Tag Archives: photo

Enough With the Middle-Age Whites, Already

Mother Jones

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

In a Washington Post column over the weekend, Fareed Zakaria wrote this:

In a well-known paper, economists Angus Deaton and Anne Case found that over the past 15 years, one group — middle-age whites in the United States — constitutes an alarming trend. They are dying in increasing numbers.

I suppose I’m tilting at windmills here, but this misconstrual of the Case/Deaton paper really bugs me. It’s not “middle aged” whites who are dying of drug and alcohol poisonings, suicide, and chronic liver disease in vastly greater numbers. The chart on the right is taken directly from data in the Case/Deaton paper, and it shows two groups with outsize increases in mortality: 30-34 year olds and 50-59 year olds. So there are three age cohorts here. Roughly speaking, one cohort was born in the early 50s and shows big problems; another was born in the 60s and shows only moderate problems; and the third was born in the early 70s and once again shows big problems.

These cohorts might change if you examine the data using different age buckets, different diseases, and a different timeframe. Who knows? Regardless, if you’re going to put forward an explanation about why this is happening, it better account for all three age groups. You can’t just pretend the data points only to “middle-age” whites and then spin your theories from that.

Oh, and the paper is by Case and Deaton, not Deaton and Case. Either way, though, I sure wish one of them would step in to correct this.

View original post here: 

Enough With the Middle-Age Whites, Already

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Enough With the Middle-Age Whites, Already

Modern Teenagers Not So Mysterious After All

Mother Jones

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

At the New York Times today, Conor Dougherty clues us in on what it’s like being a teenager today:

Teenagers being teenagers, the room was full of angst and contradictions. They love Instagram, the photo-sharing app, but are terrified their posts will be ignored or mocked. They feel less pressure on Snapchat, the disappearing-message service, but say Snapchat can be annoying because disappearing messages make it hard to follow a continuing conversation. They do not like advertisements but also do not like to pay for things.

It’s nice to see that modern teenagers aren’t really that hard to understand after all. Plus ça change.

Continued here – 

Modern Teenagers Not So Mysterious After All

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Modern Teenagers Not So Mysterious After All

2016 Has Arrived With a Bang

Mother Jones

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

Huh. My breakfast exploded this morning. That’s never happened before.

Read more:

2016 Has Arrived With a Bang

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on 2016 Has Arrived With a Bang

Carly Fiorina Wins 2016 Pandering Championship After Only 11 Hours

Mother Jones

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

I wasn’t planning to blog anything today, but this sort of forced my hand:

CAR-LY! CAR-LY! CAR-LY! Let’s all raise a cheer for the golden cornfields of Palo Alto!

What really puts this over the top is the fact that it’s so chuckleheaded. No real Iowa fan would have anything but contempt for a Stanford grad who abandoned her school just for a chance to become president of the United States.

Of course, the game hasn’t started yet. There’s still time to issue an emergency tweet blaming this on an intern who’s been summarily dismissed. Either way, though, I declare the 2016 pandering championship closed. What could possibly beat this?

Originally from – 

Carly Fiorina Wins 2016 Pandering Championship After Only 11 Hours

Posted in alo, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Carly Fiorina Wins 2016 Pandering Championship After Only 11 Hours

New Year’s Catblogging – 1 January 2016

Mother Jones

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

This article – 

New Year’s Catblogging – 1 January 2016

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on New Year’s Catblogging – 1 January 2016

We’re Going to Ring Out 2015 With Marshmallows

Mother Jones

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

Look what I found at the 99¢ store last night: Mexican marshmallows. (Cat shown for scale.) According to the package, they can be used to make all manner of tasty treats. So what should I make? Or should I just toss them into a bowl tonight as a New Year’s Eve party appetizer?

And speaking of that, when did New Year’s Eve become NYE? I’ve only just noticed it this year, which probably means it started five or ten years ago. Is this a texting thing invented by those ubiquitous “millennials” I hear so much about, because they didn’t want to spell out the whole thing once a year on their “smartphones”? Or what?

More – 

We’re Going to Ring Out 2015 With Marshmallows

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on We’re Going to Ring Out 2015 With Marshmallows

Star Trek is Now Officially Forever

Mother Jones

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

In 2016 the postal service will be honoring Sarah Vaughan, Richard Allen, Shirley Temple, Indiana, the repeal of the Stamp Act, pickup trucks, various holidays, and, of course, the 50th anniversary of Star Trek. Here are the deets:

Star Trek
Celebrating the 50th anniversary of the television premiere, the new Star Trek Forever stamps showcase four digital illustrations inspired by classic elements of the television program:

the Starship Enterprise inside the outline of a Starfleet insignia against a gold background;
the silhouette of a crewman in a transporter against a red background;
the silhouette of the Enterprise from above against a green background; and,
the Enterprise inside the outline of the Vulcan statue (Spock’s iconic hand gesture) against a blue background

The words “SPACE… THE FINAL FRONTIER,” from Captain Kirk’s famous voice-over appear beneath the stamps against a background of stars. The stamps were designed by Heads of State under the art direction of Antonio Alcalá.

