UNDERNEWS--June 1, 2011

The Review will be on the road for the next few days, hence no email reports but updates at http://prorevnews.blogspot.com

Pocket paradigms

The more high placed is the person to whom one introduces a new idea, the more likely this individual is to be uncomfortable, dismissive, or suddenly in need of another drink. Unchallenged myopia is one of the most cherished privileges of power. - Sam Smith

Word

Victory goes to the player who makes the next-to-last mistake - Chessmaster Savielly Grigorievitch Tartakower

How the conventional media pimped for the Ryan budget disaster

Peter Hart and Julie Hollar, FAIR - The budget proposal released on April 5 by Rep. Paul Ryan (R.-Wisc.) included tax cuts for the wealthy, tax hikes for the middle class, drastic cuts in social spending and a radical restructuring of Medicare that would shift most of the cost of healthcare to seniors. Its dubious claims of deficit reduction rely on fatally flawed assumptions and inexplicable projections.

Meanwhile, the 76-member Congres-sional Progressive Caucus unveiled its own “People’s Budget” proposal on April 13, which would eliminate the deficit in 10 years without eroding social services or raising taxes on the working class.

Guess which one the Beltway media embraced?

Much of the avalanche of corporate media coverage about the Ryan plan has presented it as a serious solution to long-term budget problems, or at least the starting point of a serious conversation about the topic.

In Time magazine, readers learned that Paul Ryan¬described as having “jet black hair and a touch of Eagle Scout to him”¬ has unveiled an ambitious package of huge budget cuts designed to dig the country out of its crippling debt crisis. For Ryan, reining in spending is nothing less than an act of patriotic valor.

The magazine also declared that he is “a PowerPoint fanatic with an almost unsettling fluency in the fine print of massive budget documents.”

Deep into the article, readers get this parenthetical warning: (He’s also been criticized for peddling fuzzy math and rosy projections. A Washington Post fact check deemed his budget full of “dubious assertions, questionable assumptions and fishy figures.”)

So someone with “an almost unsettling fluency in the fine print of massive budget documents” has presented a budget plan filled with obvious problems. How can both things be true?

For too many media outlets, probing the details of Ryan’s plan was less important than telling an appealing political story: that finally someone has presented a “serious” budget proposal. Lacking evidence to demonstrate the plan’s seriousness, media cited Ryan’s biography in order to supply the necessary credibility.

Thus the Washington Post explained that Ryan is “wonky” and “an unlikely revolutionary.” The Post added that “Ryan studied economics in college, and in Congress he has embraced the weedy issues of the federal budget.” The Post’s lead wondered if Ryan can “really manage the hardest sales job in U.S. politics.” The paper seemed to think so: So far, the sales pitch appears to be classic Ryan. He will make his case with earnestness and a hope that a quiet explanation of budget math can swing the country in a way that previous politicians could not.

Ryan’s “budget math” relies on, among other things, wildly implausible estimates concerning unemployment and government spending. Krugman explains that the plan asserts without explanation that unemployment will fall to its lowest level in 50 years, and that the entire federal budget, excluding Social Security and health programs, can be slashed by more than two-thirds via unspecified cuts. But as salesman to the corporate media, it seems Ryan is largely succeeding.

New York Times columnist David Brooks called Ryan’s budget plan “the most comprehensive and most courageous budget reform proposal any of us have seen in our lifetimes...[which] will put all future arguments in the proper context.”

Even those who disagreed with Ryan’s plan found ways to praise it. In Time, Fareed Zakaria wrote that “Ryan’s plan is deeply flawed, but it is courageous.” Zakaria added that “Ryan makes magical assumptions about growth¬and thus tax revenues,” and that other aspects are “highly unrealistic.” But still he concludes that it should be applauded as “a serious effort to tackle entitlement programs.”

And on NBC’s Chris Matthews Show, pundit Gloria Borger declared: “We have to give Paul Ryan an awful lot of credit because, as all of our august colleagues have said, yes, it does define the conversation for 2012.”

In a piece for Time.com, reporter Michael Grunwald noted the incongruity of such praise and wondered, “What’s so brave about fuzzy math in the service of Tea Party ideology”?. . .

