Most people have enough fear of skin cancer and photo-aging to give tanning salons wide berth, pun intended. But how safe are sunscreens themselves? Weeks after the New York Times exposed the caprice in assignment of sun protection factors (SPF) last year, Sen. Charles Schumer (D- New York) called on the FDA to investigate reports that an ingredient in most sunscreens — retinyl palmitate –  actually causes cancer.

In one FDA study on animals, dismissed by a dermatologist consultant to sunscreen companies as “very premature to even cast doubt about the safety of this chemical,” retinyl palmitate accelerated tumors and lesions in the sun by 21 percent! (Similar studies on humans not animals would be “unethical” say scientists)

And there are other sunscreen doubts. Many people don’t apply the needed amount of sunscreen to protect themselves from UVA and UVB sunrays because the products are expensive (and no one wants to be a goo monster).  But when they do, they still may not be safe since ingredients like oxybenzone — which is an endocrine-disrupter, as are most fragrances — and titanium dioxide are now thought to penetrate the skin and enter the bloodstream. THAT wasn’t in the brochure.

Once upon a time, before links between skin cancer and sun bathing were confirmed, people didn’t use sunscreen. They used baby oil and iodine to enhance the sun’s effect, literally sautéed  themselves in the sun and using reflectors. (They were also smoking Tareytons or Kents which also wasn’t seen as self-destructive.)  Having the best suntan in the room was like being the thinnest person in the room decades later: a badge of social status and sex appeal. Who knew that wrinkles would develop? Who believed they would live past 30?

Then the pendulum swung and the sun was as bad as, well, cigarettes. The era of sunscreens and long sleeves began and spray-on tans, often carrot-orange, were the rage, with Hollywood leading the way.

In fact the sun-avoidance pendulum swung so far, sunscreens began to be blamed for a possible national Vitamin D deficiency. The sun presumably couldn’t find bare skin on which to make Vitamin D anymore. Patients everywhere were told to seek sun instead of avoid it!

But last year, an Institute of Medicine report suggested that the deficiency fears might have been an over reaction. “The number of people with vitamin D deficiency in North America may be overestimated because many laboratories appear to be using cut-points that are much higher than the committee suggests is appropriate,” it said. Now, some are hoping the Institute of Medicine will address the sunscreen ingredients retinyl palmitate and oxybenzone.

Meanwhile, enjoy your shade.

Is the enemy of my enemy my friend?

Neatly tied together here, Stanley Crouch has chimed in on Cornel West’s critique of Barack Obama. Interestingly, Grimace look alike Stanley Crouch defends Obama and the “blackademics” against West’s charges that the President’s policies are contrary to the good of the Black community.

While it was little discussed at the time, a year or so ago failed academic and bomb throwing polemicist David Horowitz attempted a beat down of Dr. West in a screed called “Hurricane West: Cornel West and American Radicalism.” While possessing some pithy prose, Horowitz’s assault was predictable and fit perfectly with his Right-wing victimology, conspiranoid fantasies of a Left-wing plot to destroy America.

To my eyes, what is funny/compelling/unintentionally ironic about Horowitz’s vicious 2010 hit piece on Cornel West is that in many ways it is a mirror of Crouch’s NY Daily News column of a year later.

There, as viewed through Horowitz’s lens, President Obama is a dangerous Socialist Progressive anti-American who is in bed with and enabled by Cornel West’s activism and ideology, where the latter is a fraud and con artist–he is apparently also an “academic entertainer” and a walking black stereotype:

There is no other explanation for the ability of a shallow, vain, and trivial intellect, a comrade of anti-Semites and violent racists and a friend to America’s enemies, to attain the cultural eminence that Cornel West has achieved….Cornel West can be seen on the one hand as a progressive version of the Stepin Fetchit stereotype — absurd in his stumbling efforts to impersonate an intellectual and to wear the mantle of a prophet of social change. But Cornel West is also the archetype of an American radicalism that has set out to destroy the American experiment, and whose favorite son now occupies the White House as its commander-in-chief. Viewed as a historic force that has conducted a 50-year assault on America’s institutional values and standards and that has driven America’s cultural decline, the progressive Left is a movement that masks malice towards its own country as a love for the world’s powerless and oppressed.

To Stanley Crouch, Cornel West is an out of touch activist type who is a huckster and academic circus freak who plays the over-educated fool for trinkets and gold:

Serious black intellectuals privately dismissed West many years ago as no more than an academic loudmouth with a good show business game. He has perfected a variety of poses – from academic to conciliator to rapper – that are intended to give the impression that a very substantial mind is mulling over something and will soon drop some rhetorical bombs that will blow away all nonsense. A staple figure in American comedy is the pompous, educated fool, drowning in narcissism. West has long fit the bill; Harris-Perry finally exposed him for those who didn’t already know.

