Tag Archives: countries

OPEC Economies Doing Fine – Our Double Dip Is Their Double Peak

Posted on September 11, 2010 by Benny Hollywood| Leave a comment

OPEC Net Oil Export Revenues . Image credit: USEIA Based on projections from the EIA report, September 2010 Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO), members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) could earn $731 billion of net oil export revenues in 2010. The USA is a big OPEC customer. Separately. according to projections by Suite101 , total US crude oil imports will cost an estimated $181 bi… Read the full story on TreeHugger

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ABC Hides Identity of Liberal Activists Advocating for More Government Intervention in Business

Posted on August 23, 2010 by Benny Hollywood| Leave a comment

Good Morning America’s Bianna Golodryga on Sunday featured a liberal activist arguing for more government intervention in the form of paid time off laws and “affordable” child care. The ABC host never identified Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner’s ideology or the fact that she’s a  Huffington Post contributor. Instead, Golodryga fretted about “bias” against women who have children. The Rowe-Finkbeiner interview and the preceding segment lamented the fact that women who have children often don’t end up making as much as men and also females who don’t have kids. Neither segment even hinted that there could be two sides to the story. Instead, Rowe-Finkbeiner was allowed to lobby, “We know that passing family-friendly policies and programs like paid family leave, like affordable child care, like access to paid sick days, like access to flexible work options, those things actually help lower the gap between women and men.” Rowe-Finkbeiner’s blogs on the Huffington Post have advocated for a number of left-wing causes, including attacking Arizona for its tough immigration law. The segment also featured a woman by the name of Kiki Peppard. Golodryga explained: “Kiki Peppard spent a decade as a successful bookkeeper before taking leave to spend more time with her kids. But, when she went to reenter the work force after a divorce, she found herself on the outside looking in.” An ABC graphic blandly identified that Kiki “had a hard time finding work.” However, according to MomsRising.org , where Rowe-Finkbeiner is the executive director, Peppard has ties to the organization dating back to 2006. Golodryga also skipped this fact. Instead, she wondered, ” So, we heard Kiki’s story. How common and widespread are stories like hers? ” Rowe-Finkbeiner played dumb: “You know, I hear from women like Kiki everyday. Kiki is definitely not alone.” ABC on Sunday went way beyond being one-sided. Not identifying either of these women, their agendas and their connections is incredibly misleading. A transcript of the August 22 segment, which aired at 8:40 am EDT, follows: BIANNA GOLODRYGA: In America’s Jobs this morning, we’re going to look at the pay gap. The disparity between what men and women make has been shrinking over the years. And while it’s still not exactly equal, it is getting better, except for one particular group of women. They’re some of the most accomplished women in the world. Supreme Court justices. A former secretary of state. Even the head of Homeland Security. But, despite their widely varying political differences, they all have one thing in common: These woman don’t have children. And experts say, that fact may contribute directly to their success. According to the University of Chicago, men and women right out of school had nearly identical incomes and hours worked. But, 15 Years later, the men made 75 percent more than the women in the group. The only exception to the room? A small group of women who never had children. Their pay equaled the men. KIKI PEPPARD: There is such a double standard. GOLODRYGA: Kiki Peppard spent a decade as a successful bookkeeper before taking leave to spend more time with her kids. But, when she went to reenter the work force after a divorce, she found herself on the outside looking in. PEPPARD: The very first question asked me was, “Are you married?” And the second question was, “Do you have any children? This went on for the first 18 job interviews. On my19th job interview, they did not ask me about my marital status. They did not ask if I had children and hired me. GOLODRYGA: It’s long been assumed women make less than men because they have more career disruptions. But the unequal pay disparity also pits moms against non-moms. Women with kids are 44 percent less likely to be hired than women without. And they’re paid $11,000 less. And in this economy, that bias can be devastating to many families just trying to get by. And joining me now from Seattle to talk more about this is Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner, the co-founder and executive director of MomRising.org. Good morning. Thanks for joining us, Kristin. KRISTIN ROWE-FINKBEINER (executive director, Momsrising.org): Good morning. GOLODRYGA: So, we heard Kiki’s story. How common and widespread are stories like hers? ROWE-FINKBEINER: You know, I hear from women like Kiki everyday. Kiki is definitely not alone. One of the thing is that this problem is bigger than most people realized. In fact, the maternal wall standing in the way of the glass ceiling. And here’s what it looks like: Women without children make 90 cents to a man’s dollar. Women with children make only 73 cents to a man’s dollar. So, this is a big discrepancy. And we have a big issue with pay discrimination against mothers. GOLODRYGA: So, when we hear statistics like that, what can be done to level out the playing field in the workforce? ROWE-FINKBEINER: Well, we have a big issue to address. And that’s that we have a 1950s work policy structure but we have a modern labor force. We’re now more than 50 percent of the labor force are women for the first time in history. But, that doesn’t mean we’ve reached full equality as we just heard in the segment. Because, right now, women and mothers are struggling. Moms are working full time and can’t put food on the table. In fact, one in four children in our nation are experiencing food scarcity in their households because of economic limitations, according to the USDA. So, the solutions are there. We have solutions. We know that passing family-friendly policies and programs like paid family leave, like affordable child care, like access to paid sick days, like access to flexible work options , those things actually help lower the gap between women and men. And they raise all boats. Because, it’s not just moms who need the policies, but everybody needs those policies in order to excel in their life, in the workplace and with their families. GOLODRYGA: But, now of all times, with the economy being so bumpy, with jobs being even more difficult to find, what should moms who are planning on taking time off do to avoid falling behind? ROWE-FINKBEINER: Well, professional women who decide to take time out of the labor force need to do four things. One, and most importantly, they really need to keep up with their professional contacts. Maintain those contacts so they have smooth sailing when they move back into the labor force. Two, they need to make sure that their professional accreditations are up to date while their out of the labor force. Three, this is really important. They need to find a mentor. Somebody who has navigated this interesting seas before and can help them navigate through. And fourth, one thing that’s very important is to find volunteer positions that you can put on the resume while you’re out of the labor force to show that you were productive while you were staying home with kids. Not that staying home with kids isn’t an important job in and of itself. Because it is. One of the things, though that is critically important to understand is that because we have a 1950s work policy structure in our nation still, we haven’t updated our policies like most other countries have, that most women can’t stay out of the labor force. So, we have a huge problem where we, you know, don’t have paid family leave, like 177 other countries do. And because of that, we see the implications on kids with a quarter of families with young children living in poverty. So, it’s important to recognize that not that many people can stay out of the labor force. GOLODRYGA: That is true, indeed. Especially in these times.

