Understood. But the paper and news on line as well as TV carried the story's
which I based my reply on. And to ask for clarification of what you had seen or heard, leaves me guessing. Sure I do think faster than I type so I will leave some thoughts out as my stubby fingers try to keep up. Maybe that would have been a better question to ask something about. And would have meant to me that you were looking to clarity. See how long it took for us to reach agreement. We are working less effective than the US Govt. and that is shameful, looool

Remember your thirty or so I am 62 and we come from two different periods of learning and life in general, agreed?

Absolutely agreed...

At some point I will go back to the first post and see what it was I wanted clarification on. I felt that at one poin you had made a blanket statement... which the article also had done, and I thought the article was also wrong for doing it.

I more or less hate the media today because instead of just reporting the news, they have to use scare tactics and sensationalism.

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some days you're the dog, some days you're the hydrant

http://www.marchforbabies.com/chuck725 ... helping babies born prematurely and with birth defects

That is one reason I prefer to post the entire article. So one can use their mind and read between the lines if you get my drift. yahoo is (to me) to me the best news besides some of the other online news. They seem to be right on most of the time.
CNN, FOX and MSNBC and a lot of the major news outlets use what your referring to. But at times each of these also report real news depending on the person in the field. Like Michael Weir or Christine Anapour (might be mis-spelled) whom I haven't seen in a while.
But Michael Weir has been in Iraq longer than anyone and I believe him before anyone else on news that relates to Iraq.

have your sound on and let the few commercials pass..Video - Breaking News Videos from CNN.com

This thread kills me in comparison to the thread about the girls in the youtube video.

Kids...

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Even if you hold the minority opinion, stick to your guns and go against the flow if that's what you truly believe. (CnRedd)

I think in general we overprotect children, and I feel that the ultra-religious people protect their kids the MOST. But most of all, LAZY parents are causing many of our problems.

There are too many parents out there who raise their kids as trophies that they don't want to let turn into actual people. They want them to be "cute" for life. They don't want to teach their kids important life lessons--they think if they "raise them right" by only letting them do a small handful of things, that somehow, magically, they'll suddenly be great and perfect when they finally turn 18. There are LOTS of parents out there like that. They're the ones raising naive, clueless, ignorant children who have no self esteem.

Then there's the other side, the ones raised by "hip-hop culture parents" who let their kids do anything and figure that the best lessons are ones out of direct experience and that if something bad happens to them, there's nothing they could have done anyway. Then, instead of being consistent on things, they beat and scream at their kids for random things on a regular basis. Then if they're not in jail by the time they're 18, they think they've done a good job. They're also the ones raising naive, clueless, ignorant children, but these kids aren't lacking a self-esteem, their esteem revolves around their current standing in their cliques or their gangs.

I think the sue-happy mindset in this country has destroyed self-responsibility. Kids are getting taught from an early age that if something goes wrong, it's somebody else's fault.

Kids NEED to learn the concept of responsibility. Kids NEED to learn how to defend themselves and shouldn't be taught to be defenseless and submissive. Kids need to learn how to cook, how to clean, how to balance a checkbook, and they need to learn about how the business world works.

Kids are NOT helpless unless they get TAUGHT to be helpless. The parents who teach their kids to be helpless, unfortunately, NEED to protect their kids because THEIR kids would NOT know how to stand up for themselves.

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I'm actually dealing with this issue currently. My kids are 7 & 9 and they are at the point now where they just want to go out and play, unsupervised.

Now when I was their age, in fact much younger than their age, I was outside all the time. Had to be in by dinner time but the rest of the day I ran free all over the entire neighborhood. So did ALL the other kids in my neighborhood.

These days ALL the kids aren't running around outside. On top of that you have all these newer housing developments that have up and decided sidewalks are unnecessary so running free literally means "playing in the street." I had sidewalks as a kid and was encouraged to stay on them but I played in the street too.

But there's far more cars on the road these days. And during the day there's far more teen drivers. Back when I was a kid most of the neighborhood teens didn't have cars and if they were allowed to drive it was their parents car at night after their parents had returned from work. Now teens are driving their own cars recklessly all damn day, at least in my neighborhood. They fly around corners like maniacs. Less parents are leaving their kids out to roam and so that adds to the likelihood that less drivers are expecting to find kids in the street when they zip around a corner.

I don't worry much about my kids being abducted, I worry far more about them getting hit by a car. But you have to let them go out and play. I know several moms who thinks it's downright NEGLECTFUL to let your kids out, free. But I won't keep my kids prisoner in the house. It's just not healthy. But it is hard to let them go out especially considering others aren't ALL letting their kids out as well.

The other thing is when I was growing up there were lots of stay at home moms in the neighborhood. If we were being bad blocks away from our house someone else's mom would come out and holler at us. There was like a neighborhood tree of sorts with moms all over the neighborhood keeping watch out their windows and occasionally yelling at whoever needed yelling at. There's very little of that these days. Kids are positively shocked when I yell at them! They're very disrespectful and you have no idea where they live or who they are. In my day, you mouth off to a neighbor and that neighbor is marching you home and you're in for it. As a teen we were very unsupervised but as kids running around the neighborhood there was a whole gaggle of women all over the place keeping tabs on you and what you were doing. And anyone of them was capable of marching you home or getting your mom on the phone.

It's just soooo different today. But I let my kids go out. I also keep the fridge full of goodies and keep the garage full of sporting equipment and do whatever all I can do to encourage what little neighborhood gang we have to all hang around here on this street. I'd rather have all manner of kids running in and out here then having mine run in and out elsewhere. The other day there was a kid in my house I'd never seen before getting drinks out of the fridge. It's an odd way to meet. My kids were nowhere to be found but apparently they sent this one in to get some juice boxes. But I do my best to meet all these kids and encourage them to run together, preferably within earshot or yelling distance. I figure if they stick together they'll be good. My dog runs with them too. Not sure what all good that will do but it makes me feel better.

You know I forget to mention there's LESS kids around, now, than before too. Hell on Halloween I remember the streets being freaking packed with little monsters. There's plenty of streets around now that are just empty on Halloween. People are less likely to have big families now so there's just less kids running around.

It sucks cause I generally believe they're safer in numbers.

So start breeding more and send your little shites out to play.

As we are seeing the last 3 days this compond in Texas meets those you bring up. Funny not much about the extra wifes being by state law to be single moms and their collecting welfare for the children and that gets my goat up. Now this morning more on the police and the state being wrong.
When this sect is breaking the laws in several ways. And one is getting taxpayers money by the fist full.

Aren't they just taking advantage of a situation though? If they can't marry, they are single mothers. There's no "defacto married" clause in the welfare rules.
Technically it's not much different than any guy who roams the town getting women pregnant. Unless you sterilize the women, I don't see how you can stop their right to support.

Taking advantage of loopholes is the American way.

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Even if you hold the minority opinion, stick to your guns and go against the flow if that's what you truly believe. (CnRedd)

I voted no. I feel that if society (in general) did overprotect children, then I wouldn't feel like I had to watch mine like a hawk. I understand that numbers are going down, laws are getting harsher, but the bottom line is (very) bad things are still happening to children right under their parent's nose. So I take it upon myself to watch my children carefully and do everything to keep them out of harm's way.

Hey my mother was (smotheringly) overprotective of my brother and I (for good reason), and I think we turned out okay, I can definitely balance my checkbook!