Pro-Life in Hollywood

I've always liked Kelsey Grammar (Frasier) and Patricia Heaton (Ray's wife on Everybody Loves Raymond). They have a new show coming to Fox, and Heaton is active in "Feminists for Life." National Review interviewed her and she had some very sensible things to say.

The feminists of the ‘60s and ‘70s felt that in order to promote the agenda of equality in the workplace, which I believe in, that they had to denigrate this other very important aspect of being a woman, which is being a mother and bearing children. To even have to compare these two things is ridiculous. I think a mistake these feminists made was that you had to be more like a man to compete in the world. What that leads to is woman having abortions in order to compete. And that’s not really having a choice. So, that’s a big mistake, and you have to spend a lot of time undoing that notion.

Women need to protect their right to bear children without harassment from boyfriends, or parents, or employers, or professors, and no one should be able to tell women that they cannot bear their children, or that they should have to sacrifice their child in order to accomplish other things in life.

The Real-Life Impact of Liberals in Power

Very interesting look at employment numbers on a state-by-state basis. This article compares job growth since 2001 with the national average.

Total Blue-state employment growth has been only 3.3 percent during the current expansion, which began in November 2001, compared with the U.S. rate of 5.5 percent. Meanwhile, total Red-state employment growth has been 7.5 percent, more than double that of the Blue states.

Unsurprisingly, Michigan is dead last at -5%. But, more interesting is the fact the "Red" states (those voting for Pres. Bush in both 2000 and 2004) are doing much better than the "Blue" states. the Red states in the West are doing particularly well.

the labor market doesn't care who is in power, but the policies put in place by those who govern can either encourage or discourage employers, and this article makes a good case that liberal policies discourage job growth. (the situation in France and Germany being an extreme example)

Boys Adrift

National Review Online has an interview with a physician who has written an interesting book on some of the problems many boys and young men seem to have doing something constructive with their lives.

(I realize I have very little room to talk here, glass houses being what they are, but . . .)

Girls are achieving more than boys are these days. More girls graduate form high school, and many more graduate from college than do their male classmates.

One factor he blames - video games:

These new video games are so exciting, so realistic, so engaging, that many boys get addicted to them. They play them 10, 15, 20 hours a week. I very often hear of parties where the girls stand around talking with other girls, while the young men are in the next room playing Halo on the 55-inch flat screen or watching their buddies play. We’re seeing more and more young men who would rather play these video games rather than try to meet girls.

Anyway, food for thought certainly, especially for those of us raising boys. The doctor blames five factors for the increasing prevalence of "failure to launch" (quoting from www.boysadrift.com):

Video Games. Studies show that some of the most popular video games are disengaging boys from real-world pursuits.

Teaching Methods. Profound changes in the way children are educated have had the unintended consequence of turning many boys off school.

Prescription Drugs. Overuse of medication for ADHD may be causing irreversible damage to the motivational centers in boys’ brains.

Endocrine Disruptors. Environmental estrogens from plastic bottles and food sources may be lowering boys’ testosterone levels, making their bones more brittle and throwing their endocrine systems out of whack.

Devaluation of Masculinity. Shifts in popular culture have transformed the role models of manhood. Forty years ago we had Father Knows Best; today we have The Simpsons.