Right Wing Extremism & Bigotry Ignored/Worsened by Fox, Republicans, etc • Guns • Republican Voter Suppression • Climate Change & Dangers Ignore by Conservative Media • Republican Rep Support Dog Fighting • Mars • Low IQ=Conservative • more

- Wade Michael Page: Islamophobia unleashed

We have yet to determine if Page mistook Sikhs for Muslims, but such questions are irrelevant. In today’s Islamophobic atmosphere, there has been increased marginalization of all AMEMSA (Arab, Middle Eastern, Muslim, South Asian) communities. In particular, Sikh Americans have faced the brunt of post-9/11 hate crimes and backlash, with Sikh men often being mistaken for Muslims. The first post-9/11 hate crime murder was of Balbir Singh Sodhi, a Sikh gas station owner in Arizona, whom the murderer chose because he was “dark-skinned, bearded and wore a turban.”Instead of using their position of influence to build bridges of understanding, Bachmann and four GOP colleagues recently decided to stoke the flames of fear-mongering by engaging in a witch hunt against fellow Americans. Facts are not Bachmann’s strong suit. Instead, she continues the odious tradition of McCarthyism and relies on paranoia, hunches and the prevailing anti-Muslim sentiment in the country to justify smearing respected American Muslim individuals as being connected to radical Muslim organizations. Bachmann’s Islamophobia was appreciated by her Tea Party base who rewarded her “dangerous” and “downright vicious” conspiracy theories with July donations totaling $1 million. (For perspective, Bachmann previously raised $1 million over a period of three months, April through June.)

- Wade Michael Page, Sikh temple shooter, identified as skinhead band leader

The gunman who killed six people at a Sikh temple south of Milwaukee on Sunday and critically wounded three others, including a police officer, was identified Monday as Wade Michael Page, a 40-year-old Army veteran with reported links to the white supremacist movement.

- Neo-Nazi Rampage: Army Psy-Ops Vet, White Power Musician ID’d As Gunman in Sikh Temple Shooting

More details have come to light about the man who shot dead six worshippers and critically wounded three others at the Oak Creek Sikh temple in Wisconsin before he was killed by police. The gunman, Wade Michael Page, was a white, 40-year-old U.S. Army veteran with links to white supremacist groups and membership in skinhead rock bands.

- Former DHS Analyst Daryl Johnson on How He Was Silenced for Warning of Far-Right Militants in U.S.

While working as a senior analyst in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in 2009, Johnson authored a report warning about the increasing dangers of violent right-wing extremism in the United States, sparking a political firestorm in the process. Under pressure from Republican lawmakers and popular talk show hosts, DHS ultimately repudiated Johnson’s paper.

- To Be American, Christian and Oppressed

...the Christian God and the Christian Bible [are still] everywhere in the United States, and neither is in any danger of being dethroned. That people like Malkin and Kelly [Republicans] like to pretend otherwise means one of two things: they are either paranoid religious fanatics who actually believe their house of worship is in jeopardy, or they’re playing politics and hoping to gin up the rabid religious fervor that paints an angry red so much of Republicanism these days

- Voter Suppression in the Land of Enchantment

Officials could be trying to outreach to more potential voters and engage them in the democratic process. But apparently that risk is just too high, because… someone’s dog may get a registration letter? The County Clerk is relying on a tired old myth—that individuals are perpetuating voter fraud. Extensive research shows that voter fraud is almost nonexistent. The real outrage is that at least one-sixth, if not more, of New Mexico’s eligible voters aren’t even registered.

- I Have Photo ID, Therefore I Am

When Laila Stones sent a letter to the Commonwealth of Virginia requesting a copy of her birth certificate, the response was jarring: “They say I don’t exist,” she recounts under oath.Stones needs her birth certificate so that she can obtain a photo identification card and thereby vote in November. She’s a witness against the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, where she now lives, in a lawsuit filed by civil rights groups to block the state’s voter ID law. Stones is one of at least ten witnesses called to testify about the burdens she’s suffered to obtain the ID now mandated for voting. Her testimony is mostly about why she doesn’t have the resources to comply.

- STUDY: Conservative Talk Radio Promotes Echo-Chamber Of Hate Speech

A study released today by the National Hispanic Media Coalition (NHMC) and UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center (CSRC) found that conservative talk radio contributes to "hate speech" against ethnic, racial, religious groups and the LGBT community.

- Romney tax plan helps rich, hurts middle class: study

Republican U.S. presidential challenger Mitt Romney's proposal to slash individual income taxes by 20 percent across-the-board would primarily boost the income of the wealthiest taxpayers, according to a nonpartisan analysis released on Wednesday.

- Romney Suggests Outsourcing Experience Will Help Him Win Back U.S. Jobs

n an apparent effort to confront the Obama campaign’s focus on his links to shipping U.S. jobs overseas, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney suggested his familiarity with outsourcing makes him well poised to return jobs to the United States.

- Fox Pushes GOP's Dubious Claims Of Health Care Reform Cost Increase

In uncritically presenting the GOP graphic, Fox ignored how Republicans and their media allies have routinely exaggerated the cost of the ACA. Indeed,  Fox and others had previously claimed that the ACA's cost had "doubled" from $900 million over 10 years to $1.7 trillion, the chart's third number. In fact, the CBO found that the cost had actually decreased.

- Time to Stand Up to the Gun Nuts

Ever since 1994, when the NRA successfully targeted Democrats in swing districts who had the temerity to support the Brady Bill and President Clinton's assault weapons ban, there has been virtually no resistance to the gun lobby.

- Government Regulations Do Not Have A Meaningful Impact On Unemployment

[Libertarians and Republicans constantly complain about government regulations, claiming they kill jobs, limit business growth, etc. They'd rather allow corporations to be self-regulatory, in essence allowing Exxon to decide if it's safe to drill for oil in your back yard rather than independent government regulators] On America's Newsroom, Fox News promoted a Republican congressman's claim that a halt to government regulations will lower the unemployment rate, and then misled viewers over regulations' negligent effect on business and unemployment. In the last six years, regulations were responsible for less than 1 percent of all job loss, and small business owners have cited demand, not regulation, as their biggest obstacle to job creation.

- Did the US cause Fallujah's birth defects? video

New research is underway on the alarming increase in birth defects in the Iraqi city of Fallujah.In November 2004, the US led an assault on Fallujah - a stronghold of opposition against the US occupation, west of Baghdad. Intense bombardment left many of its buildings destroyed and displaced much of the 300,000-strong population.
Eventually, the US was forced to admit that amongst its arsenal was white phosphorus - a substance the Pentagon described as a 'chemical weapon' when it was used by Saddam Hussein against the Kurds.
In addition, eyewitnesses claimed the US military used "unusual weapons".
Subsequent investigations have focused on the possible use of depleted uranium by the US for its armour-piercing qualities. The US, however, denies using such weaponry.

- The Wall Street Journal: Dismissing Environmental Threats Since 1976

To forestall policy on climate change, the Wall Street Journal editorial board routinely downplays scientific consensus, overstates the cost of taking action, and claims that politics, not science, motivate those concerned about the climate. But an analysis of more than 100 editorials from 1976 to present shows that the Wall Street Journal used these same rhetorical tactics in previous decades on acid rain and ozone depletion and they did not stand the test of time.

- Climate Skeptic, Koch-Funded Scientist Richard Muller Admits Global Warming Real & Humans The Cause

After years of denying global warming, physicist Richard Muller now says "global warming is real and humans are almost entirely the cause."

- Japan could become second biggest solar power nation

WITH nuclear power on the ropes in Japan, it could be solar power's time to shine. Minamisoma City in Fukushima prefecture has signed an agreement with Toshiba to build the country's biggest solar park. The deal comes weeks after Japan introduced feed-in tariffs to subsidise renewable energy - a move that could see the nation become one of the world's largest markets for solar power.

