Meaning that, we will spend 45 trillion dollars to basically get today's weather.
Now, let's consider what this means. It means we have to use 1/5th of the energy we presently use now. By any conceivable measure, modern society places the wealth of a society based on how much energy it can consume. All things being equal, spending money to get the same or less of an effect will make people poorer. I mean, in a perfect world, where oil just poured out of a big new 100 billion barrel find in Montana and we didn't have to do anything about AGW, we could take that 45 trillion and feed the world, cure AIDs, build a base on Mars, and still have enough money to invade Iraq 20 times over. It's a lot of money to basically make us poorer.
We might have to do it, after all. But, let's call this for what it is. Because of climate change, humanity is about to become a whole lot poorer.
During summer in the Northern hemisphere, the Earth is farther from the sun due to its elliptical orbit. Of course it's been getting colder during the period that the Earth is getting farther from the sun. Try looking at the long-term trend of global temperatures, say, over the past twenty years. I think you'll see temperatures have been increasing.
The anomaly figures I gave you already take seasonal variances into consideration. So, you would read the FTP link as.xxx degrees above or below "normal".
The planet has been getting colder over the last six months, of that, there is no doubt. Even the IPCC graphs and the NASA graphs are starting to show a downward trend at the very end, at this point.
But, that could be a "weather" thing and if the AGW people are right, temps should start moving back upwards. If they do, you are right. Hurrah, let's go blow 45 trillion dollars and knock the temp down 1/10th of a degree by living in the stone ages. But, if they do continue to go down, they do so against every prediction made by every computer model.
the problem with the sunspot people is, they don't have a model yet... they say, "oh lack of sunspots makes temperature go down', but no one has been able to find a physical mechanism. (outside from some controversial danish studies on cosmic rays and cloud formation).. but, if the temperature keeps going down, that means the AGW CO2 based computer models are wrong. So, yeah, its a pretty simple bet. Up or down. The science is not set in stone.
Probably also makes you drive more cautiously, as in "if I'm in a crash, I'm gonna die! - don't crash!"
It's crazy, but people modded me as funny without considering that I actually came up with an easy 400-500 pounds, or about 25% of the weight of a modern car. I doubled the article in there. I can chop more weight.
get rid of
a) any bumper mandate b) the emergency brake c) power windows [motors/cabling] d) passenger windshield wiper e) power mirrors
bottom line is, all the stuff in the car takes up weight. those fancy speakers and subwoofers, they gotta go. even the radio is debatable.
moral of the story is, you gotta start designing cars more like spaceships, where energy / weight is at a premium.
and you can get rid of the heavy leather seats and use a lighter spalco racing seat.
get rid of the spare tire and the wrench. (just get a tow truck for when you need it)
and really, you want to get rid of the tailpipe altogether and just run the exhaust out to the side of the car rather than all the way back.
consider using a plastic fuel tank
how much do disk brakes weigh? do you really need brakes on all four wheels?
I was thinking more like the snow in China, and the hurricane season that hasn't happened in 4 years. But oh, we're going to get more hurricanes, any day now.
I mean by satellites operated without AGW funding on the line. NASA keeps changing its historical data, as do other people.
The reason given for this in AGW circles is the recently ended LaNina. If temperatures continue to fall, then, AGW theories won't stack up.
But the main point is this: I've not seen a single climate (as in non-weather event), that justifies the amount of money proposed be spent on AGW. Just give me one predicted event... and I'll see you a snow in Iraq.
No discernible warming since 2000? Then this article from NASA [nasa.gov] must be all wrong then. Thanks for letting us know! *rolleyes
The source isn't credible, because it's James Hansen, whose pretty plugged into the global warming scene. He has a lot of shoddy fortran code to stick up for.
Better comparison is look at the IPCC forecasts versus today, and you'll see that the planet hasn't actually warmed.
a) get rid of the catalytic converter b) shorten the tailpipe and shrink the muffler c) get rid of airbags d) get rid of power heated super seats e) get rid of side impact safety beams
that right there gets you some good weight savings.