Meanwhile, the Beltway media reaction to the People’s Budget ranged from indifferent to scornful. Not a single hard news story on the proposal ran in the New York Times, Washington Post or USA Today. The Post’s Dana Milbank covered the unveiling of the “far-left” budget only to mock it, spending much of his time making fun of the “starry-eyed” progressives’ press conference and attire. Milbank snidely commented on Caucus co-chair Raul Grijalva’s tie, which “hung loosely from his neck and ended five inches above his waistband,” and noted that the lawmakers and staffers kept poking one another with their umbrellas, and they found themselves competing with the whine of a Capitol tractor. Their oft-repeated slogan, “The People’s Budget,” conveyed an unhelpful association with “the people’s republic” and other socialist undertakings.

Milbank snorted that the budget proposal gives a sense of how things would be if liberals ran the world: no cuts in Social Security benefits, government-negotiated Medicare drug prices, and increased income and Social Security taxes for the wealthy. Corporations and investors would be hit with a variety of new fees and taxes. And the military would face a shock-and-awe accounting: a 22 percent cut in Army soldiers, 30 percent for the Marines, 20 percent for the Navy and 15 percent for the Air Force. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan would end, and weapons programs would go begging.

Milbank treats these policies as self-evidently absurd¬even though, unlike Ryan’s tax cuts for the rich and dismantling of Medicare, they’re actually quite popular with the public. . .

It’s true that the Beltway media largely serve as stenographers to power, and the Progressive Caucus does not represent the “mainstream” of the Democratic party, as defined by the party’s center of gravity in Washington. But remember that Ryan’s plan had all of 13 Congressional supporters even months after he first formally introduced it in January. That didn’t stop him from getting hundreds of media entions and dozens of interviews throughout the year, including plenty of praise for his “political courage”, well before the midterm elections skewed the party further to the right and shifted Ryan’s plan to the GOP “mainstream.”

Don't give up on books yet

Stephen Krashen, Schools Matter - A common view is that books are obsolete, and for two reasons: People just aren't interested in reading these days, and for those who are, ebook readers, such as the Kindle, are taking over. Not according to at least one indication. The number of new book titles printed each year continues to increase, and the increase over the last decade is dramatic. Bowker, an information service company, reported that 215,138 book titles were published in 2002. This increased to 302,410 in 2009, and the projected total (based on preliminary data) for 2010 was 316,480.

The increase in titles published holds even when we consider the increase in the population of the US. The population in 2002 was estimated to be about 288,600,000. In 2010 it was estimated to be about 318,750,00 million. The ratio of books per person in the US has increased: In 2002, there was one book published for every 1342 people, in 2010, there was one book published for every 1007 people.

Justice Thomas’ wife worked for group that fought Obamacare

Stephanie Mencimer, Mother Jones - Following a time-honored Washington tradition of dumping required but embarrassing information on a Friday night before a major holiday, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas finally released the details of his wife's income from her year or so working for the tea party group Liberty Central, which fought President Obama's health care reform law. His new financial disclosure form indicates that his wife, Virginia, who served as Liberty Central's president and CEO, received $150,000 in salary from the group and less than $15,000 in payments from an anti-health care lobbying firm she started.

The disclosure was apparently prompted in part by Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.), who had been needling Thomas for months to disclose how much money his wife earned from Liberty Central. That's because challenges to Obama's health care reform law are likely to end up before the Supreme Court sooner rather than later, and if Thomas and his wife benefited from her income working against the bill, the justice has an enormous conflict of interest in hearing any legal challenge. Thomas had failed to disclose Virginia's income on his financial disclosure forms for 20 years; under pressure from Weiner and others, he had recently amended old disclosures to reflect hundreds of thousands of dollars she had earned working for the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank that also opposed Obama's health care plan.

UN revises population growth upwards

Malcom Potts & Martha Campbell, Foreign Policy - This week, the United Nations Population Division made a radical shift in its population projections. Previously, the organization had estimated that the number of people living on the planet would reach around 9 billion by 2050 ¬ and then level off. Now everything has changed: Rather than leveling off, the population size will continue to grow, reaching 10 billion or more at century’s end.

Why is this happening? Put simply, fertility rates. Across much of the world, women are having fewer children, but in African countries, the decline is far slower than expected. Part of this shift was supposed to come from preferences about family size and better access to family planning to make that possible. Sadly, however, that access hasn’t come. Another factor, many expected, would come from the deleterious impact of high HIV/AIDS rates. But even Uganda ¬ with one of the highest numbers of AIDS cases in sub-Saharan Africa ¬ is projected to almost triple its population by 2050. In fact, outside a handful of countries, HIV/AIDS has only a tiny impact on overall population. Consider this: In the first five months of this year, the world population grew by enough to equal all the AIDS deaths since the epidemic began 30 years ago.

