Tag Archives: photos

Here Is Today’s French Fiscal Horsepower History Lesson

by CandyTobias Posted on February 7, 2016

Mother Jones

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

No one is going to care about this post. Too bad. I feel like writing, and on a weekend you take what you can get.

Anyway, I was musing the other day about the fact that I’ve always owned foreign cars. Partly this is just chance, partly the fact that I live in California, and, I suppose, partly because my parents always owned foreign cars. The first one was purchased around the time of my birth, and we kids called it the bye-bye, for reasons I presumably don’t have to explain. It was, as it happens, a Renault. But which Renault?

I did a bit of lazy googling last night, but nothing looked quite right. Then this morning, I noticed one of those Fiat 500s that J-Lo hawks on TV, and thought that it looked a little like the old Renault. Except I was sure the Renault had vents in the rear.

But wait. Rear vents means a rear engine. So I googled that, and instantly got a million hits for the 4CV, which was clearly the old bye-bye. My mother confirmed this telephonically a bit later. And that got me curious. Citroën, of course, produced the iconic 2CV, which first came off the assembly line at about the same time. What’s with that? What’s the appeal of __CV to postwar French auto manufacturers?

The answer turned out to be pretty funky. CV stands for chevaux vapeur, or horsepower. But the 4CV is not a 4-horsepower car. CV, it turns out, is used to mean tax horsepower. After World War II, France (along with other European countries) wanted to encourage people to buy low-power cars, so they put a tax on horsepower. But just taxing horsepower would have been too simple. Instead, they used a formula that took into account the number of cylinders, the piston bore, and the stroke. Here’s the formula for the 4CV:

These numbers were undoubtedly carefully engineered to produce the highest result that would round down to 4. In fact, the 4CV had a whopping 17 horsepower, and could get to 60 mph in just under 40 seconds. Ours had a few wee problems chugging along at 6,000 feet in Flagstaff on the way to Denver in 1960, but what can you expect for 17 horsepower?

So that’s your history lesson for the day. Apparently the French tax the horsepower of cars to this day, though the formula has changed over time. According to Wikipedia, “Since 1998 the taxable power is calculated from the sum of a CO2 emission figure (over 45), and the maximum power output of the engine in kilowatts (over 40) to the power of 1.6.” The power of 1.6? I guess they still love a little pointless complexity in France.

Link: 

Here Is Today’s French Fiscal Horsepower History Lesson

Posted in alo, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, PUR, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Here Is Today’s French Fiscal Horsepower History Lesson

Let Us All Take a Random Walk Through New Hampshire

by FredaCulver Posted on February 6, 2016

Mother Jones

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

I’m feeling a little bored, and that means all of you have to listen to me regaling you with a bunch of random political tweets from my timeline. This is, truly, the best way of getting a real feel for the campaign trail from afar. First up is Donald Trump, who canceled an event today because airports were closed in New Hampshire:

Apparently so. CNN reports that Trump’s operator at LaGuardia was open for business, and the operator in Manchester says it is “always open for business, 24 hours a day.” And even if Trump did have airport trouble, it was only because he insists on going home to New York every night. Apparently the man of the people just can’t stand the thought of spending a few nights at a local Hilton.

This whole thing cracks me up because of Trump’s insistence that he’s a “high energy” guy. But he can’t handle a real campaign, the kind where you spend weeks at a time on the road doing four or five events a day. He flies in for a speech every few days and thinks he’s showing real fortitude. He’d probably drop from exhaustion if he followed the same schedule as Hillary Clinton or Jeb Bush.

Next up is Marco Rubio:

This is what makes it hard for me to figure out Rubio’s appeal. To me he seems like a robot: he’s memorized a whole bunch of virtual index cards, and whenever you ask a question he performs a database search and recites whatever comes up. The index cards aren’t bad, mind you, and I suppose they allow him to emulate a dumb person’s notion what a smart person sounds like. This is despite the fact that he normally talks with the same kind of hurried clip employed by nervous eighth graders reading off actual index cards.

Of course, this is just a specific example of a more general problem. Every four years, it looks to me like none of the Republican candidates can win. They all seem to have too many obvious problems. But of course someone has to win. So sure, Rubio reminds me of an over-ambitious teacher’s pet running for student council president, but compared to Trump or Carson or Cruz or Fiorina or Christie—well, I guess I can see how he might look good.

