Why I don't eat fish

Many people assume that since I'm a vegetarian I must at least eat fish. Aside from the fact that fish suffer too when they're killed for food (how would you like to suffocate to death?), the seas are dangerously overfished. Here's an excerpt from a very alarming article in the Washington Post entitled "Seafood Population Depleted by 2048, Study Finds":

The world will run out of seafood by 2048 if steep declines in marine species continue at current rates, according to a study released today by an international group of ecologists and economists.

The paper, published in the journal Science, concludes that overfishing, pollution, and other environmental factors are wiping out important species across the globe, hampering the ocean's ability to produce seafood, filter nutrients and resist the spread of disease.

"We really see the end of the line now," said lead author Boris Worm, a marine biologist at Canada's Dalhousie University. "It's within our lifetime. Our children will see a world without seafood if we don't change things."

The 14 researchers from Canada, Panama, Sweden and the United States spent four years analyzing all the available data on fish populations and ocean ecosystems to reach their conclusion. They found that by 2003 -- the last year for which data on global commercial fish catches is available -- 29 percent of all fished species had collapsed, and that the rate of population collapses has accelerated in recent years.

As of 1980, just 13.5 percent of fished species had collapsed, even though fishing vessels were pursuing 1,736 fewer species back then. Today, the fishing industry harvests 7,784 species commercially.

"It's like hitting the gas pedal and holding it down at a constant level," Worm said in an telephone interview. "The rate accelerates over time."

Okay. Did anybody hear this on the news? The mainstream news media should be screaming this. But most people won't hear about it and Red Lobster will go on offering its all-you-can-eat shrimp dinners (that's just obscene) and one day we'll wake up to a world of dead oceans.

Something to remember

I stumbled upon this today and I'm glad I did:

Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle.

-- Philo of Alexandria

The perils of simply being female

I'm on the Tulsa Interfaith Alliance mailing list and this morning the coordinator of that organization sent me an article from the New York Times by Bob Herbert entitled "Punished for Being Female". Here's how it gets started:

Bride burnings, honor killings, female infanticide, sex trafficking, mass rape as a weapon of war and many other hideous forms of violence against women are documented in a report released last month by the United Nations.

The report, a compilation of many studies from around the world, should have been seen as the latest dispatch from that permanent world war — the war against women all over the planet. Instead, the news media greeted its shocking contents with a collective yawn.

The war analogy is not an overstatement. In many parts of the world, men beat, torture, rape and kill women with impunity. In Ciudad Juárez, a Mexican city on the Texas border, 300 to 400 women have been murdered over the past several years. Many were raped and mutilated. The widespread belief that punishment for these crimes was unlikely was a “key factor” in their occurrence, the report said.

Each year thousands of wives in India are murdered and maimed — many of them doused with kerosene and set ablaze — by husbands dissatisfied by the size of their dowries or angry about their wives’ behavior. In Ethiopia, the abduction and rape of young girls is a commonplace way to obtain a bride. In many instances the parents agree to the marriage, believing that the raped child is no longer fit to marry anyone else.

In Pakistan, a woman cannot legally prove that she was raped unless four “virtuous” Muslim men testify that they witnessed the attack. Without those four witnesses, the woman herself is vulnerable to prosecution for fornication or adultery.

While it’s undoubtedly true that men maim and kill other men in astonishing numbers, what I’m talking about here is the way that women, by the millions, are systematically targeted for attack because they are women.

Until the civilized world collectively says, "No, we won't stand for this," it will continue. Why are female life, female dignity and female well-being so devalued in the world?

Oh damn; he apologized

Just got this from the Washington Post. Notice it's front page news:

Thursday, November 2, 2006; Page A01

Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) issued two apologies for remarks that seemed to impugn U.S. troops and abandoned his public schedule yesterday, but he denounced what he called the "campaign of smear and fear" against him as the surreal sequel to the 2004 presidential election echoed across the campaign trail.

