The Commentariat -- Dec. 29, 2014
Internal links removed.
David Cohen of Politico: "President Barack Obama on Sunday praised the official end of the 13-year U.S. combat mission in Afghanistan, offering his remarks to coincide with a handover ceremony there. 'On this day,' Obama said in a statement, 'we give thanks to our troops and intelligence personnel who have been relentless against the terrorists responsible for 9/11 -- devastating the core Al Qaeda leadership, delivering justice to Osama bin Laden, disrupting terrorist plots and saving countless American lives. We are safer, and our nation is more secure, because of their service.'" ...
... Tim Craig & Carol Morello of the Washington Post: "After pledging for years to crack down on violent Islamists, Pakistani authorities are now taking exceptional steps to do so, with a major military operation against the militants and a vow to rein in radical propaganda. The government's campaign has intensified in the wake of a massacre at an elite army-run school in Peshawar this month, reflecting a striking change in public opinion about the danger posed by the extremist groups." ...
... CW Note: Yes, I think these stories are related. The only hope for the region is for the general public to reject extremism & for governments to control extremists. (Of course we need the same kind of movement in the U.S., even if our powerful extremists are not quite as extreme as the Taliban & similar groups.)
Josh Lederman of the AP: "Warning from President Barack Obama to congressional Republicans: I have a veto pen and, come January, I won't be afraid to use it.... 'I haven't used the veto pen very often since I've been in office,' Obama said in an NPR interview airing Monday. 'Now, I suspect, there are going to be some times where I've got to pull that pen out.' He added: 'I'm going to defend gains that we've made in health care. I'm going to defend gains that we've made on environment and clean air and clean water.'" The audio of the interview & a story by Steve Inskeep is here. The transcript is here.
I certainly don't support that action yesterday; I think it was very inappropriate at that event. To bring politics or to bring issues into that event was very inappropriate and I do not support it. He is the mayor of New York. He is there representing the citizens of New York to express their remorse and their regret at that death. It was very inappropriate. -- New York City Police Commissioner Bill Bratton
... David Goodman of the New York Times: "William J. Bratton, the New York City police commissioner, said on Sunday [on CBS's 'Face the Nation'] that a silent protest by scores of his officers who turned their backs on Mayor Bill de Blasio as he spoke during a funeral service for a fellow officer killed in the line of duty was 'very inappropriate.'" ...
... Hunter Schwartz of the Washington Post: "Police Commissioner Bill Bratton called frustration in New York and across the country surrounding policing the 'tip of the iceberg' during an appearance Sunday on NBC's 'Meet the Press.' 'This is about the continuing poverty rates, the continuing growing disparity between the wealthy and the poor,' he said. 'It's about unemployment issues. There are so many national issues that have to be addressed that it isn't just policing, as I think we all well know.'... 'The issues go far beyond race relations in this city,' he said. 'They involve labor contracts. They involve a lot of history in the city that's really different from some of what's going on in the country as a whole.'" ...
... David McCabe of the Hill: "New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) should apologize to the city's police officers for comments he had made about how the police treat minorities, former Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R) said on Sunday. 'He should have apologized for the remarks he made that gave the police the impression that he's on the other side,' he said on the CBS program 'Face the Nation.'" ...
... David McCabe: "Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R) on Sunday criticized President Obama's association with the Rev. Al Sharpton, arguing it sends a signal of hostility to police. Giuliani, who has battled with Sharpton throughout his career, said Obama couldn't expect to be seen as supportive of police as long as he associates with Sharpton, an MSNBC talk-show host and longtime activist. 'If he would like to have a poster boy for hating the police, it's Al Sharpton,' he said while appearing on CBS' Face the Nation. 'You make Al Sharpton a close advisor, you're going to turn the police in America against you.' 'To have that man sitting next to you speaks volumes,' he said." ...
... Hunter Schwartz: "A Ferguson Police Department public relations officer has been put on administrative leave over his response to the destruction of a memorial to Michael Brown, the teenager who was fatally shot by a police officer.... 'I don't know that a crime has occurred,' Officer Timothy Zoll said Friday in an interview with The Washington Post. 'But a pile of trash in the middle of the street? The Washington Post is making a call over this?' The department said in a statement Saturday that Zoll misled his superiors about the contents of the interview, that he had been placed on unpaid leave, effective immediately, and that there would be disciplinary proceedings."
