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The 10 Most Glorious Movies of 2013—and the 4 Most Unspeakably Awful

Mother Jones

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I have long believed that film criticism is a pointless, wildly unnecessary profession. The longer your review of a movie, the truer this becomes.

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The 10 Most Glorious Movies of 2013—and the 4 Most Unspeakably Awful

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New York Might Never Top the 1949 Rockefeller Center Tree

Image: LIFE

Every year, the giant tree in Rockefeller Center is unveiled to some fanfare. But no tree is likely to top the tree that the city had in 1949. After years in which war-time trees stood stoically without lights, New Yorkers got a tree to remember. The Bowery Boys describe the spectacle:

Perhaps knowing the mild temperatures that awaited that season — it would only snow two inches between November 1949 and January 1950 — the Rockefeller Center holiday designers decided to spray paint the gigantic 75-foot tree in hundreds of gallons of whimsical silver paint.  It was then engulfed in 7,500 electric lights in pastel colors — pink, blue, yellow, green and orange, described as “plucked from a sky in fairyland.”

Not only was the tree covered in silver paint and lights, the walkway leading up to it was lined with 576 snowflakes that whirled dizzily. In fact, the display was so bright and wild that it caused one of the worst traffic jams the New York Times had seen in years. Cars were reportedly trapped between 72nd Street and 41st Street for hours.

Although this years tree has far more lights (45,000 in total) and induce plenty of traffic, it won’t be quite the silver, spinning whirlwind of 1949.

More from Smithsonian.com:

“Holidays on Display” at American History Museum
Dreaming of a Green Christmas

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New York Might Never Top the 1949 Rockefeller Center Tree

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WATCH: Glenn Greenwald Killed the Internet Fiore Cartoon

Mother Jones

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Mark Fiore is a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist and animator whose work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Examiner, and dozens of other publications. He is an active member of the American Association of Editorial Cartoonists, and has a website featuring his work.

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WATCH: Glenn Greenwald Killed the Internet Fiore Cartoon

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Karl Rove Pretends That Conservatives Have a Health Care Plan

Mother Jones

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Karl Rove stamps his feet today and insists that conservatives do too have a plan to replace Obamacare:

The president and his liberal posse have a fundamental, philosophical objection to conservative ideas on health care. They oppose reforms that put the patient in charge rather than government, that rely on competition rather than regulation, and that strengthen market forces rather than weaken them.

….In the past, with a few exceptions, Republicans talked too infrequently and with insufficient passion about health-care reform, leaving the field to the Democrats. There’s a different political reality today.

Actually, liberals have a fundamental, philosophical objection to the tired repetition of stale ideas that (a) plainly won’t work, (b) have no political support, and (c) contra Rove, inspire no genuine passion among Republicans other than as a way of pretending that they have a health care plan.

Rove’s “plan” would blow a huge hole in the deficit; wouldn’t reduce costs; and quite likely would decimate the current employer-based system without covering any of the people with pre-existing conditions who are tossed out on their asses. And the worst part of it is that Rove knows all this perfectly well. He just doesn’t care. He needs words on a page, so he’s put some words on a page.

In any case, if you want more than just a peevish rant from someone (i.e., me) who’s too tired to bother going through Rove’s collection of gimmicks and evasions point by point, we’ve got you covered. Aaron Carroll has the detailed version here. Paul Krugman has the short version here. Enjoy.

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Karl Rove Pretends That Conservatives Have a Health Care Plan

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Chart of the Day: How the Rich and the Rest of Us Earn Our Money

Mother Jones

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This won’t come as any big surprise, but the chart below from the Tax Policy Center does a very nice job of showing how the rich are different from you and me. Most of us earn money from our jobs. Even up at the 90th percentile (about $150,000 or so), ordinary income makes up 77 percent of all cash earnings. Business and investment income make up only 9 percent. But in the top 0.1 percent, the domain of millionaires and billionaires, business and investment income make up 57 percent of cash earnings. As Jared Bernstein says, this explains a lot about economic policy preferences:

Think about these differences the next time you hear a politician explaining why we need to cut taxes on corporate income or capital gains….The framing is invariably “trickle-down”—such cuts will lift everybody’s fortunes—but the real motivation is what you see here. Once you get up to the very top of the income scale—the top 0.1% in the bar furthest to the right (as it were)—you’ve got two-thirds of their income coming from non-labor sources.

Low corporate and capital gains taxes, as well as cuts to top marginal rates, are always framed as crucial to economic growth. Conversely, high payroll taxes are always framed as crucial to keeping Medicare and Social Security fully funded. And maybe so. But it’s quite a coincidence that all of these policies just happen to be precisely what benefits rich people the most, isn’t it? Keep that in mind the next time you hear the latest self-serving bit of richsplaining from some Wall Street titan about taxes and the economy. You know the drill: job creators, incentive effects, globalization, capital formation, etc. etc. Just don’t worry your pretty little head about the details, OK?

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Chart of the Day: How the Rich and the Rest of Us Earn Our Money

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California cities want paint makers to remove lead from homes

California cities want paint makers to remove lead from homes

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Ten California cities have a message for paint companies that sold lead-tainted products to their residents in decades past: “Get that shit out of our houses.”

Local governments filed suit again five paint manufacturers in 2000, and on Monday the trial finally began. Atlantic Richfield, NL Industries, Sherwin-Williams, and two other paint companies are defending themselves against claims that they should have pay to strip poisonous lead plaint out of an estimated 5 million homes, at a cost of about $1 billion. From the San Jose Mercury News:

[T]he industry will fight back hard, arguing that it never deliberately sold a hazardous product and that lead paint is no longer a significant public health threat in California.

But decades after the government banned lead paint because of its health threat to children, the substance remains in many homes built before 1978, particularly in older, low-income neighborhoods where families are considered less likely to be aware of the threat. Lead paint has been linked to a host of maladies in children, from learning disabilities and stunted growth to seizures and even death.

“Lead poisoning has been the longest-running epidemic in American pediatric history, and is a silent, ongoing tragedy,” David Rosner, a Columbia University professor who will be an expert witness for the governments, said in an email exchange.

The paint industry has prevailed in similar lawsuits brought against it in Missouri, Ohio, and Rhode Island, but Californian officials are hopeful about their chances in this case.

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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California cities want paint makers to remove lead from homes

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