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IT’S MUCH MORE IF YOU INCLUDE DINNER OR HELP WITH TERM PAPERS AS PAYMENT: Six Percent of Americans Have Accepted Payment for Sex: For those ages 30-44, it rises to almost 10 percent.
Overall, slightly more people say getting paid for sex should be illegal (43 percent) than say that it should be legal (40 percent)—although with a 4.5 percent of margin of error on the study, the opposite could just as well be true. Seventeen percent weren’t sure. A somewhat larger number of respondents were in favor of criminalizing the purchase of sex, with 45 percent in favor, 39 opposed, and 17 percent again unsure.
Among the youngest cohort, however, a full 50 percent of respondents said it should be illegal to pay for sex and 46 percent said it should be illegal to accept payment for it.
The gender divide in prostitution views was also stark, with men significantly more likely than women to say that both buying and selling sex should be legal. Half of male respondents said paying for sex should be legal, a position shared by just 29 percent of female respondents. Just 37 percent of male respondents said it should be criminalized, while 52 of the women surveyed did.
The breakdown was similar for accepting payment for sex: 51 percent of men said it should be legal and 36 percent said it should be illegal, while just 30 percent of women said it should be legal and 50 percent said it should be illegal.
Like taxi drivers who oppose Uber, there’s a fair amount of protectionism here, I think.
EVERYTHING SEEMINGLY IS SPINNING OUT OF CONTROL: Exorcist warns vampire ritual killings ‘on the rise’ after spate of Satanic initiation murders.
REPORT: KEITH EMERSON HAS PASSED AWAY AT AGE 71.
I wasn’t a big ELP fan, but I loved “Lucky Man,” and its groundbreaking synthesizer solo. Late last year, shortly after installing Jam Origin’s MIDI Guitar plugin on my computer, I was having lots of fun playing those style licks with my Telecaster plugged into Korg’s M1 software synthesizer, which has a patch called “Lucky Guy.” But then, it seems like every synthesizer, whether hardware or software-based, has a recreation of that tone, given that Emerson’s solo is for synth players what “Stairway to Heaven” or “Smoke on the Water” is for electric guitarists.
Though Emerson used to tell the story that by the ’90s, he forgot how to play it himself! In an interview with Keyboard magazine he said, “I’d played that solo many years before but knew what was expected of me. I actually got help from your magazine! I called up [then editor] Dominic Milano and said, “Dominic, you might think this is very funny, but I need a transcription of the ‘Lucky Man’ solo, because I’m damned if I can get it off the record!” RIP, as yet another legendary rock pioneer has left the stadium.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89g1P_J40JA
UPDATE (5:45 PM PST): Emerson “died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head, Santa Monica police confirmed to the BBC. His death was being investigated as a suicide, police added.”
SHOCKING NEWS FROM THE WORLD OF SCIENCE: What Men and Women Want From Sex Robots Is Very Different. Of course, if you consider a vibrator a sex robot, many, perhaps most, women have sex-robot experience already.
Related: Feminist double standards and some classic thoughts from Eugene Volokh.
DISPATCHES FROM THE NEWSPEAK DICTIONARY: Every modern revolutionary movement has sought to change the language. Campus leftists are hardly the first.
WHAT IF OBAMA DID WHAT TRUMP DOES?, Andrew Klavan asks:
Grove’s sources further report that Lewandowksi apologized to Breitbart’s Washington political editor, Matthew Boyle, and said to Boyle “that he and Fields had never met before and that he didn’t recognize her as a Breitbart reporter, instead mistaking her for an adversarial member of the mainstream media.”
So again, Substitution Game: How would Trump supporters react if Obama’s guy said he had roughed up a reporter because he thought the lady was with Fox News?
Now Lewandowski is saying he never did it at all. If Obama’s guy said that, after reportedly apologizing, would you believe him?
Look, Trump has repeatedly called for violence against hecklers — and violence against hecklers and protesters has followed. In the video above (around the 8:30 mark) Megyn Kelly shows a man sucker punching a black protester who is being escorted OUT of a Trump event. Afterward, the thug explains that the protester wasn’t “acting like an American,” and that “the next time we see him, we might have to kill him.” This is not an isolated incident, but one of a number of such outbursts, which Trump and his people have repeatedly excused.
Substitution Game: what would the Trumpians say if a black man devoted to Obama had cold-cocked a white protester at an Obama rally? Especially after Obama had instructed his followers to “knock the crap” out of anyone who might oppose him. Use your imagination.
Or reverse the races and recall the disgusting details of Kenneth Gladney being roughed up by thugs wearing SEIU t-shirts when Gladney dared protest Obamacare in 2009 at a town hall meeting hosted by then-Rep. Russ Carnahan (D-MO), after Obama and his colleagues had throughout his campaign the year prior instructed supporters to “argue with neighbors, get in their faces,” “punch back twice as hard,” and as Obama told a crowd in Philadelphia, “If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun. Because from what I understand folks in Philly like a good brawl. I’ve seen Eagles fans.”
