yjacket

I'm very glad that you were able to overcome this trial; I would caution however on some things that I don't think are quite right. The past and the future are not concepts humanity invented-they are very real. For many things in life, we don't get do-overs. Actions today make the past tomorrow and determine the future. Actions have very real consequences. Least anyone think otherwise, fornication is an extremely serious sin with some very serious potential consequences and one should very seriously consider the potential marriage prospect of individuals who have broken the law of Chastity. It's not about "chewed bubble gum", it's about the undeniable fact that having sexual relationships with another individual changes you. Potential consequences involve STDs, pregnancy, emotional trauma, etc. There is no such thing as "just sex". Yes, as a father I would seriously caution my children about marrying another individual who has willingly fornicated-and there is a big difference b/w someone who is raped and not (even though many of the same potential pitfalls exist). There are plenty of worthy individuals who have not fornicated. I'm glad that it worked out for you; but just like I would caution my children against marrying individuals who come from divorced families, abused childhoods, etc. I would caution my children against marrying those who have willingly fornicated. It may very well work out (as in your case), but you are playing with fire and any fornication better be long ago and dead and buried.

IMO, the threshold for "good enough" is as a provider do you provide enough to allow your wife to take care of her obligations; generally speaking I think this means as a provider are you earning enough to provide a roof over your families head, clothes on their backs and food in their bellies and in today's society transportation as the sole income generator. Now granted everyone's circumstance is different and sometimes a disability strikes, sometimes health or job conditions change, etc. But the ideal is for the man to provide the financial backing to allow his wife to concentrate and focus on the home (and for a significant period of time this will include raising children) and community. In the end I don't really think the Lord will care whether we made 50k vs 100k, he will care more about whether we faithfully fulfilled our obligations, responsibilities and duties. I give advice like I would to my daughters . . .it is their choice who they marry, but considering I have been on this rock for a decent amount of time and seen my fair share of problems and come out alive if they ask for my thoughts I'll certainly give them. If my daughter came to me asking about if they should marry a teacher, I'd probably have some questions. 1st question I'd have is does he treat you right, second question I'd ask is are you comfortable living the teacher's lifestyle? The average regular teachers salary is anywhere from 50-70k and starting out is more in the 30-40k, depending on where you live. Certainly, enough to provide the necessities of life and enough to provide, but you will most likely live a very humble lifestyle (unless he decides to be a college professor-that is a gravy train!). Granted teachers generally get great retirement, but 30 years is a long ways to wait for retirement. If you are perfectly fine living a humble lifestyle-go for it, if not then you should think about it some more. Go into marriage with eyes wide open, understanding that no one you marry will be perfect. If you don't choose this spouse but another one you trade one set of problems for another set-b/c neither you nor your spouse is perfect. It's a matter of can you live with the problems your spouse has and can they live with your problems. If living a humble lifestyle is going to be a problem then best deal with it now rather than have 20 years of conflict over it. This is actually one of the reasons why Romeo & Juliet, etc. and the common love stories about happily ever after are such bunk and have caused much pain and suffering. It is also why arraigned marriage were a thing. A lot of making a marriage work comes down to working together with common goals and one purpose. Much of those goals and purposes are set before Harry ever met Sally! Children generally grow up to be similar to their parents and tend to emulate them. So if you grew up in an affluent household, you most likely will come to expect to living an affluent lifestyle. Therefore marrying someone who isn't affluent will tend to led to conflict. This isn't always the case and there are always exceptions, but in general we replicate to some extent our upbringing. It is why children of divorced parents are more likely to divorce, why abused children are more likely to be abusers, etc. So in sum, IMO in the Lord's eyes, whether you are a teacher or a doctor is irrelevant-it's about whether you are providing the necessities of life for your family. If you have the ability to do so and are doing it-then check that box. If as a spouse you are perfectly fine living that lifestyle go for it, if not, think about it. And finally . . .what is it with young people asking random strangers on the internet for marriage advice? You'd think they'd go to the one source who they should trust most on this earth . . . their parents!!!! (or are their parents to scared to give open honest advice or are they too afraid to get it???)

