Monday Reads
Posted: August 20, 2012 Filed under: morning reads | Tags: D- for US bridges, Kevin "the dip" Yoder, Niall Ferguson, Paul Ryan, putting the junk in congressional junket, serial hypocrit, serial liar, sex apartheid in education, sex segregation 71 Comments
Good Morning!
Be careful driving across any bridge in this country. Chances are that it’s unsafe.
The American Society of Civil Engineers, the nation’s oldest national engineering group, has awarded America’s roadways a grade of D-, rated one in four bridges as “structurally deficient or functionally obsolete” and warned that thousands of American dams are on the verge of failure. It warned that unless tax dollars are redirected, the whole thing could crumble.
Altogether, Americans spend 4.2 billion hours a year stuck in traffic because of poorly maintained roads at a cost of $78.2 billion annually in squandered time and fuel.
The average age of America’s 600,000-plus bridges has reached 43 years old, and Congress needs $17 billion a year to make them safe for use.
The nation has 6,000 deficient dams, with 1,800 of them rating a high “hazard potential,” which means that structural failure could kill people.
The society’s complete report card can be found here.
I live next to two drawbridges over the canal with the levees that flooded and killed so many in the lower ninth ward. The two of those things predate WW 1 and are out of commission a lot. They even look rickety any more. I just shudder to think what will happen one day.
Sit down. I just about fell off my chair when the ACLU tweeted this one last night.
Some school officials in West Virginia think boys and girls are so “hard-wired” to learn differently that they have implemented some major changes in their middle school: boys and girls are separated into different classrooms for all their academic classes and taught using radically different methods.
At Van Devender Middle School (or Vandy), a public school in Wood County WV, the boys’ classroom is brightly lit and cool, and the students are allowed to run around to blow off steam. They can sit in beanbag chairs if they wish and their desks are moveable and do not face each other. The girls’ classrooms are warm and dimly lit, and students are expected to remain in their seats and face each other while they work, even if they find that distracting. Girls are supposed to discuss their feelings about novels while boys are supposed to discuss the action in the books.
Adding insult to injury, this is their neighborhood middle school, to which they were assigned by the Board of Education.
The explanation for implementing this radical version of single-sex education there? On some state-standardized measures, Vandy students were performing less well than the rest of the county. Somehow, separating the students by sex for all of their academic core curriculum classes and teaching them differently was supposed to fix this problem. Even though all the other middle schools – the ones supposedly outperforming Vandy – were coed.
This separation was based on the work of Leonard Sax and the organization he founded and runs, the National Association for Single-Sex Public Education (NASSPE), which holds conferences and teacher trainings to promote the theory that boys’ and girls’ brains are so different that they should be placed in separate classrooms and taught using different methods. These theories have traction because they are simple to implement.
You may want to stay seated for this one too. GOP freshmen Congressmen go wild in Israel. Kansas Republican Rep. Kevin Yoder puts the junk in junket.
The FBI probed a late-night swim in the Sea of Galilee that involved drinking, numerous GOP freshmen lawmakers, top leadership staff – and one nude member of Congress, according to more than a dozen sources, including eyewitnesses.
During a fact-finding congressional trip to the Holy Land last summer, Rep. Kevin Yoder (R-Kan.) took off his clothes and jumped into the sea, joining a number of members, their families and GOP staff during a night out in Israel, the sources told POLITICO. Other participants, including the daughter of another congressman, swam fully clothed while some lawmakers partially disrobed. More than 20 people took part in the late-night dip in the sea, according to sources who were participants in the trip.
Since we’re on stupid Republican Congress critterz, did you know Paul Ryan’s new found fame has led to increased sales of Rand’s books? How depressing is that?
While Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney didn’t get an appreciable bounce after naming Paul Ryan as his running mate, the late Ayn Rand sure did.
The philosopher who favored individualism over collectivism has won renewed attention with the choice of Ryan, who in 2005 credited Rand as being “the reason I got involved in public service.”
Ryan has since scaled back that praise, citing Rand’s atheism. Rand died in 1982.
The Rand box set of two of her works – “Atlas Shrugged” and “The Fountainhead” – cracked the Top 100 “Movers & Shakers” list on Amazon.com earlier this week. The online retailer’s gauge measures the biggest increases in sales ranking compared with the previous 24 hours. Rand’s books jumped 20 percent in the rankings yesterday.
