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Some Republicans Fear That Their Hard-Liners Will Alienate Hispanics
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Republicans Accuse Obama of Treating Immigrants Like Humans
WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—In a sharp Republican rebuke to President Obama’s proposed actions on immigration, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell accused the President, on Thursday night, of “flagrantly treating immigrants like human beings, in clear defiance of the wishes of Congress.”
McConnell was brutal in his assessment of the President’s speech on immigration, blasting him for “eliminating the fear of deportation, which is the great engine of the American economy.”
“Fear is what keeps immigrants working so hard and so fast and so cheap,” McConnell said. “Remove the fear of deportation, and what will immigrants become? Lazy Americans.”
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Planet On Pace For Warmest Year On Record
Can't happen here.
By Kurtis Alexander
November 20, 2014
The Earth is on track for its warmest year on record, federal scientists said Thursday after temperatures in October climbed to historical highs.
Despite relatively cool weather across much of the United States this year, including big snowstorms along the East Coast in recent days, four of the past five months worldwide have seen record-breaking average temperatures, according to theNational Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Record heat has flogged large chunks of Europe, Russia and the Pacific Ocean, scientists said.
RELATED STORIES
California, too, has seen many warm months this year. The state averaged a temperature of 63.8 degrees between January and October — 1.6 degrees above the previous high set for the same period in both 2003 and 1992, according to NOAA.
California is “virtually certain” to have its warmest year on record, said Thursday’s NOAA report.
The global heat is propelled by warming ocean waters and is in sync with what climate experts say are rising surface temperatures due to an increase in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
While one month or even one year isn’t indicative of a trend, scientists say the burning of fossil fuels over time is trapping heat and changing the climate.
The average global temperature of 58.43 degrees this October was 1.3 degrees above the 20th century average for the month, and 0.02 degrees above the previous October high in 2003.
Kurtis Alexander is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: kalexander@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @kurtisalexander
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There's A Suicide Epidemic In Utah — And One Neuroscientist Thinks He Knows Why
The above chart is taken from a Mormon article about Utah vital statistics.
As a cluster, these vital statistics are so exceptional that it's important to look at the role of Mormonism in Utah's social and political life.
"Mormonism Is Not A Christian Religion. Founding Prophet Joseph Smith Was A Sex Pervert"http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/08/mormonism-is-not-christian-denomination.html
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/08/mormonism-is-not-christian-denomination.html
New York Times: It's Official. Mormon Founder, Joseph Smith, Had Up To 40 Wives
Polygamy Is Legal In Utah Again
***
Living in Utah means packed powder in April, canyoneering in the clouds, snow-capped vistas so vivid they look Photoshopped — and the shortest average work week in the country. So it's not surprising that surveys show how much Utah residents love their outdoorsy, adventure-filled state.
But there's another side to Utah that isn't shown in surveys. Despite ranking as America's happiest state, Utah has disproportionately high rates of suicide and associated mood disorders compared to the rest of the country. In fact, it's the No. 1 state for antidepressant use. These polarized feelings of despondency and delight underlie a confusing phenomenon that Perry Renshaw, a neuroscientist at the University of Utah investigating the strange juxtaposition, calls the "Utah paradox."
Utah residents and experts are aware of the paradox, often attributing gun use, low population density and the area's heavy Mormon influence as potential factors. But Renshaw thinks he's identified a more likely cause for the Utah blues: altitude.
Renshaw believes that altitude has an impact on our brain chemistry, specifically that it changes the levels of serotonin and dopamine, two key chemicals in the brain that help regulate our feelings of happiness. America's favorite antidepressants (and party drugs) work by controlling the level of these chemicals in the brain. The air in Utah, one could say, works just like this.
Since moving to Utah in 2008, Renshaw has found mounting statistical, scientific and anecdotal support for his theory. If Renshaw's theory holds true, his work represents a major step forward in solving a long-standing mental health mystery.
Westward, ho?
Utah lies in a region of the country commonly known as the Rockies, the mountain states or even just "out west." To those who analyze violent death data, it's known as the "suicide belt."
According to the National Violent Death Reporting System, a surveillance system run by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Utah and other states in the Rockies consistently have the highest suicide rates in the country aside from Alaska. In the map below, the block of red — states with suicide rates over 14 per 100,000 people — is hard to miss.
Image Credit: KSL.com via CDC
Before heading west, Renshaw studied the effects of drug abuse on brain chemistry at Harvard Medical School. When he started working at the Salt Lake City Veteran Affairs' mental illness center five years ago, suicide research was a priority. Shortly after Renshaw arrived, a suicidologist presented a map depicting suicide rates.
"From the beginning," Renshaw said, recalling his developing eureka moment, "the statistical evidence seemed off the charts."
To see if statistics could help explain why so many mountain-dwelling Americans commit suicide, Renshaw analyzed data on altitude, suicide and mental illness over the last five years.
In a 2011 study published in the American Journal of Psychiatry, a group of researchers, including Renshaw, analyzed state suicide rates with respect to gun ownership, population density, poverty, health insurance quality and availability of psychiatric care. Of all the factors, altitude had the strongest link to suicide — even the group of states with the least available psychiatric care had fewer suicides than the highest-altitude states, where psychiatric care was easier to find.
In a follow-up study, Renshaw looked at instances of suicide that involved guns and those that didn't. Again, he found a positive correlation between suicide and altitude across the board.
Renshaw also used CDC violent death data to examine the relationship between altitude and mental illness. The elevation at which people live, he found, is a strong predictor of their mental health status.
Image Credit: Perry Renshaw via Ranking America's Mental Health
Renshaw discovered research supporting his theory. Doctors from Case Western University, it turned out, were crunching numbers based on a similar hunch about altitude and suicide. In a 2010 study published in High Altitude Medicine and Biology, the Case Western group analyzed suicide rates across 2,584 counties in 16 states and found that suicides start increasing between 2,000 and 3,000 feet in all U.S. regions. The U.S. isn't a special case — analysis of suicide rates in other countries, including South Korea and Austria, bore similar results.
Psychology research has also made a connection between mental health and elevation. In a 2005 study, the Naval Health Research Center measured mood changes in Marines who left seaside San Diego for 30 days of strenuous training in the Northern California mountains. Before training, the Marines completed a self-evaluation of their levels of anxiety, dejection, fatigue and bewilderment, among other mood symptoms. They completed the same evaluation after training ended, and then again 90 days later. While their physical fitness improved during training, their mental health disintegrated. Before training, the Marines reported more balanced mood levels than average college-aged men. By the time they finished, they described mood symptoms comparable to those of psychiatric patients. Ninety days later, they were just as sad and agitated.
All of this evidence, Renshaw says, seemed too strong to dismiss as coincidental. Based on a comparison of suicide rates at sea level and at areas above 2,000 feet, living at a high altitude may make people 30% more likely to commit suicide.
Image Credit: Perry Renshaw via Journal of High Altitude Medicine and Biology
More than numbers
In addition to the statistical evidence, Renshaw collected anecdotes that supported his developing theory.
Five years ago in Park City, Utah, Renshaw presented his theory and his research on suicide. Afterward, he was approached by a female audience member who was part of a support group of women — women who began showing symptoms of anxiety and depression only after they moved to Utah. She was floored to hear Renshaw's theory, which made sense of her group's shared, confusing mental health issues.
And Renshaw also learned that the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado, which sits 7,000 feet above sea level, struggled to hold on to out-of-state professors, who often left after a few months because they felt off, physically and mentally. Out-of-state students from low-altitude areas also fared worse academically than their in-state counterparts.
Renshaw himself undertook an informal study of researchers who moved to Utah from coastal areas and found that around 35% experienced new, often pronounced, symptoms of anxiety and depression.
Still, a host of evidence spoke to the other side of the paradox — the positive feelings associated with living in America's "happiest" state. Clinical trial participants who grew up in Utah and moved away, for example, often told Renshaw they returned home to the "call of the mountains." He spoke to researchers in Colorado who reported the same trend: People born and raised in the mountains moved to lower land and found themselves longing for their home state.
Salt Lake Valley. Image Credit: Scott Catron via Wikimedia Commons
Additionally, Renshaw became aware of a Latter Day Saints training center in Provo, Utah, where Mormons from around the country went to brush up on religious recruitment skills. He heard that many missionaries in training diagnosed with ADD stopped taking their medication within a few weeks of arriving at the center. This medical quirk dovetailed with statistics about ADD and ADHD — the rate of diagnosis in Salt Lake City is consistently 50% lower than ocean-hugging New York City.
Together, the stray statistics and stories about life out west tipped off Renshaw to a common culprit: altitude-induced oxygen depletion.
There is such a thing as too much fresh air
As anyone who saw Gravity knows, oxygen density decreases as altitude rises. Oxygen deprivation from high altitude induces a condition called hypobaric hypoxia, which ranges in severity based on how little oxygen is available. Some hypoxic effects are well known — nausea and headaches from altitude sickness, nosebleeds and lower alcohol tolerance, for example. But while physical afflictions associated with hypoxia have gained academic and mainstream attention, scientists have largely ignored its potential impact on mental health.
