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Eight Ways The Drought Is Influencing Thanksgiving

By Climate Guest Blogger on Nov 21, 2012 at 5:08 pm

by Katie Valentine and Whitney Allen

Thanksgiving is a time of plenty – or, maybe more accurately, of vast over-consumption — from the meal to the midnight shopping rampage afterward.

But across the United States this year, “plenty” has not been enjoyed by many farmers. A historic drought devastated crops over the summer, causing a spike in grain prices that led to farmers slaughtering cows early, selling their herds or feeding them candy as a cheap alternative to corn.

This year’s historic drought is still having an impact as we move into the holidays. In most cases the influence on food prices has been very modest — with only very slight increases in food products. But for those buying in bulk, the price increases have become a greater factor. For example, government purchases through the Emergency Food Assistance Program have dropped by half, from $723 million three years ago to $352 million. And that is putting pressure on food banks that rely on donations from these programs to keep their shelves full.

The drought, which at one point covered nearly 80 percent of the contiguous U.S. this summer, is now working its way through products in the grocery store. Here are some ways your Thanksgiving is influenced by this year’s severe drought — an event that Midwestern scientists say is “consistent with an observed warmer climate.”

Wheat: This summer’s drought decimated wheat crops in the U.S. and Russia, and this winter’s crop isn’t faring much better. As drought continues in much of the Great Plains region, winter wheat quality has declined for the past three weeks – as of November 19, only 34 percent of the crop was rated good or excellent by the USDA, and about 24 percent was in poor or very poor condition. This has caused the price of wheat in the U.S. to spike from $266.32 per ton in April 2012 to $358.20 in October. The increase in price won’t likely put a damper on your Thanksgiving shopping – the price of rolls increased only 3 cents since last year – but the poor wheat crop coupled with failures in other grain harvests has run the U.S. grain stockpiles to historically low levels, which could spell trouble for future Thanksgivings.

Turkey: The drought-induced increase in wheat and corn prices has driven turkey prices up too – though marginally. The average cost of a 16-pound turkey will be about $22.23 this year – a total increase of 66 cents from 2011. The increase may not mean much for consumers buying a single turkey for dinner, but it may be influencing their desire to donate turkeys to others. Several charities have reported being short the number of turkeys they want to serve needy families this year. Turkey prices are expected to remain higher through at least 2013.

Read more

Security

GOP Senators Attack Obama, Praise Egyptian President In Statement On Gaza Ceasefire

By Ben Armbruster on Nov 21, 2012 at 4:15 pm

(Photo: AP)

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Egyptian Prime Minister Mohamed Kamel Amr today announced a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel, ending eight days of violence that resulted in nearly 150 dead and more wounded. President Obama dispatched Clinton to the region yesterday and the nation’s top diplomat traveled to Jerusalem and Cairo today to help facilitate the deal.

But in a statement on the Gaza ceasefire today, Sens. John McCain (R-AZ), Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) — one day after intelligence officials debunked their attacks on the Obama administration over Benghazi — didn’t have any kind words for the president and his team. In fact, the new “Three Amigos” attacked Obama, saying there needs to be “smarter American leadership” in the Middle East.

Yet the three Republicans did have praise for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Egyptian President Muhammad Morsi:

We commend Prime Minister Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders for the role they played in reaching today’s ceasefire. We also are encouraged by the responsible leadership role played by the President of Egypt and his government. President Morsi deserves credit for successfully bringing an end to the violence and preventing further loss of life on both sides. These actions are befitting the commitment to peace and security that Egypt has traditionally upheld as a leader of the Arab world.

Indeed, Netanyahu, Morsi and others involved ending the hostilities deserve credit — but so does the Obama administration. And given their embarrassing campaign to bring down the Obama administration on Libya, it’s not entirely shocking that McCain and his allies don’t see it that way.

Update

Reporting that the ceasefire between Hamas and Israel continues to hold, the New York Times notes that the deal “was reached only through a final American diplomatic push: Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton conferred for hours with Mr. Morsi and the United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, at the presidential palace” in Cairo.

Update

Morsi’s top foreign policy aide praised Obama’s role in the negotiations. “Yes, they were carrying the point of view of the Israeli side, but they were understanding also the other side, the Palestinian side,” he said of President Obama’s role. “The sincerity and understanding was really very helpful.”

