Tag Archives: america

In the 21st Century, We All Want Smart, Gorgeous Mates

by GwenJosehvf Posted on April 19, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Wonkblog points us today to a chart from Max Roser showing how men and women rated various aspects of potential mates in 1939 vs. 2009. (Since 1939 is the comparison year, it goes without saying that we’re talking about straight, cis, and most likely white folks here.) You can see the entire set of data at either of the links above, but I was interested mainly in the traits that have moved up or down significantly over that period. Here they are, in a handily color-coded pink and blue chart:

What can we tell from this? For starters, keep in mind that this is what people say they value, not what they actually value. “Similar political background,” for example, has allegedly moved up only one spot, from dead last to almost last, so it’s not in my chart. But there’s considerable evidence that a lot of people today would rather have their big toes cut off than associate with someone of the opposite party. So take all of this with a grain of salt.

Anyway, obviously chastity is out the door. No one cares anymore. Refinement is now decidedly old-fashioned, replaced by a desire for the more egalitarian virtue of sociability. And love has zoomed up to the top of the chart. (Allegedly, anyway.)

Beyond that, the two big movers are education and good looks. Apparently we all want mates who are both smart and gorgeous, which might go a long way toward explaining why marriage seems to be in decline. How many smart, gorgeous people are there in the world, after all? And if they have to be gregarious too—well, you’re just being mighty picky. Good luck.

Notably, the boring traits haven’t changed much: dependability and stability were near the top of the chart in 1939, and they’re still there now. I guess meat and potatoes are always in fashion. Or so we tell the pollsters, anyway.

Original article:  

In the 21st Century, We All Want Smart, Gorgeous Mates

Posted in FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on In the 21st Century, We All Want Smart, Gorgeous Mates

Hillary’s Right. Tabasco Sauce Is Great.

by SherylX138 Posted on April 19, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Hillary Clinton carries around Tabasco in her purse. UPROXX thinks this means she is “trying too hard.” UPROXX is stupid. She has done this for years. She really likes Tabasco. A lot of people don’t and have used this occasion to make jokes about Tabasco. I rise in its defense.

Here’s what you need to understand about Tabasco. It isn’t really a hot sauce. It’s silly to compare it to other hot sauces because it really isn’t that hot, but it is good. It is a vinegar sauce. A delicious vinegar sauce that America loves. It makes almost anything better. What would a Bloody Mary be without Tabasco? What about corned beef hash? Do you like corned beef hash? Of course you do. Everyone likes corned beef hash. But would you like corned beef hash without Tabasco? I am not so sure.

No matter what you call it, it is undeniable that America has chosen Tabasco as its spicy condiment of choice. It is in almost every single restaurant in America. The places that do not have it are flipping the bird to the American people.

Tabasco Tabasco Tabasco. Yum yum yum. Confession: I have been known to take hits of Tabasco straight.

Now let’s go a bit further.

The worst condiment in America is mayonnaise. Mayonnaise offends my senses and makes me want to vomit. However, Americans love mayonnaise. I forgive them for this. America is about choice. Americans should be allowed to have their disgusting mayonnaise. But if we are going to allow people to have mayonnaise when they want, then we need to allow people to have Tabasco without shame.

Here’s the real worst thing about mayonnaise: When you ask a waiter for a BLT with no mayo, they do not respect the no mayo wish. They think in their addled minds, “How could anyone not want mayo?” Well, look, I don’t want mayo. Get away from me.

I would understand people who don’t like Tabasco getting upset if Tabasco were treated with the same assumptions as mayonnaise, but it is not so. Tabasco is never just on something. They give you the bottle and you make your own mind up. You have no reason to be mad about Tabasco. Tabasco isn’t forcing itself on you. Tabasco is just there; if you want to use it, use it.

Your outrage about Tabasco is misplaced. If you want sriracha or Tapatio or whatever, that’s fine! Live and let live, bro. The fact that other people’s enjoyment of Tabasco incenses you so says something about you. Not Tabasco. It is an indictment of your emotional maturity. I don’t know why you can’t let people be happy, but you can’t. Maybe your parents weren’t around. Maybe your dad went to the store to buy some Tabasco and never came back. I don’t care. Take it up with a therapist. Let people who want to indulge in Tabasco without fear of social retribution do so. It is why the pilgrims sailed across a sea.

