Believing You Are A Victim… [Mitt Romney]

I would like to start by saying I AM NOT A SUPPORTER OF MITT ROMNEY. (nor Obama)

Today all the rage on the blogosphere is about how ol’ Mitt lashed his tongue and the less privileged.  I think its a bunch of garbage and a stupid thing to stay, but he was at least on the right train of thought. 

To my understanding the fact about, 47% of the population has taken some sort of federal support from the government, is true. I do not have a problem with him calling out the people who “think they are victims”. I think way to many people decided long ago that their life was going to come easy and money and iPhones were going to rain down from the sky on them without them having to do any work for them.  Its one of the biggest problems i see in youth today and it comes from most of their parents.  Entitlement! And when what they feel they are entitled to doesn’t come easily to them, they instantly become a victim.  Its like they can’t believe that after all of the lack of work they have done they didn’t reach their goals. Goals are met by hard work, long hours, and practice.  America was not built on the backbones of freeloaders it was built on the backs of hard workers and innovators.

I do however think it might be the dumbest thing ever for him to think…

“I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.” -Romney

First, the idea that people cannot change for the better is sickening to me.  How can you rule out 47% of the USA population as failures so easily? Mitt, you are only playing to the victimization they already feel. If they truly cannot be turned around THAN THE TRULY ARE VICTIMS.

Secondly, a Man (or Woman, not in the election though) who makes his goal to convince the population to take personal responsibility and care for their lives, is a man who is worthy of being president of the USA. In fact that is exactly what you should be trying to do. 

I would becoming the biggest supporter in the world of the first Politician who runs on the platform of just that. It would be a breath of fresh air for the USA to put some of its wasted tax money into “Convincing People to Take Personal Responsibility and Care For Their Lives” In fact this should be a class taught in high school…

It would be called “ITS YOUR LIFE TAKE CONTROL OF IT” and be required to pass in order to graduate. 

We need to stop giving money to problem citizens of the country and start invest time and education into fixing the problems. I am not going to get into the list of things I think are problems, but I wanted to clarify I do not blame this on people, I blame this on the lack of motivation, education, and circumstance that holds these people back from being successful.  I wouldn’t even mind if I had to pay higher taxes if instead of a welfare check, people got a life coach.

 

A life coach who:

Came and woke them up every morning EARLY.

Helped them apply for JOBS get needed EDUCATION.

Or whatever else they needed help with to become a PRODUCTIVE MEMBER OF SOCIETY.

Just STOP giving them money to buy drugs and booze. I know some of you will say, “Not everyone on a social benefit program is buying drugs and booze”. I say you are correct, but how many of them own iPhones or flat screen TV’s. That is besides the point anyway, because if someone who is collecting from the government is actually trying to better their life,  they should have no issue with a life coach coming and helping them succeed at it.

WE NEED TO CHANGE THE PROCESS TO FIX THE PROBLEM.

What we are doing right now “Is like burning money to stay warm instead of paying the gas bill”. 

THE END IS NEAR…For The NCAA…

I normally have much more to add onto articles when i post them, but this guy says it all. Amateurism is dead in college athletics.  Next year we will begin to pay the players, and the academic students are getting screwed for it.

Article originally posted HERE

In June of 1970, Bill Veeck, a renegade baseball owner, took the stand for the plaintiff in the case of Flood v. Kuhn, in which St. Louis Cardinal outfielder Curt Flood essentially sued major league baseball to break the power of the “reserve system,” a pernicious practice that bound a player to one team for as long as that one team wanted to keep him. It was this system of, at best, involuntary servitude on which the business of baseball had remained a rigged game in favor of management for over a century.

Veeck thought the system doomed. Sooner or later, he believed, a judge, or somebody else in authority that didn’t give a damn about sitting in the owner’s box for Opening Day, was going to get a good look at the system. That person probably then would spend four or five minutes laughing so hard that they nearly fainted, and then that person would throw out the whole system for the fraud that it was. Better to eliminate the reserve system gradually, Veeck testified. (He recommended a system of seven-year contracts, much like the system that had prevailed at one time in Hollywood.) That way, he thought, the owners could control the transition between the reserve system and whatever came next. Veeck also pointed out that the reserve system, as it was practiced at the time, ran counter to some cherished American beliefs about the country’s values.

