Friday Open Thread

Filed in National by on April 29, 2011

Welcome to your Friday open thread. Yay for Friday! I hope you’re enjoying yours, whether at work or at play.

Pressure can work. Think Progress urged several of the sponsors of the Celebrity Apprentice to drop sponsorship of the show. At least one company responded, Groupon.

Groupon Inc. said it won’t let ads appear on the website for “The Apprentice” after customers complained about the political views of Donald Trump, the real estate developer who stars on the NBC television show.

While Groupon isn’t a sponsor of the show, its ads occasionally appear on the related site, Julie Mossler, a spokeswoman for Chicago-based Groupon, said in a statement.

“Enough consumers contacted us to warrant ensuring that we don’t place ads on ‘The Apprentice’ home page in the future,” the statement said. “This isn’t a political statement, it’s avoiding intentionally upsetting a segment of our customers.”

I really like Groupon’s statement here. I wish more companies would get it. It’s just better for businesses to stay out of politics because you are alienating potential customers. I’m hoping more companies will learn this lesson and perhaps we can get a lot of this money out of our political system.

Women rule (or soon will).

According to new Census figures released yesterday, women have surpassed men in achieving advanced college degrees, in addition to attaining 57% of undergraduate degrees.

Women just edge out male peers. In the 25+ age bracket, 10.6 million U.S. women have a master’s degree or higher, compared to 10.5 million men. Women also now hold 1.4 million more bachelor’s degrees than men.

According to the Associated Press, this may explain a steady change in parenting roles. The number of stay-at-home dads increased to two million last year, or one in 15 fathers, while the number of stay-at-home moms dropped for the fourth year in a row to five million.

Maybe if we get more women in upper management, we will finally retire the word “balls.” One can only hope anyway.

Tags:

About the Author ()

Opinionated chemist, troublemaker, blogger on national and Delaware politics.

Comments (13)

Trackback URL | Comments RSS Feed

  1. cassandra m says:

    This is completely hysterical: Fox News Hosting GOP Debate with No Debaters

  2. cassandra_m says:

    Nancy Pelosi thinks that Exxon Mobil profits are proof oil subsidies need to be gone and asks Boehner to bring a vote to eliminate them.

  3. PBaumbach says:

    drug drop off day tomorrow–http://governor.delaware.gov/docs/presdrugtakeback.shtml

  4. Jason330 says:

    You gals getting more college degrees is nice and all but it has ruined public education. Stay with me…

    The current system was put in place when smart driven women didn’t have many career opportunities. Therefor, a great number of very intelligent women who would have otherwise found jobs in business or science went into teaching. The result was an artificially large pool of well qualified women candidates who (being women) would work for peanuts while producing a high quality product.

    That plantation system is gone now.

  5. heragain says:

    More women with advanced degrees just means lower wages for everyone.

    You’ll see.

  6. Jason330 says:

    I’d point out that the observation above makes no sense whatsoever, but I’m sure some nutbag take it as an opening to relate crackpot theory.

  7. RustyDils says:

    It is fantastic that more women are getting college degrees these days, Genius with out education is like silver in the mine.

  8. Joe Cass says:

    One up side to women taking over: they never hold grudges. 🙂

  9. Aoine says:

    anyone suppose there has been blood drawn at the GOP convention yet??

  10. Dana Garrett says:

    If we must be held under the sway of some -archy, I’d rather it be a matriarchy than a patriarchy.

  11. jason330 says:

    Are any of the usual GOP nutbags big twitter users? The NJ has a write up of the usual slobbery Reagan worship that passes for a speech.

  12. Aoine says:

    Bill Colley is-its his own over inflated ego that drives it

    #bumpcolley

    But I wouldnt follow him – his size eclipses the sun itself – so its cold in his shadow

  13. heragain says:

    I just mean that employers have often used women to hold job pay low, rather than giving women living wages similar to men.

    An example: The category of healthcare workers known as “Physician’s assistants” was created out of army medics in the mid ’60’s. They were overwhelmingly male, and their hourly ranges from $27-$55 per hour. Nurses (RN’s), on the other hand, being traditionally female, despite 4 years of college professional training,(or more) work for $21-$32 an hour.

    The same is seen in many industries. Jobs traditionally associated with men tend to pay better than jobs that are traditionally associated with women. So I’m not ready to get excited about the potential for female college graduates to get paid fairly, particularly in this economic climate.

    In some cases I’m a pessimist. 🙁