You know what other condiment is great is mustard. Mustard is great. You know what other condiment is not so great? Ketchup. Ketchup is too sweet! Ketchup is also, like mayonnaise, one of those things that restaurants just assume you want on things. I do not. If I wanted ketchup on something I would ask for it. Be outraged about ketchup and mayonnaise. Not Tabasco.

Tabasco has done nothing to you.

Excerpt from: 

Hillary’s Right. Tabasco Sauce Is Great.

Posted in Anchor, Casio, Everyone, FF, GE, LG, ONA, PUR, Radius, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Hillary’s Right. Tabasco Sauce Is Great.

Everyone Knows Why Hillary Clinton Won’t Release Her Goldman Sachs Speeches

by SPHLoretta Posted on April 16, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

John Judis says he’s worried about Hillary Clinton again:

I don’t understand why she can’t put the Goldman, Sachs question behind her. I initially assumed that she either didn’t have transcripts or that what she said was the usual milquetoast stuff politicians offer up. But her continued refusal to provide transcripts (which I now assume must exist) suggests that there must be something damning in them.

If she gets the nomination, she’ll face these questions again in the fall, and if Trump or Cruz is her opponent, these questions will detract from the attention that their past utterances about Mexican rapists or masturbation or whathaveyou.

For what it’s worth, I think we all know what’s in those transcripts: a bit of routine praise for the yeoman work that investment bankers do to keep the gears of the economy well oiled. Maybe something like this:

These are tough times for investment bankers. I think Goldman Sachs is the only organization with a lower approval rating than Congress audience laughs politely between bites of prime rib. But seriously, folks, Main Street and Wall Street need each other. Bankers aren’t villains. I support higher leverage requirements and regulation of derivatives audience stares moodily at their forks, but I’ve always said that we need to do it in a practical way. Some of the financial engineering that’s come under such attack from the Bernie Sanders of the world audience brightens is just what our country needs. It helps states build roads and cities build schools. You’re the villains when things go bad—and maybe sometimes you deserve to be. But other times you’re the heroes America can’t do without.

This is the kind of thing that people say when they give a speech. But in the hands of a political opponent, it will come out like this:

Bankers aren’t villains….The financial engineering that’s come under such attack from the Bernie Sanders of the world is just what our country needs. It helps states build roads and cities build schools….You’re the heroes America can’t do without.

Something like that, anyway. My own guess is that it’s vanishingly unlikely Hillary said anything in these speeches that’s truly a bombshell. Her entire life suggests the kind of caution and experience with leaks that almost certainly made these speeches dull and predictable. But the Goldman folks knew all that up front. They just wanted the cachet of having a Clinton address their dinner.

Still, when you give speeches to any industry group, you offer up some praise for the vital work they do. It’s just part of the spiel. And Hillary knows perfectly well without even looking that some of that stuff is in these speeches—and it can be taken out of context and made into yet another endless and idiotic Republican meme. Remember “You didn’t build that”? Sure you do.

On another note, if Hillary does release the transcripts, she’s sure not going to do it now. She’ll wait until she has the nomination wrapped up and then release them during the dog days of May or June. If possible, she’ll do it the same day Donald Trump blows up the news cycle again. By that time, Democrats will all be circling the wagons to defend her and the entire foofarah will be dead by the time the real campaign starts in September.

As for the odds of a genuine bombshell, I’d put it at about 1 percent. I guess you never know about these things, but literally everything in Hillary’s 40-year political career suggests a woman who simply doesn’t traffic in bombshells. It’s not in her personality, and in any case, long experience has taught her better. It’s only barely conceivable that something genuinely damning is anywhere in any of those speeches.

