November 12, 2009
Women Becoming Majority of Union Workers
-By Warner Todd Huston
The Associated Press had an interesting article reporting that women are fast becoming the majority of union members and will be the majority in 10 years if current trends continue.
As it stand now, women make up 45 percent of union members today, up from 35 percent in 1983. Apparently white men now only make up 38 percent of the union workforce, down from almost 52 percent in ‘83.
The AP notes that this preponderance of women is changing the goals of union negotiators.
“When you have a majority of women in the labor movement, issues like work-family balance, paid sick days and paid parental leave become more important,” said John Schmitt, an economist at the left-leaning think tank and one of the authors of the report.
And what has caused this change? The growth of public, government unions. At this point, the AP reports, that 49 percent of all union members are now working for local, state, and federal workers in public employees unions. 61 percent of public employees are female.
It is some necessary and interesting information to have when considering how to face unions in America. It also goes to show that the road to defeating unions is to have them removed from the public sphere. Unions only recently became pervasive in government as before the so-called little Wagner act in New York, government employees were not unionized. We must return to this status as government employees unions are antithetical to good government.
(Cross posted at TheUnionLabelBlog.com.)
Trackback URL
Posted by Warner Todd Huston in Barack Obama, Delusional Dupes and DUmmies, Democrats, Economy, Government corruption, News, Union Mafias/Thugs at 2:13 pm | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) |
Video: Governor Perry Says Obama Hell Bent on Socialism
The Texas Governor speaks the truth! Obama is also hell bent on indecision.
Find more videos like this on Mywesttexas Chatter
Trackback URL
Posted by Jay in 1st Amendment, Anti-Americanism, Anti-Capitalism, Barack Obama, Constitution, Democrats, Domestic Enemies, Government corruption, Government tyranny, High Crimes and Misdemeanors, News, Socialism, Treason, U.S. Constitution, U.S. Sovereignty, Unconstitutional, Video, liberalism at 12:18 pm | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) |
Want To Feed The Homeless? Not In Phoenix
Unless you arrive with the phrase “we’re from the government, and we’re here to help”
A Phoenix ordinance banning charity dining halls in residential neighborhoods withstood a challenge by a north-central Phoenix church.
Retired Arizona Supreme Court Justice Robert Corcoran, serving as a hearing officer, ruled Monday that feeding the homeless at a place of worship can be banned by city ordinance. The decision affects all Phoenix churches with underlying residential zoning.
Over the summer, city officials maintained that CrossRoads United Methodist Church, 7901 N. Central Ave., violated Phoenix zoning code by feeding the poor and homeless on its property, a use that can only occur in commercial or industrial zones. City officials said the decision is effective immediately.
Amazing, eh? Rather then say “thank you for helping these people out,” and perhaps changing the ordinance, Phoenix decided the best thing to do was be typical government weenies. There was a time when most charity and help came from churches and individuals. People with compassion. Now said charity can only come from certain legal restrictions. Bet it makes the homeless feel great. Where is the ACLU when you need them to stand up for the rights of citizens and the downtrodden?
Oh, there they are. They’re suing government leaders, including Charlie Crist, in Florida due to the pathetic state of the government run schools. Visibly absent from the suit are the teacher’s unions.
Trackback URL
Posted by William Teach in 1st Amendment, ACLU, Activist Judges, Christianity, Church And State, Constitution, Government tyranny, Judicial Tyranny, News, Property Rights, Stupidity, Supreme Court, Unconstitutional, Where's the ACLU at 10:00 am | Comment (1) | Trackback (1) |
- Jeremiah Films: Domestic Threats against Christian Ministries...
“50 percent of the [USA] warming that has occurred since 1950 is due to land use changes rather than greenhouse gases”
From a Georgia Tech Press Release:
Reducing Greenhouse Gases May Not Be Enough to Slow Climate Change
Georgia Tech City and Regional Planning Professor Brian Stone publishes a paper in the December edition of Environmental Science and Technology that suggests policymakers need to address the influence of global deforestation and urbanization on climate change, in addition to greenhouse gas emissions.
According to Stone’s paper, as the international community meets in Copenhagen in December to develop a new framework for responding to climate change, policymakers need to give serious consideration to broadening the range of management strategies beyond greenhouse gas reductions alone.
