The Outrageousness of Alabama and Today's Republican Party

After that abortion bill in Alabama this week, man. What can you say?

As if Donald Trump and his Senate weren't bad enough, now this.

The Republican Party and Right Wing are now, as of this week,on an all out war on women and women's rights.

What's next? Take away their right to vote? Don't let them own property any longer? Make sure they can't get an education? It's not that outside the realm of possibility, it wouldn't seem. Remember this?

Senate Republicans reject equal pay bill

They did that in 2014. Voted down equal pay for women. Really.

They are only consistent.

Instead of working on denying women's abortion rights, you'd think the Alabama legislators would work on poverty in the state, wouldn't you?

ALABAMA HAS THE WORST POVERTY IN THE DEVELOPED WORLD, U.N. OFFICIAL SAYS

But no. Instead, all these white, old government representatives work on this.

Staunch as they are against abortion and abortion rights, you'd think they'd come down squarely for sex education, right? Wouldn't you think?

Republican Lawmakers Approve Ban On Sex Ed Funding

Mind you, that example is only Iowa but still, it's indicative of the party's stance.

And contraceptives? To fight those abortions?

Republicans Cut Contraceptives for Women

Nah...

And then there's "day after" pills so, again, there would be fewer abortions or possibility of abortions...  Right?

Republicans Cut Contraceptives for Women

Again, no.

And we, here in Missouri, no better. This week, voting for a bill to effectively ban abortions.

Missouri's House passes bill 

banning abortions at 8 weeks

Of course, when you have yet one more Republican, still, in 2019, saying things supporting "consensual rape", what can you say? It makes clear their collective ignorance and callousness.

GOP Mo. Lawmaker Apologizes for 'Consensual Rape' Remark

Missouri's Governor declared "All life has value."  "All life has value" from the political party that lost 1475 children, keeping them from their parents at the southern border. 

Suddenly, "all life has value."  That sounds conspicuously like "Black Lives Matter", doesn't it? But they were vehemently, publicly against that claim at the time. 

Meanwhile, the Republican Party announced their official slogan for the 2020 election campaign.

Darn near actual.

God help us.

Links:

Morning-After Pills Don't Cause Abortion, Studies Say

Contraception Is Not Abortion

Did Republicans Actually Say These Things About Rape?

An Important, If Also Brief, History Lesson All Americans Need

I do wish all adult Americans and, yes, all our schoolchildren, too, would read the brief article from today's New York Times from their editorial board.

When Southern Newspapers 

Justified Lynching

It is stunning.

So with that thought and hope, here it is in its entirety:

The white Southern press played a role in the racial terrorism of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, which saw thousands of African-Americans hanged, burned, drowned or beaten to death by white mobs.

The Arkansas lynch mob that burned a black tenant farmer at the stake in 1921 observed common practice when it advertised the killing in advance so spectators could mark the grisly event on their calendars. The organizers notified newspapers early in the day that they planned to kill Henry Lowery as painfully as possible, giving editors time to produce special editions that provided the time, place and gruesome particulars of the death to come.

Historians have paid scant attention to the role that the white Southern press played in the racial terrorism of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, which saw thousands of African-Americans hanged, burned, drowned or beaten to death by white mobs. This issue surfaced in dramatic fashion recently when the nearly two-centuries-old Montgomery Advertiser printed a front-page editorial apologizing for lynching coverage that dehumanized black victims. The apology coincided with the recent opening in Montgomery, Ala., of a memorial to lynching victims, and it sets the stage for a timely discussion of a deeply dishonorable period in Southern press history.

The bloody celebration at which 500 jeering spectators saw Henry Lowery burned to ashes was held at Nodena, Ark., on Jan. 26, 1921. Among those in attendance was a reporter for The Memphis Press whose story — under the headline “Kill Negro by Inches” — validated the barbaric proceedings and cataloged the victim’s suffering in lurid detail, noting that Lowery remained stoically silent “even after the flesh had dropped away from his legs and the flames were leaping toward his face.”

Lowery had been charged with a wanton act of murder for killing his white landlord and the landlord’s adult daughter. The renowned lynching investigator Walter White later reported that Lowery had drawn a pistol only after being shot by the landlord’s son and physically attacked by the landlord himself in a dispute over wages. In the eyes of the lynching state — where an African-American could be put to death on a white person’s whim — the impulse toward self-defense was often viewed as a crime when it came with a black face.

