With the recent tragedy in Colorado there has been a lot of talk about gun control in the US. Whether you are pro or anti gun control, I think these six facts are interesting and informative.
Source: Washington Post
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This type of attitude really makes me angry. It shows a complete lack of understanding and sympathy with women in bad situations. Plus we don’t need to be bringing any unwanted children into this world. There are only so many people that this planet can support and I fear with exponential growth, we are fast approaching that maximum. Children should be cherished gifts and not unwanted burdens. A woman should have the freedom to decide if the has the emotional bandwitdth, financial resources, and desire to have any child before it is born. I thought that all of that was decided so many years ago with the Supreme Court ruling, yet it keeps being challenged again and again and again.
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I have always found the art of selective vocabulary to elicit a desired emotional response to be annoying at best, but I do have to admit that it is probably a lot more effective than I would like to think it is. It is interesting to see what vocabulary the Republicans think will generate a more sympathetic response in these troubled times.
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I have mixed feelings about this article. I feel badly for the farmers because they have really been screwed over by the law makers. There aren’t enough small farmers left in the US to have a large political impact though other parts of the farming industry still have a lot of power and sway politically often to the detriment of the small farmer. I think that immigration control is good, but I think consistency is better. It isn’t fair that illegal immigrants have been ignored in the US until the last couple of years and now there is a witch hunt to drive them out of the country. That is ridiculous. Those people are here because they are filling an economic need and expelling them is not just cruel to them and their families, it hurts that segment of the economy. Some more gradual process should have been implemented that would allow illegal workers to gain legal status, particularly if they could demonstrate that they have been working in the US for a number of years and are an established part of the community. Another part of me wonders why when unemployment is so high, the farmers can’t find anyone to do the work. Yes, I understand that most of the unemployed are not physically close to the farmers, but if you need work, you need to be willing to go to where the work is located. This is a fairly common phenomenon in bad economic times in the past that people would move to where the work was or follow the work as it moves around. In any case Alabama was stupid to create a situation where the illegal immigrants were forced out without any firm plan for who was going to replace their labor.
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Okay, I think calling the GOP the Party of Pollution is a bit overly dramatic, but I do agree that lessening environmental standards is not going to create a significant number of new jobs and is going to make us and the environment more unhealthy. Companies do not regulate themselves at all well when it comes to pollution so I think having strong environmental regulations is very important. If anything those regulations should be tightened, not relaxed.
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This disturbs me as it seems that unjust laws are becoming more and more common to target specific events or protests that the powers that be are not happy about. I grew up thinking that the right to protest while perhaps wasn’t expressly stated in the Bill of Rights, must fall under that freedom of speech concept and was a protected right in America. However, it seems laws are popping up that make it more and more difficult to protest legally. You need permits and notice and this and that… when generally something worth protesting is kind of a NOW type thing and not something where you want to take the time to petition for the right. I guess the widespread freedom of speech and expression on the internet kind of makes up for the lessening freedom of speech on the street, but I am not sure it really sends the same kind of message to the powers that be. Also freedom of speech on the internet is by no means a sure thing as the repeated attempts of the Australian government to try to censor the internet have shown.
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This isn’t surprising, but it is still concerning. Money, money, money. It seems in the US today, it is all about the money. Very few people have it, and you do not. Even if you think you are doing okay, I doubt you are playing with the folks that can contribute tens of thousands of dollars to an unpaid school board position vote.
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If you think that governments doing things generally result in more harm than good, a system in which one party can completely stall the other resulting in complete gridlock might seem like a good idea, but at a time like now which the government really does need to step in and do a lot of things, the system is preventing anything from happening. I used to think better of the GOP, but my faith is lost. I see that they have no incentive for anything good to happen in America until the next election. It is sad, but not completely unexpected that the good of the party is now held in much higher esteem than the good on the country. I wonder if it was always so? Since most of my life the GOP has been in control either entirely or mostly, it is hard for me to know.