“I think it would certainly help the players and the game itself to no longer be one of the few places in which there is human bondage,” Veeck testified, according to the account in Brad Snyder’s A Well-Paid Slave, an exemplary book on the Flood case. “I think it would be to the benefit of the reputation of the game of baseball … At least, it would be fair.”

The owners didn’t listen. Veeck was not one of them. He had a predilection for putting midgets on the field. And black people. And, as far as the authoritarian exercise of whiteness went, baseball management made the Politburo look like the O’Jays. They ignored Veeck. They even beat theFlood case in the Supreme Court. Then, in 1975, an arbitrator named Peter Seitz threw out the reserve clause and free agency fell onto baseball all at once and everywhere. The system utterly collapsed and, just as Veeck had predicted, it was not a soft landing.

Something like that has happened over the last 20 or 30 years in regard to college athletics. Every few years, some angry, stick-waving prophet would come wandering into the cozy system of unpaid (or barely paid) labor and start bellowing about how the essential corruption in the system wasn’t that some players got money under the table, but that none of them were allowed to get any over it. Sooner or later, these people said, the system would collapse from its own internal contradictions — yes, some of these people summoned up enough Marx through the bong resin in their brains from their college days to make a point — and the people running college sports had best figure out how to control the chaos before it overwhelmed them. Nobody listened. Very little changed, except that college sports became bigger and more lucrative, an enterprise of sports spectacle balanced precariously on the fragile principle that everybody should get to make money except the people doing the actual work.

Now, though, the indications are that the reckoning is finally here. In its role as the protector of the lucrative status quo, the NCAA is under assault from a number of different directions, and the organization seems to be cracking from the pressure. Just in the past two years, we have seen the lawsuit brought by former UCLA star Ed O’Bannon in which O’Bannon and several other former NCAA athletes challenged the NCAA’s right to profit from their “likenesses” in perpetuity. Earlier this month, legendary center Bill Russell joined that suit. In the October issue of the Atlantic, historian Taylor Branch took a mighty whack at the entire system and made a case for paying college athletes on the grounds of simple fairness. Branch’s credentials as a chronicler of the civil rights movement gave his critique a profound resonance in places where nobody much cares if Alabama beats LSU this weekend. Yesterday, Congressman Bobby Rush of Illinois, a former Black Panther who once escaped being murdered by the Chicago Police Department through the expedient of not being at home to get shot, and still the only man to defeat Barack Obama head-to-head in an election, likened the NCAA to Al Capone, which is not a compliment, not even in Chicago. And, perhaps most significant of all, a petition is being circulated by current football and basketball players requesting (politely) a cut of the vast ancillary revenues that the colleges and the NCAA are raking in.

On October 27, undoubtedly in response to all of this, and in an obvious attempt to keep order within the help, the NCAA voted to allow its member conferences to decide whether to pay their athletes an annual stipend of $2,000 to cover the “incidental costs” of a college education. NCAA president Mark Emmert was firm in his denial that this constituted “pay for play.”

Nonsense.

Of course, it is.

And that’s the ballgame right there. As soon as you pay someone $2,000, you cannot make the argument that it is unethical to pay that person $5,000, or $10,000, or a million bucks a year, for all that. Amateurism is one of those rigid things that cannot bend, only shatter. Amateurism is an unsustainable concept. It could not last in golf. It could not last in tennis. It couldn’t even last in the Olympics, where it was supposed to have been ordained by Zeus or someone. It is the rancid legacy of a stultified British class system in which athletes were supposed to be “gentlemen” and not “tradesmen.” Which is to say that sports are supposed to be for Us and not Them, old sport.

It was particularly badly suited for transplantation to this country, where we — theoretically, anyway, and against a preponderance of available evidence today — believe that we are a classless society based on upward mobility and the essential fairness of our system.

(Yeah, yeah, I know, but play along for the moment, OK?)

Sports have always played an important role in the construction of that part of our national self-image. Sports as a “way out of poverty” is one of our more cherished national myths, and it always ran headlong into the British concept of amateurism, which was based on a class system that didn’t believe in ways out of poverty for the lower orders, or the Irish. But I repeat myself. Basically, amateurism offends against this country’s image of itself and, therefore, its support here always has been tenuous.

