Expert says breastfeeding benefits ‘greatly exaggerated’
I just don’t get it. God designed our bodies to feed our babies. It’s what “they” are for. I can’t help but feel that attempts to prove that formula, like daycare, is just as good as moms caring for their babies naturally is rooted in the desire to keep sex separate from its consequences. Sex without babies unless you intend it, and babies without a lifestyle change (return to work and perky breasts) unless you intend it.
Today on Capitol Hill:
Sen. Specter, who recently switched parties from Republican to Democrat, expressed frustration over the nominee’s refusal to give specific answers on a number of legal issues and court rulings.
“Is there anything the Senate or Congress can do if a nominee says one thing seated at that table and does something exactly the opposite once they walk across the street?” he asked Sotomayor Wednesday during Day 3 of her confirmation hearings as she seeks to become the first Hispanic to sit on the high court.
I’ll bet there are plenty of Pennsylvania voters who want to know the same thing about Senators who switch parties. Perhaps the first and best opportunity to protect the interests of your constituency is to worry more about keeping your own promises instead of fretting about others keeping theirs.
Oh, sorry, did I just suggest a holy war? So very un-PC…
The case against homeschooling
Don’t look for statistics or anything other than anecdotal evidence to support this teacher’s “case.”
In response to his top ten list, here is my rebuttal:
(aka: Why I am so glad my kids won’t have a teacher like him):
#10: If your kid is geeky, he will be mocked, whether he was homeschooled or not. There are geeks in public schools. There are non-geeks in homeschools. Oh, and in MY school, I do not tolerate mocking. So, that would be the public school kids doing the mocking, and I’d rather not send my kids off there to learn how (thankyouverymuch).
#9: Funny thing, I attended an elementary school where we ate lunch at our desks. I really don’t think it is unusual for schools to do this. Why you can’t eat and learn in the same place is beyond my understanding. Why a home can’t be a learning centered environment is beyond me too. Really, all learning takes is books, and most homeschoolers have those lying about (one or two or…five hundred). Oh, and every elementary aged public school kid I’ve ever known has attended a “pajama day” where everybody dresses in jammies and they watch movies. And they call that school?
#8: It is not my child’s responsibility to teach other children. That’s why we hire teachers. Is it selfish for me to care more about my own child’s education than another child’s? I can’t raise the world. I pay my excessively high property taxes and expect the state to educate the poor. If the state can’t do it, give me my money back, and I’ll “adopt” a few kids and send them to a decent private school (NJ property taxes on my bitty home are over $4000 a year, enough for 2 kids at an inner city Catholic school). And another thing, the rich and the poor don’t really mix. Rich people live in nice neighborhoods in good school districts. The only peers that most poor kids have are other poor kids.
#7: Really, should a self-proclaimed agnostic dare speak for God? Amazing. Anyway, there are plenty of ways to evangelize, and since they can’t pray in school, I hardly think that would be the accepted venue for preaching the Word of God. They might get expelled. So, really, I’m saving everybody a lot of paperwork by just keeping them home in the first place.
#6: Whatever did we do before our best and brightest became public school teachers? Scary thought: by high school age, most kids are self-taught. Or they go to community college. Or they go to a co-op where the mom with a Master’s in English Lit teaches the kids with a mom who has a Master’s in Chemistry. Homeschoolers are resourceful and not limited to the talent found within the local school.
#5: As a mother, the NEA kind of pisses me off. When we got married, my husband and I included “not putting our kids in public schools” in our vows (I omitted “obey” and put this in instead).
#4: I hardly think the college students mocking homeschoolers (see #1) is a fine example of tolerance and acceptance of alternative lifestyles. It’s safe to say that less than 5% of the people in this country were homeschooled, and yet bigotry is still prevalent. Seems to me like brick-and-mortar schools are doing a piss-poor job of teaching tolerance. Of course, I also think it isn’t their job to do that. I have this crazy idea that schools are for learning things like how to read and write, not having somebody else’s values taught.
#3: You are so right. My kids are totally missing out on learning curse words, how to talk back to their parents and be disrespectful of other adults, how funny toilet humor is, what websites contain free porn, three dozen different slang terms for blowjob, what drugstores will sell cigarettes to minors, who sells marijuana, and which girls are putting out. The poor dears. It worries me how they will ever function in an office environment when they’re grownups.
