Climate Change Real • Fukushima Dangers Were Hidden • Republicans Lie • How Our Wars Help Al Qaeda • Racist Voter ID laws • STUDY: Pot 20 Times More Harmful than Cigarettes • Swine Flu FAR Deadlier than Reported • USA Doesn't Believe in Evolution •

- Japanese Gov't Hid Radiation Information from Public

The information, showing residents in an area northwest of the Fukushima Daichi nuclear plant were being exposed to their annual permissible dose of radiation within only eight hours, was not made public, and those residents were not evacuated.

- What Is Wrong With Our Education System? Almost Half the Population Doesn't Accept Evolution

Rejecting evolution expresses more than an inability to think critically; it relies on a fundamentally paranoid worldview. --- Do you know what the worst thing about the recent Gallup poll on evolution is? It isn’t that 46 percent of respondents are creationists (“God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last ten thousand years or so”). Or that 32 percent believe in “theistic evolution” (“Human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God guided this process”). Or that only 15 percent said humans evolved and “God had no part in this process.” It isn’t even that the percentage of Americans with creationist views has barely budged since 1982, when it was 44 percent, with a small rise in the no-God vote (up from 9 percent) coming at the expense of the divine-help position (down from 38 percent). Or that 58 percent of Republicans are creationists, although that does explain a lot.It’s that the proportion of college graduates who are creationists is exactly the same as for the general public. That’s right: 46 percent of Americans with sixteen long years of education under their belt believe the story of Adam and Eve is literally true.

- Korean scientists hit back at creationist textbook campaign

A group of 30 South Korean evolutionary scientists and palaeontologists has released a statement condemning a successful campaign by the creationist group Society for Textbook Reform (STR) to remove some examples of evolution from high-school biology textbooks

- Fox Marks UN Earth Summit By Denying Global Warming

As world leaders gather for the UN's Rio+20 Earth Summit this week in Brazil, Fox is taking the opportunity to once again deny the threat of climate change

- The Evil of Our Interventionist Wars

Nearly all states in the Middle East have appalling human rights records, some of them with even fewer redeeming features than Gadaffi’s Libya or Assad’s Syria. But then those states, such as Saudi Arabia, are close allies of the West. Only the terminally naïve or dishonest argue that the states targeted by the West have been selected for the benefit of their long-suffering citizens. Rather, they have been chosen because they are seen as implacably opposed to American and Israeli interests in the region.

- Statement of Ralph Nader on Supreme Court Pro-Corporate Decision

In reversing the judgment of the [Republican dominated] Supreme Court of Montana that found corporate independent expenditures in elections to be corrupting, the usual “gang of five” majority on the Supreme Court continued its judicial drive to change the meaning of the preamble to our Constitution from “we the people” to “we the corporations.”

- 2009 swine flu outbreak was 15 times deadlier: study

The swine flu pandemic of 2009 killed an estimated 284,500 people, some 15 times the number confirmed by laboratory tests at the time, according to a new study by an international group of scientists.

- Eat Less Meat, Save The World

If you believe that earth’s natural resources are limitless, which maybe was excusable 100 years ago but is the height of ignorance now,  or that “technology will fix it” or that we can simply go mine them in outer space with Newt Gingrich, I guess none of this worries you. But if you believe in reality, and you’d like that to be a place that your kids get to enjoy, this is a big deal.

- How Drones Help Al Qaeda

Drone strikes are causing more and more Yemenis to hate America and join radical militants; they are not driven by ideology but rather by a sense of revenge and despair. Robert Grenier, the former head of the C.I.A.’s counterterrorism center, has warned that the American drone program in Yemen risks turning the country into a safe haven for Al Qaeda like the tribal areas of Pakistan — “the Arabian equivalent of Waziristan.”

- The Danger of Endless War video

The United States is engaged in a seemingly endless war against a nebulous enemy. Nation Editor Katrina vanden Heuvel, appearing on Current's Viewpoint with Eliot Spitzer, explains that by using drones and employing the indefinite detention of enemy combatants, the United States is undermining its own democracy and diminishing its stature abroad.

- Study Finds Media Overwhelmingly Repeat GOP "Job Killer" Allegations With No Verification?

Media have overwhelmingly repeated claims by Republican politicians and corporations that government policies are "job killers" without citing any evidence for this claim according to a new study.

- Americans saw wealth plummet 40 percent from 2007 to 2010, Federal Reserve says

The recent recession wiped out nearly two decades of Americans’ wealth, according to government data released Monday, with ­middle-class families bearing the brunt of the decline.

- Pennsylvania Voter ID Law Places Expiration Date on Democracy

Back in April, Pennsylvania Secretary of State Carol Aichele visited the editorial board of the Erie Times-News newspaper to speak with them about the new photo voter ID bill Gov. Tom Corbett had just signed into law. The bill is supposed to fight or prevent voter fraud, but like with every other state that has passed voter ID laws, this fraud is mostly a boogeyman that seems to only haunt Republicans in their dreams (Check this Rolling Stone slideshow for an excellent ride through voter fraud myth debunkment). .... The stakes are high for Pennsylvania, which is a perennial battleground state, and which has a long history of disenfranchising voters, particularly black students.

- Colorado Wildfire: Our Scorching Future?

Hayhoe, along with an international team of scientists, discovered that climate change will disrupt fire patterns across over 80 percent of the globe by the end of the century. “Scientists found compelling agreement in long term models that more fires would occur at mid-to-high latitude areas like North America

- U.S. completes warmest 12-month period again, smashes spring record

The period from June 2011 to May 2012 was the warmest 12-months since records began (in 1895) in the continental United States. This unprecedented stretch of warmth bests the previous 12-month record, established just one month ago.

- In North Carolina, a Political Storm over Rising Seas

Years of coastal flooding seem to argue for climate adaptation, but [Republican] state lawmakers may ban such policies

- Virginia [Republican] Lawmaker Says ‘Sea Level Rise’ Is A ‘Left Wing Term,’ Excises It From State Report On Coastal Flooding

Virginia’s legislature commissioned a $50,000 study to determine the impacts of climate change on the state’s shores. To greenlight the project, they omitted words like “climate change” and “sea level rise” from the study’s description itself. According to the [Republican] House of Delegates sponsor of the study, these are “liberal code words,” even though they are noncontroversial in the climate science community.

