The Blaisdell Blog

There are a handful of items that need addressing, but do not warrant an entire column.   So, today is a series of Butler Bits.   Topping this list is New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s current effort to promote breast feeding by making formula difficult to get, and laced with paperwork.   Now, don’t get me wrong.   I nursed both my girls and encourage every new mother to do the same.   It is the best route for baby, mother, and society.   But it amazes me that the same people who are all for, “choice” when it comes to aborting a baby are the same people who want to put hurdles in the way of mothers who choose formula over nursing.   What is more, the hospitals are not to dispense formula without giving the mother a lesson on what is wrong with formula and what is right with breast feeding.   Isn’t this the same kind of intelligence requested by opponents of abortion (counseling, sonograms, etc.) but loudly denounced by those who are pro abortion?   Why is information necessary

I am an unabashed Anglophile.   While three of my grandparents are immigrants (two from Norway , one from Germany ) my Grandfather Blaisdell is part of a long line of Englishmen who came from the Lancashire, England area in 1635.   Whether because of Ralph Blaisdell’s heroic journey to this country, an affinity for a country which was pivotal in creating the American character, or simple good taste I have spent a lifetime loving all things British.   Our tradition of representative government comes from England .   Great Britain used its hard won world prominence to advance science and society.   Several of my favorite authors are British.   You can’t get better nonfiction writing than Simon Winchester; Edward Rutherfurd writes great epic fiction; Ken Follett, J. K. Rowling, J. R. R. Tolkein, Agatha Christie, Jane Austin and all of the Brontes, have all brightened hours of my life.     The list is endless and we haven’t even started on Shakespeare yet.   So, between history and her

Sally Ride, America ’s first woman in space, died on Monday of pancreatic cancer.   She was 61 years old.   The woman was a class act from the word, “go” and deserves her place in history.   She is the kind of woman that I want my granddaughters—and grandsons—to use as a role model.               Ride, who at age 32 was also the youngest astronaut to go into space, had a PhD in Physics from Stanford University .   She was the complete package: smart, pretty, a nationally ranked tennis player, with a work ethic that compelled her to succeed at every level.   She was also the child of Presbyterians who lived their faith.   All of these things helped create a woman who had her eyes on the stars and her feet on the ground.   It also, evidently, gave her the grace to work past the stupid, sexist, pandering questions that accompanied her unique position as a female astronaut in the ‘80’s.   There are some reporters out there who should, if they are not already, be hanging their hea

The world is too heavy today.   Let’s take a walk on the light side.              When I think of light banter, there is nothing that comes to mind quicker or easier than the battle of the sexes.   I was put into mind of this the other day when my husband walked through the house and said, “So, we need all the lights on?”   That is his way of telling me that our house should have all the overhead lighting of the Lascaux caves.   For some reason, probably associated with our Neanderthal beginnings, men always want the lights out and the heat turned down.   Women, on the other hand, assume that if the electric bill has been paid that the lights should be on and the ambient temperature should be comfortable.    It is the inherent difference between having two sensible, “x” chromosomes and being stuck with just one, “x” and a truncated version called a, “y.”             Let me make clear that the battle of the sexes should never be taken too seriously.   Any sane person, girding u

I love Charles Krauthammer.   He is smart, can cut to the point of an issue in a heartbeat, he’s even sexy in a, “Grinchy” sort of way.   He is also my kind of conservative.   On July 19, Krauthammer wrote a spectacular column concerning the issue of President Obama and several other liberal Democrats insistence that the government, not the people are to be credited with individual success.   I strongly urge you to read it in the Washington Post (my newspaper of choice on the internet).               Krauthammer’s words speak directly to a point that needs to be made over and over when bringing up Obama’s contempt for individual initiative.   Obama’s belief that government, not the individual, is the primary mover in society should become a major decision point in this election.   There are three points here: All of us are products of our family, community, dominant culture and government.   I wrote a book on education a decade ago, Beating the Bell Curve .

Late in the day on Friday, July 13 th , President Obama mounted the stage of Historic Firehouse Number One in Roanoke , Virginia .   The room held around 800 people but it was hot and several people fainted.   In front of a carefully screened group of supporters he gave one of the most important speeches of his reelection campaign.    It was not meant to be a major speech.   That will come in the even more carefully scripted Convention Hall in Charlotte , North Carolina this September in front of adoring media and rabid political supporters.   But this speech in Roanoke is crucial to the 2012 election because on Friday, in Virginia , President Obama went off message.   Whether through error or hubris, he abandoned his script and spoke off the cuff.   And in so doing, he showed us the man behind the curtain.   The angry but controlled, insecure yet charismatic, market fearful, socialistically inclined man that Barrack Obama really is. I am speaking, of course, of the now famou

