deadissue.com

A Lynx relocated to Colorado went all the way back to Canada, only to be killed by an asshole:

It was an extraordinary journey of 1,200 miles – from Silverton, Colorado to Nordegg, Alberta, Canada.

And although the life of the adventurous vagabond, a 9-year-old Canadian lynx given the scientific name BC-03-M-02, ended in a Canadian trap line on Jan. 28, researchers say the animal lived an amazing life and set a world record for distances lynx have traveled.

“It was an incredible trek,” said Gabriela “Gabby” Yates, the lynx project manager at the University of Alberta in Canada. “The fact of where this started, where it ended and the children this lynx had, it is really an incredible story.”

But the incredible story ended bacause one asshole wanted to make a fur coat for another asshole.

“It is an incredible demonstration of what these animals can do,” she said. “It demonstrates the incredible capacity these cats have.”

The male lynx, then two years old, was captured near Kamloops, British Columbia in 2003. He was released for reintroduction near Creede on April 16, 2003.

For the next four years, the Colorado Division of Wildlife kept track of the collared lynx. During that time, he fathered two sets of kittens, one set of two in 2005, and one set of four in 2006.

The litters were born near Silverton. DOW officials believe the male mated with the same female lynx for both litters.

The last time Shenk was able to find the cat was April 20, 2007, and then he disappeared.

The next human contact that anyone had with the lynx was on Jan. 28, when Bryan Anger, a trapper from Rocky Mountain House, Alberta, found BC-03-M-02 dead in his trap line.

I get that what the trapper is doing is legal, but it is disgusting that anyone would want to destroy such an amazing animal for someone’s vanity.

One labor leader thinks he has the answer:

I am going to talk tonight about anger—and specifically the anger of working people. I want to explain why working people are right to be mad about what has happened to our economy and our country, and then I want to talk about why there is a difference between anger and hatred. There are forces in our country that are working hard to convert justifiable anger about an economy that only seems to work for a few of us into racist and homophobic hate and violence directed at our President and heroes like Congressman John Lewis. Most of all, those forces of hate seek to divide working people – to turn our anger against each other.

I am not sure I completely buy this, it seems like most the terrorist wannabe tea-baggers are retired indaviduals collecting social security, my guess is there anger is more from the idea that the country has a black president and most people don’t hate gays the way they do. He then goes on to say:

For a generation, our intellectual culture has suggested that in the new global age, work is something someone else does. Someone we never met far away in an export processing zone will make our clothes, immigrants with no rights in our political process or workplaces will cook our food and clean our clothes.

And for the lucky top 10 percent of our society, that has been the reality of globalization—everything got cheaper and easier.

But for the rest of the country, economic reality has been something entirely different. It has meant trying to hold on to a good job in a grim game of musical chairs where every time the music stopped, there were fewer good jobs and more people trying to get and keep one. Over the last decade, we lost more than 5 million manufacturing jobs—a million of them professional and design jobs. We lost 20 percent of our aerospace manufacturing jobs. We’re losing high-tech jobs—the jobs we were supposed to keep.

My guess is that these jobs are gone and they are not coming back until Americans agree to work cheaper, and even if the jobs do come back they will probably not pay as well; which makes me think people are going to have to consume less, and perhaps look for meaningful work that doesn’t pay as well. I guess you can be angry about the situation but it might be better live in a smaller house, drive a smaller car and maybe have a smaller family and enjoy what life has to offer.

From Washingtonmonthly.com:

HUCKABEE, FAMILIES, AND PUPPIES…. Republican Mike Huckabee — former Arkansas governor, former presidential candidates, and Fox News personality — hasn’t made much of an effort to hide his contempt for gay people. What’s interesting, though, is that as American culture becomes more respectful and tolerant, Huckabee seems to be moving in the wrong direction.

He chatted with the College of New Jersey’s magazine, The Perspective, about a variety of policy matters, including LGBT issues. Huckabee proceeded to compare marriage equality to drug abuse, incest, and polygamy.

Perhaps most strikingly, though, Huckabee denounced allowing same-sex couples adopting children or becoming foster parents.

“I think this is not about trying to create statements for people who want to change the basic fundamental definitions of family,” Huckabee said. “And always we should act in the best interest of the children, not in the seeming interest of the adults.”

“Children are not puppies,” he continued. “This is not a time to see if we can experiment and find out, how does this work?”
Just so we’re clear, we’re talking about orphans and children who are often abused or neglected. Most decent people would think it’s in “the best interest of the children” for those kids in need to live with people who will love and care for them.