Newspapers even bragged about the roles they had played in arranging particularly spectacular lynchings. But the real damage was done in terse, workaday stories that justified lynching by casting its victims as “fiends,” “brutes,” “born criminals” or, that catchall favorite, “troublesome Negroes.” The narrative that tied blackness inextricably to criminality — and to the death penalty — survived the lynching era and lives on to this day.

The Montgomery Advertiser was historically opposed to lynching. Nevertheless, when its current staff scrutinized the paper’s lynching-era coverage, they concluded that it had conveniently opposed lynching in the abstract while responding with indifference to its bloody, real-world consequences. The editors found that the paper too often presumed without proof that lynching victims were guilty and that, in doing so, it advanced the aims of white supremacist rule.

That description applies broadly to the Jim Crow-era South, where even newspapers that were viewed as liberal replicated the apartheid state within their pages — by separating news and birth announcements by race, by rendering law-abiding black people invisible and especially by denying African-Americans the courtesy titles Mr. and Mrs. This humiliating practice was meant to illustrate the impossibility of racial equality. It also let white readers know when a black person was being quoted so that the person’s statement could be ignored.

The newspaper editor Ira Harkey, who was white, incurred outrage in 1949 when he abandoned the Southern journalistic practice of automatically labeling black people by race in stories and began cautiously extending the courtesy title Mrs. in the pages of The Pascagoula Chronicle-Star “to certain carefully selected Negro women such as teachers and nurses.” Harkey was reviled — and shot at — by racists in Mississippi for championing civil rights. He wrote bitterly of his earlier years at The New Orleans Times-Picayune, where there was “a flat rule that Negroes were not to appear in photographs”; it was required that they be airbrushed out of crowd scenes.

The Montgomery Advertiser — known in the 19th century as the leading paper of the Confederacy — put itself on the wrong side of history in countless ways, not least by ridiculing the civil rights movement that was launched by the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955 and reached its zenith a decade later with the march from Selma to Montgomery and the passage of the Voting Rights Act.

Bro Krift, now the paper’s 41-year-old executive editor, was well aware of this history when he greeted the opening of the lynching memorial by devoting the Advertiser’s front page to the names of victims alongside its bluntly worded editorial acknowledging the paper’s complicity. Speaking of the memorial in a recent telephone interview, Mr. Krift said: “I realized, holy Moses, this could change the narrative for the rest of time in America. This could be the physical representation of the conversation we need to have in America.”

Link:

Newspaper Apologizes for 'Shameful' Coverage of Lynchings

Missouri Makes a Very Dark List

Wow.

Missouri not only made the top, worst 10 on a new survey of the 50 states in America, it actually made the top, worst 5.

America's 10 worst states to live in 2017 

- CNBC.com

"These are the 10 worst states in the US for quality of life, including crime, health, social tolerance and the environment."

So check out what they say about our own Show Me state:

5. MISSOURI

Show Me how to stay safe in Missouri, where violent crime in all categories has been rising, in some cases by double digits. Missouri also lacks statewide protections against discrimination based on sexual orientation, marital status, and gender identity. And the state is near the bottom for public health funding.

2017 Quality of Life score: 99 out of 300 points
Weaknesses: Crime rate, health, inclusiveness
Strength: Attractions
2016 Quality of Life rank: No. 49

Note that last statistic, too.  2016 Quality of Life rank:  49.  Out of 50, of course. Only one state worse than us, whoever that is. 

Even on this list, we're worse than Mississippi, for God's sake. 

WORSE THAN MISSISSIPPI.

Let that sink in.

I know I personally take no comfort whatever in learning that neighbor state to the South, Arkansas, is ranked 4th worst or that, again, neighbor state Oklahoma is ranked number 3.

We should no way be on this list. This is horrible.

We must do better. We have to.

And we start by getting Republicans out of public office.

Let's get started.

Kansas City In Top Ten Cities Facing the "Most Danger Days"

With the warming of the planet, proven, scientifically, it becomes important to know what's in front of us.
There's a rather important article out last month from the online environmental magazine Grist:

Top 10 cities facing the most “danger days” due to climate change

So what is a "danger day"?