Renshaw believes that oxygen-poor air tampers with brain chemistry, leading to a drop in serotonin and an uptick in dopamine. Serotonin and dopamine are neurotransmitters, brain chemicals that relay signals between neurons and other cells.
Serotonin, an inhibitory neurotransmitter, helps stabilize emotions. Antidepressants — SSRIs, (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor), which include Prozac and Lexapro — work by blocking the transport of serotonin back to the neurons, thereby increasing its supply in the brain.
Dopamine, an excitatory neurotransmitter, plays a vital role in our ability to focus. Too little dopamine can make us scatterbrained, whereas a dopamine increase causes hyper-concentration and feelings of euphoria. Caffeine, prescription drugs, including some ADD/ADHD medications, and illegal stimulants like cocaine and methamphetamine, work by increasing the availability of dopamine in our brains.
So why do some people enjoy the benefits of the Utah air's impact on increased dopamine levels, which should make us happier, and some fall victim to the impact on decreased levels of serotonin, which would make us more depressed?
The answer lies in how changes in neurotransmitter levels affect our individual brain chemistry.
As Renshaw's theory goes, serotonin deficiency exacerbates symptoms of pre-existing anxiety and depression, increasing the likelihood of becoming suicidal (mental illness is a factor in about 90% of suicides). People with an existing mood disorder, or a predisposition to mental illness, would be more sensitive to the effects of waning serotonin levels.
Women, who naturally have half as much serotonin as men, Renshaw said, are more likely to develop a mood disorder as a result of living in the mountains (about 24% of middle-aged women in Utah take an SSRI — double the national rate. The various anecdotes about anxious Utah women, Renshaw believes, bolster his theory).
From left to right, depiction of serotonin release in a control situation, affected by SSRI Prozac, and at a high altitude. Image Credit: Perry Renshaw
But those without a predisposition to mental illness will, on the flip side, feel happier. By Renshaw's estimates, the brain makes about 20% more dopamine in the mountains.
People who leave their hearts in Utah might be homesick for their family and friends, but they may also be missing the high of living up high. Outdoor junkies, Renshaw proffered, could be just that: junkies jonesing for some oxygen-deprived air.
Similarly, though Mormon missionaries attribute discontinuing ADD medications to a religious awakening, Renshaw proposes a more cynical explanation: Since ADD and ADHD are both dopamine deficiency disorders, these missionaries are trading one source of dopamine enhancement for another.
Utah pharmacies are dispensing SSRIs in droves, especially to middle-aged women. But Renshaw isn't sure the pills are working. SSRIs don't create serotonin — they merely preserve what's already in the brain, thereby increasing the availability of a chemical that helps balance mood. Thanks to the blood-brain barrier, it's notoriously hard to treat neurologically-based disorders through traditional treatment methods, like pills, injections or adhesive patches. We can get medication into the bloodstream, but it won't actually reach the brain. For people who don't have any serotonin — perhaps because hypoxia decreased their already-low supply — SSRIs are probably no more effective than prescription-plan tic tacs.
Squaw Peak in Provo, Utah. Image Credit: Pastelitodepapa via Wikimedia Commons
Deer Valley ski resort. Image Credit: Skyguy414 via Wikimedia Commons
A controversial theory
Renshaw's previous neuroimaging work at Harvard laid the foundation for his theory that oxygen deprivation affects brain chemistry. Using the same equipment that generate MRIs,
"If I wasn't a spectroscopist and studying changes in brain chemistry associated with mood disorders," Rensha said, "there's no way I would have figured out the connection between altitude and suicide."
Others didn't see it like he did. When Renshaw peddled his altitude-suicide theory around the mountain states in 2008, he faced prickly reception. Renshaw heard that Utah's governor at the time, Jon Huntsman, was disgusted that the state would fund the anti-Utah research. Huntsman's staff did not respond to a request for comment.
And Renshaw said he delivered a presentation at Mormon-stronghold Brigham Young University that provoked outrage among the audience. However, after he finished speaking, three students shared a separate story of a friend or relative committing suicide shortly after moving to Utah.
But Renshaw insists that mountain folk need not flee to the coasts based on his findings. Rather, understanding how altitude might affect brain chemistry is knowledge that can be used to improve mental illness treatment and, hopefully, curb suicide.
More and more, scientists are starting to see it how Renshaw does.
Doug Gray, a suicidologist at the University of Utah, has been studying suicide in the western mountain states for over 20 years. Whenever he makes a presentation, Gray said, he asks audience members why they think the region has such high suicide rates. People generally offer a cultural explanation, but Gray's never been persuaded.
"Nevada and Colorado also have high suicide rates," Gray said, reflecting on theories ventured over the years. "You tell me how Salt Lake City and Las Vegas have the same culture."
About six years ago, Renshaw caught Gray's presentation at a conference where Renshaw was also scheduled to speak. Gray posed his usual question to the audience and, per Gray's recollection, Renshaw raised his hand and said, "Did you know that at high altitude, the brain goes through metabolic changes, and some people can adapt while others can't, based on their DNA?"
Gray's jaw dropped.
"Well," Gray recalls saying, "that would explain it."
Renshaw's work, in Gray's opinion, won't gain mainstream acceptance for a while. But, he believes the theory is only getting stronger, as Renshaw corroborates the mental illness-altitude connection through animal studies and clinical trials for natural substances to help treat some hypoxia-induced mood disorders.
Renshaw, too, is confident his findings are beyond the realm of a fluke, but he isn't willing to dismiss other explanations for the suicide-altitude connection, including studies on gun access. Multiple overlapping factors, he says, are likely in play.
Nevertheless, some environmental factors we commonly accept as relevant to our mental welfare seemed absurd less than a generation ago. In the 1980s, for example, experts were skeptical that depression could stem from seasonal shifts in sunlight exposure. But 30 years after seasonal affective disorder got its name, SAD sufferers plant themselves in front of light boxes to combat the winter doldrums without anyone raising any eyebrows.
As a practical matter, Renshaw said, it's hard to study the impact of changing altitude on neurotransmitter levels in humans. But studies have looked at brain chemistry changes in rats at very high simulated altitudes — comparable to that of the Andes mountains — and seen serotonin levels drop while dopamine levels surged. Renshaw is currently conducting his own study on neurotransmitter levels in rats at different altitudes.
When it comes to subjects as biologically and environmentally thorny as mental health and suicide, Renshaw said, the answer is always more research.
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The GOP Is Sundered By Civil War And Hostilities Will Worsen
Ahead of President Obama's prime-time address announcing his plans to take executive action on immigration policy, House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) released this message saying Obama actions are not "how our democracy works." (YouTube/John Boehner)
Just two weeks ago, Republicans handed President Obama a humiliating defeat at the polls, winning full control of Congress. But already, party leaders fear that the conservative uproar over the president’s immigration actions will doom any hopes for a stable period of GOP governance.
The moves announced Thursday night by Obama — which will protect millions of illegal immigrants from deportation — have sparked an immediate and widening rebellion among tea party lawmakers that top Republicans are struggling to contain.
Despite expanded powers and some new titles, soon-to-be Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) remain sharply limited in their ability to persuade their most conservative members. The duo has been thrust back into the same cycle of intraparty warfare that has largely defined the GOP during the Obama years and that has hurt the party’s brand among the broader electorate.
"It is the first real challenge for Boehner and McConnell together,” said Rep. Peter T. King (R-N.Y.), a Boehner ally. “They’d like to wipe the slate clean for when they start up next year, with this situation behind us.”
"It is the first real challenge for Boehner and McConnell together,” said Rep. Peter T. King (R-N.Y.), a Boehner ally. “They’d like to wipe the slate clean for when they start up next year, with this situation behind us.”
In his prime-time speech from the East Room of the White House, Obama blamed Republicans for forcing his hand by refusing to approve immigration reform and told them, “Pass a bill.” He also cast the issue in moral terms, quoting Scripture to bolster his case.
During his speech on immigration reform, President Obama called on illegal immigrants to "come out of the shadows" and "get right with the law." (AP)
But comprehensive immigration reform is unlikely to pass a Republican-held Congress, because of partisan hostilities in Washington. Still, GOP leaders badly want to show the country that the party can govern constructively, even if it is not clear whether they can keep their raucous conference united.
McConnell and Boehner, for example, want to approve a long-term spending bill at least through the early part of next year — part of an effort to limit theatrical confrontations with Obama and focus on tax reform and other Republican-friendly issues.
But conservatives inside and outside Congress want to use the budget process as a battleground to wage war against Obama and his immigration program. The proposed gambit raises the specter of another government shutdown, akin to the one that damaged Republicans last year.
The debate is also a test of whether the party can contain the controversial and sometimes offensive comments that have often hindered attempts to bolster support for Republicans among Hispanics. After tea party firebrand Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) said on Wednesday that protected immigrants would become “illiterate” voters, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) winced.
“Unfortunate, unfair, unnecessary, unwise,” said Graham, who is close to party leaders.
Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Pa.), a moderate from the Philadelphia exurbs, said the leadership is asking his colleagues to “not play into the president’s hands.”