Romney didn’t enjoy quite as big an uptick in support, according to the Gallup tracking poll released on Aug. 15, which showed support for the Republican increased 1 percentage point to 47 percent of registered voters in the three days following the Ryan announcement.
Hypocrisy seems to be Ryan’s strong point. He supported Economic Stimulus under Dubya.
As it turns out, Ryan’s stimulus hypocrisy extends back at least an entire decade. In 2002, Republican President George W. Bush proposed a similar — if less ambitious — stimulus plan to the one President Obama signed in 2009. Like Obama, Bush sought to goose the economy through an influx of public sector cash. His stimulus plan included an extension of unemployment benefits and a plan to mail checks directly to millions of Americans. Ryan took to the House floor to defend this plan, accurately noting that additional government spending would help move the economy out of a recession:
We have a lot of laid off workers, and more layoffs are occurring. And we know, as a historical fact, that even if our economy begins to slowly recover, unemployment is going to linger on and on well after that recovery takes place. What we have been trying to do starting in October and into December and now is to try and get people back to work. The things we’re trying to pass in this bill are the time-tested, proven, bipartisan solutions to get businesses to stop laying off people, to hire people back, and to help those people who have lost their jobs. . . .
We’ve got to get the engine of economic growth growing again because we now know, because of recession, we don’t have the revenues that we wanted to, we don’t have the revenues we need, to fix Medicare, to fix Social Security, to fix these issues. We’ve got to get Americans back to work. Then the surpluses come back, then the jobs come back. That is the constructive answer we’re trying to accomplish here on, yes, a bipartisan basis.
A Newsweek/Daily Beast op ed By Niall Ferguson has economists and journalists alike fact checking his wrong economics. We call Shenanigans! Krugman calls it unethical.
There are multiple errors and misrepresentations in Niall Ferguson’s cover story in Newsweek — I guess they don’t do fact-checking — but this is the one that jumped out at me. Ferguson says:
The president pledged that health-care reform would not add a cent to the deficit. But the CBO and the Joint Committee on Taxation now estimate that the insurance-coverage provisions of the ACA will have a net cost of close to $1.2 trillion over the 2012–22 period.
Readers are no doubt meant to interpret this as saying that CBO found that the Act will increase the deficit. But anyone who actually read, or even skimmed, the CBO report (pdf) knows that it found that the ACA would reduce, not increase, the deficit — because the insurance subsidies were fully paid for.
Now, people on the right like to argue that the CBO was wrong. But that’s not the argument Ferguson is making — he is deliberately misleading readers, conveying the impression that the CBO had actually rejected Obama’s claim that health reform is deficit-neutral, when in fact the opposite is true.
More than that: by its very nature, health reform that expands coverage requires that lower-income families receive subsidies to make coverage affordable. So of course reform comes with a positive number for subsidies — finding that this number is indeed positive says nothing at all about the impact on the deficit unless you ask whether and how the subsidies are paid for. Ferguson has to know this (unless he’s completely ignorant about the whole subject, which I guess has to be considered as a possibility). But he goes for the cheap shot anyway.
We’re not talking about ideology or even economic analysis here — just a plain misrepresentation of the facts, with an august publication letting itself be used to misinform readers. The Times would require an abject correction if something like that slipped through. Will Newsweek?
Joe Wiesanthal at BI shows how Ferguson gets wrong a lot. There’s a list of things he’s been wrong on that’s quite lengthy as well as putting the blame on Obama for China’s huge GDP which is on target to surpass ours some time in 2017. That’s the comment below that mentions that some tings are inevitable.
Niall Ferguson has a huge piece in The Daily Beast saying Obama needs to get fired titled: “Hit The Road, Barack.”
It’s basically an ell-encompassing takedown of Obama’s record on the economy (it still sucks), the deficit (it’s getting bigger) and America’s standing in the world (The Mideast has not gotten safer).
It even hits Obama for stuff like this, which seems totally inevitable at some point, regardless of who is President.
Anyway, as you read Niall Ferguson, it’s worth noting that he has been wrong on economics ever since Obama took office.
I’m getting really tired of putting up a huge list of Republicans who seem to have caught the pathological lying disease. What’s happened to the GOP? It seems like ever since they got religion, they also got a bad case of Pants-on-Fire. It gives all of us a case of Hair-on-Fire.
What’s on your blogging and reading list today?
peej
Carissa
ecocatwoman
mablue2
Mama Lopez
peggysue22
quixote
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Sky Dancing 
That story on the bridges is something, I wonder what fingers the gas companies have in that pie…when you think of all the money spent on fuel while waiting in traffic. As for the WV school boy/girl segregation, it makes me physically ill.
