A scary statistic

40% of sexually active teen girls have an STD, according to the CDC. This is really scary, as it indicates not only the danger, but also the nature, of sex for teens.

Why so? Well, consider that in 1999, the CDC estimated that about 65 million adults, or about 33%, had been infected with an STD. The numbers are probably somewhat higher now, but we're left with the interesting phenomenon that STD infection rates for teen girls are about the same as those for adults.

Lots of implications here. To start, the parity in rates indicates that most of the seducers of teen girls are adults--it's hard to get an STD from a virgin, after all. One might also infer a fairly high rate of promiscuity--we're not exactly talking about two young hearts falling prey to nature's course after the dance, but rather more of the scene Tom Wolfe described in I am Charlotte Simmons.

Going further, we have a slightly declining rate of teen pregnancy, but a rapidly increasing STD infection rate--we've got to infer that the condoms we're throwing at teens are more effective at stopping some things than others, to put it delicately.

Finally, an exploding STD infection rate ought to put the kibosh on the idea that the main sex ed method--that of SIECUS and Planned Parenthood, not the abstinence method--is having any beneficial effect on helping teens to make intelligent decisions in this area.

I know that I'm not supposed to....

....wish harm on anyone, but I cannot help hoping that Mrs. Spitzer is inspired by Dick Armey's response to the question of what he would be doing if he'd done what Bill Clinton had done to Hillary. I now for sure that I'd have trouble convicting her for that if I were on the jury.

At the very least, it would be refreshing to see a politician come out there with a black eye or two and without his wife, and flat out tell the truth and offer his resignation and a real apology.

Great comment

Mark told me that my links are too scary to click. Insult? Nah, just reality. I took a look at FoxNews on Friday, and realized that the headlines I was seeing on Fox (and elsewhere) today are those that I'd have expected on the Weekly World News a decade or so ago.

Actually, a few of them were so bizaare, I don't know that the WWN would have covered them. It's weird out there.

No links today. You're welcome, Mark. :^)

The real Barack Hussein Obama

...is evidently a man in favor of leaving Iraqi civilians defenseless against Islamists, massive gun control, abortion on demand, and spending and tax hikes that make LBJ's look like child's play.

Evidence with links. By the way, he's said he wants to ban all forms of semi-auto weapons. That would include your bird shotgun, your carry pistol, the Garand you got from the Civilian Marksmanship Program, and more. In other words, it's DC, but nationwide.

What's wrong with politics today.

OK, a LOT, but what I was thinking of at the moment is something that Mona Charen pointed out in her column about Barack Hussein Obama's book:

Once you get past the happy surprise of finding a politician who can actually write, the book contains some disquieting elements.

Now let that sink in; Charen is saying that legislators, whose very job is to write the laws we all live under, generally cannot write their way out of a cardboard box.

If you wonder why, say, the IRS code is so difficult to understand, Mrs. Charen has your answer.

Scary

Evidently, homeowner's equity has decreased below 50% for the first time on record--since the Fed started tracking it in 1945. Part of this is falling markets, but I'd suspect another part is that the old ethic of "pay off your debts" is going by the wayside.

And our economy is paying for it in a big way, sad to say.

You've been at the Hofbrauhaus too long...

....when you start talking about German Neo-Nazi rappers converting to Islam and carrying out rap feuds with their "Muslim" brothers.

Oh, wait. That's real, evidently.

I'm wondering if their "fly girls" are heavy-set, pasty-white German girls in burqas with SS & crescent insignia.

H/T Veith.

Yet another environmental disaster....

....masquerading as an environmentally sensitive project is this (H/T Roosh).

Why a disaster? Well, a chief problem of central California farmland is a lack of organic material, along with a lack of stable fertilizer. (remember; topsoil is clay or sand + organic matter) Without this organic material to hold water and fertilizer, the amount of water and fertilizer needed (and thus pollution created) goes up exponentially.

