Thanks for the comment, but i still don't see any contradiction in what i originally wrote. The "free reign" and "freedom" terms you claim are contradictory weren't in my original statement. What was said in my various comments on this post is that children deserve respect, and we should treat them as we would like to be treated. In my view, childhood is a state of impaired capacity, comparable to an adult who has undergone surgery and is still under the effects of the anesthesia and painkillers. To restrict an impaired adult from jumping out of the hospital bed and wandering into traffic may be impairing his or her freedom, but it is unquestionably the right thing to do. Preservation of life and limb has to take precedence over "freedom" in making decisions for a compromised individual. I think the same applies to children: we have a duty to protect them from grave harm as a result of their decisions, but we don't have the right to insist that they wear certain clothes, or eat their food at the time we decide. We don't have the moral right to demand a child's obedience to a parent's whims, but we do have a moral right and even a duty to intervene if they risk significant and/or permanent harm. And as the adult regains or the child gains more capacity to make their own decisions, they should then be given greater deference to do so. I never claimed there should be "no" restrictions on a child's choices, but that there should only be reasonable and fair ones that we would choose ourselves in the same circumstances.

Actually, American health care was still the best in the world and in many respects remains so today. Long story, but the "fail" was mainly brought about by an over burdensome and convoluted legal and regulatory system. The health care dollars bleeding into the legal system and regulatory bureaucracies is enormous, not to mention time and costs of compliance borne by health care personnel. The latest health care reform may have been somewhat successful if government cleaned up its act and addressed those issues, but it failed to do so. Yep, it was another government "fail". My insurance costs have increased dramatically since the so called ACA (the largest % increase just happened for premiums due in 2015!). I expect it will get a lot worse as the ACA bureaucracy expands and consumes everything it can. IMHO, the Republican majority will not be able to tame this beast. Soon you'll be filling out a form to get permission to take an aspirin. The you'll have to sign a waiver so your doctor doesn't get sued in case you choke on it.

Ah, sorry... it was self-evident to me... but that's another thing...

"letting your daughter do whatever she wants AS LONG AS IT WAS [SAFE]" is clearly putting a restriction on her "make[ing] her own decisions."

Clearer? Your judgment of 'what's safe for her in terms of her 'own' decisions' IS, in my agreement, 'good parenting,' but it's really not giving her free rein (or reign) to 'make her own decisions.' It's a limit on 'freedom,' which is not 'freedom.'

Please explain.

Liberalism is a mental disorder and she is passing it on to her children. She is reaping what she sowed, almost immediately. Justice.

Nah. In my version if the cats get too fat and services start to suffer, the competition will either force them to correct their foolishness or they will be replaced and their company will die. In your version, the government program has "eternal life" at the expense of the tax payer and the bureaucrats get fatter and fatter and fatter (not to mention more and more powerful over directing your life).

Then I will definitely have questions for her from time to time.:) I’m just getting started now that the kids are grown. :)
The more I learn the more I feel bad about how Mrs. Romney was treated for her dressage pursuits. It is an expensive habit, but for many like me, I willing to muck stables and take care of the horses on the weekends in-trade for the lessons. Owning a horse or working with horses involves a lot of manual hard labor. You have to roll up your sleeves. I don’t believe Mrs. Romney just jumped on the back of a horse and let others do all the work. It just doesn’t work like that. You have to build that bond.

Pirate has done the horse training as well-she was competitive :)

"That's not fair"
It really isn't fair though. If life were fair good people wouldn't get sick or have accidents. Taco Bell and Xanax would be good for you.

Yes. An argument can be logical without being sound (logical and based on correct premises).

I suspect the author says bizarre things to get attention.

She's in Gainesville too. I lived in Gainesville in the mid 90s and loved it. It felt like home in so many ways: county seat, air port on the east side, east side a little rougher, big university blocks west of the downtown square.

I suspect she's trying to be the caricature of a mess to sell articles.

But it's _scary_ going the WIC office, she says. Everyone looked at the tall blond "girl" (as if she weren't over 18) who just drove her Mercedes over a pothole for the first time.

"But it wasn’t a toy — it was paid off. Were we supposed to trade it in for a crappier car we’d have to make payments on?"
No. You sell the 5 y/o Mercedes for $15,000 and use the money to buy a $3,000 car. and $12,000 worth of groceries, utilities, and rent..

I bet the husband paying who's paying for her lifestyle with the help of "President Obama's programs" (just quoting her words) is an engineer.

It's only "conservative politicians and Internet trolls" who criticize her, she says. She kept her Mercedes. Cry me a river!

Do you recognize the internal contradiction between those two statements?
Must I explain?

What kind of weirdo are you to think of such an offensive idea about a nice young woman staring demurely in the kitchen and writing an article wringing her little hands about authority-enforced sharing vs. authority-enforced austerity (as if they were different), tacitly begging for some authority in her life? (You can tell I'm above such things.)

If the article were the beginning of dirty story along that line rather than a Washington Post article, people would say the obligatory why-she's-a-spoiled-brat backstory (i.e. this article) was formulaic and over-the-top.... I mean, at least so I've heard anyway.

maybe not any different at all... since ACA was sold, in part, under the premise that adding hundreds of thousands or millions of NEW consumers to a marketplace would LOWER total costs for Everyone.

Eco 101, Bob? C'mon. Unintended consequences, man!

Bob, you might want to also consider that yes, the right wing is stupid for trying to decide reproductive decisions for everyone else based on Their Beliefs, but the Left Wing assumes that they can dig as much as they want out of Everyone's pocket in order to allocate that wealth to things THEY think is 'right,' no matter what the rest of the folks think...

And as for Enron... the employees who put all of their retirement equity into their own company's stock probably learned Economics and Investing at a government-run public school, too.... All of your eggs in one basket is usually the most stupid investing choice anyone can make. My financial manager, who makes ALL of the investing decisions for my IRA and my wife's IRA, chose five dozen or more various equities for our money, so if any one of them went to zero overnight, we'd lose maybe 2-3% of our total balance.

The Enron employees were scammed by their own management and sealed their own doom with their own financial ineptitude...

Which is why that mom is really screwing up her twins by teaching them stupid ideas... like 'life is fair' and 'someone will make sure you get an equitable share.'

But that's the American Way Today.

NO, she needs to have her ass spanked until she says she gets it, then spanked again when she proves that she really didn't.

I was talking about four-year-olds. I think by the time your kid is eight or nine -- if they are raised right, the whole question of giving the choice of eating or playing is a nice option but not expected. The kid has been conditioned and trained to follow the adult’s lead. As the child grows and their brain develops, they get the cues from nature quite readily when it is time to start pulling away from the tether--at puberty. By that time, a parent’s instructions should be ingrained, so that when the kid faces a choice, they do have some control over their impulsivity and will actually consider exercising good judgement on their own because up until that time their choices have been yours. That’s what is familiar and feels right. Telling themselves ‘no’ is nothing new.
You can give your kid choices and try not caving, or you can be the parent who is never questioned or embarrassed in public. Kids don’t test adults who always lead. Teach them about choices later.
I don’t believe in spanking. It just shows the adult was never in control.