Not at all - but when the person purchased that 5000lb SUV, did they realize the impact this would have - on them and potentially others - should they have such a tire blowout? I'd imagine they should be, so why shouldn't they be held to a higher standard?
So, what's the difference between the 5000lb SUV and the 4000lb Pontiac GTO Coupe?
If you are going to make a tool that you can profit on, you have to innovate. Right now, the old tricks of text editing and syntax highlighting are boring because developers have gotten used to them. I'm working on a closed source development product for Windows (*) [while Open for Linux] and, my whole approach is to try and do something totally different. If I'm successful, I hope to get enough shareware money to pay credit card bills and maybe work full time on my own projects for a year or two.
If you are just doing the old stack with a slightly snazzier editor, those days are gone. You have to do something different, you might want to think about language and you might even think about domain specificity. But there's room out there for both and if the closed source people are successful, and profitable, it only allows the open source people to use that funded development as a working requirements document for a more open implementation. I honestly hope that I write something that is good enough for the FOSS people to rip my ideas off, because, god knows, I'm going to rip them off too. IT's the composition that counts, not the paragraphs. I hope that makes some sense.
F--- it. If the Totally Stupid Administration, er uh, TSA, wants to turn airports into some sort of a gestapo land so that all their government union thugs can pretend they are doing something positive for the country, then, well, screw them. But until citizens of the USA have the right to petition and get the firing of any TSA worker, then, I see no reason to subject myself to these thugs.
Isn't it weird? Conservatives don't have a problem with the government invading their personal lives, but they DO have a problem with the government invading the corporations' lives.
What a classic set of liberal distortions!
Conservatives, for the most part, do not want the government to enter our lives. However, we value the following rights as tantamount to freedom: a) free speech, b) freedom of commerce, c) the right to hold property and d) the right to get income from the investment of that property. That is why, as a rule, you will see conservatives balk at any sort of proposed rule about what kind of car, house, medicine, or anything else that a person might own or buy.
Conversely, the liberal would legislate the federal right to ALL property, and impose regulations on ANYTHING. Liberals always complain about "conservative fascism", but, then, their solutions always involve creating ever more regulation (and thus, devaluing property). Liberals might make you free in the Khmer Rouge sense of the word, but, ultimately, they make you poor.
In the free market state you Americans idolize, corporations and citizens should have the same treatment under the eye of the law. No more, no less.
Actually, we view corporations as distinctly less than the rights of citizens. However, corporations, via our shares, are our property, and therefor, we resist what the government would do with it. But, make no bones about it, in the eyes of a conservative, owning a stake in Exxon Mobil, or even the entire company, is no different than the legality of owning a pencil. It is my company, my pencil, and I can do with it what I will.
I have enough experience to know that very often those people who think themselves a "pretty darned good judge of character" aren't that good as they think.
Fair enough. A lot of people on this board thought that Hans was innocent.
In this case, I wonder: wasn't Reiser committed wrongfully? Because if finding the body could turn the conviction from first degree to second degree murder it clearly means that first degree murder hasn't been proved beyond reasonable doubt.
I think Reiser is guilty. The evidence was overwhelming, I thought. The reason the DA would be willing to cop some sort of a deal would be to bring closure to the victim's family. They would be able to bury Nina and try and move on with their lives, and Hans is still going to be behind bars for a good, long time.
Finally, the juror mentioned in this article [wired.com] that made his decision based on the accused's eyes really scares me. What if I had been tried? Would a crazy schoolteacher send me to prison for life because he didn't like the look in my eyes?
I think you voice the fears of someone who is younger. As you get older, you get a better sense of who is sincere and who has something to hide and I would probably think the juror's judgement is ok. The human mind is a pretty darned good judge of character, if you listen to it.
