Author Archives: LeslieHides

Ted Cruz Says Building Trump’s Wall Is Like Fighting Slavery and Jim Crow

by LeslieHides Posted on July 21, 2016

Mother Jones

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In a primetime address to the Republican National Convention Wednesday, Ted Cruz compared GOP efforts to restrict immigration to the civil rights movement’s fight against Jim Crow laws. But the Texas senator was loudly booed by Donald Trump supporters in the convention hall when it became clear that he was not going to endorse the man who beat him for the Republican presidential nomination. Instead, Cruz encouraged his audience to “vote your conscience, vote for candidates up and down the ticket who you trust to defend our freedom and to be faithful to the Constitution.”

“We deserve leaders who stand for principle, unite us all behind shared values, cast aside anger for love,” Cruz said, in what many considered the first campaign speech of his likely 2020 presidential campaign. “That is the standard we should expect, from everybody.”

Rather than directly back Trump—who mocked his wife Heidi’s looks during the primary campaign and once suggested Cruz’s dad was complicit in the Kennedy assassination—Cruz used his prime-time slot to outline his vision of freedom.

“Freedom means free speech, not politically correct safe spaces,” he said, taking a shot at progressive college campus activists. He rattled off a series of other bullet points—religious freedom, the right to bear arms, school vouchers, and repealing Obamacare. Each of those freedoms are typical conservative talking points that the party’s nominee rarely mentions. Although Cruz’s speech focused less on social conservative issues than it might have in years past, he included a call for Washington to stay out of defining issues like marriage.

But Cruz made sure to endorse parts of Trump’s platform as well. He cited the success of the United Kingdom’s recent Brexit vote as indicative of a growing populist wave. “We deserve an immigration system that puts America first and, yes, builds a wall to keep us safe, that stops admitting ISIS terrorists as refugees,” Cruz said. “We deserve trade policies that put the interests of American farmers and manufacturing jobs over the global interests funding the lobbyists.” Cruz had never previously campaigned as an economic protectionist.

Even as he adopted aspects of the current nominee’s most controversial proposals, Cruz was careful to couch his political fight in the context of historical struggles. “Together we passed the Civil Rights Act, and together we fought to eliminate Jim Crow laws,” he said. “Those were fights for freedom, and so is this.”

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Ted Cruz Says Building Trump’s Wall Is Like Fighting Slavery and Jim Crow

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Going vegetarian can cut your diet’s carbon footprint in half

by LeslieHides Posted on June 27, 2014

The thin edge of the veg

Going vegetarian can cut your diet’s carbon footprint in half

By

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The agricultural industry is a heavy global warmer, responsible for a tenth of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. But not all farm bounties are climatically equal.

New research reveals that the diets of those who eat a typical amount of meat for an American, about four ounces or more per day, are responsible for nearly twice as much global warming as vegetarians’ diets, and nearly 2.5 times as much as vegans’.

That’s because directly eating vegetables and grains, instead of inefficiently funneling them through livestock to produce meat, reduces the amount of carbon dioxide produced by farms and farm machinery. It also cuts back on the amount of climate-changing nitrous oxide released from tilled and fertilized soils, and, of course, it eliminates methane belching and farting by cows and other animals.

A team of British researchers scrutinized the diets of 2,041 vegans, 15,751 vegetarians, 8,123 fish eaters, and 29,589 meat eaters, all of them living in the U.K. They estimated the greenhouse gas emissions associated with 289 types of food. Then they combined the data to determine the globe-warming impacts of those four diets, based on consumption of 2,000 calories a day.

The results were published this month in the journal Climatic Change. Here’s how much carbon dioxide pollution or equivalent (CO2e) an average man’s diet is responsible for every single day (an average woman’s is just slightly lower):

Heavy meat eaters (American average): 16 pounds of CO2e
Low meat eaters (less than two ounces per day): 10.3 pounds
Fish eaters (no other meat): 8.7 pounds
Vegetarians: 8.5 pounds
Vegans: 6.5 pounds

The researchers didn’t just quantify the climatic benefits of going veg. Their data offered another reminder of the personal health benefits of laying off the animal flesh. “There were also significant trends towards lower saturated fat, higher fibre and higher fruit and vegetable intake (but a higher intake of sugars) as the quantity of animal-based products in the diet decreases,” they wrote in their paper.

Pass the veggies?


Source
Dietary greenhouse gas emissions of meat-eaters, fish-eaters, vegetarians and vegans in the UK, Climatic Change

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Going vegetarian can cut your diet’s carbon footprint in half

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Divided Government Isn’t Going Away Anytime Soon

by LeslieHides Posted on March 7, 2014

Mother Jones

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Ronald Brownstein pithily sums up our current electoral dilemma:

Republicans can’t attract enough minorities to consistently capture the White House. Democrats can’t win enough whites to consistently control Congress.

Neither party has a lock on any branch of government. But Republicans are getting weaker and weaker nationally, which makes it very difficult for them to capture the White House. Midterm elections, however, which feature lower turnouts and depend on state and district voting, pose a problem for Democrats.

Obviously details still count. Republicans have a good chance of taking the Senate this year because Democrats are defending a lot of weak seats. Conversely, Democrats have a good chance of taking the Senate in 2016 because Republicans will be defending a lot of weak seats. Nonetheless, we do seem to be entering an era in which Democrats have an ever stronger edge in presidential elections and Republicans have an ever stronger edge in congressional elections, especially midterms. Unless something changes, we can probably look forward to divided government for a long time.

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Divided Government Isn’t Going Away Anytime Soon

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