You Attack Doritos

It’s not unusual in an election cycle for national candidates to pick some fights. Usually, though, candidates are strategic about the confrontations, taking on primary rivals, the other party, occasionally a critical news outlet, etc.
 
Leave it to Mike Huckabee, however, to start a feud with a bag of chips. Time magazine reported yesterday:

Quote

At 3% in national polls, Mike Huckabee faces an uphill fight against more than dozen Republican candidates for the presidential nomination. But that hasn’t stopped him from adding another opponent in recent weeks: a bag of rainbow-colored chips.
 
They’re not just any chips. They’re a limited edition Doritos product called “Rainbow Doritos,” presented as a partnership between Doritos’ parent company Frito-Lay and the It Gets Better project. Donate $10 or more to the It Gets Better Project, an organization dedicated to fighting anti-LGBT bullying, and you get mailed a bag of Rainbow Doritos. The campaign was so popular that Frito-Lay is already out of Rainbow Doritos.

The Republican presidential hopeful, however, isn’t happy. Huckabee has urged Frito-Lay to distance itself from the It Gets Better Project – the former governor is particularly outraged by sex columnist Dan Savage’s role in the project – and according to Time’s article, he also “called on Christians to boycott all snacks made by the company.”
 
Just at face value, Huckabee’s priorities seem odd. When a candidate for the nation’s highest office is outraged by bags of snacks, it’s probably time for a shift in focus.
 
But just below the surface, there’s an even more striking problem.
 
Right Wing Watch noted yesterday that when Chick-fil-A faced criticism from the left, and some LGBT groups and their allies organized boycotts, Huckabee condemned the moves as “economic terrorism.”
 
He added that there are many companies that are led by executives with whom he disagrees, but Huckabee said he’d never call for a boycott of those businesses.
 
Evidently, the GOP candidate saw multi-colored Doritos and had a change of heart.

GG Huckabee. You can leave anytime now.
 

Should be simple.

Oh! Ah! Science

NASA on Monday announced new evidence that could confirm the presence of liquid water on the red planet, increasing the possibility that astronauts journeying to Mars could rely on the planet's own water for their drinking needs.

"Liquid water is a sexy topic, and we’re like the thousandth time someone has discovered water on Mars," Lujendra Ojha, the Georgia Tech Ph.D. candidate who led the research announced Monday, told The Post. And there's a good reason that liquid water is so "sexy": Mars is now the only planet in our solar system to show evidence of the stuff on its surface, other than our own. Other worlds have it in subsurface oceans, or scattered around as vapor in the atmosphere. But Mars is the only place where we have solid evidence for liquid that sits right there in the open air.

While it would be a major leap to suggest that Mars might harbor life -- even microbial life -- liquid water at least makes it possible that parts of the planet are habitable.

The study builds on research from last April, when scientists using data from the Curiosity rover noted that the planet had the seasonal potential for liquid water. We know that because of the extremely low pressure on Mars, water has a boiling point of just a few degrees Celsius, after which it evaporates. The April study noted the presence of perchlorates -- a kind of salt -- which could make the boiling point of Mars's water much higher, theoretically allowing it to remain liquid. They posited that the planet's temperature would be right for liquid, perchlorate-filled water to form every day during winter and spring.

In theory, water that periodically turned liquid before evaporating could form geographic features often spotted on the planet that look like the slow crawl and retreat of dark, damp sand, which are called recurring slope lineae (RSL).

In the new study, published Monday in Nature Geoscience, a different group of researchers took the search for perchlorates one step further: They went looking for them in the very RSL features thought to be formed by salty liquid. They found perchlorates in abundance -- and it seems like they've been getting hydrated.

Ojha and his colleagues used the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) to check out the chemical composition of the wet looking streaks. They used a technique called spectroscopy, which keeps track of what spectra of light an object absorbs in order to make conclusions about its composition. With this technique, scientists can identify glass, ice, and other substances from miles above the surface.