“The president wants to see an angry and intemperate response, thinking the Republicans will do something that leads to a shutdown,” Dent said. “Don’t take the bait, and don’t have a hysterical reaction. We can be strong, rational and measured.”
Republican leaders are considering several moves they say would be forceful responses to the president while also keeping the government funded. Ideas being floated include filing a lawsuit over Obama’s executive authority, pursuing stand-alone legislation on immigration policy and removing funding for immigration agencies.
Another option — funding the government until the end of the fiscal year and then rescinding parts of immigration-related funding — is favored by the leadership and championed by House Appropriations Committee Chairman Harold Rogers (R-Ky.). His office has issued a memo urging members to avoid using government funding as the means of dissent and warning that some immigration agencies would not be affected since they operate on user fees.
“We are considering a variety of options,” McConnell said Thursday in a floor speech. He suggested that his preference would be for Republicans to avoid becoming mired in a fiscal clash during the lame-duck session, shortly before the GOP takes control of the Senate in January.
Many conservative lawmakers, however, are shrugging off pleas from leadership. Furious with the president, they are planning a series of immediate and hard-line actions that could have sweeping consequences. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) said Wednesday that Obama’s executive action should be met with a refusal to vote on any more of his nominees, and on Thursday, he compared the action with the ancient Catiline conspiracy, a plot to overthrow the Roman Republic.
Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), likely the next chairman of the budget committee, has advocated for a series of stopgap spending bills with the intent of pressuring the president to relent. Sessions is the featured speaker at a Heritage Foundation event Friday morning in response to Obama’s moves, a couple of hours after a scheduled Boehner news conference.
And Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) — one of the loudest voices on the right — has hinted at bringing up impeachment measures. “We have constitutional authority to do a string of things. [Impeachment] would be the very last option, but I would not rule it out,” King said Thursday on CNN.
Amid the chatter over strategy, it is the tone of outraged rank-and-file members that most worries GOP elders. Ahead of the 2016 presidential election, they do not want to see Republicans tagged by Democrats as hostile toward Latinos and other minorities.
“It only takes a couple” of comments for an unflattering narrative to build about the Republican response, said Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). “That’s the trouble with having some of these new, young punks around here. They ought to listen to us old geezers.”
In the House, Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.), who has been a prominent backer of comprehensive immigration reform, has been counseling House Republicans about the need to show empathy for undocumented workersas the party rails against the Obama administration, according to GOP aides familiar with his deliberations.
Yet the firestorms have continued to flare, with some Republicans, encouraged by grass-roots activists and conservative media personalities, eschewing the party’s more incremental line and making contentious statements.
Speaking with reporters, Bachmann had said the “social cost” of Obama’s immigration policies would be extensive, with “millions of unskilled, illiterate, foreign nationals coming into the United States who can’t speak the English language.”
When pressed on why she used the term “illiterate,” Bachmann said, “I’m not using a pejorative term against people who are non-American citizens. I’m only repeating what I heard from Hispanic Americans down at the border.”
On Friday, Bachmann and Steve King plan to travel to the U.S.-Mexico border to meet with officials to showcase their opposition to the president and cast themselves as leading Republican voices.
Other Republicans have called for a proactive legislative response beginning early next year, rallying behind a strategy that would take away government funding as the main battleground and turning toward specific policy areas.
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), a potential presidential candidate, said Republicans must signal that in spite of their disagreements with the president, they are committed to reform. “This country needs to deal with immigration,” he said in an interview.
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Led By Reagan's Dictum - "Government Is The Problem" - The GOP Quit Democracy
Here are the highlights from President Obama's speech on immigration, in which he outlined
his executive action to shield four million illegal immigrants from deportation.
his executive action to shield four million illegal immigrants from deportation.
Pax On Both Houses: Compendium Of Ronald Reagan Posts
Obama’s immigration executive order is a confession of democratic failure
Opinion writer
There are any number of marvelous things one might do as president, if Congress were not such a checked and balanced mess. But future presidents now have a new method at their disposal: Declare a long-running debate to be a national emergency. Challenge Congress, under threat of unilateral executive action, to legislate on the topic before your term runs out. And when lawmakers refuse, act with the most expansive definition of presidential power.
The supporting arguments for this approach come down to the claim that the American political system is broken — incapable of action on urgent matters because of obstructionism, bad faith and the abuse of legislative procedure. It is the political philosophy of “something must be done.”
President Obama has ably and sequentially defended both these positions. A year ago, during another immigration speech, a heckler insisted, “You have a power to stop deportations.” Obama replied: “Actually, I don’t, and that’s why we’re here. . . . What you need to know, when I’m speaking as president of the United States and I come to this community, is that if, in fact, I could solve all these problems without passing laws in Congress, then I would do so. But we’re also a nation of laws. That’s part of our tradition. And so the easy way out is to try to yell and pretend like I can do something by violating our laws. And what I’m proposing is the harder path, which is to use our democratic processes to achieve the same goal that you want to achieve.”The arguments against this approach often come down to institutionalism. Major policy shifts, in this view, deserve legislative hearings and an open amendment process. The White House should make its views known and issue veto threats. There should be a negotiation between the House and Senate to reconcile a bill. There should be a presidential signature, or a veto and an override debate. The machinery is admittedly creaky, but it manufactures democratic legitimacy.
Obama has now officially abandoned the harder path — not because the issues surrounding immigration will never be resolved (a case no one has adequately made) but because he wants to be the president to resolve them. Since our democratic process has proved disappointing during his time in office, we get a convenient reinterpretation of tradition — using a history of reasonable discretion in tying up the loose ends of a law to justify a major policy shift in the absence of law. This is motivated reasoning on steroids — and future presidents of both parties will likely find it appealing, on a variety of issues.
By crossing this particular Rubicon, Obama has given up on politics, which is, from one perspective, understandable. He doesn’t do it well. He has always viewed the political process as sullied, compared with the reasonableness of his policy insights. In the aftermath of his party’s midterm defeat, he diagnosed a problem of salesmanship. “It’s not enough just to build a better mousetrap,” he said. “People don’t automatically come beating to your door. We’ve got to sell it.”
It must come as a relief to Obama that, on immigration at least, he didn’t need to sell it — just provide an explanation after imposing his view. But there is a cost. He has taken an important national discussion and turned it into just another controversial Obama initiative. He has resolved one portion of the immigration debate while poisoning the possibility of broader reform and politically discrediting Republicans who might be open to it.
“The president’s supporters may feel obligated to defend him,” Yuval Levin of National Affairs told me, “but by killing the immigration conversation for the rest of his presidency, he has hurt his allies on this issue most of all. The people who wanted legalization get temporary work permits . . . the people who wanted a temporary worker program get nothing . . . the people who wanted more workplace enforcement get nothing.”
Whatever your view on immigration (and I support comprehensive reform), Obama’s executive order is a confession of democratic failure, through the adoption of methods that he recently described as exceeding his authority. And it serves the cause of polarization by uniting conservatives — from the Obama-obsessed to reasonable institutionalists — in fervent opposition.
Evidently the harder path was just too hard.
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When Someone Tells You They Got Rich Through Hard Work, Ask Them...
Why does this woman's viewpoint have no traction?
Because Americans prefer opinion to knowledge
ignorance to illumination
rumor to fact
irrational "feeling" over demonstrable fact
stupefaction to enlightenment
stasis to movement
regression to progress
pleasure to joy
rugged individualism to The Common Good
Self-aggrandizement to a Social Contract
exceptions-to-rules over dependable generalities
decerebrate simplification to contextualization
moated isolation to community participation
wishful thinking to scientific finding
Impossibly Pure Principles to bipartisan collaboration
ideological intransigence to domestic tranquility
ideological intransigence to domestic tranquility
punishment to reward
avarice to economic justice
acquisitiveness to sharing
harshness to mercy
vengeance to forgiveness
vengeance to forgiveness
condemnation to love
Rush Limbaugh to Jon Stewart
Ann Coulter to Stephen Colbert
Dennis Miller to Bill Maher
P.J. O'Rourke to George Carlin
"American Conservatives And Oppositional-Defiant Disorder"
"Conservatives Scare More Easily Than Liberals"
"Conservatives Scare More Easily Than Liberals"
"Are Republicans Insane?"
"The Republican Party Is A Satanic Cult"
"Are Republicans Insane?"
"The Republican Party Is A Satanic Cult"
Jindal Criticizes The Stupid Party: "Simply protects the rich so they get to keep their toys"
Jindal Criticizes The Stupid Party: "Simply protects the rich so they get to keep their toys"
"The Reign of Morons Is Here," Charles P. Pierce, The Atlantic
"The Reign of Morons Is Here," Charles P. Pierce, The Atlantic
"A Southerner Explains Tea Party Radicalism: The Civil War Is Not Over"
"People Who Watch Only Fox News Know Less Than People Who Watch No News"
"A Southerner Explains Tea Party Radicalism: The Civil War Is Not Over"
"People Who Watch Only Fox News
Know Less Than People Who Watch No News"
Bill Maher: The Zombie Life Cycle Of Republican Lies. They Never - Ever - Die
"Bank On It: The South Is Always Wrong"
"Red State Moocher Links"
"Why The Bible Belt Is Its Own Worst Enemy"
"The Guardian: John Oliver's Viral Video Is The Best Climate Debate You'll Ever See"
George McGovern: "The Case For Liberalism, A Defense Of The Future Against The Past"
George McGovern: "The Case For Liberalism, A Defense Of The Future Against The Past"
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Voltaire: "Every Man Is Guilty..."
