The Sins of the Mothers

As teenage pregnancies soar, meet the thirtysomething grandmothers

It wasn't the life Tara Bailee had in mind. Pregnant at 20, she had to resign herself to growing up quickly and learning about motherhood.

Then, at 36, she became a grandmother.

Her story may sound surprising, but Miss Bailee's is not an isolated case.

As a result of Britain's high teenage pregnancy rate - the worst in Europe - many women are becoming accustomed to looking after their grandchildren while still in their thirties - and without any sign of a husband.

...She is no longer with Rickeita's father. And Rickeita split with her daughter's father.

Pauline Huntingdon can sympathise. She was 34 when her 15-year-old daughter Leanne became pregnant.

Leanne split up with the father. Having children so young has meant the 38-year-old struggled financially and has never travelled abroad.

The new phenomenon raises questions about the social consequences of generations of children being brought up without fathers.

...Norman Wells, of Family and Youth Concern, said: "In previous generations it was not unusual for girls to marry and start having children in their late teens and early twenties, and for women to become grandparents in their late thirties.

"The key difference now is that most teenage pregnancies occur outside marriage and their children frequently lack the involvement of a committed father."

Ah, the destruction of the family unit. Leftists of the world, celebrate, your dreams are coming true!

But what has the dismantlement of marriage, the traditional family and religion gotten us? Not the progressive utopia that was promised, but children with "depression, anxiety, eating disorders and severe anti-social behaviour" and adults who don't know how to be good parents or set boundaries.

A narcissistic, nanny state, whatever-feels-good-is-right culture has wreaked havoc on the newest generations. And on it goes with no end in sight.

.

Thanks for the Food Crisis, Liberals!

Food prices are going up, people are hungry, riots are starting - all thanks to the liberal environmentalist do-gooders.

NY Sun Food Crisis Starts Eclipsing Climate Change Worries
Gore Ducks, as a Backlash Builds Against Biofuels

The campaign against climate change could be set back by the global food crisis, as foreign populations turn against measures to use foodstuffs as substitutes for fossil fuels.

...One factor being blamed for the price hikes is the use of government subsidies to promote the use of corn for ethanol production. An estimated 30% of America’s corn crop now goes to fuel, not food.

...Ethanol was initially promoted as a vehicle for America to cut back on foreign oil. In recent years, biofuels have also been touted as a way to fight climate change, but the food crisis does not augur well for ethanol’s prospects.

“It takes around 400 pounds of corn to make 25 gallons of ethanol,” Mr. Senauer, also an applied economics professor at Minnesota, said. “It’s not going to be a very good diet but that’s roughly enough to keep an adult person alive for a year.”...

NRO Let Them Eat Ethanol?
Behind the food fight.

It seemed like such a painless solution. It fits on a bumper sticker. In fact, I saw one yesterday: “Don’t burn fuel. Grow it.” The EU adopted a goal of producing 10 percent of its fuel for road transportation from biofuels by 2020. The U.S. government (cheered on by the agriculture industry and environmentalists) adopted a mandate of 36 billion gallons of biofuel production by 2022 — a five-fold increase over 2006 levels amounting to 28 percent of the U.S. grain harvest. Congress and the president joined hands to pass this feel-good legislation just when, as the Wall Street Journal pointed out, new data were demonstrating that biofuels cost more energy than they save. “…When the hidden costs of conversion are included, greenhouse-gas emissions from corn ethanol over the next 30 years will be twice as high as from regular gasoline. In the long term, it will take 167 years before the reduction in carbon emissions from using ethanol ‘pays back’ the carbon released by land-use change.”

Newsweek Sounds Good, But ...
We can't afford to make any more mistakes in how to 'save the planet.' Start by ditching corn ethanol.

...Even hybrid electric cars aren't a clear plus. If your outlet gets its juice from the standard U.S. electricity mix (half of which is generated by burning coal), hybrid electrics emit half the greenhouse gases as standard gasoline cars. But if your utility burns dirty coal inefficiently, hybrid electrics are worse. If you plug in at night, when most people do, you'll also be using more coal-generated electricity. Perhaps the greatest folly, in time lost and dollars wasted, has been the push for ethanol to replace gasoline. In the United States, almost all ethanol comes from corn. When you tote up the carbon emissions caused by clearing land to grow corn, fertilizing it and transporting it, corn ethanol leaves twice the carbon footprint as gasoline.

