georgerussia

Nope. An atheist is someone who does not believe in God; he might also say God does not exist, but it's not required. This is NOT the same as "believing there is no God". The typical problem here is that it's not possible to prove non-existence of something which never existed and seen by no one. Do you believe that Babahubra doesn't exist? What about Bebegonda? "Nobody knows" begs a question: there are people who say we should alter our behavior because the God exist, and it will punish those who will not. So the question is whether you gonna alter your behavior, or not. If you do, you believe in God. If you do not, you do not believe in God. It is that simple. * Don't pray for me if you wanna help - just send me a check. *

And I personally know a lot of women who would be perfectly okay with everything you quoted. You know, there is a lot of different countries in this world which do not share your view of "perfect world". There is no gender equality, there is no tolerance to non-mainstream religions or sexual orientation. If you think this is wrong, did you write your congressmen and senators to ask them to withdraw fundings to those countries (including Israel, of course)? Or you're not doing something and this is just another post of "would someone think of the children"? * Don't pray for me if you wanna help - just send me a check. *

What you meant by "didn't work"? Are you referring to the amount of drug-related crime for obtaining drugs? For delivering drugs? For selling drugs? Or are you just referring to the number of drug users? * Don't pray for me if you wanna help - just send me a check. *

They're actually doing much better. A lot of people are too poor to eat anything but vegetables and a little meat/fish. And no soft drinks (which is a HUGE source of carbs) because they're too expensive for regular consumption. The main problem in U.S. seems to be more like about "how much you eat", not "what you eat". A lot of people would actually lose weight by eating one Big Mac a day if that's all they eat this day. * Don't pray for me if you wanna help - just send me a check. *

Let me explain the phrase "government leverage" here which is used to "crush auto workers". It means that the company wants to pay someone money, but does not have money to do so. This means the current business situation is unrealistic. Another proof is that no private institution wants to finance them. So the company comes to the government begging for taxpayer money, and of course the government - which is acting as a lending institution paid by taxpayers - wants to make sure the loan has at least some chance to be paid back. If you personally think this is unfair, I encourage you to invest all your savings into GM stock. Or you could just send them a check. This will help the company to pay poor union workers and their (not so poor) union bosses. I'm not Obama fan, but in my opinion this is one of the things he is doing right. If the contract terms really changed to make the company viable, it would be possible to get more investment without government involvement. Excuse me, what is immoral here? Did they pay Social Security? In this case they should be eligible for payments. Will those payments be lower than they receive now? May be. Again, nobody stops you from creating a fund and putting all your savings there to compensate them the difference. You can also pay for their healthcare too. But don't forget homeless children! Sure, paid by GM. The only problem is that GM does not have money to pay for it. I wonder how a reasonable person could make such a statement. * Don't pray for me if you wanna help - just send me a check. *

As I said, it is irrelevant in context of the problem you're describing. * Don't pray for me if you wanna help - just send me a check. *

As I said, it is irrelevant in context of the problem you're describing. * Don't pray for me if you wanna help - just send me a check. *

Cliche for cliche. Oh, I thought you wanted to fix the homeless children problem as you were so emotional about. But now it looks like you just want to use it to justify your not so relevant pet project based on your political agenda... sorry, my bad. * Don't pray for me if you wanna help - just send me a check. *

I do not understand your point. You just keeping posting information from various sources, some of which have questionable credibility. You haven't said what exactly you think should be done, and how we should proceed. So do you have a plan or opinion what should be done, or you're just going to repeat the "could someone think of children" mantra? * Don't pray for me if you wanna help - just send me a check. *

There is also another related problem - people who do not have medical emergency, but still are coming to the emergency room because they do not have insurance and cannot afford or don't want to pay for the office visit. This may or may not fit the discussion, as this is not "emergency health care", but it still takes significant resources from emergency room stuff, so it has to be addressed too. I like this approach. The only issue I see is that 1% might not enough. We pay more for Medicare, which provides coverage to less people. And hospital visits could be really expensive. So the real tax might easily end up like 7-10%, which would be a significant change. * Don't pray for me if you wanna help - just send me a check. *

But how could the bank know whether the person can afford a mortgage or not until the person provides them with some income value? Of course the banks did not check those numbers in some cases, and will pay for that. But at the end it's the people who applied for those loans and provided an inflated income figure. * Don't pray for me if you wanna help - just send me a check. *

Is this information available somewhere? I wonder who they included into those 64% - like everyone who tasted any kind of alcohol once? I would attribute it more to the society tolerance to drinking, and it being a widely accepted social thing. The decline in smoking IMHO should be attributed for changing the society attitude toward smoking and smokers. At least, the number of smokers declines not because the cigarettes became illegal, or significantly more expensive. * Don't pray for me if you wanna help - just send me a check. *

