Friday Reads
Posted: November 22, 2013 Filed under: just because, morning reads 48 Comments
Good Morning!!!
We’ve got the usual suspects with the usual kinda stuff going on right now. Let’s check out some headlines together!
Here’s a great read from The Nation: Inequality Is (Literally) Killing America.
Only a few miles separate the Baltimore neighborhoods of Roland Park and Upton Druid Heights. But residents of the two areas can measure the distance between them in years—twenty years, to be exact. That’s the difference in life expectancy between Roland Park, where people live to be 83 on average, and Upton Druid Heights, where they can expect to die at 63.
Underlying these gaps in life expectancy are vast economic disparities. Roland Park is an affluent neighborhood with an unemployment rate of 3.4 percent, and a median household income above $90,000. More than 17 percent of people in Upton Druid Heights are unemployed, and the median household income is just $13,388.
It’s no secret that this sort of economic inequality is increasing nationwide; the disparity between America’s richest and poorest is the widest it’s been since the Roaring Twenties. Less discussed are the gaps in life expectancy that have widened over the past twenty-five years between America’s counties, cities and neighborhoods. While the country as a whole has gotten richer and healthier, the poor have gotten poorer, the middle class has shrunk and Americans without high school diplomas have seen their life expectancy slide back to what it was in the 1950s. Economic inequalities manifest not in numbers, but in sick and dying bodies.
On Wednesday, Senator Bernie Sanders convened a hearing before the Primary Health and Aging subcommittee to examine the connections between material and physiological well-being, and the policy implications. With Congress fixed on historic reforms to the healthcare delivery system, the doctors and public health professionals who testified this morning made it clear that policies outside of the healthcare domain are equally vital for keeping people healthy—namely, those that target poverty and inequality.
Many folks like to blame technology for the dive in wages for the middle class. A new study shows that’s not the case so “Don’t blame the Robots” for wage inequality. Check out the executive summary.
Many economists contend that technology is the primary driver of the increase in wage inequality since the late 1970s, as technology-induced job skill requirements have outpaced the growing education levels of the workforce. The influential “skill-biased technological change” (SBTC) explanation claims that technology raises demand for educated workers, thus allowing them to command higher wages—which in turn increases wage inequality. A more recent SBTC explanation focuses on computerization’s role in increasing employment in both higher-wage and lower-wage occupations, resulting in “job polarization.” This paper contends that current SBTC models—such as the education-focused “canonical model” and the more recent “tasks framework” or “job polarization” approach mentioned above—do not adequately account for key wage patterns (namely, rising wage inequality) over the last three decades. Principal findings include:
1. Technological and skill deficiency explanations of wage inequality have failed to explain key wage patterns over the last three decades, including the 2000s.
Changes to the Senate’s filibuster rules are driving the villagers wild!! Here’s a headline from WAPO: Reid, Democrats trigger ‘nuclear’ option; 
The new rules eliminate most filibusters on nominees.
Senate Democrats took the dramatic step Thursday of eliminating filibusters for most nominations by presidents, a power play they said was necessary to fix a broken system but one that Republicans said will only rupture it further.
Democrats used a rare parliamentary move to change the rules so that federal judicial nominees and executive-office appointments can advance to confirmation votes by a simple majority of senators, rather than the 60-vote supermajority that has been the standard for nearly four decades.
The immediate rationale for the move was to allow the confirmation of three picks by President Obama to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit — the most recent examples of what Democrats have long considered unreasonably partisan obstruction by Republicans.
In the long term, the rule change represents a substantial power shift in a chamber that for more than two centuries has prided itself on affording more rights to the minority party than any other legislative body in the world. Now, a president whose party holds the majority in the Senate is virtually assured of having his nominees approved, with far less opportunity for political obstruction.
Here’s some hand wringing Beltway-style from Beltway Bob.
There’s a lot of upside for Republicans in how this went down. It came at a time when Republicans control the House and are likely to do so for the duration of President Obama’s second term, so the weakening of the filibuster will have no effect on the legislation Democrats can pass. The electoral map, the demographics of midterm elections, and the political problems bedeviling Democrats make it very likely that Mitch McConnell will be majority leader come 2015 and then he will be able to take advantage of a weakened filibuster. And, finally, if and when Republicans recapture the White House and decide to do away with the filibuster altogether, Democrats won’t have much of an argument when they try to stop them.
Meawhile, back in a state where “Obamacare” is actually being implented …”Nearly 80,000 Californians sign up for Obamacare plans“.