I hinted at this before, but will be even more direct at present. There is big money to be made in making sure that one gets their 30 seconds of air time on the Obama-West fracas. I don’t want to scream that Horowitz, Crouch, and others are haters per se, but I would certainly whisper the suggestion at a decibel level high enough to hear.

The public intellectual controversy game puts money in the bank and butts in the seat. Thus, why so many want to suckle at the teats in order to move up to the lecture circuit, talking head “A-list.” Those who sit in the pews of the Church of Black Authenticity Fighting Over President Obama’s Politics need to be mindful of how in their worst moments the chattering classes and the Fourth Estate are (often) playing a game of Three Card Monty on the public.

In sum, the opinion leaders and taste makers do not necessarily care about the common good or the interests of the common man or woman for self-interest is their over-riding principle. We should all be mindful of that fact lest we find ourselves exposed, exhausted, and distracted in this time of national peril.

Written by Vyckie Garrison of No Longer Quivering for RHRealityCheck.org – News, commentary and community for reproductive health and justice.

So ~ the “refocus” of FOTF is shifting away from opposing same-sex marriage and instead focusing on making it more difficult to obtain a divorce.

Does anyone else think this is scary? … and I was seriously pissed when I read Jim Daly’s remark, “… so it’s not just ‘we don’t like each other any more.’” WTF? What woman is ever so flippant about divorce?

Truthfully ~ filing for divorce for me did mean a major step down financially ~ my income and assets took a huge hit ~ and we actually were already living close to poverty level before the divorce. BUT ~ IT WAS SO TOTALLY WORTH IT!!!!!! I’ll take poverty over abuse any day.

If FOTF and similar “pro-family” organizations succeed in reducing the Christian divorce rate to 5% ~ that’s going to represent a huge increase in misery for a lot of Christian wives who are already seriously oppressed in their “traditional” marriages ~ with husband as patriarchal head of the home and wife as subservient “helpmeet.”

These women do not need divorce to be more difficult ~ it’s already almost impossible to leave an abusive marriage when it’s supposedly God’s will and the domineering man is simply fulfilling his biblical role as head of the home.

Daly’s thinking is that by reducing the divorce rate among Christians and holding up the ”Biblical family” as the key to marriage “success,” the secular world will have to admit that God’s way is truly the best way ~ and somehow, that’s supposed to convince gays to repent of their deviancy, I guess.  Ugh.  As though the only reason gay people are gay is because they’ve never seen a long-lasting heterosexual marriage. … Read more

Brian Brown of the National Organization for Marriage claims that his organization wants a respectful discussion as to the merits of being against marriage equality.

However based on the actions of NOM – and the organizations it is partnering with in New York and Minnesota – one can’t help but to question the veracity of Brown’s statement.

So far:

• NOM has put out a misleading commercial in New York touting a claim that the organization knows is discredited.

• The organization has also blanketed the state with flyers designed to imply that gays want to use marriage equality to corrupt the innocence of children.

• Brown himself, during a rally, made the erroneous claim that Massachusetts kindergartners are being taught that their parents are bigots if said parents favor opposite-sex marriage.

And these awful missives of inaccuracy and misdirection aren’t confined solely to NOM. The organizations NOM is partnering with to fight marriage equality are also guilty of several dubious actions.

In Minnesota, the Minnesota Family Council spread inaccurate information via its site that gays engage in pedophilia, bestiality, and the consuming of urine and feces. It also cited the work of discredited physician Paul Cameron. Since this discovery became public, the Minnesota Family Council has scrubbed these references from its site, however, you can still view the information and save it from here.  To top it off, even though the items were removed, the head of the Minnesota Family Council, Tom Pritchard, actually defended the material:

Prichard defends the postings as getting “into the nature of homosexuality and homosexual behavior,” but says that won’t be the focus of his group’s efforts to pass the constitutional ban.
“The focus of this campaign is the nature and purpose of marriage — not a referendum of homosexuality per se, or its lifestyle activities and behaviors,” he says. “I would see that as a separate issue.”

And it gets more interesting in New York.

A group aiding NOM in that state, The Family Research Foundation, is encouraging supporters to write letters to the editor demonizing lgbts.  And the organization has the gall to provide prospective writers with several form letters, meaning that all they have to do is sign their name. You can view the letters here. One letter is below:

The letter implies that the lgbt orientation is as dangerous as cigarette smoking.  This theory was originally espoused by the discredited researcher Paul Cameron, the very man whose material the Minnesota Family Council scrubbed from its page.

Some folks may read this post and get frustrated.  They may say things like “whatever NOM and its allies are doing, it’s working because they are winning” or “we are losing because we aren’t fighting fire with fire.”