- The Obama Administration Torpedoes the Arms Trade Treaty- By Amy Goodman audio

What is more heavily regulated, global trade of bananas or battleships? In late June, activists gathered in New York’s Times Square to make the absurd point, that, unbelievably, “there are more rules governing your ability to trade a banana from one country to the next than governing your ability to trade an AK-47 or a military helicopter.”

- Republican U.S. Representative Supports Dog Fighting

Republican Representative Steve King made a shocking statement at a town hall meeting last week where he announced that dog fighting should be legal. He defended his absurd statement by saying that since human fighting is legal, not letting dogs fight would be prioritizing animals over humans. King is also the creator of an amendment that targets animal protection and environmental laws. Read on to learn what the Humane Society has to say on the issue.

- A photograph of Curiosity during landing has been leaked!

A few hours ago, NASA's HiRISE team announced that it had acquired an image of Curiosity during its epic descent to the Martian surface.

- No Such Thing as a Liberal Media

Republicans are featured in media news outlets more than Democrats and Democrats receive more negative coverage (and usually unfairly).

- How Right-Wing Media Have Distorted Ohio's Early Voting Debate

Right-wing media have distorted efforts by President Obama's re-election campaign to restore early voting for all Ohio voters, claiming the campaign is suing to restrict voting for members of the military. In fact, the Obama campaign's lawsuit seeks to restore early voting for all Ohioans, including members of the military and their families.

- Depriving Democrats and Minorities of their Constitutional Right to Vote

Republicans have passed hundreds of voter ID laws in the USEA this year trying to remove millions of valid registered voters from the roles in order to steal the presidential election this November. Here's an info graphic that shows just how bogus, unfair, racist and unnecessary these voter ID laws are.

- What can the Mars rover tell us about climate change on Earth?

Nasa's new rover will hunt for signs of martian climate change, and in doing so will shed light on what's going on back home

- July average tops U.S. temperature record, NOAA says

The July heat wave that wilted crops, shriveled rivers and fueled wildfires officially went into the books Wednesday as the hottest single month on record for the continental United States.

- The Dice are Loaded: NASA’s James Hansen Warns Escalating Climate Crisis Requires Intervention video

James Hansen, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies and author of “Storms of My Grandchildren,” describes how observed seasonal temperatures have corroborated the predictions of global warming climate models he first warned of in the 1980s.

- How America's Losing The War On Poverty

According to a recent survey by The Associated Press, the number of Americans living at or below the poverty line will reach its highest point since President Johnson made his famous declaration of war on poverty in 1964.

- Gun Control? Dream On. video

One reason is surely that guns have effectively become the emblem of the ongoing great white male right-wing freak-out. (Ladies might pack a pink pistol, but not an AK-47.) When Obama was elected, gun sales rose—quick, the Kenyan Muslim Communist is coming for our weapons! On NPR’s Diane Rehm Show, John Velleco of Gun Owners of America seemed comfortable with the idea that someone might want an arsenal of assault weapons to protect his family from a home invasion. What home invasion would that be? And among the many foolish justifications for amassing high-powered weaponry is the delusion that you and your friends could outgun the government if you personally decided it had become a tyranny. That’s almost as ridiculous as the notion that if everyone carried a gun, people would be safer. All those moviegoers in Aurora needed to make their misery complete was to have a bunch of armed freelancers shooting off their weapons in a dark theater.The trouble is, as with so many aspects of conservatism—the anti-choice movement, the Tea Party, Ron Paul—“gun rights” supporters win on intensity and single-mindedness.

- Posted before, just a reminder: Low IQ & Conservative Beliefs Linked to Prejudice

There's no gentle way to put it: People who give in to racism and prejudice [and who have conservative viewpoints] may simply be dumb, according to a new study that is bound to stir public controversy.

Dean

Poverty • Republican Politics • Fruits/Veggies Help You Live Longer • Right-Wing Myths About Wind Power • Leather • Obama's Kill List • more

- How extremism is normalized

The Obama administration has converted once unthinkable government claims into permanent political fixtures

- Conservative Media Try to Reverse Racial Reality

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.

- Man Tattoos Leviticus 18:22 That Forbids Homosexuality On His Arm, But Leviticus 19:28 Forbids Tattoos

Picture says it all.

- Scott Walker Spent 88% of the Money to Get 53% of the Vote

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.

- The plutocrats who bankrolled the Republican primaries--and what they want in return

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."

- Fruits and Vegetables Boost Longevity in Women

New research suggests that eating plant-based foods can lower the risk of death in senior-age women.

- Myths & Facts About Wind Power

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.

- Probability of contamination from severe nuclear reactor accidents is higher than expected: study

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.

- Tuna contaminated with Fukushima radiation found in California

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.

- How Estrogens Persist in Dairy Wastewater

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.

- Stella McCartney Takes On the Leather Trade

Find out why fashion designer Stella McCartney chooses to leave leather out of her collections.

- Another Casualty of War?: The Environment

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.

- Glenn Greenwald: Obama’s Secret Kill List "The Most Radical Power a Government Can Seize" video

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."

- This Week in Poverty: Will Janitors Strike in Houston?

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.

- Wage Theft: A Crime Without Punishment?

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.

- The Gap Between The Rich And The Poor Is So Large, You Can Literally See It From Space

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!

- The Amazon Effect

How Amazon is helping to destroy small business, etc.

- Ten Reasons to Avoid Doing Business With Amazon.com

Read all 10.

- Cocaine Habit Ages Brain Prematurely

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.

Sean

Millennial and Republican Racism • Mad Cow in USA • Nuns Reprimanded for Doing Good • US Military Killing Civilians • Climate Scientists Threatened • FBI Ignores White Supremacists & Targets Occupy Movement • Mitt Romney's Cruel Homophobia • Rats Display Kindness • more

- Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control

Medea Benjamin: Drones kill innocent civilians and antagonize whole populations

- U.S. Military Taught Officers: Use ‘Hiroshima’ Tactics for ‘Total War’ on Islam

The U.S. military taught its future leaders that a “total war” against the world’s 1.4 billion Muslims would be necessary to protect America from Islamic terrorists, according to documents obtained by Danger Room. Among the options considered for that conflict: using the lessons of “Hiroshima” to wipe out whole cities at once, targeting the “civilian population wherever necessary.”

- Climate Scientists Receive Abusive Emails and Threats from Right-wing Climate Change Deniers

“My message to the scientists is to not be silenced. It is important that they get their message out there. I hope scientists continue to put the line carefully and ethically and seriously and that any alternative views can be debated by those that know what they are talking about.”

- Witnessing a glacier's race to the sea

A seven-year photographic record of the Columbia Glacier in Prince William Sound on Alaska’s south central Pacific coast has been made into a striking time-lapse video that documents the glacier's rapid ice discharge, and is helping researchers to understand how tidewater glaciers contribute to sea-level rise.

- Money Buys Power

If this election season so far has taught us anything, it’s that money counts. And for the top one percent of the one percent (that’s the top .01 percent), donations buy an incredible amount of influence with elected officials. Just how much influence do they have? Check out our handy infographic

- Why is the FBI Manufacturing Reasons to Arrest Occupy Protesters While Ignoring White Supremacist Violence?

Writing in Rolling Stone this week, Rick Perlstein looks at how the FBI regularly entraps and creates “terrorists” out of anarchists and activists, while comparatively ignoring violent white supremacist groups.

- The Legacy of Chernobyl

Twenty-six years after the meltdown at Chernobyl, the legacy of the 1986 explosion lives on."It is a disaster that left a 30-kilometre uninhabitable exclusion zone, displaced hundreds of thousands of people, and still threatens the lives of tens of thousands," writes Greenpeace today.

- U.S. Nuns Face Vatican Rebuke for "Radical Feminism" in Stances on Church Teachings, Social Justice

The Vatican has reprimanded the largest group of Catholic nuns in the United States, saying they have focused too heavily on issues of social justice, while failing to speak out enough on "issues of crucial importance," such as abortion and same-sex marriage. [my reply: "FUCK YOU, Vatiacan!"]

