Ladywriter

cool stuff!

eeeeeeek

Happy late birthday!

Hope it was a good one!

*runs off to beat Sledge w a message board*

Was Jared Loughner's Act Political?

He didn't shoot Gabrielle Giffords randomly and it turned out she just happened to be a politician. He sought her out, targeted her and then tried to kill her based on the fact that she was a politician. He thought the government was the problem and it was unresponsive to his psychotic demands on grammar and currency. So, is Loughner a psycho? Obviously. And that's not just because he shot all of those innocent people, but also because it is abundantly clear from his writings and videos that he has significant mental issues.

But why does the act have to be either psychotic or political? It's obviously both. It was a psychotic act driven by his political beliefs. What's so hard to understand about that?

Then, the next question is whether both sides are equally at fault. Again, I'm confused by this question. What the hell did the Democrats or liberals do here? Nothing, except get shot. How can the media possibly attach false equivalency to this? Are the Democrats equally culpable for getting shot as the conservatives are for shooting them?

Loughner shot a Democrat. Gee, I wonder which side he was on? He hated the government and thought they were out to get us. Gee, I wonder which side he was on?

I thought conservatives said liberals love big government. But now some have the audacity to claim Loughner was a liberal . But if one thing is obvious from Loughner's political writings, it was that he hated the government. So, which one is it -- do liberals love or hate the government?

Come on, this is all a smoke screen to make sure people don't see what's going on here. In the last two years, there have been dozens of attacks and shootings aimed at government officials and political organizations. Every single one of them was directed at liberals, Democrats or the government. Now we're to believe that's the world's largest coincidence?

The conservative hate-mongers don't create psychos. We get that there will always be disturbed individuals out there. But the right-wing directs these lunatics to a source. They channel their fear, anger and paranoia -- and they point them toward the Democrats. They use them as hate seeking missiles.

They load them up them up with violent imagery, whether it's talk of cross-hairs or second amendment remedies or the tree of liberty being refreshed with blood. Then when they get a violent reaction they pretend to be surprised and outraged that anyone would suggest they were the least bit culpable. The reality is that it is a simple formula -- violence in, violence out. Violent imagery in, violent results out.

If pretending this isn't political or that somehow it is both-sided doesn't work (which they shouldn't worry about because so far it has

), then they say it's political exploitation to point out what they have done.

How the hell are we supposed to point out the problem if we can't mention the issue for fear of being charged with political exploitation? Would it be exploiting the tragedy of the BP oil spill to point out that maybe we should be a little careful about oil drilling? Or are we not supposed to make the most obvious points so that we don't offend the other political side's delicate sensibilities?

You know who exploited a tragedy for political gain? George W. Bush and the entire Republican Party. They used 9/11 as a gimmick to get re-elected. Then they exploited it to attack a random country that had nothing to do with 9/11. It is nearly impossible to exploit a tragedy anymore than they did with 9/11. And maybe that's why they level the charge against us now, because they know that's the first thing they'd do.

But pointing out that conservative commentators and politicians have been inciting their followers isn't done to get anyone elected. I don't even know whose election this would theoretically effect. This isn't done to press some policy agenda (again, outside of gun control, I can't even think of what agenda we are supposed to theoretically be pushing for). This is to point out an obvious fact that is getting people killed -- if you incite violence, you get violence.

To pretend that isn't happening all across the country everyday on talk radio, etc. is to be willfully blind to reality -- and to allow it to happen again. And trust me, next time they'll also say no one could have seen it coming and that whatever we do we mustn't talk about it. Preventing another tragedy like this would be such terrible exploitation. Better to be quiet and let them do it again.

Watch The Young Turks Here

Clarifications:

I didn't think these clarifications were necessary, but apparently they are for some. So, here it goes.

1. I am not saying all conservatives are responsible. I got an e-mail from a conservative saying I am blaming him for breathing. I am not blaming him at all (unless he had a national platform and talked about "targeting" liberals, Democrats, etc.), let alone for breathing.

2. I don't believe the proper remedy is limiting anyone's freedom of speech. I never suggested that. In fact, I am sure if anyone passed such a law, not only would it be unconstitutional, but it would be almost exclusively used against the left.

2A. Of course, I don't mind Rush Limbaugh or Sarah Palin attacking Democrats. That's their job. I am asking them to use some caution in how they frame their attacks and not to use violent imagery that eggs people on.

