Conservatives must be feeling regretful. After nearly fifty years of using appeals to white racial resentment to take over the South, win presidential elections and control of Congress, conservatives are realizing this might come back to bite them in the ass. As the right wing has become xenophobic and anti-Latino, conservatives have watched young Latinos and young Asian Americans join young African-Americans in being overwhelmingly Democratic. The greater diversity of this younger generation has in turn meant that Democrats, especially Barack Obama, have won handily among young voters in recent elections. All of a sudden, conservatives see being the party of angry white males as a potential liability, and they want to change their image.
the real winner in Wisconsin on Tuesday was not Republican Gov. Scott Walker, but Big Money. And the real loser was not Democrat Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, but democracy.In other words, business and billionaires bought this election for Walker. The money paid for non-stop TV and radio ads as well as mailers. There's no doubt that if the Barrett campaign had even one-third of the war- chest that Walker had, it would have been able to mount an even more formidable grassroots get-out-the-vote campaign and put more money into the TV and radio air war. Under those circumstances, it is likely that Barrett would have prevailed.
Pundits can have a field day pontificating about the Wisconsin election, but in the end its about how Big Money hijacked democracy in the Badger State on Tuesday, and how they're trying to do it again in November.
Leave it to Bill Moyers, one of America's most useful citizens, to sum up our country's present political plight in a succinct metaphor: "Our elections have replaced horse racing as the sport of kings. These kings are multibillionaire, corporate moguls who by divine right--not of God, but [of the Supreme Court's] Citizens United decision--are now buying politicians like so much pricey horseflesh."
Following relentless attacks on the solar industry in the wake of Solyndra's bankruptcy, wind power has become the latest target of the right-wing campaign against renewable energy. But contrary to the myths propagated by the conservative media, wind power is safe, increasingly affordable, and has the potential to significantly reduce pollution and U.S. reliance on fossil fuels.
Catastrophic nuclear accidents such as the core meltdowns in Chernobyl and Fukushima are more likely to happen than previously assumed. Based on the operating hours of all civil nuclear reactors and the number of nuclear meltdowns that have occurred, scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz have calculated that such events may occur once every 10 to 20 years (based on the current number of reactors) — some 200 times more often than estimated in the past.
Bluefin tuna contaminated with radiation believed to be from Fukushima Daiichi turned up off the coast of California just five months after the Japanese nuclear plant suffered meltdown last March, US scientists said.
Wastewater from large dairy farms contains significant concentrations of estrogenic hormones that can persist for months or even years, researchers report in a new study. In the absence of oxygen, the estrogens rapidly convert from one form to another; this stalls their biodegradation and complicates efforts to detect them, the researchers found.
War is hell. And that hell involves the environment, whether forests, fish or fowl.There's unexploded ordnance. Fuel spills and fires. Chemical defoliants, polluted water supplies, even the depleted uranium from modern armor-piercing bullets leaching into the land. The bid to build nuclear weapons in recent decades has left a legacy of toxic contamination across the globe, from Rocky Flats, Colorado to Mayak in southern Russia.
Then there are the conflict driven resource curses, like blood diamonds from West Africa or Congo's coltan, a metallic ore that supplies materials for consumer electronics.
The New York Times revealed this week that President Obama personally oversees a "secret kill list" containing the names and photos of individuals targeted for assassination in the U.S. drone war. According to the Times, Obama signs off on every targeted killing in Yemen and Somalia and the more complex or risky strikes in Pakistan. Individuals on the list include U.S. citizens, as well as teenage girls as young as 17 years old. "The president of the United States believes that he has the power to order people killed, assassinated, in total secrecy, without any due process, without transparency or oversight of any kind," says Glenn Greenwald, a constitutional law attorney and political and legal blogger for Salon.com. "I really do believe it’s literally the most radical power that a government and a president can seize, and yet the Obama administration has seized this power and exercised it aggressively with very little controversy."
In Houston, more than 3,200 janitors clean the offices of some of the largest and most powerful corporations in the world: JP Morgan Chase, Shell, Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Wells Fargo, KBR and Marathon Oil, to name a few. For their labor, they are paid an hourly wage of $8.35 and earn an average of $8,684 annually. Two janitors together would earn about $17,300 a year—still well below the poverty line of $22,314 for a family of four.Yesterday, the contract between the janitors and the cleaning contractors expired. SEIU Local 1 spent the past month trying to reach an agreement to raise the janitors’ hourly wage to $10 over the next three years. But the contractors countered with an offer of a $0.50 pay raise phased in over five years and—according to SEIU spokesperson Paloma Martinez—said that they “wouldn’t budge.” The contractors claimed that the building owners and tenants—the aforementioned corporations—aren’t willing to pay anything close to a living wage.
Low-wage workers in the United States face many harsh and demeaning circumstances—not being entitled to paid sick days, for instance. But there’s something particularly shocking about wage theft, an element of insult added to injury: not only does your boss pay you as little as he can get away with; he keeps a nice chunk of it for himself, just because he can. How much? According to “Broken Laws, Unprotected Workers,” a 2009 paper written by Milkman, Annette Bernhardt et al., fully 26 percent of the low-wage workers they studied in three cities—New York, Chicago and Los Angeles—had been paid less than the legally required minimum wage in the previous week; 60 percent of these were underpaid by more than $1 an hour. All in all, 68 percent of the sample had had at least one pay-related violation in the previous workweek. That turned out to be an average of $51 a week, or $2,634 a year. If a politician proposed increasing taxes by this amount, he’d be hanged from the nearest lamppost.