The “legitimate rape” story reminds me of the story of the Islamic girl that was rape by three men on the way to visit a relative and when she went to the authorities to report the rape, they stoned her for adultery. The Christian right is not quite as far gone as the Shariah guys, but they are certainly on the same spectrum. IMHO.
I swear to god the I.Q. level of this nation is at an all time low.
It has to be if this guy emerged victorious during the primaries and became their GOP challenger for a seat in the US Senate.
We may not be cutting off the heads of rape victims, or stoning them in the public square, but we are pretty close to the same idiotic mindset that allows these people to hold office and make laws that would mirror their archaic thinking.
They begin with the redefinition or rape and continue to insult women with these half baked theories which unfortunately appeals to the crowd of like minded fools. Even if this moron loses his bid in MO just look at the number of votes he gets.
Sharron Angle came “this close” to defeating Harry Reid during that Senate contest because there were enough people who accepted her theory that rape was a “blessing”. And no matter how nuts Michele Bachmann may be, she gets a lot of money thrown into her coffers whenever she makes another ridiculous statement.
It is worth noting that these nutjobs are not alone out there.
As has been noted, this guy is a close ally of Paul Ryan. His thinking is not WAY outside the GOP mainstream.
Regarding the WV story, I remember having a conversation with the principal of my daughter’s school about Title IX. She was saying that Title IX was a great thing but that sometimes it could get in the way. When I questioned her about that she said that she was interested in separating boys and girls for math class because there was a school of thought that it would be beneficial to girls (I’m guessing that the WV educators latched on to part of this theory) but that the middle school was prevented from doing it because of Title IX. I’m thinking Title IX could be used to put a stop to the nonsense in WV.
The girls + math story was from a couple of years ago. Unfortunately, I don’t remember specifics – who, what, when, where kind of stuff. I do remember it making sense to me since I was a math geek in school & much of what they said rang true. Some (maybe most) girls are intimidated in math class when they are the ones who always answer the questions correctly. Boys generally don’t like girls smarter than they are. And studies showed that teachers tended to call on boys more, even when girls put their hands up first. Seems the boys reactions & the teachers’ ignoring them had the effect of making, at least, some girls either lose interest in math or not do as well. I’ll see if I can track down a link or two.
But I agree that this story sounds like a start to the practice in many Muslim countries where girls don’t even go to school. Is this the “first step?”
It’s true that girls are sometimes intimidated about math and science, but it’s not true that boys and girls brains work so differently that they need to learn differently. The solution for the problem is to teach that boys and girls are equal.
And telling boys and girls how to talk about fiction? That’s complete nonsense and a way to limit children’s creativity. Someone definitely needs to bring a lawsuit against that school.
BB — my MA was along these lines. Sex role stereotyping — this is learned behavior rather than harded wired in the brain. Boys and girls are being forced into social roles. I’m betting that none of the “research” done by the idiots advocating forced sex role “learning” can ever be replicated by neutral third party researchers. Generally when dogmatic “experts” on learning do research their work is so riddled by poor research design that they would be tossed out of college. If in fact these jerks have a real degree or real training in basic research.
It seems like these nitwits are trying to trained the girls to be submissive and passive — in other words “ideal” christian wives for the more “robust” and dominate males.
I really hate the pseudo/faux “science” that is so common today and accept on faith.
There are a few very small differences between male and female brains, but nothing that would affect how they learn per se. Girls tend to be ahead of boys in some areas, but again, nothing really dramatic.
I found a bunch of links, but nothing yet referring to the study I remember. This, however, in The Daily Mail is encouraging: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2073523/Girls-worse-boys-maths-Study-86-countries-shows-differences-caused-attitudes-women.html?ITO=1490 This statement seems intuitive:
Let’s see: It’s OK to spend over $78 billion in time and gasoline, in order to save a relatively paltry $17 billion to fix the bridges & roads. Uh-huh. While spending $3 trillion on wars, and $15 trillion on bailouts. WTF? It’s just crazy.
Maintenance & prevention – those are things that concern the non-believers. god will provide – you just have to have faith. (that’s snark, btw)
kat, it looks like this Same Sex education initiative has been around for awhile. Found this 3 year old article about Bayou Blue Middle School: http://www.houmatoday.com/article/20090518/articles/905189966?tc=ar
And here’s the website for the educator who is pushing this practice, David Chadwell – http://chadwellconsulting.com/ And he’s a proponent of school choice – oh my, isn’t THAT a surprise.
