Want Attention? Vote!

If you can't come up with any other reason to vote on November 4th - and if you are a minority or a woman whose right to vote was paid for by the literal blood and tears and deaths of those who fought to get it for you, so shame on you if you don't - then how about this:

Every time someone who is not white, male, straight, xian, conservative, repug and rich votes, somewhere a repug head explodes.

David Atkins at Hullabaloo:

It's that day again. If you're obsessive enough about politics to be reading this, you should probably already be registered to vote by mail (assuming you live in a state that allows it.) But if you're registered to vote at the polls, be sure to get out there and vote today.

If you believe that there really is value in seeing Democrats defeat Republicans--as I suspect most of you do--then it's very important that you vote. It's not just that your vote helps win elections today. When you vote, the Democratic Party knows that you're that much more reliable a voter. We don't have to spend as much money making sure you show up, and you won't get harassed as often. From a progressive warrior point of view, it also means that when there are intra-party primaries to pick the more progressive Democrat, the campaigns will fight harder over your vote because they know you're going to show up.

For the rest of you, this is why the people who say they're going to "punish" politicians by not voting are just deluded. You're not punishing anyone. You just fall off our radar. We stop caring about you at all.

SNIP

So guess what? When a bunch of Democrats who voted in 2008 decided to just not show up at the polls in 2010 because they weren't inspired or whatever, the Democratic Party didn't say to itself "oh, we should be more progressive and inspirational!" The Party said, "well, those people can't be counted on. Let's worry about the more conservative senior voters who are on the fence."

If you want to make the Democratic Party care more about progressives and progressive issues, withholding your vote isn't how to do it. That only weakens your hand.

The biggest way to make an impact is to be both loud and reliable. Particularly when it comes to voting in Democratic primaries. Make sure the party knows you vote, that you'll vote for Democrats generally, but that any individual politician may or may not get your vote--and that you'll vote against them in a primary if it comes to that.

Those are the people who scare politicians. Not the non-voters.

So get out there and vote. Because you know what we call the sort of person who votes in a June off-year midterm primary? Someone we have to pay attention to.

Yep.  This is why I take every opportunity to tell my local Democratic Party pooh-bahs that you bet your ass I'm voting for Alison Lundergan Grimes, BUT that I'm going to have to borrow a Level-5 Hazmat suit to do it, and they better not ever forget it.

Digby:

So let's be clear. People despise Congress and its inability to solve problems. But they absolutely hate Republicans. Democrats aren't exactly sweethearts, but a majority do have a favorable impression of the party.

If everyone voted, Republicans would be bounced out of influence. But people don't vote.

The problem isn't convincing more people. The problem isn't Fox News or the right-wing media machine or anything like that. Most people aren't fooled.

The problem is getting the people who do see the world the right way to vote. In the parlance of campaign operatives, it's a turnout problem, not a persuasion problem.

So yes, because liberals stay home and don't vote, the electorate is conservative.  Democrats run as conservatives to get their votes, because conservatives are the ones voting.  We're not.

If liberals don't give a damn about voting in midterms,why should Democrats give a damn about liberals who don't vote?

Last word to Zandar, who nails it:  

Abdication of voting is cowardice, plain and simple.  If you make the political decision to stay home and not vote in order to punish politicians, you are a coward, and you deserve no voice at all in our political process.

Too many people have fought and died for women, African-Americans, Hispanic and Latino, Asian, and other minorities to be able to vote.  Walking away from that is not only irrational, despite what Gary Segura says, but suicidal.  If you feel that you are voiceless, why make yourself voiceless by not voting?

I can respect voting for the other candidate in order to punish the one you're angry with.  That's at least still exercising the right people bled for.  But to stay home and do nothing?  Insanity.  You only assure that you will not be taken seriously in the future and that your concerns will be ignored.

Why should politicians care about those who do not vote at all? 

Hate Crime

ummagumma.co:


(Source: atheist-me)

The Schools They Want

ummagumma.co:

(via nonplussedbyreligion-deactivate)

How Religion Corrodes Civil Society

That religion is a net negative to society is a given among atheists, but now Andy Norman at Free Inquiry has made the effort to explain why and how.

If the gods were not passengers on the earliest human attempts to resolve differences with words, they soon hitched a ride. Ever since, religious pronouncements have been part of public discourse. Such talk can induce feelings of religious solidarity, and this reinforces the impression that religion is conducive to moral and civil order. In fact, though, religious talk is profoundly corrosive of civil society. By quietly subverting expectations of rational accountability, religious talk undermines reason’s power to reconcile, civilize, and humanize us. In this article, I mean to illuminate the mechanism by which religions compromise our prospects for truly civilized existence. Protecting public discourse from the deleterious effects of religious piety, it turns out, is a job that cannot be left to the so-called “wall of separation” between church and state, because the U.S. Constitution’s anti-establishment clause is woefully inadequate to the task; a considerably higher and sturdier barrier is needed. The time has come for a more far-reaching principle, one that insulates politics from all forms of unaccountable talk. The solution lies in the promotion and collective embrace of an idea central to humanism—the idea that each of us has a profound moral and civic obligation to yield to the force of the better reason.

SNIP

He concludes:

Should the introduction of religious pronouncements into public discourse, then, be considered a punishable offense? No. I am not suggesting that we introduce legal or constitutional restrictions on religious speech. Indeed, the right to speak freely—even in a religious modality—should be viewed as fundamental. It doesn’t follow, though, that we are obliged to listen to such speech or treat it as germane to public policy issues, still less that we give it “equal time.” A truly civilized people will regard the insertion of theology into politics as faintly ridiculous—as worthy of bemused disdain. (And sometimes worthy of ridicule, the ridiculous being—by definition—that which calls for ridicule.) Such a people will enforce rational accountability with politeness and good humor but also with seriousness, vigor, laughter, sarcasm, and irony. They will take a stand for the force of the better reason and recognize that doing so will sometimes offend the delicate sensibilities of the faithful. The making of a truly sustainable and prosperous civilization requires that we renew our collective commitment to rational accountability.

A Religious Solution

ummagumma.co:

QOTD: Ebola Epidemic

From the Nation:

“This isn’t a natural disaster,” international health crusader Paul Farmer told The Washington Post. “This is the terrorism of poverty.”

Religious Morality

ummagumma.co:


(Source: kjdreamer, via alecologia-deactivated20120803)

"Nobody who works full-time should ever have to raise a family in poverty."

And no rich person should get tax cuts while anybody does raise a family in poverty, Mr. President.

(Technical issues with embedding video.  View it here.)

Full transcript here.

Yet More Proof Austerity Kills, But That Won 't Stop the Repugs

Facts and reality have never stopped them from pushing their kill-the-poor agenda before; why should they change now?

Seth D. Michaels at TPM:

Unfortunately for them, all of the arguments they like to deploy in favor of safety-net cuts are collapsing.

The CBO announced today that the federal budget deficit has fallen to a five-year low:

It's the smallest deficit recorded since 2008. FY2014 was the fifth consecutive year the deficit declined as a percentage of GDP. It is now an estimated 2.8% of GDP, a percentage that puts it below the average of the past 40 years.