“Across the U.S. as a whole, approximately 50 percent of the warming that has occurred since 1950 is due to land use changes (usually in the form of clearing forest for crops or cities) rather than to the emission of greenhouse gases,” said Stone. “Most large U.S. cities, including Atlanta, are warming at more than twice the rate of the planet as a whole – a rate that is mostly attributable to land use change. As a result, emissions reduction programs – like the cap and trade program under consideration by the U.S. Congress – may not sufficiently slow climate change in large cities where most people live and where land use change is the dominant driver of warming.”
According to Stone’s research, slowing the rate of forest loss around the world, and regenerating forests where lost, could significantly slow the pace of global warming.
“Treaty negotiators should formally recognize land use change as a key driver of warming,” said Stone. “The role of land use in global warming is the most important climate-related story that has not been widely covered in the media.”
Stone recommends slowing what he terms the “green loss effect” through the planting of millions of trees in urbanized areas and through the protection and regeneration of global forests outside of urbanized regions. Forested areas provide the combined benefits of directly cooling the atmosphere and of absorbing greenhouse gases, leading to additional cooling. Green architecture in cities, including green roofs and more highly reflective construction materials, would further contribute to a slowing of warming rates. Stone envisions local and state governments taking the lead in addressing the land use drivers of climate change, while the federal government takes the lead in implementing carbon reduction initiatives, like cap and trade programs.
“As we look to address the climate change issue from a land use perspective, there is a huge opportunity for local and state governments,” said Stone. “Presently, local government capacity is largely unharnessed in climate management structures under consideration by the U.S. Congress. Yet local governments possess extensive powers to manage the land use activities in both the urban and rural areas.”
The Environmental Science and Technology article is available at http://pubs.acs.org/journal/esthag.
SOURCE (See the original for links, graphics etc.)
Posted by John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.). For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. To keep up with attacks on free speech see TONGUE-TIED. Also, don’t forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me here
Trackback URL
Posted by JonJayRay in AGW hyposterics, Agenda based science, Cap & Trade, Congress, Despotism, Global Warming, Government corruption, Government malfeasance/misfeasance, Government tyranny, News, Propaganda, Research/surveys, Science/pseudo-science, Senate, State Government, Taxes, Totalitarianism, Unconstitutional, environmentalism at 8:00 am | Comment (1) | Trackbacks (0) |
The Dodger In Chief Decides Not To Accept Any Recommendations On Afghanistan
There was only so far I could milk the use of “The Decider” in a sarcastic tone when applied to Barack H. Obama. Henceforth, he shall be known as “The Dodger In Chief.” And The Dodger is doing his normal on Afghanistan
President Barack Obama does not plan to accept any of the Afghanistan war options presented by his national security team, pushing instead for revisions to clarify how and when U.S. troops would turn over responsibility to the Afghan government, a senior administration official said Wednesday.
OK, he isn’t going to accept any plan provided to him. What is his plan? Does he have one? 10 months into his presidency, perhaps it is high time to formulate one? Then again, 10 months in, it is high time to formulate an actual plan to deal with the economy.
That stance comes in the midst of forceful reservations about a possible troop buildup from the U.S. ambassador in Afghanistan, Karl Eikenberry, according to a second top administration official.
In strongly worded classified cables to Washington, Eikenberry said he had misgivings about sending in new troops while there are still so many questions about the leadership of Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
Shocker! He’s taking the advice of the guy who says he should just keep throwing over to first base to avoid throwing to the plate. Tough decisions are just not in his makeup. Unless they are on which American(s) to demean.
He has already had the advice of his entire military chain of command with a near unanimous call for reinforcements to move to the strategy that won in Iraq. We have watched as he has heard from the deep wisdom of Joe Biden and Rahm Emanuel. We have seen him dither and quibble and show a completely ineffectual and uncommitted face to our enemies and the rest of the world. Now months after his hand-picked commander has told him the situation is bad and getting worse, our troops in the field fight and die without the support of their Commander in Chief. He sent 21,000 more brave men and women there and now they are flappin’ in the breeze. How can a squad leader look his men in the eyes and tell them to saddle up and head out on a patrol, perhaps to be the last to die for a cause their President no longer believes in?
