Sunday Reads: One Word, Tampa.
Posted: September 10, 2017 Filed under: Climate Change, Cuba, Environment, Gun Control, morning reads, nature, open thread, Real Life Horror | Tags: Irma 21 Comments
This tweet by Jim Cantore sums things up into one single word…yeah, that is your latest update on Hurricane Irma.
Tampa.
My hometown.
This post is a quick round-up of links and tweets on the storms. (Don’t forget about Jose.)
One of those cranes just collapsed on a building:
And if all this wasn’t bad enough:
A little humor to lighten the mood:
Houston sunk 2cm, thank you Harvey:
Update in the Mexico earthquake:
Guess y’all heard about the “stupids” in Florida and their plans to shoot at Irma? Even the sheriff had to make a statement.
LOLGOP had the perfect response:
I will end it there. This is an open thread.
Friday Reads: Animal Farm
Posted: June 30, 2017 Filed under: Climate Change, Environmental Protection, Environmentalists, Health care reform, morning reads, religious extremists, Republican Tax Fetishists, Trump, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics 44 Comments
It’s difficult not to think about what the current state of affairs means in terms of the celebration of Independence Day as we head into Fourth of July Festivities. Our country was born of the Age of Reason. Thomas Jefferson–who wrote the document proclaiming US Independence–was an amateur scientist and philosopher. He might be considered the ideal Renaissance man if he had also found a way to support his causes and lifestyle with employees instead of slaves.
There’s always been this dark side to the American Dream and there have been many people throughout history who have fought those inclinations. It’s been a slow climb from the idea that we all are created equal to getting to a society that actually lives that value. The climb continues.
Why is it so difficult to treat one another with the respect and dignity we each deserve?
The Republican leadership and Administration is based on the most vulgar, salacious, and base motivations we’ve witnessed since Andrew Jackson was committing mass genocide on human beings he considered “savages” and since a group of people considered the nation’s black Americans to be not wholly human. They deemed all folks with African descent to be precisely 3/5ths human. All of this was done in the name of the same religion that tortures our better angels today.
The cognitive dissonance is simply mind boggling. Today, Ahvaz Iran has reached an almost unheard of temperature of 129. It’s one of the hottest temperatures ever recorded on the planet.
Another weather source, the Weather Underground, said Ahvaz hit 129.2 degrees Thursday afternoon. The heat index, which also takes humidity into account, hit an incredible 142 degrees.
Fortunately, the weather forecast for Ahvaz on Friday is for “cooler” weather, with a high of only 119 degrees, according to AccuWeather.
The official all-time world record temperature remains the 134-degree temperature measured at Death Valley, Calif, on July 10, 1913. However, some experts say that temperature isn’t reliable. Weather Underground weather historian Christopher Burt said in 2016 that such an extreme temperature was “not possible from a meteorological perspective.”
Scorching heat is one of the most expected outcomes of man-made climate change, according to a 2016 report from the National Academy of Sciences and a 2015 study in Nature Climate Change.
The prestigious magazine Science published a study estimating the economic cost of climate change to the US economy. It’s not pretty. You can read the fully study at the link. This is its Abstract.
Estimates of climate change damage are central to the design of climate policies. Here, we develop a flexible architecture for computing damages that integrates climate science, econometric analyses, and process models. We use this approach to construct spatially explicit, probabilistic, and empirically derived estimates of economic damage in the United States from climate change. The combined value of market and nonmarket damage across analyzed sectors—agriculture, crime, coastal storms, energy, human mortality, and labor—increases quadratically in global mean temperature, costing roughly 1.2% of gross domestic product per +1°C on average. Importantly, risk is distributed unequally across locations, generating a large transfer of value northward and westward that increases economic inequality. By the late 21st century, the poorest third of counties are projected to experience damages between 2 and 20% of county income (90% chance) under business-as-usual emissions (Representative Concentration Pathway 8.5).
Meanwhile, the man responsible for the EPA–professional whackadoodle Scott Pruitt–launches program to ‘critique’ climate science.
“We are in fact very excited about this initiative,” the official added. “Climate science, like other fields of science, is constantly changing. A new, fresh and transparent evaluation is something everyone should support doing.”
The disclosure follows the administration’s suggestions over several days that it supports reviewing climate science outside the normal peer-review process used by scientists. This is the first time agency officials acknowledged that Pruitt has begun that process. The source said Energy Secretary Rick Perry also favors the review.
Executives in the coal industry interpret the move as a step toward challenging the endangerment finding, the agency’s legal foundation for regulating greenhouse gases from cars, power plants and other sources. Robert Murray, CEO of Murray Energy Corp., said Pruitt assured him yesterday that he plans to begin reviewing the endangerment finding within months.
“We talked about that, and they’re going to start addressing it later this year,” Murray said in an interview. “They’re going to start getting a lot of scientific people in to give both sides of the issue.”
But another person attending the meeting said Pruitt resisted committing to a full-scale challenge of the 2009 finding. The administration source also said Pruitt “did not promise to try to rescind the endangerment finding.”
Climate scientists express concern that the “red team, blue team” concept could politicize scientific research and disproportionately elevate the views of a relatively small number of experts who disagree with mainstream scientists (Climatewire, June 29).
