November 28, 2012

SpreadingSantorum.com considering another run

Former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum says he is “open” to another run for president in 2016. Santorum was asked about a possible presidential campaign Monday at THE WEEKLY STANDARD.

“I’m open to it, yeah,” Santorum replied. “I think there’s a fight right now as to what the soul of the Republican party’s going to be and the conservative movement, and we have something to say about that. I think from our battle, we’re not going to leave the field.”

In 2012, Santorum won nearly 4 million votes and 11 GOP primary contests—the same number of states, he pointed out, Ronald Reagan won in his failed 1976 presidential bid. The nomination eventually went to Mitt Romney, whom Santorum argued did not focus on what he considered the “main issue” of the race: The role of government in the lives of Americans.

“We didn’t make that argument in this race. Our candidate didn’t make that argument, as some of us said during the campaign, because he was not capable of making that argument,” Santorum said. “In my opinion, what could have been and what should have been a referendum election on what it means to be an American, what it means for us as a country to head down the road toward European socialism, we just simply didn’t make the argument at a time when I think America was ripe to hear the argument.” ......................(more)

The complete piece (of Santorum) is at: http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/santorum-im-open-2016-run_664017.html

November 28, 2012

Dispatches from Idiot America: Global Warming skeptic to chair House Science Committee

Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), a skeptic of man-made global warming, is set to take over the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology in the 113th Congress.

On Tuesday afternoon, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) announced that the Republican Steering Committee had recommended Smith as the new chairman. The full House GOP caucus will vote on all chairmanships Wednesday and is expected to ratify the steering panel's choices.

Smith, like many of his Republican colleagues, has expressed doubt that global warming is caused by human behavior. In 2009, he criticized the media for not airing enough "dissenting opinions" about climate change.

"The (ABC, NBC and CBS television) networks have shown a steady pattern of bias on climate change," Smith said in a statement at the time. "During a six-month period, four out of five network news reports failed to acknowledge any dissenting opinions about global warming, according to a Business and Media Institute study. The networks should tell Americans the truth, rather than hide the facts." ....................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/27/lamar-smith-global-warming-house-science_n_2200408.html

November 28, 2012

How Sea Levels Will Rise

http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/how_sea_levels_will_rise_20121127/


via truthdig:


How Sea Levels Will Rise
Posted on Nov 27, 2012


[font size="1"]The New York Times
The light blue areas show the reach of seawater into New York City at a rise of 25 feet.[/font]


The New York Times on Sunday published a series of maps showing coastal and low-lying areas in the United States that could be permanently flooded as sea levels rise in the coming decades and centuries.

Major metropolitan areas on the country’s seaboards appear with toggleable settings showing the intrusion of the oceans at various levels of predicted elevation, using data provided by the U.S. Geological Survey and the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration. At a rise of 25 feet, Charleston, S.C., is predicted to be 80 percent flooded; Miami Beach, New Orleans and Atlantic City 100 percent underwater; and New York City 39 percent submerged, with large portions of all five boroughs gone, including much of Manhattan below 34th Street.

None of this could be called “good” news, but many cities in the West are expected to make out relatively well. An estimated 13 percent of Seattle and 16 percent of Portland, Ore., are projected to disappear, along with 6 percent of San Diego, 19 percent of San Francisco and 3 percent of Los Angeles. Many of these cities’ most scenic areas lie within the vulnerable zones.

Another tool called Sea Level Rise Explorer, published by Global Warming Art, lets users view endangered areas across the world and provides further scientific background to the predictions.

—Posted by Alexander Reed Kelly.

November 27, 2012

One less pig in Hogtown

(CBC News) A contrite Rob Ford acknowledged he could have done things differently in the matter that caused an Ontario judge to order him to relinquish the Toronto mayoralty, one day after attributing his ouster to left-wing politics.

