Movie night

So I finally saw the Day After Tomorrow, and I'm royally disappointed. I had heard a lot of hype about the side-slapping silliness, the "eco-comedy," so I had my hopes set high. Not so much. The Core is way, way better. If you want a pointlessly grandiose disaster movie, rent the Core. The only adjective that fits this one is "overwrought." From the very first frame, just trumped up emotion which amazingly stays absolutely steady throughout the movie -- "my dad didn't pick me up at the airport, so I'm sulky," "they were mean to me at a UN conference, so I'm sulky," "all of New York is destroyed before my eyes and I spend a week starving in a flash-freezing library -- sulk." No sense of perspective here. And movie science is notoriously bad, but still. Little details people -- the National Weather Service issues a tornado watch/warning, not an individual news station. And no matter how brightly colored the blobs on the radar are, it's not the color that signifies the presence of a tornado, it's the shape of the clouds. And I don't care how spiteful the Atlantic Ocean is feeling, weather simply cannot spring up faster than our ability to detect it. And whaddup with that bizarre speech at the end on how we've always looked down on the Third World b/c we were so blind but after our glacial smackdown, we've been humbled and learned our lesson and love our third rate neighbors? It took itself too seriously to be as good as the Core. It's not worth the late fees I have to pay for it. I so should have rented the Core. :(

ApparatChick around the world! -- Part 2

This is about a week old now, but I have to brag about getting into the Carnival of the Recipes with this entry. Yummy -- and photogenic! One of the proudest moments of my life. ApparatChick around the world!

Random thoughts

I haven't blogged for awhile. No real reason one way or the other, but I think it's indicative of a general malaise in the right of center blogosphere. For instance, as of 10:25am Central, there is not a single new post on NR's Corner, and hasn't been one since 2:05pm yesterday (I think that time is Eastern). Powerline, Michelle Malkin, even the crank-out-the-hehs InstaPundit haven't been blogging as heavily as normal. It's not just the holidays; it's been something I noticed for almost two months. I think it was Harriet Miers. Now, I have blamed Harriet Miers for everything from being a terrible SCOTUS nominee to ruining OU's football season (though that truly belongs to their losing to Texas Christian, one of the biggest role reversals in history). But, much like Wal-Mart' head-scratching decision to quit saying "Merry Christmas," the Miers nomination was a pointless attack on the very core of the President's and the GOP's base. While it may be somewhat resolved in that she's gone, the demoralization remains. It's hard to get excited about Alito, when in September we all would have been linking and cross-linking and enthusing on decisions and trivia and school records and 1980s FedSoc articles. Now -- who cares? Really? Barely even NARAL or the People for the American Way. There just hasn't been as much to get excited about, which makes it hard to write about anything. We have political ennui. The President and GOP killed any loyalty and affection I used to have for them. Even formerly pro-war conservatives have started bedwetting over McCain's torture amendment as if a) we actually are torturing people (100,000 people detained, and around a dozen died in custody? People, that's better than the average deathrate in the US. Grow up, for the love of God!) and b) this amendment would do anything to stop torture. The way hate crimes legislation taught us all an important lesson in respecting our neighbors. But when it comes right down to it -- who cares? We care, we ignore, it doesn't matter, we still get a Miers nomination (or an OU loss to TCU) regardless of our faith and effort. Ennui.

Fox and Friends

I was watching Fox and Friends yesterday, and they mentioned that people were leaving California, New York, and Washington in droves (can't imagine why). So they started listing places where these ubanites were going -- Detroit and Milwaukee, Delaware, Vermont, Indiana, Illinois. Then the mentioned Kansas (no!), southern Missouri (very much no!), and Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. MENDOZZZZZZAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!! They will bring with them hiked up taxes, outrageously and pointlessly exploded property values (what kind of medication do you need to feed a psychotic to convince them that a 1200 sq. ft. duplex half is NOT worth $800,000?), they're crappy anti-good-things Sex-and-the-City culture, and all kinds of gaywad moneypit ideas like bike paths no one uses and empty convention centers.

People, live with your own mistakes, don't tkae them here! Please, please, please, stay in your blue-state urban-paradises and leave my nice little corner of the world alone.

