Interrogation

Mia's really grilling me about Santa Claus. She doesn't want him coming down the chimney. What if there's a fire going? Way to dangerous. If he does come down the chimney, how does he get back up? If he's magic, why doesn't he just come through the door? She's very concerned about the sleigh landing on the roof. She doesn't think that's practical, but we have a lot of landscaping in our yard. No room for a sleigh. I don't think she's suspicious (yet). She just really wants to know how it works. But at this rate, this may be the last year of Santa :(

A Montessori Thanksgiving

Mia's school had a really great Thanksgiving feast on Tuesday. The kids broke up into groups and helped prepare all the food. Mia mashed sweet potatoes. Other kids made green bean casserole, cornbread, cookies, fruit salad and even butter from cream. Now she's devoted to the idea of helping me in the kitchen. Yes, it is more work for me in the short run, but here's hoping it pays off with Mia doing some solo cooking in a few years.

They also made their own Pilgrim and Indian costumes. Mia's not in this picture, but this is the only one I got with both Pilgrims and Indians.
The kids were also instructed carefully in saying "Yes, please" or "No, thank you" when they were offered something. Alas, Mia said "No, thank you" to everything but the corn bread and cookies. At least I won't suffer the trauma later today of hearing "Ewwwww, Yuck" over some delicacy grandma has slaved over.

Well, It Beats Rammstein

My husband is playing Peter Schilling's Fehler Im System for Mia and they are dancing around the living room like robots. That European electronic stuff lends itself to robot dancing. I'm not sure this will help her fit in with the other kids, but I'm sure it's more edifying that the Rammstein he plays for her on the way to school. On his agenda for tomorrow: Kraftwerk.

Getting A Jump On Christmas

Not me, of course, but all my new neighbors. Brian called me out onto the back porch last weekend to show me a Christmas tree in a neighbor's window. Since then, two houses have their outside lights on and two more Christmas trees have been added to front windows. That's just what I can see from my yard.

I always thought I started freakishly early by putting up the tree over Thanksgiving weekend.

Here Come The ABC's

If you have a preschooler, I highly recommend the DVD Here Come The ABC's by They Might Be Giants. I have a low tolerance for children's music, but this one is just the right amount of quirky. The more we listen to it, the more we like it.

Also popular with mom and dad: John Lithgow's Singin' in the Bathtub. Alas, we don't care for his new one.

I Feel Left Out

There are no big national races in Kansas. And since I moved out of Missouri a few months ago, I can't indulge in my election day ritual of going to the polls to cancel out my sister-in-law's vote.

Well, at least we have the hotly contested and very ugly Kline v. Morrison attorney general's race to get us motivated.

One Cool Thing About Touch Screen Voting

My five year old can help me vote. I point to the candidate and she presses the screen 'till it beeps. Pretty fun.

Waterboarding 101

I just got around to watching Steve Harrigan get waterboarded. My first thought was that teenage boys all over America are asking their mom's where the saran wrap is. Seriously, I was tempted myself.

One of Allah's commenters wonders if Amnesty International has done controlled experiments on waterboarding given how emphatically they insist that torture never gets good information. Now that would be one sweet science fair project. Subject A (my best friend Joe) and Subject B (my little brother)...

Happy Halloween

Mia already has an insane amount of candy from trick-or-treating at school (on a university campus where the kids visit various offices) and then the mall where I took her because I thought it would be to cold to go out tonight. But she still wanted daddy to take her around the neighborhood. I could get away with not buying any candy at all. I could regift from Mia's massive stash.

French Bus Burnings

When I read about the bus burnings in France last week, I figured it was only a matter of time before "the youths" stopped emptying the busses of passengers before setting them alight:

A group of teenagers set one bus on fire Saturday in the southern French port city of Marseille, seriously wounding a passenger. Three others suffered from smoke inhalation, police said.

No Pasaran says the wounded passenger was severely burned and is clinging to life. But never fear:

Six police were injured and 47 people were arrested, ministry officials said. Still the Interior Ministry described the night as “relative calm,” noting that up to 100 cars are torched by youths in troubled neighborhoods on an average night.

