McCain tried at least twice and Bush once (with McCain) to deal with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, but the Democrats blocked it and it didn't get through.
War spending has done great things for the economy in my part of the state. Raises/bonuses are up and the only major companies doing layoffs are the casinos.
What actually STARTED this mess, however, was the Community Reinvestment Act, which was signed in by Jimmy Carter and used during the Clinton Administration by Janet Reno to threaten banks in order to force them to make more high-risk loans.
Since then there have been more culprits. As evidenced by the fact that many banks are still holding steady, keeping to a bare minimum of CRA cooperation doesn't necessarily mean sinking your business. There have been a lot of companies willing and able to make risky loans thanks in part to the government's relaxations and encouragements in order to attempt to allow ANYBODY to get a mortgage. A lot of people have accepted deals that, if they had enough financial sense to outdo their greed, they never would have TOUCHED.
Why hasn't this caused trouble until now? Simple: The housing bubble burst. As long as interest rates were low and housing prices were high, we were not set up for trouble. Once interest rates rose, fewer people were buying, and prices therefore fell, suddenly a ton of these risky mortgages started to fail. Interestingly enough, this started around 2006, when the Democrats regained a majority... but that's probably coincidence.
Blaming Republicans alone is silly... blaming Bush is sillier, as he tried to fix it and wasn't allowed to... blaming McCain is sillier, as he tried to fix it multiple times and was rebuffed. But the silliest of all is to blame capitalism.
Certain phrases can be used to identify certain ideals. Once you learn them, you can often identify certain types of economics (or religions) by their catchphrases. This crisis boils down to: "You deserve/have the right to [item] regardless of your ability to pay." This is not a capitalist catchphrase. This is socialism at work.
But I shouldn't have to make sure my gaming machine is able to connect to the Internet so that EA can tell if I'm playing my game, and I shouldn't have to call the company if I upgrade my motherboard, video card, and DVD drive one by one within the next few months.
I'd have the same problem if we had something like, say, armed guards checking your destination whenever you left your home to make sure you're not about to go commit a crime. I wouldn't care if they were expedient in their work and it barely caused a five-minute delay in my trip, or even if they 'gladly' let me know I was allowed to go from home to Walmart to Pizza Planet and back. I'd still object to that level of surveillance.
I have not purchased Spore and, if SecureRom is in Sims 3, despite being a near daily player of Sims 2 since it's opening and Sims 1 before that, I will not purchase Sims 3 either.
I did, and so did a lot of other people, on the Sims 2 forum, but the threads kept getting deleted. We weren't being abusive or anything, either. Just saying straight out that we're not buying any expansion packs or Sims 3 if it has SecureRom. (The base game and early expansions have Safedisc. No biggie.)
The biggie that the original colonists were concerned about was "taxation without representation". They didn't feel as though they had any control over what they got taxed for or why.
Congress's current approval rating is 17%. That's only a bit over half of Bush's rating, and Congress gets much better press.
Here's another thought to thunk. This country was founded on a unique concept, which first made its appearance among the persecuted early Christians in Rome: the concept that even the government, even the king, even the emperor, even if he is declared 'a god', is subject to a higher morality. In other words, just because the country's laws say it's legal doesn't make it right, and just because the country's laws say it's illegal doesn't make it wrong.
So is taking money through taxes the same as stealing? I'm not saying it always is or isn't. However, I disagree with your argument that the reason why it is not stealing is because it is not illegal. You yet may convince me, maybe even more easily than you think, but not with that argument.
Actually, according to the recently published Baylor Religion Survey, which was conducted by the Gallup Organization, traditional Christian religion greatly decreases credulity, from the occult to conspiracies to Bigfoot. It was one of the more surprising findings of the study.
I really don't buy the conclusion. The startle reflex does not necessarily mark someone who is afraid. It may, however, mark somebody who is alert.
I have a high startle reflex. Is it because I hold conservative viewpoints? They might say it is. I say it likely has more to do with a high physical sensitivity (past the point of the sensory borders.. it's called synesthesia when that happens) and have trained myself to be reasonably good at playing First Person Shooter games.
Other posters have mentioned conservatives indicating a higher level of mental health than liberals, and I've read similar statistics on charitable giving and on happiness in their lives. You could turn it around and claim that liberals have a lower startle reflex because they are more likely to be depressed.
Any way you put it, though, all it means is that the conservatives in the study were more alert. That isn't the same thing as fearful.
The newspapers always scream that. Up 5 points, good. Up 20 points, good. Up 200 points, good. Down 2 points, THE WORLD IS ENDING!!!!!
