Pretzel_Warrior
Pretzel_Warrior's JournalCare to watch some old conservative crackpot read his newspaper on YouTube?
Hilariously boring. This guy writes under the byline of pjcomix as well as his real name, P.J. Gladnick at Newsbusters. He loves to eat and loves to buy in bulk.
Here's just a sample of this guy's work. He tells us..."keep an eye on November 9, 2013". I googled it. Nothing. So this guy's not Nostradomus. But he does like traditional print media and just wants to share.
I need everyone's help again with a book list. This one is Top 5 books you've read.
Last December/January I ended up compiling a pretty good list of "top books" to recommend to a teenager. After that, it spurred me to do a fair amount of research on the subject and ended up with a good list to offer to my teenage daughter. She's really been reading a lot this past year which is great.
So now....
What are the top 5 books you've personally read that moved you and stuck with you the most and you would easily recommend to other adults to read? I will compile everyone's results again this year. This one is much more wide open. Doesn't have to be geared toward a specific audience. Doesn't have to be fiction or nonfiction.
I will list mine in there at some point as well, but I don't want to steer the discussion in any particular direction.
"#!$%#@*^$% moderates!" Column in USA Today (Sept 2013)
This woman has some good thoughts on why it might be the saner course to get back toward moderation and compromise to actually move this country forward.
And yet when it comes to politics, the staunch and unbending are yelling. The right sneers that fellow GOP-ers are "RINOs" (Republicans in Name Only); the left bashes "moderate Democrats" in favor of a "good, progressive, populist message," to quote Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2013/09/12/moderates-democrats-republicans-politics-column/2806517/
"When did moderate become a political dirty word?" CNN
Admittedly, this is from 2012 election when Romney was still fighting for the right to get ass handed to him by Obama, but this commentator brings up some good history on moderation and why some in modern times seem to think it is aptly used as a weapon such as here on DU and on other message boards of the opposite political persuasion.
It was Barry Goldwater in 1964 who said:
And then he promptly got HIS ass handed to him by LBJ. The vast majority of Americans are centrist. That's just a fact.
http://www.cnn.com/2012/04/01/opinion/greene-moderate/
Abstract thinking can make you a more politically moderate. University study.
I find this experiment quite interesting regarding recent topics about moderates vs. liberals or more strongly held or ideologically pure views.
The research, described in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science, explored attitudes toward what some people refer to as the ground zero mosque, an Islamic community center and mosque built two blocks from the site of the former World Trade Center in New York City. When the Islamic center first was proposed it sparked a heated debate pitting proponents of religious freedom against those who felt the center should be moved away from the site of the 9/11 attacks out of reverence for those killed by Muslim extremists.
http://www.news.illinois.edu/news/12/1102abstract_thinking_JessePreston_DanielYang_IvanHernandez.html
Obamacare NOT what is contributing to drop in employer sponsored health insurance coverage
The Economic Policy Institute reveals the drop in employer-sponsored health insurance (ESI) for over a decade--something that has nothing to do with Obamacare. This is a critical point to cite when discussing this issue with conservaderps.
No demographic or socioeconomic group has been spared from the erosion of job-based insurance from 200010. Both genders and people of all ages, races, and education levels have suffered declines in employer-based coverage. Workers across the wage distribution, in small and large firms alike, and even those working full time and in white-collar jobs have also lost coverage.
http://www.epi.org/publication/bp337-employer-sponsored-health-insurance/
For overall reference, here is a link to a Kaiser Family Foundation table about who is covered by what types of insurance in the U.S. population. The breakdown is as follows by percentage
Employer 149.4 48.5%
Medicaid 50.6 16.4%
Uninsured 48.6 15.8%
Medicare 40 13.0%
Individual 15.4 5.0%
Other Public 3.8 1.2%
------------------------------------------
TOTAL 307.8 100.0%
Quickly, this means for over 81% of the population (with employer sponsored, Medicare, Medicaid, or other public insurance) there will be virtually no changes.
For those who are already in private insurance market and uninsured, it will be a mixed bag. Some will qualify for expanded Medicaid. Others will be able to obtain insurance for the first time in a long time and not be denied coverage or priced out of the market. Others who purposefully choose not to be insured will be compelled to, and some younger healthier people in private insurance market will have to pay more (in many cases because the cheap policies they have cover virtually nothing).
http://kff.org/other/state-indicator/total-population/
This is a great opinion piece in Baltimore Sun about Republican's insane demands
It looks like this whole debt ceiling thing is shaping up to be a huge "BLAME REPUBLICANS" drama if the GOP really goes through with their continued cycle of taking the nation all the way to the brink of shutdown and default. There will be no negotiating or capitulation on this. The only negotiation should be: "I'll give you a couple of small cuts only if you agree to raise the top tax bracket to 50%. End of discussion, clowns."
House leaders say stuffing the measure with all these "goodies" is the only way they can muster the votes to raise the federal debt limit by $1.1 trillion. Really? The GOP is so captured by wild-eyed fanatics that they'll plunge the nation into default, substantially raising the debt for many years to come, until everyone gives in to their demands?
Why don't they close the Capitol building and take the tourists hostage while they're at it? And that's not flagrant hyperbole compared to Sen. Todd Cruz likening those who allowed the health care reform law to pass and Germans who allowed Adolph Hitler to rise to power. It's getting increasingly difficult to tell the difference between the harm Republicans seem intent on inflicting the nation and any personal injury they might want to cause the innocent bystander.
More at:
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/editorial/bs-ed-hostages-20130926,0,407114.story
Don't have a handle on statistics, sampling, margin of error? MIT to the rescue for FREE
take advantage of MIT's open courseware which provide you video lectures, reading material, sample problems, etc.
You, too, can begin to undertand the principles of statistical inference about a population based on a sample size.
Learn too how sample size relative to the population will affect the confidence interval and cost of executing the sampling.
Great for people who don't understand scientific polling.
http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-science/6-041-probabilistic-systems-analysis-and-applied-probability-fall-2010/index.htm
face it. There is a contingent on DU who love a shirtless Putin and are swooning
over his ice blue eyes. Every word of his send chills up their spine and they thrill to his next brilliant move.
There's really nothing to be done. Only an antidote of injecting wolf blood into a person has a slight chance of diminishing the fascination and infatuation with the Russian leader.
It is best to realize Obama has been bettered by the pale enigma from Leningrad.
On edit: Quick! Someone start a VPG! We needs more pictures!
No. I was TS'd for not being politically correct enough. I learned a lesson with that one
Not least of which is that a)it can happen without warning, b)it can happen despite years of positive posting, and c)numerous requests to admins for some type of explanation can and will be completely ignored.
Some people want to say what I said was homophobic. It was me overstepping some people's bounds by suggesting gay rights people who were impatient with Obama in 2009 were lime others who said "Where's my pony?" only I said in that case "where's my fabulous pink pony.". I could understand it being deleted and people PM'ing me explaining their outrage...but summary execution seemed a bit harsh.
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Gender: MaleHometown: where beer does flow and men chunder
Home country: USA
Member since: Sun Dec 16, 2012, 03:36 AM
Number of posts: 8,361