Tag Archives: citizen

Bonus Labor Day Cat Blogging – 7 September 2015

by RaulPennell Posted on September 7, 2015

Mother Jones

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

As a certified union thug (UAW local 2103, bitches!), I am honor bound not to work today. Unless, of course, someone is wrong on the internet somewhere and I have to step in. But that doesn’t mean you will be left blogless. Hilbert is not unionized—and, like the lilies of the field, he neither toils nor spins. He just smells the roses all day long. So it’s perfectly fine for him to entertain you today.

Visit source:

Bonus Labor Day Cat Blogging – 7 September 2015

Posted in Citizen, FF, GE, LG, Mop, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Bonus Labor Day Cat Blogging – 7 September 2015

There Is a "Truck Line" Tearing America Apart

by PollyGraf09 Posted on September 6, 2015

Mother Jones

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

A few minutes ago, President Obama’s former “car czar” Steven Rattner tweeted the map below. Marcy Wheeler tweaks him for calling Hondas and Toyotas “imports” even though most of them are made in the US. I’d tweak him for saying the map shows the best-selling “cars” in each state, since it also includes trucks. Trucks aren’t cars.

But that’s enough tweaking. I’m willing to cut people a lot of slack on Twitter. Here’s what I’m curious about. You’ve no doubt heard of the famous “soda line” in America: in New England and the West, most of us call fizzy sweetened drinks soda. In the South, it’s coke. Up north, from Washington to the Ohio Valley, it’s pop.

Apparently we also have a truck line in America. In the Midwest and mountain states, people buy Ford F-series trucks. In the Great Lakes region, the Chevy Silverado reigns supreme. Out West, we seem to prefer Dodge Rams.

What’s up with that? Is this just a weird coincidence? Or is there some genuine historical reason that different trucks are popular in different regions?

More here:  

There Is a "Truck Line" Tearing America Apart

Posted in Citizen, FF, GE, LG, Mop, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on There Is a "Truck Line" Tearing America Apart

Here’s Why America Doesn’t Have a Seat at the Table Under the Law of the Sea Treaty

by DomingoHolifiel Posted on September 6, 2015

Mother Jones

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

It’s Labor Day weekend, and even the Sunday chat show hosts are hard up for guests willing to give up their final few days of summer before getting back to the grind in Washington DC. This apparently left Jake Tapper with no choice but to interview Sarah Palin. She was her usual self, and even managed to pretend that she disapproved of Obama renaming Mt. McKinley as Denali. Then Tapper mentioned that Russian planes had been flying off the coast of Alaska and Chinese warships had transited the Bering Strait. What did Palin think about that?

Putin right now, he’s flagging undersea our resources, claiming them as his own. What’s America doing about it? We don’t even have a seat at the table under the Law of the Sea Treaty. We’re not even participating in fighting back, putting America first.

I assume Palin is talking about the fight over the Arctic, which is hardly breaking news. But notice what Palin failed to mention: Why does America not have a seat at the table under the Law of the Sea Treaty? Answer: because Republicans are dead set against it. The military is for it, the State Department is for it, and Democrats are for it. I think even Palin supports it. But no matter how many concessions get made to their concerns, conservatives have relentlessly claimed that it’s a massive intrusion on American sovereignty and Republicans have accordingly refused to ratify it for decades. They refused under Reagan, they refused under Clinton, they refused under Bush, and they refused under Obama. So Palin is right: thanks to the GOP, we’re not official participants in LOST. I guess that part slipped her mind.

Source: 

Here’s Why America Doesn’t Have a Seat at the Table Under the Law of the Sea Treaty

Posted in Citizen, FF, GE, LAI, LG, Mop, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Here’s Why America Doesn’t Have a Seat at the Table Under the Law of the Sea Treaty

Are the F-Bombs Getting Worse Here at Mother Jones? An Exclusive Investigation.

by Kyung Wilhoite Posted on September 5, 2015

Mother Jones

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

Apropos of my suggested response this morning to the most obnoxious kinds of gotcha questions, David Bailey writes in comments:

Recommended answer: “Oh, go fuck yourself.”

