1/ Canada.....O Canada, where have you gone?
The kindler, gentler America sitting quietly above us has quietly turned, as this excellent article states, into a oil-addicted environmental disaster......
The power of the right wing is amazing.......Canada elected a Conservative government seven years ago, and Prime Minister Steven Harper has transformed the country into a petrostate......
Oh, Canada
How America's friendly northern neighbor became a rogue, reckless petrostate.
BY ANDREW NIKIFORUK | JULY/AUGUST 2013
For decades, the world has thought of Canada as America's friendly northern neighbor -- a responsible, earnest, if somewhat boring, land of hockey fans and single-payer health care. On the big issues, it has long played the global Boy Scout, reliably providing moral leadership on everything from ozone protection to land-mine eradication to gay rights. The late novelist Douglas Adams once quipped that if the United States often behaved like a belligerent teenage boy, Canada was an intelligent woman in her mid-30s. Basically, Canada has been the United States -- not as it is, but as it should be.
More...
But a dark secret lurks in the northern forests. Over the last decade, Canada has not so quietly become an international mining center and a rogue petrostate. It's no longer America's better half, but a dystopian vision of the continent's energy-soaked future.
That's right: The good neighbor has banked its economy on the cursed elixir of political dysfunction -- oil. Flush with visions of becoming a global energy superpower, Canada's government has taken up with pipeline evangelists, petroleum bullies, and climate change skeptics. Turns out the Boy Scout's not just hooked on junk crude -- he's become a pusher. And that's not even the worst of it.
With oil and gas now accounting for approximately a quarter of its export revenue, Canada has lost its famous politeness. Since the Conservative Party won a majority in Parliament in 2011, the federal government has eviscerated conservationists, indigenous nations, European commissioners, and just about anyone opposing unfettered oil production as unpatriotic radicals. It has muzzled climate change scientists, killed funding for environmental science of every stripe, and in a recent pair of unprecedented omnibus bills, systematically dismantled the country's most significant long-cherished environmental laws.
2/ A clear eyed assessment of where the Obama Presidency is, and where it is going from Timothy Egan in the Times......
And the answer is nowhere much.....as the Idiot from Alaska once said, "how's that hopey changey thing workin' for ya".......
It was cool, as media moments go, when President Obama called from Air Force One to congratulate the plaintiffs in the California gay marriage case on Wednesday. They were in the middle of a live television interview when the voice of the president was delivered, via cellphone, from high over the Atlantic.
But it was also emblematic of the leadership style of this brainy, tightly drawn president: too often, he phones it in from 35,000 feet, far from the sweat, grime and blood of the battlefield of politics.
This week was historic, as the most activist Supreme Court in at least 40 years continued to rewrite the laws of the land. Under Chief Justice John G. Roberts — who famously said he would rule as an umpire, not a player — the court has done far more to change daily life than the president, or those inert sluggers in Congress.
The gay rights decisions got most of the attention. But in gutting the Voting Rights Act, the court made it easier for states to put up racial and class barriers to the most basic American right. And continuing its lopsided defense of business interests, the court made it much more difficult to win a sexual harassment case. They narrowed the definition of boss, the harasser, to someone who can hire and fire. And the person who sets the work schedule or assigns the task — just another colleague!
The gay rights decisions got most of the attention. But in gutting the Voting Rights Act, the court made it easier for states to put up racial and class barriers to the most basic American right. And continuing its lopsided defense of business interests, the court made it much more difficult to win a sexual harassment case. They narrowed the definition of boss, the harasser, to someone who can hire and fire. And the person who sets the work schedule or assigns the task — just another colleague!
Looming large, as ever, is the 2010 decision allowing corporations to spend limitless amounts of money to influence elections. They can do it now in newly redrawn, gerrymandered districts designed to hold back the inevitable.
In contrast to all this life-changing, work-defining, election-shaping Big Stuff, President Obama continues to give limp speeches and moan about how he can’t get anything done with a Congress of Neanderthals and talk-radio spawn. An activist court, a passive president and a feeble Congress — such is the current balance of power.
