More Nanny State, PC Nonsense Costing Tax Payers Millions

Aren’t these pretty?  Forever Stamps,   Not so fast.  They are going to be destroyed, yep the entire run.  Why you ask?  Well it should be obvious and an outrage to you.  After all, take a look at the skateboarder.  Where are the knee pads?  The wrist braces?  No helmet?  How can that be?  It is dangerous.  Dangerous I say.  It cannot stand.  A cannonball?  How can that be allowed?  Apparently nowadays you need a helmet to do a head stand.  No helmet you might get hurt.  Oh no.  We can’t let that happen now can we?

Seriously, I didn’t ride a bike with a helmet when I was little.  I loved, and I mean loved, gymnastics.  To this day, even at my old age, I am one of the most flexible people I know.  I can put both my feet behind my head.  I don’t wear any protective gear.  So far I have never injured myself so badly that I needed medical attention.  We skateboarded without helmets and knee pads.  We survived.  It wasn’t the end of the world.   We even had cars without (gasp) airbags and child safety seats.  How did we survive?  IT’S A MIRACLE!!!!  We should all be dead by today’s standards.

Honestly, an entire run of stamps will be destroyed because someone on the Presidential Council has decided this may give kids the wrong impression about being active.  Huh?  Do kids even use stamps anymore?  What is it exactly that they are mailing out?  I mean would you have noticed the lack of knee pads had I not pointed it out?

Well at least the post office is not running in the red.  Oh wait!!!

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Reason 34,289 Not To Live in Seattle

I love the pacific northwest, especially Seattle.  It is simply beautiful.  But I could never live there.  The people are  certifiably insane out there.  Shortly after the state announces it will spend millions upon millions of tax payer dollars to make all state paperwork gender neutral comes this,

 An internal memo at Seattle City Hall is causing quite a stir. It suggests government workers no longer use the terms “citizen,” or “brown bag.”
According to the Office for Civil Rights, the terms are potentially offensive and other words should be used.

Citizen should be changed to residents and they have not quite come up with a replacement for brown bag, they are thinking sacked lunch may be more appropriate.  Oh my.  Apparently someone has gotten into their head that brown bag is a racial slur.

And while city leaders publicize “brown bag” lunch meetings as a way to designate a bring-your-own lunch time event, the term has a sorted history.
“It used to be a way people could judge skin color,” Bronstein said in a phone interview

Don’t these lawmakers have anything more pressing to deal with than this?  I mean Seattle has one of the highest levels of homelessness in the country and this is what they are choosing to deal with?  Have you ever heard anyone use the term brown bag lunch as a racial slur?  I didn’t think so.

Is is any wonder that our society and government is in such a mess?

The Politically Correct Firing of Paula Dean

The Food Network has announced that they will not be renewing the contract of Paula Dean that expires at the end of this month.  She has been fired.  The Food Network is a private business and they can hire and fire people at will.  That is their prerogative.  But the reason they did it was the mansy pansy politically correct world we have found ourselves living in.

Dean is being sued by a white woman who is claiming that she was exposed to a hostile work environment.  Now, I at one time worked at this non-profit who gave us training on hostile work environments often.  I think I had to sit through that seminar four times in the two years that I worked there.  Like most federal laws there are too broad and far too encompassing to my taste.  Virtually anything can be an offense under these laws.  The woman says that there was porn passed around in the back of  the house in the restaurant and their were people who used racial slurs.  Unless I am mistaken, the lawsuit doesn’t claim that Paula Dean herself used those slurs, just that employees did and nothing was done to stop the behavior.

During a deposition that was taken in May, Paula Dean was asked the question if she has ever used the N word.  She said yes and relayed a story about a private conversation that she had in her HOME  with her husband that took place in 1986.  At the time she was working in a bank.  A black man came into that bank, pointed a gun at her head and robbed it.  After this experience she used the N word to describe him to her husband.  This is a firable offense?