The greenwashing doesn't end there. Only half of all hybrid vehicles on the U.S. market are more fuel-efficient than their non-hybrid versions, researchers at the Union of Concerned Scientists find: some models pair a big gas-guzzling engine with hybrid technology in a way that enhances only performance, not fuel economy, explains UCS's David Friedman. "Don't assume that because something's a hybrid it's better for the environment," he says (though the Prius is). The Web site fueleconomy.gov sorts out the true greens from the impostors. ...

Thanks for the Student Loan Crisis, DEMOCRATS!

Another disastrous liberal policy based on an inability to understand basic market and economic principles hurts the people it's intended to help while lawmakers scramble to cover their behinds. As predicted by conservatives.

Truly outrageous - a must read!

WSJ: Bailout of the Year

Guess who's asking Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke for a bailout now? Hint: They are members of an exclusive club who bet wrong on the credit markets last fall. No, it's not a cabal of Wall Streeters, but Democrats in Congress.

We're referring to the "student loan crisis" now appearing in a media outlet near you. In September, Congress vowed to make education more affordable by passing the "College Cost Reduction and Access Act." [Somehow Democrats trying to make things more affordable always ends up making them more expensive] The law reduced the interest rates borrowers pay on federally insured student loans. ...

Convinced that the private lenders who make these loans were reaping too much profit, Congress also cut the yield on each loan. ...But the combination of legislative fiat and fewer investors willing to buy asset-backed securities amid the credit crunch has put the squeeze on lenders.

What's now clear is that Congress didn't merely wring the profits out of student lending. It's blown up the entire student loan market. Market leader Sallie Mae says it now loses money on every new federal education loan. ...

Others can't wait. A third of the nation's top 100 lenders to students in 2007 have temporarily suspended new loan originations or exited the business altogether. Citibank subsidiary Student Loan Corporation cited "unprecedented federal legislation" in announcing its recent withdrawal from much of the market. [Wait, if you take away the profitability of a produce, there is less incentive to provide it? Who'd have guessed!]

Usually, the law of unintended consequences takes so long to reveal itself that no one remembers the culprits. ...

Democrats would thus like to clean up the mess they created before May, when a flood of college-bound seniors will seek loans. But the pols can hardly repeal their autumn blunder mere moments after taking credit for it. No doubt many of them are still sending out taxpayer-financed mail bragging of their "achievement."

The result is that the same man who authored last year's bill to cut lenders' returns has crafted a new bill to subsidize those same lenders. ...

Daniel Akaka, Bob Casey, Tom Carper, Chris Dodd, Tim Johnson, Bob Menendez and Jon Tester are desperately seeking a bureaucrat with a large checkbook to rescue them from their self-made political disaster. ...

The Senators helpfully note in their letter that a virtue of their proposals is that they can be implemented quickly. Indeed, November is just around the corner.

Needless to say, none of this legislative history is appearing in the multiple media sob stories about students who can't get loans. But like airline passengers stranded this month due to panicky inspections, the current student loan "crisis" didn't have to happen. It is entirely a product of Congress.

This PERFECTLY embodies the great Ronald Regan quote:
"Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it."

Democrats thought the student lenders were getting "too much profit" (moving), so they regulated it. Now that has severely hurt the industry (stops moving), so Democrats want to subsidize it. How about cutting the crap and letting the market work the way it's supposed to?!

Now THAT's Penis Envy!

Penis theft panic hits city

Police in Congo have arrested 13 suspected sorcerers accused of using black magic to steal or shrink men's penises after a wave of panic and attempted lynchings triggered by the alleged witchcraft.

...Purported victims, 14 of whom were also detained by police, claimed that sorcerers simply touched them to make their genitals shrink or disappear, in what some residents said was an attempt to extort cash with the promise of a cure.

...Police arrested the accused sorcerers and their victims in an effort to avoid the sort of bloodshed seen in Ghana a decade ago, when 12 suspected penis snatchers were beaten to death by angry mobs. The 27 men have since been released.

"I'm tempted to say it's one huge joke," Oleko said.

"But when you try to tell the victims that their penises are still there, they tell you that it's become tiny or that they've become impotent. To that I tell them, 'How do you know if you haven't gone home and tried it'," he said.

..."It's real. Just yesterday here, there was a man who was a victim. We saw. What was left was tiny," said 29-year-old Alain Kalala, who sells phone credits near a Kinshasa police station.

[Ever think maybe it was tiny to begin with?]

Primaries: Democrats are only hurting themselves

Operation Chaos, baby!