#2: I have no idea what Henry’s full quote was or what he meant by it. I do not see homeschooling as risky. I definitely see public schools as risky. And no, I will not gamble with my child’s education. That is why I homeschool.
#1: Name calling, intolerance. Really, you need to examine your prejudices. Maybe get away from the school building for a little while and experience real life and real people outside of an institutional setting. Being with like-minded people so much really skews your perspective on life. Maybe you need to meet some real homeschoolers and get to know them a bit before judging. Don’t let their geekiness turn you away. Try to see past the way they don’t seem to care much what you think about them and get to know how their minds operate.
Study: Average Family Pays $1G a Year to Cover the Uninsured
This article’s main point is that when people receive health care, somebody has to pay. And if someone without insurance receives health care, those of us with insurance pay a “hidden tax” in the form of higher medical costs and therefore higher premiums.
Horrible.
So, naturally, the solution is to get everybody some health insurance, right?
Except that a lot of people who don’t have insurance, do not have it because they are unemployed and could not afford it. Or they are employed, but their employer (who may be themself) doesn’t offer it, and they themselves can’t afford it, so they go without.
So, if they can’t afford it, but we make them get it, who is going to pay for it?
Yeah, basically the same folks paying for it now. It just won’t be a hidden tax.
But first, a funny story. Mistakes that local, but non-military, kids make in this Northern Virginia area:
While driving on Route 395 through Arlington, Neighbor Girl looks over and sees a very large building. “Is that that hexagon building?” she asks.
Pentagon…hexagon…same thing.
Pentagon Briefings No Longer Quote the Bible
Whatever. I don’t really care if the cover page that nobody really reads has a Bible quote or not.
What gets me going is the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, suggesting that a Bible quote on a Pentagon brief portrays American soldiers as crusaders.
Let me tell you, the military is the one place where we do not want to remove God. The military, like the rest of America, is worldly, secular, and materialistic. There are pockets of religiously-minded people, but they run the gamut of all religions, and include varying degrees of devotion to that religion. And, just like the rest of America, there are many, among those who are “devout,” who “homechurch” or otherwise worship in their own manner, like seeing the beauty of God in a quiet golf course on a Sunday morning.
There is no lock-step, no single-mindedness, no communal belief in a higher calling.
And when you’re talking about “boots on the ground” soldiers, the ones actively engaging the potential enemy, you have a population that is mostly under 25. Like the rest of America, this age group is the least likely to consider themselves devout anything.
As uncomfortable as this concept may be for the average civilian, a soldier’s primary job is to defend and protect, which is a really nice way of saying kill. They are not a police force, designed to capture bad guys and bring them to a court system for justice. Although most (the old and the wise) soldiers hope that by carrying guns and looking tough, the bad guys will decide to pick on easier targets – like Europe – they all know that their job description includes “eliminating” threats.
Do we want a godless Army?
Do we want soldiers who don’t believe that there are any eternal consequences for their behavior on the battlefield or off? What, then, will keep them from crossing the line from killing during a battle to murdering anything that crosses their line of sight? We expect soldiers to make split second decisions – is that a combatant hiding in the closet or a little child? I have a hard time believing that fear of prosecution is a greater motivator to make the right choice than fear of eternal damnation, especially if your fellow soldiers and commanding officer and entire chain of command are equally unconcerned about morality. For at some point, the thought of “getting away with it” will permeate the organization if there aren’t any Jiminy Crickets in the bunch.
Bill’s job is hard and there are many long hours. In many ways it is incompatible with the family-centered lifestyle we desire, and the sacrifices required by the children and I are tremendous. He certainly isn’t in it for the money, and even if he were, the risk – and the fear – of sending a husband and father off to war and getting back a body in a box or a broken and changed man does not at times seem worth it. Dying does not bother my husband nearly as much as the thought of leaving behind a widow and six orphans to cope with the mess their lives suddenly became. And leaving that possibility aside, there are only so many baseball games or ballet recitals that you can miss before you start to doubt that this is the right career path.