This is off-topic, and I may not be the first to bring it up, but it seems as if Kevin’s posts have been a bit saltier recently. I have a hard time believing he would have written this a year ago.

Not complaining or criticizing, but I just thought it was interesting.

Come on. This was an homage to Dick Cheney, people! Do our schools teach nothing these days?

But am I in fact using the word fuck more often than in the past? This is surprisingly difficult to get a handle on. The problem is that my readers are all such potty mouths. According to Google, there have been 6,330 F-bombs on this blog since its move to Mother Jones, but as near as I can tell, 6,314 of them have been from commenters. Still, that leaves 16 for me. Let’s tot them up.

It turns out that David is right: I’ve already set a new personal best this year. At my current rate I’ll double my previous most obscene year (2010). The deeply researched chart on the right tells the tale, and as a personal favor to Swami Bhut Jolokia, I’ve even labeled the y-axis.

In my defense, I should point out that this total represents only about 0.15 percent of my blog posts, an average of just a bit over two per year. Not bad! What’s more, many of those were quotes of illustrious public servants like Dick Cheney. Still, I admit that if it were solely up to me these numbers would be far higher. However, (a) I know that casual F-bombs can put people off, and (b) my mother reads this blog. So I try to stay family-friendly most of the time.

Read the article: 

Are the F-Bombs Getting Worse Here at Mother Jones? An Exclusive Investigation.

Posted in Citizen, FF, GE, LAI, LG, Mop, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Are the F-Bombs Getting Worse Here at Mother Jones? An Exclusive Investigation.

A Republican’s Guide to Gotcha Questions

by Danny81R8157 Posted on September 5, 2015

Mother Jones

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

Are “gotcha” questions unfair? It depends. I’m personally averse to Jeopardy-style factual quizzes, but not because it’s out of line to probe presidential candidates about what they know. Rather, it’s the form of the question itself. It treats presidential candidates like schoolchildren being quizzed in front of the class. It’s inherently demeaning for any self-respecting adult—and for politicians too.

That said, there are gotchas and there are gotchas, and some are worse than others. Here’s a taxonomy:

SEVERE: “Can you name the president of Chechnya? The president of Taiwan? The general who is in charge of Pakistan? The prime minister of India?” Only an asshole asks questions like this.

Recommended answer: “Oh, go fuck yourself.”

HIGH: “Have you ever used cocaine?” This is moderately nasty, but there are dangers to a straightforward refusal to respond. Humor is worth a try.

Recommended answer: “Once, but only accidentally when I picked up a friend at Mena airport in the 90s and left the car door open.”

ELEVATED: “Do you know the difference between a Sunni and a Shiite?” This is a double-edged sword. Answer it properly and you sound like you actually know something about Islam. Waffle and you sound stupid. Your best bet is to turn it into an attack.

Recommended answer: “ISIS terrorists are Sunni. President Obama is a Shiite. That’s why he hates those guys so much. It all goes back to the seventh-century, when Obama’s 18th cousin 43 times removed insisted that someone from Mohammad’s family should take up the leadership of the Muslim Ummah.”

GUARDED: “What’s your favorite Bible verse?” This is basically a hanging curve. If you ever went to Sunday School, you shouldn’t have any trouble hitting it out of the park.

Recommended answer: “Eye for eye, tooth for tooth. I try to live up to this every single day. There will be no appeasement of America’s enemies on my watch.”

LOW: “What newspapers and magazines do you regularly read?” This is pretty much the opposite of a gotcha. It’s the human interest version of “hello,” a way of easing into an interview with a friendly little softball.

Recommended answer: “All the usual suspects. The Times, the Post, Human Events, and the Journal of Econometrics. Did you see their paper last month critiquing the Fed’s easy money policies by applying a Tobit regression to a fixed-effects nonparametric model with time-aggregated panel data? It was killer.”

