Our Kids Don't know History?

A couple of weeks ago the Wall Street Journal ran an article entitled,”Students Stumble Again on the Basics.” The article lamented our children’s lack of literacy in Social Science or History. According to this article, only 20% of 4th Graders, 17% of 8th Graders and 12% of 12th Graders are considered proficient or advanced in understanding history skills according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress. The test revealed that U.S. schoolchildren have made little progress since 2006 in their understanding of key historical themes, including the basic principles of democracy and America's role in the world.

Interestingly, the teachers feel that this deficiency is due to the need to focus on reading and math for the No Child Left Behind tests and standards. Surprisingly in my day we managed to learn math, reading and social studies. While the teachers seem to feel that NCLB is taking too much time, they still find time to teach “my two moms”, “my two dads”, “Betty wears a Burka” or “Felipe is illegal”. Or hours of curriculum about the environment and the evils of fossil fuels.
I took a little visit to the curriculum for the highest income school district in our area – Council Rock Bucks County. The Council Rock curriculum does not teach United States history until 5th Grade. From 1st to 4th Grade the children learn – about what it means to be a citizen using books with titles like “About My World” and “Neighborhoods Near and Far”. This curriculum, while interesting are based on Time Magazine for Kids – need I say anything about Time Magazine for adults? Do you really want these people teaching their values to your children? The magazine that has brought us both Global Cooling and Global Warming within 30 years as irrefutable science?

The bottom line is that we have time for our children to learn our history, how we fit and have changed the modern world while also learning to read and do math. We need to allow the social engineering to remain outside of the school and focus on learning academic skills.

Let’s not have another year of our children failing at history and social studies.

When you put down, Sarah Palin, you put down me and others!

So another weekend of attacking Sarah Palin for...for being considered by others as a candidate for President. Or maybe it is for being a mom. Or maybe its for owning and using guns or maybe...enough already.

Whether you would like her as presidential candidate or not, media please note how she resembles many women I know. Media please note that when you put her down, you insult all women. Media please note, how irrelevant you are becoming. You are following Mrs. Palin, because she won't grant you status to know her schedule. If I were less of a lady, I would ask "who's your Momma now?"

So here is my news flash, like Mrs Palin:
* I am a business woman with a family
* I use my husbands last name
* I value my rights, as enumerated in the Constitution including my right to carry a gun
* I am intelligent and, at times successful
* I try to live my Christian values
* I don't think that the media should have the right to know or to tell me what I should think, do or consider
* I have helped my husband maintain a small business
* I care about men and women, born and unborn
* I did not abdicate my intelligence by wearing a tiara

Unlike Mrs. Palin, I have not been as consistent over time in living my beliefs. I started living my beliefs much later in my life.

To the Sarah Palins and Michele Bachmanns of the world--thank you for your consistency, your values and your example for young and old women. Thank you for showing that marriage and a family is possible with a successful, public minded career.

To the press, this is how I define feminism--achieving your dreams regardless of your gender without having to be less of a woman, or a democrat.

Run ladies, run!

Doing the Right Thing!

On Thursday, May 19th, I had the privilege of watching the life story of a dear friend. Melissa Ohden is not your average woman. Melissa is the unintended consequence of a late term salient abortion. That's right, for those who don't speak lawyer, she lived.

Her story, "A Voice for Life" (www.avoiceforlife.com), is so honest and unvarnished that if you make it through without a tear you are a stone. This film is compassionately made by Gunther Meisse II and written by Melissa Ohden and Steve Feazel. We watched it with Melissa, her husband and her beautiful daughter (a second generation miracle).

When I tell people about Melissa, my pro-abortion friends are usually politely awed. My pro-life friends are moved to goose bumps and tears. The reaction that affected me the most was when a retired physician friend asked, "They let her live?"

I had to hear it twice to understand the question. That question proves that Melissa is doubly a miracle, and that Kermit Gosnell (Philadelphia abortion "doctor", indicted for killing children who survived the abortion process and other gruesome acts) is just the worse example of what has been accepted in our society--the death, by neglect, of the accidentally born. Something once advocated by our President on the floor of the Illinois legislature.

Last week we had the opportunity to review our lives. Some seriously considered that Rapture might take place on May 21, 2011. Others hedged their bets by revisiting their faith and beliefs. Others just thought it was all a big joke. Most of us, should be grateful to still be here--to have another chance.

I firmly believe that when the time comes, and we meet our God, we will not just have to answer for what we have done to live a life of faith. I believe we must also answer the question--"what have we done to help others turn from evil?"

Turn from evil--not tolerate evil or justify evil, but turn from it. The nurse who saved Melissa when she heard this tiny child grunting turned from evil. Are you ready to do that? Is our country ready to do that?

Let's thank God for the time to have a do over. Let's make it count for ourselves, our families and our country.

Martin Luther King and Abortion

A couple of days ago I came across an article in the Seattle Times, entitled "Black babies at twice the risk of whites, study indicates." April 4th is the anniversary of Martin Luther King's murder and I just can't believe that this was a part of his dream. The article notes:

"A college-educated black woman in the United States is more likely to lose her baby then a white woman with only high school eduction. an African-American woman who starts prenatal care in her first trimester is more likely to lose her baby than a white woman with late or no prenatal care. A black woman who does not smoke has worse birth outcomes than a white woman who smokes."

Why, asks the author? She concludes that the difference is not due to higher rates of poverty and chronic disease, that the real answer is stress, not just during pregnancy, but from a lifetime of being black.

