Motley Moose – Archive

Since 2008 – Progress Through Politics

All The News Fit To Share: End of the Week

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Photo credit to the National Park Service

Welcome to your Open News Thread!  This diary will remain open and monitored through Sunday night, when I post my big fat diary.  Jan F will add stories in the comments, and you are invited to add stories too.  

Today my stories all came from twitter links.  

New Dimension: Nebulas Are Even More Amazing in 3-D

Wired.com; Nadia Drake

As unbelievable as it may seem, space photos just got a bit more amazing.

Normally, the celestial sights we gaze at — such as ribbons of colorful gas and dust, wound around monstrous, dark caverns or splashed in front of star-studded skies — are flat. Two dimensional.

Now, Finnish astrophotographer J-P Metsavainio has rendered some spacescapes in three dimensions, using his own photographs as a starting point. “Objects in the images are not like paintings on the canvas, but really three-dimensional objects floating in the three-dimensional space,” he said in an e-mail.

Just right-click, open in a new window, and watch.  Utterly amazing.  

Bigots and Their Enablers: Reflections on Racism, Both Individual and Systemic

Tim Wise

It’s one of those stories that can leave even the most jaded and cynical critic of racist thinking scratching their head; the kind that manages to shock even those of us for whom acts of bigotry and intolerance seem all-too-typical, and who have, sadly, come to expect them in a culture such as this.

And so it was that in Flint, Michigan recently, a new father – and this is a term he has earned in only the most narrow, biological sense – demanded that when his recently arrived child was sent to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit of the hospital where she had been born, no African American nurses were to attend to her needs, to care for her, to do what neonatal ICU nurses do, which is to say keep sick babies alive. White hands only for this white, fresh as snow child, whose father, sporting a shiny new swastika tattoo (a Christmas present no doubt from his pathetic skinhead bride) prioritized his own hatreds above and beyond the needs of his precious little girl. That the future does not bode well for her seems hardly worth saying. To be delivered from an ICU into the arms of one as unhinged as this can only, by reasonable people, be seen as a turn for the worse. Incubators and breathing machines might be preferable to having parents such as she has, through no fault of her own, inherited.

7 Eye-Popping Details From The TIME Cover Story On Health Care Costs That’s Way Too Long To Read



Business Insider; Paul Szoldra


7 Eye-Popping Details From The TIME Cover Story On Health Care Costs That’s Way Too Long To Read

The piece, titled “Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us,” goes in-depth on the big problems facing hospitals, insurance companies, and the pharmaceutical industry – with patients often bearing the burden.

There is a link to the very long Time article too.

IRS Should Bar Dark Money Groups From Funding Political Ads, Lawsuit Says

Pro Publica; Kim Barker

A former Illinois congressional candidate and a government watchdog organization have teamed up to sue the Internal Revenue Service, claiming the agency should bar dark money groups from funding political ads.

The lawsuit, filed on Tuesday by David Gill, his campaign committee and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW, is the first to challenge how the IRS regulates political spending by social welfare nonprofits, campaign-finance experts say.

Indentured Servitude? GOP Lawmaker Wants To Tether Immigrants To ‘The Dirtiest Jobs’

ThinkProgress; Igor Volsky

A top conservative in the House of Representatives told NPR Thursday morning that he opposes bipartisan proposals to allow undocumented immigrants to earn a path to citizenship, but would support expanding “a guest-worker program for immigrant-labor-dependent U.S. agriculture” to ensure that farms have a steady stream of foreign labor to fulfill the “dirtiest jobs.”

The Senate’s bipartisan framework for immigration reform includes a separate track for agricultural workers, allowing them to “earn a path to citizenship through a different process under our new agricultural worker program” and lawmakers had previously considered proposals “that would provide agricultural employers with a stable, legal labor force while protecting farmworkers from exploitative working conditions.”

In light of current proposals for earned citizenship, Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) is concerned that legalized agricultural workers will take opportunity of their legal status to abandon back-breaking agricultural work and find jobs elsewhere, leaving farmers without a stable stream of labor.

For on-going discussion from earlier news diary.  I heard this story on NPR during school-dropoff and my skin crawled.  It sounded anti-American.  

Your Perfect Meditation Style

Jennifer Kass

Is this you: You really want to meditate and be less reactive in stressful situations, but you can’t sit still and empty your mind? Us, too!

It could be that you (we) just haven’t found the right meditation style, says davidji, apprentice to Deepak Chopra, and the author of The Secrets of Meditation: A Practical Guide to Inner Peace and Personal Transformation.

In his new book, the corporate executive-turned-meditation teacher covers the most frequently practiced forms of meditation. “Many types of meditation can help you manage the constant swirl of the city and our reactions to it,” he says.

