1. Does the Atheist Deny What the Theist Affirms?
2. What is Sin?
"What is sin? It is often described as 'missing the mark'—that is, failure to live up to the rigorous standard of God's holy law. But the Bible makes it clear that it is much more than that. In Leviticus 16:21, sin is described as transgression; literally, as rebellion against authority. In the prophet Nathan's confrontation of David over his sins of adultery and murder, Nathan describes sin as a despising of both God's Word and God himself (2 Sam. 12:9-10). And in Numbers 15:30-31, Moses characterizes sinners as acting 'with a high hand,' meaning defiantly. Therefore, we can conclude that sin is a rebellion against God's sovereign authority, a despising of his Word and his person, and even a defiance of God himself. It is no wonder Paul wrote that because of our sin, we were by nature objects of God's wrath (Eph. 2:3)."
From Jerry Bridges and Bob Bevington's, "The Great Exchange: My Sin for His Righteousness" (p.20) (HT: Irish Calvinist)
3. Court Says Freemasons Fall Under Religious Protection Law
Freemasonry may rank with Christianity, Judaism and Islam as an official form of "religious exercise," a California court of appeals suggested in a ruling on Oct. 3.
As such, Masons would fall under the protections of the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000 (RLUIPA), the landmark law that says government may not infringe on religious buildings without a compelling interest.
"We see no principled way to distinguish the earnest pursuit of these (Masonic) principles … from more widely acknowledged modes of religious exercise," the statement said.
4. Election Scorecard: Where the elections stand today.
5. The Chronicle of Higher Education asks What Is a 'Successful' Blog?
Is a blog successful if it gets a lot of page views? And, using the same logic, is it a failure if only a handful of people actually read it?...
Judging the success of a blog by its page views is sort of like rating a movie by its box-office tallies, a TV show by its Neilsen ratings, or a book by its place on the best-seller list.
By that standard, the best movie in the country is "30 Days of Night," the best TV show is "Dancing With the Stars," and the best novel is World Without End, by Ken Follett.
(HT: Maggie's Farm)
6. Quote of the Week: "[A] failure to attend church on Sunday is, by Catholic standards, contumacious, an ostentatious rejection of a formal obligation. It is the equivalent of an observant Jew biting into a piece of pork." -- William F. Buckley, Jr. on Giuliani's church attendance.
7. International hackers going after U.S. networks
About 140 foreign intelligence organizations are trying to hack into the computer networks of the U.S. government and U.S. companies, a top counterintelligence official said.
As Deane from Gadgetopia notes, "140 of 194 is…72% of the world, trying to hack our government."
8. Aaron from The Wardrobe Door on "A caveotic blogosphere"
But why do we feel the need to add the caveat any statement of support for another's ministry? Because we fear the guilt by association that so often comes with forays into the Christian blogosphere minefield. If we say one good thing about someone else (and we are deem worthy of a takedown), many of the watchdog "ministries" or individuals spring into action and play six degrees of separation from heresy. The person we commended has said something good about another ministry which once published a book which had a book jacket quote from this person who once knew this other pastor who said they enjoyed a message by [insert heretic here].
Aaron makes a good point, even though I don’t agree with everything on his blog…
9. Another example of the economic ignorance of Americans
Nearly half of Americans think the U.S. economy is in a recession — close to 46 percent of those surveyed in a new CNN-Opinion Research Corporation Poll out Thursday morning say the country's economy is in a recession while 51 percent of those questioned say no.
The poll finds a major difference of opinion between black and white Americans — 69 percent of black Americans questioned in the survey say the country's in a recession while only 42 percent of white Americans feel the same way.
According to CNN's Ali Velshi, the National Bureau of Economic Research defines a recession as "a significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months, normally visible in real GDP, real income, employment, industrial production, and wholesale-retail sales. A recession begins just after the economy reaches a peak of activity and ends as the economy reaches its trough. Between trough and peak, the economy is in an expansion. Expansion is the normal state of the economy; most recessions are brief and they have been rare in recent decades."