NYT: Bruising Will Go on for Party, Too

McClatchy: Analysis: Clinton's victory leaves both Dems bruised

WashTimes: Democratic prizefight might knock out party

WaPo: Signs Indicate That Duels May Be Hurting Party

WSJ: Both Democrats Are Looking Like Damaged Goods

Love it! LOVE IT!!!

global WARming

I thought this was an excellent response to the current (April 28, 2008) Time magazine cover (pic coming as soon as Blogger fixes the problem with uploading images.) Time cares more about the war on "global warming" (hasn't it been changed to "climate changed" now that it's been proven that temperatures have cooled since 1998?) than the real War on Terror.

Green Politicization of Iwo Jima Photo Condemned by Black Veteran

Washington, D.C. - Kevin L. Martin, a member of the Project 21 black leadership network and a U.S. Navy veteran, is joining fellow veterans in denouncing the Earth Day-related cover art on the April 21 issue of Time magazine.

Time altered the famous flag-raising photo from Iwo Jima is altered to show Marines raising a tree rather than the American flag to highlight an article promoting activism favoring increased regulation to fight perceived man-made global warming.

"For Time to compare the politically-driven hoax about the severity of man-made global warming to one of most pivotal moments in American history is a slap in the face to the brave men who fought their way up Iwo Jima's Mount Suribachi to plant our flag and send a clear message that victory in the long war in the Pacific was achievable," said Martin. "To callously use a famous military image so important to our nation's veterans with seemingly no concern for its impact on them shows just how far those promoters of this hoax will go." ...

"It is a shame that Time magazine is belittling the heroism of our World War II veterans to push for policies that may bring back unhappy homefront memories of that era such as food and energy rationing," added Project 21's Martin. "There has yet to be a real scientific debate on the contributions of man to any sort of global warming. The crusade by environmental activists and the willing complicity of media such as Time magazine is resulting in misguided policies. Reducing of production and exploration in the short run is going to raise prices and limit access to resources, while risky long-term schemes such as biofuels will pit stomachs against gas tanks. Is it also lost on Time that the war in the Pacific was based in part on access to energy resources?"

From the Heartland Institute's global warming page:

More than 19,000 basic and applied American scientists, two-thirds with advanced degrees, have signed the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine's Global Warming Petition, which says in part, "There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate."

Today's Funny Overheards

Can I Play, Too?
Worried manager: What are you doing over there? Sounds like you are playing with Legos. Dear God, you are!

Hartford, Connecticut
via Overheard in the Office, Apr 22, 2008



Other Cities Just Say They're the Greatest in the World
Frat tourist guy: Hey! I just hailed a New York City cab!
New Yorker, jumping into cab: I just stole your cab!

--Bleecker & Hudson

Overheard by: sean
via Overheard in New York, Apr 22, 2008

Abortion as art

Original 4/17/08 1:34pm:
This girl is clearly deeply, DEEPLY disturbed and sick.

For senior, abortion a medium for art, political discourse

Beginning next Tuesday, Shvarts will be displaying her senior art project, a documentation of a nine-month process during which she artificially inseminated herself “as often as possible” while periodically taking abortifacient drugs to induce miscarriages. Her exhibition will feature video recordings of these forced miscarriages as well as preserved collections of the blood from the process.

The goal in creating the art exhibition, Shvarts said, was to spark conversation and debate on the relationship between art and the human body. But her project has already provoked more than just debate, inciting, for instance, outcry at a forum for fellow senior art majors held last week. And when told about Shvarts’ project, students on both ends of the abortion debate have expressed shock — saying the project does everything from violate moral code to trivialize abortion.

But Shvarts insists her concept was not designed for “shock value.”

“I hope it inspires some sort of discourse,” Shvarts said. “Sure, some people will be upset with the message and will not agree with it, but it’s not the intention of the piece to scandalize anyone.”
[Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight]

...

Obviously this is a cry for help. This girl is suffering, possibly from a past abortion, and someone from Yale needs to step in and get her professional help instead of attributing this warped behavior to creativity and "art."

(On a side note, whenever I hear of beyond-ridiculous modern art pieces, I am always tempted to quit my job and smear feces on a lit Christmas tree or pour milk in a box, let it curdle and spoil, then submit it to art competitions where I will win numerous awards and sell pieces of shit for millions of dollars. Maybe someday...)