- Thank You Sisters

Nuns On the Bus, an activist group of nuns on a nine-state tour, stopped in  Republican Representative Paul Ryan's hometown of Janesville, Wisconsin to speak out gently but firmly against his budget cuts, and offer their own faithful budget. Beautiful.

- Is marijuana unhealthier than people think?

As medical and recreational use of marijuana continues to grow, a dangerous lack of awareness about its health risks could be putting millions of lives at risk. This is the conclusion reached by the British Lung Foundation (BLF), a leading charity that is worried about the "alarming disconnect" between the public perception of the drug as being relatively safe, and mounting evidence indicating that it dramatically increases a person's chance of developing cancer.According to a report issued by the BLF, nearly 9 in 10 people believe that smoking cigarettes is worse than marijuana — but the risk of developing lung cancer is as much as 20 times greater from a cannabis joint than a tobacco cigarette. Researchers contend that smoking one marijuana joint is equivalent to smoking an entire pack of cigarettes.

Climate change deniers blinded by political ideology
By Michael E. Mann
Published Vancouver June 8, 2012 in The Vancouver Sun

A recent commentary by Frank Hilliard of the Individual Rights Party of B.C. that appeared in The Vancouver Sun June 4 misinformed readers when it comes to the reality and seriousness of human-caused climate change. Further, Hilliard's tirade was riddled with fabrications and dishonest personal attacks against me and other climate scientists.

Hilliard demonstrates that he does not understand the so-called "Hockey Stick" graph that my co-authors and I published more than a decade ago, which demonstrated that the nature of recent warming is unprecedented. Our temperature reconstruction was based on hundreds of climate "proxy" records around the world, including tree-ring data from every continent as well as ice cores from polar regions, coral records from the tropical oceans, and other sources of information. Yet, Hillard claims they were based only on "one set of observations of tree rings in Russia." That is simply a blatant fabrication.

Hilliard compounds the problem by citing attacks against our work by two Canadian climate change deniers (Fraser Institute-funded economist Ross McKitrick and energy industry consultant Stephen McIntyre) with-out noting that several independent studies have established fatal flaws in their claims.

Dozens of independent studies have reproduced our original findings and the highest scientific authority in the U.S., the National Academy of Sciences, has reaffirmed our conclusions (see e.g. Science Panel Backs Study on Warming Climate, New York Times, June 22, 2006), confirming that modern temperatures are likely higher than they've been in more than a thousand years.

But all of this is a diversion anyway, as our work is not the central pillar of evidence for human-caused climate change that our detractors would like you to think it is.

Numerous independent lines of evidence, some of it based on basic physical principles that have been known for nearly two centuries, indicate that humans are warming the planet and changing our climate by burning coal and other fossil fuels.

The fact that such falsehoods and fabrications like those put forward by Hilliard could readily appear on the editorial pages of a respected paper like The Vancouver Sun is a perfect example of just how divorced our public discourse about climate change has become from scientific reality.
Indeed, it is the poisoning of the public discourse over climate change that prompted me to write my recent book, The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines, where I describe the circumstances that led to my becoming and accidental and reluctant public figure.

I describe the crescendo of attacks that I have endured as climate change deniers have engaged in a cynical campaign to try to discredit me in the hope that by so doing they might discredit the case for human-caused climate change. I describe how U.S. Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) and Sen. James Inhofe (R-Oklahoma), among the largest recipients of fossil fuel money in the Congress, have both launched partisan investigations into my work; as has Attorney-General Ken Cuc-cinelli of Virginia, another recipient of oil company largesse.

Thankfully, the scientific community is doing more to stand up for researchers who find themselves targeted by politicians and ideological groups that don't like our findings.

The Climate Science Legal Defense Fund, for instance, is soliciting donations from the general public to help cover legal expenses scientists are incurring. This is an incredible help for scientists, who often lack the resources to defend themselves and face attacks from deep-pocketed groups funded by the fossil fuel industry.

It's unfortunate that people who are ideologically opposed to dealing with climate change feel entitled to not only attack scientists like me for doing our jobs, but to attack us again and again when we try to set the record straight.

We have as much right to speak out as any citizen. But as scientists, we have a special duty to make distinctions between our scientific judgment and our opinions as citizens.

Unfortunately, the people who choose to attack us are often so blinded by their ideology, they can't tell the difference between science and political opinion.

The truth is that regardless of one's ideological position on whether or not we should reduce the emissions that drive climate change, we should be able to base decisions about how to protect ourselves from a changing climate on established science.

When I think of my role as a citizen and a parent, I feel strongly we must also confront the ethical choice we face: Choosing not to reduce emissions is choosing to leave our children the legacy of a planet that will be degraded relative to the one we inherited from our parents.
It's time for us to have a grown-up debate about climate change in this country. And attacks on scientists by political operatives like Hilliard should have no place in it.

Michael E. Mann is a member of the Pennsylvania State University faculty, holding joint positions in the departments of meteorology and geosciences and the Earth and Environmental Systems Institute (EESI). He shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 with other scientists who participated in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Sean

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

Meat Killing Planet • Climate Change • Global Economic Collapse • Keychain Animals • BP OIl Spill Causes Deformities in Marine Life • US Trains Terrorists • Homophobes Secretly Gay • Republicans Think Only the Rich Matter • more

- Next Great Depression? MIT study predicting ‘global economic collapse’ by 2030 still on track

A renowned Australian research scientist says a study from researchers at MIT claiming the world could suffer from a "global economic collapse" and "precipitous population decline" if people continue to consume the world's resources at the current pace is still on track, nearly 40 years after it was first produced.

- Meds and Banned Antibiotics Routinely Fed to Chickens

Recently, a study from the University of Maryland determined that alarming levels of arsenic were found in chicken feed, but new data suggests that arsenic isn’t the only potentially hazardous substance present. Scientists at the Johns Hopkins University and Arizona State University have discovered that birds are also routinely fed illegal antibiotics, caffeine, and even chemical compounds found in common medications. Testing feather meal from factory-farm chickens, scientists found traces of antibiotics called fluoroquinolones, which are banned in poultry production due to their potential to breed antibiotic-resistant pathogens. Furthermore, researchers found evidence of the active ingredients in Benadryl, Tylenol, and even Prozac, found in Chinese chicken meal—all of which may be used to reduce anxiety among chicken, as stress toughens the birds’ meat and inhibits their growth.