"Looking back, maybe I could have expressed myself in a different way. To everyone who believes I should have done this differently, I sincerely apologize," Ford told reporters at a Tuesday afternoon news conference at city hall.

"I was focused on raising money to help underprivileged youth. I never believed there was a conflict of interest because I had nothing to gain and the city had nothing to lose. But I respect the court's decision," said Ford, who sounded hoarse.

The mayor was in much feistier form a day earlier, when he attributed the court decision to "left-wing politics." .............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/story/2012/11/27/toronto-ford-football.html


...........

Oh, and for those wondering about the 'Hogtown' reference:

November 27, 2012

Canada, the surprise 'pariah' of the Kyoto protocol

Canada, the surprise 'pariah' of the Kyoto protocol
Some Canadians doubt whether their country should have any say in negotiating the second Kyoto protocol after it became the only nation to reject the first one

Isabeau Doucet in Montreal
guardian.co.uk, Monday 26 November 2012


Of all the delegations in the room in Doha, the Canadians adopt the lowest profile. Some question whether they should be there at all: The country's first and only Green party MP, Elizabeth May, said: "Having Canada in the room negotiating to weaken the second Kyoto, when we have already signalled that not only will we not be participating in taking on new targets in the second period but we're legally withdrawn from the protocol, should make us pariahs."

"I can't imagine how anybody would want us in the room."

Canada's current greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are 23% over the country's Kyoto protocol target, and federal government estimates place Canada 28.8% over the target by 2014. Canada is the only country to have repudiated Kyoto, the sole legally binding international policy tool to date to deal with the emissions, and ranks just behind the US and Australia in the table of worst global emitters per capita.

This is because of Canada's size, its cold climate and its resource-based economy, especially the energy-intensive, carbon-emissions-heavy oil boiled from large swaths of bitumen know as the Alberta tar sands. ...............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/nov/26/canada-kyoto

November 27, 2012

Keiser Report: Colossal Collapse Coming!

Published on Nov 24, 2012 by RussiaToday

In this episode, Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert note that the bell has rung for the bond market top as one of the biggest private equity funds in the world is seeking 'ordinary' investors to assume their long term interest rate risk.

November 27, 2012

Three reasons why anti-gay group failed to divide the black and gay communities on election day

Posted by alvinmcewen at 4:43 am
November 27, 2012


Three reasons why anti-gay group failed to divide the black and gay communities on election day


In regards to the recent election when voters approved marriage equality measures in Maryland, Washington state, and Maine and defeated an anti-marriage equality constitutional amendment in Minnesota, the one thing that will not be talked about but needs to be discussed is the utter failure of the National Organization for Marriage's attempt to play the black and gay communities against each other.

We've witnessed the organization garnering much success with this tactic in the past, most recently in North Carolina. However on election day, the tactic failed miserably. The following are three reasons why NOM's strategy failed:

1. The wedge strategy becomes public - Ironically enough, the seeds of yesterday's embarrassment were sowed in March of this year when lgbt bloggers (myself included) published a secret memo from the National Organization of Marriage detailing how the organization plotted to specifically divide the gay and black communities by seeking out black spokespeople to publicly speak out against marriage equality in hopes of using these spokespeople as targets for the ire of gays:



Marriage equality supporters long suspected that the partnership between NOM and the black leaders who supported their cause was less noble than suspected (at least on NOM's part) and this memo confirmed it. While the revelation was too late to save NC from falling to an anti-marriage equality vote, the constant mention of this memo in later articles and interviews every time NOM trotted out a black leader to speak against marriage equality could have proved ultimately devastating because it was a constant reminder to the African-American community that NOM was using them. ........................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/speakeasy/alvinmcewen/three-reasons-why-anti-gay-group-failed-divide-black-and-gay-communities

November 27, 2012

No Country For Moderate Republicans

from Salon.com:


Conservatives already pouncing on moderate GOP senate candidate
A West Virginia senate candidate is already facing criticism from the right

By Jillian Rayfield


The conservative strategy of forcing out moderate candidates in favor of party purists has had limited success over the last two election cycles. But there are some early signs the right flank of the party has not learned its lesson.