If Obama is not going to put any more troops in Afghanistan, he needs to decide. Now.
Update: Some more interesting words to replace the use of a sarcastic “Decider in Chief.” Blogs For Victory: The Ditherer. Legal Insurrection: The Dawdler In Chief.
I still want to know what President Neophytes proposals are.
Trackback URL
Posted by William Teach in Afghanistan, Anti-Americanism, Barack Obama, Government malfeasance/misfeasance, Middle East, National Security, News, President, Taliban, War On Terror, military, terrorism, terrorist appeasement at 7:40 am | Comments (3) | Trackbacks (2) |
- UNREAL: Barack Obama Rejects all War Options on Afghanistan … Still Dithering After all this Time | Scared Monkeys pinged this post.
- Confirmed: President Obama wants the United States to fail in Afghanistan | Political Byline pinged this post.
November 11, 2009
Lou Dobbs Quits CNN
So what’s Lou up to? A run for office? Is he going to a new TV show somewhere else (FOX says no)? Is he starting a political PAC?
Well, WUD UP?
Trackback URL
Posted by Warner Todd Huston in Liberal Media/Bias, News, Video at 8:45 pm | Comment (1) | Trackbacks (0) |
Camille Paglia: Pelosi Rocks, Even Though Her Health Bill Sucks Badly
Welcome to Liberal World: Pelosi’s victory for women
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi scored a giant gain for feminism last weekend. In shoving her controversy-plagued healthcare reform bill to victory by a paper-thin margin, she conclusively demonstrated that a woman can be just as gritty, ruthless and arm-twisting in pursuing her agenda as anyone in the long line of fabled male speakers before her. Even a basic feminist shibboleth like abortion rights became just another card for Pelosi to deal and swap.
Wait, I thought Feminist’s hated when men acted in that manner, so, it is OK that Pelosi does?
Whether or not her bill survives in the Senate is immaterial: Pelosi’s hard-won, trench-warfare win sets a new standard for U.S. women politicians and is certainly well beyond anything the posturing but ineffectual Hillary Clinton has ever achieved.
So, even if her legislation fails to pass, she done good. Except for that failure part. Here comes the cherry on top
As for the actual content of the House healthcare bill, horrors! Where to begin? That there are serious deficiencies and injustices in the U.S. healthcare system has been obvious for decades. To bring the poor and vulnerable into the fold has been a high ideal and an urgent goal for most Democrats. But this rigid, intrusive and grotesquely expensive bill is a nightmare. Holy Hygeia, why can’t my fellow Democrats see that the creation of another huge, inefficient federal bureaucracy would slow and disrupt the delivery of basic healthcare and subject us all to a labyrinthine mass of incompetent, unaccountable petty dictators? Massively expanding the number of healthcare consumers without making due provision for the production of more healthcare providers means that we’re hurtling toward a staggering logjam of de facto rationing. Steel yourself for the deafening screams from the careerist professional class of limousine liberals when they get stranded for hours in the jammed, jostling anterooms of doctors’ offices. They’ll probably try to hire Caribbean nannies as ringers to do the waiting for them.
There are so many negatives in that paragraph that attempting to put anything in bold is worthless.But, don’t forget, Nancy rocks. As a failure. But, she rocks.
Trackback URL
Posted by William Teach in Democrats, Healthcare, Liberal World, Nancy Pelosi, News, Stupidity, feminism, liberalism at 7:40 pm | Comments (2) | Trackbacks (0) |
Gov. Crist DID Flip Flop on Stimulus Support
-By Warner Todd Huston
On November 5 on CNN, Florida Governor Charlie Crist told Wolf Blitzer that he didn’t back the $787 billion Obama stimulus bill. Crist has since said that it isn’t a flip flop when he says he supported the stimulus “in concept” but didn’t support the specific bill.
In essence he’s trying to have it both ways. Claiming he wasn’t a supporter of the actual bill, but hedging by saying he felt something was necessary. It seems to be Crist’s way of straddling the line.
