President Obama Opens Wide Lead in New Pew Research Poll | Catholics Evenly Split Between Obama & Romney

Republican candidate Mitt Romney argued with great arrogance this week that President Obama’s supporters represent the 47% of Americans who pay no taxes. But a review of federal tax paperwork that doesn’t include Americans who filed no returns, shows without question that Republican states dominate the folk that Mitt Romney is talking about. Now maybe every Democrat in these states is on the dole, but that’s unlikely. What Republicans choose to ignore is that they represent some of the poorest folks in America. Read on at The Atlantic Where Are the 47% of Americans Who Pay No Income Taxes

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Anne is reading …

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Obama Increases Poll Leads

A new poll out today by Pew Research Center has President Obama leading Republican challenger Mitt Romney by 8 points nationally, 50 to 43 in a group of 2.424 registered voters.

It’s worth noting that President Obama holds a bigger September lead than the last three candidates to win the presidency, including Obama in 2008. Dialing back to 1988, only Bill Clinton in both 1992 and 1996 entered the fall season with a bigger advantage.

PEW research also looked at President Obama’s onging support among different religious groups. As expected, Black Protestant registered voters have almost universal support for the president. Religiously unaffiliated voters have increased slightly their support of the president from about 60% in Oct 2011 to 63-35% now.

In spite of tremendous pressure from Catholic bishops not to support the president’s policies, both white Catholic voters and white mainline protestant voters have increased their support from about 37% a year ago to nearly 50% today. As expected, the president’s support among white evangelical protestant registered voters is the lowest of all groups, hovering at about 20%. (cont. column 2)

Related reading 

Are Catholic Bishops Moving Toward The GOP? Huffington Post

Obama Leads on Most Key Issues in Pew Research Poll

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The new Pew Survey was taken during last week’s Middle East violence outbreak, but before this week’s comments from Mitt Romney about America’s 47% of deadbeats who accept government aid of any kind, including social security.

According to the survey,where the president maintains a 15 point lead among registered voters,

Far more voters see Obama as a strong leader and as the candidate voters believe would use good judgment in a crisis. Voters also express more confidence in Obama than Romney to deal with foreign policy generally, as well as problems in the Middle East.

Obama enjoys a staggering 43 point advantage in the measure “connects well with ordinary Americans”. In a massive disparity in perceived strengths between the two candidates, Obama outpaces Romney by 13 points of greater on these issues:

Takes consistent positions on issues; Willing to take unpopular stand; Good judgment in a crisis; honest and truthful; a strong leader; dealing with health care; dealing with Medicare; and representing your views on abortion.

Obama Closes Gap With Men Voters, Big Women Lead

The latest Pew Research poll of registered voters also shows President Obama closing the gender gap with men voters, while his lead with women remains huge.

Men Voters

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Women Voters

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Related reading

Thurston Howell Romney David Brooks for New York Times

Times for a Intervention Peggy Noonan for WSJ

How Do the 47% Vote? New York Times

Mark McKinnon on Why Time Is Running Out for Mitt Romney The Daily Beast

Pro-choice group unveils detailed plan to sway ‘Obama defectors’ back to Obama The Daily Caller

Fashion's Hippie Love Trend Is Tied To Womanly Cultural Creative Values

Left: Abby Brothers | Zoey Grossman | Novella Royale August 2012 | Vintage Collection III

Right: Kate King | Emma Tempest | Dansk #28 F/W 2012 | Garb of the Groupie

Fall 2012 fashion is having a Hippie Luxe moment. 70’s references abound and we fully expect to see Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix appear any moment.

Hippie Fever

Tallulah Morton | Fred Meylan | Amica August 2012 | 70s

Meghan Collison & Kori Richardson | Leda & St. Jacques | Elle Canada September 2012 | The Wicked Game

Also:

Janini Milet | Diane Sagnier | Be France August 2012 | Hippique Chic

Cultural Creatives Movement

Cultural Creatives Now 35% of US | 10% in Transition AOC New Day

Cultural Creatives often describe themselves as ‘bridge people’ between the Traditionals and Moderns, ‘trying to make a ‘cultural synthesis’ that moves the world beyond its polarized opposites. This subset of global-thinking people first emerged in the sixties and is 65% women.

The core values of Cultural Creatives remain:

• Ecological sustainability
• Enjoying exposure to foreign ideas and culture
• Concern about women and children worldwide
• Priority of health care and education
• Desire to rebuild neighborhoods and community
• Improving neighborhoods and community
• Emphasis on creating caring relationships and family life
• Social conscience and demand for authenticity
• Guarded social optimism
• Emphasis on altruism, self-actualization and spirituality as a single complex of values.

In the 1995 study, Cultural Creatives were 23.6% of US adults. By 1999 they had increased to 26%. 

An addition to the new 2008 research is a new group called the Transitionals, representing 10% of Americans. 

The current US breakdown in Dr. Ray’s research is:

Moderns 39.7%

Cultural Creatives 34.9%

Traditionals 15.4%

Transitionals 10.1%

Hope Springs Eternal

Hope Springs Eternal for a Better World in My Summer of Love (Aug 2007) AOC New Day

I attach transcendental meaning to every form of light show: white lights on bridges, lit windows in skyscrapers, fireflies in my garden.

