Two Mommies are just as good, right?

'Cause the problem isn't that a young men in stressed adolescence doesn't want to take advice direction from a woman... No, that can't be the problem.

Because feelings.

The problem has a got to be a misapplication of the magical number 2, recently discovered to have supernatural properties. So... Like... There's no reason to think that two middle-aged women who've been (primarily) spazzing each other's feminine egos for twenty years could possibly miss what's going on with the young man, whose life and emotions will be tremendously different than theirs no matter what.

"The one person of their choice." Right? It's a magical social emollient.

Wait, so if the part of the population that commits murder isn't counted, we have a low murder rate? Who knew that math could work that way???

Snark aside, if you do that for the US, you also have to discount the populations that commit the most murder in other countries.

Give someone money, it is devalued. Give them a home, ditto.

And then, they cannot imagine that anyone else has anything of value, because the connection between effort and possessions is not taught.

Then, it is easy to steal - it doesn't even feel like it.

Turn off the flow, you get riots. Nice job.

BTW, you should look up the crime rates in the USA by ethnic group. You'll shock yourself, and then marvel that anyone could hide what is going on with a clear conscience.

"Two Mommies are just as good, right?"

No, Crid. You made that up. Classic straw man.

I don't recall seeing your solution, as to how to put hetero parents in every household. Could you repeat that part, if it is here somewhere?

Crid admit he doesnt have an answer? Good luck with that. Sisyphus will be getting blowjobs before that happens

Dick Gregory correctly referred to the "War on Poverty" as a "war on poor people." Fought, it seems, to attempt to assuage liberal guilt, which nonetheless still thrives.

I would note that Wahls was in Scouts, which generally has strong male leadership, and can help alleviate the lack of male role models for single moms and lesbian parents. The three guys who had single moms in my Scout troop ended up doing very well for themselves, because their moms were realistic about the boys needing male role models, and acted on that assumption.

"Snark aside, if you do that for the US, you also have to discount the populations that commit the most murder in other countries."

Now you've got me wondering... what groups are those, actually? Sounds like an evening research project...

"Snark aside, if you do that for the US, you also have to discount the populations that commit the most murder in other countries."

Those other countries with large murder rates are largely homogenous. There isn't much in the way of racial diversity.

A person choosing to ignore the grossly disproportional rates for murder and theft within a particular sub-group seems to be willfuly blind in an effort to feel better about themselves by not appearing to be "racist". Either that or any attempt at letting a ray of reality shine in their thoughts would burst their social construct bubble.

But whatever floats your boat. I'm not one of these social policy experts. I'm just a guy that learned that math is a bitch, and she will not be denied.

Reality, she's the bitch. It's amazing how far some will go to ignore the blindingly obvious facts that fail to conform to their worldview.

One could start with the homicide rate in Chicago and the menatl gymnastics erquired to believe that whatever they are doing is a solution.

It can't be that our leaders' solutions aren't, it must be the electorate. Their solution: new electorate.

"One could start with the homicide rate in Chicago..."

Note this: The particular sub-group (actually a sub-sub-group) that we're talking about is committing most of these crimes in the areas that already have the nation's strictest gun control laws.

This post could have made a stronger case if homicide rates were examined state by state. Two interesting tables here - first:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate

If you scroll down to "Country subdivisions United States" and click "show", you can see a table of homicide rates by state.

Second, here is a table of black population by state from the 2010 census:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._States_by_African-American_population

Washington DC isn't listed, but it was 50.7 % black according to the 2010 census.

Now, compare homicide rates per 100,000 and percentage black population for the 50 states and DC:

DC 24 50.7
Louisiana 11.8 31.98
New Mexico 8.7 2.97
Maryland 7.7 29.44
Tennessee 7.3 16.78
Alabama 6.9 26.38
Mississippi 6.4 37.3

...

