No wonder Romney avoids tough interviews. He gets irritated when questioned about his record and his changing positions. Skip ahead to 8:25 to see Mitt pretending he's not angry:
It it just me or did that phony laugh make your skin crawl just a little?
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November 30, 2011
You won't like him when he's angry
Fifth-grader's suicide should be a wake-up call for parents
A 10 year-old Illinois girl hanged herself earlier this month rather than face more taunting from classmates at her small public school. The school's policy on bullying, devised no doubt by experts, states: "Tell the bully to stop; if that doesn't work, walk away; if that doesn't work, tell a teacher." It utterly failed her. When Ashlynn Conner did tell her teachers she was accused of "tattling." And the bullying continued.
According to the Chicago Tribune, the taunting may have started with a haircut:
Ashlynn [Conner] had become a target for some of her classmates years ago, said 19-year-old cousin Heidi Paree. Paree points to a time when Ashlynn had gotten a short haircut, around the time tryouts began for cheerleading at youth football games."Years ago," implying that the taunting began when she was seven or eight years old. From there, it progressed to taunts of "fat," "ugly," and "slut."
"They said she looked like a boy, 'Who's that boy over there?' That kind of thing," Paree said. "It really upset her."
Yet her mother still had faith in the school administration to fix it:
A day earlier, Ashlynn returned home in tears after being taunted by girls at school and asked to be pulled out of classes to be home-schooled, family said. Her mother told her that she they would meet with the school principal Monday.According to the Daily Mail:
An emotional Stacy Conner told WCIA-TV: 'They'd call her a slut. Ashlynn's ugly. She's fat.'That should have been the case. A parent's love and acceptance is meant to provide a foundation that won't be shaken by peer rejection.
She added: 'I thought my kids are strong kids, and that my words for them for guidance and advice was going to have more weight than what these kids could be saying.'
On Thursday, Ashlynn pleaded with her mother to allow her to be home schooled to escape Ridge Farm Elementary - and Stacy Conner refused.I don't want to judge the mother. She had no inkling her daughter would do what she did. It sounds as though she alerted the authorities and went through the proper channels.
But when will parents catch on to the fact that our "experts" and "authorities," including those who teach and run our public schools, not only can't fix our problems but are part of a system that fails to serve, and sometime even destroys, our children? Or that the "socialization" that takes place in school is not quite as desirable as the experts keep insisting? When a child whose age hasn't even reached double digits is living only to be liked and accepted by peers, that's a problem. Note that the girls who taunted little Ashlynn are referred to as her "friends" by the sheriff. In the peer-obsessed culture that dominates our schools, bullying and taunting are inevitable, serving to draw the boundaries between who is and who isn't part of the tribe.
Nothing would have been simpler or more effective than to remove Ashlynn from the toxic environment. But it didn't happen. Perhaps the mother believed that school attendance was an absolute necessity. Maybe she thought sending her daughter to school every day to run such a gauntlet would toughen her up and prepare her for the "real world." Or maybe she just couldn't conceive of life for her child outside that institution, so entrenched and revered is it in American culture. Most of us, products of the school system ourselves, just plod compliantly along the path set out for our kids, believing that others really do know what's best for them, even when the evidence of our own eyes tells us otherwise. Our baseless faith is these experts is a sort of madness that lulls us into passivity.
Ultimately, Ashlynn's ordeal did not make her stronger.
"I don't know if it is any different than when we were kids," said one of Ashlynn's neighbors. "There are some children that maybe aren't equipped to handle it."Why should children be equipped to handle a steady stream of abuse every day? Lord of the Flies isn't the "real world." Not yet, anyway. But it isn't a bad metaphor for what goes on in our schools. Parents need to wake up, by-pass the bureaucrats and authorities, and take the welfare of their children into their own hands.
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November 29, 2011
In which Mark Steyn quotes Yours Truly on the Rush Limbaugh Show
For real.
I always make it a priority to listen when Mark fills in for Rush. You can only imagine my astonishment when I heard the following as I stood at the kitchen counter picking through the remains of last week's turkey in search of enough meat to fill a sandwich for my visiting mother-in-law:
A couple of the kids heard it, too. Quelle surprise!
Thanks to the Daily Caller for posting the audio and linking to the historic post about Newt's adverbs. And many thanks to Mark Steyn. He's the best. But you already knew that.
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November 28, 2011
Oh dear. A new allegation against Herman Cain [updated]
A woman accuses Herman Cain not of harassment but of engaging in a thirteen-year affair with her. Something of this duration should be easy enough to confirm. Cain went on CNN to warn his pal Blitz about the impending story, and Cain's lawyer has issued a defensive non-denial:
“Mr. Cain has been informed today that your television station plans to broadcast a story this evening in which a female will make an accusation that she engaged in a 13-year long physical relationship with Mr. Cain. This is not an accusation of harassment in the workplace – this is not an accusation of an assault – which are subject matters of legitimate inquiry to a political candidate.Oy. So a presidential candidate who has repeatedly claimed to have been faithful to his wife for 40-plus years is now saying, through his attorney, that a long-standing adulterous affair shouldn't matter to voters? Oh. Okay.
Rather, this appears to be an accusation of private, alleged consensual conduct between adults – a subject matter which is not a proper subject of inquiry by the media or the public. No individual, whether a private citizen, a candidate for public office or a public official, should be questioned about his or her private sexual life. The public’s right to know and the media’s right to report has boundaries and most certainly those boundaries end outside of one’s bedroom door.
Mr. Cain has alerted his wife to this new accusation and discussed it with her. He has no obligation to discuss these types of accusations publicly with the media and he will not do so even if his principled position is viewed unfavorably by members of the media.”
I obviously don't know the truth but I'm sick to death of politicians, even the outsider variety. How about you?
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Update: More details here.
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Updated Tuesday morning:
Ladd Ehlinger Jr.: When Book Tours Go Bad: Herman Cain Should Never Have Run
But hey, you never thought that your con to sell your books would actually spark, did you? You never thought that good, decent, hard-working American people would actually believe what you said. Now here you are, trapped like a lying fly in amber, hoping to get the big brass ring without any other dirt coming out on you.Ouch. Read the whole thing.
All you are doing is playing your friends, your supporters, and some of my very good friends for your own fame and glory. And drinking parties. Yes - you drink like a fish, you flirt all over the place, and everyone who's attended CPAC knows it. Nothing wrong with partying. Unless you lie about it. And try to deceive the public about it. If you want to be the American-Tea-Party Berlusconi, then be up front about it, don't be a damned coward.
You should be ashamed of yourself.
If you didn't have such a ridiculous ego that seems to only recognize television and radio celebrities as your equals (and no one else is worth your glorious time), you'd see that your behavior is destructive, pathetic, and shameful. You are not Presidential material. You are a quasi-conservative, shallow celebrity with a speech impediment who spoke up to Bill Clinton back in the day. Period.
We don't need a Bill Clinton Republican on the GOP ticket, lying and hiding and parsing words in stupid legalese. You, sir, are a sociopath.
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Heh. Now Cain says they had a relationship but "there was no sex." If so how is Cain's lawyer's statement about "consensual conduct" and the sanctity of one's "private sexual life" relevant?
When asked about the nature of the relationship, Cain said:
"Friend and trying to help a friend because not having a job etc. and this sort of thing."He declines to comment further until he gets all the information to which he is not yet privy. That rings a bell, no? Perhaps he'll assemble a team of experts and use his mad business skills to determine something or other.