Not All Police Discrimination Is Racist. Dan Seufert of the Manchester, New Hampshire, Union Leader: The police chief of New London, New Hampshire, offered to drop underage alcohol-possession charges if she posed nude for him in the basement of the police station. The town awarded her a $70,000 settlement, & the chief "will never be allowed to serve as a police officer again.... State prosecutors, while calling Seastrand's actions 'abhorrent behavior and unacceptable behavior for anyone in that type of a position,' did not file criminal charges against him. They later explained that the only law applicable to the case was the abuse of power statute, under which a public official is guilty of a misdemeanor...."
Tammany Hall on the Hudson, Ctd. Jesse McKinley & Vivian Yee of the New York Times: "A day after the governors of New York and New Jersey rejected legislation aimed at upending a culture of political interference at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the bill's bistate sponsors said they ... that prospects for overriding the veto seemed slim at best. Neither Legislature has accomplished that feat with Mr. Cuomo, who was elected to a second term in November, or during Mr. Christie's nearly five years in office." ...
... CW: If the bill was so good it received unanimous approval in both state legislatures, I'm having a little trouble understanding why some legislators -- like New Jersey senate leader Tom Kean, Jr., -- are suddenly against it. Are they really that tight with their governors? Neither Christie nor Cuomo is particularly popular, & this stunt isn't going to raise their favorables.
Paul Krugman on austerity in hard times -- a self-inflicted wound.
John Vidal of the Guardian: "In 2015, [Pope Francis] will issue a lengthy message on the subject [of climate change] to the world's 1.2 billion Catholics, give an address to the UN general assembly and call a summit of the world's main religions. The reason for such frenetic activity, says Bishop Marcelo Sorondo, chancellor of the Vatican's Pontifical Academy of Sciences, is the pope's wish to directly influence next year's crucial UN climate meeting in Paris, when countries will try to conclude 20 years of fraught negotiations with a universal commitment to reduce emissions." ...
... CW: When it comes to climate change, Roman Catholic altar boys like John Boehner, Rand Paul, Marco Rubio & Bobby Jindal all have voiced some version of the "I am not a scientist" disclaimer. Will they follow with, "The Pope is not a scientist, man"?
** "Chickenhawk Nation." Jim Fallows of the Atlantic: Americans' "reverent but disengaged attitude toward the military ... has become so familiar that we assume it is the American norm. But it is not.... [During World War II & in the decades after it,] American culture was sufficiently at ease with the military to make fun of it, a stance now hard to imagine outside the military itself.... The distance between today's stateside America and its always-at-war expeditionary troops is extraordinary.... America's distance from the military makes the country too willing to go to war, and too callous about the damage warfare inflicts."
Koch for the Defense. Roy Wenzl of the Wichita Eagle: As the result of a federal criminal case against him, Charles Koch realized that the nation's criminal justice system was askew. "The Corpus Christi case led Charles Koch and his company to give money, starting about 10 years ago, to the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers." Koch also believes too many Americans are in jail for nonviolent crimes. "The nation's criminal justice system needs reform, 'especially for the disadvantaged,' Koch said, 'making it fair and making (criminal) sentences more appropriate to the crime that has been committed.' [Koch's chief counsel Michael] Holden said legislators in recent decades drifted into a habit of adding more laws every year and taking stands to show themselves as 'getting tough on crime.' ... The weight has fallen most heavily on minorities, Holden said." ...
... CW: If this leads you to a Remembrance of Things Rand Paul, yeah, there just might be a connection. Madeleines unnecessary.
Peter Sullivan of the Hill: "Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) on Sunday called on supporters to reject one of President Obama's nominees to the Treasury Department. Franken criticized nominee Antonio Weiss in no uncertain terms, arguing Obama had nominated the wrong person for the job of Treasury undersecretary for domestic finance. He argued Weiss would not put the middle class first, and that he was too close to Wall Street. 'Join me in asking the President to withdraw Antonio Weiss's nomination,' Franken wrote in an email to supporters..., with a link to the petition." CW: I signed.
CW: Amy Davidson of the New Yorker seems to think gay marriage will become acceptable in the South. She might be right, but I expect the usual Southern suspects see court decisions striking down gay-marriage bans in the same "acceptable" light they saw the anti-slavery movement & federal civil rights legislation, court decisions & executive actions: "Northern aggressors" forcing their ways upon their genteel society.