Below are satellite images from Google Earth that show two neighborhoods from a selection of cities around the world. In case it isn’t obvious, the first image is the less well-off neighborhood, the second the wealthier one. Now even passing aliens can marvel at our regressive fiscal policies!
Although cocaine makes people feel more alert and on top of things in the moment, it can leave users vulnerable to a much slower brain in the long run. A new study shows that chronic use ages key parts of the brain at an accelerated rate.
As Media Matters reported, Fox Business' Eric Bolling recently made unacceptable and bizarre racially charged comments on Fox, including accusing President Obama of inviting "hoodlum[s]" to what he called the "hizzouse." But this wasn't the first time Bolling acted inappropriately while employed by Fox. Bolling has a long history of making false and misleading claims as well as using inflammatory rhetoric and smears during his time at Fox.
[Medicare (the single payer system to deliver paid health care to people over 65 in the USA) has long been hated by conservatives/Republicans. Simply put, it's like universal healthcare, similar to what Canada has, but only for people over 65. Originally it was intended to cover ALL US citizens regardless of age, but Republicans fought against it. Now they are trying to kill it completely by turning if from a government run system to a private system that gives you vouchers that would only pay for a TINY percentage of your health care. Their claims are that it would save money. That's false, of course. Their true reasons are they want more people paying absurdly inflated insurance rates to private health insurance companies.]
And here’s what you need to know: Medicare actually saves money — a lot of money — compared with relying on private insurance companies. And this in turn means that pushing people out of Medicare, in addition to depriving many Americans of needed care, would almost surely end up increasing total health care costs.
The persistent heat and resulting storms has been blamed for at least eight deaths from the Plains to the East Coast, where authorities prepared emergency rooms and encouraged neighbors to check on the elderly as temperatures soared above 100 in spots.
The government has added formaldehyde to a list of known carcinogens, despite years of lobbying by the chemical industry. Formaldehyde is found in plastics and often used in plywood, particle board, mortuaries and hair salons. The government also said Friday that styrene, which is used in boats, bathtubs and in disposable foam plastic cups and plates, may cause cancer. The conservative billionaire Koch brothers have led the lobbying effort against labeling formaldehyde as a carcinogen. Georgia-Pacific, a subsidiary of Koch Industries, is one of the country’s top producers of formaldehyde.
The suggestion by a [Republican] U.S. congressman that Iraq repay the United States for the money it has spent in the country has stirred anger, with an Iraqi lawmaker ridiculing the idea as “stupid” and others saying Iraqis should be compensated for the hardships they’ve endured.
In its recently released 2011 State of the World's Children report , UNICEF positions climate change as the single greatest threat to youth worldwide, and in another new report, the international body...New UNICEF reports paint climate change as major threat to children, development goalsNew UNICEF reports paint climate change as major threat to children, development goals120In its recently released 2011 State of the World's Children report, UNICEF positions climate change as the single greatest threat to youth worldwide, and in another new report, the international body says that climate-related disasters threaten the success of the Millennium Development Goals that are core of international humanitarian agenda.
A [Republican sponsored] New York Senate bill—which, like similar bills in other states, aims to criminalize filming on farms—is dying on the vine because no one across the aisle [on the Democratic side] on the Assembly side will cosponsor it.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is giving significant new powers to its roughly 14,000 agents, allowing them more leeway to search databases, go through household trash or use surveillance teams to scrutinize the lives of people who have attracted their attention.
For weeks, hundreds of young people have been camping out in central Madrid. And others across Europe have now begun following their example. Protests in Lisbon, Paris, Athens and elsewhere show that Europe's lost generation has finally found its voice.
Should we try to keep ahead of those who make and use these materials? Is the effort and expense required for chemists such as myself to develop tests for new drugs, and to work with legal professionals to increase the number of banned substances, really worth it? The simple answer is yes. I have seen the effects that these chemicals can have on those who take them. In addition to damaging medical conditions, these drugs can induce dangerous or violent changes in mood and behaviour. I believe that society has a duty to intervene.
Thanks to Darwin, records on Chillingham cattle go back 150 years--and show a breeding response to climate change resulting in more winter calf deaths.
Conservative republican commentator and writer Ann Coulter again shows her homophobia and bigotry.
In a pure coincidence, Gaddafi impeded U.S. oil interests before the war by Glenn Greenwald published Saturday, Jun 11, 2011 on Salon.com
When the war in Libya began, the U.S. government convinced a large number of war supporters that we were there to achieve the very limited goal of creating a no-fly zone in Benghazi to protect civilians from air attacks, while President Obama specifically vowed that "broadening our military mission to include regime change would be a mistake." This no-fly zone was created in the first week, yet now, almost three months later, the war drags on without any end in sight, and NATO is no longer even hiding what has long been obvious: that its real goal is exactly the one Obama vowed would not be pursued -- regime change through the use of military force. We're in Libya to forcibly remove Gaddafi from power and replace him with a regime that we like better, i.e., one that is more accommodating to the interests of the West. That's not even a debatable proposition at this point.