The 2012 election is gravely serious. Herman Cain isn't. It's time for him to drop out and stop wasting our time.
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Now he's "reassessing" his campaign. Finally.
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The latest from the Hermanator, via Bryan Preston:
It seems the Cain Campaign is in Act V, Scene III. On a conference call that just ended, he said about the latest accuser:Please go away now.
“I have been attempting to help her financially because she was out of work and destitute, desperate. So, thinking that she was a friend — and I have helped many friends — I now know that she wasn’t the friend that I thought she was. But it was a just a friendship relationship.”
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Newt: It depends on what the meaning of "amnesty" is
What’s really grating is [Gingrich's] Orwellian attempt to redefine words, telling people words don’t mean what they think they mean. “Path to legality” joins “regularization,” “normalization,” “earned-status adjustment,” and all the other sleazy euphemisms we’ve been hearing for years now. If illegals are permitted to stay, that’s an amnesty, whatever the conditions. If you want to make a case for amnestying long-established illegal aliens, that can be an honorable position, but call it for what it is. Don’t lie to voters, imagining they’re too stupid to see through your deceit. There’s nothing brave about euphemism.Right. Read the rest.
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November 26, 2011
Elf on shelf spies for Santa
The parental behavior modification tool known as The Elf on the Shelf is now an animated "special" which aired last night on CBS. I didn't watch but Hank Stuever, who doesn't know much about Christmas as a religious event but totally gets the secular version, reviews:
But CBS’s animated “The Elf on the Shelf: An Elf’s Story,” airing Friday night, deserves a special look, if for no other reason than to study its ability to magnify (and commodify) a Langley-like application of unwarranted surveillance techniques during Christmastime.In case you're unfamiliar with The Elf on the Shelf, it's a book that comes with a cheap stuffed elf doll you con your kids into believing is a spy for the deity known as Santa. The Elf sits inertly around the house by day with his fixed plastic gaze, then flies to the North Pole at night to rat on the kids. I suspect that most children over the age of four don't believe this implausible scenario for a minute but play along with their ineffectual parents out of pity or embarrassment. Kids have an innate desire for what's real and true and an instinct for smelling what isn't.
Every parent knows: When the household’s youngest miscreants have gone too far, all you have to do at this time of year is reach for the phone and say, “That’s it! I’m calling Santa! I’m telling him what you’ve done. He won’t be happy.” Right away, the reprobates will wail their apologies and promise to do better. (It helps immensely if you follow through with the call. Get mean Uncle Hank to pretend to be Santa’s executive assistant on the other end of the line. “And Mr. Claus would know you frommmm . . . ?”)
Who can resist the holiday fun of scaring the children into good behavior? Ask any of history’s most efficient dictators — they’ll tell you. Christmas just isn’t Christmas without the naughty-nice punishment paradigm. Where would this holiday be without its good old-fashioned behavioral paranoia? Charles Dickens may get all the credit for this, but do also consider George Orwell.
Another Post columnist, the musically-named Petula Dvorak, mentioned the Elf last year among a litany of Christmastime tricks, scare tactics, and bribes used by desperate parents who can't get their kids to behave the rest of the year: Who needs Santa? Beleagured parents, that's who:
Let's be honest. For a short time every year, Santa is the ultimate disciplinary device. Sometime around November, right about the time the last of the Halloween candy is gone, the threats, the cajoling and the bribery begin, all in the name of Santa.So, though Ms. Dvorak acknowledges that carrot-and-stick parenting is not only ineffectual but wrong, she keeps using it anyway. Sigh.
You think the Christmas creep is about commercialism and marketing? Nope. It's parents anxious to start singing about a stalker who watches every move a kid makes.
In my home, our skylights are Santa windows, we have Santa's phone number on speed dial, the elf sits on the shelf and that naughty/nice list is constantly being revised.
No wonder some parents tear themselves to shreds trying to keep their kids believing.
Think that's bad parenting?
Let's return to the days of Krampus, the demon who came to many European homes around the time of the feast of Saint Nicholas in the beginning of December. He was a cloven monster with horns who was said to snatch bad children and snack on their entrails.
Folks sent Krampus greeting cards, depicting rosy-cheeked, Victorian children screaming as they were dragged to hell by the demon. It was almost as scary as some of the matching-sweater family greetings we received this year.
I was definitely disturbed by this European tradition, which was a fixture in my childhood.
No, I swear I won't threaten my children with this demon, tempting as it may be some nights. But come January, after the carrot and stick that is Santa is put away with the ornaments, we are again at a loss for a disciplinary crutch. Valentine's Day holds no hope, and the Easter Bunny simply doesn't have the gravitas to pull it off.
Maybe Santa ought to start delivering gifts every three months, becoming a year-round behavioral motivator.
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November 25, 2011
Children's book suggestions for Christmas giving
Well, that was fast. It's time again for our annual Christmas shopping post. You probably know how it works: if you click through any of the Amazon links here, place an item in your shopping cart (whether it's something we've linked to or not) and eventually purchase it, we will get a small percentage from Amazon that doesn't add to your cost. (More info on that here.) We greatly appreciate any purchases you may throw our way.
I've tossed various irresistible electronics, cheese baskets (by popular demand), red meat (some enhanced with bacon), dark chocolate, favorite DVDs and CDs (not just Sinatra), and of course books into our Amazon store. I've organized the books into categories: non-fiction, fiction, parenting, cookbooks, etc.
The titles I'm most enthusiastic about are the children's books. Our large family loves to read. I've highlighted some of our favorites.
Recommended books for children:
Little Britches: Father and I Were Ranchers by Ralph Moody: When boys were boys. Think of this autobiographical book and its sequels as Little House with a male protagonist. Thank goodness no one had yet come up with Ritalin in the early 1900s when Ralph was a boy; if they had, he would have been dosed early and often, and these great American stories wouldn't exist. Young Moody possessed what they once called "initiative" in spades. He was a cowboy, a farmer, and an entrepreneur par excellence. Little Britches makes an excellent read-aloud, along with Man of the Family, Mary Emma and Company, and The Fields of Home. (There are more titles in the series, but these are the best.)
The Tripods series by John Christopher: A riveting four-book series about what happens when horrifying aliens take over the earth with the help of mind-controlling "caps" that destroy the human will. A tale for our time. (Read the prequel last.)
The White Mountains
The City of Gold and Lead
The Pool of Fire
When the Tripods Came
Tintin in America and others by Hergé. Entice that reluctant reader with non-stop adventure, humor, and great drawings. These comics could never have been written today. My kids have read them over and over. (Haven't seen the new movie but will bet ten bucks it doesn't come close to capturing the spirit of the comics.)
Have Spacesuit, Will Travel by Robert Heinlein: Aliens, faster-than-light travel, and sliderules. #3 son says it's the second best book ever. (Best: The Hobbit.)
The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet and others by Eleanor Cameron. Irresistible:
WANTED: A small spaceship about eight feet long, built by a boy, or by two boys, between the ages of eight and eleven. The ship should be sturdy and well made, and should be of materials found at hand. Nothing need be bought. No adult should be consulted as to its plan or method of construction. An adventure and a chance to do a good deed await the boys who build the best space ship. Please bring your ship as soon as possible to Mr. Tyco M. Bass, 5 Thallo Street, Pacific Grove, California.I rest my case.
Anything by Marguerite Henry: We hope the current disturbing obsession with vampires hasn't killed off the American girl's passion for horses and horse stories. My daughters loved Misty of Chincoteague, Stormy, Misty's Foal, Sea Star, Orphan of Chincoteague, and King of the Wind, among others.
Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome. The first book of a dozen about imaginative British children who live in the Lake District, sailing about in boats and having adventures. A much-loved classic. #2 daughter has collected all twelve.
All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriot. This book and its sequels were written for adults but teens will also fall in love with Herriot's Yorkshire and its inhabitants, both human and animal. Hilariously funny as well as dramatic and poignant. Try to save the excellent BBC series for viewing after you and your kids have finished the books. Like dessert.
The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. A teenager I know recently remarked of the current cinematic incarnations of Holmes, "They had to change the stories to make them interesting." Wrong! For Sherlock Holmes fans or mystery lovers in general, it doesn't get any better than this suspenseful, other-worldly tale set on the desolate moors. (See Roger Kimball's How to Reform Primary Education.)
Also not to be missed:
Half Magic and others by Edward Eager. A huge favorite of daughter #4. Maybe I can get her to say a few words about it. (Asked her -- she says Edward Eager is like E. Nesbit but better.)
The Moffats and others by Eleanor Estes. The Moffats books make my top-ten list of kids' fiction.
The Freddy books by Walter Brooks. Silly old-fashioned American fun with a multi-talented pig as the main character. Twenty or so books in the series.
The Snow Queen by Hans Christian Andersen. One of the most beautiful stories ever written.
The Princess and the Goblin and others by George MacDonald. An enthralling read-aloud.
For pre-schoolers:
Little Bear by Else Holmelund Minarik: Don't let your kids or grandkids grow up without Little Bear. No need to bother with A Kiss for Little Bear, but the three linked above are required reading.
Frog and Toad by Arnold Lobel: Also necessary to childhood. You have no idea how often we've finished up a house-wide search for missing keys with the phrase, "What a lot of trouble I have made for Frog."
Little Fur Family by Margaret Wise Brown. I love this book. I've tried to link to the tiny, fur-covered edition but it's hard to tell, so buyer beware.
A House is a House for Me by Mary Ann Hoberman. A tour-de-force in ballad form, in which everything is a house for something else. Infectious, in a good way.
Browse here for many more titles and here for even more. I'll be adding others to our Amazon store in the coming days so check back if you've got young readers on your list.
A few other items recycled from last year's post:
Classic television:
Get Smart -- Kids watched and found out where dad got all his jokes.
All Creatures Great and Small -- Wonderful, and not just for anglophiles.
The Prisoner -- Be seeing you!
Movies:
3 Godfathers (1948) directed by John Ford and starring John Wayne. One of my all-time favorite westerns, and a Christmas movie to boot.
Gaslight (1944) starring Ingrid Bergman at (perhaps) her most incandescently beautiful. Excellent villain played by Charles Boyer. Very satisfying.
Bye Bye Byrdie (1963) starring Ann-Margret, Dick Van Dyke, Janet Leigh, and Bobby Rydell. What's not to like?
More movies and TV here.
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Music: Sinatra
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Again, your Amazon purchases through this site are greatly appreciated. They're also sometimes surprising, like the reader who purchased not one but two Red Green video collections. I hadn't thought of that in decades. I think we might have an old taped-off-the-TV video cassette of Mr. Green and co. lurking in the recesses of our basement. Is it possible the show has improved with age?
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November 24, 2011
On remembering to count our blessings
An important reminder from Marcia Morrissey:
It wasn't that the circumstances changed, but I did. The blessings that I had let pass me by without noticing suddenly came into focus, and I realized that I had been looking down instead of up.Just so. How easy it is to focus on the negative and take the blessings for granted. Read the rest and pass it on.
First thing the next morning I went outside to water the little vegetable garden my son and I had started. I took notice of the warm sun, and the quiet of the new day. I listened to the birds singing in the trees, and bent to feel the progress of our plants. I marveled at how much they had grown seemingly overnight—and I said thank you.
When I went inside, I prepared breakfast for my son and I was grateful that we had groceries; I laughed at something silly my son said—and I gave thanks. [. . .]
I had known this, but I had allowed the circumstances to overshadow all the little blessings God was giving me each day—gold-wrapped gifts he was leaving me—that I wasn't even noticing; what a shame.
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November 23, 2011
Something to be thankful for
Heroes like Marcus Luttrell. Here he endorses Rick Perry for president:
Hat tip: The Right Scoop
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"Newtworld" then and now
I wasn't able to watch the entire debate last night but I gather that while the candidate of the moment impressed many, as usual, with his mental agility and gift of gab, he also created some controversy with his stand on illegal immigration:
"I don't see how the party that says it's the party of the family is going to adopt an immigration policy which destroys families that have been here a quarter of a century," said Gingrich.
"And I'm prepared to take the heat for saying let's be humane in forcing the law without giving them citizenship, but by finding a way to create legality so they are not separated by their families."
How would this be determined? The answer might surprise you. Via Philip Klein:
“Newt is for a local, community review board where local citizens can decide whether or not their neighbors that have come here illegally should find a path to legality, not citizenship," he said. "Two distinctly different things.”What was it Andrew Ferguson said about Newt and practical details? Oh yeah --
He said it would operate like a World War II draft board. But I asked him whether it would be a problem for local communities to determine legality given that this issue would concern federal law.
“None of this matters until you secure the border," he said.
I asked him again, though, about how local communities could determine federal law.
“That’s why it’s called reform," he said.
When I told him it didn't answer the question, he looked to another reporter, and said, “What else do we have?”
The ultimate problem with Gingrich’s firehose approach to idea-generation wasn’t the ideological cast of the ideas but their practicality. To pluck a couple of trivial examples from the scores of proposals he offers in “To Renew America”: “We should work with every recovery program to develop low-cost detoxification programs.” Terrific, but who’s the “we,” and what would the “work” entail, and how would the cost be lowered? Before you can ask the question, Gingrich has rushed ahead. Because “we need to know more about the environment,” we should “develop a worldwide biological inventory.” Excellent idea, for all I know, but administered how? Paid for by whom? Gingrich’s vagueness was always a problem, but the books show something more: a near-total lack of interest in the political implementation of his grand ideas — a lack of interest, finally, in politics at its most mundane and consequential level. [emphasis added]If you're young and this go round is your first experience of Gingrich, please read this Mark Steyn column from 1998:
Shortly after he became Speaker, his staff circulated a five-page document of interconnected projects under the heading 'Newtworld'. Newtworld proved to be one of those theme-parks nobody wants to visit - and who can blame them? At Newtworld, what you mostly get is lots of Newt, at great length. A couple of years ago, I happened to be on a discussion panel presided over by Mrs Thatcher. In the moments before the debate began, rather than waste her time yakking with me, she cast an eye over an upcoming Newt speech that one of his aides had asked for her thoughts on. She took up her pen and scored through one line, then another. 'Even the best speeches can lose a line or two' I mumbled, nervously glancing at my own address. She scored through the rest of the paragraph, then down to the foot of the page, and over on to the next. When she'd eventually finished, she called over the lady from Newt's political action committee, and handed her the replacement text for the deleted portions: one short sentence. Poor Newt. He was never that disciplined. He was fond of movements and 'Movement Planning Proposals', but he couldn't resist moving from movement to movement. He's responsible for more movements than a crate of Ease-O-Lax: from 'The Triangle of American Progress' to the 'Caring Humanitarian Reform Movement' to 'The America That Can Be' to the 'Citizens' Opportunities Movement' to 'Renewing American Civilisation'.Read the rest cuz that ain't all.