View article – 

Everyone Knows Why Hillary Clinton Won’t Release Her Goldman Sachs Speeches

Posted in Anker, Everyone, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Everyone Knows Why Hillary Clinton Won’t Release Her Goldman Sachs Speeches

Christie’s Broke Campaign Sells Its Old Furniture for an Enormous Profit

by Clarice4515 Posted on April 15, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

At the end of February, Chris Christie’s failed presidential campaign was nearly broke. After blowing through $8.1 million, it had just $286,000 left to wind down the remnants of Christie’s presidential bid. When most campaigns call it quits, there are still invoices coming in and old bills to pay, but campaigns don’t usually have much in the way of assets to help them cover lingering costs. That’s why it’s not uncommon for campaigns to leave some laid-off staffers or vendors unpaid and out of luck. But Christie’s campaign found a way to spin gold out of what may have been the only hard asset it had left: office furniture.

Although office furniture isn’t usually a great investment, Christie may have picked up some tips on dealmaking when he backed the Donald Trump campaign. Christie’s campaign managed to unload its used office furniture for nearly 2.5 times the price it had originally paid for it. The campaign may have also violated campaign finance rules when it turned this impressive profit.

According to disclosures made with the Federal Election Commission on Friday, the campaign sold its used office furniture to a group called Leadership Matters for America PAC on March 9, for $22,769.85. That group is no disinterested party: It’s the leadership PAC set up by Christie before he launched his presidential campaign—a political committee that is allowed to finance Christie’s political interests generally, but is limited to providing just $5,000 worth of assistance to any actual campaign for public office that Christie might make.

And that’s where the problem may lie.

According to its own filings, the Christie presidential campaign bought just $6,889 worth of office furniture last July when it kicked off, giving the campaign a profit of more than $15,880. (It rented another $401 worth in October.) That’s a yuuugely successful furniture sale, as Christie’s new mentor might say.

The FEC has dealt with this issue before. Campaigns may legally sell old assets (usually office furniture) but can’t sell them for more than they are worth.

“Unless they already made a gift, the leadership PAC could pay the campaign up to $5,000 above the normal value of the furniture—$5,000 being the limit on PAC contributions to a candidate, per election,” says Sheila Krumholz, executive director of the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics (where I used to work). “So unless the campaign has receipts showing that they paid more or evidence that they got a great deal on furniture that’s actually worth more, the leadership PAC has likely exceeded the contribution limit.”

The leadership PAC had already made a $5,000 gift to the campaign in early February, so it could not have bought the furniture for more than it was worth without making an improper gift. Office furniture does not usually appreciate in value, meaning that unless the campaign bought the furniture for a real bargain in the first place, the improper gift could be even bigger than $15,900. Splitwise, a website and app that calculates fair values, estimates that $6,800 of furniture purchased new less than a year ago would now be worth around $5,800 if it’s in nearly new condition. And if most campaign offices are any indication, it probably isn’t.

So how did Christie turn this brilliant deal? His spokesman in the governor’s office referred requests for comment to Bill Palatucci, the lawyer who worked for both the campaign and the leadership PAC. Palatucci said he was trying to track down the treasurer (again for both the campaign and the leadership PAC) but had no immediate answer.

Update: Palatucci said that the sale of equipment to the leadership PAC included items other than just simple office furniture. Although both organizations had the same treasurer, he said he was not sure why the campaign might have had a more narrow definition of what constituted office furniture when it reported its purchases, but he said the campaign had records to show the equipment sold was worth the amount it charged the leadership PAC.

“There was lots of very expensive sound and lighting equipment and other office equipment, that is fully accounted for, and inventoried, so to insinuate that somehow there was a report was anything but accurate would be false,” Palatucci told Mother Jones.

Continued:

Christie’s Broke Campaign Sells Its Old Furniture for an Enormous Profit

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, PUR, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Christie’s Broke Campaign Sells Its Old Furniture for an Enormous Profit

For the 97 billionth time: Yes, there is a 97 percent consensus on climate change

by AdriannQCD Posted on April 13, 2016

For the 97 billionth time: Yes, there is a 97 percent consensus on climate change

By on 13 Apr 2016commentsShare

You know how some parents have to check their kids’ bedrooms for monsters every night, even though they know there aren’t any monsters, and deep down, the kids probably know that too? Well, a bunch of researchers effectively just checked the bedroom of every climate denier for lack of consensus on anthropogenic global warming, and just like the mom peering into her kid’s closet for the 100th time, they came up empty.

