George W. Bush Is a Far Better Painter Than He Was a President. Here"s His Portrait of Vladimir Putin.

On Friday, NBC aired an interview with former president and aspiring painter George W. Bush. The president—talking to his daughter Jenna Bush Hager on Today—unveiled 24 portraits of world leaders.

It was only a little over a year ago that we learned of Bush’s second act painting passion. Some people hate the paintings. Some people love them. Some people don’t spend that much time thinking about them. Still others can’t consider them without remembering that, you know, he was an awful president. I, for one, consider George W. Bush’s public painting career to be endearing. He’s not the best painter in the whole wide world, but he’s not the worst. There’s some skill on display, which is more than could be said for much of his presidency. Do I want to hang them in my house and look at them everyday? Of course not. But I’ve seen worse paintings. More than that, I’ve seen worse paintings painted by actual professional painters.  I’m no expert, but Bush’s Putin looks pretty not-the-worst-thing-in-the-world to me.

NBC

The Tony Blair painting on the other hand is a little splotchy, but nobody can be perfect all the time.

NBC

4,486 American servicemen and women, and more than 100,00 Iraqis lost their lives as a consequence of the war in Iraq. Here is a clip of the president who led us into that war talking about his painting career with his daughter on NBC.

Here"s At Least 260,000 Reasons Why College Isn"t Worth It

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Here"s At Least 260,000 Reasons Why College Isn"t Worth It

Wrongly foreclosed on? Here"s a few bucks from the billion-dollar banks

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Wrongly foreclosed on? Here"s a few bucks from the billion-dollar banks

Bigger Terror Weapon - Knives Or Guns? Here"s The Answer

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Bigger Terror Weapon - Knives Or Guns? Here"s The Answer

Here"s a shocker: North Korea is going to be short on grain in 2014

SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea is likely to face a shortage of 340,000 tons of grain this year, a report showed Sunday, which would mean another year to its chronic food scarcity.

The report contributed to the Korea Development Institute said Pyongyang is estimated to need some 5.37 million tons of grain this year.

The estimate was based on assumptions that the population of the communist country is 24.8 million and that each person consumed an annual average of 175 kilograms of grain in 2013.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Food Program, who had visited the North for about two weeks in late September to survey food production, forecast the communist country’s grain production at 5.03 million tons this year.

“While North Korea can cover a shortage of 300,000 tons with imports, it will have to rely on international aid for the remaining 40,000 tons,” the report written by the Korea Rural Economic Institute said.

The report noted that the country’s grain production in the last few years falls far short of 6 million tons during the 1980s.

It said while North Korea is making efforts to cultivate food from all arable lands, the country is suffering losses in productivity due to soil erosion and floods.

North Korea suffers from chronic food shortages with the average amount of rice and corn consumed by the people said to be only half of the daily consumption recommended by the United Nations.

Yonhap News Agency contributed to this report.

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/asia-pacific/north-korea/140201/grain-shortage-2014

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Here"s a shocker: North Korea is going to be short on grain in 2014

Here"s the Traffic Study Chris Christie Wasn"t Sure Existed

More MoJo coverage of Chris Christie’s bridge scandal

• Chris Christie’s Bridge Scandal, Explained



• Chris Christie: I Am “Heartbroken” and “Embarrassed” About Bridge Scandal—But Not Guilty



• Christie Administration’s Bridge Lane Closure Slowed Search for Missing 4-Year-Old, Says Official



• Chris Christie’s Not in the Clear Yet. These Text Messages Show Why.



• Here Are the Chris Christie Emails Everyone Is Talking About



• 9 Times Chris Christie Denied Using a Bridge for Political Revenge



• VIDEO: David Corn on What Chris Christie’s Bridge Scandal Means for 2016



• 5 Unanswered Questions About Chris Christie’s Bridge Scandal



• New Bridge Scandal Emails: Port Authority Official Said Christie Team’s Lane Closure “Violates Federal Law”

At last week’s press conference over the George Washington Bridge lane closings that left the New Jersey borough of Fort Lee gridlocked in September, GOP Gov. Chris Christie told reporters, “Whether there was a traffic study or not, I don’t know.” But whether or not the closures were part of a legitimate study—a Christie aide ordered the lanes closed without mentioning one—the resulting gridlock was analyzed by the Port Authority. The results were a bit obvious: If you close lanes to the George Washington Bridge, you cause traffic.

The post-jam analysis was released last week by a state assembly committee investigating the scandal. It focused on what would happen if two of the three access lanes reserved for Fort Lee residents were shut down and instead made available to other drivers. Fort Lee, according to the Port Authority, provides about 4.5 percent of George Washington Bridge traffic. The remaining 95 percent or so got to work a little quicker: The 11,592 non-Fort Lee vehicles saved about 5 minutes each during the closure, resulting in about 966vehicle hours saved. That wasn’t nearly enough to outweigh the cost—Fort Lee traffic resulted in 2,800 vehicle hours of delay. And the analysis noted that even if the traffic queues were half as long, the outcome would still be a net loss. Also, many vehicles sat so long in traffic that they missed peak toll hours, resulting in a revenue loss of $ 550 a day (or $ 137,000 over the course of a year).

A review by the Bergen Record found that the actual results may have been even worse than this analysis suggests. Other towns’ residents also use the Fort Lee access ramps, so the closed lanes delayed as much as 25 percent of the bridge’s motorists. But Port Authority political operatives used the 4.5 percent figure to try to convince nearby Republican lawmakers that the study was legitimate and that Fort Lee didn’t need three lanes, according to the Record. An email from former Port Authority official and Christie high school classmate David Wildstein to recently fired Christie aide Bridget Kelly includes talking points for Republican assemblyman Declan O’Scanlon and Jeff Bader, president of a trucking trade group, about how the closures benefited many New Jersey drivers:

Although Wildstein and other Christie allies tried to paint the closures as part of a necessary study, some Port Authority employees were suspicious. One general manager wrote in an email before the closure that the study could be done without leaving Fort Lee with only a single lane. He asked, “What is driving this?” Another supervisor replied, “A single toll lane operation invites potential disaster…It seems like we are punishing all for the sake of a few.”

As the Washington Post‘s Wonkblog points out, traffic studies rarely affect traffic at all. Engineers can measure normal traffic, simulate a closure or other change, and plug the numbers into formulas provided by the Institute of Transportation Engineers to yield the likely outcomes. When traffic does need to be altered, agencies typically do limited trial runs with a public review process to minimize the impact.

Moreover, it does not take a traffic engineer to realize that taking two of three lanes away from Fort Lee would lead to long lines and lots of waiting. But the ultimate conclusion of the post-gridlock review was not so definitive: It reads only “TBD.”

See the full report here:

 

MoJo Blogs and Articles | Mother Jones

Here"s the Traffic Study Chris Christie Wasn"t Sure Existed

Kevin O"Leary and Patrick Jane: here’s to our Not Person and Person of the Year.

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Here’s Why You Should Convert Your Music To 432 hz

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Here’s Why You Should Convert Your Music To 432 hz