Number of government limos increase by nearly three quarters under Obama

CBS News - The number of limousines owned by the U.S. government increased by 73 percent during the first two years of the Obama administration.

An analysis of General Services Administration data reveals the federal fleet has increased from 238 limos in 2008---the last year of the Bush Administration--- to 412 limos in 2010. Much of the increase was recorded in the State Department under Hillary Clinton.

For its part, the Obama administration said the increased number of limousines in the federal fleet reflects "an enhanced effort to protect diplomats and other government officials in a dangerous world."

Why do Obama and the media still stake Alan Simpson seriously?

Dean Baker, Huffington Post - Former Wyoming Senator Alan Simpson has been a holy terror ever since he was appointed by President Obama to co-chair his deficit commission last year. With equal fervor he has attacked both his opponents and the basic facts surrounding the budget in general and Social Security in particular.

Ordinarily, either his rudeness or his lack of understanding of the facts on the issues where he is supposed to be an expert would be sufficient to have him exiled from the public limelight. Yet, because his views coincide with the editorial positions at elite news outlets like the Washington Post, his credibility as a spokesperson on the budget and Social Security is never tarnished.

In the rudeness category, Mr. Simpson sent a late-night e-mail to the head of a major national women's organization implying that she was too dumb to read a simple graph. More recently he directed an obscene gesture towards the AARP. This goes along with numerous insults directed against reporters in interviews and a tirade about Snoopy Snoopy Poop Dog.

One can debate how seriously these actions should be viewed. But the contrast with Van Jones, an advisor on environmental issues to President Obama, is striking. Most Washington insider types felt that Jones had to be quickly sent packing after a single off-color remark about Republicans was made public.

Senator Simpson has been at least as aggressive in assaulting the facts on the budget in general and especially Social Security. In numerous statements to reporters and his late night e-mails he has suggested that the baby boomers were a surprise that is just now coming to the attention of policymakers. . .

The question that the public should be asking the pundits and press is how often does Senator Simpson have to be wrong, and how far from the mark does he have to go, before he loses credibility? The elite media might have a strong commitment to politicians who espouse views that it supports, but continuing to treat Senator Simpson as an expert on the budget and Social Security is a case of affirmative action gone wild.

Americans drink more wine than the French

P.J. Huffstutter, Los Angeles Times - For the first time, the U.S. in 2010 consumed more wine than France. While the French still drink far more wine per capita than Americans, the U.S. ¬ with its much larger population ¬ has more people pouring a glass of Cabernet Sauvignon or Chardonnay.

As the U.S. economic recovery creeps on, restaurateurs say they are seeing more diners ordering full bottles, rather than a single glass, of wine with their meals.

How the AFL-CIO has failed the labor movement

Ralph Nader - When Harry Kelber, the 96 year old relentless labor advocate and editor of The Labor Educator speaks, the leadership of the AFL-CIO should listen. A vigorous champion for the rights of rank-and-file workers vis-a-vis their corporate employers and their labor union leaders, Kelber has recently completed a series of five articles titled The reaction: Silence from union leaders, their union publications and at union gatherings.

Kelber, operating out of a tiny New York City office, knows more firsthand about unions, their historical triumphs, their contemporary deficiencies and their potential for tens of millions of working families than almost anyone in the country. Over the decades, no one has written more widely distributed pamphlets that cogently and concisely explain unions, the labor movement and anti-worker restrictive laws like the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947, than this honest, sensitive worker campaigner.

At a perilous period for both working and unemployed Americans, facing deep recession, corporate abandonment to China and other repressive regimes, and the Republicans' virulent assault on livelihoods and labor rights, Kelber believes that AFL-CIO should be on the ramparts. Instead, he sees it as moribund, hunkering down, with control of the power and purse concentrated in the hands of the silent and Sphinx-like Federation officers and the tiny clique of bureaucrats who run the show.

"In the AFL-CIO, the rank-and-file have no voice in electing their officials, because only the candidates of the Old Guard can be on the ballot," he writes.

Certainly, the AFL-CIO is not reflecting the old adage that when "the going gets tough, the tough get going." They recoil from any public criticism of Barack Obama, who disregards or and humiliates them by his actions.