There IS a scientific consensus on climate change, and it DOES hover around 97 percent, according to a study published today in the journal Environmental Research Letters. The unsurprising results come not from another superfluous survey of scientists and scientific papers, but rather, a survey of those surveys. Meaning the study’s authors, Merchants of Doubt co-author Naomi Oreskes among them, basically just double-, triple-, and quadruple-checked under the bed, beat a dead horse, banged their heads against a wall, wrote up their findings, and managed to do it all while not screaming, “WE JUST DID THIS YESTERDAY. NOW SHUT UP AND GO TO SLEEP!”

That’s because little Suzy is irrational, and so is a lot of America. Despite what people like Ted Cruz want you to believe, we are warming up the planet, and unless we do something about it, Suzy and her little friends are in for a rough future.

Surveys of scientists or studies reporting this not to be the case either conflate experts with non-experts or falsely equate a “no position” stance with denial or uncertainty, the new meta-survey shows. One survey of economic geologists, for example, found only a 47 percent consensus. But that’s a pretty meaningless result, because if Ben Carson taught us anything, it’s that someone can be a smart, well-respected expert in one field and a complete idiot in another.

Now, it’s tempting to just ignore people who deny this clear consensus. Many of them aren’t interested in facts and never will be, so why waste our energy? Because these people aren’t operating in a bubble. They’re using this false narrative to keep the public in a state of confusion and thus hinder any serious effort to address this problem.

John Cook, the lead author on the new study and a fellow at the Global Change Institute at The University of Queensland, wrote about this danger today in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. He said that years of misinformation and doubt from conservatives have seriously skewed the public’s understanding of where scientists stand on climate change. Just last year, he noted, a survey revealed that a mere 12 percent of Americans knew that the consensus was above 90 percent.

For those of us who think about climate change all day every day, this is pretty hard to believe. But it’s the sad truth, and it’s why we have to continue looking for monsters and beating dead horses. Fortunately, the more the world starts to change, the harder it’s going to be for people to hide behind false or misleading studies. And if that doesn’t give you hope, then maybe this clip of Bill Nye making infamous merchant of doubt Marc Morano squirm will:

Share

Please

enable JavaScript

to view the comments.

Find this article interesting?

Donate now to support our work.

Get Grist in your inbox

Source: 

For the 97 billionth time: Yes, there is a 97 percent consensus on climate change

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on For the 97 billionth time: Yes, there is a 97 percent consensus on climate change

Meet the Law Professor Who’s Running for President to Get Ted Cruz Disqualified

by NaomiYfd2551 Posted on April 12, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Victor Williams has a theory about Ted Cruz. He believes that the Canadian-born senator is not a natural born citizen and is thus ineligible to be president. And he’s decided to prove it the only way he can: by running for president himself.

Cruz is pulling “a long con” on the American people, says Williams, a law professor at the Catholic University of America, in Washington, DC. He believes that Cruz is attempting to be “born again”—not in a religious way, but by using American citizenship laws to claim natural born status, which he believes the Constitution reserves only for those born on American soil. “It’s an impossibility to make someone reborn on American soil when they were born in Canada,” he says, adding, “That probably sounds a little wackier even than running for president.”

Continue Reading »

See original – 

Meet the Law Professor Who’s Running for President to Get Ted Cruz Disqualified

Posted in Anchor, Citizen, Everyone, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Ultima, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Meet the Law Professor Who’s Running for President to Get Ted Cruz Disqualified

The Park Service Maps America’s Natural and Human-Made Soundscapes and Silences

by Myrna Posted on April 11, 2016

New maps by the National Park Service show levels of human and natural sounds around the United States. Continue reading:   The Park Service Maps America’s Natural and Human-Made Soundscapes and Silences ; ; ;

Read original article: 

The Park Service Maps America’s Natural and Human-Made Soundscapes and Silences

Posted in alternative energy, Casio, eco-friendly, FF, G & F, GE, Jason, LAI, Monterey, ONA, solar, solar power, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The Park Service Maps America’s Natural and Human-Made Soundscapes and Silences

