It was just a of couple days ago that we learned that Texas gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis thinks Texas’s gun controls are too strict. Now we’ve got this: Wendy Davis said Tuesday that she would have supported a ban on abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy, if the law adequately deferred to a woman and her doctor. First, what in the hell is that even? What does “if the law adequately deferred to a woman and her doctor” mean? Okay, explain yourself: “My concern, even in the way the 20-week ban was written in this particular bill,...
Continue reading...2014
Majority of Americans want better relations with Cuba, and so do I
A poll by the Atlantic Council found that 56% of Americans favor a more direct engagement, or even normalized relations with our neighbors off the coast of Florida. What’s more: The poll offered even greater evidence that a political tide has turned with its finding that two critical domestic political constituencies favor renewed ties to Cuba by even larger majorities than the nation at large. Survey respondents from the US Hispanic community supported broader Cuban relations by 62 to 30 percent. And voting-age residents of Florida, a decisive swing state in recent presidential elections, back a policy...
Continue reading...New York Times Columnist Line of the Day – 11 February 2014, Part Deux
My god this David Brooks column is SO David Brooks it hurts. First (I mean second), this line: Fertility rates, a good marker of confidence, are down. Is there a machine that pumps out David Brooks weird columns about how all economic and social ills are actually because confidence or values or emotions? Now, let’s unpack this paragraph. I’m just gonna go ahead and edit it for, well, correctness: No, a big factor here is a loss in self-confidencemoney. It takes faithmoney to move. You are putting yourself through temporary expense and hardship because you have faithmoneyso...
Continue reading...New York Times Columnist Line of the Day – 11 February 2014
If you’re one of the three people who remembers this here blog from its hay-day, you have once in a blue moon checked out the New York Times op-ed page. You probably recognize the names of the columnists, who every day spout the most conventionally wise of the conventional wisdom. This is a feature that is dedicated to these folks, highlighting one line that is either funny, ridiculous, strange, or actually intelligent or well-written. Today’s is from David “I Seriously Can’t Believe They Pay Me” Brooks, who in his column today drops the David Brooks beat right...
Continue reading...Why those Beatles tickets were reasonably priced
Yglesias notes that when The Beatles came to town in 1964, tickets to see them were actually pretty reasonable, if not downright cheap: Adjusting for inflation, those tickets ranged in price from $15 to $30. These days $30 will get you in to see St. Vincent at the 9:30 Club but prices to see Kings of Leon at the Verizon Center start at about $60. There are a number of concomitant reasons why, despite it being the hottest show in the world, it was so much cheaper than any popular concert would be in 2014. First is the simplest of...
Continue reading...New York Times Columnist Line of the Day – 7 February 2014
If you’re one of the three people who remembers this here blog from its hay-day, you have once in a blue moon checked out the New York Times op-ed page. You probably recognize the names of the columnists, who every day spout the most conventionally wise of the conventional wisdom. This is a feature that is dedicated to these folks, highlighting one line that is either funny, ridiculous, strange, or actually intelligent or well-written. Today’s is from David “Good God You Have A Job Doing This?” Brooks, who in his column today “Other People’s Views,” writes: We...
Continue reading...Poems for the Cruelest Month
T.S. Eliot was wrong. February is the worst. February by Bill Christophersen The cold grows colder, even as the days grow longer, February’s mercury vapor light buffing but not defrosting the bone-white ground, crusty and treacherous underfoot. This is the time of year that’s apt to put a hammerlock on a healthy appetite, old anxieties back into the night, insomnia and nightmares into play; when things in need of doing go undone and things that can’t be undone come to call, muttering recriminations at the door, and buried ambitions rise up through the floor and pin your...
Continue reading...New York Times Columnist Line of the Day – 6 February 2014
If you’re one of the three people who remembers this here blog from its hay-day, you have once in a blue moon checked out the New York Times op-ed page. You probably recognize the names of the columnists, who every day spout the most conventionally wise of the conventional wisdom. This is a feature that is dedicated to these folks, highlighting one line that is either funny, ridiculous, strange, or actually intelligent or well-written. Today’s is from Gail “The Colander” Collins, who in her column today, “Calling All Candidates,” writes: Some voters get primaries, others barely get...
Continue reading...Feminist rant of the day
[I’m sure this won’t actually be a daily feature here at V&V, but it’s a pretty reliable description of what much of my blogging is about, so.] This is how it goes. You tell me you’ve figured out what the “77 cents to a dollar” means, and it isn’t that a woman working the same job as a man gets paid that much less. It’s comparing women’s median pay with men’s median pay, without accounting for the jobs they’re in or hours worked or what. And also there’s a study that among educated 22-30 year old non-parenting...
Continue reading...Economic inequality and mobility are not the same thing
It’s the story of the day. Well, it’s the story of the past, well, ever. It seems the rich get richer and the poor get poorer and the middle gets squeezed. And, truly that’s at least been the case since 1980. Some see the cure for this malady to be “economic mobility,” which basically means, making it easier for people who were born poor to stop being so poor and start being middle class (or rich even!). Hard work and smarts! The American dream! It’s the obsession of Americans, this idea that there’s a path for people...
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