One of the biggest problems facing the U.S. is the massive ideologically-driven income gap. Fewer people in the middle hurts the economy: despite the myth, the wealthy only create jobs when people are spending – and poor people don’t have much to spend. But fear not, there is a bright side to this.
Currently women make roughly 75 cents to every dollar that men make. That isn’t the bright side and it sounds pretty terrible. Because it is. But that is among all age groups. The numbers gets slightly closer as one gets younger and younger, even if they are still quite a bit apart. It is there, however, that is where the solution lies.
As big box stores and other huge corporations become more and more the norm, people are given fewer and fewer good choices for employment. Yes, the days of real pay are over, but look on the bright side: if everyone is making $8 an hour and there is no middle class, as Republicans and other ideologues want, then from where will disparity between the sexes originate? There will still be big gaps between those at the very top, sure, but they make up a very tiny percentage of the population. As the so-called “job creators” become richer and richer, the jobs they’ll be creating will employ a great number of people – part time, at eight bucks an hour and with no real benefits. Even if men make $8.15 an hour, such disparity will hardly be noticed. Indeed, the sort of peanut raises so many Americans get today already go unnoticed.
Breyer told hundreds of people during an event in downtown Little Rock that a judge’s job is to figure out how the Founding Fathers’ values apply to modern issues.
“George Washington didn’t really have a view about the Internet,” he said, drawing laughter from the crowd of about 650 people at the Statehouse Convention Center.
It’s sad to think that more people, including the purely political conservative “justices” on the Court, don’t realize this utterly basic fact.
I hate hearing this moronic meme that the United States has the best health care in the world. It doesn’t. Anyone who thinks otherwise is ideologically deluded. I’m looking at you FOX Noise.
One major reason for our tendency to suck is that we have relatively little emphasis on preventative care. Countries with real health care, such as Canada, tend to pay a whole lot less overall in their costs while detecting diseases and illnesses early. (As it happens, this tends to help out poor people quite a bit, but hey, that might shrink the unsustainable, ideologically-driven, money-powered, larger-than-pre-1929 income gap we have going on right now.)
Medicare officials said Wednesday that the program will pay the $93,000 cost of prostate cancer drug Provenge, an innovative therapy that typically gives men suffering from an incurable stage of the disease an extra four months to live.
The good news is that the drug extends survival rates by about 4 months versus no treatment and two months versus chemotherapy. The bad news is that Dendreon, the company that makes Provenge, is about to make a billion or so dollars off the taxpayer. It claims this reflects the billion they put into research, but how much of that was subsidized by the government? And are they going to reduce the cost once they recoup their money? (Hint: No.)
But bioethicists who study health care decisions say Medicare’s ruling on Provenge mirrors the bias of the overall U.S. health system, which emphasizes expensive treatments over basic medical care. Health care costs account for nearly one fifth of the U.S. economy, more than any other country.
“We tend to put our health care dollars into very high-tech interventions that produce very marginal improvements,” said Dr. Steven Miles, a professor at the University of Minnesota’s Center for Bioethics. “The problem is that we have created a health care system that is uniquely inadequate in terms of access to primary health care, which is where you get the most bang for your buck.”
One of the big problems with our new health care law is that the stubbornness and fear Americans have towards change has prevented a single-payer system. “But my lib3rty!!!11!!!”, they say. Well, I hope you like a side of late-stage cancer with all that freedom. (Wait…do dead people have liberty?)
In an effort to be consistent, Maine governor Paul LePage has announced that he is removing his own picture from the official state of Maine website. “I just don’t see how I can show my face and not be a contradictory asshole”, said LePage.
LePage was referring to his previous douchebaggery act of removing a mural featuring great moments in Maine’s labor history from the Department of Labor building. When asked why he was being such a prissy little dick, he told reporters that the mural was hostile towards business owners who enter the Labor building. Now in an effort to be consistent, LePage has said he will take down his own image from Maine.gov.
“It wouldn’t be fair of me to leave my fat fucking face up there. It’s clear that not only am I hostile to the simple aesthetics of the website, but my face represents an anti-common sense, anti-labor, anti-poor people, anti-black people, anti-paying taxes honestly, anti-science, anti-intelligence point of view. If the Department of Labor mural’s hostility to business values justifies its removal, then certainly my anti-all things good values justifies the removal of my mug.”
