I am in basic agreement with Ken about the whole controversy surrounding Palin and her daughter.

I guess the ‘liberals’* would have a problem with teenage parents getting married — sounds so…50’s. But, I thought that they were WHICH INCLUDES THE CHOICE TO CARRY THE CHILD TO TERM, and that they would support decisions which are in line with empirical research that children living with their biological parents have better outcomes in general than children of single parents or those raised by at least one non-biological parent. (This is not to denigrate the work of many industrious single parents or adoptive parents, but only to say that mom and dad tend to do the best (if partly due to selfish genetic reasons operating on a subconscious level)) Thus the decision is the right one, one that even pro-choicers (as they call themselves) must say they support or else they are nothing but advocates, and is ordered toward what will be the best outcomes for the child. Ohh, and has not Obama been preaching, several times recently, that young African-American males should take greater responsibility in the lives of their ‘baby-mamas’? Has he not been telling them to do what the Palin’s and the Johnston’s have encouraged their children to do?

The abortion analysis is also compelling — if teenage is a secularist sin, then Bristol is not guilty of any more than several other “ticket children” except that she was ‘caught’.

Also, if Bill’s is not something that ought to be scrutinized (only his honesty about it publicly) why is Palin’s daughter’s indiscretion seen as damning for McCain? As long as Palin is honest, what is the big deal?

Wait…her desire for education over ‘comprehensive’ education indicates her failure as a mother despite Bristol a) being exposed to a culture through friends that is more lenient on sexual mores, b) being of age for several years according to ‘liberals’ for deciding her ual life and obtaining ‘remedies’ for ‘problems’ without parental involvement according to those same ‘liberals’ and c) having free will.

If a class refuses to answer questions on a government exam (worth the majority of the students’ mark) but routinely does excellent on class assignments of comparable difficulty to the exam, does that mean the teacher is a bad teacher or that the students chose not to write answers?

Also, I have before me a chart of the smartest cities in and the three cities which routinely elect left of centre politicians are 18th (Toronto), 21st (Vancouver) and 34th (Montreal) while the cities that regularly elect right of centre politicians are 3rd (Calgary), 8th (Edmonton), 12th (Saskatoon) and 17th (Regina). However, the latter are usually derided as being “redneck” and not “sophisticated” like the former, but the latter also have higher percentages who spend money on the arts (ranked 1, 8, 10, 9 respectively) than the former (22, 15, 28 respectively). While economic prowess may be a factor, this certainly makes it look like the ‘liberals’ have some explaining to do. How can the ‘dumb, backwards’ cities have smarter and more cultured populations? Sure the measures are imprecise, but the clear seperation of the groups would indicate something is being captured.

* I have some issues with using that term to designate “left of centre” policies/people since it can denote some “right of centre” values too, such as its close cousin libertarianism