Tag: Rant of the Week

Adapted from The Rant of the Week at The Stars Hollow Gazette

Yom Kippur comes to a close, and bacon lovers will die much later than they thought thanks to reduced salt and nitrates in their diets.

Pork and bacon shortage ‘unavoidable’ as record drought raises feed costs

Record droughts in the US and Russia are threatening to curtail the world’s bacon supply, farmers in the US and Europe are warning.

So dire is the situation that a world shortage of pork and bacon is “unavoidable” next year, according to Britain’s National Pig Association. And in the US farmers predict pork prices will hit new highs in 2013 as farmers cut back on production due to soaring feed costs.

Across Europe swine herds are shrinking. Ireland’s farmers cut their herd 6.6% in the 12 months to June 2012, Denmark’s fell 2.3%, Germany, Europe’s largest pork producer, cut back 1.3% and there were cuts in countries including Spain, France, Italy, Hungary and Poland.

In the US the cost of bringing home the bacon has almost doubled since 2006, according to economist Steve Meyer at Paragon Economics, and an adviser to the National Pork Producers Council. Consumption is falling as less pork is produced and prices rise, down from 50.8lbs per person per year in 2007 to a predicted 44.16lbs in 2013.

Adapted from Rant of the Week at The Stars Hollow Gazette

Black Agenda Report‘s executive editor, Glen Ford and Michael Eric Dyson, professor of sociology at Georgetown University and radio host debated the presidency of Barack Obama on Democracy Now! with host Amy Goodman.

Transcript can be read here.

Adapted from The Stars Hollow Gazette‘s Rant of the Week

This is an excerpt from George Carlin’s Brain Droppings, speech which he gave at the National Press Club on May 13, 1999.

An initiative is an idea that is going nowhere.

How much soft money can I collect in exchange for my core values?

The full video of the speech, in which he talked talked about America’s penchant for euphemism and about labeling minorities, is 56 minutes including his answers to questions from the audience.

h/t to Suzanne at FDL

Adapted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

The government takes out Al Qaeda’s “number two,” and Barack Obama finds an alternative to shutting down Guantanamo Bay.

Obama has carried out more than five times the number of covert drone strikes as George Bush.

So what’s behind Obama’s righteous drone strikes? Could it be he is just gunning for another Novel Peace Prize?

Rather than sending prisoners to GITMO, he is taking the high road by sending them to their maker. As the New York Times, puts it Mr, Obama has avoided the complications of detention by deciding to take no prisoners alive.

It’s brilliant. He doesn’t have to worry about habeas corpus because after a drone strike sometimes you can’t even fond the corpus

That brings us to:

The Obama administration reasons that anyone in a strike zone is likely Al Qaeda, so no one has to feel guilty about civilian casualties.

Adapted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

Adapted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

Minorities use black hole time travel for revenge, strokes suddenly turn people gay, and a zoo is nothing but monkey prison.

Whatever you do Do Not Google “Gay Tail Spin“.

Adapted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

Rachel Maddow reports on Mitt Romney’s confused attacks against President Obama at Friday’s NRA Conference in St. Louis. Rachel also talked with Pittsburgh councilman Ricky Burgess about the conversation the country should be having about gun violence and the need for tighter gun control laws

Andrew Rosenthal: Keep, Bear and Use

The modern drive against gun control started with an expansive interpretation of the Second Amendment as bestowing an absolute, individual right to “keep” and “bear” arms, rather than a societal right based on the need for a “well-regulated militia.”

But we are now in a new and dangerous phase of the gun movement, in which extremists led by the National Rifle Association are pushing beyond “keep” and “bear” to “use.” They are pressing state and federal lawmakers to make it easier for people to shoot other people. [..]

They certainly will not discuss these statistics, compiled by the Violence Policy Center, on the homicide rate for African Americans, which is more than three times the overall homicide rate. The overwhelming majority of victims are killed by guns, and the majority of those are killed by handguns. Missouri leads the nation in this appalling statistic.

Washington, DC–Missouri leads the nation in the rate of black homicide victimization for the second year in a row according to a new analysis of unpublished Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Supplementary Homicide Report (SHR) data released today by the Violence Policy Center (VPC).

The annual study, “Black Homicide Victimization in the United States: An Analysis of 2009 Homicide Data,” (http://www.vpc.org/studies/blackhomicide12.pdf) uses 2009 data–the most recent data available from the FBI–and ranks the 50 states according to their black homicide victimization rates. The study found overwhelmingly that firearms, usually handguns, were the weapon of choice in the homicides.

Marian Wright Edelman, President of the Children’s Defense Fund: What a Difference a Gun Makes

On April 16, 2007, our nation suffered its deadliest shooting incident ever by a single gunman when a student killed 32 people and wounded 25 others at Virginia Tech before committing suicide. Five years later, have we learned anything about controlling our national gun and gun violence epidemic? A look at just a few of the sad headlines across the country so far this year suggests we haven’t learned much or anything at all. [..]

As a nation we can’t afford to keep waiting for common-sense gun control laws that would protect our children and all of us from indefensible gun violence. It’s time to repeal senseless gun laws like the “Stand Your Ground” laws enacted by 21 states that have grabbed so much attention in Trayvon’s case and allow people in Florida to defend themselves with deadly force anytime and anywhere if they feel threatened. More than two million people have signed online petitions saying they want to repeal these laws. It’s time to require consumer safety standards and childproof safety features for all guns and strengthen child access prevention laws that ensure guns are stored safely and securely to prevent unnecessary tragedies like those in Washington state. And in a political environment where the too-secretive and powerful advocacy group American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) pushed “Stand Your Ground” laws in other states along with other “model bills” that benefit some corporate bottom lines or special interests like the NRA, it’s time for all of ALEC’s corporate sponsors to walk away from enabling or acquiescing in destructive laws that protect guns, not children.

It’s a tragedy that five years after Virginia Tech so little has changed. How many years must we wait until tragic headlines about school shootings, children dying, and people using the “shoot first and ask questions later” defense to take the law into their own hands go away? When will we finally get the courage to stand up as a nation and say enough to the deadly proliferation of guns and gun violence that endanger children’s and public safety?

When?