There are many reasons for this, both good and bad - but the biggest takeaway is that deficit reduction is a consequence of economic growth, rather than a prerequisite for growth, as politicians of both parties have spent so much time arguing.

One result is that politicians are spending less time talking about the deficit, which in itself is a positive outcome, because it knocks away one of the first arguments for pointlessly cruel safety-net cuts.

Indeed, the “pivot to deficits” that happened before economic recovery was even underway has hurt the economy more in the long term. The last few years of showdowns, shutdowns and compromise cuts have been a huge wasted opportunity:

Austerity has also hurt more than we thought — so much so that it might even be self-defeating. That's right: cutting spending in a slump might actually make debt problems worse.

The rush to trim deficits led to lost jobs, cuts to food stamps, and the end of extended unemployment benefits, long before the recovery

So you’ll be less likely to hear arguments about a future debt crisis that needs to be imminently solved with cuts to the major social safety net programs; instead, you’re more likely to hear what I’ll call the “unleash” argument: the notion that we need overall cuts to the size and role of government in order to jump-start our economy.

No, you won't. You'll hear them even more loudly and effectively.  The austerity hysterics never quit.

QOTD: Useless Air Strikes

Kevin Drum:

But guess what? The Iraqi army is still incompetent. America's allies still have their own agendas and don't care about ours. Air campaigns still aren't enough on their own to stop a concerted ground attack. This is the way things are. There are no magic wands. If you want quick results against ISIS, then speak up and tell us you want to send in 100,000 troops. If you're not willing to do that, then you have to accept that lots of innocent people are going to die without the United States being able to offer much help. Make your choice now.

Advice for Alison From Somebody Who Knows Coal Far Better Than She Ever Will

Run on progressive solutions to economic problems, and stop running away from the Democratic Party.

George Zornick at The Nation:

The midterm elections are twenty-seven days away, and AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka has been keeping a relentless road schedule campaigning for Democratic candidates. One thing he’d like to see more of: talk about basic economic fairness issues.

“I think more populism, or more focus on the economic issues, would be helpful,” he told a small group of reporters at the AFL-CIO headquarters in Washington, DC. “I think it would help drive turnout as well. I think the candidates that focus only on negative things, doing everything negative, have a real danger of having their base go flat.”

Trumka said that in talking to workers on the campaign trail, he frequently confronts a problem that has bedeviled Democrats in many past midterms: apathy. Union members wonder why it matters if they vote.

“They say that at the plant gate, at doors, on the telephone,” Trumka said. “I try to explain to them that the economy is not like the weather. Those that are in power, and those that want to be in power, want us to believe the economy is like the weather—there’s nothing you can do about it, so don’t bother. But the economy…it’s nothing but a bunch of rules. And those rules decide the winners and losers, and those rules are made by the men and women we elect. That’s why this election is important.”

"What I Want People in America to Understand About Ebola Is That It Is Not a Threat to Them"

A must-read from Rebekah Schultz, via TPM, writing directly from Liberia, the heart of the epidemic in Africa:

What I want people in America to understand is that Ebola is not a threat to them because America has hospitals. It has doctors. Americans aren’t asked to take their sick loved ones back to the rented room they share with five other people. They have more than plastic shopping bags to protect their hands from contamination.

Read the whole amazing thing.

It Works

ummagumma.co:

merica | 2 notes

Grimes Hands Mitch A Double-Digit Victory

As all 679,370 Kentucky Democratic voters who voted for Barack Obama in 2012 shake their heads and make plans to stay the fuck home on Nov. 4.

Congrats, Alison: You just made the single stupidest political move of the 2014 cycle.

Sam Youngman at the Herald:

Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes has refused seven times in the past seven days to say whether or not she voted for President Barack Obama for president.

Grimes was asked three times by a Herald-Leader reporter after an event on Oct. 2 if she voted for Obama, ignoring the question and turning her back on the reporter asking it.

On Thursday, Grimes refused four times to tell The Courier-Journal's editorial board if she voted for Obama.

"You know, this election, it isn't about the president," Grimes said when first asked if she voted for Obama in 2008 and 2012.

After being asked the third time, Grimes responded: "I was actually a delegate for Hillary Clinton, and I think that Kentuckians know I'm a Clinton Democrat through and through. I respect the sanctity of the ballot box, and I know that the members of this editorial board do as well."

Yeah, why would you ever want to claim support for the President who brought affordable health care to hundreds of thousands of Kentuckians?

Why Conservatives Hate History

The facts destroy their mythology, that's why.

Sean McElwee at Salon:

American’s right wing, you see, is terrified of history because it is always sentimentalizing it. Many of its arguments rely on a feeling of nostalgia for “good old days,” that appeals almost exclusively to aging whites. That means that a more accurate history, one that considers groups that are traditionally marginalized — women, people of color, Native Americans, immigrants and the poor — don’t necessarily sit that well. Their stories, the stories of the downtrodden, crush the false narrative that many conservatives like to imagine — that of a idyllic past marred by the New Deal, women’s liberation and civil rights.

In Denver, a school board recently tried to limit the historical curriculum to only events that would, “promote citizenship, patriotism, essentials and benefits of the free-market system, respect for authority and respect for individual rights.” Needless to say, much of American history — the Great Depression, the Trail of Tears and the internment of Japanese-Americans — would, under those parameters, need to obfuscated. The Republican National Committee, meanwhile, has issued a statement calling the new Advanced Placement U.S. History standards ”radically revisionist.” But conservatives may want to take the plank out of their own eye before examining the speck in their neighbors. Here are the most important distortions of history the right has promoted recently.

SNIP

There was a time when conservatism was a philosophy concerned primarily with wrestling with and understanding tradition and the limits of human reason and ability. However, these days conservatism is reactionary — it has been imbued with racism, conspiratorial thinking and a hyper-individualistic capitalism. Instead of questioning the limits of reason, it has jettisoned it. In its place remains free market dogma, bad Biblical interpretation and a sentimentalized past. In place of reason and argument, most conservatives rely on fantasy and reminiscence. Allowing conservatives to redefine the past will be incredibly harmful.

Austerity Spreads Ebola

Just another way that repugs and their conservatard budget cuts literally kill people.

Steve M:

According to The Guardian, some Spanish health care workers warned at the time of an earlier repatriation of an infected missionary that Spain might not be ready for Ebola because of austerity-linked health-care cutbacks:

In August, 75-year-old Spanish missionary Miguel Pajares died in Madrid after being repatriated from Liberia five days earlier. He was the first patient in the current, fast-spreading outbreak to be evacuated to Europe for treatment.

Pajares' repatriation to Madrid prompted concern among health professionals who said that Spanish hospitals were not adequately equipped to handle the Ebola outbreak. Amyts, a trade union that represents physicians, called the repatriation risky, and its president, Daniel Bernabeu, asked Spanish news agency Efe if "anyone could guarantee 100% that the virus wouldn’t escape".

The Rational Continent

ummagumma.co:

Flintstone Truthers Still Demanding KY Taxpayers Subsidize Discrimination

The surprise here is not that the creation museum assholes are violating the law - given that the Supreme Court has ruled that freakazoids are above the law, they'll probably get away with it - but that Kentucky officials are actually calling them on it.

