It ain’t easy being “Green”

Salem News reporter Chris Cassidy has done it again, making my morning espresso that much more enjoyable. In recent weeks it has been his reporting on pension abuses by the Essex Regional Retirement Board. By the way, the Globe’s Sean Murphy joins the party with his own report on the shady dealings at the ERRB.

Today, Chris has a story that demonstrates the folly of much of the “Go Green” movement. It looks like the administrators at North Shore Community College need some lessons on what “being green” is all about. Maybe they should pay Al Gore to fly in on his private jet and give a talk about living the “Green” lifestyle?

Trees axed for parking at college’s ‘green’ building

DANVERS — North Shore Community College touts its proposed allied health building as a model of green technology, complete with solar panels, wind turbines and rainwater harvesting.

But last week, the college embarked on the construction of its $32 million Health Professions and Student Services Building by clearing an acre of mature, 60-foot trees that neighbors say was a habitat for deer and other wildlife….

College President Wayne Burton said they had to provide more parking to make up for the 300 to 400 spaces that will be lost temporarily during construction. To accommodate students by the time they return in September, crews had to start the parking lot construction right away. Burton said the college went ahead as soon as it consulted with the project’s general contractor rather than wait another year for a window of opportunity.

“We didn’t really get the green light to start the project until a month ago,” Burton said. “I wasn’t trying to withhold information. We just didn’t know the information.”

The green light? Rather unfortunate turn of phrase if you ask me. And the tree clearing was for…. a parking lot? Oh the irony. A “green” project that clears an acre of 60-year old trees to make room for internal combustion engines.

And what did we learn today at North Shore Community College? It ain’t easy being green.

Mother and Father’s Day deemed not PC enough for 1st grade

In my daughter’s backpack yesterday came this notice…

Dear Families,

Happy Spring! Hopefully you will have lovely weather this special weekend. This year, we have decided not to make special gifts for Mother’s and Father’s Day. The composition of families has changed over the past few years. In order to be sensitive to the needs of all children, we have decided to forego a formal acknowledgement of these upcoming holidays.

We hope that every day brings you the love of family and friends. Wishing you our best,

First Grade Teachers

What are these new family compositions? Are there that many kids being raised by wolves these days? Divorce rates have been high for generations. Single parent families are nothing new. Relatives and grandparents raising children is nothing new. For those few children not being raised by even a single parent or relative, why couldn’t they make something special for whoever it is that is raising them? Let’s diminish the role of parents and change the rules for the vast majority of children to accomodate the rare exceptions. All this worry about offending the few offends the many.

I expect these educators will be consistent with this policy and its implementation. Next holiday coming up is Memorial Day. They won’t be celebrating war will they? We have to Give Peace a Chance. Columbus Day…how could they celebrate that mass murderer! Good thing July 4 is during the summer vacation. There might be students with British relatives who are still bitter over the way things turned out. Wouldn’t want to offend them, if they’re out there. Certainly, there will be no mention of Halloween at school for that could, potentially, someday, maybe, offend a practicing Wicca. Christmas, forget about it. Thanksgiving? Wouldn’t want to offend any American Indian students. President’s Day? With all the war crimes they have committed over the years, from Truman to Bush. No way.

Who doesn’t love political correctness?

Obama: school choice is great, for my family, but not yours

I don’t blame Barack Obama for sending his kids to an elite private school in Washington DC. Who wouldn’t want to send their kids to someplace better than DC public schools? Why does President Obama take that choice away from other inner city parents in DC who don’t have the luxury of paying any price for their childrens education?

This but the latest in a long line of examples of the difference between Obama’s words and deeds. On the campaign trail, Obama talked about supporting vouchers. He also made sure that you knew how courageous he was to take on the teachers union. Here is candidate Obama,

“I will not allow my predispositions to stand in the way of making sure that our kids can learn,” Mr. Obama, who has previously said he opposes vouchers, said in a meeting with the editorial board of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. “We’re losing several generations of kids, and something has to be done.”

Like most things with Obama, it was Just Words. Yes, it was laughable then, but is not so funny to these Washingon DC parents and students who are stuck in underperforming and miserable schools.

WATCH THIS VIDEO

Allah at Hot Air offers some perspective on Obama’s priorities,

Just a reminder: Obama’s proposed budget this year was $3.6 trillion, and yet somehow he couldn’t find $18 million in there to keep this program going.

Today’s campus protests: derivative to the Nth degree

Thank you Colby College for the best laugh I’ve had in 2009.

From the excellent alumni magazine, Racial Controversy on Campus

A series of racially and culturally insensitive events stirred controversy on campus this fall, precipitating a sit-in in Pulver Pavilion and a series of demands presented to the Student Programming Board, the administration, and to students. Early in the semester some students objected to a luau-themed party that they considered insensitive to Hawaiian culture.

