More troubling signs of overpopulation

The 4,317,000 births in 2007 just edged out the figure for 1957, at the height of the baby boom. The increase reflected a slight rise in childbearing by women of all ages, including those in their 30s and 40s, and a record share of births to unmarried women.

But in contrast with the culturally transforming postwar boom, when a smaller population of women bore an average of three or four children, the recent increase mainly reflects a larger population of women of childbearing age, said Stephanie J. Ventura, chief of reproductive statistics at the center and an author of the new report. Today, the average woman has 2.1 children.

[+]

The arithmetic of Dr. Bartlett finally has the required evidence to prove him correct: less babies born on a percentage basis from a higher population produces a positive feedback effect which means more and more babies being born with little being done to stop it.

This new evidence should alarm anyone within the borders of the US. More US consumers wasting more valuable resources. As mentioned in earlier posts, let's do the Earth and ourselves a huge favor by reducing our population down to under 1billion before nature does it for us.

For more, see:

Corrupt.org interview with Dr. Bartlett on YouTube
Dr. Bartlett's video series on YouTube
Dr. Bartlett's homepage with info & resources
Corrupt.org search page of Bartlett material links

UPDATE 3/21/2009:

Check out remarks in "The Edge" section of Boston.com for curious comments:

There is both good and bad news from the more than 4.3 million births:

* The U.S. population is more than replacing itself, a healthy trend.

* However, the teen birth rate was up for the second year in a row.

[+]

Since when is the population replacing itself a healthy trend? If anything our numbers - overall, globally - should be lowered as much as possible, and Americans should be pointing the finger right at their own fellow citizens, not to far-off third world lands. Americans use many more resources on average per person and our mortality rate is much lower, so the folks doing the most damage are Americans: green lawns, supermarkets filled with products in plastic packaging, and infrastructure "needs" that far outdo anything the Romans ever built.

For once, I agree with the Pope

Actually, the Catholic Church in and of itself is not bad, it's the institution and the people that give organized religion a bad name.

Here's a case where the crowd's reaction is going to have nothing to do with the wisdom being shared by Pope Benedict and everything to do with the source:

"You can't resolve [the AIDS problem] with the distribution of condoms," the pope told reporters aboard the Alitalia plane heading to Yaounde. "On the contrary, it increases the problem."

The pope said a responsible and moral attitude toward sex would help fight the disease, as he answered questions submitted in advance by reporters traveling on the plane.

The Catholic Church rejects the use of condoms, as part of its overall teaching against artificial contraception. Senior Vatican officials have advocated fidelity in marriage and abstinence from premarital sex as key weapons in the fight against AIDS.

[+]

Of course, the mass media doesn't analyze the Pope's words, but instead decides to state supposedly draconian values of the Catholic Church directly below the only piece of info that matters: a responsible attitude toward sex helps fight this disease. If you are having sex with someone you don't know or don't trust, there will be some level of repercussion, be it from AIDS, a damaged morale, maybe the woman you slept with is a psycho, maybe she has herpes and the condom didn't protect you from that, etc.

Morons who have nothing better in their lives to focus on than simply AIDS instead of the big picture of cultural decay will vilify the Pope and parrot their message while shutting out that of others. This is a perfect example of what's wrong in our society.

Condo, house, or apartment?

I wrote this post for my Corrupt.org Family blog, but I think it's too long and strays from most of the other material, such that I'm posting it here instead.

As a reminder, the Family Blog is at:

http://themodernsoul.blogspot.com/2009/02/new-corruptorg-project.html

When my wife and I lived in a condo, it was a pretty good deal: you have a mortgage and have all of that interest you can write off your taxes, condos generally are updated much more often than apartment buildings because people buying the space will be more picky about features and flooring, and you have a sense of pride in ownership.

In our particular experience, let's ignore the fact that we didn't like the town so much and the building itself was stuffed to the brim with what were likely illegal immigrants (this was during the sub-prime boom, a time in which anyone with body hair was able to obtain a mortgage). Looking back, would I change anything after we sold our condo and decided to rent on the cheap, if I had known that less than two years later we'd be having a family?

