Here’s a little chart that’s kicking around the CAPosphere:
Looks to me like we’ve become a nation of whiners.
A Job Growth Comparison
Rep. Chris Smith: ‘Our Students Must Find The God Of The Bible And Biblical Values In The Classroom’
At a reception in St. Paul on Wednesday for Catholic Republicans, Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) — a fierce opponent of abortion — said that he is “very concerned that many of our schools and universities have lost their way.” They have become “bastions of moral relativism and moral compromise with the culture of death.”
As a solution, Smith suggested that “students must find the God of the Bible and Biblical values in the classroom”:
SMITH: Our schools need to become oases of goodness, sound moral teaching and, they must become agents of change in the culture. Our students must find the God of the Bible and Biblical values in the classroom, on the campus. I believe we need to do more to find effective ways to educate and inform policy makers and hold them to account.
Watch it:
Smith’s call for “Biblical values in the classroom” could easily be interpreted as a call for the promotion of Christianity in American schools. But, as the First Amendment Center has pointed out, “the courts have been clear that public school teachers cannot teach religion to their students or read the Bible to the class as a way of promoting their faith.”
Smith’s comments appear to be more radical than Rep. Steve King’s (R-IA) claim last year that “every child” in American schools needs to learn “the tenets of the Christian faith.” While King conceded that if “the tenets of Christianity” are to be taught in school, “other faiths” should be taught as well, Smith said no such thing.
Transcript: Read more
Climate Progress is #1, but why?
[Someone noticed the factoid below and e-mailed it to me -- and it is too rich not to comment on and try to learn from.]
I recently wrote a post “Note to media: Pork queen Palin is an earmark expert, NOT energy expert.” It began:
If you Google Palin energy expert, you’ll find more than 10,000 hits. It’s no surprise that conservative shills like George Pataki and Haley Barbour use that label — heck, a major conservative talking point is that she’s a foreign-policy expert because “Alaska is the closest part of our continent to Russia,” as Cindy McCain put it. Conservatives are desperate to inflate the resume of this partially vetted semi-qualified VP choice….
Now here’s the great thing. If you Google Palin “energy expert” now, my post is the first entry:
[RAW]
clipped from www.google.com
Search Results
Climate Progress » Blog Archive » Note to media: Pork queen Palin …
Sep 3, 2008 … palin.jpg If you Google Palin “energy expert,” you’ll find more than 10000 hits. It’s no surprise that conservative shills like George …
climateprogress.org/2008/09/03/note-to-media-pork-queen-palin-is-earmark-expert-not-energy-expert/ – 24k – Cached – Similar pages – Note this
 |
[/RAW]
Now that is change I can believe in.
So I have a Query to all those who understand search engines:
Global Boiling: Rising To The Threat — Or Not
The future of global warming — a world of extreme storms, floods, droughts, rising seas, catastrophic change, species loss — is upon us today. The Wonk Room looks at the startling new scientific evidence that has come out this week, as well as how top environmental organizations — the Environmental Defense Fund and the National Wildlife Federation — have responded.
PLANET DYING
Each day brings new, troubling headlines: the drought in Australia has deepened; coral reefs are dissolving as the oceans acidify; global warming threatens giant sequoias with extinction; and the U.S. Climate Change Science Program reported that soot and smog pollutants from Asia could cause extreme heatwaves and drought in the United States by 2050. Further, September represents the height of the Atlantic hurricane season and the end of the Arctic summer — both of which are being catastrophically changed by global warming:
EXTREME STORMS BUILDING
As the Wonk Room reported yesterday, top hurricane scientist Kerry Emanuel found that Hurricane Katrina would have been significantly weaker twenty-five years earlier. With storms Hanna, Ike, and Josephine following in Gustav‘s wake, Nature published a stark new study that shows hurricanes are getting fiercer:
As this year’s Atlantic hurricane season becomes ever more violent, scientists have come up with the firmest evidence so far that global warming will significantly increase the intensity of the most extreme storms worldwide. . . . Rising ocean temperatures are thought to be the main cause of the observed shift. The team calculates that a 1 ºC increase in sea-surface temperatures would result in a 31% increase in the global frequency of category 4 and 5 storms per year: from 13 of those storms to 17. Since 1970, the tropical oceans have warmed on average by around 0.5 ºC. Computer models suggest they may warm by a further 2 ºC by 2100.
At Climate Progress, Joe Romm responds:
Actually, if we don’t sharply reverse our current emissions path soon, SSTs are likely to rise far more than 2°C by 2100. Indeed, we could easily see a 1°C increase in SSTs by 2050, and that means four more potential city-destroying super-hurricanes per year by mid-century.
Attack of the Russian Fish
The “Alaska is close to Russia” line rears its head once again — but with a twist. Now instead of just being told that Alaska is near Russia, Sarah Palin is said to have dealt with Russia on “permitting issues and with fishing issues dealing with the sea fishing industry there in Alaska.”
I’m sure that was a tense negotiation. I’m not really sure I understand why the GOP is out there with these lame talking points. On the one hand, it’s really quite normal for people with no foreign policy experience to become president — Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan, etc. — and on the other hand Palin doesn’t seem to have any noteworthy experience or profile on domestic issues either so it’s hardly as if she’s one fishing permit deal away from being a seasoned veteran of the political scene.
New Yorker cover spotlights McCain’s houses, foreclosure crisis.
The cover of the new issue of the New Yorker spotlights Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) multiple houses, contrasting his wealth with the foreclosure crisis many Americans are struggling with:
ThinkProgress spoke with New Yorker spokeswoman Alexa Cassanos, who said that the McCain cover is in no way intended to be a response to the controversy over the satirical Obama cover in July.
Change Pakistanis Can’t Believe In
Asif Ali Zardari, Benazir Bhutto’s widower, known as “Mr Ten Percent” for his penchant for demanding bribes, is in as next prime minister of Pakistan. It seems that he won’t be coming in with much of a mandate:
A survey by Gallup Pakistan showed a lack of enthusiasm for the presidential candidates, with 44 percent of the respondents saying that they did not approve of any of the candidates.
Mr. Zardari received a 26 percent approval rating in the poll, compared with 18 percent for Mr. Siddiqui, the candidate of the Pakistan Muslim League-N.
The Times article says that as President Zardari “will have great powers, including the ability to dissolve Parliament and name the head of the Pakistani Army.” I’ve been told, however, by knowledgeable groups that it’s pretty doubtful the civilian president really could effectively boss the security services into doing anything they don’t want to do. And the fact that he won’t be coming in with any kind of overwhelming popularity seems to support the notion that in practice the Army will have a lot of leeway to do what it wants.