But I disagree with both points. Sometimes exposing a lie to sunlight is the best thing you can do.  Whatever battles NOM have won are transitory at best and, when it’s all said and done, will not be remembered when marriage equality becomes legal.

What will be remembered are the lies, the hypocrisy, the blatant inaccuracies committed in the name of God by NOM and its partners.

And hopefully those who follow our footsteps will take that behavior as a lesson of what not to do when claiming to work for morality.

With Memorial Day coming up, we should take a moment to consider something that’s gone largely unremarked in the mainstream media: more than 1,500 troops have now died in a war the American people oppose. That’s a national tragedy, and it’s one Congress can mitigate by demanding a date certain for troop withdrawals and an exit strategy to get troops home.

Sign Rethink Afghanistan’s petition to tell Congress to pass the Afghanistan Exit and Accountability Act.

It’s worth noting that the backers of the administration’s war policies swore to us that their plan would lead to fewer troop deaths, not more. Back in 2009, when the Pentagon was putting on a full-court press in support of massive troop escalations in Afghanistan, Joint Chiefs Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen said:

“[O]ur extended security presence must — and will — improve security for the Afghan people and limit both future civilian and military casualties.” –Admiral Mike Mullen, Congressional Testimony, December 2, 2009.

Suffice it to say, that promise was false. According to iCasualties.org:

• In Jan-May 2009, there were 61 U.S. troop deaths in the Afghanistan War.
• In the same period in 2010, as escalations began, there were 141.
• In the same period this year, there were 136.

In other words, comparing the year so far with the same period in 2009, before the escalations began in earnest, we can see that despite Mullen’s promise, troop deaths are double what they were before. This is just one of a string of broken promises made by war backers to the American people, and as we sail past the 1,500-troop-death milestone and careen toward the 2,000th death, it’s time we said, “Enough is enough.”

Today, Congress is considering the National Defense Authorization Act for 2012, a piece of legislation that outlines a budget for our nation’s military. One of the amendments to the bill that will be considered as early as this afternoon is based on U.S. Reps. Jim McGovern’s (D-Mass.) and Walter Jones’ (R-N.C.) Afghanistan Exit and Accountability Act (.pdf), which will require:

1. A plan and time-frame on accelerated transition of military operations to Afghan authorities;
2. A plan and time-frame on negotiations leading to a political solution and reconciliation in Afghanistan; and
3. A new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on al-Qaeda.

The McGovern/Jones amendment won’t end the war by itself, but it’s a necessary first step to reining in a war policy that up to this point has utterly failed to deliver on the promises of its backers to the American people. Supporters of Rethink Afghanistan and other organizations are urging Congress to pass this amendment this week, and the vote may happen as early as today. If you want the war to end, please use our petition to send a note to your representative immediately.

This weekend, many Americans will mark Memorial Day at barbecues or other patriotic events, but thousands of families will spend the day dealing with the heartbreaking absence of a loved one. Others will spend the day like they spent every day for the last decade: hoping there’s not a phone call or a knock at the door to tell them their deployed family member won’t be coming home.

This should be the last Memorial Day we put military families through this agony for a war that’s not making us safer. Watch our new video and then sign our petition to tell your Member of Congress why the troops should come home from Afghanistan.

Written by Sarah Lipton-Lubet, ACLU Washington Legislative Office, for RHRealityCheck.org – News, commentary and community for reproductive health and justice.

This week, Reps. Susan Davis (D-Calif.), Robert D. Andrews (D-N.J.), Diana DeGette (D-Colo.), Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.), Loretta Sanchez (D-Calif.) and Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.) stood up for U.S. servicewomen, and submitted an amendment to the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act that would end the unconscionable policy of denying rape survivors serving in the military health coverage for abortion care. The all-powerful House of Representatives Committee on Rules will decide this week whether this amendment — protecting the health and rights of U.S. servicewomen — deserves to get a vote.

Sexual assault in the armed services is at crisis levels. Tragically, we see story after story of servicewomen being attacked by their own colleagues. In the fiscal year 2010, according to the Department of Defense, 3,158 military sexual assaults were reported, many of which were reports of rape. As DOD officials have stated, even “one sexual assault is one too many,” but the above number — which is in the thousands — barely scratches the surface. Most servicewomen who have experienced sexual violence do not report the incident. Researchers estimate that up to one-third of women experience an attempted or completed rape during their military service.

In the face of this epidemic, federal law denies servicewomen and military families coverage for abortion care, even in cases of rape or incest. … Read more

It really is a game—and the stakes are dangerously high

So I was reading this New York Times explainer on yet another failure to take the oil industry off the sweet, sweet gravy train. And my mind went back a bit to what’s missing from the current discussion—the long, long history of tax breaks this powerhouse industry has won for itself over decades. It’s a little scary, though, so brace yourself.