Unfortunately, the facts seem to belie Crist’s delicately balanced tightrope act because in February of 2009 Crist was one of 18 U.S. governors (along with the governor of the Virgin Islands) that signed a letter informing President Obama that they supported the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). (See pdf of letter here)
Despite being a signatory of the letter Crist is now saying he didn’t support the specific stimulus bill. After speaking at the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices, Crist told the press, ““I think the question posed to me was, ‘Did you endorse this specific bill?’ And I said, ‘No, I didn’t,’ but the concept I thought, and still believe, was important, necessary and it helped Florida.”
The letter Crist signed, however, does not mention any ideas “in concept” but specifically supports the $787 billion stimulus bill itself. The letter begins quite clearly in support of the $787 billion stimulus bill saying, “We are writing to express our support for the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA).” What could be clearer?
How Crist can possibly claim that he never supported this specific bill when his name appears on this letter is anyone’s guess.
Text of Letter:
February 3, 2009
Dear Mr. President
We are writing to express our support for the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), which passed last week in the House and is under consideration currently in the Senate. As stewards of the economies of our respective states and regions, we urge the Congress to reach prompt resolution of all outstanding differences and you to sign the bill when it reaches your desk.
Families and businesses across the nation are hurting. Credit markets have seized up, which is affecting both business activity and consumer spending. Unemployment is rising sharply. While we all believe in the importance of free markets, we believe that the markets today need stimulating.
We support then objectives of the ARRA and welcome the partnership it offers us as governors. The support for a temporary increase in the federal commitment for public education, health care (including cost control through initiatives such as health records IT), and for rebuilding our public infrastructure will create and preserve jobs today, and represents a sound investment in our long-term economic interests as well. We look forward to working with Congress and your Administration to advance an economic recovery package that puts federal dollars to work in our states in the quickest and most efficient manner as possible.
Signed
Deval Patrick, Mass.
Arnold Schwarzenegger, Calif.
Bill Ritter, Col.
M. Jodi Rell, Conn.
Jack Markell, Del.
Charlie Crist, Fla.
Pat Quinn, Ill.
Chester Culver, Iowa
Jennifer Granholm, Mich.
Jon Corzine, New Jersey
David Paterson, New York
Ted Strickland, Ohio
Brad Henry, Oklahoma
Ted Kulongoski, Oregon
Ed Rendell, Penn.
James Douglas, Vermont
Tim Kaine, Vir.
Jim Doyle, Wisc.
John deJongh, Virgin Islands
It is also telling that out of the 19 signers of the letter, only four are Republicans, all from very liberal states.
Trackback URL
Posted by Warner Todd Huston in Anti-Americanism, Anti-Capitalism, Bald-face lies, Economy, Elections, Government, Government corruption, Healthcare, Hypocrisy/Situational Ethics, Liberal World, Nanny State, News, Political chameleons, President, RINOS, Socialism, State Government, bailouts, economic stimulus, liberalism, political opportunism at 1:00 pm | Comments (0) | Trackback (1) |
- Charlie don’t play that : The Reid Report pinged this post.
Democrats Rejected 11 Amendments Forcing Congress to Enroll in Obamacare
-By Warner Todd Huston
CNSNews is reporting that the Democratic leadership rejected 11 amendments to the healthcare bills that would have required Congress to suffer under the same onerous healthcare legislation they would force upon the rest of the country.
Republicans offered various schemes, some that would require only Congress to join Obamacare, some that would require even members of the Supreme Court, the president, the vice president and other federal employees to give up their generous Federal Employees Health Benefit Program.
“If Congress forces our constituents into a public option plan over time, then members of Congress should be expected to do the same,” Rep. Howard McKeon (R-Calif.) told CNSNews.com.
It is curious that Democrat members of Congress can sit there in Washington with a straight face and tell us lowly voters that Obamacare is best for us, yet steadfastly refuse to force themselves to exist under that same plan.
If Obamacare is so wonderful, why exactly are Democrat Congressmen so averse to suffering the same fate as the voters? It is obvious that they know the truth about Obamacare. It is a disaster and they know it. Otherwise, why would they fight so hard to stay out of it?
