Killers making living off of killing.

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Natalie Portman on Eating Animals, book by Jonathan Safran Foer

I truly love Natalie Portman. She is exquisite and a great actress. Her SNL rap is my favorite response when ever some conservative gets vicious and sends me a nasty message to something I might have tweeted. I just tweet the link to them and say "these are my sentiments to you." I never hear back from them again. I linked the x-rated version, no wonder.
By Natalie Portman at Huffington Post

Jonathan Safran Foer's book Eating Animals changed me from a twenty-year vegetarian to a vegan activist. I've always been shy about being critical of others' choices because I hate when people do that to me. I'm often interrogated about being vegetarian (e.g., "What if you find out that carrots feel pain, too? Then what'll you eat?").
I've also been afraid to feel as if I know better than someone else -- a historically dangerous stance (I'm often reminded that "Hitler was a vegetarian, too, you know"). But this book reminded me that some things are just wrong. Perhaps others disagree with me that animals have personalities, but the highly documented torture of animals is unacceptable, and the human cost Foer describes in his book, of which I was previously unaware, is universally compelling.
The human cost of factory farming -- both the compromised welfare of slaughterhouse workers and, even more, the environmental effects of the mass production of animals -- is staggering. Foer details the copious amounts of pig shit sprayed into the air that result in great spikes in human respiratory ailments, the development of new bacterial strains due to overuse of antibiotics on farmed animals, and the origins of the swine flu epidemic, whose story has gripped the nation, in factory farms.
I read the chapter on animal shit aloud to two friends -- one is from Iowa and has asthma and the other is a North Carolinian who couldn't eat fish from her local river because animal waste had been dumped in it as described in the book. They had never truly thought about the connection between their environmental conditions and their food. The story of the mass farming of animals had more impact on them when they realized it had ruined their own backyards.
But what Foer most bravely details is how eating animal pollutes not only our backyards, but also our beliefs. He reminds us that our food is symbolic of what we believe in, and that eating is how we demonstrate to ourselves and to others our beliefs: Catholics take communion -- in which food and drink represent body and blood. Jews use salty water on Passover to remind them of the slaves' bitter tears. And on Thanksgiving, Americans use succotash and slaughter to tell our own creation myth -- how the Pilgrims learned from Native Americans to harvest this land and make it their own.
Read her entire article: here.

Wall Street's Naked Swindle

By Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi
A scheme to flood the market with counterfeit stocks helped kill Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers — and the feds have yet to bust the culprits
Short-Selling Vs. Naked Short-Selling: An Explanation

Symphony of Science "We are all connected." I find this comforting.

My daughter Melody's Birthday is today, Oct. 16th

The first picture is of Melody at 8 years old, the second picture is from an ad that appeared in Philadelphia Magazine where she was once made the cover. I only wish I that that photo digitized . The third photo was taken for an ad campaign to promote my chocolate brownie business, Bonnie's Brownies. I scanned a transparancey shot so it is not clear and sharp. I am and have always been so proud of her. She made my life worth living. Such a wonderful daughter, so kind. generous and giving, volunteering her time when she isn't working to her son's school, their small church and too many other projects to name.
She, her son and husband are all ham radio operators plus amateur astronomers, They recently decided to become Bee Keepers and she treats the bees like pets. She worked for Intel Corp for fifteen years and was a highly valued employee who constantly met goals and surpassed them, winning prizes.
When growing up she grew to be 6'1" by 11 years old while I was a mere 5'10 3/4". She had to put up with a mother who worked as a secretary for a steady paycheck and was a model on the side commuting to NY for a few years.

Today is Climate Change Day & Stop Rainforest Deforestation

EPA Releases Bush Administration’s Endangerment Document
Greenhouse Gases Reached Dangerous Tipping Point a Full Ten Years Ahead of Expectations.
Texas heavy industries worry about EPA crackdown
The Rainforest Alliance works to conserve biodiversity and ensure sustainable livelihoods by transforming land-use practices, business practices and consumer behavior.
Rahall, Capito question EPA Administrator on mountaintop removal
Secret to Slowing Global Warming Lies Beneath the Waves

Thirty Republicans

Tney voted against punishing Haliburton employees who raped a fellow female employee. They wanted to deny her justice. Suppose it had been their daughter or close relative?

The Audacity of Greed

How Private Health Insurers just blew their cover
By Robert Reich

Insurance companies say the Senate healthcare bill will force them to raise premiums. Time to call their bluff.
Background: The industry hates the idea that's emerged from the Senate Finance Committee of lowering penalties on younger and healthier people who don't buy insurance. Relying on an analysis by PricewaterhouseCoopers, insurers say this means new enrollees will be older and less healthy -- which will drive up costs. And, says the industry, these costs will be passed on to consumers in the form of higher premiums. Proposed taxes on high-priced "Cadillac" policies will also be passed on to consumers. As a result, premiums will rise faster and higher than the government projects.
It's an 11th-hour bombshell.
But the bomb went off under the insurers. The only reason these costs can be passed on to consumers in the form of higher premiums is because there's not enough competition among private insurers to force them to absorb the costs by becoming more efficient. Get it? Health insurers have just made the best argument yet about why a public insurance option is necessary.
Read it here.

Our great President Barack Obama got what he deserved.

Obama’s Nobel Honors His Dignitarian Politics
by Robert Fuller

Some will say that Barack Obama’s Nobel Prize is premature. "What has he done?" they’ll ask.
Obama got the prize not for doing, but for being. Not for making peace, but for exemplifying something new on the world stage--the politics of dignity.
he Nobel Committee has simply made explicit what many have sensed. President Obama is the herald of dignitarian politics. Not libertarian, not egalitarian, but dignitarian.
Dignitarian politics represents a modern synthesis of libertarian and egalitarian politics. War between these two battle-scarred, exhausted ideologies shaped both national and international politics throughout the twentieth century. Obama is the first politician of world stature to identify and model an alternative that can meet the challenges of the twenty-first. Awarding him the Nobel Prize is an expression of the hope that our best chance for world peace lies in the dignitarian politics of which Obama is an exemplar. This excellent article can be read here.

Keith Olbermann's Special Comment on Healthcare - The Fight Over Death

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