November 23, 2009 archive

IMF: The cost of a second bailout may be democracy

  Wall Street CEO’s are deaf to Main Street while awarding themselves record bonuses from taxpayer bailout money.

  Democrats in Congress, in the White House, and regulators in the Federal Reserve who propose a permanent TARP bailout program are also deaf to Main Street.

Action Alert: Building a path to the end of gerrymandering

The disgusting act of gerrymandering is when partisan interests take control of the redistricting process, which is when congressional and legislative districts are redrawn and is usually conducted by state legislatures after the census, and use it to benefit incumbents and specific parties.

But there is good news.  There is a growing movement to end gerrymandering.  In 2008, Californians passed Prop 11, which moved the responsibility of redistricting from the legislature to a nonpartisan committee.  Now, a group in Florida is trying to put an end to gerrymandering through another ballot initiative, and they need your help today more than ever, no matter where you live in the country.

UPDATE:  Here’s a quick summary of what I’m talking about:

1.  Gerrymandering is awful and needs to be stopped

2.  FairDistrictsFlorida.org, a grassroots organization, is working to stop it by putting an initiative on the Florida ballot

3.  They’re asking for donations from Florida and across the country to pay for a processing fee of over $140,000 for their petitions

This is a repost from a few months ago.  I am reposting it because this organization needs to raise $25,000 in order to pay for the initiative to be qualified.  If they don’t do this, gerrymandering will most assuredly continue in Florida.

Afternoon Edition

Afternoon Edition is an Open Thread

Now with U.S. News.  49 Story Final.

From Yahoo News Top Stories

1 US to present emissions target at Copenhagen

by Andrew Gully, AFP

49 mins ago

WASHINGTON (AFP) – The United States will present an emissions target at upcoming UN climate change talks in Copenhagen, a senior official said Monday, as President Barack Obama mulled whether to attend the conference.

The official refused to be drawn on what that target would be but indicated that Obama would announce it in the next few days along with a decision on whether he will fly to the Danish capital to give added impetus to proceedings.

Sixty-five leaders, including from Germany, France and Brazil, have already committed to participating in the meeting, which seeks a global treaty on tackling climate change to replace the Kyoto Protocol.

Chill Space

This is the place to take a breath and chill.


Flowers Become Screens

Soaks my skin – through to the bone

Pain is nothing that a downpour won’t erase

Rain – you can’t hold on to it

A treasure you cannot frame

Rain – somehow I’m drawn to it

I feel engaged, one and the same

When heavens dressing beads off my face

The pain is nothing that a downpour won’t erase

 




How Can Blogs Help Save The Planet?

A new study commissioned by insurance companies (NOT treehugging DFHs) of the risk to port cities by 2050 paints yet another alarming picture of the Climate Crisis that is bearing down on our Planet.

A possible rise in sea levels by 0.5 meters by 2050 could put at risk more than $28 trillion worth of assets in the world’s largest coastal cities, according to a report compiled for the insurance industry.

The report, released on Monday by WWF and financial services Allianz, concludes that the world’s diverse regions and ecosystems are close to temperature thresholds — or “tipping points.”

Any one of these surge events could unleash devastating environmental, social and economic changes amid a higher urban population.

According to the report, carried out by the UK-based Tyndall Centre, the impacts of passing “Tipping Points” on the livelihoods of people and economic assets have been underestimated.

This is in addition to the umpteenth alarming report that Climate Crisis will surpass even the gloomiest predictions and models.


Oceans rising faster than expected as climate change exceeds grimmest models

_ The world’s oceans have risen by about an inch and a half.

_Droughts and wildfires have turned more severe worldwide, from the U.S. West to Australia to the Sahel desert of North Africa.

_Species now in trouble because of changing climate include, not just the lumbering polar bear which has become a symbol of global warming, but also fragile butterflies, colorful frogs and entire stands of North American pine forests.

_Temperatures over the past 12 years are 0.4 of a degree warmer than the dozen years leading up to 1997.

And yet in the midst of all of this overwhelming evidence, there are still Deniers who will do anything they can to stop Progress on addressing what only a numbskull….or a Republican….cannot recognize as the most important issue on Earth, er…um…saving the Earth.

The question is, what can we do to help? What is the most effective way for bloggers to affect the discussion on Climate Crisis? How can we make a difference? How can the blogosphere unite and act as a force …which it is eminently capable of…to help change the social and political zeitgeist regarding the Crisis?

I have some ideas percolating, but what do you folks think?

On learning something from the lessons of history

I am being challenged to support my assertion that history has lessons to be learned, and that these lessons are meaningful in terms of “what we should do next.”  There will be a long prologue in which I spell out possible metaphors for the momentum of history — readers who are interested in this discussion are recommended to read it well, whereas those who crave controversy are recommended to skip to the conclusion below, which talks about “health insurance reform” and speculates upon the future.

