YYM in Portugal

So, I get this phone call at 7 am Saturday from the YYM:  "I got pickpocketed in the Lisbon train station."

He still has his passport, and he is with his girlfriend so he has access to cash.  But it is worrisome.  Apparently the two of them had "met" this aggressive woman who stood very close to them and asked for directions.  Presumably confederate behind him reached and took the wallet.

From his front jeans pocket?  Because that is where I always tell him to keep his wallet in train stations and public place:  keep your wallet in your FRONT jeans pocket.  Make them "kiss the dog."

No, it was in his outside jacket pocket, the big open one where you put your hands.  *&$^#$&^@!

Later in the day, he sent this picture, after they had rented a car and driven over to the coast.  Things must not be TOO bad...

Click for an even more happy image.

Sometimes people ask me what sets KPC apart from other blogs. I think it is the fact that we put up stuff like this:


You won't find THAT on BrendanNyhan.com, folks. With a nod to Angry Alex...

All Politics is Local

From my NC State colleague Steven Green:

The Politics of Parenthood: Parenthood Effects on Issue Attitudes and Candidate Evaluations in 2008
Laurel Elder & Steven Greene, American Politics Research, forthcoming
Abstract: This project employs 2008 National Election Study (NES) data to explore whether parents are different than nonparents in terms of their political attitudes and candidate evaluations. We find that parenthood does have political consequences although often not in ways suggested by conventional wisdom. Rather than finding parents to be a conservative group, our results support the idea that raising children has liberalizing effects on the attitudes of women. Fatherhood shapes attitudes less than motherhood, but these fewer effects are in a conservative direction. We argue that the distinctive politics of mothers and fathers reflects the impact of parenting as a gendered socialization experience combined with the contrasting parenthood themes articulated by the Republican and Democratic parties. Finally, despite media coverage suggesting Sarah Palin’s “Hockey Mom” image would attract parents, especially mothers, to her candidacy and the Republican ticket we find no support for this idea.