June 23 - Some quick hits: Charles Krauthammer pays tribute to our kick-ass cousins in Why I Love Australia. Do they show Australia Rules Football in the U.S.? The game is tough and gritty with daz-za-ling-ly dressed refs.

CBC execs try damage control (I know what you're thinking and no, Don Cherry didn't say anything that freaked out the Perennially Panties-in-a-Bunch Crowd):

CBC programming executives scrambled to do damage control yesterday in the wake of a firestorm that erupted after fans of The National learned that the flagship newscast would be bumped eight nights this summer for an American Idol knockoff reality show.

After announcing The National's schedule shift yesterday, The Globe and Mail received 50 e-mail messages from readers from readers enraged that the Peter Mansbridge-led news hour would be pushed back to 11 p.m. on Tuesdays, starting July 18 and ending the first week of September. (Emphasis added)

N.B.: The Globe and Mail requires free registration. (Links via Newsbeat1.)

John Hawkins lists the Worst People in America as selected by bloggers and also his own selections and brief reasons for his picks -- and reminded me of some people I'd forgotten to despise. Only one of my picks didn't make it: Maureeen Dowd.

Attila girl wants silly pictures:

Send me pix if you want to participate: I'm interested in the silliest examples you've seen of cell phone towers dressed up to look like something else.

Ace highlights some reviews of the Badonkadonk Land Cruiser/Tank affectionately (?) nicknamed "Donk."

And, in case you were worried about Saddam (cue dramatic music) he's ended his hunger strike after missing one whole meal. Damn. I was really conflicted: force-feed him or just let him starve to death?

Don't Pester the Teacher: Tony Snow did some great stick handling with Helen Thomas during today's White House briefing that included questions about the latest NY Times breach of national security story about the program to track money sent from al Qaeda operatives to and from the U.S. (I wonder how much President Bush's approval ratings will go up this time? Seems to me that, if the people at the NYT really wanted to hurt the Republican administration, they wouldn't print these stories. But what do I know?)

The other Snow, Treasury Secretary John Snow, also held a news conference on the program.

I just don't get it. You have a gaggle of reporters just dying to break a Watergate-type story, yet somebody has to explain to them about "follow the money" to track down wrong-doing? That was covered in the movie, wasn't it?

President Bush and Gen. Pace attended a T-Ball game today. The things you have to do when you're president ...

I need to get myself off to work (One. More. Night.)

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June 22 - And now for something we always suspected about raising healthy children: Alpha Patriot reports on some studies that indicate that over-protecting and over-anetheticizing your kids is bad for their health.

I especially love the clip in which the The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents warns parents that healthy, energetic play may result in some boo-boos.

Let's bake up those mud pies!

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June 20 - My internet provider's frequent incapability to connect to Munu sites (including mine) continues to be a problem. Sometimes it lets me in long enough to start a post and then it loses the connection when I try to save.

I wouldn't be so angry if they had actually tried to address the problem, but when the same person asks me three different times in one conversation if I'm sure my modem is on then I get a little miffed.

This should all be resolved by Thursday because Hooray! We live in a country that allows consumers alternates.

Now let's see if this stupid post will publish.

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June 17 - Posting continues to be difficult: the denial of service attacks targeting My Pet Jawa have affected alll Munu sites (despite the inconvenience, there's also some satisfaction that a fellow Munuvian is pissing off the right people but that is offset by the infuriating fact that the Jawa Report is still off-line) plus my ISP seems to have intermittent problems finding the the Munu server. At least I have options if my ISP can't resolve the second problem.

Indeed, one of the fundamental values of Western civilization (and capitalism) is that there are a variety of options for most situations, yet when we women make choices that don't fit with what other women believe we should do there is an incredible amount of spin to make it appear that what we have freely chosen is evidence of victimhood.

For example, child-care advocates continue to be baffled by a strange phenomenom in Alberta and British Columbia. Despite the West being one of the "hottest job markets" in the country, more women in theose provinces are leaving the workforce and the numbers are especially high for women with children under the age of six. Now I'm no expert, but it seems to me that they are opting to stay home with the kids until they enter school.

Shocking, huh? They could have jobs, you know, yet they choose to stay home and focus on raising their young children during "the formative years."