Paula Dean is not being accused of using racial slurs at the work place.  Paula Dean is not being accused of discriminatory hiring practices.  Paula Dean was asked if she ever used the word.  Paula Dean was born and raised in the south during segregation.  Does anyone in their right mind think that word never left her lips throughout her life?  If so, those people are fooling themselves.

This isn’t about the right or wrong of the word.  This is about does a person have any right to have a personal conversation in the privacy of their own home anymore?  Look the word is offensive, when used by whites.  I don’t deny that.  I certainly don’t use the word and I cringe on the very rare occasions that I hear it.  But that doesn’t mean that The Food Network should feel pressured into firing this woman because of that private conversation.

Be honest, haven’t you said things in a private conversation in your home that could easily be found offensive to someone?  Should your place of employment feel that due to that you are unemployable if that conversation ever became public knowledge?

I was going back and forth with others on this last evening and one of  the things that I heard was if I went into work on Monday and used that word to a co-worker I wouldn’t have a job on Tuesday.  True enough.  But that isn’t what happened here.   I also saw comparisons to the man who fired from the television show Grey’s Anatomy for using the word faggot.  Again, that wasn’t done in the privacy of his home. That was done in public and if I remember correctly was directed towards a coworker who is gay.  There is no comparing the two.  First and foremost I have a problem with these laws to begin with. But even if I didn’t, what happen in that case was public and done in the workplace setting.

Look, you can pass all the laws you like, it won’t change people’s hearts.  I actually contend it was that people’s hearts changing that directly led to the civil rights laws being passed.  What Martin Luther King did so brilliantly was he humanized the people who were being mistreated.  He put a face to the discrimination.  When images of people being attacked by dogs and water hoses were shown in every household across the country, people had to take a look at themselves.  That is when things changed.  The law followed the heart.

People are allowed to be racists if they choose.  There isn’t anything that anyone can do about that.  People are allowed to say what they want in their homes.  She is free to spray paint the N word on her living room wall if she wants to.  I wouldn’t go to someone’s home that did that.  But it doesn’t change the right of her to do it.  This is private behavior.

She will be just fine.  She has plenty of money and she certainly won’t starve.  But that isn’t the point.  The Food Network is yet another victim of political correctness that has run amok.  They are bowing to public pressure because she is now perceived as being a racist.  She used a racial slur in her lifetime.  That isn’t a racist make.  Everyone one of us has said things that offend someone else at one point or another in our lives.  That doesn’t mean we should be able to allow public pressure to force employers across the country to fire everyone who has.

WARREN DRINKING GAME Or How To Pad Your Resume and Get Elected

The latest composite achievement of the highly sophisticated set who pad their past with moments of victimhood as resume enhancers, is Elizabeth Warren’s claim to be the first woman to breast feed and take the bar in New Jersey. Verification of her lactation litigation feat was not deemed possible. I did not know that being able to nurse a baby was a qualification for elective office, I rather thought sucking from the public teat was the prerequisite. Ergo, the baby is more qualified than she.

However, given that Elizabeth Warren was the Jamie Lynne Grumet on Time Magazine of the law before there was a Jamie Lynne Grumet on Time magazine, I do think we have the makings of a fabulous 50 Something better’s type bar game as a result of her political resume.

Simply look at your own life and craft your own unique victimhood earning bonus points from the constituency for your hardship narrative and claim a senate seat or a stiff shot of your favorite adult beverage as your prize. Warning, first claims out of the bag will be graded on originality and they must meet the strictest credulity standard, they must be lame and unprovable as Warren’s.  Plausibility is extra credit.

I’ll start.

I should be considered for a job as CEO of a major bus company in the south because I can back a twelve passenger van down a curvy 1/10th of a mile driveway backwards.

Whoops, that’s provable. I can do that and there are witnesses.  This is harder than I thought.

I should be considered as a potential candidate for the Supreme Court because I hear cases every day from 10 different children who all want two things, a ruling in their favor, and lunch.

Again, there is evidence so this won’t work.

How about, I’m a 7th generation Texan…(oops…have documents, how stupid of me)…okay….thinking hard….