Appalling

I was absolutely stunned, flummoxed, shocked, appalled -- I can't even think of the right word -- when I read this on the Anchoress, about the riots in France:

Some nights ago, “youths” threw Molotov cocktails in a bus. People scrambled outside. A poor handicapped woman was sprayed with petrol by the very same thoughtful “youths” and was saved by the bus chauffeur. The poor lady was badly burned.

FR3 channel showed the lady’s 2 daughters, Yaël and Anastasie; they were European and wore no Islamic scarf. They expressed their gratitude to the courageous chauffeur. On another channel, well there was only one daughter… whose name was Fadella and who wore an Islamic scarf! She said that her mother (??) was saved by the courageous “youths”. What do you make of this? Was Fadella an actress? You bet!

What can you say to that? Do they need more j-shools, the way they need more urban renewal programs? God Almighty, a fake daughter giving credit for saving her to the people who set the woman on fire? Unbelievable. As Glenn Reynolds says, read the whole thing.

Recip-blogging!

I actually ripped this recipe off of Mustang Catering in Livingston, Montana, which has fabulous food. They used to have a little restaurant as well, but not since the summer (after we moved). They were a block down from our house, and my dad ordered their chicken torte milanse with tomato basil sauce (and salads, fruit platter, rolls, etc., etc.) as a gift for my mom our first Christmas there, having our meal catered. It was incredibly good, and, since I got on a cooking kick, I'm trying to imitate the recipe here. It's been three years, so my memory's a little rusty, but I made this for lunch today, and it turned out great.

Ingredients
9x9x6 casserole dish
4 tubes of crescent roll dough
2 cans diced tomatoes
2 large chicken breasts
1 bag fresh spinach, chopped medium
1/2 onion (about 1/2 cup chopped fine)
2 stalks of celery (or leeks), chopped fine
1 stick of butter
3 tbs. ricotta cheese
fresh parsley, chopped medium
fresh basil, chopped medium
fresh rosemary, chopped medium
garlic powder
black pepper
1/2 lemon
sprinkle of parmesan cheese
1 egg

This cooks 6-8 servings for an entree or 12 servings as a side or buffet dish.

Preparation
1. Use a non-stick cooking spray to generously coat the inside of a casserole dish. Take one of the tubes of crescent roll dough, and coat the bottom of the dish to make the bottom crust; use at least two layers (roughly the whole tube). Use another tube of dough around the sides of the dish.

2. Boil the chicken breasts for about twenty minutes (or until cooked). No seasoning, marinating, etc. Cut the chicken into roughly bite-sized pieces.

3. Sautee the onions and the celery in 3 tbs. fresh butter.

4. After a couple of minutes, drain one can of diced tomatoes, and add them to the onions and celery.

5. When the onions and celery are almost done, add the chopped spinach, half a sprig of chopped rosemary, about 8 leaves worth of chopped basil, and about four stalks of chopped parsley. Only sautee these for about a minute, so the spinach leaves don't get wilted.

6. Mix the chicken in with the sauteed vegetables.

7. Add garlic and pepper to taste. (I like a lot of both.)

8. Add 3 tbs. of ricotta cheese and 2 tbs. of butter to the chicken and vegetables and stir in.

9. Add about half of the chicken/veggies to the casserole dish.

10. Use half of one tube of dough to create an inner layer.

11. Add the rest of the mix.

12. Use the rest of the dough to create the top crust.

13. Mix up the egg, and slather it over the top crust. Spinkle a little bit of parmesan cheese and garlic on top.

14. Bake at 350 degrees (F) for thirty minutes.

15. While the torte is baking, take the other can of diced tomatoes (keep the juice), 2 tbs. of butter, 3 chopped basil leaves, black pepper, garlic, 2 stalks of chopped parsley, a half sprig of chopped rosemary, and the juice from half a lemon, and put them in a small sauce pan. Bring to a gentle boil for two minutes.

And then you have a yummy chicken torte milanse with tomato basil sauce.

Awesome.

Map of the riots

Via Instapundit, a map of the major riot centers in France. It's in over three hundred suburbs now. Frankly, I'm surprised only one person has been murdered so far; with fire, rocks, and shooting, it's only a matter of time.

Bizarre Parisian quote of the day

This comes form the mouth of Villepin himself:

He [Villepin] said 1,500 police and gendarmes would be brought in to back up the 8,000 officers already deployed in areas hit by unrest that began in a poor Paris suburb on October 27. He also promised to accelerate urban renewal programs. [Ed. -- Because what was missing was urban renewal programs. That's what makes people riot.]

