Archive for the ‘Urban Activity’ Category
This week in science: angry world, angry universe
Saturday, March 24th, 2012
A spring heat wave shattered records across the US and Canada this month, leaving many of the nation’s temperature stations sporting an angry red hue:
The unseasonable warmth broke temperature records in more than 1,054 locations between March 13–19, as well daily lows in 627 locations, according to Hamweather. Cities as geographically diverse as Chicago, Des Moines, Traverse City (Michigan), Myrtle Beach, Madison (Wisconsin), Atlantic City, New York City, and Duluth, (Minnesota) all broke records for high temperatures in recent days.
What does that mean? Climatologist Michael Mann put it like this yesterday, “I’m often getting asked ‘the crazy warmth this winter and spring, is it climate change or just weather’? The answer I tell them is that it’s both; weather is the random rolls of the dice. But global warming and climate change is loading the dice. And that’s part of why we’re rolling so many sixes lately.”
- Remember the gorgeous image of the hyper-velocity star near the bottom of this post? What happens if a planet wanders too near the dark, violent heart of a large galaxy? It could fly off at an appreciable fraction of the speed of light!
- Why might skeptics and atheists be angry these days? Greta Christina explains in video:
I’m angry with preachers who tell women to submit to their [abusive] husbands. .. I’m angry that the belief in karma and reincarnation gets used as a justification for the caste system. I’m angry that in Islamic theocracies women who get raped can be executed for adultery.
- Let’s not tell the knuckle-draggers that hominid evolution may be responsible for runner’s high, or rigorous core training may occasionally cause orgasms for some women. Santorum might flip out and angrily denounce gyms forcing Romney to rave about defunding PE in gubmint run schools.
- Romney’s science flip-flops piss me off, but this week Rachel Maddow illustrates they are the least of Sketchy’s serial whoppers — skip to the 6:25 mark if you’re pressed for time.
Groups backing reproductive freedom, including candidate-backer EMILY’s List, see funding surge
Tuesday, March 20th, 2012
The increased visibility of the right-wing war on women’s reproductive rights is generating significant increases in funding, according to leaders of organizations such as EMILY’s List and Planned Parenthood. The 27-year-old EMILY’s List is dedicated to electing pro-choice Democratic women to office:
“We are on track to have one of the best first quarters we’ve ever had for candidate fundraising,” said EMILY’s List President Stephanie Schriock.
It’s a very different landscape than the one Democratic women faced in 2010, when 11 of them were ousted from the House and several were replaced by tea party-backed candidates. Democratic women fared better in the Senate, where moderate Sen. Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas was the only female Democratic incumbent to lose her reelection bid, but several others had close calls.
The shift is a surprise.
A spokeswoman said the organization, with eight months to go, has already raised more than twice as much as it did in the whole 2010 election cycle. That cycle EMILY’s list brought in .5 million, according to Politico, which consistently labels the group as “pro-abortion.”
Planned Parenthood has also seen a rise in contributions. A spokesperson wouldn’t say how much, but media reports said the organization brought in 0,000 in two days after it became known that the Susan G. Komen Foundation was cutting off funding for it. In addition to the increased flow of money, EMILY’s List says it has doubled its mailing list since the 2010 election and has seen a rise in additions in the past three months. Both Planned Parenthood and NARAL Pro-Choice America have seen a rise email recruits as well. It’s anybody’s guess how much of all that is due to their own efforts as opposed to spin-off from the email and social media campaigns that independent grassroots groups, including Daily Kos, have been running in the wake of the Komen decision and Limbaugh’s shoot-from-the-lip misogyny.
Getting more money and translating it into winning candidacies and then into effective policies favoring reproductive rights are, obviously, very different things. But the Republican over-reach seen in the past 15 months—GOP shadow chairman Rush Limbaugh’s “slut” diatribe, the dozens of abortion-restricting laws passed in state legislatures and the remarks of ultra-reactionary candidates like Rick Santorum—seem to have struck a nerve that years and years of organizing against the anti-choice, anti-privacy forces had not effectively achieved. All of this adds to the possibility that a reversal could finally be under way.
Housing for Survivors of Domestic Violence
Saturday, March 17th, 2012On Thursday, March 15, 2012, the Alliance hosted a webinar on housing for survivors of domestic violence. This is a recording of that webinar and supplemental documents.
National Alliance to End Homelessness
FY 2013 Appropriations: SAMHSA
Thursday, March 15th, 2012FY 2013 SAMHSA Homeless Services: Mental Health and Substance Use Treatment Services For Homeless Populations
National Alliance to End Homelessness
Advocacy Update: Sign-On Letters Circulating in House THIS WEEK!
Tuesday, March 13th, 2012Reminder: House McKinney Letter Circulating
National Alliance to End Homelessness
Secretary’s Award for Outstanding Achievement in Service for Homeless Veterans
Monday, March 12th, 2012The Department of Veterans Affairs is awarding the Secretary’s Award for Outstanding Achievement in Service for Homeless Veterans.