What I suppose is debatable, in the most generous sense of that term, is our motive in doing this. Why -- at a time when American political leaders feel compelled to advocate politically radioactive budget cuts to reduce the deficit and when polls show Americans solidly and increasingly opposed to the war -- would the U.S. Government continue to spend huge sums of money to fight this war? Why is President Obama willing to endure self-evidently valid accusations -- even from his own Party -- that he's fighting an illegal war by brazenly flouting the requirements for Congressional approval? Why would Defense Secretary Gates risk fissures by so angrily and publicly chiding NATO allies for failing to build more Freedom Bombs to devote to the war? And why would we, to use the President's phrase, "stand idly by" while numerous other regimes -- including our close allies in Bahrain and Yemen and the one in Syria -- engage in attacks on their own people at least as heinous as those threatened by Gaddafi, yet be so devoted to targeting the Libyan leader?
Whatever the answers to those mysteries, no responsible or Serious person, by definition, would suggest that any of this -- from today's Washington Post -- has anything to do with it:
The relationship between Gaddafi and the U.S. oil industry as a whole was odd. In 2004, President George W. Bush unexpectedly lifted economic sanctions on Libya in return for its renunciation of nuclear weapons and terrorism. There was a burst of optimism among American oil executives eager to return to the Libyan oil fields they had been forced to abandon two decades earlier. . . .
Yet even before armed conflict drove the U.S. companies out of Libya this year, their relations with Gaddafi had soured. The Libyan leader demanded tough contract terms. He sought big bonus payments up front. Moreover, upset that he was not getting more U.S. government respect and recognition for his earlier concessions, he pressured the oil companies to influence U.S. policies. . . .
When Gaddafi made his deal with Bush in 2004, he had hoped that returning foreign oil companies would help boost Libya’s output . . . The U.S. government also encouraged American oil companies to go back to Libya. . . .
The companies needed little encouragement. Libya has some of the biggest and most proven oil reserves -- 43.6 billion barrels -- outside Saudi Arabia, and some of the best drilling prospects. . . . Throughout this time, oil prices kept rising, whetting the appetite for greater supplies of Libya's unusually "sweet" and "light," or high-quality, crude oil.
By the time Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited in 2008, U.S. joint ventures accounted for 510,000 of Libya's 1.7 million barrels a day of production, a State Department cable said. . . .
But all was not well. By November 2007, a State Department cable noted "growing evidence of Libyan resource nationalism." It noted that in his 2006 speech marking the founding of his regime, Gaddafi said: "Oil companies are controlled by foreigners who have made millions from them. Now, Libyans must take their place to profit from this money." His son made similar remarks in 2007.
Oil companies had been forced to give their local subsidiaries Libyan names, the cable said. . . .
The entire article is worth reading, as it details how Gaddafi has progressively impeded the interests of U.S. and Western oil companies by demanding a greater share of profits and other concessions, to the point where some of those corporations were deciding that it may no longer be profitable or worthwhile to drill for oil there. But now, in a pure coincidence, there is hope on the horizon for these Western oil companies, thanks to the war profoundly humanitarian action being waged by the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize winner and his nation's closest Western allies:
But Libya's oil production has foundered, sagging to about 1.5 million barrels a day by early this year before unrest broke out. The big oil companies, several of which had drilled dry holes, felt that Libya was not making the best exploration prospects available. One major company privately said that it was on the verge of a discovery but that unrest cut short the project.
With the country torn by fighting, the big international oil companies are treading carefully, unwilling to throw their lot behind Gaddafi or the rebel coalition.
Yet when representatives of the rebel coalition in Benghazi spoke to the U.S.-Libya Business Council in Washington four weeks ago, representatives from ConocoPhillips and other oil firms attended, according to Richard Mintz, a public relations expert at the Harbour Group, which represents the Benghazi coalition. In another meeting in Washington, Ali Tarhouni, the lead economic policymaker in Benghazi, said oil contracts would be honored, Mintz said.
"Now you can figure out who’s going to win, and the name is not Gaddafi," Saleri said. "Certain things about the mosaic are taking shape. The Western companies are positioning themselves."
"Five years from now," he added, "Libyan production is going to be higher than right now and investments are going to come in."
I have two points to make about all this: (1) The reason -- the only reason -- we know about any of this is because WikiLeaks (and, allegedly, Bradley Manning) disclosed to the world the diplomatic cables which detail these conflicts. Virtually the entirety of the Post article -- like most significant revelations over the last 12 months, especially in the Middle East and North Africa -- are based exclusively on WikiLeaks disclosures. That's why we know about Gaddafi's increasingly strident demands for the "Libyanization" of his country's resource exploitation. That's how we know about most of the things we've learned about the world's most powerful political and corporate factions over the last 12 months. Is there anything easier to understand than why U.S. Government officials are so eager to punish WikiLeaks and deter future transparency projects of this sort?
(2) Is there anyone -- anywhere -- who actually believes that these aren't the driving considerations in why we're waging this war in Libya? After almost three months of fighting and bombing -- when we're so far from the original justifications and commitments that they're barely a distant memory -- is there anyone who still believes that humanitarian concerns are what brought us and other Western powers to the war in Libya? Is there anything more obvious -- as the world's oil supplies rapidly diminish -- than the fact that our prime objective is to remove Gaddafi and install a regime that is a far more reliable servant to Western oil interests, and that protecting civilians was the justifying pretext for this war, not the purpose? If (as is quite possible) the new regime turns out to be as oppressive as Gaddafi but far more subservient to Western corporations (like, say, our good Saudi friends), does anyone think we're going to care in the slightest or (at most) do anything other than pay occasional lip service to protesting it? Does anyone think we're going to care about The Libyan People if they're being oppressed or brutalized by a reliably pro-Western successor to Gaddafi?