Linda Blackford at the Herald:

A controversial plan to award $18 million in state tax incentives to a religious-themed amusement park in Grant County that plans to feature a life-size Noah's Ark could be in jeopardy because of potential hiring discrimination.

In a series of letters with Ark Encounter LLC, Kentucky's top tourism official said the preliminary tax credits are stalled because of language in the park's job application that requires "salvation testimony" and a "Creation belief statement."

SNIP

The state was notified of the posting by Americans United for the Separation of Church and State.

And you should be giving money to Americans United right now, because they're the only ones keeping both eyes on the arkpark motherfuckers.

"The commonwealth does not provide incentives to any company that discriminates on the basis of religion, and we will not make any exception for Ark Encounter LLC," Stewart wrote.

The over-under on the number of Kentucky General Assembly candidates who will be condemning that policy in loud voices between now and November 4 is all of them.

Supreme Court: Only Corporations Have Religious Freedom That Trump the Establishment Clause

Individuals who flout the separation of church and state, however, are shit out of luck.

TPM:

The Supreme Court has rejected the appeal of an Ohio public school science teacher who was fired for promoting the theory of creationism and refusing to remove religious materials from his classroom.

The justices on Monday let stand an Ohio Supreme Court ruling that found the Mount Vernon school district had grounds to fire John Freshwater in 2011 for insubordination for keeping religious books and a poster of a praying president.

The state court said the district infringed on Freshwater's First Amendment rights by ordering him to remove his personal Bible from his desk, but found he was insubordinate for keeping the other items.

Freshwater's attorney had argued that the firing violated the teacher's free speech rights.

Google Back Away From Evil; Gives Security Guards Real Jobs

No, Labor ain't dead yet.

Lauren C. Williams at Think Progress:

Google plans to bring on hundreds of security guards as own employees in a move that could help level the tech industry’s growing income disparity woes in Silicon Valley.

Instead of using third-party contracting services, Google will hire more than 200 security guards and give them the same benefits and perks as other Google employees, including retirement benefits, health insurance and parental leave, The Wall Street Journal reported. Google will continue using current security contractor, Security Industry Specialists, Inc., as the company transitions into building its in-house security force.
The landmark move follows several wage disputes in Silicon Valley, most notably among the tech industry’s invisible workforce — the cooks, janitors and security officers who help keep the businesses humming.

Many tech companies, including Apple, use contracting companies that provide security and cleaning services that don’t pay workers enough to live in surrounding area — even though they make up a sizable chunk of the workforce. There are upwards of 3,000 security guards working in Silicon Valley who make around $14 an hour on average.

But a family of four with two working adults needs to make at self-sufficiency standard of about $19 per hour. Additionally, those low-wage service workers are predominantly people of color, with Asian or Pacific Islanders and Latinos making up almost 60 percent of the workforce and African Americans comprising another 13 percent. Only 26 percent are white.

Religiousness by County

Hmm.  Eastern Kentucky appears to be less religious than the rest of the state, which is exactly the opposite of the conventional wisdom.  I guess if you've got a handful of snake handlers, that's enough to give you a reputation for general stupidity.

ummagumma.co:


(Source: iamnineonefour)

Shame on Berea

Of all the small towns in Kentucky, the one with the history of defiant diversity, educating African-Americans against the law before the Civil War, the one with the national reputation for creativity and open-arms welcome to all, the one you would think would be eager to add LGBT residents to its non-discrimination law is Berea.

But no.  And good grief, the bullshit and lies.

Karla Ward at the Herald:

The Berea City Council on Tuesday rejected an ordinance that would have prohibited discrimination against gay, lesbian and transgender people in housing, employment and public accommodation.The measure failed on a vote of 5 to 3.

"I am absolutely for fairness and equality for all people, but I cannot support this ordinance," Councilwoman Violet Farmer said before the vote.

She said she feared expensive legal battles and situations in which "the city would be pitted against local businesses or individuals," and she questioned the need for "another protected class."

SNIP

Councilwoman Diane Kerby, however, later said that "just because it's divisive doesn't mean we shouldn't bring it up."

"If there are any of us who do not have equal rights, that affects all of us," she said. "We're talking about basic human rights ... the right to earn a living and the right to have a place to live."

The council chambers at the Police and Municipal Building were filled to standing room only, and scores more filled a former service station next door to watch the deliberations via television.

SNIP

"I really hope we can find a way to move on together, if the town is as special as we say we are," Councilman Virgil Burnside, who supported the ordinance, said after the vote was taken.

If the measure had passed, Berea would have been the eighth Kentucky city to adopt a fairness ordinance, joining Danville, Frankfort, Lexington, Louisville, Morehead, Covington and Vicco, in Perry County.

When Reality Proves You a Liar, Lie About Reality

Liberals suffer from the curse of honesty.  We just can't get away with the blatant lies that repugs and conservatards spew so blithely and effectively.  Maybe we just respect reality too much.

David Atkins at Hullabaloo:

Conservatives have the problem that reality continues to be punishing to their worldview. Abstinence education doesn’t prevent teen pregnancy; tax cuts don’t generate revenue; climate change is real; supply-side economics doesn’t create sustainable growth; etc.

Their usual answer to be battered by the way the world actually works, is to spend oodles of money telling voters convenient fantasies. Dynamic scoring is just another way of inserting their self-serving and misguided wishful thinking into the reality-based budget system.

Priorities

From Firedoglake:

- Juan Cole: “Congress Cut $8.7 Billion in Food Stamps in Same Year We’ll Spend $22 Billion to Fight Islamic State”

Tax the RIch Out of Existence

They know exactly what's happening, and every minute that goes by without us attacking them with torches and pitchforks just makes them richer and safer.

Digby:

That's from a week-long series at Mother Jones about the effects of income inequality.  

I thought this one was particularly interesting:

That proverbial rising tide is really a giant wave. The wealthy are comfortably riding it on their multi-million dollar yachts while the rest of us are strapped to the keel. Sure, you could say we rise with that wave too but we're still under the water.

Mothers

ummagumma.co:

Turnout, Turnout, TURNOUT

Yeah yeah, Alison's up by two points. You know what I don't see?  I don't see my local Democratic Party knocking on my door to make sure that I am going to acquire the Level-5 Hazmat suit necessary for me to vote for that repug-lite DINO in four weeks.

Not one sniff of an effort to turn out Democratic voters. Gigantic cards every day from the Turtle, but nothing from the Big Dog's Best Girl.

This isn't a U.S. Senate campaign; it's a bad joke.

Meanwhile, the Kentucky House is on the verge of falling to the repugs. That will be a catastrophe.

And when repug Jaime Comer wins the gubernatorial election next year - or rather, when Jack Loser Conway throws away another election any Democratic candidate could win - we will be completely fucked.

Exceptionally Exploitative

As the survivor of a southern public school system whose idea of teaching the Civil War War of Northern Aggression was repeated showings of "Gone With the Wind," a movie I have ever since hated with the heat of a thousand supernovas, let me just say that anyone who thinks this country ended slavery "voluntarily" is not only wrong, not only not fit to sit on a public school board, but should be stripped of her rights to vote, drive, and speak to actual human beings.