- Tropical Depression: Your Saltwater Fish Tank May Be Killing the Ocean

Most tropical fish sold in pet stores come from reefs in Indonesia and the Philippines, where fishermen stun the colorful dwellers with squirts of sodium cyanide. The potent nerve toxin causes the fish to float up out of the reefs so they can be easily scooped up, but it can also injure or kill them as well as trigger coral bleaching.

- Local Media Fail To Cover Climate Denial, ALEC Link

Louisiana, South Dakota, Kentucky, New Mexico, Tennessee, Oklahoma, and Texas -- passed measures or promoted  policies that would change the education curriculums in their states to begin teaching "different perspectives" in environmental science instruction. The major newspapers in each of these states gave varying coverage to the issue with some not even covering the issue at all. In addition a Media Matters investigation shows that, despite the appearance that these state proposals and model legislation by the conservative organization the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), not once did these newspapers mention ALEC or their model legislation in their coverage.

- U.S. Records Warmest March; More Than 15,000 Warm Temperature Records Broken

Record and near-record breaking temperatures dominated the eastern two-thirds of the United States and contributed to the warmest March on record for the contiguous United States, a record that dates back to 1895. More than 15,000 warm temperature records were broken during the month

- Pollution Playing A Major Role In Sea Temperatures

The new research appears in the journal Nature. If it's confirmed, it could foretell a warmer Atlantic, because the aerosol pollution has apparently cooled the Atlantic some. But new pollution controls are reducing the amount of those aerosols — that's good for public health, but it also means the ocean loses its sunblock.

- Gulf seafood deformities alarm scientists

Eyeless shrimp and fish with lesions are becoming common, with BP oil pollution believed to be the likely cause.

- Is Meat killing the Planet? UN says diet change will slow climate change

The pink elephant in the room of global warming discussions is the link between animal agriculture and accelerating climate change. To put it frankly – if we stop eating meat, we will quickly slow down global warming.

- Warming climate reveals links to infectious disease

Researchers are gaining new insight into how pathogens will react to a warmer future: 'It's not just a summer disease. It's becoming a spring and fall disease now.'

- The Long, Hot March of Climate Change

The Pentagon knows it. The world’s largest insurers know it. Now, governments may be overthrown because of it. It is climate change, and it is real. According to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, last month was the hottest March on record for the United States since 1895, when records were first kept, with average temperatures of 8.6 degrees F above average. More than 15,000 March high-temperature records were broken nationally. Drought, wildfires, tornadoes and other extreme weather events are already plaguing the country.

- The Greatest Challenge of Our Species

While it is not as if nothing has been achieved in the interim or that scientific understanding has stood still, it is obvious that new science is not needed to conclude that humanity has failed to act at the scale and with the urgency needed.In the United States, in particular (but not exclusively), far too much attention has been given to the non-issue of whether climate change is real or not. In the meantime the heating of the atmosphere proceeds inexorably, the Arctic ice has thinned and retreated at its summer low to a point that it might be tied to the exceptionally warm spring in Europe and North America. Spring bloom has erupted early in North America and Europe. Most people just say how nice the weather is with no sense of the march of climate change.

- Live Animals Being Sold as Keyrings in China

Keyring ornaments are perhaps the most useless item you'll ever carry in your pocket or stuff in your purse -- but now, thanks to an increasingly popular item being sold in China, it can easily be the cruelest, too. For the price you might expect to pay for some kitschy trinket, Chinese street vendors are selling live animals, permanently sealed in a small plastic pouch where they can survive for a short while as someone's conversation piece. Apparently, these unimaginably inhumane keyrings are actually quite popular -- and worst of all, it's totally legal.

- Broadcast News Networks Misrepresent Intelligence On Iranian Nuclear Issues

Many in the media have long since repudiated their failures in the lead-up to the Iraq War, acknowledging that they were too quick to accept the false notion that Iraq possessed a sizable and dangerous cache of weapons of mass destruction. The question today is whether they have learned from those mistakes.

- Report: U.S. trained terror group

When the U.S. wants to fund, train, arm or otherwise align itself with a Terrorist group or state sponsor of Terror — as it often does — it at least usually has the tact to first remove them from its formal terrorist list (as the U.S. did when it wanted to support Saddam in 1982 and work with Libya in 2006), or it just keeps them off the list altogether despite what former Council on Foreign Relations writer Lionel Beehner described as “mounds of evidence that [they] at one time or another abetted terrorists” (as it has done with close U.S. allies in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, along with the El Salvadoran death squads and Nicaraguan contras armed and funded in the 1980s by the Reagan administration). But according to a new, multi-sourced report from The New Yorker‘s Seymour Hersh, the U.S. did not even bother going through those motions when, during the Bush years, it trained the Iranian dissident group Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK) at a secretive Department of Energy site in Nevada...

- Updated Review Finds Little U.S. Military Risk in Nuclear Test Ban

Any move toward ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, an agreement designed to end the testing of nuclear weapons permanently, will require a lengthy debate in the U.S. Senate, which has not been scheduled and would be improbable in an election year. But according to the U.S. National Academies, there is no technical reason why the United States should not sign on the dotted line right now. In a report released last week, an expert panel said it would be possible to keep America's stockpile of nuclear weapons safe and reliable without testing, and that treaty-monitoring technologies now make it impossible for states to hide a test big enough to be useful.

- Homophobes 'may be secretly attracted to people of the same sex'

Homophobes could be attracted to people of the same sex but are not admitting it to themselves, a series of psychology studies has found.Researchers in New York, Essex and California say they've found evidence that gays and lesbians remind homophobes of themselves  - which is why they develop an intense aversion and fear of them.
They claim homophobic people tend to repress their true sexuality as they've often been brought up in families where being gay is not acceptable.

- Seeking the Truth About U.S. Targeted Killing Strike That Killed Dozens of Women and Children in Yemen

Today the ACLU and the Center for Constitutional Rights filed a Freedom of Information Act request seeking information about a horrific U.S. missile strike that killed dozens of civilians in Yemen.