"Every man is guilty of all the good he didn't do."
Voltaire, philosopher (1694-1778)
***
Alan: This blog's motto, "The best is enemy of the good" was probably a bit of traditional wisdom but it was first written down by Voltaire.
Voltaire
Wikiquotes
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House Republicans Pass Bill Banning Scientists From Advising EPA On Own Research
Congressional climate wars were dominated Tuesday by the U.S. Senate, which spent the day debating, and ultimately failing to pass, a bill approving the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. While all that was happening, and largely unnoticed, the House was busy doing what it does best: attacking science.
H.R. 1422, which passed 229-191, would shake up the EPA’s Scientific Advisory Board, placing restrictions on those pesky scientists and creating room for experts with overt financial ties to the industries affected by EPA regulations.
The bill is being framed as a play for transparency: Rep. Michael Burgess, R-Texas, argued that the board’s current structure is problematic because it “excludes industry experts, but not officials for environmental advocacy groups.” The inclusion of industry experts, he said, would right this injustice.
But the White House, which threatened to veto the bill, said it would “negatively affect the appointment of experts and would weaken the scientific independence and integrity of the SAB.”
In what might be the most ridiculous aspect of the whole thing, the bill forbids scientific experts from participating in “advisory activities” that either directly or indirectly involve their own work. In case that wasn’t clear: experts would be forbidden from sharing their expertise in their own research — the bizarre assumption, apparently, being that having conducted peer-reviewed studies on a topic would constitute a conflict of interest. “In other words,” wrote Union of Concerned Scientists director Andrew A. Rosenberg in an editorial for RollCall, “academic scientists who know the most about a subject can’t weigh in, but experts paid by corporations who want to block regulations can.”
Lindsay Abrams is a staff writer at Salon, reporting on all things sustainable. Follow her on Twitter @readingirl, email labrams@salon.com.
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The Thinking Housewife: "Thuggery And The Pizza Industrial Complex"
Domino's Pizza
Bad product.
Active participation in The Thinking Housewife's most recent "horror."
Conservative Catholic ownership.
Dear Fred,
Here is the lead to Laura's latest post. "He is one of countless low-paid pizza drivers who have been killed." http://www.thinkinghousewife.com/wp/2014/11/thuggery-and-the-pizza-industrial-complex/
Countless?
Admittedly, white American policymakers are responsible for 3 million needless deaths in Vietnam and perhaps a million equally mindless deaths in Iraq - plus the ongoing chaos wrought by "Bush's Toxic Legacy." http://
But "countless killed pizza drivers?"
These killings are both tragic and reprehensible but the bedrock principle of moral theology remains the maintenance of perspective-and-proportion.
Sometimes called prudence.
Here is the lead to Laura's latest post. "He is one of countless low-paid pizza drivers who have been killed." http://www.thinkinghousewife.com/wp/2014/11/thuggery-and-the-pizza-industrial-complex/
Countless?
Admittedly, white American policymakers are responsible for 3 million needless deaths in Vietnam and perhaps a million equally mindless deaths in Iraq - plus the ongoing chaos wrought by "Bush's Toxic Legacy." http://
But "countless killed pizza drivers?"
These killings are both tragic and reprehensible but the bedrock principle of moral theology remains the maintenance of perspective-and-proportion.
Sometimes called prudence.
Sometimes called prudence.
"Shark Attacks Rise Worldwide: Risk Assessment and Aquinas' Criteria For Sin"
"Thomas Aquinas On American Conservatives' Continual Commission Of Sin"
Whereas violent crime rates continue to plummet throughout the United States, "The Thinking Housewife" sounds increasingly like a community newspaper's "crime blotter."
If it bleeds it leads.
Here is a 2011 Wall Street Journal article on plummeting crime rates: http://online.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304066504576345553135009870
And here is a 2014 update on the continuation of plummeting crime rates: http://jurist.org/paperchase/2014/02/fbi-reports-decreases-in-violent-crimes-property-crimes.php
America's Real Criminal Element: Lead
Pax tecum
Alan
PS If Laura were to write an article substituting the word "Military" for "Pizza,"Truth -- rather than race-based hysteria -- would be well-served. Notably, there are few behaviors as "immodest" as public displays of hysteria.
"Thomas Aquinas On American Conservatives' Continual Commission Of Sin"
Whereas violent crime rates continue to plummet throughout the United States, "The Thinking Housewife" sounds increasingly like a community newspaper's "crime blotter."
If it bleeds it leads.
If it bleeds it leads.
Here is a 2011 Wall Street Journal article on plummeting crime rates: http://online.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304066504576345553135009870
And here is a 2014 update on the continuation of plummeting crime rates: http://jurist.org/paperchase/2014/02/fbi-reports-decreases-in-violent-crimes-property-crimes.php
America's Real Criminal Element: Lead
Pax tecum
Alan
PS If Laura were to write an article substituting the word "Military" for "Pizza,"Truth -- rather than race-based hysteria -- would be well-served. Notably, there are few behaviors as "immodest" as public displays of hysteria.
Thuggery and the Pizza Industrial Complex
James Crabtree, 45, was delivering pizza in Columbus, Ohio on the evening of October, 29, 2014 when he was shot multiple times and robbed of approximately $50. No arrests have been made. He is one of countless low-paid pizza drivers who have been killed while delivering the cheese-slathered particleboard that is now the world’s most disgusting foodstuff.
KRISTOR writes:
Reading over Alan’s list of depredations in Saint Louis since August, I could not help noticing that many of the crimes occurred in connection with the pizza industry. I make nothing of this – I don’t know what I could possibly make of it. But it rather leapt out at me. Is there some weird conjunction of universes going on, between thuggery and pizza?
Laura writes:
What with all that has been said here about industrial pizza, one important fact has been only briefly touched upon: The pizza business is dangerous. I don’t know if anyone has tried to count up all the victims. Pizza places stay open late and some are robbed for this reason. But it’s the pizza delivery that poses the greatest dangers. Many pizza delivery men and women have been killed over the years, typically slain for a few bucks. “Senseless” isn’t the right word. What could be easier than robbing a man who comes to your door with a few bucks in his wallet?
On October 29, James Crabtree, 45, was killed in Columbus while delivering his last pizza of the night. He was shot multiple times outside the house that placed the order and left to die in the street. He probably had $50 or so with him and it was gone. Pizza drivers deliberately don’t carry much money. The Columbus police noted the trend:
“People are desperate,” robbery detective Philip Thomas said. “What to you and I might seem like a trivial amount of money is worth taking someone’s life over.
“And they take the pizza, of course.”
No one has been arrested in Crabtree’s death and one wonders if anyone ever will be arrested. There is no description of suspects.
In 2010, a 17-year-old black girl, Yamiley Mathurin, ordered pizza in the Boston area with the intention of attacking the driver with her two friends.
When Richel Nova, a 58-year-old father of three, arrived with chicken wings, pizza, and a liter of Sprite, Mathurin told him to come around the back of the vacant house and follow her up the stairs. When he walked into the second-floor apartment, prosecutors said, [Mathurin's friends] Gallet and St. Jean began stabbing him with two knives.
One knife broke during the attack and the second weapon was never recovered, Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Hickman has said. Gallet and St. Jean have pleaded not guilty, and jury selection in their trial began Monday.
They took Nova’s car, money and the pizzas. Nova was stabbed 16 times and left to die on the porch of an abandoned house. According to The Boston Globe, “He knew the dangers of his job and took precautions, like keeping the car engine running and the door open in case he needed to make a quick escape. Prosecutors have said Mathurin’s polite, sweet demeanor on the phone and at the scene made her seem trustworthy. ” Mathurin eventually pled guilty and will serve no more than 20 years in prison. Her two friends were also convicted.
Richard Nova
Yamiley Mathurin
Given how dangerous delivering pizzas is, it’s a wonder that anyone does it, let alone a pretty young woman. Kayla Thompson, 26, was killed last May in Ohio while delivering pizza. Adam Burris, 32, has been charged with her murder. Thompson, who worked for Plus 1 Pizza, was a single mother of two young children.
Kayla Thompson
Adam Burris
Elizabeth Hutcheson was also a single mother. In June, 2012, Hutcheson, 27, a Domino’s pizza delivery woman and the mother of a young child, was allegedly stabbed 50 times and bludgeoned to death by two teenagers, Cahedra Cook, 18 at the time, and her 15-year-old boyfriend Eddie Clark. Hutcheson was delivering a pizza in Cedartown in northwest Georgia. Cook pled guilty to the murder and will serve a minimum of 30 years in prison.