LGBT

Airport Security Tips For Transgender Travelers

By Zack Ford on Nov 21, 2012 at 3:15 pm

With many people traveling for the Thanksgiving holiday, the National Center for Transgender Equality has released a new list of tips to help those who are transgender or gender non-conforming avoid mistreatment or humiliation while processing through airport security. Here is a reminder of the rights that all passengers have while being screened by the TSA:

  1. You can opt out of body scanning machines at any time. However, travelers who opt-out of body scanning machines will be required to undergo a thorough pat-down.
  2. Transgender travelers have a right to a pat-down by an agent of the same gender as the traveler. This is based on your gender presentation. The gender on your identification documents and boarding passes should not matter for pat-downs.
  3. Travelers have a right to request that a pat-down be held in a private screening area, and with a witness or companion of the traveler’s choosing.
  4. You should not any time be subjected to personal questions about your gender, or be forced to lift, remove or raise an article of clothing to reveal a prosthetic item. Prosthetic items include binding garments and breast forms.
  5. All children under age thirteen have a right to modified screening procedures.

NCTE recommends the following tips for travelers:

  1. Ensuring that the name and gender on your ticket reservation match the government-issued ID you bring to the airport with you. The gender on your identification and on your ticket reservation does not need to match your current gender presentation.
  2. Downloading the Fly Rights iPhone and Android application before your travel, which makes it easy to report complaints directly with the Transportation Security Administration and the Department of Homeland Security.
  3. For frequent travelers, exploring the TSA Pre-Check program which offers “expedited screening.”

Everybody deserves the same opportunity to travel safely to visit their family and loved ones, but not all security personnel may properly understand how best to respect transgender passengers. With patience and understanding, all travelers will arrive safely at their destinations with their dignity intact.

Download NCTE’s full guide here.

 

Security

Right Wing Invents New Bengahzi Conspiracy Theory: Top U.S. Intel Official Is A Liar

By Hamed Aleaziz on Nov 21, 2012 at 3:06 pm

The Republicans’ new focus of attack in the faux “Benghazi-gate” scandal is Director of National Intelligence (DNI) James Clapper, claiming that he lied about the source of changes to talking points on the Benghazi attack given to U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice.

Yesterday, a DNI spokesperson debunked accusations made by Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and other Republicans that the White House changed Rice’s Benghazi talking points, saying that it was the intelligence community that made the “substantive” changes to the talking points. Moreover, former CIA head David Petraeus and other top intelligence officials have said there was no politicization of the process and that the talking points were not altered to minimize the role of extremists but to reflect the best intelligence at the time.

McCain appeared to accept the new information but wondered why Clapper and other DNI officials did not provide this information during closed door hearings last week. And now that all their earlier attacks on Rice have fell apart, Republicans and conservative media figures are directing their attacks at Clapper, a George W. Bush appointee:

– BILL O’REILLY: Now it’s James Clapper, President Obama’s national security guy who is saying, “Oh, it’s me. I sent Rice out there and I took out all the al Qaeda stuff.” I’m not buying it. None of this adds up. … All right so there’s a lot of lying going on here.

– CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: I’m not buying it because the Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee said that a week ago in classified testimony that same Clapper said that they had no idea who changed the talking points and now a week later he seems to say he did? That’s kind of strange. I mean I’ve seen amnesia in my day in my clinical days and that one is pretty quick, one week.

– TUCKER CARLSON: I hate to think that the director of National Intelligence lied, is a liar. But I’m not sure I see an alternate explanation. Apparently, he’s contradicting what he testified to just last week. Is there another explanation for this?”

– FOX NEWS’ STEVE DOOCY: They did say it is out of the [DNI] office. It’s not him per se, so we’re supposed to believe that a Clapper aide changed what Petraeus had said? That’s very, very curious.

– REP. TREY GOWDY (R-SC): This is the head of our national intelligence and he changed his mind within the course of 24 hours. So how are you possibly going to have any confidence in what he says?

And while Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-GA) didn’t call Clapper a liar, he told Fox News’ Stuart Varney that he now might be involved in the alleged cover up:

GINGREY: Now have you got someone who basically can trump the CIA, especially if the president says to him — I am not suggesting that he did, but he could have — look, James, we need to kind of clean this up a little bit.. We are doing really well. We’re right about time for the election and we are doing very well on national security and this could blow our cover.

Watch the video compilation of the attacks against Clapper:

The right wing has spent months trying to bring down the Obama administration in politicization the attacks in Benghazi that left four Americans dead and after all of their conspiracy theories and baseless attacks have been debunked, the rabbit hole appears to have led to Clapper and who knows where it will end.

