Sunday, January 23rd, 2011
ERICK ECKOLM, - The New York Times
Stephan: It won't be long now until we start reading about girls dying of septicemia resulting from back room abortions performed with coat hanger wires and high enema tubes -- you think I am kidding? These deaths will predictably be particularly frequent in the conservative states where sex education is debased, unprotected sexual activity is higher, as is the incidence of sexually transmitted diseases, and spousal physical abuse.
Once again ideology and theology will trump commonsense and decency and instead of dealing with unwanted pregnancies in a compassionate and humane way, we will simply absorb these Girls' deaths, the way we do those resulting from gun violence. We do so treasure our obsessions.
Newly energized by their success in November’s midterm elections, conservative legislators in dozens of states are mounting aggressive campaigns to limit abortions.
The lawmakers are drafting, and some have already introduced, bills that would ban most abortions at 20 weeks after conception, push women considering abortions to view a live ultrasound of the fetus, or curb insurance coverage, among other proposals.
In Florida and Kansas, legislators plan to reintroduce measures that were vetoed by previous governors but have the support of the new chief executives, like ultrasound requirements and more stringent regulation of late-term abortions.
‘I call on the Legislature to bring to my desk legislation that protects the unborn, establishing a culture of life in Kansas,
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Sunday, January 23rd, 2011
PAUL HARRIS, - The Guardian (U.K.)
Stephan: As many of you know I don't really use either Facebook or Twitter. I get about 250 emails a day, and try to answer as many as I can. I just don't have time for anything else. Psychologically, watching people tweeting all the time reminds me of why after several years making a living as a photographer I quit and put down my cameras. I realized I was not living my life, I was looking at it through a view finder, and that was not o.k. for my well-being.
NEW YORK — The way in which people frantically communicate online via Twitter, Facebook and instant messaging can be seen as a form of modern madness, according to a leading American sociologist.
‘A behaviour that has become typical may still express the problems that once caused us to see it as pathological,’ MIT professor Sherry Turkle writes in her new book, Alone Together, which is leading an attack on the information age.
Turkle’s book, published in the UK next month, has caused a sensation in America, which is usually more obsessed with the merits of social networking. She appeared last week on Stephen Colbert’s late-night comedy show, The Colbert Report. When Turkle said she had been at funerals where people checked their iPhones, Colbert quipped: ‘We all say goodbye in our own way.’
Turkle’s thesis is simple: technology is threatening to dominate our lives and make us less human. Under the illusion of allowing us to communicate better, it is actually isolating us from real human interactions in a cyber-reality that is a poor imitation of the real world.
But Turkle’s book is far from the only work of its kind. An intellectual backlash in America is calling for a rejection of some of […]
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Sunday, January 23rd, 2011
Stephan: People like Glenn Beck rant on about the Founders with no real sense of who they were, or what they thought. That he is now the principal historian of America's past for several million people in this country is a testament to how ignorant we have become as a people.
Here are some actual facts, and an update you might want to follow-up on. UPDATE: January 21- Given the conversation and controversy this piece has engendered, Greg Sargent over at The Washington Post put the piece to the test. You might be interested in what Greg discovered in his article, 'Newsflash: Founders favored government run health care.
The ink was barely dry on the PPACA when the first of many lawsuits to block the mandated health insurance provisions of the law was filed in a Florida District Court.
The pleadings, in part, read –
The Constitution nowhere authorizes the United States to mandate, either directly or under threat of penalty, that all citizens and legal residents have qualifying health care coverage.
State of Florida, et al. vs. HHS
It turns out, the Founding Fathers would beg to disagree.
In July of 1798, Congress passed – and President John Adams signed – ‘An Act for the Relief of Sick and Disabled Seamen.
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Sunday, January 23rd, 2011
ROBERT PARRY, - OENNews.com
Stephan: One of the 'big lies' the right specializes in is that the media is an organized juggernaut crushing them when, of course, the truth is quite otherwise. The media is overwhelmingly right wing.
Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, is Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq.
Keith Olbermann’s abrupt departure from MSNBC should be another wake-up call to American progressives about the fragile foothold that liberal-oriented fare now has for only a few hours on one corporate cable network.
Though Olbermann hosted MSNBC’s top-rated news show, ‘Countdown with Keith Olbermann,’ he disappeared from the network with only the briefest of good-byes. Certainly, the callous treatment of Olbermann by the MSNBC brass would never be replicated by Rupert Murdoch’s right-wing Fox News toward its media stars.
At Fox News, the likes of Bill O’Reilly, Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity have far greater leeway to pitch right-wing ideas and even to organize pro-Republican political events. Last November, Olbermann was suspended for two days for making donations to three Democratic candidates, including Arizona’s Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who was wounded in the Jan. 8 shooting in Tucson.
Now, with Olbermann’s permanent departure on Friday, the remainder of MSNBC’s liberal evening line-up, which also includes Rachel Maddow, Ed Schultz and Lawrence O’Donnell (who will fill Olbermann’s 8 p.m. slot), must face the reality that any sustained friction with management could mean the bum’s rush for them, too.
The liberal hosts also must remember that MSNBC experimented with liberal-oriented programming only after all other programming […]
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Saturday, January 22nd, 2011
DEBORAH ZABARENKO, - Reuters
Stephan: If you want to visit the Outerbanks of North Carolina, or Kitty Hawk, where humankind took flight, I'd plan it in the not too distant future. Parts of Malibu will also disappear.
'Sea level rise is expected to top 3 feet by 2100, largely due to melting from ice sheets,
Greenland’s ice sheet melted at a record rate in 2010, and this could be a major contributor to sea level rise in coming decades.
The ice in Greenland melted so much last year that it formed rivers and lakes on top of the vast series of glaciers that covers much of the big Arctic island, with waterfalls flowing through cracks and holes toward the bottom of the ice sheet. Take a look at video from Marco Tedesco of City College of New York, who is leading a project to study what factors affect ice sheet melting. The photo at left shows a camp by the side of a stream flowing from a lake – all of it on top of the ice sheet.
‘This past melt season was exceptional, with melting in some areas stretching up to 50 days longer than average,
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