Considerettes

John Edwards really need to rediscover his place in this world.

A fairy tale about two princes falling in love sparked a backlash - and a lawsuit - against a teacher and a school last year when it was read to a second-grade class in Massachusetts.

But the three frontrunners in the Democratic presidential race suggested Wednesday night at their debate in New Hampshire that they’d support reading the controversial book to children as part of a school curriculum.

Moderator Tim Russert asked John Edwards, Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. Hillary Clinton whether they’d be comfortable having the story - called “King & King” - read to their children in school.

Edwards gave the first and most definitive answer - a resounding and instant “yes, absolutely” - although he added that it “might be a little tough” for second-graders.

…

The 2004 vice presidential candidate and former North Carolina senator said he doesn’t want to influence his kids’ opinions about the issue.

“I don’t want to make that decision on behalf of my children,” he said. “I want my children to be able to make that decision on behalf of themselves, and I want them to be exposed to all the information, even in - did you say second grade? Second grade might be a little tough, but even in second grade to be exposed to all those possibilities, because I don’t want to impose my view. Nobody made me God.”

Though nobody made John Edwards God, God made him a parent. To throw his hands up and say that since he’s not The Almighty that he has no place in forming his childrens’ views is a major cop-out. I’m sure he’d find some reason to inject himself in their upbringing if, let’s say, the book were instead about a Kingdom where homosexuality wasn’t practiced because everyone thought it was immoral.

And while we’re on the subject of second graders making their own moral decisions, how about a book on adultery? I mean, it happens quite a lot, and some folks don’t see the moral issue with it, so let’s just show the kiddos an alternative. “The Open-Marriage Kingdom”, in the children’s section at a bookstore near you.

Careful, John. If the Lord wants that book out, He’ll reach down with His own hand and smite it Himself. No one made you God.

Technorati Tags: John Edwards, Democrats, Tim Russert, Massachusetts, King & King, homosexuality, public school, education

Popularity: 16% [?]

In February, 2008, Ben Stein (yes, that Ben Stein) is coming out with a movie that exposes the scientific community’s rather non-scientific silencing of those not towing the line.

Evolution – and the explosive debate over its virtual monopoly on America’s public school classrooms – is the focus of the film “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.”

In the movie, Stein, who is also a lawyer, economist, former presidential speechwriter, author and social commentator, is stunned by what he discovers – an elitist scientific establishment that has traded in its skepticism for dogma. Even worse, say publicists for the feature film, “along the way, Stein uncovers a long line of biologists, astronomers, chemists and philosophers who have had their reputations destroyed and their careers ruined by a scientific establishment that allows absolutely no dissent from Charles Darwin’s theory of random mutation and natural selection.”

“Big Science in this area of biology has lost its way,” says Stein. “Scientists are supposed to be allowed to follow the evidence wherever it may lead, no matter what the implications are. Freedom of inquiry has been greatly compromised, and this is not only anti-American, it’s anti-science. It’s anti-the whole concept of learning.”

Nice to see someone taking on this issue in what looks to be a funny and informative, Ben Stein sort of way.

Technorati Tags: Ben Stein, evolution, intelligent design, movies, Charles Darwin, documentary

Popularity: 20% [?]

Liz Taylor is keeping the divorce rate high.

Eight-times married Hollywood icon Elizabeth Taylor could be heading for yet another trip down the aisle as she declared her love for a wealthy businessman she met last year in Hawaii.

As much as I believe the divorce rate in the country is too high, its people like Taylor that make it artificially high. She’s been divorced 8 times, so 8 other married couples need to stay together for life just to keep a combined 50% rate alive.

And if past history is any indicator, two more couples need to be signed up real soon now.

Technorati Tags: Elizabeth Taylor, divorce rate

Popularity: 5% [?]