But the military needs family men who can see their own child’s eyes reflected in those of a scrawny kid in Kosovo. It needs men who derive comfort from, as well as fear, a just God who reads the hearts of all and knows the truth of what you do. A moral man does not obey an unlawful order. Take God out of the military and you risk creating a power unfettered by conscience.
So, again, whatever. No more Bible quotes on Pentagon briefs. But may the civilians whose sensibilities are so disturbed at the thought of soldiers deriving comfort and direction from the Word of God hold their own behavior and choices to such a supreme standard.
Brown University Kills ‘Columbus Day’ for ‘Fall Weekend’
The faculty of the Ivy League university voted at a meeting Tuesday to establish a new academic and administrative holiday in October called “Fall Weekend” that coincides with Columbus Day, but that doesn’t bear the name of the explorer.
Hundreds of Brown students had asked the Providence, R.I. school to stop observing Columbus Day, saying Christopher Columbus’s violent treatment of Native Americans he encountered was inconsistent with Brown’s values.
“I’m very pleased,” Reiko Koyama, a sophomore who led the effort, told the student newspaper, the Brown Daily Herald. “It’s been a long time coming.”
Just in case you too have been duped into thinking Christopher Columbus enslaved and tortured peaceable Native Americans, please allow me to set the record straight: Christopher Columbus was a poor administrator, a bad leader, and a terrible PR man. But he did not himself abuse Native Americans nor did he encourage, approve or tolerate the abusive behavior on the part of the men who sailed his ships and settled somewhat in the new lands. His second or third voyage, in fact, was manned by convicts who were granted release from prison if they went, since he could not muster a crew willing to go. Hello? Send murders to America and then be surprised when they…murder?
So, instead of admiring a man who refused to give up, who remained persistent in following his dreams, who did, in fact, find a whole new world that nobody had any idea existed before (yes, he was wrong in that it wasn’t India, but 500 years later we have proven to be a much better discovery than India, doncha think?). Instead of that, we’ll blame him for the crimes of others and completely negate any of the good that he did do.
History, especially history based on gossip and lies and spin, is a harsh judge. Learn the truth, dear, wise fools of Brown, and may you be spared similar treatment at the end of your time.
Oh, and to what purpose does it serve to change the name of a holiday and still take the holiday? If you really want to protest the day off, go to class on Columbus Day.
“I think it’s important to see that words hurt and words do matter.”
– The chairman of the Special Olympics, Tim Shriver, on the President’s poor choice of language in describing his bowling skills.
It was only last month that the President made offhand remarks about Jessica Simpson looking fat.
Senator Grassley says that AIG executives should commit suicide – and then takes it back when he comes under heat. He “didn’t mean it like that.”
If I cared to spend an hour, I could come up with probably a dozen more recent examples of careless talking.
Words do matter. I thank my father for teaching me to always mean what I say and say what I mean. Boy, would he give you the third degree. And no squirming away with a lame, “But, Da-ad! You know what I mean!” He would insist that he didn’t, and make you explain yourself. It was much simpler, really, to just say it right the first time.
I excuse people all the time for careless talking, but I admit that I do so with a condescension that I try to mask. Out of charity, I keep my mouth shut, but inside I’m analyzing why someone would talk a certain way: lack of education, lack of experience, lack of compassion. A big pet peeve? Using the term “retarded” to mean “stupid.” When I was in high school, my quick retort to that was always, “My brother is retarded, but he would never do something that dumb.” I never had someone repeat that term in front of me, and I’d like to think that they probably quit for good. After all, it is rather juvenile.
But apparently, the President never met someone like me, so he never learned that saying what basically amounts to “I bowl like a retard” is, well, juvenile.
I so want the leaders of my government to act like grown ups.
Words matter. This is why we hush our children when they say mean things and make them say they are sorry. This is why we ban “bad” words like “stupid” and “hate”. This is why we teach them to say “I don’t care for it” instead of “This food is disgusting.” This is why we we suggest “I am angry” as an alternative to “I wish you were dead” and certainly as an alternative to “You should go kill yourself.”
The lessons that the President should have learned as a child are being taught to him now. It’s a hard knock and embarrassing way to learn, but I hope he studies well. And perhaps he will consider leaving the joking to Leno.
