Kay Hymowitz has written a book called “Manning Up,” in which she decries the tendency in America for young men to, more and more, be irresponsible, couch potatoes who look only for sex at the local singles bar. They do not want to settle down and support a family with the conventional wife and children. They seem to have entered a stage of life, which she calls “pre-adulthood.” To young women looking for a good husband, the typical young man looks more like an overgrown and aged fraternity boy. They often get money from their parents and spend a lot of their time playing video games and watching spectator sports.
Statistics on this age group shows that they are marrying later and later in life—the mean age for marriage is now 27.5 years for men; in 1980, it was 23. (For women, the mean age of marriage is 25; in 1980, it was 20.) Many people are not even getting married; among both sexes, 53% of all people in the age group of 25-29 have never been married. Men are not even bothering to get a college degree to the same extent as women (26% of men now get bachelor’s degrees; 33% of women get bachelor’s degrees in the United States.).
Relatively affluent, free of family responsibilities, and entertained by an array of media devoted to his every pleasure, the single young man can live in pig heaven—and often does. Women put up with him for a while, but then in fear and disgust give up on any idea of a husband and kids. This rational choice on the part of women only serves to legitimize men's attachment to the sand box. Why should they grow up? No one needs them anyway. There's nothing they have to do.
I lay, at least part of this problem, at the foot of the feminist movement. Women have become so apparently independent of men that men do not feel called to take care of women as they did in the past. And…they can get all the sex they want at the local bar. So, why should these lazy and worthless men tie themselves down with family responsibilities?
They might just as well have another beer.
This whole bad scene demonstrates what happens to legitimate manhood and womanhood when the Christian principles of the Bible are ignored and sinful mankind goes his own way.
If you are interested in following this question further, I refer you to http://on.wsj.com/z1dXvn.
Saturday, March 3, 2012
Friday, March 2, 2012
Deficits, Deficits, Deficits!!
I was asked yesterday if the national deficit had become greater under the Obama or the G.W. Bush administrations. The question stimulated me to do some research to finally answer that question without doubt. The facts are as follows:
Under President Bush, the national debt added $4.5 trillion over the 8 years he was in office leaving, at the end, a national debt of $10.2 trillion. Under President Obama, the national debt increased by $4.2 trillion in his first 2½ years in office. Our national debt now stands at $14.5 trillion. The Obama administration is asking for another annual budget that will expand the national debt by more than another $1 trillion. These figures can be gleaned from several places and are part of the public domain. They are reliable.
Republicans see these figures as very dangerous; and believe that we should do all in our power to reduce the debt. If we do not, conservatives see America sinking into the same pothole as Greece.
The national debt of the United States now stands at greater than 100% of our GDP (gross national product). Reliable economists have said that a debt/GDP ratio greater than 90% prevents a government from managing its economy constructively.
Democrats and liberals of all kinds see the situation differently. They point to a set of data released by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in May 2011 that resulted in a graph, which shows that the largest piece of the national debt is caused by the Bush tax cuts. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan seem to have little effect on the resultant national debt. To peruse this graph, control click on the following link http://bit.ly/yPwpeR . What this graph fails to depict is the fact that the largest part of our national deficit, by far, is spending on entitlements.
Personally, I still think that taking money away from investing private citizens will have a bad effect on the business and employment climate situation in America. I think the overspending MUST BE REINED IN.
Under President Bush, the national debt added $4.5 trillion over the 8 years he was in office leaving, at the end, a national debt of $10.2 trillion. Under President Obama, the national debt increased by $4.2 trillion in his first 2½ years in office. Our national debt now stands at $14.5 trillion. The Obama administration is asking for another annual budget that will expand the national debt by more than another $1 trillion. These figures can be gleaned from several places and are part of the public domain. They are reliable.
Republicans see these figures as very dangerous; and believe that we should do all in our power to reduce the debt. If we do not, conservatives see America sinking into the same pothole as Greece.