Tips For Sharing Links:

Simple, three step procedure:

1. Put a pair of square brackets into the comment:

[]

2. Copy the link (URL) to your story and paste it into the brackets:



3. Copy the headline (or type your own) into the brackets at the left and put a space after it (the space before “http” is essential):

American Voices: Northeast Braces For Historic Blizzard

You can add a block quote from the news story by copying/pasting text, highlighting it then using the quote button to surround it with the “quote” html pairs:

< quote >”As a 12-year-old, should I have lived through this many storms of the century by now?”< /quote >

Voila! (that is French for “Holy mackeral!! It works!!”):


Categories: Uncategorized.

/ 76 Comments

76 comments

  2. Jk2003

    My daughter is on a space kick.  Now that my nightly Internet check is done, I am off to knit and watch project runway (one of my guilty pleasures).

  4. princesspat

    Furloughs loom for civilian Defense Dept. workers in Northwest

    Defense Department workers in Washington state would see their paychecks whacked by about

    20 percent from late April through the end of September under a furlough plan announced Wednesday to help the Pentagon cope with budget cuts to take effect March 1.

    The furloughs could affect some 16,200 civilian employees at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, a combined Army and Air Force installation. It would also hit some 16,000 Northwest civilian Navy employees, the majority of whom work in Washington.

    I hope people in communities across this country are reading and thinking about how this needles “crisis” will impact their  daily lives.

  5. dear occupant

    on Indiana’s proposed 2 vaginal probe legislation.

    ‘Set aside all of that. Because none of it makes the wrenching debate over the lines we draw as a state over abortion any more clear or easy to deal with.

    Instead, focus for now on Senate Bill 489, which also cleared the same Indiana Senate committee on Wednesday. Among its provisions: Clinics would need to provide consent forms – ones that are already required – in color. “Why color?” Sen. Mike Young, the bill’s sponsor, was asked. According to an account from Indianapolis Star reporter Mary Beth Schneider, Young said that color would be more realistic.

    The fine for using plain, black and white – less realistic, apparently – documents: $10,000.

    All of this from legislators who campaigned on less red tape.

    Now that you’ve set all of that aside, ask this: Is this legislature really up for this debate? Or is it just more chipping away at women’s health care while dancing around the bigger issues?

    Paperwork in color. Wow.’

    MORANS.

  6. zenor

    The summary assumes facts not given and draws unsupportable conclusions.

    How do we readers know there’s a skinhead bride?

    Is there confirmation that she paid for her husband’s nazi tattoo?

    Who said it was a Xmas present?

    It is an outrageous story. But this version has needless flaws that weaken the credibility of the report.

    I am not defending the bigotry.

    I’m uncomfortable with the reportage.

    And, how did the hospital respond to this father? Do we know?

  8. JanF

    Thune Tells Second Graders He Has No White House Ambitions

    [Republican Senator John] Thune, who is often pegged as a dark horse 2016 presidential contender, was answering questions from second grade students at an elementary school in Sioux Falls, S.D. when the topic turned to a potential White House bid.

    The chiseled jaw … the steely (blue, usually) eyes … unmovable hair. It is like they are from an “I Look Like a President Should Look” mold.

    The link to the story has unintentional humor. Links are usually a shortened version of the headline (and is often a clue to headline changes, btw). That one is “thune-tells-second-graders-he-has-no-white“. Ha!! His problem, and the problem of the entire Republican party, that “white” is all he has.

  9. JanF

    Top GOP Senator: Native American Juries Are Incapable Of Trying White People Fairly

    Last week, Grassley was one of just 22 senators-all Republican men-who voted against reauthorizing VAWA. During a town hall meeting in Indianola on Wednesday, a woman asked him to explain his vote. Grassley responded that the legislation is unconstitutional, a belief shared by at least five of his colleagues.

    Since the Constitution guarantees citizens the right to a trial among a jury of peers, Grassley reasoned that white men would be deprived of their rights if those who were accused of violence against Native American women had to appear in a tribal court. “On an Indian reservation, it’s going to be made up of Indians, right?” Grassley said. “So the non-Indian doesn’t get a fair trial.”

    First, according to Grassley, black people can’t get fair trials if there are white people on the jury. Second, he is misreading the constitution:

    There is actually no requirement that juries reflect “society as a whole.” The Sixth Amendment requires juries to be drawn from the “State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed,”

    And thirdly, it is patently offensive for him to assume that an all-Indian jury would render justice less blindly than an all-white jury.

  10. JanF

    “Don’t Get Old in Wisconsin”: nursing home story getting national attention

    A story published Sunday on captimes.com by the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism revealed the effects of a 2011 tort reform law. A provision in the law prevents state health inspection records from being used by families in civil lawsuits against nursing homes and other long-term health care providers, or in criminal cases against providers charged with abuse or neglect.