- Facebook Lobbies Washington to “Like” Spying on Users

But Facebook – which opposed the cyber-security bills last year – has decided to support CISPA. The proposed law “would make it easier for Facebook and other companies to receive critical threat data from the U.S. government,” Facebook’s Washington DC office posted on its blog.  It would “impose no new obligations on us to share data with anyone –- and ensures that if we do share data about specific cyber threats, we are able to continue to safeguard our users’ private information, just as we do today.”Well, many Facebook users would testify that the company actually does a very poor job of protecting user’s private information.

- Mad Cow Case Found in California, Says USDA

Yesterday, the US Department of Agriculture held a press conference to announce the discovery of the fourth case of mad cow disease found domestically since 2003.

- Sugar can make you dumb, US scientists warn

Eating too much sugar can eat away at your brain power, according to US scientists who published a study showing how a steady diet of high-fructose corn syrup sapped lab rats' memories.

- Chinese Athletes Going Veg Before Olympics

Many Chinese athletes are giving up meat in preparation for the Olympics, concerned that the drugs used to raise animals may compromise the results of their mandatory drug tests.

- Rats Display Altruism

Calling someone a rat may be complimentary. According to a study published in the December 9, 2011, issue of Science, rats can be surprisingly selfless.

- Zoo Chimp Makes Elaborate Plots to Attack Humans

At first Santino was famous for throwing rocks and other projectiles at visitors who annoyed him. Now he has improved his technique, which requires spontaneous innovation for future deception. Researcher Mathias Osvath, lead author of a paper about Santino in PLoS ONE, explained what the clever chimp did:

- Republican Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney's Former Classmate Describes Romney as ‘Bullying Supreme’ – A ‘Pack of Dogs’ Who Targeted ‘Different’ Boy

A high school classmate of presidential candidate Mitt Romney told ABC News today that he considers a particular prank the two pulled at Michigan’s Cranbrook School to be “assault and battery” and that he witnessed Romney hold the scissors to cut the hair of a student who was being physically pinned to the ground by several others. [Many other witnesses have  since corroborated the incident]

- Father of Ex-Gay Movement Apologizes to Gay Community for Making It All Up

Dr. Robert Spitzer’s watershed 2001 study on reparative therapy is widely credited as having given birth to the modern Ex-Gay movement, and the evangelical belief that sexual orientation can be changed through prayer and therapy, earning Spitzer the ire of the worldwide LGBT community.A decade later, Spitzer has written a public apology admitting that he essentially made the whole thing up.

- War On Words: NYC Dept. Of Education Wants 50 ‘Forbidden’ Words Banned From Standardized Tests

Right-wing Republican pressure forces weak New York City Department of Education to ban certain words from standardized tests so as not to offend people who don't believe in evolution, etc.

- Five Tax Fallacies Invented by the 1%

We hear these claims often, even though they're entirely false. An analysis of the facts should make that clear.

- Torture: The Jose Rodriguez lesson

Jose Rodriguez, the high-ranking CIA official who ordered the destruction of 92 videos showing the agency’s interrogation of Terrorist suspects, was interviewed on Sunday night about his new pro-torture book by 60 Minutes (that show’s network, CBS, and the publisher of Rodriguez’s new book, Simon & Schuster, are both owned by the CBS Corp., now synergistically profiting off of torture advocacy). There is an important lesson to be learned from this interview.As many commenters correctly noted, the torture-defending Rodriguez is clearly a crazed sociopath...

- Fox News Bigotry: Fox Says If You Want "Us To Be Nice To Muslims In This Country," "Stop Killing Our People" In Nigeria

Crazy Fox News guy says that bigotry is justified.

- CHART: Fox Spent More Time On "Crucify" Comments Than 3 Major Oil & Gas Risks

In less than a week, Fox News has devoted 34 segments totaling more than two hours of airtime expressing outrage about the word choice of an EPA official who spoke two years ago about punishing oil companies who violate the law. That's 10 times more coverage than Fox gave to 3 major stories related to the risks of oil and gas development, combined.

- Social Security is not going broke

[The Right Wing narrative that Social Security is going broke] has become the conventional wisdom because it is easily reduced to a headline or sound bite. The facts, which require more nuance and detail, show that, with a few fixes, Social Security can be safe for as long as we want.

Race, Millennials and Reverse Discrimination
By Jamelle Bouie
Published Apr. 26 2012 in The Nation

The most commonly said thing about the “Millennial” generation [those born in the 1980s and later] is that it’s more diverse and more tolerant than its predecessors. Millennials are more likely to be persons of color, more likely to show acceptance of same-sex relationships and more likely to have diverse social connections. With that said, none of this means that we’re somehow immune to problems of racism, prejudice and privilege.

Indeed, you don’t have to look far for examples of young people acting with an eye toward ignorance. There’s the “ironic racism” of Girls writer Leslie Arfin, the incredible outpouring of hate toward African-American actors in The Hunger Games and the annual stories of kids who throw blackface parties or complain about Asian students for existing.

All of this is lead in for a new survey from the Public Religion Research Institute, which polled adults aged 18 to 24 on everything from religion and morality to economic issues and the 2012 election. They also posed questions on race and ethnicity: Does government pay too much attention to the problems of blacks and other minorities? Is “reverse discrimination” a problem in today’s society? Is demographic change a good thing for American society?

The results weren’t heartening. Overall, 46 percent of Millennials agree that the government pays too much attention to the problems of minorities, with 49 percent who disagree. 48 percent also agree that discrimination against whites is a genuine problem. When you disaggregate by race and count only white Millennials, the picture is much worse.

A solid majority of white Millennials, 56 percent, say that government has paid too much attention to the problems of blacks and other minorities. An even larger majority, 58 percent, say that “discrimination against whites has become as big a problem as discrimination against blacks and other minorities.”

The pollsters at PRRI don’t try to tease out what this actually means, and honestly—as an African-American myself—it’s hard to figure out. Discrimination against minorities takes many forms, and most are easy to identify. There’s the overt bigotry of day-to-day life, the subtle discrimination of laws and institutions (the arrest rate for black men, the predatory lending aimed at minority communities) and the miasma of racist ideas that flow through our culture and sit in our subconscious, ready to act.

These things might hinder white Americans in a spiritual sense, but it’s absurd to say that they have a material effect on the prospects of white people. If you are white in the United States, almost everyone in a position of power or influence looks like you. You won’t be questioned if you find yourself in a nice part of town, you won’t be the picture of criminality, and few people will ever question your right to take government help. Cops won’t give you a hard time as a matter of course, and no one will ask you to speak for white people as a whole. Sports fans won’t go apoplectic and shower you with racial slurs because you scored a goal. The list goes on.

A quick note for those of you who will say that all of these things have happened to you. I’m not saying that individual white people are immune to being hassled by the cops, or being followed in a store. What I am saying, however, is that none of that will happen on the basis of your skin color. Being white doesn’t carry a host of negative assumptions. It’s considered neutral. Being black (or Latino) does, and that’s the difference.

With all of that in mind, I don’t quote understand how anyone could plausibly say that discrimination against white people is a problem in the same way that it is for minorities. But if I had to hazard a guess as to why a majority of young white people believe it, here is what I would say:
Because many young people are either in college or preparing to go to college, affirmative action is a salient issue, and there’s a widespread perception that minority students have an easier time of getting into school. Of course, this isn’t true at all; affirmative action adds racial (and ethnic, and gender, and religious) disadvantage to the collection of things that colleges examine when determining an applicant. There are no quotas and it doesn’t guarantee entry; a bad candidate is a bad candidate, regardless of their race. But if a Latino student and a white student are equally matched, the university might lean towards always choosing the former.

(Another note: just because the white student didn’t get in doesn’t mean that someone took “their” spot. Colleges don’t owe spots to students, and if you don’t get in to the school of your choice, the college took nothing away from you. With or without affirmative action, the odds of getting into a selective college are low).

What's more, we live in a culture where honest conversation about race is rare, especially among white people, where it’s surrounded by fear and anxiety. For many white kids, if not most, racial conversations are limited to a few units in elementary and middle school. Otherwise, they’re left to fend for themselves, which either leads to a sense of privileged obliviousness—i.e., you live and act as if this were a “colorblind” world, despite the fact that color matters for many people—or confusion and resentment.

