Ronnie on Politics

This is all very disturbing to me.  Bush likes to walk all over the US Constitution.

The Bill of Wrongs The 10 most outrageous civil liberties violations of 2006.

I love those year-end roundups—ubiquitous annual lists of greatest films and albums and lip glosses and tractors. It's reassuring that all human information can be wrestled into bundles of 10. In that spirit, Slate proudly presents, the top 10 civil liberties nightmares of the year:

Read this article online here.

Well, I kinda think they deserve what happened to them.

Animal sacrifices maim 1,400 in Turkey

ANKARA, Turkey - Over a thousand Turks spent the first day of the Muslim feast of Eid al-Adha in emergency wards on Sunday after stabbing themselves or suffering other injuries while sacrificing startled animals.

At least 1,413 people — referred to as "amateur butchers" by the Turkish media — were treated at hospitals across the country, most suffering cuts to their hands and legs, the Anatolia news agency reported.

Four people were severely injured, crushed under the weight of large animals that fell on top of them, the agency reported. Another person was hurt when a crane used to lift an animal tumbled onto him, the agency said.

Three other people suffered heart attacks and died while trying to restrain animals, CNN-Turk television reported.

Read entire article online here.

This is great news for those with type 2 diabetes.  A vegan diet is a great diet for everyone including the animals.

Groundbreaking PCRM Study Shows the Dramatic Impact of a Low-Fat Vegan Diet

More than 20 million Americans have diabetes, a condition that greatly increases the risk of heart problems and other complications. A new study has shown that a low-fat vegan diet treats type 2 diabetes more effectively than a standard diabetes diet and may be more effective than single-agent therapy with oral diabetes drugs. The randomized controlled trial was conducted by doctors and dietitians with PCRM, George Washington University, and the University of Toronto, with funding from the National Institutes of Health and the Diabetes Action Research and Education Foundation.

The study involved 99 individuals in the greater Washington, D.C., area with type 2 diabetes. Half the group was randomly assigned to follow a low-fat vegan diet, with no limits on calories, carbohydrate, or portion sizes. The other study participants were asked to follow a diet based on the American Diabetes Association’s (ADA’s) guidelines, which involves calorie counting and portion control, but allows most foods, including meats and dairy products, in limited amounts. Participants in both groups followed the diet for 22 weeks and received dietary support in the form of cooking demonstrations, tips on following the diet they were on, and group meetings. While participants in both groups improved, the vegan group experienced significantly greater reductions in A1c (a measure of blood sugar levels over a prolonged period), weight, body mass index, waist circumference, and LDL (“bad”) cholesterol.

Read entire article online here.

This study is very interesting.  The same thing applies to other habits like smoking.  The higher the IQ the less chance of becoming a smoker.

Smarter kids eat their greens

CHILDREN with high IQs are more likely to be vegetarians when they grow up, according to new research.

A British study of more them 8000 men and women aged 30 whose IQs had been measured when they were 10, showed that the higher the IQ, the greater the odds of being a vegetarian.

"People who are more intelligent as children, who will obviously keep that intelligence when they are 30, were more likely to say they are vegetarians at that age than those that were less intelligent," said Dr Catherine Gale, an epidemiologist at the University of Southampton in England.

Read entire article online here.

Left Behind: Eternal Forces video game

Just in time for Christmas, the religious right has released a violent video game in which born-again Christians aim to convert or kill those who don't adhere to their extreme ideology.  The video game, "Left Behind: Eternal Forces," is based on the apocalyptic "Left Behind" novels - written and promoted by religious right leader Tim LaHaye. Despite the violent, intolerant message being marketed to children, Wal-Mart, the nation's #1 video game seller, is selling the "Left Behind: Eternal Forces" video game - just in time for the holidays!