Exactly! As a society we have really screwed up our kids by telling them crap like "you can be whatever you want to be", and "just do what makes you happy". Umm, no if you aren't good at math, I don't care how much you love rockets-you ain't gonna be creating them. If you are 5'5" you're never going to play professional basketball. IMO I think a lot of this has come about b/c of parenting but also b/c of where we are parenting. Parenting in a suburb is a lot harder . . .how do you teach your kids hard work (pick up your toys???). 100 years ago the vast majority of the population lived on farms so kids learned to do the crap jobs they didn't like doing b/c you had to do it. Cows need milking, corn needs planting, etc. So you had two choices you could either learn to love the work you do or be miserable doing it. You have to do it regardless so you might as well learn to love it. So, even though I don't live on a farm, I try and teach my kids there are some things you just have to do, you can either gripe about it or just do it with a smile. The same thing with a job, you can either learn to love it or be miserable but as a husband you still have to provide.

I would also ask where he is at in his schooling. If he is changing his major and this is his 2nd year at college-maybe not that big of a deal since a lot of people take a year or two to really find what they want to be doing. If he is a junior or senior and changing, then that brings up additional questions. Like JAG said, it is reasonable to expect him to begin providing in a reasonable amount of time after marriage. Now if he is a very driven individual and plans on getting a PhD and you are getting married when he is a sophmore-then that reasonable time frame is probably going to be 5-6 years. If he just wants to get a BS and get out, then that time frame should be 4-5 years from when he started college. The long and short is that being a husband and a provider is a big responsibility and as such you want to marry someone who treats it as such; sometimes as a provider that means sacrificing personal "happiness" and "finding yourself" for the good of the family. The last thing you want to do is marry someone who does not understand the awesome responsibility that it is to be a husband and provide for your family (and this comment doesn't have much to do with the amount of money one makes more about the attitude).

I do also disagree slightly with the righteousness equal wealth. On a society wide level and even at an individual level, the more righteous the people the more prosperous the people. But just because your are more prosperous doesn't mean you will be rich or even wealthy. What it means is that in general you will be more wealthy than you would have been had you not been righteous. Now this is not always the case in each instance, as I've personally had instances where doing the right thing has cost me in pay raises-but on a whole I am most definitely more wealthy than had I not been righteous. In many cases this is easily demonstrated by living some of the basic laws of the Gospel. For example, no fornication means you won't have a baby out of wedlock (which leads to less wealth), living a righteous live with your spouse means you won't get divorced (which leads to a significant decrease in wealth). Living the word of wisdom and not smoking means you probably won't get lung cancer (and won't have to spend money on it), etc. etc. etc. So in the temporal sense it tends to lead to more wealth and in the spiritual sense it leads to more wealth also.

I take a little different approach on this. Looking for the qualifications in a husband that can provide for the family != the same as looking for the prettiest girl. The Proclamation on the Family explicitly states: By divine design, fathers are to preside over their families in love and righteousness and are responsible to provide the necessities of life and protection for their families. Mothers are primarily responsible for the nurture of their children. In other words, a husbands role and job is to provide (i.e. earn income for the family) and the wife's job is nurture and take care of home. It is my opinion, this young lady's concern is not without merit. A comparable concern would be if a young man has worries about whether his potential wife would be a good nurturer-i.e. homemaker. These are certainly valid concerns. If one looks at the GA, almost to a T all of them have the traditional family structure, i.e. the husband provides, the wife nurtures. So I like a lot of JAG's previous response. There is the potential for shallowness with this line of thinking; i.e. how much is enough to provide. This is subjective and has changed as the general standard of living has increased. Personally, I think providing means enabling the wife to do her job. So I would turn the question around, not whether he makes enough-but is he going to be able to enable me as a wife to fulfill my obligations as a wife and a homemaker. And yes this is part of my beef with today's society. Just as many woman do not understand their role in the marriage-many men do not either; rather than provide for their family they want to do what "makes them happy", whatever that is. Not too many years ago, men found a career that they could generally live with and then learned to love their career-not some mythical rainbow job (it's great if you've got one-but more likely than not you've got to learn to love your job). In other words, men found something they were good at, figured out how to make money at it and learned to love it. So to the young lady, is your concern shallow-no I don't think it is (but do remember if you are going to find a husband who provides very well-make sure you do your job very well also-otherwise you end up unequally yolked and that is a recipe for disaster). As a GA said, keep your eyes wide open before marriage and shut afterwards.