Indeed, at the end of the day, Americans do a terrible job of teaching our history, and an even worse job of teaching our awful racial history. By and large, slavery is treated with appropriate horror, but everything after that is passed over and ignored. In my experience, students—white or otherwise—are ignorant of the violence and economic oppression that characterized much of the black experience for the better part of a century. Racism is morphed into a personal force—represented by Bull Connor or George Wallace—and there’s no attempt to show the economic and social effects of Jim Crow and segregation.

For a lot of young white people, I think, racism has become completely untethered from history. They’ve been taught “colorblindness” sans a sense of what it means to grow up in a country where white supremacy was once the ruling ideology. “Reverse discrimination,” then, is a catch-all for frustration at rules they don’t understand (white people can’t say the “N-word”), and double standards that seem unfair (e.g., “Why can’t we have White History Month and a White Entertainment Channel?). It’s understandable, but also a little depressing.

Sean

The Lie of American Exceptionalism • Climate Change Caused by Mankind • Water Wars? • Fukushima Leaking Radioactive Water into Ocean • Fox Says Muppets are Communists • Dogs and PTSD • Republicans Trying to Kill Post Office • Occupy Art • more

- Coming to a Theater Near You: The Greatest Water Crisis in the History of Civilization

And here’s the bad news in a nutshell: if you live in the Southwest or just about anywhere in the American West, you or your children and grandchildren could soon enough be facing the Age of Thirst, which may also prove to be the greatest water crisis in the history of civilization.  No kidding.

Jonathan Overpeck, a climate scientist at the University of Arizona who played a major role in the Nobel-Prize-winning work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, tells me that the prospect of 130° F days in Phoenix worries him far less than the prospect of decades of acute dryness. “If anything is scary, the scariest is that we could trip across a transition into a megadrought.” He adds, “You can probably bet your house that, unless we do something about these greenhouse gas emissions, the megadroughts of the future are going to be a lot hotter than the ones of the past.”

- Extreme Weather

Given the expected weather pattern shifts due to La Nina, is there cause to bring climate change into the extreme weather debate? The Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) believes so. The Nobel prize winning group released a report on November 18 focusing on extreme weather events, linking their increase in frequency to climate change.

- It's Official, Climate Change Caused by Man: Three-quarters of climate change is man-made

Natural climate variability is extremely unlikely to have contributed more than about one-quarter of the temperature rise observed in the past 60 years, reports a pair of Swiss climate modellers in a paper published online today. Most of the observed warming — at least 74 % — is almost certainly due to human activity, they write in Nature Geoscience.

- From Cairo to the Cape, climate change begins to take hold of Africa

The world's poorest communities have begun to experience extreme weather outside the natural variability of African climate. Without a rapid reduction in emissions, the continent faces calamitous temperature rises within this century

- Health ‘first casualty’ of climate change

The World Health Organisation predicts that changing climate conditions will lead to increases in malaria, cholera and dengue fever, as well as losses of life due to extreme weather events

- Horn of Africa Crisis: Drought Zone

As millions in Kenya suffer from extreme hunger, is the US addressing the causes of the crisis or just its syptoms?

- Fukushima Plant Leaks Radioactive Water

Large quantities of highly radioactive water have leaked through a crack in the wall of a treatment facility at the Fukushima power plant, and some may have founds its way into the sea, the plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power [Tepco], said.

- Fox Business' Follow The Money Unmasks The Muppets' Liberal Agenda: "Brainwashing" Your Kids!

This attempt at right-wing media criticism brought to you by the letter "S"... for stupid.

- NPR’s domestic drone commercial

But listeners of NPR would know about virtually none of that. On its All Things Considered program yesterday, NPR broadcast a five-minute report (audio below) from Brian Naylor that purported to be a news story on the domestic use of drones but was, in fact, much more akin to a commercial for the drone industry.

- The Postal Service Plots Its Own Demise

There are many appropriate targets for Occupy Wall Street protests. But the OWS protesters hit a bull’s-eye when they invaded a National Press Club briefing where Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe—who likes to make like a corporate executive and refer to himself as “Chief Operating Officer of the US Postal Service”—was giving a speech about the need to close local post offices, layoff workers and, though this was unspoken, take the steps that will lead to the privatization of the one of the country’s greatest public assets.[republicans want to kill the US postal service because it's a well functioning public branch of government and unionized. Republicans hate unions and hate any part of government that works well]

- Arizona Outraged At Right Wing Racist Sheriff Arpaio Fiasco, Calls For Resignation

Less than two weeks after Citizens for a Better Arizona announced their intent to form the nation's first ever "Citizens Posse" to hold infamous Sheriff Joe Arpaio accountable for gross abuses of power and civil rights violations, an alarming new investigation just released by the Associated Press has found that hundreds of reported sex crimes, including child molestation, have fallen through the cracks of the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office.

- After Duty, Dogs Suffer Like Soldiers

If anyone needed evidence of the frontline role played by dogs in war these days, here is the latest: the four-legged, wet-nosed troops used to sniff out mines, track down enemy fighters and clear buildings are struggling with the mental strains of combat nearly as much as their human counterparts.

- BEST CAPTION AT THE ONION ALL WEEK: Rumors Of Extramarital Affair End Campaign Of Presidential Candidate Who Didn't Know China Has Nuclear Weapons

Republicans are so dumb they reject Cain for extra-marital affairs, but not for being utterly uninformed about the world. And then ironically throw their support behind serial-philanderer Newt Gingrich.

- Occupy Art

Poster artwork inspired by the Occupy movement.

The American century: That was then
The next time you hear a politician insist that America is exceptional, think of it as a secret confession that we aren't.
By Tom Engelhardt
Published December 2, 2011 in the L.A. Times

Tea party activists attend Glenn Beck's 2010 rally in Washington. President Obama and his would-be GOP presidential opponents have touted American exceptionalism in recent speeches. (Jim Lo Scalzo / European Pressphoto Agency)

If you want a gauge of an America on the downward slope, you could look at the recent poll commissioned by the newspaper the Hill, in which a startling 69% of respondents said they considered the country to be in decline. Or you could just consider the soaring language of this season's presidential candidates. Mitt Romney, in a recent Republican debate on foreign policy, was typical, insisting that "this century must be an American century" in which "America leads the free world and the free world leads the entire world."

President Obama too is prone to the overheated language of American exceptionalism, announcing frequently his intention to ensure that the 21st century is "another American century."

As a 67-year-old, I grew up in a post-World War II era that, by any measure, was the height of the first American century. As much of the rest of the developed world struggled to rebuild devastated cities, the United States couldn't have been more exceptional, a one-of-a-kind country in producing the big-ticket items both of peace and of war, often from the same corporations.

Back then, there was no need for presidents or presidential candidates to get up and repetitively reassure the American people of just how exceptional we were. It was too obvious to state. After all, when you've really got it, you don't have to flaunt it.

So, the next time you hear any politician insisting that this country is American century-style exceptional, think of it as a kind of secret confession that we aren't. These days, you can feel the uncomfortably defensive snarl (or whine) that lurks in the insistence that our country isn't just another powerful nation in political gridlock and economic trouble.

Think here, if you will, of Rambo's muscles, which were in their own way as much a confession of insecurity as Romney's talk of exceptionalism. Back in the day, the screen western or war hero — Gary Cooper or John Wayne — might be strong and silent, but brute physique was the least of his attributes. He wasn't overmuscled or cartoonishly outsized. As a man of that true American century moment, he didn't have to go out of his way to emphasize his hero-hood and his physical power.

Rambo arrived on-screen in the post-Vietnam War years as a creature of American defeat. It was a time when strong and silent wasn't convincing enough anymore, when a literal arms race seemed necessary, when the pecs of American power needed to be overblown to be overshown.

Romney and crew are, verbally speaking, the Rambos of this 21st century American moment. And their version of nonstop exceptionalism fits well with another strange repetitive feature of the present landscape: the exaltation of the American soldier as a hero of heroes, an exemplar for the nation.