In 2006, George Bush instructed us that there was a "responsible" and an "irresponsible" way for citizens to debate the Iraq War: the "responsible" way was to suggest that there may be better tactics for waging the war more effectively, while the "irresponsible" way was to outrageously insinuate that perhaps oil or Israel or deceit played a role in the invasion:
Yet we must remember there is a difference between responsible and irresponsible debate -- and it's even more important to conduct this debate responsibly when American troops are risking their lives overseas.
The American people know the difference between responsible and irresponsible debate when they see it. They know the difference between honest critics who question the way the war is being prosecuted and partisan critics who claim that we acted in Iraq because of oil, or because of Israel, or because we misled the American people. And they know the difference between a loyal opposition that points out what is wrong, and defeatists who refuse to see that anything is right.
Earlier this month, Hillary Clinton hosted a meeting of top executives from a wide array of corporations -- Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Halliburton, GE, Chevron, Lockheed Martin, Citigroup, Occidental Petroleum, etc. etc. -- to plot how to exploit "economic opportunities in the new Iraq." And one WikiLeaks "diplomatic" cable after the next reveals constant government efforts to promote the interests of Western corporations in the developing world. Nonetheless, the very notion that the U.S. wages wars not for humanitarian or freedom-spreading purposes, but rather to exploit the resources of other nations for its own large corporations, is deeply "irresponsible" and unSerious. As usual, the ideas stigmatized with the most potent taboos are the ones that are the most obviously true.
It's certainly possible to contend reasonably that (as was true for Iraq) removing a heinous dictator and other humanitarian outcomes will be the incidental by-product of our war in Libya even if not its purpose (although, as was also true in Iraq, one would need to see the regime that replaces Gaddafi to know if that's true). And it's fine -- or at least candid -- to argue, as Ann Coulter often does, that "of course we should go to war for oil. . . .We need oil. That's a good reason to go to war." But to believe that humanitarianism (protection of Libya civilians) was why we went to war in Libya requires a blindness so willful and complete that it's genuinely difficult to describe.
UPDATE: To clarify what I believe was already clear: the point here is not that the U.S. invaded Libya in order to steal its oil. That's not the West's modus operandi. The point is that what distinguishes Gaddafi and made him a war target is not the claimed humanitarian rationale (he brutalized his own people) any more than "Saddam's gassing his own people" (25 years ago when he was a close American ally) was the reason the U.S. invaded Iraq. Instead, what distinguished Gaddafi and made him a war target was that he had become insufficiently compliant -- an unreliable and unstable servant to the West.
The U.S. does not object in the slightest when a leader oppresses or even attacks his own people. The U.S. adores leaders who do things like that. Its best friends in the region have long done and continue to do exactly that -- from Mubarak to the Saudis to Yemen's Saleh to the Bahrainis, not to mention the Shah of Iran and even our one-time good friend Saddam. The very idea that the U.S. Government woke up one day and suddenly decided that it can no longer abide a leader who mistreats his own people -- and that's why we went to Libya -- is so ludicrous that it's actually painful to hear that people believe that. It so obviously confuses pretext with cause. If Gaddafi had continued to be as compliant as he had been in the past, does anyone really believe we would have invaded his country and spent months trying to kill him and replace him with another regime?
That's not to say that Gaddafi's "resource nationalism" is the only or even overriding motive for the war in Libya. Wars are typically caused by the interests of multiple factions and rarely have just one motive. As Jim Webb explained in arguing that the U.S. has no vital interest in Libya, the French and British are far more reliant on Libyan oil than the U.S. is (and this reader offers a rational dissent and alternative explanation for the war). But the U.S. has long made clear that it will not tolerate hostile or disobedient rulers in countries where it believes it has vital interests, and that's particularly true in oil rich nations (which is one reason for the American obsession with Iran). It's just hard to believe that any rational person would believe that the war in Libya is unrelated to the fact that Gaddafi has been increasingly obstructionist in allowing Western oil companies access to that nation's oil and that Libya is so rich in oil.
After the assassination of bin Laden I received such a deluge of requests for comment that I was unable to respond individually, and on May 4 and later I sent an unedited form response instead, not intending for it to be posted, and expecting to write it up more fully and carefully later on. But it was posted, then circulated.That was followed but a deluge of reactions from all over the world. It is far from a scientific sample of course, but nevertheless, the tendencies may be of some interest. Overwhelmingly, those from the “third world” were on the order of “thanks for saying what we think.” There were similar ones from the US, but many others were infuriated, often virtually hysterical, with almost no relation to the actual content of the posted form letter.
Resource wars are possible as global warming melts polar ice - opening new areas to oil exploitation, cables indicate. ... Sir David King, the UK government's former chief scientific adviser, called the invasion of Iraq "the first of [this century's] resource wars", warning that "powerful nations will secure resources for their own people at the expense of others".
"The doomsday would be competitive resource wars. As climate change gets worse, people will be pushed to get more resources to run their air conditioners and so forth. My prediction is that we are still going to be addicted to oil [when the main icecaps melt] and these resources are going to be extracted by the most powerful lot - which would include Russia, the US and China."
Do you know one of those people who says, "I'm a vegetarian, but I still eat chicken"? Considering that chickens are arguably the most abused animals on the planet, they should be one of the first animals we remove from our plates—and there's no better time to do that than World Week for Abolition of Meat.... Chickens' cognitive skills rival those of cats, dogs, and, in some cases, primates....But the billions of chickens who are slaughtered for food or crammed into cages and used for eggs suffer horribly throughout their short lives.