"We’re going to places where we thought we were seeing the presence of water and finding chemical evidence of perchlorates," Ojha said. And the correlation goes further than that: The hydrated salts seem to disappear in areas where RSL weren't forming anymore, or were shrinking.

"We're observing the leftover molecules of water in the salt," Ojha said. "We're finding evidence that they're getting hydrated."

Morten Bo Madsen of the University of Copenhagen -- who co-authored the April study, but wasn't involved in the latest work -- said the new results were significant.

"[The] flow of liquid salty water is no longer just a possibility; it does actually occur," he told The Post. "The results shows that liquid does indeed flow on Mars today."

Ojha's work confirms that hydrated salts seem very likely to have something to do with the formation of the wet looking streaks on Mars. But there's more work to do to confirm the presence of liquid water itself. Ojha pointed out that the MRO's resolution is too low to pick up many of the smaller "wet" features on Mars, and that a new orbiter could get even more information -- especially since the MRO only allows us to examine Mars's surface at what Ojha believes is the driest point in the day. Eventually, the hope is that a rover can take a closer look at the streaks themselves.

If liquid is truly forming on the surface because of these salts, it's still extremely volatile -- it should evaporate at just 20 degrees Celsius or so. But it could create pockets of the planet where microbes can survive, even today.

And in theory, it could be extracted and used by astronauts on a Mars mission. Perchlorates could be helpful in their own right, too -- they can be used to make rocket propellant.

"If we ever go there, we could probably utilize this. We wouldn't have to bring tons of water," Ojha said. "This stuff seems like science fiction, but in 100 years or so it could be fact."

I identify as Otherkin, as I am the reincarnation of a dragon.

Please respect my wishes.

Or Suffer my Curse

News Conference Slated at 6PM EST

Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin has concluded he no longer has a path to the Republican presidential nomination and plans to drop out of the 2016 campaign, according to three Republicans familiar with his decision, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Mr. Walker called a news conference in Madison at 6 p.m. Eastern time.

“The short answer is money,” said a supporter of Mr. Walker’s who was briefed on the decision. “He’s made a decision not to limp into Iowa.”

Mr. Walker’s intended withdrawal is a humiliating climb down for a Republican governor once seen as all but politically invincible. He started the year at the top of the polls but has seen his position gradually deteriorate, amid the rise of Donald J. Trump’s populist campaign and repeated missteps by Mr. Walker himself.

In the most recent CNN survey, Mr. Walker drew support nationally from less than one-half of one percent of Republican primary voters. He faced growing pressure to shake up his campaign staff, a step he was loath to take, according to Republicans briefed on his deliberations.

The Hill Article

Actual Poll

Presidential candidate Carly Fiorina is leading the GOP field in New Hampshire, a new poll finds.

A Voter Gravity poll released Friday shows Fiorina with 22 percent support among Granite State GOP primary voters. She has a 4-point edge over her nearest competitor, billionaire Donald Trump, who has 18 percent support.

Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson nets 10 percent support, with the poll finding no other Republican White House hopeful cracking double digits in the first-in-the-nation primary state.

The poll found Gov. John Kasich (R-Ohio) and former Gov. Jeb Bush (R-Fla.) tied with 9 percent each.
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) follows with 7 percent while Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Gov. Chris Christie (R-N.J.) trail him with 6 percent each.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) nabs 3 percent in New Hampshire, while Gov. Scott Walker (R-Wis.) and former Gov. Mike Huckabee (R-Ark.) tie at 2 percent.

All other GOP presidential candidates, Voter Gravity added, got 6 percent overall.

Voter Gravity’s poll surveyed 2,839 New Hampshire Republican primary voters via touchtone phones on Thursday.

The poll was conducted after Fiorina’s strong performance in the second televised GOP presidential debate Wednesday night.

The former Hewlett-Packard CEO emerged from Wednesday evening’s contest, in Simi Valley, Calif., with glowing reviews and rising interest across social media platforms.

A Morning Consult poll released Friday also found her to be the winner of the debate. Twenty-nine percent of viewers thought Fiorina emerged victorious.

