Life is Good

Thursday, 20 May 2010 00:00 Last Updated on Friday, 21 May 2010 09:53

Planned Parenthood is building some nice new digs in St. Paul.

According to the Star Trib article a few weeks back:

The new, three-story facility will be environmentally efficient and provide a more convenient location for many of nearly 30,000 people in the Twin Cities who use its reproductive health services, she said. It will be close to the new Central Corridor light rail line, which is expected to open in 2014.

Well gee, I'm glad it's on the light rail line! 

Planned Parenthood is also trying position itself for the impact of the new federal health care law, which is likely to increase demand for medical services, she said.

So they admit ObamaCare= more abortions on our tax dime!

Even now, demand for all its reproductive health services except abortion, is increasing, Stoesz said. Abortion rates both in Minnesota and nationally have been declining for several years.

Well, at least some good news.

Question:  Why are these huge abortion operations always in low-income areas of a city?  Sad.  Sad.  Sad.

James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal had a recent piece about the old-guard  Pro-Choice'ers lamenting the fact that there are far fewer young women in their ranks. 

There's a question here that nobody is asking: Where don't babies come from? "Young, zealous women," after all, begin their lives as baby girls. For a more detailed exposition of this theory, check out our 2005 article "The Roe Effect." But here's the short summary: If the next generation of abortion proponents is mysteriously missing, it may be because their mothers availed themselves of the right to have an abortion and thus did not become mothers.

It's true.  My mom is ardently Pro-Life...she had four children back in the days of the zero population theories and endured many dirty looks and questions about her bigger-than-usual family.  I always wanted a bigger family myself and plan to instill the same values in my kids.  There have been articles written about the liberal/conservative divide on family size, but it's really just common-sense.  One article notes:

Tomorrow's children, therefore, unlike members of the postwar baby boom generation, will be for the most part descendants of a comparatively narrow and culturally conservative segment of society. To be sure, some members of the rising generation may reject their parents' values, as often happens. But when they look for fellow secularists with whom to make common cause, they will find that most of their would-be fellow travelers were quite literally never born.

Anecdotally I know quite a few liberal-leaning women who have three kids...Three is the new two, the new accepted "top" number you can have that is universally accepted.  I also know many wonderfully conservative women who have two kids or who never had kids at all....then there's ultra-lib hero, Nancy Pelosi who has five children.  But in general, there's evidence to the claim that conservatives have more babies

Abortion is one issues with which conservatives must never move too far to the liberatarian-bend of "do whatever you want to do" because these things matter.   The American family matters...and incidentally, these are the issues where we can bond with many in the new-immigrant communities who hold these same values.  While the left promises handouts, we promise to protect life.

The fact is that our culture has come to celebrate motherhood and babies (celebrating single motherhood?  another question.) No amount of the tired chants, "My body, my choice!" or the paid-NARAL neighborhood canvassers, are going to change that. 

A Tale of Two Toms

Thursday, 20 May 2010 15:49 Last Updated on Thursday, 20 May 2010 23:15

I had an interesting week.  My sainted mother was out of town to visit my sisters which left my brother and I on duty for our 95-year-old grandmother, Fran.  I've blogged about grandma before...she's a lifelong hardline Democrat who cancelled out my grandfather's vote for fifty-five years.  She still drinks Manhattans and has a wonderfully witty sense of humor.  Her favorite shows are "Monty Python" and "Seinfeld" re-runs.  She also doesn't look a day over 85 and still puts herself together quite well.  Perfect pink lipstick , classic jewelry, and Estee Lauder "White Linen"....class all the way.

I dutifully visited grandma and chatted for a few hours...only to spend six more hours in the ER with her after a fall a few days later.  She was fine, but don't get me started on the mess that is assisted care living and C.Y.A. legal practices and the cost of health care.....I'll save it for another blog post. 

Back to granny...I try to stay away from politics (which is always a challenge for me,) and I'll only go on the defense with her when necessary.  She doesn't like that I'm such a staunch conservative, nevermind the fact that it was her brother Bill who reinforced these values in me as a kid. 

So when I went to her pad I was ready for some small talk.  Instead, she almost immediately asked:   "What do you think of this Tom Emmer?"

I replied, "Well, Grandma, I like him.  I like him a lot.  What do you think?"