The latest data, which charts enrollment from the October 1 start through November 19, means that about 20,000 more people signed up for plans since the exchange’s initial update on its enrollment released November 13.
California, which is the most populous U.S. state and embraced the Affordable Care Act early on, is considered a crucial region for the administration’s enrollment effort. The state is one of 14 operating their own exchanges, as opposed to relying on the federal government.
Last week, the U.S. government released initial data showing that 106,000 people had enrolled in new exchanges nationwide from October 1 through November 2. California’s enrollment amounted to about one-third of all sign-ups during that period and outnumbered the combined tallies of all 36 states that use the faulty HealthCare.gov website operated by the federal government.
Covered California also released data on Thursday showing that nearly 23 percent of the sign-ups during the first month of enrollment were 18 to 34 years old, while 34 percent were 55 to 64 years old.
Those age breakdowns are in line with other early data released by four other state exchanges, showing that more older adults have signed up for the new plans than younger Americans so far.
The age balance is being closely watched to determine the financial stability of the insurance market created by the Affordable Care Act, as the participation of younger people is needed to offset costs for sicker beneficiaries. Health policy experts and actuaries told Reuters it was premature to draw any conclusions about the early demographic data.
Well, if you simply must join in on the season, be sure to encourage the stores that don’t steal the family turkey dinner time from their employees.
Can’t we just simply celebrate Thanksgiving first please?
Never mind that much of the big news this holiday season has been about major retailers, from Walmart to Target to the newest entrant, Macy’s, announcing their Thanksgiving Day shopping hours.
While it can hurt the bottom line for one day, staying closed on Thanksgiving can be a big plus, too. “I appreciate brands that make the gutsy decision to defer some revenue and stay closed,” says brand guru Erika Napoletano. “They’re celebrating their most important asset – their employees.”
It has yet to be proven that the majority of shoppers “really want and need” stores to be open on Thanksgiving, says Sharon Love, a retail consultant. Last year, 35 million Americans visited stores or websites on Thanksgiving vs. 89 million on Black Friday, according to the National Retail Federation.
Families often like to do more than just eat on Thanksgiving, the trade group points out. “Some go to movies. Some go bowling. Some go to football games or to restaurants,” says Bill Thorne, senior vice president. To say that employees at these venues should work but that retail workers shouldn’t “doesn’t make a whole lot of sense,” he adds.
But staying closed on Thanksgiving makes perfect sense to Nordstrom, which has done just that since 1901.
“Our customers appreciate us taking this approach,” says spokesman Colin Johnson. He adds that no holiday decorations go up until the store reopens on Black Friday.
Dillard’s also will keep all 299 stores closed on Thanksgiving Day “to honor our associates with their family time,” says spokeswoman Julie Johnson Bull.
Home Depot will keep its nearly 2,000 stores closed, in part, because “this isn’t our make-or-break season like it is for many retailers,” says spokesman Stephen Holmes.
TJX, which owns the T.J. Maxx and Marshalls brands, also will stay dark on Thanksgiving. “We feel so strongly about our employees spending Thanksgiving with their families,” says spokeswoman Doreen Thompson. “And we don’t anticipate this changing in the future.”Nor does Costco, says spokesman Bob Nelson. “We feel no pressure to open on Thanksgiving Day this year, or in subsequent years.”
Here’s a dose of Hillary from Politico.
Hillary Clinton on Thursday argued that women can play a critical role in promoting sustainability while speaking at a Philadelphia event, where she also dealt lightheartedly with what appeared to be a friendly heckler.
“[In] developed countries, we still have to keep knocking barriers down to women’s full participation on boards of companies that make decisions about sustainability, in corporate suites where people make decisions about sustainability,” she said to cheers, speaking at a conference held by the U.S. Green Building Council.
“Now I’m not one who will say automatically that having women involved makes a difference just by the fact of the women being there, but there’s growing evidence that corporations with women in leadership positions, as corporate executives, and in the board, are actually more focused on sustainability.”
So, one of the games I used to hate to play back in the day was who is the biggest she-man feminist of the all. I wasn’t aware back then or now that it was a 
competition. Here, it is again at Politico. It’s focused on the damned if you do damned if you don’t position of FLOTUS. Hillary was nailed for being out there. Michelle Obama is being nailed for not being out there enough.
The New York Times observed that many of Michelle Obama’s supporters have been itching for her to move beyond “evangelizing exercise and good eating habits,” noting that, despite her widespread popularity, the first lady has long “been derided by critics who hoped she would use her historic position to move more deeply into policy.”
