More than 60 teenage girls out of every 1,000 in Texas become pregnant. That statistic places Texas in third place nationally, when assessing teen pregnancy rates. Texas has an abstinence-only sex education program. And Governor Rick Perry has an explanation:
In the face of the data, Governor Perry plainly states that "it works". As seen from the video, Governor Perry thinks that blame may be placed on how the teachers are presenting the abstinence program and how the teens are applying the curriculum.
There are several conclusions that may be drawn from Governor Perry's approach. As a fiscal conservative, Governor Perry believes in a tightly controlled budget. However, that does not stop him from supporting educational expenditures on a curriculum that somehow produces poor results. Clearly, Governor Perry's approach is that policy should follow personal belief systems rather than be derailed by inconvenient empirical data.
Catherine Forsythe
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Comments
Not to mention football.
#2. How sad is it that he cannot grasp the societal implications of failed policy, but instead can only grasp black and white/ dollars and cents business sheets. It is clear how his brain works: no acknowledgement of humanity and its tendencies, but an understanding of how to spend money for returns...not that this has a great return, so maybe, his brain isn't working after all.
http://www.alternet.org/news/152037/21_reasons_rick_perry%27s_texas_is_a_complete_disaster/
Uh, sure does!! 3rd in the nation for teen pregnancy, it seems to be working on something.
~shaking head~ He scares me, he's got followers that nod at that crap. I mean, when I was in high school, I didn't have sex, but it wasn't a choice, damn being a geek!! ~:D But, kids are going to have sex, especially if you make it this evil naughty thing, I'd rather they had access to safe sex methods, not just for pregnancy, but STDs and such.
And contrary to these Right Wing Christian Poopooheads, married folks can get STDs just as easy as single folks.....God love you Poopooheads!!!
**wanders off**
I think it's a perfect illustration of the fatal flaw of the rigidly ideological. It’s especially visible now on the right, of course but I've seen it in ideologies of all directions. It's the only answer I've been able to come up with to why people who otherwise seem to have average intelligence subscribe to, even cling desperately to beliefs that fly in the face of empirical reality.
The ideology does not arise from thought, especially not reasoned analysis, but from emotion and psychology and it results in delusions that are necessary for the continued functioning of the people who hold to it. To maintain a life of delusion it is necessary to hear, see and read – to perceive selectively. As Perry demonstrates effectively in this vignette.
That’s not very thoroughly thought out but I’m just taking a short break from some extremely tedious bureaucratic functionarying and I need to get back to it.
Hey, if you don’t fuck you can’t get pregnant....right?
The moderator didn’t make it clear that the “real” question is, “Does teaching abstinence, the way it is taught in Texas, effectively prevent unwanted teen-age pregnancies?”
When you ask an unclear question you leave yourself open to getting back an unclear or “propaganda” answer. The interviewer did that and got back just what you’d expect.
That interviewer did such a bad job that he almost - almost - managed to make Perry’s answers look reasonable. Had Perry been asked the ‘right’ question, he’d have been nailed. The stats contain the only correct answer to the right question.
.
HUGGGGGGGGGG
Relief for the rest of us. I say: the empirical data of the last damn fool
We elected from texas ought to make a policy
Like they have in nuclear fallout zones
For texas prez hopefuls:
Don’t go there for, oh, 40 yrs.