cassandra_m

"You don't make progress by standing on the sidelines, whimpering and complaining. You make progress by implementing ideas." -Shirley Chisholm

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cassandra_m's Latest Posts

Late Night Video –The Drive to Ban Divorce in California

Filed in National by on January 6, 2010 1 Comment

Speaks for itself!

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The Good News and the Bad News of Senator Dodd’s Retirement

Filed in National by on January 6, 2010 13 Comments

The Good:

With AG Blumenthal in, this seat is definitely safer for Democrats. Public Policy Polling had a poll in the field this week and the results are quite good for Blumenthal:

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The Casino Report Is In

Filed in Delaware by on January 6, 2010 3 Comments

And apparently lots of people are not happy about this result. The NJ has the story.

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Senator Dorgan (D-ND) Retiring

Filed in National by on January 5, 2010 24 Comments

Via the WaPo — Senator Byron Dorgan announced today that he would be retiring at the end of his term:
North Dakota Democratic Sen. Byron Dorgan will not run for re-election later this year, creating a major pickup opportunity for Republicans.

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Ammonia in Your Beef

Filed in National by on January 5, 2010 23 Comments
Ammonia in Your Beef

And this isn’t even a story about Chinese made or processed goods.

Via the NYT — Beef trimmings were often sent off to be made into cooking oil or into pet food because the trimmings had a high risk of E. coli, salmonella and other food pathogens. A company called Beef Products, though, found a way around this — by treating this beef (gassing it basically) with ammonia. This ammoniated beef is then sold to school lunch programs and McDonalds and other processors where it is used as an extender product.

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Delaware and 10 Northeast and Mid-Atlantic States in Pact to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Fuels

Filed in National by on January 5, 2010 0 Comments

This was announced on 12/30 — sorry for the delay is seeing this! You can see the entire Press Release here. The key info:

Gov. Jack Markell joined the governors of 10 other Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states today in announcing a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) among the states that underscores their commitment toward developing a regional Low Carbon Fuel Standard in a regional effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from fuels for vehicles and other uses.

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More Security Checks and the Race to Whole Body Screening

Filed in National by on January 4, 2010 12 Comments

New security rules have been implemented for people coming to the US from certain countries:

But American citizens, and most others who are not flying through those 14 nations on their way to the United States, will no longer automatically face the full range of intensified security that was imposed after the attempted bombing of a Northwest Airlines flight, officials said.

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2009: The Year in Right Wing Buffoons, Racists, Misogynists, Homophobes and All-Around Idiots

Filed in National by on January 3, 2010 1 Comment

That is the title of this blog post from Ron Reagan’s Air America blog. I never get to to hear Ron Regan’s show, but he can be very good of even pretty wonky topics. So it was fun to hear him have on at the expense of wingnut buffoonery this past year.

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The Aughts Were A Lost Decade — Part II

Filed in National by on January 3, 2010 2 Comments

Bloomberg notes that even though the 2009 stock market rally was pretty remarkable, it did not save investors from the single worst decade of returns. And that is the single worst since they’ve been collecting data:

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New Year Resolutions

Filed in National by on January 2, 2010 1 Comment

A link to The Happiness Project was sent to me by a friend, and the author — Gretchen Rubin — has one of the better approaches I’ve read for crafting New Year’s resolutions that you’ll keep:

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A Modest Proposal for the Media

Filed in National by on December 29, 2009 6 Comments

One of my favorite media critics/scholars is Jay Rosen who has a proposal for fixing the mess that is the Sunday talk shows:

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This Can’t Be Right

Filed in National by on December 28, 2009 85 Comments

The Obama Administration asked for funds to buy a prison in Illinois to transfer Gitmo prisoners to: Rebuffed this month by skeptical lawmakers when it sought finances to buy a prison in rural Illinois, the Obama administration is struggling to come up with the money to replace the Guantánamo Bay prison. As a result, officials […]

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Teabaggers Target Corporate America

Filed in National by on December 28, 2009 9 Comments

Yep, you heard that right — the teabaggers are trying to organize a “National Day of Strike” for January 20, the first anniversary of Obama’s inauguration: The goal of the strike, according to the website where it’s being planned, is to “financially cripple” the companies across America the group says are “backing the leftist agenda” […]

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