Tag Archives: november

The November Midterm Election is Anyone’s Game

by Garland36G Posted on May 21, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

The wonks at The Monkey Cage think Republicans have a 77 percent chance of taking the Senate in November. The wonks at The Upshot think Republicans have only a 43 percent chance of taking the Senate. The wonks at 538 seem to think it’s close to a toss-up.

So I don’t know what to think. I guess we’ll have to wait for the actual election to happen. How very 20th century.

Source article:

The November Midterm Election is Anyone’s Game

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The November Midterm Election is Anyone’s Game

Quote of the Day: Happy Mother’s Day!

by Sheila23Nhgcdkm Posted on May 11, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

I had always wanted to be a mother. It’s the first thing I said to your dad. We met at a party in LA in February, 1983. I was a producer at CBS. “What do you want to do with your career at CBS?” he asked me. And I said, “Nothing, I want to get married and have children.” And he said, “Me too. Let’s get married.” And we got married like one month later and now we have you three kids. If we hadn’t been this crazy, you guys wouldn’t exist! So be nice to the baby boomer generation.

—Jeramie Dreyfuss, my mom and the best actress ever to play a psycho killer in a deeply disturbing early-70s horror film. (Happy Mother’s Day, mom! I love you.)

Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms! You guys are the best.

Taken from:

Quote of the Day: Happy Mother’s Day!

Posted in Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta, Vintage | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Quote of the Day: Happy Mother’s Day!

WATCH: Front-Runner in GOP Senate Primary Says Planned Parenthood Wants to Kill Newborns

by AmberPkk Posted on March 12, 2014

Mother Jones

According to North Carolina GOP Senate candidate Greg Brannon, Planned Parenthood has a secret plan to legalize the killing of newborn babies as old as three months. Brannon, a Rand Paul-backed obstetrician who is a front-runner for the GOP nomination, made the allegations at a November fundraiser for Hand of Hope, a chain of crisis pregnancy centers he operates in North Carolina.

Well how far will it go? Last year, February 29, 2012, the Journal of Ethics in Australia, they debated that. They said we already know abortion is fine, why stop in the womb? Why not three months after. Why should we end the responsibility at that point? It could happen in America. Florida’s trying to do it right now and so is Georgia. Planned Parenthood. Because we allowed that slippery slope. Every human being deserves life, liberty, and property.

Brannon’s statement appears to be based on testimony given last year by a lobbyist for the Florida Alliance of Planned Parenthood Affiliates. Asked how the organization’s physicians would respond if a baby were born alive during an abortion, the lobbyist appeared confused and said she’d have to check. But in a follow-up statement, Barbara Zdravecky, CEO of Planned Parenthood of Southwest and Central Florida, unambiguously rejected the notion: “In the extremely unlikely event that the scenario presented by the legislators ever happened, of course Planned Parenthood would provide appropriate care to both the woman and the infant.”

“These absurd and patently false claims by Greg Brannon demonstrate just how extreme and out of touch he is when it comes to women’s health issues—and the rest of the Republican Senate candidates in North Carolina are just as dangerous,” Planned Parenthood Action Fund Executive Vice President Dawn Laguens said in a statement. Brannon’s campaign did not respond to request for clarification.

In the same speech, Brannon said women get abortions because of the same nihilistic worldview that causes them to believe in evolution. “We have people who believe they evolve from nothing, they came from nothing, they’ll go to nothing, and today doesn’t matter, so when they have a mistake, why not move on?,” he said.

The most recent survey of the race, from Public Policy Polling, showed Brannon tied with Thom Tillis, the speaker of the state house of representatives, for the Republican nomination—and running even with Sen. Kay Hagan (R-N.C.) in a hypothetical November matchup.

Original link:

WATCH: Front-Runner in GOP Senate Primary Says Planned Parenthood Wants to Kill Newborns

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on WATCH: Front-Runner in GOP Senate Primary Says Planned Parenthood Wants to Kill Newborns

Obamacare Enrollments Are Starting to Surge

by CarmonRoy Posted on December 19, 2013

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Over the past 24 hours, I have managed to say not a single word about either Duck Dynasty or Pajama Boy. So what do I get for my reward? This:

HORSEBACK GUESSTIMATE WARNING: Unless it’s hidden away somewhere, California hasn’t released weekly enrollment numbers. But they’ve released numbers for October, and for the first two weeks of November, and then for October+November. Then today they released numbers for the first three days of this week: 13K on Monday, 19K on Tuesday, and 20K on Wednesday. If you put that all together and then take a reasonable swag at filling in the gaps, you get the chart above. It’s not official or anything, but it’s probably not too far off.

And what it shows is that with deadlines finally looming, all those people who have been shopping for the past month or two are finally enrolling at a furious pace. Other states are reporting a similar surge. Obamacare still has a long way to go, but things are definitely starting to perk up.

