Tag Archives: opinion

Finally, a Super Bowl Ad That Told the Truth

by LeliaLykins Posted on February 2, 2015

Mother Jones

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Everyone is freaking out about Nationwide’s super depressing Super Bowl commercial about preventable child death.

See?

Freaking out hard:

Here’s the commercial:

I don’t have a child so take my opinion for what it’s worth, but I rise in defense of this commercial.

The world is a dangerous place. If you freak out every time someone reminds you of that simple truth, then you don’t live in the world that exists. You live in a world of pure imagination.

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Finally, a Super Bowl Ad That Told the Truth

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This Judge Just Said Everything You Want to Say to the Anti-Gay Marriage Crowd, But Better

by ReneeBandy Posted on September 5, 2014

Mother Jones

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On Thursday, federal judge Richard Posner of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a lower court’s ruling striking down gay marriage bans in Wisconsin and Indiana. This marks the 22nd time since the Supreme Court struck down the Defense of Marriage Act last year that a federal court has found bans on same-sex marriage unconstitutional. On Wednesday, a different federal judge issued an opinion upholding Louisiana’s ban, making the total post-DOMA record 22-1.

Posner’s opinion is special, though, because, as Gawker notes, it’s, well, amazing. And bitchy. And delicious.

Our pair of cases is rich in detail but ultimately straight-forward to decide. The challenged laws discriminate against a minority defined by an immutable characteristic, and the only rationale that the states put forth with any conviction—that same-sex couples and their children don’t need marriage because same-sex couples can’t produce children, intended or unintended—is so full of holes that it cannot be taken seriously.

Indiana defended its ban by arguing that the state had no reason to extend marriage to gay people because gay people can’t have children—that marriage is designed, in part, to force fathers in hetereosexual relationships to raise children they may or may not have wanted.

At oral argument the state‘s lawyer was asked whether “Indiana’s law is about successfully raising children,” and since “you agree same-sex couples can successfully raise children, why shouldn’t the ban be lifted as to them?” The lawyer answered that “the assumption is that with opposite-sex couples there is very little thought given during the sexual act, sometimes, to whether babies may be a consequence.” In other words, Indiana’s government thinks that straight couples tend to be sexually irresponsible, producing unwanted children by the carload, and so must be pressured (in the form of governmental encouragement of marriage through a combination of sticks and carrots) to marry, but that gay couples, unable as they are to produce children wanted or unwanted, are model parents—model citizens really—so have no need for marriage. Heterosexuals get drunk and pregnant, producing unwanted children; their reward is to be allowed to marry. Homosexual couples do not produce unwanted children; their reward is to be denied the right to marry. Go figure.

My favorite bit is Posner’s response to Indiana’s assertion that “homosexuals are politically powerful out of proportion to their numbers.”

No evidence is presented by the state to support this contention. It is true that an increasing number of heterosexuals support same-sex marriage; otherwise 11 states would not have changed their laws to permit such marriage (the other 8 states that allow same-sex marriage do so as a result of judicial decisions invalidating the states’ bans). No inference of manipulation of the democratic process by homosexuals can be drawn, however, any more than it could be inferred from the enactment of civil rights laws that African-Americans “are politically powerful out of proportion to their numbers.” It is to the credit of American voters that they do not support only laws that are in their palpable self-interest. They support laws punishing cruelty to animals, even though not a single animal has a vote.

Go read the whole thing. It’s wonderful.

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This Judge Just Said Everything You Want to Say to the Anti-Gay Marriage Crowd, But Better

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Hobby Lobby Wasn’t About Religious Freedom. It Was About Abortion.

by Martha8879 Posted on June 30, 2014

Mother Jones

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Elsewhere at Mother Jones, Dana Liebelson collects the either best lines from Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s dissent in the Hobby Lobby case. Here’s what I consider the most telling passage from Samuel Alito’s majority opinion:

Kinda reminds you of Bush v. Gore, doesn’t it? Alito takes pains to make it clear that his opinion shouldn’t be considered precedent for anything except the narrowly specific issue at hand: whether contraceptives that some people consider abortifacients can be excluded from health plans.

I think it’s important to recognize what Alito is saying here. Basically, he’s making the case that abortion is unique as a religious issue. If you object to anything else on a religious basis, you’re probably out of luck. But if you object to abortion on religious grounds, you will be given every possible consideration. Even if your objection is only related to abortion in the most tenuous imaginable way—as it is here, where IUDs are considered to be abortifacients for highly idiosyncratic doctrinal reasons—it will be treated with the utmost deference.

This is not a ruling that upholds religious liberty. It is a ruling that specifically enshrines opposition to abortion as the most important religious liberty in America.

