A small instance of a humongous and worsening situation: The decline in the chipmunk’s genetic diversity occurred in the relatively short span of 90 years, demonstrating the rapid threat changing climate can represent for a species, a UC Berkeley release said Sunday. The shift of the living due to a warming environment poses a danger to everything — we and the animals around us can become more vulnerable to the   Read More ...

Political lying as an art form: Take last Thursday’s Republican debate in South Carolina. Hundreds of G.O.P. voters applauded as Newt Gingrich blasted CNN’s John King for raising an accusation about marriage and sex in presidential politics. These same voters, I have no doubt, would have cheered Gingrich for doing just that in 1998 when he led the charge to impeach President Clinton for his dalliance with a younger woman   Read More ...

Some of the righteous posturing: “…utterly deplorable…”  — U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta “…wholly inconsistent with the high standards of conduct and warrior ethos that we have demonstrated throughout our history…”  — Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James Amos “…deplorable, reprehensible and unacceptable…”  — White House spokesman Jay Carney “…absolutely inconsistent with American values…”  — Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (Illustration found here). Of course, these clowns were commenting on a   Read More ...

Tis the season for the big lie. Infamous fabricator Stephen Glass is now after a lawyer’s job — off ‘Shattered Glass‘ fame, he made up stories at the New Republic during the late 1990s and was fired, displaying a major-tendency to lie at the drop of a vowel. Adam Penenberg, who outed Glass as a serial liar (via fastcompany.com): When I first learned of Glass’s quest to join the legal   Read More ...

Climate change ain’t for bullshitters. And no crap talk — President Obama’s video visit to the UN climate talks  in Durban, South Africa, citing the late Nobel peace prize winner and Kenyan environmentalist Wangari Maathai: “Here in Durban, we can carry on her work, to … grow our economies in a way that’s sustainable and that addresses climate change. In this you have the partnership of the United States. Delegates   Read More ...

Ralph Waldo Emerson, America’s greatest philosopher, visited Thoreau in jail. Emerson asked: “Henry, why are you here?” Thoreau replied: “Why are you not here?” – In protest of the Mexican War, 1846 In those crackdowns this week on the OWS, a deep, sinking feeling of nefarious, dark workings: Questions about the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS’s) potential involvement in the violent crackdowns on Occupy Wall Street protests nationwide continue to   Read More ...

Sometimes it’s nauseatingly obvious Republicans have abandoned normal and compassionate discourse and are just blubbering nonsense. On Monday, Republicans allowed health for children to be dipped in a money pie: The spending bill also would allow tomato paste on pizzas to be counted as a vegetable, as it is now. The department’s proposed guidelines would have attempted to prevent that. The changes had been requested by food companies that produce   Read More ...

In the last few years there’s been a momentous outburst of gall — the audacity of some people to bullshit despite incredible evidence to the contrary — which has touched just about every aspect of US life, especially in politics. Two such unrelated examples occurred this past weekend, one involved GOP presidential candidate Rick Perry and the other concerned the former US vice president, The Dick. (Illustration found here). Due   Read More ...

Watching the ceremonies this morning in New York is way sad — not just for the innocents killed today a decade ago and their families, but also for the naive, near-pompous nationalism inspired by the event. The only ones entitled to really grieve are friends and relatives of the victims (to them, most-likely, everyday since is a small piece of any Sept. 11) — the rest of us should be   Read More ...

In the wake of the more-recent events in Libya, the world wants to know much-more about the US CIA’s nefarious so-called ‘rendition‘ program, which led to all those “black sites” in at least seven countries where “enhanced interrogation” took place — people were kidnapped off city streets, take to secret prisons and tortured. An operation created and conducted by US officials in the name of all US peoples. (Illustration found here).   Read More ...