Opposition to LePage was stunned. Democratic leader Emily Cain of Orono expressed utter amazement. “This guy has been a pure douche for the past 3 months. He has made Maine look like a fucking joke. I can’t believe he would actually go and do something intelligent for once.”
LePage’s supporters were less enthusiastic, but all said they understood. “This is a real hit to the Republican party, but at least the dickface is being consistent”, said Bangor council member and frequent radio guest Cary Weston.
The reaction of the Maine people is yet to be seen, but early comments indicate an appreciation of the first grain of honesty from the current administration.
“Ayuh, I don’t like the douche, but I’ve always felt his face made Maine’s website pretty hostile to a whole lotta common sense things. Gotta agree with LeDouche on this one”, said Joe Blow.
The administration reports that its replacement of LePage’s mug with a black hole is only temporary, however no objections have been raised. In fact, everyone has so far agreed that the new image really makes a lot of sense.
“I have two grandchildren: Maggie is 11; Robert is 9,” Gingrich said at Cornerstone Church here. “I am convinced that if we do not decisively win the struggle over the nature of America, by the time they’re my age they will be in a secular atheist country, potentially one dominated by radical Islamists and with no understanding of what it once meant to be an American.”
About the only thing he got right is that his grandchildren will likely be in a secular country when they get to his age. That is, presuming they stay in the United States and the United States remains exactly the same as it has been for the past 235 years.
I think it was around 2000. I was 15 and in my freshmen year of high school. Adolescent hormones raged inside me. Everything in life was so busy, so much more complicated. I had all these new feelings inside me. Which sexual orientation was I to choose?
I created an excel flow chart that I worked on weekend after weekend. If I was going to figure out what I liked, I was going to need to make a rational decision with some hard data. I listed all the attributes I liked in guys in one area of the chart and all the attributes of girls I liked in another area. It was going to be a tough competition.
I took my sheets and translated them into tables and graphs. As I looked at the boys, I noticed several things I liked: We all seemed to like being assholes to each other, only guys seemed to want to go to the arcade, and we all had the same juvenile sense of humor. “What’s that, Billy? An armpit fart? Ho-ho, har-har! Well done, my friend! Well done! You are certainly in the running!”
I took a look at the tables and graphs for the girls. It looked like they had these magical things called “boobies”.
Then, to play it safe and sure, I rechecked the data, specifically looking at the graphs. Here’s what I got for the boys:
And for the girls:
There the science was right in front of me. I clearly had far more hard data in favor of the girls than the boys. I even compared my data set to those of my friends. Some had the same numbers. Others had more mixed information. Still others had just the inverse. I even found out girls had these things called “minds”. My choice was clear.
So when did you decide to be gay or straight? What sort of scientifically accurate charts did you make?
I’ve writtenaboutJohn Lott in the past. We were even Facebook buddies for a little while. At least until I embarrassed him by, ya know, doing research. It turned out he was being dishonest about something or other and he didn’t want to deal with someone pointing that out (see here). I suppose his history of apparently making up studies and impersonating women on the Internet who praise John Lott (fancy that!) would make him a little sensitive. So I suppose with that in mind, the guy isn’t likely to post anything like this:
Update: I don’t read Lott’s terrible blog (he mostly just reposts junk from other sites…weird that he doesn’t like original material, huh?), but I was interested to see his freaking out and whining from when Obama won the presidency. And what did I find? Why, this:
minor puzzle: Obama predicts a million plus at his “celebation” tonight but there are a lot of empty hotel rooms
That was the grammatically painful title of a post the sore loser made. Is it true? Nope.
Mayor Daley predicted Tuesday that more than a million people would descend on Grant Park for Barack Obama’s election night “celebration” and said the city has no plans to screen people entering the park.
The mayor said “everybody’s talking about” the Obama celebration.
“It’s gonna be surprising. There’s gonna be a lot of people who will want to come down and celebrate…We hope it’s a million or more. It would be wonderful.”