You mean like this? http://www.wsbtv.com/news/local/north-fulton-county/roswell-officer-fired-over-confederate-flag-in-her-yard/412733435 Flying a flag that is the heritage of the South. How did this happen? The Left has been very good at controlling language and messaging for a lot longer than most of us have been alive. The words for homosexual used to be completely different then the Left co-opted "gay". Gay means happy, joyful and the Left co-opted it for homosexual-i.e. the subliminal connotation is that to be homosexual is to be happy. Changing the plain meaning of words is very problematic; my favorite is the "Evacuation" of the Jews from Germany.

I severely disagree with the ban on political activities for tax-exempt organizations like Churches and I severely disagree that Churches should be taxed for the following. Freedom of religion is enshrined in the 1st Amendment stipulates that no law shall be made prohibiting the free exercise there-of. There is a reason why it is the very first section of the very first amendment. It is because freedom of religion supersedes freedom of speech-freedom of religion encompasses a world-view, it is in essence the freedom of thought and belief. We have a very perverse idea that religion only encompasses the "spiritual" and it doesn't; what good is the spiritual if it doesn't translate to the temporal. The Founders understood this, the churches took an active role in promoting the Revolutionary War, in fact there were lots of comparisons to the 12 Tribes of Israel, people being called by God to split, it wasn't just a political revolution but also a religious revolution as well (Church of England??). Churches weren't tax just so they could espouse their political beliefs, their political beliefs were part of the religion! This is also manifested in the early days of the Church and quite frankly one of the major reasons why there was so much persecution. The locals weren't just afraid of Mormon's strange beliefs and mocked them for it-they were afraid of the political power that a large group of adherents to a foreign religion would wield b/c the Church and politics were very largely one and the same. The states up until the mid-1800s had official state religions. It should be part of a religions freedom to speak as they see fit on the politics of the day-if people don't like politics the religion espouses then they can find another church. By wedding tax exempt status to the restriction of religions to speak out is in effect restricting the 1st amendment. Why? Well who sets the tax laws-the government. Sure a church could just get taxed and speak freely but then all the government needs to do to drive churches out of existence is simply tax more. So if the government didn't like the political talk of a religion or didn't like political talk from any religion-just tax them out of existence. As a side-note this is how hemp was banned. A law was simply passed that levied a tax on it-it couldn't compete and was driven out of business. The power to tax is the power to reduce, diminish, and ultimately drive out of existence the influence of the thing that is taxed.

You are a good man! My bad on assuming you were a female, please accept my apologies-I didn't look at the gender.

Children are awesome, part of the repentance process is being responsible for the consequences of our actions. Sex is the natural way for spirits to gain a body (one of the major reasons we are here). Therefore the likely outcome of having sex out of wedlock is a baby and as such part of the repentance process for having sex out of wedlock is to be responsible with the gift God has given-the gift of life. In older days and when society as a whole had a better sense of honor-a child out of wedlock meant the offending parties were to get married (hence the term shotgun wedding-you knocked up the daughter then Daddy holds a shotgun to you to get you married!)-it was also called doing the right thing. Now a days good luck on getting the offending parties to be married. As such the life of a single parent with a child out of wedlock is very difficult-the difficulty you are in for you can't possibly grasp. Life will be very difficult and you will have to forgo personal desires and choices that had you not fornicated you would still have, but again that is part of the repentance process, humbly accepting the consequences of our actions and doing the best we can with those consequences to make life better. Your focus now as part of the repentance process is to be the best father possible for this child-part of being a good parent is to demonstrate to children what a good marriage looks like and as such part of that responsibility is to also find a good partner.

