October 2008
26 posts
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“[Abstinence-before-marriage] pledgers apparently gather strength from the sense...”
– Margaret Talbot, “Red Sex, Blue Sex”, The New Yorker, discussing the findings of sociologists Peter Bearman and Hannah Bruckner.
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Corporate lobbyists enjoy one last trick-or-treat... →
Away from the intense national spotlight on the 2008 presidential election, the Bush administration has been working quietly and diligently to enrich its wealthy friends and contributors at the expense of literally everybody else. What a fitting punctuation mark to a complete failure of a presidency.
This election, let’s remember that a president really represents a whole set of powerful...
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What a wacko.
Michelle Bachmann: Proof that anyone can be a Congressperson.
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NY Times looks into Wayne Pacelle's Humane Society
This article details how the Humane Society has very successfully ratcheted up its efforts for ‘farm animals’ over the last several years under Wayne Pacelle’s determined leadership.
One thing to note (h/t Catalogue) is that Pacelle prefers the language of “animal protection” to “animal rights”. I can understand some ambivalence about rights language...
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Prop. 2 Updates
This HERE-recommended Grist article, published yesterday, details how the anti-cruelty measure is playing out on the ground in California.
One interesting tidbit from the piece:
Opponents of Prop. 2 say it would double egg prices. Proponents say it would raise the price of an egg by only a penny. But the threat of higher prices was enough to win the California NAACP over to the no side.
So...
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Yes on 3 →
We’ve recently been highlighting Prop. 2, the California ballot measure that could outlaw some of the cruelest aspects of factory farming in that state.
Over the weekend, a Massachusetts resident alerted me to a state initiative there that deserves voter support. Passage of Question 3 — otherwise known as the Greyhound Protection Act — will phase out all commercial greyhound...
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Comedic Perfection
Courtesy of the Daily Show. The interview with Wasilla’s current mayor is particularly juicy.
H/t to Jed L at DailyKos.
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WatchIn this video you’ll see 8 or 9 Obama supporters holding a banner in front of Sarah Palin’s motorcade, and then getting shoved, body slammed, and dragged away by 4 or 5 policemen. The officers’ aggression appears to escalate even further when one officer gets pinned down by the body of a protester — after that protester was shoved into him by a fellow officer. I mean, this...
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“The public should always be wondering how it is possible to give so much for the...”
– Henry Ford, (as quoted here).
Mr. Ford was speaking from a marketing perspective, saying a consumer should always be wowed by the amount of value he seems to get in exchange for the amount he pays. I suppose Ford believed (as most of us do) that this is (a) a good thing and (b) the end of the...
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Classic
As seen on Craiglist:
Greatest Singer on the planet!!!
My name is Warren and I used to be the lead singer of the cover band Green Machine. I decided to leave them after I realized that they were not matching up to my standards and not willing to work hard enough. I Brought that band to the popularity that they are today and I can do the same for your band. I have all of the “A”...
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A real American hero
Man Gulps Down 15-Pound Burger With [5 pounds of] Toppings
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Oprah weighs in on California's Prop. 2 →
Oprah recently did a show highlighting the animal welfare issues raised by California’s Proposition 2, which would ban certain torturous conditions that currently afflict farm animals in the Golden State. (For background on Prop. 2, see our earlier post.)
If you are infuriated to hear factory farmers claim — as they do in this piece — that they “care about” the...
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“Mankind seldom reacts before problems become too severe to ignore.”
– H.D.S. Greenway, in an excellent piece on global warming for the Boston Globe.
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NY Times weighs in on Prop. 2
Via Humane Society president Wayne Pacelle’s blog, the NY Times editorial board recently wrote a few paragraphs in support of Prop. 2, the California voter initiative that may ban some of the worst factory farm abuses in that state.
The last paragraph struck me:
To a California voter still undecided on Proposition 2, we say simply, imagine being confined in the voting booth for life....
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Connecticut
A fair state.
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“I don’t believe the First Amendment is any guarantee to those who wish to...”
– Thomas E. Hutchins, former Maryland state police superintendent, attempting to justify a 14-month program of surveillance and infiltration that targeted Maryland anti-war and anti-death penalty groups from 2005-2006.
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Cindy McCain: Barack Obama has "waged the dirtiest...
As David Kurtz over at TPM stated: “Up is down.”
My dirtiest response to Cindy: Are you popping the same pills you were getting illegally prescribed to you back in ‘94 via your so-called charity work?
Of course, my dirtiest is still cleaner than the McCains’ brand of shit, because it’s rooted in fact. I have standards, you know.
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An exceptionalist campaign
An AP article offers up this unwittingly interesting quote from Sarah Palin — really, are there any wittingly interesting ones? — as she stretches desperately to cast Barack Obama as un-American:
“This is not a man who sees America like you and I see America. We see America as a force of good in this world. We see an America of exceptionalism.”
Palin surely meant to say...
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AP, consider yourself fact-checked.
For those of you sleeping under a rock on the moon, the Vice Presidential debate between Joe Biden and Sarah Palin happened last night. As usual, various media outlets play the post-debate fact check game.
And, as usual, the piss-poor quality of the traditional corporate media’s “fact-checking” stands in stark contrast to that of independent — and, who’d’ve...
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