Shutdown: n. A maneuver whereby persons elected and paid by the public to do little but pass budgets refuse to do so unless they are permitted to prevent poor children from seeing a doctor. Compromise: v. To Comply. The president, reelected by a comfortable margin, and the Senate, with a Democratic majority, must do what […]
Archives for September 2013
Scientists: Certain that Human-Caused Climate Change Threatens our Planet (Queally)
Jon Queally writes at Commondreams.org “Unequivocal.” If the public and policymakers want a single adjective to describe the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's new assessment report that's the word. Released Friday, the IPCC report states, that "warming in the climate system is unequivocal and since 1950 many changes have been observed throughout […]
Why US Clout in the Middle East is Gone (Hiro)
Dilip Hiro writes at Tomdispatch.com: What if the sole superpower on the planet makes its will known — repeatedly — and finds that no one is listening? Barely a decade ago, that would have seemed like a conundrum from some fantasy Earth in an alternate dimension. Now, it is increasingly a plain description of political […]
Why Israel’s Plan to Bomb Iran is more Dangerous to Israel than Obama-Rouhani Diplomacy
Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has made no secret of his dismay that the Obama administration is entering into what look like serious negotiations with Iran over the latter’s nuclear enrichment program. Israeli hawks such as Netanyahu want the US to bomb the Iranian nuclear enrichment facilities in Natanz near Isfahan and in Fordow near […]
You Can have Obamacare, or You can have Cruzcare (Jamiol Cartoon)
Courtesy Jamiol’s world
Is Iran out of the US War Queue? The Twilight of the Hawks
The short telephone conversation between US President Barack Obama and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on Friday may or may not lead to a successful diplomatic resolution of US-Iranian conflicts, especially over Tehran’s nuclear enrichment program. But if it does, how will the hawks in Washington survive? The US is an unusually war-like country. Since 1963 […]
Where did Syria get its Chemical Weapons in the First Place? (Brühl)
Jannis Brühl writes at ProPublica In the wake of a recent Russian-U.S. deal averting American airstrikes, Syria has begun to answer questions about its chemical weapons stockpile. One thing inspectors don’t have the mandate to ask is where those weapons came from in the first place. But evidence already out there suggests Syria got crucial […]
Stand up to Global Warming or just Observe it? Ice Cover down 40% since 1980 (Naidoo@ Moyers)
Bill Moyers interviews Kumi Naidoo of Greenpeace International on the urgency of action on climate change: The program’s blurb: “On this week’s broadcast, the charismatic Greenpeace International Executive Director Kumi Naidoo joins Bill to discuss the politics of global warming and the urgency of environmental activism. As of this moment Vladimir Putin’s government is holding […]
With a Solar Minimum and La Nina’s, Why isn’t it Really, Really Cold?
2013 is witnessing another year of very low sunspot activity, showing that we are in a years-long solar minimum. It may not last much longer, but something is going on more than just the usual drop in solar activity every 11 years. Even that 11-year cycle affects the weather. But we’ve seen remarkably low sunspot […]
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