I’m not one to post campaign material for one candidate or another here, especially since I’ve really not made up my mind. But this post by Mitt Romney at Redstate really hits the nail on the head with me. Key paragraph:

The blame for Washington’s failures lies not just with the Democrats but with Republicans as well. We have to put our own house in order. We can no longer be a party of big spenders with ethical standards more fitting of a Jay Leno punch line. We can no longer pretend our borders are secure. When Republicans act like Democrats, America loses. It’s time for change in Washington and change begins with us.

Read the whole thing.

Technorati Tags: Mitt Romney, Republicans, government, Jay Leno

Popularity: 7% [?]

From Gizmodo comes word of this new item that, frankly, speaks volumes about our public school system.

Made from 13 layers of K-29 Kevlar, this thin, lightweight plate fits in most backpacks and can stop every bullet from a 9mm all the way to Dirty Harry’s .44 Magnum.

Yeah, that’s the kind of “socialization” my homeschooled kids are missing out on.

Technorati Tags: education, homeschooling, guns, public schools, socialization, bulletproof backpack

Popularity: 17% [?]

It appears that too many on the Left are willing and eager to accept Jon Stewart at face value, forgetting that his show is, y’know, not an actual news show.

“Idiots are now convinced that Dubya doesn’t know Nelson Mandela is still alive,” writes Abu Wabu. “What has in fact died, and what a miserable, stinking death it was, is real intellectual rigor on the idiot left.” As made evident by followers of Daily Show host Jon Stewart, “a voice for democratic ideals and the noble place of citizenship”, at least according to Tom Brokaw. Pity, then, that Stewart’s idealistic nobility is wasted on an audience of morons:

Thursday’s episode of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Oh my God. How funny was it? And for a very wrong reason indeed. I’ve already shared it with others. George W Bush thought Nelson Mandela is dead? Dude! How wrong could he possibly be!

Hat tip to Tim Blair, who has a host of other examples. And, of course, if these Nuance Nabobs would take a look at the context, they’d see that Stewart’s hack job just fed them plastic red meat, that they gobbled up. This wouldn’t be so scary if “The Daily Show” weren’t so many people’s primary news source.

It’s a comedy show, folks. Treat it with way more skepticism than your average nightly news program.

Technorati Tags: The Daily Show, Jon Stewart, Nelson Mandela, Tom Brokaw, George W Bush, liberal, media, comedy

Popularity: 9% [?]

It’s always interesting to me to see what some computer program figures would be the best presidential candidate for me. While it’s a fun little diversion, I think folks ought to at least give them a try. I think they might be surprised.

An acquaintance of mine, who is a political conservative and white, when talking with African-American co-workers, would often see that, while they held conservative principles, would vote Democrat anyway. When she asked one of them to take one of these kinds of surveys, her co-worker was shocked that the Republican candidate lined up much more closely with her beliefs than the Democrat, so I think it’s worth giving it a shot.

I took this survey, and here are my results:

1. Theoretical Ideal Candidate (100%)
2. Chuck Hagel (not running) (78%)
3. Mitt Romney (77%)
4. Sam Brownback (73%)
5. Jim Gilmore (withdrawn) (73%)
6. Tom Tancredo (71%)
7. Duncan Hunter (70%)
8. John McCain (66%)
9. Fred Thompson (62%)
10. Newt Gingrich (not announced) (62%)
11. Mike Huckabee (57%)
12. Rudolph Giuliani (57%)
13. Tommy Thompson (withdrawn) (56%)
14. Ron Paul (51%)
15. Kent McManigal (campaign suspended) (50%)
16. Michael Bloomberg (says he will not run) (30%)
17. Al Gore (not announced) (26%)
18. Bill Richardson (25%)
19. Joseph Biden (24%)
20. Hillary Clinton (22%)
21. Wesley Clark (not running, endorsed Clinton) (21%)
22. John Edwards (18%)
23. Christopher Dodd (15%)
24. Barack Obama (14%)
25. Mike Gravel (14%)
26. Alan Augustson (campaign suspended) (12%)
27. Dennis Kucinich (9%)
28. Elaine Brown (0%)

Update:  Welcome, NY Observer readers.