Pruitt told about 30 people attending a board meeting of the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity yesterday morning that he’s establishing a “specific process” to review climate science, the administration official said. Murray and two other people in the room interpreted Pruitt as saying he would challenge the endangerment finding.
Challenging the endangerment finding would be enormously difficult, according to many lawyers. The finding is built on an array of scientific material establishing that human health and welfare is endangered by a handful of greenhouse gases emitted by industry, power plants and cars. It stems from a Supreme Court ruling in 2007.
If Pruitt somehow succeeded in rolling back the finding — an outcome that many Republicans say is far-fetched — the federal government would no longer be required to restrict greenhouse gas emissions.
Other evidence that there is no sign of intelligent life in the majority of Republicans are these doozies:
Trump Administration Appoints Anti-Transgender Activist To Gender Equality Post
“To put it simply, a boy claiming gender confusion must now be allowed in the same shower, bathroom, or locker room with my daughter,” wrote the new senior adviser for women’s empowerment at USAID.
White House council for women and girls goes dark under Trump
The administration is evaluating whether to keep the office, created under President Barack Obama to focus on gender equality
I agree with Ezra Klein on this: “It turns out the liberal caricature of conservatism is correct. It’s depressing. But it’s true.” These people are motivated by greed and feeding a group of religious zealots who think Eve is the root of all evil and any one not pristine white carries the stain of sin.
Marc Thiessen, the George W. Bush speechwriter who now writes a column for the Washington Post op-ed page, is aghast at the Senate GOP’s health care bill. “Paying for a massive tax cut for the wealthy with cuts to health care for the most vulnerable Americans is morally reprehensible,” he says.
“If Republicans want to confirm every liberal caricature of conservatism in a single piece of legislation, they could do no better than vote on the GOP bill in its current form.”
But at what point do we admit that this isn’t the liberal caricature of conservatism? It’s just … conservatism.
Though Republicans had long promised the country a repeal-and-replace plan that offered better coverage at lower cost, the House GOP’s health care bill cut hundreds of billions of dollars in taxes for the rich and paid for it by gutting health care spending on the poor. It was widely criticized and polled terribly.
Senate Republicans responded by releasing a revised health care bill that also cut hundreds of billions of dollars in taxes for the rich and paid for it by gutting health care spending on the poor. It has also been widely criticized, and it also is polling terribly.
Donald Trump, who ran on a platform of covering everyone with better health insurance than they get now, has endorsed both bills.
Republicans, in other words, have repeatedly broken their promises and defied public opinion in order to release health care bills that cut spending on the poorest Americans to fund massive tax cuts for the richest Americans. (The Tax Policy Center estimates that 44.6 percent of the Senate bill’s tax cuts go to households making more than $875,000.)
Fundamentalism of all sorts has always been the basis of the evil done by this country. Republicans are feeding it.
How do you make climate change personal to someone who believes only God can alter the weather? How do you make racial equality personal to someone who believes whites are naturally superior to non-whites? How do you make gender equality personal to someone who believes women are supposed to be subservient to men by God’s command? How do you get someone to view minorities as not threatening personal to people who don’t live around and never interact with them? How do you make personal the fact massive tax cuts and cutting back government hurts their economic situation when they’ve voted for these for decades? I don’t think you can without some catastrophic events. And maybe not even then. The Civil War was pretty damn catastrophic yet a large swath of the South believed and still believes they were right, had the moral high ground. They were/are also mostly Christian fundamentalists who believe they are superior because of the color of their skin and the religion they profess to follow. There is a pattern here for anyone willing to connect the dots.
“Rural, white America needs to be better understood,” is not one of the dots. “Rural, white America needs to be better understood,” is a dodge, meant to avoid the real problems because talking about the real problems is viewed as “too upsetting,” “too mean,” “too arrogant,” “too elite,” “too snobbish.” Pointing out Aunt Bee’s views of Mexicans, blacks, gays…is bigoted isn’t the thing one does in polite society. Too bad more people don’t think the same about the views Aunt Bee has. It’s the classic, “You’re a racist for calling me a racist,” ploy. Or, as it is more commonly known, “I know you are but what am I?”
I do think rational arguments are needed, even if they go mostly ignored and ridiculed. I believe in treating people with the respect they’ve earned but the key point here is “earned.” I’ll gladly sit down with Aunt Bee and have a nice, polite conversation about her beliefs about “the gays,” “the blacks,” “illegals,”…and do so without calling her a bigot or a racist. But, this doesn’t mean she isn’t a bigot and a racist and if I’m asked to describe her beliefs these are the only words that honestly fit. No one with cancer wants to be told they have cancer, but just because no one uses the word, “cancer,” it doesn’t mean they don’t have it. Just because the media, pundits on all sides, some Democratic leaders don’t want to call the actions of many rural, Christian, white Americans, “racist/bigoted” doesn’t make them not so.
Paul Krugman is more succinct. He calls it Republican ‘cruelty’. It is exactly that.
The puzzle — and it is a puzzle, even for those who have long since concluded that something is terribly wrong with the modern G.O.P. — is why the party is pushing this harsh, morally indefensible agenda.