Lobo addendum:
“The House of Representatives … can make no law which will not have its full operation on themselves and their friends, as well as the great mass of society. This has always been deemed one of the strongest bonds by which human policy can connect the rulers and the people together. It creates between them that communion of interest, and sympathy of sentiments, of which few governments have furnished examples; but without which every government degenerates into tyranny.” – James Madison
Trackback URL
Posted by Warner Todd Huston in Barack Obama, Congress, Delusional Dupes and DUmmies, Democrats, Government, Government corruption, Government malfeasance/misfeasance, Government tyranny, Healthcare, House, Hypocrisy/Situational Ethics, Liberal World, Nanny State, News, President, Socialism, Taxes, Totalitarianism, Unconstitutional, liberalism at 12:58 pm | Comments (2) | Trackbacks (0) |
A Victory Against Obama’s Unionism in New Hampshire
-By Warner Todd Huston
In a victory for free labor, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) has cancelled its solicitation for bids to build a new Jobs Corps Center in the state of New Hampshire. Why is it a victory? Because initial plans to receive bids would have discriminated against non-union construction companies per President Obama’s orders. Over 80% of all construction companies are non-union.
Executive Order 13502, signed early in Obama’s term, was applied to the New Hampshire construction project and instituted what is known as a Project Labor Agreement (PLA). A PLA is a way to force all companies working on a construction project to agree to union rules, dues, pensions and payments whether they are union shops and their employees are union members or not.
In effect, a PLA turns every employee and company working on a PLA enforced project into a unionized force. Naturally, this drives up costs, lengthens deadlines, and forces employees to fork over dues money even if they don’t belong to a union.
A PLA ruling either outright excludes non-union companies (often as much as 80% of the workforce in any particular state) or forces them to be hobbled under union rules, but PLAs are nothing less than a government payoff to unions. In essence a PLA is a direct transfer of government money to union coffers and that is precisely why President Obama decreed via Executive Order that henceforth all government construction projects would be forced to proceed under PLAs.
As David Denholm amusing put it:
To put this in perspective, picture a thug at a candy store in Chicago telling the store’s owner that for a weekly payoff his windows won’t be broken and his customers will not be molested. The cost of the weekly payoff is, of course, passed along in higher prices to the purchasers of candy. The thug has the additional economic responsibility to impose the same terms on all other candy stores in the area so that his client won’t be at a disadvantage.
I wonder why Mr. Denholm used Chicago as his example…
The victory in New Hampshire came after Associated Builders and Contractor (ABC) member North Branch Construction of Concord, N.H. filed a protest with the Government Accountability Office (GAO). North Branch Construction challenged the PLA as unlawful and discriminatory.
“This is a real win for the principle of fair and open competition in government procurement,” said North Branch Construction attorney Maurice Baskin of Venable LLP, ABC’s General Counsel. “It is no coincidence that the Department of Labor canceled its unlawful PLA mandate the day before the agency was required to file a response to our bid protest. We demonstrated that there was no justification for imposing a PLA on this project and that the PLA mandate violated the Competition in Contracting Act and other longstanding federal procurement requirements.”
“There is no justification for playing favorites in the government procurement process,” said ABC President and CEO Kirk Pickerel. “We hope that other federal agencies will heed this example and recognize that PLAs only result in delayed construction and harm to taxpayers. ABC will continue to protest any attempt to impose PLAs on federal construction projects in violation of competitive bidding laws.”
“The Department of Labor can still move this project forward by abandoning this illegal PLA,” said Ken Holmes, president of North Branch Construction. “Our company and other New Hampshire businesses deserve a fair opportunity to provide the public with the best construction product at the best price and we hope the Labor Department will build this project without a PLA in early 2010.”
It remains to be seen if this success can be replicated in other projects in the future, but for now this can be seen as a victory for free labor and a hopeful precedent for the future.
(Cross posted at TheUnionLabelBlog.com.)
Trackback URL
Posted by Warner Todd Huston in Anti-Americanism, Anti-Capitalism, Barack Obama, Delusional Dupes and DUmmies, Democrats, Economy, Government, Government corruption, Liberal World, News, President, Taxes, Union Mafias/Thugs, liberalism at 12:57 pm | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) |
A Fitting Memorial to Veterans
-By Warner Todd Huston
An inscription on a WWII monument in Kohima, India fittingly describes the sacrifices that our soldiers make with their service to our nation. And on this Veterans Day it is also fitting to focus on it. The Inscription says:
“When You Go Home, Tell Them Of Us And Say, For Their Tomorrow, We Gave Our Today.”