Coming up: the history. But first, the Times:

The Senate on Tuesday blocked a Democratic proposal to strip the five leading oil companies of tax breaks that backers of the measure said were unfairly padding industry profits while consumers were struggling with high gas prices.

Despite falling eight votes short of the 60 needed to move ahead with the bill, top Democrats said they would insist that eliminating the tax breaks to generate billions of dollars in revenue must be part of any future agreement to raise the federal debt limit.

“We have to stand up and say, ‘Enough is enough,’ ” said Senator Al Franken, Democrat of Minnesota. “While oil prices are gouging the pocketbooks of American families, these companies are on a pace for a record profit this year.”

The defeat on Tuesday was expected since most Republicans were dug in against what they saw as a politically motivated plan in advance of the 2012 elections. Democrats had hoped that directing the savings toward the deficit would make it harder for Republicans to reject it.

The statement above, by the New York Times reporter, is an example of the maddening sort of thing common in the so-called “mainstream” press as it struggles to appear “fair and balanced.” Even Republican politicians would admit in private that they are never opposed to anything principally because it is “politically motivated.” Almost everything they do is politically motivated—if not for attracting voters than for appealing to financial backers. Please name one politically suicidal act of conscience performed by the GOP lately—or in the last ten years.

In the 52-to-48 vote, 3 Democrats joined 45 Republicans in opposing the bill, which was supported by the Obama administration and fiscal watchdog groups that saw the tax help for the oil industry as wasteful. Forty-eight Democrats, two independents and two Republicans backed it.

It’s not that it is wasteful. It’s that it is welfare for the rich—giving an unnecessary advantage to those who already have every advantage.

As I discovered in researching the background of the rise of the Bush family for my book Family of Secrets, so much of the unknown origins of political intrigue—from the strenuous lobbying effort to get the freshman Congressman George H.W. Bush appointed to the House Ways and Means Committee as a freshman, to John F. Kennedy’s political problems, to even Watergate—could be ascribed in part to the oil industry’s urgency for protecting tax breaks. Sometimes, the tax breaks have been the most important part of the industry’s profits. The most recent, defeated bill, sought to get rid of a number of loopholes and advantages. You can learn more here.

One of the key provisions in the bill concerned the oil depletion allowance. The allowance permits firms to recover their “capital investment—the costs of discovering, purchasing, and developing the well—over the period the well produces income.” The senate bill did not propose getting rid of this highly attractive allowance, only modifying it so that the five biggest companies could not use a formula called “percentage depletion,” in which “total deductions could (and often do) exceed the taxpayer’s capital investment.”

So—get this: all the Senate dems were doing in the area of the depletion allowance was trying to keep just the five biggest companies from deducting more than their actual capital investment. They weren’t trying to get rid of this long-controversial depletion allowance, and weren’t trying to prevent any other oil companies from deducting more than they spent. Amazing! And this tepid measure still didn’t pass. (Of course, there were other provisions, including trying to block oil companies from sneakily reclassifying royalties paid abroad as “taxes” so they could deduct them domestically—a tax connivance on par with the depletion allowance in its one-sided benefit for the industry and harm to the greater good.)

The sordid history of just the oil depletion allowance alone reads like a Grisham thriller. Bad things happened to those who seriously threatened the allowance.

You’d like some particulars, you say? Here is a really long linked set of excerpts on the subject, collected from throughout the book:

…To head off this larger threat, it was clear to John F. Kennedy’s political advisers that he would have to campaign in Texas, along with Florida, in 1963. Kennedy was interested in revoking the oil depletion allowance, a decision that would have meant steep losses for Texas oilmen, and he continued voicing his support for civil rights, always a contentious issue in the South.…

President Kennedy demonstrated his willingness to buck big money during the “steel crisis” of April 1962, when he forced a price rollback by sending FBI agents into corporate offices. But Kennedy’s gutsiest—and arguably his most dangerous—domestic initiative was his administration’s crusade against the oil depletion allowance, the tax break that swelled uncounted oil fortunes. It gave oil companies a large and automatic deduction, regardless of their actual costs, as compensation for dwindling assets in the ground.

Robert Kennedy instructed the FBI to issue questionnaires, asking the oil companies for specific production and sales data. “The oil industry—in particular, the more financially vulnerable Dallas-based independents—did not welcome this intrusion. The trade publication Oil and Gas Journal charged that RFK was setting up a “battleground [on which] business and government will collide.”

FBI director Hoover expressed his own reservations, especially about the use of his agents to gather information in the matter. Hoover’s close relationship with the oil industry was part of the oil-intelligence link he shared with [CIA director Allen]Dulles and the CIA. Industry big shots weren’t just sources; they were clients and friends. And Hoover’s FBI was known for returning favors.