I can't say that I'm surprised. I can't think of a single period in my adult life when people didn’t think the economy was in "bad shape." (HT: HolyCoast)
Researchers with access to closely guarded college admissions data have found that, on the whole, about 15 percent of freshmen enrolled at America's highly selective colleges are white teens who failed to meet their institutions' minimum admissions standards…. White students who failed to make the grade on all counts were nearly twice as prevalent on such campuses as black and Hispanic students who received an admissions break based on their ethnicity or race.
Who are these mediocre white students getting into institutions such as Harvard, Wellesley, Notre Dame, Duke, and the University of Virginia? A sizable number are recruited athletes who, research has shown, will perform worse on average than other students with similar academic profiles, mainly as a result of the demands their coaches will place on them.
A larger share, however, are students who gained admission through their ties to people the institution wanted to keep happy, with alumni, donors, faculty members, administrators, and politicians topping the list.
(HT: orgtheory.net)
11. Your Salary in Real Time (HT: The Presurfer)
12. Quote of the Week (Part II): "We need people to march in the parade, but we also need those who merely observe and ask where it is going." -- William F. Vallicella on "Life's Parade"
13. Marco Visscher writes in Ode magazine on "The exodus from the Tower of Babel":
Parents in Lausitz, on the border of Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic, would rather teach their kids German than traditional Sorbic simply because German will help them get on in the world. A forgotten language should be seen as signaling rather than causing the loss of cultural identity.
Language was conceived so people could understand one another. In a world in which people are increasingly connected and work in close co-operation, it is only logical that the need for local languages would fade.
More to the point, less confusion in our Tower of Babel is conducive to world peace. How different might things be if Israelis and Palestinians could--literally--understand each other?
(HT: Mere Comments)
14. Reagan biographer and conservative strategist Craig Shirley in response to Rudy Giuliani's invocation of the "11th Commandment" in a CNN television package:
"Rudy Giuliani knows as much about the 11th Commandment as he does about conservatism, which is very little. The 11th Commandment was a term created by the Chairman of the California Republican Party, Gaylord Parkinson in 1966. Reagan adopted it to mean that one Republican did not attack another Republican's patriotism, fidelity or sobriety. Politicians like Giuliani hide behind it when criticized by another on issues, which Reagan did plenty against Ford in 1976 and George Bush in 1980."
(HT: Marc Ambinder)
15. 7 Myths and Truths About Pirates
It’s a scene from the movies: A pirate ship pulls up alongside another ship, and then the pirates swing across on ropes and storm the ship. But how realistic is this scene? Not very, experts say. Most ship captains owned their cargos, which were usually fully insured. They preferred to surrender the minute they were approached by a pirate ship, seeing piracy as one of the costs of doing business.
16. Love Isn’t Enough: 5 Reasons Why Same-Sex Marriage Will Harm Children (HT: Catholic Fire)
17. One of the best (and most elaborate) pranks ever. A restroom, a mirror, and a young woman putting on make-up. Only the mirror is not a real mirror, but a sheet of glass. The restroom on the other side is exactly the same but build in reflection. And the young lady is not alone, on the other side of the sheet of glass is her twin sister.
(HT: The Presurfer)
18. From the abstract of a paper titled, "New Age Thinking: Alternative Ways of Measuring Age, Their Relationship to Labor Force Participation, Goverment Policies and GDP"
The current practice of measuring age as years-since-birth, both in common practice and in the law, rather than alternative measures reflecting a person's stage in the lifecycle distorts important behavior such as retirement, saving, and the discussion of dependency ratios. Two alternative measures of age are explored: mortality risk and remaining life expectancy. With these alternative measures, the huge wave of elderly forecast for the first half of this century doesn't look like a huge wave at all. By conventional 65+ standards, the fraction of the population that is elderly will grow by about 66 percent. However, the fraction of the population that is above a mortality rate that corresponds to 65+ today will grow by only 20 percent. Needless to say, the aging of the society is a lot less dramatic with the alternative mortality-based age measures. In a separate application of age measurement…GDP would be between seven and ten percent higher by 2050 if retirement lengths stabilize.
(HT: Marginal Revolution)
19. 100 Truths in 30 Years with Christ
20. Does the requirement of photo IDs disenfranchise voters? Not if they already have one…
After two years of litigation, neither the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) nor the other organizations who brought the Georgia suit could produce a single individual who did not already have a photo ID or could not easily get one. The claims that large numbers of voters lack a photo ID were dismissed by the court when the plaintiffs were unable to produce evidence.