The national debt of the United States now stands at greater than 100% of our GDP (gross national product). Reliable economists have said that a debt/GDP ratio greater than 90% prevents a government from managing its economy constructively.
Democrats and liberals of all kinds see the situation differently. They point to a set of data released by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in May 2011 that resulted in a graph, which shows that the largest piece of the national debt is caused by the Bush tax cuts. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan seem to have little effect on the resultant national debt. To peruse this graph, control click on the following link http://bit.ly/yPwpeR . What this graph fails to depict is the fact that the largest part of our national deficit, by far, is spending on entitlements.
Personally, I still think that taking money away from investing private citizens will have a bad effect on the business and employment climate situation in America. I think the overspending MUST BE REINED IN.
Monday, February 27, 2012
Why Doctors Die Differently From Their Patients
It is a fact that physicians die differently from the way their patients die. Physicians have a much smaller tendency to use on themselves, chemotherapy, radical surgery, high dose radiation therapy, and artificial kidney treatment for their own terminal diseases. The reason for that is that they are familiar with the complications and the small recovery rates of many terminal-type treatments available today. And…they just say “NO.” One friend of mine who had been in an intensive care unit for two weeks; the suffering there was so intense that he said if he had it to do, again, he would not consent.
Doctors don't want to die any more than anyone else does. But they usually have talked about the limits of modern medicine with their families. They want to make sure that, when the time comes, no heroic measures are taken. During their last moments, they know, for instance, that they don't want someone breaking their ribs by performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation (which is what happens when CPR is done right).
In a 2003 article, Joseph J. Gallo and others looked at what physicians want when it comes to end-of-life decisions. In a survey of 765 doctors, they found that 64% had created an advanced directive—specifying what steps should and should not be taken to save their lives should they become incapacitated. That compares to only about 20%for the general public. (As one might expect, older doctors are more likely than younger doctors to have made "arrangements," as shown in a study by Paula Lester and others.) Often those advanced directives specify that in the case of cardiac arrest, no resuscitation is to be done.
A 2010 study of more than 95,000 cases of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) found that only 8% of patients survived for more than one month. Of these, only about 3% could lead a mostly normal life. If CPR is done in a nursing home, less than 1% survive for 3 months.
Physicians have seen that it is often better to go home for the last weeks of a life than to spend that time in a painful and fruitless attempt to ward off a certain death. Informed physicians realize that having the last weeks at home enjoying their families and the things they enjoy is much better than spending that time in the hospital with needles being stuck into them and undergoing other invasive techniques. (Control click)
http://on.wsj.com/AmKniq
Doctors don't want to die any more than anyone else does. But they usually have talked about the limits of modern medicine with their families. They want to make sure that, when the time comes, no heroic measures are taken. During their last moments, they know, for instance, that they don't want someone breaking their ribs by performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation (which is what happens when CPR is done right).
In a 2003 article, Joseph J. Gallo and others looked at what physicians want when it comes to end-of-life decisions. In a survey of 765 doctors, they found that 64% had created an advanced directive—specifying what steps should and should not be taken to save their lives should they become incapacitated. That compares to only about 20%for the general public. (As one might expect, older doctors are more likely than younger doctors to have made "arrangements," as shown in a study by Paula Lester and others.) Often those advanced directives specify that in the case of cardiac arrest, no resuscitation is to be done.
A 2010 study of more than 95,000 cases of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) found that only 8% of patients survived for more than one month. Of these, only about 3% could lead a mostly normal life. If CPR is done in a nursing home, less than 1% survive for 3 months.
Physicians have seen that it is often better to go home for the last weeks of a life than to spend that time in a painful and fruitless attempt to ward off a certain death. Informed physicians realize that having the last weeks at home enjoying their families and the things they enjoy is much better than spending that time in the hospital with needles being stuck into them and undergoing other invasive techniques. (Control click)
http://on.wsj.com/AmKniq
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