Burgers USA

Burgers! That’s America’s food. But wait, the hamburger is named after some German city … what gives? Food historian George Motz and animator Jorge Corona explain:

Senator Rubio: ‘I’m Not an Absentee, I’m an Outsider!’

First-term Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL), congressional quitter and presidential candidate, has missed more votes than any other senator in the current Congress. Telling Jeb Bush that other people missed votes years ago doesn’t change that.

Besides, Mr. Rubio says, he isn’t playing hooky, he’s a rebel, an outsider.

“When pressed on CNN’s State of the Union about why he’s missed so many votes, the senator explained a lot of them ‘won’t mean anything’ and will ultimately go nowhere or get vetoed by Obama. But isn’t that a bit hypocritical, since Rubio just declared that federal workers who don’t perform their jobs should be able to be fired? ‘Voting is not the only part of the Senate job. The most important thing a senator does is constituent service,’ Rubio explained, adding that he still attends intelligence briefings. ‘I’m not missing votes because I’m on vacation,’ he said. ‘I’m running for president so that the votes they take in the Senate are actually meaningful again.'”

— “Marco Rubio Is Skipping Senate Votes Because He’s a Washington Outsider,” Margaret Hartmann, New York Magazine

Mind the Gap

“According to calculations from the Equal Payback Project, American women are owed $29,811,746,430,000 (that’s U.S. dollars, also known as U.S. golden dollars with Sacagawea on them) due to the wage gap.

Working female Sarah Silverman is fund-raising for this exact amount. She promises that if this fund-raising goal is met, each woman in America will receive a check. If not, the money will go the National Women’s Law Center, which advocates for legal and structural changes to support professional women. They’re only trillions dollars away from removing this gap off the list of gaps facing women today.”

— “Sarah Silverman Is Fund-raising 29 Trillion Dollars,” Maggie Lange, New York Magazine

More:

“Sarah Silverman creates provocative new video on women’s salaries and ‘the $500,000 vagina tax,'” Siri Srinivas, The Guardian

“Everything you need to know about the gender wage gap,” Danielle Kurtzleben, Vox

“Pay Equity & Discrimination,” Institute for Women’s Policy Research.

 Video after the jump (NSFW, of course, it’s Sarah Silverman.)