And besides, that's why there's more than one juror.
I've got the troll points for arguing that he was guilty from the get-go, and I think that he is. But, in this case, I think before those people who supported him jump off of a mental cliff, let's let the DA actually deliver the body and the proof of Hans's cooperation. The story is believable enough, but, let's let the DA PROVE it first.
I would tear down all the caternary wires and develop lithium ion trains, and have them take a charge at central points. All those wires depress real estate prices and would, for example, make property on the delaware and christina rivers more desirable for development.
People don't need cars in cities. Instead, what you do is put shopping centers on the fricking rail lines so that people can get off, shop, and then get back on the train. The Northeast is not just a transportation problem, but an urban planning one as well.
All of the track needs to be upgraded. There's a lot of wood rail track that's spiked still, dated from nearly a century ago. This needs to be ripped up and replaced with concrete tied continuously welded track to allow for high speed rail service. You also need to have more sidings so that trains can pull off for loading and unloading without clogging the rail lines, and you need to have more loops for turning them around.
But yeah, the northeast needs a massive rail upgrade, and it wouldn't be all -that- expensive to do. I can't see it being more than 100 billion dollars!
Well, apart from the fact a dam is actually useful, and a train between two holiday resorts during a time when people have no money to spend on holidays is all kinds of pointless.
Ok, the fundamental problem of the USA right now is that our infrastructure is old and inefficient and its killing us, ultimately driving this recession. So, during the resultant recession, the government grabs a bunch of people and goes and fixes things.
It's a public works project, so, you'll keep engineers working to build it, construction people working on it. I mean, I'm not a big fan of government spending and taxes that go with it, but there are times when the feds have to step in and clean house and this is one. So, yeah, the Feds should be supporting this and other rail lines, improving the roads (improve fuel efficiency), upgrading power stations, (like change out fuel oil burning plants and then coal plants for nukes), and should be researching some sort of way to get all the methane hydrate off the coast back into the USA to ease a natural gas shortage.
In Delaware crossing Red Mill Road and Harmony Road until the late 70s. The amount of signaling at those crossings was insane too since those trains went through there around 100+ MPH.
Allowing real high speed trains in the US is a threat to our dependence on foreign oil, and the foreign lobbyists simply won't ALLOW it. At some point there will be no wide open spaces left for these trains, and then the public (nimbys) will be against trains on their own, without opposition from Big Oil.
So how does that explain the hundreds of mile long trains that criss cross the USA hauling freight, every day? 90% of all freight is shipped by rail in the USA. Guess your conspiracy didn't quite work out, huh.
Actually, the bulk of continental freight shipped in the USA is by rail. Have a look at the rolling stock of the likes of Union Pacific, Norfolk Suffolk or CSX, and you'll see that there's been quite a bit going on.
For example, cars are just getting into gas electric hybrids, but the railroads have been running diesel electric hybrids now for decades. The locomotives are now into a new generation of hybrid technology.
The fuel efficiency of these rail lines is staggering. One or two locomotives pull trains that can be two miles long!
But you are preaching to the choir here. I love trains.
Ok, I've seen some inattentive election judges, but how do they get away with that?
You could probably figure out who the recently dead people are and where they lived based on publicly available information, or, at information available to your friends in government. From there, you just have to show up and vote.
With that, you don't even need to have your polling place people be crooked. You just need to educate them that every vote counts, and that, they need to extend the benefit of the doubt, so that, when your "dead" people walk into vote, they don't even get questioned for fear of disenfranchisement.
The Republicans spent tens of millions of dollars investigating
We Republicans were just doing our part to help the first black american get nominated to a political party. You see, back then, Dick Cheney's spies had already pegged Obama as an up and comer and Hillary as a future rival, so, we had to do our part to help the guy out.
