2 million Wisconsin citizens demand Walker’s removal

Image courtesy of WKOW.com, Madison, WI.

John Nichols at the Nation tells the story of democracy at work in Wisconsin:

What does democracy look like? How about this: a governor, swept into office on the GOP wave of 2010 with a financial assist from the billionaire Koch brothers, pivots immediately from moderate talk about job creation to radical austerity that divides his state more than any in the Union. He attacks the collective bargaining rights of public workers and teachers. When hundreds of thousands of citizens rally to oppose his agenda, the governor and his allies respond by attempting to bar protests in the Capitol. They reject their state’s tradition of open and transparent government, dismiss criticisms from the opposition—even from moderates in their own party—and begin gerrymandering districts and changing election rules, actions Common Cause and the League of Women Voters recognize as assaults on voting rights. Faced with a serious threat to basic rights and democracy, citizens organize a grassroots campaign to recall and remove the governor, the lieutenant governor, the State Senate majority leader and key legislators.

The task is daunting: it requires collecting more than a million signatures in the dead of winter, and it must overcome a multimillion-dollar attack campaign, along with daily condemnations from local, state and national talk-radio and the Fox News echo chamber. Yet in villages and inner-city neighborhoods, grandmothers with clipboards and high school seniors engaging for the first time in politics brave the snow and cold. They put up with catcalls from Rush Limbaugh listeners who have been instructed that they are nothing but “union stooges.” On the day the documents are due, the people march to the state elections office with brass bands, banners and petitions bearing almost
2 million names—the largest portion of a state’s population ever to demand the removal of a governor and his lieutenants.

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What’s the difference between normal grief and depression?

Photo credits: Public domain.

About 20 years ago, I was pastor of two small United Church of Christ congregations in northwestern Pennsylvania. 

Shortly after one of my parishioners, a retiree, died of cancer, his wife came to visit me. She told me that her doctor had offered to prescribe an antidepressant for her. 

She said, “It made me angry. I told him my grief was normal, and I didn’t want any drugs.”

I applauded her decision.

The headline for Allen Frances’s post, Don’t Confuse Grief with Depression, caught my eye this morning. Frances, Professor Emeritus of Duke University, supports the attitude demonstrated by my grieving parishioner with his strong opposition to a proposal that would transform grief into a depressive disorder.

Frances writes:

A front page story by Ben Carey in January 24th's New York Times carries the poetic title: 'When does a broken heart become a diagnosis?' It describes a puzzling proposal by D.S.M. 5 to transform what is now considered normal grief into Major Depressive Disorder. 

D.S.M. IV already recognizes that some people respond to loss with severe problems that warrant immediate attention. It therefore encourages the diagnosis of major depression whenever bereavement is persistent or is associated with severe, impairing, delusional, or suicidal symptoms. D.S.M. IV thus makes a crucial distinction between the transient pain of expectable grief and the severe and/or persistent symptoms of major depression. D.S.M. 5 proposes to eliminate this distinction. It would allow the diagnosis of major depressive disorder after only two weeks of fairly mild symptoms.

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Protect our endangered wolves from aerial killing

Jamie Rappaport Clark, president of Defenders of Wildlife, has some breaking news for all of us:

Yesterday, the Idaho Department of Fish and Game confirmed the state is moving forward as soon as weather permits with plans to have the federal Wildlife Services agency kill as many as two thirds of the wolves in the Lolo District of Clearwater National Forest – possibly leaving only 25 or 30 wolves in the district in a misguided attempt to increase elk numbers for hunter harvest.

Help us stop the killing. Please donate now to support our all-out campaign to stop this ill-conceived and unscientific wolf cull.

The killing could begin within days, when snowfall and a break in the storm in the area will make it easier for federal agents in helicopters to find, target and kill wolves in this wild area of Northeastern Idaho.

According to the Idaho Department of Fish and Game director, if Wildlife Services -- the federal agency charged with the killing -- is allowed to move forward with this plan, the state hopes to expand the use of federal dollars and aerial culling to other national forests in Idaho. 

The Obama Administration has not yet indicated how it will respond to Idaho’s request to use federal money and staff to kill these wolves on federal lands, or why it would be justified in doing so since these wolves are on federal lands and not in major conflict with livestock.

That’s why today Defenders is launching a new comprehensive campaign to stop aerial wolf killing in the Lolo District and help ensure an interconnected, sustainable population of these ecologically important animals remain in the region.

Donate now to help stop the killing and save the lives of wolves.

In the next week – with your help –we will launch an outreach plan to make more people aware of this plan, including in media outlets locally and across the country.

We’ll put pressure on federal officials to not participate in Idaho’s unjustified wolf killing plan, including Secretary Tom Vilsack (who oversees the agency that would execute the wolf killing plan in the Lolo District) and President Obama. And we’ll continue to work with ranchers to reduce conflicts with wolves, saving the lives of these amazing and important animals.

This will be a difficult fight, but I believe that our efforts can prevail – with your help. Please donate now to support efforts to save Idaho wolves and other imperiled wildlife.

To support our vital advocacy efforts in the coming days we need to raise at least $50,000 by Monday. Will you help?

The aerial wolf killing plan is not the only new threat to wolves in Idaho.

