Posted by Elaine Magliaro
“The Donald” announced earlier today that he will seek to be the 2016 presidential nominee for the Republican Party. Be still my heart!
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Geoinformation approaches to tracking down wildlife poachers
By: Ann Summers
A tiger skeleton soaks in rice wine in Harbin, China. There is a growing, clamoring demand for tiger bone wine, a tonic made by steeping a tiger carcass in rice wine to produce an extremely expensive elixir. It’s thought to impart the animal’s great strength, a status symbol product bought or gifted by the elite: government officials, military officers, and wealthy businessmen. Photo courtesy Save the Tiger Fund
Ultimately the elimination of cultural folk ideologies on the capitalist demand side should stop the illegal harvesting of wildlife. That such conspicuous consumption still motivates unsustainable practices cannot be minimized in its globally immoral turpitude. Moral suasion seems far too timid in the abuse of complex global economic trade relationships and infrastructure and the demands for serious policy solutions should become paramount, as they perpetuate premodern barbarity and ignorance in the modern name of wretched excess. Ultimately, even an approach that intersects culture, ecology, and economy using geoinformation science is still limited by the quality and quantity of the data network created. Patel’s methodology provides one filter, but ultimately enforcement may require more serious geospatial positioning data to enforce any changes in conservation policies.
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Pope Francis vs. Dumbass American Politician: Senator James Inhofe Says That the Catholic Pontiff Should Butt Out of the Climate Change Discussion
By Elaine Magliaro
Last Thursday, Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) told “a conference of global warming skeptics” at the Heartland Institute “that the fight against climate change is really about global control with little accountability.” Inhofe, the chair of the Senate environment and public works committee, is probably Congress’s most well-known climate change denier. He has claimed that human-caused climate change is “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.” Earlier this year, Inhofe attempted to debunk the fact that climate change is real by throwing a snowball on the Senate floor.
Timothy Cama (The Hill)
The Heartland Institute, along with the Heritage Foundation, gave Inhofe the Political Leadership on Climate Change Award for his work against environmental policies.
In presenting the award, Jim DeMint, a former Republican senator and now president of Heritage, said Inhofe “has championed an ethic of rational conversation and conservatism that we must preserve our environment for the sake of people, not hurt them by entertaining ill-conceived doomsday prophecies which are neither honest nor scientific.”
Posted in Campaign Finance, Climate Change Deniers, Conservatives, Denialism, Government, Political Science, Politics, United States
Tagged Catholic Church, Congress, Dumbass Politicians, Global Warming, Heartland Institute, James Inhofe, Oklahoma, Pope Francis, Republicans, Sen. James Inhofe, US Senate
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Is Lard Butt Limbaugh Really Toast? Another Radio Station Drops Him Like a “Bad Habit”
Image by Donkey Hotey
By Elaine Magliaro
Over at Salon, Eric Boehlert has an article about Rush Limbaugh–the porcine, cigar-smoking, right-wing talk show host–being dropped by yet another radio station. Boehlert said that the bad news for the bloated bloviator is that things continue to get worse for him.
Boehlert explained. He noted that in April news broke that Limbaugh “was being dropped by WIBC in Indianapolis, a booming talk powerhouse that played home to Limbaugh’s radio show for more than two decades.” Boehlert said the news this week is that Limbaugh’s “new address on the Indianapolis dial is going to be WNDE, a ratings doormat AM sports station that has so few listeners it trails the commercial-free classical music outlet in town.”
Picture of the Day for June 13, 2015: On the Subject of Governor Scott Walker and Fascism (VIDEO)
By Elaine Magliaro
On Monday, Mike Spindell published a post titled Scott Walker: The Fascist Who Might Be President. In it, Mike said he thinks that the current governor of Wisconsin “is a Fascist in action and belief.” Mike added, “It may be true that many other far right Republicans and Christian Religious Fundamentalists are as well, but Scott Walker has shown himself to be the tool of billionaire Corporatists like the Koch Brothers and as such is possibly the most dangerous.” To support his thesis that Walker is a fascist, Mike provided information about the Wisconsin governor’s “positions, actions and electoral tactics.” (Click here to read Mike’s post about Scott Walker.)
I thought I’d follow up Mike’s post with a Picture of the Day to complement it:
Posted in Campaign Finance, Conservatives, Fascism, Fascists/Corporatists, Government, Labor Movement, Oligarchy, Political Science, Politics, Propaganda, States, Tea Party, United States, Wisconsin
Tagged Fascists, Governor Scott Walker, Labor Unions, Mussolini, Picture of the Day, Republicans, Scott Walker
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Mark Halperin, a Member of the Mainstream News Media, Scheduled to Host Pilates Session for GOP Donors at Romney Getaway
Mark Halperin
By Elaine Magliaro
Mark Halperin, a news journalist who is the co-managing editor of Bloomberg Politics and a frequent contributor on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, is reportedly going to co-host an early morning pilates session with Ann Romney as part of a getaway for Republican kingmakers. According to Brendan James of TPM, Halperin “plans to be stretching and rolling up into a ball on Saturday alongside a group of GOP megadonors at a weekend retreat being held by Mitt and Ann Romney.”