A culturally insensitive luau? Please. Other indignities on campus this fall included,

…a show by the Campaign Comedy Trail, a troupe hired for what was characterized in advance as political satire but deteriorated into jokes based on racial and religious stereotypes.

Jokes based on racial and religious stereotypes? Oh the humanity. Every comedian since Soupy Sales would be out of business if the Colby PC police had their way.

Nice to see that the $46,000 annual tab is addresing the most pressing social and cultural issues of our times. These kids are brainwashed to think, hey, that’s what we are supposed to do…sit ins, protests, fight the man, even if he is a faux Hawaiian one. I know. They thought the same thing in twenty years ago when I was there. My kids are not getting witin 100 miles of a liberal arts campus.

UPDATE: An e-mailer adds, “How about a little perspective? This is grievance mongering!” Good line, and good point. How about it?

Does Barack need to go to summer school?

Michelle Obama has spoken frequently on the campaign trail about the amount of student loans she and Barack had to take out to get through Harvard and Princeton. Worse yet, she had to pay them back!

As she has many times in the past, Mrs. Obama complains about the lasting burden of student loans dating from her days at Princeton and Harvard Law School. She talks about people who end up taking years and years, until middle age, to pay off their debts. “The salaries don’t keep up with the cost of paying off the debt, so you’re in your 40s, still paying off your debt at a time when you have to save for your kids,” she says.

“Barack and I were in that position,” she continues. “The only reason we’re not in that position is that Barack wrote two best-selling books… It was like Jack and his magic beans. But up until a few years ago, we were struggling to figure out how we would save for our kids.”

Good thing for that Rev. Wright sermon that inspired The Audacity of Hope! Perhaps Michelle should be asking for a refund? It appears her husband, no doubt an exceedingly smart and capable man, is having some trouble with the basics, like American history and math.

Jack Kelly, a Marine, a Green Beret, a high ranking pentagon official (deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force in the Reagan administration) and now a journalist focusing on national security issues, offered up a remedial history lesson for Barack earlier this week,

In his victory speech after the North Carolina primary, Sen. Barack Obama said something that is all the more remarkable for how little it has been remarked upon.

In defending his stated intent to meet with America’s enemies without preconditions, Sen. Obama said: “I trust the American people to understand that it is not weakness, but wisdom to talk not just to our friends, but to our enemies, like Roosevelt did, and Kennedy did, and Truman did.”

That he made this statement, and that it passed without comment by the journalists covering his speech indicates either breathtaking ignorance of history on the part of both, or deceit.

I assume the Roosevelt to whom Sen. Obama referred is Franklin D. Roosevelt. Our enemies in World War II were Nazi Germany, headed by Adolf Hitler; fascist Italy, headed by Benito Mussolini, and militarist Japan, headed by Hideki Tojo. FDR talked directly with none of them before the outbreak of hostilities, and his policy once war began was unconditional surrender.

FDR died before victory was achieved, and was succeeded by Harry Truman. Truman did not modify the policy of unconditional surrender. He ended that war not with negotiation, but with the atomic bomb.

Harry Truman also was president when North Korea invaded South Korea in June, 1950. President Truman’s response was not to call up North Korean dictator Kim Il Sung for a chat. It was to send troops.

We learned yesterday that during this long campaign, Barack has “visited 57 states with one to go”

The far more important issue here is the one noted above by Jack Kelley. The Atlantic’s Mark Ambinder summed up the video nicely by writing,

Obama is tired, nothing more. But if John McCain did this — if he mistakenly said he’d visited 57 states — the media would be all up in his grill, accusing him of a senior moment.

Happy Leap Year

Did you know that “Julius Caesar proclaimed the last day of February as Leap Year Day, skipping it three out of four years. Back then, February 30th was the last day of the last month of the year, which is why he picked it.”

Here are 50 fun facts about Leap Year.

Great moments in parenting

When it comes to kids, cars and drinking, some kids get the message, some don’t,

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Jane Hambleton has dubbed herself the “meanest mom on the planet.”

After finding alcohol in her son’s car, she decided to sell the car and share her 19-year-old’s misdeed with everyone — by placing an ad in the local newspaper.

The ad reads: “OLDS 1999 Intrigue. Totally uncool parents who obviously don’t love teenage son, selling his car. Only driven for three weeks before snoopy mom who needs to get a life found booze under front seat. $3,700/offer. Call meanest mom on the planet.”

…”It’s overwhelming the number of calls I’ve gotten from people saying ‘Thank you, it’s nice to see a responsible parent.’ So far there are no calls from anyone saying, ‘You’re really strict. You’re real overboard, lady.”‘

The only critic is her son, who Hambleton says is “very, very unhappy” with the ad and claims the alcohol was left by a passenger.

Hambleton believes her son but has decided mercy isn’t the best policy in this case. She says she set two rules when she bought the car at Thanksgiving: No booze, and always keep it locked.

Good for her. You go mom!