If you're wondering what 'The Triangle of American Progress' is, relax: pretty soon it had evolved into 'The Four Pillars of American Civilisation', which in turn expanded into the 'Five Pillars of the 21st Century'. The collected brainstorms of Newt sound like a cross between T.E. Lawrence and the numerologically obsessed Fruit of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan who claims that once a month he's taken up into a spacecraft floating above earth to commune with the spirits of deceased African-Americans. Aside from his 'Five Pillars', Newt had the 'Four Great Truths', the 'Nine Zones of Creativity', the 'Fourteen Steps to RAC' (see Renewing American Civilisation above), the Four Can'ts, the Five Cs, the Four Tops, the Jackson Five, the McGuire Sisters, and on and on.
That Newt is why I can't take today's Newt seriously. He's full-to-bursting of himself and his multi-point "solutions," which he cranks out at will and inflates with portentous language. (Try it at home. It's mostly in the adverbs. Instead of saying, "Gee, Aunt Martha, this new pumpkin pie tastes delicious," spice it up with a few of Newt's favorite modifiers and your simple compliment will take on a grand and weighty significance: "This dramatically reconfigured, deeply compelling pumpkin pie tastes extraordinarily delicious.")
George Will calls him the "classic rental politician." Husband calls him a "pitchman." I don't like him or trust him. (I mean Newt, not my husband.) I'm surprised so many people do. Guess I'll add that to the long list of Things I Don't Understand.
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Thanks to Michelle Malkin for the Buzzworthy link.
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Updated to add a link to Ace's post on same. He's got the Newt-speak down pretty well:
Newt would call this a "radical, transformative solution that shows a fundamental empowerment of the citizenry" or whatever. I call it daffy.I think he means it's deeply, remarkably, extraordinarily daffy.
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Many thanks to Mark Steyn for the Corner link.
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12/1/11: See follow-up to this historic post (who knew?), here.
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November 22, 2011
How to make a bad thing worse
The bad thing is daycare. The worse thing is government-run daycare. But of course the nanny-staters would love to extend their "free" government babysitting all the way down to infants and make the family even more irrelevant. Carrie Lukas:
Any government subsidy for childcare would come with massive strings about what constitutes a “government-approved daycare center.” As we’ve seen with health care, this means that government would soon be dictating exactly how daycare centers could do business: who they let in, the services they provided, how much they charged, who are “qualified” workers — the list would go on and on. Existing daycare centers that meet government-standards would be flooded with children; smaller centers and at-home daycare facilities would have to be radically altered — or more likely would just go out of businesses.And what if, like me, she not only doesn't want to use daycare, but conscientiously objects to children being raised by hirelings in institutions? I'm opposed to daycare because it's bad for children.
And what about families that currently keep a parent at home? The stay-at-home mom who now provides a valuable service to her family — both in providing the best care for her charges and saving the family from childcare costs — would see her economic value decline as she could be replaced with a “free” government alternative, even if it provided inferior care. Worse, her family’s tax dollars would go to paying for a service that she didn’t want to use.
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Update: Minnesota governor orders unionization of child care providers
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Supercommittee fraud
That's probably the wrong word. I'm not sure you can call something a fraud when, from the beginning, no one ever expected anyone to believe it was anything but.
Republican candidates are calling Obama out for his lack of leadership here. He's no leader, but let's not pretend that his involvement in the process would have resulted in an agreement to cut government. That's just laughable.
John Podhoretz:
The supercommittee triumphed in accomplishing what it was truly intended to accomplish.Mark Steyn:
It was created to kick the can down the road. The only thing that mattered was that it come into existence, and it did. Its invention made increases in the debt ceiling possible through the end of President Obama’s term.
Oh, the supercommittee’s putative purpose was to find massive spending cuts and tax hikes acceptable to both Democrats and Republicans. Then, after achieving this supernatural goal, it was to place these historic changes before Congress, the president and the American people and solve America’s spiraling debt problem at no political cost to anyone.
That scenario was a transparent absurdity. Indeed, it was so absurd that committee members couldn’t even go through the motions of pretending to fulfill it. Politico’s Mike Allen informs us that the supercommittee never actually met during the month of November.
Let me repeat that: As the deadline of Thanksgiving rapidly approached, the supercommittee members couldn’t be bothered to sit in the same room together.
This just proves that it was there just to get us to Thanksgiving. Thursday is Thanksgiving. The supercommittee’s work is done.
The lament that the supercommittee was unable to make a deal is ridiculous — because the supercommittee itself was the deal.
. . . the timidity of the GOP frontrunners is far more disturbing. In a sane polity, they would be competing over the abolition of departments, the rollback of regulatory tyranny, the shrinking of entitlements – not to mention flying commercial and making do with a mere 20-car motorcade. This close to the abyss, public discourse is nowhere near where it ought to be.And that's part of the plan:
Michael Walsh:
That’s because at least one side in this cold civil war never wanted to succeed in the first place. “The worm has turned a little bit,” one Democratic aide was quoted as saying by Politico. “The national conversation now is about income inequality and about jobs, and it’s not really about cutting the size of government anymore or cutting spending.”Back to Steyn:
So the super committee’s failure was preordained, as the Dems have thrown in their lot with Obama’s demonize-the-productive-class 2012 campaign. They’re trying to change the subject from bloated government, a complex and unfair tax code and out-of-control entitlement spending to a “soak the rich” sham populism exemplified by the recent Occupy Wall Street movement. They’re even willing to risk another downgrade of the country’s credit rating to get the president re-elected.
Another downgrade is now inevitable. After that, all that’s holding the joint up is the dollar’s status as global currency. If the world were looking around for a reserve currency today, I doubt it would pick that of a $15 trillion sinkhole. This week’s failure will hasten the urge of the Chinese and others to arrange a post-dollar order. I wrote earlier this year about America’s inclination to do everything big. And so it goes even with imperial eclipse: We are inviting nothing so genteel as “decline” but rather a sudden convulsive collapse.Michelle Malkin calls for new blood:
The disease: Entrenched incumbency.Will it help? This Congress, and a long line of Congresses before it, have proven they utterly lack the will to cut spending and reduce government. It's anathema to them. Perhaps a big enough change will be effected next November to alter course. But it seems most likely that our inevitable downsizing can only happen the hard way, a la Steyn.
The cure? Fresh fiscal conservative blood.
Remember in November.
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Updated to add John Hayward's take:
No sooner had the Super Committee formally announced that it couldn’t reach a deal on deficit reduction than the howling leadership void in the Oval Office dispersed and President Obama appeared, dressed in his ridiculous “deficit hawk” costume and issuing dire warnings to those who would try to escape the doom of sequestration.You must read the rest.
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Many thanks to Michelle Malkin for the Buzzworthy link.
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November 21, 2011
Newt's chutzpah
Tim Carney provides proof that Newt Gingrich was indeed a lobbyist for the drug companies:
So we know he was paid consultant for drug makers. That's the first criterion for being a drug lobbyist.Read the whole thing. The conclusion is inescapable.
Here's the second criterion: While some consultants simply provide strategy or advice, Gingrich directly contacted lawmakers in an effort to win their votes. [. . .]
Two aides to other GOP members who had been resisting the bill told me their bosses were lobbied by Gingrich over the phone, sometimes citing politics, sometimes citing substance. And it worked. "Newt Gingrich moved votes on the prescription-drug bill," one conservative staffer told me. "That's for sure."