But dismissing growing calls for army intervention, he said: "We have not reached that point."

As my mom said, what would that point look like?

Illegal immigration con't

Niall Ferguson has a much rosier view of our illegal immigration (or at least Hispanic immigration; the only immigrant he mentioned was a naturalized Bolivian immigrant) than I took a few days ago, vis a vis the Paris riots and their Muslim problem:

Not so long ago I was at a junior school in Texas, not far from the Mexican border. The day began with the entire class singing a ditty that went: "I am proud to be an American, be an American, be an American/ I am proud to be an American, living in the USA - OK!" Deeply corny, no doubt. But these little kids sang it with real gusto. Every single one of them was of Mexican origin.

---

This works. I can vividly remember the day my cleaning lady in New York - a Bolivian by birth - passed her tests, swore that oath and became an American citizen. She was euphoric. "What are you going to do now?" I asked. "Enrol[sic] in Law School," she replied. And she did.

As that suggests, the problem in Europe is partly economic. In free market America, immigrants get jobs; they are not much more likely to be unemployed than workers born in the USA. But the second problem is that Europeans do not try hard enough to make immigrants integrate culturally.

On the contrary, in the name of "multi-culturalism", we positively encourage them to retain their languages and allegiances.

Fellow Englishman John Derbyshire takes a somewhat gloomier position, though (as expected):

An uncharacteristically dimwitted piece by Niall Ferguson in yesterday's Sunday Telegraph (London).

The gist of it is, that the French haven't tried hard enough to assimilate their North African Muslim immigrants, and that the U.S.A. does things so much better. The piece is filled with Tamar Jacoby-style happy talk about how, e.g., "The US has long excelled at integrating newcomers into American society."

The US did indeed excel at incorporating Germans (Christian, European), Irish (Christian, European), Italian (Christian, European), East European (Christian and Jewish, European),... into its foundationally Christian, European society.

Whether we shall have similar success with Central Americans (Christian, mainly Amerindian) and Muslim Middle Easterners (Muslim, Middle Eastern), is an issue not yet decided. We can, and should, hope; but many of the indicators are negative.

Heather MacDonald has an awesome article in the fall issue of City Journal. According to her article, Mexican consulates across teh country actively engage in getting IDs to illegals, supplying lawyers and support for illegals who are jailed to get them to stay in this country, providing textbooks for Mexian history adn culture and the Spanish lanugage to schools and libraries (even doing spot checks and testing in schools to make sure the kids are fluent in Spanish and using the materials), and encouraging bilingual education and services.

Mexico’s struggle to hold the hearts of its fleeing countrymen has worked. Mexican migrants have maintained a strong nationalism, exhibited through the “unfailing celebration of Mexican national, religious, and regional holidays, the conspicuous displays of patriotic symbols in Mexican neighborhoods and businesses, and in the low naturalization rate,” writes University of California professor Luis Eduardo Guarnizo. In the last decade, the rate of naturalization among legal Mexican immigrants did improve, in response to the 1996 welfare-reform law, which reduced welfare eligibility for non-citizen immigrants, and to Mexico’s authorization of dual nationality in 1998 (not exactly ideal motives for becoming citizens).

The comparison between the contributers and the leeches still holds true. MacDonald points out more: the guidebook on how to get into the US illegally and then how to keep from getting caught; a cabinet-level organization to promote "Mexicans Abroad"; law enforcement groups to protect illegals from criminals, corrupt Mexican officials, and Minutemen as they cross; even calling the billions of dollars a year that illegals send back to their families an invaluable economic source of domestic revenue. When illegals are arrested, it's a "human rights violation," an "act of bad faith" or "racism" or "bias." They object to illegals being arrested for any criminal activity, even unrelated to immigration violations. And in light of lists like this, that's a dangerous policy to listen to.

Quick to defend individual illegals, the [Mexican] consuls just as energetically fight legislative measures to reclaim the border. Voters nationwide have lost patience with the federal government’s indifference to illegal immigration, which imposes crippling costs on local schools, hospitals, and jails that must serve or incarcerate thousands of illegal students, patients, and gangbangers.