Weather forecasters do the same thing. O gosh we're going to have TEN INCHES OF SNOW!!!! Brace yourselves, folks, this is going to be BAD! New-Englanders don't do milk and bread runs on the local grocery stores over ten inches of snow. Sure, it's a pain to clean up and might net you a half day out of work (or less, depending on your area), but c'mon guys this happens at least five times a winter.
Sure, things are tight, and my family is hovering within $500/year (I am not kidding) of being able to receive all sorts of federal aid because of it. (We're getting no help this year, needless to say.) But you know what? There's still food in the fridge, there's still oil in the tank, and the car's still running. Thanks to a bit of thrift and some unexpected kindnesses, we'll weather out the storm.
So when we're facing an artificial, government-created bubble bursting and bringing down several stocks that were artificially high and prices that were artificially low, as we bounce slightly downward in our efforts to stabilize, would you rather hear the OMG THE SKY IS FALLING? Or that we're bouncing slightly downward in our efforts to stabilize? McCain says that the fundamentals are strong, and I don't believe that the current turbulence negates that statement.
The guy who faced enemy torture and appreciates the value of a safe, sturdy home says that while things are hard, they will get better. The guy who's popularity depends on making people believe that the outgoing President personally and single-handedly ruined our economy near-permanently claims that the skies are falling. However, sometimes you have to sell someone the problem before you can sell them the solution...
The economy isn't broken. We've had a few bubbles (housing, oil, tech) puff up and then burst. Growth has slowed, but more recently it's risen slightly again. Unemployment, though it's risen slightly, is still incredibly low.
The Clinton economy was not only unsustainable as it was not based in reality, but it was not so good to the entire country. The past nearly eight years have been some of the best for my family. My father, an ex-Navy electronics technician with years of experience, found himself out of work for parts of the Clinton era and working physical labor jobs for the rest. When your main employers are all connected to defense contractors, a gutted military causes a very difficult situation.
To point out that people who promote the use of condoms as an absolute cure-all and license to do whatever you please with whomever you please is a scientific and medical fallacy being accepted in our culture and taught in our schools, so what's another 'fallacy' in the form of creationism, flat-earth-ism, or anything else? We're already, so to speak, 'doing it wrong'.
Plus this crowd goes off into The Evolution Debate so quickly, all you got to do is breathe to set them off, it was kind of neat to change the topic for a while. Thank you!
What exactly are you trying to claim here? You keep responding to my claim that sex education classes are wrong to claim that condoms are a complete cure-all for all the perils of frequent, casual, multi-partner sex by claiming that they can prevent PREGNANCY 98% of the time IF USED PERFECTLY. (I'm not sure where you got the idea that studies on failure rate are done only on prostitutes, btw.)
In addition, you keep responding to "15% in typical use" with "2% with perfect use" as if the two situations are comparable. I think your next step was supposed to be making the case that the average teenage and pre-teen public school student is more likely to attain "perfect use" than "typical use"... good luck with that.
I already knew they worked reasonably well in pregnancy prevention when used very carefully. That's why my husband and I started using them when I had an adverse reaction to the hormone pill.
Come to think of it, considering that I use them while acknowledging their limits, and you seem intent on proving they Have None, who's obsessed?
I don't know, that depends on your point of view... I don't think 15-20% failure rate under typical use for pregnancy and 15-20% failure rate under best conditions for most STD's is good enough odds to declare it a 'statistically insignificant'.
I've never actually seen anyone apply a pin to a condom, especially my mother. That would be a waste of a reasonably expensive item, and the lesson that might be learned is already a no-brainer. I suspect you've got a strawman-stereotype picture built up of who I am and how I was educated, and that picture doesn't quite match up to my more complicated reality.
She taught me, as you just mentioned, that condoms are no cure for a lack of common sense. Public sex education, however, the type I mentioned above as a fallacy (common in my area), encourages lack of common sense with the excuse that a condom will somehow protect you from all ills. The closest I've ever seen to a caution has been, "Kind of try not to have sex with a complete stranger while you're high or drunk if you think of it, because you might not be quite as likely to USE THE CONDOM."
You're the one who added "while intact". You should have also added "before any genital contact is made" as well, as there's a little something my mother (a better sex educator than my school) taught me called 'pre-ejaculate'...
Not exactly involving storks or eyes, that, but it has a fair bit more medical/scientific proof. I didn't think it was all that new, either...
Apparently you didn't think so either, despite your mocking language, because you felt the need to append the all-important "while intact" and focus on the pregnancies while ignoring the STD's.
