martin horn's comments

Some Tea Partiers are feeling embattled because a fellow gold-standard lover went on a killing spree that has led to millions of people developing a negative stereotype about all Tea Partiers.

This stereotype is forming based on the actions of a one-in-a-million murderer who possibly warped their beliefs into justifying violence.

Perhaps this will lead to some empathy for Muslim Americans, millions of whom live peacefully in the United States and lead productive lives as soldiers, doctors, policemen, teachers, etc., only to labeled as a possible fifth column every time a small group of 5 attempt (and usually fail) to kill Americans.

But considering how empathy has become a taboo word to some, I'm not holding my breath....

For what's it worth, based on my experiences during my medical training, if I had to explain why we have more teen pregnancies, I would it explain it in the following way:

1. Teenagers everywhere have the urge to have sex. (That should be a given)

2. There is greater expectation in the U.S. than in Europe for the parents to take the lead in teaching kids about sex and protection. Also, the U.S. is more in favor of the "delay sex" than "practice safe sex" approach than Europe.

3. In Europe, pro-contraception education is more prevalent both in terms of public health campaigns as well as sex education in schools. Combating teenage sex is viewed more as a lost cause, so the battle is shifted towards getting the teens to practice safe sex. By contrast, parents in the U.S. are more likely to object to their kids being taught about sex in schools (in part because of Americans' religiosity as well as the belief that parents should be the ones teaching the kids).

4. Taking points 1 through 3, I would say that the average European teenager views sex as okay and knows how to use contraception. In the USA, you have differing groups of teens:
Those who view sex as okay and know how to use contraception,
Those who view sex as immoral and may or may not know how to use contraception, and
Those who view sex as okay but do NOT know how to use contraception. Our teen pregnancies and teenage abortions come from teens in the latter group.

The point I'm trying to make is that the abstinence only method can work, but it's heavily reliant on parents impressing the point on their kids while raising them. Sometimes in the U.S., parents preach the abstinence approach and the kids don't listen. Failure to teach the kids how to use contraception means that when kids opt against abstinence, the result is pregnancy.

I believe you are over-complicating this somewhat.

From my experiences talking with people of various political beliefs, fervent liberals are typically just as "proud, at least unapologetic, and sometimes belligerent about their beliefs" as the devout conservatives and libertarians you mention in your blog post.

The reason why the liberal election majorities are seen as more eager to appear bipartisan than the conservative election majorities is, simply put, a numbers game. Self-described conservatives outnumber self-described liberals 2 to 1. In the end, both groups need to recruit moderates/independents to their cause to win, but conservatives have to do far less recruiting because they already have 35% of the electorate while liberals are starting out with below 20%.

Lexhumana explains this as America being a center-right nation, and certainly by the standards of, say, OECD nations, we would be considered center right. What's the theme since 1980? Conservative Republicans like Ronald Reagan and George Bush being re-elected with over 50% of the vote, a moderate Republicans like George H.W. Bush being elected and then defeated in 1992 by a conservative/centrist Democrat with the help of a libertarian-esque candidate named Ross Perot. The difficulty liberals have in achieving an electoral majority is neatly encapsulated by the following statistic: President Obama is the first Democrat in decades to win over 50% of the vote - not even Clinton managed to achieve that.

When most of your election majorities are non-liberals, you can't be too liberal.

Look, to be clear, I favor immigration, and agree that the benefits to the immigrants themselves are immense (because that's why they come here). However, there is simply no way an uncontrolled flood of low-skilled immigrant labor is good for the low-skilled native labor force.

As someone pointed out, apparently this paper strongly suggests that native workers as a whole benefit from illegal immigration. And I agree to an extent: if a flood of illegal immigrants comes to the U.S., doctors benefit from having more patients to treat, lawyers benefit from having more clients to represent, business owners benefit from having cheaper labor and more customers to lure into their stores, and skilled workers as a whole benefit from having cheaper workers to tend to their lawns and watch over their kids, so I can see how low-skill immigration benefits skilled Americans. It's the low skilled Americans who compete with those immigrants that I worry about.

Also: I'm not worried about the supposedly "non-assimilating" Mexican immigrants - whenever I meet a family, you invariably have some of the older members with poor English skills, but the youngest, American-born members have perfect English skills, wear the same crap as 7th-generation American kids and listen to the same crummy music (i.e., they assimilated). I'm just worried that the sheer numbers of immigrants that migrate to this country illegally depresses the wages of low-skilled Americans, which then exacerbates income inequality. Anyone who doesn't think it's an issue should therefore support an uncontrolled flood of members of their profession, be it overseas doctors, lawyers, computer programmers, engineers, etc.

One more thing: While I do feel that some people go a little overboard in trying to paint Barbour as racist based on the watermelon quip (I think he's just insensitive, not bigoted), I do think some people here are going a little overboard in trying to pretend there's *nothing* wrong with the quip.

Pretend I'm a politician. Imagine if someone on my staff complained about having Jewish people at an upcoming event in Boca Raton by referring them as "hook-nosers" (analogous to the "coon" reference made by a Barbour staffer). Imagine if in the course of me telling the idiot staffer off, I warned that if my aide persisted in anti-Semitic remarks, he "would be reincarnated as a pinata filled with money and placed at the mercy of Jews."

Would the people here arguing that the Barbour quip is *nothing* be comfortable with me as a candidate saying what I wrote above? After all, just as all people love watermelon, all people love money. I'm not Jewish, but if I saw a pinata filled with money, I'd grab the closest baseball bat and bust it up till the money came out.

Still, despite the universal love of money that transcends race and religion, what I wrote above is insensitive and inappropriate, just like Barbour's quip about watermelon. Barbour is making a racially insensitive remark. That doesn't make him a KKK-supporting racist (not even close), but it also doesn't mean he's above reproach for the remark.

Whenever I think of Haley Barbour, I think of this example of,

"How not to run for President": Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour, a possible Presidential candidate in 2012, was profiled in The Weekly Standard this week, and he talked about growing up during the Civil Rights movement in the South. He mentions attending a rally by Martin Luther King Jr. (Good), but then says he actually didn't hear anything MLK had to say, so he and his friends just checked out the ladies the whole time (Not so good).

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/1210/Barbour_in_the_civil_rights_...

Well, based on *very* recent history, we can expect the Republicans to stand for lower spending for so long as Democrat is the President of the United States.

Should Republicans control the executive branch, Washington, D.C. can look forward to double-digit percentage increases in spending and new, unfunded entitlements and tax breaks.

I don't see any reason to believe differently, with a majority of the Republicans on Capitol Hill having been part of the tax cut and spend spree of the early 2000s.

To second shaun39 and hedgefundguy, I would imagine the "unprecedented" fiscal tightening by the British government will do plenty to combat inflation.

President Obama, politically, is doing okay. He has a 45 to 50% approval rating with unemployment barely under 10%. I can only assume that with any economic improvement, his rating will improve slightly, so he can look forward to running for re-election with an approval rating near 50% - not Clinton-levels, but certainly better than Bush-levels, both of whom won re-election.

That being said, I think we need to stop assuming all of the President's political moves that seem shaky or haphazard or ill-thought out are potentially genius moves in disguise, in wake of his party losing 60 seats in the House. The fact that polling shows voters being in a more "anti-Democrat" than "pro-Republican" mood doesn't exactly make Obama's strategic moves with regard to legislation and communicating with the public look good.