*This video is not for children, Republicans, or the faint of heart.*
It is a satire of what the republicans of our country want to do to women.
"Republicans, Get in my Vagina"
http://front.moveon.org/kate-beckinsale-on-why-you-should-open-up-your-legs-and-let-the-government-in/#.T7VZ_MHPRH4.facebook
Yay us. So, vote republican today, and we can have this happen too!!!
Friday, May 18, 2012
Wednesday, May 16, 2012
Bill on Student Loans in Limbo
On Tuesday, the Senate voted on the future of Stafford Loan interest rates. The rates for subsidized loans are currently at 3.4%, but without action from the government, will jump to 6.8% come July 1, 2012. A majority of 60 votes were needed to pass the bill which would lower these rates, unfortunately, the votes were split 52/45.
The issue between parties is not lower interest rates — most are in agreement that they should be lowered — it’s the how that’s keeping the bill from passing. The bill, written by the Democrats, attempts to close a tax loophole for high-salary workers in order to fund one more year of low-interest loans. However, the Republicans rather see this money come from elsewhere.
With both parties locked in a stalemate, it’s unclear how this issue will be resolved, but to learn more about the bill, check out this recent article from The New York Times.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/09/us/politics/senate-republicans-block-bill-on-student-loan-rates.html?_r=1&smid=tw-share
or read it below...
By JONATHAN WEISMAN
Republicans in Senate Block Bill on Student Loan Rates
WASHINGTON — Senate Republicans on Tuesday blocked consideration of a Democratic bill to prevent the doubling of somestudent loan interest rates, leaving the legislation in limbo less than two months before rates on subsidized federal loans are set to shoot upward.
Multimedia
Related
Student Loan Debate Becomes Election-Year Fight (April 27, 2012)
Student Loan Interest Rates Loom as Political Battle (April 20, 2012)
The Election 2012 App
A one-stop destination for the latest political news — from The Times and other top sources. Plus opinion, polls, campaign data and video.
Luke Sharrett for The New York Times
Democrats arrayed college students to plead for a yes vote. The bill was blocked on party lines.
Readers’ Comments
Readers shared their thoughts on this article.
Along party lines, the Senate voted 52 to 45 on a key procedural motion, failing to reach the 60 votes needed to begin debating the measure. Senator Olympia J. Snowe, the moderate Republican from Maine who is retiring, voted present.
Senators said quiet negotiations had begun to resolve the impasse, but Democrats sought to raise the political pressure, vowing to take to the Senate floor to show the cost of inaction for students in their states.
“Mitt Romney says he supports what we’re trying to do. I’d suggest he pick up the phone and call Senator McConnell,” said Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Senate majority leader, referring to the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.
Republicans blamed Democrats for the impasse and suggested that they were manufacturing a political controversy instead of working out differences in private.
“We all agree we’re not going to let the rate go up,” Mr. McConnell said.
The vote was the Senate Republicans’ 21st successfulfilibuster of a Democratic bill this Congress, which started in January 2011. Republicans have blocked consideration of President Obama’s full jobs proposal, as well as legislation repealing tax breaks for oil companies, helping local governments pay teachers and first responders, and setting a minimum tax rate for households earning more than $1 million a year. Republicans say the measures were flawed and potentially harmful to the economic recovery.
But the student loan filibuster may be the highest-profile stalemate yet, because unlike those earlier bills, this one is not likely to be abandoned. Mr. Obama has elevated the issue by hammering Republicans on it for weeks. American students took out twice the value of student loans in 2011, about $112 billion, as they did a decade before, after adjusting for inflation. Over all, Americans now owe about $1 trillion in student loans. In 2010, such debt surpassed credit card debt for the first time.
The bill in limbo addresses only part of that burden. Graduate students with Stafford loans pay a higher rate, as do students with unsubsidized Stafford loans. Most undergraduates take out both unsubsidized and subsidized loans.
Republicans say they want to extend Democratic legislation passed in 2007 that temporarily reduced interest rates for low- and middle-income undergraduates who receive subsidized Stafford loans to 3.4 percent from 6.8 percent. But the Republicans would not accept the Senate Democrats’ proposal to pay for a one-year extension by changing a law that allows some wealthy taxpayers to avoid paying Social Security andMedicare taxes by classifying their pay as dividends, not cash income.
“They want to raise taxes on people who are creating jobs when we are still recovering from the greatest recession since the Great Depression,” said Senator Lamar Alexander, Republican of Tennessee, who instead wanted to pay for the rate decrease by eliminating a fund for preventive health care in Mr. Obama’s health care law.