A headline at the Washington Post today is titled “It’s not just Trump. Authoritarian populism is rising across the West. Here’s why.” No. Here’s why:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrt6msZmU7Y
I’ve had fun over the past several months pointing out comparisons of our current reality show president and his would-be successor. But it’s truly disgusting to see these sorts incidents where Trump’s goons and his more zealous fans stoop to the level of Obama his enablers.
OH, THAT EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: Can Leftist Student Activists Survive Without Their Professional Babysitters and Allies?
THE NEW ZAPRUDER FILM: Who grabbed Michelle Fields’ arm after the Trump rally?
MY USA TODAY COLUMN Don’t underrate how far we’ve come. Plus, a warning:
Things aren’t perfect today, of course, and there are still plenty of things to worry about. But it’s worth noting just how far we’ve come. It’s also worth noting that most of these advancements are the result of free enterprise and open markets, and worth remembering that politicians, for their own selfish purposes, might stop this progress at any time. Free markets are great, but they don’t offer the opportunities for graft and personal aggrandizement that un-free markets do. And to politicians, that’s a bug, not a feature.
Consider yourself warned.
GOOD ADVICE: Don’t Post About Me on Social Media, Children Say.
NOBODY EXPECTS THE VAST RIGHT-WING CONSPIRACY! Leftist Professor Fired by Leftist University for Threatening Leftist Press at Leftist Rally Blames…Conservatives.
Some days, I really do wish the VRWC was a force as vast and as all-powerful as it exists rent-free in the minds of the far left. And yes, Stephen Kruiser’s post at the above link is referring to exactly who you think it’s referring to.
Related: Mizzou Faces 25% Enrollment Drop, $32M Budget Deficit After Racial Protests.
NANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE: Researchers Seek Source of Frequency Fluctuations in Nanoresonators.
UP TO 65% OFF soccer goals from Franklin Sports.
HOW TO THROW a hurricane party.
Once shoppers get used to buy-one-get-one-or-more deals, as they had at Jos. A. Bank Clothiers, they stop coming back when the promotions end.
Jos. A. Bank’s parent, Tailored Brands Inc., found that out as it attempted to fold the former Maryland-based retailer into its Men’s Wearhouse portfolio and move away from discounting, perhaps too quickly.
After ending the year with slumping sales and a $1 billion quarterly loss, the company is preparing to close 250 stores, including about 140 Jos. A. Bank locations.
The staggering problems facing Tailored Brands suggest that its corporate predecessor, Men’s Wearhouse, paid too much for Jos. A. Bank in the $1.8 billion acquisition in 2014 and overestimated its ability to integrate the chains quickly, several experts said Thursday.
Jos A. Bank used to be a place where, if you knew which lines to choose from and when to shop, you could get a good-enough suit for a great price. Then the Great Recession hit, and Jos became the place where you could buy four or five pretty bad suits for the same price.
The decline in quality may have as much to do with the store’s troubles as ending the massive discounts did.
TOM MAGUIRE: The Michelle Fields Assault: The Plot Thickens. Something that should have been dealt with via an apology and a bought drink has now turned into a semi-major issue. Unimpressive.
SPYING: Surprise! NSA data will soon routinely be used for domestic policing that has nothing to do with terrorism. Who could have seen this coming?
CHANGE: America’s Air Supremacy Is Fading Fast.
As regards the much higher performance F-22, only about ninety are available for global air supremacy tasks. This is arguably too small for winning air supremacy in one theatre, let alone both Europe and the Pacific. Ongoing peacetime training attrition is further gradually reducing this small fleet. The 2009 decision ceasing F-22 production early was based in part on beliefs that it was irrelevant to countering Islamic extremists or the counterinsurgency wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Events have now overtaken this perspective.
Scaling back American power is a feature, not a bug, to those who never believed in American exceptionalism.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: Law School Debt Hits Minorities Hardest. This goes along with revelations that poor students with low LSAT scores — who are unlikely to graduate or pass the bar — have the highest debt, as law schools admit them to keep tuition revenues flowing. Funny that higher education — one of the most left-leaning industries in America — is so exploitative with regard to minorities and the poor.
PASSING THE BUCK: Obama Says European distraction led to Libya “mess.”
In a profile published Thursday in The Atlantic, the President told author Jeffrey Goldberg that British Prime Minister David Cameron became “distracted by a range of other things” after the operation. Cameron, along with former French President Nicolas Sarkozy, took the brunt of Obama’s criticism.
Although Obama thinks the intervention went as well as it could, he views Libya today as a “mess.” Privately, according to the article, he refers to the troubled state as a “sh*t show.”
It’s always anybody’s sh*t show but his.
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