I'm going to give you the best advice anyone will give you in getting married. 1) Look for a wife!! 2) Look to become a husband! I know it sounds so simple but in today's society it is actually a big beef of mine. Society has done a very, very poor job of actually preparing and teaching young people what it means to be a wife and what it means to be a husband. Quite frankly, too many young women and young men have absolutely no clue what it means to be married and what it means to be a wife and a husband. It is one of the reasons why homosexual "marriages" have become so acceptable, b/c people in general think that all you need to be married is to love each other and it is the biggest reason why divorce is so rampant. If your concept of marriage is that "all we need to do is love each other", you are in for a very rough marriage. Being a wife and being a husband comes with very specific roles and responsibilities (unfortunately our society has gotten them backwards and well it's not "politically correct" to actually outline what a wife does and what a husband does-but if you want a broad hint read The Proclamation on the Family). So my advice, look for someone who wants to be a wife and who will excel at it! Naturally speaking you will generally only become infatuated with, i.e. sexually attached to women who are sexually attractive to you-so don't worry about whether she is "pretty enough", worry more about is she going to be a good wife.

The biggest problem I see (and this happened especially during the primary) is that everyone thinks (especially in the LDS culture) that their guy is a morally upstanding guy (a.k.a. McCullin/Cruz), yet Trump was seen as the devil. Yet the simple truth is that there are very, very few individuals involved at the national politics who are not in some way corrupt and morally bankrupt. The biggest hypocrisy among LDS is believing that their guy is so pristine and pure-even the LDS politicians to much extent have betrayed their morality (Harry Reid anyone??). The simple truth is that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The amount of power that individual Congresscritters wield is enormous and thus that power attracts those who seek and aspire for power. Those who seek and aspire for power over others are by definition morally bankrupt-Christ never sought for power and the Evil one was thrown out of Heaven for seeking power. As such, and given the massive amount of money required to successfully run for a national position it is nigh impossible for a non-morally bankrupt individual to come close to winning such positions. Some have done it, but they are more the exception rather than the rule. From my perspective, I didn't see any candidate in 2016 for president who embodied DC 98:10-just varying degrees of moral bankruptcy. In my lifetime, I have only seen a couple of candidates for President who I can say with confidence I believed they were not morally bankrupt. How can one determine-through a long track record. Having a no-name candidate who has no track-record of taking a moral stand when it's hard and having a Senator with only 3 years of experience and declaring them pristine is a little presumptive. Yet, just because a leader has committed adultery or multiple marriages, etc. does not mean that God cannot work through them. So if I conclude that all candidates are morally bankrupt then I choose a leader based on their politics and what would be good for the nation.

My take is that Trump is neither the devil nor the angel he is made out to be. I think he is a very flawed man, but he is a leader and I generally like a lot of his picks. I'd like them to be better, but when the President Elect calls in Judge Napolitano and chats with him for an hour about the qualifications necessary for Supreme Court I'll give Trump the benefit of the doubt. The Judge is awesome and uber-libertarian. Personally, I think there are still enough good, moral, decent small government people left in this country that God heard their prayers-is Trump a savior-no, but I truly do not think the person as a people we would hope for in a leader would actually be able to make it through the process. People talk about Cruz, but Cruz would not have beat Hillary-Cruz was not the "establishment" pick and all the same tricks they pulled on Trump they would have pulled on Cruz. The difference being that Cruz would not have been able to punch back effectively. I think Cruz loses definitively-remember the Insiders (Hillary, etc.) wanted either Cruz or Trump. They did not want a R establishment pick. Anybody who thinks Cruz would not have lost needs to examine how bad the rhetoric was. In order to fight back effectively against that, you need someone who is very skilled in being a leader-the biggest thing Cruz had was that he was a Senator-hardly leadership necessary to win. I believe that had Clinton been elected it would have been the end of this country. I do believe in my lifetime I will see the downfall of the USA-we are morally bankrupt-but there are still enough good people left that it's not hopeless-one day I think it will be.

