This is one of the best and most interesting debates I’ve seen in a while.
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | M – Th 11p / 10c | |||
| Cliff May Unedited Interview Pt. 1 | ||||
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But I do have just one question: So if what Cliff May is saying is that it’s ok to “torture” or have rules of torture, being that you can inflict so-called discomfort to someone as long as it will not result in death, why would terrorists give up the information interrogators want if they know that it (the torture) can not kill them? Besides, these people want to be killed so that they are martyrs for their cause. I guess I just don’t see how the threat of supposed death, but they knowing they can’t be killed is any incentive to give up the information one is trying to get out of them.
And according to what he says, the Geneva Convention even states that you cannot inflict discomfort of any kind. But as we all know, rules are just there to be broken anyway.
On Thursday, a Minnesota House committee rejected a bill that would require voters to show a photo ID to get into their polling place. The bill was proposed by Represtentative Tom Emmer (R-Delano) and is similar to several conservative- backed proposed bills country-wide attempting to prevent voter fraud. Secretary of State Mark Ritchie said that the law would likely disenfranchise voters as well as cost the state a good deal of money. In my eyes its as simple as this: this bill will likely affect the elderly and those with lower incomes and no ability or desire to acquire a driver’s license. These are the people more likely to vote Democratic (no matter how much the Republicans want to call themselves the party of the people) and therefore the loss of votes would actually improve Republican chances in the state.
As I’ve stated before, my coworkers like to listen to AM1500 during the day. I do my best to ignore it, but often I am flabbergasted at the things suggested by their radio personalities. The other day, Joe Soucheray was talking about voting in Minnesota having discussed the recount and the photo ID vote, and he said something that I believe says a lot about the channel and right-wingers. He suggested that as we continue to include more people in the vote (and in the context I can only assume this means immigrants and people of so called lower classes), the system is becoming cheapened. From my interpretation of Soucheray’s phrasing, it seems as if he feels voting should remain a relatively exclusive institution in this country. As if it should not be the right of every American to vote for the person they want to run their country. This is dangerous language, as is anything relating to taking rights away from people, and harkens back to the opinions of conservative white men when blacks and women were given the right to vote. But the difference is that the right is already there, the attempt is to snatch it away.
This sort of inequality seems to be a standard opinion across the board for right-wingers. There are movements now attempting to make English the official language of a handful of states, to make it genuinely harder for people who do not speak English to live in the United States. Is this a value this country was based upon? What ever happened to the term “melting pot?” The line is “liberty and justice for all,” not just for some. “That all men are created equal” does not only apply to rich, white men. We all come from different backgrounds here. Many of us caucasians have roots in Europe. We’re all immigrants, except for the Native Americans, who technically are the only people who belong here.
It frustrates me when people work so hard to take other people’s rights away. Especially when its just an attempt to recover a few more votes for the other side. This bill has absolutely nothing to do with voter fraud. Do not mistake that.
Canis lupus, the gray wolf, is the center of even more debate. In the late 1980’s and into the 90’s, the wolf population was restored in the Rocky Mountains in Yellowstone National Park through a controvesial process of live-trapping in Canada and relocating. This was highly debated and fought mostly by ranchers and farmers in the area who feared for the lives of their cattle. Now, in the year 2008, the population of wolves has gone up to over 1000 across three states from almost zero.
But the trouble now is in Alaska, where the population of wolves is relatively high, at 7,700-11,200. There is a wolf control program that exists in the state, allowing citizens to receive a license to hunt the animals. According to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game:
Wolves and bears are very effective and efficient predators on caribou, moose, deer and other wildlife. In most of Alaska, humans also rely on the same species for food. In Alaska’s Interior, predators kill more than 80 percent of the moose and caribou that die during an average year, while humans kill less than 10 percent. In most of the state, predation holds prey populations at levels far below what could be supported by the habitat in the area. Predation is an important part of the ecosystem, and all ADF&G wolf management programs, including control programs, are designed to sustain wolf populations in the future.