Credit: 

Obamacare Enrollments Are Starting to Surge

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Obamacare Enrollments Are Starting to Surge

The GOP’s Filibuster Freakout: 13 Dramatic Reactions From Senate Republicans

by I ambit Posted on November 21, 2013

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Senate Democrats upended the chamber’s normal procedure Thursday morning, restoring a sense of normalcy to the oft-dysfunctional institution by changing the filibuster rules for confirming judicial and executive-branch nominees. Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) turned to the so-called “nuclear option”—a parliamentary trick to write the rules with just 51 votes, rather than the standard two-thirds majority required to change Senate procedures. Clearing a filibuster on those appointees will no longer take a 60-vote supermajority, and President Barack Obama’s judges and White House staff can now be approved by a simple up-or-down vote.

It’s not an outrageous concept. Senate rules were changed regularly under these basic-majority votes when the late Robert Byrd of West Virginia was majority leader in the 1970s. Yet on Thursday, Republicans acted as if the world had ended and democracy would soon collapse thanks to Reid’s egregious change of the rules. It’s hard to take their doom-and-gloom predictions too seriously. Republicans, including Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, were amped to end filibusters of judicial nominations in 2005 until Democrats caved and cut a deal.

Here’s a sample of the some of the most hyperbolic Republican reactions to filibuster reform:

1. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) on the Senate floor:

“He Harry Reid is not a dictator. He does not have the power to dictate how this Senate operates.”

2. Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.):

3. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) on CNN:

“What we really need is an anti-bullying ordinance in the Senate. I mean, now we’ve got a big bully. Harry Reid says he’s just gonna break the rules and make new rules.”

4. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.):

“They’re governed by the newer members…who have never been in a minority, who are primarily driving this issue. They succeeded and they will pay a very, very heavy price for it.”

5. Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.):

6. Sen. Alexander, again, this time on the floor of the Senate:

“This action today creates a perpetual opportunity for the tyranny of the majority because it permits a majority in this body to do whatever it wants to do any time it wants to do it. This should be called Obamacare II, because it is another example of the use of raw partisan political party for the majority to do whatever it wants to do any time it wants to do it.”

7. Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) on his Facebook page:

“Rather than fix the Obamacare disaster, today Harry Reid doubled down on the brass knuckles partisan power politics that produced it—jam it through, no compromise, unilaterally make up new rules whenever needed. This isn’t just a shame for the Senate; it’s scary and dictatorial for our country.”

8. Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.):

9. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) right before the nuclear-option vote:

“Just yesterday, I saw a story about a guy getting a letter in the mail saying his dog, his dog had qualified for insurance under Obamacare. So yeah, I would probably be running for the exit, too, if I had supported this law. I would be looking to change the subject, change the subject just as Senate Democrats have been doing with their threats of going nuclear and changing the Senate rules on nominations.”

10. Sen. Dan Coates (R-Ind.) on his Facebook page:

“This action to change the Senate rules and weaken the Founding Fathers’ vision for checks and balances is yet another disturbing power grab and reminds the public of how the Democrats jammed through the unwanted health care law.”

11. Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.):

“The Democrats’ vote to invoke the ‘nuclear option’ and fundamentally change the rules of the Senate is a raw power grab which is deeply disappointing. Like the manner in which they rammed through Obamacare on party line votes, they have now broken the rules of the Senate to allow them to do the same for the president’s executive and judicial nominees.”

12. Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.):

13. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa):

“The silver lining is that there will come a day when roles are reversed. When that happens, our side will likely nominate and confirm lower court and Supreme Court nominees with 51 votes regardless of whether the Democrats actually buy into this fanciful notion that they can demolish the filibuster on lower court nominees and still preserve it for Supreme Court.”

Originally from – 

The GOP’s Filibuster Freakout: 13 Dramatic Reactions From Senate Republicans

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The GOP’s Filibuster Freakout: 13 Dramatic Reactions From Senate Republicans

Operation Green Fence Highlights Issues with U.S. Recycling Plan

by kosiczek1910 Posted on September 16, 2013

For years, cardboard has been a highly profitable export from the U.S. to China. New regulations could change the way America approaches recycling and trash disposal. Photo: morgueFile/bosela

For years, one of America’s biggest exports to China was trash. But now, Operation Green Fence could overhaul our current recycling and trash disposal efforts. The initiative, announced in February 2013, is an effort by Chinese environmental and customs officials to be more stringent about what imported waste will be allowed into the country.

China has been a prime market for recycled raw materials for several years, and the U.S. — as well as Europe, Japan and Hong Kong — has exported scrap materials to China. In fact, it’s a highly profitable export for the U.S., which netted $10.8 billion from metal and paper scrap in 2011. Cardboard boxes and other scrap paper are particularly valuable; China lacks the abundant forest resources enjoyed by the U.S., so the Asian nation buys our cardboard and other scrap paper, then combines it with their lower-grade recycled fibers to improve the quality of their packaging materials.