How about this….

Because I’ve had ten children, I should be given an honorary medical degree and be allowed to become an OBGYN. Wait, half of that is true.

Because I’ve been married for 22 years, I should be considered an expert on relationships. That’s true too –sorry.

Because I’ve never been drunk, I should be made a Sommelier.  Aha! We have a winner…but no one would believe me.  So that doesn’t work either.

Because I haven’t bought Facebook Stock, and thus haven’t made anyone lose money, I should get to ring the opening bell. I can’t prove I haven’t lost people money, and I want to ring the opening bell…so that should be sufficient.

Because I haven’t been on a reality television show, I should have one.  excepting…that might get me one…ewwwwww.

Your turn. I stink at this drinking game…but maybe it’s because I’ve never been drunk.

One thing Elizabeth Warren has illustrated with her career…it takes dedication to the craft to say such things with a straight face and perfect earnestness if only to gain sympathy.  I may need a stiff drink if she’s elected.

Can abortion make you suicidal?

Feminists played on the sympathies of earlier generations by raising the specter of the back-alley abortion with a hanger. Since then we’ve seen millions murdered in the womb, and the horror of the Philly clinic for mothers and babies alike.

But what of the social pathology associated with the act? Even Norma McCorvey/Jane Roe herself regretted her abortion, though it took years. Now women can see the baby develop in the womb early on. Preemies are born at younger ages than those aborted. How can this all be denied by a thinking person?

Now British researchers have concluded a major study, upending prevalent American ones:

An important meta-analysis published today in the prestigious British Journal of Psychiatry demonstrates that nearly 10% of mental health problems in women are directly attributable to abortion.  “Abortion and mental health: quantitative synthesis and analysis of research published 1995-2009,” by Priscilla Coleman of Bowling Green University, shows that women with an abortion history have an 81% increased risk of mental health problems and 155% increased risk of suicide.  This meta-analysis combines 22 studies of 877,181 women, 163, 831 of whom have had abortions.  A meta-analysis is an especially powerful type of study because it includes a large number of subjects, and by combining studies is much more reliable than a single study.

This review, which is larger than any study to date, contradicts the recent and biased and less systematic review by the American Psychological Association, which fails to find a relationship between mental health problems and abortion.  The new meta-analysis also contradicts the stance of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), which has been silent on the mental health impact of abortion in its official publications despite overwhelming evidence over the last two decades of abortion’s adverse effects.

Ignore the evidence at the risk of even women’s health, the gaping loophole of the abortion at all costs crowd.

P.S. And while giving the Black Panthers a pass at the polling place–where they were actually blocking access and brandishing billy clubs, the Obama Justice Dept. is aggressively going after pro-life protesters at abortion clinics.

Another ObamaCare Ruling from on High at HHS

There’s a form of opt out for religious entities, but it’s not enough. Insurers must cover birth control with no copays:

Generic versions of the pill are available for as little as $9 a month. Still, about half of all pregnancies are unplanned. Many are among women using some form of contraception, and forgetting to take the pill is a major reason.

Not even having to pay for it will presumably enable even more forgetfulness. And more systemic abuse.

This is not really healthcare either, it’s a lifestyle choice, though widely prevalent, but it’s not limited to what we most commonly think of as birth control:

The requirement applies to all forms of birth control approved by the Food and Drug Administration. That includes the pill, intrauterine devices, the so-called morning-after pill, and newer forms of long-acting implantable hormonal contraceptives that are becoming widely used in the rest of the industrialized world.

Coverage with no copays for the morning-after pill is likely to become the most controversial part of the change. The FDA classifies Plan B and Ella as birth control, but some religious conservatives see the morning-after drugs as abortion drugs. The rules HHS issued Monday do not require coverage of RU-486 and other drugs to chemically induce an abortion.

And what this ruling does as well is increase costs–eventually leading to rationing health care to less politically correct people and real diseases.