 

Give Americans a chance to be greedy and noble at the same time, and the cultural momentum becomes unstoppable.

 

Which is part of the reason why every major “scandal” in college sports begins with the crash of a cymbal and ends with a stifled yawn. What we have in college sports at the moment is a perfect example of a functioning underground economy. People tolerate that economy because, fundamentally, we believe that, if you work a 40-hour-a-week job that requires travel all over the country, you ought to get paid for it. We also love the games. Hence, out of both selfishness and a kind of innate sense of fairness, most people are more satisfied with the sausage than they are horrified at how it’s made. Give Americans a chance to be greedy and noble at the same time, and the cultural momentum becomes unstoppable.

The counterargument, of course, is that athletes are “compensated” by the scholarships they are granted to the universities they attend. In a time in which the middle class is being squeezed, and a college education is pricing itself out of the reach of thousands of families, this argument gains a certain amount of power. However, let’s accept it on its face for the moment. You can say that the university is entitled to the gate receipts from its games based on the value of the scholarships it grants to its players, and I might even grant you that, at which point I will lie down until this feeling passes.

But the ancillary income — television revenues, the sale of jerseys and other gear, the use of a player’s “likeness” in video games, and on and on — completely overwhelms the equation and makes the relationship inequitable. The Southeastern Conference made over a billion dollars last year. The Big 10 made $905 million. These people may have a moral right to their ticket sales based on the scholarships they provide, but they don’t have a moral right to every last nickel they can squeeze out of their labor force. That’s absurd. It’s un-American. And it cannot last.

The NCAA is floundering now, proposing a cheap pay-for-play scheme while denying it is doing so, and hoping to buy a little more time against the looming inevitable. Eventually, one night, they’ll throw up the ball at an NCAA tournament game and none of the players will jump. Or, a judge will rule on one or another of the lawsuits. Let’s look at the history of one of the plaintiffs.

In 1963, Bill Russell went to Jackson, Mississippi, and, in the face of the worst America had to offer, conducted integrated basketball clinics. In his way he helped redeem the distance between this country’s promise and this country’s reality. Bill Russell’s been threatened by experts, boys, and now he’s suing you. If I were you, I wouldn’t screw with Bill Russell.

Charles P. Pierce is a staff writer for Grantland and the author of Idiot America. He writes regularly for Esquire , is the lead writer for Esquire.com’s Politics blog and is a frequent guest on NPR.

Facebook is Illegally Tracking You, And Don’t Let Anyone Tell You It Doesn’t Matter! [CORRUPTION]

That thumbs down goes to you Gizmodo.

So the article below is from Gizmodo [Is Facebook Tacking You?], but i am starting to questions the legitimacy of their website.  This article is a paid for piece of advertisement, written as a PR cover up for Facebook.  The people at Facebook, have been breaking privacy laws and tracking your web activity without your knowledge for years.  Then they state that if you are paranoid about it clear your cookies, but this does not actually work to remove the facebook tracking bug.  I actually had to find a hidden .dll files using CCleaner in order to get rid of the tracking software.  In my opinion that mean this is a malicious cookie and is definitely tracking you illegally.  So this next comment go to Gizmodo.

WHEN DID YOU GUYS SELL OUT AND START WRITING PUFF PIECES FOR MAJOR CORPORATIONS. THE INTEGRITY OF YOUR ENTIRE NEWS WEBSITE IS AT STAKE. SO CLEAN UP YOUR ACT, START DOING REAL INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM, AND STOP WRITING ARTICLES THAT HIDE THE TRUTH JUST FOR MONEY.  OTHERWISE YOU ARE NO BETTER THAN FOX NEWS OR ABC. For more on this check HERE

For the rest of you seriously consider deleting your Facebook account and cleaning your registry.  Facebook is quickly becoming an evil corporation and don’t support them with your business.

Is Facebook Tracking You After You Cancel Your Account? Does It Even Really Matter?

Citing employees at Hamburg Data Protection, Bloomberg claims that Facebook’s cookies will still actively track your online activity even if you’ve cancelled your account. But it mostly just seems like tin hat paranoia.

According to the report, there’s “suspicion” and over the way Facebook is using cookies. What that means exactly is unclear, as they don’t elaborate any further aside from saying that the cookies can identify specific people. Facebook says they delete any user specific cookies, but leave some for security purposes, such as phishing.