Much of this would have rung weirdly indeed to the ears of Americans in my childhood. They had their own set of outsized fears, but they still lived in a country with a citizen army that a draft ensured just about everyone took part in. Like mine, most families then had at least one WW II vet. And yet no one talked about greatest generations or American heroes or, like President Obama and George W. Bush before him, "the finest fighting force in the world" (or "that the world has ever known"). The soldier was simply an American.

Now, in the world of the all-volunteer Army, with the U.S. permanently, if remarkably unsuccessfully, at war around the world, the military largely exists in a separate sphere, with many Americans having no direct link to the wars being fought in their name and the soldiers who are fighting them.

Yet today, supporting the troops (or "America's warriors," as they are now often called) has become a near-religious duty. This recurrent insistence on their need for support should, like Romney's exceptionalism, be viewed as another kind of secret admission.

After all, the greatest mistake of our era was undoubtedly this: When the Soviet Union suddenly disappeared in 1991, our leaders imagined that they had achieved a kind of American victory never before seen. Where, for centuries, there had been two or more great-power rivals, there was now only the sole superpower (or even hyperpower) of planet Earth, with no significant threat anywhere.

To some, it looked as if this were, by definition, a second post-WW II moment of American exceptionalism. Mistaking military might for global power, they didn't notice that the mightier superpower of the Cold War was also heading slowly downhill in a cloud of self-congratulation. The rest of this grim story we are now living.

Long gone is that American moment and the "century" that went with it. Decline is upon us, and every assurance that it isn't only serves, however subliminally, to reinforce that reality. At whatever pace, our "warriors" and "heroes" are coming home to a distinctly unhappy, unheroic and insecure country, lacking in jobs. In the meantime, our leaders doth protest too much.

Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project, runs the Nation Institute's TomDispatch.com. His latest book, "The United States of Fear," is just out.

Sean

Occupy Wall Street • The Video Fox "News" Doesn't Want You to See • Climate Change • Nukes • Doctors Urge Plant Based Diet • more

- Here Are Four Charts That Explain What The Protesters Are Angry About

Last week, we published a chart-essay that illustrates the extreme inequality that has developed in the US economy over the past 30 years.The charts explain what the Wall Street protesters are angry about. They also explain why the protesters' message is resonating with the country at large.

- Occupy Wall Street Activist Slams Fox News Producer In Un-Aired Interview [Video]

...here is an interview that Fox News filmed, but doesn’t want you to see. The segment was shot on Wednesday for Greta van Susteren‘s show, (though it looks like the same producer from this O’Reilly segment questioning Michael Moore‘s anti-capitalist agenda) though the decision was made to leave it on the cutting room floor. The reason should be obvious pretty quickly.

- Occupy Wall Street Is A "Populist" Movement (The Tea Party Is Not)

...when covering Occupy Wall Street, the press still refuses to accurately label the protests as what they are: a distinctly populist uprising.

- Keith Olbermann reads the first collective statement of Occupy Wall Street

Keith reads the first national reading of the first collective statement of #OccupyWallStreet

- What’s behind the scorn for the Wall Street protests?

It’s unsurprising that establishment media outlets have been condescending, dismissive and scornful of the ongoing protests on Wall Street.  Any entity that declares itself an adversary of prevailing institutional power is going to be viewed with hostility by establishment-serving institutions and their loyalists.

- Occupy Wall Street Vs. Erin Burnett: A Primer In Media Failure

Yesterday, Salon's Glenn Greenwald did a fairly masterful job filleting the myopic and condescending way CNN's new hire Erin Burnett chose to cover the ongoing Occupy Wall Street demonstrations. Greenwald is hardly alone in his criticism. The Baltimore Sun's David Zurawik did much the same, saying, "Two of the fundamental attributes of good journalism are curiosity and a respect for the people on whom you report. Burnett got an "F" on both those counts with her Occupy Wall Street piece." Yesterday, I pointed to Jay Rosen, who highlighted short-lived tweets from CNN's Alison Kosik, documenting the fact that the failings Zurawik notes appear to be systemic at CNN.

- Putting the Lie to the Republicans by Ralph Nader

the Republicans are on cue bellowing "job-killing regulations" must be revoked or stopped aborning over at OSHA (protecting workers), EPA (protecting clean air and water), FDA (safer drugs and food), and NHTSA (making your vehicle safer)....The jobs these regulations may be "killing" are those that would have swelled the funeral industry, or some jobs in the healthcare and disability-care industry. On the other hand, by not being injured, workers stay on the job and do not drain the workers' compensation funds or hamper the operations of their employer.
About twenty years ago, Professor Nicholas Ashford of MIT came to Washington and testified before Congress in great detail about how and where safety regulations create jobs and make the economy more efficient in avoiding the costs of preventable injuries and disease.

- Study: Corporations Laid Off Workers Following Tax Holiday (Republicans want corporations to be able to

A new report is warning against a proposed tax holiday [pushed by the Republicans] on overseas profits that conservative corporate proponents say will boost the economy. [BUT] according to the Institute for Policy Studies, 10 major corporations fired workers right after enjoying a tax holiday in 2004-2005. Overall, 58 corporations cut more than 600,000 jobs after collectively saving some $64 billion in taxes. Overseas profits are currently taxed at the 35 percent corporate rate; a proposed measure in the Republican-controlled House would reduce that to a one-time rate of just over 5 percent.

- UN climate change envoy urges action to avert floods, drought, hunger

U.N. special envoy on climate change Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland and her 22-person international commission started warning countries to avert global warming in 1987. Twenty-five years later, the former Norwegian prime minister said the ongoing lack of international cooperation to curb carbon emissions and invest in clean energy threatens us all.

- Climate swings increase extinction risk

Scientists have begun to predict the animals that may become extinct in the next century because of climate change.

- Farewell to the Arctic — as We Know It

The physical changes from global warming are visible in the Arctic almost in real time — and they are a warning for those of us who live in more comfortable latitudes. As the polar expert Walt Meier of the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) has put it: "What happens in the Arctic doesn't stay in the Arctic."That's bad news, since not only is the warming threat in the Arctic bad, it's almost certainly intensifying.

- Global warming's CO2 culprit jumps 45% since 1990

Global emissions of carbon dioxide, the main cause of global warming, jumped 45% between 1990 and 2010, and reached an all-time high of 33 billion tons last year, the European Commission reports.

- Everest's ice is retreating as climate change grips the Himalayas

This much is known: climate change exists, it is man-made, and it is causing many glaciers to melt across the Himalayas. ... Climate change is altering the face of the Himalayas but research seeking to confirm this is yet to catch up with the mountain communities sounding the alarm. After an 18-day trek with scientists, Suzanne Goldenberg finds the warning signs hard to ignore

- With Deaths of Forests, a Loss of Key Climate Protectors

Across millions of acres, the pines of the northern and central Rockies are dying, just one among many types of forests that are showing signs of distress these days.From the mountainous Southwest deep into Texas, wildfires raced across parched landscapes this summer, burning millions more acres. In Colorado, at least 15 percent of that state’s spectacular aspen forests have gone into decline because of a lack of water.
The devastation extends worldwide. The great euphorbia trees of southern Africa are succumbing to heat and water stress. So are the Atlas cedars of northern Algeria. Fires fed by hot, dry weather are killing enormous stretches of Siberian forest. Eucalyptus trees are succumbing on a large scale to a heat blast in Australia, and the Amazon recently suffered two “once a century” droughts just five years apart, killing many large trees.

- Wave power excites as next energy source

Researchers have estimated that ocean waves could produce around the same amount of electricity for Japan as 36 nuclear reactors

- Eggs Linked to Cancer

A new study that followed tens of thousands of men shows that consuming eggs considerably increases the risk of advanced prostate cancer.