More. Catholic Vote: This Tryst Paid For By Taxpayers Like You

Infantilizing Kids

Happy Meals are already buckling, taking away consumer choice for fear of Big Gov. Now this:

New recommendations from government agencies would require that foods marketed directly to children between the ages of two and 17 contribute to healthy diets.

“We believe that food and beverage companies should market responsibly to kids,” said Susan Davison, director of corporate affairs for Kraft Foods Inc. “But we think the Interagency Working Group proposal is too restrictive. In fact, it’s so restrictive that foods like reduced fat peanut butter or two percent milk string cheese could not be advertised to children.”

Children are now defined as up to age 17, rather than the historic ad industry standard which considered teens differently.

Of course, if this goes through, it will cost jobs.

And undermine parents once again.

The takeaway for me on food is moderation. Children need to develop some of that on their own, or they never will. A treat from time to time is fine.

As was the story with playgrounds, meals can probably be too safe for common sense.

By now most people know about those crazy…

By now, most people know about those crazy Swedes and their attempt to eliminate gender from language on impressionable children on the theory that language oppresses and causes boys and girls to grow up to be men and women… as verses anything else.

Somehow, every generation prior to this one survived this madness and even turned out legitimately decent sane  people, but when it comes to creating equality in the classroom, there’s only one theory.  It goes like this:

1) Whatever we’ve done before is at its core wrong and dangerous and must be stopped. (This is taken as a given truth. Why? Because someone somewhere felt marginalized and has declared that this was the cause and source).

2) Whatever we substitute must be as much as possible, the opposite of what has been done before.  (No research necessary, the classroom and its moppets are your social guinea pigs, enjoy)!

3) You may predict all good things and the utopia to follow without fear of skepticism, criticism or consequences for poor, ineffective, disastrous or ridiculous results.

4) You will be lauded for your politically correct good intentions and thought process. 

“We could just get to Utopia if everyone would do it our way” thinking is madness.  It is the root of this sort of educational reform, we can eliminate anger and  evil and pain through education if we just teach them young enough what to do.  Oppression from family and language, liberty through state education and the elimination of words from reality –got it.

Deciding that children will be like blocks of marble from which if we’re patient, fully formed beings shall emerge who define and decide their own realities according not to actual facts but their own feelings is a shortcut to how to raise a civilization of narcissists and psychopaths –who define and see the world on their terms only. 

I wish I were simply engaging in hyperbole to make a point, but if a kid thinks 1+4 is 6 until they decide otherwise, why should they ever come to think otherwise?  If a kid comes to believe because he/she has been taught that nothing is but his/her thinking makes it so, (a moral relativist ultimate conclusion, all is mine to define), why should any of these children ever give a damn about anyone else’s desired or perceived or defined reality?  I foresee a lot of hurt feelings when these kids grow enough to run into others who don’t see the world as they do which will be as soon as they go to a non state sponsored playground and meet a less purely raised individual of the same age. 

And how far are these nutjobs at the experimental Egalia willing to take this thought process.  Are they then going to declare use of gender specific language tantamount to hate speech?  Revise “Are You My Mother” to be “Are You Who Gestated Me?”

Here’s a crazy idea for those modern thinkers who come up with this tripe.  Go outside and meet actual people.  There are women lawyers and doctors. There are men who are chefs and artists. This is not the middle ages and most folks, (even toddlers) see male and female role models out there in the world and that is how they come to know what is possible.  They also see that there are men and there are women and omitting language does not do what you intend, rather it simply pretends that what is (gender based on biology) isn’t. 

Final thought for those Swedish avant-garde thinkers of new thinkery, before everyone goes off storm chasing (the kid not being assigned a gender by his/her parents) to create a society peopled with “It’s Pat” clones, maybe we ought to ask why and to what end?

Can we have school choice already?

My kids are out, thank God, but every time I see a story like this I get so steamed.

Most parents are too cowed by the possibility there will be reprisals by teachers against their child so they stay silent–unless they can afford private school.

I thought W’s No Child Left Behind might be the best we could do to break the unions at the national level, but states circumvented it.