Cahedra Lynn Cook, 18 at the time, was charged in Hutcheson’s death
Given these crimes and many more, one would think pizza outlets would stop sending low-paid workers into risky situations and maybe even stop delivering pizza altogether. But it appears business is too good for that to happen and the luxury of having lukewarm particleboard topped with rubber cheese show up at one’s doorstep is too dear.
From The Daily Mail:
When asked about the risk to employees delivering pizza, Mr [Ken] McIntyre said Domino’s gives training programmes to its employees and encourages drivers not to carry more than US$20 with them.
‘We have been delivering pizzas for 52 years, and there’s a lot we do, but what we can’t do is eliminate evil,’ he said.
Richard Nova’s relatives sued Domino’s for wrongful death.
— Comments —
George Weinbaum writes:
This post misses the point: it is dangerous to deliver pizza to Negroes. Just like it is dangerous to pick them up in your taxi. Suppose a Dominoes franchise stopped delivering pizza to Negroes. What would happen? How fast would Eric Holder and Al Sharpton scream about “white racism” in pizza delivery?
Laura writes:
It is dangerous to deliver to blacks and businesses are not permitted to discriminate in such a way that might save lives, but Adam Burris, to cite one example, wasn’t black. Pizza businesses know nothing about who is ordering and therefore the whole thing is risky.
Laura adds:
Pizza murders have occurred in Britain too. Thavisha Lakindu Peiris was killed and robbed by two Arab teenagers while delivering Domino’s in Sheffield last year.
↧
Do Wars Really Defend America’s Freedom?
In his lifetime, General Butler was the most highly decorated Marine ever.
***
"War Is A Racket," By Professed "Gangster For Capitalism" Major General Smedley Butler"
***
"Memorial Day: When Should The United States Go To War?"
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/05/memorial-day-when-should-united-states.html***
Jesse Ventura: "Military Doesn't Fight For Our Freedom"
***
Do Wars Really Defend America’s Freedom?
Shortly after the United States entered World War I, seven states passed laws abridging freedom of speech and freedom of the press. In June 1917, they were joined by Congress, which passed the Espionage Act. This law granted the federal government the power to censor publications and ban them from the mail, and made the obstruction of the draft or of enlistment in the armed forces punishable by a hefty fine and up to 20 years’ imprisonment.
Thereafter, the U.S. government censored newspapers and magazines while conducting prosecutions of the war’s critics, sending over 1,500 to prison with lengthy sentences. This included the prominent labor leader and Socialist Party presidential candidate, Eugene V. Debs. Meanwhile, teachers were fired from the public schools and universities, elected state and federal legislators critical of the war were prevented from taking office, and religious pacifists who refusedto carry weapons after they were drafted into the armed forces were forcibly clad in uniform, beaten, stabbed with bayonets, dragged by ropes around their necks, tortured, and killed. It was the worst outbreak of government repression in U.S. history, and sparked the formation of the American Civil Liberties Union.
Although America’s civil liberties record was much better during World War II, the nation’s participation in that conflict did lead to serious infringements upon American freedoms. Probably the best-known was the federal government’s incarceration of 110,000 people of Japanese heritage in internment camps. Two-thirds of them were U.S. citizens, most of whom had been born (and many of whose parents had been born) in the United States. In 1988, recognizing the blatant unconstitutionality of the wartime internment, Congress passed the Civil Liberties Act, which apologized for the action and paid reparations to the survivors and their families.
But the war led to other violations of rights, as well, including the imprisonment of roughly 6,000 conscientious objectors and the confinement of some 12,000 others in Civilian Public Service camps. Congress also passed the Smith Act, which made the advocacy of the overthrow of the government a crime punishable by 20 years’ imprisonment. As this legislation was used to prosecute and imprison members of groups that merely talked abstractly of revolution, the U.S. Supreme Court ultimately narrowed its scope considerably.
The civil liberties situation worsened considerably with the advent of the Cold War. In Congress, the House Un-American Activities Committee gathered files on over a million Americans whose loyalty it questioned and held contentious hearings designed to expose alleged subversives. Jumping into the act, Senator Joseph McCarthy began reckless, demagogic accusations of Communism and treason, using his political power and, later, a Senate investigations subcommittee, to defame and intimidate. The president, for his part, established the Attorney General’s List of “subversive” organizations, as well as a federal Loyalty Program, which dismissed thousands of U.S. public servants from their jobs.
The compulsory signing of loyalty oaths became standard practice on the federal, state, and local level. By 1952, 30 states required some sort of loyalty oath for teachers. Although this effort to root out “un-Americans” never resulted in the discovery of a single spy or saboteur, it did play havoc with people’s livesand cast a pall of fear over the nation.
When citizen activism bubbled up in the form of protest against the Vietnam War, the federal government responded with a stepped-up program of repression. J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI director, had been expanding his agency’s power ever since World War I, and swung into action with his COINTELPRO program. Designed to expose, disrupt, and neutralize the new wave of activism by any means necessary, COINTELPRO spread false, derogatory information about dissident leaders and organizations, created conflicts among their leaders and members, and resorted to burglary and violence.
It targeted nearly all social change movements, including the peace movement, the civil rights movement, the women’s movement, and theenvironmental movement. The FBI’s files bulged with information on millions of Americans it viewed as national enemies or potential enemies, and it placed many of them under surveillance, including writers, teachers, activists, and U.S. senators Convinced that Martin Luther King, Jr. was a dangerous subversive, Hoover made numerous efforts to destroy him, including encouraging him to commit suicide.
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Although revelations about the unsavory activities of U.S. intelligence agencies led to curbs on them in the 1970s, subsequent wars encouraged a new surge of police state measures. In 1981, the FBI opened an investigation of individuals and groups opposing President Reagan’s military intervention in Central America. It utilized informers at political meetings, break-ins at churches, members’ homes, and organizational offices, and surveillance of hundreds of peace demonstrations. Among the targeted groups were the National Council of Churches, the United Auto Workers, and the Maryknoll Sisters of the Roman Catholic Church. After the beginning of the Global War on Terror, the remaining checks on U.S. intelligence agencies were swept aside. The Patriot Act provided the government with sweeping power to spy on individuals, in some cases without any suspicion of wrongdoing, while the National Security Agency collected all Americans’ phone and internet communications.
The problem here lies not in some unique flaw of the United States but, rather, in the fact that warfare is not conducive to freedom. Amid the heightened fear and inflamed nationalism that accompany war, governments and many of their citizens regard dissent as akin to treason. In these circumstances, “national security” usually trumps liberty. As the journalist Randolph Bourne remarked during World War I: “War is the health of the state.” Americans who cherish freedom should keep this in mind.
War is a Racket
Major General Smedley Butler
United States Marine Corps Commandant
In his lifetime, Major General Butler was the most decorated Marine ever.
In retirement, General Butler, a life-long Republican, ran for a Pennsylvania.
A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of people. Only a small inside group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses.
I believe in adequate defense at the coastline and nothing else. If a nation comes over here to fight, then we'll fight. The trouble with America is that when the dollar only earns six percent over here, then it gets restless and goes overseas to get 100 percent. Then the flag follows the dollar and the soldiers follow the flag.
I wouldn't go to war again as I have done to protect some lousy investment of the bankers. There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes, and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket.
There isn't a trick in the racketeering bag that the military gang is blind to. It has its "finger men" to point out enemies, its "muscle men" to destroy enemies, its "brain men" to plan war preparations, and a "Big Boss" Super-Nationalistic-Capitalism.
It may seem off for me, a military man, to adopt such a comparison. Truthfulness compels me to. I spent thirty-three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country's most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high-class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street, and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.
I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it. Like all the members of the military profession, I never had a thought of my own until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military service. Thus I helped make Mexico, and especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenue in. I helped in the raping of half-a-dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers and Co. in 1909-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras 'right' for American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested. "During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. I was rewarded with honors, medals, and promotion. Looking back on it, I feel that I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate a racket in three city districts. The Marines operated on three continents." Excerpt from 1933 speech.
For all five chapters of Butler's "War is a Racket," please see: http://www.lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm
***
"Why We Fight"
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/08/why-we-fight-documentary-film-about.html***
Christian "Just War" Principles
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/05/benedict-xvi-from-now-on-there-are-no.html
***
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Well, come on all of you, big strong men,
Uncle Sam needs your help again.
He's got himself in a terrible jam
Way down yonder in Vietnam
So put down your books and pick up a gun,
We're gonna have a whole lotta fun.
And it's one, two, three,
What are we fighting for ?
Don't ask me, I don't give a damn,
Next stop is Vietnam;
And it's five, six, seven,
Open up the pearly gates,
Well there ain't no time to wonder why,
Whoopee! we're all gonna die.
Come on Wall Street, don't be slow,
Why man, this is war au-go-go
There's plenty good money to be made
By supplying the Army with the tools of its trade,
But just hope and pray that if they drop the bomb,
They drop it on the Viet Cong.
And it's one, two, three,
What are we fighting for ?
Don't ask me, I don't give a damn,
Next stop is Vietnam.
And it's five, six, seven,
Open up the pearly gates,
Well there ain't no time to wonder why
Whoopee! we're all gonna die.
Well, come on generals, let's move fast;
Your big chance has come at last.