Even if we were going to stay in our current 900 sq. ft. apartment long-term, the answer is "no", and the major reason I recommend renting or owning a stand-alone house on your own land, is property managers (and condo associations).

Our experience with condo management was an awful one. There's one individual who can normally never be bothered with very valid complaints or requests, and always gives you a hard time over the silliest things. We ended up being charged $75 for his "time" to fill out a bank insurance form with about five check-boxes on it. That nearly held up the sale of our condo. I was happy to pay it to get out of the place, and have never looked back. And believe it or not, that was the least of our problems – you can't be dealing with this nonsense from passive-aggressive bullies looking for a handout when you have an infant.

Now compare this to a landlord, particularly in a state like Massachusetts where tenant protection laws are nothing if not unreasonable (in favor of the tenant). If you're a good tenant and pay your rent on time, the landlord will be more responsive because you're a guaranteed stream of income every month. In a condo, if you pay your condo fee, the manager doesn't care about you because they can penalize you for not paying it (again, with passive-aggressive bully behavior, the stuff of elementary school playgrounds).

The bottom line is this: do your research before you rent and make sure the landlord doesn't have a bad reputation for treating tenants like garbage or being unresponsive (use Yahoo!, LocalSearch, Yelp, etc.). You hold the cards more as a renter – believe it or not – than as an owner of space in a condo complex. The best option, of course, is to work something out with family if there's a reasonable amount of space – if they'll be a good influence on your child – or buy a standalone house if you can afford to do so. It puts you in the driver's seat more and will give you more time with your family to worry about important things.

New Corrupt.org mission statement

Courtesy of Brett Stevens. I like #4 the best, but you decide:

[Link to new Corrupt.org Misssion Statement]

Obama not giving up reigns of Bush

As a Senate committee debated yesterday whether to create a "truth commission" to investigate alleged abuses of White House authority during the Bush era, President Obama has quietly adopted some of his predecessor's expansive views of the power as commander in chief - especially concerning antiterrorism policies.

Those moves could lead to a confrontation over the scope of presidential authority with the Democratic-led Congress, whose leaders say they intend to recalibrate the balance of power between Congress and the White House. Some top Democrats, Obama allies, and civil libertarians say they are closely watching how the new president uses his power, and intend to challenge him if he does not voluntarily roll it back to pre-Bush limits.

[link]

What, you thought it was going to be any different with a hip and cool new President? Oops - this isn't an iPod commercial anymore; this is the real thing.

Republicans get into power in the late 90s and early 2000's and end up with infighting and a go-nowhere approach to politics. Democrats get into power in 2008 and 2009, and the same thing happens. When are we going to finally realize that both parties are the same group of morons just spinning their wheels on Capitol Hill?

We don't need a "truth commission" to reign in some of the executive authority granted to - well, himself - by Bush. We simply need to move forward with an approach that stems from the Constitution: "Do you have the power, as the head of the executive branch of government, under the Constitution to do that? No? Well then you can't do it. And if you do, our Court system will ensure you're stopped."

The Constitution is somewhat complex, but it also provides very set guidelines and a great balance of power. That power was bound to be corrupted at some time or other - whether by FDR for (seemingly) the public good so that the government could provide for people, or by Bush for the moronic notion that he had some mission from God (a la Blues Brothers) to fight terrorism with any authority he deemed necessary.

Ron Paul on Glenn Beck: Globalism is a nightmare

Truer words were never spoken:




"The solutions are going to be presented as gigantic and global, and the answer is going to be local – the answer is going to come from you and your local community and state, not the globe."

Yet another argument in favor of parallelism - even the mass media and business interests are warming up to the idea that the entire world's hands in America's pie can only be a bad thing.

Imagine having grown up in Eastern Europe or Soviet Russia. Your newly elected American President saddles up to the G7 summit indicating he'd be open to a world currency and all kinds of solutions where we open up the flood gates to input from other nations. Of course every country in the world is going to love it because they all want America to be run in the same pseudo-socialist way. It's a passive-aggressive bully mentality and the US has absolutely no need to consider input from any other nations on how our country should be run.

Being a Massachusetts resident, I already see some of the problems with half-socialist/half-capitalist regimes, and I can tell you that the future of this country is a dark one if we sell out to foreign nations (more than we already have).