Remaining cookies are used in “identifying spammers and phishers, detecting when somebody unauthorized is trying to access your account, helping you get back into your account if you get hacked,” and blocking underage users from re-registering with a different birth date, Facebook said.

Should Facebook be doing this without people knowing? Probably not. But even if they are collecting data on you after you cancel your account, is it different from what any other website is doing? If these are supercookies, which are considerably harder to get rid of, then yeah, it’s problematic. But sites will drop a cookie on your computer and track your data even if you’re just visiting—regardless of whether or not you have an account.

This instance doesn’t seem to be much different. Sure, Facebook has data about us that is much more focused and specific, but if you’re that paranoid about it, clear out your cookies. [Bloomberg]

Unemployment is being under reported by 52%.

On Friday the most current jobs report showed that only 80,000 jobs were created in October.  This is less than everyone was hoping for yet for some reason the unemployment numbers went down.  Actually they were reported at 9.1%. Now for most intelligent people that type of statistics just doesn’t make any sense. However this is another tactic the Gov’t uses to hide the truth from the people. Unemployment is actually closer to double that rate, but the other half of the people have been out of work so long they are not counted anymore.  less than 50% of the currently jobless are actually being recorded in the unemployment numbers.  that means that unemployment is closer to 20% not 9%, to put that into perspective that means nearly 70 million people are without work, or 1 in 5 Americans.

Abelow originally posted HERE

 

Washington • The jobs crisis has left so many people out of work for so long that most of America’s unemployed are no longer receiving unemployment benefits.

Early last year, 75 percent were receiving checks. The figure is now 48 percent — a shift that points to a growing crisis of long-term unemployment. Nearly one-third of America’s 14 million unemployed have had no job for a year or more.

Congress is expected to decide by year’s end whether to continue providing emergency unemployment benefits for up to 99 weeks in the hardest-hit states. If the emergency benefits expire, the proportion of the unemployed receiving aid would fall further.

The ranks of the poor would also rise. The Census Bureau says unemployment benefits kept 3.2 million people from slipping into poverty last year. It defines poverty as annual income below $22,314 for a family of four.

Yet for a growing share of the unemployed, a vote in Congress to extend the benefits to 99 weeks is irrelevant. They’ve had no job for more than 99 weeks. They’re no longer eligible for benefits.

Their options include food stamps or other social programs. Nearly 46 million people received food stamps in August, a record total. That figure could grow as more people lose unemployment benefits.

So could the government’s disability rolls. Applications for the disability insurance program have jumped about 50 percent since 2007.

“There’s going to be increased hardship,” said Wayne Vroman, an economist at the Urban Institute.

The number of unemployed has been roughly stable this year. Yet the number receiving benefits has plunged 30 percent.

Government unemployment benefits weren’t designed to sustain people for long stretches without work. They usually don’t have to. In the recoveries from the previous three recessions, the longest average duration of unemployment was 21 weeks, in July 1983.

By contrast, in the wake of the Great Recession, the figure reached 41 weeks in September. That’s the longest on records dating to 1948. The figure is now 39 weeks.

“It was a good safety net for a shorter recession,” said Carl Van Horn, an economist at Rutgers University. It assumes “the economy will experience short interruptions and then go back to normal.”

Weekly unemployment checks average about $300 nationwide. If the extended benefits aren’t renewed, growth could slow by up to a half-percentage point next year, economists say.

The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that each $1 spent on unemployment benefits generates up to $1.90 in economic growth. The CBO has found that the program is the most effective government policy for increasing growth among 11 options it’s analyzed.

Jon Polis lives in East Greenwich, R.I., one of the 20 states where 99 weeks of benefits are available. He used them all up after losing his job as a warehouse worker in 2008. His benefits paid for groceries, car maintenance and health insurance.

Now, Polis, 55, receives disability insurance payments, food stamps and lives in government-subsidized housing. He’s been unable to find work because employers in his field want computer skills he doesn’t have.

Employers are crying that they can’t find qualified help,” he said. But the ones he interviewed with “weren’t willing to train anybody.”

From late 2007, when the recession began, to early 2010, the number of people receiving unemployment benefits rose more than four-fold, to 11.5 million.

