Washington Post: GOP’s Red America forced to rethink what it knows about the country

uncdan:

stoneagechronicles:

And, naturally, this white whine piece features Tennessee, which kind of “won” (or lost, depending on your perspective) a certain contest from earlier this year that was hosted on this blog.

I rather like how “I’m not ignorant” and “my kids aren’t allowed to read Harry Potter” are said by the same person. 

Source: stoneagechronicles

Let's Get Lost.: I do not personally know any people who are transgender.

higgies:

infinitebackbeat:

And I have a point to saying that.

I full support the rights of LGBTQ men, women, and youth and I accept people who choose to live alternative lifestyles. But I am not personally involved and I do not know all of the specifics of what goes on for them. I suppose that’s obvious. Only in the past…

“Choose” is a strong term.  I’m not offended that you said it, but avoid it in the future because it’s quite incorrect.

Everything else, totally agree.  For all that I know about the LGBT community (including being bi myself), there’s so much that I don’t know.  It’s a very sensitive subject that has a lot of details.  I think that instead of getting offended, people should focus on trying to educate others.  For instance, I just now told Kush that saying that people “choose to live alternative lifestyles” is incorrect, because it’s not a choice.  I’m not hurt that he said it, and I’m not going to send him hate mail about it or stalk his home.

Moral of the story: don’t hate, educate.  Unless the person completely ignores everything you say.  Still, don’t threaten them.  That’s the wrong way to deal with it.

Source: naive-melodies

We’ve been hearing a lot about the war on women, which is real enough. But there’s also a war on the young, which is just as real even if it’s better disguised. And it’s doing immense harm, not just to the young, but to the nation’s future.

Let’s start with some advice Mitt Romney gave to college students during an appearance last week. After denouncing President Obama’s “divisiveness,” the candidate told his audience, “Take a shot, go for it, take a risk, get the education, borrow money if you have to from your parents, start a business.”

The first thing you notice here is, of course, the Romney touch — the distinctive lack of empathy for those who weren’t born into affluent families, who can’t rely on the Bank of Mom and Dad to finance their ambitions. But the rest of the remark is just as bad in its own way.

I mean, “get the education”? And pay for it how? Tuition at public colleges and universities has soared, in part thanks to sharp reductions in state aid. Mr. Romney isn’t proposing anything that would fix that; he is, however, a strong supporter of the Ryan budget plan, which would drastically cut federal student aid, causing roughly a million students to lose their Pell grants.

So how, exactly, are young people from cash-strapped families supposed to “get the education”? Back in March Mr. Romney had the answer: Find the college “that has a little lower price where you can get a good education.” Good luck with that. But I guess it’s divisive to point out that Mr. Romney’s prescriptions are useless for Americans who weren’t born with his advantages.

… What should we do to help America’s young? Basically, the opposite of what Mr. Romney and his friends want. We should be expanding student aid, not slashing it. And we should reverse the de facto austerity policies that are holding back the U.S. economy — the unprecedented cutbacks at the state and local level, which have been hitting education especially hard.

Yes, such a policy reversal would cost money. But refusing to spend that money is foolish and shortsighted even in purely fiscal terms. Remember, the young aren’t just America’s future; they’re the future of the tax base, too.

A mind is a terrible thing to waste; wasting the minds of a whole generation is even more terrible. Let’s stop doing it.

Paul Krugman, The New York Times, “Wasting Our Minds.”

Go read the whole damned thing.

(via inothernews)

Romney’s stance on this just infuriates me because it reflects so many of conservatives’ own views: that with enough hard work, anyone can be successful and if you’re not successful then you’re not working hard enough.

So many of my peers have this idea that being raised in an upper-middle-class neighborhood and having jobs in the summer constitutes hard work, and when their good grades (furnished by the best schools) get them scholarships, they really truly deserved that money over a student at an inner-city school who faced an entirely different set of challenges everyday that are not conducive to good grades. And what that doesn’t cover isn’t a big deal - mom and dad have it. 

I am LUCKY that my father believes in the value of education and good performance in school. I am LUCKY that I had the option to attend an in-state school where my tuition is half-off thanks to the fact that he’s a professor, and that the basic HOPE covers virtually everything else. Still, he’s willing to dish out his retirement (that yes, he built from scratch) to pay my bills so that I can focus on my studies. If not, I (like a few of my roommates) would be strapped with so many student loans I’d be in debt for possibly forever. 

Wealthy conservatives often profess how “blessed” and “thankful” they are but what they do not understand is that they were LUCKY to be born into their circumstances. They want people to work hard to go to college but they do not understand that even those who DO work very, very hard simply cannot afford it — and the conservative fiscal decisions regarding education will only result in fewer people being educated, NOT reserving higher education for those who “deserve it.” Everyone deserves it and everyone deserves it to be affordable. Anything else constitutes a complete lack of insight as to how the world works.  

(via jessicaicampbell)

“Remember, the young aren’t just America’s future; they’re the future of the tax base, too.”

Pretty much the whole thing in a nutshell. If you want to keep your economy strong, America, you simply do not have a choice.

(via jessicaicampbell)

Source: inothernews

DEAR FUCK, NO. NO. NNNOOO.

amazingatheist:

The seventy-year-old female patient had a history of frequent urinary-tract infections. She had a fever and slight back pain, so I ordered a catheterized urine specimen to be sent to the lab. I went on to other patients, but the nurse soon returned and said she had tried to cath the woman but couldn’t find her urethra-the opening to the bladder. She had asked several other nurses to help her cath the lady, but no one could find the urethral opening. I decided to help, and went to the patient’s bedside. I found an elderly, pleasant woman who told me about the history of frequent urinary problems and told me she was childless.

I examined the woman’s perineum and identified the larger orifice of what appeared to be the vaginal vault, and searched above this for the urethral opening. I couldn’t find an opening either, but as I looked, some urine trickled out of the vagina. Suspecting a fistula connecting the bladder to the vagina, or an embedded urethral meatus, I decided to look inside the vagina with a speculum. As I readied to do this, however, I noticed something underneath the vagina, on the perineum, and looked closer. I found the patient’s vagina and intact hymen under what I had assumed was the vagina. I realized that the upper opening she was using as a vagina was in fact the patient’s urethra. I asked the woman if she had any problems with sexual relations with her husband.

“Not really. It hurt the first year or so, but it was fine after that.”

She had been married for fifty-two years.

CHARLES HAGEN, M.D. Auburn, Alabama

Oh my GOD.

I gave four “uuuugh”s, I swear.

Seriously what. What kind of sick fuck fucks a woman in the urethra. How ignorant are these people?