Economy

Unemployment Insurance Kept 2.3 Million Americans Out Of Poverty Last Year

By Travis Waldron on Nov 21, 2012 at 3:00 pm

America’s unemployment insurance program is not as robust as those in many industrialized nations, but the program that is speeding toward massive reductions if Congress doesn’t extend it before the end of the year still kept more than 2 million Americans out of poverty in 2011. According to the National Employment Law Project, which is calling on Congress to re-authorize the federal unemployment compensation program before the end of the year, unemployment insurance kept 2.3 million out of poverty, cutting the number of Americans who were entered the ranks of poverty last year in half:

Were it not for unemployment insurance, the increase in the number of Americans living in poverty would have doubled over the last year. (While the number of people in poverty grew by 2.3 million from 2010 to 2011, unemployment insurance prevented an additional 2.3 million Americans from joining their ranks.)

Unemployment insurance is generally handled by the states, but because long-term unemployment was exacerbated during the Great Recession, Congress enacted the Emergency Unemployment Compensation program in 2008. If the federal program isn’t extended by the end of the year, 2 million Americans could lose unemployment benefits, and another 1 million will join them in the early part of 2013. More than 500,000 recipients lost benefits earlier this year because of the way the program is administered and because Congress reduced eligibility for it.

Republicans have pushed against past extensions of the program, arguing that it creates a culture of dependency on federal benefits that reduce the incentive to find work. But the federal program requires workers to search for jobs, and studies have shown that recipients look harder for jobs than those who don’t receive benefits. Meanwhile, in industrialized nations, there is no proof that more generous unemployment insurance programs lead to higher levels of employment: Greece’s unemployment rate, for instance, has soared even though it has one of the least generous programs in the world, while Israel boasts both a generous unemployment program and a falling unemployment rate.

Justice

Obama’s Only Presidential Pardon This Year Went To The Turkey

By Nicole Flatow on Nov 21, 2012 at 3:00 pm

As is annual tradition, President Obama used his constitutionally granted pardon power the day before Thanksgiving to save one lucky turkey. But thus far, the turkey is the only recipient of a presidential pardon in 2012. Although the Constitution confers on the president the power to “grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States,” a recent ProPublica report found that he had exercised that power more rarely than any president in modern history.

Obama’s spare use of his power to grant clemency through both pardons, which revoke an existing conviction, and commutations, which grant an early end to criminal sentences, has been documented in an extensive series by investigative outlet ProPublica. Starting after President George W. Bush’s decision early in his first term to rely on the recommendations of career pardon lawyers, the report found that whites were four times more likely than minorities to receive a presidential pardon.

As law professor Mark Osler explains in a column, the framers intended a much more robust presidential use of the pardon power:

The founding fathers did not intend for the pardon power to fall into such disuse. … Alexander Hamilton, in Federalist 74, argued that “the criminal code of every country partakes so much of necessary severity, that without an easy access to exceptions in favor of unfortunate guilt, justice would wear a countenance too sanguinary and cruel.”

Our federal system of criminal law has, of late, been “too sanguinary and cruel.” For example, thousands of federal prisoners still languish under long sentences doled out under the now-amended 100-to-1 ratio between powder and crack cocaine that was built into the federal statutes and sentencing guidelines. … At the individual level, there are strikingly strong petitions for clemency currently before the president. … One was from Weldon Angelos, who was sentenced to 55 years in prison for three small marijuana infractions and the possession of firearms that were neither used nor brandished. He had only one prior conviction, stemming from a juvenile court charge for gun possession. […]

The result was so unfair that the sentencing judge, George W. Bush appointee Paul Cassell, pled for a presidential commutation of the sentence on the very pages of the sentencing opinion, saying that the 55-year term of imprisonment he was forced by statute to issue was “unjust, cruel, and even irrational.” Cassell substantiated this by pointing out the types of crimes that would have received a much shorter sentence: hijacking planes, raping children and murder. […]

For too long, we have filled our prisons with similar minor-league players in the drug game. It might make sense if this had solved a problem, but it hasn’t. The billions spent have not bought success at reducing drug use in this country.

As the author of the ProPublica series, Dafna Linzer, pointed out on Twitter, it was one year ago today that President Obama last issued any pardons, so it is possible another round will come soon. It can’t come soon enough. President Obama’s abysmally low clemency rate is arguably not a sign that there are less deserving applicants, but rather that the process has changed — for the worse.

Election

Obama Name-Drops Nate Silver During Turkey Pardon

By Zack Beauchamp on Nov 21, 2012 at 2:25 pm

At the annual Thanksgiving Turkey Pardon, President Obama jokingly name-checked the New York Times election stats guru Nate Silver. “Once again,” Obama joked, “Nate Silver completely nailed it,” referring to the President’s decision to “pardon” both of the turkeys in question after a Facebook vote by permitting them to live out their lives rather than be slaughtered to make a Thanksgiving meal.

