Scott Walker Using $100 Million Of Taxpayer Money To Fight Off Recall?

Source: Forbes

As Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker heads into the final stretch in his effort to hang onto his job, he is finding it increasingly more difficult to make his case honestly— or without using huge sums of taxpayer money to sway voters.

While life would likely have been easier for the Governor had collective bargaining remained the key issue of the campaign, now that the election has become largely about Walker’s record on job creation, the polls reveal that things are becoming increasingly more difficult for Scott Walker. Wisconsin currently competes with Nevada for the dubious title of worst job creator in the nation, resulting in the polls tightening into a dead heat, leaving the Governor with reason to be worried.

In the effort to move withering public opinion in his direction, the Governor has embarked on a campaign strategy highly dependent upon finding someone else to blame for the poor economic performance of his state. In the process, Walker has resorted to committing a huge amount of taxpayer money to aid in his political survival, while mounting a campaign that—to anyone paying attention—only serves to highlight his own failures over the past decade.

Not surprisingly, the ‘someone’ chosen by Walker to play the role of scapegoat is his recall election opponent, Mayor Tom Barrett of city of Milwaukee—a city with some of the most difficult poverty problems in the nation.

Read more: http://www.forbes.com/sites/rickungar/2012/05/09/scott-walker-using-100-million-of-taxpayer-money-to-fight-off-recall/

Mythbusting Makeup: Skepticism and Cosmetic Claims

There’s two things the general public are guaranteed to be concerned about: their health and the contents of their wallets. Yet somehow we are drawn to claims that you can make your thighs thin via a tube of goop and eagerly purchase promises of perfect complexions through using gunk best slapped on with a spatula.

Just look at any of the millions of products on supermarket shelves worldwide touting legally defensible scientific-sounding advertising gibberish (with no explicit claims as to what exactly the “life-enhancing collagen” will do for your dead hair follicles). Skepticism and questioning the pseudoscience in cosmetics should go together like the products’ endless promises of long-life and perfect skin. With that in mind, I set off to conduct a series of interviews over several months on this topic, hoping to get some sensible advice as to what to do when making up my mind about makeup.

When talking to people for the episode of the Token Skeptic podcast (“On Myths and Makeup”), I tracked down representatives from the United Kingdom, United States, and Australia. While all of them encouraged a skeptical outlook, they all had slightly different takes on the cosmetic industry and how laws in their countries deal with the more questionable efforts to promote products.

For my interview with a representative of the United States, I spoke to Perry Romanowski. He’s a member of the Beauty Brains Podcast and the Chemists Corner website, where he reviews cosmetic products and solves consumer problems. Perry has written and edited numerous articles and books, taught continuing education classes for industry scientists, and is the author of the book Beginning Cosmetic Chemistry.



More:
http://www.csicop.org/specialarticles/show/mythbusting_makeup_skepticism_and_cosmetic_claims

See also:

http://thebeautybrains.com/
http://chemistscorner.com/perry-romanowski/

This TUC boycott has morphed into bigotry

This TUC boycott has morphed into bigotry
Discriminating against Israelis in the name of the Palestinian cause hurts any progressive agenda for a negotiated peace
By Daniel Taub

An NHS conference on conflict resolution for managers and union representatives has turned into a sobering lesson in how conflicts are decidedly not resolved. The guest lecturer at the conference, organised by the Manchester Mental Health and Social Care Trust, was to be Moty Cristal, an expert in negotiation theory and mediation. But under pressure from one of the participating unions, Unison, his invitation was unceremoniously withdrawn. The reason? He is an Israeli.

At no stage, it should be emphasised, was any concern raised about Professor Cristal himself. He is, by all accounts, an expert in his field. He has lectured around the world and in the UK, including to the Muslim Council of Britain, and has been an active participant in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations and back-channel dialogue. It was his Israeli nationality alone, he was informed, which made his participation "unacceptable given Unison and TUC policy on the Middle East conflict".