What could be a more fitting tribute to the sacrifices made by our fallen loved ones, comrades, and servants? They gave their last full measure so we could enjoy the freedoms we are so fortunate to have today. They gave their lives for our benefit in the truest definition of sacrifice.
This memorial commemorates the Allied dead that faced the Japanese 15th Army upon its invasion of India in March of 1944. The invasion was beaten back by June of the same year through the sacrifice of these Allied troops.
The words are attributed to John Maxwell Edmonds (1875 -1958), an English Classicist who in 1916 added them to a collection of 12 epitaphs to commemorate World War One. Adding the inscription to the Kohima monument was a suggestion by Major John Etty-Leal, the GSO II of the 2nd Division who was a classical scholar in civilian life.
The verse is thought to have been inspired by the Greek lyric poet Simonides of Ceos (556-468 BC) who wrote after the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC: “Go tell the Spartans, thou that passest by, That faithful to their precepts here we lie.”
And now we too can recall this verse etched into a stone in a far away and foreign land as a perfect tribute to our fallen as well as for those who gave service to their fellows by wearing the uniform of our armed forces.
So, thank you all. We appreciate your sacrifice. And happy Veterans Day.
Trackback URL
Posted by Warner Todd Huston in Fallen Heros, Heroes, History, Holidays, Veterans, military at 12:55 pm | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) |
Mayor Daley Blames Islamic Terror Attack on America’s Love of Guns
When an Islamic extremist screams “Allahu akbar” and opens fire on American soldiers, liberals know one thing for sure — it can’t have anything to do with Islam. 9/11 put Muslims first in line for the privileges of political correctness; their barbarous death cult is consequently beyond reproach.
But this hasn’t left the Left at a loss to explain Nidal Malik Hasan’s horrific killing spree. It was caused by all the things liberals don’t like — guns, for example. To quote Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, whose corrupt machine politics helped produce our Community Organizer in Chief:
Unfortunately, America loves Guns. We love guns to a point where that uh we see devastation on a daily basis. You don’t blame a group.
Likewise, it was America’s unfortunate love of air travel that caused Hasan’s colleagues to fly passenger airliners into buildings full of innocent people on September 11. You don’t blame a group, unless that group is normal Americans.
If anything good can come of the Islamic atrocity at Fort Hood, it is that liberals in both the government and the media have now squandered the absolute last of their credibility. It simply isn’t possible for them to deny any longer that their depraved ideology puts them on the side of the savages who are trying to destroy us.
On a tip from Charlie G. Cross-posted at Moonbattery.
Trackback URL
Posted by Van Helsing in 2nd Amendment, 9-11, Anti-Americanism, Bald-face lies, Constitution, Culture of Death, Democrats, Domestic Enemies, Government corruption, Gun Control, Guns, Hypocrisy/Situational Ethics, Islam, Islamicfascism, Journalistic Malpractice, Journalistic Prostitution, Journalistic incompetence, Liberal Media/Bias, Moral Relativism, Multiculturalism/PC, News, Political Correctness, RoP, Treason, U.S. Constitution, Unconstitutional, Unhinged, War On Terror, liberalism, military, terrorism, terrorist appeasement at 11:49 am | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) |
Climate Change Is Feminista Issue, Apparently
I’m not even sure how to start the preamble for this. Perhaps it is best to go with that old Futurama standard “huh what?” Population control is not what makes climate change a feminist issue
Last week Mary Fitzgerald argued that climate change is a feminist issue on the basis that population control is a way to prevent the situation spiralling out of control. And, she posited, this could be achieved by giving more women more autonomy over their own bodies, through improved access to contraception and abortion.
I’m not going to get into the arguments around whether population control is a good solution to climate change. Others have already done so; George Monbiot’s piece barely more than a month ago, for this newspaper, is a great place to start.
Ensuring all women have full reproductive freedom and reproductive justice is a necessary goal in its own right moving towards a more equal and just world. I get that it might be tempting to hitch this issue to climate change, which has so much political capital.
I thought she wasn’t going to get into that issue, which she discusses for two more paragraphs after the first three? Anyhow
But Fitzgerald is completely right that climate change is a feminist issue. Everyone stands to suffer if climate change is allowed to spiral out of control, of course, but a gender analysis of both the impacts and causes of climate change shows that globally women contribute less to the problem and yet are likely to be hit especially hard.