But the economy has remained so weak that an analysis of long-term unemployment data suggests that about 2 million people have used up 99 weeks of checks and still can’t find work.

Contributing to the smaller share of the unemployed who are receiving benefits: Some of them are college graduates or others seeking jobs for the first time. They aren’t eligible. Only those who have lost a job through no fault of their own qualify.

The proportion of the unemployed receiving benefits usually falls below 50 percent during an economic recovery. Many have either quit jobs or are new to the job market and don’t qualify.

Today, the proportion is falling for a very different reason: Jobs remain scarce. So more of the unemployed are exhausting their benefits.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has noted that the long-term unemployed increasingly find it hard to find work as their skills and professional networks erode. In a speech last month, Bernanke called long-term unemployment a “national crisis” that should be a top priority for Congress.

Lawmakers will have to decide whether to continue the extended benefits by the end of this year. If the program ends, nearly 2.2 million people will be cut off by February.

Congress has extended the program nine times. But it might balk at the $45 billion cost. It will be the first time the Republican-led House will vote on the issue.

USA Government Executes USA Citizen Without A Trial Or Due Process [CORRUPTION]

I KNOW WHATS COMING. PEOPLE ARE GOING TO TELL ME ITS OKAY BECUASE HE WAS A TERRORIST.  HE WAS RESPONCIBLE FOR THE DEATH OF AMERICANS ETC ETC, I UNDERSTAND WHERE YOU ARE COMING FROM.  THERE IS A VERY SLIM CHANCE HE DID NOT DESERVE TO DIE.  BUT HOW CAN WE BE SURE IF THERE WAS NEVER A TRIAL. THE ONLY THING THAT CAN BE PROVEN NOW IS THAT THSI GUY DIDN’T LIKE AMERICA AND SPOKE OUT AGAINST OUR GOVERNMENT, SO THE KILLED HIM. THIS IS A SCARY MOMENT IN AMERICAN HISTORY.  UNDER THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION WE HAVE TAKEN TO ASSASSINATING CITIZENS WITHOUT A TRIAL. SOUNDS GOOD WHEN IT S A TERRORIST, UNTIL THEY CLAIM YOU ARE A TERRORIST OR SOMEONE YOU CARE ABOUT IS ONE. CHECK OUT THE STORY FROM WASHINGTON BELOW.

 

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration’s secret legal memorandum that opened the door to the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born radical Muslim cleric hiding in Yemen, found that it would be lawful only if it were not feasible to take him alive, according to people who have read the document.

Site Intelligence, via European Pressphoto Agency

Anwar al-Awlaki, a militant cleric who was an American citizen, was killed in Yemen.

 The memo, written last year, followed months of extensive interagency deliberations and offers a glimpse into the legal debate that led to one of the most significant decisions made by President Obama — to move ahead with the killing of an American citizen without a trial.

The secret document provided the justification for acting despite an executive order banning assassinations, a federal law against murder, protections in the Bill of Rights and various strictures of the international laws of war, according to people familiar with the analysis. The memo, however, was narrowly drawn to the specifics of Mr. Awlaki’s case and did not establish a broad new legal doctrine to permit the targeted killing of any Americans believed to pose a terrorist threat.

The Obama administration has refused to acknowledge or discuss its role in the drone strike that killed Mr. Awlaki last month and that technically remains a covert operation. The government has also resisted growing calls that it provide a detailed public explanation of why officials deemed it lawful to kill an American citizen, setting a precedent that scholars, rights activists and others say has raised concerns about the rule of law and civil liberties.

But the document that laid out the administration’s justification — a roughly 50-page memorandum by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, completed around June 2010 — was described on the condition of anonymity by people who have read it.

The legal analysis, in essence, concluded that Mr. Awlaki could be legally killed, if it was not feasible to capture him, because intelligence agencies said he was taking part in the war between the United States and Al Qaeda and posed a significant threat to Americans, as well as because Yemeni authorities were unable or unwilling to stop him.

The memorandum, which was written more than a year before Mr. Awlaki was killed, does not independently analyze the quality of the evidence against him.

The administration did not respond to requests for comment on this article.

The deliberations to craft the memo included meetings in the White House Situation Room involving top lawyers for the Pentagon, State Department, National Security Council and intelligence agencies.