Trump currently leads the race for next year’s GOP presidential nomination with an average of 28.3 percent support, according to the latest RealClearPolitics average of national polls.

Fiorina, meanwhile, ranks sixth with 4.7 percent support.

This amuses me.

Yeah, I got it, and finished it (Well, what's available). And while I'm too tired at the moment to do a proper review of the expansion, I figure you all can ask questions (if you have them) about the DLC, and I shall try to answer them.

And before you ask, yes. There is a story in the expansion, and yes - it's actually decent.

Question in the title is pretty straight forward: Is society generally afraid of sexuality/sex/etc?

Disclosure: The topic and examples for this thread came from this video, and I'm curious as to what you all think:



Going to use Miley Cyrus as an example (Cause who doesn't love a celebrity as a debate example) - throughout her recent remolding of her image, plenty of people have screamed about how her image is not friendly for children, how she is no longer a decent role model, blah blah blah.

At the same time, we have Taylor Swift winning awards for videos featuring weaponry and fights, and almost everyone enjoys a movie about violence - to the point that we seem to glorify that, over a movie where there may be nudity (Heaven forbid...)

I dunno, I'm tired and probably rambling, but just curious as to your thoughts?

YouGov/CBS

Hillary Clinton’s deficit among likely Democratic primary voters in New Hampshire has grown to more than 20 points, while her lead over Bernie Sanders among likely caucus voters in Iowa has been reversed, according to the first wave of the YouGov/CBS News 2016 Battleground Tracker. Clinton remains ahead in South Carolina, where Joe Biden also makes a strong showing.

The new poll finds Sen. Sanders with 52% support among Democratic primary voters in New Hampshire, while former Secretary of State Clinton, long considered the front-runner for the 2016 Democratic nomination, receives 30%. Recent polls have shown Sanders’ lead growing in the Granite State, but this would be the first to show the Vermont Senator over 50%.

Possibly more worrying for the Clinton campaign is her performance in Iowa, where Sanders now leads by 10 points, with 43% to Clinton’s 33%.

Until recently Clinton had retained an edge in Iowa, the other first-in-the-nation voting state along with New Hampshire. A recent CNN/ORC poll found the pair tied among likely Iowa caucus voters.

Vice President Joe Biden, who is rumored to be considering a run for the White House in 2016, receives only 10% support from Democrats in Iowa and 9% in New Hampshire placing him third in both states. Biden’s best performance is in South Carolina, where he has the backing of 22% of Democratic primary voters, matching Sanders’ 23%. Yet Clinton remains firmly in the lead there with 46% support.

While Democrats Iowa and New Hampshire are overwhelmingly white, South Carolina is the first early state with a significant minority population – over half of likely Democratic primary voters in the Palmetto State are African-American, a group with whom Clinton retains strong support. Indeed Sanders has a narrow lead over Clinton among white South Carolina Democrats (46%-39%), but trails Clinton by 48 points among blacks.

Another demographic with whom Clinton has received disproportionate support is with women, and that mostly remains the case here. Clinton's support is 7 points higher among Iowa women than men. The gender gap is larger in New Hampshire (12 points) and insignificant in South Carolina (4 points). By contrast, Bernie Sanders performs particularly well with Democratic men – though Clinton trails by only 11 points among women in New Hampshire she trails by a mammoth 38 points among men.

The YouGov/CBS News 2016 Battleground Tracker is based on surveys of registered voters who had previously voted in primaries in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. The poll was conducted online but included registered voters who were contacted by phone. The sample includes 548 likely Democratic primary voters in New Hampshire, 528 in South Carolina, and 646 likely caucus voters in Iowa. See a more detailed description of the methodology used here.

The poll also has stats on the GOP, which is still being led by Trump, followed by Carson.

The rise of Sanders is....moronic, to be quite honest.

It's raining, cold, and I don't want to cook. So takeout it is.


What should I get?

I feel it describes us perfectly.

Discuss this beauty of a man.

I'm dying of laughter over here.

T4R