Stem cell decision exposes religious divides:
Princeton University politics professor Robert George, a Catholic and another member of the Bush-era Council on Bioethics, said the moral argument over embryonic stem cell research is not rooted in religion but in ethics and equality. He said research shows that an embryo is a human being in its earliest form of development, so we have to ask ourselves whether all human life should be treated equally, with dignity and respect.
“I don’t think the question has anything to do with religion or pulling out our microscope and trying to find souls,” George said. “We live in a pluralistic society where some people believe there are no such things as souls. Does that mean we should not have moral objections to killing 17-year-old adolescents?”
I’m a bit shocked that Princeton University, home also to infanticide-promoter Peter Singer, permits a pro-life professor on their roster. Or maybe he’s the one guy in there so they can call themselves “diverse.”
Over and over and over again, I hear the refrain that “we’re not sure” when human life begins. So, of course, naturally, we’ll err on the side of caution and protect that fetus, right? Wrong.
Over and over and over again, I hear the refrain that we need to “relieve human suffering” and that these embryos are “unwanted” and would be “destroyed anyway.” Yet most of us would cringe at the thought of the elderly, enfeebled and on life support, being treated like a commodity.
If we can not treat all human life with dignity, then we can not expect such treatment for ourselves. None of us has the right to classify any other human being as inferior. And yet, when you set aside this basic tenet, that each human life has equal worth, and begin to rank people, born/unborn, healthy/unhealthy, young/old, man/woman, able-bodied/handicapped, you quickly become an oppressor, no better than Dr. Mengele, willing to use other people for your own personal gain whether that be money, health or fame or some other personal pleasure.
Either you think it’s ok to use people, to treat people like a natural resource ready to be exploited, to evaluate someone’s worth based on how productive or useful they are to society, to agree that a majority vote is acceptable in determining which basic rights any human gets to retain, or…
…you think that each human being is endowed with certain inalienable rights, to include life and liberty, and as such should be afforded with basic human dignity to include respecting their bodies both in life and in death (we do not simply heap people in mass graves unless urgently, medically necessary).
And if you think that all human beings have an equal worth (and Peter Singer does not), then you better be erring on the side of caution. It is only for the humble to equate themselves with a “clump of cells,” but the inverse of humility is pride, and if you choose pride, remember when you find your own intrinsic worth in question (and if you live long enough, you will eventually get to “old age”) how you treated your fellow man.
My mother-in-law sent us the first two CDs in Michael Medved‘s The American Revolution First Person History Series. The first disc explains why they fought and the second covers the Boston Tea Party. We’ve finished the first one and are half done with the second. (Thanks, Mom!)
These discs are nicely done. The target audience is adults, which is good. There isn’t anything offensive for children, but it covers the myriad of issues to give a broader (more complicated) view of what was happening in those days. My boys may not understand how all the details intertwine fully, but I think them half understanding the full story beats them fully understanding the half story. Does that make sense?
I blogged a few years ago about not being sure if I would have supported the American Revolution. The Boston Tea Party, in particular, seems to be more an act of shameful vandalism than noble civil disobedience. These discs have changed my mind and helped me to understand better how the colonists went from being loyal British subjects to insurgents.
The primary theme I took from Disc 1 was that the colonists fought to preserve their way of life, not really to make a new social order. England, in massive debt after the French and Indian War, turned to the comparatively wealthy colonists to pay what really was their fair share of the cost. But England’s methodology was tyrannical, and the colonies balked at having their autonomy taken away.
Right now, our government is poised to vote on a massive “stimulus” bill. Besides the billions of dollars in pure pork, there are other questionable provisions, most especially the ones involving government interference in health care. The Democrats seem gleefully eager to rush money in every direction finally seizing an opportunity to shove down America’s throat a tablespoon of bitter elixir guaranteed to cure every ailment. They would do well to tread more lightly. I do not think the American spirit of independence, including freedom from governmental interference in our daily life, is quite dead.
As Medved said on his first disc, a people are always more willing to fight to defend their way of life than for new ideals. Socialists may “hope” for big changes and may see their measures as fair, reasonable, or good. In the 1770’s England thought their taxes were fair, reasonable and good as well. And the more they insisted on telling the colonists how it was going to be, the angrier the colonists became. It will be interesting to see how insistent our Congress gets in the next few years. And just as interesting to watch how resistant the average American gets.
Reit This Way 