Stephen Sherrill of GQ picks the U.S.'s "20 Craziest Politicians." All but three are Republicans. The 20th, Joe Biden, is kind of a throwaway. Sherrill cites Biden for being "crazy enough to run again for president." No match for most of the Republican picks. ...
... Sherrill's piece was very upsetting to Kyle Smith of the New York Post, who chose 16 crazy Democrats, among them Michelle Obama & Bernie Sanders. ...
... David Atkins in the Washington Monthly: The New York Post's "attempt at false equivalence shows just what's wrong with the Republican Party -- and with those in the supposedly objective press who play the false equivalence game. Politics is full of exaggeration and hyperbole ... but that's what constitutes most of the examples in the New York Post's list of 'crazy' -- and why their list includes well-respected Democratic politicians, while the GQ list targets the GOP's fringe.... The GQ list, by contrast, is about mostly conservative politicians saying, believing and doing truly scary and unpopular stuff.... hese things are not in the same ballpark, no matter how much conservatives and many journalists would like to pretend that they are. The modern conservative movement really is full of crazy that is unmatched on the other side."
Presidential Election
** Mark Jacobson profiles Bernie Sanders for New York. ...
... Jacobson mentions that Sanders recorded a folk album in 1987. "Asked why he did such a thing, Sanders says, 'It appealed to my ego.'" It's fair to say, Bernie didn't exactly sing:
... Here's a bit more from the site Seven Days. Kind of a hoot, if not a hootenanny. Ah, even more here.
Alexandra Jaffe of CNN: "Jeb Bush is the clear Republican presidential frontrunner, surging to the front of the potential GOP pack following his announcement that he's 'actively exploring' a bid, a new CNN/ORC poll found. He takes nearly one-quarter --23% -- of Republicans surveyed in the new nationwide poll, putting him 10 points ahead of his closest competitor, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie...." ...
... As Greg Sargent points out, "The new CNN poll also finds that Hillary Clinton is far ahead of Elizabeth Warren in the evolving Dem primary: Clinton leads Warren among Democrats by 66-9.... The CNN poll also finds Clinton leading Jeb Bush among Americans overall by 54-41; she leads Chris Christie by 56-39; she leads Rand Paul by 58-38; and she leads Ted Cruz by 60-35." ...
... CW: That's kinda interesting, because Bush, Christie, Paul & Cruz hardly lack for name recognition.
News Ledes
Los Angeles Times: "Los Angeles police are investigating whether gunfire in South Los Angeles on Sunday night was aimed at two officers responding to a call, officials said Monday."
Guardian: "A Scottish nurse is being treated in an isolation unit in Glasgow after being diagnosed with the Ebola virus hours after arriving home from west Africa via a British Airways flight from Heathrow."
Guardian: "An Indonesian official said that missing AirAsia flight QZ8501 was likely to be 'at the bottom of the sea' on Monday morning, as hopes that an elaborate international search and rescue effort would find survivors began to fade. The jet vanished from radar screens on Sunday morning with 162 people on board, as it approached violent weather over the Java Sea about 40 minutes into a two-hour flight between the Indonesian city of Surabaya and Singapore. The plane, an Airbus A320-200 operated by an Indonesian subsidiary of the Malaysian budget airline AirAsia, reportedly requested to deviate from its flight path to avoid a cloud. Moments later, it lost contact with Jakarta air traffic controllers. It did not send a distress signal."
Reuters: "Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi said on Monday that four more bodies had been recovered from the car ferry that caught fire off the coast of Greece, bringing the death toll to five. Renzi said during an end-year press conference that about 60 passengers remained on board more than 24 hours after the fire started and they would be brought to safety within 'a few hours'."
Share Article
Reader Comments (19)
It's nice that the Pope is going to say something about climate change. However I am sure he will not say that the Catholic Church is a perfect example of the problem.
Climate change is due to having way to many human beings on the planet and you can be sure that the Church will continue to make it worse.
There is no factor that represents a greater risk for the climate disaster than the increase in population. After all, the planet can handle another 10, 20 50 billion or so right?
I'm sorry if being logical violates the 5000 year old words of a god.
@Marvin Schwalb. Excellent point. Obvious, too, though I didn't think of it.
Marie
Jim Fallows' excellent piece on the chickenhawkening of America lets loose a few of the dogmas of war, one of which, in this age of chickenhawks, who know next to nothing about actual combat and its toll on human lives, and clearly couldn't care less, demotes the combat veteran to the role of plasticized action figure, to be admired and placed on the shelf with the other toys and then largely ignored.