It is amazing, though that, Obama's people went and brought up EVERY SINGLE REPUBLICAN CHARGE as if it were fact. We heard it all from the Obama camp, as if it were gospel. I had to wonder, where were all these Democrats before? But there you saw it, liberal writers chalking up Clinton's shady whitewater dealings, the coverups of the abuses of women, the murder of Vincent Foster and Ron Brown. It was like, every thing Ken Starr ever even dreamed of came out magnified and in technicolor by the Obama machine and in states where values mattered to people.
The problem is, ultimately, that parents are not having enough kids. So, whereas before, you might have one smart kid and a couple of ok ones destined for the factory, now, just that one kid you have HAS to go to college, and frankly, they may not be up to it. Instead of parents beating their children and their teachers up because Johnny isn't into books, maybe these parents should have had more kids, so that they could get one that's really and truly cut out for higher education, rather than being shoehorned into it.
I should probably explicitly state that this includes abortion.
That won't happen in a million years. Americans are split evenly on abortion, but, nearly unanimously would prefer that the morons that get themselves pregnant take care of their own problems.
Besides, why do you want the country to have less kids? I would think that, we should have even MORE native children, so that we can have a huge army and take over the world. In any case, the vast majority of the welfare state that the USA has become is basically a tax on young people to take care of the old. Just look at how the US budget is stacked for old people - social security, medicare, and more. You need to have more young people paying taxes, or grandma has to live in a refrigerator box.
Slashdot Mirror
Huricane frequency isn't all that connected with global warming, hurricane intensity is what should increase.
That hasn't happened either. I work in hurricane insurance software, and it just hasn't happened.
Blow 45 trillion dollars and knock the temp down 1/10th of a degree by living in the stone ages? Can you say straw man?
Ah, if it only were a straw man....
International Energy Agency Report
Now, if we blow through this money, and knock our emissions down, we still wind up with a CO2 level STILL HIGHER THAN TODAY.
http://ucsaction.org/campaign/3_6_07_sanders_waxman_climate_bills/explanation
Meaning that, we will spend 45 trillion dollars to basically get today's weather.
Now, let's consider what this means. It means we have to use 1/5th of the energy we presently use now. By any conceivable measure, modern society places the wealth of a society based on how much energy it can consume. All things being equal, spending money to get the same or less of an effect will make people poorer. I mean, in a perfect world, where oil just poured out of a big new 100 billion barrel find in Montana and we didn't have to do anything about AGW, we could take that 45 trillion and feed the world, cure AIDs, build a base on Mars, and still have enough money to invade Iraq 20 times over. It's a lot of money to basically make us poorer.
We might have to do it, after all. But, let's call this for what it is. Because of climate change, humanity is about to become a whole lot poorer.
During summer in the Northern hemisphere, the Earth is farther from the sun due to its elliptical orbit. Of course it's been getting colder during the period that the Earth is getting farther from the sun. Try looking at the long-term trend of global temperatures, say, over the past twenty years. I think you'll see temperatures have been increasing.
.xxx degrees above or below "normal".
The anomaly figures I gave you already take seasonal variances into consideration. So, you would read the FTP link as
The planet has been getting colder over the last six months, of that, there is no doubt. Even the IPCC graphs and the NASA graphs are starting to show a downward trend at the very end, at this point.
But, that could be a "weather" thing and if the AGW people are right, temps should start moving back upwards. If they do, you are right. Hurrah, let's go blow 45 trillion dollars and knock the temp down 1/10th of a degree by living in the stone ages. But, if they do continue to go down, they do so against every prediction made by every computer model.
the problem with the sunspot people is, they don't have a model yet... they say, "oh lack of sunspots makes temperature go down', but no one has been able to find a physical mechanism. (outside from some controversial danish studies on cosmic rays and cloud formation).. but, if the temperature keeps going down, that means the AGW CO2 based computer models are wrong. So, yeah, its a pretty simple bet. Up or down. The science is not set in stone.
Probably also makes you drive more cautiously, as in "if I'm in a crash, I'm gonna die! - don't crash!"
