kpete
kpete's JournalJeb Bush: It's 'Just Really Arrogant' To Say The Science Is Decided On Climate Change
Jeb Bush: It's 'Just Really Arrogant' To Say The Science Is Decided On Climate Change"Look, first of all, the climate is changing. I don't think the science is clear what percentage is man-made and what percentage is natural. It's convoluted. And for the people to say the science is decided on, this is just really arrogant, to be honest with you," he said.
"It's this intellectual arrogance that now you can't even have a conversation about it. The climate is changing, and we need to adapt to that reality," he said.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/21/jeb-bush-climate-change_n_7350354.html
Charles Blow: "We MUST love the brown bodies that the world would discard-even the "thugs""
Of Bikers and Thugs
MAY 21, 2015
Charles M. Blow
...............
By the way, is anyone asking about the family makeup of the bikers in Waco?
No? Exactly.
History teaches us that this is a flawed premise. This country has a history of race riots, some that stretch back centuries, to a time when two parents in the home was the universal norm. Did that prevent the violence? No.
We have to recognize what these disparities and the way we see and discuss events, particularly violent ones, are all about: an underlying fear of, distaste for, suspicion of the otherness of blackness that informs these beliefs. This is a hatred, whether the conscious considerations are malicious or benign. This is a hatred, which says that blackness is inherently lesser. This is a hatred that at its most insidious can even be internalized.
Only love can defeat that kind of hate, particularly as it manifests itself in such subtle terms. It is a love that must move against these waves of current and historical thought and sensibilities. This love, in a way, starts with black people themselves, and always has. It demands that we love ourselves wholly, it demands that we love the very flesh that the world despises, and “love it hard” as Toni Morrison wrote in “Beloved,” because the world beyond our own hearts hates it.
In a sense, we must love our flesh hard because the world hates it hard.
We must build our own fortifications against systems and structures of brutality and subjugation that have long endured — that break us and blame us for the breaking.
When we come to love ourselves, we can more clearly see the lies that buttress the hatred, and it all begins to crumble like the ashes of a thing consumed by fire.
When we love ourselves, we honor ourselves and we see that black betterment isn’t simply about choice and culture but also about a defying and a demanding — defying the simplistic narrative of a personal pathology that society is salivating to impose, and demanding a dismantling of the systems of oppression (like racially tilted policing, criminal justice and incarceration) that play an incalculable role in black community destruction.
And while we can’t demand that the world love our flesh as we do, we can — and must! — demand that it stop pretending that its hatred of it is some cultural chimera concocted by a racial grievance industry. We can demand that the data around racial bias, which stretches across society, be accepted as fact rather than opinion.
We can demand the right to call hatred by its name and to its face. We can demand the right to exist, fully and freely, in the wholeness and beauty of our own humanity.
We must see the brilliant light in our beautiful darkness and love the brown bodies that the world would just as well mark and discard — even the “thugs.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/21/opinion/charles-blow-of-bikers-and-thugs.html?_r=0
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Ken Burns: "BLACK LIVES MATTER-ALL LIVES MATTER" - "Our Cities & Towns Cannot Become Plantations"
WOW - you WILL be inspired, even if you graduated years ago:
OUR CITIES AND TOWNS CANNOT BECOME PLANTATIONS!!!!
Published on May 18, 2015
The complete addess by acclaimed filmmaker Ken Burns, a sobering call to action to the Washington University in St. Louis Class of 2015, delivered May 15, 2015. "We broke it, but you've got to fix it," he told some 15,000 graduates, family and friends gathered in Brookings Quadrangle.
a small snippet, please listen to it all, quite beautiful, really:
But the shame continues: prison populations exploding with young black men, young black men killed almost weekly by policemen, whole communities of color burdened by corrupt municipalities that resemble more the predatory company store of a supposedly bygone era than a responsible local government. Our cities and towns and suburbs cannot become modern plantations.
It is unconscionable, as you emerge from this privileged sanctuary, that a few miles from here -- and nearly everywhere else in America: Baltimore, New York City, North Charleston, Cleveland, Oklahoma, Sanford, Florida, nearly everywhere else -- we are still playing out, sadly, an utterly American story, that the same stultifying conditions and sentiments that brought on our Civil War are still on such vivid and unpleasant display.
Remember: Black lives matter. All lives matter.
Reject fundamentalism wherever it raises its ugly head. It's not civilized. Choose to live in the Bedford Falls of "It's a Wonderful Life," not its oppressive opposite, Pottersville...
Don't confuse monetary success with excellence. The poet Robert Penn Warren once warned me that "careerism is death"...
Read. The book is still the greatest manmade machine of all -- not the car, not the TV, not the computer or the smartphone.
Do not allow our social media to segregate us into ever smaller tribes and clans, fiercely and sometimes appropriately loyal to our group, but also capable of metastasizing into profound distrust of the other...
