Tuesday, August 4th, 2015
Adrienne LaFrance, - The Atlantic
Stephan: I see more and more of this because it is beginning to dawn on people who take the time to really look at the data that the world, including the United States, is going to be very different very shortly. Perhaps not in your lifetime but your children's assuredly.
The question raised by this report: Is any place safe from climate change, I think is going to become a matter of sovereign interest to millions.
Credit: NASA
Put simply: Climate change poses the threat of global catastrophe. The planet isn’t just getting hotter, it’s destabilizing. Entire ecosystems are at risk. The future of humanity is at stake.
Scientists warn that extreme weather will get worse and huge swaths of coastal cities will be submerged by ever-more-acidic oceans. All of which raises a question: If climate change continues at this pace, is anywhere going to be safe?
“Switzerland would be a good guess,” said James Hansen, the director of climate science at Columbia University’s Earth Institute. Hansen’s latest climate study warns that climate change is actually happening faster than computer models previously predicted. He and more than a dozen co-authors found that sea levels could rise at least 10 feet in the next 50 years. Slate points out that although the study isn’t yet peer-reviewed, Hansen is “known for being alarmist and also right.”
Okay, so. Switzerland might be a desirable place to live—certainly in general, but also as a way to avoid the effects of climate change—for a few reasons: It’s landlocked, which […]
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Tuesday, August 4th, 2015
Paul Buchheit, - Nation of Change
Stephan: This is a disturbing, but pretty accurate portrait of American society. It's not a very nice picture but it says one thing clearly: If those of us who value wellness don't become pro-active in support of that value we are complicit in our own destruction.
The U.S. has experienced “gush-up” rather than “trickle-down” with the message of “winner-take-all” wealth over the common good. The shame is on the adherents of unregulated free-market capitalism—Congress.
Credit: Nation of Change
America has experienced “gush-up” rather than “trickle-down.” The shame is on the adherents of unregulated free-market capitalism, who have assaulted us with the message of “winner-take-all” wealth over the common good. George Will perpetuates the neoliberal myth by quoting one of his idols, John Tamny: “Income inequality in a capitalist system is truly beautiful…it provides the incentive for creative people to gamble on new ideas..”But in the realm of reality, there are many reasons for embarrassment:1. Just Because They’re Rich, Billionaires are Trusted to Design Our Education and Health SystemsBill Gates leads the way here. He got rich in questionable ways from technology, and, as a result, […]
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Tuesday, August 4th, 2015
Casey Quinlan, - Think Progress
Stephan: The Theocratic Right is trying to define what is and isn't history in American textbooks. Here is the latest. This trend is only going to become more intense as an increasingly agitated Rightist White population becomes a smaller and smaller percentage of the total U.S. population.
Declaration of Independence, painting by John Trumbul
Credit: Library of Congress
After backlash from conservatives that AP guidelines released last year by the College Board were unpatriotic, the new AP standards, which are effective immediately, will use the phrase “American exceptionalism,” and includes the founding fathers, according to Newsweek. The College Board said it “previously assumed it wasn’t something it needed to spell out as part of what would be taught in an American history course.”
Some of the main criticisms of the guidelines, conservatives voiced, were less emphasis on the founding fathers and more emphasis on slavery. The guidelines also included earlier American history that included violence against Native Americans and mentioned the growing influence of social conservatives. There were also complaints that World War II was not emphasized enough, but military victories will be given more attention in the new standards. Mentions of slavery will be “roughly the same” as previous standards, according to Newsweek.
Conservatives also took issue […]
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Tuesday, August 4th, 2015
Kate Brannen , - The Daily Beast
Stephan: Here is a very good look at who really profits from war. It is a disgraceful story. Everything about these wars, except for the idealism and sense of service offered up by young Americans, is wrong.
The war against ISIS isn’t going so great, with the self-appointed terror group standing up to a year of U.S. airstrikes in Syria and Iraq.But that hasn’t kept defense contractors from doing rather well amidst the fighting. Lockheed Martin has received orders for thousands of more Hellfire missiles. AM General is busy supplying Iraq with 160 American-built Humvee vehicles, while General Dynamics is selling the country millions of dollars worth of tank ammunition.
SOS International, a family-owned business whose corporate headquarters are located in New York City, is one of the biggest players on the ground in Iraq, employing the most Americans in the country after the U.S. Embassy. On the company’s board of advisors: former Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz—considered to be one of the architects of the invasion of Iraq—and Paul Butler, a former special assistant to Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld.
The company, which goes by “SOSi,” says on its website that the contracts it’s been awarded for work in Iraq in 2015 have a total value of more than $400 million. They include a $40 million contract to provide everything from meals to perimeter security to emergency fire and medical services at Iraq’s Besmaya Compound, […]
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Sean McElwee, Research Associate - Demos - Salon
Stephan: The Founders didn't believe in universal suffrage in 18th century America, but they did believe the entirety of the defined voter class should be able to vote, an important distinction. And recognizing the world changes, they built in a very specific way to redefine the voting class. Gradually voting evolved and now, as this report describes, the Republican Party at the state level, and its drive to privatize what are properly public institutions, such as prisons, is actively attempting to subvert that evolution to bias the election outcome. This is real scumbaggery.
Governor Rick Scott
Credit: Eric Risberg
In 2014, voter turnout hit new lows for a midterm election: The most recent census data suggest turnout was a measly 41.9 percent. It’s likely that turnout was even lower, since the census data, while the best we have, is slightly inflated by the fact that people overreport socially positive behaviors like voting. Data that directly examines the number of votes counted suggest that turnout was around 36.6 percent of the voting-eligible population. But, while census data aren’t perfect, they allow us to examine turnout among different demographic groups (though even here, there are flaws). Looking at the data, I find a pretty stunning gender gap among one racial group: Black men are far less likely to vote than black women, and this is likely the legacy of mass incarceration.
The numbers are stark. In 2014, turnout among non-Hispanic white men was 45 percent, but among black men it was 36 percent (among Asian men it was 26 percent […]
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