Here is a list of some of the things this game, which has been rated “T” for “Teen” teaches kids:

- involves teenagers in killing non-Christians and Christians who do not convert to your particular form of Christianity (Source: LBET Game Tutorial and game play);

- teaches teenagers that those “seeking peace for all mankind” are with the forces of the Antichrist (Source: Left Behind Games Website FAQs http://www.leftbehindgames.com/pages/faq.htm)

- teaches teens that “activists” are “wolves in sheep’s clothing,” warning teens to particularly beware of them (Source: LBET Game Manual, p. 45)

- teaches teenagers that most musicians are “singing the praises of the antichrist” and that “rock stars” and “pop stars” make “formidable spiritual opponents” (Source: LBET Game Manual, p. 44)

- teaches teens that humanitarian aid workers who are not Christian, including medics, nurses, and doctors, have “had the veil of the antichrist’s deceit pulled over their eyes” and are therefore part of the enemy forces who may be killed (Source: LBET Game Manual, p. 41)

"Left Behind: Eternal Forces" takes place in New York City, shortly after the rapture. Gamers are charged with creating Christian militias who roam the streets of New York City, looking to convert non-believers and killing those who they are unable to draw to their side. In fact, after particularly bloody battles, players must use prayer to recharge their "soul points" that have been diminished by the killing.

Most disturbing is the game's apparent attempt at religious indoctrination - aimed at children and focused on violent, divisive, and hateful scenarios.

The game has outraged progressive and conservative Christians alike, and despite the religious right's typical opposition to violent video games, "Left Behind: Eternal Forces" has not generated any criticism from this group and in fact gained a gleaming review from a Focus on the Family affiliated website this week.

While the religious right apparently has no problem pushing the product this holiday season, America's #1 video game seller should know better.

To learn more about the “Left Behind” series of books visit here and here.

To learn more about “apocalypticism”, which is what this is all about, visit here.

To take action on this issue visit here.

Yes, just let those sinners die. Another shinning example of Christian love.

Faith groups urge cuts to AIDS fund

LAKE FOREST, Calif. -- Some leading Christian conservatives, angry over the Global Fund to Fight AIDS's promotion of condoms and its perceived lack of support for faith-based programs, are pushing Congress to cut US support for the AIDS initiative, which was initiated by President Bush in a Rose Garden ceremony five years ago with a $200 million commitment.

The fund -- whose full name is the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria -- has become one of the pillars of the international effort to fight infectious diseases, growing into a $6.6 billion organization that supports programs in 136 countries.

It is a primary vehicle for the AIDS-fighting efforts of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The only larger HIV and AIDS program in the world is the president's $15 billion, five-year plan.

Read entire article here.

Let's just hope this quack doesn't get elected.

God's Senator: Who would Jesus vote for? Meet Sam Brownback

[...}

Tonight, Bredesen has come to breathe that power into Brownback's presidential campaign. After little more than a decade in Washington, Brownback has managed to position himself at the very center of the Christian conservative uprising that is transforming American politics. Just six years ago, winning the evangelical vote required only a veneer of bland normalcy, nothing more than George Bush's vague assurance that Jesus was his favorite philosopher. Now, Brownback seeks something far more radical: not faith-based politics but faith in place of politics. In his dream America, the one he believes both the Bible and the Constitution promise, the state will simply wither away. In its place will be a country so suffused with God and the free market that the social fabric of the last hundred years -- schools, Social Security, welfare -- will be privatized or simply done away with. There will be no abortions; sex will be confined to heterosexual marriage. Men will lead families, mothers will tend children, and big business and the church will take care of all.

[...]

"I am a seeker," he says. Brownback believes that every spiritual path has its own unique scent, and he wants to inhale them all. When he ran for the House he was a Methodist. By the time he ran for the Senate he was an evangelical. Now he has become a Catholic. He was baptized not in a church but in a chapel tucked between lobbyists' offices on K Street that is run by Opus Dei, the secretive lay order founded by a Catholic priest who advocated "holy coercion" and considered Spanish dictator Francisco Franco an ideal of worldly power. Brownback also studies Torah with an orthodox rabbi from Brooklyn. "Deep," says the rabbi, Nosson Scherman. Lately, Brownback has been reading the Koran, but he doesn't like what he's finding. "There's some difficult material in it with regard to the Christian and the Jew," he tells a Christian radio program, voice husky with regret.

Read entire article here.

This is a bit scary. Hope we never have the chance to find out if it's true.

