What I post on this blog, mostly anything and everything. I am going to try and post more personal things as that is the purpose of a blog after all.
Photoset reblogged from with 1,371 notes
Last night’s Daily Show was a real vocabulary-booster. Click here to watch.
Photo reblogged from Letters To My Country with 51 notes
One of the many “voluntary” searches that took place in Watertown, Mass. during the Tsarnaev manhunt. This resident no doubt feels much safer and secure with a loaded gun pointed at her face.
PoorRichardsNews makes the necessary point:
I am not anti-police. I have no problem with a police show of force, a manhunt for a suspect, or a “shelter-in-place” directive when a fugitive is on the loose. The police in Boston were searching for some dangerous criminals who killed innocent people, killed a rookie police officer, hurled at least 3 bombs at police during the chase, and engaged the police in a massive gunfight. Obviously, extraordinary precautionary measures are reasonable and necessary.
However, when there is a manhunt for 1 person, it’s also important to remember that over 99% of the other people in the area are innocent. These innocent people shouldn’t be herded like cattle out out of their homes at gunpoint. They shouldn’t be treated as suspects. The number one priority of police officers should be to protect citizens, not protect themselves from citizens.
Photoset reblogged from fauna with 70 notes
Federal Court Gives Green Light to Palila Protection
Removal of grazing mammals that destroy endangered bird habitat to resume
Earth Justice media release
Honolulu, HI — Yesterday, the U.S. District Court for the District of Hawaiʻi issued an order clearing the way for the State of Hawaiʻi Department of Land and Natural Resources (DLNR) to resume aerial hunts to remove grazing mammals from the last forest habitat of the critically endangered Palila (Loxioides bailleui) atop Mauna Kea on the island of Hawaiʻi.
Earthjustice, representing the Hawaiʻi Chapter of the Sierra Club, the Hawaiʻi Audubon Society and the National Audubon Society, has been in court since 1978 to protect the palila from feral sheep and goats and mouflon sheep that ravage the māmane-naio forest on which the palila depends.
In a series of orders beginning in 1979, the Court found that, to prevent the bird’s extinction, DLNR must permanently remove the mammals from the palila’s designated critical habitat through all necessary means, including aerial hunts. DLNR had suspended the hunts following passage of a Hawaiʻi County ordinance in July 2012 that sought to ban them. The Court held that, under the U.S. Constitution, the federal Endangered Species Act trumps the county law…
(read more: Earth Justice)
(photo: USFWS, San Diego Zoo/USGS)
Quote reblogged from Letters To My Country with 6 notes
Paradoxically, aiding the resistance [in Syria] could drive some Syrians who desire a negotiated solution toward the government. The Financial Times recently reported: “As the civil war becomes ever dirtier, rebels’ actions are starting to mirror those of the regime.” In fact, opposition fighters increasingly kill regime soldiers and supporters, and have turned to crime, including kidnapping, to raise funds…
Intervening would give Washington ownership for the conflict’s outcome without control. Americans have no moral obligation to support either warring side in an increasingly complex conflict — think Spanish Civil War, for instance. However, helping one side win would make Washington accountable for the winner’s conduct.
In Kosovo NATO went to war to stop ethnic cleansing and stood by as the victorious ethnic Albanians defenestrated a quarter of a million Serbs, Roma, and others. In Syria the potential for a violent breakdown if the rebels triumph is even greater. Warned Holliday: “The remnants of the Syrian military and the powerful pro-regime militias are likely to wage a fierce insurgency against any opposition-led Sunni government in Syria if the Assad regime collapses.” At the extreme, imagine Iraq redux.
Photo reblogged from Explore with 238 notes
An 1877 social-satirical map of Europe. Complement with a visual history of maps as power and propaganda.
Photo reblogged from ShortFormBlog with 995 notes
I was in the audience for this. Was some crazy stuff, and it was very disappointing to see him removed from the stage. (To be clear, it wasn’t at Obama’s inauguration, but at a party related to the inauguration.) — Ernie @ SFB
Source: mehreenkasana
Quote reblogged from Letters To My Country with 25 notes
Until now, the driver of copyright legislation has always been Big Content, and there’s never really been a driving force on the free speech side or the tech side. So that has yet to develop. And I don’t know that is going to effectively develop this year, but I think its time to take a look at these issues.