Don’t count on it. As President Obama claws his way through a second term, the sense of urgency for his well-educated wife to do more—to make a difference—may well be mounting. But that doesn’t mean it’s going to happen. In fact, East Wing officials I spoke with stress that Michelle Obama is not about to tap her inner wonk—she will focus on young people, not policy—and while the task of promoting higher ed may be new, speaking directly to kids is simply what Michelle does. Sure enough, in a sit-down with BET’s 106 & Park the week after the Education Department rollout, there was the first lady in full mom mode, lecturing students about nothing more politically controversial than the need to do their homework and get to school on time.
So enough already with the pining for a Michelle Obama who simply doesn’t exist. The woman is not going to morph into an edgier, more activist first lady. The 2012 election did not set her free. Even now, with her husband waddling toward lame duck territory, she is not going to let loose suddenly with some straight talk about abortion rights or Obamacare or the Common Core curriculum debate. Turns out, she was serious about that whole “mom-in-chief” business—it wasn’t merely a political strategy but also a personal choice. “
Lizz Winstead offers up some sage thoughts here.
Wow. I don’t know where to begin on this. This is an article written by someone who decided to put her issues into other women’s mouths. And in Politico, AKA “The Fluffers for The Chamber of Commerce” no less.
At least it will mostly be read by Below The Beltway types.
We’ve seen this technique before on TV news interviews. The correspondent will say to the subject something like, “Some people have said you are a…” and then a list a slew of character assassinations that apparently “Some unnamed people” have said.This article feels like that. Except the sum total of “some people” is her.
http://www.politico.co…Now after you read this, and before you start stabbing your couch, please know that this same writer, was paid to write a piece crowning Sarah Palin as a new feminist icon.
I’m snuggling with the dog as I live through a second evening of a hard freeze What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
peej
Carissa
bostonboomer
ecocatwoman
mablue2
peggysue22
quixote
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Sky Dancing 
“The electoral map, the demographics of midterm elections, and the political problems bedeviling Democrats make it very likely that Mitch McConnell will be majority leader come 2015 and then he will be able to take advantage of a weakened filibuster.”
Perhaps McConnell will become the Majority Leader, but the problem with that thinking is that Obama still holds the Veto Pen and there is no parliamentary way to circumvent the veto other than a straight up-down two-thirds majority vote in both houses.
The other circumstance that envisions the GOP with both houses and the Presidency is a more feasible scenario for abuse of the rule change by the GOP, but with the current state of the GOP presidential hopefuls, that doesn’t seem very likely. And besides, ABUSE of the rules is the primary tactic of the GOP whether they’re in power or out of power, so what was there to lose?
The truth is the GOP/TP’ers have been using the Cloture rule/Filibuster which requires 60 votes to end the debate, to keep the presidents judicial nominations from ever coming to the floor for an up or down vote. They have used this tactic over and over again since Obama became POTUS, and not just where judicial nominations are concerned. It essentially is a pattern of abuse of the rules that is being used to nullify the election of Obama.
HYPOCRITE ALERT!!!!!
Now the fuckers in the GOP/TP are using words like “unethical” to bash the Dems for taking this step, yet in the next breath during the floor speeches that followed yesterdays events, the GOP VOWED to use it themselves when/if they regain the Senate. HYPOCRITES.
Well said, Mouse. “Hypocrite” perfectly describes McConnell and his GOP cohorts.
“The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.”
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
“The Conduct of Life” (1860)
LOL!!! Thanks for the quote, I haven’t heard it in years.
If I worked for CSPAN I’d lobby for that quote to be scrolled under the GOP/TP Congress person every time one of them spoke on the Senate or House Floor.
The dems need to develop the habit of fighting for what’s right. You can’t get in a fight with thugs and expect marquess of Queensbury rules from all.
lol! It’s not like they can’t know what to expect from the Rs.
Backbone, and persistence. That’s what we need from the Dems.
Also continued support of New Deal / Great Society programs and a strong commitment to preserve them. We will accept nothing less!
“You can’t get in a fight with thugs and expect marquess of Queensbury rules from all
Yeah….The Dems think the expression “putting on the gloves” refers to the gloves they wear on the golf course. Although I think Harry Reid was a boxer in his youth, so maybe he was showing a little of that grit yesterday.
.
