Think Obama’s a huge spender? Then you need to see these two charts. On Tuesday, Kevin Drum posted this chart showing the growth in total government spending -- that means federal, state and local -- adjusted by population ("per capita").
Kevin Drum, Mother Jones The takeaway, Drum says, is that "total government spending didn't go up much during the Clinton era, and it's actually declined during under President Obama. In the last two decades, it's only gone up significantly during the Bush era, the same era in which taxes were cut dramatically. " But some said Drum's chart was a trick, as it looked at total government spending rather than just federal spending. President Obama and the Magic Dime. Gun-death tally: Every American gun death since Newtown Sandy Hook shooting (INTERACTIVE)
The answer to the simple question in that headline is surprisingly hard to come by.
So Slate is collecting data for our crowdsourced interactive. This data is necessarily incomplete (click here to see why, and to learn more about @GunDeaths, the Twitter user who helped us create this interactive). Gun Industry Spends Millions to Get Children Into Guns. Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images With the declining popularity of shooting sports, the firearms industry has come up with a way to make sure it still has customers in the future: Appeal to children.
The New York Times’ Mike McIntire takes a detailed look at how around five years ago, the industry ratcheted up a campaign to market its products to younger and younger children through a variety of nonprofit groups it directly finances. These groups sometimes give money and ammunition to youth groups, sponsor handgun competitions for children, and develop video games that directly promote certain brands of weapons. Meanwhile, they lobby lawmakers to weaken any age restrictions that may exist on hunting and shooting sports in general.
Even though the NRA has long supported youth shooting programs, those types of activities were usually confined to using single-shot rifles. Ilona Szwarc: American Girls and their owners (PHOTOS). Ilona Szwac.
Ilona Szwarc’s initial contact with the American Girl doll happened during a period of shooting street photography. Intrigued by the seemingly endless parade of real-life girls and their versions of a “mini-me,” Szwarc approached the girls and their parents to see if she could document them. American Girl dolls have been a perennially popular toy for nearly three decades, and the franchise includes several styles of doll, flagship stores, and even a magazine. An 18-inch doll runs around $100, which doesn’t include all the outfit changes and a multitude of accessories. Some of the dolls focus on American history, but Szwarc focused on the more popular “contemporary” versions.
Sarah Palin and Fox News Part Ways, Showing how Star Power has Faded. Bill Pugliano/Getty Images Sarah Palin and Fox News are parting ways.
Real Clear Politics was first to hear word from a source close to the former governor that Palin had decided not to renew her contract at Fox News. The cable channel later confirmed the news with the New York Times saying that several sources had described the split as amicable. To Barack Obama on the Eve of His Second Term: Time to Acknowledge Climate Change, Globalization, and Genetic Engineering. In the three or four decades after 1490, the human experience on planet Earth arguably changed more than it had since the Year One. Voyages of discovery transformed a world of isolated societies and sent potatoes and tomatoes sailing from the New World to Ireland and Italy, and horses and apples from Europe to the Americas in return.
Trade became truly global, and cross-cultural exchange the norm. The invention of movable type and the printing press fostered popular literacy. Obama’s 2013 State of the Union Address. The 8 Greatest Wars Ever Fought by Fox News. #4.
Obama's Gay War on Marriage In May of last year, the worst conservative fears had come true -- our president announced that he didn't care if gay people got married. The war on men. The battle of the sexes is alive and well.
According to Pew Research Center, the share of women ages eighteen to thirty-four that say having a successful marriage is one of the most important things in their lives rose nine percentage points since 1997 – from 28 percent to 37 percent. For men, the opposite occurred. The share voicing this opinion dropped, from 35 percent to 29 percent. Believe it or not, modern women want to get married. Guess which North American country produces the most garbage. Wrong! Despite how demure its citizens are, Canada sometimes feels a little insecure about always being promoted as second-fiddle to the United States.
There is a famous T-shirt which suggests that Canada is America’s hat; while this is largely true, Canada yearns to occasionally suggest that the U.S. is Canada’s boxer shorts. (Your Florida is hanging out.) In one thing, though, Canada emerges victorious: garbage production. From the CBC: The Conference Board of Canada gave Canada a C grade on Thursday and ranked it in 15th place among 17 developed nations studied across a host of environmental-efficiency metrics.