They're are on the verge of a busload of French citizens being burned alive and they call it "relative calm." Perhaps they're waiting for a "real" atrocity to do something about this problem. Or perhaps, there is nothing they can do. I'm afraid we're about to find out.

Islam -- Controversial Literature

While searching my local library's catalog for The Truth About Muhammad, I discovered a new (to me) subject heading. Islam -- Controversial Literature. They might as well have called it Robert Spencer -- Books By since he authored half of the books returned by that search.

There Are Always Two Sides To My Side Of The Story

Heard a good one today on NPR. North Carolina has a program to send elected officials to Mexico to help them understand the plight of illegal immigrants. They interviewed the program's director and program graduate that saw the light and changed his position from trying to get rid of illegals to trying to assimilate them. Next they covered the various assimilation efforts. Then they covered the "other side" of the story. "Yet, not everyone is impressed...."

As I'm sure you've already surmised, the "other side" was someone who felt North Carolina wasn't doing enough to cater to illegals. Apparently there is no one in North Carolina who wonders why poverty and corruption in Mexico should dictate local policy in the U.S. No one wonders why their elected officials are putting the interests of foreigners over the interests of the people who elected them.

Leave it to NPR to cover the range of opinion on illegal immigration, from those sympathetic to illegal immigrants all the way to open border advocates.

A Crunchy Con Thing To Do

A few weeks ago, my sister-in-law and I ordered a pasture-raised, organic hog from a local farm. We picked it up yesterday. 97 pounds of pork. I think, at $3 a pound, it was competitively priced with regular pork, but I know it was vastly less expensive that organic pork from Wild Oats. Of course, you have to buy parts of the hog you might otherwise pass up. Pickled pigs feet anyone?

I recently read Real Food: What To Eat and Why which convinced me of the benefits of pasture raised (not necessarily organic) meat. These animals really are what they eat. But the price of organic meat in the store? Ouch.

Foley-induced Flashback

This Foley incident reminded me of something I hadn't thought about in over 20 years. When I was a young teenager, my grandmother had a boyfriend who was active in Democratic party politics. At some family gathering, he mentioned the page program, then looked at me and said "Hey, maybe you could be a page." Something like the following conversation ensued:

Me: Cool!

All my male relatives: No way!

Me: Why?

All my male relatives: {embarrassed silence}

My mother: Well, you can't trust those old men around young ladies.

A bunch of Midwestern small-fry knew this was standard congressional conduct 20+ years ago, but, by all means, let's pretend to be shocked! shocked! about Foley.

You Might Be a Nerd....

if you watch Dancing With the Stars and the only "celebrity" you recognize is Tucker Carlson.

Obsession

I attended a screening of Obsession:Radical Islam's War Against the West last night. I saw a brief note about it in the local paper, so I headed over. I was lucky to get in. The auditorium, which seats about 300, was packed. I was by myself, so I got to slip into the last empty seat. The paper made it sound like some local poly/sci professor was screening it for his class, but in fact, the event was sponsored by the Unity Coalition for Israel. Hence the large turn out.

Frank Gaffney also spoke. He mentioned that the producers were still trying to get a distribution deal which is why the movie hasn't been released on video and is still being screened in auditoriums and passed around Samizdat style. He thought they were close to a deal. I hope so. This movie deserves at least as large an audience as Fahrenheit 9/11 had. Hmmm. Think ABC will be willing to take on the Dems again?

The movie was excellent, although much of the information won't be news to LGF readers. It dealt effectively with separating Islamofascists from the general Muslim population both by having a disclaimer of the "most Muslims are peaceful" variety and including the comments of three anti-Islamist Muslims in the film.

There was plenty of discussion from Western analysts, such as Caroline Glick and Daniel Pipes, but by far the most compelling commentary came from the Islamists themselves. There were suicide-bomber inductions, goose stepping troops and music videos (?!) from Iranian TV featuring George W. Bush on screen while the singers chanted "Satan, Satan." But the really bone-chilling clips were the ones that didn't need translation. A British imam in London explains why it's fine to kill the unbeliever. British jihadis in Pakistan explaining, in perfect English, why they would be happy to kill British soldiers.