It was covered in my school, too. In the Christian-curriculum homeschool program, I mean. The persecution, everything. Darwin too, what he did and how it was verified. In the public school I attended for a couple of years, we never made it that far in the book by the end of the year, because it took us at least five weeks to cover each chapter.
I had theology class too... literature, grammar, spelling, science, history, math, government, economics, and Latin. Now that was an education...
Well, we already have people displaying big glossy brochures, infiltrating mass media, and showing up at every school claiming that you can prevent AIDS, pregnancy, and other 'evils' by using a condom when you have sex with whoever you feel like you love very much. So what's one more fallacy in today's marketplace of ideas?
Ah, yeah, if I was looking for someone to just take orders from the Republican party, I wouldn't pick someone who teams up with Democrats to take down corrupt Republicans.
Center for Immigration Studies. Please bear with me on the formatting... I can code data structures and object-oriented in C++, but I never did much in HTML... (Note after preview: Looks like Slashdot does the link work for me. Hooray!)
The parts of this that I found notable were:
Households headed by illegal aliens imposed more than $26.3 billion in costs on the federal government in 2002 and paid only $16 billion in taxes, creating a net fiscal deficit of almost $10.4 billion, or $2,700 per illegal household.
If illegal aliens were given amnesty and began to pay taxes and use services like households headed by legal immigrants with the same education levels, the estimated annual net fiscal deficit would increase from $2,700 per household to nearly $7,700, for a total net cost of $29 billion.
Costs increase dramatically because unskilled immigrants with legal status -- what most illegal aliens would become -- can access government programs, but still tend to make very modest tax payments.
And...
The vast majority of illegals hold jobs. Thus the fiscal deficit they create for the federal government is not the result of an unwillingness to work.
Open immigration would only work if we reduced the levels of social programs in the U.S. During times when we've let in waves of poor, less-educated immigrants, the extent of social programs has not been anywhere near to the extent that it is today. We can no longer afford to give food, supplies, housing, education, medical care, and retirement pay to anybody who crosses our border, regardless of their ability to pay.
One study on the federal level only shows that illegal immigrants cost more in social services than they pay in taxes, to the tune of about $10 billion. If they were all granted amnesty and began to pay taxes and use social services at the rate of legal immigrants of the same educational level, that deficit would rise to $30 billion. (Legal immigrants as a whole do not create a deficit, because a higher percentage of them are highly skilled/educated. Therefore, they pay more in taxes and use fewer services.)
Our current economy and level of government control depends on a very delicate balance: enough richer people to fund the services given to the poor. If you suddenly flood the country with 10-12 billion poor, even if they are all making U.S. legal minimum wage as legal citizens, that balance will tip. (Actually, the balance has already tipped. We are currently dealing with it by increasing the federal debt and forcing the states to increase THEIR debt through unfunded mandates.)
It comes to three choices: Throw open the borders and end a lot of social programs, close up the borders and guard them well, or watch our cradle-to-grave government collapse in dire bankruptcy and in all likelihood take the world economy with it.
As a "disclaimer"... Yes, I advocate dropping and/or limiting those social programs. No, I don't want 'poor people to starve'. Right now, my family does what we can to support charities and do our own good, giving anything we do have, like spare sleeping space or an extra seat for dinner. I'd continue to want to do anything I can to help those in need!
Why can't we do more? Well, 20% of our family paycheck goes to income tax alone. We spend on mortgage, electrical/phone/heat, a simple internet connection, gas for the cars.. that's it. We don't own a cell phone. What's left, 8% of the original gross, is our food budget. (Entertainment and savings are both 0%.)
Our food budget is about 67% of the amount that a family our size gets given for food stamps in my state. In April, when the baby is due, it will be 55%.
Well... yes and no. When it comes to welfare and social security, you definitely have a case. However, there is a lot more than that in our country that's taxpayer funded.
Granted, they're probably not making extensive use of libraries. But they are using the roads and other such utilities. The kids are in the elementary schools. In addition (and I do not disagree with the policy even though it leads to abuse, btw) they receive medical care at any hospital, regardless of immigration status or ability to pay. In addition, all studies show a definite higher crime concentration among them.
I do believe that most people worldwide are basically decent people. Unfortunately, among those who come illegally are a higher concentration of criminals, as better jobs isn't the only reason to want to change countries and disappear. From law enforcement to medical treatment of crime victims to jailing and departing costs, costs add up...