Think about it. Losing health coverage is a nightmare, especially if you’re older, have health problems and/or lack the financial resources to cope if illness strikes. And since Americans with those characteristics are precisely the people this legislation effectively targets, tens of millions would soon find themselves living this nightmare.
Meanwhile, taxes that fall mainly on a tiny, wealthy minority would be reduced or eliminated. These cuts would be big in dollar terms, but because the rich are already so rich, the savings would make very little difference to their lives.
More than 40 percent of the Senate bill’s tax cuts would go to people with annual incomes over $1 million — but even these lucky few would see their after-tax income rise only by a barely noticeable 2 percent.
So it’s vast suffering — including, according to the best estimates, around 200,000 preventable deaths — imposed on many of our fellow citizens in order to give a handful of wealthy people what amounts to some extra pocket change. And the public hates the idea: Polling shows overwhelming popular opposition, even though many voters don’t realize just how cruel the bill really is. For example, only a minority of voters are aware of the plan to make savage cuts to Medicaid.
In fact, my guess is that the bill has low approval even among those who would get a significant tax cut. Warren Buffett has denounced the Senate bill as the “Relief for the Rich Act,” and he’s surely not the only billionaire who feels that way.
Which brings me back to my question: Why would anyone want to do this?
Because they can and because they love power and money. Their mega-rich donors will shower them in both.
I think we can forever ask ourselves the big question of why do these uneducated white people continually fall for it? The answer is that their life basically sucks and they’re doing what ever they can to feel better about it. Religion and Republicans give them a feeling of superiority based on the only thing they have: the identity birth gave them. Every one is paying an awful price for that.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today? Tuesday is Independence Day if we can keep it.
Sunday Reads: ffather’s Day. Just a straight “fuh”…
Posted: June 18, 2017 Filed under: Climate Change, Environment, Health care reform, morning reads, open thread, Psychopaths in charge, racism, Reproductive Health, Reproductive Rights, right wing hate grouups, the GOP, War on Women, Women's Healthcare, Women's Rights 9 Comments
👆🏼 See that image? I still haven’t spoken those two words together… and very proud of that fact.
It is Father’s Day…so let me first start out by wishing all the daddies the best on this special Sunday.
I was planning on writing a happy post, with happy links. Then I started to review the news and realized…who am I trying to kid? Such crap goings on.
That is why today’s ffather’s Day post is spelled as such…we have such an embarrassment in office, and in the administration. These dudes are fathers but look at what horrible pieces of shit they are…
They do not deserve a capital letter Father’s Day.
So let us commemorate it…which brings us to ffather’s Day.
Foreign Correspondent (1940) — (Movie Clip) May I Have Your Picture?
Just a straight “fuh” …as in “Fuck you kid, can’t you see, the only person that matters is me!”
(Granted, tRump hasn’t been beheaded…but I think you will get my meaning here.)
Back to the “fuh”.
Case in point:
Here is the images if you can’t see this tweet:
Today’s tweets…44 and 45.
It’s enough to make you puke.
Have a look at some of the ffather’s out there…and the kind of legislation these assholes are sponsoring these days.
These horrid men, are not only plotting to kill millions, as they kill Obamacare: The AHCA Could Cause an Economic Downturn – The Atlantic
A new report argues that the Republican health law would slash jobs and perhaps trigger a recession.
A new report from the Commonwealth Fund and George Washington University researchers Leighton Ku, Erika Steinmetz, Erin Brantley, Nikhil Holla, and Brian K. Bruen finds that the AHCA would slash total jobs by about a million, total state gross domestic products by $93 billion, and total business output by $148 billion by 2026. Most of those jobs would be shed from the health-care industry, which would contract severely over that frame. Most of the losses in economic activity would come in states that have expanded Medicaid to low-income adults under the Affordable Care Act.
How about some new form of discrimination…Using Birth Control or Getting an Abortion Could Disqualify You From Jobs in Missouri | Allure
Reproductive rights have been taking a hit left and right, and now folks living in Missouri may be facing another setback. Their state Senate has just voted to pass a bill this past Wednesday night after 10 hours of closed-door meetings that, if fully approved, could legally allow hiring managers to discriminate against those who have gotten abortions in the past, as well as applicants who use birth control.
Alison Drieth, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Missouri, told The Kansas City Star what she thought about the late night vote made by the Senate. “Passing further restrictions on women’s access to abortion in the dark of night is shameful, at best,” she said. “Republican senators know this, or they would have allowed the hundreds of people rallying at the Capitol on Wednesday take part in the process.”
Reproductive rights have been taking a hit left and right, and now folks living in Missouri may be facing another setback. Their state Senate has just voted to pass a bill this past Wednesday night after 10 hours of closed-door meetings that, if fully approved, could legally allow hiring managers to discriminate against those who have gotten abortions in the past, as well as applicants who use birth control.
Alison Drieth, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Missouri, told The Kansas City Star what she thought about the late night vote made by the Senate. “Passing further restrictions on women’s access to abortion in the dark of night is shameful, at best,” she said. “Republican senators know this, or they would have allowed the hundreds of people rallying at the Capitol on Wednesday take part in the process.”
