Getting rid of your inner wuss....

Peter Rabbit Must Die:

"The homeowner, a city-boy artist and illustrator who had moved to rural Pennsylvania, never wanted to kill the woodchucks. Sure, they were ruining the garden and digging up the foundations of outbuildings, but it was a moral issue: the artist, who is still so uncomfortable about what transpired — and so concerned about how his New York clients would feel about it that he is not willing to be identified — did not want to take a life."

This is a great piece, even though I find it hard to believe the Times gave it the full-page treatment.

How quickly we forgot....

Back to the Garden - A Woodstock Museum

Using the term "hippie bus" makes the author seem like an idiot; but the entire premise is as over-used as could be. Perhaps what they should be doing is erecting a monument to remind us of just how self-absorbed we were at the time ("Don't eat the brown acid!"), and how quickly the party devolved into mayhem - remember that Altamont was just a short while down the road......

Something to ponder...

The New Cold War

"The next American president will inherit many foreign policy challenges, but surely one of the biggest will be the cold war. Yes, the next president is going to be a cold-war president — but this cold war is with Iran."

Friedman hasn't been all that cogent lately; but this Op-Ed today makes a whole lot of sense. Appeasing the Shiite animals will be the left's primary focus after the election; and we will find out very quickly if our new President has any balls at all.

Life is dangerous....

Fatal Accidents Erode Perk of Off-Campus Lunches

"Smithtown is one of a number of districts on Long Island and around the country that have recently closed their campuses at lunchtime, canceling a generations-old rite of passage because of school officials’ and parents’ growing concern over traffic accidents and in some cases, truancy. This 11,000-student district in Suffolk County stopped allowing students to go out for lunch in November, the day after a lunchtime car accident that killed two Smithtown West seniors and a third teenager."

This is just another appalling development in the stupidity of our parenting and educational practices. You can probably blame the lawyers because, in this case, I would imagine that the school district is doing their best to avoid liability. But how much good are you doing these kids by covering them in bubble wrap when they need to be learning that they need to be responsible for their own safety?

Life is a scary proposition, folks; and no amount of coddling is going to change that. As parents, we owe it to our kids to let them find much of this out on their own, lest we wind-up with a bunch of sniveling little Europeans on our hands who cannot wipe their own asses without an act of Congress. Sorrily, we are going to lose some of them along the way; and no matter how many ways we try and keep that from happening, these kids - especially teenagers - are going to figure out new ways to worsen the odds. Oddly enough, it's the parents who need to grow up.....

Certainly, the devil is in the details...

Critics See Symbols of Islam in Flight 93 Memorial Design

"As envisioned by its designer, the memorial to the victims who died on Sept. 11, 2001, when United Flight 93 crashed into a field near Shanksville, Pa., would follow the topography of the bowl-shaped land, creating a circular pathway ringed by trees, all focused on the “sacred ground” of the crash site near the bottom of the circle."

Very well said....

Over-Parenting and Social Disaster:

"Another pitfall of overprotection is a heartbreaking irony: Because over-parented children are taught to obsess over themselves, they don’t learn how to connect with others. Helicopter parents, who think they are drenching their children with love, are raising lonely sons and daughters. The kids’ constant self-focus, developed under the tonnage of unending parental intervention, handicaps them in every social setting."

My personal term for them is "Toilet Paper Parents" - for what I consider to be obvious reasons (and my own way with words). They are all over the place for heavens sake. They can NEVER not answer the cell phone when one of their little darlings calls to discuss what the next ten minutes will bring; and they MUST end the conversation with "I loooove you!" because that little darling (even if he or she is 25 years old) might get the impression that there are other people on the planet besides themselves.

Besides being destructive, it's really quite disgusting, isn't it?

I guess we forgot about them....

The Volokh Conspiracy:

So I guess that Asians aren't "of color" any more — they're colorless like me. At least it's better than their being "lily white," in the words of the late California Chief Justice Rose Bird.

Wretchard sees that race is starting to be defined more as a level of victimhood.....

I think eventually race will be decided on the basis of politics. Condoleeza Rice will become "white"; Barack Obama will remain "black". Ward Churchill will become a native American. And Bill Richardson will oscillate between being white and Latino, depending on the length of his beard

.

Not much different from the bitterness of Rev. Wright, is it?

Obama told the crowd: "You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. So it's not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion, or antipathy to people who aren't like them, or anti-immigrant sentiment, or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

Roger Kimball has his own interpretation....

This is going to be very interesting...

Ann Woolner:

So now, Duke University wants to keep certain people from saying certain things about the disproven rape allegations against the school s lacrosse players.

Now that lawsuits accuse Duke of having helped inflame campus sentiment against the team, this is a good time to be quiet about the whole thing, it seems.