And John Derbyshire wants to know why Newt is getting a pass on his consultant gig with Freddie Mac:
Newt’s trying to ju-jitsu the thing, telling us that his experience as a shill for Freddie Mac gave him valuable insider understanding of governmental affairs. Isn’t that what we want in a candidate, valuable insider understanding of governmental affairs? Quote from Newt, on the campaign trail in Iowa Wednesday, quote: “It reminds people that I know a great deal about Washington. We just tried four years of amateur ignorance, and it didn’t work very well. So having someone who actually knows Washington might be a really good thing.”Read the rest.
That’s a bit like a rabbit applying for a management position on a lettuce farm. Why not? He knows all there is to know about lettuce.
Newt’s chutzpah knows no bounds, though. Back during the 2008 presidential campaign, he told a Fox News interviewer that then-Senator Obama ought to return contributions he had received from Freddie Mac and its sister racket, Fannie Mae. Just last year Newt brought out a campaign book in which he argued for getting rid of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. Now here he is in Iowa this week defending Freddie Mac. Quote: “Every American should be interested in expanding housing opportunities.”
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Various & sundry
A few things in no particular order:
Michael Walsh is not optimistic about 2012:
Meanwhile, Say-Anything Mitt has no home port and is unlikely find one beyond the generic anti-Obama vote. Which, alas, will not be big enough or motivated enough to evict Cap’n Barry from the White House bridge as he madly steers the ship of state into the iceberg. Indeed, the campaign will begin and end with this photograph.Ouch.
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George Will effectively eviscerates Newt Gingrich:
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The NASCAR fans who booed the first lady yesterday behaved badly. But it's not exactly surprising that they didn't appreciate being pandered to by someone who views them with contempt.
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Obama the Job Killer:
Barack Obama just postponed shale gas drilling in Ohio for another half year to please environmental groups. His latest move effectively kills 200,000 high-paying jobs in the swing state.***
In case you missed it, here's what Paul Ryan sees as the biggest problem our country faces:
Education is at the heart of it all, but the culture is, too. Moral relativism has done so much damage to the bottom end of this country, the bottom fifth has been damaged by the culture of moral relativism more than by anything else, I would argue. If you ask me what the biggest problem in America is, I’m not going to tell you debt, deficits, statistics, economics — I’ll tell you it’s moral relativism. Now is it my job to fix that as a congressman? No, but I can do damage to it. But it’s the job of parents to raise their kids … But let’s not ignore it. These things go beyond statistics, they go into the culture. As a policymaker, I simply make that as an observation, not that I have an answer and a bill I can pass in Congress and to fix that.All for now.
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November 20, 2011
Music break: Hugh Jackman in Oklahoma!
November 19, 2011
EU settles science on mysterious link between water and dehydration
After extensive research, the science is settled:
Brussels bureaucrats were ridiculed yesterday after banning drink manufacturers from claiming that water can prevent dehydration.Don Surber: "Everyone knows that the real solution to dehydration isn’t water. You simply ban dehydration and it goes away."
EU officials concluded that, following a three-year investigation, there was no evidence to prove the previously undisputed fact.
Producers of bottled water are now forbidden by law from making the claim and will face a two-year jail sentence if they defy the edict, which comes into force in the UK next month.
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Steyn on Penn State scandal
Mark Steyn's Saturday column: No Man's Land
The graduate assistant, Mike McQueary, is now pushing 40, and is sufficiently grown-up to realize that the portrait of him that emerges from the indictment is not to his credit and to attempt, privately, to modify it. "No one can imagine my thoughts or wants to be in my shoes for those 30-45 seconds," he emailed a friend a few days ago. "Trust me."(That phrase -- "trust me" -- is a pet peeve of mine. When I hear it I want to do the opposite. Pray you, avoid it.)
"Trust me"? Maybe the 10-year-old boy did. And then watched Mr. McQueary leave the building. Perhaps the child-man should try "imagining" the 10-year-old's thoughts or being in his shoes. Oh, wait. He wasn't wearing any.
When the culture sends a thousand messages that growing up is passé it's no wonder actual children are left without protectors. I read somewhere that McQueary is now a married man with a child. One hopes, "trust-me" excuses aside, he would behave differently today. Nothing has the potential to push a person into adulthood like parenthood (though it doesn't always take).
Read the rest. I try not to excerpt too much from a Steyn column so you'll have the pleasure of reading it all in context.
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November 18, 2011
Music break: Swing, Swing, Swing
From the Kennedy Center's Swing, Swing, Swing festival, some great live performances:
11/17/11: Asleep at the Wheel
11/18/11: Eric Felten Jazz Orchestra
11/11/11: Connaitre Miller with Eric Felten Jazz Orchestra
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"Mitt and me"?
Newt:
“I really see Mitt and I [sic] as co-front-runners,” said Gingrich, adding that the nomination battle is “going to come down to Mitt and me.”So Beltway credentials and connections are a selling point now among conservatives? (Remember that Tea Party thing? It was all the rage last year.)
Gingrich said his Beltway know-how and overall experience are why he won’t get voted off the island, but instead will be the last Republican standing when all is said and done.
“My hope,” he said, “is the island will decide that it likes me.”
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A collection of school stories
Sigh.
Hey teacher, can we have our ball back? No. "Toronto School Bans All ‘Hard’ Sports Balls" -- including soccer balls and tennis balls, because kids might get hurt, or "scared." Only squishy balls are allowed. Be careful, kids!
This principal is not your pal: It would be fascinating to track this allegedly perverted Bronx principal's rise up the education system ladder, wouldn't it? Who wrote his recommendations, and what did they say? Sheesh.
Role models: A policeman who served as a "resource officer" in a school teamed up with a teacher to create porn sites. They had high hopes for their classy domain name, mysluttyteachers dot com.
Great Moments in Public Education: In case you missed it, it's the story of a teacher and an aide who cruelly belittled and insulted a disabled girl for years. The authorities wouldn't listen to parent complaints, even accusing them of "harassment." Ultimately the mother and her boyfriend wired the 14 year-old girl and recorded the abuse. They won a lawsuit and the aide has been de-certified, but the teacher, well, you know how hard it is to get rid of a bad teacher:
After a confidential investigation, the board decided to suspend Wilt’s license as an intervention specialist for one year because of “conduct unbecoming to the teaching profession.” Under an agreement with the board, Wilt can avoid that suspension if she remains in good standing with the district and completes eight hours of training focused on bullying awareness and reporting child abuse.I give up.
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One more horror story, this time at a private school. What parents are thinking by sending their kids there is beyond me.
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November 17, 2011
Following up on "Getting know where"
My recent post, Getting know where: Public school kids explain why it's better than homeschooling, has generated lots of thoughtful comments here and elsewhere. If you're interested, take a look at Rod Dreher's Sugar coding your homeschooled moron (75 comments) and Ricochet contributor DrewInWisconsin's This “real world” you’re talking about? I don't think it means what you think it means (36 comments).
Commenter Judith Levy suggests (as I have, repeatedly) reading Hold On to Your Kids in order to understand why so many children aren't interested in anything but being part of the peer-herd.
As a mother I deplore the way the public school system has encroached upon and undermined the family. Rush Limbaugh, commenting the other day on the practice in some Memphis schools of providing all three meals for students, exaggerated but made a valid point:
The sperm meets the egg, the kid's born and off to school he goes and you might see him on weekends, but you're not gonna be expected to feed him.Along those lines:
Absurd: 10,000 DC kids eat three meals at school
No cheers for longer school day
Near-universal support for universal pre-school
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Campaign notes
Oh -- does that matter?Jonathan Gruber, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor who advised both Mitt Romney and President Obama on the construction of their health-care programs, is irritated that Romney is trying to draw distinctions between the two programs on the campaign trail.