Before the vote, Senate Democrats arrayed college students to plead for a yes vote, including Clarise McCants, 21, a junior at Howard University in Washington who said she pulled herself out of a troubled neighborhood in North Philadelphia and relies on $13,500 in Stafford loans for her tuition.
“I know I’m not the only one with dreams,” she said. “I’m here to ask Congress, ‘Don’t double my rate.’ ”
Republicans have not always been so averse to closing the loophole that the Senate bill addresses. In 2004, when it emerged that John Edwards, then a vice-presidential hopeful, had classified himself as a “subchapter S corporation” to pay himself dividends rather than income, conservatives criticized him for avoiding payroll taxes.
But the Democratic line of attack has been complicated by the House’s actions. Shrugging off a veto threat, the House passed an extension of the subsidized rate last month, paid for with the preventive health care fund. Thirteen Democrats voted for the bill, making up for the 30 Republicans who voted no because they opposed federal subsidies for an interest rate that they believed should be set by market forces. Those Democratic defections put the House bill over the top and fortified Republican arguments that the Senate Democrats were now to blame for the stalemate.
Representative Steny Hoyer of Maryland, the House minority whip, said Tuesday that those Democratic votes were driven by politics, not substance. “They didn’t want that 30-second ad” attacking them for opposing a rate-subsidy extension, he said. “That was not a demonstration at all for the funding source.”
Republicans made clear they would go on offense, blaming Democrats if interest rates doubled July 1.
“Instead of compounding the problem with more bad policies that raise taxes on small businesses and raid Social Security and Medicare, we must work together to prevent a rate increase on students and make it easier for job creators to hire them when they graduate,” Senator Roy Blunt, Republican of Missouri, said after the vote.
Monday, May 14, 2012
Tap -vs- Bottled water
Question of the day Tap water or bottled water???
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Like so many other people of the world I have always bought bottled water. Why? Well, because it is easy, BUT is convenience more desirable than health?
Did you know that 40% of all bottled water is just filtered tap water. In that case I can buy my own filter and filter my own tap, while saving plastic from polluting our environment and adding more money to my pockets. Not to mention the chemicals from the plastic that is polluting me. Plastic bottles that we drink from are 80% P.E.T.E. or Polyethylene terephthalate. Yeah, it took me a couple tries to pronounce it too. What it is though is more important than how it is pronounced.
Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) is clear, tough, and shatterproof. It provides a barrier to oxygen, water, and carbon dioxide and is identified with the number 1. PET's ability to contain carbon dioxide (carbonation) makes it ideal for use in carbonated soft drink bottles. Take a look at the bottom of your soft drink bottle and you will most likely find a number 1 there. PET is also used to make bottles for water, juice, sports drinks, beer, mouthwash, catsup, and salad dressing. You can also find it on your food jars for peanut butter, jam, jelly, and pickles as well as in microwavable food trays.
Recent studies have shown that reusing bottles made of PET can in fact be dangerous. PET was found to break down over time and leach into the beverage when the bottles were reused. The toxin DEHA also appeared in the water sample from reused water bottles. DEHA has been shown to cause liver problems, other possible reproductive difficulties, and is suspected to cause cancer in humans.
Where is it that these bottles end up? In our land fills, recycling, side of the road, and, you got it, in our water supply??? The chemicals are leaking out into our fresh water system, into our ocean life as well as wildlife, and, that's it, right back into us!
There are only a handful of states the mandate recycling and add a $.05 or $.10 deposit on each bottle, Maine being one of them. With the deposit approximately 70% of people recycle, but that is compared to 20% who recycle in the rest of the country, where it is not mandated. So in my estimation these plastic bottles after the first use are sitting in our water and environment leaking out chemicals that we are then putting in our children and ourselves...ew! Think about that the next time you want to throw a bottle on the ground!
And this, is only the plastic. We have not even come to the water part yet...which is scary.
Water is a natural resource, so shouldn't it be a natural right to have water, to not "own" water, to share it, and to take care of it? Most people think this, but (of course) corporations have a different view on it. Since it can make them money by fooling the people of the world, by convincing them they are giving you a "natural" product at safer way to go. How safe are the chemicals in the plastic? The best part of all of this is that most bottled water is only filtered tap water...that is why they call it natural.
Nestle, who is owned by Pepsi, also owns Poland Springs, Zephyrhills, Ice Mountain, Ozarka, and Deer Park water, believe that they can do whatever they want to. Nestle came into Fryeburg, Maine, before any of the towns people knew, and started pumping water from the town's well, and since Maine has what is called Absolute Dominion law (whose pump is bigger), they had every right to come in and take the water from this town. Fryeburg went two days without their water supply, until they could pump in another well to receive water. The nursing homes, children, and animals had a horrible time during these two days.