Christians seem to like the idea of kids in orphanages, I guess an orphanage is the best place to indoctrinate kids in christian mythology and it is a bonus that the sinning parents are dead. Plus, I guess it gives Christians a chance to pretend that they are helping people and for some of them it gives them access to more victims.

I have been trying to follow bike racing and it is very confusing, but this guy sounds pretty good:

ROUBAIX, France (AFP) – Swiss Olympic time-trial champion Fabian Cancellara won the Paris-Roubaix one day classic cycling race on Sunday to complete a rare double of the Tour of Flanders and the Paris-Roubaix in the same season.

The 29-year-old – also the world time-trial champion and winning this event for the second time – is only the 10th rider to achieve the double and first since Belgian Tom Boonen in 2005.

The weird thing with bike racing is that it really is a team sport, at least when you get to races like the Tour De France, and it is hard to understand how that happens; for the really big races the team is just as important as the stars on it, but the stars, guys like Lance Armstrong and Alberto Contodor are the only one who gets recognition when they win.
This years tour De France is shaping up like an epic battle between Lance Armstrong and Alberto Contodor when it should perhaps be considered a battle between Astana and Radio Shack.

Texas dosen’t allow people to get home equity loans that exceed 80% of the homes appraised value, essentially they have mandated that you must strive for 20% equity in your home; as much as I make fun of Texas this might be a model for national mortgage rules.
This sort of rule encourages people to see a home as home first and not merely as a vehicle to finance an extravagant lifestyle.

As somebody who saw prom as a hassle I am uniquely ill suited to talk back about it, but…

A bunch of her classmates started a Facebook group called “Constance quit yer cryin” to ridicule her. The attitude of the students and parents who spoke up there was characterized less by overt homophobia than by a resentment of the effort, characterized as attention-grubbing and selfish, to upset local traditions and “force” the school to cancel the dance by demanding equal treatment. But then gay-friendly sites—including traffic behemoth Perez Hilton—began linking the group, bringing a tsunami of comments from people all over the world, in numbers vastly dwarfing the original membership. Almost all condemned the actions of the school and parents, and supported Constance. Not a few doled out their own hateful stereotypes, heaping scorn not just on the school, but on southerners or Christians on the whole, as inbred rednecks. Photos were posted, and much speculation ensued about which rack at Walmart various prom dresses had come off.

Contemplate how vertigo-inducing this must be. You’ve got a local community where a certain set of cultural norms is so dominant that it’s just seen as obvious and natural that a lesbian wouldn’t have an equal right to participate in prom—to the point where the overt hostility isn’t really directed at Constance’s sexuality so much as her bewildering insistence on messing with the way everyone knows things are supposed to be. They’re not attuned to the injustice because it seems like almost a fact of nature. Except they’re now flooded with undeniable evidence that a hell of a lot of people don’t see things that way, and even hold their community in contempt for seeing things that way. There have been thousands of “outside” posts in a handful of days, with more every minute.

One person who is different really sticks out in a small town, this might be an advantage to a good athlete or a good student, but if you are someone or something that people don’t approve of watchout.

Here is a link to the facebook page in case you are interested which I think was a pretty clear cut case of cyberbullying; especially the parents who posted on that site should be ashamed of themselves.

Christain mythology is not only dangerous it is incredibly mean spirited.

Steve Benen talks about the differences between left and right policy goals:

For the left, the goals relate to policy ends. We want to expand access to quality health care. We want to lower carbon emissions to combat global warming. We want to reform the lending process for student loans so more young people can afford to go to college. There are competing ways to get to where progressives want to go, but the focus is on the policy achievement.

So, to Krugman’s point, the liberal worldview is not about necessarily increasing the size of government or raising taxes; those mechanisms are only valuable insofar as they reach the desired end-point. Whether the government increases or shrinks in the process is largely irrelevant.

For the right, it’s backwards — the ideological goal is the achievement.

I think this happens because conservatism is mostly based on fiction by Ayn Rand and perhaps a misguided view that a strong government weakens the church; which given the number of scandals in churches may be a good thing. My main point though is that their is no proof that making government smaller does anything for anyone and in fact most places with weak central government are not real nice, I am thinking Haiti, Somalia and Sudan. But magicaly good things are supposed to happen if we just lower taxes and end regulation, hasn’t happened yet and no matter how hard we wish for good things it wont happen in the future either.

Probably not in a good way, but this certainly is interesting.