If passed, the bill would put stringent and unwanted restrictions on abortion providers, as the bill would require state health departments to annually inspect clinics unannounced. The Kansas City Star reports, “It also would provide stronger whistleblower protections for employees of abortion clinics and new requirements for pathologists who provide services to abortion clinics.” Both employers and landlords would be allowed to put into place discriminatory practices based on applicants reproductive health decisions. There’s currently an ordinance in place banning this type of discrimination that the bill aims to nullify, based on the idea that it infringes on the religious rights of faith-based employers and landlords.
This bill is not law yet, however, so there is hope. The Missouri House will reconvene next week, and they’ll either ask the Senate to make adjustments to the bill or pass it up to the governor without any changes. We’ll just have to watch this one and see what happens.
Next up, bully kids. I wonder how many of these kids learned their bully tactics from their fathers:
White kids are bullying minority students using Trump’s words – Salon.com
This is Trump’s America: kids are mimicking the president in rhetoric and action
Donald Trump’s real campaign promise was that he would give whites back the power they imagined they’d lost. That message was stated not in dog whistles, but loudly enough that the entire country heard him, even children. The trickle-down effect of Trump’s campaign rhetoric and election is now being felt among kids in schools across the country. Bullying, according to a Buzzfeed News report, has taken on an “alarming twist . . . with white students using the president’s words and slogans to bully Latino, Middle Eastern, black, Asian, and Jewish classmates.”
Buzzfeed reporters analyzed data collected by the Documenting Hate Project, which catalogs reports of bias and bullying, and found more than “50 incidents, across 26 states, in which a K-12 student invoked Trump’s name or message in an apparent effort to harass a classmate during the past school year.” The incidents took place between October 2016 and May 2017. Here are just a fraction of the incidents cited by Buzzfeed investigators:
- A group of white male students at a high school in Shakopee, Minnesota who surrounded an African-American girl and sang the national anthem, “replacing the closing line with ‘and the home of the slaves.’”
- In a third-grade classroom in Louisville, Kentucky, a boy chased a Latina girl while screaming “Build the wall!”
- On the school bus, a white eighth-grader told a Filipino classmate, “You are going to be deported.”
- A white eighth-grade student in Brea, California, told a black student, “Now that Trump won, you’re going to have to go back to Africa, where you belong.”
- An English teacher in Spokane Valley, Washington, describes discovering a “group of white students following a Latino student in the hallway, taunting him with chants of ‘the wall’s coming!’ and ‘Trump! Trump! Trump!’”
- The Dallas, Texas mother of a sixth-grader reported that on Election Day, students at her son’s school harassed him and his friends with shouts of, “Heil Hitlary.” One of the bullied students was told, “One million of your lives is worth less than 30,000 deleted emails.”
These represent just a handful of the bullying incidents the Buzzfeed article lists. The authors acknowledge that countless incidents go unreported, and spoke to parents whose children had avoiding telling school authorities because of fears of social backlash. Kids are infamously cruel. And while some school administrators suggested the bullies in these cases may have been unaware of what their words truly meant — an excuse that’s believable for the youngest offenders — it would be naive to think Trump is the only source they’re learning from. While the president has certainly helped make the environment exponentially more toxic, parents, friends and neighbors feed the ugliness as well.
There is a new rally planned in Charlottesville, how many ffathers will attend this?
Talking about disgusting ffathers…Scalise has been listed in stable condition today. You must have seen this? In a funny sort of ironic way….Bigoted Homophobe Steve Scalise’s Life Was Saved by a Queer Black Woman
Steve Scalise, the House Majority Whip who was shot by a gunman who attacked a congressional baseball practice on Wednesday, has kept company with racists. He was forced to apologize for speaking at an international conference of white supremacists, and reportedly referred to himself as “David Duke without the baggage.” Following Scalise’s shooting, Duke praised him for “defending white civil rights.”
Scalise has also been described as one of the most anti-LGBTQ politicians in Washington. He’s voted against LBGTQ rights over and over again. He also authored Louisiana’s ban on same-sex marriage. Like many of his ilk, he said he was only trying to protect “traditional” marriage.
So it is a point of especially delicious irony that Scalise, who survived the attack (and is reportedly in critical condition), may owe his life to a queer black woman.
Crystal Griner, a Capitol Police officer, was one of two special agents on Scalise’s security detail yesterday who helped take down shooter James Hodgkinson. People at the scene said that the two officers prevented an all-out “massacre” on the field that day, engaging in a firefight with Hodgkinson before killing him.
Griner sustained wounds in the fight, and she, like Scalise, was in a hospital recovering last night. By her side was her wife, Tiffany.
Horrible ffathers…
Just a few more links:
Huge forest fires in Portugal kill at least 60 | World news | The Guardian
Many died in their cars as they fled from huge blaze amid severe heatwave on Iberian peninsula
Brrr! How Much Can Temperatures Drop During a Total Solar Eclipse?
During the total solar eclipse on Aug. 21, 2017, the moon will completely cover the disk of the sun from Oregon to South Carolina. During this period of “totality,” eclipse observers will likely report feeling a sudden drop in temperature. Just how much does the mercury drop during this celestial event?
During the total solar eclipse on Dec. 9, 1834, the Gettysburg Republican Banner reported that in some places, the eclipse caused the temperature to drop by as much as 28 degrees Fahrenheit, from 78 degrees F to 50 degrees F (25 degrees Celsius to 10 degrees C). During a total solar eclipse on the Norwegian island of Svalbard in March 2015, temperatures dropped from 8 degrees F to minus 7 degrees F (minus 13 C to minus 21 degrees C).