As the judge noted, "although the Plaintiffs claim to know of people who claim that they lack Photo ID, Plaintiffs have failed to identify those individuals "the failure to identify those individuals 'is particularly acute' in light of plaintiffs' contention that a large number of Georgia voters lack acceptable Photo ID."
(HT: Cranach)
21. How to build your own Sputnik
22. Victor Hanson on the Iraq War:
I don't think the country is ready, either psychologically or politically, for the very real chance that the U.S. military is going to stabilize Iraq and end the insurgency—on the al Qaeda side with help from millions of formerly hostile Sunnis, and on the Shiite side, with Shiites fed up with the criminality of their own militias, and that relatively soon oil and electrical supplies will continue to improve even more radically, as well as the general economic climate of the country at large.
Yet, there is at least a 60/40 chance of that happening very soon, and should it transpire we will witness some of the most interesting political contortions in American history.
23. Hordes of shirtless dudes invade Abercrombie and Fitch (video)
Friends at Improv Everywhere recently completed their latest mission "No Shirts", where they organized 111 shirtless men of all shapes and sizes to go shopping at the Abercrombie and Fitch store on 5th Avenue in New York. As it turns out, in a store that celebrates the shirtless male, shirtless men are not allowed to buy shirts.
Caution: Contains scenes of men--many of them ugly, hairy, and/or tubby--with their shirts off. (HT: BoingBoing)
24. Transhumanists, Egalitarianism, and Eternal Life:
"Ordinary citizens wouldn't know what to do with eternal life," says Minsky. "The masses don't have any clear-cut goals or purpose." Only scientists, who work on problems that might take decades to solve appreciate the need for extended lifespans, he argues.
He is also staunchly against regulating the development of new technologies. "Scientists shouldn't have ethical responsibility for their inventions, they should be able to do what they want," he says. "You shouldn't ask them to have the same values as other people."
From "Death special: The plan for eternal life" by Danielle Egan, issue 2625 of New Scientist magazine, 13 October 2007, page 46.
25. LOLCat of the Week
26. Megan McArdle meets supply-side censorship:
A conservative publication, which I will not name, just spiked a book review because I said that the Laffer Curve didn't apply at American levels of taxation, even while otherwise expressing my vast displeasure with the (liberal) economic notions of the book I was reviewing. This isn't me looking for an alternative explanation for the spiking of a bad review: the literary editor accepted it, edited it, and then three hours later told me it couldn't be published because it violated their editorial line on taxation.
I suppose I ought to have known, but I didn't. Go ahead liberals, pile on: you told me so. The Laffer Curve and the supply siders pushing it seem to be the teacher's unions of the right.
27. An extinction timeline from 1950-2050 [PDF] (HT: Kottke.org)
28. Seth Godin on The Wikipedia Gap
I wonder who the first teacher was who said to his class, "Okay, we have ball point pens now. No need to use class time to learn how to use a fountain pen."
I heard from two people this week (one is 11, the other twice that) who were forbidden to use Wikipedia to do homework.
When I was in b-school, I admit that I discovered a shortcut. I had to write a long paper on Castro. I went to the magnificent Stanford library, found a great book on Castro, opened to the bibliography and found ten sources. Which I then laboriously paged through, spending hours and hours in order to find the facts I needed.
Then, facts in hand, I was able to do the actually useful part… I synthesized some new ideas and wrote a paper.
Apparently, going through the act of finding the books, sorting through them, reading a lot of chaff and eventually finding the facts is an essential skill for an 11-year-old kid. And for a college sophomore. Essential enough to be responsible for 80% of the time they spend on the work itself?
30. How to wash your hands and beat the flu
1) Turn on the water and get it to a temperature you like.
2) Lather up using soap. (Soap does not kill germs. A bar of soap is a great medium for growing germs. The surfactant action of soap helps the running water flush the germs away. That's how it works. It's purely mechanical. Antibacterial soap is a waste of time and money, and just helps breed antibiotic-resistant bugs.)
3) Rub your hands vigorously together, paying special attention to the fingernails, getting up onto the wrists, for as long as it takes you to sing one stanza of The Star Spangled Banner or two verses of Little Mattie Groves.