As attention turns to speculation that May 21, 2011, will be the Biblical day of rapture, Media Matters revisits a litany of fringe right-wing media figures who foretold that President Obama might just be the Antichrist - the latest in a long line of world leaders presaged as "the beast."
- No Such Thing As Liberal Media: Keith Olbermann (Former news host on MSNBC, soon to be on Current TV) tweets:
"Presented without comment: Michael Moore named contributor to @Current. Michael Steele [former chairman of the Republican Party] named contributor to MSNBC"
Two U.S. representatives from Pennsylvania are advocating that the federal government back a new generation of miniature nuclear reactors that could power neighborhoods.
At least 89 people have died in Joplin, Missouri, and the toll is expected to climb as one of the deadliest tornadoes in state history roared through the small Midwestern city on Sunday, local officials said on Monday.
Only God can make a tree, the poem says. But scientists are working on making artificial leaves that can produce fuels directly from sunlight, water and carbon dioxide, just as real leaves do. One day, the new leaves could help people heat their homes and drive their cars.
Apparently harboring the time-honored illusion that if you don't talk about something that makes you uncomfortable then it will go away, Tennessee legislators have passed the country's first so-called "Don't Say Gay" law, wherein middle school teachers can only discuss sexuality in the context of "natural human reproduction science" - as in, you know, man plus woman equals baby. More on protests, the idiocy of the bill, background and petition by WeSayGay, and more corporate and Chamber gay-bashing.
The Right's Mirror-Image View of Life Anti-abortion campaigners in the US fail to value life lost through war, or those taken by a punitive justice system.
By Cliff Schecter
Pubished May 2011 on Al Jazeera
Anti-abortion campaigners believe it is their right to choose the rights of others - while many 'pro-lifers' vocally support the death penalty and wars that kill innocents [GALLO/GETTY]
Yesterday, I pulled up to a drive-through ATM, and sitting in front of me in the line was a car with a license plate that simply stated, "Choose Life".
Who can argue with that? I support life, don't you?
The problem, of course, is the relationship between that phrase and the US right wing. You know, the ones who are petrified of everything from black presidents to black helicopters to Black Sabbath.
Yes, they piously claim to be "pro-life", but it is a simple platitude, for - to paraphrase Inigo Montoya from The Princess Bride - I do not think that word means what they think it means.
To those not steeped in US politics, being pro-life might seem like it means what one would expect - to oppose policies and endeavours that duly result in a loss of human life. But, in the US political arena, it means something quite different. Generally, it is a way of telling everyone that it's your business to give a woman her marching orders - that she must eventually carry a three-day-old embryo to term, even if it's the result of rape or incest.
Or its corollary, that you're some kind of Nietzschean Superman for ensuring that 91-year-old patients in terrible pain due to pancreatic cancer must stick a tube in any empty orifice to force themselves to stay alive and suffer, even against their own wishes.
The sad reality is that, to be pro-life in the US today, which is to be conservative in almost all cases, is to love thy enemy by supporting illegal wars - or just plain stupid ones - that kill hundreds of thousands of innocents, cutting health-care benefits and nutrition programs for children and the poor, and turning the other cheek … of the person you're torturing.
It is also to cut funding for bridges that are falling down to make room for slashing the tax on yacht shoes, make a best faith effort to ensure criminals, the mentally unbalanced and terrorists have access to assault weapons and C4 explosives, and to love thy neighbour - to love them so much as to give him or her a lethal injection if you think they killed someone.
"Think" is the operative word here, as it seems the conservative Governor of Ohio, John Kasich, may be about to put an innocent man to death. Shawn Hawkins, the man in question, is to be executed on June 14, 2011. This, even though there are serious enough concerns he may be innocent that on May 11, the Ohio Parole Board unanimously recommended that the governor grant him clemency due to increasing doubt over his guilt.
But hell, what's a little faulty eyewitness testimony, evidence destroyed before it could be DNA tested, and lack of placing the defendant in possession of the murder weapon between friends?
So, in other words, the morning-after pill is murder, but taking a guy who even Ken Blackwell, Republican candidate for Governor in 2006, thinks should be given clemency - and killing him - that is just so pro-life!
The truth is that those on the US right are about as "pro-life" as Arnold Schwarzenegger is pro-wife. Or Dominique Strauss Kahn is pro-maid.
It is an empty phrase they throw around to get a core demographic of lunatics who hate the very idea of a woman choosing to have sex and having any control over her body frothing at the mouth. Because presumably, Jesus, who talked about love and brotherhood, would have taken the time to stop walking on water and curing the infirm to publicly flog any woman contemplating a life of self-determination.
This is not to say there are not legitimate concerns with late-term abortions. I have these concerns. Or underage girls making this decision without adult guidance. I have those ones too.
But this is not what this particular battle's about. Because if it were, I probably wouldn't have once argued on a television show with a conservative, who in one sentence told me that abortion was murder, and in the next that we should eliminate the Environmental Protection Agency (the guys who, you know, make sure we can breathe) - and turn Iraq into a "glass factory" (See: sand and extreme heat).
Now maybe you're reading this and asking: "I already know all of this, why is he wasting my time?" Well, perhaps this is just my way of saying I'm tired of the platitudes, particularly on the licence plates of portly, pale, Rush Limbaugh-imbibers who take way-too-much time at the drive-through ATM because they're still working their way through fractions.