Mr. Obama promised labor in 2008 to press for a $9.50 federal minimum wage by 2011, and the Employee Free Choice Act, especially "card check," and then forgot about both commitments. He has not spoken out and vigorously fought for an adequate OSHA inspection and enforcement budget to diminish the tens of thousands of workplace related fatalities every year. He's been too busy managing drones, Kandahar and outlying regions of the quagmire of our undeclared wars.

Nothing Obama does seems to publically rile the AFL-CIO. In February, he crossed Lafayette Square from the White House with great fanfare to visit his pro-Republican opponents at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce yet declined to go around the corner and visit the AFL-CIO headquarters. Where was the public objection from the House of Labor?

He prevents his vice-president from responding to the Wisconsin state federation of Labor's invitation to address the biggest rally in Madison, Wisconsin protesting labor's arch enemy, Republican Governor Scott Walker. Biden, a self-styled "union guy", wanted to go but the political operatives in the White House said NO. Still no public objection from Labor's leaders.

Kelber describes the lack of a strong, funded national and international strategy to deal with the growing gap between rich and poor and the expanding shipment of both blue and white collar jobs abroad. He laments AFL-CIO's failure to develop a "working relation with the new global unions that are challenging transnational corporations and winning some agreements." He also notes that the AFL's top leaders "have minimal influence at world labor conferences. They rarely attend them, even when they are invited."

Pushing for higher wages and worker rights in the poorer developing countries, including the adoption of International Labor Organization (ILO) standards has great merit and is also a constructive way to also protect American workers.

Kelber believes it is obvious "that U.S. cooperation with labor unions from other countries with the same employer is the best way to organize giant multinationals, but the AFL-CIO has spent little time, money and resources in building close working relations with unions from abroad."

What is restraining AFL-CIO's President Richard Trumka? A former coal miner, then a coal miners' lawyer, and president of the United Mine Workers, Mr. Trumka has been at the Federation for over a decade. He knows the politics of the AFL-CIO, makes great speeches about callous corporatism around the country, and has a useful website detailing corporate greed.

Unfortunately, words aside, he is not putting real, bold muscle behind the needs of America's desperate workers.

He can start by shaking up his bureaucracy and put forth an emancipation manifesto of democratic reforms internal to the unions themselves and external to the government and the corporate giants. They all go together.

When I asked Harry Kelber whether there were any unions he admires, he named the fast-growing California Nurses Association and the United Electrical Workers.

CNA's executive director Rose Ann DeMoro is on the AFL-CIO Board and has urged Mr. Trumka to be more aggressive. She has secured his stepped-up support for a Wall Street financial speculation tax that could bring in over $300 billion a year. He may even join her and the nurses in a symbolic picketing of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce headquarters next month.

The ever fundamental Kelber, however, sees a plan B if the AFL-CIO does not change. "Union members should be thinking about creating a new bottoms-up labor federation," he urges, reminding them that in the nineteen thirties, the Committee of Industrial Organizations seceded from the American Federation of Labor and went on "to organize millions of workers in such major corporations as General Motors, General Electric, U.S. Steel, Westinghouse, Hormel and others."

The new labor federation, he envisions, for today's times would be controlled by the membership and led by local unions and central labor councils that are impatient with the sluggish leadership of their international union presidents.

How not to help the Mid East

Stephen M. Walt - Juan Cole had a nice piece over the weekend on the paltry Western offers of support for the Arab Spring. Helping the Arab economies recover and securing a moderate and democratic outcome in Egypt and Tunisia (and maybe elsewhere) is arguably one of the more significant priorities in contemporary international affairs, yet pledges of outside help have been pretty meager.

..Consider that the European Recovery Program (aka the "Marshall Plan") cost about $13 billion in 1948 dollars, which would the equivalent of about $113 billion today. The U.S. economy was only about $270 billion back then, so Marshall Plan aid amounted to roughly 5 percent of U.S. GDP. If Washington were to pledge a similar percentage today, it would be about $700 billion. Of course, Egypt and Tunisia are just two countries, not a whole continent, but even a tenth of that amount would be some $70 billion (which is less than we spend each year fighting in Afghanistan). Yet nobody seems to be thinking in these terms. After all, what did Obama offer Egypt in his speech at the State Department? A couple of billion in loan guarantees and debt relief, and that's all. And I'm not saying he should've have pledged more, because I've no idea where he could find it or how he'd get Congress to authorize it.

Which goes a long way toward explaining why the United States and its allies aren't going to have much influence over how the Arab spring evolves.