A danger day is when the combination of heat and humidity (also known as the heat index) make it feel like it’s 105 degrees F or hotter. Warming temperatures are about to push U.S. cities into a new regime where danger days happen regularly.
With the globe's warming temperatures, it's projected we will continue to have ever-climbing temperatures.

Of the 144 U.S. cities Climate Central analyzed, only 12 of them averaged more than one danger day per year since 1950. Most of those cities are clustered in the South where humidity tends to be worst in the morning while temperatures peak in the late afternoon.

But by 2030, a whopping 85 cities — home to nearly third of the U.S. population — are projected to deal with at least 20 danger days annually. Only nine cities are projected to experience less than one danger day per year. By 2050, just three cities could have as little as one danger day per year, while 109 cities that are home to 125 million Americans will experience 20 danger days or greater annually.

So where does this tend to look likely to hit worst? Where, in the nation, will be most heated and have the most of these "danger days"? Here are the top 10 cities projected now. And look who's right about in the middle of it all:

There is a lot of the Midwest there. Tulsa, Oklahoma, Jackson, Missouri, Wichita, Kansas all along with our own Kansas City.

Some of the ripple effects?

All that added heat will change the daily rhythm of life across the U.S. The impact on health will be a top concern, particularly for children and senior citizens. When the heat index rises above 105°F, heat exhaustion can set in and cause fainting, dizziness, confusion and vomiting. When humidity crosses 60 percent, the body also loses its ability to cool itself by sweating. Hot, humid conditions have made high school football a focal point for heat exhaustion as heat-related deaths have tripled since 1994.

Some states and cities have responded by setting up rules to cancel sports practices based on the weather forecasts while others have cooling centers and warning systems to help deal with oppressive conditions. Rising temperatures mean those plans will have to be adjusted and relied upon more regularly.

Outdoor laborers will see their productivity fall. According to findings in the Risky Business report, the productivity of farmers, construction workers, landscapers, and others who work outside could drop by 3 percent by century’s end.

It will also drive up how much people spend on energy as air conditioning goes from being handy to being a necessity. If greenhouse gas emissions continue on their current trend, energy expenditures could rise by up to 7 percent by 2050 and 21 percent by 2100. That added capacity will strain the electricity grid, and even violent crime could rise.

Once again, it doesn't look pretty, ladies and gentlemen.

It would be nice if our legislators---all of them---would start taking action on climate change. Heaven knows some in the business community and the lots of the military, both, already have.

Four examples of ecological nightmares for fossil fuels

click on picture for easier reading


Is this what we really want?

A brief history of race in America

First, we owned African-Americans in the United States. They were brought over by boat, sold into slavery and that's where they stayed, their entire lives, until they died. If they were "lucky", their master(s) weren't completely horrible and abusive and/or tortuous to them while in this state.

Keep in mind, too, that, during this lifetime of slave work, besides being paid nothing, they were also almost entirely uneducated, formally. Most didn't know how to read or write. The ones who did were taught how to read and/or write if and only if it helped their master(s).

Then we "freed" them, after 200 years of this slavery, in 1863 with the "Emancipation Proclamation." Of course, they weren't really freed as they owned nothing--nothing--and most had nowhere to go. Besides the fact that the defacto social and political system still held them very much down. Many black men, especially, in the South, were arrested for "vagrancy" and sold to corporations for their labor. Still in slavery. That lasted until the 1940's, too. (See link below).

All during this time, they were at least under-educated, still, if not uneducated, as the masses would have it. "Separate but equal" was declared the law of the land and everything was hunky-dory.

Then, finally, in the 1960's, they were, again, officially, given the right to vote and the right to "fair housing." Of course, this was only on paper and segregating this minority to its own side of town still went on, as we have learned or as we know.

So deep-seated racism permeated our country from our inception right up to today and yet still, so many people across the nation--mostly white but other races, too--think that somehow, some way, African-Americans are not supposed to have any problems today, culturally, socially, economically or otherwise.

Isn't that just a nice, tidy, convenient conclusion?

Links: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emancipation_Proclamation

http://www.slaverybyanothername.com

Congratulations, Kansas City!!

You're not on the FBI's "Most Dangerous Cities in America." (But St. Louis, is. See links, below).