You can pick whatever political slogan you want. But pro-life is pro-life in any language.
And you're probably a bit closer to actually being pro-life if you care about how a pregnant woman will get healthcare, and not being the guy trying to cut it, while wearing your wife-beater t-shirt and holding up the Obama sign with the Hitler moustache.
Cliff Schecter is the President of Libertas, LLC, a progressive public relations firm, the author of the 2008 bestseller The Real McCain, and a regular contributor to The Huffington Post. You can follow him on Twitter: @cliffschecter
A survivor of the Chernobyl disaster says people exposed to radiation from Japan's crippled nuclear plant will spend the rest of their lives fearing the "bombshell" of cancer and other dire illnesses.
The Chernobyl catastrophe released 100 times more radiation than the atom bombs dropped over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Yet many seem to just dismiss the accident as a part of history and forget what large doses of radiation actually do to human lives. Sadly, focussing solely on the disputed statistics of Chernobyl has dehumanized what happened. The effects of Chernobyl touched millions of people and thousands still endure very visible and painful effects.
With the 25th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear plant catastrophe having arrived, and with the disaster at the Fukushima nuclear complex still unfolding and radioactivity continuing to spew from those plants some people are asking: can nuclear power be made safe?
The answer is no. Nuclear power can never be made safe.
This was clearly explained by Admiral Hyman Rickover, the “father” of the U.S. nuclear navy and in charge of construction of the first nuclear power plant in the nation, Shippingport in Pennsylvania. Before a committee of Congress, as he retired from the navy in 1982, Rickover warned of the inherent lethality of nuclear power and urged that “we outlaw nuclear reactors.”
Climate change is likely to diminish already scarce water supplies in the Western United States, exacerbating problems for millions of water users in the West, according to a new government report.
Inspired by Ronald Reagan and funded by the right's richest donors, a web of free-market think tanks has fueled the nationwide attack on workers' rights.
The noble guardians of our national morality - aka Texas' Republican House of Representatives - have easily passed a bill requiring any public college with a student center on "alternative" sexuality to provide equal funding to one promoting "traditional values," like, presumably, date rape and other beer-fueled heterosexual rampages. Young Conservatives of Texas hope this will mean the closing of centers that "encourage folks who consider themselves homosexuals to go on considering themselves as such."
“This report confirms that ultra-low interest loans provided by the Federal Reserve during the financial crisis turned out to be direct corporate welfare to big banks,” Sanders said. “Instead of using the Fed loans to reinvest in the economy, some of the largest financial institutions in this country appear to have lent this money back to the federal government at a higher rate of interest by purchasing U.S. government securities.”
Following the passage of Michigan Republican Gov. Rick Snyder’s “Financial Martial Law,” Emergency Financial Manager (EFM) of Detroit Public Schools (DPS) Robert Bobb is closing 8 schools and selling 45 to [private] companies. DPS is currently preparing a charter school board through training sessions provided by the National Charter Schools Institute, which had more than 70 charter operators and entrepreneurs in attendance just this month. In addition, DPS has hired the National Association of Charter School Authorizers (NACSA) to review applications.
NACSA’s president, Greg Richmond, worked with charter schools set up in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, and claims “The system opened up to the people of New Orleans in a way it hadn’t before…Now there are dozens of opportunities to get involved.”
Laid out in an infographic from Hunch and our friends at Column Five Media, the contrasts between self-identified "Mac people" and "PC people" are pretty much exactly what the Mac commercials would have you believe: Mac users are more progressive and fun, and PC users, of which there are many, many more, are more suburban.
A handful of statistics from the graphic:
36 percent of PC people are liberal, while 58 percent of Mac people are liberal
21 percent of PC people live in a rural area, while 52 percent of Mac people are in a city
Mac people are more likely to have college degrees
PC people prefer tuna fish sandwiches, but Mac people like the oh-so-trendy Vietnamese bánh mì
PC people like TV Guide; Mac people like Dwell
Why Sport Hunting Is Cruel and Unnecessary
Published 4/26/11 at Peta.com
Although it was a crucial part of humans’ survival 100,000 years ago, hunting is now nothing more than a violent form of recreation that the vast majority of hunters do not need for subsistence.(1) Hunting has contributed to the extinction of animal species all over the world, including the Tasmanian tiger and the great auk.(2,3)
Less than 5 percent of the U.S. population hunts, yet hunting is permitted in many wildlife refuges, national forests, and state parks and on other public lands.(4) Almost 40 percent of hunters slaughter and maim millions of animals on public land every year, and by some estimates, poachers kill just as many animals illegally.(5,6)
Pain and Suffering
Many animals suffer prolonged, painful deaths when they are injured but not killed by hunters. A member of the Maine Bowhunters Alliance estimates that 50 percent of animals who are shot with crossbows are wounded but not killed.(7) A study of 80 radio-collared white-tailed deer found that of the 22 deer who had been shot with “traditional archery equipment,” 11 were wounded but not recovered by hunters.(8) Twenty percent of foxes who have been wounded by hunters are shot again; 10 percent manage to escape, but “starvation is a likely fate” for them, according to one veterinarian.(9) A South Dakota Department of Game, Fish, and Parks biologist estimates that more than 3 million wounded ducks go “unretrieved” every year.(10) A British study of deer hunting found that 11 percent of deer who’d been killed by hunters died only after being shot two or more times and that some wounded deer suffered for more than 15 minutes before dying.(11)
Hunting disrupts migration and hibernation patterns and destroys families. For animals like wolves, who mate for life and live in close-knit family units, hunting can devastate entire communities. The stress that hunted animals suffer—caused by fear and the inescapable loud noises and other commotion that hunters create—also severely compromises their normal eating habits, making it hard for them to store the fat and energy that they need in order to survive the winter.