4) Rinse off the soap with the running water.
5) Dry your hands with a paper towel.
6) Use the expended paper towel to turn off the water.
31. Height Affects How People Perceive Their Quality Of Life -- Your height in adult life significantly affects your quality of life, with short people reporting worse physical and mental health than people of normal height. This large, peer reviewed study, which appears in Clinical Endocrinology, shows that adult height is linked to how good a person thinks their health is. Short people judge their state of health to be significantly lower than their normal height peers do.
32. Researchers Knock Out HIV -- With the latest advances in treatment, doctors have discovered that they can successfully neutralize the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). The so-called ‘combination therapy’ prevents HIV from mutating and spreading, allowing patients to rebuild their immune system to the same levels as the rest of the population. To date, it represents the most significant treatment for patients suffering from HIV.
33. Counseling in Two Easy Words
(HT: Fide-O)
http://www.evangelicaloutpost.com/mt/mt-trackback.cgi/3989
1
As to #9. Oh, please, Joe. You are ignoring the wonderful years when Bill Clinton was president. All we heard all the time was what a wonderful economy we had. Are you truly saying that you didn't hear that during those years? During the height of the impeachment, all we heard was that while Clinton's behavior was "reprehensible" and "indefensible", we really shouldn't do anything about it because the economy was in such good shape.
This doesn't mean that your overall point is wrong, i.e. that Americans are woefully ignorant on economics. It does mean, however, that Americans are informed by an incredibly biased press corps. The economy, by all standards, is doing as well as, if not better than during the Clinton years, yet all we've heard from the press is doom and gloom during the Bush years. The press bias has never been more apparent than during these last seven years. And when it comes to the war it has been truly dangerous.
No matter what the facts are currently, Bush is seen to be a complete failure by the media and therefore, by much of the population. The media have chosen sides and it sure ain't Bush.
posted on 10.23.2007 9:29 AM2
As to #22. The question is, Joe, are YOU ready "for the very real chance that the U.S. military is going to stabilize Iraq and end the insurgency"?
In view of the failure of George Bush's presidency already being written, could it be that it will need to be sent to rewrite?
Victor Davis Hanson has been the most prescient and accurate writer on war and THIS war for the last six years. Have you been reading him all along or did you just discover him?
posted on 10.23.2007 9:42 AM3
#28 - YES! Research IS that important. In the business world, there is not always a Wikipedia entry on the topic you need to study. The main goal of the research paper is NOT to learn about the topic (though that is a close second); the main goal is to teach the student how to do the research to find something.
Wikipedia, Google, and other Internet research needs to be taught just like any other research tool, but society is not at the level YET that students can be allowed to ignore basic research principles like searching through sources (paper or otherwise) for data.
I work in software development and half of the employees at my company can't learn new languages or platforms without a comprehensive encyclopedia of answers constantly available to them on the Internet. They don't know how to study something new.
They're copy-and-paste developers/help-desk/analysts/etc. People can get by in life with that sort of skill set, but they are being left in the dust by those with good research skills who can learn, search and study WITHOUT pre-formulated answers.
posted on 10.23.2007 10:05 AM4
In response to #1, John Shore has asked the same question of atheists and he has gotten a lot of response from the atheist community. It turned into quite the series!
An Honest Question: Atheists, How Do You Process Your Guilt?
What the Atheists Taught Me
Christians and Atheists in Communion -- in Harmony, I Mean! But Now What?
Atheists! Incoming Olive Branch!
posted on 10.23.2007 10:19 AM5
Joe,
Thank you for linking to my post at Cerulean Sanctum on the 100 truths in 30 years with Christ. I pray that it blesses your readers and gets them thinking about those 100 truths, plus the truths they've learned in their own Christian walk.
Have a blessed week.
posted on 10.23.2007 10:55 AM6
Another example of the economic ignorance of Americans:
This isn't evidence of economic ignorance - just of the difference between a technical definition and people's common-sense understanding of the situation.
As you note, the technical definition of recession includes:
"A recession begins just after the economy reaches a peak of activity and ends as the economy reaches its trough."
That is, by definition the recession is over when things literally get so bad they can't get any worse. Most people would think the recession was still going on at that point.