On the show, I was very specific on what kinds of language I was referring to (I also have a link in the story above to examples).

3. I don't think that Jared Loughner necessarily listened to an episode of the Glenn Beck show and then went and did this (although others, like Byron Williams did specifically do just that). I am saying that these conservative leaders are purposely creating an environment in which this type of violence festers.

4. Lastly, I am not saying that these conservative leaders celebrated this news or wanted this specific outcome. I assume they are still human. But they knew, or should have known, that they were creating the environment that led to this kind of violence -- and they didn't give a damn.

What did you think was going to happen when you kept telling people to grab their guns, the government was endangering their family and way of life and that they should defend themselves? This was going to happen. Don't pretend otherwise.

cool

awesome

No more shootings, no more hate

pol.moveon.orgIn the wake of the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, we must end the violent rhetoric that has exploded in American politics. Join me in calling on every member of Congress and the major TV news networks to debate, not hate.

LIBERAL And Proud Of It

Nine-year-old victim of deadly Tucson shooting rampage identified

www.kidk.comThe identity of the nine-year-old tragically killed in Saturday morning's shooting rampage in Tucson, Arizona is Christina Taylor Green.

Tell Sarah Palin to stop inciting violence. | Change.org

www.change.orgRep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) & 11 others were gunned down in a senseless act of a violence. Giffords was on Palin's "target list" before the ...

Bill O'Riely got away with his Tiller the baby killer campaign that led to Dr Tiller being gunned down in church by a fox news fan

Sarah Palin will also get away with her target list and reload bullshit

Oil Spill Commission Assigns Blame for BP Disaster

Key findings from the chapter:

“. . .the Macondo blowout was the product of several individual missteps and oversights by BP, Halliburton, and Transocean, which government regulators lacked the authority, the necessary resources, and the technical expertise to prevent.”

“The blowout was not the product of a series of aberrational decisions made by rogue industry or government officials that could not have been anticipated or expected to occur again. Rather, the root causes are systemic and, absent significant reform in both industry practices and government policies, might well recur.”

“What we. . .know is considerable and significant: (1) each of the mistakes made on the rig and onshore by industry and government increased the risk of a well blowout; (2) the cumulative risk that resulted from these decisions and actions was both unreasonably large and avoidable; and (3) the risk of a catastrophic blowout was ultimately realized on April 20 and several of the mistakes were contributing causes of the blowout.”Among the examples of engineering mistakes and management failures highlighted in the chapter:

• Inadequate risk evaluation and management of late-stage well design decisions;

• A flawed design for the cement slurry used to seal the bottom of the well, which was developed without adequate engineering review or operator supervision;

• A “negative pressure test,” conducted to evaluate the cement seal at the bottom of the well, identified problems but was incorrectly judged a success because of insufficiently rigorous test procedures and inadequate training of key personnel;

• Flawed procedures for securing the well that called for unnecessarily removing drilling mud from the wellbore. If left in place, that drilling mud would have helped prevent hydrocarbons from entering the well and causing the blowout;

• Apparent inattention to key initial signals of the impending blowout; and

• An ineffective response to the blowout once it began, including but not limited to a failure of the rig’s blowout preventer to close off the well.

The chapter reports that these failures were preventable. Errors and misjudgments by at least three companies -- BP, Halliburton and Transocean -- contributed to the disaster. Federal regulations did not address many of the key issues -- for example, no regulation specified basic procedures for the negative pressure test used to evaluate the cement seal or minimum criteria for test success.

The chapter also notes, "Whether purposeful or not, many of the decisions that BP, Halliburton, and Transocean made that increased the risk of the Macondo blowout clearly saved those companies significant time (and money)."

The Commission’s full report will be released on January 11th.

I don't usually bother

but

this year ciggys are going bye bye

Pikachu is getting house trained

I'll do my best to spread positive atheism and assist in the de-conversion of those in need of support (I know leaving religion isn't too hard but giving up a personal deity can be depressing at first)

and take no shit and no prisoners!!

you?

its really such a double edged sword. If we have come to this level of advanced tech before, wtf happened to us?

Did we abandon earth and colonize elsewhere? maybe we're the ancient aliens...

The environment killed us off? volcanism, climate hell courtesy glaciation, unpleasantries from space ...

Or did we kill each other off? War, bio-warfare, religious cult death pacts....