One of Hoover’s good friends, the ultrarich Texas oilman Clint Murchison Sr., was among the most aggressive players in the depletion allowance dispute. Murchison had been exposed as far back as the early 1950s—in Luce’s Time magazine no less—as epitomizing the absurdity of this giveaway to the rich and powerful. Another strong defender of the allowance was Democratic senator Robert Kerr of Oklahoma, the multimillionaire owner of the Kerr-McGee oil company. So friendly was he with his Republican colleague Prescott Bush that when Prescott’s son, George HW Bush, was starting up his Zapata Offshore [oil] operation, Kerr offered some of his own executives to help. Several of them even left Kerr’s company to become Bush’s top executives.

…Lyndon Johnson shared in the prevailing oil belt enmity toward Kennedy. In fact, he was the one person in the White House the oilmen trusted….After Johnson ascended to the presidency, he and newly elected congressman Bush were often allies on such issues as the oil depletion allowance and the war in Vietnam….[oil executive Jack] Crichton (close with Bush and head of a secretive Dallas-based, oil-connected military intelligence unit that deeply immersed in aspects of the tragic events of November 22, 1963)  was so plugged into the Dallas power structure that one of his company directors was Clint Murchison Sr., king of the oil depletion allowance, and another was D. Harold Byrd, owner of the Texas School Book Depository building.….

When [George HW] Bush arrived in Washington after the 1966 elections, he was immediately positioned to help large moneyed interests, and by so doing improve his own political fortunes. His father, still influential, had twisted arms to get him a coveted seat on the House Ways and Means Committee, which writes all tax legislation. The committee was the gatekeeper against attempts to eliminate the oil depletion allowance, and Bush’s assignment there was no small feat. No freshman of either party had gotten on since 1904. But former senator [and investment banker] Prescott Bush had personally called the committee chairman. Then he got GOP minority leader Gerald Ford—a Warren Commission member and later vice president and president—to make the request himself. It was a lot of voltage, but the rewards were worth the effort. George HW Bush now would be a go-to rep for the oil industry, which could provide Nixon with the Texas financial juice he would need to win the Republican nomination in 1968….

During the Eisenhower years, the Texas oil industry really took off. George HW Bush was now part of a “swarm of young Ivy Leaguers,” as Fortune magazine put it, who had “descended on an isolated west Texas oil town—Midland—and created a most unlikely outpost of the working rich.” Central to these ambitions was continued congressional support for the oil depletion allowance, which greatly reduced taxes on income derived from the production of oil. The allowance was first enacted in 1913 as part of the original income tax. At first it was a 5 percent deduction but by 1926 it had grown to 27.5 percent. This was a time when Washington was “wading shoulder-deep in oil,” the New Republic reported. “In the hotels, on the streets, at the dinner tables, the sole subject of discussion is oil. Congress has abandoned all other business.”

Following the discovery of the giant East Texas oil fields in 1931, there was nothing Texas oilmen fought for more vigorously than their depletion allowance. From its inception to the late 1960s, the oil depletion allowance had cost taxpayers an estimated $140 billion in lost revenue. Nixon, backed by Prescott Bush and his friends, supported the allowance in 1946, while [the man he defeated and replaced in the  House, Democrat Jerry] Voorhis opposed it. Six years later, General Dwight D. Eisenhower supported the oil depletion allowance, and he got the oilmen’s blessings—and substantial contributions as well.…

In 1969, despite his earlier attempts to keep the peace among the party’s factions, new President Nixon was soon embroiled in a series of power struggles. Perhaps the most important concerned the oil depletion allowance, as members of Congress in 1969 launched new attempts to rein in the costly giveaway. Representative George H. W. Bush was the industry’s Horatio at the bridge—or perhaps its George Wallace. “In an era when civil rights became the great moral issue that galvanized liberals,” observed Bush biographer Herbert S. Parmet, “the targeted oil depletion allowance was not far behind.”

Bush had barely completed his first term in the House. But he had an urgent task. President Nixon was under pressure to support a reduction in the depletion allowance, and some signals were emerging from the administration that he might do just that. Bush, joined by [Texas] Senator Tower, flew to Nixon’s vacation home in California to help save the day. The trip was apparently a success. Nixon affirmed his intention to block the reform efforts. Bush later wrote Nixon’s treasury secretary, David Kennedy, to thank him for reversing an earlier statement hinting that the White House might cave in to popular pressure for reform, adding: “I was also appreciative of your telling how I bled and died for the oil industry.”