We are at the point now I think where the only thing is to follow the Walker lead, stop the collective bargaining, push for school choice, and vote REPUBLICAN whenever you can.

We can’t afford our kids to be so ill-served as to think Big Gov is the way the truth and the life, especially when it won’t be there for them. They’ll be there for it.

 

 

Michelle O meets with Nompumelelo Ntuli-Zuma, one of President Jacob Zuma’s three wives

…at his official residence. Zuma was scheduled to be out of the country. That’s South Africa. Three wives. According to Wiki he’s been married quite a lot, including a “fiancee” by another name he was supposedly to marry last December.

Charges of 3 rapes

A sex scandal:

South Africa has an unemployment rate upwards of 30 percent. In some communities the percentage is even higher. The idea that a president would spend more time dealing with sex scandals instead of fixing the country’s economic woes does not sit well with many people, says Spio-Garbrah.

“Zuma has always presented himself as the common man. The problem for many South Africans is ‘if half of us are unemployed and the rest are barely surviving, how come you can afford to have 19 children, three wives and one girlfriend?'” he says. “For someone who doesn’t have job, who can’t even afford to feed his family, for Zuma to be going around and fathering children left, right and center would irk such a person.”

Former member of the communist party. Living large.

Then there are the corruption charges, but that’s nothing out of the ordinary in most countries, not to mention Chicago.

No wonder he’s out of the country, the State Dept. probably insisted on it.

But why go there in the first place and give recognition in any way to this disgusting president? Before they had apartheid, now polygamy is honored in their leading family. (I guess cuz it’s “anti-colonial” it’s OK) The official line:

“She’s coming on this trip to talk about women’s development and youth development, and South Africa’s a leader in that, not only on the continent but globally,” said Elizabeth Trudeau, spokesman for the US embassy in Pretoria.

Quite the role model.

  –crossposted at BackyardConservative

Wreckovery Summer in the City TWO. Michelle

Buy one get one free. Not so much.

Yessiree, Michelle O is going to be the president’s secret weapon this year. One of his best assets. Will she hold another beer summit in the White House?

More Chicago flash mob reaction. It wasn’t just a suburban biker–two doctors in town for a convention were attacked–on or near what we call here the Magnificent Mile. You know, near the lake. Near the Gold Coast where Oprah has her perch. A comment from the Tribune story:

  Sick-of-the-Chicago-Way at 8:02 AM June 07, 2011 We have a president and Congress that wants to redistribute wealth.  These kids simply chose to remove the middle man from the deal.  Perhaps the solution is a government program that directly gives “disadvantaged” youth Ipads and Iphones

Yes we can. Let’s Move.

P.S. Why does Chicago have one of the highest crime rates in the country? Why is Chicago’s population back to 1920’s levels? In other news, Dems overturn the 2010 midterms in Illinois. …Maybe these women will wise up this time and be immune to Michelle’s message. Especially if they can’t move.

Related post: Women take the long view, drop O in droves

  –crossposted at BackyardConservative

Our no more thin mints culture war

This has come up on Potluck before. The battle intensifies, given the ObamaCare forced funding of abortion, and the more we know about Planned Parenthood. They are part of the PC in-crowd. Kathryn Jean Lopez, NRO, on Girl Scouts going rogue from their leftist-run organization:

Sydney tells me: “Many Girl Scouts are good, wholesome girls. The problem lies within the national organization’s leadership and its lack of adherence to its promise of neutrality.” She adds that girls often need and “should get help, but Planned Parenthood and abortion — what GSUSA is directing them to — are not help. Abortion has serious risks for women, including breast cancer, infertility, post-traumatic stress disorder, and suicide. Does this sound like help?”

“If we had a say,” Sydney continues, “we would make it so they were truly neutral about a girl’s health and sexuality, abortion and birth control, and political affiliations, as they promise to be. We would put the focus where it should be, on character-building and leadership activities.”

Character building for girls. What a concept.