The Vulcan statue? Oh well. At least they’re trying. So you see? 2016 is already a better year than 2015.

This article – 

Star Trek is Now Officially Forever

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Star Trek is Now Officially Forever

Republican Demographic Problems Aren’t Just For the Future Anymore

Mother Jones

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

Here’s an interesting poll analysis from Reuters. It shows demographic shifts since the 2012 elections, and it turns out that most groups are pretty stable. There are three exceptions. On the plus side for conservatives, Jews have become slightly more Republican. But on the minus side, Hispanics and young whites have become significantly more Democratic.

Hispanics are no surprise. Republicans have spent the past three years loudly opposing comprehensive immigration reform and playing “can you top this?” when it comes to border security. Then along came Donald Trump, with his murderers and rapists and his big, beautiful wall. The only surprise here is Hispanics haven’t moved further away from the Republican Party.

But it’s certainly odd that Republicans are losing both Hispanics and young whites. Or maybe not. Older whites are generally attracted to traditional conservative values and the vague racial dog whistles that Republicans specialize in. But younger whites are probably turned off by social troglodytism—especially anti-gay animus—and don’t respond to the dog whistles one way or another. So they’re leaving.

I guess it’s time for yet another Republican post mortem that they can then proceed to ignore. Why wait until after the election, after all?

From:  

Republican Demographic Problems Aren’t Just For the Future Anymore

Posted in alo, ATTRA, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Republican Demographic Problems Aren’t Just For the Future Anymore

Racists Hate the Idea of Paying College Athletes

Mother Jones

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

Well, I’ll be damned:

Could racial prejudice also affect attitudes toward paying college athletes? There are good reasons to believe that it could.

….To find out whether racial prejudice influences white opinion on paying college athletes, we conducted a survey of opinions on “pay for play” policies using the 2014 CCES. In a statistical analysis that controlled for a host of other influences, we found this: Negative racial views about blacks were the single most important predictor of white opposition to paying college athletes.

….To check our findings’ validity, we also conducted an experiment. Before we asked white respondents whether college athletes should be paid, we showed one group pictures of young black men with stereotypical African American first and last names. We showed another group no pictures at all. As you can see in the figure on the right, whites who were primed by seeing pictures of young black men were significantly more likely to say they opposed paying college athletes. Support dropped most dramatically among whites who expressed the most resent towards blacks as a group.

Apparently this gap is also visible in ordinary poll results: “In every survey to date, blacks are far more likely to support paying college athletes when compared to whites. For instance, in the 2014 Cooperative Congressional Election Study, 53 percent of African Americans backed paying college athletes–more than doubling the support expressed by whites (22 percent).”

I’m basically willing to believe that race and racial animus permeate practically everything of significance in America. But I wouldn’t have guessed this. I’m not sure why, but it just never occurred to me to think of big-time college sports as a “black thing,” even though it obviously is. It just goes to show how deeply our racial sickness infests us.

Continue at source: 

Racists Hate the Idea of Paying College Athletes

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Racists Hate the Idea of Paying College Athletes

Donald Trump’s Tax Plan Is Far More Sensational Then Jeb Bush’s

Mother Jones

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

The folks at the Tax Policy Center have spurned my advice to spend more time with their families, instead spending their holiday weekends beavering away on an analysis of Donald Trump’s tax plan. And the important news is that it’s bigger, more energetic, and altogether more taxerrific than Jeb Bush’s weak-tea excuse for a tax plan. Bush would increase the national debt by 28 percentage points over the next decade. Trump kills it with a 39 point increase in red ink. Bush raises the federal deficit by $1 trillion in 2026. Trump goes big and increases it by $1.6 trillion. Bush’s plan costs $6.8 trillion over ten years. Trump’s plan clocks in at a budget-busting $9.5 trillion. And Bush reduces the tax rate of the super-rich by a meager 7.6 percent. Trump buries him by slashing tax rates for the Wall Street set by 12.5 percent.

Once again, Bush has brought a knife to a gun fight, and Trump has slapped him silly. This is why Trump is a winner. Merry Christmas, billionaires!

Link:  

Donald Trump’s Tax Plan Is Far More Sensational Then Jeb Bush’s

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, PUR, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Donald Trump’s Tax Plan Is Far More Sensational Then Jeb Bush’s