Discovered in Israel, the finding challenges conventional wisdom that Homo sapiens originated in Africa

Israeli archaeologists have discovered human remains dating from 400,000 years ago, challenging conventional wisdom that Homo sapiens originated in Africa, the leader of excavations in Israel said on Tuesday.

Avi Gopher, of Tel Aviv University's Institute of Archaeology, said testing of stalagmites, stalactites and other material found in a cave east of Tel Aviv indicates that eight teeth uncovered there could be the earliest traces so far of our species.

"Our cave was used for a period of about 250,000 years -- from about 400,000 years ago to about 200,000 years ago," he told AFP.

"The teeth are scattered through the layers of the cave, some in the deeper part, that is to say from 400,000 years and through all kinds of other layers that can be up to 200,000 years. The oldest are 400,000 years old," he added."

That calls into question the widely held view that Africa was the birthplace of modern man, said Gopher, who headed the dig at Qesem Cave.

"It is accepted at the moment that the earliest Homo sapiens that we know is in east Africa and is 200,000 years old -- or a little less. We don't know of anywhere else where anyone claims to have an earlier Homo sapiens," he said.

Gopher said the first teeth were discovered in 2006 but he and his team waited until they had several samples, then conducted years of testing, using a variety of dating methods, before publishing their findings.

Digging continues at the cave, the university said, with researchers hoping to "uncover additional finds that will enable them to confirm the findings published up to now and to enhance our understanding of the evolution of mankind, and especially the appearance of modern man."

it still baffles me that as old as we are we didn't decide to flush turds away until a few thousand years ago .....

photons love to be 2 places at once lol

I wish Einstein and Hawking could get together for tea

Rig owner refuses to honor oil spill subpoenas

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The owner of the rig that exploded in the Gulf of Mexico is refusing to honor subpoenas from a federal board that has challenged the company's involvement in monitoring the testing of a key piece of equipment that failed to stop the oil spill disaster.

Transocean said the U.S. Chemical Safety Board does not have jurisdiction in the probe, so it doesn't have a right to the documents and other items it seeks. The board told The Associated Press late Wednesday that it does have jurisdiction and it has asked the Justice Department to intervene to enforce the subpoenas.

Last week, the board demanded that the testing of the failed blowout preventer stop until Transocean and Cameron International are removed from any hands-on role in the examination. It said it's a conflict of interest. The request is pending.

Testing at a NASA facility in New Orleans is on hold for the holidays anyway and isn't expected to resume until Jan. 10, according to officials monitoring the tests and a status update distributed to interested parties.

Besides documents, the board said Transocean has also denied it access to witnesses — specifically a half-dozen of the rig company's employees the board wants to question.

The jurisdiction dispute surrounds whether the Deepwater Horizon rig was a stationary unit or a mobile vessel. The rig exploded on April 20, killing 11 workers and leading to more than 200 million gallons of oil being released from BP's undersea well, according to government estimates

The board's primary jurisdiction to investigate serious chemical accidents and make recommendations involves hazardous releases to the air by fixed industrial facilities. The board's managing director, Daniel Horowitz, asserted in an interview that the rig was tethered and not functioning as a moving vessel at the time of the accident, making it a stationary site.

Transocean argued in a Dec. 2 letter to the Chemical Safety Board that was obtained by the AP that because its rig was a mobile offshore drilling unit, it was a vessel, and not fixed.

if thats how Trans wants to play this shit I say we ban their co from American territory 4ever

people disappoint, they rarely live up to our expectations. the higher the pedestal we put them on the bigger the splat when they fall.

I'm glad that you can move on now. It will get better and you'll find someone worth your time. New year new start, go for it!

he got an extra life for that feat lol

~chu loved opening presents, but her fav seems to be Ditto's catnip stuffed toy >.< they're such nipheads!

I got Dawkins and Hitchens for xmas I'm going to read The God Delusion first

Tuesday’s FCC ruling on net neutrality shifts billions in profits and boils down to one fact: There will soon be a fast Internet for the rich and a slow Internet for the poor.

That is a huge deal. It means we are entering an age in which we will have two Internets—the fast one, with great content, that costs more (maybe a lot more) to use, and then the MuggleNet, which is free but slow and crappy. Cable TV vs. rabbit ears.