Oh I completely agree with you on this; but that is a common attitude among the elite. Unfortunately what has happened is that people have become less and less involved in politics yet more and more politicized. So you have very few people actually show up to the GOP County Conventions, State Conventions, etc. where a lot of these decisions about who is an elector is actually made. The people who are involved have a very elitist attitude that they know what is right for the party regardless of what the normal people think. That "the will of the people . . .who cares about them attitude" that is the exact attitude of the elites on both sides of the isle and it is the reason why Trump was elected in the first place. The political bodies have lost the touch with the common man and no longer even care about them-they are just in it for the power, money and glory.

So technically, he might be correct-mass execution of it would most likely lead to some very bad things simply b/c people do not understand the process of government we have. A comparable would have been the Republican National Convention and the #NeverTrumpers at the RNC. Yes, once the actual delegates are voting they can vote however they want to and are not bound by plurality votes, popular votes, etc. but to have done so in mass would have lead to some very bad things. Not b/c doing so is wrong, but because people do not understand that we are a representative democracy and that is why you have to be very careful about the people you elect to represent you at the next level.

Actually, the guy who did the interview is correct. The founders set up a process where the people were never to directly vote for President or Vice-president, but they were to vote for electors who expressed a preference for one person over another. So the real process is that we vote for electors who then vote for President rather than directly voting for President. The Founders original view was that no president would ever be directly elected in a general election. At the time of the founding of the USA, the colonies were more like actual individual countries in a confederation rather than one united country (in many ways very similar to the EU today). The founders originally thought that what would happen is that each state would run their own "favored son" for president and the electors would pair down the list to a few candidates who Congress would then select from. Another factor is originally everything was done by local committees and conventions. It was a bubble-up representative democracy. The actual individual votes were democratic, but each layer was built on representation. Thus, the revolution started with local Committees of Correspondence who elected people from their ranks to attend the Continental Congress. We still have vestiges of this system in the Republican/Democrat Primary process where you have local Mass Precinct Meetings that elect representatives to go to County Conventions that vote on County issues and elect representatives to the State Convention (and conduct state business) and then elect people to represent them at the National Committee level. Originally set-up the only portion of the federal government that was directly accountable to the people was to be the House of Representatives (and at 30,000 people per Rep-it was truly accountable to the people). Now at at least 500-1million people per Representative claiming that a House of Rep. member is accountable to his local people is laughable. So actually, yes the guy is technically correct-we are founded and set-up the way he claims, the electors are accountable to the people who elected him. In some states (IIRC) the electors are actually on the ballot and in most states the electors are chosen by the Republican/Democrat party either at their State Conventions or chosen by the State Committee. So yes the electors are elected . . . but to become an elected elector you have to be heavily involved in the R/D party. But yes, once elected they have the autonomy to vote as they see fit-it is their right as an elector.

No, this isn't the problem. The problem is we think healthcare should be cheap but the reality is that it's not cheap. Healthcare is no different than any other industry. Take computers, 35 years ago a computer cost 20k+, now it's $500. 35 years ago we couldn't kill certain types of cancer and getting cancer was almost certainly a painful death. Now we have people who can survive cancers that weren't survivable when I was a kid. Getting to the point of literally saving people's lives through medicine isn't cheap and isn't not like building a computer where you can engineer it, test it, re-design, etc. The human body doesn't work like that. Billions and billions of dollars of private money has been thrown at solving cancer . . .and miraculously today you can survive some types of cancer with a medical bill of maybe 500k (with no insurance). Hmm 500k today or being dead 35 years ago. Basic healthcare is not expensive. A physical, doctor's apt. cavities, etc. are all on the order of $100. That's like getting a new pair of brakes. You basic surgery is on the order of 3k-5k. And considering you are under general for a couple of hours, there is generally a team of 4-5 people working on you, cost of liability insurance etc, that's not bad. It's like getting a new transmission. Major surgery is 10k and buying a used car can be about that much and major surgery should happen about as often. Healthcare is just like any other industry, the desire for profit and competitive will drive prices down. The only thing that prevents it is government meddling. I guarantee you the more you get government out of healthcare the cheaper it will be. The folly is the thinking that everyone deserves a certain level of healthcare-ain't no such thing, you don't deserve a car, a house, food, etc. You've got to either work for it or rely on charity from others. Unfortunately due to government meddling we've taken charity out of it and rely on stealing other people's money to provide for the poor.