Watch Obama’s remarks:

Like other statistical models, Silver’s algorithm correctly predicted all fifty states in the Presidential election, despite vicious criticism of his approach as having a “liberal bias.”

Security

Myanmar Signs On To Landmark Agreement Opening Up Its Nuclear Program

By Zack Beauchamp on Nov 21, 2012 at 2:10 pm

The President of Myanmar agreed to grant international inspectors unprecedented access to its nuclear material and facilities, signalling a major step forward for the reforming authoritarian pariah state. Right on the heels of President Obama’s visit (part of a broader American attempt to smooth the country’s path to democracy), Myanmarese leader Thein Sein issued a statement announcing his government’s intention to move towards greater nuclear transparency:

Myanmar announced it would sign an international agreement that would require it to declare all nuclear facilities and materials. Although it would be up to Myanmar to decide what to declare, it could provide some answers concerning its acquisition of dual-use machinery and its military cooperation with Pyongyang that the U.S. and other nations regard as suspect. …

David Albright and Andrea Stricker of the Institute for Science and International Security, a Washington-based nonproliferation group, said in an analysis it was a “remarkable decision.” “This latest move by Burma is extremely positive for its ongoing push for openness about the nuclear issue and for building confidence and transparency with the international community,” they wrote.

As recently as 2010, some analysts had worried that Myanmar was following in North Korea’s footsteps and attempting to insulate itself from foreign pressure to reform by acquiring a nuclear weapon. There is some evidence that Myanmar had plans to build a nuclear weapon in 2006. While this most recent agreement is not an ironclad guarantee that Myanmar is abandoning any nuclear ambitions, it is good evidence that the military junta that still controls most of the government is serious about reforming. It’s also a success for President Obama’s stated goal of limiting the spread of nuclear weapons worldwide.

Though the military government violently put down monk-led protests as recently as 2007, the government held parliamentary elections this April that brought long-suffering opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi into the legislature. The American sanctions-and-diplomacy approach is widely credited with playing a role in the military’s decision to take steps, however tentative, towards a more democratic political system. According to the New York Times, the Obama administration‘s “series of cautious [diplomatic] moves…have significantly eased tensions between the United States and Myanmar.”

NEWS FLASH

Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. Will Resign | Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-IL) will resign his seat in Congress, the Chicago Sun-Times reports. Over the last several months, Jackson has been staying at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota while coping with mental health problems. His reported maladies include “bipolar depression and gastrointestinal issues,” but the Congressman has been relatively private about his illnesses. His hospitalization coincided with an ongoing investigation into what was suspected to be inappropriate use of campaign funds. Jackson was also under an ethics investigation by Congress. In September, Jackson sold his home in Washington to help pay his medical bills. Despite being absent from the public eye, the nine-term Congressman handily won re-election to his tenth term this month.

Justice

Days After Passage Of Oklahoma’s ‘Open Carry’ Law, Man Enters Voting Booth With Gun On Hip

By Nicole Flatow on Nov 21, 2012 at 1:30 pm

On November 1, an Oklahoma law went into effect that allows residents with a license to openly carry their guns in the state. But six days after the law’s passage, a man tested the limits of the policy by walking into a polling place on Election Day with a holstered handgun on his waist. He was turned away, but returned later wearing a “disguise,” and the now-concealed gun was only discovered after he had voted. Oklahoma’s News 9 reports:

Police say on Election Day, Ethan walked into the Fountains at Canterbury Retirement Village to vote. Police say other voters noticed a handgun hanging from Ethan’s hip and some complained. Sisson was shown the door by elections monitors because open carry in public areas like polling places is still against the law.

SGT. JENNIFER WARDLOW: “They suggested possibly going out to his car putting it into his trunk, and that he would then be allowed to come back and vote.”

Police say Sisson returned two hours later, wearing a jacket and a hat that partially covered his face. He was allowed to vote. The arrest warrant says Sisson then took off his baseball cap and jacket and exposed his handgun on his hip. Ethan Sisson then told the inspector it was his right to have his gun with him. Sisson was then ordered to leave.

Oklahoma’s new “open carry” law allows individuals with permits to openly carry guns in public and into many types of businesses including restaurants, grocery stores and banks, unless they post a sign prohibiting guns. But even the generous new law does not permit guns – concealed or otherwise — at the polling place or government buildings.

Among the concerns of the law’s opponents were that those with permits would inadvertently carry guns into a school or other prohibited place, and that these facilities would be ill-prepared to screen for armed citizens. After the law’s passage, applications for handgun permits spiked 40 percent. One senator justified the law by saying it was needed to fend off attacks from wild turkeys.

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