I think the dream is still alive, but the odds of living it have gotten exponentially worse in my lifetime. It was never a guarantee, more a lottery, and the percentage paid back to the winners has steadily shrunk.

Time to buy some lottery tickets.

I'm from Texas. I support Abortion. No contraceptive is 100% effective, not even if you combine them. If you don't understand that, study how percentages work.

Secondly, kids are hormonally driven creatures. They are literally under the influence of natural chemicals driving them to procreate.

Not every school or parent teaches them about contraceptives. In fact, you will find most 'Christians" only support abstinence. This is the equivalent of telling a chemically dependent addict to "Just Say No!" How well did that work in the drug war back in the day? (Hint: However, despite DARE's bold claims, research has shown that the program has failed spectacularly.)

Third, the people who are most affected by this new law are the people that can least afford the better contraceptives or having a child in a non-stable family environment. This won't bother a middle class or rich family at all, they can just send the kid off to an "aunt" in another state until the issue is resolved. Those kids from poor families will just be forced to have the kid and likely it will ruin their lives. This doesn't even take into account that the new law doesn't have ANY exceptions for rape or incest.

Fourth, the USA was founded on religious freedom. In other words, you get to believe what you want and others get to do the same. This means that if a religious person tells another person that something they are doing is forbidden due to morality contained in their religion, that other person can tell you to fuck right off. Church and State are supposed to be separate, but the Christian right think they should be able to legislate their religious ideas on others. Do you not see the hypocrisy here?

I'm nominally a conservative. Sadly that means that I get lumped in with you ultra far right wackos that want to turn the USA into a religious state like Iran or Afghanistan. I'm not leaving my home state because some religious nut jobs think it is OK to kill adults by lethal injection but that it is BAD to kill some cells that are multiplying.

Btw, the cardiac activity detected on ultrasound at six weeks is not a true heartbeat. It results from electrical activity, but the valves of the heart have not yet formed. And the sound does not indicate the pregnancy is viable. Women typically don't notice they are pregnant until they miss a period. So if they are unlucky, they may already be close to four weeks pregnant. That leaves them two weeks to confirm it with a doctor, since home tests are not 100%, get together money for the abortion, find a clinic, and schedule an appointment that falls within the remaining time period. Since this law will cause even more clinics to close in Texas, you can add travel and patient backlog to the time. A teen could do everything right and still miss out on the lottery for an appointment, dramatically changing their life for years.

But at least some smug religious person can sip their coffee and be proud they enforced their morality on some evil women that dared sleep around out of wedlock.

He probably has a history of being late for things which worked out for him this time. Otherwise he probably would have been sitting in the car.

On the other hand, had the roof not fallen and he got to the 7-11 instead, he probably would have gotten the winning scratch off lottery ticket for 100 MILLLLLION dollars.

The fact that a President can get 3 partisan judges in one term to the SCOTUS is madness. No matter the leaning.

Take the selection power away from the President. Why should a SCOTUS judge be a Presidential pick in the first place? It should belong to the people.

I think a fair minded party SHOULD pack the court to fix the system. However, the method need to be different than the President nominate/Senate approve process currently in place. Use a lottery type of system is an option. House/Senate Republicans and Democrats each gets to choose the same amount of nominations (vetted by both sides) and then the selection is done by lottery. That'll ensure some form of randomized fairness, and the judges aren't so overly partisan.

Subscribe to what you want, my birth lottery included trees and butterflies, I was raised in a forest in a glass house in a forest. (We had an atrium inside with a forest of trees growing through the roof, and the house was in the middle of a forest)

If I were born black, that person would be me, but I would be different. Besides, I was born a poor black child, sir. ;-)

If my starting line is 50 meters ahead of yours in a 100 yard dash through nothing but luck, that's pretty lucky for me.

I feel pretty successful having made little effort to get there, that's luck.

I don't feel shame because I'm not a normal American that thinks anything they want is something they deserve and need. Best lesson my dad ever taught me was know the difference between want and need and you'll be far happier in life. It's true.

I don't have too much, I have enough, but I still share with those who i feel don't. I've housed multiple friends for free, and even let one live in my yard for 7 years, which in retrospect was at least 5 years too many. My wife and I live comfortably on <$30000 a year. Most Americans can't live on that for one person. Newts do just fine, we take a vacation every year, pay our bills, and eat well.
Maybe that's why I'm so different. I was allowed to roam the wild woods and bayou alone at just over 3, to the point where the neighbors told my parents they were going to call the cops. This was in the middle of Houston, literally a wilderness of (or at least in) modern civilization. ;-)

I did go to school for 24 years (preschool -the ten year plan at Jr college) but never tried hard or practiced, to the point where my trig teacher insisted I was cheating because I didn't pay attention or do homework so she separated me for a big test, the class average dropped a full grade but not me, my neighbors were cheating off me. She left me alone after that. That might be preparations, but it wasn't hard work. It was boring busy work.