Over the weekend I noticed that the coaches of both NY area NFL teams, Tom Coughlin of the Giants and Rex Ryan of the Jets, both donned NYPD caps in a show of support for that city's (and, perhaps, by extension, all) police officers. Fox sports personalities also demonstrated their support in the same way. I doubt any of them would have been caught dead sporting a Bill deBlasio cap or a cap with the quote "I can't breathe."
The why is obvious. Unquestioning support of either cops or the military has become a shibboleth for Fox-style Real Americans. Fallows mentions the regular, routine (and embarrassingly rote) celebrations of the military at sporting and political events.
I sometimes wonder how it would go if there was ever a halftime event that celebrated social workers or teachers or, heaven forbid, community organizers. True, they don't get shot at (all that often), and don't put their lives on the line (every day), but for all the yapping about "keeping us free" and "protecting our freedoms", I don't think anyone who has been paying attention could argue with a straight face that the military, under certain political direction, has done more over the last 15 years to better this country than teachers. But, okay, I'm never gonna win that one.
The larger point is that cops and the military like a few other "action figures" have, in this conservatively controlled country, achieved the status of one dimensional avatars. They are accorded instant respect and awe and anyone attempting to question their work or how they do it is instantly branded a traitor or worse (a community organizer?).
The right, especially, indulges this sort of unconditional, almost inarticulate, hagiography. Cops, the military, business leaders, and anyone who owns a gun and brandishes it publicly, have been recreated as stick figures, stock characters in a two dimensional commedia dell'arte (sans comedy or art). As soon as Harlequin or Pierrot, or Columbina, or Il Dottore, step or stumble onstage, the audience knows what to expect. In this way, Fox has become the preeminent purveyor of stock characters in the modern theater.
This would be funny if the downside weren't so parlous.
The inability of anyone to question or even discuss--never mind attempt to change--the essence of these stock figures means that all cops, even the bad ones, are accorded the same institutional protections (what if Pulcinella suddenly appeared as a kind, thoughtful, moderate character? Just think of the uproar!). The flip side of that is that their "enemies" (you know who they are...) are also presented and treated as stock characters. Their lines and their roles come pre-written. They're stupid, antisocial thugs, they're lazy moochers and hate white people and police. Any attempt by them or anyone else to break down that characterization is met with extreme antipathy. "Don't mess with my Rossini!"
The difference is that after the opera is over, we leave the theater and return to the real world. In Right Wing World, it's commedia dell'arte all the time.
@Marvin; field correspondent from Jersey and one of my personal favorite reads, Aside from the knowledge that every little sperm is sacred I learned the Vatican plan for climate reversal is "Go solar, shower polar". Speaking for my generation of Catholic teenage boys the plan probably won't work.
@Akhilleus: Gee, I wonder if those coaches will be sanctioned by the league for making political statements. Sports fans & commentators should got themselves in knots over players who expressed support for the victims of unwarranted police killings.
Marie
What fun to read the list of loonies––Yoho, Arpalo, the four G's: Gohmert, Grimm, Grothman and Cruz; Barton and Burgess led by King and Keisling followed by Ernst and not young Johnson; Hill, Lee, and crazy like a Fox, Foxx followed by Le Page and Paul--all duly noted to be "out there" somewhere beyond the rainbow but the one who strikes me as the most frightening is Gordon Klingenschmitt––the name alone leaves one breathless–-and the fact that many people voted for this guy is even more frightening. Below is the skinny on old "Chaps"–-name given because besides being a right-wing televangelist he was a military chaplain.
https://www.freespeech.org/text/gordon-klingenschmitts-entire-activist-career-based-myth
Came across this NYT feature yesterday. Most sites tend to run an end-of-year retrospective of the outstanding pictures of the year ranging from the sublime, the beautiful to shocking and somewhere in between.
In the Times 2014 The Year in Pictures slide show of 100 exceptional photos highlight the past twelve months. Among the many fascinating 'a picture is worth a thousand words (or more)' were #47: Mayor de Blasio speaks to 616 graduating police officers at Madison Square Garden earlier this year; and #63: a heavily-armed, militarized police unit of three confronts a single black male.
More than words can say.