It's crazy, but people modded me as funny without considering that I actually came up with an easy 400-500 pounds, or about 25% of the weight of a modern car. I doubled the article in there. I can chop more weight.
get rid of
a) any bumper mandate
b) the emergency brake
c) power windows [motors/cabling]
d) passenger windshield wiper
e) power mirrors
bottom line is, all the stuff in the car takes up weight. those fancy speakers and subwoofers, they gotta go. even the radio is debatable.
moral of the story is, you gotta start designing cars more like spaceships, where energy / weight is at a premium.
and you can get rid of the heavy leather seats and use a lighter spalco racing seat.
get rid of the spare tire and the wrench. (just get a tow truck for when you need it)
and really, you want to get rid of the tailpipe altogether and just run the exhaust out to the side of the car rather than all the way back.
consider using a plastic fuel tank
how much do disk brakes weigh? do you really need brakes on all four wheels?
You mean like these graphs from the IPCC
I was thinking more like the snow in China, and the hurricane season that hasn't happened in 4 years. But oh, we're going to get more hurricanes, any day now.
I mean by satellites operated without AGW funding on the line. NASA keeps changing its historical data, as do other people.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/05/02/a_tale_of_two_thermometers/
But really, the prediction is pretty simple. For the last six months, the earth's temperature has fallen, according to satellite measurements.
ftp://ftp.ssmi.com/msu/monthly_time_series/rss_monthly_msu_amsu_channel_tlt_anomalies_land_and_ocean_v03_1.txt
The reason given for this in AGW circles is the recently ended LaNina. If temperatures continue to fall, then, AGW theories won't stack up.
But the main point is this: I've not seen a single climate (as in non-weather event), that justifies the amount of money proposed be spent on AGW. Just give me one predicted event... and I'll see you a snow in Iraq.
No discernible warming since 2000? Then this article from NASA [nasa.gov] must be all wrong then. Thanks for letting us know! *rolleyes
The source isn't credible, because it's James Hansen, whose pretty plugged into the global warming scene. He has a lot of shoddy fortran code to stick up for.
Better comparison is look at the IPCC forecasts versus today, and you'll see that the planet hasn't actually warmed.
If you want to give up weight in cars.
a) get rid of the catalytic converter
b) shorten the tailpipe and shrink the muffler
c) get rid of airbags
d) get rid of power heated super seats
e) get rid of side impact safety beams
that right there gets you some good weight savings.
Not at all - but when the person purchased that 5000lb SUV, did they realize the impact this would have - on them and potentially others - should they have such a tire blowout? I'd imagine they should be, so why shouldn't they be held to a higher standard?
So, what's the difference between the 5000lb SUV and the 4000lb Pontiac GTO Coupe?
If you are going to make a tool that you can profit on, you have to innovate. Right now, the old tricks of text editing and syntax highlighting are boring because developers have gotten used to them. I'm working on a closed source development product for Windows (*) [while Open for Linux] and, my whole approach is to try and do something totally different. If I'm successful, I hope to get enough shareware money to pay credit card bills and maybe work full time on my own projects for a year or two.
If you are just doing the old stack with a slightly snazzier editor, those days are gone. You have to do something different, you might want to think about language and you might even think about domain specificity. But there's room out there for both and if the closed source people are successful, and profitable, it only allows the open source people to use that funded development as a working requirements document for a more open implementation. I honestly hope that I write something that is good enough for the FOSS people to rip my ideas off, because, god knows, I'm going to rip them off too. IT's the composition that counts, not the paragraphs. I hope that makes some sense.
F--- it. If the Totally Stupid Administration, er uh, TSA, wants to turn airports into some sort of a gestapo land so that all their government union thugs can pretend they are doing something positive for the country, then, well, screw them. But until citizens of the USA have the right to petition and get the firing of any TSA worker, then, I see no reason to subject myself to these thugs.