Erik Loomis at Lawyers, Guns and Money:

In the recent battles over the new AP U.S. History standards, standards that center nothing more than the standard narrative of most American historians in 2014, one of the right-wing critiques is that they don’t celebrate American exceptionalism, while instead instilling in our young people that they should question authority (the horror!). Among the many problems with these assertions is that the idea of American exceptionalism in service of whatever right-wing agenda is currently popular means forgetting the many ways that exceptionalism has operated in the past. Kevin Levin:

Part of the criticism of the revised AP US History curriculum revolves around the assumption that it undercuts and even contradicts a narrative of America’s Exceptionalism. I don’t believe it does and I base such a conclusion on the fact that I’ve read through it. More accurately, it doesn’t say anything one way or the other. I suspect that the vast majority of critics have yet to read it through.

What I’ve never understood, however, is if some people expect me to teach American history through such a lens, whose understanding of the concept should I teach?

Baptist’s slaveowners fully embraced capitalism. Despite the Panic of 1837 slavery resulted in enormous profits throughout the first half of the nineteenth century and helped to push the nation west on its course of “Manifest Destiny.” Americans celebrated this expansion and the wealth created as a sign of its exceptionalism. I suspect that this is one of the reasons why there is such a need to argue that American slavery was not profitable and that it was on the decline by the eve of the Civil War. Better to see it as positioned in sharp opposition from the kind of post-Civil War capitalist surge than as the engine that pushed it forward. We should ignore the fact that it was John Calhoun’s theory of “Due Process” that was later embraced by pro-big-business legal thinkers during the Industrial Revolution.

No, no, stop with that version of American exceptionalism. We just need to teach that America is awesome. Enough said.

Morals

ummagumma.co:

Music

Mitchie-poo Exposed

No, not that kind of exposed.  The corruption kind of exposed that won't make any repugs vote for Alison, but might get a few disappointed Democratic voters off their asses and to the polls Nov. 4.

Down With Tyranny:

The Cincinnati Enquirer is the dominant newspaper for northern Kentucky and publishes a Kentucky edition every day. This morning’s Mitch McConnell exposé by Curtis Ellis and Harry Wu isn’t only going to be read by folks in Ohio. And the basic premise that Ellis and Wu are making— that McConnell has enriched himself while in the U.S. Senate through his dealings with Communist China— aren’t new to Kentuckians. Even here at DWT we’ve been covering McConnell’s funny business with China regularly since 2007.

Read the whole thing.

All They Really Want Taught Is Bibble and Obediance to Corporate Overlords

Digby:

This is why you need teacher's unions and tenure. When people like this take over school boards (and this isn't the first time) they will happily fire anyone who teaches evolution and refuses to teach the kids that the US "voluntarily ended slavery."

Compare and Contrast

Divine Irony:

liberalsarecool:

Conservatism as policy is a failure. #abstinence

(Source: adeyami)

Say Well Done

ummagumma.co:

Hitler the Creationist

Yeah, suck it, freakazoids.

PZ Myers checks the translating skills of the motherfuckers claiming Hitler was an evolutionist, and finds them wanting.

But that was a little odd — I’ve read a translation of Hitler’s evil little book, and I didn’t see anything about evolutionary biology in there — there was a lot of “Nature” and “Creator” and “God” sprinkled throughout, though. So I had to go look, and yes, I found that quote in this translation (pdf). It’s in chapter XI, Race and People, and it’s full of anthropomorphization of natural processes and what I would call clearly anti-evolutionary sentiment.

SNIP

That’s an idea that would fit right in at the Creation “Museum”, but not in any biology text.

He concludes:

Yeah, sorry, Christians, but Hitler was expressing Christian and Creationist ideas in Mein Kampf. You’re free to claim that he was corrupting and distorting Christian ideals (although I could argue with that, too), but to claim he was using evolutionary biology to advance his racist ideas is simply ludicrous.

Absurd

ummagumma.co:

QOTD

Charlie Pierce:

It doesn't matter how many people vote for the anti-gravity party, you still can't flap your arms and fly to the moon.

NOW Can We Outlaw Tasers?

Also make sure any cop who thinks this is appropriate behavior is fired immediately and barred from every owning a weapon of any kind.

Karoli at Crooks and Liars:

What the hell? The days of friendly Officer Pete and career day fun are long gone. Now the cops bring tasers to teach kids what happens when they disobey.

A 10-year-old boy attending a Tularosa, N.M., Intermediate School’s Career Day expected it to be fun and educational, but instead he ended up in the emergency room.

The boy, identified as R.D., blacked out after receiving 50,000 volts of electricity when struck by a police officer’s Taser gun.

Rachel Higgins, a guardian appointed by the court to protect the child’s privacy filed a lawsuit Oct. 26 in 1st Judicial District Court in Santa Fe County against Police Officer Chris Webb and the New Mexico Department of Public Safety on behalf of R.D., claiming that Webb fired his electronic control weapon at the boy on May 4, 2012.

Webb has been charged with battery, failure to render emergency medical care, unreasonable seizure and excessive force.

Higgins will appear in court to represent the boy because the family members live in a small town and do not want to reveal their identities.

The lawsuit claims police officers drove their patrol cars onto the intermediate school campus, where Webb asked a group of boys which one would like to clean his patrol unit.

R.D. raised his hand to say he did not want to clean the police officer’s car.
Webb then said, according to the lawsuit, “Let me show what happens to people who do not listen to the police.” He then “shot his Taser gun at the boy’s chest,” said the family’s attorney Shannon Kennedy of the Kennedy Law Firm of Albuquerque.

I hope the judge or jury awards the kid millions and this cop goes to jail for a very, very long time. There is no excuse -- zero -- for that kind of sadistic behavior toward a kid, or anyone else for that matter.

See also. 

Extremists

ummagumma.co:

"We do better when the middle class does better."

No, Mr. President: During the middle-class economy of 1935 to 1975, we all did better when we all did better, but that was because the rich paid their fair share so that the poor could reach the middle class.  Today, only the rich do well, and only taxing them out of existing and lifting the poor out of poverty will save the middle class.



Full transcript here.

How Many Dead Women Will It Take to Slake the Misogynists' Thirst?

All of them.

Kevin Drum:

We are rapidly approaching a point in half the states in America where abortions will be effectively available only to rich women. They'll just jet off to clinics in California or New York if they have to. Non-rich women, who can't afford that, will be forced into motherhood whether they like it or not. At which point conservatives, as usual, will suddenly lose all interest in them except as props for their rants about lazy welfare cheats.

No, non-rich women will NOT be forced into motherhood.  They will be forced into botched, back-alley illegal abortions, which should just be called "Gosnells" from now on.  The will end up sterile from punctures and infections if they're lucky; dead if they're not.  Or maybe imprisoned for life on bogus "murder" charges.

And no, conservatives will never lose interest in women who have sex outside the "Dugger rules." The maimed, dead and imprisoned ones will be held up forever as proof that only Dugger-rule sex is safe.

UPDATE:  And the states are already doing it.

How Many Dead Women Will It Take to Slake the Misogynists' Thirst?

All of them.

Kevin Drum:

We are rapidly approaching a point in half the states in America where abortions will be effectively available only to rich women. They'll just jet off to clinics in California or New York if they have to. Non-rich women, who can't afford that, will be forced into motherhood whether they like it or not. At which point conservatives, as usual, will suddenly lose all interest in them except as props for their rants about lazy welfare cheats.