- Think Natural Gas Leasing Makes Homeowners Money? Think Again (Video)

From Texas to Wyoming to Pennsylvania, countless homeowners have learned the cruel truth that a home without clean water is essentially valueless. Many homeowners dealing with contamination have had their property values slashed by 75 or 80 percent by professional appraisers, but have been unable to find buyers—at any price. These families are often stuck paying mortgages on homes they can no longer live in safely, with no one to turn to for help. Gas companies have no obligation to compensate homeowners for the loss of their shelter, or the long-term loss of their “nest egg.” For some, destroyed land is also destroyed income. Farmers have watched as companies that told them at lease-signing, “You’ll never even know we’re here” instead built roads and toxic wastewater pools on their best fields, leaving their animals with no place to graze and their crop yields insufficient to pay their bills.

- NRA Chief Lobbyist Cox Says "We Will Defend" Stand Your Ground Laws

At an event during last weekend's National Rifle Association annual meeting, NRA chief lobbyist Chris W. Cox said that the group doesn't "apologize" for its support for "Stand Your Ground" self-defense legislation in the wake of the killing of Trayvon Martin, adding, "We will defend our efforts. We will defend those laws."

- Romney's own hot-mic moment

At the fundraiser, Haake adds, both Romney and his wife Ann remained absolutely giddy about last week’s Hilary Rosen flap. "It was my early birthday present for someone to be critical of me as a mother, and that was really a defining moment, and I loved it," Ann Romney said. The candidate went further, calling the episode a "gift" that allowed his campaign to show contrast with Democrats in the general election's first week. But while Romney said last week that “all moms are working moms,” that doesn’t apply to mothers who are welfare recipients, the Boston Globe says. Romney said at a Jan. 4 campaign stop in Manchester, N.H.: “Even if you have a child two years of age, you need to go to work,” Romney describing his position as Massachusetts governor. “And people said, ‘Well that’s heartless,’ and I said ‘No, no, I’m willing to spend more giving daycare to allow those parents to go back to work. It’ll cost the state more providing that daycare, but I want the individuals to have the dignity of work.’”

- Police condemned over student pepper-spraying

Campus police violated policy and used poor judgment when they used pepper spray against student demonstrators at a California university in November, according to a report into the incident.

- Rachel Maddow: Michigan GOP circumvents democracy with shady vote corner-cutting

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

- The ‘Voter Fraud’ Fraud

...conservatives continue to hype the extremely rare occurrence of election fraud as if it were something that happens every day and is somehow responsible for the election of Obama and Democratic candidates across the map. And there is evidence that they’ve been successful in pushing this fact-free narrative among the broader public.

- Disenfranchised in America

New legislation across the US could have a huge impact on the country's 2012 presidential elections. Largely Republican politicians have passed a range of new voting laws that groups fear could disenfranchise as many as five million American voters this year.

Troops Out, Now What?
Posted: 03/29/2012 on HuffingtonPost.com

March 19th marked the sad anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Nine tumultuous years after "shock and awe," the people of Iraq struggle to rebuild their society while dealing with the aftermath of a disastrous occupation. When the last combat brigades pulled out in December 2011, putting Iraq in their rear-view mirrors, what was the legacy they left in their wake and the burdens they brought home with them?

As both an organizer active with Iraq Veterans Against the War and a student of anthropology, I have worked closely with U.S. military veterans who served in the so-called "Global War of Terror," particularly those involved in peace and social justice movements. Looking back, I see many lessons to be drawn from this costly debacle.

The Perils of Militarism


The first lesson is that militarism in the U.S. seems to have a gravitational force pulling a wide array of resources and sectors into its orbit. Our involvement with Iraq serves as a case study for how deeply rooted militarism is in American culture and political life. The Bush administration gambled on this fact as it made the case for war. The entire undertaking, however, was doomed from the outset given the well-documented false pretenses underpinning their arguments, inept leadership by the Coalition Provisional Authority, and rampant corruption of private contractors who operated with impunity, all with deadly consequences for the Iraqi population.

Even members of the academic community were drawn to the tremendous power and influence the military-industrial complex enjoys. Social scientists were employed as part of the U.S. military's Human Terrain System (HTS) program to assist combat commanders in getting a better understanding of Iraqi and Afghan culture and social structure as part of a larger counterinsurgency strategy. This program and articles published by anthropologists working in it prompted a heated debate within the American Anthropological Association, which had previously passed resolutions against the Iraq war and torture. The debate centered on the issue of professional ethics guiding anthropologists engaged in research involving human subjects.

With counter-insurgency strategy relying heavily on building relationships with the local population, critics argued these anthropologists were violating norms of obtaining informed consent from the Iraqi participants where they worked and that reporting their findings for use in military operations put civilian lives at risk. As a response, the Network of Concerned Anthropologists gathered signers for an online petition and initiated a number of editorials for academic and popular publications. Thus, while the pull toward militarism is strong there are always socially responsible people willing to fight against it.

Yellow Ribbons and Purple Hearts


The second lesson is that the logic of militarism shapes the national dialogue and makes going to and supporting war a primary responsibility of the citizenry. The mission to topple Saddam Hussein, driven by claims that he allegedly possessed weapons of mass destruction and connections to al Qaeda leaders, led many enlistees and service members to view service in Iraq as a just cause, likened to the fight against fascism during WWII. Calls for civilians to "Support the Troops" and do their part to ensure their service is honored in some way was the dominant rhetoric across the mainstream political spectrum. While I think veterans deserve our respect, it should not come at the cost of blindly accepting unjust wars or committing huge expenditures unquestioningly.

Yet, for the over two million troops and veterans who served a tour in Iraq, re-adjusting to life back home has not been a smooth transition. While the total number of troops who were killed or wounded in Iraq is far less when compared to previous major conflicts, the war is no less devastating for the troops, vets and their families. Multiple tours of duty in Iraq, Afghanistan, or both have left many veterans with serious physical and psychological injuries.