In any case, sure, revamp the system, sure, make it easier for good workers to get in, however we work it. But just letting them continue to come in illegally because the system is currently too tough... no, that causes far more problems than it solves for anybody.
I support fixing laws that are broken. I would have to do a more thorough examination of the immigration laws to determine how they are broken and how best to fix them.
What concerns me is the "Titanic Effect". We are not the saviors of the entire world. I care very much about people in other countries, and I support (financially, not just in theory) efforts to give them richer lives. (A lot of that support ends up in either Africa or South America.) However, you need a strong arm to be able to lift people from the water.
The "Titanic Effect"? When the ship sank, there were boats that had a couple of empty spaces, that might have gone in and taken in one or two survivors. The problem was the ferocity of the survivors, which is an understandable reaction considering that they were facing death. A lifeboat could be very easily swarmed and sunk, and instead of saving two more lives, you'd be dooming another forty (give or take). I do not support throwing the borders open to anyone and everyone just because "it's mean to exclude people".
I have no objection to anyone who enters legally and seeks to assimilate (which doesn't mean refusing to follow their holidays, fashions, or cooking styles.. I love learning new cultures!), and I have no objection to a careful review and overhaul of the immigration laws. I do, however, tend to prefer efforts that seek to bring other parts of the world to our level of freedom and prosperity.
The "we're paying all their medical bills and educational services and welfare checks etc." argument on my side is not racist or nationalist, as I trend to conservative libertarian and disapprove of the same socialistic behavior when applied to fellow Americans. Give me back more of my own tax money. Let me take care of those in need, economically and with a genuine will. A meal and a hug is more valuable than a blank check and an empty stare. (Granted, that's a whole other topic. Suffice to say my frustration about paying the bills for illegal immigrants does not begin or end with the illegal immigrants.)
Ok, so it's not about racism, it's just that it's wrong to object to people sneaking in illegally, because in the past other people not related to us have objected to people coming in legally? That seems a bit of a stretch to me. (I'm the descendant of some of those various European nationalities, you see.)
If you form it like that, there's no way I can object to anything in your eyes without hating people. It must be an interesting life you lead.
Some non-working women are full-time homemakers, and others are "lazy b***" as said before. I'm saying this as a full-time homemaker.
"She never saved any money..." My mother, a homemaker who is not lazy, is not happy unless she has $10K in the bank and proper pension contributions from my father's job.
There are a couple of ways to be a homemaker. Some women sit and watch soap operas all day. Others are possibly the busiest people on the planet. They mend clothing so that they don't have to buy more. They re-use tin foil when things get tight. Some of them homeschool. Some even still buy fruits in season for half the price and can them for the winter.
The non-lazy homemakers are not as likely to get caught flat-footed in retirement. They've been saving their family money for decades. They know how to trim costs. If they DO have to work outside the home, they have much less trouble adapting and are often prized by their supervisors for their work ethic and quality.
"Women of that era were not taught to go over finances..." Not true, at least not true in my area. My mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother handled the finances. It was considered a given that a good mother taught her sons and daughters how to write a check and balance a budget. Maybe rich women down South somewhere were taught to go hang around and be pretty all the time, but New Englander farmer wives have always had to be on their toes!
Precisely! I need a car in my area. I need it, no question about it.. I'm miles from anywhere, no transit system nearby, etc. What do you think I pay on it per month?
It's an '89 Chevy Cavalier with over 150K miles on it. I bought it outright, used, in college about 11 years ago. As long as it's still safe and still runs, I'm going to keep running it.
And yes, it is possible to keep a car for that long IF you get the oil changes done, don't jackrabbit off every stop sign, remember that the engine needs to warm up a little in the wintertime, and try to avoid towing sailboats. (My 4cyl wagon has instructions for a trailer hitch, but doesn't recommend using it.) When it dies, I can spend $6K-$9K and get a used car that's much nicer than a 'clunker'... if you pay in full by check, they'll knock up to 25-30% off the price!
I asked a friend of mine in Holland about this and the answer I got back was basically: 50% income tax rate + 17% sales tax rate + 10% unemployment in areas.
I'll do without, thanks. Under those conditions, health insurance (which is not the same as health care, which American hospitals must provide by law regardless of ability to pay) is just too expensive.
Oh, btw, add in a multi-tiered government system that requires the poor to pay more before the government health insurance kicks in. This guy in particular receives NO health care at all because he can't afford the initial couple hundred dollars before The Almighty State kicks in.
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McCain tried at least twice and Bush once (with McCain) to deal with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, but the Democrats blocked it and it didn't get through.