"Well his mother used to be a good pal of old Mary Melby's and Tom Melby and one of the Emmer boys when to Notre Dame together, so I guess he may be okay."  (This is a woman who has called me- on more than one occasion- a "Dirty Republican", this is a woman who has never in her LIFE voted for the GOP....and she thinks Tom Emmer might be okay.) I say nothing.  I won't be tricked by this wiley old woman. 

"But, I think I'm going to vote for Tom Horner." 

My eyes light up. 

My grandparents, Fran and Jack, were lifelong pals with Tom's parents, Sal and Jack Horner, whom they knew through Visitation parish in South Minneapolis.  She shares a couple quick stories about the family....and then I carefully ask,  "So, you're not going to vote for the Democrat?" 

"No, I'll vote for Tom."

I don't dare ask which Tom, but I think I know which Tom.

When I did some limited calling for the Emmer campaign, people would continually say things like, "Oh, my sister babysat for Tom." or  "We know the family very well." or "I know his brother."  These personal connections may very well dull the edge of the character attacks lobbed against him by the left.  Minnesotans like my grandmother don't like it very much when you attack a hometown boy.

Don't ever underestimate the power of these connections, Minneapolis is one big small town.  Margaret Anderson Kelliher doesn't have this advantage (she may represent Minneapolis, but she's not FROM Minneapolis and there's a difference.)  Tom Horner does...and my bet is (as others have also bet,) that it's the DFL votes that will be going to Horner.

So on this political question, I'm with Grandma Fran, I'm glad he's in the race. 

I Heart Chris Christie

Sunday, 16 May 2010 09:00

Aren't the voters of New Jersey lucky?

It's just so refreshing to see elected officials who don't sit and worry about what everybody thinks of them or worry about how they play to the media or worry about what their next political move.....and most importantly who don't worry about whether they're re-elected or not.  They only want to shrink the bloat of government and promote the growth of the private sector.  It's like a breath of fresh air.

Dim lights

Liberal Logic and Segregation in the Schools

Wednesday, 12 May 2010 22:19 Last Updated on Sunday, 16 May 2010 09:01

Myron Orfield us a longtime Law Professor at the University of Minnesota and represented the University area as a State Representative back when I was in school, (because TWO government jobs are always better than one.)   Orfield was in Eden Prairie a couple of weeks ago consulting our over-consulted School Board in his area of expertise:  race and poverty.

Per the Eden Prairie News:  (and I apologize but the link is not on their website- so this is linked to the print edition where you'll have to find the article itself) 

Orfield said that it's legal for school districts to use race as part of its guidelines for drawing district boundaries.

For those interested in the what the U.S. Supreme Court had to say about the issue in June 2007, see the ruling here. 

Orfield has been consulting the schools here, as have the $500-$800/hour consultants at Pacific Educational Group, since 2007.  Orfield has been following events in Eden Prairie for almost a decade, in 2001 he said this about Eden Prairie:

“I get sad out here,” Sen. Orfield says. “The landscape is being destroyed and money is being sucked out of the city.”

You can see a bit of the sadness in Orfield's answers to the Eden Prairie School Board a couple weeks back.

Suburbs like Eden Prairie make Orfield sad indeed and he's dedicated most of his career to promoting "regional solutions"  i.e. creating schooling/housing districts via gerrymandering and unconstitutional taxing authorities like the Met Council.  Essentially he wants Minneapolis to stay urban in character, but wants the inner-ring suburbs to become more urban and the exurban development to be stopped altogether.  What he never acknowledges is that people choose to live somewhere for specific reasons.  My few friends who live in the city wouldn't be caught dead living in the 'burbs.  I love the city, but specifically chose to live somewhere where  I'm not represented in the state legislature and U.S. Congress by some nutty liberal nor living next door to the anti-war dove signs that dot the residential streets of Minneapolis. The restaurants leave a bit to be desired, but I digress.

Orfield's dream is to have the Met Council come in and dictate to the suburbs (even more than they are so already,) what housing is allowed, what schools should be built, what public transit is going to be funded and who's going to pay for all of it.  (Guess who's going to pay for all of it....)  It's a regional liberal utopia!  (Reason #34 Tom Emmer needs to be Governor- getting rid of the Met Council.) 