The Alaska Board of Game approves wildlife regulations through a public participation process. When the Board determines that people need more moose and/or caribou in a particular area, and restrictions on hunting aren’t enough to allow prey populations to increase, predator control programs may be needed. Wolf hunting and trapping rarely reduces wolf numbers enough to increase prey numbers or harvests.
Currently, five wolf control programs are underway that comprises about 9.4% of Alaska’s land area. The programs use a closely controlled permit system allowing aerial or same day airborne methods to remove wolves in designated areas. In these areas, wolf numbers will be temporarily reduced, but wolves will not be permanently eliminated from any area. Successful programs allow humans to take more moose, and healthy populations of wolves to continue to thrive in Alaska.
Now a group called Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund, with actor Ashley Judd as their figurehead, has launched a campaign including a television ad attacking Sarah Palin and her stance on the program.
According to the group, Palin is attempting to pass legislation in increase the program’s limits, allowing for more hunting of wolves and bears. Palin’s background on environmental and wildlife issues tends to paint a picture of a woman who has little care for the world around her. She was well known for her stance on drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge(ANWR) and also sued the US government to stop the listing of the polar bear on the endangered species list. Just recently, she suggested that she would sue the government yet again to remove the beluga whale from the endangered species list in Alaska’s Cook Inlet. It is not beyond resoning that she would be opposed to any action to save the gray wolf, but this is what she said in response to the ad:
“It is reprehensible and hypocritical that the Defenders of Wildlife would use Alaska and my administration as a fundraising tool to deceive Americans into parting with their hard-earned money.”
“The ad campaign by this extreme fringe group, as Alaskans have witnessed over the last several years, distorts the facts about Alaska’s wildlife management programs. Alaskans depend on wildlife for food and cultural practices which can’t be sustained when predators are allowed to decimate moose and caribou populations. Our predator control programs are scientific and successful at protecting vulnerable wildlife. These audacious fundraising attempts misrepresent what goes on in Alaska, and I encourage people to learn the facts about Alaska’s positive record of managing wildlife for abundance.”
“Shame on the Defenders of Wildlife for twisting the truth in an effort to raise funds from innocent and hard-pressed Americans struggling with these rough economic times.”
From Reuters
Now that you have the background, here’s what I think. Being a biologist and having my background in environmental and ecological biology, I’ve done my fair share of study of gray wolves. The wolves act as an apex preditor, meaning that through their predations, all other organisms sharing the same environment are affected in some way. The wolves check the caribou and moose populations, slowing the browsing of new growth of plants, thus letting them grow larger and thicker. This in turn increases the numbers of birds in an area by providing more nesting and more food through insect increases. This sort of cascade happens all across the food web of which wolves sit in the center. I do believe that the ADFG is taking a scientific stance in its wolf control program. Most likely if the wolf population stayed where it is, food could become limited and the wolves would die of starvation. Such is the way the biological world works.
That being said, the aerial hunting methods, the proposed bounty for the forelegs of the animals, and the idea of running a “propaganda campaign” to increase hunting seem vile to me. If one chooses to hunt a wolf, it should be performed just like deer hunting, with a gun and your own two legs. Wolves do not attack humans frequently, and in the last 40 years only 22 attacks have been recorded in North America (International Wolf Center), thus if the use of helicopters and low-flying planes is for safety, the claim is mostly groundless. The idea of a propaganda campaign and a bounty sounds a bit along the lines of the programs that led to the near extinction of the wolves in Yellowstone. Overall, I do not agree with the Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund that any hunting of wolves is a terrible thing, but I also do not agree with Alaska’s methods of killing the animals. We mustn’t push science away, and I’m afraid that this is just what Sarah Palin would like to do. Anything done after an analytical review of the data available is better than running blindly into it.
“The martyr sacrifices themselves entirely in vain. Or rather not in vain; for they make the selfish more selfish, the lazy more lazy, the narrow narrower.”
-Florence Nightingale
I’m starting to get annoyed with the whole “liberal media” thing. I really didn’t assume I would be commenting on something as inane as the little shibboleth that could, but after enough time hearing it nonstop, I really couldn’t help but make connections.
