Up North Mommy

Teenage girls in Gloucester make pregnancy pact

Of course, the first words out of my mouth when I began reading this story were "where in the hell were these girls' parents?!" 

There's a stunning twist to the sudden rise in teen pregnancies at Gloucester High School. Seventeen students there are expecting and many of them became that way on purpose.

Time Magazine first reported that nearly half of the girls confessed to making a pact to get pregnant and raise their babies together. None of them is older than 16.

Schools Superintendent Christopher Farmer told WBZ's Bill Shields Thursday the girls had "an agreement to get pregnant."

Farmer said these are generally "girls who lack self-esteem and have a lack of love in their life."

"The common threat is the lack of self-esteem and purpose in life, and a lack of a sense of direction," said Farmer. "Young women wanting and needing affection."

For God's sake what is going on in our families that these children, and that's what these girls are - children, can make an agreement like this, plan it, and go through with it without their parents knowledge? Well, considering one of the girls' friends said they all wanted to have babies so that they would have someone who loved them unconditionally shows that their parents didn't seem to have any interest in their daughters' lives or well being.

They want unconditional love, they should have gotten dogs.

And take a look at who one of the fathers is:

Sullivan told the magazine that the pact wasn't the only shocking incident.

"We found out one of the fathers is a 24-year-old homeless guy," he told Time.

Cassy Fiano, one of my Wizbang blog colleagues is commenting as well on this, and she isn't buying the unconditional love excuse. She thinks it's more due to the media's and the Hollywood's glamourization of pregnancy:

The students are lacking love, so they decide they want to have a baby?  I call B.S. 

This is simply a bunch of girls who have no idea what they're getting into. They see movies like "Knocked Up" and "Juno". They see celebrities like Angelina Jolie, Jessica Alba, Ashlee Simpson, and Jamie Lynn Spears having babies out of wedlock. They're constantly being bombarded with sex from every direction and told by adults that it isn't a big deal, as long as they're "safe". Their parents are likely never there, absentee parents who don't pay enough attention to their daughters' lives and won't put their foot down, yet will always be their safety net.

All of these things combine, and what do we find? A group of sixteen-year-old girls with no comprehension of what they're doing to their lives or what the real world is like, who are so desperate to be adults that they're getting pregnant on purpose, one of them by a homeless man.

I understand her anger here; however, it's the parents' responsibility to teach these kids that the characters in movies and the Hollywood stars who are having kids are not the examples they should be following.  It's the parents' job to instill the kind of values in their children that would cause them to not want to be like Hollywood stars.

Man takes advantage of Tim Russert's death to push his agenda

Mike Adams at Natural News has decided to use Tim Russert's death to sell his agenda and seemingly his books. If you take a look at this website, you'll see a couple of books written my Mr. Adams clearly displayed on the right hand side.

So what's the issue? It's this: before Mr. Russert has even been eulogized and buried, Mr. Adams has published an article in which he blames Mr. Russert's death on pharmaceutical industry. Mr. Adams doesn't know anything about Mr. Russert's medical history or daily eating and exercise habits. Nor does he know anything about his stress levels, yet he acts like he and his lifestyle alone could have single handedly saved Mr. Russert's life. Not only is this in bad taste, but it's also sickeningly manipulative.

Mr. Adams' goal is to sway as many people as possible to adopt his way of living. His argument is that people should eat healthy and exercise, therefore, eliminating any need for pharmaceuticals to control a health issue. On the surface, that sounds completely innocuous, a good idea, in fact. However, eating healthy and exercising alone is not going to solve everyone's health issues, something Mr. Adams doesn't acknowledge. Instead, says this:

What happened to Russert is about to happen to America's medicated population

Sadly, Tim Russert has learned the hard way what four generations of Americans are about to learn: That you cannot medicate yourself to good health, and when you try to do so, you often end up dying from the very medicine you thought was saving your life.

