Cult of Dusty: Cheers! You’re An Atheist! / Official Video
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Category Archives: Politics
Santorum: Google Me!
Let’s Stop Voting in Churches
A Baylor University study just published in the International Journal for the Psychology of Religion found that having a church in clear sight can influence people’s answers to questions. Co-author Wade Rowatt pointed out that the “important finding here is that people near a religious building reported slightly but significantly more conservative social and political attitudes than similar people near a government building.” The Baylor study confirms an earlier Stanford University study that shows the same effect when looking specifically at how people’s voting place influences their vote. Stanford researcher Jonah Berger said, “Voting in a church could activate norms of following church doctrine. Such effects may even occur outside an individual’s awareness.”
Since polling place influences the vote, governments and election boards should do all they can to find neutral voting locations. And it would seem very unlikely that churches would be chosen if neutrality were the aim. Why not use schools, courthouses, firehouses and the like instead?
Republican Racism is an Air Raid Siren, Not a Dog Whistle
To point: white conservative populists have disdain for non-whites, see them as lazy, outside of the polity, and as rightful targets for appeals based on symbolic racism. In the eyes of the Right, “those people” are not “real Americans.” They never can be. . .
. . . To defeat President Obama, the Republican Party is wallowing in white racism in order to win over racially and economically insecure white voters. However, Gingrich and company are doing this overtly. There is little subtlety. . .
Sadly, matters may be so dire that the white identity politics of years past are now “new school” rather than “old school.” To marshal that fear, insecurity, and anger one does not need nuance, sophistication, or dog whistles. White conservatives can put such feelings on blast and gin up the psychological wages of white fear, white anxiety, and white rage to try to defeat Barack Obama.
A Picture’s Meaning Can Express Ten Thousand Words
Quote: George Clooney / On Gay and Lesbian Equality
CORPORATE MEDIA: The Illusion of Choice
Bill Moyers: America Has Woken Up to the Reality: Inequality Matters
So no, Mitt Romney, when we say that Americans are waking up to the reality that inequality matters, we’re not guilty of “envy” or “class warfare,” as you claimed to Matt Lauer on NBC’s Today. Nor are we talking about everybody earning the same amount of money – that’s the straw man apologists for inequality raise whenever anyone tries to get serious.
We’re talking what it takes to live a decent life. If you get sick without health coverage, inequality matters. If you’re the only breadwinner and out of work, inequality matters. If your local public library closes down and you can’t afford books on your own, inequality matters. If budget cuts mean your child has to pay to play on the school basketball team, sing in the chorus or march in the band, inequality matters. If you lose your job as you’re about to retire, inequality matters. If the financial system collapses and knocks the props from beneath your pension, inequality matters.
Neither one of us grew up wealthy, but we went to good public schools, played sandlot ball at a good public park, lived near a good public library, and drove down good public highways – all made possible by people we never met and would never know. There was an unwritten bargain among generations: we didn’t all get the same deal, but we did get civilization.
Robert Redford: President Obama Stands Up to Big Oil
Let’s face it: Big Oil is used to getting its way. But not today… and we have President Obama to thank for standing up to them in spite of the political risk.
President Obama has just rejected a permit for the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline — a project that promised riches for the oil giants and an environmental disaster for the rest of us. . .
So when you hear Big Oil call Keystone XL a national jobs plan — ask “Are you kidding me?” A single pipeline project is not a jobs plan. Economic security is to be found in clean energy not in dirty energy that threatens us with oil spills and ever worsening harm from climate change.
And when you hear Big Oil say that we need Keystone XL for our security — tell them to get real. Energy security comes from reducing our dependence on oil, not from a pipeline that would leave us with the risk but send the tar sands oil overseas.
New Tool Reveals Country’s Most Polluted Places: How Close Do You Live?
Looking for some awkward synergy? The Environmental Protection Agency recently released a comprehensive database of America’s greatest greenhouse gas creators. It interactively indexes the 6,700 power plants and other facilities responsible for 80 percent of U.S. emissions, in an accessible online resource that gives interested citizens the ability not only to monitor their local and national pollution, but also to reproduce data-specific graphs and charts to fire off to colleagues and friends on social networks. . .
the Sierra Club and many others — likely including some of those EPA employees he addressed for the first time — who wondered aloud whether America had slipstreamed straight back to the Bush regime after President Obama halted EPA regulation of smog and air pollution, a major slap in the face to the environmentalists who have looked to him for change since the 2008 election. . .
Luckily, next year the GHG Reporting Program will widen to include 12 other industries, including electronics manufacturing and underground mining, eventually covering 85 percent of total GHG emissions, all viewable in its rewarding online resource.
But freeing information is not the same as shackling polluters. That heavy lifting on industries has sadly been postponed until after the 2012 election.
Always Question Authority 