Odds, ends and links

•Maureen Dowd says Downton Abbey really cleans up the way the servant class was treated back in the day.
•Not maintaining our infrastructure or thinking about pollution amounts to a bet that we’ll be dead before things turn to crap. The odds are against us.
•Strippers demand to be treated as employees, not freelancers.
•A look at how competition and the free market work to bring prices down, or don’t work.
•A blogger remembers when America felt it could do anything. Fight pollution. Fight polio. Develop prosperity. The reason we don’t? Republicans. “Republican rule has transformed this young, vibrant nation from a nation that once believed it could do anything, into a nation that believes it’s broke and can’t afford to do anything. Think about it; everything we discuss doing these days is through the frame of how much it costs and whether or not it will make money, which is not rational. While we are still the richest nation in the world, with Republicans in charge – especially the current crop – we won’t be for long.”
•When fighting discrimination what makes a good ally?
•Right-to-lifers say they’re concerned about women’s health, but abortion may be safer than giving birth.
•A college tells a female student that trying to get her alleged rapist punished through campus security or the court system could constitute harassment.
•I hadn’t read about this before, but the Battle of Gettysburg gave an opportunity for Lee’s forces to capture free blacks for slavery.
•Robert Downey gets asked about his art. Scarlet Johannsson gets asked about her diet.