Impaired to the point of being unemployable, their capacity to function in a difficult economy for healthy people, much less a veteran with wrestling with rehabilitation and trauma, is severely limited. The recent revelations of a four-tour Army staff sergeant who allegedly massacred 17 civilians in Afghanistan highlight the depth of the problem. My organization has launched the Operation Recovery campaign to raise awareness about the widespread nature of trauma and to stop the deployment of traumatized troops.

Although improvements to the GI Bill came late in the war, many veterans still find it difficult to maintain a stable lifestyle conducive to completing a college education. Overcoming the effects of military sexual trauma, post traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury can be a daunting task. Even when one seeks care at a Veterans Affairs (VA) health facility, many veterans face long wait times or bureaucracy that frustrates and makes getting care elusive. A plethora of veterans' organizations has sprung up to meet the demands of a new and growing veterans population.

The Long Shadow of War


The final lesson is that civilians have paid the biggest price for what U.S. militarism creates. The toll on Iraqi civil society has and continues to be tremendous. Estimates of civilian deaths between 2003 and 2011 because of coalition or sectarian violence range from 115,000 to 157,000 according to IraqBodyCount.org. The number of wounded is difficult to quantify accurately but is in the hundreds of thousands. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reports the number of internally displaced people at over 1.3 million, while the number of Iraqi refugees in neighboring countries or elsewhere is over 1.6 million.

The amount of damage caused by air strikes and ground fighting has impaired basic services such as access to the clean water, reliable electricity and medical services. After years of sanctions and occupation, Iraqi society has been left to sort out the mess in the aftermath. Few acknowledge the widespread mental and emotional trauma that Iraqis face as they deal with the loss of their families, security, and communities. In spite of it all, pro-democracy movements critical of the U.S., the Maliki government, and in solidarity with the "Arab Spring" uprisings, have swept across Iraq according to a blog by Ali Issa, an Iraqi-American organizer with the War Resisters League.

The environmental devastation caused by coalition munitions and the prolonged occupation presence, has created a wasteland of nuclear and chemical waste ruining crops, water tables, and a compromising the gene pool. The city of Fallujah alone has seen a 15 fold increase in birth defects and cancer between 2008 and 2009 according to The Guardian, among a relatively young and healthy population before the occupation.

Iraqi and international physicians as well as U.S. military veterans have worked to draw attention to this important issue. Dubbed the "agent orange" of the 21st century, depleted uranium (DU) will continue to have a devastating impact on Iraqi society for generations to come. On the flip-side, veterans are suffering from a whole host of service-related health problems linked to DU exposure. Some have argued Gulf War syndrome -- a complex array of symptoms that defy conventional diagnoses -- is a result of DU or nerve agent exposure and combat veterans report a number of serious ailments including chronic fatigue, skins conditions, unexplained headaches, neurological, cardiovascular, gastrointestinal and menstrual disorders.

Although the outlook seems bleak, as the vast majority of people not directly affected by the war will quickly forget about Iraqis and the veterans, I take heart in the incredible human capacity for empathy with the "other," and the will to dedicate oneself to achieving justice.

Jose Vasquez is the Executive Director of Iraq Veterans Against the War. He served fourteen years in the U.S. Army and was honorably discharged in 2007 as a conscientious objector. Jose was a key organizer of Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan - Eyewitness Accounts of the Occupations and represented IVAW in the editing process for the book published by Haymarket . He is pursuing a Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology at CUNY Graduate Center conducting research on the politics of veteran status in contemporary American society.

Sean

Why Republicans Deny Proven Science • Climate Change • War • Big Oil/Coal/Gas Want the USA to be 3rd World State • DOGS! • Racism and the Trayvon Martin Murder

- Why Rush Limbaugh and the right turned on Trayvon Martin

A national tragedy became another awful political shouting match, thanks to vile [Republican] pundits and talk-radio hosts

- Accusing Others Of Playing "The Race Card" Does Nothing To Advance Dialogue

More than a month after the shooting, the facts about the shooting remain unclear. What is clear, however, is that the right-wing media's modus operandi when it comes to racial issues hasn't changed. Now that prominent black Americans are singling out race as a reason the 17-year-old is dead, conservative media figures are out in full force with what can only be described as ferocious backlash against those they deride as "professional race baiters."

- The Value of Bringing Your Dog to Work

...a new study has come out that says employees should bring their dogs to work. Not only will having man's best friend around help you get through the day, it will also help others around you.

- Welcome to the New Third World of Energy, the United States

How Big Energy Companies Plan to Turn the United States into a Third-World Petro-State

- Act, or face world food shortage: report

A MAJOR new report on global food security has warned international leaders, farmers and food companies that urgent action is needed to avoid irrevocably unsustainable and inadequate agricultural production by 2050. Consumers may also be encouraged to shift their diets away from red meat and livestock-based foods such as dairy products to “more resource-efficient and healthier” vegetable-rich diets.

- Data Mining You

the New American Foundation estimates, based on news reports, that 17 percent of the Pakistanis killed in U.S. drone strikes between 2004 and 2011 were civilians; in 2011 the figure was 11 percent. The Air Force does not release statistics on the subject but the science board’s report cited an internal estimate that suggested U.S. drone strikes accounted for 8 percent of all civilian casualties in the Afghan theater (compared to 66 percent caused by the Taliban).

- Boredom, terror, deadly mistakes: Secrets of the new drone war

In the new world of the National Security Complex, no one can be trusted—except the officials working within it, who in their eternal bureaucratic vigilance clearly consider themselves above any law. The system that they are constructing (or that, perhaps, is constructing them) has no more to do with democracy or an American republic or the Constitution than it does with a Soviet-style state. Think of it as a phenomenon for which we have no name. Like the yottabyte, it’s something new under the sun, still awaiting its own strange and ugly moniker.

- How Coral Bleaching Could Lead to Famine

The effects of climate change, such as coral bleaching, become slow-motion disasters, with knock-on effects for years

Why the GOP [Republicans] distrusts science
It's not just evolution and climate change -- conservatives' trust in science is plummeting across the board
by Chris Mooney Published 4/2/12 on Salon.com

For a long time, those of us who monitor the troubled relationship between science and the American public had at least one thing we could feel good about. And that was knowing that while we might argue endlessly over global warming or the teaching of evolution, at the end of the day Americans in general still expressed strong confidence — strong trust — in the institution of science and its leaders. Spats over a handful of divisive issues didn’t seem to have soured them on science across the board.