Hold the phone! The article does not even mention the fact that the rate of abortion for black women is more than twice the rate for white women (55.5 versus 20.2, respectively). A pretty close correlation to the rate of preterm births and miscarriages. The American College of Gynecology (ACOG) completed a study over three years ago in conjunction with the March of Dimes which noted in the appendix, that induced abortion has an impact on preterm births and miscarriages.

How much more important is incidence of abortion than stress? How much of that stress is due to living with the abortion? Why is this nearly direct correlation ignored?

Remembering Dr. Martin Luther King, let us also remember his views on abortion:

"The Negro can not win...if he is willing to sell the future of his children for his personal and immediate comfort and safety"--Ebony, Vol. 41, No.3, January 1966, Page 63.

Let's not be afraid to see the real issues and the real facts that affect the lives of black women. And to my white counterparts, think of the future outcomes of your actions as you usher minority women into the doors of abortion clinics.

Whatever happened to parents in popular culture?

One of my favorite saying is--"It takes a village, to absolve me of the responsibility to raise my own children."

I have been watching too much television lately. As a result, I have noticed how children and parents are portrayed. When did parents become completely ineffective in the media? My favorite examples are the Mirena commercials and a luncheon meat commercial.

In the Mirena commercial(the African American version), a mom is trying to remember if she has taken her birth control pill and to decide if she would like another child. Meanwhile her two current children crash the shopping cart into the watermelon display while unsupervised in the grocery store, drop water balloons from the balcony while unsupervised at home, take the jelly beans that their father is eating one after the other while not supervising them in the yard, and pulling the dogs fur while they bath it unsupervised. Trust me the white version of this commercial is not any better.

Or let's look at the luncheon meat commercial where in the mother's and father's fantasy, it is a lovely Thanksgiving dinner with fine china and well behaved children. In reality it is a screaming scene of children throwing food and helpless parents eating sandwiches.

News flash--Mirena parents, you do not need any more children until you learn how to supervise and raise the ones you have.

Luncheon meat people, put down the sandwich and discipline your children.

Thank God, I have been spending a lot of time speaking at high schools to very responsible young people. They are focused on protecting life and achieving goals that are measured in units of intelligence and compassion. Their parents are involved in their lives.

If only the popular culture would take a moment to look at real children and parents, and stop trying to convince us that it everyone's responsibility to raise our children except ours.

Oh How I Miss the Press from the Bush Days

Oh how I miss the press of the Bush years. Oh how I miss the daily body counts from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Oh how I miss the daily updates on the price of gasoline.

Apparently, the press only is passionate about these issues when the President is a Republican.

So let me do their job for them. Since President Obama took office 1,549* American heroes have been killed. Funny how my neighbor who always had the body count listed on a sign on her doorstep, updated daily, addressed to President Bush, seems to have lost that sign.

Just since 2009, the price of gasoline on the East coast has risen over $1.50 per gallon, despite the fact that the price of crude oil has not followed the same rate of growth.** Where are the reports on how much oil money is donated to the Democrat party in general, to Obama's campaign specifically. Interesting how no one mentions that the oil industry has always been more generous to Democrat politicians.

The press regaled us with pictures of our fallen heroes being unloaded from planes at Dover AFB, reminded us of each military suicide. Where is the outrage with these tragedies?

I wish for a world of fairness and impartiality. I guess these really aren't tragedies to the left, just useful tools.

*icasualties.org
**U S Energy Information Administration

Too Early to Celebrate the Health Care Reform Lawsuits!

Thanks to the fine work of the Attorney General in Florida and Mark Levine, Esq. of the Landmark Legal Foundation, and to the great legal mind of Federal District Court Judge Henry Hudson. The President’s use of the commerce clause to implement two key portions of health care reform may be hampered. These are the individual mandate and the penalty for failing to buy insurance.

But wait!

The following features of the law are still intact:
• No preexisting condition limitations
• Limitations on the premium differentiation across enrollment groups
• Removal of co pays and deductibles on preventive care, effectively killing savings accounts and major medical only plans

Those of us for rational market reform should not lose sight of how war is waged. The Waxmans and Kennedys have worked for 70 years to incrementally change the minds of Americans about government’s role in health care.

They brought us Medicare for seniors, Medicaid for the poor, Medicare for those with disabilities, Medicaid for those with disabilities, CHIP for children, CHIP/Family Care for Adults, and Medicaid for individuals…

The single payer crowd has long understood the concept of eating an elephant one bite at time.

Since this lawsuit leaves the key provisions of the health care law in place, that only work with an individual mandate:
• Premiums will increase drastically—when only the sickest and the most risk adverse are the only ones with insurance, insurance costs more.
• If one limits the price differential between age and sex groups for purchase then the healthy, whose experience is not considered will not take insurance and the cost will increase.
• Citing the failure of the program without the individual mandate, looking to increased numbers of uninsured and increased cost the only option will be single payer.

While we celebrate, they continue to eat the elephant.

What we conservative mistake for overreaching may, in fact, have been a brilliant use of the long confidence game—the long Con.

There are short Cons and long Cons. Short Cons are games like three card Monte and letters telling you have won. The long Con is more elegant and takes patience. The mark (victim) must feel that they have won or are smarter than the confidence man along the way.

We, the Marks, now feel that we are the winner when the confidence man has us positioned to handover our wallets…control of our health care in the final move of this long Con.

Please don’t accept partial wins and open up the champagne. Let’s repeal all of this monster. The only thing that stops a confidence man it his tracks is a two letter word—NO!