It was principally drafted by David Barron and Martin Lederman, who were both lawyers in the Office of Legal Counsel at the time, and was signed by Mr. Barron. The office may have given oral approval for an attack on Mr. Awlaki before completing its detailed memorandum. Several news reports before June 2010 quoted anonymous counterterrorism officials as saying that Mr. Awlaki had been placed on a kill-or-capture list around the time of the attempted bombing of a Detroit-bound airliner on Dec. 25, 2009. Mr. Awlaki wasaccused of helping to recruit the attacker for that operation.

Mr. Awlaki, who was born in New Mexico, was also accused of playing a role in a failed plot to bomb two cargo planes last year, part of a pattern of activities that counterterrorism officials have said showed that he had evolved from merely being a propagandist — in sermons justifying violence by Muslims against the United States — to playing an operational role in Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula’s continuing efforts to carry out terrorist attacks.

Other assertions about Mr. Awlaki included that he was a leader of the group, which had become a “cobelligerent” with Al Qaeda, and he was pushing it to focus on trying to attack the United States again. The lawyers were also told that capturing him alive among hostile armed allies might not be feasible if and when he were located.

Based on those premises, the Justice Department concluded that Mr. Awlaki was covered by the authorization to use military force against Al Qaeda that Congress enacted shortly after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 — meaning that he was a lawful target in the armed conflict unless some other legal prohibition trumped that authority.

It then considered possible obstacles and rejected each in turn.

Among them was an executive order that bans assassinations. That order, the lawyers found, blocked unlawful killings of political leaders outside of war, but not the killing of a lawful target in an armed conflict.

A federal statute that prohibits Americans from murdering other Americans abroad, the lawyers wrote, did not apply either, because it is not “murder” to kill a wartime enemy in compliance with the laws of war.

But that raised another pressing question: would it comply with the laws of war if the drone operator who fired the missile was a Central Intelligence Agency official, who, unlike a soldier, wore no uniform? The memorandum concluded that such a case would not be a war crime, although the operator might be in theoretical jeopardy of being prosecuted in a Yemeni court for violating Yemen’s domestic laws against murder, a highly unlikely possibility.

Then there was the Bill of Rights: the Fourth Amendment’s guarantee that a “person” cannot be seized by the government unreasonably, and the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee that the government may not deprive a person of life “without due process of law.”

The memo concluded that what was reasonable, and the process that was due, was different for Mr. Awlaki than for an ordinary criminal. It cited court cases allowing American citizens who had joined an enemy’s forces to be detained or prosecuted in a military court just like noncitizen enemies.

It also cited several other Supreme Court precedents, like a 2007 caseinvolving a high-speed chase and a 1985 case involving the shooting of a fleeing suspect, finding that it was constitutional for the police to take actions that put a suspect in serious risk of death in order to curtail an imminent risk to innocent people.

The document’s authors argued that “imminent” risks could include those by an enemy leader who is in the business of attacking the United States whenever possible, even if he is not in the midst of launching an attack at the precise moment he is located.

The Terrible Effects Of A Fatherless Family On Both Sons And Daughters, And The New Stats To Back It Up [BASTARDS]

This one goes out to all of the dads out there who do not take good enough care of their children.  And by GOOD ENOUGH I mean staying married to their mother and living in the same home as them, not just supplying them with $$$.  New Studies have provided information that shows boys who grow up in a fatherless household are at a serious disadvantage in life AND IT IS YOUR FAULT FOR LEAVING.

Article originally posted HERE

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the share of children living in mother-only households has risen from 8 percent in 1960 to 23 percent in 2010. Freakonomics has a long-standing interest in the role parents play in the lives of their children, and while we usually find no merit in helicopter parenting, a basic level of involvement is obviously important. Past research has shown that a father’s involvement with his children is linked to all kinds of beneficial outcomes, from higher academic achievement, improved social and emotional well-being, to lower incidences of delinquency, risk taking, and other problem behaviors.

A new working paper from authors Deborah A. Cobb-Clark and Erdal Tekin examines the relationship between juvenile delinquency and the role of a father in the household, particularly in terms of the different effects an absent father has on boys and girls. They discovered, among other things, that sons benefit far more from a father (or father-figure) than daughters do. From the abstract:

…we find that adolescent boys engage in more delinquent behavior if there is no father figure in their lives. However, adolescent girls’ behavior is largely independent of the presence (or absence) of their fathers.