(Crossposted at Orange)

Open House

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“Obama operatives” fake child, grandchilds death, say brainwashed teabaggers

Crossposted at Daily Kos

    Reading a story like this breaks my heart and makes me mad as hell.


    A group called the Chicago Tea Party Patriots publicly heckled a grieving family and suggested that the couple fabricated their tragic story.

~snip~

    Midge Hough was heckled by anti-reform crowd members. “You can laugh at me, that’s okay,” she said, crying. “But I lost two people, and I know you think that’s funny, that’s okay.”

    HuffingtonPost.com

More below the fold.

Desecration

Last night I watched the documentary on msnbc: “100 Heartbeats,” part of MSNBC’s Future Earth series on the race to save our planet.

In “100 Heartbeats,” the second premiere in MSNBC’s landmark Future Earth series, famed naturalist Jeff Corwin tells the story of the “Sixth Extinction” – caused by people and which can only be stopped by people. Keep checking futureearth.msnbc.com for information about the next premiere, “Future Earth: 2025,” which will air on Dec. 20. You can catch “100 Heartbeats” on MSNBC again on Thanksgiving at 11 a.m. ET.

I was glad to see this show in a Sunday evening slot on msnbc and I really wish to god they’d do more like this … just blanket their whole weekend programming with this instead of the prison porn they usually do. Why not? Perhaps we should think about a write-in campaign to convince them of that!

I’m suffering a ripple-over, a hangover, of thoughts and I’m attempting to share some of these thoughts here.

There is a lot of bloggage currently over the increasing volume on the xtian’s idiocy, see  this essay from gottlieb. I was struck this morning by the juxtaposition.  I am just… so … aghast at the hypocrisy and the indignity of their whining … when this is going on.

This is desecration. This is an unholy war. This is …

Every year tens of millions of sharks die a slow death because of finning. Finning is the inhumane practice of hacking off the shark’s fins and throwing its still living body back into the sea. The sharks either starve to death, are eaten alive by other fish, or drown (if they are not in constant movement their gills cannot extract oxygen from the water). Shark fins are being “harvested” in ever greater numbers to feed the growing demand for shark fin soup, an Asian “delicacy”.

Not only is the finning of sharks barbaric, but their indiscriminate slaughter at an unsustainable rate is pushing many species to the brink of extinction. Since the 1970s the populations of several species have been decimated by over 95%. source

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Poor, Poor, Pitiful Christians



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Jealous of the Jewish monopoly on endless and warrantless persecution, Christians have entered the game of perpetual victim-hood by secular society and promise to fight for their rights to worship as they please, separation of Church and State be damned.

A formidable coalition of 150 Catholic, Orthodox and evangelical leaders are calling on Christians in a new manifesto to reject secular authority – and even engage in civil disobedience – if laws force them to accept abortion, same-sex marriage and other ideas that betray their religious beliefs.

Yup. The heathen government of infidels, emancipated women, liberals and communists are about to send the Christians to homosexual-abortion-science-fiction camps where they will be forced to eat fetus stew and accept the foreign ideology of common sense.

If At First You Don’t Succeed, etc…

When all the cards seem stacked against you, when the road is long and rocky and all uphill, when it seems that the whole world and everything in it tells you you can’t do it because you just don’t have it in your genes to do it… don’t listen to all the negative nellies, and whatever you do, don’t give up.

Sometimes, no matter how hard it gets, no matter how many times you fall, you just gotta keep getting back up, and you just gotta get dressed up, and you just gotta keep on trying.

Even if your wheels fall off, or you go right off the road into the bushes, or you drive right into a rock wall, you just gotta get back up, brush yourself off, put on your best suit, smile at the doubters with a big ass toothy grin, and with steely eyed determination get back into the drivers seat, stamp on the gas pedal, and go for it.

Goal setting and determination is what separates the humans from the monkeys, I guess.

Never give an inch… and never give up.

Don’t never say never.

Success is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration.

Whatever it is you’re trying to do, you can do it if you just keep on trying.

Docudharma Times Monday November 23




Monday’s Headlines:

Wave of Debt Payments Facing U.S. Government

Climate change sceptics and lobbyists put world at risk, says top adviser

Public option at center of debate

U.S.: Three Mile Island radiation not significant

Climate change sceptics and lobbyists put world at risk, says top adviser

Life’s a drag act for the TV presenter challenging homophobia in Pakistan

Nepalese villagers prepare to slaughter 315,000 animals

Fifa shows Iraqi footballers the red card after Sunni-Shia struggle

 Human rights concerns raised as Rwanda set to join Commonwealth

South Africa to set up special courts for World Cup

Russia ‘is now a criminal state’, says Bill Browder

Romanian incumbent tops vote, but run-off needed

Brazil’s President Elbows U.S. on the Diplomatic Stage

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