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Are We Facing a Genderless Future?

Posted on August 23, 2010 by Benny Hollywood| Leave a comment

A small but growing number of people are rejecting being labeled male or female. This spring, an Australian named Norrie May-Welby made headlines around the world as the world’s first legally genderless person when the New South Wales Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages sent the Sydney resident a certificate containing neither M for male or F for female. For a few days, it appeared that the 48-year-old activist and performer had won a long legal battle to be declared “sex not specified”—the only category that felt right to this immigrant from Scotland. May-Welby’s journey of gender identity can only be characterized as a long and winding road. Registered male at birth, May-Welby began taking female hormones at 23 and had sex-change surgery to become a woman, but now doesn’t take any hormones and identifies as genderless. The prized piece of paper May-Welby sought is called a Recognised Details Certificate, and it’s given to immigrants to Australia who want to record a sex change. But the victory was short-lived. After so much publicity, it was perhaps inevitable that the New South Wales government would backtrack—which it did a few days later, saying the registry didn’t have the legal authority to issue a certificate with anything but male or female. May-Welby (who now goes by the single name Norrie) has filed an appeal with the Australian Human Rights Commission. It’s easy to dismiss this case as just one more bizarre news story from Down Under, but May-Welby’s case could also represent the future of gender identity. Although no one is keeping statistics, researchers who study gender say a small but growing number of people (including some who have had sex-change operations) consider themselves “gender neutral” or “gender variant.” Their stories vary widely. Some find that even after surgery, they simply can’t ignore previous years of experience living as another gender. Others may feel that their gender identity is fluid. Still others are experimenting with where they feel most comfortable on what they see as a continuum of gender. “For some, it’s a form of protest because gender is such a strong organizing principle in our society,” says Walter Bockting, an associate professor and clinical psychologist at the University of Minnesota Medical School who has been studying transgender health since 1986. “Their identities expand our thinking about gender.” In fact, some researchers compare the evolution in thinking about gender to the struggle that began a generation ago for gay and lesbian rights. Dr. Jack Drescher is a member of an American Psychiatric Association (APA) committee that is currently reviewing changes to the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, which is used around the world by clinicians, researchers, regulatory agencies, and insurance companies to classify mental disorders. DSM-5, as it’s called, won’t be published until 2013, but Drescher’s committee is reconsidering the diagnosis of gender-identity disorder, which encompasses people who do not identify with the gender assigned to them by biology. The current debate echoes the controversy over the APA’s 1973 decision to modify the second edition of the DSM by declaring that homosexuality could be considered a mental disorder only if it was disturbing to the patient. Drescher’s committee thought about dropping the diagnosis of gender-identity disorder altogether, but realized that if it did, people who wanted treatment (sex-change surgery, hormones, or talk therapy) wouldn’t be able to get the diagnosis they need for insurance coverage. Instead, Drescher says, the committee is proposing changing the name to “gender incongruence” and making the diagnosis contingent on the person feeling significant distress over their gender confusion. “We didn’t want to pathologize all expressions of gender variance just because they were not common or made someone uncomfortable,” Drescher says. But that seemingly simple change of language could help usher in a new era, in which a person’s gender could be expressed or experienced as male, female, “in between,” or “otherwise.” “People who work in this area have very flexible notions of gender,” Drescher says. “We don’t want to force people to fit into a doctor’s categories,” even though, he concedes, most cultures “tend to think in binaries.” Bockting predicts that such binary thinking will eventually disappear. Many scientists, he says, see gender as a continuum and acknowledge that some people naturally fall in the middle. Gender, Bockting says, “develops between the biological and the environmental. You can’t always detect gender by physical evidence. You have to ask the person how they identify themselves; in that sense, it’s psychological.” And gender isn’t synonymous with sex, he says, although the distinction may elude the layman. Sex, Bockting says, is assigned at birth based on the appearance of external genitalia. But, he says, “to determine a person’s gender identity, you have to wait until they grow up and can describe how they identify their gender.” And being genderless or gender-neutral isn’t the same thing as being asexual. “If you are asexual,” he says, “you are not interested in having sex with other people,” while gender-neutral people may be attracted to men, women, both sexes, or other people who are gender-neutral. And while May-Welby’s story may seem out there, Bockting says it’s not uncommon for people undergoing sex changes to find that surgery doesn’t resolve all their gender-identity issues. “With time,” he says, “they accept a certain amount of ambiguity … We have this idea that people take hormones and undergo surgery and become the other gender. But in reality it’s more complicated.” Even before the advent of sex-change surgery, there were always people who felt they didn’t fit into either gender. In India, a group of people called hijra have existed for centuries. They are typically biological males who dress as women but consider themselves to have neither gender, Bockting says. There is also a long tradition of eunuch culture. Even today, other countries are more comfortable with the idea of gender variance. Drescher says that France has removed transsexuality from its list of psychiatric disorders and put it in the category of rare diseases. The British government has also declared that transsexuality is “not a mental illness,” but people who want a sex-change can get treatment under the National Health Service. How all the debate will play out in this country is still unclear, but college students may be among those leading the charge for change. Many campuses—including Harvard, Penn and Michigan—now offer gender neutral housing and more unisex bathrooms to accommodate students who don’t fall neatly into male or female categories. The Common Application, which is used by most college applicants, just announced that it is considering adding voluntary questions that would give students a broader array of choices to describe their gender identity and allow them to state their sexual orientation, after gay advocates urged the change. How long before such changes begin to show up in other parts of society is unclear. But Drescher says he is certain of one thing after a lifetime of working with gender: “There is no way that six billion people can be categorized into two groups.” Now if we could only figure out the pronoun problem. added by: animalia_libero