The Hillary/Michelle comparison perfectly illustrates the damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don’t judgments that women face regularly. Much as I am a supporter and fan of Hillary Clinton, I’m also a huge fan of Michelle Obama. I was at first put off by her preaching about exercise and nutrition because I felt it was elitist, but I’ve come to understand how important it is especially for the African American community and other minorities who occupy more than their share of space below America’s poverty line. Mrs. Obama has brought healthy eating and exercise to the forefront for many people.
On a side note, my daughter and I had the privilege to attend an event over the summer where Michelle Obama was speaking. After her speech, she worked the rope line and shook hands. My daughter is college age but tiny and very young looking. People at the event were kind enough to let her get to the front of the crowd so she could see. When Mrs. Obama got to my daughter, her (Michelle’s) face lit up. You could tell she was delighted to be speaking to a young person and even bent down to give my daughter a hug to the crowd’s delight. Michelle’s reaction was genuine, she really does love young people and it shows.
I think focusing on young people and their needs is extremely important, and I hope Michelle continues to do what feels right to her and not what media pundits think she *should* do.
My problem with Mrs. Obama’s focus on healthful eating and exercise is I think it does not address the many barriers the poor face when trying to lead healthier lives. Those barriers include the higher price of fresh foods and the practical problems one faces when preparing those foods. How do you chop and slice when you have no cutting tools, much less a food processor? How do you cook something quickly when you have no microwave? How do you cook period when you have no usable pots or pans? Yes, the poor sometimes can’t afford those things. ( I know from experience. ) How do you grow your own food when you live an apartment with no garden space? Yes, there are community gardens in some towns but how do you get there if you have no transportation? To get to my town’s community garden ( round-trip ) would require me to take four different buses and spend at least two hours on the bus, not counting time spent at the garden. How is a young mother expected to be able to do that? Take her children along if she can’t afford child care? Have people ever ridden public transportation with mothers who have young children aboard? I have. It is a nightmare for those mothers trying to get strollers onto the buses, quieting crying children who need diapers changed, etc. The same problems exist when attempting an exercise program. Jump into the SUV and head to the Y? I think not. For a young mother without a car to get to the Y here requires a two hour round-trip on the bus, too. And the Y is not automatically free. Yes, “free membership” can be applied for but it is hard to get. And if a young mother in poverty is working ( and many are ), how can she possibly find time to cook from scatch, grow her own food, and have an exercise program? She probably struggles to find time to sleep. People who aren’t poor don’t think about these things because they have never had to.
There is no quick solution, but I think Michelle’s efforts have opened some minds within the African American community. Remember, there are no Whole Foods stores in poor neighborhoods but there are plenty of fast food joints. Entire generations have grown up eating that crap and it has become ingrained in people’s cultures. Rather than accept what currently exists, people can rally behind Michelle and demand change. Change is incremental. Michelle Obama is the first leader to show that she cares about the poor and wants to show them that they have a right to demand nutritious foods.
Mrs. Obama needs to focus her efforts mainly on public and private agencies as well as businesses to pressure them to provide access to better food and exercise options for poor people. IMHO, she has been primarily shoveling more piles of guilt ( no more Popeye’s chicken for you! ) onto poor people who already struggle with incredible difficulty and stress just making it through another day alive.
I think that’s the point in this post. Try as she might, she just can’t win. Whatever she does is not good enough. Forget that she is the first highly respected African American to even broach the subject of nutrition and exercise within the community and there are some studies which have shown that childhood obesity is on the decline. Just not good enough.
My daughter worked with women delivering babies with medicaid. She said there are a startling number of obese young women whose lives and babies are endangered by their weight too. I think getting kids to be more aware of what they eat and dancing or exercising more is good on a lot of levels. A lot of time her move program focuses on dancing which is good too as a form of personal expression.
She comes to the MLK school here in the 9th ward all the time. She reads to the kids and dances with them. She has worked to get fresh fruits and vegetables into the school vending machines and the small stores that dot our neighborhoods. She does a lot of that when she isn’t with the kids. She is down here following up on stuff too. She doesn’t just do hit and run photo ops. I have really grown to appreciate the extent of her connection to our community and the kids here in our neediest areas. She has come back many times not just a few.
Thanks for a big old dose of reality, Beata.
Beata,
I agree with you about Michelle’s focus on obesity. I think that is counterproductive. But I support her love of children. Dakinikat has told me how Michelle has visited poor schools in NOLA–with no publicity. She does love children, and that’s a good thing. It would be great if she would push the issues you’re talking about. Perhaps she will after she leaves the WH. You’re right.
I just hate to see women criticized and divided like this. Each woman does what she can do.