This is not the first time a supposedly political boycott has seamlessly morphed into bigotry and prejudice. When two Israeli academics were "unappointed" from the editorial boards of journals at Manchester University, – again purely on the grounds of their citizenship – one of them, Gideon Toury, observed wryly: "I was appointed as a scholar and unappointed as an Israeli."

<snip>

A current example is the campaign to press the Globe Theatre to withdraw an invitation to the Habima theatre company, the oldest Hebrew language theatre group in the world, from performing as part of the World Shakespeare Festival accompanying the London 2012 Olympics. Of the 37 participating theatre companies, Habima is the only one subject to such a call. Yet Habima, with its cast of Arab and Jewish actors, and a repertory which repeatedly challenges Israeli establishment dogmas, is precisely the kind of voice that progressives should be supporting, rather than undermining.

More:
http://apps.facebook.com/theguardian/commentisfree/2012/may/08/boycott-israelis-tuc-bigotry?fb_source=other_multiline&fb_action_types=news.reads

Taking the day off and getting my nails done...

Being Mean to Fat People Is Pointless: A Good Old-Fashioned Plea for Civility

Being Mean to Fat People Is Pointless: A Good Old-Fashioned Plea for Civility

"Obesity will crush the United States into oblivion." That's the final line of the trailer for HBO's upcoming fatpocalypse documentary Weight of the Nation (which, as far as I can tell, was directed by Roland Emmerich and ends with Will Smith blowing up the fat-people mothership with a nuclear warhead). That's right, you guys. The fat people are coming. To crush the entire nation. Into oblivioooooooooon. This is why we can't have nice nations.

<snip>

Now. Here's the thing. Maybe obesity is a gruesome scourge that's going to literally sink the United States like a new-timey Lost City of Fatlantis (w-evs, suckers! Fat is buoyant!)—but that's actually not what this post is about. I do not want to talk about whether or not BMIs are bullshit, or whether or not the obesity "epidemic" (PANIC! PANIC! PANIC!) actually leveled off more than a decade ago, or the way that pretty much everyone erroneously conflates size with health. I'm not going to sit here and try to convince the internet that real-world weight loss is infinitely more complicated and painful than calories in/calories out. I want to put all that contentious shit in a jar right now (and put a cloth over the jar so the contentious shit goes to sleep like some idiot parrot) and just talk about the way we talk about fat people.

Fat people in America are reduced to nothing but fatness. A fat person has a health problem of any kind? It's because they're fat. A fat person is single? Well, duh. Fat. They deserve it. A fat person is poor? That's not surprising—obviously they have bad judgment and no impulse control! Because why would a smart person choose to be fat? If a fat person goes to a restaurant and sits on a broken chair and the chair collapses under them, it's because they're fat. But if a thin person sits on the same broken chair and the chair collapses under them, it's because they sat on a broken chair.

And that kind of reductive, simplistic thinking makes it incredibly easy to rest a whole nation's problems on the shoulders of the "obese."

I know this is a terribly uncool, bleeding-heart thing to say, but language like "crush the United States into oblivion" hurts people. It sets up fat people—in case you forgot, fat people are people—as not just the adversaries of our own health or some lady's airplane elbow room or your boner (the usual crimes), but as the future downfall of humanity itself. The assumption that you have a right to legislate another person's body "for their own good," or "for the children," or even "because they're gross," is its own kind of crazy—but to inflate that assumption to apocalyptic proportions, railing against the nation-obliterating medical bills of nebulous future straw-fatties, is fucking bonkers. Actively pushing this idea that fat people, via their choices or lack of willpower (or whatever it is you've decided turned their body into a shape you don't like), are ruining the country just makes the country a worse place for fat people to live. Which isn't going make fat people any less fat; it only makes them more miserable and you more of a dick.