The full article is no longer available, but not only is the quote from Daley and not Obama, but it looks like it wasn’t even a prediction. Daley was just saying he hoped for a huge turnout. (He got it, though it was more like 125,000.) Not only was Lott wrong about who made the prediction, he was wrong about what was actually said. Yep, wrong in his wrongness. Amazing.
Michelle Obama has done an excellent job in her role as the First Lady. Her efforts to curb obesity deserve nothing but praise. Being fat is terrible. The only thing worse is being proud of it – I’m looking at you, America.
This almost all stems from Obama’s effort to push through a bill last year that decreased the number of hungry students while at the same time funding healthier food for public schools. Conservatives, more willing than ever to lie, keep saying over and over and over “I don’t want to be told what I can and cannot eat!” (Or maybe they’re just that fucking stupid. I don’t know.) The bill changed some government standards for food in public schools. If these people weren’t against the government giving kids shit food, then they shouldn’t be against the government giving them good food. The difference is in quality, not mandates or forced diets or any other nonsense.
What brings this on is the polemics of the argument. Limbaugh showed them perfectly: Michelle Obama had shitty food? SHE HATES YOUR FREEDOM AND IS JUST AN ELITIST!!1!! It’s annoying. We can’t have an honest discussion about this stuff. People who actually give a damn about health are over here saying, hey look, nutrition starts at birth. We need to make sure every child is as healthy as can be. And we also need to make sure we continue those good habits. That doesn’t mean being perfect or not having that big meal at Thanksgiving. It means keeping the salt down, cutting out the trans-fats, boosting the minerals and vitamins; it means exercising – go for a run or a walk, lift weights, play tennis. Every day? If you can, sure. But anyone who isn’t a polemic asshole knows that one doesn’t need to train like a star athlete to be healthy.
Take a look at this typical conservative response I got (via Facebook) about Limbaugh’s failed attack on Obama:
1) You’re right. Ribs are healthy.
2) “Individual splurges”? WAIT a minute! You just said it was healthy? Let’s take a poll: Ribs for dinner – healthy or unhealthy?
It’s this sort of polarization of which I am becoming increasingly intolerant. Anyone who bothered to follow the links from the Limbaugh story knows that Obama had a small serving of lean ribs with a series of healthy sides that most Americans would never touch; she went to that restaurant specifically because it was healthy. What’s more – and I’m sure I’ve lost the polemic audience at this point, what with my use of facts and junk – she was skiing. I personally make it a point to eat some fast food before I take the mountain. I want to give myself the most energy I can for the day because I know how quickly I’m going to burn it off – just because a food is generally not healthy does not mean it is always not healthy. Not that Obama ate unhealthy or had a fatty meal because she went skiing. She actually had a healthy meal. Limbaugh and every supporting conservative either just lied or was willfully ignorant.
That brings me to my next point: fast food. Yes, once in an absolute great while, I will indulge without the reason of some major activity. As shitty as the food is, I’ve never had a problem with admitting how great it tastes. I have it maybe once or twice a month. I’m sure I’ve also gone three or four months without it. And even if I wanted it twice a week, I could get away with it because of my metabolism and healthy activity. Does that make me a hypocrite? Does it make my pro-health arguments invalid? Does it mean Obama would disapprove? Nope, nope, nope. But despite that, I hear one conservative I know give me a shit every time he sees me with a fast food burger. I hate it. Not because it exposes some double-standard – I don’t have that in regards to health. I hate it because it’s an example of the sort of polemics that are more comfortable on conservative radio than in rational discussion. I wish we could banish these arguments wherever they rear their ugly little heads.
But don’t think my motivation here is personal. I’m seeing these pro-fat arguments being made all the time, not just by friends or on Facebook. Polemics are the annoying surface of the issue, but the real problem is that all these conservatives are promoting fatness. It is wrong to not try and be healthy. That doesn’t mean it’s wrong to be fat – though fat people tend to be the chubby face of the problem. It means people ought to make an honest effort to be healthy. That will vary from person to person. (It’s especially frustrating when the lying conservatives pretend like that isn’t true.) America faces a terrible problem right now: we’re getting fat and not enough people are angry about it.
