That Didn't Take Long

Peace group blames U.S., U.K. for Iraq hostages:

BAGHDAD, Iraq - A peace group blamed the United States and Britain for the abduction of four activists shown in an insurgent video, saying the kidnapping was the direct result of the occupation of Iraq.

Well, of course. It couldn't have anything to do with these "peace" activists wandering into a dangerous situation armed only with their ideology. And Lord knows it couldn't be the fault of the head-choppers with guns. If it can't be traced back to the Great Satan, it just isn't worth talking about.

The Stepford School

Yes, a school can be too perfect.

I've been checking out schools trying to help us decide where to move. I found the web page of one that claimed to have a modified Montessori program. It's located in a place we call Corporate Woods, a fancy office park filled with law firms. I guess that should have been my first clue. "The Most Academic Curriculum For Your Child" should have been clue #2.

But still I persist, because Montessori elementary programs are few and far between around here. Extra-curricular activities. Full-time registered nurse. F-3 Tornado Shelter. Closed-circuit TV to observe the classrooms. Key card entry. But I finally picked up the undeniable scary-perfection vibe when I read that the playgrounds "...are surfaced in the synthetic “field turf” found in professional football stadiums. Our playgrounds are green in January, produce no grass stains, and are never muddy! "

Plastic grass? Hmmm. I find grass stains as annoying as the next mother, but that doesn't mean I want to ban grass. Maybe I really don't belong in the snobby suburbs.

Technorati Tag: kansas city

Why Teaching Religion in School is a Bad Idea, Part 312

Here's the story of a little dust-up at the University of Kansas over a professor apparently designing a course to mock conservative Christians. The course was originally called "Special Topics in Religion: Intelligent Design, Creationisms and other Religious Mythologies," later changed to "Intelligent Design and Creationism." The controversy erupted when an e-mail from the professor to the Society of Open-Minded Atheists and Agnostics, a student organization for which he serves as faculty adviser, was made public. In it he "called supporters of the teaching of intelligent design and creationism religious "fundies" and said it would be a "nice slap in their big fat face" to teach the subjects as mythology".

I don't know whether this guy is a righteous advocate of science or a big jerk. But my point is that conservative Christians seem to think the local pastor will be teaching the Bible class at the local high school, when, in fact, it will be taught by guys like this.

Finally Learned Something On The Morning Shows

No, it wasn't insightful commentary on world events, but it was useful. When you are ordering on-line, if there is a box for a coupon code when you check out, then there is a coupon somewhere and if you google the store name and "coupon code", you'll find it. That little trick just saved me $8.00.

Thanksgiving: A Smashing Success

Granted, my standards for success are pretty low. I only had 6 adults plus Mia, but all the food was warm and on the table at approximately the same time and within 15 minutes of the appointed hour. A low-stress holiday with the family. I really can't ask for more than that.

Chopped Liver

That's what they call me when Grandma is around. Mia actually tries to lure Grandma to her room and shut the door to keep me out. My mom and I chatter on endlessly when we get together, so I guess Mia realizes that she will not have Grandma's undivided attention if I'm around. And there is nothing she loves more than undivided attention.

This shunning might make some mother's sad, but not me. Mia is very much a momma's girl, so it's nice to see that she can get along without me for awhile.

Snobby Suburbs

The Kansas City Star recently did a series on the best KC suburbs. As we are currently looking for a suburb to move to, I read the series with great interest. Leawood, Kansas, one of the suburbs we are particularly interested in was ranked number two largely because of the very low crime rate:

South of the Missouri River in Kansas City, violent and major property crimes occur so often that a resident will be victimized, on average, once a decade. Just across the state line into suburban Leawood, however, that threat nearly disappears. [snip]

Why is Leawood so safe? A big part of it is that Leawood simply does more police patrolling than other cities do.

And what do these patrols do, besides making frequent appearances on every street in Leawood? Crack down on moving violations:

Indeed, Leawood’s police have a long-standing reputation for stopping cars coming through town. It even dates back decades to when Police Chief Sid Mitchell was growing up in south Kansas City and attending Center High School.

“I was scared to death to come across the state line because you’d get stopped for going a mile over the speed limit,” Mitchell says. And all these years later, he insists one thing hasn’t changed: “We’re tough on traffic.”

So you get a reputation for being tough on traffic and suddenly, people who have no particular business in your town start to avoid it. Criminals go where they are less likely to encounter police. Sounds like a pretty good idea, right? But no:

...the city has been seen by some as insensitive toward minorities and even as holding a “keep out” attitude toward outsiders.

More derision is heaped on Leawood for traffic control measures it has taken in the past even though they are no longer in effect.

This is one of those things we don't like to talk about. When a town does snobby things like having few large roads connecting to other cites (or particular cities), having fewer and smaller parks to avoid attracting outsiders, and having lots of police poking around... well, then the residents are accused of being snobs, of thinking their town is better than the others. Snobbishness is bad. Snobby people are mean and stupid. Of course.