North Dakota 1.5 1.08
Idaho 1.4 0.95
Minnesota 1.4 4.57
Utah 1.3 1.27
Iowa 1.1 2.68
Vermont 1.1 0.87
New Hampshire 0.8 1.22

The pattern seems very clear to me - lots of blacks means lots of murders, and fewer blacks means fewer murders, gun control or no gun control. A handful of states are exceptions to this rule, but you'd have to be willfully dumb & blind to disregard it.

It's also interesting to compare homicide rates in some of the states with the highest rates of gun ownership and least restrictive gun laws to murder rates in Canadian provinces and European countries. Wyoming has a lower murder rate than Alberta, Saskatchewan or Manitoba, Idaho is safer than Belgium...

You'd have to exclude a lot of immigrant groups, defining who is an actual native and who isn't.

You'd probably also have to exclude whatever the poorest segment of the population is, native or not, as poorer people tend to commit more crimes.

It's ridiculous to say "Well, if it weren't for the criminals we'd have low crime." Fact is, the criminals are there.

"It's ridiculous to say "Well, if it weren't for the criminals we'd have low crime." Fact is, the criminals are there."

I don't recall anyone saying anything of the sort.

No one suggested that you remove criminals from the crime statistic.

The point being made is one of racial demographics. When one racial segment is removed from the crime rate, the remaining murder and theft rates drop much more drastically than can be accounted for by the population group percentage being excluded.

The position that being poor "makes them do it" is just more self deception. Whites and Asians who are poor commit violent crimes at a far lower rate than blacks of any economic level. Having grown up in trailer parks myself, I can attest that being poor does NOT predispose someone to being a murderer or thief. It's a matter of culture.

Try this experiment on for size. Find a poor white neighborhood in your town or city, and then find a predominantly black neighborhood. Now, which one would you feel safer walking through?

No matter how much you might wish it away, or how much your Liberal Arts classes may differ, reality has a pernicious way of not caring about what you think about it. It just is.

When the shit hits the fan, the rioting mob will not care one whit for all your understanding and sympathy for their plight. Tribalism will once again be the rule of the day.

The position that being poor "makes them do it" is just more self deception. Whites and Asians who are poor commit violent crimes at a far lower rate than blacks of any economic level. Having grown up in trailer parks myself, I can attest that being poor does NOT predispose someone to being a murderer or thief. It's a matter of culture. -- Azenogoth at January 16, 2013 1:19 PM

You're right in it's a matter of culture. But I don't think it's race based.

Before the advent of the government welfare system, you either worked, starved or went to some private charity to help sustain you. Private charity generally came with some strings attached. If you didn't do what the charity wanted, you would be cut off.

The advent of the government welfare system really has changed it, and actually have penalties built in for those who want to improve the situation. Things like getting married -- you'll lose benefits; get a job and you lose benefits or are cut off completely, etc.

While you grew up in a trailer park, probably the majority of families around you were working poor. But the operative word is "working".

There are whole communities, now, in which effectively no one works and there isn't a role model to follow. The closest thing they see to an 8-5 job are school teachers. And some schools are little more than glorified baby sitting services. And this is starting to get into the third and fourth generation of this.

So the problem is that the government is playing daddy and letting the real father slip away.

Azengoth, if you're discounting the population that commits the most crimes in the US, then you have to do that in other countries too if you want to compare, whatever that population may be, be it a race, a socio-economic group, Mullahs, whatever. Otherwise it's a ridiculous comparison.

Interestingly, I saw an article recently that suggested the reason for the recent decline in crime was the laws against lead. Apparently JDs tend to have 4 times the amount of lead in their bones as non-criminal kids.

"Interestingly, I saw an article recently that suggested the reason for the recent decline in crime was the laws against lead. Apparently JDs tend to have 4 times the amount of lead in their bones as non-criminal kids."