Most people understand "recession" to mean "economic bad times", but technically it just meanst anytime economic indicators turn negative. If you think of the strength of the economy following a kind sine curve, the popular notion of recession would be the period when the curve is below the middle point, either rising or falling, while the technical definition would be whenever the curve is falling, even if it starts from a high point.
So, by the technical definition, we're kind of weakly out of the Bush recession - that is, some of the things that got so bad are have started to get better. But by any reasonable understanding of the situation, things are in fact still bad in absolute terms. Among other features of Bush's "recovery":
- he remains the worst President since at least Eisenhower in terms of average monthly employment gains over his term
- he remains the only President since at least Eisenhower to average negative monthly job growth
- his best month ever in terms of job growth still puts him behind 5 other recent Presidents considered on average over their entire terms (top three finishers: Clinton, Carter, and Johnson)
- even periods of "expansion" and of positive net job growth under Bush have always lagged population growth - there has never been a period under Bush in which more jobs were becoming available to the working population overall - he is the only President in recent history to sustain continual lagging job growth, with respect to population, throughout his term
- the Bush recession officially "ended" almost two years ago - Bush has averaged a net 33,000 jobs lost per month during the "expansion" period
- unemployment rates for both black and white declined steadily under Clinton, and rose dramatically under Bush; the gap between black and white unemployment rates narrowed under Clinton and has widened under Bush; the black unemployment rate is more than twice the white rate (and would be three times higher if you include the larger percentage of non-imprisoned working-age blacks who are categorized as "not in the labor force" because they've simply been unemployed too long)
- GDP growth under Bush has been below the 10-year moving average for most of his term (contrast Clinton: both Bush and Clinton sat through "official recessions" lasting about a year in the first year of their terms - Clinton then not only posted record job-growth for the rest of his Presidency, but GDP growth above the 10-year average almost every quarter therein; George Bush, as we note, has put people out of work by the trainload, while also posting below-average GDP growth most quarters; the "Economic Snapshots" Website notes: "Historically, we have seldom seen real GDP growth this weak except when a recession was near")
- Re: real income, the Economic Policy Institute reports:
So, yes, we're technically in an "economic expansion" - one that has seen consistently increasing gaps between available jobs and needy workers, declining real income, increasing lack of health insurance, a widening unemployment gap between blacks and whites, record levels of net job losses, and recession-level GDP growth, all during this supposed "expansion", and all arising uniquely under the Bush administration.
But you think it's a sign of "economic ignorance" that so many workers think they're worse off only because they're losing wages, benefits, and employment opportunities, and that blacks are more likely to think they're worse off only because their unemployment rate is two or three times that of whites and they're more likely to be counted out of the workforce entirely. Corporate net profits are up, largely on the basis of those declining wage expenses, so anyone who thinks the economy is bad is clearly wrong. It's only bad for for the people who do the work - you know, the little people, the ones who don't count, the ones whose actual personal economic status has no bearing on the real economy, the ones who are "ignorant" for believing that they matter.
posted on 10.23.2007 11:38 AM7
Joe,
One last comment.
As to the "economic ignorance" of some Americans, I bristle at that insinuation. The fact is that most people know their local economic conditions better than the yahoos in DC or reporters from CNN do from afar.
Fact is, the heartland of this country feels the pain before the coasts do. Always. And most of the people who sneer at the economic ignorance of some Americans are the ones that live ensconced in old wealth neighborhoods in the NE or in go-go-go neighborhoods on the Left Coast. They only see the tail end of the problems after the heartland people have been suffering for months or even years. It's been like that in every recession I've lived through.
The Midwest and Plains states are canaries in the coal mine. People here have been suffering for months. Take a look at listings for good jobs in these areas and you'll see they've been drying up for the last four months, almost to the second that the sub-prime mortgage fiasco started. And even before that the news wasn't great.
Most every family we know that was single income just three years ago is now double--and that just to make ends meet. No one's getting ahead; they're just treading water. But now they're having to tread water with both parents working full-time. Crushing energy prices, property tax increases, and 30-50 percent or more increases on groceries are hitting the heartland hard because a lot of those folks were just surviving to begin with.
This country hasn't had a uniformly good economy since 1998, and even that economy was illusionary to some extent.