This weekend in Boston a wonderful thing to see….Tall ships!
Last link, and it is about damn time:
Olivia de Havilland becomes oldest ever Dame | Daily Mail Online
She’s one of the last surviving legends of Hollywood’s golden age.
Her beauty and enigmatic smile saw Olivia de Havilland play alongside the biggest names of the silver screen – Errol Flynn, Clark Gable and Montgomery Clift.
Off screen she was romanced by the likes of Jimmy Stewart, John Huston and Howard Hughes – and reportedly turned down the advances of John F Kennedy. She won two best actress Oscars in a career spanning six decades and 49 feature films – many of them considered to be classics.
But it is only now – two weeks before her 101st birthday – that the Gone With The Wind actress has been given a damehood for services to drama. It makes her the oldest woman ever to receive the honour. In a statement, she called it ‘the most gratifying of birthday presents’.
My aunt is on a little vacation on the Northwest coast…she sent me this text last night:
Funny eh?
What is going on in your Sunday…funday?
Sunday F*ck You Trump and Other Reads
Posted: August 21, 2016 Filed under: 2016 elections, abortion rights, birth control, Climate Change, crops, Environment, Environmental Protection, Environmentalists, Farming, Hillary Clinton, History, income inequality, Migrant and Refugee Crisis in Europe and Mediterranean, the GOP, The Media SUCKS, Women's Rights | Tags: California Water Rights, Trump 6 Comments
Good Afternoon
This post is more of a link dump than anything else, we are still working on the move…and it seems like it will go on forever.
The articles will be presented to you in a certain way…
Starting with the deep south…Florida:
In Florida, Pregnant Women Cover Up and Stay Inside Amid Zika Fears – The New York Times
Moving westward…Civil suit will cost parents of Ga. teen found dead in gym mat – NY Daily News
Trump has been causing the usual fuck ups at campaign rallies in North Carolina, Wisconsin and Michigan…
Being Donald Trump Means Never Having To Say You’re Sorry
Trump’s Second Amendment Comment Is Part of an Ongoing and Troubling Trend
Trump To Black Voters: ‘What The Hell Do You Have To Lose?’
(Just a couple of more links on Trump that I have to include.)
Jerry Falwell Jr.: Trump is the Churchillian leader we need – The Washington Post
Churchillian? What the fuck is that?
Here is TPM’s take on that op/ed by Jerry Falwell Jr: Jerry Falwell Jr.: Americans Must Elect Trump Or ‘Suffer Dire Consequences’
Jerry Falwell Jr. penned a Washington Post op-ed posted Friday evening that compared Donald Trump to Winston Churchill and warned that Americans will “suffer dire consequences” if they don’t line up behind the GOP nominee.
“We are at a crossroads where our first priority must be saving our nation. We need a leader with qualities that resemble those of Winston Churchill, and I believe that leader is Donald Trump,” Falwell wrote.
Westward ho….to a new study out of Colorado: Contraception’s Role In Fighting Poverty
And in Washington State…Interracial Couple Allegedly Stabbed For Kissing by White Supremacist | LawNewz
Next up is a long read from the Grist: This California couple uses more water than all of the homes in Los Angeles | Grist
I don’t know I always find the topic of water rights laws interesting.
The Resnicks are the world’s biggest producers of pistachios and almonds, and they also hold vast groves of lemons, grapefruit, and navel oranges. All told, they claim to own America’s second-largest produce company, worth an estimated$4.2 billion.
The Resnicks have amassed this empire by following a simple agricultural precept: Crops need water. Having shrewdly maneuvered the backroom politics of California’s byzantine water rules, they are now thought to consume more of the state’s water than any other family, farm, or company. They control more of it in some years than what’s used by the residents of Los Angeles and the entire San Francisco Bay Area combined.
Such an incredible stockpiling of the state’s most precious natural resource might have attracted more criticism were it not for the Resnicks’ progressive bona fides. Last year, the couple’s political and charitable donations topped $48 million. They’ve spent $15 million on the 2,500 residents of Lost Hills — roughly 600 of whom work for the couple — funding everything from sidewalks, parks, and playing fields to affordable housing, a preschool, and a health clinic.
Last year, the Resnicks rebranded all their holdings as the Wonderful Company to highlight their focus on healthy products and philanthropy. “Our company has always believed that success means doing well by doing good,” Stewart Resnick said in a press release announcing the name change. “That is why we place such importance on our extensive community outreach programs, education and health initiatives and sustainability efforts. We are deeply committed to doing our part to build a better world and inspiring others to do the same.”
But skeptics note that the Resnicks’ donations to Lost Hills began a few months after Earth Island Journal documented the yawning wealth gap between the couple and their company town, a dusty assemblage of trailer homes, dirt roads, and crumbling infrastructure. They claim the Resnicks’ influence among politicians and liberal celebrities is quietly warping California’s water policies away from the interests of the state’s residents, wildlife, and even most farmers. “I think the Wonderful Company and the Resnicks are truly the top 1 percent wrapped in a green veneer, in a veneer of social justice,” says Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla of Restore the Delta, an advocacy group that represents farmers, fishermen, and environmentalists in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, east of San Francisco. “If they truly cared about a sustainable California and farmworkers within their own community, then how things are structured and how they are done by the Wonderful Company would be much different.”