So... what, if anything, do these "top ten" cities have in common?

Anything?

Bueller?

(Side note: We have also, it's been decided and declared, been listed as the nation's 20th "Most Manly City." Wth? See link below for this, too).

Links: http://realestate.yahoo.com/news/most-dangerous-cities-in-america.html


http://247wallst.com/2012/06/11/the-most-dangerous-cities-in-america-2/

http://www.pitch.com/plog/archives/2012/06/13/kansas-city-is-americas-20th-manliest-city

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/oklahoma-city-claims-title-of-americas-manliest-city-158474215.html

Good news, at last, from a local state capitol

Finally, at last, some good news from a local state capital:

Science Prevails In Missouri And Alabama As Creationism Bills Die in Both States

"Science scored a major victory in Missouri and Alabama last week as multiple anti-evolution bills died in the legislatures of both states.

In Missouri, the House Committee on Elementary and Secondary Education decided not to vote on a pair of bills that would have made creationism an accepted science even though there is no evidence supporting it. HB 1276 would have allowed teachers “to help students understand, analyze, critique, and review in an objective manner the scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses of the theory of biological and hypotheses of chemical evolution.” In other words, the bill would have allowed right-wing religious fanatical teachers to push their anti-evolution views. The other bill, HB 1227 would have forced “the equal treatment of science instruction regarding evolution and intelligent design,” at every level in public school and in “any introductory science course taught at any public institution of higher education.” This bill would have actually forced schools and colleges to teach creationism alongside evolution, while allowing teachers bash evolution."

I didn't know or think that this nonsense had taken a foothold in Missouri but there it is. Wow. This is painful. Thank goodness it didn't pass. Either strength and intelligence or cowardice won out.

Let's hope it was strength and intelligence.

The state has real issues and problems to deal with--like fixing I-70 from Illinois to Kansas--but they deal with this, instead.

Sick.

And lazy, too.

You'd think they'd be ashamed of themselves.

Link: http://www.addictinginfo.org/2012/05/21/creationism/

Missouri and Kansas in "Top 10 States Hit by Extreme Weather in 2011

Missouri is, indeed, number 3 on the list of the "Top 10 States Hit by Extreme Weather" this year. Kansas was number 7. In a way, really, no surprise on Missouri, is it? Joplin was so famously, horribly hit by the tornado May 22. But that's not all on Missouri and extreme weather this year: Tornadoes were just one prong of the deadly onslaught of extreme weather in Missouri, as a combination of heavy spring rains and upstream snowmelt sent the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers surging over their banks. According to NOAA, in an average year the Missouri River channels 24.8 million acre feet of water. This year, it carried 24.3 million acre feet in May and June alone. When the Army Corps of Engineers essentially blew up the levees to save the small town of Cairo, Illinois, floodwaters inundated around 130,000 acres of Missouri farmland. Then there's Kansas: The massive heat wave and drought that devastated Texas and Oklahoma didn’t hit Kansas quite as hard, but it was bad enough to help push the Jayhawk State into the top 10 this year. By midsummer, much of the southwestern part of the state was suffering under “exceptional drought” conditions — it ended up being the ninth driest year ever recorded — and by year’s end, there was still no relief in sight. Wichita had more 100-degree-plus days than any year on record, beating out even the Dust Bowl summer of 1936.

Watch How 2011 Became a 'Mind-Boggling' Year of Extreme Weather on PBS. See more from PBS NewsHour.

The number one state for most effected by extreme weather? Texas. They fried. This past year has been described as "weather on steroids." (see last 2 links below) Here's hoping 2012 is better to the planet. Links: http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2011/12/30/395849/top-10-states-hit-by-extreme-weather-in-2011/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+climateprogress%2FlCrX+%28Climate+Progress%29; http://www.climatecentral.org/news/top-ten-states-hit-hardest-by-2011s-extreme-weather/; http://thinkprogress.org/green/2011/12/30/395914/our-weather-on-steroids-the-mind-boggling-climate-disasters-of-2011/; http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2011/12/29/395730/pbs-covers-link-between-2011s-mind-boggling-extreme-weather-and-global-warming-its-like-being-on-steroids/