Small nuclear war could lead to cooldown

SAN FRANCISCO - Some of the scientists who first advanced the controversial "nuclear winter" theory more than two decades ago have come up with another bleak forecast: Even a regional nuclear war would devastate the environment.

Using modern climate and population models, researchers estimated that a small-scale nuclear conflict between two warring nations would cause 3 million to 17 million immediate casualties and lead to a marked cooldown of the planet that could lead to crop failures and further misery.

As dire as the predictions seem, they fall short of nuclear winter. That theory says that smoke and dust from an atomic war between the superpowers would blot out the sun, plunge the Earth into the deep freeze and cause mass starvation, wiping out 90 percent of the Earth's population, or billions of people.

Read the entire article here.

I sure hate to say this about any religious group but Evangelical Christians are a danger to our country and the rest of the world. To learn more about the dangers of Evangelical Christians go here.

Group seeks probe of evangelical military video

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A watchdog group that promotes religious freedom in the U.S. military accused senior officers on Monday using their rank and influence to coerce soldiers and airmen into adopting evangelical Christianity.

Such proselytizing, according to the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, has created a core of "radical" Christians within the U.S. armed forces and Pentagon who punish those who do not accept evangelical beliefs by stalling their careers.

"It's egregious beyond the pale," said Mikey Weinstein, president and founder of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. "We apparently have a radicalized, evangelical Christian Pentagon within the rest of the Pentagon."

Read entire article online here.

See the video here.

Visit the Military Religious Freedom Foundation here.

Pete Geren, a former acting secretary of the Air Force who oversaw the service's response in 2005 to accusations that evangelical Christians were pressuring cadets at the Air Force Academy, also appears in the video.

This is a very interesting article on a subject of great importance.

What's wrong with our food?

E. coli at Taco Bell, Listeria in our Thanksgiving turkey, a report of unprecedented contamination in our chicken. Michael Pollan, author of "The Omnivore's Dilemma," explains why.

Read entire article here.

To learn more about factory farming visit here and here.

To learn more about antibioatic resistance visit here and here.

To learn more about slaughterhouses visit here and here.

Go here to view a PBS special discussing a range of issues surrounding meat production in the US.

You have got to be kidding me. This is so stupid that it's got to be something the bush administration has come up with to draw attention away from something else, like the Iraq war.

EPA may drop lead air pollution limits

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration is considering doing away with health standards that cut lead from gasoline, widely regarded as one of the nation's biggest clean-air accomplishments.

Read the entire article here.

This is a story I think everyone should read because it details the life of an advisor to the Iraqi military and it looks like we might be increasing the numbers of advisors. It makes me wonder if that plan will work. I would have to question whether our military currently has enough qulified military personel to pull it off.

A Soldier's Story
Major Bill Edmonds

For just a minute or two, step into my life. I am an American soldier in the Army Special Forces. I have just returned from a one-year tour of duty in Iraq, where I lived, shared meals, slept and fought beside my Iraqi counterpart as we battled insurgents in the center of a thousand-year-old city. I am a conflicted man, and I want you to read the story of that experience as I lived it. In the interest of security, I have omitted some identifying details, but every word is true.

Read the entire article here.

Ah, more good news. The sooner we get our troops back home the better. Now let's see if Bush will listen. He hasn't in the past so why should he now?

Panel: Bush's Iraq policy 'not working'

WASHINGTON - President Bush's policy in Iraq "is not working," a high-level commission said Wednesday in a blunt, bleak assessment that called for an urgent diplomatic attempt to stabilize the country and allow withdrawal of most U.S. combat troops by early 2008.

After nearly four years of war and the deaths of more than 2,900 U.S. troops — including 10 during the day Wednesday — the situation is "grave and deteriorating," the bipartisan panel said. It also warned, "The ability of the United States to influence events within Iraq is diminishing."

It recommended the U.S. reduce political, military or economic support for Iraq if the government in Baghdad cannot make substantial progress toward providing for its own security.

Read entire article online here.

And, finally some good news we could all use:

Boxer says no more environment rollbacks

WASHINGTON - The Democrat poised to take over the Senate environment committee promises a "sea change" from six years of Republican inaction on global warming and says she expects Congress to send President Bush legislation to start curbing greenhouse gases.