In other California news, Hearst Castle threatened by fast-moving Chimney Fire – LA Times
Keeping with the Go West…theme: vintage everyday: Girls of Western United States in the early 20th Century: The Real Cowgirls of American West
Cowgirl – It’s not just a word it is a way of life! The Beauty of a Cowgirl must be seen from her eyes because that is the doorway to her heart, her true beauty is reflected in her soul.
Here are what images of badass cowgirls in the early 20th century looked like.
And just a few more articles, dealing with worldly news:
Why a 1995 speech proved formative for Clinton | PBS NewsHour -This is a post about that famous speech of Clinton’s given in China in 1995.
Refugees in Greek camps targeted by mafia gangs | World news | The Guardian
Not so jovial after all: how historians misunderstood William the Conqueror | Books | The Guardian
That is all the links I have for you today…this is an open thread.
Wednesday: Ain’t there one damn song that can make me…Break down and cry?
Posted: January 13, 2016 Filed under: Barack Obama, Climate Change, Egypt, Environment, Foreign Affairs, Human Rights, morning reads, Republican politics, Saudi Arabia, Syria, the GOP, The Media SUCKS, U.S. Politics, Women's Rights | Tags: David Bowie, Ted Cruz 22 Comments
And I did cry…
I found out about David Bowie’s death around 4;00 am Monday Morning, it was so sad. Bowie was born in 1947…the same year as my dad, maybe that was why it touched a nerve? I don’t know. But as the days have past since the news of his death, I’ve been able to look back on his music and massive product of work. I see now just exactly amount of thread this artist has woven through my memories. For all my life.
Simon Pegg sent out this tribute tweet:
I was born in April 1970. Space Oddity was 1st released in July of 1969. For me that tweet is especially true.
The post today will feature artwork by David Bowie and include a few links to photo galleries…as well as a few other articles about Bowie the man, flaws included.
Just a couple of thoughts before we start.
My mom took me to see Cat People and The Hunger back when I was a kid…
I can still feel that powerful voice of Bowie’s pounding in the theater as the credits rolled when he sang Putting Out The Fire.
And I always thought, for some strange reason…that he would live forever somewhere…never imagining that he would die a few days after turning 69.
Now for the links.
Highlights of President Obama’s 2016 State of the Union Address – Politics – NYTimes.com
Full text of President Barack Obama’s 2016 State of the Union Address
And if you didn’t catch the speech…check this out:
CNN Releases Video Imagining the State of the Union as a Wes Anderson Movie (No, Really) | Mediaite
“What if the State of the Union was like a Wes Anderson movie?”, asked no one ever. Well, CNN is here to answer your question, nobody!
And, well, it’s not so much a movie as it is a primer on the history of the State of the Union address and all the things that go into making it happen.
(P.S. If CNN is taking requests, next year do it Tarantino-style. God knows these speeches could use some tense moments and balls-to-the-wall profanity.)
Gag….okay.
Now, moving on.
Interesting video here: Arctic seed vault ‘key to future global crops’ – BBC News
And then you have this newsy bit here: Rupert Murdoch and Jerry Hall Are Engaged | Vanity Fair
Ugh, more gag.
Meanwhile on the Ted Cruz “birther” irony front:
Under Ted Cruz’s own logic, he’s ineligible for the White House – The Boston Globe
There’s more than meets the eye in the ongoing dustup over whether Ted Cruz is eligible to serve as president, which under the Constitution comes down to whether he’s a “natural born citizen” despite his 1970 Canadian birth. Senator Cruz contends his eligibility is “settled” by naturalization laws Congress enacted long ago. But those laws didn’t address, much less resolve, the matter of presidential eligibility, and no Supreme Court decision in the past two centuries has ever done so. In truth, the constitutional definition of a “natural born citizen” is completely unsettled, as the most careful scholarship on the question has concluded. Needless to say, Cruz would never take Donald Trump’s advice to ask a court whether the Cruz definition is correct, because that would in effect confess doubt where Cruz claims there is certainty.
People are entitled to their own opinions about what the definition ought to be. But the kind of judge Cruz says he admires and would appoint to the Supreme Court is an “originalist,” one who claims to be bound by the narrowly historical meaning of the Constitution’s terms at the time of their adoption. To his kind of judge, Cruz ironically wouldn’t be eligible, because the legal principles that prevailed in the 1780s and ’90s required that someone actually be born on US soil to be a “natural born” citizen. Even having two US parents wouldn’t suffice. And having just an American mother, as Cruz did, would have been insufficient at a time that made patrilineal descent decisive.
This narrow definition reflected 18th-century fears of a tyrannical takeover of our nation by someone loyal to a foreign power — fears that no longer make sense. But the same could be said of fears that a tyrannical federal army might overrun our state militias. Yet that doesn’t lead Cruz — or, more importantly, the conservative jurists he admires — to discard the Second Amendment’s “right to bear arms” as a historical relic, or to limit that right to arms-bearing by members of today’s “state militias,” the national guard.