And now for some old-school Hillary Clinton hate:

Well, I’ll be happy to credit the Intercept, but I can hardly say it reflects well on them. This is yet another example of hCDS—Hillary Clinton Derangement Syndrome.1 I mean, has any candidate for any office ever been asked for transcripts of their paid speeches? This is Calvinball squared. Besides we all know the real reason Hillary doesn’t want to release the transcripts: she gave the same canned speech to everyone and happily pocketed an easy $200 grand for each one. Hell, who wouldn’t do that? Plus there’s the obvious fact that the hCDS crowd would trawl through every word and find at least one thing they could take out of context and make into a three-day outrage. Hillary would have to be nuts to give in to this.

Who’s next? How about Ted Cruz?

Cruz really pissed off Ben Carson in Iowa, just like he seems to piss off nearly everyone who actually gets a whiff of him up close. This is bad for Cruz because he’s trying to appeal to evangelical voters. Unfortunately, Carson has apparently decided that as long as he’s going to lose, he might as well mount a kamikaze attack against Cruz on the way down. And evangelicals listen to Carson. If he says Cruz bears false witness, then he bears false witness.

Finally, some good news for Bernie Sanders:

As it turns out, the Quinnipiac poll is probably bogus. Sam Wang points out that the median post-Iowa bounce was +6 percent in New Hampshire and +4 nationally—in Hillary’s favor. So everyone should take a deep breath.

Still, the big Bernie bounce is what people were talking about today, and it will contribute to an irresistible media narrative. And let’s face it: Hillary Clinton has never been a natural politician. Most Democrats like her, but they don’t love her, and this makes Sanders dangerous. What’s more, since Clinton already has a record for blowing a seemingly insurmountable lead to a charismatic opponent, he’s doubly dangerous. If Democrats convince themselves that they don’t have to vote for Clinton, they just might not. She has lots of baggage, after all.

Is this fair? No. It’s politics. But Clinton still has more money, more endorsements, more superdelegates, more state operations, and—let’s be fair here—a pretty long track record as a sincerely liberal Democrat who works hard to implement good policies. Sanders may damage her, but she’s almost certain to still win.

And that’s that. Isn’t Twitter great? It’s practically like being there. I can almost feel my shoes crunching on the snow drifts.

1This is a good example of a retronym. At first, we just had CDS. But then Hillary ran for president, so we had to make up a new term for insane Bill hatred: bCDS. And that, of course, means we also need hCDS. It’s like brick-and-mortar store or manual transmission.

See the article here – 

Let Us All Take a Random Walk Through New Hampshire

Posted in Everyone, FF, G & F, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Let Us All Take a Random Walk Through New Hampshire

Rubio Feasts on the Leftovers in New Hampshire

by JarrodLNFcyejkz Posted on February 5, 2016

Mother Jones

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

Apologies for two polls in one day, but the latest CNN poll shows something interesting in the Republican race. Donald Trump is still in the lead in New Hampshire, but in the wake of the Iowa caucuses Marco Rubio has picked up a lot of support. Basically, several other folks have either left the race or lost their fan base, and nearly all of it has gone to Rubio.

It’s only one poll, and the absolute margin of error is large, but it probably shows the trend fairly well. And what it suggests is that as the also-rans steadily drop out of the race, Rubio is picking up the bulk of their support. If this happens in other states as well, Rubio could be well on his way to building a commanding lead.

Originally posted here: 

Rubio Feasts on the Leftovers in New Hampshire

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Rubio Feasts on the Leftovers in New Hampshire

Yet Another Look at BernieCare

by SteviePillinger Posted on February 3, 2016

Mother Jones

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

I hope you’ll pardon a bit of real-time navel-gazing. It won’t take long. A couple of weeks ago Bernie Sanders released an outline of his single-payer health plan, and I pronounced it “pretty good.” A week later, Emory’s Kenneth Thorpe took a detailed look at Sanders’ plan and basically concluded that it was fantasy. Why the huge difference between us?

It has little to do with the details of the Sanders plan. We’re both looking primarily at the financing. Here was my reasoning:

Total health care outlays in the United States come to about $3 trillion.
The federal government already spends $1 trillion.
Sanders would spend $1.4 trillion more. That comes to $2.4 trillion, which means Sanders is figuring his plan will save about $600 billion, or 20 percent of total outlays.
I doubt that. I’ll buy the idea that a single-payer plan can cut costs, but not that much. I might find $1.7 or $1.8 trillion in extra revenue credible, which means that Sanders is probably lowballing by $300 billion or so—which, by the standards of most campaign promises, is actually not that bad. I’d be delighted if a single Republican were that honest about the revenue effects of whatever tax plan they’re hawking at the moment.