Convince your government that the real threat, as Lincoln knew, comes from within. Governments always forget that, too. Do not let your government outsource honesty, transparency or candor. Do not let your government outsource democracy...
Insist that we support science and the arts, especially the arts. They have nothing to do with the actual defense of the country -- they just make the country worth defending...
And if you ever find yourself in Huck's spot, if you've "got to decide betwixt two things," do the right thing. Don't forget to tear up the letter. He didn't go to hell -- and you won't either.
MUCH, Much, Much More!!!!!
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/05/21/1386320/-Ken-Burns-Commencement-Speech-line-On-BlackLivesmatter-Gets-Huge-Applause-In-One-for-the-Ages
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JEB: "Alls I'm saying is the Dixie Chicks had better information than my brother"
?@LOLGOP
- former frontrunner Jeb Bush
https://twitter.com/LOLGOP/status/601121911721107457
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Gawker Obtains Transcripts Which Confirm Report O''Reilly's Daughter - Saw Him "Choking Her Mom"
Court Transcripts: Bill O’Reilly’s Daughter Saw Him “Choking Her Mom”
Gawker has obtained partial transcripts from the custody trial at the center of Fox News anchor Bill O’Reilly’s vicious dispute with his ex-wife, Maureen McPhilmy. The documents, which record testimony given last year, confirm that the ex-couple’s teenage daughter told a court-appointed forensic examiner that she witnessed O’Reilly “choking her mom” as he “dragged her down some stairs” by the neck. The same transcripts also reveal that O’Reilly—who famously settled a lurid sexual harassment claim from one of his young female producers—told his daughter that her mother is an “adulterer”; that he struggles to control his rage around his family; and that his daughter regards him as an absentee father.
SNIPPET HERRE:
http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--D1Z1b-wm--/c_fit,fl_progressive,q_80,w_636/1261080430121596005.png
http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--Dx5vx39D--/c_fit,fl_progressive,q_80,w_320/jb9vgs67pfg0uyhizuqs.jpg
TRANSCRIPTS & more HERE:
http://gawker.com/court-transcripts-bill-o-reilly-s-daughter-saw-him-ch-1704717356
EMPATHY STUDY: Rats forsake chocolate to save a drowning companion
?itok=DfiBl0At
The new study, by researchers at the Kwansei Gakuin University in Japan, puts those doubts to rest, Mason says. For their test of altruistic behavior, the team devised an experimental box with two compartments divided by a transparent partition. On one side of the box, a rat was forced to swim in a pool of water, which it strongly disliked. Although not at risk of drowning—the animal could cling to a ledge—it did have to tread water for up to 5 minutes. The only way the rodent could escape its watery predicament was if a second rat—sitting safe and dry on a platform—pushed open a small round door separating the two sides, letting it climb onto dry land.
Within a few days, the high-and-dry rats were regularly aiding their soaking companions by opening the door, the team reports online today in Animal Cognition. They did not open the door when the pool was dry, confirming that the rats were helping in response to others’ distress, rather than because they wanted company, Mason says. Rats that had previously been immersed learned how to save their cagemates much more quickly than those who had never been soaked, suggesting that empathy drove their behavior, she adds. “Not only does the rat recognize distress, but he is even more moved to act because he remembers being in that situation.”
Next, the team put the rodents to the ultimate test, pitting chocolate against altruism. In this experiment, rats on the dry platform had to choose between two doors, one that allowed their soaked companion to escape from the pool and another that provided access to a tasty chocolate treat. The rodents chose to help their companions before seeking the snack 50% to 80% of the time, showing that the urge to help a fellow rat was at least as strong as the desire for food, the authors say.
People differ from rats in many ways, but the study supports a growing body of evidence that there’s an evolutionary basis for helpful behavior, independent of culture or upbringing, Mason says. “Humans are not helping purely because mom taught us to help,” she says. “In part—and to what degree remains to be seen—we help because it’s in our biology.”
more:
http://news.sciencemag.org/brain-behavior/2015/05/rats-forsake-chocolate-save-drowning-companion
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10071-015-0872-2
Gohmert Alternate Universe: "Bush would have never invaded Iraq if he knew Obama would screw it up"
“Everybody else wants to ask that question of, ‘Gee, would you have gone into Iraq if you’d known what you know now?’” Gohmert complained to Virginia talk radio host John Fredericks.“If President Bush had known that he would have a total incompetent follow him that would not even be able to negotiate a status of forces agreement with Iraq and start helping our enemies and just totally put the Middle East in chaos, then he would have to think twice about doing anything if he had known he would have such a total incompetent leader take over after him,” Gohmert said. “That should be the question.”
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/gohmert-bush-wouldnt-have-invaded-iraq-had-he-known-obama-would-succeed-him-and-fight-wrong-
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