War spending has done great things for the economy in my part of the state. Raises/bonuses are up and the only major companies doing layoffs are the casinos.
What actually STARTED this mess, however, was the Community Reinvestment Act, which was signed in by Jimmy Carter and used during the Clinton Administration by Janet Reno to threaten banks in order to force them to make more high-risk loans.
Since then there have been more culprits. As evidenced by the fact that many banks are still holding steady, keeping to a bare minimum of CRA cooperation doesn't necessarily mean sinking your business. There have been a lot of companies willing and able to make risky loans thanks in part to the government's relaxations and encouragements in order to attempt to allow ANYBODY to get a mortgage. A lot of people have accepted deals that, if they had enough financial sense to outdo their greed, they never would have TOUCHED.
Why hasn't this caused trouble until now? Simple: The housing bubble burst. As long as interest rates were low and housing prices were high, we were not set up for trouble. Once interest rates rose, fewer people were buying, and prices therefore fell, suddenly a ton of these risky mortgages started to fail. Interestingly enough, this started around 2006, when the Democrats regained a majority... but that's probably coincidence.
Blaming Republicans alone is silly... blaming Bush is sillier, as he tried to fix it and wasn't allowed to... blaming McCain is sillier, as he tried to fix it multiple times and was rebuffed. But the silliest of all is to blame capitalism.
Certain phrases can be used to identify certain ideals. Once you learn them, you can often identify certain types of economics (or religions) by their catchphrases. This crisis boils down to: "You deserve/have the right to [item] regardless of your ability to pay." This is not a capitalist catchphrase. This is socialism at work.
But I shouldn't have to make sure my gaming machine is able to connect to the Internet so that EA can tell if I'm playing my game, and I shouldn't have to call the company if I upgrade my motherboard, video card, and DVD drive one by one within the next few months.
I'd have the same problem if we had something like, say, armed guards checking your destination whenever you left your home to make sure you're not about to go commit a crime. I wouldn't care if they were expedient in their work and it barely caused a five-minute delay in my trip, or even if they 'gladly' let me know I was allowed to go from home to Walmart to Pizza Planet and back. I'd still object to that level of surveillance.
I have not purchased Spore and, if SecureRom is in Sims 3, despite being a near daily player of Sims 2 since it's opening and Sims 1 before that, I will not purchase Sims 3 either.
I did, and so did a lot of other people, on the Sims 2 forum, but the threads kept getting deleted. We weren't being abusive or anything, either. Just saying straight out that we're not buying any expansion packs or Sims 3 if it has SecureRom. (The base game and early expansions have Safedisc. No biggie.)
Ah nope, many of us think he would have been worse.
The biggie that the original colonists were concerned about was "taxation without representation". They didn't feel as though they had any control over what they got taxed for or why.
Congress's current approval rating is 17%. That's only a bit over half of Bush's rating, and Congress gets much better press.
Here's another thought to thunk. This country was founded on a unique concept, which first made its appearance among the persecuted early Christians in Rome: the concept that even the government, even the king, even the emperor, even if he is declared 'a god', is subject to a higher morality. In other words, just because the country's laws say it's legal doesn't make it right, and just because the country's laws say it's illegal doesn't make it wrong.
So is taking money through taxes the same as stealing? I'm not saying it always is or isn't. However, I disagree with your argument that the reason why it is not stealing is because it is not illegal. You yet may convince me, maybe even more easily than you think, but not with that argument.
Actually, according to the recently published Baylor Religion Survey, which was conducted by the Gallup Organization, traditional Christian religion greatly decreases credulity, from the occult to conspiracies to Bigfoot. It was one of the more surprising findings of the study.
I really don't buy the conclusion. The startle reflex does not necessarily mark someone who is afraid. It may, however, mark somebody who is alert.
I have a high startle reflex. Is it because I hold conservative viewpoints? They might say it is. I say it likely has more to do with a high physical sensitivity (past the point of the sensory borders.. it's called synesthesia when that happens) and have trained myself to be reasonably good at playing First Person Shooter games.
Other posters have mentioned conservatives indicating a higher level of mental health than liberals, and I've read similar statistics on charitable giving and on happiness in their lives. You could turn it around and claim that liberals have a lower startle reflex because they are more likely to be depressed.
Any way you put it, though, all it means is that the conservatives in the study were more alert. That isn't the same thing as fearful.
When they want to have sex in the parks, in the schools, and in your living room?
I have no problem with people who like to have sex at home and leave it in the bedroom.. or kitchen table.. or wherever they do it in there.