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AP Exclusive: Under Desk, CIA Found Video of 9/11 Plotter Being Interrogated in a Secret Prison

Posted on August 17, 2010 by Benny Hollywood| Leave a comment

AP Exclusive: Under desk, CIA found video of 9/11 plotter being interrogated in secret prison ADAM GOLDMAN, MATT APUZZO Associated Press Writers August 17, 2010|12:45 a.m. WASHINGTON (AP) — The CIA has tapes of 9/11 plotter Ramzi Binalshibh being interrogated in a secret overseas prison. Discovered under a desk, the recordings could provide an unparalleled look at how foreign governments aided the U.S. in holding and questioning suspected terrorists. The two videotapes and one audiotape are believed to be the only remaining recordings made within the clandestine prison system. The tapes depict Binalshibh's interrogation sessions at a Moroccan-run facility the CIA used near Rabat in 2002, several current and former U.S. officials told The Associated Press. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because the recordings remain a closely guarded secret. When the CIA destroyed its cache of 92 videos of two other al-Qaida operatives, Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Nashiri, being waterboarded in 2005, officials believed they had wiped away all of the agency's interrogation footage. But in 2007, a staffer discovered a box tucked under a desk in the CIA's Counterterrorism Center and pulled out the Binalshibh tapes. A Justice Department prosecutor who is already investigating whether destroying the Zubaydah and al-Nashiri tapes was illegal is now also probing why the Binalshibh tapes were never disclosed. Twice, the government told a federal judge they did not exist. The tapes could complicate U.S. efforts to prosecute Binalshibh, 38, who has been described as a “key facilitator” in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. If the tapes surfaced at trial, they could clearly reveal Morocco's role in the counterterrorism program known as Greystone, which authorized the CIA to hold terrorists in secret prisons and shuttle them to other countries. More significantly to his defense, the tapes also could provide evidence of Binalshibh's mental state within the first months of his capture. In court documents, defense lawyers have been asking for medical records to see whether Binalshibh's years in CIA custody made him mentally unstable. He is being treated for schizophrenia with a potent cocktail of anti-psychotic medications. With military commissions on hold while the Obama administration figures out what to do with suspected terrorists, Binalshibh has never had a hearing on whether he is mentally fit to stand trial. “If those tapes exist, they would be extremely relevant,” said Thomas A. Durkin, Binalshibh's civilian lawyer. The CIA first publicly hinted at the existence of the Binalshibh tapes in 2007 in a letter to U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema in Virginia. The government twice denied having such tapes, and recanted once they were discovered. But the government blacked out Binalshibh's name from a public copy of the letter. At the time, the CIA played down the significance, saying the videos were not taken as part of the CIA's detention program and did not show CIA interrogations. That's true, but only because of the unusual nature of the Moroccan prison, which was largely financed by the CIA but run by Moroccans, the former officials said. The CIA could move detainees in and out, and oversee the interrogations, but officially, Morocco had control. CIA spokesman George Little would not discuss the Moroccan facility except to say agency officials “continue to cooperate with inquiries into past counterterrorism practices.” Moroccan government officials did not respond to questions about Binalshibh and his time in Morocco. The country has never acknowledged the existence of the detention center. Morocco has a troubled history of prison abuse and human rights violations. A government-created commission identified decades of torture, forced disappearances, poor prison conditions and sexual violence. And this year's State Department report on Morocco notes continued accusations of torture by security forces. But current and former U.S. officials say no harsh interrogation methods, like the simulated drowning tactic called waterboarding, were used in Morocco. In the CIA's secret network of undisclosed “black prisons,” Morocco was just way station of sorts, a place to hold detainees for a few months at a time. “The tapes record a guy sitting in a room just answering questions,” according to a U.S. official familiar with the program. That would make them quite different from the 92 interrogation videos of Zubaydah and al-Nashiri being subjected to waterboarding and other harsh interrogation tactics. Binalshibh was captured Sept. 11, 2002, and interrogated for days at a CIA facility in Afghanistan. Almost immediately, two former CIA officials said, Binalshibh exhibited mental instability that would worsen over time. When FBI agents finally had a chance to interview Binalshibh, they found him lethargic but unharmed. “He had a certain toughness about him, like he didn't care,” said Raymond Holcomb, a retired FBI agent who spent five days alongside the CIA with Binalshibh in Afghanistan and wrote about it in a forthcoming book, “Endless Enemies: Inside FBI Counterterrorism.” Though Binalshibh was uncooperative