---

The Mexican government will push to control as much U.S. immigration policy as it can get away with. It’s up to American officials to stop such interference, but the Bush administration simply winks at foreign attacks on immigration laws that it itself refuses to enforce. President Bush should worry less about upsetting his friends at Los Pinos and more about listening to the American people: illegal immigration, they believe, is an affront to the rule of law and a threat to American security. It can and must be stopped.

Spinning in the player

Listening to Kosmos Express, one of my big, big high school faves, but, unlike a lot of what I liked then, this has not fallen into disfavor as time passed. Pop but edgier, off the wall lyrics, very cynical. Just plain cool. Oh yeah, "Little Tree" and "Love Is Me." You rock.

Good line

Prof. Bainbridge says what I've been trying to much more eloquently that I did:

I think this is precisely the point that the party loyalists missed during the quag-Miers fight. Bush's nomination of Harriet Miers broke the social compact between his White House and his base, providing the tipping point at which cumulative dissatisfaction with Bush's governing style and decisions boiled over. To party loyalists there could be no greater sin than questioning the leader of their party; to movement activists, however, the purpose of a political party is not to perpetuate itself in office but to achieve political goals. If the party refuses to use its power to advance the agenda, the party has forfeited its claim on our loyalty.

Riots and illegal immigration

There was an article yesterday on the continuing riots in Paris, "a European version of the intifada that at the time of writing appears beyond control." And there is a scary thought buried near the end:

As the number of immigrants and their descendants increases in a particular locality, more and more of its native French inhabitants leave for "calmer places," thus making assimilation still more difficult.

In some areas, it is possible for an immigrant or his descendants to spend a whole life without ever encountering the need to speak French, let alone familiarize himself with any aspect of the famous French culture.

This introduces some sobering thoughts for our own immigrant assimilation. Normal disclaimers: no, I am not against immigration; no, I am not against Hispanic, particularly Mexican, immigration. Yes, we are a nation of immigrants, a melting pot, etc. Yes, that influx of new blood, new idealism, the fresh perspective on freedom and liberty, prosperity, and opportunity is the strongest part of our culture.

And it is the part that is missing in illegal immigration. People who want to be here, who prize what America is, are welcome; people who only want to take what America can offer are a seriously destabilizing force (and no jokes here about those people being Democrats; I'm talking immigration here). There is a huge, massive difference between people who want to participate in a society and culture and people who want to take advantage of the benefits of that culture. One group contributes, the other leeches. And the leeches, as we have seen, range from the societal drag to the fatally dangerous. (Anyone remember that guy in LA who was deported for cocaine smuggling, only to return and use is 19-month-old daughter as a human shield in his gun battle with police? The busboy in Denver who shot a cop and fled south? The Arab Muslims caught in Arizona border towns after crossing up through Mexico?)

A failure to proect our borders is dangerous to us in exactly the same way as it has become dangerous to France, Denmark, Sweden, the UK, and Germany. Huge groups of people who do not speak the language, take part in the culture, succeed in business or education, live separate and alone and abandoned in a community they never came to appreciate, only grudgingly tolerate. Do I think Mexican illegals, even 15 million of them, constitute the threat that Muslims do in Europe? Not only no, but hell, no. But that doesn't mean that we can't learn from the troubles of others. If an alienated, perpetual underclass, a group of "others," within a community can create or exacerbate that kind of violence, than we should deal with our own group of others.

Victor Davis Hanson touches that point in City Journal:

Practical considerations also get in the way of securing the homeland. Any radical change in our immigration laws—affecting entry into the U.S., systematic deportation of illegal aliens, or scrutiny of visa holders—requires comprehensive reform. And such transformation immediately raises the question of what to do with the 10 to 15 million illegal Mexican aliens residing here and with our vast, unsecured southern border. So far, sensitivity to Hispanic concerns, both here and in Mexico, coupled with employer lobbying, has precluded securing the border and insisting on legality for all new immigrants. Deporting illegal aliens from the Middle East will immediately lead to questions as to why we are not deporting millions of unlawful Mexican residents—a political hot potato.

Yet immigration control—as the Dutch and French have learned—may be the most powerful tool in the war against the jihadists. Not only does it help keep terrorists out, it also carries symbolic weight.

