A few news stories for you, in case you’re bored. See if you can detect the stupidity here.
Many American youngsters participating in federally funded abstinence-only programs have been taught over the past three years that abortion can lead to sterility and suicide, that half the gay male teenagers in the United States have tested positive for the AIDS virus, and that touching a person’s genitals “can result in pregnancy,” a congressional staff analysis has found.
A long-awaited national study has concluded that abstinence-only sex education, a cornerstone of the Bush administration’s social agenda, does not keep teenagers from having sex. Neither does it increase or decrease the likelihood that if they do have sex, they will use a condom.
Expectations that a Democratic-controlled Congress would gut abstinence-only education rose this spring after a major federally funded study concluded that such programs do not appear to have any effect on sexual abstinence among youth, nor on age of sexual initiation or number of sex partners.But the oldest abstinence program won a reprieve last month. And a companion program may get a significant funding increase. The reason: Led by Obey, some Democrats are suddenly protecting the programs.
Obey is supporting abstinence-only education, saying he wants to steer his panel away from the highly charged terrain of moral issues.
… and into the I-guess-not-so-highly-charged terrain of wasting government funds on useless-at-best programs for the sake of trying to win votes.
Freaking Democrats.
Posted by James at October 19, 2007 12:00 PMI'm so glad the Democrats won in '06. Everything is different now.
Posted by: David Grenier at October 19, 2007 12:04 PMYup. we are out of Iraq. We've ditched tax cuts for the wealthy. And science is firmly respected again.
Viva la revolution!
Posted by: briwei at October 19, 2007 3:59 PMThe 06 elections got people hopeful that things could change. Sadly, that is not the case. If one party controls the executive branch, and another party controls the legislative branch, very little is accomplished by either party since it is rare that both camps want the same thing. The only time an opposite-party legislature trumps the executive branch is it the legislature is overwhelmingly controlled by that party (so they can override any vetos). The democrats don't have that now, and I suspect neither side will get that kind of leverage in the legislature after the 2008 election. The only way anything will change is if the President and the majority of the legislature come from the same camp.
Just my two cents
Posted by: Kitten Herder at October 22, 2007 3:25 PMKitten Herder, that's not really true. There have been Democratic presidents who couldn't work with a Democratic congress (Jimmy Carter), and Democratic presidents who could work with a Republican congress (Clinton). What we have is a president who's out of touch with reality by design, and a congress that can't figure out how to work together. I don't know if it's because we've become so partisan or if it was always this bad, but an effective president can work with either party in congress.
Posted by: Maggie at October 22, 2007 5:39 PM