We have community gardens all over the place because in urban areas you have a lot of empty lots. I think a lot of her focus has been on exercise too. We are seeing children and young people here with adult onset diabetes and high blood pressure and heart disease. There has been a big movement to put fresh fruits and vegetables in the corner stores and churches are sponsoring Saturday farmer’s markets in their parking lots and schools too. I have seen her work here do lots of good actually but I live in an inner city neighborhood. We also have a network of community centers here next to schools for young and elderly. Most run sports programs at all hours. It is part of keeping kids off the streets and out of gangs.
That’s good, Dak. Indianapolis may have some of those things but less urban areas in Indiana rarely do.
I worry about the rural poor too. They have little access to services.
The rural poor don’t even have access to access and rarely know what help is available or how to go about getting the help they’re qualified for. I had a friend who grew up in the mountains near where Dolly Parton grew up. Her stories of isolation, deprivation and humiliation are heartbreaking and for far too many people in those regions of America nothing has gotten better.
I don’t know why people like Bill & Melinda Gates or Warren Buffett or others who have more money than sense don’t focus some of their fortune on poor and disenfranchised American’s. I know they do good work in Africa, but we have people living in deplorable conditions right here and nobody is trying to save them.
And while I’m on one of my rants I’d like to say that meals on wheels is the only food and contact with others that many poor seniors and disabled poor get. Funds for that program are tied to the Farm Bill and the GOP is targeting those who in my opinion are the most helpless people in America. I don’t know how a GOP Congressman has the gall to support and lobby for drug testing food stamp recipients while he’s snorting coke. HYPOCRITE
Healthy eating doesn’t have to be pricey. It is going to be different from average ‘Murican diet, though. If you look at nutrients and serving sizes, simple fresh foods and non-processed foods — vegetables, fruit, yogurt (without the sugar glob jam additives), pasta, grains, beans, main dishes which aren’t smothered in oily cheesey sauces — one can eat well and healthily without it being expensive. I am not talking blueberries out of season and triple-luxe olive oil. As a young adult I had little money and received food stamp aid for a while, but I ate fairly well and healthily, if boringly. Maybe because I was a vegetarian that forced me to look at foods differently.
Marian Nestle’s book “What To Eat” has lots of good info on healthy eating, statistics that refute the healthy-is-always-expensive myth, and explains nutrition science in a readable way. But certainly we need more groceries with healthy food options, more farmers’ markets, in more areas.
Exercise — if we frame that as “physical activity” and expand that concept, there are nearly always ways to get exercise. Take stairs instead of elevators, park farther away, walk farther from the bus stop, get a yoga or exercise DVD or book (free) from your local library so you can dance or do step-work or simple strengthening exercise at home. Certainly it is much harder with kidlets and strollers. Playground play-date sessions where the moms get together too and can run around with the kids. Maternal sleep deprivation — no good answers, unfortunately.
But yes, we do need more parks, safer neighborhoods, built environments that encourage walking.
luv this story……..I participated and shared in a large garden this year……….didn’t cost me a thing (except seeds). My freezer is full, and ready for the holidays. My pumpkins and squash are ready for the oven. I walk everyday, and am in nasty mood when I don’t, which brings me to freezing weather. It does keep me from walking outdoors along the river, but I head to big box stores and walk around there. Getting young people involved in being healthy is a worthy cause……… Mrs. Obama has done a great job, I would have lost it with the way the media treats her, she is gracious.
I plan to spend the day in contemplation of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy 50 years ago today. It was a day that changed our country and our politics forever.
After carefully following the coverage of the anniversary over the past month or so, I’ve come to the conclusion that most Americans want to just pretend it didn’t happen. I think when my generation is gone it will finally disappear into the memory hole. I know there are some people who still care; but memories are fading, and to most younger people events that happened 50 years ago probably seem irrelevant to their everyday lives.
Paying close attention to how the death of a president is lied about by the U.S. media and basically ignored by the U.S. government, I realize that we really are living in Orwell’s 1984.
I am reminded of another Orwell term: crimestop — “The faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought. It includes the power of not grasping analogies, of failing to perceive logical errors, of misunderstanding the simplest arguments if they are inimical to Ingsoc, and of being bored or repelled by any train of thought which is capable of leading in a heretical direction. In short….protective stupidity.”
I hope everyone will take at least a few minutes today to think about what this day marks — a coup d’etat and the end of any pretense of real democracy in America. After what happened to Jack Kennedy, no other president would dare to really cross the CIA, and that is why President Obama will not order the release of the CIA’s secret files on Lee Harvey Oswald’s connections to the agency.