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Unions Should Brace Themselves for a Major Supreme Court Loss

by KianHeinrich Posted on June 26, 2014

Mother Jones

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It’s official: The Supreme Court will wait until Monday, the final day of the current term, to issue its decision in Harris v. Quinn. As I explained in May, Harris is a blockbuster case that could, in a worst-case scenario, wipe public-employee unions such as SEIU and AFSCME off the map. And the chances of a damaging decision in Harris just increased—here’s why.

Heading into Thursday, the Supreme Court had Harris and three other cases left to decide. The justices chose to issue their opinions concerning presidential recess appointments (Noel Canning v. National Labor Relations Board) and so-called buffer zones keeping protesters at a distance from abortion clinics (McCullen v. Coakley). Justice Stephen Breyer, a liberal member of the court, wrote the Canning opinion; Chief Justice John Roberts, a conservative, took the lead in McCullen.

This makes it more likely that Justice Samuel Alito, who we’ve yet to hear much from, will write the opinion in Harris, which points to bad news for public-employee unions. “There’s almost no question Justice Alito has this opinion unless he lost his majority along way,” tweets Rick Hasen, a University of California-Irvine law professor. “Anti-union is his signature issue.”

Labor officials can only hope Hasen is wrong. Alito is strongly anti-union. In the 2012 case Knox v. SEIU, Alito essentially invited labor’s foes to challenge the basic model of public-employee unionism, in which non-union employees can be made to pay dues to a union for bargaining on their behalf, representing them in grievance issues, etc. Harris makes such a challenge; it’s what Alito asked for.

Unions like to call those non-member payments “fair share” dues. If it’s the union’s job, they reason, to represent all members and nonmembers in a unionized workplace, then all those workers should pay their fair share for that representation. Conservatives—and Alito—say fair-share fees violate the First Amendment rights of non-union workers.

The outcome in Harris could cut a number of ways. The Supreme Court could uphold the lower court’s decision dismissing the suit—a big union victory. It could strike down fair share fees—the equivalent of Congress passing a national right-to-work bill. (Right-to-work laws ban unions from collecting those fair-share fees from non-members.) Public-employee unions would survive that decision, but it would be a blow. The court could also effectively enact right-to-work nationwide and kneecap a union’s ability to exclusively represent employees in a unionized workplace. That would be catastrophic for public-employee unions.

If there’s any judge who might go that far, it would be Samuel Alito.

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Unions Should Brace Themselves for a Major Supreme Court Loss

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Monster wind farm planned in South Dakota

by Lou Bovee Posted on February 12, 2014

Monster wind farm planned in South Dakota

By

Travis S.

Well blow us over, Mount Rushmore State! Scores of landowners in South Dakota are banding together in an attempt to build a one-gigawatt wind farm, which would be spread over thousands of acres of farmland.

South Dakota is already a leader when it comes to harnessing wind energy. Nearly 500 large turbines spin over the state’s windswept landscapes, with a collective capacity of 784 megawatts of power. The Watertown Public Opinion reports on an attempt to more than double that capacity:

With over 80 landowners ready to dedicate nearly 20,000 acres to one of South Dakota’s largest wind projects, Dakota Power Community Wind is ready to begin the research phase of the operation.

“Our board has approved the purchase of [a meteorological] tower to kick off the research collection phase,” said Paul Shubeck, Dakota Power Community Wind board chairman. “We need to collect two to three years of data before construction can begin.” …

The 20,000 acres of farmland currently signed up for the project are sufficient to support a 300-megawatt windfarm, according to company officials. That would still be the largest single windfarm in South Dakota and would add nearly 50% to the state’s wind production.

Project leaders are now working to get more landowners on board. If built as envisioned, the sprawling wind farm would produce more than three times as much electricity as the natural gas–burning Deer Creek Station, which became the state’s most powerful fossil-fuel power plant when it began operating in 2012.


Source
Research phase to begin for Dakota Power Community Wind, Watertown Public Opinion

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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L.A. Times won’t publish climate-denier letters

by 2lgax8lh Posted on October 10, 2013

L.A. Times won’t publish climate-denier letters

By

Jason Eppink

We can’t always escape the climate-denying rants of our relatives. Fortunately, though, we won’t have to read climate-denying rants from the relatives of others when we pick up the Los Angeles Times.

Last week, in discussing the fight over Obamacare, the Times’ letters editor mentioned in passing that the newspaper doesn’t publish letters to the editor that claim there’s no evidence of human-caused climate change:

Regular readers of The Times’ Opinion pages will know that, among the few letters published over the last week that have blamed the Democrats for the government shutdown (a preponderance faulted House Republicans), none made the argument about Congress exempting itself from Obamacare.

Why? Simply put, this objection to the president’s healthcare law is based on a falsehood, and letters that have an untrue basis (for example, ones that say there’s no sign humans have caused climate change) do not get printed.