Technorati Tags: United States, presidential campaign, presidential candidate selector

Popularity: 13% [?]

A Ten Commandments display in Kentucky will remain, beating back an assault by the ACLU.

A federal court in Lexington, Ky., has ruled that the Ten Commandments can remain on display in the Mercer County courthouse, rejecting an attempt by the American Civil Liberties Union to have them removed.

“This is a major victory for the people of Mercer County and for all Americans who don’t buy into the ACLU’s extreme misrepresentation of our Constitution,” said Francis J. Manion, senior counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice, which argued the case for the county.

“The First Amendment was never intended to remove all mention of God or religion from the public square,” said Manion. “The Supreme Court and many other courts have long recognized the foundational role of the Ten Commandments in the development of our legal system.”

Hat tip to Stop the ACLU, where Nathan Bradfield, after making his case for why the ACLU has been wrong in this and other efforts, states:

Those who would argue that our Founders intended to begin a secular nation with secular documents are living a pipe dream. A. H. Everett, said in the Legislature of Massachusetts, “In almost all of the distinguished states, the principal care of the community has been to provide for the support of religion.” Whether out of ignorance or lack of exposure, a minority of Americans neglect every Founder not named Paine, Jefferson, or Madison. And the latter two must be quoted out of context in order fit their secular, separation mold.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say the tide is turning against the ACLU in cases like this, because it matters so much whether the judge takes the Constitution at its word or not. But it is good to see.

Technorati Tags: Ten Commandments, Kentucky, Mercer County, ACLU, Francis J. Manion, ACLJ, First Amendment, church and state

Popularity: 7% [?]

The appearance of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at Columbia University was trumpeted by portions of the Left as a big win for “free speech”. I’m reminded of the saying used quite often; an open mind, like an open window, still needs a screen to keep the bugs out. Just because our republic isn’t going to collapse if we let an evil man speak doesn’t mean we should offer up a forum for him.

But apparently, the Left has its own version of the screen. If the speech exposes the dirty laundry of the Left, it should be screened out.

Early this summer, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign for president learned that the men’s magazine GQ was working on a story the campaign was sure to hate: an account of infighting in Hillaryland.

So Clinton’s aides pulled a page from the book of Hollywood publicists and offered GQ a stark choice: Kill the piece, or lose access to planned celebrity coverboy Bill Clinton.

Despite internal protests, GQ editor Jim Nelson met the Clinton campaign’s demands, which had been delivered by Bill Clinton’s spokesman, Jay Carson, several sources familiar with the conversations said.

GQ writer George Saunders traveled with Clinton to Africa in July, and Clinton is slated to appear on the cover of GQ’s December issue, in which it traditionally names a “Man of the Year,” according magazine industry sources.

And the offending article by Atlantic Monthly staff writer Josh Green got the spike.

Wasn’t it supposed to be George W. Bush that participated in this kind of stifling of dissent?

Technorati Tags: Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, GQ Magazine, George Saunders, Josh Green, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, free speech, liberal media

Popularity: 6% [?]

The clutter on your TV screen is getting worse.

Kyra Sedgwick, star of “The Closer” on TNT, walks under a police tape and scans the screen with her flashlight. And every time she does, she makes Gretchen Corbin, a technical writer in Berkeley, Calif., irate.

The promotional ads for “The Closer” run in the bottom right of the screen during other TNT programs — a graphic called a snipe. But for Ms. Corbin, who sometimes watches movies that have subtitles, the tiny images block the dialogue.

“Some ad just took over the entire bottom of the screen so I missed what the characters said to each other,” said Ms. Corbin, describing a recent experience. “And it’s TV, so you can’t rewind.”

Snipes are just the latest effort by network executives to cram promotions onto television screens in the age of channel surfing, ad skipping and screen-based multitasking. At first, viewers may feel a slight jolt of pleasure at the sight of a new visual effect, they say, but over time the intrusions contribute to the sense that the screen is far more cluttered — not just with ads, but with news crawls and other streams of information.