One inconvienent fact remains. According to The Star's search for the best places to live in the KC Metro, Leawood ranked #2 of 40 suburbs surveyed. Number one was the snobby city just south of Leawood. Number 4, #7 and #8: Snobby. And the rest are too far flung to worry much about criminals driving out from the city (no public transport to speak of here in KC) So presumably, these places are better. They are undeniably better in terms of low crime and good schools, which are the 2 most important thing for people with kids (along with price).

So we laud a city for having low crime and good schools, but we deride a city for doing what it takes to get low crime and good schools.

Technorati Tag: kansas city

Is this a good idea?

One of Merkel's first moves as Chancellor:

In order to fill budget holes, Merkel and her new government also announced a rise in sales tax by three percentage points to 19 percent in 2007.

Wow, 16% is already high and they're going to 19%? Stores on the Missouri side of the state line advertise how much you'll save on sales tax because Missouri is in the mid-to-high 6% range while the Kansas rate is 7% to8%. I wouldn't buy anything more expensive than a pack of gum in Kansas if their tax rate was 19%.

If you want to know about Bush's trip to Mongolia...

you have to visit Gateway Pundit, because Good Morning America was all about Bush not being able to get some door open while trying to leave a press conference, which apparently symbolizes Bush's whole trip to Asia...or something. Thanks for reminding us what serious journalists you all are there at ABC.

Johnny Depp to Abandon France?

I thought it was Scrapple face:

Hollywood star Johnny Depp is so shocked by the riots raging through France, he's considering abandoning his home in the country.

Why didn't he just buy a "ranch" in Montana like the rest of Hollywood? Thought those sophisticated Europeans couldn't have any problems, I guess. (via LGF comments)

World Beard Championship

The World Beard and Moustache Championships were recently held in Germany. These fine fellows were the winners in the Goatees and Other Partial Beards - Freestyle category. There are 17 such categories. Who knew?

Iconoclasm 201

I'm finally listening to Treason, by Ann Coulter. I never picked it up because I thought it would be a silly screed. I thought I wouldn't enjoy listening to hours of angry diatribe, even if I agreed with the substance of the argument. Then I saw the documentary Is It True What They Say About Ann? I've read her columns, but I'd never seen her in action. I was surprised and impressed. She's not even a little bit angry. Even as she's saying the most outrageous things, she has a barely suppressed smile on her face. I suspect she's shockingly blunt and oh so clever as a way of drawing attention to her arguments.

But what made me run to the library for the audio version of Treason was a clip of her destroying Bill O'Reilly(?) by leading him to agree that McCarthy was horrible for instigating all that HUAC nastiness regarding Hollywood screenwriters and then casually pointing out that HUAC stands for The House UnAmerican Activities Committee, while McCarthy was generally referred to as Senator McCarthy, what with him being in the Senate and all. That's when I realized how precious little I knew about about the whole McCarthy era (if three years can be referred to as an era). And I'm not trusting George Clooney to enlighten me.

The McCarthy stuff is fascinating, but I already had a mini-epiphany on that during the controversy over awarding Elia Kazan an Oscar for Life-Time Achievement. That was the first time I ever heard anyone say that the people named before the committee really were communists. It is always implied, or said outright, that the committee was in the grip of anti-communist paranoia, searching relentlessly for enemies that weren't there and demanding that some sacrificial lamb be produced to satisfy there blood-lust. In fact, Hollywood was filled with communists working diligently for our implacable enemy. All Kazan had done was tell the truth under oath. And even that had nothing to do with McCarthy.

What's truly amazing is Coulter's attack on Truman's image as the first cold-warrior. I live 20 minutes from the Truman Library in Independence, MO and I have to wonder how popular Ann is around here anymore. We really love Harry in this neck of the woods. But I must admit that it never occurred to me that "containment" might not be an aggressive anti-communist stance (Ann: conservatives prefer victory to cowardly containment). I had no clue that the Army kept knowledge of the Venona Project to decode secret Soviet transmissions from Roosevelt and Truman because they couldn't be trusted not to leak to the Soviets that their code had been broken. How deeply embedded were Soviet spies in the US government? Well, let's just say that Stalin knew that we had the A-bomb before Truman did.

All that, and I'm only about half-way through.

Update: Bookworm links to this Coulter article on the George Clooney movie.

Brainwashing 201

The Chronicle of Higher Education has a review of Evan Maloney's Brainwashing 201: The Second Semester:

In a darkened theater, a married couple appears on the screen. "Laura and Roger Freberg seem like normal people," narrates a pleasant male voice. "She's a professor at Cal Poly, and he owns a local business. They've been married since 1972. They live in a beautiful town. And their daughter was recently awarded a Bronze Star for her service in Iraq. But they also have a horrible secret. And for seven years, it made their lives living hell."