during his early interrogations, his interviews formed the foundation for parts of the 9/11 commission report. One official said he also provided intelligence about a plot to crash aircraft into London's Heathrow Airport. Binalshibh spent five months in Morocco in late 2002 and early 2003, the first of three trips through the facility during his years in CIA custody. Since his incarceration was established at Guantanamo Bay in 2006, Binalshibh has appeared increasingly erratic. Court records show him acting out, breaking cameras in his cell and smearing them with feces. He has experienced delusions, believing the CIA was intentionally shaking his bed and cell, according to court records and interviews. He has imagined tingling sensations like things were crawling all over him and developed a nervous tic, obsessively scratching himself. Nine years after his capture, there is no indication when Binalshibh and other admitted 9/11 terrorists will face military or civilian trials. Binalshibh and other accused 9/11 conspirators have openly admitted their roles, praising the attacks. Binalshibh and the others have asked to plead guilty, a move that would head off any trial and almost certainly guarantee the videotapes never get played in any court. http://www.gotgeoint.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/9-113.bmp added by: EthicalVegan

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Henry Rollins Knows What’s Wrong with American Education – and Guess Who’s to Blame

Posted on August 13, 2010 by Benny Hollywood| Leave a comment

On the heels of a new College Board report that the United States is struggling to compete with other countries when it comes to college completion rates, Vanity Fair’s resident straight talker, Henry Rollins, has figured out the problem.  The education system isn’t struggling because of possible factors contained within the report, such as: Inadequate funding of preschool programs Poor college counseling programs for middle and high school aged children High school dropout rates A lack of international standardization for curriculum Skyrocketing costs of education No, Henry has stumbled onto the real, super secret reason why students are failing to finish their college work:  Sarah Palin and George Bush .  To be accurate, it’s not so much the direct fault of Palin and Bush – rather, it is those of you who support them, their stupid comments, and their intellectually uninterested ways.  Their fans see them as real people and because of that, they feel comfort in an unchallenging environment. Rollins explains why ‘America doesn’t seem to value a college education the way it used to’: “…in America the educated person is often seen as some sissified, fragile know-it-all who looks down at the common man. Every time Sarah Palin says something stupid, she gets more fans. To them, she is “real.” It’s the same reason why so many Americans loved George Bush. They saw themselves in this intellectually uninterested man and found comfort in such an unchallenging environment.” Worse, Rollins somehow manages to immediately transition into a Hitler reference.  In explaining that Americans seem to express disdain for the educated person (via leaders such as Palin and Bush), he then goes on to say: “What leaders had contempt for educated people?  Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, to name a few.” And “Funny how the very idea of increased education opportunities threatens some Americans.  They will tell you that education is stupid.” And “America’s abysmal report card, appalling treatment of teachers, and hostile contempt for its young people should be our national shame, the sub-literate albatross swinging from our collective neck.  America No. 1?  Not even close.” Now, before you go accusing Mr. Rollins of being a liar, a liar, a liar, a liar , it is important to note that Henry speaks from experience, having come from a very thorough, college-educated background himself.  However, in this case anyway, it is apparent that Palin and Bush weren’t the cause of at least one American quitting college.   Rollins dropped out of American University following a very brief stint (one semester) in the late ‘70’s.  Citing reasons such as boredom, and the fact that his classmates would rather study beer and bongs than read books, Rollins instead pursued his musical career. Seems he is partially correct.  There are some individuals out there who look at college experience with contempt, threatened by education because it is, in a word, stupid.  By way of contrast, Sarah Palin earned a Bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Idaho.  Oh, and that intellectually uninterested guy we mentioned earlier?  He earned a history degree from Yale University in 1968, and is the only President to have ever earned a Masters Degree in Business Administration from Harvard Business School. Make no mistake, Henry Rollins is an incredibly intelligent, well-read, real-world educated person, and Vanity Fair is wise in giving him an outlet.  But traipsing into the world of liberal lunacy (Palin and Bush Derangement Syndrome) clouds any argument one can make.  In this case, Rollins opines that education suffers because of uneducated people who have a better education than himself.  The result is intellectually dishonest and hypocritical. In other words, he is the Wrong Man for this debate. – Rusty welcomes comments/feedback at Weiss.Rusty@gmail.com .