Sewage rates in Alabama due to federal requirements

I was reading the news today when I was struck by this rather explosive headline: Alabama Residents Furious Over Possible Rate Increases: ‘If They Let This Stuff Happen They Are Going to Get the Biggest Riot the South Has Ever Seen’ It seems people are paying sewage and water bills from the city to the tune of $150 per month--and it's been threatened with big increases. What got me about the story, as far as KC is concerned is this: "Sewage and water rates (on average) have increased faster than inflation because the federal government has demanded that cities replace their “worn-out” sewer facilities to meet federal clean-water standards. When a federal judge forced Jefferson County to upgrade its outdated sewer system, officials decided to finance the project with bonds." Now, they did make a big mistake by taking out floating interest rate loans for the bonds but here's another big problem: "The sewage system was supposed to cost $300 million. However, since the project started in 1996, the costs have risen to $3.1 billion after various problems and a series of bond and derivatives deals fell through in 2008. Not surprisingly, a large amount of corruption was involved. JP Morgan Securities and two of its former directors have been fined for trying to bribe to Jefferson County employees and politicians in a bid to win business financing for the sewer project. Six former Jefferson County commissioners have been found guilty of accepting bribes, along with 15 other state officials." Hopefull nothing remotely similar will happen here in little ol' KCMO with the new sewers we're supposed to be getting. Here's hoping. Enjoy your weekend, y'all. Link to original article: http://news.yahoo.com/alabama-residents-furious-over-rate-increases-let-stuff-202403568.html

"America's Saddest Cities"?--St. Lou--not you

Men's Health Magazine just came out with a list of "America's Saddest Cities" and, yes, St. Louis is on there but you, Kansas City, you are not. I think the Sprint and the Kauffman Centers may have helped keep us off there. Either that or we're just not on their radar. Note: Detroit and Memphis are on there, too. In my next post, you won't believe who's number 4 on "Happiest American Cities." Anyway, enjoy, Kansas City--it's only been good press coverage lately. For now, anyway. Link to original post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/30/americas-saddest-cities_n_1120753.html?ncid=webmail18#s507155&title=St_Louis_MO

Fires and floods, all from today's news: what's going on

Check this out.  All these headlines and news stories are out just today, fresh off the wire.  This is what's going on across the country right now.

First, fires.

The ones in Arizona:

Arizona forest fire expands to 233,000 acres

Major wildfire spreads across eastern Arizona

Then on the East Coast:

Wildfire smoke drifts 130 miles up Ga. coast

Wildfires Buring 200K Acreas In NE Fla.

‎


Then Texas, you can't forget Texas:

Wildfires continue to burn in several counties ‎ And Colorado: Colorado health department warns of dangerous haze from wildfires Next up is the flooding. First Nebraska: Farmers Can Prepare for Flooding Now Low-level emergency declared at Fort Calhoun nuke plant ‎‎ Then Iowa: Platte River flood threat in Nebraska‎ Modale Residents Prepare For Historic Flooding ‎ Governor says Missouri River flooding worst in his lifetime (audio)‎ Montana: Wyoming residents reach out to Montana flood victims ‎ Missouri on the Western side: Federal, State Officials Warn of Long-Term Missouri River Flooding ‎ And check out this little beauty from this story, here, above, in case you wonder when it will be over:   (Washington, DC) -- More water will be released into the Missouri River than ever before in the coming months as federal officials work to deal with record amounts of rain and mountain snow packs. Kevin Grody of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers warns the mountain snow pack in Montana has not started to melt much yet and cited several inches of rain in the past few weeks. Grody said the release of water from several reservoirs will more than double previous records for releases. He said the six dams on the Missouri River are in good shape and are not expected to have any problems, but said the levee system could be troublesome due to a mix of levees built for different levels of flood protection. Federal officials expect flooding to continue on the Missouri River into mid-August at the earliest. Then there's Missouri on the Eastern side: Missouri River Flooding Expected ‎ Illinois: CF Industries to close plant on flooding worries ‎ Minnesota: Amtrak service between St. Paul and Spokane to resume Tuesday ‎ Then there's the different areas experiencing drought to severe drought across the country. There's South Carolina: SC drought alert and brush, grass fires start early for Anderson area ‎ And Colorado: Drought plagues rangeland - The Pueblo Chieftain: News And Texas, again: Water restrictions increase amid Texas drought And Oklahoma:   Drought grows more dire in Texas and Oklahoma And Kansas: Winter wheat harvest begins in Kansas amid drought fears Then we can't forget the tornadoes this year in Tuscaloosa, Alabama and then our own Joplin, just down the road, along with Reading, Kansas, of course. According to the American Red Cross, this is just some of the things they've responded to this year alone: American Red Cross volunteers have staffed numerous disaster response efforts so far this spring, including those still underway in Alabama and Mississippi, the recent storms in Massachussets, Missouri, Oklahoma and Minnesota, flooding in North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana and Vermont, and the anticipated flooding right here in Nebraska. My point is only that there sure seems like there's a heckuva lot going on, weather-wise, and that most of it hasn't been good by a long shot. The sky isn't falling but it's busy. ‎