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While I think STEM degrees offer a lot of advantages to students because you graduate with better defined skills than a lot of liberal arts majors and STEM careers in recent years have been more reliable at getting graduates higher paying jobs, I think that liberal arts majors are still important and should definitely not be eliminated. I do think that liberal arts degrees should probably include some technology and math components because it is almost impossible to get by in the modern world without computer proficiency and an understanding of math at least as it relates to finance. However, not all students are not interested in most STEM topics, and that is okay. There are a lot of places in the world for liberal arts majors and not an infinite number of jobs in the STEM fields. Cutting university funding because of bad economic times isn’t a bad thing, but attacking all liberal arts as a waste of time is pure stupidity.
I do think that students should do a basic economic analysis before they enroll in any program to make sure that it is financially viable for their situation. Having 200k of debt when you are aspiring to a 30k a year social worker position is not good math. Though it is not in the universities best interest, I think schools should track graduates and post statistics about their earnings by subject majored in to prospective students so they can do a fair economic analysis. This would show the universities strengths and weaknesses a little too clearly for their preference, I fear.
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This article is definitely biased by a scientific thinking, but as I am a scientific thinker, that is okay by me. Plus I would love to see a bit more reason and logic in political debates instead of all the emotional triggers that get people riled up without actually changing things or fixing any of Americas ever growing set of serious problems.
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It may be the nostalgia of childhood because I will fully admit I was not that politically aware for Reagan’s terms in office, but those were good years in America and I thought he was doing a good job. It doesn’t seem like the times that have followed have been as good though we have had booms and busts. It could be that Reagan was lucky with the state of the country he was given and the fact that it was a relatively peaceful time or it may have been the skill of the man himself or more likely a little of both. It may also be that my memories are the fuzzy warm ones of a child, but it seems the current flock of GOP candidates with a few non-highly ranked ones, go beyond just not meeting a Reagan standard to being complete wackos. I am sure that the GOP has always had flaws, but it seems like it has taken a dramatic turn for the worse in recent years and that saddens me.
It isn’t like we haven’t already figured out that a lot of the tea party politicians make regular politicians look like all around nice guys, but this one is particularly disgusting. How does one end up as an elected official owing $100k in child support? The GOP makes me very ashamed to have some conservative leanings these days.
Apparently, the Texas governor and GOP presidential candidate thinks FEMA is a waste of money until his own state is on fire at which point it is not the time to discuss cutting the FEMA budget. Pretty funny…
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My first impression is, is this stuff for real? If these two candidates are really the religious wackos that they appear to be, how in the world are they being discussed as serious contenders for the US presidential race? I honestly don’t know anything about Rick Perry, but the more I hear about Michele Bachmann the more I am confused as to why she is holding any kind of US office, much less a serious contender for the GOP nomination. Has the country gone insane? This article reads like a weird conspiracy theory that I would generally not take too seriously, but EVERYTHING about Michele Bachmann seems to read like a weird conspiracy theory.
I have no issue with people being Christian or any other religion when taken in moderation, but religious extremism in any form tends to worry me. Actually, most extremism worries me, and I don’t really want to see the US being run by an extremist of any kind.
So I am not sure that I believe the Christian plot for domination, but the frequency with this type of article and Michele Bachmann has me worried.
This article which is strongly anti-GOP somewhat pains me because I have historically thought of myself as more of a republican than a democrat, and I am not a fan of Obama.
However, the GOP’s recent behavior has been a disgrace and looking back it seems that a lot of today’s problems have their roots in when the GOP has held the presidency. However, in the last 30 years the GOP has held the presidency 2/3 of the time so it is hard to know if the democrats would have made decisions that lead the country into a better position now if they had been in office more often.
Anyway, I thought the article had an interesting view of history, and I completely agree that today you will not be able to balance the budget without increasing revenue which means some tax increases. The GOP thinking otherwise is completely unrealistic.
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