The White House and Republican allies orchestrated a cascade of denunciations throughout the day to keep the once and possibly future presidential candidate on the defensive and force other Democrats to distance themselves. Kerry canceled plans to appear with several candidates and returned home to avoid becoming "a distraction to these campaigns."

Republican strategists appeared almost gleeful over the contretemps because it revived a favorite target at a time they need to motivate core supporters to vote in Tuesday's midterm elections. GOP officials have tried to make the elections not a referendum on President Bush but a choice between two parties with competing visions over taxes, terrorism and Iraq, but they have struggled to find a symbol for Democrats. Kerry's comments have allowed Republicans to make him again the face of his party and cast 2006 as a rerun of Bush vs. Kerry.

Democrats were irritated to lose two days in the homestretch that they would rather have devoted to Bush's troubled Iraq policy, and they pressed Kerry to apologize and get out of sight. Hoping to change the subject, Democrats seized on comments by Bush, who told reporters he wants Vice President Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to remain in their jobs for the final two years of his administration.

I'm sick of Democrats forming a circular firing squad. They eat their own - unlike Republicans who consistendly rally around their own. When will we learn?

More on the Kerry "gaffe"

The problem with Kerry's "botched" joke is that it really touched a national nerve. We want to stay in denial about how we actually recruit young men and women for our all volunteer military. This morning, MadPriest sent me a page of comments from the Guardian about the Kerry situation and this paragraph caught my attention:

The dirty secret is we purposely recruit people in poor and desperate economic and cultural situations. They are easier to convince, they work cheaper, and fewer people will miss them if they die. Sure, it's brutal, but this is war people and this is how it's always been. Recruiters go specifically to these types of neighborhoods and show them pictures of exotic places all throughout the world that they 'might' see and give them details on how short their tour will be and how unlikely it is they will be stationed in Iraq... and then boom! Their parents are getting a letter that the US's gamble with their child's life didn't go as planned. Sorry for your loss.

Except this is not really how it's always been - in the U.S. at least. We used to have a draft and therefore had young people from all socio-economic levels in the military. (Sure, some people gamed the system but it was still more fair than it is now.)

Apology demanded from Boehner

Howard Dean

Well, you've heard this by now, of course:

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- House Majority Leader John Boehner's call for critics to lay off Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld because the generals are responsible for the conduct of the war in Iraq has sparked outrage among Democrats.

Both Howard Dean and Harry Reid have demanded apologies. Here's Howard Dean's statement:

After the Bush Administration’s numerous failures in Iraq, to blame our brave troops is just wrong. John Boehner should apologize immediately. Once again, Republican leadership is pointing fingers rather than taking responsibility for their failures. Our brave troops deserve better from Republican leaders like Don Rumsfeld, John Boehner and Dick Cheney.

And here's the comment from my good friend, Walt Calahan:

It's all the generals fault. Really?

I don't care if the Democrats are outraged. We independent voters are outraged with Republicans and Democrats for this war. But to blame the generals??????????

Just because someone is a "Majority Leader" does NOT make them smart. Election time really brings out the true colors.

I'd call Boehner a horse's ass, but a friend reminded me that my two horses might be listening and take offense. Ha ha ha

W

Democrats need to fight hard from now until Tuesday and not wimp out. It will be interesting to see how they do.

Leno snark

Ha.

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff says that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is doing what God tells him to. This is how we are able to win the war against those religious fanatics.

-- Jay Leno

Kerry's botched joke

Well, by now it has come to your attention that John Kerry, in a speech to college students, said that they needed to study hard or they would end up "stuck in Iraq." And you also know that the Republicans are outraged - OUTRAGED, I tell you! - that he would dare imply that our troops are not educated.

You can catch up with the full story by reading a CNN article entitled "After remark, Kerry curtails campaigning for Democrats". Here's what actually happened:

A Kerry aide said that the prepared statement, which had been designed to criticize Bush, "was mangled in delivery."

Kerry was supposed to say, "I can't overstress the importance of a great education. Do you know where you end up if you don't study, if you aren't smart, if you're intellectually lazy? You end up getting us stuck in a war in Iraq."