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Henry Rollins Knows What’s Wrong with American Education – and Guess Who’s to Blame

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A massive, "unprecedented escape" of genetically-modified crops into the wild

Posted on August 10, 2010 by Benny Hollywood| Leave a comment

Genetically-modified canola has been breeding undetected in the American wilds for at least “several generations,” say scientists. The escaped GM canola has already mutated into a never-before-seen strain, and now it may be modifying other plants too. Canola is a yellow flowering plant that is used to make oil. Researchers working in North Dakota, found strains of transgenic canola growing wild on roadsides far from local farms – meaning the GM plants had spread quite far. They found two strains of transgenic canola. According to Nature: “The extent of the escape is unprecedented,” says Cynthia Sagers, an ecologist at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, who led the research team that found the canola (Brassica napus, also known as rapeseed). Sagers and her team found two varieties of transgenic canola in the wild – one modified to be resistant to Monsanto's Roundup herbicide (glyphosate), and one resistant to Bayer Crop Science's Liberty herbicide (gluphosinate). They also found some plants that were resistant to both herbicides, showing that the different GM plants had bred to produce a plant with a new trait that did not exist anywhere else. Sagers says the previous discoveries in other countries of transgenic canola populations growing outside of cultivation were often in or near fields used for commercial transgenic canola production. By contrast, her research team found feral populations of herbicide-resistant canola growing along roads, near petrol stations and grocery stores, often at large distances from areas of agricultural production. http://io9.com/5609576/a-massive-unprecedented-escape-of-genetically+modified-cr… added by: Sexirobot

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Schultz Mocks Rove Radio Work, But Can’t Pronounce ‘Cousteau’

Posted on August 9, 2010 by Benny Hollywood| Leave a comment

From the Department Of People In Glass Houses . . . Early in his MSNBC show this evening, Ed Schultz mocked Karl Rove’s performance in filling in for Rush Limbaugh today.  In particular, Schultz slammed Rove for his brief problem in providing the show’s call-in number.   But later in the show, Ed himself ran head-first into a rhetorical roadblock, stumbling badly when it came to pronouncing the most famous name in the world of ocean studies: Cousteau. ED SCHULTZ: And in Psycho Talk tonight, Karl Rove filled in for the Drugster [Schultz’s nasty nickname for Rush] on his radio show today, and I think old Turd Blossom should probably stick to his day job across the street over at Fox . . . Rove’s debut as a radio host was a total disaster. Right off the bat he had a hell of a time finding the call-in number, even though it was right on the screen in front of him. But later, it was Ed’s turn to pronounce a name so famous it’s the first one that comes up in Google search when you type in Jacques.  Here was Ed’s heroic struggle as he sought to introduce Phillipe, grandson of the famous oceanographer. SCHULTZ:  Coming up . . . world-renowned environmental expert Philippe Castoo, Cas–, Coh-stow will join us, coming up here in just a moment.  Give Phillipe credit for his French sang froid in–just–managing to suppress a smirk at poor Ed’s problems. Note: Ed also let some professional jealousy creep into his roasting of Rove/Limbaugh. Schultz spoke sarcastically [longingly?] of “that high-impact, totally-entertaining, right-wing radio on five million stations across America that we just can’t live without.”