Though a non-residential father isn’t ideal, a father-like replacement does have positive effects on boys. A stepfather tends to reduce delinquent behavior, and having a father figure who puts in a significant quantity of time around a child is important.

Adolescent boys who have a father figure in their lives are significantly less likely to engage in subsequent delinquent behavior than are their peers with no father in their lives.  For example, the incidence of any form of delinquent behavior is 7.6 percentage points lower among boys living with their biological fathers and is 8.5 percentage points lower among boys who live with stepfathers and have no relationship with their biological fathers.

While daughters generally require a level of quality interaction with a father figure, sons benefit from sheer quantity of time, and respond simply to having a father or father figure around the house. Most interestingly, however, is the finding that daughters appear to be adversely affected by contact with their non-residential biological father.

It is also important to note that growing up with only a non-residential, biological  father who spent time talking with his adolescent daughter appears to be associated with slight increases in her delinquent behavior as measured by any type of crime, violent crime, and selling drugs once she reaches adulthood. This surprising result may be due to the possibility that these verbal interactions between the non-residential father and the adolescent  is an indication of a problematic relationship between the two, which might have manifested itself as delinquent behavior later in life.

For both young men and women, delinquent behavior decreased if their mothers simply spent time “doing things” with them during their adolescence. Mothers also do significantly more “talking” with their daughters than with their sons, a potential contributor for why sons are more affected by the absence of a father than daughters are. However, the authors note that:

Mothers also do not appear to compensate for the complete absence of a father figure by increasing their involvement with their children. In fact, it is those children without a father figure in their lives who engage in fewer activities and talk about fewer issues with their mothers.

Announcement To The World [Vendetta Speech Edit]

Good evening, World. Allow me first to apologize for this interruption. I do, like many of you, appreciate the comforts of every day routine — the security of the familiar, the tranquility of repetition. I enjoy them as much as any person. But in the spirit of commemoration, whereby those important events of the past, usually associated with someone’s death or the end of some awful bloody struggle, are celebrated with a nice holiday, I thought we could mark this OWS protest, as a day that is truly should be remembered, by taking some time out of our daily lives to sit down and have a little chat.

There are of course those who do not want us to speak. I suspect even now, orders are being shouted into telephones, and men with guns will soon be on their way. Why? Because while the nightstick may be used in lieu of conversation, words will always retain their power. Words offer the means to meaning, and for those who will listen, the enunciation of truth. And the truth is, there is something terribly wrong with this country, isn’t there?
Cruelty and injustice, intolerance and oppression. *And where once you had the freedom to object, to think and speak as you saw fit, you now have censors and systems of surveillance coercing your conformity and soliciting your submission.* How did this happen? Who’s to blame? Well certainly there are those more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable, but again truth be told, if you’re looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror.

I know why you did it. I know you were afraid. Who wouldn’t be? War, terror, disease, poverty. There were a myriad of problems which conspired to corrupt your reason and rob you of your common sense. Fear got the best of you, and in your panic you turned to the corrupt governments and powerful corporations of the world. They promised you order, they promised you peace, They promise you prosperity and all they demanded in return was your silent, obedient consent.

Yesterday we sought to end that silence. Yesterday we OCCUPIED more than 1800 cities world wide, to remind everyone of what it has FORGOTTEN. We are the majority. Our hope was to remind the world that fairness, justice, and freedom are more than words, they are perspectives. So if you’ve seen nothing, if the crimes of these governments remain unknown to you then I would suggest that you allow the world to pass unmarked. But if you see what I see, if you feel as I feel, and if you would seek as I seek, then I ask you to stand beside me, outside the doors of corruption across the globe, and together we shall give them an event that shall never, ever be forgot.

Occupy Wall Street Protest. Pictures From Around The World. [PICTURES]

Today we truly saw the beginning of something big.  This is what happens when the majority can put petty differences aside to try and reach action on one common goal to better all of humanity. if you are still confused This Is What The Occupy Wall Street Protest Is All About, Hint Its One Word! [ACCOUNTABILITY] also read this Announcement To The World [Vendetta Speech Edit]

More arrests today from all over the world what will they do when they fill all of the jails?