Link:  

A Republican’s Guide to Gotcha Questions

Posted in Citizen, FF, GE, LG, Mop, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on A Republican’s Guide to Gotcha Questions

Kids Who Breathe More Pollution Have Lower Grades

by ShawnaWeston Posted on September 5, 2015

Mother Jones

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

A growing body of evidence suggests pollution can do a number on the brain. The July/August Mother Jones cover story chronicled the research connecting neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s to the dirty air we breathe; studies have found that pollution may also age the brain prematurely. And according to new research from the University of Texas-El Paso, pollution’s damage to the brain may start even sooner than was previously thought: Fourth and fifth graders exposed to exhaust emissions, researchers found, don’t do as well in school as their peers who breathe cleaner air.

Using the Environmental Protection Agency’s National Air Toxics Assessment, researchers estimated how often children were exposed to air pollution in their homes. They then compared that data with the academic performance of close to 1,900 kids enrolled in the El Paso Independent School District (EPISD)—an area prone to high levels of pollution.

Adjusting for other factors that can influence school performance, like socioeconomic status and parents’ education levels, the researchers found that students exposed to more emissions had lower grade-point averages. Areas included in the study were ranked by the amount of air pollution, and students living in areas with the highest levels (in the top 75 percent) had GPAs that were 0.031 points below those who lived where the air was cleaner.

The researchers also found that pollution from “non-road mobile sources”—such as airports, construction vehicles, and trains—had the greatest impact on GPA, even though factories and vehicle emissions often receive the most attention from policymakers.

The American Lung Association reports that some 139 million people—close to half of the nation’s population—live in areas with air that the group deems “too dangerous to breathe,” and the UTEP researchers highlighted that low-income families are more likely to live in the most polluted areas. Poverty alone has been connected to adverse affects on childhood brain development, but the new findings suggest poor students might be at an even greater disadvantage because of pollution levels near their homes.

“This study and this body of literature about air pollution is demonstrating one more negative effect of air pollution in our environment,” says researcher Sara Grineski. “There are many studies that show that higher levels of air pollution are associated with so many negative effects, from asthma, respiratory infections, cardiovascular disease, and autism, to reduced school performance.”

Grineski and her coauthor believe their findings indicate an even greater urgency to implement policies that will curb emissions. “The finding that there is a significant association between residential exposure to air toxins and GPA at the individual level is both novel and disturbing,” they write. “These findings provide another piece of evidence that should inform advocacy for pollution reduction in the USA and beyond.”

See original article here: 

Kids Who Breathe More Pollution Have Lower Grades

Posted in alo, Anchor, Citizen, Eureka, FF, GE, LG, Mop, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Kids Who Breathe More Pollution Have Lower Grades

California Is About to Ban Those Little Pieces of Plastic in Your Toothpaste and Face Scrub

by FlorrieQHY Posted on September 4, 2015

Mother Jones

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

On Friday, the California Senate passed legislation that will ban the sale of microbeads—â&#128;&#139;those colorful bits of plastic that you find in face scrub, body wash, and toothpaste—in personal care products by 2020.

Though a handful of other states â&#128;&#139;have already passed microbead bans, California’s is by far the most stringent, as it doesn’t provide exemptions for “biodegradeable” plastics. (No plastics have proven to break down in marine environments so far.) Because California makes up roughly one-eighth of the American market for personal care products, the legislation will likely change the way the products are designed throughout the United States.

Johnson & Johnson and Procter & Gamble lobbied against the bill, which is expected to pass the State Assembly next week and be signed into law within the month.

Environmental advocates have expressed concern over microbeads for years, as the particles are so small that they aren’t caught in wastewater treatment plants and end up in waterways and oceans, where they don’t biodegrade and are frequently mistaken for food by fish and other marine animals. There are an estimated 300,000 microbeads in a single tube of face wash; collectively, roughly 300 tons of the plastic ends up in US waterways each year.