Marie,
Some commentator briefly mentioned that the NFL doesn't (typically) condone its minions displaying any logos or such not directly sanctioned by the league, and thus Ryan and Coughlin might be subject to fines or some form of discipline. The conflagration in the wingnut blogosphere could be seen from satellites in space, with suggestions of the NFL siding with murderers and haters of America. That sent the NFL censors into hiding. I doubt we'll hear any more about disciplinary actions against the NY coaches.
The Right knows it has this power and it is never afraid to unleash the loonies in order to keep its enemies in line.
In 1972, at the Olympic games in Mexico City, two American track stars, winners of gold and bronze in the 200m event, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, gave their famous black power salute (Smith has always referred to it as a human rights salute, but you'll never hear anyone in the MSM ever refer to it as such) on the podium during the playing of the national anthem.
Avery Brundage, (aka Rat Bastard) IOC president at the time, demanded that the US team suspend the two athletes and had them banned from the Olympic Village for their "political display". The US Track team declined, whereupon, Brundage threatened to disqualify the entire team. Smith and Carlos were summarily booted.
Understand, however, as is typically the case in Right Wing World, that Avery Brundage, who was IOC president in 1936, had no problem when German athletes mounted medal podiums and gave the Nazi salute. That, of course, was completely different, no "political display" there, unlike those awful nee-groes.
Can't you just hear some 1972 era Sean Hannity defending Brundage's position in both cases? A kind of savoir faire approach to the Nazis but an all points alert for the black guys. Hell, Sean Hannity would probably defend him today.
Plus ça change, eh?
The GQ list is a good read, and, unfortunately, quite true. The really sad thing is that these are just their picks for the 20 craziest of the bunch. There are hundreds more winger pols just a skosh of loony below these nuts.
But just as crazy are some of the comments to the GQ article. The first mouth-frother demands that Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton, Harry Reid, Jonathan Gruber, and Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, all be considered as just as out-of-control cuckoo. First, Gruber is not an elected official. And if you want to compare the others to dangerous asylum inmates like Gohmert, Hice, Barton, Arpaio, and Yoho, you'd better be ready to argue that people who run red lights, jay walk, and double park are equivalent to Son of Sam, the Zodiac Killer, Ted Bundy, and John Wayne Gacy.
False equivalence doesn't even come close.
(The second really sad thing, or maybe the first, is that of the 20 craziest pols, 2 of them are running for president!!)
@Akhilleus: Thanks for the history lesson. I have a feeling Hannity has been practicing the Nazi salute in his bathroom mirror for a long time.
Marie
Marie makes the point that we here in the US need to put a lid on our own extremist nuts. We might need a bunch of lids. The number of loonies is more than any single container can hold.
But here's the problem: lack of a solid game plan and the right players to carry it out. (I'm full of football analogies today, so bear with me; 'tis the season...)
Watching several games yesterday, it occurred to me that you can't just have a good plan. You need the right players. In too many instances, one team is just handing the other one victory on a platter, just begging to get beaten like a drum, either through mistakes, bad play calling, poor personnel decisions, or just plain stupidity. Too often, however, that other team, with victory being dangled in front of them, blow it. They allow a terrible team with inferior, crazy-ass players and even crazier play calling to win because they just weren't ready and didn't have what was needed to close the deal.
This is the Democratic Party these days.
The Republican Party is infected with dimwits, blowhards, bigots, religious loonies, ignoramuses, and imbeciles. It should be a piece of cake to beat these people. But time and again, we fumble at midfield, throw an interception, get called for unnecessary penalties, and have the wrong people out on the field with a terrible game plan.
We let the losers win. Time and again. People who have no business winning a tag rush game against neighborhood kids, win some of the biggest battles in the country. Now, granted, they have upended the playing field. Gerrymandering, election rigging, and disenfranchising voters are all serious handicaps, pretty much like one team always getting the number 1, 2, and 3 players in the draft every year.
But Democrats still consistently refuse to take advantage of their own advantages. First, they're not insane. But they never take the opportunity to point out that their opponents are; and dangerously so. They let the other team constantly badger and bully the referees. They let them change the rules in the middle of the game. The announcers are all on their side too, but none of these are excuses enough for the lack of gumption and toughness necessary to win.
We need a new game plan. Better leadership. And players who won't knuckle under to the losers. I'm really tired of losing games we should be winning easily. The fact that the other team recruits and drafts players who are increasingly unstable and mentally deficient should be a gift. It hasn't been.
I love that Ursula K. Le Guin quote about the ability of human beings to resist and change any human power. We just need the right ones.
Just consider this my almost, next-to-end-of-year rant.