Poor people are likely to bear the brunt as the climate changes and 70% of the world’s poor are women. According to one estimate, 85% of the victims of climate disasters are women. Another study found 75% of environmental refugees are women. (Statistics from the Women’s Manifesto on Climate Change).
Gotta love the source of the study. Here’s a clue for you, Ms. Jesse McAbe: you enact all your crazy global warming plans, and the women in the poor countries will suffer way, way, way more.
After some more quibbling about how this is a feminsta issue, we end with
So, yes, climate change is a feminist issue; women are on the front lines of climate change impact and need to be part of creating solutions. And women all over the world are in dire need of access to full and real reproductive justice. But linking the two by advocating population control as a solution to climate change isn’t the way to achieve either of these aims.
Only in Liberal World can we link access to abortion around the world to globull warming. Sigh.
Trackback URL
Posted by William Teach in AGW hyposterics, Abortion, Agenda based science, Global Warming, Infanticide, Moral Relativism, News, Science/pseudo-science, Secular Humanism, Social Engineering, Socialism, feminism at 10:00 am | Comment (1) | Trackbacks (0) |
Super Pesky! New CO2 research throws Warmist calculations into a cocked hat
New data show that the balance between the airborne and the absorbed fraction of carbon dioxide has stayed approximately constant since 1850, despite emissions of carbon dioxide having risen from about 2 billion tons a year in 1850 to 35 billion tons a year now.
This suggests that terrestrial ecosystems and the oceans have a much greater capacity to absorb CO2 than had been previously expected.
The results run contrary to a significant body of recent research which expects that the capacity of terrestrial ecosystems and the oceans to absorb CO2 should start to diminish as CO2 emissions increase, letting greenhouse gas levels skyrocket. Dr Wolfgang Knorr at the University of Bristol found that in fact the trend in the airborne fraction since 1850 has only been 0.7 ± 1.4% per decade, which is essentially zero.
The strength of the new study, published online in Geophysical Research Letters, is that it rests solely on measurements and statistical data, including historical records extracted from Antarctic ice, and does not rely on computations with complex climate models.
This work is extremely important for climate change policy, because emission targets to be negotiated at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen early next month have been based on projections that have a carbon free sink of already factored in. Some researchers have cautioned against this approach, pointing at evidence that suggests the sink has already started to decrease.
So is this good news for climate negotiations in Copenhagen? “Not necessarily”, says Knorr. “Like all studies of this kind, there are uncertainties in the data, so rather than relying on Nature to provide a free service, soaking up our waste carbon, we need to ascertain why the proportion being absorbed has not changed”.
Another result of the study is that emissions from deforestation might have been overestimated by between 18 and 75 per cent. This would agree with results published last week in Nature Geoscience by a team led by Guido van der Werf from VU University Amsterdam. They re-visited deforestation data and concluded that emissions have been overestimated by at least a factor of two.
The paper: “Is the airborne fraction of anthropogenic CO2 emissions increasing?” by Wolfgang Knorr. Geophysical Research Letters, VOL. 36, L21710, doi:10.1029/2009GL040613, 2009.
Posted by John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.). For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. To keep up with attacks on free speech see TONGUE-TIED. Also, don’t forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me here
Trackback URL
Posted by JonJayRay in AGW hyposterics, Agenda based science, Global Warming, News, Research/surveys, Science/pseudo-science at 8:06 am | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) |
LOL! Leftist philosophers tie themselves into a knot
Philosophy is a rather vague term used to cover a lot of loose thinking. I belong to the tradition called Anglo-Saxon empiricism, though some of the most notable exponents of Anglo-Saxon empiricism were not Anglo-Saxon. Ludwig Wittgenstein, for instance, was an Austrian Jew. Anglo-Saxon empiricists restrict their task to something quite akin to science. They look for order and regularity in discourse and try to clear up what people are saying and implying when they say certain kinds of things. And that is, of course, no easy task.