3/ As you may have gathered I like Bill Maher, and this is why........he's very funny, and calls it as he sees it.....five "B+" Maher minutes.......
Bill Maher: GOP Opposes Morning-After Pill Because It Removes God’s ‘Punishments For Sluts Who Put Out’
by Josh Feldman | 12:10 am, June 29th, 2013VIDEO» 244 comments
Bill Maher ended his show tonight calling out Republicans for claiming to be so pro-life but opposing preventative measures like Plan B and the HPV vaccine. Maher said that in the world of Christian conservatives, preventing things like pregnancy and HPV through such means “remove[s] God’s natural intended punishments for sluts who put out.”
Maher said that the GOP isn’t necessarily waging a war on all women, just “women having sex that doesn’t end with a baby popping out.” They like sex for “procreation, not recreation,” and Maher said the only reason they cry foul about “parental rights” with HPV vaccines but not others is because “you don’t get those diseases from screwing or yodeling in the canyon.”
Maher mocked the idea that as soon as young girls get the HPV vaccine, they’ll immediately start having sex, much in the same way he “couldn’t wait to jab rusty nails into my feet” after getting his tetanus shot. He declared that when teenagers will have sex no matter what, denying them things like the HPV vaccine “is like not giving them an umbrella so it won’t rain!”
Maher could only conclude that Republicans don’t really care about preventing abortion, “you and your invisible friend just don’t like people having sex.”
4/ Do you live in the Western US, or know people who do? Send them these two stories......
From the Times
The tragic death of 19 firemen illustrates how the West is getting drier, and it will get worse.....
Experts See New Normal as a Hotter, Drier West Faces More Huge Fires
David Kadlubowski/The Arizona Republic, via Associated Press
The Yarnell Hill fire, which on Monday expanded tenfold, covering more than 8,000 acres.
By FELICITY BARRINGER and KENNETH CHANG
Published: July 1, 2013
The gusty monsoon winds where the Colorado Plateau begins to drop off into the Sonoran Desert continued to bedevil about 400 firefighters who were defending 500 homes and 200 businesses in the old gold mining villages ofYarnell and Peeples Valley.
Scientists said those blazes and 15 others that remained uncontained from New Mexico to California and Idaho were part of the new normal — an increasingly hot and dry West, resulting in more catastrophic fires.
Since 1970, Arizona has warmed at a rate 0.72 degrees per decade, the fastest among the 50 states, based on an analysis of temperature data by Climate Central, an independent organization that researches and reports on climate. Even as the temperatures have leveled off in many places around the world in the past decade, the Southwest has continued to get hotter.
“The decade of 2001 to 2010 in Arizona was the hottest in both spring and the summer,” said Gregg Garfin, a professor of climate, natural resources and policy at the University of Arizona and the executive editor of a study examining the impact of climate change on the Southwest.
Warmer winters mean less snowfall. More of the winter precipitation falls as rain, which quickly flows away in streams instead of seeping deep underground.
The soils then dry out earlier and more quickly in May and June. “It’s the most arid time of year,” Dr. Garfin said. “It’s windy as well.”
The growing season also starts earlier, so there is more to burn.
5/ From ThinkProgress Green
And here is the science, yes science behind the drought and extreme heat conditions in the West. This week it hit 118 degrees in Las Vegas.....
It's not "God's Will" as the idiot branch of the Republicans say, it's not cyclical as the Koch Brothers propaganda machine pumps out on Fox News, it's caused by the arctic ice melting and was predicted 10 years ago. And it will continue......
Scientists predicted a decade ago that Arctic ice loss would bring on worse western droughts. Arctic ice loss has been much faster than the researchers — and indeed all climate modelers — expected (see “CryoSat-2 Confirms Sea Ice Volume Has Collapsed“).
It just so happens that the western U.S. is in the grip of a brutal, record-breaking drought. Is this just an amazing coincidence — or were the scientists right and what would that mean for the future? I ask the authors.
Here is the latest drought monitor:
And that drought monitor predates the record-smashing heat wave now gripping the West.