Everyone needs to remember that Paul Ryan partnered with Todd Akin on the infamous bill to change the definition of rape. Ryan has also introduced legislation to establish “personhood” at conception. Mitt Romney has also signed onto the “personhood” crap, even though it would elimination in vitro fertilization–which more than one of his sons has used.
Feel like I am going to throw up from all this shit!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Politico:
This will be an issue for Romney & Ryan in the debates because both men are on the record as anti-choice and both have voiced support for a Personhood Amendment. The Personhood Amendment basically ends all abortion and would make all forms of hormonal contraception, including IUD’s, illegal. Forget the personhood or the autonomy of women to make decisions regarding their own bodies, the GOP/TP has reduced women to incubators.
Romney’s talking about boycotting the presidential debates…………..Do it, pleaze Romney.
Is that the sound of chickens clucking?
Paul Ryan hailed Todd Akin’s “leadership” during Missouri Senate primary.
Ryan is just so special. He’s every republican only with more wingnut. 😉
Geez, after reading some of the news on this asshole, I felt sick. Literally sick! I’m sure that while my hands were tied behind my back, when the son of a bitch had me gagged with my own bra…that my body was fighting getting pregnant as well? Wow, I must be some kind of superwoman! Well Supergirl since I was only 15. I guess it was fortunate for me that the asshole got me when I was on my period…and boy am I lucky that it wasn’t only my vagina that was assaulted. Unless there is some scientific proof this Akin fuckoff can quote which says a woman can get pregnant from sodomy as well. Oh boy…a study that Akin found which proves a woman’s body fights to get pregnant, because every sperm is sacred. I fucking hate these GOP assholes…as well as the MSM and journalist and Democrats who let them get away with all this shit. War on Women, it is more like torture of women, and man I would just love to be able to fuck these dickwads up as much as I have been.
I mean 15 on the verge of 16…was right before my birthday…
I’m sorry, JJ. He makes me sick too, and I hold Romney absolutely responsible, since he signed onto the personhood crap and picked Ryan as VP.
“Rape is like being run over by a truck, except afterwards they ask you how you liked it.”
Maybe Akin would get his head on right if he was run over by a truck a few times.
Rape IS torture. Rape IS a hate crime. Forced pregnancy is torture too. Why do not these idiots understand that?
JJ…..That story is terrifying and many of us can relate to it. Sadly, to many men cannot even imagine the horror you experienced.
Bastard who make these comments are ignorant asshats. The only way this sort of guy could ever understand the terror of rape or it’s consequences which can range from pregnancy to disease to permanent psychological and physical damage, is to throw them NUDE and incapacitated into a max security prison with a bunch of horn-dogs and leave them there for a few days. That ought to do it!!!
BB, Luna and Mouse, your comments of support are so welcomed. Thank you…
Director Tony Scott jumps to his death from LA bridge.
This is very sad. Scott was in his late 60’s. Elton John’s bassist also commited suicide a few days ago. He was 56 years old, I believe, and left behind a wife and children.
I have read as men get older, their rate of suicide increases. I wonder why that is.
Do you have any insight about older men and suicide, BB? Is it untreated depression? Isolation? Feelings of worthlessness because their esteem is so closely tied to career success?
Sorry, I really don’t know much about it. We’ll probably learn more about what happened with Scott as time goes on.
I’ve seen some reports that Tony Scott had brain cancer…‘Top Gun’ Director Tony Scott Had Inoperable Brain Cancer – ABC News
I did wonder if Scott had a physical illness that was untreatable. There was no mention of it in earlier reports. May he RIP now.
I refuse to consider Dana Loesch to be a woman. This twitter stream defending Akin is such bullshit.
TBogg: The Pride Of CNN (Updated)
Just goes to show that some women can be equally as stupid as some men, though you’d think she should have some sort of clue.
This piece from The Nation makes a lot of sense: http://www.thenation.com/blog/169451/danger-laughing-todd-akin
Read the whole piece, where Ilyse Hogue compares Akin’s “comment” to the change in attitude about climate change. The Right keeps moving the goal line further and further down field.
This is sort of OT, but not really. I think it’s a brilliant & important piece that many, if not all, women can personally relate to: http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/10994-men-explain-things-to-me-facts-didnt-get-in-their-way
Personally, being told I’m wrong about something about which I know I am correct is my #1 hot button. Our voices must be heard or we will never achieve equality.