No, non-rich women will NOT be forced into motherhood.  They will be forced into botched, back-alley illegal abortions, which should just be called "Gosnells" from now on.  The will end up sterile from punctures and infections if they're lucky; dead if they're not.  Or maybe imprisoned for life on bogus "murder" charges.

And no, conservatives will never lose interest in women who have sex outside the "Dugger rules." The maimed, dead and imprisoned ones will be held up forever as proof that only Dugger-rule sex is safe.

Joking

ummagumma.co:

(Source: thehackerformerlyknownas4chan)

Contain the Border Threat

Rude Pundit nails it:

Now that the first Ebola case in the United States has been diagnosed, we know that the infection of the entire nation is imminent. Because of this very real possibility, it is time to build a fence around the entirety of Texas, all 3029 miles, in order to keep the rest of the country safe from diseased Texans.

SNIP

Some Americans may fault this strategy for being too draconian. However, should one Ebola-carrying Texan walk into the middle of Times Square or the National Mall and sneeze, Americans will wonder why we didn't do more to stop Texas.

Read the whole brilliant thing.

And while you're there, catch this one, too.  

Millions in New Revenue by Legalizing Pot

Marijuana could be the closest thing to an economic free lunch as it gets, second only to industrial hemp in Kentucky.

If only the drug and tax hysterics would shut the fuck up.

David Atkins at Hullabaloo:

If you want to raise revenue, look to CO and WA

It’s almost as if legalization were a no brainer:

If a pair of new government forecasts prove true, Washington and Colorado would see more than $800 million in extra revenue over the next few years thanks to marijuana sales. At the least. The estimates, both released in recent days, differ greatly in what they predict and over what time period. But together they show that the plant, now legal to purchase in both states, could generate at least $811.2 million for the trailblazing states before 2020. Washington can expect $637 million by 2019, while Colorado can expect $174.5 million through the fiscal year that ends in 2017, according to state estimates. Such estimates are, of course, difficult to make as there is no precedence for what is being forecast: Marijuana for recreational use has never before been sold legally.

And that doesn’t even get into the cost savings from avoiding socially destructive jail time for the “offense” of marijuana possession.

It’s only a matter of time before the entire country sees the light on this one. Everyone will then wonder what took us so long, even as conservatives look around and say “who, me?”

Kentucky's Top Polluters

James Bruggers at the Courier:

Power plants top Kentucky's biggest sources of climate pollution, according to just-released data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

There's no surprise there.

But a prominent chemical plant in Louisville's Rubbertown area -- Dupont Louisville Works -- is among the top ten biggest climate polluters in Kentucky for its emissions of hydrofluorocarbons, which the EPA say are actually more potent than carbon dioxide when it comes to heating up the atmosphere.

The EPA released its fourth year of Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program data, detailing greenhouse gas pollution trends and emissions broken down by industrial sector, geographic region and individual facilities. In 2013, reported emissions from large industrial facilities nationwide were 20 million metric tons higher than the prior year, or 0.6 percent, driven largely by an increase in coal use for power generation, the agency said.

That figure intrigued me because conventional wisdom is that we've been burning more natural gas (which has less impact on the climate) and less coal.

No Right to Water

This is the logical conclusion of a country and a world run by the repug super-rich: only the repug super-rich are human.  Only the repug super-rich are worthy of the basic human right of drinking water.

Crooks and Liars:

Rika Christensen
Posted with permission from Americans Against the Tea Party

U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Steven Rhodes decided that the poor do not have a right to water, and allowed the water shutoffs in Detroit to continue. The ruling comes in response to a plea to ban the shutoffs for six months. In the land of the allegedly free, this is just one more way to punish the poor for having the audacity to be poor.

According to The Detroit News, Judge Rhodes worried that turning water service back on to customers who can't pay would hit Detroit's revenues too hard. "The last thing Detroit needs is this to hit its revenues," he said. He appears to be concerned about the overall welfare of one of the country's poorest metropolises, which would be commendable, except a city like Detroit can't get back on track by punishing its poorest residents.

Detroit's downfall came as the result of several different factors. It's a very complex problem that does not have one single solution (even the get-more-money-now solution won't work well for very long). So, by all means, punish the poor for being poor and for being unable to find halfway decent work in a city that doesn't have any halfway decent work anymore.

This is about more than whether punishing these people is in the interests of the greater good, though. Judge Rhodes actually issued a ruling in direct opposition to the U.N.'s position on water as a human right. According to The Huffington Post, the U.N. officially declared water to be a human right, and U.N. experts called Detroit's water shutoffs a violation of human rights, because these people genuinely don't have the ability to pay. Catarina de Albuquerque, the special Rapporteur on the right to safe water and sanitation, specifically said:

"Disconnections due to non-payment are only permissible if it can be shown that the resident is able to pay but is not paying. In other words, when there is genuine inability to pay, human rights simply forbids disconnections."

Free!

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(via artoftheunbeliever)

Call the Crazy Motherfuckers Crazy Motherfuckers Already. Before It's Too Late.

Do it, Alison. Nobody who thinks Mitch McConnell is not fucking insane is ever going to vote for you, no matter how many innocent animals or EPA inspectors you kill.

Charlie Pearce:

The great failing of the Democratic party over the past three-and-a-half decades has been the party's failure to take political advantage of the obvious prion disease that has afflicted the Republican party since it first ate all the monkey-brains in the mid-1970's. Whether this was out of cowardice, incompetence, or an overly optimistic view of the inherent sanity of the electorate, is no longer an issue. The failure to make the Republican crazee the Republican party's standing public identity has encouraged the increased spread, and the increased virulence of the prion disease, with disastrous consequences for the rest of us. Why, in the name of god, would you not call Michele Bachmann crazy? Because it might offend the people who vote for her? It's supposed to offend those people. Those people beg to be offended, and, by doing so, you at least inject into the discussion the notion that the Republican party has thrown its marbles gleefully to the four winds. A few elections later, that may become the general opinion. After all, the Permanent Republican Majority wasn't built in a day.

How Are Charter Schools Terrible? In Every Way

Bills to force impoverished Kentucky public schools to pay rich corporations and churches to run charter schools are being drafted for the 2104 General Assembly as you read this.

It is impossible to overstate the catastrophe charter schools represent for school children, for public school systems, for communities, and for local and state economies.

Kentucky is one of the few states still holding out against these thieving motherfuckers.  Don't let what is happening to other states happen here.

Gordon Lafer at The Nation:

This fall, New Orleans’s Recovery School District became the country’s first all-charter district, completing a process begun following Hurricane Katrina, when the Bush administration refused to pay for reopening public schools, instead providing $45 million for charter schools to take their place. While these schools are publicly funded, the local community has no control over their curriculum or quality because they are not overseen by any democratically elected school board.

If corporate lobbyists have their way, the New Orleans model will be replicated across the country, with Netflix CEO and charter booster Reed Hastings leading the call to “get rid of school boards.”

