peterfeld:

If you saw the Buzzfeed story about how Mitt Romney went from being a vocal supporter of gay rights up through his successful 2002 election for governor (in moderate Massachusetts) — then, on taking office, immediately switched gears to holding rallies against same-sex marriage, saying:

I agree with 3000 years of recorded history. Marriage is a union between a man and a woman.

and testifying:

The children of America have a right to have a mother and a father.

it’s obvious what was going on. Mitt never had any interest in being governor of Mass. - he wasn’t going to run for reelection anyway, now he was running for president. He just said whatever he had to say. Classic Etch-a-Sketch.

But if you’re wondering what his true attitude might be, check out this story in the Washington Post about Mitt as a prep school senior:

Back on the handsome campus, studded with Tudor brick buildings and manicured fields, he spotted something he thought did not belong at a school where the boys wore ties and carried briefcases. John Lauber, a soft-spoken new student one year behind Romney, was perpetually teased for his nonconformity and presumed homosexuality. Now he was walking around the all-boys school with bleached-blond hair that draped over one eye, and Romney wasn’t having it.

“He can’t look like that. That’s wrong. Just look at him!” an incensed Romney told Matthew Friedemann, his close friend in the Stevens Hall dorm, according to Friedemann’s recollection. Mitt, the teenaged son of Michigan Gov. George Romney, kept complaining about Lauber’s look, Friedemann recalled.

A few days later, Friedemann entered Stevens Hall off the school’s collegiate quad to find Romney marching out of his own room ahead of a prep school posse shouting about their plan to cut Lauber’s hair. Friedemann followed them to a nearby room where they came upon Lauber, tackled him and pinned him to the ground. As Lauber, his eyes filling with tears, screamed for help, Romney repeatedly clipped his hair with a pair of scissors.

Still wondering: which part of “3000 years of recorded history” don’t you understand?

newsweek:

One of our video producers edits today’s NewsBeast show. (He had no idea we creepily snapped this shot behind him). (Taken with instagram)

Hi, Greg!

Log Cabin Republicans Executive Director R. Clarke Cooper • In a statement released late Wednesday afternoon, condemning President Obama for what they perceived as manipulation of the LGBT community. “Log Cabin Republicans appreciate that President Obama has finally come in line with leaders like Vice President Dick Cheney on this issue,” said Cooper, adding, “this calculated announcement comes too late to be of any use to the people of North Carolina, or any of the other states that have addressed this issue on his watch.” source (via • follow)

Either this guy is some kind of genius expert on quantum reverse causality, or he’s a confused as a … as a gay Republican.

newsweek:

You just had to do that, didn’t you, Fox Nation?!

I missed the “declares war on marriage” part. Can someone catch me up?

… and hooray for that.

“Cat cafes,” where cats are the “hosts” and humans the paying customers, spread from Japan to Austria (birthplace of Hitler, BTW). This will not end well.

…when there’s money in it. Go free market!

This guy gets it. (via BoingBoing)

WWII RAF hero; pivotal figure in the Six-Day War. Now you know.

nwkarchivist:

Victory in Europe Complete;

Allies Now Turn Efforts Toward Smashing Jap War Machine

A peace that passeth all understanding came to the world this week.  It was anticlimactic, it was premature, it was confusing, it was the greatest snafu of all time-but it was wonderful.  On the 2,075th day of the biggest, costliest war in history, some 25,000,000 ceased fighting.  Ahead lay the difficult problems of the peace and the hard struggle to bring to an end the other half of the global war, the war against Japan.  But for a few days at least a great burden was lifted for muvh of mankind.

Newsweek May 14, 1945

(via cheatsheet)

theatlantic:

The Difference Between the U.S. and Europe in 1 Graph

The euro zone has Greece. The United States has Mississippi. Or Missouri.

The difference between the U.S. and Europe is that when the Greek economy “pulls a Mississippi” (or perhaps I should say, when Mississippi “pulls a Greece”), the EU and the U.S. have 180-degree opposite reactions. Over here, we calmly write checks to Mississippi in the form of Medicaid and unemployment insurance, no questions asked. Europe has no comparable “Peripheraid” for its weak peripheral states. Instead, it has chaos.

Michael Cembalest, a JP Morgan analyst, passes along another clever graph which shows fiscal transfers (don’t worry, that’s just another word for money) between the rich California-Connecticut-Illinois-New Jersey-New York quintuple and poorer states like Tennessee. If similar, seamless transfers existed in the EU, the rich north would have to send to Portugal and Greece at least an additional 30 cents for every dollar they paid in taxes, year after year after year.

When you hear commentators say, “the euro zone must begin to transition toward a fiscal union,” what they are saying, in human-speak, is that the Europe needs to be more like the United States, with balanced budget laws for its individual members and seamless fiscal transfers from the rich countries to the poor, to protect the indigent, old, and sick, no matter where they reside.

The Germans call this sort of thing “a permanent bailout.” We just call it “Missouri.”

You just messed with the wrong dairy farm.

(via crookedindifference)

Too soon?

iloveoldmagazines:

Popular Science

1947 Vol. 150, No. 5

shutupweirdo:

Topic: How Mom Wronged You