In today’s Washington Post Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) is quoted as saying, “If we can’t get a good deal, a balanced deal that calls on the wealthy to pay their fair share, then I will absolutely continue this debate into 2013,” Bold words from the party that has not even submitted, let alone voted, on a budget in three years—even the two years they had an iron clad majority in both houses.   Some $600 billion dollars worth of tax hikes and spending cuts will take place automatically in January.   The Democrats are counting on both tax payers and tax users being upset by this.               Murray ’s speech, by the way, is not going to be delivered on the floor of the Senate, where it might actually lead to debate, compromise and action—that would be way too much to ask from this dismally impotent Congress.   No, Ms Murray is offering her, “…here I stand” musings to the like-minded theorists at the Brookings Institute.   I can see the solemn head nodding, the fingertips closed in a p

Our sun has been busy lately.   On Thursday, July 12, an X class flare from sunspot group 1520 sent a coronal mass ejection (CME) directly toward earth.   Anyone lucky enough to have clear night skies for the next 24 hours could see an amazing display of aurora borealis (Northern Lights).   Of course that is just the sugar.   The vinegar comes in the form of ionic disruption capable of affecting power grids and satellite communication.   Nor is the sunspot cluster that produced this pumped up solar wind done.   There is every chance that the sunspots (which are abounding on the sun right now) will produce another huge X class flare.             Sunspots are areas on the sun’s surface where magnetic energy is particularly high.   When two of these spots bring opposite magnetic poles together they create unfathomable ejections of energy.   These storms arc far into space and then rush outward like tsunami waves.   The earth is like an island caught in the path of these waves.   Our

During the summer, my husband and I travel the country in our RV.   We love where it takes us, which is everywhere.    Sometimes, “everywhere” includes a serendipitous adventure that is pure Americana .             Recently we visited Grand Coulee Dam and explored the Dry Falls area south of Coulee City .   How can you pass up the Ice Age saga of Lake Missoula ’s ice dam breaking and a lake the size of a Great Lake draining in 48 hours, scouring out the great coulee and carving out a path for the beautiful Columbia River ?   But, the surprise came a few days later when we took a wrong turn and headed toward Chief Joseph Dam 51 miles down river from Grand Coulee .               Chief Joseph Dam, named for the great Nez Perce leader, is the 2 nd largest electricity producer in the United States .   It is a beautiful dam with the power plant sitting at right angles to the dam itself.   There are 27 penstocks sending water, powered by gravity only, to an equal number of t

I learned the lessons of political tolerance early.   Mom was a Republican, Dad was a Democrat and politics was served at every meal.   The only rule was you had to keep one foot on the floor.   I have frequently said that being married to someone of the opposite political persuasion is a good lesson in perspective.   You learn how to speak softly and consider the veracity of the other side.    There are very few truths that come directly from God’s mouth to someone’s ear.               For that reason, I do not believe in demonizing President Obama or his party in the coming debate about what constitutes good government.   It is not going to be a choice of good or evil, it is a choice of philosophies.   People of good will and pure thought can, genuinely, see the same problems, feel equally compelled to solve them, and choose completely different paths to that resolution.   Never is this more apparent than in the debate about health care.               First, I have a request.

I am an American.   You can tell by looking at me.   It is in how I stand, walk and talk.   I have been in only a few foreign countries.   But I am willing to bet that in every one people took one look at me and said to themselves, “American.”   I like that.   I am guilty of the hubris of thinking that being an American is better than being from any other country.   Mind you, I have absolutely no imperialist ambitions.    We would do nothing but adulterate out strength and character by acquiring additional territory.   Neither do I think that we are better intellectually than other people.   I am an unabashed anglophile.   I admire the English and consider them the fountainhead of all that is best in American law and democracy.   Intellectually, I know that genius and inventive acumen are equally distributed throughout the human population.   That means, by the way, that the third world countries are an intellectual landscape lying fallow through economic deprivation.   We need

The Constitution is our anchor of stability in a turbulent world!   We can withstand a bad President and a petulant Congress (for the short term, at least) because our Constitution both guides and limits.   If someone asked me to provide proof of a loving God I would simply ask them how else so many geniuses in the matter of human governance could have been clustered together in the right time and place to create both our country and the means to govern it.    Our founding fathers had the vision to devise a way to not only govern themselves, but govern a country that they could not imagine, yet believed would prevail. The constitution of the United States is like a good parent.   It has allowed us to grow up as we have grown older, with the result that the United States of America is the oldest living democracy in the world.   The miracle of this document is that it lives, breathes and moves with the times.   The three branches of our government work together while standing alon