Representative Conyers is Fighting For Our Homes

One last post for the night. Here is a video that Rep. Conyers and David Dayen (of Calitics fame) created to invite people to tell their foreclosure story and explain how Conyers' sponsored legislation is designed to change bankruptcy laws and stop foreclosures. You can read more about it at Brave New Films.

I just passed this link on to a friend. It's via Balloon Juice and it is all kinds of awesome.

Have You Heard? Conservative States are Top Porn Consumers

I just love this.

Eight of the top 10 pornography consuming states gave their electoral votes to John McCain in last year's presidential election – Florida and Hawaii were the exceptions. While six out of the lowest 10 favoured Barack Obama.

Gotta love them family values. Well, it seems to me that the more a healthy desire is suppressed, the more in comes out in the form of projection and shadow. So, name it and claim it, conservatives! Adding to this relatively minor tidbit is the more noticeable idiocy pertaining to sex education going on in the Texas public school system. Their abstinence only programs are a dismal failure if your metric is factually informed teens.

The study was published by Texas Freedom Network and they looked at the study materials from over 900 school programs. Not really surprisingly, they found massive factual errors. The report was called "Just Say Know" and it states,

"The overwhelming majority of Texas schools use scare tactics and spread myths in place of teaching basic sex and health information that students can use to protect themselves and others."

As Steven Benen points out, let's not forget that there is more than an ethical and public health cost to this incompetence. Economically, misinformation is really expensive:

Texas, thanks to its taxpayer-financed confusion, has one of the highest teen-pregnancy rates in the nation, costing the state "approximately $1 billion annually for the costs of teen childbearing.

AIG Bailout Further Explained

I'm no economist so I am trying really hard to understand this mess we're in. It's difficult to find well-written articles explaining in simple language who did what to whom and why. This is the best article I've read yet about why AIG was in such bad shape (specific things they did/did not do and how they communicated to other financial entities about risk/return) and why they continue to need the gobs and gobs of taxpayer dollars they're getting. It doesn't look like it's going to end anytime soon.
Also this:

The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.