National Alliance to End Homelessness
Open Thread for Nights Owls: Leon Panetta says U.S. would hit Iran harder than Israel would
Friday, March 9th, 2012
Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta told a reporter from the National Journal Thursday that the Pentagon has for “a long time” been preparing an array of military options for striking Iran if diplomatic and economic sanctions fail to stop what is widely but not universally viewed as that nation making progress toward building a nuclear weapon. Such preparations should be no surprise. The Pentagon develops contingency plans for a variety of actions that never take place.
Tehran has for years adamantly denied that it intends to build a nuke and no one has shown hard evidence that it is doing so. But its past behavior in this regard, having concealed previous work, has led to suspicions that it is still engaged in some level of concealment even now.
Foes of attacking Iran range from those who say that that nation is not building a bomb to those, such as former national intelligence officer Paul Pillar, who say it shouldn’t come under fire even if it does.
Whether the saber-rattling will actually lead to an outright attack is anybody’s guess. Speculation about attacks from Israel or the United States being imminent have been going around for a decade.
Yochi J. Dreazen reports:
In the interview, Panetta said he didn’t believe Israeli leaders had made up their minds about whether to order a high-risk raid against Iran’s nuclear facilities. Panetta, President Obama, and an array of other senior U.S. military and civilian officials have counseled Israel to give the sanctions more time to work before resorting to military force. They’ve also warned that an attack would set Iran’s nuclear program back only by a few years, a high price to pay for the inevitably violent Iranian retaliation likely to follow. [...]
Panetta said in the interview that a unilateral Israeli strike against Iran would be less effective than one conducted by the U.S., which has a significantly larger air force and an array of advanced weapons more powerful than any possessed by the Jewish state. [...]
“If they decided to do it there’s no question that it would have an impact, but I think it’s also clear that if the United States did it we would have a hell of a bigger impact,” Panetta said in the interview.[...]
Panetta’s remarks echoed his tough talk on Iran earlier this week. Speaking to a powerful pro-Israel lobby on Tuesday, Panetta said that “if all else fails, we will act” to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.
“Let me be clear—we do not have a policy of containment,” he told the crowd. “We have a policy of preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.”
Is this just campaign talk? Or something real?
Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on this date in 2004:
Today is International Women’s Day, and women’s peace groups around the world are issuing backgrounders and statements galore; in particular they are drawing attention to the very important issue of the decline of rights and security for women in Iraq since the US “liberation.”
[I've gotten four different ones in my inbox already.] One of the best ones I’ve seen came from Madre, and since this is a resource we don’t see cited very often in dKos land, I thought it might be worthwhile to pass it on.
Before you start to complain that security isn’t a woman’s issue per se, it might be helpful to remember that when social structures break down, it is women (and the weaker in society) who bear, in particular ways, the burdens that arise from that collapse. Thus these issues offer a good indicator of “bigger picture” state security questions.
Women: the canaries in the proverbial national security coal mine.
If only Obama were white & had stuffed a dead deer head into Derrick Bell’s mailbox, he wouldn’t have this problem today #BreitbartHasTape— @JC_Christian via Tweed webOS
High Impact Posts are here. Top Comments are here.
FY 2013 Veterans Appropriations: Sample House Letter
Thursday, March 8th, 2012Use this sample letter as a template when sending a letter to your representatives in the House urging them to sign on to Rep. Green’s letter supporting million for new HUD-VASH vouchers and/or to submit a programmatic request for VA homelessness funding.
National Alliance to End Homelessness
Alliance Online News: Emerging Framework for Ending Youth Homelessness and Upcoming Webinar
Wednesday, March 7th, 2012Emerging Framework for Ending Youth Homelessness and Upcoming Webinar
National Alliance to End Homelessness
Super PACs and the law of intended consequences
Sunday, March 4th, 2012
As a percentage of the total voting population, campaign donors are a rare breed. In October of 2011, President Barack Obama’s campaign passed the 1 million donor mark for his reelection campaign (he had some 3 million donors in 2008). Even if one were to add up the total number of donors from all the presidential campaigns this cycle, the number would be minuscule compared the hundreds of million eligible voters.
Whittle down that number to those who actually bankroll the majority of campaign funds with max out checks and bundling and the number gets even smaller. Whittle that number down to those who are substantially bankrolling Super Pacs and we’re down to, as Ari Berman has pointed out, the .0000063 percent:
Those are the 196 individual donors who have provided nearly 80 percent of the money raised by super PACs in 2011 by giving 0,000 or more each.
Most Super Pac donors also max out to a candidate’s political campaign. That’s the way the system is crafted. That’s the way it’s supposed to work.
(Continue reading below the fold)