In 2005, MSNBC’s Chris Hayes published some remarkable journalism on his experience canvassing for John Kerry in Wisconsin, where voters didn’t seem to have any idea that their economic distress was something for which voting could make a difference.

“When I would tell them that Kerry had a plan to lower health-care premiums, they would respond in disbelief—not in disbelief that he had a plan, but that the cost of health care was a political issue,” Hayes reported. “It was as if you were telling them that Kerry was promising to extend summer into December.”

(. . .)

Data-driven analysis is only as good as the categories by which you sift the information. If you’ve already decided that “liberals” are the people who prefer locally sourced arugula to eating at McDonald’s, or are the people who don’t watch Fox News, it is a reasonable conclusion that there aren’t enough “liberals” out there to elect Bernie Sanders. Yet political categories shift. One of the things the best politicians do is work to shift them.

Sanders has been extraordinarily clear about the kind of shift he’d like to effect: Republicans “divide people on gay marriage. They divide people on abortion. They divide people on immigration. And what my job is, and it’s not just in blue states. . . [is] to bring working people together around an economic agenda that works. People are sick and tired of establishment politics; they are sick and tired of a politics in which candidates continue to represent the rich and the powerful.”

Non custodial parents are the approved 21st century whipping boys (and girls). Non Custodial Parents are the only group where there is next to zero support from those not in our situation. There are plenty of men who fight for women’s rights, plenty of non-blacks and straights who fight for African American and Gay rights. Who stands with Non Custodial Parents?


Our children are torn from us, and more often than not the custodial parent seeks to emotionally isolate and alienate the non custodial parent from the child/children. Two of the three branches of state and federal governments, who should be fighting to protect the rights of all of their citizens, are positioned against us, the legislature and the judiciary. Instead of support or empathy, the only time one of our group is noticed is if they are late in paying or haven’t paid child support, or if they lose it and say or do something they shouldn’t. For the record, I do not know anyone who is in the process of becoming or who is a non custodial parent who hasn’t lost it at some point and I don’t want to meet anyone who hasn’t. If you love and care about your children, I don’t see how you could stay completely sane during this systematic bullying by the system. I don’t see David Hasselhoff and Alec Baldwin the same as the rest of the country and world see them. I’ve been there. My daughter and I were exceptionally close until my ex wife decided to punish me for divorcing her by taking custody away from me. I lost it completely and became incredibly depressed for nearly two years. If you love your child and someone takes them away from you, I guarantee you that at least part of your sanity will not be far behind.


Child Support and every other weekend visits (or less) make the Iraq war look like brilliant policy. There is a simple alternative that is psychologically and emotionally much better for the children, is more fair, and doesn’t encourage one of the parents to use the children as a weapon against the other parent. Its called “Fully Equal and Shared Custody”. One parent has the children for X amount of time, the other has the children next for the same amount of time. They have the children equal amounts of time, thus they each pay for the children’s expenses when the child lives with them, making the arbitrary and capricious amounts set for Child Support unnecessary, inappropriate and irrelevant. The question is, does anyone care?

The only things Hillary's experience seems to be good for is perfecting how to talk out of both sides of her mouth, engaging in the politics of personal destruction and other aspects of her ruthless pursuit of power that remind one of what a Karl Rove might do. That kind of person ought not to be the Democratic nominee.

If that's all her detractors have got, I'm more confident than ever that she is the right candidate.

In a new study, researchers found that goods made in China have much higher carbon dioxide emissions than the same products manufactured in other countries. That’s because the factories making them rely on antiquated technologies and processes and source much of their energy from heavy carbon-emitting coal-fired power plants.

One of the worst-polluting culprits identified was petrochemical plants, which produce propylene—the main ingredient in most plastic products—to feed growing demand from first-world countries such as the U.S.

“To make a pound of propylene in China is 21 times more carbon-intensive than to produce it in the EU,” said Steven Davis, an energy scientist at the University of California, Irvine.

He, along with collaborators at Harvard University and the University of Maryland, looked at data from China, reviewed the life-cycle assessment of various products, and researched how Chinese industries exchanged goods and services. They then calculated how much energy the different industries use and how much carbon dioxide is generated from that energy. Their findings were published in the journal Nature Climate Change.