“Toxic microbeads are accumulating in our rivers, lakes and oceans at alarmingly high levels. We can and must act now,” said assembly member Richard Bloom (D-Santa Monica), who authored the bill. “Continuing to use these harmful and unnecessary plastics when natural alternatives are widely available is simply irresponsible and will only result in significant cleanups costs to taxpayers who will have to foot the bill to restore our already limited water resources and ocean health.”

This article: 

California Is About to Ban Those Little Pieces of Plastic in Your Toothpaste and Face Scrub

Posted in Anchor, Citizen, FF, GE, LG, Mop, ONA, oven, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on California Is About to Ban Those Little Pieces of Plastic in Your Toothpaste and Face Scrub

Friday Cat Blogging – 4 September 2015

by CarmonKTRqhvjz Posted on September 4, 2015

Mother Jones

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

Like Hillary Clinton, we’ve been watching a lot of HGTV lately. This has inspired Marian to create a long list of renovation projects she’d like to do. It’s inspired me to wonder if literally everyone in the world wants an open-concept floor plan these days.

And one other thing: It’s also made it clear that most interior designers on TV are dog people. How do I know? Because they seem to be very fond of rectangular sinks in bathrooms. However, as we more refined types know, this is entirely unacceptable. Ovals fit the requirements of a properly outfitted household much better.

BONUS FEATURE IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: The prefecture of Hiroshima, in the cat-crazy country of Japan, has created the first cat’s-eye version of Google Street View. Check it out.

Link: 

Friday Cat Blogging – 4 September 2015

Posted in Citizen, Everyone, FF, GE, LG, Mop, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Friday Cat Blogging – 4 September 2015

Germany Has Taken In 800,000 Syrian Refugees. Guess How Many the US Has Taken In?

by CameronByrne88 Posted on September 3, 2015

Mother Jones

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

Germany is set to take in 800,000 refugees from Syria by the end of the year.

America, a country that won two World Wars, went to the moon, and did “the other things,” has taken in, well, far fewer.

Quoth the Guardian:

The US has admitted approximately 1,500 Syrian refugees since the beginning of the civil war there in 2011, mostly within the last fiscal year. Since April, the number of admitted refugees has more than doubled from an estimate of 700.

…

Anna Greene, IRC’s director of policy & advocacy for US programs, said the 1,500 people the US has admitted thus far “doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of what is needed and what could really make a difference”.

Oxfam wants the US to up that number to 70,000 by the end of 2016.

Link to article: 

Germany Has Taken In 800,000 Syrian Refugees. Guess How Many the US Has Taken In?

Posted in Anchor, Citizen, FF, GE, LG, Mop, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Germany Has Taken In 800,000 Syrian Refugees. Guess How Many the US Has Taken In?

Rhetoric vs. Reality, Police Safety Edition

by RubySlavin Posted on September 3, 2015

Mother Jones

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

Here’s the rhetoric:

Scott Walker: “In the last six years under President Obama, we’ve seen a rise in anti-police rhetoric….This rhetoric has real consequences for the safety of officers who put their lives on the line for us and hampers their ability to serve the communities that need their help.”

Ted Cruz: “Cops across this country are feeling the assault. They’re feeling the assault from the president, from the top on down….That is fundamentally wrong, and it is endangering the safety and security of us all.”

Donald Trump: “I know cities where police are afraid to even talk to people because they want to be able to retire and have their pension….And then you wonder what’s wrong with our cities. We need a whole new mind-set.”

And here’s the reality. During the George Bush administration, police fatalities per 100 million residents averaged 58 per year (54 if you exclude 2001). During the Obama administration, that’s dropped to 42.

Link:  

Rhetoric vs. Reality, Police Safety Edition

Posted in Citizen, FF, GE, LG, Mop, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Rhetoric vs. Reality, Police Safety Edition