Sat, Oct 4: Don’t take my word for it…

I’m starting a new feature here at The Writ.  Following my show I’m going to post some of my notes and links that I mentioned so you don’t have to take my word for it.  I’m just the messenger:

Today’s British Slang Introduction of Stevie:

“Our man from across the pond, working the phones in our Nation’s capital, a man who’ll never fanny around before quaffing a pint of Guiness with a Liverpudlian and unafraid to knock up Glaswegian who’s taken a kip in front of the Telly, one of the few immigrant workers who still wants to work for an American Dollar, our own Stevie Webb!”

Sarah Palin made raped women pay for their “rape kit”.

CNN’s Jessica Yellin claimed to have found no evidence in city records that Sarah Palin was aware that sexual assault victims were being billed for forensic testing. However, recently released budget documents show that Sarah Palin directly shifted the cost of the rape kits from the police department to the victims in her budget for fiscal year 2000. If what a former city council member told CNN is true, that “Palin would review each department’s budget line by line,” then she either knew about the funding shift and approved it or was negligent in her role as state executive.

It is a fact that under Sarah Palin’s administration, Wasilla cut funds that had previously paid for the medical exams and began charging victims or their health insurers the $500 to $1200 fees. Although Palin spokeswoman Maria Comella wrote USA Today that the GOP vice presidential nominee “does not believe, nor has she ever believed, that rape victims should have to pay for an evidence-gathering test…To suggest otherwise is a deliberate misrepresentation of her commitment to supporting victims and bringing violent criminals to justice,” the evidence from Wasilla’s budget records says otherwise.

Wouldn’t oppose an “evidence-gathering test” is word parsing to say “I’m not against DNA tests to catch rapists, I’m just against giving women pills to abort their rapist’s baby.”

Government won’t test your produce for pesticides anymore.

WASHINGTON—The Bush administration has abruptly halted a government program that tests the levels of pesticides in fruits, vegetables and field crops, arguing that the $8 million-a-year program is too expensive—a decision critics say could make it harder to protect consumers from toxins in their food.

Data from the 18-year-old Agricultural Chemical Usage Program administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture were collected until this year, and the Environmental Protection Agency used the data to set safe levels of pesticides in food.

The program was launched in 1990 to answer congressional concerns over the use of the chemical daminozide, or Alar, on apples. But now USDA contends the program is too expensive.

It would cost about one thousandth of one percent of the Wall Street bailout bill we just passed in order to test our food crops for dangerous pesticides… and that’s too expensive.

Arkansas City, KS Mayor “Smellishus Poon” defends drag blackface skit... then apologizes:

Arkansas City Mayor Mel Kuhn won the weekend fundraiser, in which he appeared in dark makeup and used a vulgar reference to female genitalia as his character name. The fundraiser was for Court Appointed Special Advocates, which supports foster children.

Kuhn told the [Arkansas City Traveler] newspaper that his makeup didn’t constitute blackface and that he did not really manage to carry out the character as a black woman; he said it ended up being more like a gypsy.

“I can’t do a black accent,” he said.

Oh, well, in that case it wasn’t offensive at all!  Everybody knows it’s OK to denigrate the Roma people (they love it when you call them “Gypsies”).

Liberal Media Bias against Palin/McCain:

The multinational corporations that run the mainstream media — GE (NBC), Time Warner (CNN), Walt Disney (ABC), News Corporation (FOX), and Viacom (CBS) — stand to benefit hugely under a McCain presidency. The centerpiece of Sen. McCain’s economic plan — actually, the whole plan— is large tax cuts for corporations. It would deliver $1.44 billion in tax cuts to the five largest media companies, according to an analysis by the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

You don’t get to be the mainstream media without drinking deeply from the main stream of GOP deregulation and irresponsible tax slashing.

Marijuana Minute: Most people think War on Drugs is a failure, and texting or drinking drivers are worse drivers than cannabis smokers.

Zogby International
Three in four likely voters (76%) believe the U.S. war on drugs is failing, a sentiment that cuts across the political spectrum – including the vast majority of Democrats (86%), political independents (81%), and most Republicans (61%). There is also a strong belief that the anti-drug effort is failing among those who intend to vote for Barack Obama (89%) for president, as well as most supporters of John McCain (61%).

When asked what they believe is the single best way to combat international drug trafficking and illicit use, 27% of likely voters said legalizing some drugs would be the best approach — 34% of Obama supporters and 20% of McCain backers agreed.

Texting drivers more dangerous than drunks: study
Sending text messages from your mobile phone while driving is more dangerous than climbing behind the wheel under the influence of drink or drugs, a study by Britain’s Transport Research Laboratory (TRL) has found.

The reaction times of people texting as they drove fell by 35 percent, while those who had consumed the legal limit of alcohol, or taken cannabis, fell by 21 percent and 12 percent respectively, according to the study.

Drill Here! Drill Now!

Sounds good, if you’re talking about the oil leases that Big Oil already have, but aren’t exploring.  Like I said today, this is all about acquiring assets, trading commodities for speculators, the same Enron-style energy market manipulation we’ve seen before in California but only on a global scale.

This video makes the point quite well.

Goodbye from the world’s biggest polluter

This just in from the world’s biggest asshole:

Bush to G8: ‘Goodbye from the world’s biggest polluter’ – World Politics, World – The Independent
President George Bush signed off with a defiant farewell over his refusal to accept global climate change targets at his last G8 summit.

As he prepared to fly out from Japan, he told his fellow leaders: “Goodbye from the world’s biggest polluter.”

President Bush made the private joke in the summit’s closing session, senior sources said yesterday. His remarks were taken as a two-fingered salute from the President from Texas who is wedded to the oil industry.

Stevie tells me the “two-fingered salute” is British for the “one-fingered salute” here.

Exxon Valdez ruling worries environmental watchdogs

Great Seattle-PI piece on SCOTUS slashing to $500M what were punitive damages of $2.5B which had been an original jury award of $5B against Exxon for glopping up Prince William Sound and countless wildlife with crude oil.  I mentioned on the show how little this hurts a corporation that makes $1,300 per second and how a mere 4.5 days-worth of profit isn’t enough of a punishment to force them to change their ways.  It becomes a simple cost/benefit analysis where it’s cheaper to hire lawyers than to make safety and environmental improvements.  Now, the original jury award of $5B, that’s half of an earnings quarter, and shareholders would feel that.

Toward the end of the piece, though, there’s a bit that feels like one of those “green” commercials big oil and big coal put on during the political debates and network news shows — you know, the PR campaign to make you think fossil fuel providers really want thriving solar and wind power while funneling big ad dollars to corporate media to make sure the talking heads don’t raise any questions about climate change.

Exxon Valdez ruling worries environmental watchdogs
But for Alaska Tanker’s Mathur, that kind of thinking is foreign to a stronger-than-ever safety culture. He points out that in the past six years, the company’s ships have not spilled a drop of crude oil. It mirrors improvements in much of the industry, environmental regulators say.

And Mathur said young sailors are a new breed.

This week, he was talking to a young seaman, telling him how he should take care to “protect the environment.”

“This 20-year-old, able-bodied seaman puts up his hand and says, ‘Mr. Mathur, would you mind calling it our environment instead of the environment?’ ” Mathur said.

I will take that last sentence to heart.  That’s good framing.  The environment is something outside of you; our environment means we all have responsibility to save our selves.