Needless to say, climate deniers were not pleased. But letters editor Paul Thornton was unswayed by their complaints, as he explained in a response:

As for letters on climate change, we do get plenty from those who deny global warming. And to say they “deny” it might be an understatement: Many say climate change is a hoax, a scheme by liberals to curtail personal freedom. …

[W]hen deciding which letters should run among hundreds on such weighty matters as climate change, I must rely on the experts — in other words, those scientists with advanced degrees who undertake tedious research and rigorous peer review.

And those scientists have provided ample evidence that human activity is indeed linked to climate change. Just last month, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — a body made up of the world’s top climate scientists — said it was 95% certain that we fossil-fuel-burning humans are driving global warming. The debate right now isn’t whether this evidence exists (clearly, it does) but what this evidence means for us.

I do my best to keep errors of fact off the letters page; when one does run, a correction is published. Saying “there’s no sign humans have caused climate change” is not stating an opinion, it’s asserting a factual inaccuracy.

Say, Paul, with the holidays approaching, some of us are wondering whether you’d care to pop around to mediate dinner-table disagreements?


Source
The Obamacare exemptions that aren’t, L.A. Times
On letters from climate-change deniers, L.A. Times

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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Climate change could bring more hurricanes

by pawel Posted on July 9, 2013

Climate change could bring more hurricanes

By John Upton

NASA Goddard

Climate scientists have long predicted that cyclones and hurricanes would become more destructive as the climate changes, but that the number of such storms each year would decrease, or perhaps remain constant.

That notion was challenged Monday by Kerry Emanuel, an atmospheric scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in a paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Emanuel’s computer models foresee stronger cyclones and hurricanes, in line with previous research, but they also foresee a growing number of the storms each year as warming continues.

The Carbon Brief explained Emanuel’s research:

Six global scale climate models were used to produce a broad picture about what earth’s climate would be like under high levels of greenhouse gas emissions. From this, information about air and sea temperatures, wind patterns and atmospheric moisture, was used to simulate where and when tropical cyclones might occur in the future.

The results suggest that the number of tropical cyclones could exceed 100 per year by about 2070, compared to an average of 90 per year at the moment. Tropical cyclones could get more intense too, if the modelling is right.

The total amount of energy tropical cyclones release is expected to increase by 45 per cent over the course of the 21st century. Some of that energy would be spent by the extra 10 or so tropical cyclones per year, but half of it would be released by intense storms getting even stronger – meaning higher winds, taller storm surges and greater economic costs.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Emanuel’s findings are being received with some skepticism by other atmospheric scientists, at least for the moment. From Climate Central:

James Elsner, an atmospheric scientist at Florida State University who was not involved in this study, downplayed the study’s conclusions given the considerable uncertainties involved with using computer models to simulate complex storms such as hurricanes.

“The results from the new Emanuel are provocative, but in my opinion there is little reason to put much weight on them when considering what might happen to tropical cyclone activity during the next 50 to 80 years,” he said in an email to Climate Central.

Emanuel points out that scientists are still learning what drives cyclonic frequency, which helps to explain the discrepancy between previous studies and this one. “The physics behind these numbers remains enigmatic, and the general relationship between tropical cyclone activity and climate is only beginning to be understood,” he wrote in the paper.

So will there be more cyclones and hurricanes as the climate changes, or not? We’ll be watching to see whether other climate scientists start reaching conclusions similar to Emanuel’s. If they do, we could be in for an even bumpier ride as the globe warms.

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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DealBook: Britain’s Top Fraud Office Aims to Add Bite to Its Bark

by Myrna Posted on June 18, 2013

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David Green, the director of the Serious Fraud Office, plans to revive the agency’s reputation with a criminal investigation into the rigging of the Libor.

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Biblical flood means climate change isn’t caused by humans, says Texas Rep. Joe Barton

by Casey Wood Posted on April 11, 2013

Biblical flood means climate change isn’t caused by humans, says Texas Rep. Joe Barton

By John Upton

Shutterstock

The Great Flood happened, therefore climate science is a fraud.

Most people realize that the seas are rising, hurricanes are becoming more ferocious, and oceans are turning to acid because we keep digging up fossil fuels, burning them, and poisoning the atmosphere.

But Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) is not most people. He’s a die-hard climate denier, and a particularly clueless one at that.

During a hearing yesterday on a GOP bill that would fast-track the Keystone XL pipeline without the blessing of President Barack Obama, Barton muttered some batshit crazy stuff.

From BuzzFeed:

“I would point out that people like me who support hydrocarbon development don’t deny that climate is changing,” he added. “I think you can have an honest difference of opinion of what’s causing that change without automatically being either all in that’s all because of mankind or it’s all just natural. I think there’s a divergence of evidence.”

Barton then cited the biblical Great Flood as an example of climate change not caused by man.

“I would point out that if you’re a believer in the Bible, one would have to say the Great Flood is an example of climate change and that certainly wasn’t because mankind had overdeveloped hydrocarbon energy.”

Is this batshit crazier than when he apologized to BP for the way the company was treated after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill? You decide.

John Upton is a science aficionado and green news junkie who

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