Republicans and big corporations take over the Democratic Convention

From Lee Fang and Zaid Jilani of The Intercept:

THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY’S 2012 platform pledged to “curb the influence of lobbyists and special interests.” But the 2016 convention in Philadelphia will be officially hosted by lobbyists and corporate executives, a number of whom are actively working to undermine progressive policies achieved by President Barack Obama, including health care reform and net neutrality. Some of the members of the 2016 Democratic National Convention Host Committee, whose job is to organize the logistics and events for the convention, are hardly even Democratic Party stalwarts, given that many have donated and raised thousands of dollars for Republican presidential and congressional candidates this cycle. The composition of the 15-member Host Committee may appear out of sync with the rhetoric of Democratic presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, but the reality is that the party, in the form of the Democratic National Committee, has moved decisively to embrace the lobbying industry.

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How can any evangelical tolerate Donald Trump?

Have you ever wondered how evangelicals can tolerate Donald Trump. It's got to be more than Hate of Hillary, right? This Salon article by VALERIE TARICO suggests that Trump is a spitting image of a prominent Old Testament character.

From Genesis through Revelation, the Bible lays out precisely how people should grovel and sing God’s praises and otherwise kiss up. God wants his adoring followers to beg for things he already knows they need. ... And he doesn’t like it at all if anyone pays attention to competing deities. “Thou shalt worship no other god!” he roars, “For the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God!” [More . . . ]

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Quotes on romance

Perhaps it is because I've been in the throes of romance for the past 10 months, a relationship that keeps getting better and better, but I've been struggling to find words to describe or express my feelings to my beloved. That is why I set out to find some well-crafted quotes on romance, quotes new to me. I found some that are most excellent: “Romance is thinking about your significant other, when you are supposed to be thinking about something else.” ― Nicholas Sparks “A man sees in the world what he carries in his heart.” ― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust: First Part “The very essence of romance is uncertainty.” ― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays “When love is not madness it is not love.” ― Pedro Calderón de la Barca “Every great love starts with a great story...” ― Nicholas Sparks, The Notebook [more . . . ]

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The stress children put on a marriage

The happily ever after trope goes something like this:  Love, marriage, children, happiness.   However, that is not what the statistics show.  "Parents often become more distant and businesslike with each other as they attend to the details of parenting."  The source of this sad passage is "Decades of Studies Show What Happens to Marriages After Having Kids," in Fortune Magazine. The statistics show that having children drives a married couple apart more than it brings them more closely together:

The irony is that even as the marital satisfaction of new parents declines, the likelihood of them divorcing also declines. So, having children may make you miserable, but you’ll be miserable together.

Worse still, this decrease in marital satisfaction likely leads to a change in general happiness, because the biggest predictor of overall life satisfaction is one’s satisfaction with their spouse.

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