But Thorpe says Sanders is off by a whopping $1.1 trillion. Yikes! Where does that come from? There are several places where Thorpe suggests the Sanders plan will cost more than Sanders thinks, but the main difference is shown in the table on the right. Thorpe, it turns out, thinks the Sanders plan would cost an additional $1.9 trillion in the first year. So he and I are roughly on the same page.

But I stopped there. I basically assumed that both costs and revenues would increase each year at about the same rate, and that was that. Thorpe, however, figures costs will increase substantially each year but tax revenues will increase hardly at all. So that means an increasing gap between revenue and spending, which averages out to $1.1 trillion over ten years.

Other details aside, then, this is the big difference. If Sanders’ new taxes fall further and further behind each year as health care costs rise, then he’s got a big funding gap that he would have to make up with higher tax rates. But if he can keep cost growth down to about the same level as his tax revenue growth, his plan is in decent shape.

So which is it? Beats me. This is the kind of thing where the devil really is in the details, and even a small difference in assumptions can add up to a lot over ten years. Still, I was curious to see why Thorpe and I seemed to diverge so strongly, and this is it. Take it for what it’s worth.

View original:  

Yet Another Look at BernieCare

Posted in alo, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Yet Another Look at BernieCare

And Now For a Short Dental Interlude

by CareyHorsley66 Posted on February 3, 2016

Mother Jones

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

I’m off to the dentist. My teeth are actually in fine shape, but when you hit your 50s all the fillings you got in your 20s and 30s apparently start to go south, so they have to be removed and refilled. Or so my dentist says, anyway. Today I get two or three of them replaced. I don’t remember exactly. Hopefully she does.

UPDATE: It was three. Two of them were old silver fillings, which she hates because of the mercury. So out they came.

Read this article – 

And Now For a Short Dental Interlude

Posted in alo, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on And Now For a Short Dental Interlude

The Republican Field Is Shrinking Rapidly

by Diane1360ajbo Posted on February 3, 2016

Mother Jones

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

I know how easy it is to lose track of things. So just for the record, we’re now down to seven real candidates on the Republican side of things:

Cruz
Rubio
Bush
Trump
Carson
Christie
Kasich

This doesn’t count the three dead-enders who haven’t officially quit yet: Jim Gilmore, Rick Santorum, and Carly Fiorina. By my figuring, New Hampshire should kill off Bush and Carson and get us down to five real candidates. Maybe even Kasich and Christie, too. For all practical purposes, by next Wednesday we might finally be down to our long-fabled three-man race.

Continue reading: 

The Republican Field Is Shrinking Rapidly

Posted in alo, FF, G & F, GE, LG, ONA, PUR, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The Republican Field Is Shrinking Rapidly

Conservative Culture and the Fear of Reverse Racism

by KimberlUMA Posted on February 3, 2016

Mother Jones

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

Bruce Bartlett has written a new paper that examines the role of “reverse racism” in the rise of Donald Trump. Bartlett touches on a number of topics—e.g., changing demographics, partisan realignment, the media promotion of race as an in-group marker—but the cornerstone of his narrative is a simple recognition that fear of reverse racism is deep and pervasive among white Americans. Here’s the basic lay of the land from a bit of research done a few years ago by Michael Norton and Samuel Sommers:

As you can see, everyone agrees that racism was endemic in the 50s, and everyone agrees that it’s improved since then. But among whites, a majority believe that racism against blacks has improved so much—and reverse racism against whites has intensified so much—that today there’s literally more bias against whites than against blacks.

The Norton-Summers study doesn’t break down racial views further, but it’s a safe guess that fears of reverse racism are concentrated primarily among political conservatives—encouraged on a near daily basis by talk radio, Fox News, and Republican politicians. Given this, it’s hardly any wonder that Trump’s barely-coded appeals to racial resentment have resonated so strongly among Republican voters. Trump himself may or may not have any staying power, but his basic appeal is rooted in a culture of white grievance that’s been growing for years and is likely to keep growing in the future as white majorities continue to shrink. No matter what happens to Trump himself, he’s mainstreamed white victimhood as a political force to be reckoned with for the foreseeable future.