But that is the problem . . .unless you get rid of the whole thing and just simply let the free market work whatever they replace it with will eventually fail. The solution to health care is to let hospitals refuse service. You can't pay, you don't get service.

Except the thing I can't figure out is why the big insurance companies lobbied for it . . .were they not bright enough to see what would eventually happen? Were they thinking they would get access to more government cheese?

Yeap, I love the HSA. I have never had a regular health care plan. . . I've had multiple kids with it, some major surgeries and other stuff. It has almost always been cheaper than the full blown plan. What I generally do to fund my HSA is wait until tax time and then fund it (you can apply the funds to the previous tax year), then I use my tax return to replenish the account the HSA funds came from. Let me tell you putting in about 6k a year and not pulling much out really makes that sucker grow-it's like a 2nd savings account. Plus you can then invest the funds in some basic mutual funds and watch it grow even more. Add a catastrophic insurance with it and you are good for most things except major illnesses.

Yes, missed appointments as a missionary hurt. That was almost always a sign that things were not looking good. 1 missed apt . . . maybe they forgot life happened etc. more than one in a row and you quickly learn that you will probably be crossing that person off the teaching pool list.

1st off, I'm very glad that you've decided to investigate the Church and the restored Gospel. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is absolutely awesome!-it is the solution to the problems of the world. I've never been an investigator, but I have been a missionary and yes depending on your background it can be overwhelming. Sometimes as missionaries and members we can forget how much new information there is and that can be very overwhelming. My biggest piece of advice is just to be upfront with the missionaries about your concerns, fears, being overwhelmed etc. While the missionaries are young, they have very good hearts and genuinely want what is best for you. Baptism is the process through which we make a covenant to God that we will be a disciple of Jesus Christ and to become a member of His Church. It is a very important covenant for individuals to gain salvation and as such the missionaries (who's entire purpose for 2 years is to bring people to Christ through baptism) are very focused on helping individuals make that very important covenant. Sometimes, if the missionaries are not perceptive enough this can come across as aggressive pressure to be baptized. If you are not ready for a baptismal date, just tell them. However, the process of changing our lives to honestly become disciples of Christ is lifelong; but just because it is a lifelong process doesn't mean we have to wait until we know everything to make a covenant with God that we want to become a member of His Church and be His disciples. That's the beauty of the Gospel, we just start out on the small and simple things and we continue to grow until our faith becomes stronger and stronger. As far as the amount of knowledge goes, there is a set of questions asked prior to baptism to ensure you are ready for baptism. The questions are listed below, if you can answer 1,2,3,5,6 in the affirmative and 4 in the negative, you are ready to be baptized regardless of the amount of knowledge you have or don't have-the only thing that it depends on is your desire to be baptized. If you answer 4 in the affirmative then you can be baptized, but it will require a few more steps. If you have confusion or lack knowledge on any of those questions then it's okay-that's what the missionaries are their for, to help guide you along the way-but always remember this journey in this life back to Heavenly Father by becoming a disciple of Christ is an individual matter. The missionaries and even the Church are simply guides and helping stones along the way of our personal journey to coming to know our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. 1.Do you believe that God is our Eternal Father? Do you believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, the Savior and Redeemer of the world? 2. Do you believe the Church and gospel of Jesus Christ have been restored through the Prophet Joseph Smith? Do you believe that [current Church President] is a prophet of God? What does this mean to you? 3. What does it mean to you to repent? Do you feel that you have repented of your past transgressions? 4. Have you ever committed a serious crime? If so, are you now on probation or parole? Have you ever participated in an abortion? a homosexual relationship? 5. You have been taught that membership in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints includes living gospel standards. What do you understand of the following standards? Are you willing to obey them? a. The law of chastity, which prohibits any sexual relationship outside the bonds of a legal marriage between a man and a woman. b. The law of tithing. c. The Word of Wisdom. d. The Sabbath day, including partaking of the sacrament weekly and rendering service to fellow members. 6. When you are baptized, you covenant with God that you are willing to take upon yourself the name of Christ and keep His commandments throughout your life. Are you ready to make this covenant and strive to be faithful to it?