The newspapers always scream that. Up 5 points, good. Up 20 points, good. Up 200 points, good. Down 2 points, THE WORLD IS ENDING!!!!!
Weather forecasters do the same thing. O gosh we're going to have TEN INCHES OF SNOW!!!! Brace yourselves, folks, this is going to be BAD! New-Englanders don't do milk and bread runs on the local grocery stores over ten inches of snow. Sure, it's a pain to clean up and might net you a half day out of work (or less, depending on your area), but c'mon guys this happens at least five times a winter.
Sure, things are tight, and my family is hovering within $500/year (I am not kidding) of being able to receive all sorts of federal aid because of it. (We're getting no help this year, needless to say.) But you know what? There's still food in the fridge, there's still oil in the tank, and the car's still running. Thanks to a bit of thrift and some unexpected kindnesses, we'll weather out the storm.
So when we're facing an artificial, government-created bubble bursting and bringing down several stocks that were artificially high and prices that were artificially low, as we bounce slightly downward in our efforts to stabilize, would you rather hear the OMG THE SKY IS FALLING? Or that we're bouncing slightly downward in our efforts to stabilize? McCain says that the fundamentals are strong, and I don't believe that the current turbulence negates that statement.
The guy who faced enemy torture and appreciates the value of a safe, sturdy home says that while things are hard, they will get better. The guy who's popularity depends on making people believe that the outgoing President personally and single-handedly ruined our economy near-permanently claims that the skies are falling. However, sometimes you have to sell someone the problem before you can sell them the solution...
The economy isn't broken. We've had a few bubbles (housing, oil, tech) puff up and then burst. Growth has slowed, but more recently it's risen slightly again. Unemployment, though it's risen slightly, is still incredibly low.
The Clinton economy was not only unsustainable as it was not based in reality, but it was not so good to the entire country. The past nearly eight years have been some of the best for my family. My father, an ex-Navy electronics technician with years of experience, found himself out of work for parts of the Clinton era and working physical labor jobs for the rest. When your main employers are all connected to defense contractors, a gutted military causes a very difficult situation.
To point out that people who promote the use of condoms as an absolute cure-all and license to do whatever you please with whomever you please is a scientific and medical fallacy being accepted in our culture and taught in our schools, so what's another 'fallacy' in the form of creationism, flat-earth-ism, or anything else? We're already, so to speak, 'doing it wrong'.
Plus this crowd goes off into The Evolution Debate so quickly, all you got to do is breathe to set them off, it was kind of neat to change the topic for a while. Thank you!
What exactly are you trying to claim here? You keep responding to my claim that sex education classes are wrong to claim that condoms are a complete cure-all for all the perils of frequent, casual, multi-partner sex by claiming that they can prevent PREGNANCY 98% of the time IF USED PERFECTLY. (I'm not sure where you got the idea that studies on failure rate are done only on prostitutes, btw.)
In addition, you keep responding to "15% in typical use" with "2% with perfect use" as if the two situations are comparable. I think your next step was supposed to be making the case that the average teenage and pre-teen public school student is more likely to attain "perfect use" than "typical use"... good luck with that.
I already knew they worked reasonably well in pregnancy prevention when used very carefully. That's why my husband and I started using them when I had an adverse reaction to the hormone pill.
Come to think of it, considering that I use them while acknowledging their limits, and you seem intent on proving they Have None, who's obsessed?
I don't know, that depends on your point of view... I don't think 15-20% failure rate under typical use for pregnancy and 15-20% failure rate under best conditions for most STD's is good enough odds to declare it a 'statistically insignificant'.
I've never actually seen anyone apply a pin to a condom, especially my mother. That would be a waste of a reasonably expensive item, and the lesson that might be learned is already a no-brainer. I suspect you've got a strawman-stereotype picture built up of who I am and how I was educated, and that picture doesn't quite match up to my more complicated reality.
She taught me, as you just mentioned, that condoms are no cure for a lack of common sense. Public sex education, however, the type I mentioned above as a fallacy (common in my area), encourages lack of common sense with the excuse that a condom will somehow protect you from all ills. The closest I've ever seen to a caution has been, "Kind of try not to have sex with a complete stranger while you're high or drunk if you think of it, because you might not be quite as likely to USE THE CONDOM."
You're the one who added "while intact". You should have also added "before any genital contact is made" as well, as there's a little something my mother (a better sex educator than my school) taught me called 'pre-ejaculate'...
Not exactly involving storks or eyes, that, but it has a fair bit more medical/scientific proof. I didn't think it was all that new, either...