How is it that during a drought of 35 states, where residents were on strict water usage restriction, that Pepsi continued to pump approx. 350,000 gallons of water a day to bottle and sell, were being sold back to the drought ridden people???
Falls Lake, North Carolina
No one can say what the long term effects of destroying our environment by bottling water will have on people. It is only since 1989 that water was being bottled in plastic.
Did you know that the FDA doesn't have a whole lot to do with bottled water companies? The monitoring of bottled water in really inadequate due to the issue of the bottled water companies doing their own testing and reporting of said water. In easy words they are self regulated. The FDA also only covers products that are crossing state boarders, which most corporations like Pepsi and Coke, keep it locally within state. They bottle the water from the state they sell it right back to.
Tap water is constantly being tested, multiple times a day, to see if it is drinkable. It is a regulated system, where the water is tested by municipalities officials approx. 300 times a month.
You healthiest, safest choice is to get a refillable, non-BPA, container, and drink your tap...refill at water fountains, since they are regulated, and help educate others on the folly of bottled water!!!
Like so many other people of the world I have always bought bottled water. Why? Well, because it is easy, BUT is convenience more desirable than health?
Did you know that 40% of all bottled water is just filtered tap water. In that case I can buy my own filter and filter my own tap, while saving plastic from polluting our environment and adding more money to my pockets. Not to mention the chemicals from the plastic that is polluting me. Plastic bottles that we drink from are 80% P.E.T.E. or Polyethylene terephthalate. Yeah, it took me a couple tries to pronounce it too. What it is though is more important than how it is pronounced.
Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) is clear, tough, and shatterproof. It provides a barrier to oxygen, water, and carbon dioxide and is identified with the number 1. PET's ability to contain carbon dioxide (carbonation) makes it ideal for use in carbonated soft drink bottles. Take a look at the bottom of your soft drink bottle and you will most likely find a number 1 there. PET is also used to make bottles for water, juice, sports drinks, beer, mouthwash, catsup, and salad dressing. You can also find it on your food jars for peanut butter, jam, jelly, and pickles as well as in microwavable food trays.
Recent studies have shown that reusing bottles made of PET can in fact be dangerous. PET was found to break down over time and leach into the beverage when the bottles were reused. The toxin DEHA also appeared in the water sample from reused water bottles. DEHA has been shown to cause liver problems, other possible reproductive difficulties, and is suspected to cause cancer in humans.
Where is it that these bottles end up? In our land fills, recycling, side of the road, and, you got it, in our water supply??? The chemicals are leaking out into our fresh water system, into our ocean life as well as wildlife, and, that's it, right back into us!
There are only a handful of states the mandate recycling and add a $.05 or $.10 deposit on each bottle, Maine being one of them. With the deposit approximately 70% of people recycle, but that is compared to 20% who recycle in the rest of the country, where it is not mandated. So in my estimation these plastic bottles after the first use are sitting in our water and environment leaking out chemicals that we are then putting in our children and ourselves...ew! Think about that the next time you want to throw a bottle on the ground!
And this, is only the plastic. We have not even come to the water part yet...which is scary.
Water is a natural resource, so shouldn't it be a natural right to have water, to not "own" water, to share it, and to take care of it? Most people think this, but (of course) corporations have a different view on it. Since it can make them money by fooling the people of the world, by convincing them they are giving you a "natural" product at safer way to go. How safe are the chemicals in the plastic? The best part of all of this is that most bottled water is only filtered tap water...that is why they call it natural.
Nestle, who is owned by Pepsi, also owns Poland Springs, Zephyrhills, Ice Mountain, Ozarka, and Deer Park water, believe that they can do whatever they want to. Nestle came into Fryeburg, Maine, before any of the towns people knew, and started pumping water from the town's well, and since Maine has what is called Absolute Dominion law (whose pump is bigger), they had every right to come in and take the water from this town. Fryeburg went two days without their water supply, until they could pump in another well to receive water. The nursing homes, children, and animals had a horrible time during these two days.
How is it that during a drought of 35 states, where residents were on strict water usage restriction, that Pepsi continued to pump approx. 350,000 gallons of water a day to bottle and sell, were being sold back to the drought ridden people???
No one can say what the long term effects of destroying our environment by bottling water will have on people. It is only since 1989 that water was being bottled in plastic.
Did you know that the FDA doesn't have a whole lot to do with bottled water companies? The monitoring of bottled water in really inadequate due to the issue of the bottled water companies doing their own testing and reporting of said water. In easy words they are self regulated. The FDA also only covers products that are crossing state boarders, which most corporations like Pepsi and Coke, keep it locally within state. They bottle the water from the state they sell it right back to.
