As Pandagon puts it: "No child left in school"

Our Nation's Dropout Rate


Read rest here


How exactly is it that a wealthy First World country like the US think that this situation is in its best interests? Do we WANT to become a banana republic? Do we REALLY need to spell out what a disaster this is? And where, oh where is the 24/7 media blitz? And where are our Presidential candidates' sweeping speeches offering solutions to this downright threat to our nation's continued prosperity?

Inequality is Incovenient. .To say the least.

The Republic of T brings a kickass essay addressing the 3 or 4 big cases of discrimination against gays that have been highlighted over the past couple of weeks:

[Example Number One:]The Pentagon at first blocked Rep. Tammy Baldwin’s domestic partner from traveling on a military plane with a congressional delegation on a trip to Europe but gave in after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi intervened.

The Pentagon said it was merely following House rules, which do not define domestic partners as spouses. Pelosi’s office countered that the Pentagon has its own rules about who can go on its planes.

Both sides agree that Defense Secretary Robert Gates reversed the decision to keep Azar off the plane after getting contacted by Pelosi, D-Calif.

…Morrell said that Pelosi asked Gates to honor her decision to waive House rules to allow Azar to travel and that Gates asked her to put that request in writing.

“She did so, and he — in this one case only — agreed to it,” Morrell said. “This is not a precedent by any means. This does not open the doors for life partners to travel on congressional delegations.” But Gates has agreed to review future requests, Morrell said.

Dear Presidential candidates,
Civil Unions are NOT ENOUGH. When the SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE has to intervene on behalf of a member of Congress, civil unions are a fucking insult. Clinton, states have more often than not REFUSED to progressive on any issue that I can think of right now, and you know that. Obama, whatever your religious objection, the bottomline is this...ALL AMERICANS ARE ENTITLED TO THEIR CIVIL RIGHTS. Regardless of what your God has to say about it. Otherwise, what you are saying is that all Americans are NOT EQUAL. That gay people are second class citizens. And that is a VERY ironic message in light of the fact that both of you represent constituencies who know what's its like to be second-class citizens and have been fighting that BS for years. Is this what feminism and the entire history of Af-Americans in the US has led us to? Do you realize that you are harming a subset of your own people by kowtowing to bigotry? Do you realize that you are betraying the progressive cause, that you are ignoring the Human Rights Charter of the UN, and that you are making a mockery of the US' claims of being a progressive civilized country? Oh hell, do you realize that what you are doing is fucking WRONG?


Sick and tired of the BS
A disgusted voter

Foreign Policy Questions

See alsoOther perspectives

( John McCain's Foreign Policy Speech )

( Obama's Foreign Policy Speech )

Analysis of McCain's Speech on Foreign Policy

McCain vs Obama on Foreign Policy

Misogynist News Coverage of Hilary Clinton

Via Shakesville

News Coverage on Hilary Clinton

Really Glenn Beck? "It cries!" WHAT?????

The clips of Keith Olbermann don't fit the theme. That was legitimate criticism. Should have used others.

The rest of it is fucking disgusting.

Bottomline: Stop bashing her because she's a woman. Bash her on THE ISSUES.

Bread and circuses, while America burns...

Glenn Greenwald points out that: In the past two weeks, the following events transpired. A Department of Justice memo, authored by John Yoo, was released which authorized torture and presidential lawbreaking. It was revealed that the Bush administration declared the Fourth Amendment of the Bill of Rights to be inapplicable to "domestic military operations" within the U.S. The U.S. Attorney General appears to have fabricated a key event leading to the 9/11 attacks and made patently false statements about surveillance laws and related lawsuits. Barack Obama went bowling in Pennsylvania and had a low score.

Here are the number of times, according to NEXIS, that various topics have been mentioned in the media over the past thirty days:

"Yoo and torture" - 102

"Mukasey and 9/11" -- 73

"Yoo and Fourth Amendment" -- 16

"Obama and bowling" -- 1,043

"Obama and Wright" -- More than 3,000 (too many to be counted)

"Obama and patriotism" - 1,607

"Clinton and Lewinsky" -- 1,079

Megan McArdle, a political writer for The Atlantic Monthly, argues, among other things, that Americans care more about Barack Obama than John Yoo because John Yoo is not running for President. Also, people don't know about "minor gov't functunaries". And of course, this perennial argument: that people don't care about weighty issues like gov't torture, they prefer to read about Britney Spears Seriously. Read the whole thing.


And as for Dan Drezner, professor at Tufts University, well... 2) There are more press mentions of an event when the target of the media inquiry actually responds to the press. To my knowledge, John Yoo has said nothing since the terror memo was leaked published, [2 seconds worth of googling disproves that see Esquire magazine article] and the Bush administration has clammed up as well. Barack Obama, on the other hand, clearly did respond to the Jeremiah Wright business, leading to multiple news cycles about that issue;[Really? Does ANYONE think that Obama ignoring this issue would have persuaded the mainstream media to back off? Remember John Kerry's swiftboating?]