According to Dr David Holmes, a psychologist at Manchester Metropolitan University, women are having more affairs than ever – recent studies say the figure is around 20 per cent for men and a bit over 15 per cent for women – but they behave very differently from men when they cheat.
‘The biggest difference is that women are much better at keeping their affairs secret,’ he says. ‘If you look at the studies into paternity, even conservative figures show that between eight and 15 per cent of children haven’t been fathered by the man who thinks he’s the biological parent.’

Cheating is something a lot of people do and maybe as a society we need to chillout about it.

Ok, I will admit without any available facts I am pretty much just taking a page out of the FOX playbook, but…

Update: I guess I should admit this looks like it was probably gang related violence, but I would be willing to bet all the perpretraters were probably Christians.

Looks like Nissan is going to build an electric car for the masses.. The Nissan Leaf will have a range of 100 miles on a charge, which seems ample for most commutes. I wonder how many people will try to plug-in at work and pass all their commuting expenses on to their employer.

From Matt Yglesias:

This is how the political right operates—there’s a lot of rhetoric about free markets, and a lot of institutions that are staffed by people who very sincerely believe in free markets, but no real organized political movement on behalf of free markets except insofar as market-talk bolsters Republican Party electoral fortunes or rich people’s desire to pay lower taxes.

I think most fifteen-year-olds who read Ayn Rand really believe in the market based economy, they also think they are going to be the next John Galt, but for most everyone else it is just an excuse not to pay taxes.

Ok, not really but at least she is sort of using her celebrity for something worth while:

Can you say “strange bedfellows”? Octuplets mother Nadya Suleman, whose financial troubles have been well-documented, has accepted an offer from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals: $5,000 and a month’s supply of vegan hot dogs and hamburger patties for her family of 15 in exchange for allowing the animal-rights group to place an ad on her lawn.

The ad — which, in light of Suleman’s status as a paparazzi magnet, is likely to attract a lot of eyeballs — makes light of the mother of 14’s “Octomom” nickname. “Don’t let your dog or cat become an ‘octomom’,” it reads, “Always spay or neuter. PETA.” Pictured beside the text is a mother cat nursing a litter of young kittens.

If I had any money I might try to get her to put up a sign regarding vasectomy’s.

The Hutaree militia was hoping to kill police officers in preparation for the end of days:

Conventional militia organizations are racing to distance themselves from the Hutaree — the Christian-based militia whose members were charged yesterday with conspiring to kill law enforcement as part of their preparation for the coming battle with the Anti-Christ. But that may be a tall order.

Appearing on CNN this morning, Michael Lackomar, a member of the Southeast Michigan Volunteer Militia, called the Hutaree — also primarily based in Michigan — “really a fringe group outside of anything we do.”

“They’re more of a private army or a terrorist organization or really just a criminal organization,’ said Lackomar. He added that some of the Hutaree had sought refuge over the weekend with members of his group, who advised the Hutaree to turn themselves in.

But Mark Potok, the executive director of the Southern Poverty law Center, which tracks extremist groups, told TPMmuckraker that the Hutaree fit comfortably within the broader militia movement.

“The Hutaree were apparently ensconced right smack in the middle of the militia movement,” said Potok.

Potok explained that the more secular militia groups foresee an impending catastrophe in the form of the federal government confiscating weapons, imposing martial law, and herding those who resist into concentration camps. Ultimately, he said, they fear that the U.S. will be subsumed into a socialistic “One World Order,” under supra-national bodies like the U.N. or the EU.

Most militia members seem to have a foundation in Christian mythology which they then translate in violence against society, I think that trying to believe in things that are demonstratably false must lead people to violence.

Is their anything farmers don’t whine about?

And, most Tea partiers are unemployed so at least they have lots of free time to be idiots. Essentially the tea partiers are mad that government isn’t helping them, of course they bitch about it everytime anyone tries to do something that might help them out, because the government program might also help brown people.

Some smart people are not impressed with the bill passed last night:

So Healthcare reform has passed, a month or two ago it looked dead, but Obama and Co brought it back. I think later people will understand that obama’s best attribute is his persistance and steadyness. The White house lost the news cycle many days in a row, but in the end we have healthcare reform.

This sort of reminds me of the election where McCain spent all his time trying to win the newscycle and eventually lost the election because he seemed like a contestant on a reality show. The Republicans would probably win on survivor or dancng with the stars, but fortunately they lost at thier job, and as a result the rest of us won.