Isn't it weird? Conservatives don't have a problem with the government invading their personal lives, but they DO have a problem with the government invading the corporations' lives.
What a classic set of liberal distortions!
Conservatives, for the most part, do not want the government to enter our lives. However, we value the following rights as tantamount to freedom: a) free speech, b) freedom of commerce, c) the right to hold property and d) the right to get income from the investment of that property. That is why, as a rule, you will see conservatives balk at any sort of proposed rule about what kind of car, house, medicine, or anything else that a person might own or buy.
Conversely, the liberal would legislate the federal right to ALL property, and impose regulations on ANYTHING. Liberals always complain about "conservative fascism", but, then, their solutions always involve creating ever more regulation (and thus, devaluing property). Liberals might make you free in the Khmer Rouge sense of the word, but, ultimately, they make you poor.
In the free market state you Americans idolize, corporations and citizens should have the same treatment under the eye of the law. No more, no less.
Actually, we view corporations as distinctly less than the rights of citizens. However, corporations, via our shares, are our property, and therefor, we resist what the government would do with it. But, make no bones about it, in the eyes of a conservative, owning a stake in Exxon Mobil, or even the entire company, is no different than the legality of owning a pencil. It is my company, my pencil, and I can do with it what I will.
oj simpson's case was skewered in this country by race
No, it was more like, he stabbed the two to death, a jealous lover, and he obviously got away with it.
I have enough experience to know that very often those people who think themselves a "pretty darned good judge of character" aren't that good as they think.
Fair enough. A lot of people on this board thought that Hans was innocent.
In this case, I wonder: wasn't Reiser committed wrongfully? Because if finding the body could turn the conviction from first degree to second degree murder it clearly means that first degree murder hasn't been proved beyond reasonable doubt.
I think Reiser is guilty. The evidence was overwhelming, I thought. The reason the DA would be willing to cop some sort of a deal would be to bring closure to the victim's family. They would be able to bury Nina and try and move on with their lives, and Hans is still going to be behind bars for a good, long time.
Finally, the juror mentioned in this article [wired.com] that made his decision based on the accused's eyes really scares me. What if I had been tried? Would a crazy schoolteacher send me to prison for life because he didn't like the look in my eyes?
I think you voice the fears of someone who is younger. As you get older, you get a better sense of who is sincere and who has something to hide and I would probably think the juror's judgement is ok. The human mind is a pretty darned good judge of character, if you listen to it.
And besides, that's why there's more than one juror.
I've got the troll points for arguing that he was guilty from the get-go, and I think that he is. But, in this case, I think before those people who supported him jump off of a mental cliff, let's let the DA actually deliver the body and the proof of Hans's cooperation. The story is believable enough, but, let's let the DA PROVE it first.
I would tear down all the caternary wires and develop lithium ion trains, and have them take a charge at central points. All those wires depress real estate prices and would, for example, make property on the delaware and christina rivers more desirable for development.
People don't need cars in cities. Instead, what you do is put shopping centers on the fricking rail lines so that people can get off, shop, and then get back on the train. The Northeast is not just a transportation problem, but an urban planning one as well.
All of the track needs to be upgraded. There's a lot of wood rail track that's spiked still, dated from nearly a century ago. This needs to be ripped up and replaced with concrete tied continuously welded track to allow for high speed rail service. You also need to have more sidings so that trains can pull off for loading and unloading without clogging the rail lines, and you need to have more loops for turning them around.
But yeah, the northeast needs a massive rail upgrade, and it wouldn't be all -that- expensive to do. I can't see it being more than 100 billion dollars!
Well, apart from the fact a dam is actually useful, and a train between two holiday resorts during a time when people have no money to spend on holidays is all kinds of pointless.
Ok, the fundamental problem of the USA right now is that our infrastructure is old and inefficient and its killing us, ultimately driving this recession. So, during the resultant recession, the government grabs a bunch of people and goes and fixes things.