    … the laws are part of a package pushed by the nursing home industry to “make it virtually impossible for grossly negligent facilities to ever be liable for punitive damages.”

    The investigative report is here: Wisconsin Watch and Charles Pierce at Esquire weighs in on The Walker Way.

    The election (twice!) of Scott Walker, the goggle-eyed homunculus hired by Koch Industries to run their midwest subsidiary formerly known as the state of Wisconsin, has caused a radical redefinition of the political culture unlike that taking place almost anywhere else. The Wisconsin Idea – from which came many of the progressive notions that made the 20th century superior to the 19th, and the political manifestation of what became known as the Social Gospel – was the animating force behind Wisconsin politics for so many years that watching Walker recklessly destroy it is like watching the political equivalent of paving paradise and putting up the parking lot.

  12. JanF

    NOT The Onion

    Huckabee, Gingrich: Obama Is ‘Very Different’ Than George Washington

    “This is a very different president than our first one,” Huckabee said. “George Washington was so adamant that we would not have a king and I thought, ‘Well, gosh, we’ve done pretty well until 2008 and now I thnk we may have ended up with one.’ Am I too far off in saying that there’s probably never been a greater contrast than George Washington than Barack Obama?”

    Gingrich concurred, arguing that Obama’s “shenanigans” run counter to Washington’s “reticence” and “desire to be a good citizen.”

    Gingrich went on to say that George Washington “would think that it was disgraceful, that it was everything that he stood against because he really believe that you should put the country first, not partisan advantage and not factional skirmishing.”

    Exactly! Republicans would never do anything so unseemly as to seek partisan advantage when the country’s welfare is at stake!!  

  13. slksfca

    …it does tie in with our current guns-n-ammo nonsense.

    An 18-year-old Florida woman was only slightly injured this week when she was shot by her friend’s oven, police said. Aalaya Walker was visiting a friend in St. Petersburg Monday when they decided they wanted some late-night waffles, The Tampa Bay Times reported. So Walker began preheating the oven — unaware that her friend, JJ Sandy, 25, was storing a magazine from his .45-caliber Glock 21 in the oven.

  14. Chris Blask

    In four years, it was completed, with the 100 ounce (2.85 kg) aluminum apex/lightning-rod being put in place on December 6, 1884.[25] The apex was the largest single piece of aluminum cast at the time, when aluminum commanded a price comparable to silver. Two years later, the Hall-Heroult process made aluminum easier to produce and the price of aluminum plummeted, making the once-valuable apex nearly worthless, though it still provided a lustrous, non-rusting apex that served as the original lightning rod.

  15. princesspat

    These 21 animals have strong feelings on the sequester

    Under the terms of the sequester, the Smithsonian will take a $40 million budget cut in 2013. Among the programs run by the Smithsonian? The National Zoo.

    ~snip~

    But staff are also resolute. “We will never compromise on human safety, and we’ll never compromise animal welfare,” promises Dennis Kelly, director of the National Zoo, which has a $50 million budget and employs 450 people. “These people are incredibly devoted to these animals.” The story is a great read, although it did miss one key question: How do the animals feel about this mess? Let’s take a look!

  18. JanF

    What the National Mall Looked Like 150 Years Ago (And Now)

    This is interesting:

    One of the biggest differences between today’s National Mall and the Mall of the 1860s is the size of it. This map of the city from 1850 shows that the current site of the Lincoln Memorial was underwater while he was alive. In the decades to follow, agricultural sediment from upstream would deposit on the banks, strechting the Mall out into the river. The site of the Washington Monument is now about a mile farther from the water than it was when the city was planned.

  19. JanF

    Obama Administration Moves To Strike Down Defense Of Marriage Act

    The Obama administration filed the first in a series of legal briefs on Friday calling for the Supreme Court to strike down the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), saying the 1996 law that defines marriage as between one man and one woman is unconstitutional. Previously having only committed to not defending DOMA, the administration has now actively decided to seek its repeal.

    “Moral opposition to homosexuality, though it may reflect deeply held personal views, is not a legitimate policy objective that can justify unequal treatment of gay and lesbian people,” said Solicitor General Donald Verrilli in the Justice Department’s brief. “The law denies to tens of thousands of same-sex couples who are legally married under state law an array of important federal benefits that are available to legally married opposite-sex couples. Because this discrimination cannot be justified as substantially furthering any important governmental interest, Section 3 [which prohibits the marriage of same-sex couples] is unconstitutional.”

  20. JanF

    Obama: Supreme Court Won’t Take Away Your Right To Vote

    President Obama told “The Black Eagle” radio show on Thursday that even if the Voting Rights Act loses in the Supreme Court, people won’t lose their right to vote.

