Motley Moose – Archive

Lurking beneath the headline stories on cable news shows is the next stage of the Iranian Revolution, which continues to smolder after this summer’s uprising.  Police are out in force at this moment trying to put forth the power of the military and Republican Guard in opposition to the will of the public and the religious clerics who founded the current regime.

Two-term Iranian president Mohammad Khatami had a speech interrupted by Mehdi Army thugs today, GreenUnity4Iran has video of various protests going on today and other documentary video.

“Iran 26 Dec 09 Tehran- Jamaran Inside Hosseynieh Hall”

I don’t know if you get to read incoming e-mail. I doubt it, as I know the value of your time in running the country and still finding some room for your wife, children and dog. However, I would like to offer you a couple of points from my not-so-unique position as an unemployed American with two college degrees who worked on your campaign steadily for many months last year… and who is now getting more and more disappointed in your progress, or lack thereof.

A lot of people think of the United States as a religious country, but really, it’s just a religious world out there. The US simply happens to have a lot of Christians. If you go hunting statistics, you’ll generally find estimates between about 12 and 17% for the “nonreligious” (atheist, agnostic, secular humanist, etc.) world population. From my personal heathen perspective, the religiosity in America and around the world is a bit puzzling. I doubt I will ever truly understand the need people seem to have for religion, though some of what I read indicates that it may increase life expectancy in some places and for various reasons. (But then again, so does owning a pet, so I figured I’d skip the religion bit and adopt four cats.)

This season tends to annoy me a tad, primarily due to the “in your face” attitude of so many southern Christians. Most of them mean well, of course, so it’s hardly something I feel comfortable directly criticizing; it still makes for many moments of slight vexation and exasperation, however, which I do my best to cover with a polite smile.  

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a 23-year-old young man from Nigeria, tried to make his statement by blowing up the plane he was on from Amsterdam to Detroit.  According to passengers “there was a pop, and then a puff of smoke”, and then the young man was tackled by passengers and subdued.

CNN and all the news channels are providing all the information (and arguably more) that anyone could ask for.  The question I have for all of you is:

“What if anything do you take away from this incident?”

Cross-post (op-ed) from the Worldwatch Institute’s Nourishing the Planet

By Danielle Nierenberg and Brian Halweil

It’s been twenty-five years since a well-meaning music producer threw together a bunch of megastars to record the now ubiquitous humanitarian torch song, Do They Know it’s Christmas. Bob Geldof’s Band-Aid raised millions of dollars and immeasurable awareness with the compelling chorus of “Feed the World,” but global interest in those hungry people has plummeted in the last two decades, if the barometer is international investment in agriculture: agriculture’s share of global development aid has dropped from 7 percent to 4 percent since the song debuted, even though most of the world’s poor and hungry people depend on agriculture for their livelihoods.

The famine-stricken Ethiopia that inspired the song in the 1980s remains hobbled by food shortages today: some 23 million people in the Horn of Africa are at risk for starvation, according to the World Food Program, which delivers food aid around the world. The global recession and a recent spike in food prices aren’t helping, either; the United Nations reported recently that the number of hungry worldwide has crested 1 billion.

The sheer number of hungry people isn’t the only reason we must raise our standards for success. Because agriculture makes up such a large percentage of the planet’s surface, and touches our rivers, air, and other natural resources so intimately, the world can’t tolerate some of the unintended-and counterproductive-consequences of how we farm and produce food. And farmers everywhere, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, will need crop varieties and whole new approaches to farming that help them deal with drought, extreme heat and increasingly erratic weather.

Hopefully, our collective understanding of how to “cure” hunger has matured enough over the last twenty-five years to recognize that solutions lie not only in shipping food aid, but a new approach to agriculture that nourishes people and the planet. One of us has been traveling in Africa for the last two months, visiting farmers, agricultural research centers and other sources of innovation. There is no shortage of innovative and winning ideas on the continent.  

I just wanted to pass on, to all of you who have joined our community here at the Moose, how thankful I am to have you guys here. This is truly a community, as tight-knit and firm a bond as any. Amazing, in this day and age, with the anonymity of the Internet and the distances separating us, that a group of people could come together the way we have. In that light, I’d like to share a prayer.

Heavenly Father,

In your name we pray. Amen.

Wherever you are this Christmas, and whatever you’re doing, God Bless you all- have a wonderful day.

It has been a working holiday for the US Senate and it would appear that they will spend this week in Washington.

Aw. That was sweet and funny Senator Burris. I am such a sap.

Michael Steele is looking for some attention. Robert Gibbs had a few choice words for Steele.

Chris Matthews has noticed an interesting trend in the republican party.

Let them represent Jesusland.

I had a conversation with someone today.  It’s my usual holiday conversation about the existence of Christ.  As a gratefully recovering Catholic and now proud atheist, I did my usual dance of trying to be considerate and polite and changing the subject.  As is often the case, my friend continued on undeterred with great curiosity about how I cannot believe in any god and what that might mean.  I obliged by quickly employing the word delusional and said that I see no difference between one fairy tale and another.  Predictably, we finished up pretty quickly after that.

(Cross-posted at The National Gadfly.)

This is the first part of a series of posts analyzing the swing state Florida. Part two can be found here.

In 2008, Illinois Senator Barack Obama won Colorado by 9.0%, Florida by 2.8%, and Indiana by 1.0%. Guess which one was the “swing state” in 2004.

The answer is Florida, and if that seems strange in light of the above – it is. In fairness, one might counter that Obama did relatively poorly in Florida (where he didn’t campaign in the primaries) and relatively well in Colorado (where the Democratic convention was held).

Here’s another question. Colorado, Florida, Indiana. Only one of these three sends a majority-Republican delegation to the House of Representatives. Which one is it? (A hint: it’s not Indiana.)

It turns out that Florida elects 15 Republican congressmen and 10 Democratic congressmen. Again, to be fair, one might note that Florida’s Republican-controlled state legislature gerrymandered Florida’s congressional districts to achieve an unbalanced result. This is relatively easy – most Democrats live in tightly clustered South Florida.

But that’s just it: Florida’s state legislature is Republican-controlled. In fact, Republicans have 60%+ majorities in both chambers. Florida’s governor is Republican Charlie Crist. Florida was voted Democratic in only two of the last eight presidential elections. John Kerry’s campaign was shocked by the margin he lost by in Florida. Bill Clinton won Georgia, of all states, while losing Florida in 1992.

To be fair, I’m picking and choosing my numbers. If you go back to the past nine presidential elections, you’ll find Democrats batting three for nine, not two for eight. And three of those eight elections were big Republican victories.

But there’s only so many times one can say “to be fair.” There’s only so many excuses one can make for yet another indication of Republican dominance in Florida.

Because the closer one inspects as Florida, the more it begins to look less like a swing state than a conservative state with an unusually big Democratic base – which the media happens to call a swing state.

In the next section, I’ll be analyzing why exactly this is so.

–Inoljt, http://mypolitikal.com/

Just now, the final vote requiring 60 to pass in the Senate was won – 60 to 39.

At 7am tomorrow the bill will be approved.  This will be the first time that a vote has been held in the Senate on Christmas Eve since 1895.

Ho, Ho Ho!  Merry Christmas!