As a matter of fact, after the film, Gaffney took two separate questions on why we haven't nuked Iran yet. To paraphrase, he said "How much would it help to nuke Iran? The enemy is among us."

Hard to Believe

On 9/11/01, I slept late due to a colicky three-month old. I flipped on the radio and caught the tail-end of the action. A reporter was telling the radio host that she could no longer see the building. It was gone. The host tried to clarify. "You can't see it because of all the smoke?" "No," the reporter replied, "it collapsed. It's gone." I made haste to the TV to see what was gone.

Today, I was reminded of how incomprehensible the events of that day seemed. Since I missed it the first time around, I watched a little of CNN's replay of their coverage. I tuned in just before the second plane hit. It was odd listening to the anchors try to digest the second strike. Anyone watching the video could see clearly what had just happened. Yet the anchors, probably not watching the feed, thought that the first plane inside the North tower had exploded. They couldn't accept what their producer was telling them until they ran back the video and saw it for themselves. They they went on about a possible glitch in the navigation system leading the planes into the towers.

What had just happened was simply unbelievable.

Frank Gaffney at JCCC

On Sept. 11, Johnson County Community College (Kansas), is showing the film Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West. In addition, Frank Gaffney, author of War Footing: Ten Steps America Must Take to Prevail in the War for the Free World will be speaking and taking questions.

I wanted to see that film since I first heard about it, but thought I would have to wait for the video. Apparently, they're having trouble getting a distributor (surprise). I also happened to grab Gaffney's book off the "New Book" shelf at the library a few weeks ago and am finding it quite interesting. If I go into skim mode, I think I can finish it by Monday night.

Mortgage Moms?

Are went meant to take seriously these media characterizations of each election cycle's most important group of swing voters. "Soccer Moms" seemed possible, "Security Moms" seemed obvious (to me, as I was one), but "Mortgage Moms":

In a year when politics is being roiled by angry debates over the Iraq war and immigration, it might seem odd to imagine the midterm elections being waged over
square footage and closet space. But these are parts of a lifestyle that Sharon Condit, a deputy clerk of court, describes as dogged by a sense of limits: "We have dreams of this future, but we can't get it right now."

Mortgage rates hit a four-year high of 6.80 % in July and are now back down to 6.44%. That high is about .1 percent higher that we paid 8 years ago on our first house, and the current low is about .1 percent higher than we paid for our most recent house. Sure, lower is always better than higher, but is .1% really crushing people's dreams?

But wait. More from the article:

A less obvious but powerful variable is the interest paid by people carrying credit card debt or mortgages whose monthly payments vary with interest rates. People buffeted by these trends have given rise to a new and volatile voting block.

Okay, so this isn't really about mortgage rates. It's about people who used low interest rates to buy a lot of stuff or leverage themselves into houses they couldn't otherwise afford. But I guess "Adjustable Rate Mortgage Mom" just isn't catchy enough.

Intolerance of Intolerance

Mia recently discovered on-line computer games. She loves to play them, although she often misses the point. Yesterday, she was playing one based on Arthur, a show for elementary school kids. Arthur's friends have demanded that he settle a debate. One likes Mozart and the other likes Binky (a pop band). You have three choices, side with one of the friends or choose the more enlightened path of telling the friends that neither was better, musical preference is just a matter of taste.

Well, Mia is five. She picked Binky because she thought the name sounded funny. Her punishment, well Arthur's punishment, for being a proto-fascist and deigning to designate one form of music superior to another was to stay home from the Yo-Yo Ma concert while the rest of the characters went, even the Binky fan.

This is not an anti-PBS rant. The topic of that post would be the snotty little sayings Mia has picked up from watching some of those shows. I just found it amusing that an exercise transparently designed to teach children respect for the choices of other, would display so little respect for her choice. Don't worry, Mia. You have 13 years of education ahead of you to ensure you learn the proper responses to these questions.