Now you can go out and get those reds
'Cause the only good commie is the one that's dead
And you know that peace can only be won
When we've blown 'em all to kingdom come.
And it's one, two, three,
What are we fighting for ?
Don't ask me, I don't give a damn,
Next stop is Vietnam;
And it's five, six, seven,
Open up the pearly gates,
Well there ain't no time to wonder why
Whoopee! we're all gonna die.
Come on mothers throughout the land,
Pack your boys off to Vietnam.
Come on fathers, and don't hesitate
To send your sons off before it's too late.
And you can be the first ones in your block
To have your boy come home in a box.
And it's one, two, three
What are we fighting for ?
Don't ask me, I don't give a damn,
Next stop is Vietnam.
And it's five, six, seven,
Open up the pearly gates,
Well there ain't no time to wonder why,
Whoopee! we're all gonna die.
Uncle Sam needs your help again.
He's got himself in a terrible jam
Way down yonder in Vietnam
So put down your books and pick up a gun,
We're gonna have a whole lotta fun.
And it's one, two, three,
What are we fighting for ?
Don't ask me, I don't give a damn,
Next stop is Vietnam;
And it's five, six, seven,
Open up the pearly gates,
Well there ain't no time to wonder why,
Whoopee! we're all gonna die.
Come on Wall Street, don't be slow,
Why man, this is war au-go-go
There's plenty good money to be made
By supplying the Army with the tools of its trade,
But just hope and pray that if they drop the bomb,
They drop it on the Viet Cong.
And it's one, two, three,
What are we fighting for ?
Don't ask me, I don't give a damn,
Next stop is Vietnam.
And it's five, six, seven,
Open up the pearly gates,
Well there ain't no time to wonder why
Whoopee! we're all gonna die.
Well, come on generals, let's move fast;
Your big chance has come at last.
Now you can go out and get those reds
'Cause the only good commie is the one that's dead
And you know that peace can only be won
When we've blown 'em all to kingdom come.
And it's one, two, three,
What are we fighting for ?
Don't ask me, I don't give a damn,
Next stop is Vietnam;
And it's five, six, seven,
Open up the pearly gates,
Well there ain't no time to wonder why
Whoopee! we're all gonna die.
Come on mothers throughout the land,
Pack your boys off to Vietnam.
Come on fathers, and don't hesitate
To send your sons off before it's too late.
And you can be the first ones in your block
To have your boy come home in a box.
And it's one, two, three
What are we fighting for ?
Don't ask me, I don't give a damn,
Next stop is Vietnam.
And it's five, six, seven,
Open up the pearly gates,
Well there ain't no time to wonder why,
Whoopee! we're all gonna die.
↧
How Near Total Wealth Sequestration "At The Top" Actually Impacts The Rest Of Us
"Plutocracy Triumphant"Cartoon Compendium
If the mainstream media made the effort to analyze and report the facts, the whole country would know about a level of selfishness that has spiraled out of control since the economists of the Reagan era convinced the wealthiest Americans that greed is good for everyone. Here are four extreme examples of that selfishness.
1. Ebola’s Not Worth the Money If Only Africans Get Infected
World Health Organization (WHO) director-general Dr. Margaret Chan recently stated: “Ebola emerged nearly four decades ago. Why are clinicians still empty-handed, with no vaccines and no cure? Because Ebola has historically been confined to poor African nations. The R&D incentive is virtually non-existent. A profit-driven industry does not invest in products for markets that cannot pay.”
So we turn to philanthropy. But rich donors don’t compensate for the flaws of capitalism. The Gates Foundation, among others, may appear noble and praiseworthy for all its charitable giving, but Dr. Chan noted that “My budget [is] highly earmarked, so it is driven by what I call donor interests.” Little of that ‘earmarking’ is toward diseases of the poor. A study in The Lancet of medical products registered in 2000-11 revealed that “Only four new chemical entities were approved for neglected diseases (three for malaria, one for diarrhoeal disease), accounting for 1% of the 336 new chemical entities approved during the study period.”
A related problem with philanthropy is summarized by Stacy Palmer, editor of The Chronicle of Philanthropy: “Wealthy people tend to give to colleges, art museums, opera and hospitals very generously…Food banks depend more on lower income Americans.”
The Chronicle of Philanthropy confirmed that Americans with annual earnings under $100,000 increased their post-recession giving by 4.5 percent. Americans who earned over $200,000 reduced their giving by 4.6 percent over the same time period.
2. Going To Their Graves Without Paying What They Owe
Charles Koch, who is very much alive, said “I want my fair share – and that’s all of it.”
His dream is coming true. $30 trillion has been taken since the recession, most of it financial gains, almost all of it by the richest 1%, one-hundred thousand of whom made an estimated $18 million each in three years, and most of whom are so rich that they can let their portfolios sit nearly tax-free until they die, at which point an almost non-existent estate tax ensuresnearly tax-free fortunes for their fortunate sons and daughters (only aboutone out of a thousand estates are taxed).
Yet these are the people who benefit most from national security, infrastructure, tax laws, and patent and copyright laws. They’re protected by police who stop and frisk and harass and arrest anyone who threatens the status quo of their wealthy society. But they don’t want to pay for all the benefits, even after they’re dead.
3. Inventing Rules That Take Money from the Poor
A collection of contrived laws and policies effectively transfer money from the middle class to the rulemakers:
—Capital Gains: Pay less for just owning stocks
—Carried Interest: The astonishing claim that hedge fund profits are not regular income
—Payroll Tax: Multi-millionaires pay a tiny percentage compared to middle-income earners
—Derivatives: Risky financial instruments are the first to be paid off in a bank collapse
—Bankruptcies: Businesses can get out of debt, students can’t
4. Treating Less Fortunate People As If They Don’t Exist
Compelling research by Paul Piff and his colleagues has demonstrated that the accumulation of wealth leads to a sense of entitlement and qualities of narcissism. For example, rich people are more likely to flout traffic laws, to take items of value from others, and to cheat when necessary to win a prize or position.
At a higher level, irrefutable data has been accumulated to confirm
Children: One out of every five American children lives in poverty, and for black children under the age of six it’s nearly one out of TWO. Almost half of food stamp recipients are children. Worldwide, 76 million children are living in poverty in the developed world, and hundreds of millions more in the developing world.
The Elderly: Three-quarters of Americans approaching retirement in 2010 had an average of less than $30,000 to support them in their retirement years.
The Homeless: According to The Nation, there are now more homeless people in New York City than at any time since the 1970s, and the number ofhomeless schoolchildren is at an all-time high.
The Sick and Disabled: Over 200 recent studies have confirmed a link between financial stress and sickness. In just 20 years America’s ranking among developed countries dropped on nearly every major health measure.
Privileged people, oblivious to the realities beneath their lofty positions, talk about struggling Americans getting “comfortable” in poverty, using food stamps to buy expensive food, and resting in the “hammock” of the safety net. Perhaps delusion helps them to rationalize their selfishness.
"The Rich Aren't Just Grabbing A Bigger Slice Of The Pie. They're Taking It All"
"Politics And Economics: The 101 Courses You Wish You Had"
"The Rich Aren't Just Grabbing A Bigger Slice Of The Pie. They're Taking It All"
"Politics And Economics: The 101 Courses You Wish You Had"
↧
Click Here For Free Software To See If You’re Under Surveillance
Photograph by Tim Flach/Getty Images
For more than two years, researchers and rights activists have tracked the proliferation and abuse of computer spyware that can watch people in their homes and intercept their e-mails. Now they’ve built a tool that can help the targets protect themselves.
The free, downloadable software, called Detekt, searches computers for the presence of malicious programs that have been built to evade detection. The spyware ranges from government-grade products used by intelligence and police agencies to hacker staples known as RATs—remote administration tools. Detekt, which was developed by security researcher Claudio Guarnieri, is being released in a partnership with advocacy groups Amnesty International, Digitale Gesellschaft, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and Privacy International.
Guarnieri says his tool finds hidden spy programs by seeking unique patterns on computers that indicate a specific malware is running. He warns users not to expect his program (which is available only for Windows machines) to find all spyware, and notes that the release of Detekt could spur malware developers to further cloak their code.
The use of the programs—which can remotely turn on webcams and track keystrokes—gained attention as researchers increasingly found the spyware being used to target political activists and journalists. In Syria, dissidents have been attacked by malware delivered through fake documents sent via Skype (MSFT). In Washington and London, Bahraini democracy activists received e-mails laced with what was identified as the German-made FinSpy Trojan. In Ethiopia, another hacking tool made multiple attempts against employees of an independent media company, according to a probe by Guarnieri and security researchers Morgan Marquis-Boire, Bill Marczak, and John Scott-Railton.
The new safeguard comes amid fresh reminders of pervasive electronic snooping around the globe. Just this week, London-based Privacy International published a 96-page report detailing surveillance capabilities of Central Asian republics and the companies that supply them.