Sixty years after Brown v. Board of Education, a new type of segregation is spreading across the urban landscape. The US Chamber of Commerce, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), Americans for Prosperity and their legislative allies are promoting an ambitious, two-pronged agenda for poor cities: replace public schools with privately run charter schools, and replace teachers with technology.

What was accomplished by a hurricane in New Orleans is being pursued elsewhere by legislation. The formula is simple: use standardized tests to declare dozens of poor schools “persistently failing”; put these under the control of a special unelected authority; and then have that authority replace the public schools with charters. In 2011, Tennessee and Michigan created special districts to take over low-scoring schools; in both cases, the superintendent was specifically authorized to replace public schools with charters. This year, Wisconsin legislators considered a bill that bypassed the middle step and simply required that low-performing public schools be replaced with privately run charters. Since test scores are primarily a function of poverty, it’s no surprise that 80 percent of the Tennessee schools targeted for privatization are in Memphis, or that the Michigan and Wisconsin bills focus, respectively, on Detroit and Milwaukee.

Recently, corporate-backed reform advocates have begun insisting that no public authority whatsoever be responsible for running schools. Neerav Kingsland, the former CEO of New Schools for New Orleans, warns that superintendents “must not succumb to the temptation to improve schools through better direct operation. Rather, [they] must humbly acknowledge that a marketplace of school operators will…out-perform even the best direct-run system.” Hastings similarly suggests that the role of elected school boards be limited to “bringing to town more and more charter-school networks. Sort of like a Chamber of Commerce would to develop business.”

Thus, what “slum clearance” did for the real-estate industry in the 1960s and ’70s, high-stakes testing will do for the charter industry: wipe away large swaths of public schools, enabling private operators to grow not school by school, but twenty or thirty schools at a time.

This is not an evidence-based policy; research shows that replacing public schools with privately run charters will, in itself, do nothing to improve education. But this hasn’t dampened the vigor of charter-school boosters.

Corporate lobbyists are increasingly promoting a type of charter school that places an emphasis on technology instead of human teachers. One of the exemplars of this model is Rocketship Education, based in Silicon Valley but with contracts to open schools in Milwaukee, Memphis, Nashville and Washington, DC. Rocketship’s model is based on four principles. First, the company cuts costs by eliminating teachers. Starting in kindergarten, students spend about one-quarter of their class time in teacherless computer labs, using video-game-based math and reading applications. The company has voiced hopes of increasing digital instruction to as much as 50 percent of student learning time.

Second, Rocketship relies on a corps of young, inexperienced, low-cost teachers. The turnover rate is dramatic—nearly 30 percent last year—but the company pays Teach for America to supply a steady stream of replacements.

Third, the school has narrowed its curriculum to a near-exclusive focus on math and reading. Since both Rocketship’s marketing strategy and teachers’ salaries are based on reading and math scores, other subjects are treated as inessential. There are no dedicated social studies or science classes, no music or foreign-language instruction, no guidance counselors and no libraries.

Finally, Rocketship maintains a relentless focus on teaching to the test. Students take math exams every eight weeks; following each, the staff revises lesson plans with an eye to improving scores. Rocketship boasts of its “backwards-mapping” pedagogy—starting with the test standards and then developing lesson plans to meet them. Rocketship is, as near as possible, all test-prep all the time.
(It is, of course, all about the money. Wall Street wants unaccountable, minimal-cost faux "schools.")

After decades of research, we know a lot about what makes for good schools. But there is also a handy shortcut for figuring this out: look where rich people send their kids. These schools invariably boast a broad curriculum taught by experienced teachers in small classes. Wisconsin’s top ten elementary schools, for instance, look nothing like Rocketship’s: they have twice as many licensed teachers per student; offer music, art, libraries, foreign languages and guidance counselors; and provide classes that are taught in person by experienced educators.

SNIP

Thus, the charter industry seeks to build a new system of segregated education—one divided by class and geography rather than explicitly by race. Segregation may ease the politics of the industry’s expansion, allowing privileged families to see the Rocketship model as something that’s happening only to poor people, as something inconceivable in their own neighborhoods.

But such parents are mistaken. Investors are operating on a market logic, not a racial one. The destruction of public schooling starts in poor cities because this is where parents are politically powerless to resist a degraded education model. But after the industry has taken over city school systems, it will move into the suburbs. Profitable charter ventures will look to grow indefinitely, until there are no more public schools to conquer. As Rocketship co-founder John Danner explains, critics shouldn’t worry about charter schools skimming the best students, because eventually “we’re going to educate all of the students, so there’s nothing left to skim.”

The Economy That "Socialism" Produces

The funny - or tragic - part is that Germany's economy can best be described as non-totalitarian capitalism.  We've just gotten so used to the lords-n-serfs corporatism of the last 30 years in the U.S. that we think anything that comes within a light-year of recognizing workers as human beings must be socialism, if not outright communism.

Tom Sullivan at Hullabaloo:

Germans are much happier with their lot than Americans, writes Harold Meyerson. Satisfaction tracks more closely with a country's economy than its style of government, according to a recent Pew survey of the world's economies. Nine out of ten people in countries with "advanced" economies were dissatisfied with theirs, and eight felt their economies were "bad." Except Germany.

A strong, manufacturing-driven export economy (with the Euro a factor) and a weaker financial sector sets Germany apart from the United States. Whereas 58 percent in the U.S. feel the economy is bad, 85 percent of Germans felt things in Germany were going well. Why?

Many of Germany’s most successful companies are privately owned and not subject to investor pressure to reward large shareholders through practices prevalent in the United States, such as slashing wages, cutting back on worker training and research and development and buying back stock.

Publicly traded German companies still retain their earnings to invest in expansions, a practice that was the U.S. norm until the doctrine of rewarding shareholders with nearly all of a company’s profits took hold during the past quarter-century.

In the United States, major shareholders and the top executives whose pay increasingly is linked to stock price control the corporate boards that approve these kinds of distributions of their companies’ earnings. In Germany, however, the profits that companies rack up are shared more broadly because shareholders don’t dominate corporate boards. By law, any sizable German company must divide the seats on its board equally between management- and worker-selected representatives. Any company with more than 50 employees must have managers meet regularly with workers’ councils to discuss and negotiate issues of working conditions (but not pay).

These arrangements have largely ensured that the funding is there for the world’s best worker-training programs and that the most highly skilled and compensated jobs of such globalized German firms as Daimler and Siemens remain in Germany. They have ensured that prosperity is widely shared in Germany — not concentrated at the top, as it is in the United States.

Damned socialists. No ... wait.

Some friends observed that tax and economic policy changes in this country over the last thirty years have shifted the business model from one that encouraged, long, slow growth sustained by good schools, sound infrastructure, and reinvestment -- more like the German model -- to one that encourages financialization and get-rich-quick schemes. Make your money fast and cash out. If that's not your business model, said one from experience, American venture capitalists are uninterested in your better mousetrap.

Says Meyerson, since the 1980s U.S. business and government leaned on Germany "to get with the Wall Street program." The Germans declined. Their economy did not. Overall, Germans seem rather satisfied with the results.

Religion in a Dark Room

ummagumma.co:

Support Striking Workers in Lexington

Get out there and tell the workers you support them.  At least honk as you drive by.  Write letters to the editor supporting the workers. Tell everybody you know to do the same.