The moment passed, but protecting the allowance remained uppermost in the minds of independent oilmen—and Nixon was not proving sufficiently stalwart on the matter. The White House sent political operative Jack Gleason out to West Texas to calm flaring tempers. “[Nixon aide] Harry Dent sent me down to Midland, to the Midland Petroleum Club, to talk to them about the depletion allowance,” Gleason told me in a 2008 interview. Gleason had trouble understanding the complex issue, so he was not clear on precisely what the oilmen were mad about. “Almost got lynched and run out of town . . . It was a very ugly scene. Fortunately one guy . . . saved my ass, or otherwise I’d still be buried somewhere at the Petroleum Club.”…

There would be growing anger in the Pentagon about Nixon and Kissinger’s secret attempts to secure agreements with China and the Soviet Union without consulting the military. And there were the oilmen, who found Nixon wasn’t solid enough on their most basic concerns, such as the oil depletion allowance and oil import quotas….the oil barons were up in arms over threats to the oil depletion allowance, convinced that Nixon was not solidly enough in their corner. But they had other gripes.

As [Nixon aide H.R.] Haldeman noted in a diary entry in December 1969: “Big problem persists on oil import quotas. Have to make some decision, and can’t win. If we do what we should, and what the task force recommends, we’d apparently end up losing at least a couple of senate seats, including George Bush in Texas. Trying to figure out a way to duck the whole thing and shift it to Congress.” …

It turns out that in March 1974, as the effort to oust Nixon continued to mount, Congress and the Nixon administration were making things very uncomfortable for the Bush crowd. There were news reports that federal officials and members of Congress were looking into possible antitrust violations by people who sat simultaneously on multiple oil company boards. In a December 1973 letter responding to members of Congress, an assistant attorney general had confirmed that the Nixon Justice Department was looking at these so-called interlocking directorates.

Most striking about the long list of violators is this: a significant majority of them had been friends of, fund- raisers for, or major donors to George HW Bush. Many had also been employers or sponsors of George de Mohrenschildt [the oilman-spook and longtime friend of HW Bush who served as a kind of mentor to Lee Harvey Oswald.] The list included the son of oil depletion king Clint Murchison Sr.; Admiral Arleigh Burke Jr., who had allied himself with Allen Dulles in post–Bay of Pigs inquiries into the disaster and criticized Kennedy’s handling of the invasion; [Texas military contracting king] George Brown of Brown and Root, backer of LBJ and George HW Bush and employer of Oswald/Bush friend George de Mohrenschildt; Dean McGee, former business partner of the late oil depletion backer Senator Robert Kerr; Toddie Lee Wynne, whose family provided lodging to Marina Oswald after Kennedy’s assassination; oil-military intelligence man Jack Crichton; and Neil Mallon, George HW Bush’s well- connected “uncle,” who ran the Bush family’s oil services firm Dresser Industries (later merged with Halliburton and Brown and Root.]

Who had been investigating these men? Nixon’s Justice Department. It was almost a perfect echo of what was going on in JFK’s final year in office—and in life. Jack Kennedy had been fighting with the same group of independent oilmen over the oil depletion allowance, and Bobby Kennedy’s Justice Department had sent grudging FBI agents into oil company offices to examine their books. Nixon and his old nemesis JFK had both angered the same people, and both had been removed from the presidency….

Robert G. Stone, who ran Harvard University’s board of overseers in the late 80s when it pumped massive investments into the obscure oil company Harken Energy at the time  the firm was employing young George W. Bush and bolstering his political and financial fortunes, was a board member and sometime chairman of a whole range of companies involved with international shipping, the use of inland barges to move oil, and oil exploration. At one point he controlled one of the world’s largest cargo fleets. And he was intimately associated with a small circle of highly politicized oilmen whose names have appeared in previous chapters. He served as chairman of the board of the Houston-based Kirby Corporation, a shipping and oil concern substantially controlled by the family of the oil depletion allowance king, Clint Murchison.

How is that for a thumbnail on why the Senate can’t resist the oil industry? Back to the New York Times and the recent, failed effort to cut oil tax breaks:

Energy-state Democrats criticized the initiative, saying it was misdirected and would do nothing to ease gasoline prices and could cost American jobs.

“Why are we harming an industry — five large oil and gas companies that work internationally, that employ 9.2 million people in the United States directly?” asked Senator Mary L. Landrieu, Democrat of Louisiana. “Why are we doing it?”

Republicans, who on Wednesday will push their own plan to open more areas to oil drilling and speed government permits, said the Democratic proposal would contribute to higher prices and increase dependence on foreign oil even though a recent Congressional Research Service report predicted any impact on prices would be negligible.

The above paragraph is a rare Times effort to directly challenge a dubious statement…

…on Tuesday, Senate Democrats wrote to the Federal Trade Commission seeking an inquiry into whether domestic oil refiners had reduced production to drive down the gasoline supply and drive up prices. “This is just another piece of the puzzle that we need to get at as we try to take away taxpayer subsidies to Big Oil and hold Big Oil accountable for whatever may be going on in the supply chain that is hurting the families that I work for,” said Senator Claire McCaskill, Democrat of Missouri.

