Pro-life? Perhaps.

The defense of 'life' by pro-life advocates is only one of many appropriate concerns regarding our country's commitment to its' citizens.  It's perhaps the first in ethical importance, but there are more.  Here's a quick list:

food - 
housing - 
education - 
opportunity - 
employment - 
healthcare - 
freedom - 
equality - 
security - 
safety - 

A February review by the National Poverty Center of poverty data since 1996

estimates that the number of households in extreme poverty - people living

on $2 or less daily,  - rose from 636,000 households in 1996 to 1.46 million

 households in 2011, including 2.55 million children.

 an increase of 130 percent.

"I do not believe that just because you're opposed to abortion, that that makes you pro-life. In fact, I think in many cases, your morality is deeply lacking if all you want is a child born but not a child fed, not a child educated, not a child housed. And why would I think that you don't?  Because you don't want any tax money to go there. That's not pro-life. That's pro-birth.  We need a much broader conversation on what the morality of pro-life is."
  ~Sister Joan Chittister, O.S.B.

Republicans and Democrats each claim the moral  high ground.  Any chance they both need some severe correction? 

Our polarized rhetoric and our similarly polarized Congress are doing extraordinary harm to our nation and its' citizens.  It's as though the goal is winning rather than serving well.

Note:  Sister Joan is the author of 50 books and a lecturer. Holding a Ph.D. from Penn State University, she is also a research associate at Cambridge University. Other subjects of her writing includes women in the church and society, human rights, peace and justice, religious life and spirituality. She has appeared in the media on numerous shows including Meet the Press, 60 Minutes, Bill Moyers, BBC, NPR, and Oprah Winfrey. You can visit Joan Chittister's website at Joan Chittister.org.  Interesting lady.

INFO!

One of my favorite commercials, created by neuromarketers (modern psychology in advertising)

 who understand that cute dogs doing funny stuff will get our attention.  They give us, "dog tested
 and approved," as the closing line to help us think favorably about the brand name.

Why would a car maker use dogs in their ads?  Because everybody says, "Awwww," and watches the whole thing.

Commercials and infomercials -- those really long product shows -- are not information,  just attempts to influence where our money gets spent.  They are not objective or the solution to needs we might have.

Advertising by definition is strong persuasion, an attempt to talk us into buying something we wouldn't otherwise consider, to provoke a sense of need in us that their product will satisfy better than some other.

We need to regularly remind ourselves what it is about and explain it to our kids, commercials are not information.  They're after our money, our lifestyle, our priorities, and our self-image.  True?

One of the world's smallest countries, Sao Tome & Principe
-- poor, but a gracious culture.  They think differently than 
we do.  Their world is a bit more real than ours, perhaps.

Need a little clarity?  Leave the country for awhile, discover who you are in a world full of people like you and not.  See what it's like to live on $5 a day with one TV channel and no internet, to walk instead of drive, and do all your shopping at the street vendors instead of a store or online.  Such a reality check will help, but it's hard to really understand and adjust, of course.

Most important, make sure your kids understand.  The media is sponsored, the reality they present isn't real or reasonable, and letting such things taint your thinking (your life) is about the same as deliberately living in a sty, even if all the pigs love it.

Final Score: 331 to 1

CEOs Earn 331 Times More Than the Average Worker

(... and 774 Times As Much As Minimum Wage Earners)

An interesting proposal scheduled for a public vote in Switzerland, limiting CEO salaries to 12 times the worker average.  They can still be multi-millionaires, but the workforce would have to be paid fairly.  If the business is successful, the workers would be compensated with a reasonable share of that success.

Not a bad idea, although the regulatory details would be a nightmare.
(It was voted down.  The realization came that businesses would just reshape themselves in some fashion to escape the restrictions, and wages would be unchanged.)

The accelerating gap between the rich and everyone else is visible across the emerging globalized economy.  While the rich extract extraordinary wealth from the marketplace, the average citizen is losing ground.  The rich get quickly richer at the expense of everyone else ... in the world, literally.  Is that troublesome?

It is a particularly difficult concept to grasp unless you or someone you love has been the target.

Otherwise, we'll say, "Oh yes, so sad," and move on.

Want a better use for your money?

Why would someone want more wealth than they or their children could ever, ever, ever need?

The GAP - Part VIII: Competition

The list of differences between man and animal includes conscience and choice as perhaps most definitive.

We understand how the animal world is free to live by nature where only the strong survive and persist.  It's a competition for survival.

We hope for better from mankind, perhaps for nobility and courage, for meaningful relationships, for generosity and compassion.

At least, some of us do.

The increasing gap between rich and poor suggests an animalistic mind where little thought is given to the impact of our actions on others.  It's almost as though there were no conscience at play, no willingness to help, to share, to make a way for others.  It's the easier path, of course.