Nicole, I assume you're talking specifically about leaded gasoline. There is a statistical correlation (I've seen the analysis recently; I'll try to dig it up) between the phaseout of leaded gasoline in the U.S. and U.S. violent crime rates. I'm not yet sure that I buy the implication; there are areas that have continued to use leaded gasoline until fairly recently (agricultural, some aviation, and some forms of auto racing), and I haven't seen anyone claim that people engaged in those areas have unusually high rates of violent crime. Nonetheless, it's an intriguing hypothesis.

> Actually, yes -- intact families seem to make the
> difference.

More exciting new language! "Intact Families" hits the charts at number three with a bullet, right after"The one person of their choice."

Amy, you are COWARDLY.

You don't have the COURAGE to acknowledge a world wherein every adult fantasy of happiness can't be made to fit... Because of policy! (Mean people! They just suck, right?)

Your comments (and seeming enthusiasm) for fatherhood is FRAUDULENT. You Do Not Mean It.

Funny, though, how you so often feel compelled to pretend that you do... Social issue after social issue...

Pretense must be a lot of work.

> "a wholesome upbringing with male role models"

Why bother with a whole human being when you can just settle for a wholesome one?

Not fathers. Not intimacy in the home. Not actual masculinity... Just "role models."

"Role models" is like a commercial product from Kraft Foods or Proctor & Gamble... Role Models™ is not like actual men, who smell bad and get cranky sometimes. Role Models™ are cheeerfully-packaged, powdery stuff, available nationwide.

• Role Models™ can be sprinkled, freely or lightly (to taste, Ladies!) over your children to compensate for a woman's feelings of guilt over over being socially and romantically incompetent... While still retaining full ego mastery of her slave-like whelps, which is all she wanted anyway.

• Role Models™ can be rated and reviewed in Consumer Reports, using their famously impenetrable and needlessly abstract charts, such that allegiances can be shed and composed with no more difficulty than switching sports teams when moving to a new city... Because spiritual attachment is not a factor for women who dust their boys with Role Models™.

That's what women want, right? When the kids grow up to go to prison, all they want is to say 'I did everything I could... I tried to give him the best Role Models™'

So, like, "actually," nothing you said in the bog post reflects your actual beliefs about the human heart.

OK.

Funny how often we find you saying those things, though.

So, Crid, lemme get this, um, "straight":

In the absence of hetero parents, you are insisting that single parenthood is superior to two gays parenting?

Because I can't find a case where Amy's claimed they are always superior to straights, though there is the occasional point that some hetero pairs suck and some gay pairs can't parent.

> The gay population is actually quite tiny
> compared to the general population and the
> population of gays having kids is far tinier.

Oh! I didn't realize. OK.

So what you're saying is, we should be willing to throw a few children's souls overboard just so you and your white-wine friends can toast each other's super-compassion-y sophistimication at by the fire at wintertime beach parties.

Or did I miss your point? What does "tiny compared to the general population" have to do with anything? There used to be a small number of slaves compared to the "general population."

> In the absence of hetero parents, you are
> insisting that single parenthood is superior
> to two gays parenting?

You're starting at the wrong end of the list. You might also ask: What's better for kids, a daily bludgeoning with garden hose, or weekly fisticuffs with brass knuckles?

The question is: What's best for children?

What's best for children is a loving mother with a loving father.

Amy can't see that this applies to all children, even the percentage that's "tiny compared to the general population," and your view is perhaps similarly obscured.

It was Judaism that discerned that all stand equal before God, right? (This was years ago.)

Mostly, I'm appalled —

> What kids throughout human history have
> had is a group of adults raising them

—at Amy's full-meat-press embrace of some of the deepest, most trite stupidities of our generation.

THIS is the arrogant socialism that's fucking our country up, the idea that somehow other people are inherently responsible for us. THESE are the idiocies that have swollen our government to a such loathsome, immobile fatness.... dismembering our healthcare system on behalf of those who'll contribute nothing to it, and enriching the retirements of our laziest, least contributory public officials. It's the presumption that ennobled the bloodbath of divorce in recent generations that's plunged millions of children INTO POVERTY, NEVER TO ESCAPE.

