People seem to want to audit the author's tax return and financial and personal history to see if she is truly needy enough and how bad or good her choices were to warrant any sympathy or financial support. Is she living in a neighborhood fancier than she can afford? Is she paying too much for childcare? Is she too dependent on the state? Should she have gotten an MBA? Does she deserve three children?

But you know what? We can only guess. The people who seem determined to make those guesses and use them to judge her situation seem to be missing the point of the article

The point of the article is, when your economic situation changes, sometimes you have to swallow your pride and do things you never thought you'd do. In a volatile economy, it can happen to lots of people who thought they were prepared. She tells that story eloquently and honestly.

It occurred to me that most of the haters on this thread are probably terrified of ending up in poverty themselves. They have their talismans collected around themselves of how they did it Right and will never be faced with the horrors of poverty that face people who don't take life seriously enough. It must be grimly satisfying to them to judge the lives of others who have failed by not being as shrewd and careful as they are.

I think I hate it even more when people use bad arguments to support issues I agree with than when I fundamentally disagree with them.

We need to stop saying, "It wouldn't even have any effect on gas prices until 2030." It's a stupid argument. If it makes sense to drill and it's going to take 22 years to get it out, we'd damned well better get going. I can't see this argument possibly convincing anyone who thinks the potential increase in oil supply is worth the environmental risk of drilling to change their mind.

Other fallacies:

One of the commenters here has said that "drilling for US oil won't affect the price of oil here more than anywhere else" which is mostly true and totally misses the point. Price isn't the only control on oil. OPEC, for instance, can refuse to release oil to the market to drive up the price or to punish those they disagree with. We would (theoretically) be able to influence domestic suppliers production levels.

Another commenter said "Only real proof is what the oil companies experts say about whether there is oil or not." Does that intend to mean that there are no other scientists studying oil supplies? Or that non-oil company scientists aren't sufficiently motivated to find the truth? Neither of these seem justified by what I see in the papers, there seem to be thousands of people studying this diligently from all angles. What I find most horrific about that statement, though, is the implicit idea that we should just let the oil companies regulate themselves. They know best where the oil is, let 'em go get it. That is a sure road to ecological disaster.

When we went into Iraq, we were abundantly ready to fight world war II. We'd have kicked ass from day one. If that had been WWII, we'd have had Hitler on his knees in months without having to do all the nasty things like firebomb Dresden, and without having to depend on Uncle Joe. Then we could have gone and kicked Stalin's ass. Oh, we were abundantly prepared to meet any 3 armies of the world at once on the open battlefield.

The bad news: too bad nobody fights wars that way anymore.

NBC proudly proclaims on their website that there are 5 top sports in the Olympics including Basketball, Beach Volleyball, Swimming, Gymnastics, and Track and Field. So guess what we're gonna be seeing a lot (more) of? Personally I think more breadth and less depth would be more interesting to watch. I've about had my fill of NBC's Big Five and will probably stop watching as soon as Phelps is done.

http://www.nbcolympics.com/sports/index.html

If I had to actually watch the endless beach volleyball or ridiculous puff pieces I'd have stopped watching altogether by now.

This is a major quadrennial event in each of the 28 sports represented at the olympics. (That counts "Aquatics" as one - swimming, diving, synchro swimming & diving, water polo, are each separate within that).

So why are we only seeing two or three separate sports in any one show?

Totally agree wrt beach volleyball. I like watching volleyball, but in this event where there are such a vast number of sports that don't even get a 5 minute mention, spending hours and hours watching beach volleyball seems a bit much. One has to wonder why, and I can't help but conclude that the powers that be at NBC figure that people will tune in for the pretty girls in bikinis. I figured out a long time ago that those bikinis aren't going to slip, so can we move on now?

By contrast, I thought the way they showed the women's time trial bicycle final was great - a 45 minute race compressed down to one short segment capturing the highlights.

Seriously, I even get that they want to have long story arcs to carry the audience along, but pulling back on the big arcs a bit might give them space to show some highlights of the other dozens of events that don't get any air time at all currently.