Something to Know - 23 June

1.  Wondering where our future investigative journalists are coming from is a big worry, as we see the decline in the news paper industry.   It is my real belief that it is the well-schooled and hard-core nitty gritty investigative journalist who keeps this country honest.  As a group, they are the conscience of this nation.  Without them, we would not know about Watergate, Pentagon Papers, NSA snooping, and any number of political shenanigans going on every day.   Michael Isikoff is an example of those who have gone from NPR to NBC to ....well the media that is slowly replacing the printed news.   Perhaps, this will be the future of muckraking, and an internship at Yahoo will be the bedrock of keeping everybody honest in the future:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/23/business/media/yahoo-picks-nbc-veteran-as-investigative-reporter.html?emc=eta1

2.  I have been saving this article for an appropriate opportunity.  Can't find one, so it you get it now.   If you watched the Showtime series Years of Living Dangerously, you saw what the industry of Coconut Oil has done to the global environment.  Malaysia has cut down its rain forests, exporting the lumber, then exporting tons of greenhouse gases in the burning of the remains so that Coconut trees can be planted to harvest the resulting oil.   In the burning process of the land, just imagine that there is a large layer of peat that has formed over the eons that smolders and burns for days, weeks and months - more gases (including methane) up into the atmosphere.   The usable life of a coconut tree is about 25 years, and then it is cut down, then burned, and presto - more gas is released.  This article, which praises the oil of the coconut, is why millions of acres of a far off land are being abused for the sake of capitalistic greed.  The destruction of rain forests in Brazil, the  Philippines, and Malaysia by big Agriculture Corporations is part of the problem of our dangerous living practices.   Just sayin':

http://www.latimes.com/health/la-he-coconut-20140614-story.html

3.  Getting back to politics, we have the Albany New Bureau  (All Ben), offering up a resident neighbor's view on the distorted logic of the GeeOpie:

http://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/reich/article/The-3-biggest-right-wing-lies-about-poverty-5568197.php?t=1c3fb8c1cb

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Juan
 

 

The trouble with born-again Christians is that they are an even bigger pain the second time around.

-- Herb Caen