When I started this blog Crazy Signs were my job, now it looks like many people all over the world have entered my line of work.

If this sign is true watch out NYC we invaded countries based on tips this good.

How will he let people know what the demands are with his mouth taped shut.

This sign is so true, this should be the goal of everyone who supports this movement. Not only to strive for a world that we do want, but also make sure with 100% of our effort that we do not fall asleep at the wheel again and let the world come to this again.

Freedom for the 99% has been but a whisper in the wind for a long long time, we have never become more free, the 1% has just become better at making us think we are.

I love the faces the SUITES are making in the high end restaurant in the background.  Its like they can tell that the immoral teet they have been milking may finally be on its way out.

When I first posted about HACKERS starting an underground movement back at the end of May and early June [The Hacker Group Anonymous, Begins Phase One Of Destroying The Credit Markets] when I first created my blog, I never thought it would gain the support it has and lead to outright public protests against the same thing they were supporting.

Looks like more and more people are joining “The Heroic” part of this sign…

Yes if you scan the bar code on your computer it works too.

WE ARE THE 99%!

China May Be The Next Debt Crisis. [ECONOMY]

For those of you who are worried about the USA debt, you have the right idea, but take some solace in knowing that China and the rest of the world are worst off than we are.

ORIGINALLY POSTED HERE

Fears surface over Chinese debt amid lending practices

China’s property market could see a slowdown

With its deep pockets and buoyant growth, China has been touted as a white knight for the world economy.

But fears are growing that the country may face its own debt crisis as its economy shows signs of a slowdown.

Premier Wen Jiabao this week urged stronger financial support for cash-strapped smaller businesses.

His call comes amid reports that many private sector enterprises are facing bankruptcy due to credit tightening and an explosion in informal lending.

In the eastern city of Wenzhou, one-fifth of the city’s 360,000 small and mid-sized businesses have stopped operating due to cash shortages, China’s official news agency Xinhua reported on Thursday.

“Effective measures should be taken to contain the trend of usury, crack down on illegal fundraising and properly handle the problems of collateral and capital shortage in order to prevent risks from spreading and evolving on a regional scale,” Mr Wen said while visiting the city.

According to Chinese media reports, more than 80 businessmen have fled the city unable to pay loans taken out from underground banks and one shoe factory owner jumped off a building and killed himself.

“We consider the informal lending market the most likely short-term time bomb for the Chinese economy,”

Dong TaoCredit Suisse

Economists believe this could be the beginning of a larger wave of corporate bankruptcies.

Concern centres on China’s informal lending or shadow banking market – rich individuals and businesses that offer loans at interest rates spanning from 14% to 70%.

Companies and entrepreneurs have turned to this underground sector, with Chinese banks tightening lending as part of the government’s fight against inflation.

Credit Suisse says that hard statistics on the sector are hard to come by, but loans could total as much as 4 trillion yuan ($627bn; £406bn) – equal to 8% of the formal banking sector – and may be growing at 50% a year.

It estimates that 60% of informal loans have gone to small property developers, with the rest going to other businesses that need bridge loans.

“We consider the informal lending market the most likely short-term time bomb for the Chinese economy,” Dong Tao, Asia economist at Credit Suisse, said in a recent report.

“Either Beijing takes pro-active and decisive measures to deal with the issue, or a mini credit crisis is likely to emerge in our opinion,” he says.

Default swaps

Fears of an economic slowdown in China have also fuelled a surge in the trading of credit default swaps – financial instruments that insure against the risk of debt defaults.

The net value of outstanding credit default swaps on Chinese government debt has risen to $8.3bn, compared with $1.6bn two years ago, the Financial Times reported on Thursday.

Investors are worried that China’s economy could experience a “hard landing” – a sudden slowdown after years of blistering growth.

The property market is thought to be particularly vulnerable, with house prices soaring in the past two years.

The country has raised interest rates three times so far this year and ordered banks to increase their reserves six times in the same period.

 

Occupy Wall Street Protest Video [HIGHLIGHTS]

Announcement To The World [Vendetta Speech Edit]

Wow this might be the first time the youth of NYC do something huge and meaningful.