Tap water is constantly being tested, multiple times a day, to see if it is drinkable. It is a regulated system, where the water is tested by municipalities officials approx. 300 times a month.
You healthiest, safest choice is to get a refillable, non-BPA, container, and drink your tap...refill at water fountains, since they are regulated, and help educate others on the folly of bottled water!!!
No War on Women? Our Big A** Chart Says You’re Wrong!
05/11/2012 · 2:46 PM BY
Many have said the war on women doesn’t exist, that it’s a ploy by the left to demonize Republicans. But what have we seen since they took over the house and stormed state legislatures across the country in 2010?
We’ve seen no comprehensive jobs bills, no bills drafted to try to stabilize the economy or rein in the criminal excesses of Wall Street and the banking worlds; we’ve witnessed continued, unrelenting obstructionism…
And we’ve seen the passage of an unprecedented number of bills meant to limit women’s access to health care and abortion services, which, may I remind you, remains legal in the United States of America. By the end of 2011, 135 pieces of legislation had been passed out of 1100 introduced, and in 2012 alone over 30 new provisions or measures have already been enacted out of 944 bills introduced.
Sometimes all those numbers can make it difficult to grasp the severity of the situation and only a visual will drill the message home.
Luckily for you, The Stew has just that – with a huge thank you to Stew blogger Karen Y. for her tireless research!
Thursday, May 3, 2012
Mayonnaise Jar and Two Cups of Coffee
The Mayonnaise Jar and Two Cups of Coffee
When things in your lives seem almost too much to handle, when 24 hours in a day are not enough, remember the mayonnaise jar and the 2 cups of coffee.
A professor stood before his philosophy class and had some items in front of him. When the class began, he wordlessly picked up a very large and empty mayonnaise jar and proceeded to fill it with golf balls. He then asked the students if the jar was full. They agreed that it was.
The professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar. He shook the jar lightly. The pebbles rolled into the open areas between the golf balls. He then asked the students again if the jar was full. They agreed it was.
The professor next picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar. Of course, the sand filled up everything else. He asked once more if the jar was full. The students responded with an unanimous "yes."
The professor then produced two cups of coffee from under the table and poured the entire contents into the jar effectively filling the empty space between the sand. The students laughed.
"Now," said the professor as the laughter subsided, "I want you to recognize that this jar represents your life. The golf balls are the important things--your family, your children, your health, your friends and your favorite passions--and if everything else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full.
The pebbles are the other things that matter like your job, your house and your car.
The sand is everything else--the small stuff. "If you put the sand into the jar first," he continued, "there is no room for the pebbles or the golf balls. The same goes for life. If you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff you will never have room for the things that are important to you.
"Pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness. Play with your children. Take time to get medical checkups. Take your spouse out to dinner. Play another 18. There will always be time to clean the house and fix the disposal. Take care of the golf balls first--the things that really matter. Set your priorities. The rest is just sand."
One of the students raised her hand and inquired what the coffee represented. The professor smiled. "I'm glad you asked.
It just goes to show you that no matter how full your life may seem, there's always room for a couple of cups of coffee with a friend."
When things in your lives seem almost too much to handle, when 24 hours in a day are not enough, remember the mayonnaise jar and the 2 cups of coffee.
A professor stood before his philosophy class and had some items in front of him. When the class began, he wordlessly picked up a very large and empty mayonnaise jar and proceeded to fill it with golf balls. He then asked the students if the jar was full. They agreed that it was.
The professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar. He shook the jar lightly. The pebbles rolled into the open areas between the golf balls. He then asked the students again if the jar was full. They agreed it was.
The professor next picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar. Of course, the sand filled up everything else. He asked once more if the jar was full. The students responded with an unanimous "yes."
The professor then produced two cups of coffee from under the table and poured the entire contents into the jar effectively filling the empty space between the sand. The students laughed.
"Now," said the professor as the laughter subsided, "I want you to recognize that this jar represents your life. The golf balls are the important things--your family, your children, your health, your friends and your favorite passions--and if everything else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full.
The pebbles are the other things that matter like your job, your house and your car.
The sand is everything else--the small stuff. "If you put the sand into the jar first," he continued, "there is no room for the pebbles or the golf balls. The same goes for life. If you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff you will never have room for the things that are important to you.
"Pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness. Play with your children. Take time to get medical checkups. Take your spouse out to dinner. Play another 18. There will always be time to clean the house and fix the disposal. Take care of the golf balls first--the things that really matter. Set your priorities. The rest is just sand."
One of the students raised her hand and inquired what the coffee represented. The professor smiled. "I'm glad you asked.
It just goes to show you that no matter how full your life may seem, there's always room for a couple of cups of coffee with a friend."
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