WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO CHILD-REARING OVER THE PAST 30 YEARS:

Is your child ready for first grade? Earlier this month, Chicago Now blogger Christine Whitley reprinted a checklist from a 1979 child-rearing series designed to help a parent figure that one out. Ten out of 12 meant readiness. Can your child “draw and color and stay within the lines of the design being colored?” Of course. Can she count “eight to ten pennies correctly?” Heck, yeah, I say for parents of kindergarteners everywhere. “Does your child try to write or copy letters or numbers?” Isn’t that what preschool is for?

“Can he travel alone in the neighborhood (four to eight blocks) to store, school, playground, or to a friend’s home?”

It’s amazing what a difference 30 years have made. Academically, that 1979 first grader (who also needed to be “six years, six months” old and “have two to five permanent or second teeth”) would have been considered right on target to start preschool. In terms of life skills, she’s heading for middle school, riding her two-wheeled bike and finding her own way home. It’s not surprising that I came to this link via Lenore Skenazy’s Free-Range Kids blog. What is surprising is just how shocking a jolt it is to realize how stark the difference is between then and now.

I don’t think it’s an improvement.

GROUND ZERO MOSQUE comes up in the Weiner-seat race.

Remember all those lengthy lectures 13 months ago from our moral and intellectual superiors on the Ground Zero Mosque? Liberals insisted that we should be tolerant and support those all-American things like freedom of some religions, single moms, and the Prius. My how our liberal betters strutted and preened and clucked their tongues at us mouth-breathing, booger-eating, inbred, racist Tea Baggers for daring to suggest that maybe this was a bad idea. We must stand by basic American principles, they said.

Now, with a congressional seat in balance, liberals are saying How Dare You Quote Us!

Have you no decency, sir, and all that bunk.

I am rather amused. Republican Bob Turner faces Assemblyman David Weprin in Tuesday’s election to find a successor to Democratic former Congressman Anthony Weiner, whose boner on Twitter cost him his job. Weprin appears in a yarmulke in his ads. Turner cannot. That is how important a certain religion is in the Brooklyn/Queens district. The problem for David Weprin is, a year ago, he supported the Ground Zero Mosque. . . . My, my, my. If supporting the building of the mosque is the right thing to do, why not stand by those words that were said 13 months ago? Oh wait, that high-moral-ground stand might cost Democrats a seat in Congress. So what liberals are saying is that they are willing to stand up for unpopular causes — unless doing what they say is right may cost them a few votes.

Quoting people’s statements when they are politically damaging is unfair, or something.

“THE PET GOAT,” Ten Years Later.

UNILATERALISM: Administration Willing To Go It Alone. “Many of Obama’s priorities have sputtered and stalled, and the president blames gridlock in Washington for the lack of progress that voters might hold over his head come next November. But the White House has signaled it is willing to use other options such as executive orders, administrative action at the agency level and a review of regulations to implement the president’s wishes without Congress on board.”