Blood-Thirsty and Profit-Driven
To attract more hunters (and their money), federal and state agencies implement programs—often called “wildlife management” or “conservation” programs—that are designed to boost the numbers of “game” species. These programs help to ensure that there are plenty of animals for hunters to kill and, consequently, plenty of revenue from the sale of hunting licenses.
Duck hunters in Louisiana persuaded the state wildlife agency to direct $100,000 a year toward “reduced predator impact,” which involved trapping foxes and raccoons so that more duck eggs would hatch, giving hunters more birds to kill.(12) The Ohio Division of Wildlife teamed up with a hunter-organized society to push for clear-cutting (i.e., decimating large tracts of trees) in Wayne National Forest in order to “produce habitat needed by ruffed grouse.”(13)
In Alaska, the Department of Fish and Game is trying to increase the number of moose for hunters by “controlling” the wolf and bear populations. Grizzlies and black bears have been moved hundreds of miles away from their homes; two were shot by hunters within two weeks of their relocation, and others have simply returned to their homes.(14) Wolves have been slaughtered in order to “let the moose population rebound and provide a higher harvest for local hunters.”(15) In the early 1990s, a program designed to reduce the wolf population backfired when snares failed to kill victims quickly, and photos of suffering wolves were viewed by an outraged public.(16)
Nature Takes Care of Its Own
The delicate balance of ecosystems ensures their own survival—if they are left unaltered. Natural predators help maintain this balance by killing only the sickest and weakest individuals. Hunters, however, kill any animal whose head they would like to hang over the fireplace—including large, healthy animals who are needed to keep the population strong. Elephant poaching is believed to have increased the number of tuskless animals in Africa, and in Canada, hunting has caused bighorn sheep’s horn size to fall by 25 percent in the last 40 years; Nature magazine reports that “the effect on the populations’ genetics is probably deeper.”(17)
Even when unusual natural occurrences cause overpopulation, natural processes work to stabilize the group. Starvation and disease can be tragic, but they are nature’s ways of ensuring that healthy, strong animals survive and maintain the strength level of the rest of their herd or group. Shooting an animal because he or she might starve or become sick is arbitrary and destructive.
Not only does “sport” hunting jeopardize nature’s balance, it also exacerbates other problems. For example, the transfer of captive-bred deer and elk between states for the purpose of hunting is believed to have contributed to the epidemic spread of chronic wasting disease (CWD). As a result, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has given state wildlife agencies millions of dollars to “manage” deer and elk populations.(18) The fatal neurological illness that affects these animals has been likened to mad cow disease, and while the USDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention claim that CWD has no relationship to any similar diseases that affect humans or farmed animals, the slaughter of deer and elk continues.(19,20)
Another problem with hunting involves the introduction of exotic “game” animals who, if they’re able to escape and thrive, pose a threat to native wildlife and established ecosystems.
Canned Cruelty
Most hunting occurs on private land, where laws that protect wildlife are often inapplicable or difficult to enforce. On private lands that are set up as for-profit hunting reserves or game ranches, hunters can pay to kill native and exotic species in “canned hunts.” These animals may be native to the area, raised elsewhere and brought in, or purchased from individuals who are trafficking in unwanted or surplus animals from zoos and circuses. They are hunted and killed for the sole purpose of providing hunters with a “trophy.”
Canned hunts are becoming big business—there are an estimated 1,000 game preserves in the U.S.(21) Ted Turner, the country’s largest private landowner, allows hunters to pay thousands of dollars to kill bison, deer, African antelopes, and turkeys on his 2 million acres.(22)
Animals on canned-hunting ranches are often accustomed to humans and are usually unable to escape from the enclosures that they are confined to, which range in size from just a few yards to thousands of acres. Most of these ranches operate on a “no kill, no pay” policy, so it is in owners’ best interests to ensure that clients get what they came for. Owners do this by offering guides who are familiar with animals’ locations and habits, permitting the use of dogs, and supplying “feeding stations” that lure unsuspecting animals to food while hunters lie in wait.
Many states, including Arizona, Montana, Utah, and Wyoming have limited or banned canned hunts, but there are no federal laws regulating the practice at this time.(23,24)
Other Victims
Hunting accidents destroy property and injure or kill horses, cows, dogs, cats, hikers, and other hunters. In 2006, then-Vice President Dick Cheney famously shot a friend while hunting quail on a canned-hunting preserve.(25) According to the International Hunter Education Association, there are dozens of deaths and hundreds of injuries attributed to hunting in the U.S. every year—and that number only includes incidents involving humans.(26) It is an ongoing problem, and one warden explained that “hunters seem unfamiliar with their firearms and do not have enough respect for the damage they can do.”(27)
The bears, cougars, deer, foxes, and other animals who are chased, trapped, and even killed by dogs during (sometimes illegal) hunts aren’t the only ones to suffer from this variant of the “sport.” Dogs used for hunting are often kept chained or penned and are denied routine veterinary care like vaccines and heartworm medication. Some are lost during hunts and never found while others are turned loose at the end of hunting season to fend for themselves and die of starvation or get struck by a vehicle.
