This Is Just Sick

Was Ehrlich right about multiculturalism?

Here is a partial list of workshops at the 17th annual convention of the National Association for Multicultural Education (NAME), which K-12 teachers from every state attend thanks to our tax dollars:

• "The Unbearable Whiteness of Being: Dismantling White Privilege and Supporting Anti-Racist Education in Our Classrooms and Schools." Taught by a professor from St. Cloud State University in Minnesota, this session "is designed to help educators identify and deconstruct their own white privilege and in so doing more deeply commit themselves to anti-racist teaching and critical multicultural teaching."

• "Talking About Religious Oppression and Unpacking Christian Privilege." This session, taught by a team of professors, "will examine the dynamics of Christian privilege and oppression of minority religious groups and nonbelievers as constructed and maintained on three distinct levels: individual, institutional and societal. A historical and legal lecturette will be presented and participants will engage in interactive learning modules."

• "Beyond Celebrating Diversity: Teaching Teachers How to be Critical Multicultural Educators." Taught by NAME regional director Paul Gorski, founder of the activist group EdChange, this session will start from the premise that multiculturalism's greatest danger "comes from educators who ostensibly support its goals, but whose work - cultural plunges, food fairs, etc. - reflects a compassionate conservative consciousness rather than social justice. This session focuses on preparing teachers, not for celebrating diversity, but for achieving justice in schools and society."

No way in hell is my kid going to a government school. Thank God there are private schools to take up the slack. Don't think they aren't trying to take that option away.

Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons: but in every nation he that feareth Him, and worketh righteousness, is acceptable to Him. - Acts 10: 34, 35

Divine Selection - Character matters.

Something Fishy Here

Gmail uses Google's innovative technology to keep spam out of your inbox.

I have a Gmail account and have been pretty amazed at how effective the spam blocker is at keeping spam out of the inbox. I wish Thunderbird was that effective. That being said, I have a feeling they may be cooking the books, so to speak.

I get a lot of spam on the Gmail account, and it's different than spam I get on other accounts. All my other accounts get a much wider variety of spam, on Gmail it's always for a Rolex, sexual enhancements or some other such thing. Also, I have an account I use for sweepstakes and I get less spam at that one than at Gmail. I haven't given my Gmail address out to anyone except Buy.com and use it to log into Blogger. I have given the other one out to literally hundreds of companies. How are the spammers getting my Gmail address? It's an unusual address, especially the form it is in.

I don't have an answer but have a feeling Google is selling the addresses to spammers or possibly even spamming themselves to make Gmail look better. I don't know, but it just doesn't feel right.

Raising Sand

New album from Alison Krauss and Robert Plant - listen to it free at their website. Very nice.

Men Behaving Badly

Defending Christ in Spite of Christianity by Lenny Cacchio

If someone were to challenge me with Hitchens' observations, I would have to grant him that the politics of Christianity has a sordid side, but that's why Jesus made the pointed statement that his kingdom is not of this world. He did not intend the Church to become a player in the power politics of the kingdoms of men. Hitchens seems to be saying that there can't be a God because people are so bad, and surely a man of Hitchens acumen can see that it does not necessarily follow. One must not confuse institutions that claim the Christian label with Jesus Christ. They are not the same thing.

Any organization or institution (or individual for that matter) that puts the name of Christ on its shingle needs to be careful about giving occasion for doubt. Jesus once warned his disciples about denying him before men, and that means more than disowning him. It means claiming the name of Christ while doing the works of the devil. Blasphemy is taking the Lord's name in vain, and there is no greater blasphemy than doing evil in the name of good, or as Jesus might have put it, "the time is coming that whoever kills you will think that he offers God service." (John 16:2 NKJV)

In other words, don't blame God for the sins of man. We do that on our own.

Life in the Movies

War, like life, is not a movie -- Mark Steyn

But the third and bigger point is that, enjoyable as they are, pop-culture metaphors aren't really of much use, especially when you're up against cultures where life is still defined by how you live as opposed to what you experience via media. It seems to me, for example, that when anti-war types bemoan Iraq as this generation's Vietnam "quagmire," older folks are thinking of the real Vietnam – the Gulf of Tonkin resolution and whatnot – but most anybody under 50 is thinking of Vietnam movies: some vague video-store mélange of "The Full Metal Deer Apocalypse."