- Dairy cows systematically slaughtered to drive up price of milk

Animal rights group Compassion Over Killing was the first to uncover the alleged systematic slaughter of healthy dairy cows in California. The group turned to Seattle attorney Steve Berman, who filed the suit claiming more than half a million U.S. dairy cows were slaughtered over seven years to artificially reduce the supply of milk and drive up prices.

- Conflicts of Consistency: Vegan Dogs and Their Diets

The good news is that it's easy to feed your dog a healthy and wholesome vegan diet. While you could feed Fido homemade food or many of the great vegan foods that you make for yourself, there is a much easier and more convenient route that also ensures that he is on a sound nutritional diet.

- Where's the E. Coli? L.A. Company Recalls Over 377,000 Pounds of Ground Beef

A Los Angeles meat company has announced a recall of several cases of their ground meat and ground meat products out of concern the meat is tainted with E. Coli bacteria.

- Humane Meat: A Contradiction in Terms

People have become increasingly aware that virtually all of the 10 billion land animals slaughtered in the U.S. each year for their meat, eggs and milk are terribly mistreated. In fact, routine farming practices are so abusive that they would warrant felony animal cruelty charges were they done to cats or dogs.As a result, huge numbers of compassionate people have joined the ranks of the vegetarians. Some, however, have looked instead to meat from animals treated less badly, which they call "humane meat." This raises three questions. First, is there such a thing as truly "humane meat"? Second, would consuming only humane meat satisfy the demands of ethical living? And third, do we, as individuals, have good reason to promote "humane meat" rather than vegetarianism?
....how many of us could spend an afternoon cutting animals' throats, or even watching it? And then ask yourself in what other areas of your life do you pay others to do things you find too repulsive? And how ethical is it to pay someone to do things that are wholly unnecessary and too atrocious to watch?

- Doctors Urge Plant-Based Diet

A report from a group of chief physicians suggests that a plant-based diet could reduce the risk of developing most serious diseases.

4th of July - Former Fox News Chief Says Fox Isn't Factual - Ralph Nader - Gaza Aid Ship - Michele Bacman is Dumb AND Crazy - Fukushima - ANOTHER Oil Spill - Nuke Worries - US Killing Whales - Film: Hot Coffee - The Soundstrike

- Ralph Nader Is Tired of Running for President

The most important moral and intellectual voices within a disintegrating society are slowly discredited when their nonviolent protests and calls for justice cannot alter intransigent and corrupt systems of power. The repeated acts of peaceful civil disobedience, efforts at electoral and political reform and the fight to protect the rule of law are dismissed as useless by an embittered, dispossessed and betrayed public. The demagogues and hatemongers, the purveyors of violence, easily seduce enraged and bewildered masses in the final stages of collapse with false promises of vengeance, new glory and moral renewal. And in the spiral downward the good among us are reviled as naive and ineffectual fools.

- The Militarized Surrealism of Barack Obama

...whether by inclination, political calculation, or some mix of the two, our president has become a rhetorical idolator.

These days [Obama] can barely open his mouth without also bowing down before the U.S. military in ways that once would have struck Americans as embarrassing, if not incomprehensible.  In addition, he regularly prostrates himself before this country’s special mission to the world and never ceases to emphasize that the United States is indeed an exception among nations.  Finally, in a way once alien to American presidents, he invokes God’s blessing upon the military and the country as regularly as you brush your teeth.

Think of these as the triumvirate without which no Obama foreign-policy moment would be complete: greatest military, greatest nation, our God.  And in this he follows directly, if awkwardly, in Bush's footsteps.

- Exxon Claims Spill Damage Limited, Gov. Doubtful

Teams of federal and Exxon Mobile workers are moving along the banks of Montana's legendary Yellowstone River in an effort to contain damage and gauge the impact from tens of thousands of gallons of crude oil that gushed from a ruptured pipe beneath the riverbed.

- French Nuclear Power Plant Explosion Heightens Safety Fears

An explosion sparked a fire at a French nuclear power station on Saturday, just two days after the authorities found 32 safety concerns at the plant.

- Is New Mexico's Los Alamos National Laboratory Really Safe?

Caused by a fallen power line, the blaze — which spans more than 108 miles — has destroyed about 61,000 acres of the Santa Fe National Forest and forced the evacuation of the town of Los Alamos (population 11,000).  Worse, the fire is creeping dangerously close to the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), one of the country's biggest nuclear research facilities. At risk are 20-30,000 drums of Cold War-era plutonium-contaminated waste Technical Area 54 in the Area G section that are sitting above ground in fabric tents.

- Former News Corp. President: Fox News' Opinion Shows Aren't Meant To Be "Factual"

Former News Corp. President Peter Chernin admits in a new TV special on Rupert Murdoch that some Fox News shows are not meant to be "factual."

- Fox Nation: Re-Writing Headlines To Fit The Agenda

A trend that has been noticed far too often here at Media Matters is this: if Fox News wants to spin a certain aspect of a story to fit their conservative agenda, they'll do it any way they know how. Their blog, Fox Nation, seems to exist solely to do just that.

-Actual News Headlines Vs. Fox News Headlines
         Fox News lies and manipulates people

- Sean Hannity Failed- an Example of how Fox "News' Routinely Lies and Misleads its Viewers

On his Fox News show last night, Sean Hannity lashed out at former Department of Education official Kevin Jennings, launching into a series of discredited smears and anti-gay slurs.

Hannity was responding to an interview Jennings gave to Media Matters, in which Jennings had discussed the impact of his anti-bullying work and said that those (including Fox) who had engaged in a campaign of "defamation" against him had "completely failed."

- “Hot Coffee” Documentary Exposes Corporate Attacks on Consumer Rights, Features Expert Insights from Public Citizen

[Republicans and the mainstream media have long tried to villainize the legal system, citing this incident as an example of "frivolous lawsuits". They have done this in order to protect the rich corporations from being held responsible for producing dangerous products or doing things that harm people].

Stella Liebeck, 79-years-old, was sitting in the passenger seat of her grandson’s car having purchased a cup of McDonald’s coffee. After the car stopped, she tried to hold the cup securely between her knees while removing the lid. However, the cup tipped over, pouring scalding hot coffee onto her lap. She received third-degree burns over 16 percent of her body, necessitating hospitalization for eight days, whirlpool treatment for debridement of her wounds, skin grafting, scarring, and disability for more than two years.

Despite these extensive injuries, she offered to settle with McDonald’s for $20,000. However, McDonald’s refused to settle for this small amount and, in fact, never offered more than $800.

The jury awarded Liebeck $200,000 in compensatory damages — reduced to $160,000 because the jury found her 20 percent at fault — and $2.7 million in punitive damages for McDonald’s callous conduct. (To put this in perspective, McDonald’s revenue from coffee sales alone was in excess of $1.3 million a day.) The trial judge reduced the punitive damages to $480,000, but did state that McDonald’s had engaged in “willful, wanton, and reckless” behavior. Mrs. Liebeck and McDonald’s eventually settled for a confidential amount. The jury heard the following evidence in the case:

- Floodwater Seeps into Nebraska Nuke Plant Building

An 8-foot-tall, water-filled temporary berm protecting the plant collapsed early Sunday. Vendor workers were at the plant Monday to determine whether the 2,000 foot berm can be repaired.

- Wind turbine turns out surplus

It's been a little over a year since the University of Delaware's joint-venture wind turbine started spinning in Lewes.

And save for the first three months of operation in June, July and August 2010, power generated exceeded use at the Lewes Campus, said Jeremy Firestone, director of the Center for Carbon-free Power Integration and a professor at the College of Earth, Ocean and Environment.

- US police smash camera for recording killing

A picture may be worth 1,000 words, but Narces Benoit's decision to videotape a shooting by Miami police landed him in jail after officers smashed his cell-phone camera.