“The problem is there is no way to say that,” Gruber told Capital New York. “Because they’re the same [-------] bill. He just can’t have his cake and eat it too. Basically, you know, it’s the same bill. He can try to draw distinctions and stuff, but he’s just lying.
While he's at it, Romney might explain this:
Just before Mitt Romney left the Massachusetts governor’s office and first ran for president, 11 of his top aides purchased their state-issued computer hard drives, and the Romney administration’s e-mails were all wiped from a server, according to interviews and records obtained by the Globe.Transparency!
Romney administration officials had the remaining computers in the governor’s office replaced just before Governor Deval Patrick’s staff showed up to take power in January 2007, according to Mark Reilly, Patrick’s chief legal counsel.
As a result, Patrick’s office, which has been bombarded with inquiries for records from the Romney era, has no electronic record of any Romney administration e-mails, Reilly said.
Gingrich
Andrew Ferguson deserves an endurance medal for reading all twenty-one of Newt Gingrich's books. An amazing feat. His findings are consistent with the impression we've formed of Newt over the years: full of himself and often full of baloney. Just a bit:
In “Window of Opportunity,” Gingrich introduced himself as a futurist, a role he has played off and on throughout his career. There are problems inherent in futurism, most of them involving the future, which the futurist is obliged to predict (it’s his job) and which seldom cooperates as he would hope. Gingrich has called some and missed some. In 1984, he saw more clearly than most that computers would touch every aspect of commercial and private life, but nobody any longer wants to build “a large array of mirrors [that] could affect the earth’s climate,” warming it up so farmers could extend the growing season.Newt has always been an idea machine, cranking his "solutions" out at an alarming rate. So it's no wonder many of them are lemons:
Gingrich’s faith in technology, as his books express it, is total, undimmed by potential misfirings. His artless belief in gadgetry and the power of human ingenuity, his inexhaustible curiosity and magpie gathering of unexpected facts (did you know Ray Kroc gave his autobiography the unappetizing title “Grinding It Out”?), makes his first book the most winning of them all. Even the polemics against the bureaucrats and liberals and other opponents of progress are mild compared to what we’ve got used to in the intervening decades.
He advocated a health tax on alcohol to discourage drinking — social engineering, it’s called — and imagined government-issued credit cards that would allow citizens to order goods and services directly from the feds. He thought the government should run nutritional programs at grocery stores and give away some foodstuffs free. He was pushing cuts in the defense budget in 1984 and a prototype of President Obama’s cash-for-clunkers program in 1995.Lots more here, so read the rest.
Cain
Herman Cain, most likely in an effort to avoid "gotcha" questions (an ever-expanding category) has canceled his interview with the Union Leader. Yesterday's live appearance in Florida elicited a couple of embarrassments, but hey, he's not supposed to know anything about foreign policy. (Yes, that might have been a joke, but it's getting pretty hard to tell.)
Perry
Emily Miller writes on Rick Perry's plan to downsize government:
Every day the Congress is in session, government grows and more borrowed money is spent. America is overregulated and under water. We don’t need more laws, more government programs or more deficit spending. The Founding Fathers never envisioned a legislative branch run by career politicians. Forcing our representatives to spend more time outside the Beltway, living under the laws they make, is exactly what this country needs.Here's the video from his Hannity appearance last night.
Perry's plan to reduce government includes cutting congressional hours, staff, and pay. He has gone so far as to challenge Speaker Pelosi to a debate. She has refused:
She suggested she couldn’t debate Perry on Monday because her schedule was booked with three events that day -- an event in Portland, a tour of labs in California and “that's two. I can't remember what the third thing is."Nancy Pelosi has a sense of humor? I did not see that coming.
From the moment the letter was sent, a debate between Perry and Pelosi had about as much chance of happening as President Obama taking on the mayor of Amarillo. But the Texan is obviously trying to do something big and bold to capture the imagination of Republicans who have been abandoning him for the likes of Herman Cain and Newt Gingrich. A new Fox News poll has Perry sliding to just 7 % among GOP primary voters.Stay tuned. It's not over.
Linked by Michelle Malkin -- many thanks!
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November 16, 2011
Newt?
Conservative blogger William Jacobson makes his case for Gingrich. Among his assets:
Newt is uniquely capable of communicating a winning conservative vision in a persuasive and forceful manner, as the positive reaction to his debate performances demonstrates. Obama versus Newt on stage before an audience of tens of millions of voters could lead to a catastrophic defeat for Obama, while Obama versus any other current candidate could have the opposite effect.Yes, it could. Or Newt could run rings round Obama logically but to no avail. The best debater doesn't always win. Anyway, read the rest of Prof. Jacobson's argument and see what you think. In endorsing Newt, he writes Rick Perry off in three sentences:
Perry has been a solid Governor who has been unable to bring it to the national stage. I had very high hopes for Perry when the buzz of his possible presidential run started over the summer, but reality did not meet expectations, by a wide margin. It is too late in this election cycle for Perry to change the nation’s first impression, not even a better than expected showing in Iowa.Dunno. I don't fancy Newt, nor have I given up on Perry. He's still got three things going for him: 1) money; 2) conservative ideas; and 3) . . .
. . . oh yeah -- not a single vote has yet been cast. There's still ample time for opinions to shift and gel. The polls currently show three candidates in the ever-fluid top tier. One of them is a balloon that developed a couple of serious leaks during its ascent and has nowhere to go now but down. Another is Romney, golden boy of the establishment and a RINO at best. And then there's Newt, who has a history of erraticism and some very heavy baggage. Prof. J. on Newt's serial infidelity:
Many of the personal criticisms of Newt are fair game and well-known, and we would be foolish to discount them completely. But Americans are a forgiving people on personal matters, and Newt has atoned for his real and perceived sins. Variations on “when I was young and irresponsible, I was young and irresponsible,” still work.But Gingrich was in his fifties when he started cheating on his second wife. So that doesn't fly for me and I'm probably not alone. It speaks to character.
Back to Perry. The liberal media, which has been writing his epitaph since the first debate, does so again today: Rick Perry, conservative hero no longer. That proclamation immediately followed Perry's announcement yesterday of ways to significantly reduce government's influence in our lives. Ben Domenech:
Taking a sledgehammer to Washington is a line that Perry’s been rolling out since day one: this reform plan is the real fulfillment of that, and it will be instructive to see the reactions to this regardless whether Perry is the people's champion this time around. It is based on a fundamental belief that government is a problem, not a solution, to what ails the nation. This used to be a widely accepted conservative idea. I expect the reaction to Perry's proposals will tell us if it still is.Read the rest. Hacking away the tentacles of monster government is what it's all about for me. Proposing to do so is a necessary first step.
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Oops. I see I used the exact same Domenech excerpt a couple of posts back. Please pardon the repetition.
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P&P for your mobile device
A de-cluttered version of the blog:
http://www.punditandpundette.com/?m=1
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Chris Matthews: It's the hate, stupid
He may be an irrelevant half-witted blowhard but every now and then he's good for a laugh. Let Chris Matthews explain it all to you. The key to understanding the GOP nomination process, you see, is that Republicans are "consumed by hate." Their brains are "wracked by hatred":
Barack Obama wasn't a "political walk-on" in 2008 but the ten-year governor of Texas is? Really?