Brad Delong wades into the Krugman vFerguson dustup on Newsweek’s cover story.
More Lies from Niall Ferguson: Fire-His-Ass-Now Department
Ferguson, who has been right about nothing I can remember, deserves a good ass kicking and it appears he’s getting it.
I couldn’t believe that article. First year econ students ought to be able to pull about his bad statistics and math. Harvard should be ashamed of him as should Newsweek and The Daily Beast. An editor should’ve put the kibosh on it.
Chavis Carter autopsy: Forensic expert calls suicide ‘possible’, ‘very unlikely’ | theGrio
Duh!
More Delong, Oops, wonder if this will matter?
Todd Akin Doubles Down: If She Gets Pregnant, It Wasn’t Really Rape–I’m on the Same Page as Paul Ryan and the Other Republican Sponsors of HR 3
So the woman who is drugged and raped — that doesn’t count as rape because she wasn’t fighting????
Ryan would do really well in jail. Yep — I would wish that on him and Akin.
I’m sure Romney will be just thrilled to hear that! ROFLOL!
So what about the woman frightened out of her mind so her body’s frozen? Because she’s always heard that you don’t ever want to make the man mad? And women are weaker than men, etc.?
All rape is forcible rape.
Does anyone else get the idea this creep has raped a lot of women? Non-forcibly, of course. /s
Don’t forget, Ryan has the exact same beliefs. He cosponsored the bill with Akin.
Apparently the “doctor” who put forth this factoid was Dr. Fay Boozman of Arkansas when he was running for office. He should know, after all, since he is an ophthalmologist:
http://thewelltimedperiod.blogspot.com/2008/01/mike-huckabee-dr-fay-boozman-and-gods.html
He called it “God’s Little Protective Shield.” After his defeat, then Gov. Huckabee appointed Boozman to head the State Dept of Health.
On rape, pregnancy and the GOP fight for the U.S. Senate | Political Insider
To me, the most pernicious falsehood in the Ferguson piece is his repetition of this wingnut factoid:
This is just a flat-out lie, no matter how you slice it. As I pointed out over at John Smart’s:
I agree that particular lie is arguable the worse since it has the potential to damage millions of people, if it continues to be believed.
Here’s another jewel from James Fallows. It seems Ferguson made a real mess of this thing. Newsweek should not ship the issue like this, it’s horrible.
As a Harvard Alum, I Apologize
I haven’t has the heart to go to JWS’s blog in quite some time. I applaud your effort.
Ferguson can’t even put one over on Politico in his dustup with Krugman.
Niall Ferguson’s ridiculous defense
O/T – Just saw the Phillis Diiller passed away today at age 95.
http://www.tmz.com/2012/08/20/phyllis-diller-dead/
That, of course, is Phyllis, not the way I spelled it!
Ada Driver was her birth name…………………what a kick, R.I.P.
Of course it comes from one of the assholes that defended the dickwad:
https://twitter.com/EWErickson/status/237617906337325056
Akin just said on Huckabee’s radio show that he was staying in, according to tpm I think,
I think I need to disappear for a while, this Akin and Ryan and the rest of the assholes is getting me too worked up.
Read where Rove’s superpac is pulling out of MO now.
Claire must be throwing back shots and dancing in the streets by now.
Take care of yourself, JJ. Find something to do or a place to go that makes you feel safe. xxxooo.
Thank you Beata…xoxoxo
Augusta National Golf Club admits first female members
well, that’s big of them
Yeah, it’s a pittance, but I’ll take it. I’m glad it happened in my lifetime.
Welcome to the 20th Century. Ooops, the 21st Century.
These men seem to really believe that it was God’s will that allows a girl/woman to be raped.
They are supporting an amendment to make you deliver the rapist child, and trying to convince you that you will come out on the other side of all of all this evil and torture, and be glad for that.
Mercy………………
Remember the bible sez you’re suppose to marry your rapist too.
Hilarious Akin lady parts diagram.
LOL!
Finally.
Obama to media: Romney’s whole campaign is based on lies
I have been working and just this afternoon trying to catch up on the great links. I am so upset about Akin and Ferguson that I need to control myself. I really don’t think I could add to the great comments I’ve read so far. That doesn’t mean I’m through. But I really want you guys to read something.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/20/peter-sivere-jpmorgan-whistleblower_n_1812329.html?page=2
This is going to go unnoticed today.
PD, it took me a few days to get up the courage to read the comments myself. 😉