So more or less, what we have here a nasty tradeoff. Yes, PG&E gets "renewable" methane, but on the flip side, the draining of the Colorado (and lakes in the Sierras) continues, and the pollution of aquifers of the central valley is worsened. It also ought to be remembered that large lagoons like this can do wonders to poison entire aquifers and even rivers if the levee breaks.

Try buying one of these instead.

Six things

Guess I got tagged by Roosh. Six random things about me that others might not know. We'll call it "what living in ultraliberal Boulder, CO did to me."

1. It made me a Nebraska fan. Go Big Red! (Ralphie; it's what's for dinner)

2. It taught me to enjoy shooting sports and reject gun control. (take that, Brady Bunch)

3. It's where I bought my V8 powered, four wheel drive pickup. (take that, Sierra Club)

4. It's where I learned to butcher deer and antelope, and tan their hides. (take that, PETA!)

5. It's where I learned to age and devour large cuts of rare beef. And venison.

6. It drove me to take an active part in crisis pregnancy centers.

Living among the "loony left" wasn't all bad, now that I think of it. It made me, in part, the conservative I am. Now tagging:

Mark

Ben

KingDavid

Gino

Larry Kudlow gets it

Incessant increases in the money supply are a chief cause of recession. I fault Kudlow in only one aspect; he stops short of advocating a return to real money.

I wish I could say

...."I knew it," but I can't. A new study has come out about the "energy savings" of Daylight Savings Time, and the conclusion is....

...it actually costs energy because it gets people home in the heat of the day, and thus increases air conditioning costs.

So let's skip it this year, and I'll get to church on time this Sunday, and we'll all be happy. OK?

A bit on welfare

As the "Great Society" started its "War on the Poor," one of the architects of our welfare state, Pat Moynihan, warned of something very dangerous; "Aid to Families with Dependent Children" contained a provision he called "father out of the home." To receive benefits, a mother could not be married to the father, or even living in the same house.

Predictably, mayhem broke out as fathers were pushed out of the lives of their children, and the number of people on assistance exploded as people figured out it was "easier than working." Part of this was helped with the 1996 welfare reform act that required work, but it appears that the "father out of the home" rule still applies.

Here's a look at the program today. It appears that somewhere between three and four hundred million dollars is being spent to support about 100,000 families.

That's about 10% of the million families with children in our state, and given limited eligibility (5 year limit), that means that something like 20-30% of kids in our state spend time supported by this--at a cost of something like $35000 per family--yes, that's a middle class income for a mother and a child.

Seems to me like it's about time that we got rid of the "father out of the house" rule. Two minimum wage jobs lift a family of four above the poverty line, after all. It might not hurt, either, if administrators required recipients to name the father of their children to allow child support to be collected.

Some interesting things

First, Dennis Prager puts out a list that isn't exactly making my alma mater look good. The way I see it, even though MSU isn't among the most liberal of schools, it's pretty easy to graduate from there with no understanding whatsoever of western civilization.

And then there's the place I got my master's, "Ski U."

Here's a little bit more on things going on in California, by Cal Thomas. Sounds like time for some California families to vote with their feet.

Want to make the government schools look even worse? I dare suggest that a basic acquaintance with the roots of western civilization and the liberal arts--provided in grade school--might be just what the doctor ordered.

Another bit on schools of "education"

....from Linda Schrock Taylor of Lewrockwell.com. The antipathy between actual education and schools of education, in her opinion, is noteworthy.

Four, or five, or one great reason to homeschool.

Check this out. Vox Day reports on reasons for existence cited by the College of Education at Cal State-Sacramento:

There are four main goals that we have and will continue to focus on in the college, which are expressed in the acronym TEACH:

Transformative Leadership
Equity and Social Justice
Action
Collaboration
Human Differences and Diversity

Apparently, "counting to five" does not appear to be one of the strengths of the college, and it's also apparently not terribly important that students learn to read or think for themselves. However, it looks like their graduates will have political correctness down pat when they enter the kindergarten classroom to read Heather Has Two Mommies to their charges.

I visited the website of the college. For some reason, they don't have their newer newsletters online. If this is representative of their work, I can't blame them.