NRA Convention: Dwindling Membership, Desperate Rhetoric

Stephan:  The corporate media always portrays the NRA as an invincible force. If this report is to be believed, and Robert Greenwald has historically been a reliable early bird, then a significant trend is afoot.

NRA messageAny doubts about whether the NRA is feeling the pressure of an increasingly powerful gun violence prevention movement can be quelled by reading Wayne LaPierre’s latest keynote rant. While never the most coherent thinker, this year’s stream-of-warped-consciousness epic hate poem, showed LaPierre giving up all pretense and appealing directly to his audience’s worst fears, deepest prejudices and festering anger. Here’s why:

For years the National Rifle Association has maintained its stranglehold on national politics by convincing politicians that it is politically invincible. But now there is fresh evidence — actual numbers — that show the NRA is increasingly feeling the heat of Americans’ shifting attitudes about gun violence prevention. This is a big deal.

The numbers appear in a tax form known as a 990, which charitable organizations must file every year to let the Internal Revenue Service know what they are up to. The NRA’s 990 for the year 2014 just appeared online at Guidestar, where all such filings are made public.

The invincibility myth has always been just […]

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The Pentagon’s Huge Atomic Floppies

Stephan:  During the Cold War with the Soviet Union the dominant geopolitical military strategy was something called MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction), the idea being that if each side could blow the other to bouncing gravel that neither side would start such a war. And it worked. In those days being in the nuclear command was a hot career ticket. Then on the 26th December 1991 the Soviet Union ceased to exist. And since that time the U.S. nuclear air  and land  forces have been frozen in time. The naval submarine arm of what was called the Triad, because the sea is such a demanding environment, has had to be more up to date, but even it is technologically far behind the times. Here is the truth about how really out of date land missile installations have become. And serving in that command is now a career dead end. And so, today, we have the most powerful weapons on earth, run and managed on systems that were out of date 30 years ago. It is a truly bizarre story.
Minuteman III Launch Control, Oscar Zero Missile Alert Facility at the Ronald Reagan Minuteman Missile Site near Cooperstown, North Dakota.

Minuteman III Launch Control, Oscar Zero Missile Alert Facility at the Ronald Reagan Minuteman Missile Site near Cooperstown, North Dakota.

When you hear the phrase “floppy disk,” your mind (assuming you’re of a certain age) flashes back to those ubiquitous 3.5-inch versions that were AOL’s Johnny Appleseed in the mid-1990s, spreading “You’ve Got Mail!” across the land. Only the aged among us can recollect what came before: the behemoth 5.25-inch models that owned the (tiny computer universe of the) 1980s.

That’s why it might give you pause to learn that the Pentagon—that epitome of cutting-edge technology and the inventor of the Internet—still uses gargantuan 8-inch floppy disks, fossils from the 1970s, to help operate the nation’s nuclear weapons.

“Legacy IT investments across the federal government are becoming increasingly obsolete,” the Government Accounting Office said in a report released Wednesday. “For instance, [the Department of] Defense is still using 8-inch floppy disks in a legacy system that coordinates the operational functions of the United States’ […]

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Bees guided to flowers by invisible electric fields

Stephan:  Have you ever wondered how bees find flowers at just the right time for pollen? If you look at a flower you can see that at bee size they look like landing pads with guidance showing you where to land, and promising good times will be had by all -- but not when. That it turns out is the subject of this report. Quite wonderful. Do everything you can to help the bees. Our lives depend upon them.
Tiny hairs detect the electric field and communicate with the nervous system  Credit: ALAMY

Tiny hairs detect the electric field and communicate with the nervous system
Credit: ALAMY

Bees are drawn to flowers by an invisible electric field as well as their bright colours, a new study has shown.

Scientists at the University of Bristol have found the insects use tiny vibrating hairs to sense the static electricity and guide them into the sources of pollen.

Many members of the insect world may be equally sensitive to small electric fieldsDr Gregory Sutton, University of Bristol

Hairs move rapidly in response to the electric fields, sending messages to the nervous system.

Dr Gregory Sutton, from the university’s School of Biological Sciences, said the bees’ hair danced in response to the electric fields in the same way human hair reacts when a balloon is held to the head.

“A lot of insects have similar […]

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Christian conservatives want to regulate sex — and deny it to the poor

Stephan:  This is a really interesting essay about religion and sex, that raises issues I hadn't thought about, or thought through, and now that I have I agree with what Valerie Tarico is saying. The relationship is principally one of power. I put a lot of emphasis on this linkage because it is such a big factor in shaping our culture -- even if we rarely talk about it that way.
unhappy couple in bed

Unhappy couple in bed

Sexual intimacy and pleasure are some of humanity’s most cherished experiences. The so-called “best things in life” include natural beauty, fine dining, the arts, thrilling adventures, creative pursuits and community service. But love and orgasms are among the few peak experiences that are equally available to rich and poor, equally sweet to those whose lives are going according to plan and to many whose dreams are in pieces.

Religious conservatives think that these treasured dimensions of the human experience should be available to only a privileged few people whose lives fit their model: male-dominated, monogamous, heterosexual pairs who have pledged love and contractual marriage for life. Some true believers—especially those in thrall to the Protestant Quiverfull Movement or the Vatican—would further limit sexual privileges even within hetero state-licensed, church-sanctified marriages to only couples who are open to intimacy producing a pregnancy and a child. Take your pick: it’s either reproductive roulette or no sex—although you might be able to game God by tracking female fertility and then bumping […]

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US Pads Defense Industry Profits By Arming Both Sides In Conflict

Stephan:  The U.S. arms industry constitutes the richest and most powerful merchants of death collaborative in the world.  You almost never see anything about this on electronic media. I think the calculation is that it would upset Americans to know that one of the major activities to which their tax dollars are out centers on killing people -- by the thousands, some years by the hundreds of thousands.. It is giving us a very bad reputation as this essay demonstrates.
ISIS militants stand with a captured American Humvee, given to the Iraqi Army and captured by ISIS, June 19, 2014. CREDIT: AP

ISIS militants stand with a captured American Humvee, given to the Iraqi Army and captured by ISIS, June 19, 2014.
Credit: AP

KITCHENER, ONTARIO —  The United States has long billed itself as “the land of the free and the home of the brave.” This fairytale receives credence within the country’s own borders, as its lemming-like citizens place hand on heart, look at the waving flag, and wipe tears from their eyes.

Yet a good story doesn’t often play quite as well when cultures and traditions are different, and for countries that have a free press or that have been victimized by the U.S. — and their name is legion — the lofty statements about liberty and equality that U.S. spokespeople are forever mouthing don’t hold much water.

From the Philippines, Mexico, Chile, Brazil and Nicaragua, right through Korea, Vietnam and Grenada, to Iraq, Syria, Yemen and […]

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