So yeah, when I hear how dumb we Midwesterners are to economic conditions when our local factories are closing down, our jobs are being shipped overseas, and all that rushes into the vacuum are jobs slinging burgers at a chain fast food restaurant with no medical benefits and a $150 paycheck at the end of the week, perhaps we have something to be gloomy about.
When The Wall Street Journal writes articles about the growing disparity between the rich and the poor in this country, and it notes the continual job losses that are pushing the middle class down the economic totem pole, then yes, we've got a problem.
I mean, how blind do we have to get to miss all these dead canaries?
posted on 10.23.2007 1:12 PM8
The middle class knows that it is getting the shaft. I work for the largest company in the world, and it has only made me more disillusioned about the future of this country.
All that corporations care about is the bottom line. If they can outsource things to India or Malaysia they will do it in a second, because it makes the number on the spreadsheet look better. All the while the richest are making themselves richer, and are increasing isolated from the people their decisions affect.
Pretty soon these American companies won't have customers because the middle class won't be able to afford their products, but they won't care because there is always a billion Chinese and Indians to sell to.
When did it become a conservative value to sell out to big corporations? What happened to championing the ability for Americans to live a comfortable middle class lifestyle on the salary of a single college educated earner? I can never recall a time in my life when people were so cynical and no longer believed in America to deliver a nice life to those who played by the rules and worked hard.
One party offers failed socialism and unassimilated millions, the other believes that companies who make a profit will raise their employees wages out of the goddness of their hearts instead of paying themselves off.
posted on 10.23.2007 3:02 PM9
Ocklarki:
"What happened to championing the ability for Americans to live a comfortable middle class lifestyle on the salary of a single college educated earner?"
I'll even go one step farther - a couple years ago, I saw Chris Matthews trying to display his Philly roots but he said something that really hit home with me. Roughly speaking, there was a time when a young guy would "get a girl in trouble" and he'd go down to the plant or mill, get a job, and he could marry that girl, work at that plant or mill, and put together some sort of decent life for his family.
My dad died young and my mother never went to college, but she's a bright lady that learned to write well, keep decent records, and since she kept up with new technology, she's a great office manager. Everyone gets their paycheck on time, everyone gets their health insurance and other benefits, the bills get paid, they never go over budget, etc...when she retires, her replacement will have to have a college degree. Why? Will it make him/her better or more qualified? That young person will have spent upwards of $40,000 for a college degree to start at a job for about $25,000/year. If they borrowed the money to go to school, enjoy that $400/month student loan payment. When it's all said and done, it's slightly better than working in retail. At least they'll be making more money than a starting teacher in North Carolina.
I work with young kids and it troubles me to see kids today feeling trapped, looking at a lifetime of debt starting at 22 or lifetime of dead-end, low-rent jobs starting at 18 and it's no wonder they end up making stupid and harmful decisions like drugs, crime, and violence...
posted on 10.24.2007 12:58 AM10
Oclarki,
We've got common ground on your post no. 8.
If you continue with this line of thinking, you'll eventually see that partisan political bickering is just a way to divide people and keep them from addressing the real issues with our country. We are losing (or maybe have already lost) our democracy. Government is operating for the benefit of big corporations, defense contractors, and the wealthiest top one percent of our population that controls 22 percent of the wealth.
Ron Paul makes sense when he says we need to scale back the american empire. Do we really need to maintain 700 bases all over the world, creating more enemies, and bankrupting our economy in the process?
posted on 10.24.2007 1:44 PM11
kevin T Keith (and DLE):
Just for sake of argument, let's grant that things are as horrible as you say (which I don't believe) and that it's all Bush's fault that we have a uniquely bad economy. Please thrill us with your solution to the horrible situation we find ourselves in. How do we "grow" the middle class? How do we "invest" in our children? How do we ensure that everyone keeps getting better jobs and their pay rates keep going up? How do we make sure everyone has affordable health care and internet access and reliable transportation and safe neighborhoods and chicken in every pot? Please tell us. Because it's obvious that the tax cuts haven't worked and the spending hasn't worked, because Bush has done gangbusters on both of those. There must be a better way and I'm certain you know what it is.
posted on 10.24.2007 3:58 PM12
jd,
The best way to increase the stability and prospects for the middle class involves returning to good old fashioned conservative principles.