So if you live in the West, you might want to think about moving.......which kind of brings up a serious point - where the hell can you move to? As the recent story "Goodbye Miami" says, South Florida is doomed, the eastern seaboard coastal cities are vulnerable to flooding, the entire Western half of the country will run out of water....where is the best place to weather [?] the next 20 years [or 30 for some of you]?
Good question, and if I see any good advice I'll put it in......
6/ Here is a feel good video, which I's sure you need after the news that just keeps getting worse.....
A Japanese High School teenage girl band playing Benny Goodman.....looks like it's part of a movie, or maybe "Japan's Got Talent" or similar, but if you like the big band sound, and cute Japanese girls, this is wonderful stuff........
Four minutes of great music.....
7/ How the oligarchy works - Part 564
Like generic drugs and their reasonable pricing? The pharmaceutical companies are working diligently to ban the sale of generics made in India.....which are most of the drugs available at a fraction of the cost of the originals.....
And the Obama administration and Congress, owned by the giant drug companies, are caving as usual......
WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration and members of Congress are pressing India to curb its generic medication industry. The move comes at the behest of U.S. pharmaceutical companies, which have drowned out warnings from public health experts that inexpensive drugs from India are essential to providing life-saving treatments around the world.
Low-cost generics from India have dramatically lowered medical costs in developing countries and proved critical to global AIDS relief programs; about 98 percent of the drugs purchased by President George W. Bush's landmark PEPFAR AIDS relief program are generics from India. Before Indian companies rolled out generic versions priced at $1 a day, AIDS medication cost about $10,000 per person per year.
But India's generic industry has also cut into profits for Pfizer and other U.S. and European drug companies. In response, these companies have sought to impose aggressive patenting and intellectual property standards in India, measures that would grant the firms monopoly pricing power over new drugs and lock out generics producers.
On Thursday, a House subcommittee held a hearing on international trade disputes with India that included testimony from American manufacturing and solar energy groups. Most of the event, however, was devoted to U.S. drug company Pfizer's complaints about Indian policies that have fostered the country's billion-dollar generics industry. The hearing followed Secretary of State John Kerry's trip to India earlier this week for the U.S.-India Strategic Dialogue, a major diplomatic mission.
Last week, a bipartisan group of 170 House lawmakers sent a letter to Kerry and President Barack Obama raising objections to India's patent system. But at Thursday's hearing, few seemed well-versed on intellectual property or public health issues.
8/ An amusing video of a reporter that gets his revenge on videobombers...... the last one is very good....about four minutes.....
If you can get past the fact that a guy named Pat has a segment called "The Pat-Down," check out this clip of WGN reporter Pat Tomasulo seeking revenge on people who wave or make faces at the camera while he's doing a news report on location. The unsuspecting "video bombers" get their wish of getting on TV -- only to be interviewed on the spot on anything from erectile dysfunction to their underwear preference.
9/ Ah the middle class dream......a house, 2.4 kids and a Volvo......just an illusion, isn't it.
A really depressing story, but go on - read it anyway.......
Big Lie: America Doesn't Have #1 Richest Middle-Class in the World... We're Ranked 27th!
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America is the richest country on Earth. We have the most millionaires, the most billionaires and our wealthiest citizens have garnered more of the planet's riches than any other group in the world. We even have hedge fund managers who make in one hour as much as the average family makes in 21 years!
This opulence is supposed to trickle down to the rest of us, improving the lives of everyday Americans. At least that's what free-market cheerleaders repeatedly promise us.
Unfortunately, it's a lie, one of the biggest ever perpetrated on the American people.
Our middle class is falling further and further behind in comparison to the rest of the world. We keep hearing that America is number one. Well, when it comes to middle-class wealth, we're number 27.
The most telling comparative measurement is median wealth (per adult). It describes the amount of wealth accumulated by the person precisely in the middle of the wealth distribution -- fifty percent of the adult population has more wealth, while fifty percent has less. You can't get more middle than that.
Wealth is measured by the total sum of all our assets (homes, bank accounts, stocks, bonds etc) minus our liabilities (outstanding loans and other debts). It the best indicator we have for individual and family prosperity. While the never-ending accumulation of wealth may be wrecking the planet, wealth also provides basic security, especially in a country like ours with such skimpy social programs. Wealth allows us to survive periods of economic turmoil. Wealth allows our children to go to college without incurring crippling debts, or to get help for the down-payment on their first homes. As Bill Holiday sings, "God bless the child that's got his own."