On wireless—which eventually will be the more important platform—that disparity will be even more evident. The rich will get great stuff. The poor will get, well, what the poor usually get, which is not much.

Oddly enough this bifurcation resonates beyond just the speed of our Internet connection. It also is happening to information itself. We could be heading into a world where the rich get better information, from a wider choice of sources, while the poor get less.

Video Games Boost Brain Power, Multitasking Skills

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Daphne Bavelier is professor of brain and cognitive sciences at the University of Rochester. She studies young people playing action video games. Having now conducted more than 20 studies on the topic, Bavelier says, "It turns out that action video games are far from mindless."

Her studies show that video gamers show improved skills in vision, attention and certain aspects of cognition. And these skills are not just gaming skills, but real-world skills. They perform better than non-gamers on certain tests of attention, speed, accuracy, vision and multitasking, says Bavelier.

Brain researcher Jay Pratt, professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, has studied the differences between men and women in their ability to mentally manipulate 3-D figures. This skill is called spatial cognition, and it's an essential mental skill for math and engineering. Typically, Pratt says, women test significantly worse than men on tests of spatial cognition.

But Pratt found in his studies that when women who'd had little gaming experience were trained on action video games, the gender difference nearly disappeared.

"Video game players are able to pick up very subtle, statistical irregularities in environments and use them to their advantage," Pratt says. "And these same irregularities in environments are the things that help us guide our behaviors on a daily basis."

yeah

Just-Released IRS Data Show Effects of Our Radical New Greed-Is-Good Culture

As the House considers a bill to extend the Bush tax cuts for the top 2%, slash corporate taxes and potentially make the Estate Tax more generous to billionaires than ever before, it's instructive to put the move into a larger cultural/historical context. And thanks to newly released IRS documents, we can do just that.

As the Institute for Policy Studies reports, officials at the National Archives recently released a 67-year-old U.S. Treasury Department report detailing what the richest Americans once paid in taxes in the middle of the 20th century. IPS notes that "We have simply never had clearer evidence of just how much America used to expect out of individual wealthy Americans -- and just how little, by comparison, we expect out of our wealthy today." Here are some of the details

We learn, for instance, that 1941's top executive at IBM, Thomas Watson, collected $517,221 in compensation that year, about $7.7 million in current dollars. Watson paid 69 percent of his total 1941 income in federal income tax.

Last year, today's chief exec at IBM, Sam Palmisano, took home $24.3 million for his executive labors. We don't know how much income above that sum Palmisano reported in 2009, or exactly how much of that total he paid in taxes.

But we do know that the 13,374 Americans who reported incomes over $10 million in 2008, the latest year with IRS stats available, paid an average 24.1 percent of their taxable incomes in federal income tax.

In other words, IBM CEO Palmisano last year took home, after adjusting for inflation, over three times more than his predecessor Thomas Watson took home in 1941. Yet Watson in 1941 paid almost three times more of his income in federal income taxes than Palmisano likely paid in 2009.

So assuming that Palmisano pays roughly what his fellow millionaires pay in taxes, we've seen IBM CEO tax rates go from 69 percent down to 24 percent. That's a massive tax cut, and it's no coincidence that it came over the very same period we saw an explosion in federal deficits. And remember, these numbers compare the data that exists before this week's expected passage of even more new deficit-expanding tax cuts for the super-rich.

Save for being referenced in Bernie Sanders' 9-hour-long quasi-filibuster, these new numbers weren't a part of the debate about the new tax cuts - and they certainly didn't play a decisive role for White House and congressional policymakers. That's because the numbers represent a deeper cultural/attitudinal shift toward wealth deification in this, a radical new greed-is-good epoch (by "new" I mean the last 30 years in our country's 200+ year history). Embedded in our tax and budget debates is the bipartisan assumption that the super-rich shouldn't pay the tax rates they paid during the mid-20th century - AKA the tax rates that existed when our economy boomed.

Somehow, this assumption goes unquestioned at a time when we simultaneously wonder why we have huge deficits and why our economy is now faltering. We are so enthralled with preserving the riches of the so-called Masters of the Universe, and those Masters of the Universe have their wealth to buy off so many politicians, that we are now immersed in a culture of willful ignorance. We can no longer learn history's lessons about taxes -- even the lessons that are as crystal clear as this newly released IRS data.

We survived Bush. You will survive Obama.