There's a book Tim Russert needed, and it's the same book that tens of millions of Americans need right now. It's called Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease by Caldwell Esselstyn. You can read about the book at his website, www.HeartAttackProof.com

This book, simply stated, teaches you how to reverse heart disease by changing what you eat. Change your diet, and heart disease vanishes, blood flow is restored, and the build-up of arterial plaque begins to fade away. It is absolutely true that through changes in diet and exercise, a person can make themselves heart attack proof.

That's a terrible over generalization and over simplification of a very complex health issue. Take my parents for example. They are both 64 years old and in excellent health. They both exercise every day. My dad runs on his treadmill for about a half an hour every morning. My mom runs/walks 2.5 miles every day, rain, snow, or sun. They also eat very healthy: lean meats, low fat, low glycemic index carbs, lots of fruits and vegetables, and plenty of protein like fish. And they take a variety of vitamins that are good for them: vitamins, minerals, garlic, omega 3 fatty acids, 81 mg aspirin and other things, every single day. And they've been living this way for years. From the time I was in grade school (think the 1970's), I was drinking skim milk and eating low sugar foods, long before it was popular to do so. Kid favorites like Hostess, Little Debbie, and other high carb, high fat sweets were banned from my house.

But that has not made my parents heart attack proof. They both are on Lipitor because, in spite of their excellent eating habits and daily exercise, they both have high cholesterol. Why?

It's genetic.

So Mr. Adams' argument does not apply to my parents, and I'm quite certain that there are plenty of other people just like my parents out there as well.

Now, maybe I'm over reacting here and Mr. Adams is just trying to save people's lives, but his tone sounds too snake oil salesmanesque for my taste. Instead of simply providing unbiased information on diet and exercise to educate his readers, Mr. Adams is arguing that living his way will make you heart attack proof, which is simply not possible. He's using Tim Russert's death to advance his agenda. That's in very bad form, Mr. Adams.

Cross posted at Wizbang

Iowa Storms

I have no idea what I would do if I saw this coming at me.

It's something out of a nightmare.

My thoughts and prayers are with the families who lost lost loved ones or their homes from the tornadoes. Now, after the storms are a distant memory, Iowans have to contend with rising waters.

Tim Russert dead at 58

I was completely shocked to hear the news today that Tim Russert died. He collapsed suddenly while working in NBC's Washington bureau.  You can watch the video of Tom Brokaw announcing Tim's death in a breaking news brief below:

More at Wizbang.

Pajama recall at the Children's Place

According to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, the Children's Place has a recall on their camouflage pajamas because of excessive lead. If you own either of these pajamas, return them to the nearest Children's Place store:

Surprisingly, they were made in Vietnam, not China.

Hat tip: Debbie at Three Weddings

Mom bloggers make impact once again

Subway has issued a public apology for excluding home schooled kids from their most recent promotion (hat tip Young Mommy):

To HSLDA:

We at SUBWAY restaurants place a high value on education, regardless of the setting, and have initiated a number of programs and promotions aimed at educating our youth in the areas of health and fitness.

We sincerely apologize to anyone who feels excluded by our current essay contest. Our intention was to provide an opportunity for traditional schools, many of which we know have trouble affording athletic equipment, to win equipment. Our intent was certainly not to exclude homeschooled children from the opportunity to win prizes and benefit from better access to fitness equipment.

To address the inadvertent limitation of our current contest and provide an opportunity for even more kids to improve their fitness, we will soon create an additional contest in which homeschooled students will be encouraged to participate. When the kids win, everyone wins!

—Subway restaurants

Once again, this shows the impact moms have in the corporate world. Moms are the primary decision makers when it comes to spending family money, and more and more moms are homeschooling their children. Subway was quite daft in treating the children of homeschooling moms like they weren't "real" students.

