Climate change as a prisoners’ dilemma

"Rrrat's okay, you guys. We would have done the same to you."

“Rrrat’s okay, you guys. We would have done the same to you.”

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has released its latest report on intergovernmental panels climate change, and our situation does not look good. Contrary to a number of anonymously funded think-tanks who insist that everything is fine, the Yokohama panel warns that “nobody on this planet is going to be untouched by the impacts of climate change.” The good news, though, is that poor people are going to get touched a lot harder and in more uncomfortable places. The big warning from the panel is food scarcity, which will ironically starve people in undeveloped nations—the same people who contribute least to carbon emissions. Climate change is an ethical issue. The people who are doing it most are mostly doing it to other people, which makes it a kind of prisoner’s dilemma.

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Friday links! Amazing America edition

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQzDqM0XbFM

That right there is the theme song to Sarah Palin’s new show Amazing America, which presumably celebrates everything great about the United States—including, at :59, “the dogs and the horses and the trucks and the guns.” Finally, basic cable is giving dogs and horses the credit they deserve. As one commenter put it:

Speaks straight from the GUT!  The way it is presented it gives us ALL a DEEP SENSE OF PRIDE!  Isn’t it a gift from our God when each can take PRIDE not necessarily only from what we have done but love the PRIDE we have in sharing ALL INCLUSIVE OF EACH THAT HAS THEIR PRIDE AND SATISFACTION OF GIVING TO OUR GIFT TO AN “AMAZING AMERICA!”

Today is Friday, and it’s high time we all took pride not necessarily in doing things, but in proudly including ourselves in the satisfaction of giving our gift to America, which is us. Won’t you speak from the gut with me?

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Pittsburgh rappers arrested for lyrics

Jamal Knox, Rashee Beasley and another unidentified person, in a grainy photo with no cutline courtesy of KDKA Pittsburgh

Jamal Knox, Rashee Beasley and another unidentified person, in a grainy photo with no cutline courtesy of KDKA Pittsburgh

Remember when Johnny Cash went to prison for confessing to a Reno-area murder in “Folsom Prison Blues?” I’m joking, of course: Johnny Cash was white. In unrelated news, two Pittsburgh rappers have been found guilty of intimidation of witnesses, conspiracy and making terroristic threats on the basis of a rap video posted on YouTube. Jamal Knox and Rashee Beasley are rappers in the same sense that they are adults, which is to say technically. But they did rap about violence against police officers in a song that mentioned two Pittsburgh cops by name. Both were sentenced to prison by Judge Jeffrey Manning, in what the Times calls a nationwide trend of prosecutors using rap lyrics as evidence in criminal trials.

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Do corporations get religious freedom?

Still less trouble than the gun lobby

Still less trouble than the gun lobby

The Supreme Court is now hearing arguments that corporations can opt out of the Affordable Care Act’s requirement to cover employee contraception on the basis of their sincerely held religious beliefs. In addition to a Mennonite cabinet maker, the Hobby Lobby chain has brought suit against the government, arguing that the morning-after pill and IUDs constitute abortion in their understanding of Christianity. Federal law already prohibits anyone from making employers to pay for abortions. An appeals court already ruled in favor of Hobby Lobby, citing Citizens United v. FEC in its determination that corporations enjoy freedom of religion in the same way they get freedom of speech.

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Obama to end NSA phone data collection

The NSA

The NSA

Good news, you guys terrorists: the foreign intelligence surveillance court order that authorizes the NSA to collect calling data on every American expires Friday. Also, ambiguous news, you guys: President Obama plans to ask FISA to extend the program for another 90 days, but he will also ask Congress to end it. The secret domestic surveillance program that for the last decade has been totally legal and okay will go away now that we know about it. I’m pretty sure that means the terrorists won. Thanks a lot, Edward Snowden.

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