Well, that is a turn of events.

This is the same school where faculty and students loudly demanded jailing -- and worse -- for the young men; where administrators canceled the team s season and fired the coach to try to quell the mob. That same school is now trying to punish players lawyers for inviting the news media to write about what the school allegedly did wrong."

Read the whole piece, and then read this book.

Via Instapundit

"A PROVOCATIVE MASKED BALL SET IN THE RUINS OF THE WORLD TRADE CENTER:" They do this because they know we won't behead them. Such is the bravery of artists.

Did you ever get the feeling from these foolish people that every bad thing that ever happened throughout history (which, by the way, is a lot older than the US in case you missed high school history) was invented right here? Slavery, oppression, racism, war, and fallen arches all had their debut in The New World didn't they?

Advancing (not very) colored people...

NAACP INVITES Jeremiah Wright to speak. There must have been a Hillary operative or two behind that decision.

All you have to do is make them feel guilty

Sir Elton:

"I never cease to be amazed at the misogynist attitude of some of the people in this country. I say to hell with them."

Now we are getting to the crux of the matter: If you don't vote for Hillary, you are a misogynist; and if you don't vote for Obama, you are a racist. This guilt thing seems to have worked well with all of my liberal Jewish friends.... Well done, Dems.

"Orwellian" is right...

This is where we are headed in this country in the battle of free speech vs. "human rights" and "multiculturalism". Thank goodness there are people like Mark Steyn, Pamella Geller and others who are willing to take these idiots on (please note that NONE of those folks are from the left).
Read Reynold's whole post, follow the links; and then look at where our colleges and universities are headed - and be very, very scared.

Where's the ACLU when they are really needed?

Via The Agitator:

Whether or not an Obama delegate should have resigned for calling two black kids climbing in a tree near her home “monkeys” sorta’ depends on how she said it, and I guess which way the winds of political correctness happen to be blowing. I can certainly see an innocuous explanation. And I guess I could see a less forgiving explanation. But a $75 fine? For something she said? Even if she meant it in an overtly racial way, I can’t see how that passes constitutional muster. Or at least how it should.

We deserve to be angry...

IRAQ WAR VETERANS -- "TOO CONTROVERSIAL." Ward Churchill: Educational!

Tampa prosecutors plan to go ahead with charges against a 93-year-old man who offered a prostitute $20 for . . . well, I suppose it could have been sex. I think the guy deserves a commendation for his ambition.

From Instapundit...

NETWORK SOLUTIONS SHUTS DOWN A WEBSITE under Islamist pressure. I'm guessing they wouldn't respond to complaints from Baptists quite so readily.

UPDATE: Reader Antoinette Aubert emails: "Baptists don't blow people up for disagreeing with them. Heck Baptists don't even sue you for disagreeing with them. Thus does multi-culturalism make cowards of us all." Or encourage violence and litigation.

Our Little Darlings

Megan McArdle has something to say about modern parents who refuse to vaccinate their children:

Of course, I recognize that people have a right to abide by their conscience, and I would not want public health officials to force children to be vaccinated. I just think that people who are unvaccinated, unless they have a legitimate medical reason for same, should not be allowed to use public roads, public sidewalks, or public services. They have a right not to vaccinate their children. But they do not have a right to risk my health.

It is hard to imagine the level of selfishness that pervades modern-day parenthood. I sit and stare at wildly behaving little runts as their parents sit and do nothing, expecting everyone else to tolerate their children's' behavior because we are not supposed to hurt their "self-esteem". Schools are being ruined by "helicopter parents" who think that teachers are nothing more than overpaid baby-sitters; and, even worse, these kids are turning into self-centered brats who cannot even fill out a college application without Mommy and Daddy helping them out. They all need rescuing - and they are all voting for Obama......

Flavor of the month...

The Wisdom of the Ages, for Now Anyway

EARLIER this month, Oprah Winfrey looked into a camera and announced to the world that she was about to do the “most exciting thing I’ve ever done.”

Do people really believe this nonsense? By next month this guy will have been the third in bed with the Spitzers...

Just don't use the term "bitches"

Sometimes, the Dogs Just Don’t Like the Dog Food:

"Women’s college basketball (and for that matter, the WNBA) has been given every possible opportunity to succeed. Where it doesn’t get the attention men’s basketball does, Brennan sees sexism. I see a game that just isn’t very entertaining to watch."

Once again, the forces of "equality" are determined to make sure that you and I think just like they do - whether we want to or not. The other thing you can be sure of - if Donna Shalala is in favor of it, it has got to be a Nanny State bunch of bullshit.

Vague recollections of "A Clockwork Orange"...