A few more days left though...
Marie,
Ha! That was an L&C comment: laugh and cry.
The funny thing is, I can easily picture Hannity making with the Heil Hitler salute. The sad thing is, I can easily picture Hannity...
Finally finished Fallows chilling, most excellent piece on military excess along with wars that are forces that give us meaning (to steal from Chris Hedges' fine book on the subject). That so much of this has to do with power and money isn't surprising, but it leaves one limp knowing in order to change any of it is a task so monumental it appears to be insurmountable. Fallow's voice reaches very few, I'm afraid, so that the public remains ignorant, uncaring, and will go back back to their play stations, yet will always take time out to salute the flag and get all misty when they sing the Star Spangled Banner while putting their hands to their hearts.
Akhilleus: In 1933 Brundage, head of the American Olympic Committee was against Germany holding the 1936 Olympic games because of the treatment of Jews. A 1934 tour of Germany's facilities changed his mind. In November 1935 America's International Olympic Committee representative, Ernst Jahnke moved to cancel or move the 1936 games. In July 1936 Jahnke himself became the first member of the modern games to be ejected and Brundage was elected to replace him. The president of the IOC in 1936 was a Belgian and Brundage the new boy.
Cowichan,
Besides being an anti-Semite and a hypocrite (he once had an American swimmer barred from competing after a rumor that she had been at a party with a man she wasn't married to; he, meanwhile, was a lifelong serial adulterer), Brundage tried to keep women from competing in the Olympics, and also, because he believed that the Olympics should be restricted mostly to track and field events (events he competed in as a young man), tried to kill the winter Olympic games.
For more, read David Maraniss' book about the 1960 Rome Olympics. Well researched, well written, full of stuff I had never previously read about including the expanded influence of television in the decisions of the sporting world and the role of international espionage involving attempts by US spooks to recruit American athletes to help with plans to lure a Soviet defector to the states.
Brundage, for his part, welcomed the first all white South African apartheid era team to the Olympics.
A gold medal winner in the All Around Prick category.
@Marvin Schwalb
I agree and "raise you one" in your lament that overpopulation is the worst and most impossible issue contributing to climate change! How is it that overpopulation is never mentioned by politicians in either party as the prevalent danger that it is? We are finally talking about how farm animals contribute to climate change, and there has been minimal outcry about that--probably because most carnivores are unwilling to reduce or give up their meat and poultry consumption.
Until people commit to having only one or two children--or to remain childless--we are sunk. This will not happen in Africa, India and most third world countries, because their tradition is built on having many children so that one might live to care for his/her parents in their old age. Sad but true. In the Peace Corps back in the days, we tried to teach Indians about birth control and even gave away transistor radios to women or men who agreed to sterilization (after they had 2 or more children). Looking back, that was rather barbaric, and it did not work. I have pretty much given up hope.
What a downer to be thinking about as the New Year approaches....sigh.
Kate,
You know, of course, were there to be a single mention of parents restricting their offspring, however willingly, and for whatever reason, to one or two, the wingnuts would scream "RED CHINA!!" and "Family Planning" and "Hatred of Procreation" and "Jesus Protect Us From Liberals" and all sorts of horrible mantras.
And Chuck Todd would grinningly grill the next Democrat on his show about why he or she wanted to go against the Will of God and the American People (read: Teabaggers), because FREEDOM!
Fox would produce a seven hour "documentary" about how Mooslims and Afreecans, and dirty sub-continent types have 75 babies by each momma, and how 'mericans are being left behind (get it?) by the Procreation Gap.
Then Procreation Promises would be required of all child-bearing age women.
Overpopulation is not a concern for the Christian Right. Their primary concern is how to kill or enslave members of populations who don't believe what they do.
@ Kate & Ak.
Isn't there some kind of unreality show about a good christian farmer and his brood sow out in Arkansas? I think it's called "19 Kids and Counting." Maybe it's 21 or 25 by now but I wouldn't know because I've never seen it and have no desire to.
I just wonder if Jim Bob keeps Michelle in a gestation crate for the duration.
Erdogan (Turkey president) recently said that Turkish women should not practice birth control - that they owe the state at least three children.
Actually, we are caught in a sort of a trap. I agree that population growth is the primary problem, at the same time a falling birth rate is not a plan for a healthy economy. A falling birth rate will pose problems for social security and probably many other social programs.
Easy prediction - rocky times ahead.