Orfield was recently featured in the University of Minnesota Alumni Magazine in a cover story about segregation in Minnesota schools...from the article:

Orfield advocates making the Met Council a proactive force for reining in unruly sprawl and promoting affordable housing across the region. He also strongly backs a directly elected council, which he believes would free it from the vacillating controls of changing governors (his own bill on this in 1994 failed in the legislature by one vote).Other regional solutions high on his list are expanded city-suburban school integration.

And:

Orfield talks about the push from Minneapolis Public Schools to leave the time-and-taxdollar-wasting West Metro Educational Program....(how dare a district try to assert some autonomy!)

“If Minneapolis leaves, it falls apart. We have a responsibility to hang in there, to be part of pushing from the inside to make it what we want it to be.”

And there's the liberal mind-set for you.....where the world exists in a classroom and things are "as you want them to be" never how they really are...

The article also features Hopkins School Superintendent John Schultz who is pictured at Hopkins Chinese Immersion School, XinXang Academy, and states support for Orfield's idea that we need "regional sytems" to integrate the schools. 

There's only one problem:  Xin Xang is a segregated school.  At least according to the standards set by PEG and Orfield.

I sent a data request to Hopkins Schools (which was answered very quickly, once again proving that Eden Prairie Schools has the slowest staff in the state,) and asked them for their diversity statistics for XinXang.  They first sent me to their website to look at statistics for Eisenhower Elementary School where XinXang is housed.  Here are those statistics:

765 Students

52% Female

48% Male

49% White

28% Black

9% Hispanic

8% Asian

Now here are the statistics for their Chinese Immersion School- housed in the same building:

143 Students

61% female

39% male,

62% white students,

32% Biracial asian

6% Black, Hispanic and American Indian.

So- essentially, much like Eden Prairie's Spanish Immersion School- this is a cultural school for White and Asian kids.  (Or in Eden Prairie's case for White and Hispanic kids.)  It's really no surpise-- the entire language Immersion school concept is about forty years old and came out of French-speaking Canada where French-Canadians wanted to preserve their lanugage and culture.  Our Spanish Immersion school promotes Hispanic Culture.  Hopkins Chinese Immersion school promotes Asian culture (there is no such thing by the way as the countries which make up these two racial groups are as different as they can be....)  And really folks, this is all fine and dandy, but let's not praise them for being beacons of "diversity." 

With over $300,000 (and counting) spent with Pacific Educational Group by Hopkins and Eden Prairie Schools, one can either conclude that the consulting company promotes this "feel-good" segregation within the public school system (under the guise of "multi-culturalism"), or the districts simply don't heed any of the spendy advice of the company.  Either way, it ain't good..

But because Spanish Immersion or Chinese Immersion or any other Cultural-school of liberal liking adheres to the academic love of mult-culturalism, any segregation in those schools is okay by them!  Talk about convenient (and faulty) logic.

Orfield also takes time talking to the EP School Board about funding disparities between districts and essentially defends them and basically makes the case that unless black kids go to school with white kids, they won't be successful.  Now I ask, as I always ask on this blog:  Who are the racists?  If racism is defined by believing that your race is superior to another race and you believe that "black and brown" kids must go to school with white kids in order to succeed, who has the superiority complex? 

Conservatives believe in the superiority of one thing:  the individual.  Individual students learn individually regardless of their class, race or socioeconomic status and to believe anything other than that is simply wrong. 

Obviously the intentions and motives are good on all sides.  There is nobody out there who doesn't believe in equal educational opportunity for children...but the twisted road that liberals take to try to get there simply hasn't worked, doesn't work and will never work in the mess that is the government-run school system.  Bring on the scholarships, bring on the funding that mirrors our College and University system, and let's finally fix this thing.

P.S.

In other EP School News, I'm happy to see the School Board holding meetings-before-their-meetings for the public or "stakeholders" in their weird-paid-consultants-told-us-to-say-this lingo....The bad news is there appears to be no intellectual curiosity from the School Board about the issue I raised weeks ago...closed-door meetings to select the members of the critical task forces which will re-shape the district.  Instead the district has its political strategy A-game on with its widely promoted one-hour-long  "Task Force Input Session"....Isn't it nice that they're opening the doors and allowing input AFTER the task-forces where hand-picked by the Administration?