"A lot of bad things happened," Mr. Freberg says. Someone tried to break into their house, a swastika was burned on their lawn, and he says, "some really nasty threats" were made against their children.

"Were they closet Nazis?" the narrator asks, to footage of two Nazi soldiers forcibly escorting a priest down the street.

"Did they have people buried in their backyard?" he asks, as viewers see a scene from Night of the Living Dead.

"No, it was something worse ... much worse," he says, dragging out every word. "They were ... Republicans!"

(Via Libertas)

Yep. It's Big

Don't miss The Big Ad. Very funny.

Great Alt. History Potential Here

On November 1, 1950, President Harry Truman was almost assassinated by Puerto Rican Nationalists. Apparently the incident was downplayed at the time, but was really quite a close call. America's Gunfight: The Plot to Kill Harry Truman and the Shoot-Out that Stopped It is a new book out about the incident by Stephen Hunter and John Bainbridge, Jr.

According to Hunter, if four other potential shooters hadn't have backed out (in other words, if there would have been 5 or 6 shooters instead of two)... welcome to the Alben Barkley era.

Listen to the the Hunter interview here (Nov. 14th edition)

Oddly enough, the two assassins weren't the poverty-stricken, oppressed, down-and-outers that you always here about (but somehow rarely see) carrying out these suicide missions. The ringleader was a middle-class family man who spoke English and put his kids in American schools. Hmmmm.

Fascist Propaganda Meets PBSKids

Okay, this National Front video is... well...just look and see.

(via No Pasaran commentor Lou Minatti, who compares it to a "Third Reich version of the Teletubbies," but I'm sure he means Boohbah)

Ideology Makes Bad Science

Dr. E.O. Wilson, expert on biodiversity, Professor Emeritus at Harvard University and a Pulitzer Prize-winning author was on Up To Date today. The discussion was wide ranging, but it started with the doctor expressing concern about the Intelligent Design controversy in Kansas and later touched on his brush with the left in the early 70's.

He was called a Nazi and doused with water while giving a speech because he contended that there is a strong genetic tendency towards racism and war. The prevailing opinion on campuses at the time (and still in the humanities departments) was that humans were blank slates to be written upon by the enlightened left. That he had the temerity to suggest otherwise was intolerable.

Just another story to illustrate that fanaticism isn't found only (or even mainly) in church.

Leaks and the leaking leakers who leak them

Seems the CIA has sent a report to the Justice Department asking for the Post story on secret CIA prisons to be investigated as a possible leak of classified information. How do we know about this report? "The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity..."

(via Ace)

These Things Take Time

I'm amazed that France is only now imposing curfews after 12 days of rioting. Or as La Shawn Barber reader Myopic Zeal puts it:

I have come across this shocking bit of evidence that while France burns, Chirac has spent the last eleven days reading the French version of the much maligned children’s story “My Pet Goat.”

Really. Chirac is making FEMA look speedy.

Mark Steyn Gets Gloomy

Yikes:

... I noticed a few months ago that Telegraph readers had started closing their gloomier missives to me with the words, "Fortunately I won't live to see it" - a sign-off now so routine in my mailbag I assumed it was the British version of "Have a nice day". But that's a false consolation. As France this past fortnight reminds us, the changes in Europe are happening far faster than most people thought. That's the problem: unless you're planning on croaking imminently, you will live to see it.

Is the Pendulum Swinging?

Hugh Hewitt has an interview with Victor David Hanson. VDH suggests Europe is ready to swing to the right:

So while the American people were apologizing for the Patriot Act, to their left-wing European friends, they have not a clue that the legislation a lot of European parliaments is so far to the right of anything that we could imagine, such as deporting a naturalized citizen, without a hearing...

and when the ideas of the far-left prove unworkable:

The idea that there will be somebody who will promise them to bring order, to bring back respect, to bring back reverence for tradition, and to get the economy, to get the society back on an even keel, in the European tradition. And that'll be quite unexpected by us, because we keep thinking that they're left-wing and post-modern, but we don't read their history.

(via Instapundit)

Female Bodyguards Have The Advantage

Here's an interesting blurb at Strategy Page about the use of women in security details. Seems men so under-estimate women that they don't even notice them, turning women into invisible bodyguards. Talk about playing to your strengths.

Night Nine...

of the Paris riots is underway according to No-Pasaran.

"...you know, we kept hearing all this stuff ever since September 11th, you know, the Muslim street is going to explode in anger. Well, it finally did, and it was in Paris, not in the Middle East." -- Mark Steyn

Speaking of Zombies...

as I was the other day, Gateway Pundit has a round-up of zombie sightings in polling places across America. The dead, it seems, vote Democrat.