Gallup Survey: Acceptance Of Polygamy Is Up

According to the New York Times, the shift on same-sex marriage has captured the headlines, but the changes on views toward marriage are much broader than one issue.

The latest Gallup social issues survey shows changing social views since 2001.  They show that not just support for same-sex marriage is changing.

Approval of unwed parenthood (45 percent in 2001, 61 percent now), divorce (59 percent then, 71 percent today), and premarital sex (53 percent then, 68 percent now) are on the rise.

Also, the acceptance of polygamy has more than doubled.  Support for “plural matrimony” rose from 7 percent to 16 percent during the same period.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/31/opinion/sunday/ross-douthat-the-prospects-for-polygamy.html?_r=0

President Creates Twitter Account, Gets Trolled By Racists

President Obama sent his inaugural Twitter post from the Oval Office on Monday, writes The New York Times.

The White House heralded the event with fanfare, and displayed a photograph of him perched on his desk tapping out his message on an iPhone.

The account is @POTUS — named for the in-house acronym derived from “President Of The United States.”

A White House aide wrote that it would “serve as a new way for President Obama to engage directly with the American people, with tweets coming exclusively from him.”

According to The New York Times, however, it took only a few minutes for Mr. Obama’s account to attract racist, hate-filled posts and replies.

“They addressed him with racial slurs and called him a monkey,” wrote the Times.

One post had an image of the president with his neck in a noose.

Racial hostility toward the nation’s first black president has long been expressed in stark terms on the Internet, where conspiracy theories thrive and prejudices find ready outlets, writes The New York Times.

“But the racist Twitter posts are different because now that Mr. Obama has his own account, the slurs are addressed directly to him, for all to see,” writes the Times.

(Updated article to add link)

More:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/22/us/politics/obamas-twitter-debut-potus-attracts-hate-filled-posts.html?_r=0

LA Times: Is The Republican Campaign To Repeal Obamacare Over?

After five years and more than 50 votes in Congress, the Republican campaign to repeal the Affordable Care Act (the ACA or “Obamacare”) is essentially over, states the LA Times.

According to the LA Times, GOP congressional leaders, unable to roll back the law while President Obama remains in office and unwilling to again threaten a government shutdown to pressure him, are focused on other issues like trade and tax reform.

Another interesting development is that senior Republican lawmakers have quietly incorporated many of the law’s key protections into their own proposal bills, including guaranteeing coverage and providing government assistance to help consumers purchase insurance.

Oddly, facing the situation that the Supreme Court this year could strip away insurance subsidies provided through the law, several GOP lawmakers have even proposed extending the aid, perhaps even until a new president takes office.

Former Florida Governor and presidential candidate Jeb Bush has shown little enthusiasm for a new healthcare fight. Last year, he even criticized the repeal effort, states the LA Times.

This doesn’t mean that efforts to repeal the law will completely stop.

“Only 18% of Americans want to go back to the system we had before because they do not want to go back to some of the problems we had,” Whit Ayres, a veteran Republican pollster who works for presidential candidate Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida.

Republicans like Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, who still demand a repeal, appear to be long shots for the presidential nomination, states the LA Times.

More realistic might be adjustments to Obamacare rather than outright repeal. For example, the Affordable Care Act allows states to enact policies that specifically ban abortion coverage in health plans offered through the health insurance exchange.

Right now, Republicans in the House State Affairs Committee in Texas are considering just such a bill that would ban coverage for abortion in health plans offered through the ACA’s health insurance exchange.

Opponents, however, argued that House Bill 3130 would create yet another hurdle for women.

More:

http://www.latimes.com/business/healthcare/la-na-obamacare-republicans-20150418-story.html#page=1

(Updated article)

Malta and Azerbaijan To Develop LNG, Oil Hub: More Energy Independence For The Region?

Malta and Azerbaijan have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to collaborate on the development of a LNG (Liquified Natural Gas) hub which would serve for local and international markets, reports the Times of Malta.