One wonders if Senator McCaskill really thinks she can hold Big Oil “accountable”—or whether she and her colleagues even understand the background to the current battle.

Members of Congress are so overwhelmed dealing with the here-and-now, the frenetic pace of legislating, raising money and courting voters, that they’re often the last people in the room to have a good grounding in the history that shapes—and often dooms—their efforts.

Image Credit:  (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/fe/King_oil_boardgame.jpg/300px-King_oil_boardgame.jpg)

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WhoWhatWhy is a nonprofit, nonpartisan investigative news site founded by Russ Baker. Follow it on Facebook and Twitter or visit WhoWhatWhy.com

Apparently, beauty is not in the eye of the beholder. If Dr. Satoshi Kanazawa’s “Why Are Black Women Less Physically Attractive Than Other Women?” is to be believed, it is an empirical “fact” that can be arrived at through the scientific method.

When this story circulated about these Internets last week I did not comment on the big ballyhoo the resulted because it was uninteresting and a bit “meh” to me.
While I understood the hurt feelings, feelings by themselves are not a substitute for reasoned engagement (on that note, his colleagues and students are taking Kanazawa to the woodshed as they should). Moreover, I found it more problematic that Psychology Today quickly deleted the piece and through it down the memory well. That was cowardly, but they are in the money making and not the truth telling business.

Ultimately, Kanazawa’s work is piss poor science and I did not feel the need to put on my wading boots. The argument as outlined suffers from problems of construct validity (is Kanazawa actually measuring “beauty” or something else entirely? Are his variables accurate? Are objective measures of beauty as gathered by subjective interviewers reliable or consistent?). The model that he offers is also misspecified (are the relationships between the independent variables correct?). I am not a stats head, but even I could catch those pop up fly balls.

The measurement of beauty is an interesting project and certainly worth exploring. But, and here is Kanazawa’s critical error, the concept of beauty is laden with history and socio-political baggage. The notion of beauty is socially constructed and not a fixed or real thing; beauty legitimates certain regimes of truth; and like the race science of an earlier age validates the assumed superiority and assumptions of those who are both creating and administering the test. While trying to reduce this to a scientific puzzle, Dr. Kanazawa, a professor at the esteemed and prestigious LSE, should have known to pick up a few history and social science texts–and consult with his colleagues who study the history and philosophy of science–before endeavoring to explore the relationships between race and science.

The idea of whiteness as THE beauty standard is centuries old. It was created at the nexus of the imperial and colonial projects to rationalize and justify the exploitation of the world by Europeans. The idea that whiteness equals beauty is exposed as a patent lie when the normative philosophy and race thinking underlying the assumption is exposed on its own terms.

To point, the following selection on the relationship between whiteness, beauty, and science from Nell Irvin Painter’s great book, The History of White People:

White asks, “Where shall we find unless in the European, that nobly arched head, containing such a quantity of brain…?” The mention of brain leads to a physiognomy of intelligence that recalls Camper’s facial angle; White continues, “Where the perpendicular face, the prominent nose, and round projecting chin?” He ends with a soft-porn love note to white feminine beauty that incorporates the fondness for the blush found in many a hymn to whiteness. White and Thomas Jefferson shared with many others this enthusiasm for the virtuous pallor of privileged women. White asks, “In what other quarter of the globe shall we find that blush that overspreads the soft features of the beautiful women of Europe, that emblem of modesty, of delicate feelings, and of sense? Where that nice expression of the amiable and softer passions in the countenance; and that general elegance of features and complexion? Where, except on the bosom of the European woman, two such plump and snowy white hemispheres, tipt with vermillion?”

Sadly, even in the 21st century there are many people who belong to the colored races of the world that both consciously and subconsciously embrace the idea that whiteness is de facto beauty. It is funny then, that some may scream and howl at the offense committed by Professor Kanazawa, but how many of said protesters believe on a deep and existential level that he was actually correct?

Thus, no small amount of Fanon mixed with Freudian projection is the 800 pound elephant in the room that few want to engage.

UPDATE: May 25th: 9am CST: Greenpeace activists have ended their 26-hour occupation of the Fisk Generation Station smokestack in Chicago, leaving behind a giant reminder of the Windy City’s dirty legacy and clean energy future: The painted letters of “Quit Coal” now drape permanently down the sides of the smokestack with the demand that California-based Edison International close down its deadly Fisk and Crawford coal plants.

Nearly a century ago, Chicago activist Mary “Mother” Jones took on the great coal barons of her city. Jones declared: “Not all the coal that is dug warms the world. It remains indifferent to the lives of those who risk their life and health down in the blackness of the earth.”