UPDATE 1 - 4/17/08 10:10pm

Yale: Student's Art Project Only 'Creative Fiction'

"Ms. Shvarts is engaged in performance art," a Yale spokeswoman, Helaine Klaski, said. "She stated to three senior Yale University officials today, including two deans, that she did not impregnate herself and that she did not induce any miscarriages. The entire project is an art piece, a creative fiction designed to draw attention to the ambiguity surrounding form and function of a woman’s body."

Ms. Klasky went on to suggest that Yale would not have permitted a project of the sort described in the student newspaper. "Had these acts been real, they would have violated basic ethical standards and raised serious mental and physical health concerns."

Phew! My faith in humanity has been restored . . . for now . . .


UPDATE 2 - 4/18/08 11:20am

I am confused

Shvarts, Yale clash over project

...But while Shvarts stood by her project and claimed that administrators had backed her before the planned exhibition attracted national condemnation, the university dismissed it as nothing more than a piece of fiction.

...But in an interview later Thursday afternoon, Shvarts defended her work and called the University’s statement “ultimately inaccurate.” She reiterated that she engaged in the nine-month process she publicized on Wednesday in a press release that was first reported in the News: repeatedly using a needleless syringe to insert semen into herself, then taking abortifacient herbs at the end of her menstrual cycle to induce bleeding. Thursday evening, in a tour of her art studio, she shared with the News video footage she claimed depicted her attempts at self-induced miscarriages.

“No one can say with 100-percent certainty that anything in the piece did or did not happen,” Shvarts said, adding that she does not know whether she was ever pregnant. “The nature of the piece is that it did not consist of certainties.”

Told of Shvarts’ comments, the University fired back. In a statement issued just before midnight on Thursday, Klasky told the News that Shvarts had vowed that if the University revealed her admission, “she would deny it.”

“Her denial is part of her performance,” Klasky wrote in an e-mail message. “We are disappointed that she would deliberately lie to the press in the name of art.”

LOL Overheards

It's More Like a Museum of Strangers' Poo, Honey
Little girl, inside port-a-potty: Mommy! Mommy!
Mommy: Just be quiet and go potty.
Little girl: Mommy, do you know what it feels like in here? It's like a little house where I'll always be protected.

Renaissance Festival
Maryland

Overheard by: Nancy Whiskey
via Overheard Everywhere, Apr 15, 2008

I Mean Geraniums!
Woman #1: Where did you go to college?
Woman #2: University of Cape Town.
Woman #1: Oh, is that in Virginia?
Woman #2: No, it's actually in South Africa.
Woman #1: Ohhhh, sorry, I'm bad with geometry.
Woman #2: ...
Woman #1: I mean geology!

Overheard by: Actually, that was my mom.
via Overheard Everywhere, Apr 15, 2008

If Ned Flanders Had Sired a Girl
Dad: So, your school called today, honey, and do you know what they said?
Six-year-old girl: No, what?
Dad: That they have to check everyone in your class tomorrow for lice!
Six-year-old girl: Hoorayyyyyy!!

--West 4th St Platform

Overheard by: Jess
via Overheard in New York, Apr 15, 2008


You're Not a Lesbian, Are You?
Two-year-old girl runs up to Indian Sikh with grey beard and purple turban.
Toddler: Santa! Look mommy, Santa! Hi Santa!
Mom: She ... Likes your hat.

--Lillian's Pizza, Forest Hills

Overheard by: Ethan
via Overheard in New York, Apr 13, 2008

Enforcement works again

And WHY does Chertoff have to defend finally enforcing the law?!

Chertoff Defends Immigration Enforcement

In an interview with The Associated Press, Chertoff said this week that the rising complaints from businesses offer some evidence the Bush administration's approach is working.

"This is harsh but accurate proof positive that, for the first time in decades, we've succeeded in changing the dynamic and (are) actually beginning to reduce illegal immigration," Chertoff said. "Unfortunately, unless you counterbalance that with a robust system to allow people to come in temporarily and legally, you're going to wind up with an economic problem."

... Chertoff sharply criticized businesses that complain the crackdowns on their hiring of illegal immigrants will cost them money. In a federal court case last year, groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce argued that the department had failed to account for the economic impact of new regulations on businesses.

The argument "basically suggests we can't enforce the law because it will prevent people from making money illegally," Chertoff said. "The business community loves it (hiring illegal immigrants) because you have illegals, you pay them less, they have no place to go to complain."

Good to hear this from Chertoff, who is normally pro-amnesty.