Thankfully, there’s an alternative now. The American Heritage Girls. Faith Service Fun

A matter of degree

Women surpassed men over a decade ago in getting bachelor’s degrees. Now it’s post-graduate.

On the face of it, fine.

But the story touts the wonderful opportunity for men to be Mr. Mom. This is a feminist leftie take on the stats.

If you’re going to take that tack, given men’s underemployment in the mancession, shouldn’t this be a cause for concern? I mean, men might want choice too.

The other issue is just what kind of learning is going on in some of our schools anyway? (See previous post for just one example. Here’s another. Here’s another and another.)

We’re paying a lot, or our kids are. Some call it a higher education bubble.

With this economy, what kind of jobs do we especially need for the future, to be able to compete in the world economy?

Women still trail men in professional subcategories such as business, science and engineering.

It’s a matter of degree.

“Infected” by Christian values?

At the Corner, Paul Diamond, counsel in the case of UK parents deemed unfit to foster children by virtue of their mainstream Christian beliefs (my post here) provides the rest of the story.

Are Children ‘Infected’ by Judeo-Christian Values?

The state-sponsored Equality and Human Rights Commission intervened and argued that it was the duty of the state to protect vulnerable children from becoming “infected” with Judeo-Christian values of sexual morality.

The rest is history, and in a startling judgment, the High Court held last Monday that the United Kingdom is a secular state and that Christianity as part of the law is “mere rhetoric.” For Americans to note, the United Kingdom is formally a Christian state with the Queen as the head of the Church of England.

The court made a series of statements to the effect that rights of sexual orientation trump religious freedom, that a local authority can require positive attitudes to be demonstrated towards homosexuality, that the Johns’ traditional Christian views could conflict with the “duty to safeguard and promote the welfare of looked after children,” and finally that Article 9 (Europe’s pale reflection of the First Amendment) does not protect beliefs contrary to the interests of the child.

Mr. Diamond discusses the speed with which the UK has reached this point and hopes the US will learn from his country’s experience. Read the whole thing.

Nudity, Child Rape, Suicide Shown to 9yr olds at Suburban Chicago Winnetka Grade School. ‘Appropriately’, no one Fired

However, we can assure the public that the staff members involved in this incident were treated fairly and appropriately. No employees were or will be fired as a result of this incident.

Do you know who’s teaching your child? And what they’re “teaching”? Who decides when a child is old enough for nudity, rape and suicide – parents or teachers?

Maybe it’s all the rumblings about union salaries, pensions and power in the news, but there is a broader question raised by a recent incident at Greeley School in Winnetka. That’s where a couple of substitute teachers showed parts of an HBO movie called The Middle Passage to fourth graders a few weeks ago. Some parents were upset that their 9-year-olds were viewing a movie that included nudity, child rape and suicide aboard a slave ship.

Of course parents who questioned this were accused of being vile bigots… 

The issue came to light after Patrick Livney and three other parents of Greeley School fourth graders complained about the film.

Livney said it’s had scarring effects on his daughter and other students at Greeley.

“Now we’ve got a situation where there’s demonstrable damage done to 9-year-olds’ brains. We have fourth graders talking about depressing classrooms, depression. Boys going around talking about ‘rape dogs.’ Are you kidding me?” Livney said. “After five great years at Greeley, (my daughter) doesn’t want to go to school.”

He said some boys now don’t want to go into the water “because this movie shows sharks devouring slaves who were purposely thrown overboard.”[snip]

From a harshly sarcastic email by Jen McQuet, a Winnetka parent, published in TribLocal:

About 20 million Africans were taken from homes and families and sold into slavery to work plantations in North and South America. More than half died. But the real tragedy, really and seriously, is that a privileged little girl from Winnetka had to see some scary pictures of it. That’s serious, long-lasting damage.

…For wanting to protect their children from vile imagery. (You know, something a bit like this but much, much worse.) More at leftie Huffpo, which overwhelmingly voted it was OK to show this to grade school kids.Who is politicizing education? For the children. Who is treating children as pawns for their agenda? Is this a “safe learning environment”? Causing some children to cry until midnight and have recurring nightmares and fears? 

