Tween girls are the fuel of the "American Idol" mothership; they are the ones who jam up the voting lines, texting until their fingers bleed, and they are no small part of the reason 23-year-old Kris Allen -- supremely crushable, pocket-size, deeply religious, utterly unthreatening Kris Allen -- became the "American Idol" winner in the biggest upset in the show's history.

Let's be frank here. It is no mystery Lambert is gay and given the "tween" input, that's what did him in based on his perceived inaccessibility.

OTOH, Allen, being a standard hetero, could still inspire dreams of future romance and improbable relationships in the tweenies' febrile brains.

A damned shame, because Lambert really deserved to win it. (Not that I watch, my wife keeps me informed as it's her favorite show)

darvader wrote:

If the IOU's from the US treasury bought by Social Security are not realy, then why have working people been paying all this extra money into the system for 25 years?

Well, because it's a Ponzi scheme! At least that is what they'd tell you. But the key think they always omit, or re-frame, is the nature of the IOUs. Which is while, technically, they are IOUs, they are also bonds! And those bonds must be honored. It isn't a matter of tossing them in the nearest dumpster because they are also "IOUs".

Congress has NO choice other than to approve the obligations, by law. There is no such finance critter as a "non-redeemable" bond. (There are non-negotiable bonds, but that doesn't mean the same thing).

Once a bond is issued, it has to be redeemed at some future date, in order for the bond issuer to sustain credibility - particularly in the financial markets, and especially with overseas holders of its other bonds!

If SS bonds were truly "non-redeemable" then its issuer (U.S. Gov't) would have to be insolvent. That means all its other bond issues, say to foreign investors, would have to be "non-redeemable" too. If that were true, the implications would be horrendous.

Splitting hairs about bond definitions by playing verbal parlor games is a fool's errand, because in the end, no foreign investor, finance-business type buys it. At least those with whom I'm acquainted(in the UK, Germany and Switzerland). To them, a bond is a bond is a bond. Whether an IOU from the U.S. gov't to its own people, or an IOU to a foreign investor, interest. Default on one type, then you can't be trusted for any!

As Mark Weisbrot (The Denver Post, March 5, 2003, p. 1B) noted:

"The bonds held by the Social security Trust Fund are dismissed as 'IOUs' or 'pieces of paper', as if the credit of the U.S. Treasury- which has never defaulted in the history of this country - is something rather shaky.'The Trust Fund's money's been spent!' they exclaim, as if exposing some kind of scam.

Guess what? So has the $720 billion that Japan loaned the U.S. Treasury. The Japanese government will be repaid, however, interest and principal and so will Social Security"

In the end, Weisbrot accurately observes that blaming Social security for future debt problems is like blaming your credit card company for your own over-sized spending habits. By analogy, just as the credit card company is the lender to you - even while you spend recklessly - so Social Security is the lender of note to the U.S. government - not the spender.

In order for the Rightist-Libertarian disinfo campaign to work, however, they know they must succeed in painting Social Security as the "debtor" - and hence "bankrupt" (despite the fact it has NO creditors) to make their bogus case.

We need to get as many people as we can not to drink the kool aid and buy into that. Again, Michael Hiltzik's book is an eye opener here: The Plot Against Social Security.

the author doesn't extend her research purview which might have brought her face to face with the REAL culprit: rBGH (recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone) laced milk!

Yes, milk! Not natural milk, but the type extracted from cows administered rBGH. Evidence abounds now that this causes females to reach puberty much faster than they normally would, and it is obvious to see why. They are ingesting gallons of sexual-hormone laced milk.

While rBGH is banned in Europe and Canada, and has been boycotted by 95 percent of US dairy farmers, the FDA, Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Agriculture continue to license the drug (and other new genetically engineered foods) without pre-market safety tests. Thanks to industry pressure, genetically engineered foods are NOT required to carry identifying labels.

The Consumer's Union, bless their hearts, has noted that the FDA should never have approved it. BGH "treatment" causes significantly increased levels of another growth hormone called IGF-1 in the milk, according to a 1990 study sponsored by Monsanto and published in Science. Bovine IGF-1 is identical to the IGF-1 naturally found in humans, and therein lies the problem.

When one ingests this milk one's body "thinks" its being given a dose of IGF-1 and responds accordingly. Breasts gorw bigger, and much earlier, as well as other body parts.

What is worse news, for the long term, is that excess levels of natural growth factor (IGF-1), have been incriminated as major causes of breast, colon, and prostate cancers.

This stuff needs to be outlawed, and all girls need to be protected from getting anywhere near the stuff.