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Duplicitous ABC Advances Obama’s Big Spending College Graduation Agenda

Posted on August 9, 2010 by Benny Hollywood| Leave a comment

ABC on Monday night delivered an even shoddier than usual piece of advocacy for President Barack Obama in the guise of a news story, duplicity which started with fill-in anchor George Stephnopoulos, trying to make Obama’s comments seem well-timed and topical, falsely describing statistics, released more than two weeks ago, as “new numbers today show…” Stephanopoulos intoned: Now to a stunning example of the U.S. falling behind where we shouldn’t. New numbers today show eleven countries, including Canada, South Korea, and Russia, now lead the U.S. in the rate of young adults getting college degrees. That spells trouble, and President Obama said we can’t afford to ignore it. On screen, ABC credited the College Board and, indeed, the “College Board Advocacy & Policy Center” released such a report – but back on July 22 ( press release ). Reporter Yunji de Nies managed to produce a story on the administration’s promise “everything is on the table” to improve education, yet she failed to mention how the administration’s loyalty to teacher unions blocks public school reform.   de Nies related how, at a speech at the University of Texas, Obama told the students “America has failed them” and he “set a daunting goal: Raise college graduation rates from today’s 40 percent to 60 percent in ten years by adding at least eight million graduates” so “the President wants to get more students in the door by making college more affordable through increased financial aid and student loans.” She concluded with an assurance from Secretary of Education Arne Duncan: Secretary Duncan says everything is on the table. There’s talk of adding more days to the school year, hiring an army of new teachers and, of course, raising standards. None of that is cheap and it could be a tough sell for states with tight budgets. As if “everything” only includes ideas which require more spending. From the Monday, August 9 ABC World News: GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: Now to a stunning example of the U.S. falling behind where we shouldn’t. New numbers today show eleven countries, including Canada, South Korea, and Russia, now lead the U.S. in the rate of young adults getting college degrees. That spells trouble, and President Obama said we can’t afford to ignore it. Yunji de Nies is at the White House tonight. YUNJI de NIES: Today, President Obama told an audience, that included 3,500 college students, that America has failed them. PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: In a single generation, we’ve fallen from first place to 12th place in college graduation rates for young adults. De NIES: How did we get here? ARNE DUNCAN, SECRETARY OF EDUCATION: We got a little self-satisfied. And other countries have, I think, out-worked us. They have out-invested. They have taken this more seriously, and I think this is a wake-up call. de NIES: Mr. Obama has set a daunting goal: Raise college graduation rates from today’s 40 percent to 60 percent in ten years by adding at least eight million graduates. OBAMA: The single most important thing we can do is to make sure we’ve got a world-class education system for everybody. de NIES: Some education experts say the problem isn’t colleges but high schools that fail to prepare students once they get there. RICK HESS, AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE: A large percentage showing up needing remediation in reading and mathematics and courses that colleges would like to think have been done in high schools. de NIES: To tackle that problem, the President is pushing a set of common academic standards so all colleges would have the same skills and the President wants to get more students in the door by making college more affordable through increased financial aid and student loans. de NIES: It took 30 years to get to number 12. Do you think we can really get to number 1 in 10? DUNCAN: I do. Is it an ambitious goal? Absolutely. Is it going to take hard work? Absolutely. But, frankly, failure’s not an option here. De NIES: Secretary Duncan says everything is on the table. There’s talk of adding more days to the school year, hiring an army of new teachers and, of course, raising standards. None of that is cheap and it could be a tough sell for states with tight budgets.

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CBS’s Dickerson Questions ‘Claim’ That California Judge in Prop 8 Ruling Openly Gay