The evidence for this came in the form of polling data from the General Social Survey, which for decades has asked people to rate their level of confidence in the leaders of a variety of institutions. Even at a time of declining trust in institutions in general, science always seemed to fare pretty well by this metric. “In 2008, more Americans expressed a ‘great deal’ of confidence in scientific leaders than in the leaders of any other institution except the military,” noted the National Science Foundation’s 2010 “Science and Engineering Indicators” report, which serves as a clearinghouse for these sorts of public opinion findings.

Last week, however, such claims seemed to all but fall apart.

In a new study published in the American Sociological Review, Gordon Gauchat of the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill analyzed responses to this “confidence in institutions” question — which  has been asked since 1974 — based on the political ideology of the respondents. And in doing so, he found that confidence in the scientific community had declined quite dramatically among self-described U.S. political conservatives. This downward trend in the data, says Gauchat, had previously been hidden by “not breaking out the political part of it” — by treating all Americans as a uniform group.

And not only did Gauchat find that, from 1974 to 2010, conservatives marched away from the scientific community. He also found, quite disturbingly, that this had a surprising and paradoxical relationship with their levels of education. It turns out that it was the educated conservatives who became the most distrusting of science over time — a phenomenon that I have called the “smart idiot” effect, and that likely reflects their higher level of political knowledge and engagement. Liberals, in contrast, remained relatively uniform in their trust in science over the period.

In one sense, I suppose I should be gratified by these results: Gauchat explicitly set out to test the thesis of my 2005 book “The Republican War on Science,” and writes that his results provide “strong evidence” in my favor. (Not that this is the sort of thing that you want to be right about.) But how do we explain this occurrence — this big move, by conservatives, away from science?

Just as I did in “Republican War,” Gauchat points the finger at the rise of the “New Right” as a political movement in the 1960s and 1970s. He underscores how upstart conservatives generated their own alternative sources of expertise — in other words, created their own version of reality, scientific and otherwise — at think tanks like the Heritage Foundation and Cato Institute. The goal was to hit back against liberal academia, as well as the intellectuals and scientists who worked there.

At the same time, conservatives also forged an alternative media universe — centered on Fox News and Rush Limbaugh’s radio show — where scientists often fell under attack on a key set of politicized issues like global warming, evolution, embryonic stem cell research, and many others.

The idea, then, is that conservatives came to define the worlds of science and academia as a liberal domain that was biased against them — one they had to actively combat by generating their own sources of “counter-expertise.” And naturally, this led to decreased trust in scientists and their institutions, especially among the most politically attuned conservatives, who were most familiar with the nature of these battles, and tracked them most closely.
Sounds plausible enough — but is that the full story?

There’s no doubt it’s partly true; but in recent years, I’ve come to question whether it is a complete account. In particular, in my new book, “The Republican Brain,” I emphasize that beyond such surface-level political and sociological explanations, we also have to examine the powerful sub-surface psychological determinants of political behavior. Really, you need both types of explanations, combined, before you can understand many political phenomena.

In a psychological sense, there are many reasons to think that self-described political conservatives today are just different people than they were in 1974 — more rigid, more closed-minded. Consider, for instance, the work of political scientists Marc Hetherington of Vanderbilt and Jonathan Weiler, also of the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. In their 2009 book “Authoritarianism and Polarization in American Politics,” Hetherington and Weiler show that the U.S. became not only more politically divided, but also more psychologically divided, during the time period in question.

The chief catalyst for this development was Nixon’s infamous “Southern Strategy” and the rise of an array of “culture war” issues during the 1960s and 1970s. As a result of these forces, Hetherington and Weiler explain, a group of people called “authoritarians” — a generally conservative personality type characterized by cognitive rigidity, viewing the world in black-and-white terms, and holding fixed beliefs, often fundamentalist Christian ones — became much more strongly clustered in the Republican Party, and the conservative movement, than they had been previously.

In other words, the “conservatives” analyzed in Gauchat’s study seem to have changed psychological identities over time.  According to Weiler, “those self-identifying as conservative have been increasingly likely to be authoritarians over the past generation.”

This occurred for a number of reasons, Weiler explains. Concerted attacks on “liberalism” pushed working-class whites — once supportive of the New Deal — away from embracing that label; instead, the term came to be more associated with the civil rights struggle, and later, with women’s rights and gay rights. At the same time, the political mobilization of conservative Christians — many of them authoritarians — helped draw a much stronger linkage between calling oneself a “conservative” and embracing religious fundamentalism. “As liberalism and conservatism came to be redefined,” explains Weiler, “authoritarians had reason to gravitate much more readily toward one ideological camp, and one political party.”

So under this theory, it’s not just that movement conservatives built think tanks that allowed for an end-run around scientific expertise. And it’s not just that they constantly attacked academia, where liberals and scientists were clustered. It’s also that people inclined to view the world in black and white terms increasingly came to call themselves “conservative” in the first place.

How does psychological authoritarianism set the stage for a distrust of science? If you see the world in an authoritarian way, then you’re more likely to dismiss your ideological opponents (scientists or otherwise) without compromise — to define them as an out-group, an “other.” At the same time, you’re also less likely to appreciate the nuanced, measured style of thinking and writing that is so typical of scientists (and for that matter, liberals). It just won’t feel right to you. Authoritarians are known for their intolerance of uncertainty; yet uncertainty is the lifeblood of science.

And indeed, if you look at the Tea Party today — a highly authoritarian group of people, according to Hetherington and Weiler — this is exactly what you see. Take the issue of global warming. Not only do Tea Partyers dismiss the overwhelming body of science showing that humans are causing it; polling data also show they’re confident they don’t need any more information about the issue. They’re not just wrong, then; it’s considerably worse than that. They’re wrong and also sure of themselves.

It is important to acknowledge that authoritarianism refers to a psychological trait or disposition, not an explicit ideology. At least theoretically, it’s content neutral. So it’s conceivable that in a very different political context, authoritarians might well have lined up behind science, rather than against it. That would be an odd political case, though; especially in a democracy, it’s not very likely that authoritarianism and science will get along very well together, any more than that authoritarianism and liberalism will go together. They’re just such deeply opposed ways of thinking — and being. You could argue that the clash between science and authoritarianism dates all the way back to the time of Galileo, if not farther.

