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[RedKing]

During the Straw Poll, every Republican was seeking to curry his favor. And now we know why he didn't give it. Thank you sir, your sanity is appreciated.

Srsly? I thought Buffet was reviled by the right-wing in the same category as George Soros. It's not the first time he's made comments like this.

EDIT: For one thing, his foundations have funded things like family planning NGOs. My wife used to work for one of them.

[Truean]

During the Straw Poll, every Republican was seeking to curry his favor. And now we know why he didn't give it. Thank you sir, your sanity is appreciated.

Srsly? I thought Buffet was reviled by the right-wing in the same category as George Soros. It's not the first time he's made comments like this.

EDIT: For one thing, his foundations have funded things like family planning NGOs. My wife used to work for one of them.

Arnold used him and he's republican http://archive.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2003/8/18/155747.shtml

Both Obama and McCain were seriously trying to get him to run the treasury
http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/news/story.html?id=e3ea0608-5890-4660-b529-d700ca8470fb

They would love for a rich donor like him to be on their side. He would lend credibility to their plan for economic recovery.... Limbaugh supporters, including my dad who listens religiously, seem to like him or rather they did, not sure why.

Also this:
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0711/59335.html

[RedKing]

During the Straw Poll, every Republican was seeking to curry his favor. And now we know why he didn't give it. Thank you sir, your sanity is appreciated.

Srsly? I thought Buffet was reviled by the right-wing in the same category as George Soros. It's not the first time he's made comments like this.

EDIT: For one thing, his foundations have funded things like family planning NGOs. My wife used to work for one of them.

Arnold used him and he's republican http://archive.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2003/8/18/155747.shtml

Both Obama and McCain were seriously trying to get him to run the treasury
http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/news/story.html?id=e3ea0608-5890-4660-b529-d700ca8470fb

They would love for a rich donor like him to be on their side. He would lend credibility to their plan for economic recovery.... Limbaugh supporters, including my dad who listens religiously, seem to like him or rather they did, not sure why.

Also this:
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0711/59335.html

Arnie was not your average Republican. I never thought I'd say this, but the GOP could actually use a lot more Schwarzeneggers. As for Dittoheads liking him...well, there's a certain built-in love for anyone rich that's not in Hollywood. Especially if the person is rich because of capitalism. And Buffet, while he's not a social conservative, has been more discreet in his politics than Soros or Gates. But from what I know of him, he's essentially in that billionaire-philanthropist grouping with them.

[Pnx]

Funny that you bring that up...

"You've damaged yourself, you've damaged another person, you've damaged your peers and, quite honestly, you've damaged your own race," the 54-year-old mayor, who is black, said at his West Philadelphia church last week.

He also lectured parents in the city's African-American communities about taking responsibility for their children.

"That's part of the problem in the black community. ... We have too many men making too many babies they don't want to take care of and then we end up dealing with your children," Nutter said.

This guy really sounds very racist. Although I've made my views clear before that I think there really shouldn't even be a black and white community, and that people lending recognition to it are just enforcing the divide.
I can't be the only one who's tired of this issue cropping up.

Short post supporting maternity leave.

This is a very, very good thing for everyone to read.

I do support maternity leave, it's very important that our children get the best upbringing we can (reasonably) give them.
This issue does kind of play off of my fears of overpopulation. We should really have fewer people being born. It makes things more difficult down the line when you have an ageing population. But I think it's worth the trouble.

Don't eat ice cream in Belarus.

Bloody hell.

Make sure you don't applaud ironically either.

Russia scares me. Just the things I hear from there scare me. A place that well developed shouldn't be that way.

[Kay12]

Don't eat ice cream in Belarus.

Bloody hell.

Make sure you don't applaud ironically either.

Russia scares me. Just the things I hear from there scare me. A place that well developed shouldn't be that way.

You do know that's not Russia, do you?

[Pnx]

Don't eat ice cream in Belarus.

Bloody hell.

Make sure you don't applaud ironically either.

Russia scares me. Just the things I hear from there scare me. A place that well developed shouldn't be that way.

You do know that's not Russia, do you?

According to my Russian friends, Belarus (white russia) is generally considered part of Russia. Just with it's own language and some autonomy.
At least, from what I understand. I could be wrong.

[olemars]

I consider maternity leave a gender equality measure, not a child-raising measure. Same with kindergartens from year 1. The traditional way is the stay-at-home mom, these measures give the mother the chance to keep her career.

And maternity leave doesn't cause any population explosion. Around here you have the right to a full year of paid maternity leave, but childbirth rates are still only barely self-sustaining and the average age for having your first child is pretty high. Even with maternity leave and kindergartens, the impact on education and work is so high that women/couples put off having kids until they're well established and settled, often well into their thirties.

[Sheb]

Belarus sin't part of Russia, but they have a commitment to form a united state with them one day. They're still a different country now.

[Siquo]

This guy really sounds very racist. Although I've made my views clear before that I think there really shouldn't even be a black and white community, and that people lending recognition to it are just enforcing the divide.
I can't be the only one who's tired of this issue cropping up.