3) Shockingly, the press appears to be more interested in events that determine the future (i.e., who will be the next president?) than in events that look back at the past. [Me? Speechless.]

First to begin with:John Yoo responds in Esquire Magazine on April 3 I found that in two seconds worth of googling.

There are loads of WTFness in these McArdle's and Drenzer's statements. But Mr. Greenwald takes them apart much more effectively than I would have, to wit...

McArdle's principal point is that "Americans care more about [Obama] than John Yoo because, well, John Yoo isn't running for president" and that "most people don't care about minor government functionaries." Just think about that for a moment. Megan McCardle thinks that John Yoo is basically the DOJ version of Lynndie England -- just some low-level guy who went off on his own and did some isolated, unauthorized bad things in the past that our political leaders have now corrected.

She quite obviously has no idea that the memoranda John Yoo wrote -- legalizing government torture, declaring presidential omnipotence, and suspending the Fourth Amendment inside the U.S. -- are not merely his opinion, but became the official position of the entire Executive Branch of the U.S. Government. She also quite obviously has no idea that he did all of that in close association with the most powerful political officials in the White House, including David Addington, Alberto Gonzales and ultimately Donald Rumsfeld, nor does she have the slightest awareness that the torture-authorizing memoranda were used to brief Gen. Geoffrey Miller, the commander of Guantanamo who then went to Iraq to train the commanders of American prisons in Iraq, including Abu Ghraib, nor that the theories of presidential omnipotence underlying it all remain firmly in place.

And that's the point. Because we have an establishment media that completely ignores these matters in favor of chattering endlessly about how Obama bowls and the cleavage that Hillary shows, the U.S. Government, at its highest levels, can literally create a torture regime -- war crimes by any measure -- and explicitly seize lawbreaking powers. And when they do, even people like Megan McArdle -- who writes on political matters for the The Atlantic -- will remain completely ignorant of even the most basic facts about what the Government did, ignorance which won't stop her from defending it all and dismissing its significance.


and

Then we have Dan Drezner. He lists several reasons why the media's coverage is fine here, but what he writes doesn't even make sense on its own terms. He argues, for example, that controversies where the target of the controversy comments on it will understandably get more media attention than where the target doesn't comment (yet, almost immediately, John Yoo did comment extensively about his memos, while Hillary has said nothing about Lewinksy for years and Obama hasn't commented on whether his bowling prowess means he's an effete and out-of-touch elitist).

Worse, Drezner's rationale would mean that high government officials who commit serious crimes will be able -- and ought to be able -- to keep the press coverage to a minimum simply by refusing to comment on what they've done, since all the press should do is report what each side says. If the wrong-doers say nothing, there doesn't need to be press coverage about it -- because, hey, what can reporters do?

See why I love this guy? See why the MSM is fucking dangerous to the survival of democracy in these here United States?

Please do yourself a favour and read the whole thing And then, if you haven't already, set about finding yourself alternative news sources (and Fox anything doesn't count). Cause if you are waiting on the MSM to inform and enlighten you, you'll be waking up one morning to realize that the US is a fascist state, and be wondering how that happened. Also, keep a sharp eye on effort to fuck up Net Neutrality.

Americans try to patent yoga

TimesonlineUK

American attempt to patent yoga puts Indians in a twist
Jeremy Page in Delhi

For millions around the world yoga is a source of relaxation and spiritual sustenance. Not so for the Indian Government, which has worked itself into a furious twist over efforts by American entrepreneurs – including an Indian-born celebrity “yogi” – to patent the ancient practice.

Indian officials announced yesterday that they would lodge official complaints with US authorities over hundreds of yoga-related patents, copyrights and trademarks that have been issued in recent years.

The Health Ministry said that it would take up the matter directly with the United States Patent and Trademark Office, while the Commerce Ministry said that it would write to the US Trade Representative.

“How can you patent yoga – something that has been in the public domain for thousands of years?” said Verghese Samuel, joint secretary of the Ministry of Health department for yoga and other traditional practices. “It’s a ridiculous decision,” he told The Times. “We’ll have to challenge it. We’ve already started the process.”

The dispute has exposed the differing attitudes towards yoga – and intellectual property rights over “traditional knowledge” – in India and the US.

( Read more... )

I would be more blunt in saying that the dispute is the latest incarnation of Western stealing of traditional ideas.  Cultural appropriation, ahoy!

rock. hard place.

Obviously, coming back home was a huge mistake.