1800 say they'll attend this weekend's Jefferson Memorial dance protest”

DCIST - Oh, so you thought that the arrest of several people who were dancing inside the Jefferson Memorial on Saturday afternoon would be the end of the whole brouhaha? Think again: the same group of people who put together the original demonstration are planning an even bigger display of civil disobedience this weekend -- and over 1,800 people say they'll attend.

Adam Kokesh and several others -- a handful of whom were arrested by U.S. Park Police over the weekend during a demonstration in protest of a U.S. Court of Appeals ruling barring dancing inside the Jefferson -- have posted a Facebook invitation to a "DANCE PARTY @ TJ'S!!!", scheduled to take place at noon this Saturday.

"Come dance with us! You don't have to risk arrest, you can dance on the steps outside in support or join us in civil disobedience in the memorial!" reads the invitation, which also proclaims that "THIS IS NOT A PROTEST! I AM NOT ORGANIZING ANYTHING!" despite being arranged by several individuals. Regardless of your thoughts on the protest or those behind it, there's little doubt that a collection of over a thousand people could put a real crimp into the "atmosphere of calm, tranquility, and reverence" inside the Jefferson that the Court suggested dancing would compromise.

Based on the video of the arrests and the ensuing media coverage, the U.S. Park Police have launched an "all-encompassing inquiry" into the arrests.

Budget cutting NJ governor flies to son's ball game in police helicopter

NJ. Com- Gov. Chris Christie arrived at his son's baseball game aboard a State Police helicopter.

Christie disembarked from the helicopter and got into a black car with tinted windows that drove him about a 100 yards to the baseball field.

During the 5th inning, Christie and First Lady Mary Pat Christie got into the car, rode back to the helicopter and left the game. During a pitching change, play was stopped for a couple of minutes while the helicopter took off.

"It is a means of transportation that is occasionally used as the schedule demands," said Christie spokesman Michael Drewniak in an email. "This has historically been the case in prior administrations as well, and we continue to be judicious in limiting its use."

The governor had no public events on his schedule, offering no insight to where he might have been traveling from.

Gulf dead zone causing sex deformities in fish

National Geographic - A low-oxygen "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico (map) is causing sexual deformities in fish, a new study says.

Between 2006 and 2007, nearly a quarter of female Atlantic croaker fish caught in the northern Gulf's dead zone had developed deformed, testes-like organs instead of ovaries.

It's unclear how long the fish were living in hypoxic¬or low oxygen¬waters before they began developing such sexual defects. But lab experiments showed that ten weeks of exposure is all that's needed.

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Obama cracks down on civil rights abuses by city cops

Salon - In a marked shift from the Bush administration, President Obama's Justice Department is aggressively investigating several big urban police departments for systematic civil rights abuses such as harassment of racial minorities, false arrests, and excessive use of force.

In interviews, activists and attorneys on the ground in several cities where the DOJ has dispatched civil rights investigators welcomed the shift. To progressives disappointed by Eric Holder's Justice Department on key issues like the failure to investigate Bush-era torture and the prosecution of whistle-blowers, recent actions by the DOJ's Civil Rights Division are a bright spot.

In just the past few months, the Civil Rights Division has announced "pattern and practice" investigations in Newark, New Jersey and Seattle. It's also conducting a preliminary investigation of the Denver Police Department, and all this is on top of a high-profile push to reform the notorious New Orleans Police Department -- as well as criminal prosecutions of several New Orleans officers.

The "pattern and practice" authority comes from a 1994 law passed by Congress after the brutal beating of Rodney King by white Los Angeles police officers, who allegedly yelled racial slurs as they hit him. The law allows the DOJ to sue police departments if there is a pattern of violations of citizens' constitutional rights -- things like an excessive use of force, discrimination, and illegal searches. Often, after an investigation, the police department in question will enter into a voluntary reform agreement with the DOJ to avoid a lawsuit and the imposition of reforms.

Medicare in huge danger

Chicago Tribune, 1996 - “Medicare trustees reported Wednesday that the program's financial outlook is getting worse, touching off a new round of debate over the future of the federal health insurance system for the elderly and disabled. According to the trustees, who give the program a fiscal checkup every year, the fund that pays Medicare hospital bills dipped into the red last year and will go broke in early 2001. That's a year earlier than they predicted in 1995.”