Liberals, progressives, and moderates all have different ideas for our great country. Just because we, as a group, do not agree on a single subject does not mean that we are not all part of the same family. The point I'd like to make tonight is that while we may never agree on everything, one thing we can agree on is that we do not need a Republican in The White House. We must stick together, or they will win.

we must stick together or they'll win...

we did and they have anyway.

yes, the dems have made some progress these last 2 years but that progress has costs attached to it.

So you can't be denied for pre exsisting conditions, well thats great... considering you will no longer have a choice as to whether or not you want or can afford to pay for health insurance. In theory everyone should have health ins, in practice w/o a low to no cost way (the strangled in its crib public option) to provide plans to everyone it is not going to happen. It's forcing people to buy something from for profit companies just for being a living breathing American. We are not cars out on public roads, we're people. Unbelievably I agree with the baggers *clutch chest* that the individual mandate is unconstitutional. If healthcare reform is repealed it will be because of the unconstitutional mandate, ie the damn law is bobby trapped and guess who gets to play the part of the boob

this tax reform disaster is loaded w/ booby traps as well. People wail about the fall of SS...and then don't have to pay into it. Its a fantastic step forward to bankrupting and thus having to "privatize SS to save it". You really think the banksters that lost peoples private retirement funds will do any better when they have ALL American's money to play with? I don't. Just look at this years bonuses.

Does respecting and protecting the folks who have earned what they have by their own merit no longer exist? All you have to do to be super wealthy is be born into or marry into a rich family, no worries Daddy Warbucks will make sure you never have to do anything for yourself if you don't want to and as an added bonus he'll hand you to the keys to the congress he bought.

Our working poor, the dwindling middle class, vets, and most importantly our children are eating the giant shit taco. We can't give children a quality education let alone feed them all, but thats okay because Daddy Warbucks can buy another yacht this year and save a dozen jobs. Guess that bridge can just go right on ahead and collapse, but thats okay because somebody is going to have a sparkly new diamond ring on their finger this xmas.

the fucking injustice of it all is sickening. start with a shitty compromise and end with your head in the toilet.

The holiday season is a religious bonanza, a chance for many of them to get their time in the spotlight, be a big deal in ppls lives for a while. Thats fine, thats great, but not everyone shares your exact beliefs and enthusiasm so please don't cram. Nobody likes being crammed. That is how you isolate people from you. If you said merry xmas to an atheist and they replied with you're god is not real Jesus never existed would you be offended? Do you have a right to be when you started it? No you don't, you were thinking of only you and your beliefs with no regard for the other persons feelings. If you were thinking of how your words would make them feel and you do it to make them happy the christian says merry x mas the other christian says to you too, thats nice but if you're doing it to make someone angry, feel bad...cram... unless you need them out of your life, not so nice.

Santa is watching

this guy can really go off X'D

Government Sues BP For Gulf Oil Spill: U.S. Justice Department Files Lawsuit Against Nine Companies Involved In Disaster

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department on Wednesday sued BP Exploration and Production Inc. and eight other companies in the Gulf oil spill disaster in an effort to recover billions of dollars from the largest offshore spill in U.S. history.

The Obama administration's lawsuit asks that the companies be held liable without limitation under the Oil Pollution Act for all removal costs and damages caused by the oil spill, including damages to natural resources. The lawsuit also seeks civil penalties under the Clean Water Act

somebody's bleeding christ its about fucking time

Among the other companies whose names have emerged in the aftermath of the spill are Halliburton, which handled the cementing of the well; and Cameron International, which made the blowout preventer that apparently failed to stop the gusher after the rig exploded last April 20

MoveOn

Problem #1 The deal is a stealth attack on Social Security.

The deal will lower the payroll tax—the tax that funds the Social Security trust. This is a trap for Democrats. Republicans have been coming after Social Security for years and this cut is the biggest threat to the vital program in decades. It will cut one-third of Social Security's funding this year alone and when we need to restore the payroll tax back to its current level, Republicans will cry "tax increases" and could gut it permanently.

ATM Social Security is not lacking funds as our generations are working enough to support those collecting now. What we need to do is create a surplus because the days of having 6 kids to work on the farm were pretty much over by the time gen X came along and we've procreated a whole lot less. That means less ppl paying into what we will be taking out of.

This is a bad idea and should be given heave ho and yes its a double trap; it fucks the candidates when this bad piece of legislation expires and then ppl's taxes go up again and its screwing over upcoming retirees.