Members of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace workers union who are employed by Allsource Global Management, a subcontractor to Lockheed Martin at Bluegrass Station Army Depot in Lexington, voted to strike Tuesday night.

Bob Wood, spokesman for the union, which has 170 members at AGM, said the workers voted 98 percent to strike over a breakdown in bargaining over cuts in pay of 35 percent to 50 percent. The strike was to begin at 12:01 a.m. Wednesday.

AGM provides supplies for U.S. Army Special Forces units, Wood said.

Employers all over the country are fucking their workers in the ass with giant, spiked, poisoned dildos of low pay, no benefits, high stress and layoff threats.

Keeping unemployment high just ensures workers tolerate such abuse.

IAMA members aren't taking it.  They're fighting back. Help them.

Crime Rates Down Permanently; That's Why We Have to Arrest So Many Minorities for Nothing

Seriously, not even Exxon-Mobil and the Kochs have the stranglehold on public policy in this country that the private prison industry has.

Kevin Drum:

(Last month) the Bureau of Justice Statistics released the latest numbers on incarceration rates, and the headline news is that we're sending fewer people to prison. But there's an interesting wrinkle in the numbers that few news outlets have picked up on, even though it's a trend that's been obvious in the numbers for a long time. Here it is:

That's from Rick Nevin, and you know what's coming next, don't you? Lead. It explains a lot of what's going on here.

The US started phasing out gasoline lead in 1975, which means that children born after 1975 were exposed to steadily less lead. And the effect was cumulative: the later they were born, the less lead they were exposed to and the less crime they committed when they grew up. However, children born before 1975 were unaffected by all this. They were born in a high-lead era, and since all that matters is exposure during early childhood, the damage had already been done.

In 2013, this means that the statistics show a reduction in crime rates in adults under the age of 40, and the younger the cohort the lower the crime rate. Unsurprisingly, this also means they're incarcerated at lower rates. The chart above shows this fairly dramatically.

But it also shows that incarceration rates have stayed steady or increased for older men. Those over the age of 40 had their lives ruined by lead when they were children, and the effect was permanent. They're still committing crimes and being sent to prison at the same rate as ever. It's hard to explain both these trends—lower prison rates for kids, higher prison rates for the middle-aged—without taking lead into account.

This is one of the reasons that the lead-crime hypothesis is important. In one sense, it's little more than a historical curio. It explains the rise and fall of crime between 1960 and 2010, but by now most environmental lead has been cleaned up and there's only a limited amount left to worry about. So it's interesting, but nothing more.

But here's why it matters: if the hypothesis is true, it means that violent crime rates aren't down because of transient factors like drug use or poverty or harsh penal codes. The reduction is permanent. Our children are just flatly less violent than the lead-addled kids who grew up in the years after World War II. And that in turn means that the decline in incarceration rates is permanent. We don't need as much prison space as we used to, and we don't need punitive penal codes designed to toss kids behind bars for 20 years at the first sign of danger.

In other words, we can ease up. Our kids are less violent and our streets are less dangerous. Nor is that likely to change. The lead is mostly gone, and it's going to stay gone. We're safer today not because of broken windows or three-strikes laws or 20-year sentences for dealing cocaine. We're safer because we're no longer poisoning our children in ways that turn them into hair-trigger thugs. And guess what? If we cleaned up the ambient lead that still remains, we'd be even safer 20 years from now.

ISIS Panic

It's bullshit.  Of course it's bullshit.

Jessica Williams on the Daily Show Nails. It.

(Sorry, can't embed video.)

Don't Come In

ummagumma.co:

(Source: kittenbutter, via xenia69)

Don't Miss It Nov. 8: "Pipelines, Fracking and Kentucky's Future Beyond Fossil Fuels"

From the pure grassroots activists who threw a giant wrench into the planned Bluegrass Pipeline, the launch of a new effort to protect all Kentuckians from the last fracking gasp of fossil fuels. It's free to all and even provides lunch. How can you resist?

Pipelines, Fracking, and Kentucky's Future
Beyond Fossil Fuels

November 8, 2014
Locust Trace AgriScience Farm
Lexington, Kentucky

Landowners and others affected by the proposed Bluegrass Hazardous Liquids Pipelines announce a summit to educate Kentuckians about the issues of natural gas liquids(NGLs), fracking, landowner rights, and local options for communities seeking a sustainable future. 

Dr. Jim O'Reilly of University of Cincinnati will give the keynote address.  An expert on law and public health, Dr. O'Reilly is currently writing a book on gas fracking for Thomson-Rueters-West Publishers.  Andy McDonald of the Kentucky Conservation Committee will speak about the transformative possibilities of renewable energy for Kentucky.  Other speakers and panelists will discuss fracking in Kentucky, repurposed NGL lines, legislative priorities, and choices for ensuring that land is protected and communities remain vibrant for future generations.  See below for a working agenda for the day.

Thanks to many sponsors and supporters, this will be a free event.  You are encouraged to preregister, however, so we can have a count for lunch.  Chef Susie Quick of Honest Farm in Midway will be making roast turkey, lamb moussaka, and vegetarian pasta.  Attendees are invited to bring a side dish or dessert to contribute or to make a donation towards the meal at the event.  You can preregister at www.stopbluegrasspipeline.us or www.nobluegrasspipeline.com.

This event was inspired by the successful grassroots opposition to the proposed Bluegrass Pipeline in 2013-2014.  While Williams and Boardwalk companies have suspended their operations in Kentucky for the moment, they hold many easements along the swath of the pipeline and can exercise their option on those easements for up to three years.  Fracking continues to boom northeast of the Commonwealth and we remain in "pipeline alley" between the production to the north and the processing facilities to the south of us.  In addition, Kinder Morgan and Mark West companies continue progress on repurposing the Tennessee pipeline through Kentucky from natural gas to natural gas liquids.  This decades-old pipeline is slated to begin transporting hazardous liquids late in 2016.  Affected counties include Greenup, Carter, Lewis, Rowan, Bath, Montgomery, Clark, Madison, Garrard, Boyle, Marion, Taylor, Greene, Hart, Metcalf, Barren, Allen, Simpson and possibly Lincoln and Casey.

We hope that this summit will serve Kentuckians by supplying much needed information about this significant issue.   Additionally, we hope that the summit will clearly articulate safe, renewable, and economically viable energy alternatives to fossil fuels.

Sponsors of the summit include Kentucky Resources Council, Food and Water Watch, Kentucky Conservation Committee, Envision Franklin County, New Pioneers for a Sustainable Future, Dominican Sisters of Peace, Kentucky Heartwood,  Sisters of Loretto, Earth Tools, Inc., Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, The Sisters of Mercy South Central Community, The Sisters of Charity of Nazareth, and Kentucky Waterways Alliance. 

We welcome additional sponsors! 

Sponsorships are $25 and up, with $100 recommended.  Sponsors are invited to table at the event.  Sponsorships can be sent to No Bluegrass Pipeline Fund, P.O. Box 4573, Frankfort KY 40604.

See below for our working agenda for the day.