Anyone who has studied actually studied "renewable" energy knows it is a complete sham. Renew with what, wind, water, solar? Ha, you can't possibly harvest enough of the sun's energy to replace coal, oil, gas, etc. The only real renewable that has great potential is nuclear. One of the coolest and eye-opening college course I took was an in-depth look at solar energy and then another class about power generation (both in hard engineering classes). The maximum efficiency that is possible from solar power is at most 26%, i.e. we can only harvest at best 26% of the sun's energy. It is scientifically impossible here on the planet to do better than that. All these "green" energy crap, you just trade one problem for another. You want wind power, well guess what you have to deal with hundreds of thousands of acres of giant windmills that aren't exactly pleasing to the eye and could be used for more useful things like crops or cattle. You want solar power, well guess what you get to deal with massive huge solar plants that generate a ton of heat and light, so much so that migratory birds that fly across the solar panels will roast to death. You want water power, guess what you get to deal with massive dams which change the composition of rivers, etc. cause problems with fish. There is no free lunch, you just trade one problem for another. The only reason why "renewable" energies don't have as many "problems" is b/c they aren't implemented on a large enough scale. Renewable only account for something like 5% of the total energy needed by the US (and I'm probably high on that figure-I think it was closer to 1% 5 years ago, but say it is 5% just for giggles and grins). Just to get it to a significant figure would require implementation on a large scale that would bring all these problems into focus. The only energy source that can solve these problems is nuclear, but thanks to Greenpeace nuts, nuclear has a bad rap. This "clean energy" crap is just that a load of crap.

In the past, there was a way to take care of this and a word for it too. It's called Charity. Unfortunately, we have relied too much on the government to make things better instead of the individual. There was a safety net, it was called your local community and your local church. It's one of the reasons why people were heavily involved in church and community-they formed a safety net. The government has crowded out much of private charity in health care. Much of the discussion gets back to what is a right and what is a privilege. Do I have a right to a house? a car? medical insurance? The answer is no. B/c if the answer is yes, then that means I have a right to force others to give me something. Do I have a right to force another human being to take care of me when I am sick? The answer should obviously be no. And since that is the case it means health care isn't a right but a privilege, in that someone else must want to take care of me. They can either take care of me b/c they love me (like a family member), because they have charity for me, or b/c I can offer them something in return for taking care of me (money). If those are the reasons why someone would take care of me when I am sick, then those who are poor and chronically ill by almost nature must rely upon the goodness of other human beings in the form of charity to help them out. Using force to make society pay for the chronically ill who are sick is a perversion of charity.