Posted on August 9, 2010 by Benny Hollywood| Leave a comment

During a discussion of California’s Proposition 8 being overturned on CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday, fill-in host John Dickerson questioned Family Research Council President Tony Perkins’s assertion that the federal judge who made the ruling was openly gay: “You mention this claim that he’s openly homosexual. I’m not sure if that’s, in fact, the case.” Perkins replied by citing his source on Judge Vaughn Walker’s sexual orientation: “Well, that, according to The San Francisco Chronicle, that he is openly homosexual, one of two federal judges.” Thursday’s Good Morning America on ABC reported that fact as well, even while NBC’s Today and the CBS Early Show failed to mention it. Dickerson followed his doubt of Perkins by arguing: “…whether [Walker] is or isn’t, what basis – what bearing does that have on the case?” Perkins responded: “…had this guy been a – say, an evangelical preacher in his past, there would have been cries for him to step down from this case. So I do think it has a bearing on the case.” Dickerson countered: “You think it’s made his ruling skewed?”   An examination of the kind of language used in Walker’s opinion demonstrates a clear bias against supporters of Proposition 8: “The evidence at trial regarding the campaign to pass Proposition 8 uncloaks the most likely explanation for its passage: a desire to advance the belief that opposite-sex couples are morally superior to same-sex couples. The campaign relied heavily on negative stereotypes about gays and lesbians…” As attorney Ed Whelan explained in a February 7 post for National Review Online : “Walker’s entire course of conduct has only one sensible explanation: that Walker is hellbent to use the case to advance the cause of same-sex marriage. Given his manifest inability to be impartial, Walker should have recused himself from the beginning, and he remains obligated to do so now.” While Dickerson was quick to question a completely accurate statement from Perkins, he allowed a glaringly misstatement from left-wing attorney David Boies to go unchallenged. Boies, who along with attorney Ted Olsen lead the lawsuit against Proposition 8, ranted against Perkins and others opposed to the judge’s ruling: “Well, it’s easy to sit around and debate and throw around opinions, appeal to people’s fear and prejudice….it’s very easy for the people who want to deprive gay and lesbian citizens of the right to vote to make all sorts of statements and campaign literature…” While it seems clear that Boies simply misspoke and meant to say “right to marry” instead of “right to vote,” Dickerson made no effort to correct the record for viewers. Boies concluded his rant by sanctimoniously proclaiming: “We put fear and prejudice on trial, and fear and prejudice lost.” Perkins began to respond: “That is absolutely not true-” But Dickerson just moved on to the next question, pressing Perkins: “The judge in this case said that the state has to find some kind of harm created by same-sex marriage. There has to be empirical evidence. Mr. Boies says, and the judge says, there was no evidence on that case. So what harm – give us some evidence, in terms of the harm that would be created by allowing same-sex marriages?” As NewsBusters’ Noel Sheppard earlier reported , the segment that followed, with CBS legal analyst Jan Crawford and Washington Post writer Dan Balz, was remarkably balanced on the issue. Crawford noted that it would be an “enormous stretch” for the U.S. Supreme Court to agree with Walker’s ruling. Here is a full transcript of the August 8 segment with Boies and Perkins: 10:38AM JOHN DICKERSON: Joining us now to discuss the California ruling on same-sex marriage: from San Francisco, David Boies, one of the lead attorneys for the plaintiffs; and Tony Perkins, the head of the Family Research Council, he is in Wichita Falls, Texas. Mr. Boies, I want to start with you. After the judge ruled in your favor, he put a stay on marriages going forward. I want to know, with so much legal fighting ahead on this issue, why should marriages be reinstated immediately? DAVID BOIES [CHAIRMAN, BOIES, SCHILLER & FLEXNER]: I think the issue is not whether they ought to be reinstated immediately, but whether you ought to have marriage equality. I think that courts can differ in terms of whether this goes into effect immediately or after an appeal. I think the critical issue here is that what you have is a district court finding after a full trial, everybody had an opportunity to be heard, an opinion that demonstrates that there is simply no basis whatsoever to continue discrimination against gay and lesbian citizens who want to marry. DICKERSON: Tony Perkins, you said this ruling, this decision left you speechless. What’s your reaction going to be now? TONY PERKINS [PRESIDENT, FAMILY RESEARCH COUNCIL]: Well, this is not without political parallel. I mean, you go back to the 1970s and abortion was nowhere near the political issue that it is today when the court interjected itself in 1973 to this issue. And this issue is not going to go away. I think what you have is one judge who thinks he knows – and a district level judge, and an openly homosexual judge at that, who says he knows better than not only 7 million voters in the state of California, but voters in 30 states across the nation that have passed marriage amendments. This is far from over. DICKERSON: You mention this claim that he’s openly homosexual. I’m not sure if that’s, in fact, the case. But whether he is or isn’t, what basis – what bearing does that have on the case? PERKINS: Well, that, according to The San Francisco Chronicle, that he is openly homosexual, one of two federal judges. And I think, you know, had this guy been a – say, an evangelical preacher in his past, there would have been cries for him to step down from this case. So I do think it has a bearing on the case. But this is not without precedent- DICKERSON: But you think it’s made his – you think it’s made his ruling skewed? PERKINS: This is not without precedent. Well, I mean, you look at – he ignored a lot of the social science in – in his opinion. But in Nebraska, in 2005, there was a similar ruling by another federal district level judge. It was overturned in the Eighth Circuit unanimously. So there is certainly, not only based upon the social empirical data that’s out there, but on the legal basis, this is a flawed decision. And as I said, it’s far from over. DICKERSON: David Boies, the one thing you mentioned, that the judge spent a great deal of time on the facts of the case here. What’s your response to Mr. Perkins? BOIES: Well, it’s easy to sit around and debate and throw around opinions, appeal to people’s fear and prejudice, cite studies that either don’t exist or don’t say what you say they do. In a court of law, you’ve got to come in and you’ve got to support those