The Koch brothers aren’t true evil, I was surprised to learn. But they’ve put together a coalition that intends to spend almost $1 billion in 2016.
I do believe that money is intended to buy election wins for Republican candidates who will be expected to support polices that benefit … the Koch brothers.
This is a business move. Though they lost perhaps half a billion trying to defeat Obama, they hope to get back more than 1.5 billion if the next President is a Republican.
Click PLAY or watch a protest song on YouTube.
If you don’t like billionaires buying elections, campaign against the politicians they support.
In the United States 98% of women have used birth control at some point in time and 62% of those of reproductive age are currently using birth control …
(I assume the other 2% practice abstinence.)
About a third of American women will have an abortion in their lifetime. It’s a difficult and traumatic decision for most. 😦
Anything we can do to reduce the rates of unwanted pregnancy and abortion should be considered.
old white men deciding what women can do with their bodies
If you restrict access to sex education and contraception, expect more abortions.
Roman Catholics and (many) evangelicals should expect more abortions because they limit access to contraceptives.
The Roman Catholic Church should council women not to have abortions. But then provide help for those additional children they want born. Many are born to young, poor and distressed mothers who don’t have access to abortion. Those children really need the help of the Church.
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… Around 44 million abortions occur each year in the world, with a little under half done unsafely.
Abortion rates have changed little between 2003 and 2008, before which they decreased for decades due to better education about family planning and birth control. …
Those who are against abortion largely claim that an embryo or fetus is a human with a right to life and may compare it to murder.
Supporters point to a woman’s right to decide over her own body and to human rights in general. …
The blue and green colours indicate those nations where abortion is mostly legal on request.
“Every Sperm is Sacred” is a Monty Python musical sketch satire of Catholic teachings on reproduction that forbid masturbation and contraception by artificial means.
Obviously 1 egg or 1 sperm is NOT life.
But there is a legitimate argument on when a human life actually begins. I don’t have a strong opinion on this.
A late-term abortion often refers to an induced abortion procedure that occurs after the 20th week of gestation. Those are – obviously – even worse than first trimester abortions.
With typical lack of research I caught the last ferry from Nanaimo to Tsawwassen. You could ASSume the British Columbia government would require public transport to meet every ferry.
You’d assume wrong. 😦 Public transport meets every ferry except the last one of the day. People get stranded every night.
I found this out by asking the ferry purser. A regular truck driver happened to be standing there at the time. He immediately offered me a ride from the ferry terminal to the Vancouver Sky Train. 🙂
It was after 1am when I got to the elevated platform. With 4 minutes to spare I jumped on the last train. 🙂
A couple hours sleep in the airport. Then the easy check-in to the first flight of the day at 6am.
Arriving Denver I had one errand. To send a piece of snail mail. The only post office in that airport was closed for lunch. But a lady waiting in line kindly gave me an American stamp. 🙂
Pay it forward.
Betsy had recommended a new inexpensive bus service out of Denver into the Rocky mountains. The driver sized me up and said: “I believe you might be a Senior”.
I got the discounted old-timer’s fare on the 4th day of the service. 🙂
I’m very critical of the American military. Seems to me near everything they’ve done since WW II has been a waste of taxpayer dollars and lives. The reputation of the American Government worldwide has never been worse.
But there’s no doubt that entering into WW II was justified. They were attacked by Japan.
The Axis forces – Hitler in particular – had to be stopped. I said in High School that I’d go back in time and kill Hitler in the crib if I could.
I thank the USA for entering into WW II. And for doing a good job in helping to end that war as quickly as possible.
You can argue that only one nuclear bomb was needed in Japan, not two. But – to be fair – it’s difficult to judge those making the decisions at that time.
For 20 years The Economist has led calls for a rethink on drug prohibition. This film looks at new approaches to drugs policy, from Portugal to Colorado. “Drugs: War or Store?” kicks off our new “Global Compass” series, examining novel approaches to policy problems.
A Hollywood simpleton’s version, for sure. But it’s a good glimpse into the ethical dilemmas of western boots on the ground in the Muslim world. I recommend Homeland.