It would be real nice, but probably impractical. https://www.nationalpriorities.org/budget-basics/federal-budget-101/spending/ Mandatory federal spending accounts for ~65% of the current budget (that includes medicare, social security, etc.) or about 2.5 trillion. "Discretionary" spending makes up the other 1.1 trillion of which 53% is military spending, currently the interest on the debt is only 6% at 250 billion. Here is the rub, over the past 8 years, most of the interest has been rolled into low-interest bonds, i.e. the Federal government is paying super low-interest rates on the debt. Once (and it will happen) interest rates rise, the government will be forced to start paying normal rates on the debt. At normal rates (~5-6%) the interest on the debt would balloon to something like 800 billion a year! So in practical terms the only part of the federal budget that can be cut is the 1.1 trillion of discretionary spending. No politician is going to touch SS, medicare, etc. until they are forced to and Trump never ran on a platform of reforming SS. This is why you here every so often the idea from politicians to raise the retirement age or cut back SS benefits. As a country we are on the cusp of a huge amount of the population (baby boomers) entering into retirement and collecting SS checks, medicare, etc. Once those folks are removed from the working force and no longer paying into SS and are now taking out expect SS payments to skyrocket. SS was always built on a scam that you have more workers paying into the system that people taking out of the system. It's dropped from 3.4 to 2.8. In 2020 in will be 2.4. In 2020 16% of the population will be 65 or older. https://www.ssa.gov/history/ratios.html https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/ssb/v66n4/v66n4p37.html. Quite frankly demographically we screwed ourselves as a country. The liberalist, elite, feminist movement engrained less and less children in people's head. Right now, the US is below repopulation rate. There are ~1.8-1.9 births per woman, you must have 2.1 births per woman simply to maintain an even population. The only reason the population is growing in the US is due to immigration! Combine all that and there are some very serious structural problems down the road that are not going to be solved very easily. So let's take military spending, Trump nor the GOP war-party are going to cut military spending (especially when he campaigns on a stronger military). So what's left, the other 500 billion used to fund all the rest of the Federal Government??? Sure you could cut some, maybe 10-50 billion, but 300 billion, not gonna happen! Then you look at the current deficit to GPD ratio: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GFDEGDQ188S We are already at 105% and that's up 20% since the end of the 2008 recession! The longest expansion in US history was 10 years, we are beginning year 7 in 2 months. We are going to have a recession soon, bank on it-my guess is this time next year (they almost always begin in the fall). So you already can't cut the federal budget much, during a recession the federal income drops and the deficit expands (naturally), so you can bank that 105% going up another 10-15%. The only ways to solve this structural problem are either a) print a bunch of base money to take down the leverage ratio and drop the amount of debt to base money out there (i.e. unleash massive inflation which would inflate away most of the debt-a soft default), b) default on the debt and wipe it away (hard default) or c) pay it back. C is what the European Countries like Greece, etc. are doing and what Japan is doing. Eventually though you have so much debt that you can't pay it back and you have to start defaulting anyway. Maybe, just maybe there is still a chance where you can drop enough regulation and enough of the US economy is unencumbered that the US economy can start growing a lot again. That is the best case scenario that I hope with Trump, the next best case scenario is that we become like Japan for the next 20 years with very little inflation but more and more debt, and quite frankly in Japan as long as the individual stays out of debt things aren't too bad. It still remains to be seen what the end-game for Japan is. My belief is that it will go like it always goes in a debt-based purely fiat currency, a massive financial crack-up boom of inflation where the debt is wiped away and the currency becomes worthless. That's why the Tea Party howling at the debt is like the wolf howling at the moon. They complain about the wrong thing, you want to solve the debt, you have to reform the entire monetary system, which is the Federal Reserve System and how our currency is actually created. But to do that would require reforming the entire world monetary system since the US currency is the reserve currency of the world, the moment you reform the Federal Reserve is the moment you reform the entire world monetary regime and that is the moment you have a world monetary collapse. And that is the heart and root of the New World Order and One World Government. Everyone use one monetary currency-it is why the EU became the EU-it first started out as a trade agreement, then became a monetary agreement and then stated to become a political agreement. It is what Clinton was planning with the US, first a trade agreement with Mexico and Canada (NAFTA), the next step was and is a monetary agreement. And the above is why I turned so adamantly against Clinton. I started reading the actual e-mails, speeches, etc. and realized these people weren't kidding around. Had she been elected, her plan was a North American Union with Mexico and Canada. This wasn't some conspiracy nut-it was spelled out in their own words. So long-term, we are screwed, but then again in the long-term we are all dead. But the reaper has been stayed for a bit. The Federal debt on the other hand-it will one day completely explode-it's just a matter of when (but that could be in 30 years).