Apparently you didn't think so either, despite your mocking language, because you felt the need to append the all-important "while intact" and focus on the pregnancies while ignoring the STD's.
It was covered in my school, too. In the Christian-curriculum homeschool program, I mean. The persecution, everything. Darwin too, what he did and how it was verified. In the public school I attended for a couple of years, we never made it that far in the book by the end of the year, because it took us at least five weeks to cover each chapter.
I had theology class too... literature, grammar, spelling, science, history, math, government, economics, and Latin. Now that was an education...
Well, we already have people displaying big glossy brochures, infiltrating mass media, and showing up at every school claiming that you can prevent AIDS, pregnancy, and other 'evils' by using a condom when you have sex with whoever you feel like you love very much. So what's one more fallacy in today's marketplace of ideas?
Ah, yeah, if I was looking for someone to just take orders from the Republican party, I wouldn't pick someone who teams up with Democrats to take down corrupt Republicans.
http://www.cis.org/articles/2004/fiscalexec.html
Center for Immigration Studies. Please bear with me on the formatting... I can code data structures and object-oriented in C++, but I never did much in HTML... (Note after preview: Looks like Slashdot does the link work for me. Hooray!)
The parts of this that I found notable were:
Households headed by illegal aliens imposed more than $26.3 billion in costs on the federal government in 2002 and paid only $16 billion in taxes, creating a net fiscal deficit of almost $10.4 billion, or $2,700 per illegal household.
If illegal aliens were given amnesty and began to pay taxes and use services like households headed by legal immigrants with the same education levels, the estimated annual net fiscal deficit would increase from $2,700 per household to nearly $7,700, for a total net cost of $29 billion.
Costs increase dramatically because unskilled immigrants with legal status -- what most illegal aliens would become -- can access government programs, but still tend to make very modest tax payments.
And...
The vast majority of illegals hold jobs. Thus the fiscal deficit they create for the federal government is not the result of an unwillingness to work.
Open immigration would only work if we reduced the levels of social programs in the U.S. During times when we've let in waves of poor, less-educated immigrants, the extent of social programs has not been anywhere near to the extent that it is today. We can no longer afford to give food, supplies, housing, education, medical care, and retirement pay to anybody who crosses our border, regardless of their ability to pay.
One study on the federal level only shows that illegal immigrants cost more in social services than they pay in taxes, to the tune of about $10 billion. If they were all granted amnesty and began to pay taxes and use social services at the rate of legal immigrants of the same educational level, that deficit would rise to $30 billion. (Legal immigrants as a whole do not create a deficit, because a higher percentage of them are highly skilled/educated. Therefore, they pay more in taxes and use fewer services.)
Our current economy and level of government control depends on a very delicate balance: enough richer people to fund the services given to the poor. If you suddenly flood the country with 10-12 billion poor, even if they are all making U.S. legal minimum wage as legal citizens, that balance will tip. (Actually, the balance has already tipped. We are currently dealing with it by increasing the federal debt and forcing the states to increase THEIR debt through unfunded mandates.)
It comes to three choices: Throw open the borders and end a lot of social programs, close up the borders and guard them well, or watch our cradle-to-grave government collapse in dire bankruptcy and in all likelihood take the world economy with it.
As a "disclaimer"... Yes, I advocate dropping and/or limiting those social programs. No, I don't want 'poor people to starve'. Right now, my family does what we can to support charities and do our own good, giving anything we do have, like spare sleeping space or an extra seat for dinner. I'd continue to want to do anything I can to help those in need!
Why can't we do more? Well, 20% of our family paycheck goes to income tax alone. We spend on mortgage, electrical/phone/heat, a simple internet connection, gas for the cars.. that's it. We don't own a cell phone. What's left, 8% of the original gross, is our food budget. (Entertainment and savings are both 0%.)
Our food budget is about 67% of the amount that a family our size gets given for food stamps in my state. In April, when the baby is due, it will be 55%.
Well... yes and no. When it comes to welfare and social security, you definitely have a case. However, there is a lot more than that in our country that's taxpayer funded.
Granted, they're probably not making extensive use of libraries. But they are using the roads and other such utilities. The kids are in the elementary schools. In addition (and I do not disagree with the policy even though it leads to abuse, btw) they receive medical care at any hospital, regardless of immigration status or ability to pay. In addition, all studies show a definite higher crime concentration among them.
I do believe that most people worldwide are basically decent people. Unfortunately, among those who come illegally are a higher concentration of criminals, as better jobs isn't the only reason to want to change countries and disappear. From law enforcement to medical treatment of crime victims to jailing and departing costs, costs add up...