300 killed in Southern tornadoes--SNAP--Royal couple wed

What an attention span we--and our media--have.

Literally, one day the huge news is that the casualty count from a string of 600 tornadoes--600--is rising to 300 people and literally, the next day, the next morning, so much of the news--the top story today--is of the Royal wedding in England.

What?  What did you say?  I wasn't paying attention.

Links:  http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_royals/20110429/wl_yblog_royals/kate-middleton-wedding-dress-a-success
http://omg.yahoo.com/blogs/a-line/prince-william-kate-balcony-kisses-complete-wedding/818
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110429/ap_on_re_us/us_severe_weather_survival_stories
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/eu_britain_royal_wedding;_ylt=AmVSr1U7QtzBWV5toOJQu9tH2ocA;_ylu=X3oDMTJyZ2kzYjRjBGFzc2V0A2FwLzIwMTEwNDI5L2V1X2JyaXRhaW5fcm95YWxfd2VkZGluZwRjcG9zAzEEcG9zAzEEc2VjA3luX3RvcF9zdG9yaWVzBHNsawNicml0YWluY2VsZWI-
http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_royals/watch-the-royal-wedding-live-on-yahoo-news;_ylt=Atb9kyO.u2PUjsTAblockeETEtl_;_ylu=X3oDMTNucmhmZjYzBGFzc2V0A3libG9nX3JveWFscy8yMDExMDQyOS93YXRjaC10aGUtcm95YWwtd2VkZGluZy1saXZlLW9uLXlhaG9vLW5ld3MEY3BvcwMyBHBvcwMyBHNlYwN5bl90b3Bfc3RvcmllcwRzbGsDd2F0Y2h0aGVicml0
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_severe_weather;_ylt=As55B978GE.P1kslJ4Vi_oITEtl_;_ylu=X3oDMTJrcDBiazhoBGFzc2V0A2FwLzIwMTEwNDI5L3VzX3NldmVyZV93ZWF0aGVyBGNwb3MDNARwb3MDNARzZWMDeW5fdG9wX3N0b3JpZXMEc2xrA3N1cnZpdm9yc3BpYw--

"Least peaceful" US states: all red?

Well here's an eyeful this evening that just makes a bluecoat Dem just as happy and reassured or something just good and positive.

It seems there's a study out right now on the "Most Peaceful US States" which, naturally, ends up also pointing out those on the other end of the scale---the "Least Peaceful US States".

And guess what?

To no one's surprise, the gun-loving, "shoot-'em-up" Red States (read Right-wing, Republican, Conservative, Redneck, etc.) are at the bottom, mostly, while the educated, Liberal, "Lefty", Leftist, Progressive Blue States are the former--the most peaceful states.

To wit and if you're a red-stater, eat yer heart out:

A study by the Institute for Economics and Peace finds that Maine is the most peaceful state in the country, while Louisiana is the least peaceful.

The group lists the ten most peaceful states in order as: Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Minnesota, North Dakota, Utah,--oops, they slipped in there-- Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Iowa, and Washington.


What'd I say?


Now, the flip side:


And here are the least (also in order, with Louisiana leading the unrest): Louisiana, Tennessee, Nevada, Florida, Alabama, Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Maryland.

In that second group, all I see are guns, guns and more guns.  I can hear everyone in the Red States making excuses now, can't you?

In a completely unrelated but great fun note, they added this:    It's worth noting that Louisiana was ranked as the laziest U.S. state in a separate study last year. Apparently, kicking back and taking it easy doesn't amount to a life of calm in the eyes of some, though many Louisianians, this reporter among them, would probably argue that they're not lazy or non-peaceful, just misunderstood.