Claire Danes as Carrie Mathison is a manic CIA intelligence officer assigned to the Counterterrorism Center. She fanatically wants to defend America … at any cost.
In the fourth season, Carrie is working as a CIA station chief in Islamabad, Pakistan.
Carrie’s failures are symbolic of the failures of the USA in that region.
On Metacritic, it has a score of 74 out of 100, based on 22 reviews.[22] On Rotten Tomatoes, the season received an 82% rating based on 49 reviews with an average rating of 8.0/10. The critical consensus reads “Homeland is back on top, with a renewed energy and focus not seen since its first season.” …
I’d agree. Seasons 1 and 4 are the best, so far.
… According to media reports, Pakistani officials were unhappy over the depiction of Pakistan in the fourth season. …
Fox News isn’t just bad for America, which is the usual liberal complaint. It’s also bad for the Republican Party, the still-conservative Bartlett holds, because it has stunted the GOP’s growth with a news agenda that ships “misinformation” to the party’s far-right base.
This is the so-called Fox “echo chamber” effect you’ve read so much about …
According to chamber theorists, Fox “breeds extremism” within the Republican Party by convincing viewers to reject other news feeds as biased and to partake only of Fox content and like-minded conservative radio fodder. The echo chamber, so the theory goes, has deluded the party into thinking that support for its radical-right views is greater than it really is. This, in turn, has convinced the party to run radical candidates who aren’t as electable as they seem to be. And all this extremism prevents the GOP’s presidential candidates from reaching centrist voters, who are essential for victory.
… the network is better at employing presidential candidates than electing them. …
… The median age of a Fox viewer is 68 … and its median age is rising. …
“My conscience won’t let me go shoot my brother or some darker people or some poor, hungry people in the mud for big, powerful America.
And shoot them for what? They never called me nigger, they never lynched me, they didn’t put no dogs on me, they didn’t rob me of my nationality, rape and kill my mother and father.
Shoot them for what? How can I shoot them poor people? Poor little black people and babies and children and women. How can I shoot them poor people? Just take me to jail.”
One of the many things that revolts me about the GW Bush years was their introduction of “enhanced interrogation techniques“.
A new documentary reminds us of American torture.
FRONTLINE investigates the fight over the CIA’s controversial “enhanced interrogation” methods, widely criticized as torture. Based on recently declassified documents and interviews with key political leaders and CIA insiders, filmmaker Michael Kirk investigates the secret history of what the CIA did — and whether it worked.
It didn’t work. It was torture. If another nation had used these techniques on Americans, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld would have called it torture.
Enhanced interrogation techniques … … methods included prolonged stress positions, hooding, subjection to deafening noise, sleep deprivation to the point of hallucination, deprivation of food and drink — as well as waterboarding, walling, nakedness, subjection to extreme cold, confinement in small coffin-like boxes, and repeated slapping or beating.
There were also cases of medically unnecessary forced rectal feeding (anal rape) and threats to harm family members. …
A nonpartisan, independent review of interrogation and detention programs in the years after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks concluded that “it is indisputable that the United States engaged in the practice of torture” and that the nation’s highest officials bore ultimate responsibility for it. …
The hijackers in the September 11 attacks were 19 men affiliated with al-Qaeda, and 15 of the 19 were citizens of Saudi Arabia. The others were from the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Lebanon.
So why did Bush evacuate 2 dozen members of Osama bin Laden’s family from the United States the first few days following? (They were friends of the Bush family.)
Why did GW attack a completely different nation – Iraq?
Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9-11. He didn’t even like Osama bin Ladin.
The war was going to happen. The WMD claims were the result of the need to find a case for the war, rather than the other way around. Paul Krugman is exactly right when he says:
The Iraq war wasn’t an innocent mistake, a venture undertaken on the basis of intelligence that turned out to be wrong. America invaded Iraq because the Bush administration wanted a war. The public justifications for the invasion were nothing but pretexts, and falsified pretexts at that.
Rick McCharles 