It may be broken window policing, focusing on a less vital aspect of domestic security like illegal Mexican/OTM immigration. But the windows are being broken, and like Guiliani's New York, setting higher standards in one area may make it easier to keep them in others.

Riot humor

Heh.

In a stark warning of continued violence Monday, immigrant community spokes-cat Imam Tariq Al-Felix of the Lipi Le Lyon Mosque said that arson and looting would continue “until the French government does something to solve the problem of all the burned out looted buildings in our neighborhoods.”

Bizarre Parisian quote of the day

Paris continues to burn, spreading violence and destruction into twenty -- twenty!! -- nearby towns.

One of the buildings burned down was a gymnasium (the burned out shell below), and there was this strange quote by one of the immigrants living in the neighborhood:

Rioters also set fire to a gym near the Les Tilleuls housing complex in the Seine-Saint-Denis region. It burned and smoldered Wednesday night as residents looked on in despair.

"Where is she going to practice now?" asked Mohammed Fawzi Kaci, an Algerian immigrant whose 8-year-old daughter took gymnastics classes at the facility.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, where, oh where under God's merciful heavens, is little eight-year-old Algerian girl going to practice her gymnastics?

Ther eis something surreal about that. They have had over 300 cars burned, buses burned, almost 150 arrested, nine people injured, a kindergarten school burned to teh ground, car dealerships burned, government offices burned - -their whole region is encapsulated with smoke and ash and rubble. And the question on this guy's mind is "where is she going to practice now?" Seriously? Would this be the first thing you thought of? Not me. Maybe fear and anger at the juxtaposition of childhood innocence and exuberance and the deranged violence of that freaked out community. Maybe fear for my home and my family and possibly my life. But where is she going to practice now? WTF?

But it is questions like these -- questions where you can substitute "little Caitlin" for "little Fatima," that seem to generate a connection with normal, sane middle-class life -- that make this kind of paragrpah seem less ludicrous:

The violence also has cast doubt on the success of France's model of seeking to integrate its immigrant community — its Muslim population, at an estimated 5 million, is Western Europe's largest — by playing down differences between ethnic groups. Rather than feeling embraced as full and equal citizens, immigrants and their French-born children often complain of police harassment and of being refused jobs, housing and opportunities.

Wow, the problem was too much integration. Too assimilated. They played down their differences too much. I'm glad that tehre is that kind of objective, hard-hitting journalism to expose the truth like that.

Then it comes all into perspective in the final sentence:

"Sarkozy's language [calling the rioters scum and riffraff] has added oil to the fire. He should really weigh his words," said Kaci, whose daughter lost her gym. "I'm proud to live in France, but this France disappoints me."

One of those brave souls whose daughter can no longer flip and tumble in the burning gym (a symbol of innocence lost) is pointing the finger right where it goes, like a water witcher: Sarkozy! Muslims wouldn't be torching their own neighborhoods like it's south central LA and firing at rescuers like it's the Ninth Ward if it weren't for those mean, mean, hateful words of Sarkozy!

The burning of Paris

The riots in France are continuing. But at least now it's getting some attention.
Via InstaPundit, Meryl Yourish has a three-year-old Weekly Standard article predicting that the well-received French violence against Jews was an outcropping of Jew-hating Muslims living in France. And that that hatred has spread. She also has a link to this article, pointing out loads of Ramadan violence festivities, which have driven police in Brussels not to eat or drink publicly during Ramadan and cities acress the continent, inlcuding France and Sweden, to declare neighborhoods and subrurbs "no-go" zones, ceding them to the Muslims. Britain continues its porcine purge of piggy banks and The Three Little Pigs children's books and such offensive symbols of colonialism as St. George and the Union Jack.

The Corner is pointing out how the MSM, here and abroad, has forgotten that Muslims are doing this, chalking it up to poor, disdvantaged youths. And Jonah Goldberg has this sobeirng thought:

I certainly hope this doesn't happen, but if you were al Qaeda or some similar outfit, wouldn't you want to foment these riots as much as conceivably possible? The Jihadis subscribe to the Lenninist doctrine of the worse, the better. Fomenting violence and alienation in the heart of Europe sounds like the ideal means of doing that. Can we expect to see foreign fighters in France?

GatewayPundit has a round up and some great pictures.

The fear mentioned on teh Corner and elsewhere is that as goes France, so goes the rest of Europe.