Before the announcement that the statement was botched, McCain, a Vietnam veteran and former prisoner of war, joined his GOP colleagues in condemning the remark and demanding an apology.

But Kerry refused to relent, calling the criticism part of the "classic GOP playbook."

"I'm not going to be lectured by a stuffed-suit White House mouthpiece standing behind a podium, or doughy Rush Limbaugh, who no doubt today will take a break from belittling Michael J. Fox's Parkinson's disease to start lying about me just as they have lied about Iraq."

My old friend, Walt Calahan, sent me a copy of an email he wrote in reply to someone who insisted that Kerry needs to apologize. Here's what Walt said:

No Kerry doesn't.

Kerry put his life on the line in Vietnam.

Bush, when AWOL in Alabama, never finishing his fly boy life in the Texas Air National Guard (couldn't pass the physical).

Bush abandoned the real fight in Afghanistan to get the terrorist, to waste our troops in Iraq. Now he wants us to believe his war of attrition in Iraq (sounds like Vietnam all over again) is the only correct way to win this war.

Republicans are afraid to speak their mind 'cause they all need the welfare handouts from the Republican Party to run their campaigns.

Democrats are afraid to speak their minds 'cause they are afraid to lose their meager place in Congress because they don't have the balls to fight back.

Meanwhile, one veteran who is pissed off at the war, and tells a poorly worded joke about it, is the source of "Moral Outrage" by a President who wouldn't know morals if it bit him on the ass. This was clearly seen as he flew 1500 feet over New Orleans. Instead of setting down at ground zero to help Americans who had their lives destroyed, he morally flew on.

One more election that never addresses what the common person really needs. Just more Bull Shit of gotcha'.

You know what, I can't wait till next Wednesday when these "leaders" wake up without a clue what to do next.

W

Well, Walt, I hope you're right. About next Wednesday, I mean. You'll forgive me if I'm not optimistic, however. I don't trust the Republicans not to steal this election too.

Bill Maher says it.

You can't say it better than this:

A great nation doesn't torture people or make them disappear without a trial. Bush keeps saying the terrorists hate us for our freedom. And he's working damn hard to see that pretty soon that won't be a problem.

-- Bill Maher

Happy All Hallow's Eve everybody!

An evil thing

I want to recommend a short article here. It's succinct and to the point and, unsurprisingly, Canadian - from the Toronto Star, to be exact. It's entitled "The Real Problem is That it is Illegal for One Country to Invade Another Country". Here's an excerpt:

The real problem is, and always has been, that it is illegal — not to mention immoral — for a country to invade another country, in other words, to wage a war of aggression.

The fact that Iraq is the last unharvested oil bonanza on earth, in an era of increasingly fierce global competition for dwindling oil reserves, only makes U.S. motives all the more suspect.

As the Nuremberg Tribunal concluded after World War II: "War is essentially an evil thing ... To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime, it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole."

If the U.S. had a genuinely open media, there would be a ferocious debate raging about how to deal with the fact that Washington initiated a war of aggression that has resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands — possibly hundreds of thousands — of Iraqis, and almost 3,000 Americans.

But of course, we don't have a genuinely open media. Our Fourth Estate has been bought and paid for by big business. And war is profitable. For the already rich, that is.

Computer woes

Hi, friends. You're not going to believe what happened. Henry, one of my cats, was sitting on the keyboard of my computer when I got home from church today (that's what I get for not closing the laptop) and he obviously messed it up royally. It's totally frozen. Yes, I've re-booted. I've tried everything. I'm going to need to phone my computer guru in the morning and see what's what. Right now I'm at the computer in Cynthia's office but I won't be able to use that much so be patient. I'll get back to posting regularly when I have a reliable computer.

Ah, cats! Ya gotta love 'em.