10/ How the flame rises, then burns out......Lady Gaga was THE megastar of 2011, but where is she now? Allegedly she gained 50 lbs and had health issues, but is planning a comeback.
While we wait for that, enjoy the extended length version of one of her originals "Poker Face", where she is in full Gaga form and wonderfully excessive......
11/ A viral video that truly tells it like it is - a financial reporter visited Ireland and part of his "man on the street" interviews was this one with a most articulate Irish gentleman.......2 minutes, and very true......
Note - salty language.......
12/ The most dangerous right wing politician in the country isn't a politician - It's Chief Justice John Roberts......
He has a long term plan to change America, by gutting the middle class and consolidating the oligarchy's rule......think this is an exaggeration? Read this......
And remember - the swing vote on the Gay Marriage decision wasn't Roberts - it was Justice Kennedy.....
WASHINGTON -- The shrewdest, most manipulative and radical politician in this city isn't the president or a member of Congress. He's the chief justice of the United States Supreme Court, John G. Roberts Jr.
Roberts assured the nation during his 2005 confirmation hearing that he would be an umpire of constitutional law, but instead he has become the cleanup hitter, manager and team owner.
In a now familiar two-step of jurisprudence, the Roberts Court on Wednesday tactically ceded ground it did not regard as crucial -- this time, on two gay rights cases. Cable TV was full of smiling gay rights activists, happy that the Supreme Court had effectively restored same-sex marriage in California and ensured federal benefitsfor same-sex couples married in the 12 states (and D.C.) that sanction it.
But politically, these tolerant rulings on the country's social fabric deflect attention from the Roberts Court's deeper goal: to remove the federal government as an impediment to corporate, state and local power. In other words, to dismantle a framework of progressive laws and court rulings stretching back to Teddy Roosevelt, the New Deal and the Great Society.
"Roberts has a long-range plan for radical change," said Norman Ornstein, a senior scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. "And he's moving faster than he thought possible when he started eight years ago."
13/ Tom Tomorrow on the Supreme Court's 5/4 gay marriage decision......
14/ How weak we collectively are.....fast food restaurants are including healthy options on their menus, but does this lead to more people eating better and healthier food?
The answer is of course no, fast food patrons are eating more and more junk......but if you do go to FF restaurants, read this - if you realise what you are actually doing, you have a shot at changing your behaviour......
NEWS ANALYSIS
Why Healthy Eaters Fall for Fries
By STEPHANIE CLIFFORD
Published: June 29, 2013
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LAST Tuesday, Connor Moran, a limit-the-red-meat, increase-the-greens, eat-salad-for-lunch kind of guy, stopped into a Bronx Dunkin’ Donuts for his usual black coffee, no sugar, no cream.
He walked out with a sandwich of egg and bacon between two halves of a glazed doughnut.
Such is the puzzle of the food industry: American consumers, even otherwise healthy ones, keep choosing caloric indulgences rather than healthy foods at fast-food restaurants.
Public health officials have been pushing fast-food restaurants to offer more nutritious foods to help combat excess weight in the United States, wheremore than one-third of American adults are obese. And restaurants have obliged by adding healthy menu items. But it’s the sugary, fatty items that are flying — or waddling — out the door.
The new menu items added by fast-food chains this year indicate as much: abrownie-batter-filled doughnut (Dunkin’ Donuts), a bacon habanero ranchQuarter Pounder (McDonald’s), bacon-filled tater tots (Burger King), a six-slices-of-bacon-and-
Then there’s the Glazed Donut Breakfast Sandwich from Dunkin’ Donuts that Mr. Moran tried. It was rolled out nationally this month after a Massachusetts test that was a “viral hit,” the company’s executive chef told The Boston Globe earlier this month. “Within days of the test, people were sending pictures, tweeting ‘look what I got!’ or ‘this is so wrong!’ and it was just incredible.”