Sen. Barbara Boxer of California, who will lead the Environment and Public Works Committee beginning in January, acknowledged Tuesday she may fall short of her goal: imposing the nation's first mandatory limits on industrial emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases.

[...]

In the interview, Boxer also promised to end Bush administration rollbacks on environmental rules if they are not supported by science.

"Any kind of weakening of environmental laws or secrecy or changes in the dead of night — it's over," Boxer said. "We're going to for once, finally, make this committee an environment committee, not an anti-environment committee. ... This is a sea change that is coming to this committee."

Read entire article here.

I guess this could have been expected.  I'm sure this will have an effect on skiing but I also wonder about the water supply in that region.  I know that many areas depend on melting snow running off of mountains for water.

Alps said to be at warmest in centuries

VIENNA, Austria - Global warming has driven temperatures in the Alps to their highest in 1,300 years, according to one of the authors of an EU-backed climate study.

The study reconstructed the climate back to the year 755 in the region encompassing France's Rhone Valley to the west, Budapest, Hungary, to the east, Tuscany, Italy, to the south and Nuremberg, Germany, to the north.

"We are currently experiencing the warmest period in the Alpine region in 1,300 years," Reinhard Boehm, a climatologist at Austria's Central Institute for Meteorology and Geodynamics, said Tuesday.

Read entire article here.

Read the ALP-IMP Study summary here.

It seems that hardly a day goes be without some more bad news about Global Warming.  This one is very important.

It's bad enough that we have drastically reduced the worlds fish populations (see here) but now this:

Crucial marine food chain link withers

WASHINGTON - In a "sneak peak" revealing a grim side effect of future warmer seas, new NASA satellite data find that the vital base of the ocean food web shrinks when the world's seas get hotter. And that discovery has scientists worried about how much food marine life will have as global warming progresses.

The data show a significant link between warmer water — either from the El Nino weather phenomenon or global warming — and reduced production of phytoplankton of the world's oceans, according to a study in Thursday's journal Nature.

Read entire article online here.

See the full NASA study here.

This government agency needs a complete overhaul.  I sure hope some heads roll over this.  A lot of rebuilding could have been done with this billion dollars.

Audit says FEMA squandering Katrina aid

WASHINGTON - The government is squandering tens of millions of dollars in Hurricane Katrina disaster aid, in some cases doling out housing payments to people living rent-free, investigators said Wednesday.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has recouped less than 1 percent of the $1 billion that investigators contend it squandered on fraudulent assistance, according to the Government Accountability Office.  Its report shows the disaster relief agency's struggles, one year after the deadly storm, to rush aid to those in need while also preventing abuse.

Read entire article online here.

A copy of the GAO report can be found at: http://wid.ap.org/documents/katrina/GAO120606.pdf

Yes folks, this is what American justice looks like.   So, you think this is fair.   How would you like it if this happened to you or someone you loved?  This man has not even been convicted.   Citizens in the United States have lost so many rights that I hardly recognize it anymore.  Hey, Wake Up America!

Video Is a Window Into a Terror Suspect’s Isolation

One spring day during his three and a half years as an enemy combatant, Jose Padilla, experienced a break from the monotony of his solitary confinement in a bare cell in the brig at the Naval Weapons Station in Charleston, S.C.

That day, Mr. Padilla, a Brooklyn-born Muslim convert whom the Bush administration had accused of plotting a dirty bomb attack and had detained without charges, got to go to the dentist.

“Today is May 21,” a naval official declared to a camera videotaping the event. “Right now we’re ready to do a root canal treatment on Jose Padilla, our enemy combatant.”

Several guards in camouflage and riot gear approached cell No. 103. They unlocked a rectangular panel at the bottom of the door and Mr. Padilla’s bare feet slid through, eerily disembodied. As one guard held down a foot with his black boot, the others shackled Mr. Padilla’s legs. Next, his hands emerged through another hole to be manacled.

Wordlessly, the guards, pushing into the cell, chained Mr. Padilla’s cuffed hands to a metal belt. Briefly, his expressionless eyes met the camera before he lowered his head submissively in expectation of what came next: noise-blocking headphones over his ears and blacked-out goggles over his eyes. Then the guards, whose faces were hidden behind plastic visors, marched their masked, clanking prisoner down the hall to his root canal.