The MOU targets “strategic collaboration” in the oil and gas sector as part of the government’s vision to transform energy and petroleum sectors into key value added economic activities, and both sides identified a number of key areas, according to MarineLink.com.

The European Union is also looking southwards to develop a “southern gas corridor” for natural gas from Azerbaijan to fuel the European mainland.

More here

War In Afghanistan Not Really Over For U.S.

The United States and NATO formally ended their war in Afghanistan on Sunday, December 28th, with a ceremony at their military headquarters in Kabul,  according to the New York Post.

Most of the Marine Corps left Afghanistan months ago, but a small group of Marines stayed behind, continuing the fight in the country, according to The Marine Corps Times.

“Marine Expeditionary Brigade-Afghanistan exited Helmand Province in October, turning Camp Leatherneck over to local troops and departing for the States. The highly-publicized transition marked an end to the Corps’ major role in Afghanistan. Two months later, U.S. officials declared the end of combat operations in the 13-year-old conflict,” according to the Marine Corps Times.

The Marine Corps Times claims that “an unidentified number of Marines stayed on to help defend Bagram Airfield while remaining coalition troops train and assist Afghan troops and police officers.”

The Marines are part of the Georgian Deployment Program, and arrived with that nation’s 51st Light Infantry Battalion, said Marine Lt. Col. Peter Lang, the team’s officer in charge, in an email describing the rotation.

The Marines are embedded with soldiers from the ex-Soviet country of Georgia.

“In May, the Marines departed for Georgia where they embedded with the light infantry battalion, offering infantry advisers as well as experts in intelligence, communications, logistics, operations and medical aid,” states the Marine Corps Times.

The Marine liaison team was in Georgia until September.  They are reportedly now in Afghanistan.

“We are proud to be partnered with the Georgians,” wrote Lang, “there is a mutual respect and shared understanding that allows us to function as a cohesive team.”

More here

Mr. Incredible Convicted Of Brawl With Bat-girl

A man who wears a Mr. Incredible costume to entertain tourists on Hollywood Boulevard was convicted Tuesday of punching and body-slamming a Batgirl-clothed woman during a fight last year.

Muhammet Bilik, 35, was convicted of battery and sentenced to a day in jail, three years probation, 20 days of Caltrans work and 36 anger-management classes in connection with the Oct. 22 attack that was caught on camera and uploaded to YouTube, according to the L.A. Times.

This was just the latest in a series of Hollywood Boulevard cartoon characters behaving badly, according to the L.A. Times.

Consider these incidents:

2005: Elmo, another Mr. Incredible and the villain from the “Scream” movies were arrested on suspicion of aggressive panhandling.

2007: LAPD officers arrested Chewbacca on suspicion of head-butting a tour guide. (Headline: “The Force Is All Over Chewbacca.”)

2009: Batman and Robin sought the help of police to deal with run-ins with CD vendors.

2011: SpongeBob SquarePants was questioned by officers after an altercation with two women.

2013: Two Captain Americas and a Spider-Man got into a brawl near the Hollywood & Highland shopping complex.

Video by blurblurblur13

Was William Shakespeare Gay?

According to The Times of India and other sources, the sexuality of William Shakespeare has again been called into question by leading scholars, it has been reported.

Sir Brian Vickers, a visiting professor at University College London, started the academic debate by claiming that a “Times Literary Supplement” book review was wrong to state that Shakespeare’s sonnet 116 was written in a “primarily homosexual context,” Daily Star reported.

The British academic asserted that the sonnet did not give any indication about his love life and argued that Shakespeare was talking about a type of love that had nothing to do with sexual attraction.

However, scholar Arthur Freeman stated that no “responsible editor” would dismiss the possibility “of homosexual, as well as heterosexual passion” being behind the sonnets.

Prof Stanley Wells, honorary president of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, also took issue with Sir Brian writing and mentioned that when a poet whose name is William writes poems of painful and unabashed sexual frankness which pun on the word “will” 13 times in Sonnet No 135, it was not unreasonable to conclude that he might be writing from the depths of his own experience.

However, it has been widely acknowledged that Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway when he was 18 and that he had three children.