A Humane Alternative
There are 30 million deer in the U.S., and because hunting has been an ineffective method to “control” populations (one Pennsylvania hunter “manages” the population and attracts deer by clearing his 600-acre plot of wooded land and planting corn), some wildlife agencies are considering other management techniques.(28,29) Several recent studies suggest that sterilization is an effective, long-term solution to overpopulation. An experimental birth-control vaccine is being used on female deer in Princeton, N.J.(30,31) One Georgia study of 1,500 white-tailed deer on Cumberland Island concluded that “if females are captured, marked, and counted, sterilization reduces herd size, even at relatively low annual sterilization rates.”(32)
What You Can Do
Before you support a “wildlife” or “conservation” group, ask about its position on hunting. Groups such as the National Wildlife Federation, the National Audubon Society, the Sierra Club, the Izaak Walton League, the Wilderness Society, and the World Wildlife Fund are pro–sport-hunting, or at the very least, they do not oppose it.
To combat hunting in your area, post “no hunting” signs on your land, join or form an anti-hunting organization, protest organized hunts, and spread deer repellent or human hair (from barber shops) near hunting areas. Call 1-800-628-7275 to report poachers in national parks to the National Parks and Conservation Association. Educate others about hunting. Encourage your legislators to enact or enforce wildlife-protection laws, and insist that nonhunters be equally represented on the staffs of wildlife agencies.
References 1) National Research Council, “Science and the Endangered Species Act” (Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1995) 21. 2) Grant Holloway, “Cloning to Revive Extinct Species,” CNN.com, 28 May 2002. 3) Canadian Museum of Nature, “Great Auk,” 2008. 4) U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, “2006 National Survey of Fishing, Hunting, and Wildlife-Associated Recreation” (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 2007) 4. 5) U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service 81. 6) Illinois Department of Natural Resources, “How the Program Works,” 10 October 2008. 7) Stephen S. Ditchkoff et al., “Wounding Rates of White-Tailed Deer With Traditional Archery Equipment,” Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the Southeastern Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies (1998). 8) D.J. Renny, “Merits and Demerits of Different Methods of Culling British Wild Mammals: A Veterinary Surgeon’s Perspective,” Proceedings of a Symposium on the Welfare of British Wild Mammals (London: 2002). 9) Spencer Vaa, “Reducing Wounding Losses,” South Dakota Department of Game, Fish, and Parks, 2004. 10) E.L. Bradshaw and P. Bateson, “Welfare Implications of Culling Red Deer (Cervus Elaphus),” Animal Welfare 9 (2000): 3-24. 11) John Swinconeck, “Controlled Hunt May Be Solution to the Excess of ‘Deer at Our Doorstep,’” York County Coast Star 27 Jun. 2002. 12) Bob Marshall, “Is Predator Program Enough?” Times-Picayune 2 Mar. 2003. 13) Dave Golowenski, “Grouse Numbers Go Up if Trees Come Down,” The Columbus Dispatch 20 Feb. 2003. 14) Associated Press, “Hunters Shoot Two Relocated Bears,” 9 Jun. 2003. 15) Joel Gay, “McGrath Wolf Kills Fall Short,” Anchorage Daily News 25 Apr. 2003. 16) Joel Gay, “Governor Takes Heat From Hunters Expecting Aerial Wolf Control,” Anchorage Daily News 8 Apr. 2003. 17) John Whitfield, “Sheep Horns Downsized by Hunters’ Taste for Trophies,” Nature 426 (2003): 595. 18) U.S. Department of Agriculture, “USDA Makes $4 Million Available to State Wildlife Agencies for Strengthening Chronic Wasting Disease Management,” news release, 15 Apr. 2003. 19) U.S. Department of Agriculture, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Services, “Chronic Wasting Disease,” 4 Jan. 2007. 20) Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Division of Media Relations, “Fatal Degenerative Neurologic Illnesses in Men Who Participated in Wild Game Feasts—Wisconsin, 2002,” news release, Feb. 2003. 21) Sam Farr, “Reps. Farr, Shays Introduce Bill to Can Canned Hunts,” U.S. Fed News 7 Oct. 2004. 22) Robert M. Poole, “Hunters: For Love of the Land,” National Geographic Magazine Nov. 2007. 23) National Conference of State Legislatures, “Environment, Energy, and Transportation Program: Fishing, Hunting, and Wildlife,” Apr. 2008. 24) Clint Talbott, “Hunting in a Cage, There Ought to Be a Law,” Boulder Daily Camera 25 Jan. 2008. 25) Dana Bash, “Cheney Accidentally Shoots Fellow Hunter,” CNN.com, 12 Feb. 2006. 26International Hunter Education Association, “Hunter Incident Clearinghouse,” 30 Mar. 2008. 27) Tom Harelson, “1998 Deer Gun Season Report,” Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, 8 Dec. 1998. 28) Associated Press, “Deer Eating Away at Forests, Nationwide,” 18 Jan. 2005. 29) Andrew C. Revkin, “States Seek to Restore Deer Balance,” The New York Times 29 Dec. 2002. 30) Roger Segelken, “Surgical Sterilization Snips Away at Deer Population,” Cornell News 19 Mar. 2003. 31) Associated Press, “Princeton’s Deer Hunt Coming to a Premature End,,” 21 Mar. 2003. 32) James L. Boone and Richard G. Wiegert, “Modeling Deer Herd Management: Sterilization Is a Viable Option,” Ecological Modeling 72 (1994): 175-86.