Forcing one side to argue an extreme hurts a very noble cause. And despite the lying and unwillingness to engage in an honest dialogue, I think most conservatives also recognize that obesity is a serious problem. We need to tackle it. If we can get our arms around it. We need to take the politics out of all this, get rid of the asshole-ridden polemics. Michelle Obama is making a very good effort and everyone should be thanking her. We need to follow her lead. Fill our schools with healthy foods. Discourage kids from getting fast food. Make restaurants disclose what they’re feeding us. Encourage more activity. These are good things. Let’s not fight against them because of some unrelated ideology.
In my run-in with a few caricature feminists last year, I disagreed over something pretty simple. There was a picture of two fat women next to an article about fat women and medical care on CNN. The caricature feminist, Suzanne Franks, said that it was a sexist picture because it didn’t show their faces, instead only focusing on their “boobs and vagina”. Several people, including myself, pointed out that it would be wildly inappropriate to feature their faces, and besides, the article was about fat people. The objectification was on fatness, not women per se. For that I was deemed horrifically sexist; I clearly must hate all women. In fact, I was accused of only disagreeing because the blogger was a woman. In reality, I actually had assumed she was a man. A small part of the reason is that most bloggers are men, but there was also this reason:
As I (audaciously!) explained in previous posts, I never said my assumption (that the post was by a man) was good or bad. What’s more, I was also going on the fact that Franks looks like a man with long hair in her picture. I didn’t originally raise that point for the sake of not being so crude, but if she’s going to hammer on the point, then that’s what’s going to happen.
So in my effort not to be insulting of her face, I had to say I had an assumption I knew wouldn’t going over well where I was. But I figured I had at least won the point: If I assumed the blogger was a male, then I couldn’t possibly be disagreeing for the sake of disagreeing with a woman. Of course, actually addressing that point would be embarrassing; people don’t like to admit when they’re wrong on the Internet. Instead, everyone focused on the fact that I had such a crazy! assumption in the first place. I freely admitted that it wasn’t a great assumption to have, even if most bloggers actually are male, but that didn’t really matter to anyone. Assumptions?! YOU HATE [whatever that person likes]!!!
So that brings me to a recent post by PZ. He talks about some new book that says 21st century men are immature and not living up to any real standards. The reason? Feminism, of course! It’s clearly a stupid premise.* However, just as stupid is the claim PZ makes that men aren’t growing up for the intrinsic reason that they are men. If there’s a problem with this generation, it isn’t just with one sex or the other. (Not that I think there’s something horrid about this generation: PZ is an old guy, so he’s falling into the trap into which most every old person before him has fallen – he thinks young people suck and we didn’t have to walk 15 miles in the snow to get to school just so we could get our daily whipping!)
But his unusually muddled post aside, several of the commenters take the time to mention video games when talking about immature men. Jadehawk had this to say:
meh. I don’t mind the non-marrying, non-settling down sort of man. I don’t even mind the video-game playing, spending all night on the internet type. In fact, I’ve got one of those at home.
It’s the entitled douchebags I mind. Those who think all women are supposed to play mommy for them.
While I’m glad Jadehawk (look at me, not assuming his or her sex!) took the time to differentiate between these type of men, I still really hate the association between video games and the immaturity PZ discussed. It’s just an ugly assumption. And aren’t assumptions like that just shitty? They were when I made them about Franks being male.
But on video games: first of all, video gamers are nearly split 50/50 between male and female today. Second, if someone goes on and on about the acting or the storyline or the plot twists or the cinematography of a movie, why, that’s just an avid movie goer; that person really appreciates a form of art. But video games? Nah. That’s just childish baby-baby stuff. It’s totally different because, um, well, uh, um, um, um, it just is, okay?!
You know, I don’t think my points here are too crazy. 1) The connection between feminism causing immaturity in men is just as nebulous as the connection between men and some magical intrinsic immaturity. 2) The assumptions we make, while almost always more common and with more impact from the dominant side, are often a fault. 3) Video gamers are composed of an ever-increasing even mixture of men and women, neither of which is immature for wanting to have some virtual fun.
But I’m sure that’s horribly fucking sexist in someone’s eyes.
*According to the comment section on the post, it looks like that isn’t really the premise of the book. The website reporting it, WorldNutDaily, seems to have given things their own spin.
For the Sake of Science 