Original link: 

Conservative Culture and the Fear of Reverse Racism

Posted in Everyone, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Conservative Culture and the Fear of Reverse Racism

Clinton Beats Sanders, 50-50

by Serena8909 Posted on February 2, 2016

Mother Jones

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

I’m not much of a horse-race guy, but it sure seems like the horse race is now key to the future of the Democratic primaries. The problem for Bernie Sanders is that he has an obvious structural disadvantage—superdelegates are almost 100 percent Clinton supporters—as well as a problem in the states following New Hampshire. So he needs to follow up his good showing in Iowa with electrifying results in New Hampshire.

But he can’t. He started opening up a big lead in New Hampshire at the beginning of January, and the polls now have him 20 points ahead. To generate any serious shock waves he’d have to win by 30 or 40 points, and that’s just not in the cards. Obviously anything can happen, but at this point it looks like Sanders wins in New Hampshire; it’s entirely expected and ho hum; and Clinton then marches implacably on to the nomination. It’s hard for me to see a likely scenario in which anything different happens.

Link to article:

Clinton Beats Sanders, 50-50

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Clinton Beats Sanders, 50-50

Ted! Ted! Ted!

by KassandraLumholt Posted on February 2, 2016

Mother Jones

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

Here are tonight’s big messages as we all fondly say “Goodbye, Iowa”:

Ted Cruz: I will have the shortest name of any president in history.
Marco Rubio: Benghazi!
Donald Trump: Finishing in the top ten is a great victory.
Jeb Bush: I have a short name too. And hey, I beat Carly.
Republican Party: We count votes a lot more efficiently than those loser Democrats.
Hillary Clinton: A win is a win. Let’s get out of here.
Bernie Sanders: Hmmm. Maybe we’re not that tired of Hillary’s emails after all.
Democratic Party: We may be slow, but we make up for it with a stereotypically cumbersome and complex voting process.

Iowa is historically so unpredictive of anything that I honestly didn’t have a lot of interest in tonight’s results. I was mainly curious about how Donald Trump would somehow spin his second place finish as a victory. The answer, it turned out, was to drone on about how “they” told him to skip Iowa because he wouldn’t even break the top ten. I assume this is the same “they” who repeatedly told Marco Rubio that he was too much of a schmuck to win. Whoever “they” are, they’ve been busy.

And now on to New Hampshire, a state inexplicably in love with Donald Trump. What’s that all about, anyway?

Read original article:

Ted! Ted! Ted!

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Ted! Ted! Ted!

At the SAGs, It’s All About the Bragging

by NOPWallace Posted on February 1, 2016

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 Screen Actors Guild sure do seem pleased with themselves:

Idris Elba…summed up the tone of the evening onstage with this play on words: “Welcome to diverse TV.”

The talk of the evening, onstage and behind the scenes, was the show’s strong display of inclusiveness….Laura Prepon…“This is what we talk about when we talk about diversity.”…Viola Davis…“They won because the actors have craft, they have a level of excellence that reaches people.”…Uzo Aduba…“It’s amazing to see actors have the opportunity to celebrate other actors’ work and to feel empowered by the voting process so they can see whatever actor they want reflected up there.”

….From the outset, the show made a point of presenting the diversity of its membership and nominees. The ceremony opened with several actors — Rami Malek, Queen Latifah, Jeffrey Tambor, Anna Chlumsky, Kunal Nayyar — talking about what it means to be in their profession.

SAG Awards Committee Chair JoBeth Williams said the actor-focused awards show has “worked very hard to reflect the real world.” Williams noted its roster of presenters and nominees as proof of that.

OK, two things. First, these guys sound a lot less interested in diversity than in bragging about their nobility and getting in some digs at the Oscars. Second, I’d be a lot more impressed by their crowing if they had a better record of honoring black actors. The only reasonable comparison with the Academy Awards is in the solo film acting awards, and the chart on the right tells the story. In the past decade, 9 percent of all Oscar acting nominations have gone to black actors. For SAG, it’s a whopping 10 percent. In the past two years, there have been no black actors nominated for Oscars and a grand total of 1 for a SAG. The SAGs are doing better, but they probably shouldn’t sprain their arms patting themselves on the back for their performance.

Continued here: 

At the SAGs, It’s All About the Bragging

Posted in Bragg, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Oster, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on At the SAGs, It’s All About the Bragging