Of course, it could also just be because it's hotter and more humid than belly heck down there in the bayou, of course.

And don't blame us.

It's not OUR study.


Have a great evening, y'all.

Link:  http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_thelookout/20110406/ts_yblog_thelookout/study-maine-the-most-peaceful-u-s-state-louisiana-the-least

Dolphin deaths on the Gulf Coast

Scientists are doing the work now on dolphin deaths in the Gulf of Mexico--it seems 53 of them have washed up on beaches dead when the norm is far lower at 2 per year, from what I've read.

Scientists scrutinize rise in baby dolphin deaths

NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- Scientists are trying to figure out what killed 53 bottlenose dolphins - many of them babies - so far this year in the Gulf of Mexico, as five more of their carcasses washed up Thursday in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.

It's likely to be months before they get back lab work showing what caused the spontaneous abortions, premature births, deaths shortly after birth and adult deaths said Blair Mase, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's stranding coordinator for the Gulf Coast.

Moby Solangi, director of the Institute for Marine Mammal Studies in Gulfport, said he'd never seen anything like the calf deaths, or found word of anything like it in 30 years of records from his area - Alabama, Mississippi and east Louisiana.

I have to say, however, that, given the whole oil spill ordeal and the dispersants put on the Gulf, it seems difficult to believe that there wouldn't be a correlation between these deaths and the nightmare that was the oil spill. 

No conclusion, for sure and no "presumed guilty" but it sure seems highly likely, don't you think?

For now, we'll stay tuned.

Links:  http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_DEAD_DOLPHINS?SITE=JRC&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
http://www.tampabay.com/news/environment/wildlife/scientists-investigating-dolphin-deaths-in-gulf-say-bp-oil-spill-is/1153647

Kansas and Missouri, No.'s 3 and 4 on "States with the Deadliest Eating Habits"?

Yikes.

Mississippi, on this list, I guessed.  I thought sure neither Missouri nor Kansas would be on it but there we are:

10 States With the Deadliest Eating Habits

4. Kansas

Grocery Stores Per 1,000 Residents: 0.35 (7th)
Amount Spent on Fast Food Per Capita: $610 (19th least)
Gallons of Soft Drinks Purchased Per Capita: 64 (23rd most)
Pounds of Sweet Snacks Purchased Per Capita: 121 (12th most)

Kansas has some of the easiest access (seventh-best) to stores where cheap and healthy food is available. It is clear, however, that most residents do not take advantage of this, as the state has one of the worst diets in the country. Residents consume the 12th-most sweet snacks per person as well as the 12th-most solid fats -- more than 20 pounds per person. The state ranks 28th in adult diabetes and 31st in obesity -- 28% of the state's adults are considered overweight.

3. Missouri

Grocery Stores Per 1,000 Residents: 0.26 (22nd)
Amount Spent on Fast Food Per Capita: $623 (21st least)
Gallons of Soft Drinks Purchased Per Capita: 65 (18th highest)
Pounds of Sweet Snacks Purchased Per Capita: 121 (17th most)

Missouri does not rank especially poor in any of the metrics considered, however it does rank badly in about almost every one. It has the 11th-lowest rates of adults eating the recommended amount of fruits and vegetables, the eighth-greatest rate of food insecurity, and relatively high rates of soft drink, sweet snack and solid fats consumption. Missouri has the ninth-worst rate of obesity among adults, with 30% having a body mass index greater than 30.

And only Alabama (at no. 2) and Mississippi are worse, for pity's sake.  I can hardly believe this. 

Additionally, so you know it's not some bogus, trumped-up Forbes Magazine article that's putting this out, it's from the "Recent data reported in medical journal Lancet" and it "showed that BMI (Body Mass Index), a recognized measurement of obesity, is higher on average in America than in any other nation."

Note, too, that it's not just an obesity ranking, it's the "deadliest eating habits" And from a medical journal.  Yow.

Not a good list to be one, by a long shot, eh, folks?

Pass the popcorn.

...and butter, while you're at it.

Link to original post:  http://finance.yahoo.com/family-home/article/112083/10-states-with-the-deadliest-eating-habits