Take the Scott Thomas Beauchamp debacle at the New Republic, in which the magazine ran an atrocity-a-go-go Baghdad diary piece by a serving soldier about dehumanized troops desecrating graves, abusing disfigured women, etc. It smelled phony from the get-go – except to the professional media class from whose ranks the New Republic's editors are drawn: To them, it smelled great, because it aligned reality with the movie looping endlessly through the windmills of their mind, a nonstop Coppola-Stone retrospective in which ill-educated conscripts are the dupes of a nutso officer class.

It's the same with all those guys driving around with "9/11 Was An Inside Job" bumper stickers. That aligns reality with every conspiracy movie from the past three decades: It's always the government who did it – sometimes it's some supersecret agency working deep within the bureaucracy from behind an unassuming nameplate on a Washington street; and sometimes it's the president himself – but when poor Joe Schmoe on the lam from the Feds eventually unravels it, the cunning conspiracy is always the work of a ruthlessly efficient all-powerful state. So Iraq is Vietnam. And 9/11 is the Kennedy assassination, with ever higher percentages of the American people gathering on the melted steely knoll.

There's a kind of decadence about all this: If 9/11 was really an inside job, you wouldn't be driving around with a bumper sticker bragging that you were on to it. Fantasy is a by-product of security: it's the difference between hanging upside down in your dominatrix's bondage parlor after work on Friday and enduring the real thing for years on end in Saddam's prisons.

Monster Truck Show

We took James to a monster truck show on Sunday. I don't think we'll do that again. After ten minutes I was ready to go and James and Irma weren't far behind, but we stuck it out. The biggest problem was the noise. It was way too loud. The show was in an indoor arena with a cement floor and it was just painful when those trucks got going. It was not just loud, no, no. The music they were playing was loud - we couldn't even hear each other over the music, which was annoyingly obnoxious by itself (think loud rock music over a crappy PA system). The trucks were painful. I know loud, I've worked on a flight line, been to plenty of concerts, and been to auto races. The closest loud were the races but being inside just multiplied the sound. I searched in vain for someone selling earplugs - I'd be selling earplugs if it were my show. I ended up crumpling some paper towel up and sticking it in my ears. You couldn't really see it, it was like putting foam plugs in your ear and it saved the day for me. James just put his hands over his ears, he didn't like the paper towel idea. I don't know how Irma took it.

It was a relief when the motorcycles came out to play, they were whisper quiet (in comparison) and you could just barely hear them with the music playing. They had a car jump a ramp and smash into a line of cars. James thought that sounded cool but after it crashed his first words were, "That was dumb." He was right. I just don't get enjoyment out of seeing things destroyed for fun.

That being said, I do like watching the monster truck shows on TV occasionally. These trucks we saw were not those TV trucks, they were not on that level, and if I ever go to one of those shows I will bring earplugs.

I wanted to get some video of the show and was checking the tape to make sure I wouldn't tape over something important (the kids play with it sometimes) and James wanted to go to the bathroom so I walked with the camera. He went to the end of a long bank of stalls and as I walked behind I pushed play to check the tape, camera pointing to the floor. On the screen I see a bathroom stall with a guys feet at the bottom. I checked the camera, it was in 'play', not 'camera' mode and it was indeed pointing down. The guys feet disappeared, he pulled them up. I was just standing there now, trying to figure out what the hell was going on and hoping nobody saw it. I turned it off. I turned it on again and the feet came back down. This was too weird. I hit rewind and found out one of the kids had taped a scene from a movie off the TV. Scared me 'bout half to death. Never bring a camera in the bathroom.

Revenge of the Nerds

You saw how the cat wakes up it's human, well, we have our ways of getting even. Scroll down for 2nd pic.

Let Me Guess ...

the attractive, intelligent ruling elite are the liberals, and the underclass of dim-witted, ugly goblin-like creatures are the conservatives? That's the way liberals see the world now, so it's no surprise to see someone actually project that out to future branching of the human species. Not gonna happen though.