Until Chicago passes the Clean Power Ordinance, that deadly legacy remains for the children and citizens under the volcano of the nation’s most decrepit coal-fired plants.

UPDATE: 5:45pm CST: Greenpeace’s daring actions against Chicago’s lethal and widely denounced old coal-fired plants expanded this afternoon, as eight more activists rappelled off the Pulaski Bridge, near the Crawford coal plant in the neighborhood of Little Village and dropped a banner that blocked coal barge traffic on the river. The banner declared: “We can stop coal” and “Nosotros podemos parar el carbόn.”

“I know that we can stand up to big coal and use our collective power and strength to stop companies like Edison International from poisoning our communities. All around America, people like us can stop coal. We must take a stand for our health, our welfare and our future,” said Laila Williams, one of the activists dangling from the bridge.

UPDATE: 4pm CST: In a true testament to civic duty and responsibility, the eight Greenpeace activists atop the Fisk Generation Station are now cleaning up the filth and toxic particulates along the 450-foot tall smokestack with a new coat of paint–and a special message for the city of Chicago, Mayor Emanuel, and the Irvine, California-based multinational corporate owners Edison International. Stay tuned.

Chicago, your lives are in the balance. And the nation is watching.

That is the message this morning, as eight Greenpeace activists dangle 450 feet from the smokestack of the Model T-era Fisk Generation Station in the ailing Pilsen neighborhood. Citing the spiraling and devastating impact of the decrepit coal-fired plant on the area citizens and the city at large, the protesters are calling on the Edison International subsidiary Midwest Generation and the city of Chicago to “quit coal” and shut down the plant.

photo courtesy of Greenpeace Chicago

Numerous studies have documented the link between Chicago’s two coal-fired plants and lung cancer, heart attacks, premature deaths, acute and chronic bronchitis, emergency room visits, and record asthma rates and other respiratory illnesses, which cost the city an estimated $127 million annually in damages.

According to a released statement by Greenpeace, “Fisk and Crawford generate about 18 times the emissions of O’Hare airport’s ground operations and equal two-thirds of the CO2 emissions generated by all modes of transportation in Chicago.”

“We’re fighting for our lives,” said Leila Mendez, a resident of the Pilsen community. “This plant has a significant impact on the health of our communities and our children. These plants don’t power Chicago; the profits go out of state, and we get stuck with the pollution. It’s time to stand up to Edison International and demand more for our future.”

Earlier this spring, the Chicago City Council failed to vote on the Chicago Clean Power Ordinance, which would have forced the plants to clean up or shut down. A national coalition has focused on Chicago’s dirty plants as ground zero for clean energy transition in the nation.

“Chicago is facing a serious challenge,” says Chicago-based community activist Edyta Sitko. “Will the Council lead the country by quitting coal and standing up to corporate polluters? Or will it be the last major American city with two dirty coal plants within its borders? “

In 1892, an editorial in the Chicago Tribune opined: “Doubtless the end of the coal, at least as an article of a mighty commerce, will arrive within a period brief in comparison with the ages of human existence… How long can the earth sustain life?”

Over one century later, citizens across Chicago and the nation are now demanding that Midwest Generation and Chicago’s new mayor Rahm Emanuel finally make good on this promise and transition the city to clean energy.

Here’s a new video on Chicago’s long-time movement to close the plants:

Last Friday afternoon, I watched an episode of Private Practice that had aired the week before and was not all that surprised when one of the story lines focused on abortion. The show, which follows the lives of a group of doctors in Los Angeles, has dealt with the topic a number of times before.  It is clear that the writers and producers don’t just support a woman’s right to choose but are willing to risk alienating some viewers in order to use the show as a platform to promote reproductive rights.  In fact, though I often find the writing predictable and overly melodramatic (the show is one of those guilty TV pleasures), I think the writers have done a great job with the abortion debate.  They have given characters a chance to express both sides of the issue but in the end they always present well-reasoned, and even well-researched, arguments for why the right to “safe, legal abortions, without judgment” is so important. 

Still, I was struck by one scene in this episode which reminded me of the mandatory “counseling” some states are now making women go through before they can exercise their legal right to terminate a pregnancy. 

The episode, “God Bless the Child,” focused on the clashing views of two OB/GYNs, Dr. Addison Montgomery who performs abortions (and has had one) and Dr. Naomi Bennett who is opposed to abortion for religious reasons.  A patient, Patty, comes to Addison with uterine cramping and stomach pains about a month after having had an early abortion. It turns out the procedure was not done correctly and the woman is now 19 weeks pregnant. Addison explains that she can still legally have an abortion but that at this stage of the pregnancy it is a more complicated procedure. Patty decides to do it, but Naomi approaches her in the waiting room and pretty blatantly tries to talk her out of terminating her pregnancy.

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