In my twenties, my husband’s brother produced a marvelous breast sculpture a pulsating piece of female anatomy, featured in a Lincoln Center Salvador Dali moment. It offered endless hours of kaleidoscopic, lightshow effects, and transformed our ordinary Brooklyn apartment into a posh night club …

Much of the Whitney (Summer of Love) art was created under hallucinogenic influence of LSD, a fantasy-inducing drug that challenges our perception of reality with merging shapes, forms and colors that aren’t “real”.

Vivid, red geraniums aren’t actually visible on a dark, cloud-covered summer night, but one could probably pass a lie-detector test insisting that they were visible at 3am in full-crimson splendor, defying science in all their glory.

My Carversville flowers didn’t glow in the dark last night, and for one brief moment, I realized that forward-looking me wanted a supernatural, spiritual, acid-like experience with this heavily-promoted, healthy, heavenly light show. Read on

Obama's Lead With Women Widens | Nine Days With Hillary Clinton | Gates Foundation Reinvents the Toilet

AOC Private Studio

Ageless, sensual fashion editorials

Doutzen Kroes | Mario Sorrenti | Vogue Paris August 2012

French Roast News

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is the cover girl of Conde Nast’s Traveler, reinforcing her position as the most globetrotting American secretary of state ever. Hillary shares her thoughts on humanity in words that are music to our ears.

In the modern world, we’re all interdependent, we’re all interconnected. You just can’t say that you’re only going to deal with your own kind of person, or you’re only going to meet your own kind or person, or you’re only going to listen to your own kind of person. That’s not the way the world is going to work. And we’ll either figure out how to be more integrated, or we will disintegrate.

Hillary Clinton will have clocked over a million miles when she steps down as secretary. Writer Devin Doyle says that “traveling with Clinton is like chasing after a woman shot out of a cannon with rocket boosters strapped to her pantsuit”. Keeping up with her is described as “punishing,” “grueling” and “exhausting”.

Clinton guesses that her popularity stems from a combination of factors. For one, she represents the United States, which, “despite all of the criticism and other issues, people still admire.” Another reason is that she went to work for the man against whom she battled fiercely for the presidency and who dealt her a stunning defeat. “They find that just amazing. Why would he ask me and why would I say yes? Because we both love our country and democracy, and in a time of great challenge, people need to commit to their country and to their fellow human beings. I think that resonates with some people,” she says.

We share a video of Secretary Clinton in India, stopping to meet West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee, who recently defeated 30 years of Communist rule in a state of 91 million in Kolkata. The occasion was the first time an American high official had visited the program focused on combating India’s sex trafficking industry, in which girls are sold into slavery.

AOC Private Studio

Candid commentary about female sensuality

Kate Upton | Guy Aroch | GQ Italia August 2012

ALL new fashion & style editorials

Women Rally Around Obama

New research on the 2012 presidential election shows that President Obama has a commanding lead among women voters, a lead that should increase now that Mitt Romney has chosen Paul Ryan as his running mate. Mitt’s main guy Paul Ryan is Mr. Sponsor of a federal law mandating unnecessary ultrasounds for women seeking an abortion and Mr. Sponsor of the same rights for a fertilized egg as for the woman in the voting booth — making the egg more important than she is in reality.

All her independent decisions about even taking certain medications are governed by the needs of her embryo, making her a true incubator machine with no rights of her own to good health.

Here’s the latest polling research, via Jedediah Bila writing on FOX:

On August 7-8 CNN/ORC found that women were voting for Obama (73%) over Romney (44%).

On August 13, The Wall Street/NBC confirmed polling results that Obama leads Romney 54% to 39% among women. Among college-educated women, the president leads 63%-32%. (Note, those results might include Ryan results.)

Tove Larsen (speaking) of Eawag, the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology, talks about their diversion toilet at yesterday’s  ‘Reinventing the Toilet’ Fair, sponsored by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

“We couldn’t be happier with the response that we’ve gotten,” Bill Gates said.

To pass the foundation’s threshold for the world’s next toilet, it must operate without running water, electricity or a septic system, not discharge pollutants, preferably capture energy or other resources, and operate at a cost of 5 cents a day. via Salon

AOC Style

City/country fashion editorials/living with style

Karlie Kloss | David Sims | Vogue US September 2012 | Her Brilliant Career

More French Roast Headlines

View larger Obesity in America chart.

Obesity in America

Using self-reported results that are probably worse than reported, the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention has revealed the details of America’s latest obesity reality check. For the first time, researchers used households that can only be contacted with mobile phones, results that bring more younger people into the statistics.

Mississippi leads the nation in obesity. via The Economist

US Fertility Rate Plunges

America’s fertility rate has plunged below replacement level at a time when France’s is stable and Britain’s rising.

The Economist writes that Mexican migrants — who have higher fertility rates — are not finding work and go back home. Significant research confirms that young people are postponing marriage, buying new homes and having children.

Saudi Arabia’s Women Only Cities

In an innovative measure to deal with strict gender-laws that prohibit men and women working together, Saudi Arabia is planning to build several women-only cities. The first location to employ women only will be a new industrial city in the Eastern Province of Hofuf.

Segregated schools, universities and offices are already the norm in Saudi Arabia where women require a male guardian’s consent for activities including marriage, divorce or travel, reports Huff Po.

Although 60 percent of the nation’s college graduates are women, only 15 percent are employed.