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November 15, 2011
Perry argues for cutting government, hits a nerve
Gov. Rick Perry wants to cut congressional salaries in half and bring back the part-time citizen legislator. (Tea Partiers -- are you listening?) You can imagine how this idea is going over with the ruling class:
“Is this a serious proposal he’s making for a country that has very high unemployment, who’s budget deficit is larger than it’s ever been in history, which has two wars that we’re confronting and trying to bring to a conclusion?” Mr. Hoyer said of the Republican presidential hopeful.Those are arguments for Congress-lite, no? But Hoyer (in order to justify his existence) has to pretend otherwise.
“If this is what he thinks is pandering to the Tea Party, it is not in my opinion speaking to the issues that the American public feels are very, very critical to them, jobs being the number one issue,” Mr. Hoyer said. “So I don’t think it’s a very serious effort on his part.”He hopes it isn't. (And since when does Steny Hoyer have his finger on the pulse of the Tea Party, or the American public?) Perry responds, via PJT:
Gov. Perry said, “I guarantee you I got their attention today when I talked about reforming the legislative branch of government by making it a part-time citizen Congress. When people like Steny Hoyer come out there and go, ‘Is this guy being serious?’ Yeah, you better believe it Steny. Americans are serious. They’re serious about the spending that’s going on. They’re serious about insider trading that it’s obvious Congressional men and women are involved with – and things that if a private citizen did they’d send you to the penitentiary.”
Gov. Perry continued, “It’s not a surprise to me when I laid out this fundamental reform that I talk about and ask the American people to consider a part-time citizen Congress, that career politicians like Steny Hoyer don’t like my plan to overhaul Washington. They’re making a great living up there. The Washington metropolitan area is the most affluent in this country because you have all the inside trading and frankly the corruption and the contracting that’s going on. … Yeah, Washington and the Washington metropolitan area is doing really well, at our expense I might add.
Bonus: Vile Bill Maher said that Mitt Romney "is all that stands between us and the rise of the apes.”
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Updated to add this from Ricochet guest-writer Ben Domenech:
Taking a sledgehammer to Washington is a line that Perry’s been rolling out since day one: this reform plan is the real fulfillment of that, and it will be instructive to see the reactions to this regardless whether Perry is the people's champion this time around. It is based on a fundamental belief that government is a problem, not a solution, to what ails the nation. This used to be a widely accepted conservative idea. I expect the reaction to Perry's proposals will tell us if it still is.Read the rest.
Many thanks to Michelle Malkin for linking.Thanks also to Doug Ross for same.
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A few things
Not much time this morning but here are a few items not to be missed:
David French: Penn State and Absolute Moral Imperatives:
There are moral absolutes in life, and one of them is this: If a man comes across a child rape in process, he should do whatever he can to stop the rape and protect the child. There should be no reasonable debate about this, and the relevant question is not whether that standard is correct but whether we have the individual courage to meet that standard.Read the rest. Follow it up, if you care to, with David Brooks's contrasting take.
Those two sentences should be among the least controversial ever written in the pages of NRO. Indeed, there should be no need to even write them, but in the aftermath of my Friday posting about cowardice at Penn State, I was surprised at the number of individuals — both in the comments and via e-mail — who admonished me for my rush to judgment of the young graduate assistant who failed to stop Sandusky and failed even to call the police.
Next up: Rod Dreher on the small child's developmental need for love and attachment:
Interestingly, the Ferber technique for teaching babies to sleep on their own involves leaving infants in their bassinets to “cry themselves out.” One cannot help wondering how much damage parents who used it (it was a big fad when our kids were babies) might have done to their young. The BabyWise method, which is popular with some Christians, does the same thing (additionally, BabyWise has been strongly criticized as a health hazard for infants).Read on and find out. This is a topic near and dear to my heart, as regular readers know. La Leche League was right all along about the child's need for hands-on, intuitive-style love and attention. So there.
What kind of effects does this childhood neglect have on children as they age?
Now for some politics: Rick Perry proposes radical reforms of our corrupt, bloated, nightmare of a government. Some of his ideas:
Cut congressional pay in half and repeal the rules that prevent members of Congress from holding real jobs in their home states and communities.He also wants to get rid of the Department of Education (woo hoo!), the Department of Commerce, and that other one, uh, you know . . . . Anyway, see the link for his complete list.
Criminalize insider trading by members of Congress.
Until a Balanced Budget Amendment is ratified by the states, support cutting Congressional pay in half if Congress fails to propose a long-term balanced budget. Freeze federal civilian hiring and salaries until the budget is balanced.
Veto any bill that places a new, unfunded mandate on states, local communities, or schools.
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The Right Scoop has Glenn Beck's interview with Gov. Perry. He wants to get back to part-time citizen legislators. That ought to appeal to the Tea Party.
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Linked at MichelleMalkin.com -- thanks!
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November 14, 2011
Herman Cain: Yes, no, maybe, I don't know . . .
The Cain bubble just burst. Michelle Malkin cringes and so will you. Watch Herman expose his ignorance of the issues and implode. Whatever you think about the sexual harassment charges against him is no longer relevant. He's not qualified.
Rick Perry's weak debating performances pale in comparison. It's one thing to be a poor debater and another to be grossly uninformed on issues.
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Is it possible our government is more corrupt than we thought?
Why yes, it is. Peter Schweizer has written a book exposing Congress's nifty system of "honest [sic] graft" and 60 Minutes (yes, that 60 Minutes) has teamed up with him to investigate it. Business Insider reports:
Members of Congress can legally make trades on non-public information they obtain during their official duties, CBS News' '60 Minutes' reported on Sunday night.I really can't think of words to describe this level of governmental arrogance and corruption except to cite the title of Schweizer's book: Throw Them All Out. We need to take that literally.
Branded 'honest graft,' lawmakers can use market-moving information that they learn in congressional committees to trade on the stock market — actions that likely would carry stiff jail and civil penalties if they did not hold public office.
In one example, Steve Kroft report that Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-AL), now the chair of the House Financial Services Committee, bet against the market in the days before the 2008 financial crisis hit — after getting 'apocalyptic briefings' from Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and then-Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson.
Kroft also raises questions about the trading patterns of Speaker of the House John Boehner and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi — and the real estate purchases of other senators and representatives.
The report relies heavily on the work of Peter Schweizer, a fellow at the conservative Hoover Institution, whose work '60 Minutes' independently verified.
"This is a venture opportunity," Schweizer told '60 Minutes.' "This is an opportunity to leverage your position in public service and use that position to enrich yourself, your friends, and your family."
According to Schweizer, Bachus engineered "no less than forty options trades" between July 2008 and November 2008 — a period when markets were at their most volatile — netting as much as $50,000 by betting that the market would go up or down at crucial points in the crisis. And he made tens of thousands more when the financial reforms went into place in 2009.
Even without this information, the people's approval for Congress is at an all-time low. Watch for it to hit single digits if this story doesn't get buried.
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Rick Perry: They belong in jail:
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Backstage with Rick Perry
Erick Erickson said Rick Perry's handling of his memory lapse "will be studied by future campaigns as the textbook example of damage control." It's hard not to like Perry's demeanor before the subsequent debate:
"It's life, man. Go live it."
And in case you missed it, his follow-up reference to the embarrassing lapse was pitch-perfect. Though I don't know Perry well enough to rate his temperament (and I haven't been able to get a good look at his pant crease) I like his humility and humor.