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↧
Here's The 1969 Bill Cosby Routine About Wanting To Drug Women's Drinks
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| Bill Cosby's It's True! It's True! album. |
Time was, this country responded to rape accusations against America's Sweater Dad, Bill Cosby, the same way Cosby's Noah did to God's command that he put two of each animal onto a boat: by saying, "Riiiiiiiiiiigghhhht" and then moving on.
Today, though, the testimonials against Cosby keep coming, and the man himself is canceling public appearances, stonewalling a clearly shaken Scott Simon of NPR, and finally responding with a public statement (sent through his lawyer) that has right on its surface one immediately verifiable lie: "At age 77, he is doing his best work."
Cosby's dozen-plus accusers tell similar stories: that, after having a drink with Cosby, they felt drugged and confused as he had his way with them. Curiously, Cosby himself once made such scenarios the center of a stand-up routine: Witness "Spanish Fly," a cut from his now-unfortunately titled 1969 LP It's True! It's True!.
In it, Cosby describes being a kid and hearing about a wonder drug -- "Spanish Fly" -- that would make a girl go crazy once it was put into her drink. He presents this as a horny/goofy lark of an idea, a myth that kids buy into all over the world. More disturbingly, Cosby then describes his adult interest in such a drug, especially on a trip he took to Spain with Robert Culp of I Spy -- both Culp and Cosby, he claims, were desperate to get their hands on some Spanish Fly.
Even when I heard this bit as a kid, I wondered: Why would famous TV stars need a drug to get women interested in them? Why is sex something to lie and cheat and scheme to get, rather than something to share? Hearing it now, it's positively chilling, especially the crowd's easy laughter, which suggests that Cosby was able to put over his fantasy of women stripped of their ability to say no as something near universal. Boys will be boys, hahaha, and then refuse ever to speak of it once they become rich and powerful men.
See also:
Here's What the Daily News Robin Williams Cover Should Have Looked Like
Here's How Unbiased GamerGate Crusaders Would 'Review' Citizen Kane
Here's What the Daily News Robin Williams Cover Should Have Looked Like
Here's How Unbiased GamerGate Crusaders Would 'Review' Citizen Kane
↧
Americans Actually Love The Post Office. Higher Approval Than Any Other Agency
Poll finds that the beleaguered USPS is the nation's most-liked government agency
Complaining about the post office is an American pastime, like griping about Congress, or whining about the DMV. Who, in their right mind, actually likes dealing with the post office?
A lot of people, it turns out. According to a new Gallupsurvey, 72% of Americans say the U.S. Postal Service is doing an excellent or good job. That puts the USPS ahead of 12 other government agencies, including the FBI, the CDC, NASA and the CIA. And the younger the respondent, the more likely they were to think highly of our much-maligned courier: 81% of 18-to-29-year-olds rated the post office’s job as excellent or good, while 65% of those over 65 said the same thing.
So what accounts for the post office’s surprising popularity? Age, for one.
As the volume of letters has declined, the USPS has evolved to become as much a courier of packages as it is a way to send and receive first-class mail. In the last few years, the post office has not only expanded its delivery of parcels (it recently began a partnership with Amazon to deliver on Sundays), but it also often delivers packages for FedEx and UPS in what’s called “last mile” delivery, which are shipments to residents that private carriers don’t service. That means millennials interact less with the USPS at its worst — the interminable lines at understaffed post offices — and more from the comfort of home, where the mailman is the person at the door with their new shoes from Amazon or their iPhone from the Apple store.
The post office is also the one agency that Americans actually see doing its job each day. You see postal employees on their routes. You can see post offices open. When’s the last time you saw an FDA worker inspecting your local restaurant or the Federal Reserve Board in action as it plotted the end of quantitative easing?
Not that the latest survey should make the post office rejoice. The faltering institution has run deficits every year since 2007 and its aggressive efforts to adapt to the digital age have not yet been enough to offset the substantial drop in mail volume and onerous Congressional mandates to fund retirees. But it never hurts to have the public on your side.
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Most Unhinged Responses to Obama’s Immigration Speech
"Conservatives Scare More Easily Than Liberals"
"Conservatives Scare More Easily Than Liberals"
There’s a broad legal consensus that Obama’s new policy directives are likely constitutional, particularly because they’re centered on prioritization and inaction. The crux of the new initiatives: the administration will focus the limited resources it has to fight undocumented immigration on efforts to deport those who pose a security risk or commit crimes, and downplay efforts to deport undocumented parents of children who were born or grew up here.
As is often the case in this great land of partisan party politics, a narrative quickly coalesced. Obama was instantly branded an “emperor” and a “king.” Let’s take a look.
Pat Buchanan wrote that things would never be the same: “Our rogue president has crossed an historic line, and so has the republic.”
“We have just taken a monumental step away from republicanism toward Caesarism,” Buchanan continued. “For this is rule by diktat, the rejection of which sparked the American Revolution.”
“Apparently, America now has its first emperor,” Sen. Jeff Sessions wrote in USA Today. “And he has issued an imperial order to dissolve America's borders.”
Writing in advance of Obama’s announcement, the ever-prescient Sen. Ted Cruz warned of a similar dissolution of all things democratic and American: “If he acts by executive diktat, President Obama will not be acting as a president, he will be acting as a monarch.”
Cruz himself immigrated to the United States from Canada as a young child. After Obama spoke, Cruz proposed the newly elected, Republican-led Senate abdicate one of its key responsibilities: “. . . the new Senate Majority Leader who takes over in January should announce that the 114th Congress will not confirm a single nominee—executive or judicial—outside of vital national security positions, so long as the illegal amnesty persists.”
Likely presidential candidate Sen. Rand Paul showed some Web savvy by posting a “starter pack” for the “president who thinks he’s a king” on Twitter:
Twitter Images & More: http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2014/11/responses-obamas-immigration-speech
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"The Reign of Morons Is Here," Charles P. Pierce, The Atlantic
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George McGovern: "The Case For Liberalism, A Defense Of The Future Against The Past"
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Adam Lanza Judgment: 'He, And He Alone, Bears Responsibility For This Monstrosity'
Adam Lanza with parents
Alan:I am, of course, a distant observer of the Sandy Hook slaughter and am unaware of many details uncovered by the Connecticut probe.
But to say this "monstrous act" is the sole responsibility of Adam Lanza seems wrong, perhaps driven by Christian belief in the primacy of personal responsibility and correlative belief that Acts of God are limited to "natural" disasters.
American Christianity holds that human individuals -- by nature "Masters of Free Will" -- must always "man up."
It may also be that America's Official Story obliges belief in the central credo of Second Amendment Evangelism that "Guns don't kill people. People kill people."
If Adam's parents had not normalized guns - if his mother had not provided weapons and training in their use - this mass murder would not have occurred.
"Gun Cartoons and Gun Violence Bibliography"
"Gun Cartoons and Gun Violence Bibliography"
A devastating catalogue of mental issues which dogged the life of Adam Lanza, who killed 20 children at Sandy Hook elementary school, nearly two years ago, has been revealed in an official report.
Connecticut’s Office of the Child Advocate said that Lanza’s mother, Nancy, who was also killed in the gun rampage, failed to tackle the problem.
Instead of confronting the problems which first became apparent when her son was a toddler, she chose to “accommodate and appease” her son, read the report.
In addition to slaughtering 20 children, Lanza killed six school staff and his mother in a murderous rampage at the elementary school at Newtown, Connecticut in December 2012 before turning the gun on himself.
The troubled childhood of Lanza, who was 20 when he carried out the killing spree, is laid bare in the 114-page report which also reveals that the attack had been “purposefully thought-out and planned.”
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Lanza was only two years old when his psychological difficulties first became apparent.
He was taken to doctors in New Hampshire because of difficulties he appeared to have communication with others.
By the time he was nine years old the problems were worsening.
“There were early indications of AL’s (Lanza’s) preoccupation with violence, depicted by extremely graphic writings that appeared to have been largely unaddressed by schools and possibly by parents,” the report noted.
Officials standing outside of Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown (AP)
Then four years later he was withdrawn from school, with the approval of the community psychiatrist.
By the time Lanza was 14, the Yale Child Study Centre, warned that the strategy of accommodating him – rather than tackling the problem - “would lead to a deteriorating life of dysfunction and isolation.”
However the centre’s warnings and recommendations went largely unheeded, the report adds.
There was some improvement when Lanza returned to school, but this proved short lived, and he was pulled out again.
Both the school and Lanza’s parents thought he was a gifted student, a conclusion which was not borne out by independent psychological tests.
Drugs were prescribed to tackle Lanza’s anxiety and obsessive compulsive disorders.
A firearm seized from the Adam Lanza's house (PA)
Alan: I am a distant observer but the judgment that Lanza alone bears responsibility for this monstrous act"
But Lanza’s refusal to take the medication was supported by his mother.
His condition worsened with Lanza becoming more isolated, stopping all contact with his father in 2010 and refusing to respond to emails he had been sent.
“AL became increasingly preoccupied with mass murder, encouraged by a cyber-community – a micro society of mass murder enthusiasts with whom he was in email communication,” the report continued, referring to him by his initials.
Lanza, who had gone shooting with his parents retained access to firearms and high capacity ammunition magazines despite his mental health deteriorating.
