« Motherhood, Pipelines, and Weekend Open Thread | Main | Wednesday Open Thread »

April 25, 2012

Comments

Feed You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.

Paula B

>>does that mean they no longer have the moral right to have sex? Yep, that's what they're saying. The sooner they say it out loud, and can be forced to publicly own that belief, the better.

Egg-sactly right! Someone had to say it. Can a revival of the Shaker movement be far behind? Think of what we'll save on school taxes alone, not to mention car seats, bunk beds and sneakers.

Meanwhile, over at Esquire.com, Charles Pierce has a good one on Mittens's last speech: http://t.co/f2MXQ6si

Paula B

I don't want to deflect the thread, but will be offline for a while and want to add this story to the mix:
http://bit.ly/IvB8Zg

AP says employers are ready to step in and implement many aspects of the ACA if it is deemed unconstitutional by SCOTUS, including provider exchanges. The main differences will being, 1/the insured will pay more for the services and 2/far, far fewer will be insured, and 3/lots and lots of people will make money on the deal along the way, instead of the taxpayers benefiting from the transaction.
Those lucky enough to have jobs better hold on to them if they want to keep themselves and their families insured. While you're at it, GOP, why not bring back the company store!

oddjob

DON'T GIVE THEM IDEAS!

Paula B

If you haven’t already read it, here is a great reminder of what life is like without cheap and available contraception coupled a social environment that supports a woman’s choice to use it. It was only yesterday that such was not the case. Or maybe a couple of yesterdays, whatever. This piece was written by an OB/GYN about her own mother’s experience in the UK, where they were a little behind in the use of (relatively) safe and easy-to-manage birth control methods that gave women a chance to protect themselves from unwanted pregnancies.
This country has been in the forefront of advocating for the use of cheap and easy birth control in developing nations for decades, through various international humanitarian agencies, including UNICEF and WHO. Perhaps some of our legislators need to take some of our own advice.

Paula B

Don't know why I can get this link to work, but here it is:
http://bit.ly/I9TJeI

nancy

l-t-c -- Sent this page on to Digg. Your post is a nutshell and Eureka moment at the same time, I'd say.

The sooner they say it out loud, and can be forced to publicly own that belief, the better.

The graph is startling.

Mitt's lying liar victory speech about our current state of affairs earned a fiery response from Amanda which I'd recommend reading -- sidebar @Pandagon. "Republican destructiveness, and why it's so effective."

Sir Charles

l-t c,

Great post. I think it bears repeating just how important readily available and affordable contraception is.

It's not frivolous, it's not an after-thought, and it's not a luxury. It is a genuine necessity.

Crissa

24% working below 2/3 the median wage?

That's really tough mathematically. What's the limit on that? I mean, there's got to be a theoretical limit - below 50% - of how many can work below the median wage.

KN

Crissa, not really, assume a minimum wage of $7/hr a work force of 150 million, you get 36 million working for less than $4.62/hr, $39 million working for between $4.62 and $7.00/hr, and 75 million working for more than $7.00 per hour.

KN

nancy - nice rant, I had difficulty reading it but I got the gist I think. I agree that the issue is there is no incentive to behave. But punishment will not solve that problem, first of all enforcement is at best weak and for the most part non-existent. Bankers who impoverish millions with predatory loans and illegal foreclosures walk free and reap huge rewards, dope smokers do hard time.

The only incentive is to cheat and game the system and get filthy rich. A few fail, and get pinned. Most skate.

KN

ltc - you have hit upon a clear and obvious point here and it warrants serious consideration. The sad thing is that we cannot evaluate arguments in terms of their merits but we have to weigh them in terms of the motives because on the merits, the right wing will lie about anything.

Let's do a short thought experiment. Put ten people in a room and let them fiddle there for 12 hours without any contact with the outside world. Then bring in one ham sandwich on five grain bread, whole, place a knife with a dull edge on the table next to it. Then leave and observe what happens. I can't predict a result.

The analogy is sound though, we live on a finite planet with finite resources and yet our biological capacity is for infinite reproduction. These two things conflict. Oddly, uniquely, unlike any other organism that has ever lived on this planet we can foresee, predict the outcome of unlimited reproduction, and at the same time forestall it with the same genius.

If we were half as intelligent as we think we are we would by now have established a kind of tepid but still inspiring utopia wherein we were living in equilbirium with a nature that had not been seriously deranged by greed and avarice and folly and stupidity. But that is not the case, instead we teater on a sharp fulcrum of future and no future, and seem to be flocking towards the no future side in droves.

I am bemused by all this, but in no sense at all surprised.

oddjob

I mean, there's got to be a theoretical limit - below 50% - of how many can work below the median wage.

That's probably so of the mean wage, but the median wage is merely the wage that divides the population into two equal halves. It can be any wage that does that.

beckya57

I really, really don't like having a front row seat in which to watch the decline of a once-great nation. Leading the developed world in percentage of low-wage jobs--just great. And it's even worse because most of the other countries on that list have much better safety nets than ours. In other words, we're also the worst place to have a low-wage job.

Verify your Comment

Previewing your Comment

This is only a preview. Your comment has not yet been posted.

Working...
Your comment could not be posted. Error type:
Your comment has been posted. Post another comment

The letters and numbers you entered did not match the image. Please try again.

As a final step before posting your comment, enter the letters and numbers you see in the image below. This prevents automated programs from posting comments.

Having trouble reading this image? View an alternate.

Working...

Post a comment