James reported that a spokesperson for Bloomberg had declined to comment on Friday when reached by TPM. He added that the pilates session is only one of many activities–or “enthusiast sessions.” James said that other activities include “flag football with Sen. Marco Rubio and skeet shooting with Sen. Lindsey Graham.”
Halperin will reportedly be the only journalist at the retreat participating in, rather than covering, the event.
Posted in Barack Obama, Conservatives, Media, Political Science, Politics, Presidents, United States
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Governor Rick Snyder and the Unraveling of Democracy in the State of Michigan
Governor Rick Snyder
(R-Michigan)
By Elaine Magliaro
Loretta Gottesdeiner of Tom’s Dispatch has an article over at Salon titled “Something is rotten in Michigan”: Poisoned water supplies, dissolved school districts and a massive unraveling of American democracy. Gottesdeiner says that Michigan Governor “Rick Snyder has given himself regime-change-style powers like Bush in Iraq, and his state is paying the price.”
Gottesdeiner:
Something is rotten in the state of Michigan.
One city neglected to inform its residents that its water supply was laced with cancerous chemicals. Another dissolved its public school district and replaced it with a charter school system, only to witness the for-profit management company it hired flee the scene after determining it couldn’t turn a profit. Numerous cities and school districts in the state are now run by single, state-appointed technocrats, as permitted under an emergency financial manager law pushed through by Rick Snyder, Michigan’s austerity-promoting governor. This legislation not only strips residents of their local voting rights, but gives Snyder’s appointee the power to do just about anything, including dissolving the city itself — all (no matter how disastrous) in the name of “fiscal responsibility.”
If you’re thinking, “Who cares?” since what happens in Michigan stays in Michigan, think again. The state’s aggressive balance-the-books style of governance has already spread beyond its borders. In January, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie appointed bankruptcy lawyer and former Detroit emergency manager Kevyn Orr to be a “legal adviser” to Atlantic City. The Detroit Free Press described the move as “a state takeover similar to Gov. Rick Snyder’s state intervention in the Motor City.”
Posted in Capitalism, Conservatives, Corruption, Democracy, Government, Local Government, Political Science, Politics, Society, States, United States
Tagged Governor Rick Snyder, Michigan, Michigan Emergency Managers, Republicans
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Picture of the Day for May 12, 2015: Regarding the GOP’s War on Women
Posted by Elaine Magliaro
Here’s a “Picture of the Day” that I think is an appropriate follow-up to the article that I posted this morning titled The Public Shaming of Unwed Mothers: Regarding Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, and Florida’s 2001 “Scarlet Letter” Adoption Law:
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The Public Shaming of Unwed Mothers: Regarding Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, and Florida’s 2001 “Scarlet Letter” Adoption Law
By Elaine Magliaro
On Tuesday, Laura Bassett of Huffington Post brought attention to Florida’s 2001 “Scarlet Letter” adoption law. According to Bassett, the controversial law required single mothers who did not know the identity of the fathers of their children “to publish their sexual histories in a newspaper before they could legally put their babies up for adoption.” The law reportedly passed with “overwhelming majorities in the House and Senate.”
In 2002, The Gainesville Sun reported on the new adoption law:
Under a relatively new provision, Florida requires mothers wanting to put a baby up for adoption to publish a newspaper ad identifying herself and her sexual partners in the year prior to her child’s birth. It even applies to rape victims or minors.
The mother has to publicize her sex partners only if she can’t find the biological father and get him to sign a waiver before the adoption.
The measure was contained in a 104-page bill passed by the Legislature in 2001. The law, which had Gov. Jeb Bush’s tacit endorsement, took effect last October. The legislation was controversial, but the provision on publicizing a woman’s sexual history was not a focal point of the debate.
Texas Teacher Fired after Posting Facebook Comments Suggesting a Return to Segregation of the Races Might Be a Good Idea
Karen Fitzgibbons
By Elaine Magliaro
From Jia Tolentino of Jezebel:
A fourth-grade teacher at Bennett Elementary School in Frenship ISD, which serves Lubbock, TX, has written, deleted, and faced widespread public shame for a Facebook post in which she details her anger at Eric Casebolt’s resignation and her support for a return to a bygone era in which blacks were formally segregated on one side of the town.
Tolentino said that the teacher, Karen Fitzgibbons, “saw the video screenshotted in the post she shared—saw a white agent of the state pull his gun on a bunch of teenagers while brutalizing” a black girl and wrote:
This makes me ANGRY! This officer should not have had to resign. I’m going to just go ahead and say it… the blacks are the ones causing the problems and this “racial tension.” I guess that’s what happens when you flunk out of school and have no education. I’m sure their parents are just as guilty for not knowing what their kids were doing, or knew it and didn’t care. I’m almost to the point of wanting them all segregated on one side of town so they can hurt each other and leave the innocent people alone. Maybe the 50s and 60s were really on to something. now, let the bashing of my true and honest opinion begin… GO! #imnotracist #imsickofthemcausingtrouble #itwasagatedcommunity
Posted in Equal Rights, Police, Racism, Society, Texas, United States
Tagged Facebook, Karen Fitzgibbons, McKinney (TX)
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