Update: What others are saying about Healthcare passage:

Now that it’s done, Barack Obama will go down in history as one of America’s finest presidents. It’s always possible of course that, like LBJ, he’ll get involved in some unrelated fiasco that mars his reputation. But fundamentally, he’s reshaped the policy landscape in a way that no progressive politician has done in decades.

Under the circumstances, it’s in some ways crazy to realize the scope of things still on the congress’ plate. The House has already passed major legislation dealing with climate change and financial regulation, and the president is also committed to significant reform of K-12 education and the immigration system.

Anyone out there watching Caprica? When Zoe shot the dog I. Thought I was going to have to stop watching the show, but I guess all is well.
Anytime you worship one all knowing being things are bound to go badly.

One person tries to stop popular legislation and he can’t figure out why people are mad at him. I might have to scrounge up a few bucks to send to Bart Stupak’s primary challenger.

I know someone is probably going to argue that Stupak was just sticking to his principles, whatever those are, but if he really is pro-life as he claims, denying health-care to millions is not partof his principles. My guess is that he thought it would fun to be the center of attention, and bashing women and poor people is generally a no-lose situation for a politician; here is hoping it becomes a loser move for Mr Stupak.

I enjoy watching self righteous pricks get their comeuppance as much as anyone but this did happen twenty-five years ago, maybe he deserves a break.

House Majority Leader Kevin Garn announced Saturday he was resigning from the Utah Legislature, two days after revelations of a nude hot-tubbing incident with a minor 25 years ago and a payment to keep it quiet.

“After discussing this matter with my family, I have decided that it is in the best interests of them, my colleagues and the people of Utah,” Garn said in his letter of resignation, submitted to House Speaker David Clark, R-Santa Clara, Saturday morning.

Cheryl Maher, who was the teen in the hot tub with Garn in 1985, said she has felt “a lot of peace” since coming forward with her story.

“I hope Kevin knows I never meant to hurt anyone, but the truth had to come out,” she said Saturday morning in a phone interview from her New Hampshire home. By working with women in crisis or the mentally ill “he can turn this thing around to something positive. … He could really help a lot of people,” she said.

Looks like someone else picked up on the prostate overtreatment issue:

A kind of odd piece of conventional wisdom has hardened that it’s dishonest of Barack Obama or Matt Yglesias or anyone else to suggest that there are some free lunches to be had in the realm of health reform. I think it’s clear that you can’t do public policy on a major issue entirely with free lunches, but realistically the policy realm is full of low-hanging fruit and free lunches. The only reason to think it wouldn’t be would be an odd assumption that we reached near-optimal policy on all topics sometime around 2007.

In the health care domain, in particular, a mix of weak science, bad economic incentives, and poor mathematical understanding leads to a fair amount of over-treatment. And over-treatment for cancer isn’t just an issue of spending money that didn’t need to be spent—treatment for prostate cancer normally has very unpleasant side effects and it’s really cruel to inflict it on men who don’t actually need the treatment. And as far as cancers go, that’s totally typical. Reducing over-screening and over-treatment would probably save money (though it’s always hard to know what the long-term impact will be since everyone eventually gets sick and dies) and will definitely spare patients a lot of pain and suffering. (bolding mine)

What is really difficult to deal with is the anger one faces when they suggest that a procedure may be too much, or that the science behind a procedure is not completely sound.

The free lunch crowd seems to have decided that medical procedures don’t have trade-offs both in terms of costs and health outcomes so any suggestion that a procedure is not needed will usually be met with anger. Think back to when a few groups were suggesting that people could skip a few mammograms. As long as we continue to view health care as a commodity that should be consumed like any other commodity, that is to consume as much as possible, the U.S will have problems with our health-care system.

I would love to talk more about this but this weekend is shaping up to be awfully busy but if you are a guy reading this might save you years of incontinence and impotence.

EACH year some 30 million American men undergo testing for prostate-specific antigen, an enzyme made by the prostate. Approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 1994, the P.S.A. test is the most commonly used tool for detecting prostate cancer.

The test’s popularity has led to a hugely expensive public health disaster. It’s an issue I am painfully familiar with — I discovered P.S.A. in 1970. As Congress searches for ways to cut costs in our health care system, a significant savings could come from changing the way the antigen is used to screen for prostate cancer.

This op-ed has a little more credibility than some given the author helped think up this test he has no incentive to lie about it.

Prostate cancer may get a lot of press, but consider the numbers: American men have a 16 percent lifetime chance of receiving a diagnosis of prostate cancer, but only a 3 percent chance of dying from it. That’s because the majority of prostate cancers grow slowly. In other words, men lucky enough to reach old age are much more likely to die with prostate cancer than to die of it.