Linguist George Lakoff has written a very interesting article analysing Bush's "stay the course" slogan and why the attempts to change it won't work. Here's an excerpt:

In the context of a metaphorical war against evil, "stay the course" evoked all these emotion-laden metaphors. The phrase enabled the president to act the way he'd been acting - and to demonstrate that it was his strong character that enabled him to stay on the moral path.

To not stay the course evokes the same metaphors, but says you are not steadfast, not morally strong. In addition, it means not getting to your destination - that is, not achieving your original purpose. In other words, you are lacking in character and strength; you are unable to "complete the mission" and "achieve the goal."

"Stay the course" was for years a trap for those who disagreed with the president's policies in Iraq. To disagree was weak and immoral. It meant abandoning the fight against evil. But now the president himself is caught in that trap. To keep staying the course, given obvious reality, is to get deeper into disaster in Iraq, while not staying the course is to abandon one's moral authority as a conservative. Either way, the president loses.

I do hope Lakoff is right. Bush's recent claim that he'd "never been stay the course" is simply laughable. You really should hear Keith Olbermann on that subject. You can do so right here. And while we're at it, you might as well hear Dave Letterman's crack on the slogan right here.

Lincoln's view on invasion

This is from an article in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer entitled "Fear is Driving this Political Drama":

Abraham Lincoln vigorously denounced President Polk for unnecessarily, in Lincoln's view, launching the war with Mexico in 1846. Lincoln declared Polk's argument -- "that if it shall become necessary to repel invasion, the President may, without violation of the Constitution ... invade the territory of another country" -- permitted the chief executive "to make war at pleasure" and subject the American people to "the most oppressive of all Kingly oppressions."

-- Hubert G. Locke

As George Santayana said, "Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

Voting machine "glitches"

I know the polls are favoring the Democrats as we head into this election. But I'm not confident. And the reason I'm not confident is because of the voting machines. One reason, of course, is that they're owned by Republican leaning companies and have been known to be programmed to flip votes for Republicans. But the second reason is the simple unreliability of the machines. Take a look at this excerpt from an article by Steven Lesser entitled "Election 2006 - Electronic Voting Machines Are Already Failing":

"I tried to hit the letter 'A' and instead the machine kept displaying that I had typed 'S'". Such was the experience of Allan Greene of St. Petersburg, Florida when he attempted to select write in Florida Gubernatorial candidate Omari Musa . According to Nancy Whitlock, spokesperson for Pinellas County Supervisor of Elections Deborah Clark, the culprit was machine calibration.
...
Elections personnel now overwhelmingly depend on computerized electronic voting machines. Anyone familiar with running a moderately sized Information Systems department, particularly on the Operations side, knows that it is a challenge to keep machines running even under the best of circumstances. I have fourteen years of experience working on the Operations side of the IS/IT departments of large and prestigious firms. I can tell all of my readers that being able to guarantee that a couple of hundred machines will definitely work on a specific day for the entire day under heavy use is a difficult task for even the best IT professionals. Yet, this is exactly the task that now faces elections staff of every county in the country every two years.

Now that's bad enough. But then there's the nefarious tampering that you know is going on. Take a look at what's happened in Virginia:

As been reported by the AP press, Jim Webb, Democratic challenger for U.S. Senator in Virginia to Republican incumbent, George "Macaca" Allen, has had his last (Webb’s) name chopped off or "hacked" off by electronic voting touch-screen
machines!

What is being called a "glitch" by Hart InterCivic spokespersons, three cities in Virginia -- Alexandria, Falls Church and Charlottesville -- will not properly display Jim Webb's name on the November ballot summary screen. Voters will only see 'James H. "Jim"' on the ballot, instead of James H. "Jim" Webb.

To make matters worse, the candidates will have "their party affiliations...cut off" even after navigating through the summary screen nearly blind. To put some perspective and clarity to this, in Alexandria, Falls Church and Charlottesville, Virginia, voters will not be able to recognize Jim Webb by his full name OR by his party’s affiliation!

