Obama goes to mat for Israel despite critics

MoonHowler

President Obama is in a very delicate international situation right now as Palestine prepares to ask the UN to recognize its statehood.  The United States will vote against this measure in the UN Security Council and in doing so, will piss off most of the Arab nations.  However, Palestinian Statehood must come about through peaceful negotiations with Israel, not a UN decree. 

Meanwhile, candidates Romney and Perry really need to back off political commentary during this critical period.  There cannot be two or three heads of state.  Both men, embolden by a recent win in NY-9,  are obviously pandering to the normally democratic Jewish vote in an attempt to lure votes away for the Republicans.  The posturing needs to stop until these negotiations are over.  Further instability in the middle east is not needed so Romney and Perry can pick up a few more votes. 

Read More

Devil went down to Georgia and said no clemency for Troy Davis

MoonHowler

Convicted cop killer Troy Davis is slated to be executed at 7 pm tonight after being denied clemency from a Georgia pardons board.  Denial of clemency has been described as routine.

This execution has been troublesome for many people including proponents of the death penalty.  7 out of 9 of the witnesses in the trial have recanted their statements.  At least one has said that he was young when he said what he gave them what they wanted to hear. 

CBS News reports the following:

CBS News legal analyst Andrew Cohen described the denial of clemency as “routine.”

 “Parole boards almost never grant clemency, so this is not a surprise,” Cohen said. “Now if Wednesday’s execution is going to be halted it’s going to have to come from the federal courts, and the U.S. Supreme Court in particular, which last week halted a Texas execution.”

 Davis has gotten support from hundreds of thousands of people, including a former FBI director, former President Jimmy Carter and Pope Benedict XVI, and a U.S. Supreme Court ruling gave him an unusual opportunity to prove his innocence last year. State and federal courts, however, repeatedly upheld his conviction for the 1989 killing of Mark MacPhail, an off-duty police officer who was working as a security guard in Savannah when he was shot dead rushing to help a homeless man who was being attacked.

Read More

Another new prejudice–redheaded sperm donors

MoonHowler

It’s official.  The latest prejudice is now red headed sperm donors.  No one wants red headed off-spring it appears.

According to the Washington Post (and lots of other ‘accordings’):

According to The Telegraph, by way of Gawker, the world’s largest sperm donor bank has revealed that, despite Christina Hendricksstar turn at the Emmys, it has begun turning down red-headed sperm donors.

Ole Schou, Cryos’s director, told the Danish newspaper Ekstrabladet :

“There are too many redheads in relation to demand. I do not think you chose a redhead, unless the partner — for example, the sterile male — has red hair, or because the lone woman has a preference for redheads. And that’s perhaps not so many, especially in the latter case.”

Cryos serves clients all over the world, so their findings of bias is international.

There is one place where little red heads are wanted and that is Ireland.  Should we be surprised?   Red hair and freckles are always welcome on the Emerald Isle.   Meanwhile, there is no crime in excluding certain attributes from sperm banks.   Prospective parents can always express a preference and it isn’t red heads! 

Ethical questions will always plague medical technologies.  Are there any taboos that parents should not get to select?

 

Bringing Back the Jobs

MoonHowler

It all started with a tweet from an SMU student to ABC news asking for help finding Made in America products for her dorm room.  It seems that the college catalog for dorm shopping  had NO products that were made in America.  So the search began.

Diane Sawyer reported some amazing figures.  If colleges and universities had Made in America  products in the catalogs they provide the nearly 3 million new students entering college this year, a half million jobs would be created.  $46 Billion dollars are spent each year to outfit new rooms.  Over 800 colleges use this  catalog and all the schools got money back for distributing the catalogs to incoming freshmen. 

Will the colleges switch?  Probably only if students and taxpayers insist!  Why are we peddling foreign made products?

Good job ABC News for ferreting out this glaring problem.  Good for SMU for agreeing to change.  No one had asked.  Therefore, no one knew.