On the other hand, the kind of judge I admire and Cruz abhors is a “living constitutionalist,” one who believes that the Constitution’s meaning evolves with the perceived needs of the time and longstanding practice. To that kind of judge, Cruz would be eligible to serve because it no longer makes sense to be bound by the narrow historical definition that would disqualify him.
When Cruz was my constitutional law student at Harvard, he aced the course after making a big point of opposing my views in class — arguing stridently for sticking with the “original meaning” against the idea of a more elastic “living Constitution” whenever such ideas came up. I enjoyed jousting with him, but Ted never convinced me — nor did I convince him.
At least he was consistent in those days. Now, he seems to be a fair weather originalist, abandoning that method’s narrow constraints when it suits his ambition.
Ted Cruz is not eligible to be president – The Washington Post
Donald Trump is actually right about something: Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) is not a natural-born citizen and therefore is not eligible to be president or vice president of the United States.
The Constitution provides that “No person except a natural born Citizen . . . shall be eligible to the Office of President.” The concept of “natural born” comes from common law, and it is that law the Supreme Court has said we must turn to for the concept’s definition. On this subject, common law is clear and unambiguous. The 18th-century English jurist William Blackstone, the preeminent authority on it, declared natural-born citizens are “such as are born within the dominions of the crown of England,” while aliens are “such as are born out of it.” The key to this division is the assumption of allegiance to one’s country of birth. The Americans who drafted the Constitution adopted this principle for the United States. James Madison, known as the “father of the Constitution,” stated, “It is an established maxim that birth is a criterion of allegiance. . . . [And] place is the most certain criterion; it is what applies in the United States.”
Cruz is, of course, a U.S. citizen. As he was born in Canada, he is not natural-born. His mother, however, is an American, and Congress has provided by statute for the naturalization of children born abroad to citizens. Because of the senator’s parentage, he did not have to follow the lengthy naturalization process that aliens without American parents must undergo. Instead, Cruz was naturalized at birth. This provision has not always been available. For example, there were several decades in the 19th century when children of Americans born abroad were not given automatic naturalization.
Article I of the Constitution grants Congress the power to naturalize an alien — that is, Congress may remove an alien’s legal disabilities, such as not being allowed to vote. But Article II of the Constitution expressly adopts the legal status of the natural-born citizen and requires that a president possess that status. However we feel about allowing naturalized immigrants to reach for the stars, the Constitution must be amended before one of them can attain the office of president. Congress simply does not have the power to convert someone born outside the United States into a natural-born citizen.
Let me be clear: I am not a so-called birther. I am a legal historian. President Obama is without question eligible for the office he serves. The distinction between the president and Cruz is simple: The president was born within the United States, and the senator was born outside of it. That is a distinction with a difference.
Thanks to Boston Boomer for the H/T on both of those links.
Back to some bad journalism… now that it has been a few days since that riveting piece of “journalism” from Sean Penn in the latest Rolling Stone? (Flash Frame: That was a piece of shit.)
The problem with Rolling Stone’s El Chapo interview isn’t Sean Penn. It’s his editors. – Poynter
If you’re an editor about to send a famous and sympathetic writer to interview one of the world’s most notorious villains, here’s how you might prep him:
First, drill him on his assumptions and make sure there is an intellectual argument elsewhere to back him up.
Then, you’d likely remind him that his loyalty should be with his readers, not his subject. And you’d reinforce that by helping him anticipate the natural questions those readers might bring to such a controversial interview.
You’d want to see his interview questions ahead of time to ensure they are asked in neutral language that will hold your notorious source accountable.
Of course you’d advise him that it’s unacceptable to cut a deal that provides the source with prior review.
And finally, you’d remind him that the story must be well-reported and intellectually honest, so that it could stand on its own without a byline. That’s how you know it’s worth the paper it’s printed on.
It’s common for a writer’s ambitions to outpace his talents. (Sean Penn, you are no Hunter S. Thompson). That’s what editors are for. The best editors lift writers above the level they might reach on their own. They bring discipline to wandering pieces. They force writers to nail down assumptions and abandon unnecessary prose.
The editor’s role on the front end is the easy work. All he had to do was prepare Penn to set aside his own ego and go into the interview with his loyalties firmly on the side of Rolling Stone’s audience. But that front end work often makes the heavy lifting on the back side a bit lighter. During the actual writing, an editor should have been working with Penn to identify a structure, build a coherent argument and then challenge readers to see a complicated character operating in a complicated system.
How do you do that? You have to bring in other voices. Here’s what’s missing from Penn’s El Chapo piece…
Take a look at that link to see what is missing. I would guess that Penn did not do this work with Rolling Stone backing his moves. I suggest it is a Penn deal alone…and possibly a movie in the works all along. The “article” was probably shopped to the highest bidder and under no circumstance could it be “edited” because it is Penn’s pitch in glorified shit filled black and white print. *Note: I may be wrong here, in which case I really don’t give a damn…but that is my own opinion on the matter.