If unhealthy food is wrong, restaurant visitors apparently don’t want to be right.
15/ Our certified asshole Governor has been quietly working away, vetoing sensible policies, signing awful bills the fools in Tallahassee pass and allowing the State to turn down $51 billion in Obamacare funds....
But here's a nice, quiet little scam this bastard has got through - prisoner's health care in Florida jails will be privatized this year, so in a couple of years look for prisoners dying from lack of care from the underfunded jail medical facilities.....
If there is a Heaven or Hell like the Christians that run this state all believe in, a lot of them especially our pond scum Governor Rick Scott will be roasting on a spit, nice and close to the eternal fire for life without parole.......
Massive privatization of prison health care looms in Florida
Saturday, June 29, 2013 4:30am
TALLAHASSEE — The nation's largest outsourcing of prison medical care is finally under way in Florida with the state turning to a private company with a history of problems in other states.
Corizon Inc. of Brentwood, Tenn., plans to start work Aug. 1 after Florida won a two-year legal fight with a public employee union that accused the Legislature of illegally seeking to privatize health care in most prisons by steering the decision to a 14-member Legislative Budget Commission.
The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and a second union representing physicians and dentists won the first round in circuit court. The state prevailed in the 1st District Court of Appeal, where a three-judge panel upheld the right of the commission to approve a budget transfer for the project and ruled that the prison system has "broad authority" under law to contract for services
Todays video - the conservatory scene from "In The Heat Of The Night", the incredibly good movie from 1967 with Rod Steiger and Sydney Poitier.
Steiger is the Police Chief of a small southern town, and Poitier is a Chicago Homicide detective visiting his family......and when a baffling murder takes place in his sleepy burg, the Chief asks Poitier to look at the case......
But remember this is 1967 in the deep south, and Poitier of course is black.....
Todays granny joke
A little old lady was walking down the street dragging two large plastic garbage bags behind her. One of the bags was ripped and every once in a while a $20 fell out onto the sidewalk. Noticing this, a policeman stopped her, and said, "Ma'am, there are $20 bills falling out of that bag."
"Oh, really? Darn it!" Said the little old lady. "I'd better go back and see if I can find them. Thanks for telling me officer.
Well, now, not so fast," said the cop. Where did you get all that money? You didn't steal it, did you?"
"Oh, no, no", said the old lady. "You see, my back yard is right next to a Golf course. A lot of Golfers come and pee through a knot hole in my fence, right into my flower Garden. It used to really tick me off. Kills the flowers, you know. Then I thought, 'why not make the best of it?
So, now, I stand behind the fence by the knot hole, real quiet, with my hedge clippers. Every time some guy sticks his thing through my fence, I surprise him, grab hold of it and say, 'O.K., buddy! Give me $20, or off it comes.'
"Well, that seems only fair," said the cop, laughing.
"OK. Good luck!
"Oh by the way, what's in the other bag?"
"Not everybody pays."
Todays biblical joke
MARRIAGE/MARIJUANAFor those who haven't heard, Washington State just passed two laws - gay
marriage and legalized marijuana.
The fact that gay marriage and marijuana were legalized on the same day
makes perfect biblical sense because as Leviticus 20:13 says,"If a man lies with another man they should be stoned."We just hadn't interpreted it correctly before.
Todays jokes that will get guys in deep trouble if you repeat them.....
Went out last night and got really wasted.I woke up in the middle of the night next to some chick who was snoring and farting, so I knew I made it home OK!I spent a couple of hours defrosting the fridge last night, or "foreplay" as she likes to call it.I woke up this morning at 8, and could smell something was wrong.I got downstairs and found the wife face down on the kitchen floor, not breathing!I panicked. I didn't know what to do.Then I remembered McDonald serves breakfast until 11:30.The other night, my wife asked me how many women I'd slept with.I told her, "Only you. All the others kept me awake all night!"My missus packed my bags, and as I walked out the front door, she screamed, "I wish you a slow and painful death, you bastard!""Oh," I replied, "so now you want me to stay!"I've just installed strobe lights in the bedroom.It makes the wife look like she's moving during sex.
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