Your fantasy is just not what history says, Amy, certainly not for the family. Yeah, there have always been other adults around, but they weren't responsible for your kids. (Mostly, the neighboring burghers were diddling your terrified daughter, the dim one without teeth, back behind the stables while you were pulling grain out of the fields; she was only going to live to be 23 anyway.) That's a big part of the American miracle — People came here because they wanted to protect their own interests and their own children, thankyouverymuch.

> your ridiculous notion that homosexual parents

There's no such thing. If two gays are raising a child, it's because a genuine parent shirked responsibility, was squeezed out of the family, or died.

> in an intact family, will...I don't even know
> what your point is...

You're working too hard to feign ignorance. I've been too clear, at your expense on your servers, for too many years for you to pretend that this is somehow too obscure for you to appreciate. An "intact family" is precisely a loving mother with a loving father and their child.

> ...raise gangland slayers?

No, they'll willfully — for their adult gratifications — deny children the loving mother and/or loving father who they deserve. If civilization has a birthright, that's it.

> Raise people who will be deeply disturbed?

Did I say that? Why would you think I did?.... if you've read the comments in good faith?

I don't think you have. Let's all go to France!:

You see, two rights collide: the right to a child for gays, and the right of a child to a mother and father. The international convention on the rights of the child stipulates in effect that ‘the highest interest of the child should be a primary consideration’ (Article 3, section 1).

“That…sounds like the abolition of marriage. Marriage is left with no essential features, no fixed core as a social reality — it is simply whatever consenting adults want it to be. Some who see this logic, thinking that marriage has no form and serves no social purpose, conclude that the government should get out of the marriage business.

“If so, how will society protect the needs of children — the prime victims of our non-marital sexual culture — without government growing more intrusive and more expensive?”

For the record, the international convention is mentioned only to describe the ubiquitous recognition of this most profound human bond; international law itself is not of interest.

crid, you are an unethical bastard, of course a mother and father are better, but not everyone gets the best some people are born to carp parents, they spend their childhood bouncing around foster care or orphanages you cant pretend that such situations are better than gay parents.

And technically the 'best' thing for a child is not a mother and father. It is a large extended family including cousins older and younger, aunts, uncles, grandparents, ect

"What's best for children is a loving mother with a loving father. Amy can't see that this applies to all children, even the percentage that's "tiny compared to the general population," and your view is perhaps similarly obscured."

You know, when you start talking, it's like you can't hear anything else.

From the beginning, Amy has not contested this, nor have I.

You, once again, have ducked the question about how to make this happen while obsessing about gay parenting.

That's not obscure to anyone.

> Research by Judith Stacey and Tim Bednarz

Oh... "Research"!

             A "study" from your white wine friends

                              vs.

                  The whole of human history

Hmmmmmmmmm.........

> Amy has not contested this, nor have I.

Wonnerfil! Because you're a proud basement logician, Raddy, a totes-serious hobbyist. Right? We know this... Because you've told us! Not so big on the initial readings or subsequent reporting, but you loves to grind on the reasoning. And this a commutative calculation, so you should be done with it. Already.

You want what's best for kids or you don't.

You and Amy do not: In today's exchange, Amy concedes that there's some percentage of kids whose best interests can be thrown overboard, because some (very special) grownups blahblah and blah.

Mere biology cannot deprive children of what you have "not contested" is their birthright. To make that happen, white wine people have to devise and enforce cruel policies.

It will be fun to probe & chart the limits of Amy's new exception in the years ahead! I'm especially interested to see if the horizon of her concern is especially foreshortened for minorities, the retarded and, y'know, little girls.

Fat ones.

Because despite their swollen, clumsy mass, they're a "tinier" concern. I get this.