Not just “snipes” but full blown, full-color, moving ads that take away from the current show, sometimes obscuring it. This really is way too much.

This ranks right down there with a feature on news channels that appeared after 9/11: The Scroller(tm). On a day when terrorism hit the US, keeping up with more news than just what was being covered at the moment was very useful. But when The Scroller is noting who’s won a local mustache and beard contest, it’s usefulness has long, long been outlived. Give me some of my screen back, guys

Technorati Tags: television, snipe, Gretchen Corbin, advertisements

Popularity: 7% [?]

Shire Network News #104 has been released. The feature interview is with graphic novelist, Bosch Fawstin. Click here for the show notes, links, and ways to listen to the show; directly from the web site, by downloading the mp3 file, or by subscribing with your podcatcher of choice.

Below is the text of my commentary segment.

MoveOn.org placed a full-page ad in the New York Times suggesting that General Petraeus might be called “General Betray Us”. MoveOn.org, who I assume supports the troops, just not their leaders, and who don’t question anyone’s patriotism, except when they do, says that “Iraq is mired in an unwinnable religious civil war.”

Now, by “unwinnable”, I imagine they mean that we can’t win, by stopping the fighting. And that’s certainly true, especially if you look at history. I mean, the British have been trying to stop Protestant and Catholic violence in Ireland for…. Oh, wait. They did manage to stop the violence. OK, well that’s a good thing, right?

The peace in Ireland came after 38 years of, shall we say, “occupation” by British forces. But MoveOn.org is shocked — SHOCKED — that “American troops will need to stay in Iraq for as long as ten years”. So perhaps peace after 38 years was not worth it? Talk about your short attention spans. Talk about your instant gratification culture. These guys must not keep their money in anything longer than a 6-month certificate of deposit. “The Cold War going to last how long? Ah, just give the Soviets what they want. A few innocent looking missiles in Cuba aren’t going to hurt anyone. Let’s just move on, and bring the troops home from Germany.”

(Oh, and we’d better not let them know that we still have American troops in Germany. I mean, can you imagine the reaction? I may be a mean-spirited wingnut, but I have my limits.)

And if there was any question — any at all — that MoveOn.org and the allegedly objective New York Times were on the same, viciously partisan side, here’s some information that should clarify things. The Times gave MoveOn.org a significantly cut rate on their “Betray Us” full page ad. The standard rate for that size an ad is $181,692, but MoveOn.org got theirs for a mere $65,000. That’s a about 65% off! That’s either because September is a slow ad month for the Times, or because, as one Republican staffer put it, they must’ve gotten the “family discount”. Actually, this rate is called the “special advocacy” rate, but is this discount available for conservative causes? If you ask the Swift Boat Vets for Truth, or the National Right to Life Committee, you’ll soon realize that this “special advocacy” rate is applied in a rather lopsided fashion. Got to keep it all in the family, as it were.

In conjunction with this, the Times has put out a new, sliding scale rate for political ads. The new schedule is as follows:

All Republicans: 110% of list price
Generic Democrats: 75%
BDS Sufferers: 50%
Daily Kos writers: 40% but the ad must appear in the Entertainment section
Michael Moore: No upfront charge. Instead, 13% of gross profits from the next movie
William Shatner: Name your own price
And an additional 5% off for each clever pun on someone’s name (which must appear in at least 48 point type)

At least we know where the Times stands; side by side with an organization, like MoveOn.org, that is willing to smear anyone for political gain. It runs in the family.

Back to you, Brian.

Technorati Tags: Ireland, MoveOn.org, New York Times, Bosch Fawstin, General Peter Petraeus

Popularity: 10% [?]

A moment of silence would seem…redundant? >grin<

I had a high school teacher, in a class called “Literature and the Arts”, who exposed us to the mime of Marceau. I never became a fan of mime, but I did understand how gifted Marceau was and that mime could really tell a story and be much more than just pretending you’re stuck in a glass box or climbing an invisible rope.

