Bookworm Room

It’s already old news to you that statistical data shows that Obama is the most polarizing president ever.  Much as I’d like to blame Obama, it seems that, rather than causing the polarization, he reflects it: One Gallup chart ranks presidents from Eisenhower to Obama on polarization during their third year in office. Obama is [...]

1 Comment »

We spend a lot of time talking here about the way our Progressive culture infantilizes young people.  Just think about the way the whole liberal world had a collective head explosion when Newt suggested that young people get jobs to learn the value of discipline and achieve the satisfaction of wages.  But all is not [...]

7 Comments »

One of the reasons a lot of people, myself included, like Newt is because he says politically incorrect things that ordinary people think.  In other words, his politically correct utterances aren’t out of the KKK playbook, they’re out of “the reasonable common-sense before 1960s Leftist education took over” playbook. A week ago, he said that [...]

7 Comments »

Regular readers know Marica, who occasionally comments here.  If you like her comments, as I do, you might want to check out the blog she’s started, Big Food, Big Garden, Big Life.  While you’re there, be sure to read this post, about the Left’s smug belief in the righteousness of its “scientific” views, and about [...]

9 Comments »

Much has been written about playwright David Mamet’s coming-out as a conservative and his reasons for so doing, but there is still much gold to be mined from Mamet’s mind.   Today’s National Review Online revisits Mamet in this stellar piece by Matthew Shaffer that contains this one gem that perfectly encapsulates some of the [...]

33 Comments »

A classic Seinfeld episode concerned George Costanza’s decision (at Kramer’s urging) to park in a handicapped zone.  This being George, things went drastically wrong.  What I remember from the episode, though, isn’t the cascading sequence of disasters; instead; it’s the opprobrium heaped upon George for parking in the blue.  His parking decision wasn’t treated as [...]

14 Comments »

I was at my church this past weekend and was struck by the large number of college-graduate children that are now back living at home with their parents, out of work. The impression I have is that many of these kids still have no idea what they want to do with their lives. I get [...]

44 Comments »

As we settle into the Obama Depression era, one thing that I and others have noticed is that many of the very youth that voted enthusiastically for Obama are the ones already feeling the consequence of his policies: they are unemployed. As one of my college-age kids put it, “our generation is so over Obama, [...]

18 Comments »

My husband and I frequently debate the virtue of sending our children off to a costly four year university (assuming, of course, that they are admitted).  I’m agin’ it, because I think it’s insane to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars so that ones child can listen to this type of gobbledygook: American Digest, from [...]

42 Comments »

The language is blue, but don’t let that stop you.  Read it.  Read it all. My favorite line, incidentally, is this one: Despite her underprivileged background Professor Kagan rose to the challenge and graduated magna cum laude, an honor reserved for the top 89% of Harvard Law alumni. Right there is one of the dirty [...]

5 Comments »

I was at my child’s school the other day, and happened to glance at the daily handout the children receive.  It had the usual special announcements and ended with “Today’s Patriotic Quotation.”  I was rather pleased to see that there was a patriotic quotation included (on a daily basis, yet).  Reading the quotation, though, just [...]

4 Comments »

Readers of my blog know that one of my personal bête noires is liberal indoctrination in public schools.  I blog about it frequently.  My last outing on that subject was here, and I’ll get back to that in a little bit.  First, though, I’d like you to see how one public school teacher saw fit [...]

10 Comments »

There are some things that seem immutable, right until a collapse that, in 20/20 hindsight, seemed inevitable.  Just think of the Iranian Revolution, the Fall of the Berlin wall and . . . the SEIU? For some time, the Service Employees International Union has appeared to be a permanent fixture on the political and economic [...]

6 Comments »

Two days ago, I brought to your attention the fact that the San Francisco School Board — despite facing a $113 million dollar budget shortfall over the next two years, despite its admission that it will be cutting summer school and academic programs, and despite the fact that there has not been a sudden outbreak [...]

9 Comments »

[UPDATE:  The school board stopped mulling and decided to act.] Last week, I wrote a long, ruminative post questioning how far a democracy must go to protect its minorities.  Stepping in, right on cue, the San Francisco School District, which is facing a disastrous budget shortfall, is considering a huge expansion in a program aimed [...]

17 Comments »

I’m working on a post, but thought you all would find this interesting in the meantime: From AJ Strata, something that’s not just interesting, but is also terrifying:  the terrorists are out there and, having gotten the measure of our new president and his administration, they are massing for war. If you needed a reminder [...]

No Comments »

I have to admit that I’ve gotten to the point with President Obama that, whatever he’s for, I’m automatically against in the first instance, at least until I’ve had a chance to check it out.  Take, for example, his recent proposal for a “three-year freeze on discretionary, ‘non-security’ spending.“  My very first reaction was, “What’s [...]

10 Comments »

My daughter’s Spanish class has spent the last couple of days watching a movie.  I know many people who learned English by watching American television, so I don’t have a problem with using movies as a teaching device.  I do, however, have a big problem with the movie chosen — La Misma la Luna — [...]

10 Comments »

This is a portmanteau post, filled with interesting things I read today, some of which come in neatly matched sets. Opening today’s San Francisco Moronicle, the first thing I saw was that an illegal teen’s arrest is causing a stir in San Francisco’s halls of power.  You see, San Francisco is a sanctuary city, and [...]

6 Comments »

I’m having a minor mid-life crisis.  I’ve been a practicing lawyer for almost 23 years now.  I’m quite good at what I do, but I hate it.  And lately, it’s been getting harder and harder to flog myself into getting the work done and meeting the deadlines.  (Although I should assure any current or potential [...]

12 Comments »

I’m reading a very enjoyable novel right now that is completely tuned in to the way in which the Left operates, especially when it comes to the media and academia. The writer is completely tuned into the name calling that substitutes for informed debate. For example, when the book’s protagonist, Paul, learns that Leftists starting [...]

8 Comments »

When parents think about what a school should do for their children, they think in terms of the three “Rs,” plus a lovely layering of science, history, and other subjects that maketh a full (and employable) man.  The politically correct Nanny State, however, cares little for education and a great deal for ideology.  It should [...]

4 Comments »

For reasons that make no sense to me, I don’t go to Andrew Breitbart’s Big Government site as often as I should.  Wait, I take that back.  I know precisely why I don’t go:  it’s an incredible repository of closely researched and factually supported articles detailing the way in which the Obami conduct themselves.  What [...]

1 Comment »

No, my post title does not mean I’ve gone off my rocker and started supporting Kevin Jennings in his role as Safe Schools Czar.  Thanks to Terresa Monroe’s hard work, I’ve known for months exactly what kind of person Kevin Jennings, the “Safe School Czar” is.  He’s a career gay man who is devoted to [...]

48 Comments »

When I was a very little girl, back in the hard drinking 1960s, an expression I frequently heard was that someone or something needed a bit of “the hair of the dog that bit you.”  I used to think that actually meant people would consume dog hair to cure their ills.  It was only later [...]

18 Comments »