Such thinking was once dominant in Anglo-Saxon philosophy schools but the great expansion of tertiary education in recent decades has meant that many less rigorous thinkers have been employed as philosophers, some even being third-rate enough to find enlightenment in the words of an obsolete economist called Karl Marx. So philosophy schools are now replete with people who seem to think they are being profound when they say: “There is no such thing as right and wrong” or “There are many realities”. To an Anglo-Saxon empiricist, such statements are simply confused.
Such confused thinking is usually described (rather fancifully) these days as “postmodernism” but for historical purposes it is probably best subsumed under the broad category of “existentialism” — and there were many prominent existentialist thinkers in the first half of the 20th century, particularly in Germany. And many existentialist thinkers at that time were sympathetic to National Socialism (Nazism), just as their counterparts today are solidly in favour of all sorts of Leftist thinking. So existentialist thinking and Leftism have always been intimately associated among many who call themselves philosophers. And it should therefore be no surprise that prewar existentialists sound very profound to existentialists today.
The Nazi connection is however embarrassing. Heidegger, Carl Schmitt, DeMan and others sound very good and wise and profound to Leftist philosophers today so how do you cope with the Nazi connection? Easy: In the traditional Leftist way of dealing with all inconvenient facts — by ignoring it.
One of the holier of today’s existentialists has however recently upset the applecart by pointing out that the great god Heidegger was a Nazi and calling for all Heidegger’s thinking to be denounced and renounced. Leftists are not letting go of such an inspiring (to them) figure as Heidegger, however. What Heidegger says is central to what they say, so to denounce Heidegger would be to denounce most of their own thinking. And there the matter rests at the moment. A small excerpt from a NYT story about the matter below. That Nazi thinking is one subset of socialist thinking is, of course, never acknowledged:
For decades the German philosopher Martin Heidegger has been the subject of passionate debate. His critique of Western thought and technology has penetrated deeply into architecture, psychology and literary theory and inspired some of the most influential intellectual movements of the 20th century. Yet he was also a fervent Nazi.
Now a soon-to-be published book in English has revived the long-running debate about whether the man can be separated from his philosophy. Drawing on new evidence, the author, Emmanuel Faye, argues fascist and racist ideas are so woven into the fabric of Heidegger’s theories that they no longer deserve to be called philosophy. As a result Mr. Faye declares, Heidegger’s works and the many fields built on them need to be re-examined lest they spread sinister ideas as dangerous to modern thought as “the Nazi movement was to the physical existence of the exterminated peoples.”
First published in France in 2005, the book, “Heidegger: The Introduction of Nazism Into Philosophy,” calls on philosophy professors to treat Heidegger’s writings like hate speech. Libraries, too, should stop classifying Heidegger’s collected works (which have been sanitized and abridged by his family) as philosophy and instead include them under the history of Nazism. These measures would function as a warning label, like a skull-and-crossbones on a bottle of poison, to prevent the careless spread of his most odious ideas, which Mr. Faye lists as the exaltation of the state over the individual, the impossibility of morality, anti-humanism and racial purity.
The book is the most radical attack yet on Heidegger (1889-1976) and would upend the philosophical field’s treatment of his work in the United States, and even more so in France, where Heidegger has frequently been required reading for an advanced degree. Mr. Faye, an associate professor at the University of Paris, Nanterre, not only wants to drum Heidegger from the ranks of philosophers, he wants to challenge his colleagues to rethink the very purpose of philosophy and its relationship to ethics.
At the same time scholars in disciplines as far flung as poetry and psychoanalysis would be obliged to reconsider their use of Heidegger’s ideas. Although Mr. Faye talks about the close connection between Heidegger and current right-wing extremist politics, left-wing intellectuals have more frequently been inspired by his ideas. Existentialism and postmodernism as well as attendant attacks on colonialism, atomic weapons, ecological ruin and universal notions of morality are all based on his critique of the Western cultural tradition and reason.
I go into some detail about the confusions of “postmodernist” thinking here
(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, DISSECTING LEFTISM, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena . List of backup or “mirror” sites here or here — for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is “down” or failing to update. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)
Trackback URL
Posted by JonJayRay in 1st Amendment, Education, Fascism, History, Marxism, Moral Relativism, Nazism, News, Populism, Racism, Revisionism, Science/pseudo-science, Secular Humanism, Socialism, liberalism at 8:04 am | Comment (1) | Trackbacks (0) |
