Sex education isn't going to be enough. If anyone cares to read a valuable book on the subject -written by a Christian conservative no less, I suggest Unprotected written by a university campus psychiatrist(written as Anonymous M.D.).

I'm not a conservative just so you know, but I've never been able to call myself a liberal due to their generally positive association with pornography and sexual promiscuity as a form female empowerment. I say this because I really do recommend this book as a person concerned with humanitarian, feminist and sociological topics.

I tend to read books opposed to my view point so I can better understand why people(libertarians for example)think what they think. In Unprotected, I was expecting to find the usual conservative talking points on morals etc.. but I was more than suprised by what I found. I couln't argue against any of it.

I'm not religious, but I was not put off by the authors beliefs, which are mentioned pretty main in a chapter on the subject. The author is an Ivy League trained psychiatrist but also has a deep understanding of biochemestry which was a highlight of the book for me as new nothing about it before.

Thom, if you're reading this I really think you would benefit from checking this book out as it's perspective on issues you've descussed several times on the show(I listen every day!)are quite profound. It's obviously written anonymously for that reason. That being said, the book targets no one and has nothing directly to do with politics or parties. And she's not even a very good writer. Nevertheless I found the information invaluable. HIghly recommended.

@sanguine Well said.

The great recession is over? How come no one told me?

And Alan Blinder (economist, banking consultant and former Vice Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System) and chief Moody's economist Mark Zandi wrote a paper yesterday called How We Ended the Great Recession:

How We Ended the Great RecessionA source on Capitol Hill sent this to me, telling me that the paper is making the rounds on the Hill.
In the paper, Blinder and Zandi congratulate the Bush and Obama administrations for saving us from the Great Depression 2.0:

Eighteen months ago, the global financial system was on the brink of collapse and the U.S. was suffering its worst economic downturn since the 1930s. The Great Recession gave way to recovery as quickly as it did largely because of the unprecedented responses by monetary and fiscal policymakers.

In other words: "Mission Accomplished".

In the real world, however, the economy is on the second leg down of the crash, and the government's policies have not addressed the real problems. See this and this (no wonderconsumer confidence is plunging but Wall Street is partying like it's 1999).

Indeed, while Blinder and Zandi and Congress are patting themselves on the back for a job well done, the facts simply do not bear out their claims. As just one example, they claim that the TARP bank bailouts helped the economy. But as I pointed out in March 2009, the bailout money didn't actually go to any productive economic uses:

The bailout money is just going to line the pockets of the wealthy, instead of helping to stabilize the economy or even the companies receiving the bailouts:

• Bailout money is being used to subsidize companies run by horrible business men, allowing the bankers to receive fat bonuses, to redecorate their offices, and to buy gold toilets and prostitutes

• A lot of the bailout money is going to the failing companies' shareholders

• Indeed, a leading progressive economist says that the true purpose of the bank rescue plans is "a massive redistribution of wealth to the bank shareholders and their top executives"

• The Treasury Department encouraged banks to use the bailout money to buy their competitors, and pushed through an amendment to the tax laws which rewards mergers in the banking industry (this has caused a lot of companies to bite off more than they can chew, destabilizing the acquiring companies)

And as the New York Times notes, "Tens of billions of [bailout] dollars have merely passed through A.I.G. to its derivatives trading partners".

***

In other words, through a little game-playing by the Fed, taxpayer money is goingstraight into the pockets of investors in AIG's credit default swaps and is not even really stabilizing AIG.

The super-wealthy have been bailed out, and life is great for them. For everyone else, things are not so good.

The system is rigged to benefit the elites and their sycophants at the expense of the country. See this, this, this, and this.

And - because Congress members tend to be wealthy, and because they can engage in insider trading without having to worry about pesky things like the law - they continue (with only a handful of exceptions who challenge status quo thinking regarding finance and war) to make decisions which benefit their own bank accounts, instead of working for the American people.

http://georgewashington2.blogspot.com/

The lady from the IWF obviously does not go near any poor people. She should donate some of her time to the shelters and find out just how many homeless women and children are in them. How do you make a peanut butter sandwich when you live in a car? She should go down to the parking lots in many cities, (Santa Barbara) designated for the homeless to park their cars at night, so that they can be safe. Give her a dose of reality, right now she is living in a bubble. If she can't be bothered to donate her time to the poor, then maybe she shouldn't bother talking about cutting food programs for the poor.

I was on food stamps for a while a couple years ago. It paid just enugh to provide food for 20 days each month. The other 10 days I was feeding off of my social capital at the table of friends. I was lucky that I had people that cared enough about me to help me through my rough patch. I can not imagine what people totally on their own do.

DB

The Sherrod debacle did not materialize out of thin air . . . NPR deserves the open briefing room seat, NOT FUAX Noise: http://act.credoaction.com/campaign/nprbeatfox/index.html?rc=hlinko_20100728_nprfox_FB_ad1

Maxrot: Certainly technologically feasible. The point of sale is informationally more than sophisticated enough. Big Retail will piss and moan, but at the end of the day there's money in it for them. What about small non-chain retailers, though? That could be an unintended side effect.

CNN is reporting zero violence w. the civil disobedience in Police.

LA County Fair is coming up, deep fried Twinkies and Snikers bars... mmm mmm, delushious.

N

Walmart may be a transnational and not a person, but it seems like flesh-and-blood jet setters are becoming transnationals. Last night on NPR's Marketplace they were talking about how various nation-states (including the USA) are selling citizenship (to individuals); which ones offer it for the least money, which will sell you a passport in the shortest amount of time, etc., what sort of 'job creation' strings get attached, etc.

Kerry Lucas reminds me of the sheep in Orwell's novel Animal Farm: "Public sector bad. Private sector good."