Immigration Myth: All those Spanish immigrants won't learn to speak English!

Rubén G. Rumbaut and Frank Bean, both sociologists at the University of California, Irvine, and Douglas Massey, a sociologist at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School decided to conduct a study to test that hypothesis.

See: Linguistic Life expectancies: Immigrant Language Retention in Southern California (PDF)

Conclusion: By the third generation, in the most dense Hispanic immigrant community in the US, (Southern California, Hispanic immigrants don't speak Spanish anymore.

California Progress Report sums it up:The surveys asked respondents to rate their level of fluency in their native language and to identify the predominant language used at home. Those that responded “not verywell” and “English” respectively were categorized as “linguistically dead” in terms of their native tongue. The authors used these responses to derive “survival curves” of linguistic retention among immigrants--recording the fall-off in the degree to which immigrants and their descendants are able to speak their mother tongue and actually do so. These survival curves yield language “life expectancies,” or the average number of
generations a native language can be expected to persist.

The authors found that although the generational life expectancy of Spanish is greater among Mexicans in southern California than other groups, its demise is all but assured by the third generation. Third-generation immigrants are American-born with American born parents but with 3 or 4 foreign-born grandparents.

In the second generation, fluency in Spanish was greater for Mexican immigrants than for other Latin American groups, and substantially greater than the proportions of Asian immigrants who could speak their mother tongue very well. In the third generation, only 17% of Mexican immigrants still speak fluent Spanish, and in the fourth generation, just 5%. The corresponding fourth-generation figure for white European immigrants is 1%.

In short, as the study authors point out, the United States still its reputation as a language graveyard.

Also, blogger Manolo on the Toosense blog, who brought my attention to the study, points out that I’m sorry, but no ethnic group has completely assimilated. Other than language, which Latinos are losing just like any other group, every ethnic group has maintained some of their native culture. At my college graduation there were bagpipes leading the ceremony. That's what this country is about, acculturation. It's time we stopped labeling people as "other" and started a path towards intelligent immigration reform.

In addition to that, he conclusively proves yet again that those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it:P.S. Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-MN)...Bachmann also compared the situation on the border to the Israel/Palestine conflict, saying “the argument that fences don’t work doesn’t hold water. Look at Israel and Palestine. Fences work.”
...

Walls that have not worked:
Great Wall of China
Berlin Wall
Bastille
Walls of Rome
Walls of Jerusalem (several times)

He might have also added that the point of the Israeli wall was to stop Palestinian militants from harming Israel. As we can see, that hasn't worked. Come to think of it, our Congresswoman was ridiculously ignorant of the recent past, as well. After all, the wall between Eygpt and Gaza went down at the beginning of 2008, at the height of the Israeli blockade of Gaza, because desperate Palestinians in need of food and other necessities blew it up with the help of Hamas Sure, the wall went back up in a couple of days. But what makes her think that it can't go down again? Or that the same thing can't happen to a wall built in the US?

The internet is now obsolete

THE internet could soon be made obsolete. The scientists who pioneered it have now built a lightning-fast replacement capable of downloading entire feature films within seconds.

At speeds about 10,000 times faster than a typical broadband connection, “the grid” will be able to send the entire Rolling Stones back catalogue from Britain to Japan in less than two seconds.

The latest spin-off from Cern, the particle physics centre that created the web, the grid could also provide the kind of power needed to transmit holographic images; allow instant online gaming with hundreds of thousands of players; and offer high-definition video telephony for the price of a local call.

David Britton, professor of physics at Glasgow University and a leading figure in the grid project, believes grid technologies could “revolutionise” society. “With this kind of computing power, future generations will have the ability to collaborate and communicate in ways older people like me cannot even imagine,” he said.

Read here

Breaking...

Ambassdor Ryan Crocker states that it would be better for American interests to attack Al Qaeda along the Afghanistan/Pakistan border than it would be to attack whoever is in Iraq. Are you listening, John McCain? And George Bush? Stop insulting the American people's intelligence now. Kthanxs.

Via: Daily Kos, which has analysis

The next civil rights and privacy battle may be over the mind

Trolling down the street in Manhattan, I suddenly hear a woman's voice.

"Who's there? Who's there?" she whispers. I look around but can't figure out where it's coming from. It seems to emanate from inside my skull.

Was I going nuts? Nope. I had simply encountered a new advertising medium: hypersonic sound. It broadcasts audio in a focused beam, so that only a person standing directly in its path hears the message. In this case, the cable channel A&E was using the technology to promote a show about, naturally, the paranormal.

I'm a geek, so my first reaction was, "Cool!" But it also felt creepy.