Well, if there already is a community that identifies itself as a "black community", then ignoring that it's there doesn't make it go away. There shouldn't be indeed, but it's there nonetheless. He is also addressing the parents of juvenile delinquents to take some fucking responsibility, which is always a good thing in my book (being socialist doesn't mean believing that the state should raise your children for you).

[GlyphGryph]

I consider maternity leave a gender equality measure, not a child-raising measure. Same with kindergartens from year 1. The traditional way is the stay-at-home mom, these measures give the mother the chance to keep her career.

Yeah, because people will definitely want to hire those who have a legal mandate to get paid without working for a year. And I've seen quite a bit of evidence that the existence of maternity leave is an important factor for many companies in refusing to hire/promote women.

I think we're a lot better off emulating the countries that have Parental Leave rather than Maternity Leave. And gender-specific legislation doesn't sit right by me to begin with, especially one with so many professional drawbacks for the group it effects.

[Africa]

Funny that you bring that up...

Oh man. If I was still in high school I'd be pissed about this. Maybe I should still be but...meh.

Also, I don't get why the only places they rounded kids up were Center City and University City. The latter (where I live) hasn't had any of these flash mobs. As far as I know those basically happen downtown. I can only assume it's because UC is the other neighborhood where trendy white people with a lot of money live and the city is sucking up to them. Or because UPenn is pulling strings because they're scared of any rowdy black youths coming into their nice gentrified turf.

[Realmfighter]

What I never really get about these kind of laws is, why does no kid just organize a massive street party in front of the local governmental building? They can't arrest everyone. I mean, here there was a massive pro-pot protest at the legislature building with people smoking pot illegally, and while there were police officers there they weren't arresting people, only making sure that nothing went out of hand.

[MonkeyHead]

Regarding Maternity leave...

My partner and I made the decision that she would quit work and raise our children until they reach full time school age. Firstly, I was earning more. Secondly, if she had have stayed in work, we would have been worse off - her being in employment cuts the amount of tax credit we would be entitled to, and childcare would cost more than she could reasonably earn and still have some family life. For our first daughter this was supposed to be simple - a planned delivery after her being 2 weeks overdue made me taking my statutory 10 days of leave from work a breeze (even if at the time we wre stuck in a horrible house move chain). We expected similar for our second daughter, but she was born via emergency induction a month early with life threatening consequences for mother, which made things very tricky. I was entitled to 10 days leave, and after these 10 days made an attempt to return to work. The first day my Head of Faculty sent me home by mid day as I was a mess. The next morning the Bursar rang me at home, demanding to know where I was - basically if I took another day off, according to him I would be taking "Paternity Leave" - basically 6 months of unpaid leave... needless to say I went in the next day, had a full and frank exchange of veiws with him over how if I were female I would get 9 months of leave under full pay with job protection to take when I deemed fit, compared to being bullied back into work as I am male, and needing to care for one child while 2 other family members were touch and go in the hospital. I dont feel that a man deserves the same deal here as women - after all pregancy, birth and motherhood has a much bigger effect on thier life than for a man... but there has to be a much better deal than what I was offered.

As an aside, the system that operates in my workplace has been taken advantage of to some extent. Basically, more than one female member of staff has taken thier 9 months, and with 2 months to go handed in thier statutory notice of resignation, thus getting 9 months of pay checks without working! Whilst I cant blame them for taking advantage of such a system, It does grate a little that people end up covering for them to keep thier job open when they have no intent of taking it back up again. On the other hand, I did gain 2 promotions thanks to this, so maybe I shouldnt be so bitter.

[GlyphGryph]

I dont feel that a man deserves the same deal here as women - after all pregancy, birth and motherhood has a much bigger effect on thier life than for a man... but there has to be a much better deal than what I was offered.

While I give you the first two, pregnancy and birth (Since those doesn't really apply to men), I'm gonna have to see some sort of evidence for the third one there. I mean, the effect on both parents is not only pretty major, but pretty dependent on circumstance as well, so its a bit of an over generalization at the lest.

My partner and I made the decision that she would quit work and raise our children until they reach full time school age.

And this is the issue - Maternity leave is, simply, extremely sexist - in situations where the women is more successful than the man, makes more money, etc and so on, she is STILL expected to and pressured by society to put here career on hold for a year (or even quit completely) to raise the child.

[olemars]

I consider maternity leave a gender equality measure, not a child-raising measure. Same with kindergartens from year 1. The traditional way is the stay-at-home mom, these measures give the mother the chance to keep her career.

Yeah, because people will definitely want to hire those who have a legal mandate to get paid without working for a year. And I've seen quite a bit of evidence that the existence of maternity leave is an important factor for many companies in refusing to hire/promote women.

I think we're a lot better off emulating the countries that have Parental Leave rather than Maternity Leave. And gender-specific legislation doesn't sit right by me to begin with, especially one with so many professional drawbacks for the group it effects.

The government pays for it, not the employer. I guess I meant parental leave and not maternity leave too, since the benefit period can be split between the parents to a large extent.

Employers quietly avoiding hiring women because of the risk of a lengthy absence does happen (even if it's illegal). It depends a lot on the industry sector though.