For example, why is it that you can spend a billion dollars and develop a medication, and by the time you get it to market you’ve only got 15 years left on your patent term—but the ditty that advertises the medication is protected for 100 years. What is the rationale for that?
Quote reblogged from Activate the Mechanism! with 360 notes
I’m saying right now, anyone from New York or New Jersey who contributes one penny to congressional Republicans is out of their minds, because what they did last night was put a knife in the back of New Yorkers and New Jerseyans. It was an absolute disgrace.
Republican Rep. Peter King • Condemning House Republicans for refusing to vote on a post-Sandy disaster relief bill that was approved by the Senate last week. The bill would have allocated roughly $60.4 billion in disaster relief funding for the areas in New York and New Jersey that were devastated by Sandy last year. House Republicans have responded to the criticism with assurances that a vote is coming in the 113th Congress, and a denial that there is any immediate need for such funding. source (via shortformblog)
“When your people are literally freezing in the winter and they’re without food and their without shelter and they’re without clothing and my own party refuses to help them, then why should I help the Republican Party?”
So, NOW he realizes this?
(via abaldwin360)
Source: The Huffington Post
Quote reblogged from Letters To My Country with 46 notes
Try to imagine how you would feel if you woke up one morning to find the sun shinning and all the stars aflame. You would be frightened because it is our of the order of nature. Any upheaval in the universe is terrifying because it so profoundly attacks one’s sense of one’s own reality. Well, the black man has functioned in the white man’s world as a fixed star, as an immovable pillar: and as he moves out of his place, heaven and earth are shaken to their foundations.
You, don’t be afraid. I said that it was intended that you should perish in the ghetto, perish by never being allowed to go behind the white man’s definitions, by never being allowed to spell your proper name. You have, and many of us have, defeated this intention; and, by a terrible law, a terrible paradox, those innocents who believed that your imprisonment made them safe are losing their grasp of reality. But these men are your brothers—your lost, younger brothers. And if the word integration means anything, this is what it means: that we, with love, shall force our brothers to see themselves as they are, to cease fleeing from reality and begin to change it. For this is your home, my friend, do not be driven from it; great men have done great things here, and will again, and we can make America what America must become. It will be hard, James, but you come from sturdy, peasant stock, men who picked cotton and dammed rivers and built railroads, and in the teeth of the most terrifying odds, achieved and unassailable and monumental dignity. You come from a long line of poets, some of the greatest poets since Homer. One of them said, The very time I thought I was lost, My dungeon shook and my chains fell off.
Quote reblogged from Letters To My Country with 33 notes
Let’s debunk the notion that the drop in crime is due to incarceration. In truth, there is very little correlation between incarceration and the crime rate. Between 1970 and 1990 the total prison population in the U.S. rose by a million, and crime rose, too. Since then we’ve locked up another million, and crime has gone down. Is there something special about that second million? Were they the only ones who were “real criminals”? Did we simply get it wrong with the first 1.3 million we locked up? If so, can we let them out?
Link reblogged from Mother Jones magazine on Tumblr with 310 notes
"With complete disregard for his personal safety, Second Lieutenant Inouye crawled up the treacherous slope to within five yards of the nearest machine gun and hurled two grenades, destroying the emplacement. Before the enemy could retaliate, he stood up and neutralized a second machine gun nest. Although wounded by a sniper’s bullet, he continued to engage other hostile positions at close range until an exploding grenade shattered his right arm. Despite the intense pain, he refused evacuation and continued to direct his platoon until enemy resistance was broken and his men were again deployed in defensive positions." →
R.I.P. Sen. Daniel Inouye.
Photoset reblogged from ShortFormBlog with 627 notes
Evidence Jonah Goldberg has the worst timing
Top: Conservative commentator Jonah Goldberg’s hit piece on Nate Silver, published one hour ago. Bottom Left: The current map on the New York Times home page. Bottom Right: Nate Silver’s map.
Photoset reblogged from "She sang beyond the genius of the sea" with 2 notes
Interesting 2012 polling data, provided by Gallup.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/154559/us-presidential-election-center.aspx
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