But what does give me a problem about this commentary on what Penn’s article is missing…is that there is a big stink about the single Penn’s crappy piece, but what about the fucking trash put out by journalist on a daily basis? Ana Kasparian is asking that question in this article:
Sean Penn interviews El Chapo and suddenly journalists care about ethics
No one expected Sean Penn to interview the world’s most wanted drug kingpin after he escaped prison for the second time. But three months before El Chapo was recaptured by Mexican Marines, he was hanging out with the actor in a jungle for a lengthy Rolling Stone interview. In an interesting turn of events, Penn’s discussion with El Chapo has been criticized as “unethical” by politicians and journalists who couldn’t score or stomach the interview.
At the heart of the issue is how Penn allowed the violent head of the Sinaloa drug cartel to sign off on the final Rolling Stone piece, which certainly does breach journalistic ethics. One rule of journalism is to ensure that the subject being reported on doesn’t have any sway or influence on the final product, and letting El Chapo decide what can and can’t be published defeats the true purpose of doing the interview in the first place.
“Allowing any source control over a story’s content is inexcusable,” Andrew Seaman, chair of the Society of Professional Journalist’s ethics committee wrote in a blog post. “The practice of pre-approval discredits the entire story. The writer, who in this case is an actor and activist, may write the story in a more favorable light and omit unflattering facts in an attempt to not be rejected.”
Seaman does make a good point. But with the daily ethics violations committed by people who were actually trained to be journalists, it does seem strange that all of a sudden members of the media want to hash out what’s acceptable in reporting the news or conducting interviews.
You’re goddamn right!
It is a shame that her article is only a couple of more paragraphs long, using an example regarding a situation with PBS and funding to illustrate her point (go and read the rest at the link) but it should open the can of worms, don’t ya think?
Mona had a question up on her Facebook feed…about this topic…I think this article is a good way to open it up for discussion:
More Bowie, this time pictures:
vintage everyday: Amazing Vintage Photos of David Bowie in the early Days of His Career
On with a few more news links.
Pennsylvania police fatally shoot 12-year-old at her home | US news | The Guardian
Father of Koch Brothers Helped Build Nazi Oil Refinery, Book Says – The New York Times
Central American immigrants scramble for options to deportation by U.S. | Reuters
In human rights news:
Saudi Arabia Arrests Samar Badawi, Human Rights Advocate – The New York Times
U.N. war crimes investigators gathering testimony from starving Syrian town | Reuters
Let’s not end on that note.
The Mysteriously Tiny Drawings of an 18th-Century Artist, Born Without Hands or Feet
In Wordplay: Matthias Buchinger’s Drawings from the Collection of Ricky Jay, opening today at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, there’s a 1724 engraved self-portrait that the “Little Man of Nuremberg” would have used to promote his act. As the portrait shows, the German-born artist, who stood 29 inches tall, was born without hands or feet.
Using an implement he wielded with his stumps, Buchinger excelled in calligraphy, ornamentation, and micrography, the practice of making patterns with tiny letters. In this self-portrait, in the curls of his wig, he has written seven full psalms and the Lord’s Prayer.
Art was just one of Buchinger’s talents. He was a master magician, superb marksman, and a virtuoso musical-instrument player, to name a few of the skills he was paid to perform in fairgrounds and noble houses across Europe. He could also throw dice, and could put wooden objects in tiny bottles.
To contemporary sensibilities, the idea of an 18th-century dwarf magician getting a Met show of his text art might come off as an arch conceptual hoax. But Buchinger was real, and very much a part of his time.
Oh, how I wish I could see this exhibit.
January 8–April 11, 2016
Exhibition Location: The Robert Wood Johnson, Jr. Gallery, 2nd floor,Gallery 690
Approximately 15 drawings by the 18th-century German artist Matthias Buchinger (1674–1739), who was born without hands or feet, will be presented in Wordplay: Matthias Buchinger’s Drawings from the Collection of Ricky Jay, opening at the Metropolitan Museum on January 8, 2016. Despite his physical limitations, Buchinger was celebrated in his own time as a draftsman and calligrapher as well as a magician and musician, and poetic broadsides were written in Europe and Britain about his many talents and achievements. Known as “the Little Man of Nuremberg” because he was only 29 inches tall, Buchinger lived a nomadic existence and boasted a clientele that included noblemen, kings, and emperors, along with members of the public who visited him at inns and fairs, from Leipzig to Paris and London to Belfast.
And in another Met website link:
Color The Temple: Using Projected Light to Restore Color | The Metropolitan Museum of Art
It is a long read but fascinating.
Did You Know The Temple Wasn’t Always Beige?
The small square shows a cleaned surface on a temple in the Karnak Temple Complex. Image courtesy of the authors
Temples in Egypt, and in much of the ancient world, were not only carved with detailed reliefs, but also painted with vivid colors, like the example from the Karnak Temple Complex shown above. The small square shows a cleaned surface in an otherwise soot- and grime-covered relief scene. This small section at Karnak allows visitors to see the temple in new ways, and we set out to do this digitally with The Temple of Dendur.
The Temple of Dendur was originally located on an ancient site south of Aswan in the West Bank of the Nile, near the border between Egypt and the Sudan. Because the Nile flooded every year, the Egyptian government attempted to control the water through a series of dams. However, by the late 1920s, Dendur and the surrounding area was flooded for nine months out of the year. In the 1960s, the Egyptian government planned to construct a new dam that would have made this flooding permanent year-round.
Well, that is all for today…
Have a safe Wednesday. This is an open thread.
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