The Idaho Fish and Game Commission is reportedly investigating the possibility of no limits on people killing wolves on private land, similar to practices in Alberta and British Columbia, Canada, where wolves are far more numerous.

And the chairman of the Idaho Fish and Game Commission even indicated that the state may reclassify wolves as predators under state law – effectively engaging a shoot-on-sight plan similar to Wyoming’s awful plan.

The state reports that pack sizes are down. It also appears that young, less experienced wolves have been the most likely to be killed under Idaho’s wolf plan.

We need to restore science to wolf management in Idaho, and Defenders needs your help to do it. Please donate whatever you can to support our work now.  

With Gratitude,

Jamie Rappaport Clark President Defenders of Wildlife

P.S. Please make a secure donation online now, so we can put your contribution to immediate use saving wolves and other wildlife. Or, you can donate by phone by calling 1-800-385-9712.

Elizabeth Warren stands for the middleclass on the Daily Show (video)

Here's Elizabeth standing up for all of us on the Daily Show:

The Daily Show
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The Daily Show
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Highlights of Obama’s State of the Union Speech (video)

Rocky Anderson Third Party Candidate (video)

Rocky Anderson

Cross posted from LadyBoomerNYC.wordpress.com

by LadyBoomerNYC

Rocky Anderson appeared on MSNBC’s Dylan Ratigan Show on January 17, 2012 and gave a great interview and raison d’etre for his candidacy and The Justice Party. This former two-time mayor of Salt Lake City tells it like it is “about the corrupting influence of money in our government” and his ideas about how to change the system. He makes the point for a spoiler candidate–why just move the players around on the chessboard? This guy makes sense!

« Rocky Anderson for President!

Go to www.voterocky.org and show them some love. Do what you can to get the word out, donate, and get this third party going.

“In this day and age, where the Democrat and Republican parties are no longer the voice of Main Street, but the puppets of Wall Street, it is natural that a Third Party should appear to champion the traditionally conservative proposition that the Constitution is the blueprint for the operation of the government of the United States.” —Gatewood Galbraith (1947-January 18, 2012) in a stump speech during his 2000 congressional race

The behind the scenes ruthlessness of the “hope and change” candidate in 08

Obama and Clinton. (photo credit: public domain.)

In his piece in the New Yorker, Ryan Lizza clearly is not out to get Barack Obama. For the most part, Lizza offers balanced coverage of the soon to be president and his first term in office. Occasionally, the savvy reporter bends over backwards to praise Obama in his continued efforts to grasp the difference between campaigning and governing.

It’s a long article that gets tedious at times, but when Lizza exposes the Obama campaign’s deliberate strategy to attack Hillary Clinton by smearing her character rather than debating her policy positions, any civilized person has to recoil in shock.  Recall as you read the paragraphs below that Obama presented himself as the one who would rise above politics and unite the country; whereas, Hillary Clinton would be too polarizing:

(We’re still waiting for that united country, Mr. President.)

Another hard-edged decision helped make him {Obama} the Democratic Presidential nominee. In early October, 2007, David Axelrod and Obama’s other political consultants wrote the candidate a memo explaining how he could repair his floundering campaign against Hillary Clinton. They advised him to attack her personally, presenting a difficult choice for Obama. He had spent years building a reputation as a reformer who deplored the nasty side of politics, and now, he was told, he had to put that aside. Obama’s strategists wrote that all campaign communications, even the slogan—“Change We Can Believe In”—had to emphasize distinctions with Clinton on character rather than on policy. The slogan “was intended to frame the argument along the character fault line, and this is where we can and must win this fight,” the memo said. “Clinton can’t be trusted or believed when it comes to change,” because “she’s driven by political calculation not conviction, regularly backing away and shifting positions. . . . She embodies trench warfare vs. Republicans, and is consumed with beating them rather than unifying the country and building consensus to get things done. She prides herself on working the system, not changing it.” The “current goal,” the memo continued, was to define Obama as “the only authentic ‘remedy’ to what ails Washington and stands in the way of progress.”

Obama’s message promised voters, in what his aides called “the inspiration,” that “Barack Obama will end the divisive trench warfare that treats politics as a game and will lead Americans to come together to restore our common purpose.” Clinton was too polarizing to get anything done: “It may not be her fault, but Americans have deeply divided feelings about Hillary Clinton, threatening a Democratic victory in 2008 and insuring another four years of the bitter political battles that have plagued Washington for the last two decades and stymied progress.”

Neera Tanden was the policy director for Clinton’s campaign. When Clinton lost the Democratic race, Tanden became the director of domestic policy for Obama’s general-election campaign, and then a senior official working on health care in his Administration. She is now the president of the liberal Center for American Progress, perhaps the most important institution in Democratic politics. “It was a character attack,” Tanden said recently, speaking about the Obama campaign against Clinton. “I went over to Obama, I’m a big supporter of the President, but their campaign was entirely a character attack on Hillary as a liar and untrustworthy. It wasn’t an ‘issue contrast,’ it was entirely personal.” And, of course, it worked.

And it’s still working, Neera. Any mention in the blogosphere of Hillary’s current popularity compared to Obama’s humiliating poll numbers, brings out Obamaphiles regurgitating the same character attacks against her.

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