Take care Sky Dancers.
You’re exactly right and I’m so glad for your insights regarding the assassination. It did change all of us. I was six when it happened and I clearly remember the fear I felt at the time and I realize (thanks to some of the things you have written) that the event changed me and our nation as a whole.
Thanks, Janicen.
This is the first time in all these years that I’ve really tried to focus on what happened. I’ve spent quite a bit of time reading about it over the past couple of months and I’ve learned a lot. I’m as vulnerable to denial as the next person–and we really have been subject to years of systematic brainwashing by the media. It’s so much easier to just let it go and pretend everything is fine.
But the problem is that Kennedy’s murder led inevitably to the murders of MLK, RFK, and Malcolm X. The people who carried them out knew that the government would cover up it’s own mistakes and refuse to really search for the truth and that the media would join in the cover-up. It’s the same reason we still have questions about Watergate, Iran-Contra, and 9/11. This isn’t about “conspiracy theories.” It’s about justice. It’s about forcing our government to tell us the truth.
Supposedly that is what Greenwald and Snowden and their followers want, but they don’t see how all these events are connected and have built upon previous ones. Domestic surveillance was already happening back in the 50s and 60s, and it has only grown more sophisticated over the years. And the Kennedy assassination cover-up provided a blueprint for all the succeeding cover-ups.
Bobby was a Senator in NY but was always campaigning. In the fall of 1967, he was to be in the Buffalo area and there was a possibility that he was to come to our house for lunch. (If you recall, my dad was a union president at the time.) Well Oh.My.God. did my mother start cleaning that house. Every nook and cranny had to be spotless. I remember us kids joking that Bobby Kennedy wasn’t going to be going through our closets but you’d never have known that if you talked to my mother. Long story short, the luncheon never happened. My dad said that the schedule was changed at the last minute because of security and “threats” . That’s all we knew and of course we accepted that because we had already been conditioned to accept that populist leaders who fought for the middle class were always in danger of being murdered in this country.
What a story. Too bad he didn’t come.
Yeah, that would have added to the family photo album, wouldn’t it? My dad got an autograph. My husband had it framed for me under a pic of Bobby and my dad. It’s priceless to me.
Great story, Janice. So glad you have that autograph and picture of RFK and your dad. It’s something to treasure and pass on to future generations in your family.
BB, I join Janice in thanking you for your recent posts about JFK. They have been excellent. I was too young to remember his presidency or his assassination. I learned a great deal from reading your posts.
My mother never believed the official reports of JFK’s assassination. She always hoped the real facts would come out some day. I hope so as well, for the greater good of our society.
Thanks, Beata!
Your JFK posts have been excellent BB. TY!!!
The Kennedy Assassination and Pursuing ‘What It Stopped’
What it stopped it seems to me is most important. Every day since JFK’s death has been at least a bit darker and bleaker than it could have been.
http://www.sfgate.com/news/nation-world/slideshow/Life-in-1963-The-year-Kennedy-was-assassinated-74595.php
Click on Cleo
That was fun.
From Amanda Marcotte:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2013/11/22/politico_calls_michelle_obama_a_feminist_nightmare_feminists_disagree.html
I still think advocacy for children is a feminist issue. Women and children are not possessions and they need to be treated better in all circumstances. This just drives me nuts. Again, every issue is a woman’s issue. Raising healthy children makes every one better off.
Rebecca Traister @rtraister
Warren as “Hillary’s nightmare;” Michelle as “feminist nightmare:” DC media seems to be having lots of nightmares about powerful women.
Poor baby pundits. They should be having nightmares about some of the powerful men in DC.
This is an eye opener in more ways than one: http://gawker.com/fox-news-uses-a-leg-cam-to-ogle-female-panelists-legs-1469841162
Fox News Uses a “Leg Cam” to Ogle Female Panelists
The comments, and pictures in them, on that story are amazing.
This was covered here when it occurred. Looks like this young man was a rapist and murderer.
Documents: Mass. Teacher’s Throat Cut, Note Left
What a disturbing story. That poor woman.
This is gonna be an expensive lawsuit!
Miami Gardens store owner films a year’s worth of outrageous behavior by local cops
The state should stop screwing with Austin and leave us alone. There’s a little bad blood there.
Texas GOP Lawmaker Charged With Felony In Airport Gun Incident
Fantastic!
A big win for reason.