In any case, sure, revamp the system, sure, make it easier for good workers to get in, however we work it. But just letting them continue to come in illegally because the system is currently too tough... no, that causes far more problems than it solves for anybody.
I support fixing laws that are broken. I would have to do a more thorough examination of the immigration laws to determine how they are broken and how best to fix them.
What concerns me is the "Titanic Effect". We are not the saviors of the entire world. I care very much about people in other countries, and I support (financially, not just in theory) efforts to give them richer lives. (A lot of that support ends up in either Africa or South America.) However, you need a strong arm to be able to lift people from the water.
The "Titanic Effect"? When the ship sank, there were boats that had a couple of empty spaces, that might have gone in and taken in one or two survivors. The problem was the ferocity of the survivors, which is an understandable reaction considering that they were facing death. A lifeboat could be very easily swarmed and sunk, and instead of saving two more lives, you'd be dooming another forty (give or take). I do not support throwing the borders open to anyone and everyone just because "it's mean to exclude people".
I have no objection to anyone who enters legally and seeks to assimilate (which doesn't mean refusing to follow their holidays, fashions, or cooking styles.. I love learning new cultures!), and I have no objection to a careful review and overhaul of the immigration laws. I do, however, tend to prefer efforts that seek to bring other parts of the world to our level of freedom and prosperity.
The "we're paying all their medical bills and educational services and welfare checks etc." argument on my side is not racist or nationalist, as I trend to conservative libertarian and disapprove of the same socialistic behavior when applied to fellow Americans. Give me back more of my own tax money. Let me take care of those in need, economically and with a genuine will. A meal and a hug is more valuable than a blank check and an empty stare. (Granted, that's a whole other topic. Suffice to say my frustration about paying the bills for illegal immigrants does not begin or end with the illegal immigrants.)
Ok, so it's not about racism, it's just that it's wrong to object to people sneaking in illegally, because in the past other people not related to us have objected to people coming in legally? That seems a bit of a stretch to me. (I'm the descendant of some of those various European nationalities, you see.)
If you form it like that, there's no way I can object to anything in your eyes without hating people. It must be an interesting life you lead.
Some non-working women are full-time homemakers, and others are "lazy b***" as said before. I'm saying this as a full-time homemaker.
"She never saved any money..." My mother, a homemaker who is not lazy, is not happy unless she has $10K in the bank and proper pension contributions from my father's job.
There are a couple of ways to be a homemaker. Some women sit and watch soap operas all day. Others are possibly the busiest people on the planet. They mend clothing so that they don't have to buy more. They re-use tin foil when things get tight. Some of them homeschool. Some even still buy fruits in season for half the price and can them for the winter.
The non-lazy homemakers are not as likely to get caught flat-footed in retirement. They've been saving their family money for decades. They know how to trim costs. If they DO have to work outside the home, they have much less trouble adapting and are often prized by their supervisors for their work ethic and quality.
"Women of that era were not taught to go over finances..." Not true, at least not true in my area. My mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother handled the finances. It was considered a given that a good mother taught her sons and daughters how to write a check and balance a budget. Maybe rich women down South somewhere were taught to go hang around and be pretty all the time, but New Englander farmer wives have always had to be on their toes!
Precisely! I need a car in my area. I need it, no question about it.. I'm miles from anywhere, no transit system nearby, etc. What do you think I pay on it per month?
It's an '89 Chevy Cavalier with over 150K miles on it. I bought it outright, used, in college about 11 years ago. As long as it's still safe and still runs, I'm going to keep running it.
And yes, it is possible to keep a car for that long IF you get the oil changes done, don't jackrabbit off every stop sign, remember that the engine needs to warm up a little in the wintertime, and try to avoid towing sailboats. (My 4cyl wagon has instructions for a trailer hitch, but doesn't recommend using it.) When it dies, I can spend $6K-$9K and get a used car that's much nicer than a 'clunker'... if you pay in full by check, they'll knock up to 25-30% off the price!
I asked a friend of mine in Holland about this and the answer I got back was basically: 50% income tax rate + 17% sales tax rate + 10% unemployment in areas.
I'll do without, thanks. Under those conditions, health insurance (which is not the same as health care, which American hospitals must provide by law regardless of ability to pay) is just too expensive.
Oh, btw, add in a multi-tiered government system that requires the poor to pay more before the government health insurance kicks in. This guy in particular receives NO health care at all because he can't afford the initial couple hundred dollars before The Almighty State kicks in.