Pornstars are psychologically as healthy as other women?

Only Gerrymandering saved the GOP from losing the House...

Woman auctions off virginity for $780,000

Mass. Chemist Faked Drug Tests, Thousands Wrongly Convicted.

Reversing Trend, Life Span Shrinks for Some Whites

Source: New York Times

For generations of Americans, it was a given that children would live longer than their parents. But there is now mounting evidence that this enduring trend has reversed itself for the country’s least-educated whites, an increasingly troubled group whose life expectancy has fallen by four years since 1990.

Researchers have long documented that the most educated Americans were making the biggest gains in life expectancy, but now they say mortality data show that life spans for some of the least educated Americans are actually contracting. Four studies in recent years identified modest declines, but a new one that looks separately at Americans lacking a high school diploma found disturbingly sharp drops in life expectancy for whites in this group. Experts not involved in the new research said its findings were persuasive.

The reasons for the decline remain unclear, but researchers offered possible explanations, including a spike in prescription drug overdoses among young whites, higher rates of smoking among less educated white women, rising obesity, and a steady increase in the number of the least educated Americans who lack health insurance.

The steepest declines were for white women without a high school diploma, who lost five years of life between 1990 and 2008, said S. Jay Olshansky, a public health professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago and the lead investigator on the study, published last month in Health Affairs. By 2008, life expectancy for black women without a high school diploma had surpassed that of white women of the same education level, the study found.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/21/us/life-expectancy-for-less-educated-whites-in-us-is-shrinking.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120921&moc.semityn.www

Finally! Romney doesn't flip-flop.

It looks like he's sticking to what he was caught saying at that fund-raiser. Voters are now informed on exactly what he believes, what values he holds.

To the surprise of everyone outside of DU, his real values turn out to be despicable. Now, Romney has defined this election emphatically as a class-warfare battle, with an assault against the middle and lower classes. Everyone here knows those people at the dinner believed what Romney does because they made donations above the $50 thousand dollar meal. Let's face it, Romney thought he could speak freely because he was among like-minded colleagues and mostly he was right. It took months for this to come out.

As Ann Romney said in March (?), we've finally see the man beyond the zipper, the real Romney. The striking thing about his politically revealing "wardrobe malfunction" is how he presents himself to his only constituents. To hear him say it, he's valiantly going up against an almost insurmountable 47 percentage point lead, against the hordes of lazy, undeserving, titsucking, dependents: single mothers, welfare queens, social security recipients, war veterans, unemployed, malingering pseudo-disabled pirates and all the other Randian second-handers. As far as he's concerned, this fantasy throng is the only thing standing between the wealthy and another tax cut. Romney's Reliable One Percent will vote for him no matter what, and will now still vote for him even after this is out, unless they stay at home in despair.

The Republicans and Conservatives got the candidate they deserve. A banal, vacuous, thoughtless, arrogant, greedy, stupid, ruthless, self-satisfied brat. He's supposed to be a "moderate" Republican. I think, however, the other "moderate" or "compassionate" Republican presidents of our age could have been caught saying the same thing he did. That is the two Bushes. They were banal in the same way Romney is, raised wealthy and insulated from the middle and lower classes, taught to fear them, and instilled with their own unshakeable sense of entitlement, while being misinformed that they were working for everything they obtained.

Even the conservatives who rose from the lower classes have to imitate the decadent values brought about by the life of a wealthy family's son. They have to praise that ethos and show it with deeds to get investments, or if you're a politician to get donations from the wealthy.

It's very telling, and ironic, that after flip-flopping on everything else, his opinion on the 47 percent would be what he publicly sticks to. This says something, shows it's an issue very near his shrunken, atrophied heart. Romney must actually fear hellfire if he lied about this.

The press is declaring this to be the issue that has lost Romney the election. No, that was last week, (I guess the press can't remember) with his response to the riots and murders of our diplomats in Libya. This time, he has hurt the whole Republican Party. He's now an asset to the Democrats, and he could lose the Repubs both houses of Congress. I'm overjoyed. I haven't felt this way since 1980.

The question I want answered is, who leaked this to the press, and how did Romney screw them over so bad that they would throw this bomb? I suspect Romney is a shit behind the scenes, and there's a vendetta at work, but we may never know.

Government a huge doner to charities.

Mitt Romney's Smirking Suicide: Things Have Changed

Chinese government has a sex scandal.

I hit the ACA SCOTUS reasoning right on the money.

. . . back in December, 2010

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x1610#4793

I have to boast a little about it. Of course, I never thought Justice Roberts would see things my way.

If the Congress can tax, if it has all powers "Necessary and Proper," to a legislature, and if it what it passes, upon signing by the President, if laws passed under the Constitution are the supreme law of the land (the Constitution says all of this) then Congress can pass a mandate.

This is definitely the way the Founders saw it. One of the first things they did in 1789 was pass a law mandating that males above a certain age buy muskets. And if the mandate is unconstitutional, what about Selective Service, which actually mandates that somebody give their life for their country? If that's not closer to real slavery, I don't know what it is.

Mandates go back to the very origin of the country. There's no way conservatives on the SCOTUS can say it's Unconstitutional and call themselves Constructionists. They are, in fact, revisionist.

And if the SCOTUS had struck ACA down, it's hard to see how Single Payer could ever not be considered a mandate.