Chicago Tribune July 2, 1969: “The Medicare hospital trust fund faces bankruptcy by 1976 and taxes must either be raised or benefits reduced the senate finance committee was told today.”

Washington Post, April 1, 1986: “The Medicare hospital insurance program faces bankruptcy by 1996, two years earlier than projected last year.”

New York Times, January 20, 1985: In the last few years, when it appeared that the Medicare trust fund would run out of money in 1987-89... But the need seemed less urgent after the Congressional Budget Office issued new estimates last September indicating that the Medicare trust fund would not go bankrupt until 1994.

(Hat tip to Chicago Tribune columnist Eric Zorn who culled eighteen stories from the Tribune, the Washington Post and the New York Times over a period of four decades, each predicting that the Medicare Hospital Insurance Fund was teetering on the brink of disaster.)

With T Mobile takeover, ATT & Verizon would own 80% of cell phone market

Andy Griffith understood the Constitution better than Obama or Congress

Big city home prices hit new low

LA Times - An index of home prices in the nation's largest American cities plumbed new depths in March, pushing past a low set during the worst of the Great Recession. The ominous new drop for the Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller index of 20 cities, a key measure that is closely watched by economists, casts further doubt about the future of the housing market’s recovery. The index pushed below its previous bottom hit in April 2009, confirming a much-feared double-dip in home prices.

Tweet of the day
hellospaceman: Apparently people are using "inbox" as a verb. If somebody asks me to inbox them my details, I will emergency room their face.

Bottom crawlers of the month

Inspired by Arne Duncan we have launched a Race to the Bottom, a list of the worst public figures, institutions and places based on standardized test results funded by the foundation of some old computer guy. This month's top bottom crawlers are:

PEOPLE
SCOTT WALKER
DONALD TRUMP
KOCH BROTHERS
BARACK OBAMA
PAUL LEPAGE
RICK SCOTT

INSTITUTIONS & PLACES
HOMELAND SECURITY
REPUBLICAN PARTY
RIAA
NEW YORK CITY
GOLDMAN SACHS

STATESWISCONSIN
LOUISIANA
GEORGIA
INDIANA

Note: these rankings are based only on misbehavior over the past few months. Since the heaviest weight is given to most recent improprieties, rankings may change at the first of each month.

Survival notes; Hangovers

Obama gives key agriculture post to Monsanto man

Gary Ruskin, Global Research - President Obama announced that he will recess appoint Islam A. Siddiqui to the position of Chief Agricultural Negotiator, Office of the U.S. Trade Representative.

Siddiqui is a pesticide lobbyist and Vice President for Science and Regulatory Affairs at CropLife America, an agribusiness lobbying group that represents Monsanto.

From a letter of protest:

Siddiqui’s record at the U.S. Department of Agriculture and his role as a former registered lobbyist for CropLife America (whose members include Monsanto, Syngenta, DuPont and Dow), has revealed him to consistently favor agribusinesses’ interests over the interests of consumers, the environment and public health (see attached fact sheet). We believe Siddiqui’s nomination severely weakens the Obama Administration’s credibility in promoting healthier and more sustainable local food systems here at home. His appointment would also send an unfortunate signal to the rest of the world that the United States plans to continue down the failed path of high-input and energy-intensive industrial agriculture by promoting toxic pesticides, inappropriate seed biotechnologies and unfair trade agreements on nations that do not want and can least afford them.

Pocket paradigms

The problem is that hope is not audacious at all. Audacious would be doing something now, audacious would be taking a personal political risk because the country needs it, audacious would be saying something unconventional because the conventional is killing us. Audacity is not turning one's back on present needs and praying that the future will straighten it all out. . . The opposite of hope is not despair, but action. - Sam Smith

WORD

The world will always be governed by self interest: we should not try and stop this: we should try and make the self interest of cads a little more coincident with that of decent people – Samuel Butler, Victorian novelist

Gallery

After not seeing my dog in 5 months, I skyped with him last night. My mom sent me this after we disconnected:

Report: Sea levels to rise up to three feet in next hundred years

Physorg - Sea levels are set to rise by up to a metre within a century due to global warming, a new Australian report said Monday as it warned this could make "once-a-century" coastal flooding much more common.

The government's first Climate Commission report said the evidence that the Earth's surface was warming rapidly was beyond doubt.

Drawn from the most up-to-date climate science from around the world, the report said greenhouse gas emissions created by human industry was the likely culprit behind rising temperatures, warming oceans, and rising sea levels.

ENDS

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