Gauchat’s findings are the farthest thing from heartening — especially when combined with Hetherington and Weiler’s. But together, they do give us an opportunity to examine the root causes of the ideological war on science now being prosecuted by political conservatives in the U.S. You can’t begin to address a problem until you find its source. And in this case — as in so many others — that source appears to lie in both politics and also psychology, combined.

Sean

Trayvon Martin's Murder • Republican Racism • Fukushima Still Deadly and Hits USA • Health Care Reform Hated by Republicans UNTIL it's Explained to them! • more

- Congressman Gets Kicked Off House Floor by Republicans For Wearing Hoodie For Trayvon

Rep. Bobby Rush (D-IL) donned a hoodie and took to the House floor this morning to speak out against the murder of Travyon Martin, but was shouted down and removed from the floor by the Republican speaker pro tem for violating House rules prohibiting the wearing of hats.

- Rick Santorum: another slip of the tongue but was it the 'N-word'?

Did Rick Santorum really just come within a few micro-seconds of calling America's first ever black president a "nigger"?

- "A Song for Trayvon" by Jasiri X - LIVE FROM BROOKLYN, NY video

- Passing Judgment: The Death of Anna Brown

The horrific story of Anna Brown, a black, homeless, 29-year-old St. Louis woman and mother of two who after refusing to leave a hospital because her legs hurt so much was arrested for trespassing, handcuffed, dragged into a jail cell and left moaning on the floor, where she died of blood clots minutes later. Police thought she was on drugs. She wasn't. Can anyone possibly argue there is not underway in this country a gender, color and class war, though not the one the right wing envisions? There's a Change.org petition demanding access to health care, and video.

- Radiation 'fatally high' at Japan reactor

One of Japan's crippled nuclear reactors still has fatally high radiation levels and much less water to cool it than officials had estimated, according to an internal examination that renews doubts about the plant's stability.

- Radioactive Iodine from Fukushima Found in California Kelp

Kelp off Southern California was contaminated with short-lived radioisotopes a month after Japan’s Fukushima accident, a sign that the spilled radiation reached the state’s urban coastline, according to a new scientific study.

- As Fukushima Worsens, US Approves New Nukes

Despite reports this week that the Fukushima nuclear situation may be even worse than previously thought, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has given approval today for two combined licenses for two nuclear reactors in South Carolina, only the second time in the last three decades that new nuclear plants have been approved in the nation.

- Is Human Impact Accelerating Out of Control?

The impact of human activity on the Earth is running out of control, and the amount of time in which action can be taken to prevent potentially catastrophic climate change is rapidly dwindling, a leading scientist from the Australian National University told a global scientific climate conference in London yesterday.

- Steps Set for Livestock Antibiotic Ban

The Obama administration must warn drug makers that the government may soon ban agricultural uses of some popular antibiotics that many scientists say encourage the proliferation of dangerous infections and imperil public health, a federal magistrate judge ruled on Thursday. The order, issued by Judge Theodore H. Katz of the Southern District of New York, effectively restarts a process that the Food and Drug Administration began 35 years ago, but never completed, intended to prevent penicillin and tetracycline, widely used antibiotics, from losing their effectiveness in humans because of their bulk use in animal feed to promote growth in chickens, pigs and cattle.

- FDA Keeps BPA in Food, Fails Public Health Again

Today the Food and Drug Administration has announced that it will not take steps to bar bisphenol-A, or BPA, a known toxic chemical, from canned food and liquid infant formula containers.

- Obama's Waffling on Gay Marriage Could Create Election-Year Bind

With President Obama visiting Vermont and Maine today -- two states where gay marriage has been a major issue of late -- concerns about how stance on gay marriage may impact his re-election campaign continue to mount.Obama's 'evolving' stance on gay marriage could complicate his re-election campaign. President Obama has never supported gay marriage, but in 2010 he said he was "evolving" on the issue.

- Media Blackout: Progressive Budget vs. Paul Ryan (Again)

Last year Republican Rep. Paul Ryan presented a budget plan that was, according to one analysis, full of "dubious assertions, questionable assumptions and fishy figures." But Ryan's brand of budget austerity makes the media swoon–hence we saw coverage (FAIR Media Advisory, 4/12/11)  of Ryan's "piercing blue eyes" that dubbed him "a PowerPoint fanatic with an almost unsettling fluency in the fine print of massive budget documents."Ryan's budget was never going to be adopted, but its release was widely covered across the corporate media. He was given credit for presenting a plan to reduce government deficits, even though his plan didn't really do much of that.
At the same time, the Congressional Progressive Caucus released its People's Budget, which raised taxes on the wealthy, slashed military spending, enacted a public option in healthcare and a Wall Street speculation tax–and unlike Ryan's plan, actually balanced the budget. It got almost no media attention.

- This Week in Poverty: Me, Mom and Reagan

Here’s the new American reality: about half of all kids will spend at least part of their childhood in a family headed by a single mother, and the typical single mother is white, has one kid, is separated or divorced, works and probably earns less than $25,000 a year.

Segment from the Rachel Maddow Show showing that when asked, the people who oppose health care reform actually WANT Obama's Health Care reforms ONLY when you don't mention "Health Care Reform" or "Obama Care". When it's explained to them- THEY WANT IT.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Sean

Science Doesn't Exist to Republicans • Racist Republicans Buy Racist Anti-Obama Stickers • The Trayvon Martin Shooting • Lying Republicans • Carbon Emissions Hit New High • USA: Killing People Without Guilt

- Science and Santorum

Now that it appears that Rick Santorum is more than a flash in the hot (albeit not globally warmed) evolutionary pan, I confess to an oversight that occurred in this space in 2011 when I suggested that Michelle Bachmann and Rick Perry were the only ones among the Republican presidential candidates who believed that evolution was nothing more than a theory. I did Mr. Santorum a disservice by failing to acknowledge his long-standing support of creationism and his contempt for the idea of global warming. His support for creationism in the classroom goes back at least as far as 2001.

- Racist Anti-Obama Sticker Makes Rounds On Facebook

A photograph of a bumper sticker that features racist, anti-Obama language has gone viral on Facebook and other social networks.

