Bookworm Room

For your (and my) consideration this week: Council Submissions Wolf Howling – Public Sector Unions: A Toxin, A Crisis & An Opportunity The Provocateur – Glenn Beck: Are You Serious Mere Rhetoric – Syria Responds To Obama’s Engagement, Publicly Mocks Clinton And Embraces Iran The Colossus of Rhodey – Lessons from Vietnam? Or just about [...]

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I’ve never understood what the big deal is with inert landfill.  Whether what lies under the ground is a pile of dirt and rocks, or some inert garbage seems to me to be perfectly irrelevant.  I understand that, if the garbage creates toxic byproducts, that should be addressed (and it is addressed with liners), but [...]

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Back in January, I blogged about the fact that my daughter’s Spanish class sat through La Misma Luna — which is a movie that uses the travails of a charming and pathetic little boy to make the case that our laws against illegal immigrants are cruel. That’s not just my opinion.  Here’s a piece of [...]

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I found the following paragraph, culled from the San Francisco Chronicle, fascinating (emphasis mine): From top congressional leaders to online activists, liberals have sought the wisdom of UC Berkeley linguistics Professor George Lakoff for years. They ask him to teach them to do something that conservatives traditionally have done better — frame complex policy into [...]

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Mike Volpe, at The Provocateur (he’s a fellow Watcher’s Council member), sent this one: Two Radical Arab Terrorists boarded a flight out of London. One took a window seat and the other sat next to him in the middle seat. Just before takeoff, a U.S. Marine sat down in the aisle seat. After takeoff, the Marine kicked his [...]

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Back when it first came out in 1990, many of my friends swooned about how romantic Pretty Woman was, while I alternated between gagging and fulmination.  I thought it was a truly disgusting movie insofar as it encouraged prostitution as a reasonable line of work to meet a sensitive millionaire.  My intuitive sense was that [...]

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England is not one of my favorite places anymore, because of the raging antisemitism that characterizes her politics and her street.  Nevertheless, she is our ally and has been our staunch ally for more than a century.  For Obama to abandon her over the Falklands is disgusting.  At Power Line, in a few words, John [...]

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George Bernard Shaw was a reprehensible human being and, for the most part, quite bombastic (by which I mean dull, because polemical) playwright.  Nevertheless, he occasionally hit the nail on the head, as he does with this little monologue by Alfred Doolittle, from Pygmalion, a man who feels that welfare and morality should never be [...]

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One of my favorite parenting tools is “the law of natural consequences.”  For example, on a cold day, I can force my older child to wear a jacket, which engenders a big fight and a lot of lingering resentment.  Alternatively, I can advise my child that it’s cold and suggest that a jacket will be [...]

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Right Wing News has launched a very cool new website:  Self Help Quotes, a series of excellent quotations from people who believe in self-reliance and individualism.  Check it out, and consider it an ongoing resource.

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It has been an epic Monday on the domestic front (nothing bad, just lots of frustrations and inconveniences), and it’s looking as if the afternoon will be only marginally better.  I’ll blog when I can, but would be delighted if you’d use this as an open thread.

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