- Outcry in America as Pregnant Women Who Lose Babies Face Murder Charges

Women's rights campaigners see the creeping criminalization of pregnant women as a new front in the culture wars over abortion

- Bernie Sanders Takes to Senate Floor, Demands 'Shared Sacrifice'

In my view, the President of the United States of America needs to stand with the American people and say to the Republican leadership that enough is enough. No, we will not balance the budget on the backs of working families, the elderly, the sick, the children, and the poor, who have already sacrificed enough in terms of lost jobs, lost wages, lost homes, and lost pensions. Yes, we will demand that millionaires and billionaires and the largest corporations in America contribute to deficit reduction as a matter of shared sacrifice. Yes, we will reduce unnecessary and wasteful spending at the Pentagon. And, no we will not be blackmailed once again by the Republican leadership in Washington, who are threatening to destroy the full faith and credit of the United States government for the first time in our nation’s history unless they get everything they want.

- Washington Okays Attack on Unarmed U.S. Ship

The Obama administration appears to have given a green light to an Israeli attack on an unarmed flotilla carrying peace and human rights activists — including a vessel with 50 Americans on board — bound for the besieged Gaza Strip.

- US, Israel Escalate Threats Against Flotilla, Including US Citizens

A co-founder of the right-wing blog RedState (and former Bush speechwriter) created a mini-controversy over the weekend when he issued a sociopathic endorsement of Israel's possible shooting of his fellow unarmed citizens on a flotilla currently sailing to Gaza; that flotilla is trying to deliver humanitarian supplies to Gazans and protest the ongoing Israeli blockade...

- Justice In America: A Tale Of Two Crimes

Consider Paul Allen, 55, a former mortgage CEO who defrauded lenders of over $3 billion. This week, prosecutors celebrated the fact they got him a 40-month prison sentence. Consider Roy Brown, 54, a hungry homeless man who robbed a Louisiana bank of $100 - the teller gave him more but he handed the rest back. He felt bad the next day and surrendered to police. He got 15 years. Justice in America has a ways to go.

- Michele Bachmann Uncorks Another Crazy Version Of American History: The Founding Fathers Worked Tirelessly To End Slavery video

One of the leading Republican presidential candidates, Michele Bachmann, has offered yet another interpretation of American history.

Following up on Chris Wallace's much-criticized line of questioning from FOX News Sunday this weekend (he called her a flake, and later apologized), ABC's George Stephanopoulos took the opportunity on Good Morning America this morning to give Bachmann a chance to correct some of her false statements.

Namely, her assertion that the Founding Fathers worked tirelessly to ban slavery.
Stephanopoulos pointed out that Constitution and Declaration of Independence were written about 80-100 years before slavery was banned, Bachmann defended herself. Slavery was a bad thing, she reiterated, and founding father John Quincy Adams was against it.
Stephanopolos pointed out that John Quincy Adams was not a founding father. Then he gave up.

- Where Are You?

Empathy -- the ability to immerse ourselves inside the world of another -- depends on us to consciously take the abstract, and make it real.You're confined. And the doors to the building? Locked. Fear fills you. You're beyond frustrated -- you're on the verge of madness.

You can see and sense and hear tens of thousands of others just like you. They're close, some crammed right against you. Some are dying; others are deformed. The stress of this place has sparked violence -- and in rare cases, even cannibalism. Thousands have already been suffocated in massive plastic bags; thousands more were sucked through iron pipes, then electrocuted.

And now for the frightening part.

Look down at your body. You see two dime-sized bruises on your right side, and blood streaks on your legs. Your eyes burn from ammonia. Parts of your body responsible for touch and taste have been, ah, removed. And why are your toes blackened?! Despite all of this, the potential for joy still lives in you, and maybe in some small way, you sense that. And that awareness makes this precise moment all the more jarring.

- Republican Peter King: Chemical Security Hijacker

Today, Greenpeace is releasing the name of a man wanted for hijacking chemical security legislation: New York Republican Representative Peter King. King is part of group responsible for the delay in safeguarding our communities from disasters that could occur at the nation’s chemical plants.

- Our Arizona music boycott has made a difference

Sound Strike responds to charges that its protest against anti-immigration bill only hurts local venues and fans

- Japan's huge post-tsunami clean up continues

[What to do with all the garbage?!] Officials say process set to take up to three years following twin natural disasters.

- Fukushima children test positive for internal radiation exposure

Trace amounts of radioactive substances have been found in urine samples taken from children from Fukushima city, raising concerns that residents have been exposed internally to radiation from the stricken nuclear power plant 37 miles (60km) away.

- Populations Around US Nuke Plants Soar

As America's nuclear power plants have aged, the once-rural areas around them have become far more crowded and much more difficult to evacuate. Yet government and industry have paid little heed, even as plants are running at higher power and posing more danger in the event of an accident, an Associated Press investigation has found.

- U.S. Replaces Japan in Role of Villain on Whales

The United States has taken over the pro-whaling stance traditionally championed by Japan...

- Why Is This Happening to Us and Can Jesus and Rick Perry Please Stop It?

Nation, we are in crisis. Let us count the ways. Well, there are many. Lo, Texas Gov. Rick Perry has decided to come to our aid with a national call to prayer - and possible presidential run - to ask "God’s forgiveness, wisdom and provision" - even though, it's true, that praying for the fires to stop didn't work so good. Many seriously creepy people are asking too. Mercy.

Get Over Ourselves on July 4
by Matthew Rothschild
Published on Monday, July 4, 2011 by The Progressive

This July 4, I wish we, as a nation, would get over ourselves.

We are not God’s chosen people.

God did not make us a shining city on a hill.

There is no God, and we have no special right to lord ourselves over the planet.

“Manifest Destiny” and other narcissistic ideas have swollen our heads.

President Obama was way off the mark when he recently said, “We must embrace America’s singular role in the course of human events,” he said.

We don’t have a singular role, not now, much less over the long course of human events.
When you examine the actual role the United States has played, it’s not one that has showered us with glory: from slavery and the genocide against Native Americans early on to brutal imperial wars over the last century and more. Starting with the Spanish-American War and the subjugation of the Filipinos and then through dozens of invasions and usurpations in Latin America all the way to Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya, U.S. foreign policy has piled the corpses high.

And the best aspects of the United States—not the fighter jets that fly over the celebrations today, nor the size of our economy, nor the “great American spirit,” nor our prowess in sports, nor any other excuse for the adolescent chanting of “USA, USA”—are the ones that are most in decay today: the promise of democracy, and the protection of our civil liberties.
With the Citizens United decision by the Supreme Court last year, which enables corporations to spend unlimited funds to elect or defeat candidates for office, any hope for real political democracy has faded. It’s a decision that has made a joke of the cherished idea of one person, one vote. And the Supreme Court just added to the joke with its decision last month to outlaw Arizona’s clean election law and to scorn any attempts to “level the playing field.” Even before these decisions, our politicians were for sale, rent, or time-share, and the concerns of a majority of citizens—for a living wage, for universal health care—would routinely fall to the ax of corporate power.

And if you broaden the concept of democracy to include economic democracy or a fair economy, we, as a nation, have drifted back into the Gilded Age, where the top 1 percent owns an astronomical amount of the nation’s wealth and income and where economic policy is geared toward letting them grab more and more.

As far as our civil liberties go, the government has taken many of them away. The First Amendment is in shambles, as the FBI and other law enforcement have been infiltrating domestic nonviolent protest groups, and the FBI has just loosened its rules for doing so. The Fourth Amendment is all but deleted, as the Supreme Court, in one decision after another, has given police more leeway to barge into our homes without warrants. The USA Patriot Act and the revisions to the National Security Act legalize additional intrusions by the Executive Branch. And the Military Commissions Act gives the President the authority to declare any person in the United States an “enemy combatant” and then throw that person behind bars.

On this Independence Day and for many a year, we’ve lost any clue about what it means to be independent: to be self-governing, and free from repressive rule.

If we have forsaken the ideals of America, the least we could is not to destroy the Earth in the process.

That means, first and foremost, not to blow it up with nuclear weapons. We and the Russians have 95 percent of the nukes in the world, and we need to move quickly to global nuclear disarmament.

And secondly, that means not to destroy the planet by poisoning the atmosphere. Global climate change is real, it’s here, and we’ve got to deal with it. The United States has been the biggest culprit in creating this crisis, and now we are the biggest laggard in responding to it.