Even then, the test is hardly more effective than a coin toss. As I’ve been trying to make clear for many years now, P.S.A. testing can’t detect prostate cancer and, more important, it can’t distinguish between the two types of prostate cancer — the one that will kill you and the one that won’t.

The entire op-ed is worth reading just for the way it outlines how hard it is to stop doctors from prescribing a medical procedure even when it is shown to be innefective and in some cases dangerous.

From Oprah.com:

You don’t need NFL training to hurl a pizza across a New York City apartment. I found this out as I ducked to avoid my husband’s dinner (he didn’t fling it at me, he claims). “They folded the slices,” he bellowed. “Ruined.” I bit my tongue hard — but not, unfortunately, before “Did you lose your nappies?” slipped out (nappies being what they call diapers in England, which is where he’s from and where, at this point, I was wishing he had stayed). Big mistake. He went off like a car alarm, the honk-honk-beeeep-honk of his tirade so familiar, I’d long since learned to tune it out by doing guided imagery

What is guided imagery?

Freedom beckons intoxicatingly, but then I wonder if my expectations aren’t unrealistic — whether I’ve got the makings of a good marriage but am foolishly holding out for perfect. Paul Amato, Ph.D., professor of sociology, demography, and family studies at Penn State, conducted a 20-year study on 2,000 subjects who started off married, and says 55 to 60 percent of divorcing couples discard unions with real potential.

At the point when someone is throwing a pizza around the house, possibly at you, I think you can safely say the marriage is broken. One of the many issues that got lost in the Tiger Woods saga was the domestic violence, if you have ever been with someone that would come after you with a golf-club(which I have) the the temptation to cheat just to be around someody normal is pretty high; and normal can just mean somebody who isn’t violent.
The obsession with staying in bad marriages seems to be an outgrowth of our child worshipping culture where couples think they should stay together for the children. I doubt keeping children in a situation where they get to observe adults acting in a violent or childish manner all their lives is good for them, and it certainly isn’t good for the adults in the family either.

Republicans are trying to goad Democrats into making a big mistake and really that has been the Republican strategy from the beginning, keep Democrats from enacting a very popular peice of legislationa and then run on the idea that Democrats can’t get anything done.

The only drama left in the health-care debate is whether or not Democrats will fall for it or not.

The New York Times profiles one of the tea bag leaders and she seems a little unsure of what needs to be done.

Ms. Carender is less certain when it comes to explaining, for instance, how to cut the deficit without cutting Medicaid and Medicare.

“Well,” she said, thinking for a long time and then sighing. “Let’s see. Some days I’m very Randian. I feel like there shouldn’t be any of those programs, that it should all be charitable organizations. Sometimes I think, well, maybe it really should be just state, and there should be no federal part in it at all. I bounce around in my solutions to the problem.”

The tea bag movement seems to be filled with people that don’t want to pay taxes but they don’t want to cut services either; in their most ignorant form the tea baggers believe that if we just give enough to the mighty corporations they will take care of the people.
Given that the movement is based on fictional books it is not surprising that they are incredibly unrealistic and really don’t have anything to offer to the discussion but a few racist rants and threats of terrorism.

HAT TIP pandagon

The family of Bin Laden wannabe Joe Stack speaks, and they are pretty disgusting.

FOX news sort of gets something right:

This week, a couple of conservative hosts on the Fox Business Channel seemed deeply concerned about premium rate hikes from California’s Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield. They weren’t troubled by what the increases would mean for consumers — they were concerned that the increased burden on Americans might make health care reform more likely to happen.

I can’t decide if insurance companies are just that arrogant to think no one would notice a huge rate increase after a year of record profits; or if they really want some pieces of reform to pass. Hopefully this will lead to a robust public option but I am somewhat skeptical.

Every time I try to watch the Olympics it is either Curling, or Hockey, which is really just Curling with pads. What happened to ski-racing and snowboarding? You know real sports.

Over the past few years, I would say one of the few good decisions I have made was to buy a home, but it would seem I am in the minority. It would be great to see some of the failed suburbs and exurbs returned to agricultural uses, it might even help reverse climate change.

This sure looks like a map of the 2008 election.

I wonder if insurance companies, deep down, want health reform to pass.

And, if someone would just give me my own half-pipe I could win the gold.
Update: the half-pipe is next to Silverton Mountain not Copper mountain as some people have been saying. I could totally see Silverton being the next Aspen.