The Right seems to be playing the martyr these days. After John McCain birthed the concept of acting as if his campaign could be getting the low deal just because of media bias, the Conservatives ran with it. And they have yet to let it go. I hear it everywhere, on NPR, on local news broadcasts, and especially on the Right-leaning Minneapolis talk radio of AM1500.
Their new host, whose name I can’t even seem to remember (the replacement for the only good thing that came from AM1500, Mischke), is a bit of a zealot. He seems to bat for all the traditional Right-wing interests (pro-life, anti-immigration, pro-Christian), and thus seems to have a firm case of woe-is-meism. The Franken/Coleman debacle thunders on with more twists and turns than ever, and now that Franken is up by 225 votes, the media is to blame for some of the troubles, according to said pundit. You see, no one around the country even knows what’s happening because the liberal media is suppressing the important facts: there was double counting of votes and no standard method for the counting of improperly rejected absentee votes. Warning, the entire last sentence was sarcasm.
There’s not a whole lot to say on the topic, I guess. But this martyrdom is a bit annoying. Seems to me that in the last eight years while George Bush was in office ruining the country, us liberals took our chance to point out the falsehoods, inaccuracies, and downright lies coming from the administration. We didn’t complain that the world was out to get us, we just fought back. If this is the kind of attitude the Right is going to take, they really do have no chance to win the next election. And that’s fine with me.
It looks like perennial gaffe-happy U.S. Representative Michelle Bachmann (R-MN) is at it again. Her appearance on MSNBC’s Hardball with Chris Matthews in which she made comments suggesting the anti-American beliefs of now President-Elect Obama and other members of Congress and offering that soneone should launch an inquest into these beliefs (à la Joseph McCarthy), now apparently didn’t happen.
MINNEAPOLIS — Rep. Michele Bachmann has a new explanation for media accounts about comments that she made on cable TV suggesting that Barack Obama and other members of Congress might be “anti-American.”
She’s calling them an “urban legend.”
The Minnesota Republican appeared Tuesday night on Fox News’ show with Sean Hannity and Alan Colmes. Colmes, the show’s resident liberal, read a transcript of Bachmann’s quote from her appearance on Chris Matthews’”Hardball” show on MSNBC before the election. Colmes also offered to have her watch the video of her remarks. But the segment ended before Bachmann could fully respond
I guess she really does exist in her own little world. I’m still reeling that she actually managed to be re-elected, and I mostly attribute it to her false claims concerning the past of Elwyn Tinklenberg. So now we have another two years to see what she’ll do next. Let’s hope that if she manages something dangerous enough, we can pull her from her seat or at least convince congress to censure her.
Again, I’d like to stress the fact that the Coleman-Franken race that is being re-examined is being done so by mandatory recount. Because the margin is so small, under the point at which a recount is required by state law (>0.5%), at just 238 votes, the Secretary of State, Mark Ritchie, is organizing a recount. Coleman seems to be blaming the recount on Franken:
Coleman urged Franken to waive his right to a recount, saying that the prospect of changing the result was remote and that a recount would be costly to taxpayers (about $86,000).
“I just think the need for the healing process is so important. … hopefully, you don’t have TV ads during an election recount,” Coleman said.
From the Star Tribune
Today, however, Ritchie has commented on Coleman’s use of language during this process:
Secretary of State, Mark Ritchie, said it was “unfortunate” that the Coleman campaign was questioning the integrity of the election. He said adjustments are a normal part of the canvassing process before results are official as officials reconcile the ballots and numbers in the voting machines.
“The decision to use words designed to create a cloud over the election is a political strategy,” said Ritchie, a Democrat, at a Capitol news conference. “It’s a well-known political strategy. It’s unfortunate, but it’s their choice of language, not ours.”
From the Examiner
The recount will begin on November 19th and will face a December 5th deadline for submitting results. As for my opinion on the whole process: I’d love to see Franken take the win in the long run, but I don’t really believe that anything will change. They may bring the margin closer, but we’ll see the results by December.