The AP is also reporting, "Jean Jensen, secretary of the Virginia State Board of Elections, pledged to have the issue fixed by the 2007 statewide elections." How generous of her, to have the "issue" fixed by next year! In the mean time, unsuspecting voters, in these three cities, will show up on Election Day and not even find the name "Webb" on the ballot summary screen or be able to find Jim Webb’s party affiliation – Democrat – once they do find Mr. Webb’s full name.

That is correct; the vote stealing “black boxes” of 2004 are back with a new trick! Not only are the people designing and operating these machines “hacks”, not only do they allow their machines to be “hacked” into for political gain, now they program these dubious devices to “hack off” candidates names and party affiliations. Somehow, we are all supposed to believe – after all the deception in 2004 – that it is just another coincidence that it happened to a democrat – again!

Whether it’s just another “oversight” by the republican-owned and controlled electronic voting machine companies, or further proof of the malicious attempts by the GOP to suppress voter information and perpetrate election fraud, it is another glaring example of why these machines must be banned immediately.

Exactly.

Now why is it that the computer problems always seem to favor Republicans? It's a close race in Virginia. Yes, that's right: close enough to steal.

Friday cat blogging!

Henry

Photo by Ellie Finlay

Dixie Chicks censored again

Well, the major broadcasting networks are clearly bought and paid for by the right wing. It's really beyond disgusting. Check this out by John Aravosis from AMERICAblog:

"[NBC] cannot accept these spots as they are disparaging to President Bush." - NBC's letter to the Dixie Chicks.

Let's just all pack up and move to Canada because this isn't our country anymore. But then again, I have a better idea. Once Democrats win back the congress we have a long and hard look at media consolidation, and more importantly, media bias and whether the large networks have essentially been bought off by the Republicans. The Fairness Doctrine went away a long time ago, and as a result, whether through coercion or wooing, the networks have gone Republican.

For NBC to say that they won't run ads that "disparage" the president is beyond sick, it's beyond un-American. This was an ad for a new movie about how the Dixie Chicks were censored in this country for simply being critical of the president. So now NBC is going to censor their movie about being censored because the ad for the movie is critical of the president.

Seriously, NBC needs to pay for this. Just like ABC needs to pay for its Path to 9/11 fiasco. The major media has gone conservative because they think that's where the money is. Come November 7, let's show the meeting who's really in charge.

ThinkProgress has the commercial that NBC has banned for being critical of our president. Funny, but the networks don't seem have a problem with racist or homophobic ads, but when ever the ads are critical of Bush, or worse, promoting inclusive religions, suddenly they're not fit for television.

This used to be a free country. Look what has happened. It's heartbreaking.

A study of awareness of one's incompetence

Frank Ford sent me a very interesting article from the San Francisco Chronicle entitled "Incompetent People Really Have No Clue, Studies Find; They're blind to own failings, others' skills". Here's part of what it says:

There are many incompetent people in the world. Dr. David A. Dunning is haunted by the fear that he might be one of them.

Dunning, a professor of psychology at Cornell, worries about this because, according to his research, most incompetent people do not know that they are incompetent.

On the contrary. People who do things badly, Dunning has found in studies conducted with a graduate student, Justin Kruger, are usually supremely confident of their abilities -- more confident, in fact, than people who do things well.

"I began to think that there were probably lots of things that I was bad at, and I didn't know it,'' Dunning said.

One reason that the ignorant also tend to be the blissfully self-assured, the researchers believe, is that the skills required for competence often are the same skills necessary to recognize competence.

The incompetent, therefore, suffer doubly, they suggested in a paper appearing in the December issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

"Not only do they reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the ability to realize it,'' wrote Kruger, now an assistant professor at the University of Illinois, and Dunning.
...
In a series of studies, Kruger and Dunning tested their theory of incompetence. They found that subjects who scored in the lowest quartile on tests of logic, English grammar and humor were also the most likely to "grossly overestimate'' how well they had performed.

This could, I suppose, explain Bush, if you don't hold to the hypothesis that he's just plain evil, that is.