You might be asking why Republicans are pushing this issue when Americans, 55 to 40, favor the contraception mandate. Well, the answer is pretty simple. A graph from the Public Religious Research Institute can illuminate.

The key number to look at is the right of the graph: White Evangelicals. This is the bread and butter of the GOP base. So why, in an election year with a President that is fairly disliked by most branches of the GOP, would Senate Republicans feel the need to placate a base that is almost assuredly theirs? The answer is two-fold. The first part is the diminishing numbers of voters in the GOP primaries. Every state, with the exception of South Carolina, saw less voters than they did four years ago. To explain the second issue, we’ll need another graph.

Now this graph is a little old. I imagine much of that support has shifted from Gingrich to Santorum. However, that’s not the important number on this graph. The most striking thing about this graph is Mitt Romney’s struggle to get support from Evangelical Christians. While there are some groups who say that Evangelicals will, by and large, support whoever the GOP nominates, a recent story in the New York Times suggests that the problem may not go away so easily. Evangelicals are not worried that Romney will use his position to promote the Mormon church, or that he will make decisions based on church doctrine. Those complaints could be easily addressed. What worries Evangelicals, according to the New York Times story, is Mitt Romney being a nominee for President will legitimize the standing of the Mormon church in the United States and around the world.

“There’s a huge ontological gap between the Creator and the creature. So any religious perspective that reduces that gap, you think, oh, wow, that could never be called Christian.”

Suddenly, Evangelicals coming out to support a Mitt Romney campaign seems less and less likely. The Evangelical opposition to the Mormon church doesn’t stop there, either. 53% of Evangelicals do not believe that Mormonism is Christianity, compared to 21% of other Protestants and 22% of Catholics, according to a Pew Research Poll. While Santorum is gaining ground on Romney, it still seems likely that Mitt will become the party’s nominee. If that is the case, they may have a problem getting many Conservatives excited, but it seems like they will have a particularly hard time getting Evangelicals excited. That said, the same poll showed that Evangelicals would still prefer Romney to Obama, so if they can get them to the polls, then Romney and all Republicans will have a better shot at winning the White House and taking over the Senate.

In the end, this election isn’t going to be about who can win the most independent voters, it is going to be about who can get the most of their base out to the polls. This is just part of the GOP’s plan to get Evangelicals out to support their candidates. If this issue continues to hold the national debate, expect to have similar issues come out in the approaching months.

First and foremost let me answer the biggest questions of all.  Yes, this is a pallet of alcohol I happen to be pulling out of the back room of your favorite store.  No, I don’t want to go load it in your car.  No, your joke isn’t funny.  No, you aren’t the first person to make that joke even in the last five minutes.  Yes, the person at the other end of the aisle made the same joke right before you walked by. WHY YES, I do have utter contempt in my heart for you glad you noticed

Why yes I will probably be having some sort of get together with alcohol involved this weekend.  No no there is no need to get excited random person… you will not be getting invited, and your attempt at small talk has bored me more than your inability to pick a good beer or wine.

I’m sorry I didn’t realize the fact that I’m wearing dress slacks, dress shoes, and a polo that says COORS or MILLER on it makes you assume that I work for Target, Kroger, or Marsh.  Did you wonder why my outfit doesn’t look like anyone else’s outfit at the store?  It didn’t strike you as odd that I’m wearing a Lime Green shirt and black pants when everyone at Target is in Red shirts and Khaki pants?… … but yes Bread is in Aisle 5

Dear Mr/Ms Store manager,  I understand you want me to make your store number one in the morning, but I have 20+ accounts.  Someone has got to be last, and let’s be honest with each other… you’re a gas station and not high on my priority list

Cupcake wine is neither sweet nor good.  This is just a heads up

• PIN AUGHT NEW ARE
• PIE NOT GREE GREE OOOOOH
• MEW SKEDDI
• KAY BER NETTI
• MARE LOT
• Seinfeld

If you can’t pronounce it…  you probably shouldn’t buy it.  At the very least just point and say that one.

Asking where in Napa/Sonoma/ect. the winery is located proves what?  I’m obnoxious for knowing even though my job makes me, or you’re obnoxious for asking since you’ve never been to California anyway and you’re buying a $4 “Gree Gree Oh”

The recipe for Moscato is fairly simple.  Sugar+Water+Sugar+Grapes+Sugar-Flavor+Sugar-Dignity+Sugar=Moscato

If another MF’er from Indiana asks if I like Oliver, or if I’ve been to Oliver, or how much I just love all the different types of Oliver, or where can they get more Oliver, or Oliver Oliver Oliver.  I’m not exaggerating or making this up… Oliver uses the old Welch’s grape juice grapes… Concord grapes aren’t meant to make wine, and if you do it tastes like a bag of mashed up a**holes.  Congrats Indiana you’re in love with a big bag of mashed up a**holes.

And on that note… Good luck and Goodnight

Headlines that warm your alumnus heart

Sidebar: Wondering about the legalities of a mandatory survey triggering letters home. Maybe we’re off base on that?

Backtracking on a similar 2005 study, researches said that men can, in fact, like other dudes and women, too. While modern science is catching up to some groundbreaking last-century theory, it’s pleasing to know journalists remain as innuendo-filled as ever. Cue the close of the NYT article.