Problem #2 For nearly one in three workers, it's a tax increase.

Nearly 50 million working Americans—including all workers making less than $20,000 per year—and millions of federal, state, and municipal workers will see their taxes go up because of the deal.

In the midst of a shit economy taking more money from working people is just stupid.

Problem #3 The deal has not one but TWO millionaire bailouts.

In addition to extending all the Bush income tax breaks for the top 2%, the deal will slash the estate tax. If Congress did nothing, next year the estate tax would be 55% and apply to everyone inheriting $1 million or more. But the deal reduces it to 35% and only people who inherit more than $5 million will have to pay. This second bailout will give a gigantic tax giveaway to a few thousand of the richest families in the country and add hundreds of billions to the national debt.

first of all change 250 thousand middle class cut off point to $1 million. Nobody raking in a million bucks a year is middle class. Raising the cap from 250 to 1mil gives those contemplating opening or expanding business some breathing room. Might be enough to stimulate job creation. End the tax cuts for those making a million plus, they did not create the jobs we so desperately need -esp in the past 2 years- in the almost decade they've had extra millions (and in some cases billions) to spend so fuck them.

As far as the estate tax, tax that shit. These fuckers did nothing but be born or married into a rich family. They do not earn their fortunes by merit and its this kind of scum running and ruining the country presently. People who don't have to work for what they have don't appreciate it the way someone who toiled and saved does.

Problem #4:Unemployment help is insufficient and inadequate. While the deal extends unemployment benefits for another 13 months for people currently receiving it, millions of unemployed workers who've struggled the most and been out of work more than 99 weeks—since the giant Wall Street banks wrecked the economy—will get no help at all under the deal. It's a gamble that there will be jobs in the next 13 months when the insurance runs out, but the tax cuts will go well beyond that. Better to just pass a stand-alone unemployment extension to help all struggling Americans.

The extension will continue the 99 weeks of eligibility for another year, but it doesn't extend benefits to those who have reached that limit. So, if you were middle class when you became unemployed some time ago... well, embrace the poverty cuz that's your new home after the bank takes your house because you can't pay your mortgage anymore even though you've got 15 of those 30 years paid.

Problem #5 Tax giveaways to the rich are a terrible way to create jobs. Tax breaks for the rich are the least efficient way to create jobs and help the economy grow. In fact the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says extending all tax cuts would lower unemployment only 0.1% to 0.3% over the next year and that the cost of the tax deal would be $900 billion over the next five years.

They've had years to do something and haven't period. Isn't it bad enough we're leaving the kiddies a trashed planet, we gotta give them the debt of millionaires and billionaires too? Thats a gigantic load of horse shit.

Let the tax cuts expire for anyone making over a million a year.

This bill needs to more then just fail, it should be shat upon and burned publicly.

Ya wanna boo hoo about govt spending? Well...our money is being blown on asinine wars that cannot be won. There is no winning in Afg, no real way to win a 'war on terror' so long as there are fanatics -which will be always- and the 'war on drugs' is a bowl of fail. Prohibition doesn't work and imprisons way too many non violent "criminals".

This garbage is funded by our tax dollars and our children's' future, its costing us living human beings.

If our military was protecting our borders we wouldn't need to be in other fucking countries. We don't need hundreds of military bases all over the world. We are not the Roman Empire and never will be.

Religion needs to stop getting a free pass. They pay no taxes and 'my god is better then yours' is a root cause of terrorism so says this infidel. It's time to tax the hell out of religion, these multi-million dollar centers popping up everywhere is ridiculous. If a congregation needs all that then they can pay the property tax on their excess.

It's time to approach substance use and abuse like grown ups, not 7th graders in the DARE program at school. Tax and regulate consumable marijuana, let hemp become the all purpose textile it was when this country was founded. Bullying people is not an effective way to deal with substance abuse, we need to find out why these people do this to themselves (usually its a result of neglectful/abusive parents) and help them move beyond it so they can lead productive lives.

We need to stop throwing money at failed programs and use it to better the lives of our citizenry so that everyone has the same chance at a productive and prosperous life. That is the American dream and I feel as if it has been forgotten. No, thats not right, its been thrown under the bus. Families take care of their own, so do communities and so should our country. We're all Americans together.

*end bitch fest*