Technorati Tags: Marcel Marceau, mime, the arts

Popularity: 7% [?]

which country was NOT among the top 3 countries from which immigrants departed according to a 2005 source - #1! on MSN Live Search

Popularity: 6% [?]

Bruce Eckel wrote an article about how bad he thinks RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is as a tool for finding out what’s new on the net. In “RSS: The Wrong Solution to a Broken Internet”, he writes:

What are you, the consumer, trying to accomplish? You want to be notified when something happens. We have a well-known pattern for that problem. It’s called publish-subscribe. The publisher keeps a pointer to the subscriber, and when something happens tells the subscriber about it. Maximally efficient.

Why doesn’t it work? Because the internet is anonymous. People can behave badly because nobody knows who they really are, and enough people do behave badly that you can’t risk giving out a pointer to yourself. So we don’t. Instead, we need RSS where our readers are constantly, stupidly asking, “did it change yet?” “Did it change yet?” “Now has it changed?” “Now?”

And indeed that can be a problem, especially for RSS readers that poll far too frequently. Bruce makes the case for a less anonymous Internet, and I can agree with him on a number of points.

What gave me a chuckle was this bit at the end of the article, which, I imagine, is added to any article on the site.

RSS Feed

If you’d like to be notified whenever Bruce Eckel adds a new entry to his weblog, subscribe to his RSS feed.

With “RSS Feed” in big type. I know, gotta use the tools that currently exist, even if you think they’re broken, but it got my day off to a good start.

Technorati Tags: Bruce Eckel, RSS, Internet, humor

Popularity: 12% [?]

Democrats have bemoaned the (alleged) loss of standing with the world that the US has suffered supposedly due to the war in Iraq. I guess before that, everyone just loved us, and since then we’ve lost the support of our allies. Well, the good news is, those Democrats can stop their worrying; France likes us again.

Sometimes it’s not the message, but the messenger who delivers it. After spending much of this decade going head to head with the US over its invasion of Iraq due to nuclear weapons suspicions, France seems to be joining American bellicosity when it comes to those same suspicions about Iran. On French radio on Sunday, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said that it is time to “prepare ourselves for the worst” and indicated that he was talking about a possible war with Iran.

The remarks are simply the most recent indication that France under new President Nicolas Sarkozy is turning its back on the almost reflexive anti-US stance of his predecessor Jacques Chirac.

Democrats who have cited our “standing” as a reason to oppose Bush will now start supporting him, right? Well, no, of course it couldn’t be that easy.

On Monday, the UN’s head nuclear watchdog Mohamed ElBaradei blasted Kouchner, saying that diplomacy is still the best route and warned against “hyping” the issue.

“There are rules on how to use force,” ElBaradei said “and I would hope that everybody would have gotten the lesson after the Iraq situation, where 700,000 innocent civilians have lost their lives on the suspicion that a country has nuclear weapons.”

Of course, the UN is still jittery. Yes, there are rules on how to use force, which, incidentally, we followed, and still we “lost standing”. Sorry, I don’t exert too much worry on what others might think of us even if we follow the rules. I want diplomacy to work, make no mistake. But I also want enemies to know that there will be a price if they continue to threaten us and our allies. That’s all that Kouchner was saying; nothing’s off the table.

Kouchner also indicated that the European Union might begin looking into imposing its own sanctions against Iran, should the UN continue to be unable to strengthen those currently in place.

Because we all know how well UN sanctions worked on Iraq. Exhibit A is:

China and Russia — both of which wield vetoes on the UN Security Council — have been reluctant to take a harder line against Iran, which is widely suspected of trying to develop nuclear weapons.

Anyway, it looks like the world is starting to see things our way again, albeit slowly. Democrats should be sleeping better tonight.

Either that or the whole “standing” issue was just a smoke screen, as long as the “world” though the way they did. I’m kinda leaning that way.

Technorati Tags: France, United Nations, Bernard Kouchner, Mohamed ElBaradei, Iran, China, Russia

Popularity: 11% [?]