What next, Winnetka, a Laurie Dann reenactment? For educational purposes, of course.

The rest of the post here.

Quote of the day

Ed Morrissey on the end of Pelosi’s higher-cost (predictable), higher-carbon emissions (heh!) “Green the Capitol” agenda in the cafeteria:

Eating has returned now to its previous purpose of feeding people rather than lecturing them on tastes and energy policy, and costs have returned to normal as well.  But the exercise did have its value.  It showed that far from looking to deliver cheaper, cleaner, and more reliable energy resources, the “green” movement instead exists to lecture people not just on energy consumption but on a wide range of lifestyle choices.  It is much more efficient at distributing condescension than actual energy, and hypocrisy over tangible results.

 Bonus: no more useless, compostable cornstarch sporks!

A Statistically Impossible Lack of Diversity. Conservative Profs

Of Social Psychology. A sadly amusing column by John Tierney in the NY Times:

A sea of hands appeared, and Dr. Haidt estimated that liberals made up 80 percent of the 1,000 psychologists in the ballroom. When he asked for centrists and libertarians, he spotted fewer than three dozen hands. And then, when he asked for conservatives, he counted a grand total of three.

“This is a statistically impossible lack of diversity,” Dr. Haidt concluded, noting polls showing that 40 percent of Americans are conservative and 20 percent are liberal. In his speech and in an interview, Dr. Haidt argued that social psychologists are a “tribal-moral community” united by “sacred values” that hinder research and damage their credibility — and blind them to the hostile climate they’ve created for non-liberals.

There may well have been some closeted conservatives among the group. How many more didn’t enter the field at all, sensing the futility of open inquiry?

I remember the Larry Summers incident cited in the article. And the attack on Daniel Patrick Moynihan was ruinous to our society, as Pundette notes today.

Add to this the media bias we know is there, and confirmation that lawyers and judges double-team us, it’s a wonder we win any elections or make any advances at all.

Ah, but it’s the power of our ideas. In the real world.

Quote of the Day

Doug Powers writing at Michelle Malkin in response to our ’08 GOP nominee who claims his opponent is now “easier to work with” after his media-created move to the center:

John McCain often reminds me of a trout that just got hooked and is thrilled that the fisherman has agreed to meet him halfway.

Heh.

others caution against using the study to blame students for not applying themselves

Is our children learning?

Many of the students graduated without knowing how to sift fact from opinion, make a clear written argument or objectively review conflicting reports of a situation or event, according to New York University sociologist Richard Arum, lead author of the study. The students, for example, couldn’t determine the cause of an increase in neighborhood crime or how best to respond without being swayed by emotional testimony and political spin.

No problem, just get a job with the NY Times.

But let’s see, could it be because this “critical thinking” approach to education was used in elementary schools for years to dumb down and disparage actually learning basic math, science and reading skills? Could that be it? Could it be outcome-based education?

At some point students actually need to learn skills, not community organizing. How about actually thinking and questioning. That used to be the essence of a liberal arts education.

More. Ann Althouse on Howard Gardner. Count me a skeptic as well. Howard Gardner was big as “best practices” in our suburban elementary schools when my kids were inmates 15 years ago or so. While I think his approach had some value in highlighting how individuals learn differently, the main result was to let teachers and districts off the hook on testing, while renaming gym as kinetic wellness and justifying such impediments to learning as “math journals”. A liberal arts approach to math that worked for no one.

HT Memeorandum

UPDATE: Our PJ Mom’s take here.

could not identify his wife who was killed in a road crash until her veil was put back on her face

Well, isn’t that special. How many of these stories are Onion-like if they weren’t so tragic. Jihad Watch: Saudi man has never seen his wife’s face after ten years of marriage

Gee, what about that French cartoon.

And on the subject of multiculturalism, leftists wear the veil, only it covers their eyes too. Crash.

HT Memeorandum