Despite the series of alarm bells which should have been ringing, the report said the mass slaughter was not inevitable.
“There is no way to adequately explain why AL was obsessed with mass shootings and how or why he came to act on this obsession.
“In the end, only he, and he alone, bears responsibility for this monstrous act.”
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Bee Gees "Stayin' Alive" - Best Beat For Administering CPR
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Ohio Men Wrongly Convicted Of Murder On Coerced Testimony Released After 39 Years
"After My Mugging C. 1970, The Police Pressured Me To Give False Testimony"
More DNA Exonerations: 20% Of People Who Confess To Capital Crimes Are Coerced
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Two Ohio men wrongly accused of murder experienced freedom for the first time in nearly four decades on Friday morning, but said they don’t harbor bitterness over their unjust imprisonment.
A Cleveland judge on Wednesday had dropped all charges against Ricky Jackson, 57, and Wiley Bridgeman, 60, allowing for the pair’s release.
Jackson was 19 when he was convicted along with Bridgeman and Bridgeman’s brother, Ronnie, in the 1975 shooting death and robbery of Harold Franks, a Cleveland-area money order salesman.
Testimony from a 12-year-old witness helped point to Jackson as the triggerman and led a jury to convict all three. Ronnie Bridgeman, now known as Kwame Ajamu, was paroled from prison in 2003.
The witness, Edward Vernon, now 53, recanted his testimony last year, saying he was coerced by detectives, according to Cuyahoga County court documents. Vernon wrote in a 2013 affidavit that he never saw the murder take place, but he was told by detectives that if he didn’t testify against Jackson, his parents would be arrested.
Vernon said he confided in a pastor several years after meeting with Bridgeman, and the pastor encouraged him to reach out to the Innocence Project. Vernon wrote that he had “been waiting to tell the truth about this for a long time.”
And the witness, now 53, recanted his testimony last year, saying he was coerced by detectives, according to court documents.
“A lot of people think I should be mad,” said Jackson, but “in ’75, he was a 12-year-old-kid.” Jackson said “it took a lot of courage” for the witness to recant his statement.
The Ohio Innocence Project, which took up the case, said Jackson had been the longest-held U.S. prisoner to be exonerated.
Jackson was originally sentenced to death, but that sentence was vacated because of a paperwork error. The Bridgeman brothers remained on death row until Ohio declared the death penalty unconstitutional in 1978.
“One of them came within 20 days of execution before Ohio ruled the death penalty unconstitutional” said Mark Godsey, director of the Ohio Innocence Project.
“The bitterness is over with,” said Wylie Bridgeman during his first moments of freedom on Friday.
Jackson agreed. “I had plans for my life,” but “time is just something that you can't get back so I'm not going to really cry about it,” he said.
While Ohio provides compensation for those who are wrongfully imprisoned, everyone is not guaranteed money. The Ohio Innocence Project has set up a fund for Jackson.
A story published in Scene Magazine in 2011 first raised new questions about the murder and whether Jackson and the Bridgeman brothers actually committed the crime.
Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy McGinty said in court Tuesday that without an eyewitness there was not much of a case. “The state is conceding the obvious," he said, according to Reuters.
NBC News' Emmanuelle Saliba contributed to this report. Reuters also contributed.
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The Coming GOP Freak-Out Over Immigration
Have another drink, John.
When President Obama announces his executive order giving legal status to as many as 5 million undocumented immigrants, he will do it over the objections of nearly every Republican in Congress. And that’s just fine with Democrats.
“We have waited long enough for House Republicans,” Harry Reid said Wednesday. “Since they won’t act, the president should, and he will.”
Likewise, Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, who often has to contort his answers from the podium to cover every base and offend no audience, was notably at ease as he discussed the president’s immigration plans during his press briefing later in the day. “The president often says only the tough issues reach his desk,” Earnest said with half a smile. “This might be the one exception.”
After a humiliating defeat on Election Day, when Latino voters stayed home in droves and Democrats lost every race they expected and many they didn’t, the president’s party now sees an early opportunity to turn the tide back against Republicans. By moving unilaterally, the thinking goes in Washington, Democrats will get credit from Latinos for securing legal status for millions, all while goading the GOP into a potentially fatal reaction on the issue that has danced on racial, class, and political divides for decades.
“I’d say ‘advantage Obama’ on the politics of this,” said Frank Sharry, executive director of America’s Voice, a pro-reform group. “He’s going to recover lost ground in the Latino community for himself and for Democrats. This is a big, bold move that’s going to protect millions of people.”
While Democrats get the credit, Sharry predicted, the danger for Republicans comes if the opposition of the party’s most strident members, like Sens. Ted Cruz and Jeff Sessions, define the GOP as a whole. The danger of a potential Republican overreach or overreaction was clearly on the minds of people in both parties Wednesday.
“If the fight over the next six weeks, six months, two years is, ‘Republicans want to kill this thing in the crib, Democrats fight to defend it,’ think of the bright line that draws,” Sharry said. “One party is fighting for immigrants; the other party is fighting against them. That distinction, which was a big factor in 2012, will be turbo-charged in 2016.”
But as certain as Democrats are that the politics of another immigration fight will help them, conservatives are equally convinced of the rightness of their argument.
“It is a huge issue, and I don’t think you could overstate how important it is,” said Dan Holler, communications director for Heritage Action.
“What we said in 2013 was that if you were a politician and the American people saw you fighting with every tool you have to stop Obamacare, you’d be rewarded,” he said. “I think that played out. Similarly, if a politician used every tool available to stop executive amnesty and handing out 5 million work permits, those politicians are going to be rewarded. I think it’s a no-brainer.”
As news broke that the president would make his announcement from the White House before the end of the week, Democrats quietly hoped that the GOP would quickly find the self-destruct button. Even before the details of the president’s plans were made public, Republicans lambasted the president as “Emperor Obama” (House Speaker John Boehner), “abusing his power” (Sen. John Cornyn), using “diktats” and “the tactics of a monarch” (Cruz), and risking “anarchy” and riots in the streets (Sen. Tom Coburn).
“We expect [the new GOP majority] to use the power of the purse to defund amnesty, especially those—and there were many—who ran against it.”
While the language may have been heated, Republican leaders were quietly sorting through “a very narrow path of acceptable options,” as one GOP staffer described it. Included on the list were suing the president in federal court, passing legislation to reverse the executive order, which the president would veto, and the riskiest—passing appropriations bills to fund the entire government but stripping out money for the president to enact the executive order, a path that could lead swiftly to threats of a government shutdown.
The first test will come almost immediately, in the first week of December, as Congress debates a bill to fund the government past December 11, when the current spending bill lapses.
Conservatives have made clear they want Republican leaders to use the December deadline to confront the president on immigration.
“We expect [the new GOP majority] to use the power of the purse to defund amnesty, especially those—and there were many—who ran against it,” said Kevin Broughton, national spokesman for the Tea Party Patriots. “This is a constitutional republic, not a banana republic. Let’s see if the GOP can act like it.”
Holler said he also thought the defund strategy is the one conservatives will push for, even though incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell haspromised to keep the government operating at all costs and several senior Republican senators have indicated that a government shutdown strategy should be off the table.
“The incoming Republican majority in the Senate was built on opposition to executive amnesty,” said Holler. “It’s what a lot of these folks ran on—and ran successfully on. There’s going to be a tremendous amount of pressure to use the appropriations process to try to block the executive action, regardless of what one or two senators might say.”
While the announcement will force Republicans to deal with a split in their caucus on the issue, Democrats have their own longstanding internal battles over immigration that the president’s announcement won’t solve. The executive action Obama is expected to take likely will not include relief for farm workers, high-tech workers, or those with extenuating humanitarian circumstances, three categories Democrats had pushed hard for.
Even the guest list for a White House dinner with Hill leaders to unveil the details of his plans raised eyebrows in Obama’s own party. On the list: Democratic leaders, the incoming head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and the leading Hispanic, Asian, and black members of the Democratic caucus. Not on the list: many of the senior Democrats who worked for years to write the House’s immigration-reform legislation and learned of plans for the executive order from media reports.
“What a bunch of motherf**kers,” said a top Democratic aide of the White House’s outreach to Democrats. “They can’t even do the easy things right.”
One Democrat who should have no complaints is Harry Reid. On Friday the president will go to Del Sol High School in Reid’s hometown of Las Vegas, where Obama spoke first during the 2008 presidential campaign and returned in 2012 to promise Latinos in the audience that “the time is now” on immigration reform.
It turns out that the time wasn’t then. But two years and two elections later, it looks like the time has come for the president to deliver on his long-delayed promise to the Latino and immigrant communities, which make up 27.5 percent of the population in Nevada. Standing next to Obama will be Reid, who is up for reelection in 2016 and could face Brian Sandoval, Nevada’s popular GOP governor, who just pulled in 47 percent of the Latino vote in his reelection bid this month.
Frank Sharry says Friday’s event could make all the difference for Reid in 2016. “If Harry Reid on Friday stands next to the president and says, ‘The biggest victory in 25 years is thanks so me,’ that’s a pretty big calling card,” Sharry said.
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