Hey, maybe I got that backwards after all.

Human race will 'split into two different species

The Faithless

"Things hoped for"; the realization of ideals, the ultimate victory of good, compensation, the even balance and justice; the building of the city of God and the triumph of righteousness. "Things not seen." Oh, if there only were a God, if only there were spiritual forces as well as material forces, if only the dreams of these men of old were true and the mountain flamed with light and angelic hosts; if only these things were real, then we should be quite sure that our dreams would be realized. Fail to believe in things unseen and hope dies, the song is silent, the fight ends, and the work is abandoned. Let the dust of the highway be everything, and the troops will weary upon the march and the territory will never be possessed. Let humanity come to the conclusion that the life of bread and raiment and dust is everything, and thereby is signed the death warrant of all high ideals and aspirations, and of everything noble. There is no assurance of things hoped for unless there be the proving of things unseen. -- G. Campbell Morgan.

America was founded on faith, the impossible dream, but with her success faith diminished as surely as sand slips through the fingers and now "the life of bread and raiment and dust is everything."

Mayan Cichlid

This is my newest fish. He was caught locally, in Lake Tohopekaliga, while catching bait shrimp. Best I can tell he's a Mayan cichlid (Cichlasoma urophthalmus). It seems this fish has become established in South Florida but I can't find any reference to them being found this far north. It could be they made their way north through the Kissimmee River. This is a juvenile so I assume they are established and breeding.

Rerun

I posted this before but this is better quality. Besides, it's funny.

35 Inconvenient Truths

Chock full of errors.

As many as 35 serious scientific errors or exaggerations, all pointing towards invention of a threat that does not exist at all, or exaggerations of phenomena that do exist, do not reflect credit on the presenter of the movie or on those who advised him. The movie is unsuitable for showing to children, and provides no basis for taking policy decisions. Schools that have shown the movie to children are urged to ensure that the errors listed in this memorandum are drawn to the children’s attention.

Another Final Warning

Give all power to the U.N. or 'Humanity's very survival' is at risk

The bleak verdict on the environment was issued as an “urgent call for action” by the United Nations Environment Programme, which said that the “point of no return” was fast approaching.

Only the United Nations has the wisdom and ability to save the world. Just check their track record. OK, don't, just trust them. This is your last warning. Until the next one.

Have you hugged an Islamo-fascist today?

Ann Coulter's latest column.

Elected Democrats at least make empty rhetorical gestures about opposing Islamic fascism. Of course, amidst their nonspecific condemnations of Islamic terrorism, they make very specific demands that we genuflect before Islam and perform exotic fetishes on the fascists.

Liberals believe in burning the American flag, urinating on crucifixes and passing out birth control pills to 11-year-olds without telling their parents – but God forbid an infidel touch a Quran at Guantanamo.

Liberals claim to be terrified that the religious right is going to take over the culture in a country where more than a million babies are exterminated every year, kindergarteners can be expelled from school for mentioning God, and Islamic fascists are welcomed on college campuses while speakers opposed to Islamic fascism are met with angry protests.

Learn From Others Mistakes, Please.

God always seems to provide someone with the unique ability to elucidate world events in a time of crisis - who, of course, is ignored or ridiculed by the majority until it's too late. Mark Steyn seems to be stepping into that role for the present day.

No Smoke Without Fire by Mark Steyn

Let us zip across the Dominion, to Etobicoke, a corner of Toronto I know well. Or I thought I did. The other day a reader sent me the list of candidates for the Etobicoke North riding in this month’s provincial election. They are as follows:

Shafiq Qaadri, Liberal
Mohamed Boudjenane, NDP
Mohamed Kassim, Progressive Conservative
Jama Korshel, Green
Teresa Ceolin, Family Coalition