Rep. Shelly Moore Capito , R-W.V., is a moderate Republican who announced her candidacy on Monday, and could be a strong challenger to Dem incumbent Jay Rockefellar, who will face reelection in 2014. But Capito is facing an early onslaught of criticism from the right for being “too liberal.”

“Congresswoman Capito has a long record of support of bailouts, pork, and bigger government,” Club For Growth president Chris Chocola wrote in a press release. “She voted to bail out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, for massive expansions of government-run health insurance, giveaways to big labor, and repeatedly voted to continue funding for wasteful earmarks like an Exploratorium in San Francisco and an Aquarium in South Carolina. That’s not the formula for GOP success in U.S. Senate races.”

“Congresswoman Capito is not someone we can endorse because her spending record in the House is too liberal,” said Matt Hoskins, the Executive Director of the Senate Conservatives Fund, which was founded by Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C. ....................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.salon.com/2012/11/27/conservatives_already_pouncing_on_moderate_gop_senate_candidate/

November 27, 2012

Thom Hartmann: One of America's Most Enduring Myths Is That Slavery Ended After the Civil War

AlterNet / By Thom Hartmann

One of America's Most Enduring Myths Is That Slavery Ended After the Civil War
America didn’t “end” slavery. We simply exported it.

November 27, 2012 |


One of the most enduring myths we love here in America is that we ended our involvement with slavery after the Civil War. While our Founders – people like Thomas Jefferson, who wrote “all men are created equal” in the Declaration of Independence but owned slaves himself – were tarnished, morally imperfect hypocrites, in our modern era, we tell ourselves, we’ve risen above that. We are pure! We’re no longer tainted by slavery!

If only it were true.

The recent fires that killed 112 workers in Bangladeshi sweat shops making garments for Wal-Mart and other American retailers show how we, today, are frankly more hypocritical and dishonest about slavery than was Jefferson himself.

As are those Libertarians who argue that the Bangladeshis were “willing workers,” when poverty is so severe in that country that working, chained into a firetrap factory, is essential to survival itself. To call the working conditions of much of the developing world anything less than slavery is to ignore the power relationships that keep workers behind fences, locked 24/7 in often-violent dormitories, and the companies that string nets outside windows to reduce worker suicides.

It’s to rationalize the role we play in this modern-day version of slavery, the same way 18th Century US slavery advocates (and some modern-day Southern Republicans) argued that slaves at least had free housing, food, and medical care as compensation for their labors. ..................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/labor/one-americas-most-enduring-myths-slavery-ended-after-civil-war

November 27, 2012

Thom Hartmann/Sam Sacks: Walmart's Hunger Games

Walmart's Hunger Games

Monday, 26 November 2012 15:09
By Thom Hartmann and Sam Sacks, The Daily Take | Op-Ed


Every year after Thanksgiving, the nation's wealthy elite, still fat-bellied from turkey and cornbread stuffing, tune in to their local news outlets and observe what has become an annual tradition of bloodletting and frenzied consumerism.

We call it "Black Friday." But to those like the Walmart heirs who together own more wealth than the bottom 40% of the nation combined, it might as well be called their very own "Hunger Games."

It's their stores, after all, that play host to this one-day battle - waged by poor and working class people - to get discounted appliances, clothes, and toys for their kids.

Like Suzanne Collins' dystopic future portrayed in The Hunger Games, in which impoverished teenagers battle each other to the death once a year for the amusement of Panem's wealth elite, Black Friday "Battle Royales" often end in death as well. In just the last few years, we've seen shoppers and retail workers shot to death, trampled to death, pepper-sprayed, bitten, punched, and kicked, all in their pursuit for Black Friday shopping deals. ..............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/12970-walmarts-hunger-games