I did that, read encyclopedias and dictionaries. That was punishment at my school through 7th grade....but my grandmother read her set through twice for fun. My mother was called "the encyclopedia" in school, with good reason.

I definitely let opportunities pass often. Sometimes because I don't need them and others might, sometimes I'm just lazy and happy so see no need to expend effort, usually because I see opportunities as traps, the bait being some modest short term gain, the cage being large long term obligations. I'm always prepared for opportunities that are for me without preparation. I'm not Trumpian, I understand I have limitations, and don't tend to obligate myself beyond them.

Who said I waited. I've been lucky enough that I didn't have to wait for, nor do I expect luck. Through luck, forethought, and decent planning things have worked out well with minimal effort or sacrifice. I don't rely on luck to dig me out of holes, I tend to watch my step and not fall in them often. You might call that preparation, I call it paying attention. It's working so far.

I dont subscribe to weird oriental religions which presume being born is a lottery that possibly includes trees and butterflies.

Every person is born to a set of parents into a particular time and place and socio-economic position. That is what defines who you are. You cant say "if I was born black" because that would not be you.

That is not luck, that is your starting line. You race from there, that is where YOU start rolling the dice and having good or bad luck.

You may consider yourself lucky to be who you are and where you are, indeed you may feel some first world shame for being so fortunate, but that is surely superfluous, if you have too much you can offer to help other people.

Humans (unlike newts) need preparation, after you are born you need to practice for many years before you can be let out into the wilderness of modern civilization with any hope of surviving, let alone passing tests.

You remind me of my son, he spent his childhood reading encyclopedias and now he is surprised that he knows everything and other people dont. It came easy to him.

I did not have to work hard most of the time, am doing fine, got most of what I have because I was lucky, but I sure had a lot of opportunities run away from me because I wasnt prepared for them. Also got burned by a lot of things I should have been prepared for.

Waiting for luck is good only if you run out of options to do something.

I think a good thing to point out in the astronaut example is how many people got the job who WEREN'T hard working, in line with what @vil says, and in general no hard work + luck doesn't help you unless it's a no competition environment (like winning the lottery or being born to the right family/country).

Time for everyone on the Miss Stacy to buy lottery tickets, this is definitely their lucky day.
*quality save

I win the lottery every time I don't play.

"the only winning move is not to play." -War Games

Interesting suggestion.

I believe that with 1/10 the population, near today's per capita resource usage would be sustainable....although there would be a necessary time period with net zero or better emissions required to return the atmosphere to "normal" before runaway greenhouse effects and feedbacks turn earth into Venus 2.0. After that, there is an amount of emission the planet can absorb, so resource usage need not be curtailed excessively, but it wouldn't hurt.

I'm all for the lottery system if everyone draws straws, no exceptions except those willing to just move to the reservation voluntarily.
Even a lottery system simply for procreation would do wonders, but remembering the outrage at China for just allowing one child per couple, I doubt that would fly either. Also, it does leave the possibility that the lucky procreators might all be imbecilic morons incapable of following/continuing the plan...we don't want to become a species that is dumber than our pets....or do we?

I think the priorities should be reversed too, what's best for life on earth first, humanity second.

It's an extreme solution certainly, but not without merit. I doubt there'd ever be a willing acceptance of such a plan though, so a slightly more realistic solution would need to be moderated some. How's this for dystopian-but-not-quite-genocidal:
Worldwide lottery, a small percentage (total of 500M - 1B maybe) wins the right to live in what will be the new model of the world: something like what we have now, but with drastically reduced usage of non-renewable resources (until they can be replaced completely) and a target of zero negative impact on the environment as a whole. Still some version of democratic (generally at least), freedom of whatnot and such, open travel to the degree that sustainable transportation options allow, all the (again, sustainable) mod cons. I suppose different countries / regions could still run things according to their preferences, as long as the net-zero goal remains.
The other lottery entrants, the non-winners, don't need to die, hooray! They will however live on something akin to reservations, as serfs, without the right to further reproduce. These poor bastards, in exchange for not being outright murdered to save civilization, are to be consolidated into agricultural communes to do whatever they can to regrow the world's flora and fauna until they all eventually die. Their goal is not net-zero, but as far into the positive as possible. It would all be overseen according to some grand scheme(s) to be as beneficial for the overall future of humanity and life on Earth in general as possible.

Probably also unworkable, but preferable to megamurder?

You know that's nearly 1/4 of what we've paid for Trump's golf outtings so far....largely paid directly to him since he charges the secret service to stay at his properties that he won't divest himself from, and even to use his golf carts on the greens ($150000 so far for carts alone).
You would do yourself a service to not complain about wasting money on investigating treasonous criminal activities as long as you're on team Trump, he spends like a drunken sailor on leave that just won the lottery. Just look at deficit numbers before and after his tax plan, then try to pretend he's somehow fiscally sane.

For a comparison, the GAO said the Clinton investigations cost $70-$80 million in the 90's (translating to over $135 million in 2018 dollars) and Republicans called them under funded.
History....ain't it a thing.

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