The videotape of that trip to the dentist, which was recently released to Mr. Padilla’s lawyers and viewed by The New York Times, offers the first concrete glimpse inside the secretive military incarceration of an American citizen whose detention without charges became a test case of President Bush’s powers in the fight against terror. Still frames from the videotape were posted in Mr. Padilla’s electronic court file late Friday.

To Mr. Padilla’s lawyers, the pictures capture the dehumanization of their client during his military detention from mid-2002 until earlier this year, when the government changed his status from enemy combatant to criminal defendant and transferred him to the federal detention center in Miami. He now awaits trial scheduled for late January.

Read entire article here.

This is great news for New Yorkers.  Now if only the Federal Government would do the right thing and ban, or at least limit, this product from food in the United States.

New York bans trans fats at restaurants

NEW YORK - New York on Tuesday became the first city in the nation to ban artery-clogging trans fats at restaurants, leading the charge to limit consumption of an ingredient linked to heart disease and used in everything from french fries to pizza dough to pancake mix.

In a city where eating out is a major form of activity — either for fun or out of hectic necessity — many New Yorkers were all for the ban, saying that health concerns were more important than fears of Big Brother supervising their stomachs.

"I don't care about what might be politically correct and what's not," said Murray Bader, nursing a cup of coffee at Dunkin' Donuts on Tuesday morning. "I want to live longer!"

The 72-year-old Manhattan resident called the ban a "wakeup call" for a public often unaware of the risks of artificial fats. "This stuff clogs up your vessels," he said. "When it comes to health, we only have one life."

Read entire article online at:  http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061205/ap_on_he_me/diet_trans_fat_ban

I don't think any type of bible should be used even if it's only for a photo op.  They need to get religion out of the government.

Religious Texts and the Swearing-In Tradition

Keith Ellison of Minnesota became the first Muslim elected to Congress last month, and he plans to use the Quran instead of the Bible when he's sworn in. Some are outraged about straying from the tradition of using the Bible to swear in government officials. But that tradition isn't as solid as some might think.

Listen to this report online at:  http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6581493&ft=1&f=1012

But wait a moment. The U.S. Constitution, Article VI, section 3, clearly states the following:

"The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States."

To learn more about this issue visit these sites:

Congressman faulted for Quran at oath

Islamic group targets columnist

I guess the United States thinks it's above the law.  I hope every one of these suspects is brought to justice along with those in the bush administration that authorized this crime. 

Italy prosecutors want kidnap trial for CIA agents

ROME (Reuters) - Italian prosecutors on Tuesday asked a judge to order CIA agents and Italian spies to stand trial on charges of kidnapping a terrorism suspect and flying him to Egypt, where he says he was tortured.

After a more than two-year-long investigation that has embarrassed Washington and Rome, prosecutors said they were ready to go to court over the 2003 "rendition" of a Muslim cleric in Milan.

An Italian judge must call a preliminary hearing to decide if there is enough evidence for a trial, but even defense lawyers say privately they expect the case to go to court.

If so, it would be the first criminal trial in the world over so-called renditions, one of the most controversial aspects of U.S. President George Bush's global war on terror.

Read the entire article online at: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061205/ts_nm/italy_usa_rendition_dc_3

I find it interesting that you don't hear anything about this in most of the main stream media. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.

This is an issue that the Environmental movement should be on top of but mostly it’s the Animal Rights groups that have been addressing it. Do you think it could be because most Environmentalists are meat eaters?

Livestock is a major threat to environment

A new report published by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization says the the livestock sector is a major threat to environment as it generates more greenhouse gas emissions as measured in CO2 equivalent – 18 percent – than transport. Just as it is also a major source of land and water degradation.

Says Henning Steinfeld, Chief of FAO’s Livestock Information and Policy Branch and senior author of the report: “Livestock are one of the most significant contributors to today’s most serious environmental problems. Urgent action is required to remedy the situation.”

Read the entire article online at: http://www.vanguardngr.com/articles/2002/business/december06/01122006/b401122006.html