With Operation Green Fence, China has announced that it will be stricter in terms of what contaminants it allows in shipments. That means any shipment of recyclables that’s found to have even a single contaminant — such as a syringe or a stowaway rodent — could be turned away. During the first three months of the initiative, about 7,600 tons of material from the U.S. was rejected, according to the International Solid Waste Association. Since the campaign began, an estimated 800,000 tons of recyclable waste total has been rejected.

Industry experts fear that this new approach will lead to increased exporting costs, and there’s also plenty of concern as to what the U.S. will do with its waste if it can’t be sent to China. With a lack of recycling centers to take the goods, some of it could end up in landfills. Cities may be forced to take a hard look at what kind of recycling is offered and/or find a way to produce less contaminated waste.

Whether the initiative continues — it was originally announced as a 10-month program that would end in November — it’s clear that America has to rethink its current mind-set toward recycling and create solutions that are no longer dependent on sending trash abroad.

earth911

Read more: 

Operation Green Fence Highlights Issues with U.S. Recycling Plan

Posted in alo, FF, GE, ONA, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Operation Green Fence Highlights Issues with U.S. Recycling Plan

Side Effect: Skinny – Denise Austin

by Myrna Posted on April 13, 2013

READ GREEN WITH E-BOOKS

Side Effect: Skinny

Denise Austin’s Fat Blast Diet

Denise Austin

Genre: Health & Fitness

Price: $12.99

Publish Date: November 23, 2012

Publisher: Bird Street Books

Seller: Ingram DV LLC


It’s a common sentiment among all women: we want to be fit, we want to get healthy, and we want to have more energy to live our busy, beautiful lives! Denise Austin, the internationally-renowned fitness guru, understands women’s wants, needs, and the hurdles that they face. In her newest book, Side Effect: Skinny, Austin shares her secret fat-blast diet and healthy, delicious eating plans, alongside her fun and effective workout regimens. A culmination of Austin’s decades of research and experience getting real-life women to look and feel their very best, Side Effect: Skinny introduces easy-to-implement weight loss solutions and simple yet powerful methods that encourage women of all ages to stay fit. She’s redefining “skinny” and showing you that you don’t need to be rail-thin to look gorgeous and live healthier.Possessing straightforward, real-life health tips, meal plans and fitness solutions, Side Effect: Skinny reveals:

Link: 

Side Effect: Skinny – Denise Austin

Posted in alo, FF, GE, ONA, PUR, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Side Effect: Skinny – Denise Austin

Another sign of the apocalypse: Coal is making a comeback in the U.S.

by kastijoo8753 Posted on February 15, 2013

Another sign of the apocalypse: Coal is making a comeback in the U.S.

By Philip Bump

If there were a war on coal — which, sadly, there isn’t — it appears that the tide of battle has turned. Coal is making a comeback.

In an extensive article entitled “Coal Claws Back,” the Rhodium Group, a think tank that assesses global trends, outlined the fuel’s resurgence in the U.S. In short:

While the decline in coal-fired power generation, driven in large part by cheap natural gas, has helped reduce emissions to levels most policymakers and climate diplomats thought impossible absent economy-wide legislation, it looks as though it has just about run its course. Natural gas prices bottomed out in April of last year at $1.82 per MMBTU at Henry Hub, and have since climbed to above $3. While still low relative to the high gas prices that had become the norm before the shale boom took hold, this rebound has been enough to stop the bleeding for coal-fired power. Coal’s share of electricity generation increased from 33% in April to 42% in November, the most recent month for which public data is available, and industry consultancy GenScape estimates that coal’s share stabilized at these levels through January.

The picture is more clear in graph form.

Last summer, we noted that electricity generation from natural gas had nearly matched that from coal. This is one reason our CO2 emissions plummeted recently. But the coal-versus-natural-gas trend hasn’t held. (Note: All of the data used below is from the Energy Information Administration; November 2012 data is the most recently available.)

In October and November, the gap between coal and natural gas increased. Coal clawed back.

One reason is that the price of natural gas used for electricity generation increased. Below, it’s compared to the always-cyclical price of residential natural gas. Since April 2012, the price has risen steadily — up 58 percent by November.

That uptick correlates with the trend away from natural gas in energy production. Higher natural gas price, less incentive to use it to power electricity generation.

And the Rhodium Group suggests that, at least for the next year or two, the cost difference between coal and natural gas will hold steady.

Rhodium Group

Click to embiggen.

The EIA, meanwhile, projects that coal will hold a consistent if smaller share of the generation market for another 30 years, with natural gas and renewables inching up in the percentage of generation. Overall amount of generation, which had fallen in recent years, will start going back up.

EIA

Click to embiggen.

More coal use and more electricity produced means more greenhouse gas emissions.

Rhodium Group

Click to embiggen.

Welcome back to the fight, coal. You weren’t missed.

Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.

Read more:

Business & Technology

,

Climate & Energy

Also in Grist

Please enable JavaScript to see recommended stories

View original post here:

Another sign of the apocalypse: Coal is making a comeback in the U.S.

Posted in GE, LG, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Another sign of the apocalypse: Coal is making a comeback in the U.S.