For each of us then, there remains the opportunity to respond to conscience and to choose.  We can each make the difference for another, perhaps even for many.


Want a better use for your money?

Selling Baby Parts

In case you were wondering, it is true and apparently somewhat legal.  This Snopes article like many others points out that what was revealed in CMP videos was/is in fact happening.  The laws governing such practices are ambiguous at best, and the industry's common practices are troubling.

George J. Annas, a law professor and bioethicist at Boston University, said, “What's going on now is probably legal, but Congress won't like it."

Regarding the companies, Mr. Annas said: "They won't be real happy that this is all out in the public. This threatens their business. Even if what they're doing is legal, the law can easily be changed."

Do they sell baby organs?  Yes.  

Do they profit?  Perhaps, perhaps not.  

Is it legal?  Perhaps.  

Are the mothers truly aware?  Is there full, appropriate consent from patients and under the highest ethical and legal standards?  Perhaps, some of the time.  

All that and the reality of the industry's practices are troubling when viewed and considered publically.

More on the subject at Life and Conscience Issues and at PolitiFact

Climate Does Change

The scientific inquiry continues and contrarians still get the best media coverage.  

Fox News is all the way up to 28% accurate on the issue in 2014, and 72% misleading. They were only 7% accurate the year before.

• Fox News covered climate science 50 times in 2013. Of these segments, 28 percent were accurate, while 72 percent were misleading portrayals of the science.
• More than half of Fox's misleading coverage (53%) was from one regular program, The Five, where the hosts instigated misleading debates about established climate science.  Fox hosts and guests were more likely than others to disparage the study of climate science and criticize scientists.

Uninformed is only eclipsed by misinformed.  The issue deserves better from us.  Our children deserve better.

Are there reputable resources?  For a good 'bad example', note the graphic here:

"It just happens" from a popular site, globalresearch.ca.  Despite presenting itself as a source of 

scholarly analysis, the site primarily consists of conspiracy theories, pseudoscience and propaganda.

It's fairly easy to find appealing articles to support almost any preferred conclusion.  This isn't science, of course.

In the last 650,000 years, there have been seven cycles of glacial advance and retreat, with the abrupt end of the last ice age around 8,000 years ago marking the beginning of the modern climate era - and according to the archeological record, of human civilizations.

The variations are generally attributed to orbital variations on a 100,000 year cycle that change the amount of sunlight we receive.  The solar energy changes are quite small, but enough to bring significant climate change.

If it were that simple, though, we wouldn't be in the intense debate we find these days.
We're stuck with some facts:

NASA analysis of CO2 levels, now higher than at any time in the previous 650,000 years.


• CO2 levels are at historic highs and it appears we did that, we humans.
• Sea levels have risen about 17 centimeters (6.7 inches) in the last century, and are rising faster as the years pass.
• The global temperature rise since 1880 has the 20 warmest years occurring since 1981 and the 10 warmest occurring in the last 12 years.
• The oceans are warming, up about 0.3 degrees since 1969.  Okay, that's not particularly persuasive.
• Glaciers are retreating.  Greenland alone lost around 60 cubic miles of ice per year, 2002-2014.
• Arctic ice is declining in both thickness and extent.  The decline is caused by and also contributes to climate change.
• Extreme events ... consider the ten coldest and warmest years on record.

"The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a group of 1,300 independent scientific experts from countries all over the world under the auspices of the United Nations, concluded there's a more than 90 percent probability that human activities over the past 250 years have warmed our planet.

Monthly mass changes in Gigatonnes (Gt) for the

Greenland ice sheet since April 2002. The anomalies

are plotted against the 2002-2014 average. From NOAA.

The changes indicate a loss of around 2,800 gigatonnes

of ice for the period. That's about 20% more loss than

gain from snowfall each year.

Greenland holds about 10 percent of the total global
 ice mass.  If it were to all melt, sea levels should
rise by around 20 feet.  No one knows how long
 that might take, of course.

The industrial activities that our modern civilization depends upon have raised atmospheric carbon dioxide levels from 280 parts per million to 405.1 parts per million in the last 150 years. The panel also concluded there's a better than 90 percent probability that human-produced greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide have caused much of the observed increase in Earth's temperatures over the past 50 years.

They said the rate of increase in global warming due to these gases is very likely to be unprecedented within the past 10,000 years or more. The Summary for Policymakers is online at http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/syr/ar4_syr_spm.pdf."

The facts here are from NASA, NOAA, and others, peer reviewed and independently supported.  The discussion continues among scientists, but little exists to support those who discount the basics.  The information available is continuously being updated.  Perhaps we should stay informed rather than media-formed.







More controversy - here - regarding Antarctica's ice.  :)