Musings of a Liberal Texan

Animals in Entertainment Musings So, what is it going to take? What has to happen in our society that turns this around and sends us in a different direction? We had a woman, an innocent neighbor of a woman that decided she could keep a chimpanzee and treat it as a “child”...only it was locked in a cage and was several hundred pounds, that has her face removed . Ripped off her head. An elephant goes on a crazy rampage. Tigers attack the man that has spent his entire life training them causing irreparable damage. And now, a trainer is killed by an Orca at one of these godforsaken, animal entertainment for profit while pretending to be a rehab. What more has to happen? How many animals have to be incarcerated, driven mad and act accordingly? How many more animals are going to be kept in confinement, for a few moments of human entertainment before we strive for the next level of civility? Animals are traumatically gathered in the wild and hauled into completely incomprehensible and unnatu

Memo to Dick Cheney: Ssshhhh, Use Your Indoor Voice Jeff Schweitzer. Marine Biologist and Former Clinton White House Science Advisor Posted: February 19, 2010 12:46 PM Former Vice President Dick Cheney appeared before a fawning crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) this week to promote his efforts to create an alternative universe in which truths about terrorism becomes lies and lies become truth. His daughter Liz also served as surrogate mouth piece. With daddy hanging on her shoulder, nodding approval, Liz had the following to say about the Christmas underwear bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab: "There's no polite way to put this, but that kind of incompetence gets people killed." Forgetting 9/11, she actually had the audacity to accuse the Obama administration of missing warnings from the intelligence community that an attack by Yemeni terrorists was imminent. In her haze of amnesia, she went on to decry the "incompetence, misjudgment and pre

What to Say to Those Who Think Single Payer Advocates Are Wacko Published on Monday, February 8, 2010 by CommonDreams.org by Paul Hochfeld What do we say to our more conservative friends, who genuinely think that the Single Payer solution to our health care crisis would be a disaster? Try what follows. In the end, you may simply agree to disagree. That’s O.K., but what follows may give them pause to think. Already, 60% of all our health care dollars come directly or indirectly (because employers insurance premiums are tax deductible) from the taxpayer. The care of our oldest neighbors are financed by Medicare, i.e. the taxpayers. The care of our disabled neighbors is financed by Medicaid. Ditto the care of our poorest neighbors who, because health follows wealth, are also at greater risk of high expense. Fourteen hundred insurance companies, at significant expense, stratify the rest of the population by “risk”. Their top-secret formula results in them covering the employed people

The Story That No One Will Tell by Rep. Alan Grayson. Congressman Alan Grayson represents Central Florida (FL-8). The story that everyone wants to tell is that the Democratic Party is disheartened and disintegrating. Teabagger Republicans are juiced up and on top. Or so the media says, over and over again. But the House candidate who raised the most money in the entire country during the last FEC reporting period -- $860,000 in three months -- is not a teabagger. He is not boosted relentlessly by Fox News. He's not even a Republican. He doesn't think that the Earth was created 6000 years ago, that President Obama was born in Kenya, or that global warming is a hoax. This House candidate also, remarkably, had the largest number of contributors. Over 15,000 individuals contributed, many of whom have given time after time, whatever they could. The House candidate who raised the most money did so without French-kissing lobbyists, without flattering the idle rich, and without reachin