“Sexual arousal is a very complicated thing,” she said. “The real phenomenon in day-to-day life is extraordinarily messy and multifactorial.”

Heard.

The article gives more detail on the study’s methodology, if you’re so inclined.

Not making this up – it’s really called newshole.

PEJ’s weekly News Coverage Index examines the news agenda of 52 different outlets from five sectors of the media: print, online, network TV, cable and radio. (See List of Outlets.) The weekly study, which includes some 1,000 stories, is designed to provide news consumers, journalists and researchers with hard data about what stories and topics the media are covering, the trajectories of that media narrative and differences among news platforms. The percentages are based on “newshole,” or the space devoted to each subject in print and online and time on radio and TV.

The topic beat out other stories for the week, including the economy, Middle East unrest and the 2012 election GOP pregaming:

Coverage of the presidential campaign dropped last week, filling 8% of the newshole compared with 12% the previous week. Last week’s coverage included former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum’s entry into the GOP field and the mass defections of staffers from Newt Gingrich’s troubled campaign.

The index is part of Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. PEJ said Weiner is the fourth-most covered – err, uncovered? – erected elected official story since measurements began in 2007.

Measurement of the news, perverts.

Whoops! Just an oversight. I’m sure there’s nothing else questionable! Just to be sure, let’s check the story’s lead:

The closet door became unhinged lately when a number of gay men in sports decided to turn the knob and hold a public liberation.

Maybe it’s time to retire literary uses of the closet metaphor.

“This is quite possibly the worst news ever,” Rep. Doc Hastings (R-Wa.) said Tuesday. Hastings is the chairman of the House Committee on Natural Resources, which held hearings on the shortage last month.

“Hyperboles are among our greatest assets in this nation,” Hastings added. “And we must fight to preserve them.”

The hyperbole shortage is a recent development; however, this is not the first time America has seen the incredibly important linguistic tool face trouble. During World War II hyperboles were reserved only for use in recruitment posters and war time speeches.

However, since the 1940s use of hyperboles among the public has soared by an estimated eleventy billion percent, meaning that almost every single statement made by Americans in 2008 (the last year data was available) was in some way a hyperbole.

“We treat it like its something that going to be around forever,” Dr. Walter Hastings of the National Exaggeration Institute in Great Good Place, Del. “Like it was paper or clean water or something.”

Graphic by Ryan Smith

The report, which ran, like, a million pages, explained how hyperboles have become overused and may soon become extinct due to massive overuse.

For example, every single day the United State Congress uses over 45 trillion hyperboles, a figure that does not even include outright lies. Furthermore, the robust advertising industry uses a hyperbole every single nanosecond of every single day.

“If we don’t stop this rampant use of hyperboles we may face a future where reality is the only reality we can talk about,” Dr. Hastings added.

While members of both the Republican and Democratic party agree the pending hyperbole shortage is the most important issue of our time and perhaps all times, they have different views on how the shortage should be handled. Democratic leaders, including Rep. Ed Markey (D-Ma.), the ranking Democrat on the committee on Natural Resources, suggested restricting the use of hyperboles, allowing only a certain number per person. Under Markey’s plan, advertisers would be able to by unused hyperboles from less hyperbole prone industries.

“This plan is by far the most original and thought-out plan in the history of Congress,” Rep. Jim Costa (D-Ca.) said. “It clearly is the only option we can consider.”

Republicans seemed unlikely to support the Markey plan.

“This just puts the government in the way of industry and consumers,” Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Tx.) said late Tuesday. Gohmert added that, while he wouldn’t release the details of the Republican counter proposal, it would allow for unchecked hyperbole use and attempt to keep hyperbole costs low.

Possible Presidential Candidate Donald Trump offered up a solution of his own on a five hour interview with the Today show Yesterday.

“I look at Iraq and Afghanistan and I see all these hyperboles that they are not using,” the most important figure in real estate and commerce said. “I mean, things are hellish there. They don’t need hyperboles to describe the world around them, they don’t need to exaggerate, their world is already bad enough just by reality. We should take their unused hyperboles and return them to the United States, where they belong.”

Meanwhile, Dr. Hastings just hopes action is taken quickly.

“We could be facing the greatest disaster in American history,” he said. “This could be like if Katrina and Pearl Harbor had a baby on 9/11. This could demolish the very fabric of our great nation.”

Outed in the interview, he reviews a couple awkward and painful moments (hearing “Can you hear me now?” as his grandmother was lowered into her grave) in the course of his nearly 10-year stint as the face of “the network.”

Equally disgusting, he discloses an incident where the fear of bad PR silenced a voice known for being heard loud and clear:

Then there were the drive-bys. Marcarelli has a home in Guilford, Connecticut, and five summers ago, kids in an SUV began driving past at night, yelling, “Can you hear me now?” Later, says Marcarelli, “they started screaming ‘faggot’ up at my house. It got progressively more profane as the years went by.” One night, it happened while some friends were over, and he decided to call the police. “As soon as I hung up the phone,” he says, “I realized that in order for them to do anything about it, it would have to become a report that would go into a police log.” Worried about the publicity—and the questions that might ensue if it came out that the actor playing Test Man was gay—he declined to file a report.

Via Gawker