But the author of the study concludes that this is due, among other factors, to the lack of child care::

The author of the study, Francine Roy, says women are entering and exiting the job market for reasons that have little to do with financial need.

Instead, Roy argues that factors such as the availability of day care, educational levels, number of children and the type of employment drive women's participation in the workforce.

"The rising participation rate of women in eastern Canada appears associated with greater use of daycare and higher education levels in Quebec, lower birthrates in the Atlantic provinces, and a lower proportion of immigrants than in the West," Roy writes in the study.

Having constant, one-one-one interaction with young children in those early years is not only incredibly satisfying for both parent and child but has the additional benefit of establishing a solid bedrock for the child which can stabilize him or her after they enter the "real" world of elementary school as well as later on when they become teens and the inevitable struggle ensues to redefine limits and capabilities as well as themselves as independent from the parents (except for money, shelter, food, and the family car!)

One of my aunts told me long ago that the primary duty of parents is to raise responsible adults. You can't sub-contract that job out, yet universal childcare with the attendant heavier tax load will force women out of the homes and into the job market.

The sad part is that having government agencies raise children is being presented as an ideal scenario by daycare advocates. There are two glaring problems with that position: the ridiculous notion that we can raise children on an assembly line, and the inability to have quality control. (Actually there are three: the absurdity of thinking the government actually performs routine tasks better than the average person.)

Whatever happened to the tiresome assertion that each of us is unique? Uniqueness doesn't roll off assembly lines (reminds me of the old joke that you can buy a Ford in any colour you want so long as you choose black.) Uniqueness, also known as individuality by us older types, is nurtured by consistent, one-on-one interaction that parents are best fitted to provide. The family remains the best setting where good qualities can be encouraged and bad qualities can be dealt with, and it should go without saying that dealing with behaviour problems when they first appear is far better than trying to deal with them after they become entrenched characteristics.

I make this claim about the family for one simple reason: parents love their children. Parents have an ongoing interest in their children's future. Parents are emotionally invested in their children in ways that reach far above and beyond someone who is paid to look after their children. Parents don't go on strike.

I keep thinking that the real impetus for government day care is that the social engineers are frustrated that, try as they might, this country continues to produce square peg children who defy efforts to pound them into round holes and they figure that if they can get the children at any earilier age it will better their chances of making children more pliable, i.e., into uniform, cookie-cutter kids.

Issues over quality control are fairly self-evident when you are dealing with a monopoly and more so when the government is the sole provider. Both health care and education issues continue to plague us, and tangential to the problems in the education sector, it is worth noting that children who learned to read at home before they entered school do better scholastically than those whose parents rely exclusively on the schools to teach that basic skill.

People conveniently forget that even that bastion of early childhood education, Sesame Street, was specifically designed to be viewed by both parent and child, which tends to reinforce the necessary role of the parent as a child learns how to learn.

Am I saying that families where both parents work cannot raise children well? No, but I do think it is a lot harder and a lot more frustrating because we've already devoted our best and most productive hours of the day at work. And then there's the need to discipline children, which require two vital tools: patience and maintaining a calm atmosphere. That's damned hard to achieve when your day is one long rush: rushing to get them and you ready to leave in the morning, rushing to pick them up after work, rushing to prepare dinner, rushing to bathe them, rushing to read the bedtime story ... all this yet rushing to get them to bed at a decent hour. Even with both parents performing those tasks, where's the time to teach them why it's wrong to bop another child on the head with a Tonka truck? or find a suitable answer to "why is the sky blue?" or "why do I have to kiss Aunt Martha even though she smells funny?"

Interestingly, David Warren comments on the steady encroachments on personal freedoms, including the destruction of the family unit, with the goal being that "the citizen becomes a kind of jelly to be fit into any desired new mould."

So, rather than deplore the choice to stay home and raise their kids, we ought to applaud their good sense and committment to parenting.

So if you opt to say at home with kids and someone says "what do you do," i.e., where do you work and what job do you perform that enables you to pay more taxes, just look them straight in the eye and say "I'm an early childhood specialist." And you will be telling the truth.

(David Warren link via Newsbeat1.)

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