Dave Neiwert at Orincus writes about the policies, ideals, and history of the right and our abused soldiers. Lets hope that our politicians treat our veterans with the care and respect they deserve - including counseling, good medical care, and helping them rejoin society.
The far right, by appealing to people’s baser instincts and especially their fears, has a long history of encouraging working-class people to reject progressive values on purely visceral cultural grounds.
So far this century, we’ve seen a real growth of far-right rhetoric, and the march of its agenda, manifesting itself in such shapes as the Minutemen — who are in fact almost direct descendants of the ’90s militias — and various cultural eugenicists posing as “immigration reformers” and twisting the national debate on immigration in truly perverse directions; Christian “Dominionists” who want to turn the United States into a theocratic state; and most of all, a real culture of totalism fueled by an increasingly ugly tide of eliminationist rhetoric.
the extreme stresses under which we are now placing these soldiers [our soldiers in Iraq], especially in the form of multiple tours and forced reenlistment, is eventually going to produce a bumper crop of damaged citizens, some of whom are going to be extremely vulnerable to the “stab in the back” meme that’s become a major note in the right-wing drumbeat on the war.
Gregory Boyce is skeptical of global climate change and has big plans for coal.
Despite the fact that coal is known to be one of the biggest sources of greenhouse gases, Boyce, 52, is banking on a future in which America burns a lot more of it. With the country’s huge reserves, he argues, coal should be doing much more than its traditional tasks of making electricity or steel. “We’re moving into an era where we’ll be driving our vehicles based on coal-derived fuel. We’re going to be flying on it,” Boyce declares.
It would be great to dismiss that as the ravings of a madman, but if we don’t start making better choices about the way we live and invest more in green technology, he could be right.
even in our iPod age, coal still sits at the heart of the economy. The Energy Dept. predicts overall electricity demand will grow by 45% between now and 2030. It also forecasts that coal-fired plants, today 51% of the market, will grow to 57% over the same period. Coal is cheap and plentiful. And there aren’t a lot of easy alternatives for replacing it anytime soon. Just to maintain nuclear power’s 20% of the U.S. energy market, 35 to 40 new plants will have to built in the next 20 years. Renewable sources such as hydropower, wind, and biofuels face similar challenges scaling up to meet market demand.
Majikthise points to an interesting article about the probably not-so-good health of baby boomers. Unlike most articles that discuss obesity, this one doesn’t blame people for being fat - it looks at the lifestyle choices left open to them because of income.
“A lot of what we visualize about the baby boomers are the people who went to college — the highly educated group that gets all the attention. They’re the cultural icon,” said David R. Weir, an economist at the University of Michigan, noting that studies have shown that better-educated people tend to have more healthful lifestyles and better access to health care. “But not everyone went to college, and not everyone is engaging in these healthful activities.”
Majikthise summarized it like this:
We may be seeing long-term fallout from years of heightened economic insecurity and social isolation, coupled with increasingly sedentary lifestyles and less physically demanding work–and the least well off are probably going to be the hardest hit.
Not the most encouraging news. This could be a problem for our healthcare system. On the other hand, people could just be whinier:
It is unclear whether boomers are really sicker or are simply more health-conscious by dint of being better educated and having better access to information. They may also have higher expectations, making them more likely to notice and complain about aches and pains that earlier generations would have accepted as just part of getting older.
Ray comfort had claimed he could prove the existence of God in 13 minutes. Since he tried it on May 5th and I haven’t heard of mass conversions in the past few weeks, it seems his argument wasn’t very persuasive. Really, comparing the universe to a coke can? That’s just a little reductive.
The court said that MA’s law defines rape as intercourse “by force and against [the] will” of the victim and that “fraudulently obtaining consent to sexual intercourse does not constitute rape as defined in our statute.”
So my representative here in AZ is Rick Renzi. He’s not a good guy. And when I write him letters, his response merely reiterates his position, IF I hear back from his office at all. Right now he’s getting into even more trouble - the FBI raided his wife’s insurance company a few weeks ago. While there do seem to be a lot of politicians in trouble right now, this seems to be a pretty big deal.
The Renzi matters now are part of a formal public-corruption probe being conducted by a federal grand jury in Tucson, reports the Wall Street Journal. On Thursday of last week, that grand jury authorized a search warrant on a Renzi family-owned business in Sonoita. And, as if that were not troubling enough, Renzi’s former chief of staff is reportedly cooperating with federal investigators.In fact, there are two on-going federal investigations related to businesses owned by Renzi and family members, both first reported in October. But of the two, the investigation of Renzi’s efforts to push a sale of a 480-acre parcel of Cochise County farmland appears to be the more troubling. There’s a lot of smoke billowing up from that fallow patch of farmland.
But like a lot of republicans in trouble recently, he has a faulty memory:
Renzi’s response to these curious events? Not much directly. But there is this from former Arizona Attorney General Grant Woods, now a Renzi attorney: “(Renzi) did not know Mr. Sandlin had an interest in that land.”
The Brazilian government is working hard to deal with HIV/AIDS in their country and aren’t letting the drug companies push them around.
“We consider the offer insufficient, and we told the manufacturer,” Brazil’s health minister, Jose Temporao, told Reuters on Thursday. “The decision (on whether to break the patent) is now being analyzed by the president.” Brazil offers free universal access to AIDS drugs. [link]
This is a great post that deals with a lot of issues, starting with the way men act as if they’re being attacked if they’re criticized, especially by a woman, which leads to the criticism being softened. Mandolin also points us to some rather strong evidence that the “women talk more than men” idea is complete and utter bullshit. But she lets us know how the whole stereotype got started:
Women aren’t supposed to talk, so when they talk, they’re seen as talking A LOT. Black women really aren’t supposed to talk, so when they talk, they’re seen as talking REALLY LOUDLY.