Maybe some of the temperament experts from last time around could help us out and rate Perry's? Oh, yeah -- they were completely and utterly wrong. So never mind.
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Today's must-read: 'Penn State and the slow death of American self-reliance'
Bookworm astutely connects the dots and the picture is bleak:
So, again, we have to ask why?It's a bit long but well worth the time.
Because — and this is not an idle boast — I have some of the smartest readers in the blogosphere, I can take a good stab at an answer. In an open thread about Penn State, my readers chewed over the fact that in Pennsylvania, the law allows employees who witness a crime to go up the chain of command, whereas in Texas (for example) the law requires that every person has the responsibility to report to the authorities cases of suspected child abuse. In other word, the culture is different in the two states, with one allowing people to pass the buck, and the other mandating that people take independent action.
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November 12, 2011
Getting know where: Public school kids explain why it's better than homeschooling
Check out this NYT discussion on homeschooling. Children are asked, "Would you want to be homeschooled?" Answers are in the comments.
Those of us who argue that our kids learn more at home, in spite of their untrained, non-unionized teachers and limited budgets, can take the rest of the day off. The public school kids' comments have rendered argument on that score unnecessary. A sampling from the young scholars:
In my opinion, i would never turn to home schooling. When you are home schooled, you automaticly loose the whole social experience of school. In the real world you need to be social. Otherwise you’re going to get know where. I understand that the learning education might be to an advantage while homeschooling because its all one on one and you are the only student reciveing all the help you need whenever you need it. I would never home school my child because I would be holding them back from friends and the social life they will need in the feature. I would never even consider home schooling.Sugar-coding the kids -- is that an experiment in one of those crazy homeschool chemistry books? We haven't tried that one but it sounds like fun.
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I don’t think homeschooling can prepare children for a real world because when your home schooled, you’re away from the real world and you probably wouldn’t know how to communicate with other people. School is where you learn how to work with others and communicate but if you don’t have no one else but your parents with this type of education, it would be hard when they release you into the real world. But if you’re home schooled, you wouldn’t have to be pressured with drugs. I also disagree with the writers mother when she says that working at one’s own pace and following one’s genuine interests is the best way to learn.
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I would never want to be home schooled because you are not able to socalize with your friends at school. If you dont meet or talk to anyone, people might start to make fun of you because you have no friends that hang out with you. You might be smarter if you are home schooled but you still will not know how to make good friends if you get accepted into a college where you are met with other kids. If your are home schooled and you go to college you will fell as if the class is going too slow or if you know something before other kids then you will be frusterated that you are learning the same thing and nothing new. Overall I think that home schooling is not something that you should consider because you are not social with other kids, and later on in college you will not learn as much as you should be learning.
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No I would not like to be home schooled because then I wouldn’t have a chance to meet any of my friends that I know now and I wouldn’t be going to the awsome school that i’m at now. I also think I wouldn’t be able to stand my mom for the six hours.
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I would not want to be homeschooled because I would like to be friends with people. I would also want to play sports in highschool. It is better to get out of the house then to be locked in.
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no, because is boring
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I think I wouldn’t want to be home schooled because then I wouldn’t have any friends and I wouldn’t have a life and just stay home all the time. I also need to get into a good college to have a career and I think if I’m home schooled than I wouldn’t be able to do that at all because now for college even if you have a high average and you wouldn’t be able to get into a good college because you need to be involved in school such as clubs and after school activities. Although if I was home- schooled it would probably be because I am an actress or movie star.
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When you think about it, home schooling only encorages children to stay at home, instead of preparing them to leave. It gets them used to the comfortable living arangements at home more than usual. Other then that, if they do go outside, they have no personal confrontations with other children, so they will not easily develope speaking to other people, which means no friends, no girl/boyfriend, no husbands or wives, their lives would be pretty much empty.
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I think homeschooling is dumb. I think homeschooling doesn’t prepare kids for the real world. they don’t learn how to socialize with other people. Some parents may sugar code the kids. So they might not know everything there suppose to know. no i do not agree.
The themes:
School is where our friends are (bullies included) and its institutional character prepares us for the grim "real world."
Home is an isolating, lonely place.
Friends are vastly more important than family.
"Socialization" is a necessity and can only take place in school.
"Socialization" is more important than learning.
Conformity is more important than learning.
Learning shouldn't be too pleasant an experience.
Herding us into groups is what we deserve.
Outside the institution of government school, personal advancement is not possible.
Here we have young people who can barely imagine what life would be like without school, or how they could possibly learn or make friends apart from this government institution. Their obsession with "socialization" attests to the breadth and depth of the peer-attachment epidemic.
I'm not sure what the poor things mean by "the real world," but I get the feeling they think it's going to be even bleaker than the current conveyor belt they're riding. Passivity and conformity have been bred into them from day one and all they can do is praise the system that is crushing them. It's not their fault; they never had a chance.
Page two features comments from homeschooling kids and parents trying to explain what it's all about. But it's like trying to describe daylight to the blind. In addition to the obvious leap in literacy, and at least as important as that, is the vitality evident in the homeschoolers' testimonials. They aren't blindered drones repeating what they've been fed since kindergarten.
One homeschool student:
I homeschool and I am *IN* the real world daily. I am not cloistered and learning from a pre-approved, test-ready curriculum created for a myriad of students. I learn from the real-world and its many examples across the subjects.From a homeschooling parent:
Today I spent my afternoon in an art museum learning not only about the art around me, but about the collectors of the art and why they choose to spend their money collecting art.
On Monday, I, with a group of homeschooled friends, dissected a deer brain, heart, and trachea harvested by a hunter friend.
Tomorrow I am playing golf with a public-schooled friend because he has the day off for Veteran’s Day. But we won’t go until after my dad and I put up our own tree stand and prepare for hunting Saturday morning.
And next week, I will gather with friends for handwork and hanging out. I’ll also go to work with my dad where I participate in and watch him operate a very successful manufacturing business.
All of the anti-homeschooling comments are symptomatic of the negative mythology about homeschooling.One more:
Homeschoolers do not sit at home. They are out in the world. They take classes, join clubs, attend dances and parties (yes, homeschoolers have dances, often more frequently than their schooled peers. They take community college courses, they hold down jobs (my homeschooler got a job teaching martial arts when she was fifteen), they do everything their schooled peers do. They just don’t sit in a classroom six-plus hours a day.
There are many ways to homeschool. The article was about one family. It’s unfortunate that so many readers lack the creativity to think outside the box. But that’s what happens when one surrenders one’s life to a system that can’t accept any other way to educate.
This is amazing…a bunch a comments from non homeschooled kids, speculating about why homeschooling is bad. These comments say nothing at all about homeschooling, but are a stark illustration of an intellectual poverty and lack of critical thinking skills that are a shameful artifact of our current educational practices.Yes, their intellects have suffered. But school has also damaged their spirits. If children emerge from their thirteen-year institutionalization with any measure of curiosity, creativity, initiative, or independence, it's in spite of public school, not thanks to it.
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Thanks to Rod Dreher for linking here in his piece. Don't miss the astute comments. Here's one from Publius Cato
Ah yes, the real world, where relationship are based on deception and coercion, not respect and consent. Where being tasteless and a conformist is acceptable, where being decadent and licentious is applauded. When I read the opinions of these CHILDREN, I realize where the collapse of our moral values happened: in our schools.***
Linked at Instapundit -- thanks!
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Also linked at Ricochet. Go there, and to Mr. Dreher's post, and don't miss the comments.
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