First, secure the border and control illegal immigration. Hanging drywall and roofing and other construction trades used to be decently paying jobs.
Second get the government out of the student loan business. Not everyone needs to or should go to college, yet because student loans are so easy to get, too many people go to college. In turn because there is so much money available in the form of loans, Colleges and Universities continue to raise prices. The problem is the poor get grants and financial aid, the rich can afford the high prices, and the middle class is punished. Same with healthcare, let people pay for their own. Get the government out of it except for exceptional cases.
End the over regulation of small business. Punish large corporations who aren't loyal to America. If these companies want to be a global amoral entity out for only the bottom line, then no breaks from the government should be offered. More Teddy Roosevelt please.
posted on 10.24.2007 5:01 PM13
Another example of the economic ignorance of Americans
Nearly half of Americans think the U.S. economy is in a recession — close to 46 percent of those surveyed in a new CNN-Opinion Research Corporation Poll out Thursday morning say the country's economy is in a recession while 51 percent of those questioned say no.
Actually this is an example of economic ignorance on Joe's part. Because GDP figures are often revised it is often quite difficult to say for sure when a recession begins unless you are talking about the past. For example, we won't have any numbers on October's economic activity until at least November and even then you may need to wait until December or Janurary to make sure those numbers are not revised. It's indeed quite possible we are in recession right now and the economic historians will put the start date at Oct. 2007. There's no way you can really show that we have not rode over the 'peak' of activity right now and are now in recession.
A survey like the above is a warning sign because any individual American is only able to see his localized 'economic neighborhood'. If a majority think a recession is happening it could be because a majority are seeing slowdowns right now that won't show up in the official numbers for months. On the other hand, it could also just be the result of too many reports about the subprime meltdown or hysterical Jim Cramer rants. This is why forecasting is so dicey.
16. Love Isn’t Enough: 5 Reasons Why Same-Sex Marriage Will Harm Children (HT: Catholic Fire)
The biggest error is that same-sex couples do not make children. By definition a child being raised by a same-sex couple is the result of a failure of the hetrosexual couple that produced the child. The comparison then is not between a SSM and an ideal DSM but between a SSM and a FAILED DSM.
Reason 4 is based on the argument that human sexuality is 'pliant' meaning just seeing SS couples accepted and tolerated will cause huge numbers of otherwise heterosexual kids to 'explore'. This seems to contradict the assertion that heterosexuality is 'natural' and anything else is devient. It seems to be saying it is no more natural than speaking English with a British accent is natural!
Reason 5 is the tired argument that if you permit SSM then you must permit everything else including people marrying Lamas or poodles. This argument has been exploded here numerous times over.
posted on 10.25.2007 10:51 AM14
First, secure the border and control illegal immigration. Hanging drywall and roofing and other construction trades used to be decently paying jobs.
Why should they be? Are they high skilled jobs or did they used to be decently paying jobs because they were union protected which meant keeping minorities and others out of the labor pool? Will the 'middle class' really benefit by having to pay more for construction & home improvement.
Second get the government out of the student loan business. Not everyone needs to or should go to college, yet because student loans are so easy to get, too many people go to college. In turn because there is so much money available in the form of loans, Colleges and Universities continue to raise prices.
So why would anyone pay them? I'm not going to take out a $100,000 loan unless I'm going to get something worth at least $100K, even if the interest rate is subsidized...even if it is 0% (which it isn't with student loans). The data appears to say the wage differential between a college degree & no college degree has increased, not decreased. This indicates the price of skilled labor has gone up relative to unskilled labor.
End the over regulation of small business. Punish large corporations who aren't loyal to America. If these companies want to be a global amoral entity out for only the bottom line, then no breaks from the government should be offered. More Teddy Roosevelt please.
So 'small business' won't be regulated? Small business for the most part isn't regulated to any degree that large business is. Yes there are areas where small business has a lot of paperwork to handle but you should be specific here. For example, many light construction and home improvement businesses are small. If you're going to crack down on them hiring illegal immigrant labor then you're going to be subjecting them to regulation...not ending it. And what exactly do you mean by 'loyal to America' in terms of large business? Sounds like you've been watching too much Lou Dobbs.
posted on 10.25.2007 11:21 AM