More:
http://jezebel.com/5908787/being-mean-to-fat-people-is-pointless-a-good-old+fashioned-plea-for-civility?utm_campaign=socialflow_jezebel_facebook&utm_source=jezebel_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow

Mass. Gay Republican candidate Tisei statement on President Obama’s new position on gay marriage

TISEI STATEMENT ON PRESIDENT OBAMA’S NEW POSITION
ON GAY MARRIAGE

(Lynnfield, MA) – Congressional candidate Richard Tisei today issued a statement regarding President Obama’s change of heart with regard to gay marriage.

“I support the evolution, as he has called it, of President Obama’s position on gay marriage. I’ve been a strong advocate for equal rights for all people in the area of marriage equality and elsewhere for years. As a country, we need to respect one another even when we sometimes don’t understand each other – especially when we don’t understand each other. In Massachusetts, I joined with other elected officials in both parties in support of these rights – not special rights, but equality.

President Obama is to be commended for changing his personal view on this matter, even as he reiterated his support for the right of states to do as they please regarding gay marriage. I would urge President Obama to work with people in both parties to lessen the fear surrounding this issue and to avoid its use for political gain. No one in either party should use this issue for political advantage. Voices need to be lowered and more tolerance needs to come into play throughout our land. When the Pilgrims came over so long ago, they didn’t agree on everything. So they focused on how they could successfully govern themselves and drew up the Mayflower Compact. They looked at what they had in common and how they could get along. We need to continually re-affirm our support for each other as Americans, even as times continue to change.”

http://tiseiforcongress.com/news/tisei-statement-on-president-obamas-new-position-on-gay-marriage/1663/

Tisei's slogan is, "A New Direction for Washington."

Say the phrase, "New Direction" out loud to yourself a few times.

Stand With President Obama in Support of Marriage Equality

Stand With President Obama in Support of Marriage Equality http://dccc.org/pages/marriage-equality

President Obama has announced that he supports marriage equality for all Americans.

Now we’re facing a critical moment. We must show that the American people stand behind the President and support extending the rights and responsibilities of marriage to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Americans.

Add your name and stand with President Obama in support of marriage equality.

More:
http://dccc.org/pages/marriage-equality

Yeah, right. Just add it to "Teh List."

I'm kidding.

THIS IS AWESOME!




BREAKING: Obama Embraces Marriage Equality

President Obama has come out in support of marriage equality for gay and lesbian people in an interview with ABC News’ Robin Roberts this afternoon:

OBAMA: I have to tell you that over the course of several years as I have talked to friends and family and neighbors when I think about members of my own staff who are in incredibly committed monogamous relationships, same-sex relationships, who are raising kids together, when I think about those soldiers or airmen or marines or sailors who are out there fighting on my behalf and yet feel constrained, even now that Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is gone, because they are not able to commit themselves in a marriage, at a certain point I’ve just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same sex couples should be able to get married.

More:
http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2012/05/09/481147/obama-marriage-2/

Ex-"Rage" Guitarist (Tom Morello) Threatens To Run Against Rahm

Source: NBC Chicago

Tom Morello, former guitarist of Rage Against the Machine, is living up to his ex-band’s name by threatening to run for mayor against Rahm Emanuel.

Morello says Emanuel canceled the permit for a May 18 National Nurses United rally after he was added to the bill. The group originally had permission to march to Daley Plaza but was told to move to Petrillo Music Shell “to accommodate changes to your event, including a performance by a nationally known musician and a significantly increased number of expected attendees.”

Morello raged against Emanuel to Rolling Stone magazine.

“Chicago is my hometown and the mayor is making me feel mighty unwelcome,” he said. “I don’t care what they say or do, I’m coming to rock out and speak my mind. We won't be silenced and we won't be stopped. If Rahm Emanuel is so afraid of my popularity in Chicago maybe I should run against him in the next election. See you in the streets.”

Read more: http://www.nbcchicago.com/blogs/ward-room/Ex-Rage-Guitarist-Threatens-To-Run-Against-Rahm-150796505.html

The Wisdom of Bayard Rustin