A big problem here is how to define "reckless"? You just said that majority of people do not have emergency cash even for six months. For me this would be insanely reckless to buy a house with less than six months of future payments in emergency fund, but it seems to be not rare. Would we consider reckless anyone who bought with more than 32% debt-to-income ratio? Non-conforming loans? There are a lot of variables, and as soon as you're giving benefits to some people, you could easily end up giving them to anyone * Don't pray for me if you wanna help - just send me a check. *

Well, the solution is obvious. We should tax the rich extra 50%, and use the money to pay off their mortgages. Minorities first, of course. * Don't pray for me if you wanna help - just send me a check. *

Yes, they do. The fact that risks could be mitigated doesn't mean that everyone will do it. A classic example is wing loading. Those are still risks you're talking about. You could still mitigate some of them by getting cheaper housing (for example if your housing payment is $100/month, you would not be at risk in most scenarios described above). Same as with higher wing loading, you could assume bad events won't happen, and if they do happen, you'll have other means to work around. What if you weren't able to? Are you still a victim of unfortunate circumstances? As a side note, I would consider 6 months of emergency cash an absolute minimum, and wouldn't be comfortable with anything less than a year :) I feel for those people too. The question is, what you suggest we should do? * Don't pray for me if you wanna help - just send me a check. *

This _might_ be such a circumstance (although good long-term disability policy could might prevent it), but I doubt the number of such people is statistically significant in those 6 million families. There is always context which makes any generalizations useless (including this one). This, however, doesn't mean they are useless. * Don't pray for me if you wanna help - just send me a check. *

Nothing of what you mention could ever be considered "unforeseen circumstances". Catastrophic illness is something everyone could get, and is one of the reasons people maintain good health insurance coverage. Employment is generally not guaranteed, and massive layoffs tend to happen exactly at the moments where a lot of people is also looking for a job. Those are typical risks which could be easily (but not necessary cheap) mitigated. * Don't pray for me if you wanna help - just send me a check. *

True, this happens, and one should plan for that too. Assuming that overall conditions will always be fine is taking the risk. There is always a choice to either take the risk, or mitigate the risk, and there are tools available to mitigate those risks, like getting a good long-term disability insurance. If the one considers not to use them, but take the risk instead - this is fine, but this is a choice made by an adult, not some "unfortunate circumstances". This was not what I said. I said that they made bad decisions, and lost. And this doesn't make them victims. * Don't pray for me if you wanna help - just send me a check. *

This is wrong assumption. Cost of alcohol and tobacco is not prohibitive. One could buy liquor and cigarettes legally almost everywhere, so there are no associated risks. So everyone can get it, and, following your logic, most of us should be drinkers and smokers. * Don't pray for me if you wanna help - just send me a check. *

Yes, there were also a lot of people who knowingly signed up for the loans they knew they couldn't afford once the interest rate resets. It doesn't make it different. They were adults who either made bad investment decisions, or they gambled and lost. In both cases they're not victims. * Don't pray for me if you wanna help - just send me a check. *

This is a good question, and I have a good answer. If someone foreclosed on my home which I lost because I could not afford it, I would live in a rented apartment. And next time I would buy a home I can afford. This is called "reality check". And there are no victims in foreclosure. Let's face it. There are adults who made bad decisions. Nobody _forced_ anyone to buy an overpriced property you knew you cannot afford after the teaser rate expires. * Don't pray for me if you wanna help - just send me a check. *

But again, I know no bank which would give an 1M loan to someone who stated the income $2500/mo. So the people had to lie about their income to get it. Sure, banks did not do their due diligence here and were only relying on collateral value when issuing the loan, but nobody was actually _forced_ to get a loan, and nobody was forced at gunpoint to apply for a loan using false information. * Don't pray for me if you wanna help - just send me a check. *

Sure, there are other people at fault too (and those aren't aliens from Jupiter either). However ultimately the starting point was the guy who signed up for the mortgage he knew he cannot afford. Then it went to the banks, then to the Wall Street or Fannie, and now the rest of us is paying for that. * Don't pray for me if you wanna help - just send me a check. *

So far when I put this question she allegedly asked, I got one link to article on insidecatholic.com. Which, in turn, does not quote any source. Search by the name "Dr. Maria Crenshaw" revealed only four links - all of them quoting the same phrase, apparently from the same article. Therefore the claim you make is kinda ungrounded, and giving the nature of quoted source, I'd dismiss it. And why don't you guys give credit to the original author when you quote copyrighted work? Do you know about the copyright law? This is so far the most naive comment I've ever read about AIDS. If you have 200 partners who are HIV-neg, you won't get HIV. But if you have a single partner who is HIV-positive, this is the only truly effective way, right? If you have no sex partners, but use IV drugs, this is another truly effective way? * Don't pray for me if you wanna help - just send me a check. *

I'm not surprised. How could one blame a real estate "investor" he sees in the mirrors? The one who knowingly signed up for a loan he knew he could afford? Of course it is always someone's else fault! * Don't pray for me if you wanna help - just send me a check. *