 Registration  8:30am-9am
Opening Session 9am - noon
Welcome -- Chris Schimmoeller -- 5 minutes
Overview:  Perspectives from New York -- Susan Classen -- 10 minutes
Keynote -- Dr. James O'Reilly :  " If You Break It You Own It:  Dealing Today with Tomorrow's Fracking Cleanup Costs"
                 45 minutes, then 15 min Q & A
10 min break
Panel:  Pipelines and Fracking in Kentucky -- 40 minutes of presentations, then 20 min Q & A
            Presenters: 
    NGL pipelines -- Bob Pekny
    Geology/Karst -- Ralph Ewers
    Repurposed lines -- Dick Watkins
    Fracking in KY -- Tim Joice

Speaker Andy McDonald -- "Beyond Fossil Fuels" --  30 minutes
   
       Lunch -- 1.5 hours

Afternoon Session 1:30-5:30pm

Breakout workshops from 1:30-3pm and 3:15-4:45pm with a 15 minute break in between with the same topics offered at each session so participants can attend at least two of what's offered.
Proposed Topics:
 Local Protections for Communities --    with Gwen Lachelt, other TBA

 Easements and Landowner Rights --   with Tom FitzGerald and Matt Demarcus, Terry Geoghagan

 Restoring Democracy and Working Effectively for Legislative and Political Change     with Jerry Hardt, Tom FitzGerald, Kentucky Conservation Committee, members of legislature

 Renewable Energy -- with Andy McDonald, other TBA

 Fracking, NGLs, and Repurposed Pipelines --  with Tim Joice, Dick Watkins, Ralph Ewers, and Bob Pekny

5-5:30pm  Closing Speech, Sister Claire McGowan

Volunteers Needed!

Volunteers are needed to seek additional sponsorships, promote the event, and help the day of the event. 
If you are interested please contact Chris Schimmoeller at c.schimmoeller@gmail.com or 502-226-5751x1.

Tales

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(Source: majormakaber)

Hokum

ummagumma.co:


(Source: devosdk)

Threats

ummagumma.co:

That's "hippie."

New Study: Religious Not More Moral

Morality is human, not divine. As writer Arthur C. Clark said, the greatest mistake humanity made was letting religion co-opt morality. And then letting religion twist it into the anti-human IMmorality of racism, sexism, homophobia, sectarianism and general warmongering hatred.

No, the religious are not more moral than the non-religious.  And now there's science to prove it.

The Daily Beast:

Suppose you actually do have an angel over your shoulder telling you the right thing to do. That angel probably wouldn’t tell you anything you didn’t already know. A recent study in Science aimed at uncovering how we experience morality in our everyday lives suggests that religious people are no more moral—or immoral—than non-religious people. Whether or not we believe that divine precepts give us guidance, our behavior is remarkably similar.

SNIP

People who don’t fear that justice will be meted out in an afterlife are apparently no more vicious, cruel, or licentious than a believer.

The current study breaks new ground in a few different ways. Perhaps most importantly, previous psychological studies of moral responses relied on observations in laboratory settings. This study, however, uses a method that allows researchers to escape the lab and catch glimpses of how participants think about morality as they go about their lives. Researchers using the method, known as “ecological momentary assessment,” periodically contact participants to report their feelings.

In this study, over 1,200 people were texted five times a day over the course of three days. The texts asked if they’d committed, experienced, or heard moral or immoral acts in the previous hour. If a participant answered yes, there were follow-up questions that prompted him or her to describe the event and some of his or her reactions to it. The researchers collected over 13,000 responses, almost 4,000 of which described a moral or immoral event. The acts ranged from the mundane to the unexpected: Assisted a tourist with directions because he looked lost. At work, someone stole my partner’s nice balsamic vinegar while he was off shift and most likely took it home with them. Hired someone to kill a muskrat that’s ultimately not causing any harm.

“There have been hundreds of morality studies, and the vast majority have involved presenting people with hypothetical scenarios or dilemmas and directly asking them to make moral judgments,” wrote Jesse Graham, assistant professor of psychology at the University of Southern California, in an email to The Daily Beast. “This has told us a lot, but it hasn’t told us much about how morality plays out in daily life. This study’s use of smartphone technology allows for a more ecologically valid picture of what kinds of moral events and situations people actually encounter outside the lab.” SNIP

The main notable difference between religious and non-religious people was that while both groups reported experiencing similar moral emotions, such as shame and gratitude, religious people who described their feelings were somewhat more intense.

Outliving gods

ummagumma.co:


(Source: thedragoninmygarage)

What It Is

ummagumma.co:


(Source: homecomingqueen)

"The one constant in an uncertain world"

Cthulu!  A display of jingoism by the one empire in an uncertain world is not going to save the dems in November, Mr. President.



Full transcript here.

Bashing EPA Ain't Gonna Get You Elected Governor, Jack

Unless you start standing up for real Democratic values, you're going to lose by double digits, just like Alison, and for the very same reason.

From the Courier:

Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway and a dozen of his peers from across the country are pushing hard against a recently proposed carbon pollution rule, saying it would require states to undertake a massive overhaul of their energy sectors but give them far too little time to do so.

In recent filings led by the attorney general of West Virginia, Conway said that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency overstepped its authority when creating the rule. Beyond that, he and other attorneys general said the proposal demands that states rush to complete their work.

The proposed “clean power” rule is a centerpiece of a major push by the Obama administration to help the United States – and the planet – attack climate change by reducing the amount of carbon pollution pumped into the air.

Faith

ummagumma.co:

Work That Doesn't Pay a Living Wage is Not A Job

Jobless rates dropped in all 120 Kentucky counties From August 2013 to August 2014.

Could mean more people got jobs. Could mean more people gave up looking and dropped out of the workforce.

But it probably means that some people gave up finding a real job that pays enough to live on, and accepted work at the serf-rate of minimum wage.

Because anything less than the $20 an hour minimum wage should be if it matched the increase in productivity over the last 30 years is plain exploitation.

Sebastian Kitchen at the Courier:

Increasing the minimum wage in Jefferson County would help more than one in five workers, according to a report released Tuesday.

More workers who are 50 or older would benefit than teenagers and 92 percent of those who would benefit are at least 20 years old, according to the report by the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy.

Fifty-three percent of those who would benefit are women and 75 percent are white.

Jason Bailey, director of the center, said they included more than just those who were between the current federal minimum of $7.25 an hour and the proposed $10.10 an hour because they expect some people at $11.50 or below to also receive a pay increase.

The center released the report on Tuesday as the Metro Council began work on a proposal to gradually raise the wage to $10.10 by July 1, 2017. The key sponsor, Councilwoman Attica Scott, made a push at local coffee shop and restaurant Smokey's Bean with U.S. Rep. John Yarmuth, a Louisville Democrat.

The Metro Council's Labor and Economic Development Committee held the first of at least three meetings on the proposal on Tuesday, when Republicans questioned some of the rosy findings in the Kentucky Center report.

Fourteen cities and counties have passed local minimum wage rates higher than the federal level, Bailey said.

"Those cities are still on the map," Scott, D-1st District, said and denounced "doomsday" talk about businesses leaving the community.

Bailey said studies of other areas indicate there is no adverse effect on employment such as the number of jobs in the market or on businesses leaving the community.

"Jobs don't flee to adjacent jurisdictions," Yarmuth said.

Personal Savior

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