It's a public works project, so, you'll keep engineers working to build it, construction people working on it. I mean, I'm not a big fan of government spending and taxes that go with it, but there are times when the feds have to step in and clean house and this is one. So, yeah, the Feds should be supporting this and other rail lines, improving the roads (improve fuel efficiency), upgrading power stations, (like change out fuel oil burning plants and then coal plants for nukes), and should be researching some sort of way to get all the methane hydrate off the coast back into the USA to ease a natural gas shortage.
In Delaware crossing Red Mill Road and Harmony Road until the late 70s. The amount of signaling at those crossings was insane too since those trains went through there around 100+ MPH.
They still do, but now they run much slower.
Which route from Virginia to Washington DC?
I95, I would guess. I95 is terrible.
Allowing real high speed trains in the US is a threat to our dependence on foreign oil, and the foreign lobbyists simply won't ALLOW it. At some point there will be no wide open spaces left for these trains, and then the public (nimbys) will be against trains on their own, without opposition from Big Oil.
So how does that explain the hundreds of mile long trains that criss cross the USA hauling freight, every day? 90% of all freight is shipped by rail in the USA. Guess your conspiracy didn't quite work out, huh.
Trains in the US & A? Can this really be true?
Actually, the bulk of continental freight shipped in the USA is by rail. Have a look at the rolling stock of the likes of Union Pacific, Norfolk Suffolk or CSX, and you'll see that there's been quite a bit going on.
For example, cars are just getting into gas electric hybrids, but the railroads have been running diesel electric hybrids now for decades. The locomotives are now into a new generation of hybrid technology.
The fuel efficiency of these rail lines is staggering. One or two locomotives pull trains that can be two miles long!
But you are preaching to the choir here. I love trains.
Ok, I've seen some inattentive election judges, but how do they get away with that?
You could probably figure out who the recently dead people are and where they lived based on publicly available information, or, at information available to your friends in government. From there, you just have to show up and vote.
With that, you don't even need to have your polling place people be crooked. You just need to educate them that every vote counts, and that, they need to extend the benefit of the doubt, so that, when your "dead" people walk into vote, they don't even get questioned for fear of disenfranchisement.
The Republicans spent tens of millions of dollars investigating
We Republicans were just doing our part to help the first black american get nominated to a political party. You see, back then, Dick Cheney's spies had already pegged Obama as an up and comer and Hillary as a future rival, so, we had to do our part to help the guy out.
It is amazing, though that, Obama's people went and brought up EVERY SINGLE REPUBLICAN CHARGE as if it were fact. We heard it all from the Obama camp, as if it were gospel. I had to wonder, where were all these Democrats before? But there you saw it, liberal writers chalking up Clinton's shady whitewater dealings, the coverups of the abuses of women, the murder of Vincent Foster and Ron Brown. It was like, every thing Ken Starr ever even dreamed of came out magnified and in technicolor by the Obama machine and in states where values mattered to people.
The problem is, ultimately, that parents are not having enough kids. So, whereas before, you might have one smart kid and a couple of ok ones destined for the factory, now, just that one kid you have HAS to go to college, and frankly, they may not be up to it. Instead of parents beating their children and their teachers up because Johnny isn't into books, maybe these parents should have had more kids, so that they could get one that's really and truly cut out for higher education, rather than being shoehorned into it.
I should probably explicitly state that this includes abortion.
That won't happen in a million years. Americans are split evenly on abortion, but, nearly unanimously would prefer that the morons that get themselves pregnant take care of their own problems.
Besides, why do you want the country to have less kids? I would think that, we should have even MORE native children, so that we can have a huge army and take over the world. In any case, the vast majority of the welfare state that the USA has become is basically a tax on young people to take care of the old. Just look at how the US budget is stacked for old people - social security, medicare, and more. You need to have more young people paying taxes, or grandma has to live in a refrigerator box.