One of the many reasons why I can't stand the United Nations

Supposed "humanitarian aid"  workers and United Nations "peacekeepers" are raping and abusing children in some of the poorest and most vulnerable countries. This is not a surprise to me since I have followed the UN's corruption for a while now, but to many who aren't aware of how corrupt and evil, yes I said evil, the UN is, it will come as a complete shock. This is why I'm publishing this post at my mom blog.  The report comes to us from CNN:

Humanitarian aid workers and United Nation peacekeepers are sexually abusing small children in war-ravished and food-poor countries, a leading European charity has said.

Children as young as 6 are among those who have been forced to have sex with aid workers and peacekeepers in return for food and money, Save the Children UK said in a report released Tuesday.

After interviewing hundreds of children, the charity says it found instances of rape, child prostitution, pornography, indecent sexual assault and trafficking of children for sex.

"It is hard to imagine a more grotesque abuse of authority or flagrant violation of children's rights," Jasmine Whitbread, chief executive of Save the Children UK, said.

In the report, "No One To Turn To" a 15-year-old girl from Haiti told researchers: "My friends and I were walking by the National Palace one evening when we encountered a couple of humanitarian men. The men called us over and showed us their penises.

"They offered us 100 Haitian gourdes ($2.80) and some chocolate if we would suck them. I said, 'No,' but some of the girls did it and got the money."

Save the Children says almost as shocking as the abuse itself, is the "chronic under-reporting" of the abuses. It believes that thousands more children around the world could be suffering in silence.

I characterized the UN as evil. I mean that completely. The United Nations is probably the most corrupt organization this world has ever known. Some people still don't know about the oil for food scandal that flourished under then Secretary-General Kofi Annan. Here's the background of the scandal.

It began as a U.N. humanitarian aid program called "Oil-for-Food," but it ended up with Saddam Hussein pocketing billions to become the biggest graft-generating machine ever and enriching some of America's most forceful opponents at the United Nations.

Plus, some evidence suggests that some of the money ended up in the hands of potential terrorists who are opposed to the United States.

The roots of the scandal date back to 1991, when a U.N.-backed and U.S.-led coalition expelled Saddam from Kuwait following his hostile takeover of the neighboring country. Although Saddam lost the war, he walked away with one important victory -- he got to stay in power in Iraq.

Thirteen years later, a second U.S.-led coalition made of a smaller group of nations than the first effort finally knocked Saddam out of business. And it did so without the help of the United Nations, which failed to pass a resolution backing the U.S. effort.

[...]

A new FOX News poll finds that 54 percent of the U.S. public believes the United Nations does not reflect the values of average Americans.

Only 29 percent say that U.N. policies reflect said values.

“I believe the U.N., parts of it, have been corrupt for years. But this went to a whole new level,” said Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Conn., chairman of the House Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats and International Relations.  Shays is leading one of several Oil-for-Food probes by the federal government.

The General Accountability Office has already pegged Saddam’s Oil-for-Food take at $10.1 billion. It could end up being a lot more.

Shays says Iraqis aren't the only victims -- Americans are too.

“We're talking about American lives that are being lost in an attempt to bring democracy to Iraq,” Shays said. If France, Russia, China and Germany had told Saddam it was time to back down and honor his commitments, Shays said it’s possible the United States may not have needed to go to war against Saddam.

But why did these countries really object to a second U.S.-led war against Iraq? Some evidence suggests that those countries that said they were opposing the Bush administration on principle were actually making billions from Oil-for-Food.

“I think clearly, American blood is in the hands of a number of European countries, who could have put pressure on Saddam, who could've looked him in the eye and said, ‘the United States is coming in,'" Shays said. “And to me, some of the explanation clearly has to be the Oil-for-Food program.”

Shays added that there is a chance some of the insurgents now operating against the United States and the new Iraqi government are using Oil-for-Food money in their terror campaign.

“I think it's not only possible that insurgents are using Oil-for-Food money -- I think it's very likely,” Shays said.

I also recommend reading this piece at Fox News, which breaks down this scandal's implications.