bapifar01: Midday open thread

Where were you born? And where have you lived every day since then? And what was your mom's address the year before you were born? And was there a religious ceremony surrounding your birth? Oh, and give us your lifetime employment history, including all your supervisors' names, addresses and phone numbers. Some officials at the State Department want to make it harder for you to get a passport. Included in their proposal for a new biographical section of Form DS-5513 are all those questions and more. No big deal, they say. It should only take 45 minutes for an applicant to fill out.
While median renter income has declined since 2000, what they get charged for rent and utilities has soared, according to a new report by the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies. So much so that a fourth of renters?about 10 million people?spent nearly 50 percent of their income on rent and utilities in 2009:
When considered over just a few years, changes in the shares of cost-burdened renters may not seem dramatic. Over the longer sweep of time, though, the increase is alarming. A common standard of affordability is that rent and utility costs together require less than 30 percent of household income. Above that limit, renter cost burdens are defined as moderate (between 30 and 50 percent of income) or severe (more than 50 percent of income). In 1960, 24 percent of renters were at least moderately burdened, including 12 percent that were severely burdened. By 2000, these shares had reached 38 percent and 20 percent. And by 2009, the share of at least moderately cost-burdened renters soared to 49 percent while the share of severely burdened renters jumped to 26 percent.
Both weak income gains and rising housing costs have contributed to this growth. Over the past 30 years, the median renter income has generally risen during economic expansions but then given back any gains during subsequent recessions. Following the 2001 downturn, however, real renter incomes failed to rebound and now remain below their 1980 level. At the same time, real contract rents have climbed by more than 15 percent since 1980.
Liberal women neuter men, according to Rep. Allen West (FL-22). At the Women Impacting Nation meeting last week, he invoked the Spartans as the example of how real women should bolster real men:
West: When Queen Gorgo, wife of King Leonidas, was questioned by the Persian emissary and she somewhat spoke out of turn to this Persian emissary, he tried to rebuke her. And she looked at him and said ?Persian, beware, for it is Spartan women who raise Spartan men.? ?
We need you to come in and lock shields, and strengthen up the men who are going to the fight for you. To let these other women know on the other side ? these planned Parenthood women, the Code Pink women, and all of these women that have been neutering American men and bringing us to the point of this incredible weakness ? to let them know that we are not going to have our men become subservient.

West's misogyny and his slam of liberal men has a lot going wrong for it. Not the least of which is that his claim for Queen Gorgo is not backed by an ancient source but rather the film 300, about the battle at Thermopylae in 480 B.C. West went on to make claims for the Japanese samurai opposed to modernization in the second half of the 19th Century. His history on that came from the Tom Cruise film, The Last Samurai. What's next? Mel Gibson's version of Scottish history?
Meanwhile, for the first time, women ace out men in advanced degrees, according to the Census Bureau. But men still outnumber women in degrees for business, science and engineering. And women still earn less than men in comparable jobs.
Ford reported its best quarterly profit in 13 years today, $2.6 billion. The improvement was partly because consumers are returning to the market in large numbers to buy smaller, greener cars to cope with rising gasoline prices, the company said.
For years now, military contractors have been moving ever more into arenas once left to professionals in uniform. And where it used to be clear who was calling the shots in war theaters, that is no longer the case. The crooks among them don?t even get a slap on the wrist when they go astray:
And many contractors resemble war profiteers: From 2007 to 2009, more than 200 contractors had made settlements over fraud charges while still being awarded $280 billion in new DOD contracts. To put that sum into perspective: $280 billion is roughly equal to the national gross domestic product of Denmark, and just behind that of Saudi Arabia.
After Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder of Missouri left the keys in his $52,000 Ford Flex somebody stole it, rammed it into a gun store and torched it. "And he thinks Missourians will trust him with the keys to the statehouse?" sniped one Democratic operative. A suspect in the theft has been arrested.
The Antarctic ozone hole that some corporations and anti-environmentalists once claimed doesn't exist was for the past half century the dominant influence on atmospheric circulation all the way to the Equator, according to a study to be published in Science. Now that chemicals which caused the ozone hole have been phased out, its closing over the next few decades will also have a major impact on climate.
Geography Professor Deborah Popper, who, with her husband once wrote about the Buffalo Commons, says the future does not have to be bleak for "subtracted cities" such as Detroit, Cleveland and Birminghham, which have lost large hunks of their population in the past decade or two:

Fatalism is no option: Subtracted cities must try to reclaim control of their destinies. They could start by training residents to value, salvage, restore and market unused sites and the material found there. They might supplement school drug-free zones with subtraction-action ones by reacting quickly when nearby empty properties show neglect. Children who see debris-filled plots and boarded-up buildings learn not to expect much from life. Just planting a few trees often makes a deserted lot look cared for.
TrickyLeaks has now turned WikiLeaks into a conspiracy game app.