We think of our brains as the ultimate private sanctuary, a zone where other people can't intrude without our knowledge or permission. But its boundaries are gradually eroding. Hypersonic sound is just a portent of what's coming, one of a host of emerging technologies aimed at tapping into our heads. These tools raise a fascinating, and queasy, new ethical question: Do we have a right to "mental privacy"?

We need to be scared. And then , we need to ACT.

Warnings:

Every Progressive should recognize and incorporate, deep in their soul, the plain fact: Peak and Global Warming are the most serious threats to Progressive ideals, concepts, policies, and aspirations through the 21st century ... AND today.

These are not just let’s wait until tomorrow issues, that should be put in the back of the line to deal with after other issues, we must address them with urgency today if we hope for a progressive world.

Without better energy policies starting now, the future could be bleak economically for decades to come with the impending strike of Peak Oil. Amid recessions and depressions, what happens to mental health programs? What happens to music in the classrooms? Training programs for economically disadvantaged among us? Will there be funding for these and other progressive causes? I doubt it. Don’t you?

With ever-increasing environmental stresses, global refugee and food crises, multiple-Katrina-like challenges and choices over whether to protect or abandon America’s coastal infrastructure, will Head Start funding be secure? Will Americans focus on expanding GLBT rights? Will there these and other progressive concerns be the top of the agenda? I doubt it. Don’t you?

He's posting on a progressive website, so he's addressing progressives directly. But the truth is, when the shit hits the fan, ALL of us will be spattered, be ye conservative, progressive, in-between, or none of the above. Schools, roads, the economy, health services, all of this affects ALL of us. We ALL need to join together and do something about huis. Its not a treehugger problem. Its not a wacky environmentalist problem.

Its:1. US pollutants killing the Inuit in Arctic. The US has released pollutants and toxins into our environment and these poisons were carried north by sea currents and weather patterns, contaminating sea animals eaten by the Inuit and the water they drink. Researchers have documented for the first time that "unacceptable levels" of environmental toxins are in the bodies of some of the Inuit. The level of contamination in the animals and in mothers' breast milk is exponentially higher than that level deemed to be hazardous waste when found in soil.

2. Our bodies are contaminated by chemicals and pesticides that pollute our air, water, food and land. Please meet Patricia, Denis and Deb. They were part of a group from Washington state who volunteered blood, urine and hair samples to be tested for eight classes of chemicals. They are not "walking toxic waste dumps" yet, but the level of pesticides and chemicals in their bodies "were high enough to make both scientists and subjects sit up and take notice."

"Dr. Patricia Dawson, 56, a Seattle surgeon, had the dubious honor of having 38 chemicals detected in her chemical profile. Her PBDE levels were near those found to cause reproductive problems in laboratory animals. Her levels of DDT (banned since 1972) were greater than 90 percent of the U.S. population.

Denis Hayes, president of the Bullitt Foundation and a founder of Earth Day, was found to have mercury above a level deemed safe by the Environmental Protection Agency. Mercury has the potential for causing learning deficits.

Deb Abrahamson, 51, a Native American living on the Spokane Indian Reservation, and the Rev. Ann Holmes Redding, 54, of Seattle, were found to have very high levels of pesticides."

3. In 2005, the World Bank issued a report that linked cancers to environmental conditions.

"For almost all forms of cancer, the risk of contracting this disease can be reduced if physical environments are safe for human habitation and food items are safe for consumption."

Certain illnesses have increased over the past few decades: Autism has increased tenfold, one type of leukemia increased by 62%, male birth defects doubled and childhood brain cancer increased by 40%. And, another study claims to have linked chemical pollutants used to manufacture products as a contributing factor to "soaring rates of breast cancer."

4. Our government does not know what constitutes a "safe" level of pollutant. How many times how we heard our government or a corporation say, "hey, don't worry about this particular pollutant that you are drinking, eating or breathing because it's usage is at a safe level?"

Our government operates under the assumption that any pollutant has a safe level which may be discharged into our environment for ultimate consumption by us. In fact, only 25% of the chemicals used in the US have ever been tested for toxicity. That means 75% of the chemicals are released into our environment and homes without any testing for toxicity.

We are the guinea pigs who ultimately determine what constitutes a safe level of exposure.

And that stuff is not even the tip of the iceberg. We are in TROUBLE, people. Please go read those diaries,. They are long, but by God, the scale of the problem is fucking HUGE and even then, we have not scratched the surface. For your sake and that of your children, GET INFORMED. Then change your mindset. this ain't theoretical. This ain't something that's coming in some unspecified future. This is here. This is now. We need to join together to change public policy and pressure our politicians to make the sweeping and drastic changes needed as quickly as possible. We need to do the lifestyle changes that are absolutely fundamental to survive on this planet. For our sake and the sake of our children, WE CANNOT WAIT ANY LONGER.