opinions. You’ve got to stand up under oath in cross-examination. And what we saw at trial is that it’s very easy for the people who want to deprive gay and lesbian citizens of the right to vote to make all sorts of statements and campaign literature, or in debates, where they can’t be cross-examined, but when they come into court and they have to support those opinions and they have to defend those opinions under oath and cross-examination, those opinions just melt away. And that’s what happened here. There simply wasn’t any evidence. There weren’t any of those studies. There weren’t any empirical studies. That’s just made up. That’s junk science. And it’s easy to say that on television. But a witness stand is a lonely place to lie. When you come into court, you can’t do that. And that’s what we proved. We put fear and prejudice on trial, and fear and prejudice lost. DICKERSON: Mr. Perkins, I want to- PERKINS: -that is absolutely- DICKERSON: Well, let me ask you- PERKINS: That is absolutely not true- DICKERSON: The judge in this case said that the state has to find some kind of harm created by same-sex marriage. There has to be empirical evidence. Mr. Boies says, and the judge says, there was no evidence on that case. So what harm – give us some evidence, in terms of the harm that would be created by allowing same-sex marriages? PERKINS: Well, a lot of the discussion was about the issue of children and how children are impacted by this. This is so relatively new that there is not conclusive evidence to suggest that children who grow up with two moms or two dads fare as well as children who grow up with a mom and a dad. Now, we do have an abundance of evidence over the last 40 years, from the social sciences, that show us that public policy that has devalued marriage, through laws such as no-fault divorce, has truly impacted children and impacted the institution of marriage. And the judge, in his ruling, actually over – just ignored all of that and said that there is no evidence that any of the policy that’s been adopted on no-fault divorce and other liberal-leaning policies has impacted marriage. And I think anybody with a half a brain can see that the policies that have been adopted in the last 40 years have impacted marriage and, as a result, have impacted the well-being of children. DICKERSON: Mr. Boies, let me ask you a question about where this case goes from here. There is a view among a lot of legal scholars- BOIES: Let me – let me just respond. DICKERSON: Quickly, if you could? BOIES: Let me just respond to that, okay? Okay, very quickly. Look it, the judge did deal with it. And he pointed out, which is obvious, is that no-fault divorce doesn’t have anything to do with the issue that’s here. The empirical studies that do exist – and they’re based on what’s happened in Canada and Sweden and Spain and other countries and other states where you are able to have marriage equality – demonstrate that there is no harm. There are studies going back for 20 years that demonstrate this. The problem here is that, unlike a court, people don’t stick to the facts. DICKERSON: OK, let me ask you, on the question of the Supreme Court, where this may end up one day, there is a view that the court doesn’t like to get too far out in front of where the law is now. Isn’t this a big leap for the Supreme Court to side with you, Mr. Boies, in this case? BOIES: It really isn’t. Remember, unlike abortion, the court is not creating a new legal right. This is a right that has been well-recognized for 100 years, in terms of the right of individuals to marry. And all that’s at issue here is, can the state of California take away that right depending on the sex of your intended partner? And that issue depends exactly on what you said before. Is there a rational basis for that distinction? Can you prove that it harms heterosexual marriage, children? Can you prove it harms anybody? Why do you make these people suffer if it doesn’t help anybody? And what we proved at trial is that there simply isn’t any basis, no evidence at all, to indicate that this has any harm to anybody. And, indeed, all of the evidence is to the contrary. That it makes those relationships more stable. Even the defendant’s own witnesses admitted that there was no evidence of harm to heterosexual marriage or to children as a result of gay and lesbian marriage. Even the defendant’s own experts admitted that there was great harm to homosexual couples and the children they’re raising by depriving them of the stability and love of marriage. DICKERSON: Mr. Perkins, I want to ask you about the Republican Party. Usually – often in cases like this, you hear Republican politicians jump to decry these kinds of rulings. It’s been pretty muted so far. Why do you think that is? PERKINS: Well, there’ll be a ruling – there’ll be a resolution introduced in Congress this coming week when the House is pulled back in by Nancy Pelosi. But I want to address, you know, David knows better than this, I mean, he is a constitutional lawyer. He knows that the findings of the court over the last hundred years have dealt with traditional marriage, marriage between a man and a woman. And the whole issue of civil rights that is drawn into this, you know, the court in Brown versus Board of Education and the civil rights cases in the ’50s and ’60s, were based upon constitutional amendments on the issue of racial equality which were adopted by the states. That hasn’t happened on same-sex marriage. This is an activist decision by a district-level court who is interjecting his view over the view of not only millions of Americans who have voted on this issue, but literally the history of the human race. So this is far from over. And we hope that sanity will reign when it does make its way to the United States Supreme Court. DICKERSON: Okay. Tony Perkins, thank you so much. David Boies, thank you for being with us. BOIES: Thank you.

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CBS’s Dickerson Questions ‘Claim’ That California Judge in Prop 8 Ruling Openly Gay

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Jackass 3D Trailer Shoots Out Of The Internet & Onto Your computer

Posted on August 6, 2010 by Benny Hollywood| Leave a comment

The first trailer for Jackass 3D has arrived and, it’s a trailer for another Jackass movie. By now you should know what you’re getting. New this time around is the 3D element which, by all accounts, the Jackass boys plan to milk for all it’s worth. This won’t be some subtle and artistic use of the format, even in the movie’s 2D trailer below, you’ll easily see that they plan on shooting, farting, and rocketing as many things straight at the camera and out over the audience as possible. This is Jackass. I wouldn’t have it any other way. Here’s the Jackass 3D trailer, meet me afterwards for an observation: added by: cclark_productions

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