    “I know in the past some folks have worried that if the Supreme Court strikes down Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, they’re going to lose their right to vote,” he said, according to The Hill. “That’s not the case. … People will still have the same rights not to be discriminated against when it comes to voting, you just won’t have this mechanism, this tool, that allows you to kind of stay ahead of certain practices.”

    Put me down as one of those who is particularly fond of “staying ahead” of certain practices. Challenges to voter suppression tactics after they have already suppressed the vote generally end up in wrist slaps, small fines or jail sentences that are often waived. The remedy of “re-run the election” is never part of it so the damage is done, the cheater is sworn in and we have no chance to get them out of office until their term expires.

    The Roberts’ court will go down in history as one of the most destructive in its attacks on fair elections.  

  21. Moozmuse

    Scientology Still Raises Red Flags in Germany

    Critics in Germany accuse the Scientology sect of denying fundamental human rights. The organization insists that it’s a religion. While it is not banned, Germany’s domestic intelligence monitors the group.

    …

    But this is only what you see from the outside, says Manfred Napieralla of Hamburg’s domestic intelligence service. Scientology is seeking money, power and influence. Critics, and people who have left the organization, talk about massive psychological pressure on members to fully conform to the sect’s ideology. The organization seeks “to influence, use and control key people in politics, the economy, media and other areas of society,” warns Napieralla.

    —————————————————–

    German Bishops Accept Morning-After Pill

    In mid-January, the church in Germany was blasted after two Catholic hospitals in Cologne refused treatment to a rape victim due to concerns about the provision of emergency contraception in the form of the “morning-after” pill.

    On Thursday, the German Bishops’ Conference completed an about-face on its approach to the treatment, saying that Catholic facilities in Germany were now free to prescribe such pills in rape cases, provided that the medication was used to prevent a pregnancy and not to abort an already fertilized egg.

    ————————————————–

    He’s Baaaaaack! Election Day in Italy Today

    Fears Rise of a Berlusconi Resurrection

    European Parliamentary President Martin Schulz has warned Italians against voting for Silvio Berlusconi in upcoming elections. He joins a growing list of leaders who are wary of the return of “Il Cavaliere.” The worry is particularly pronounced in the financial world….

    It is, of course, hardly news that Schulz is no great fan of Berlusconi. In 2003, when Schulz was a rank-and-file European parliamentarian and Berlusconi occupied the position of European Council president, the Italian prime minister took umbrage at critical comments made by Schulz. In response, Berlusconi said: “I know that in Italy there is a man producing a film on Nazi concentration camps. I shall put you forward for the part of guard.” The comment unleashed a brief but intense diplomatic tiff between Rome and Berlin.

    A side note:

    In the summer of 2011, Berlusconi reportedly said in a telephone conversation with a journalist that German Chancellor Angela Merkel was a “culona inscopabile,” which was widely translated as “unfuckable fatass.”

    Photo gallery of Berlusconi’s most memorable quotes

  22. dear occupant

    “I know that in Italy there is a man producing a film on Nazi concentration camps. I shall put you forward for the part of guard.” The comment unleashed a brief but intense diplomatic tiff between Rome and Berlin.

    ya think?

  24. JanF

    Leonard Pitts: A baby, the N word and a slap for Jonah Bennett

    So now, Jonah has received a lesson in How Things Are. He is 19 months old.

    Sitting on his mother’s lap on a recent Delta Airlines flight on approach to Atlanta, he was doing what babies tend to do on airplanes, particularly airplanes that are changing altitude. He was crying his little head off.

    Shut that “nigger baby” up.

    Those were the alleged words of the alleged man in the next seat just before he allegedly slapped the baby with an open palm, leaving a scratch below his right eye. […]

    [60 year old Idaho man Joe Rickey] Hundley’s attorney, Marcia Shein, promises her client is no racist. In so doing, she embraces the cognitive dissonance which so often afflicts Americans when they are confronted with the ponderous idiocy of tribal hatred. Michael Richards, you will recall, said the same thing after a “comedy” routine in which he hurled the N-word at a heckler and suggested the man should be lynched. Mel Gibson swore he wasn’t an anti-Semite shortly after he cursed the Jews and accused them of starting all the world’s wars.

    As Pitts points out, this is only the first of many slaps this baby will receive in our not-post-racial society.

    Recommended reading.  

  25. JanF

    Michigan GOP Backs Electoral Vote Scheme

    The Michigan Republican Party on Saturday endorsed a plan to shift the way Michigan allots electoral votes from a winner-take-all system to one based on the winner of the state’s Congressional districts, a plan that would benefit Republican candidates.

    I am not sure what, if anything, can be done but Republicans might want to be careful about this. It reeks of desperation and while it may give them short-term electoral gains, if people see it as cheating they may not be so keen to re-elect the guys who are doing it.  

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