"This hasn't been a great week in terms of, I think, the Constitution and where it says that you're supposed to, you know, everybody is, has a mandate to have insurance. But I think the way some Republicans are handling this is nothing more than purely despicable. The names that are next to and being highlighted by those crosshairs — I think it's an abuse of the Second Amendment. I also feel as though every single person on here is a mother, a father, a friend, a brother, a sister, and to take it to this level is — it's disappointing to see this come from the Party, and I would hope that leaders like Sarah Palin would end this" – Elizabeth Hasselbeck, who campaigned with Palin.
Month: March 2010
What’s For Dinner?
The USDA and the Economic Research Service look at 100 years of American eating. Graph above on meat eating habits. Another point of interest:
Increasing availability of fats and oils and cheese reflects their use in processed foods and the growing eating-out market in the second half of the century. The availability of fats and oils grew from 36 pounds per person in 1909 to 87 pounds in 2008. Much of this increase was in salad and cooking oils used to cook french fries, a mainstay of fast food and other restaurant menus. Cheese availability also skyrocketed—growing from 11.4 pounds per person in 1970 to 31.4 pounds in 2008. Cheese owes much of its growth to the spread of Italian and Mexican eateries in the United States and to innovative, convenient packaging, such as string cheese for lunch boxes.
(Hat tip: Kottke)
“You Promised My Boy A Mountain Of Chocolate”
Brandon Hardesty impersonates Walken and Nicholson in a brilliant (and NSFW) reenactment of a scene from Willy Wonka (with a dash of True Romance).
Mental Health Break
SNASK from Mike Crozier on Vimeo.
Time-lapse Teeth
A creepy but cool video of a little girl.
Gender In the Masthead
Newsweek revisits gender disparities in the workplace four decades after 46 female employees sued the magazine in a landmark suit:
U.S. Department of Education data show that a year out of school, despite having earned higher college GPAs in every subject, young women will take home, on average across all professions, just 80 percent of what their male colleagues do. Even at the top end, female M.B.A.s make $4,600 less per year in their first job out of business school, according to a new Catalyst study. Motherhood has long been the explanation for the persistent pay gap, yet a decade out of college, full-time working women who haven't had children still make 77 cents on the male dollar. As women increasingly become the breadwinners in this recession, bringing home 23 percent less bacon hurts families more deeply than ever before.
The numbers for the Newsweek newsroom are somewhat comparable:
No one would dare say today that "women don't write here," as the NEWSWEEK women were told 40 years ago. But men wrote all but six of NEWSWEEK's 49 cover stories last year—and two of those used the headline "The Thinking Man." In 1970, 25 percent of NEWSWEEK's editorial masthead was female; today that number is 39 percent. Better? Yes. But it's hardly equality. (Overall, 49 percent of the entire company, the business and editorial sides, is female.) "Contemporary young women enter the workplace full of enthusiasm, only to see their hopes dashed," says historian Barbara J. Berg.
Dashed?
Face Of The Day
Hewitt Award Nominee
"Possibly Obama just hates Israel and hates Jews. That’s plausible — certainly nothing in his actions suggests otherwise, really," – Glenn Reynolds.
Malkin Award Nominee
"The other day I went to look at their platform for the Democratic Party for our nation. I couldn't understand any of it. I don't speak any French," – Gov. Tim Pawlenty in New Hampshire Friday.
The Closing Of The Conservative Mind
WF Buckley's son, Chris, notes a fickle individualism and orneriness in his father that simply would not be allowed in today's 'conservative' 'movement':
I invoke William F. for straightforwardly mischievous reasons. He was the founder of the modern conservative movement that is in such terrible shape at the moment. He was also unpredictable.
While his brother James L. Buckley was running (not so well) for re-election to the U.S. Senate in 1976, WFB endorsed Allard K. Lowenstein for Congress. Allard K. Lowenstein was so far to the left of WFB that WFB wouldn't have been able to find him with the Hubble telescope. And yet WFB recognized in his friend Al a fineness of mind and principle. A patriot. But oh, what a hullaballoo it caused.
But then WFB had always been a reliable supplier of hullaballoos. In 1965, while running for mayor, he endorsed construction of bicycle paths in New York City. He was green before Green. In the late 1960's, he came out for decriminalization of drugs…
Flash forward to two years after our invasion of Iraq: He pronounced the enterprise to be failed. The reaction to this sounded an echo of LBJ, post-Tet, when he gloomily said, "If we've lost Walter (Cronkite), we've lost the war." In 1988, WFB endorsed Joe Lieberman, then a Democrat, for the U.S. Senate. Well, the list goes on and on.
Once upon a time, the intellectual conservatives in this country cherished their dissidents, encouraged argument, embraced the quirky, valued the eccentric and mocked the lock-step ideological left. Now they are what they once mocked. And they have the ideological discipline of the old left.
The Dish 