Benghazi Committee Passes 700-Day Milestone

by CharoletteBeltra Posted on April 8, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

House Democrats pointed out today that the Select Committee on Benghazi has now been cranking along for 700 days. Steve Benen comments:

To put this in context, the 9/11 Commission, investigating every possible angle to the worst terrorist attack in the history of the country, worked for 604 days and created a bipartisan report endorsed by each of the commission’s members….Rep. Trey Gowdy’s (R-S.C.) Benghazi panel has also lasted longer than the investigations into the federal response to Hurricane Katrina, the attack on Pearl Harbor, the assassination of President Kennedy, the Iran-Contra scandal, Church Committee, and the Watergate probe.

What Steve fails to acknowledge, of course, is that Benghazi is far more important than any of these other events. So naturally it’s going to take longer. I’m guessing that 914 days should just about do the trick.

Jump to original:  

Benghazi Committee Passes 700-Day Milestone

Posted in alo, alternative energy, FF, GE, LG, ONA, solar, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Benghazi Committee Passes 700-Day Milestone

It’s Been Quiet Lately. Maybe a Little Too Quiet…

by FrederiSiemens Posted on April 8, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Didn’t there used to be some guy named Donald Trump running for president? Whatever happened to him? It seems like days since I’ve heard a desperate cry for attention from the campaign trail.

See the original post – 

It’s Been Quiet Lately. Maybe a Little Too Quiet…

Posted in alternative energy, FF, GE, LG, ONA, solar, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on It’s Been Quiet Lately. Maybe a Little Too Quiet…

Yep, Wisconsin’s Voter ID Law Is All About Suppressing the Vote

by Martha8879 Posted on April 7, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Let’s be clear here: it’s not exactly breaking news that photo ID laws are designed not to fight voter fraud—which is all but nonexistent—but primarily to make it harder for Democratic constituencies to vote. Still, it’s nice to hear it from the horse’s mouth sometimes. The location, once again, is Wisconsin:

You wanna know why I left the Republican Party as it exists today? Here it is; this was the last straw: I was in the closed Senate Republican Caucus when the final round of multiple Voter ID bills were being discussed. A handful of the GOP Senators were giddy about the ramifications and literally singled out the prospects of suppressing minority and college voters.

Think about that for a minute….A vigorous debate on the ideas wasn’t good enough. Inspiring the electorate and relying on their agenda being better to get people to vote for them wasn’t good enough. No, they had to take the coward’s way out and come up with a plan to suppress the vote under the guise of ‘voter fraud.’ The truth? There was almost none.

That’s from Todd Allbaugh, former chief of staff for Wisconsin state Sen. Dale Schultz (R). TPM’s Tierney Sneed gave him a call:

Once he left politics, Allbaugh opened a Madison, Wisconsin, coffee shop, where TPM reached him over the phone and he elaborated on those claims.

“It just really incensed me that they started talking about this particular bill, and one of the senators got up and said, ‘We really need to think about the ramifications on certain neighborhoods in Milwaukee and on our college campuses and what this could do for us,’” Allbaugh said.

….According to Allbaugh, at this point in the point of meeting, Schultz brought up his own concerns with the voter ID legislation. “He was immediately shot down by another senator who said, ‘What I am interested in is getting results here and using the power while we have it, because if the Democrats were in control they would do they same thing to us, so I want to use it while we have it.’”

I wonder how many cases we need of legislators and aides either admitting this outright (like Allbaugh) or accidentally telling the truth about it (like Pennsylvania’s Mike Turzai) before the Supreme Court is willing to take a fresh look at its naive 2008 ruling upholding voter ID laws. At the time, the court wrote that concerns about voter fraud “should not be disregarded simply because partisan interests may have provided one motivation for the votes of individual legislators.” Since then, evidence has continued to pile up that voter fraud is an entirely fake concern and partisan interests are the only motivation for voter ID laws. It’s time to overturn Crawford.

From – 

Yep, Wisconsin’s Voter ID Law Is All About Suppressing the Vote

Posted in alternative energy, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, solar, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Yep, Wisconsin’s Voter ID Law Is All About Suppressing the Vote