The sticker reads "Don't Re-Nig In 2012," in large white type, above smaller text that reads: "Stop repeat offenders. Don't re-elect Obama!"

The offensive design appears to have originated at a site called Stumpy's Stickers, where it can be purchased. The site sells variations on the same idea, including another "Don't Re-Nig" design featuring a caricature of a black man's face with a missing tooth, a picture of a chimp that reads "Obama 2012," and another with a drawing of several Ku Klux Klan members that reads "The Original Boys In The Hood."

- Trayvon Martin’s Death, LeBron James and the Miami Heat

The senseless killing of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin by a self-appointed “neighborhood watch captain” has provoked anguish, rage and now, at long last, resistance. We’ve seen rallies, demonstrations and walkouts at dozens upon dozens of high schools in Florida alone. Even more remarkably, this resistance has found expression in the world of sports. An impressive group of NBA players from Carmelo Anthony to Steve Nash to the leaders of the NBA Players Association have spoken out and called for justice.

- This Week in Poverty: Paul Ryan's Focus on Dignity

[This week Republican Congressman Paul Ryan] released his budget proposal....  as clear clear a statement of one’s principles and priorities as there is in politics.

Here are the results, and they’re not pretty. Nation readers with young children should probably ask them to leave the room before reading onward.

- Can Americans Trust Government Again?

Americans turned against government in frustration and fear in the 1970s. But those same Americans from every corner can rediscover the value of government, throw off the blinders of the past generation and lead their policy-makers to a wiser path. This is the urgent mission of our times.

- MEDIA MATTERS: How often different media outlets blamed Obama for gas prices (graph)

This is how often different media outlets blamed Obama for gas prices. Guess which is Fox?

- Carbon emissions hit a new record

GREENHOUSE gases have risen to their highest level since modern humans evolved, and Australian temperatures are now about a degree warmer than they were a century ago, a major review by the CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology has found.

The national climate report, to be released today, said Australia's current climate ''cannot be explained by natural variability alone'' and that emissions resulting from human activity were playing an increasingly direct role in shaping temperatures.

- Blood Money: US Well-Practiced in 'Apologizing for Carnage'

Media reports in the days since the massacre of 16 civilians in Aghanistan have indirectly shed light on the callous realities of warfare: that the military has quantified the price of a life and believes that death can be compensated with blood money, and that the U.S. has "had a lot of practice at apologizing for carnage."

America's 300 Year-Long Lucky Streak Continues
Posted March 20, 2012 on A Tiny Revolution

One of the great things about being American is we're just lucky. Lots of countries have killed millions of people, and it made their families really angry and sad. So the countries sometimes had to feel bad about it. But when WE'VE done it, we've always been lucky enough to do it to people who turned out not to mind being killed. So no harm done.

Most recently, Steve Inskeep of NPR pointed out that Afghans haven't gotten all bent out of shape about a U.S. soldier massacring sixteen of them, because "human life is already cheap" way over there.
That's great journalism. However, it would have been even better if Inskeep had found out whether life is not just cheap in Afghanistan, but also plentiful, like it was in Vietnam:

WILLIAM WESTMORELAND: The Oriental doesn't put the same high price on life as does a Westerner. Life is plentiful. Life is cheap in the Orient.

And what about Iraqis? Were they whiny bitches when we killed them? No way:

FRED KAGAN, ARCHITECT OF IRAQ "SURGE": If anyone has seen pictures of Ramadi or Fallujah, they looked like Stalingrad. Cities absolutely crushed...
The interesting thing is that when we were fighting those battles and doing that damage, on the whole the Iraqis were not bitching about collateral damage...the Iraqis don’t on the whole say "darn it, you shouldn’t have blown up all of our houses." They sort of accept that.

We know this is correct because Iraqis felt the same way in the twenties when they were being slaughtered by the British:

"The natives of these tribes love fighting for fighting's sake," Chief of Air Staff Hugh Trenchard assured Parliament. "They have no objection to being killed." The military's argument was that, though the often indiscriminate air attacks might perturb some civilized folks back in London, such acts were viewed differently by the Arabs. As one British commander observed, "'[Shiekhs]...do not seem to resent...that women and children are accidentally killed by bombs."

Then we come to Koreans. Here's a review of Curtis LeMay's autobiography, in which LeMay explained why massive carpet bombing of North Korea during the Korean War didn't make them surrender:

LeMay [argues] that bombardment failed because of an "undying Oriental philosophy and fanaticism." He says, "Human attrition means nothing to such people," that their lives are so miserable on earth that they look forward with delight to a death which promises them "everything from tea parties with long dead grandfathers down to their pick of all the golden little dancing girls in Paradise."

Of course, all this might make it seem like it's an Eastern Hemisphere thing, which it's not. People in the Western Hemisphere have never minded being killed by America, as U.S. soldiers have observed:

Marine major Julian Smith testified that the "racial psychology" of the "poorer class of Nicaraguans" made them "densely ignorant...A state of war to them is a normal condition." Along the same lines, Colonel Robert Denig observed in his diary, "Life to them is cheap" ... When asked if he ever witnessed American brutality in Haiti, General Ivan Miller replied that "you have to remember that what we consider brutality among people in the United States is different from what they consider brutality."

Finally, in Notes on Virginia, Thomas Jefferson investigated and found out that his African slaves didn't feel emotions like white people do:

Their griefs are transient. Those numberless afflictions, which render it doubtful whether heaven has given life to us in mercy or in wrath, are less felt, and sooner forgotten with them.

Other scholars discovered that Africans were less physically sensitive too:

Negroes...are void of sensibility to a surprising degree...what would be the cause of insupportable pain to a white man, a Negro would almost disregard.

So there you have it: maybe we've done some things that would have been bad if they'd happened to sensitive people like us, but in each case we've lucked out. Right now I'm getting the feeling that very soon Iranians will turn out not to mind being killed.

HA HA BUT SERIOUSLY: I've sent email to Steve Inskeep with all of these quotes and asked for his reaction. I'm especially curious what he thinks about the fact that in 2012 a journalist (him) was expressing a sentiment that in every other case came from the people directly inflicting the suffering.
—Jon Schwarz

Sean