"Teresa"? What kind of cockamamie name is that for an Etobicoke politician? This is the first riding in Ontario in which every major party is running a Muslim candidate. But not the last. To the casual observer, this would seem to be statistically improbable. Etobicoke is not 80 per cent Muslim, nor even 50 per cent Muslim. Yet every major national party already feels obliged to defer, in its candidate selection process, to Islam’s political muscle. I write in my book that, historically, Islam has never needed to be a statistical majority in order to function as one. At the height of its power in the eighth century, the “Islamic world” stretched from Spain to India yet its population was only minority Muslim: Islam conquered and ruled an empire of non-Muslim subjects. But, a millennium and a bit on, it's not even necessary to conquer – not when everyone's so eager to concede pre-emptively, all in the name of "tolerance". As Douglas Farrow told a conference at McGill recently, tolerance is a negative: it implies a kind of passivity. "You can't build a society on that negative principle," he says. But you can rot and enfeeble the one you have, and in its ruins something new will be built.


"The decline of the West," wrote Samuel P Huntington, is still in the slow first phase, but at some point it might speed up dramatically." What is the point at which it becomes irreversible? If you’re on a river heading over the falls, it's not the moment when you plunge over the precipice and are dashed on the rocks below. That’s the great visual dividing line – Joseph Cotton in Niagara: one minute his boat's horizontal, next it's heading straight down. But the critical point happens way back upstream. It's still flat, it’s still the river not the distant falls, but what you thought were the placid shallows has, in fact, a strong silent running current and, before you even know it, you’re being swept along.

Plastered Pachyderms

When elephants get drunk, do they see pink humans?

"Hate Speech"

Mike S. Adams offers an excellent explanation of why conservative thought is rendered hate speech and Islamic threats - dripping with hatred - are not considered hate speech by liberals.

Why Islamic Fascists Get Away With Hate Speech

Hate speech is verbal communication that induces anger due to the listener’s inability to offer an intelligent response.

Because this inability to offer an intelligent response is due to one of two reasons, there are really two different types of hate speech: 1) Speech that is too dumb to merit an intelligent response, and 2) Speech for which the listener is too dumb to offer an intelligent response.

They both induce anger in the listener, regardless of whether the speaker expressed his view with any feeling of hatred or animosity.

And this leads to an understanding (see bold sentence below) of the apparent hypocrisy of gays and feminists who a) cry “hate speech” (while actually crying in some cases) against conservatives who do not wish to kill gays and feminists, and b) tolerate “hate speech” by Islamic fascists who really do wish to kill gays and feminists.

Islamic advocacy of violence is not classified as “hate speech” because it induces fear, not anger.

And, of course, it explains the success of Islamic terrorism. It is indeed a strategy that induces fear in an effort to destroy the proper function of the First Amendment through threats and intimidation too serious to simply ignore.

Feline Wake Up Call

This Is A Joke, Right?

Urban Camouflage.

That's like putting a lampshade on your head, it only works in Three Stooges movies.

Save The Children

Mark Steyn's newest commentary, The Real War On Children, brings some sense to the recent SCHIP veto.

So what is the best thing America could do "for the children"? Well, it could try not to make the same mistake as most of the rest of the Western world and avoid bequeathing the next generation a system of unsustainable entitlements that turns the entire nation into a giant Ponzi scheme. Most of us understand, for example, that Social Security needs to be "fixed" – or we'll have to raise taxes, or the retirement age, or cut benefits, etc. But, just to get the entitlements debate in perspective, projected public pensions liabilities in the United States are expected to rise by 2040 to about 6.8 percent of our gross domestic product. In Greece, the equivalent figure is 25 percent – that's not a matter of raising taxes or tweaking retirement age; that's total societal collapse.

So what? shrug the voters. Not my problem. I paid my taxes, I want my benefits.

In France, President Sarkozy is proposing a very modest step – that those who retire before the age of 65 should not receive free health care – and the French are up in arms about it. He's being angrily denounced by 53-year-old retirees, a demographic hitherto unknown to functioning societies. You spend your first 25 years being educated, you work for two or three decades, and then you spend a third of a century living off a lavish pension, with the state picking up every health care expense. No society can make that math add up.

And so, in a democratic system today's electors vote to keep the government gravy coming and leave it to tomorrow for "the children" to worry about. That's the real "war on children" – and every time you add a new entitlement to the budget you make it less and less likely they'll win it.