The atmosphere is not our dumping grounds.

And just because we fly the red, white, and blue doesn’t make us exempt from doing the right and the urgent thing.

Sean

Oceans are Dying - Radiation Leaking from US Reactors into Our water - Obama, the Republican - Man Robs Bank of $1 to Get Prison Healthcare - US Healthcare Worst in Developed World - Miss USA and Evolution - Homophobes Like Gay Porn - more

- Oceans at Dire Risk, Team of Scientists Warns

The state of the oceans is declining far more rapidly than most pessimists had expected, an international team of experts has concluded, increasing the risk that many marine species — including those that make coral reefs — could be extinct within a generation.

- Tritium Leaks Found at Many Nuke Sites

Radioactive tritium has leaked from three-quarters of U.S. commercial nuclear power sites, often into groundwater from corroded, buried piping, an Associated Press investigation shows.

The number and severity of the leaks has been escalating, even as federal regulators extend the licenses of more and more reactors across the nation.

- $1 Bank Robbery: Of Sound Mind But Not So Much Sound Body

Pity James Richard Verone, 59, an unemployed, otherwise law-abiding guy who robbed a North Carolina bank of $1 so he could get arrested and get health care for several ailments. It should be a John Prine song; instead, it's America today.

- Healthcare in US ranks last among developed countries: report

The Healthcare system in the US again ranks last among the seven developed countries in a report by Commonwealth Fund released on Wednesday. The US healthcare fails to perform well on the parameters such as access, patient safety, efficiency, and equity. The other countries in the survey are Britain, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, Australia, and New Zealand. The US was ranked last in 2007, 2006, and 2004.

- If This Doesn't Stop You, It's Likely Nothing Will

Testing our powers of denial, the Food and Drug Administration has released nine new graphic warnings for cigarette packages, the first new labels in over 25 years. The new, explicit warnings - rotting teeth, cancerous lungs, dead bodies - are required to cover at least 50 percent of every pack of cigarettes sold. The FDA hopes they will have "a significant public health impact." Sheesh, you'd think.

- U.N.: Cancer, diabetes kill millions, cost trillions globally

Ban said the rapidly increasing magnitude of noncommunicable diseases is fueled by rising risk factors including tobacco use, unhealthy diet, lack of physical activity, obesity and harmful alcohol use — and is driven in part by an aging population, the negative impact of urbanization, and the globalization of trade and marketing.

- Is it bird, is it plane? No, it's the work of Bulgarian Banksy

AN anonymous artist dubbed the Banksy of Bulgaria has transformed statues of Red Army soldiers into superhero and cartoon characters - an action that would have resulted in a firing squad 20 years ago.

- Warming Accelerates Sea Level Rise on U.S. East Coast

A new study finds that sea levels are creeping up faster along the coast of North Carolina thanks to climate change.

- Keith Olbermann's Current TV Debut: What the Critics Say

After five months, Keith Olbermann's Countdown returned to TV on Monday night, on a new network, Current TV.

- What We Didn't Do With The $113 Billion We Inexplicably Spent On Afghanistan

From the National Priorities Project, a list of tradeoffs we're unwillingly making for our senseless wars. We could have bought health care for over 25 million people, 16 million Head Start slots, much good for teachers, firefighters, veterans, students, etc

- Why the GOP Should Nominate Barack Obama in 2012

With the possible exception of Jon Huntsman, the Republican presidential field is weak on candidates who could appeal to centrist swing voters, including moderate Republicans. But there is one 2012 prospect who has a proven track record of pursuing policies that owe a great deal to the moderate Republican tradition and who could potentially shake up the race for the GOP presidential nomination: President Barack Obama.

If Obama chose to run for reelection not as a Democrat but as a moderate Republican, he could bring about two healthy transformations in the American political system. The moderate wing of the Republican Party could be restored. And the Democratic presidential nomination might be opened up to politicians from the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party.

- Homophobic Men Most Aroused by Gay Male Porn: Study

When viewing lesbian sex and straight sex, both the homophobic and the non-homophobic men showed increased penis circumference. For gay male sex, however, only the homophobic men showed heightened penis arousal.

- Newly Crowned Miss USA Was One Of Only Two Contestants Who Believe In Evolution

California’s 21-year-old Alyssa Campanella took the coveted crown in the 60th Miss USA competition last night. Campanella marks a redeeming win for the state after the now-disgraced Californian Carrie Prejean dismissed marriage equality — or as she put it "opposite marriage" — in 2009. Miss USA seemed to take a breather from political controversy until this year, when the pageant decided to ask the contestants whether they believe evolution should be taught in schools in the preliminary round. A self-proclaimed “science geek,” Campanella affirmed that evolution should indeed be taught in schools because she believes in evolution of humans throughout time. This answer, apparently, won her another title last night. She and Massachusetts’ Alida D’Angona were the only two out of 51 contestants to "unequivocally support" evolution...

Oceans in Distress Foreshadow Mass Extinction
by Marlowe Hood
Published on Monday, June 20, 2011 by Agence France-Presse

PARIS – Pollution and global warming are pushing the world's oceans to the brink of a mass extinction of marine life unseen for tens of millions of years, a consortium of scientists warned Monday.

Dying coral reefs, biodiversity ravaged by invasive species, expanding open-water "dead zones," toxic algae blooms, the massive depletion of big fish stocks -- all are accelerating, they said in a report compiled during an April meeting in Oxford of 27 of the world's top ocean experts.

Sponsored by the International Programme on the State of the Ocean (IPSO), the review of recent science found that ocean health has declined further and faster than dire forecasts only a few years ago.

These symptoms, moreover, could be the harbinger of wider disruptions in the interlocking web of biological and chemical interactions that scientists now call the Earth system.
All five mass extinctions of life on the planet, reaching back more than 500 million years, were preceded by many of the same conditions now afflicted the ocean environment, they said.

"The results are shocking," said Alex Rogers, an Oxford professor who heads IPSO and co-authored the report. "We are looking at consequences for humankind that will impact in our lifetime."

Three main drivers are sickening the global marine environment, and all are a direct consequence of humans activity: global warming, acidification and a dwindling level oxygen, a condition known as hypoxia.

Up to now, these and other impacts have been studied mainly in isolation. Only recently have scientists began to understand how these forces interact.

"We have underestimated the overall risks, and that the whole of marine degradation is greater than the sum of its parts," Rogers said. "That degradation is now happening at a faster rate than predicted."

Indeed, the pace of change is tracking or has surpassed the worst-case scenarios laid out by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in its landmark 2007 report, according to the new assessment.

The chain reaction leading to increased acidification of the oceans begins with a massive influx of carbon into Earth's climate system.

Oceans act as a massive sponge, soaking up more than a quarter of the CO2 humans pump into the atmosphere.

But when the sponge becomes too saturated, it can disrupt the delicately balanced ecosystems on which marine life -- and ultimately all life on Earth -- depends.

"The rate at which carbon is being absorbed is already far greater now than during the last globally significant extinction of marine species 55 million years ago," when some 50 percent of deep-sea life was wiped out, the report said.

That event, called the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, or PETM, may be an ancient dress rehearsal for future climate change that could be even more abrupt and more damaging, some scientists fear.

Pollution has also taken a heavy toll, rendering the oceans less resilient to climate change.
Runoff from nitrogen-rich fertiliser, killer microbes, and hormone-disrupting chemicals, for example, have all contributed to the mass die-off of corals, crucial not just for marine ecosystems but a lifeline for hundreds of millions of people too.

The harvesting up to 90 percent of some species of big fish and sharks, meanwhile, has hugely disrupted food chains throughout the ocean, leading to explosive and imbalanced growth of algae, jellyfish and other "opportunistic" flora and fauna.

"We now face losing marine species and entire marine ecosystems, such as coral reefs, within a single generation," said Daniel Laffoley, head of the International Union for Conservation of Nature's (IUCN) World Commission on Protected Areas, and co-author of the report.

"And we are also probably the last generation that has enough time to deal with the problems," he told AFP by phone.

Sean