Sunday Morning Reads: Marabunta…those crazy ants, I am the 99%!

Good Morning, it’s Sunday…

The first Sunday in October. I love October, it is my favorite month…the air has that nip of fall, the leaves change colors, and TCM has all those great old horror movie classics. More on that in the Easy Sunday links below, first let’s get down to some news that made, or didn’t make the headlines this weekend.

WTF is this? I thought the man put his foot down…he ain’t running. Now I see this: Christie Team Assessing How Fast a 2012 Campaign Could Be Mounted – NYTimes.com

Chris Christie’s political advisers are working to determine whether they could move fast enough to set up effective political operations in Iowa and New Hampshire in the wake of a relentless courtship aimed at persuading Mr. Christie, the governor of New Jersey, to plunge into the race for the Republican presidential nomination, according to operatives briefed on the preparations.

Mr. Christie has not yet decided whether to run and has not authorized the start of a full-fledged campaign operation. But with the governor now seriously considering getting in, his strategists — many of them veterans of Rudolph W. Giuliani’s 2008 campaign — are internally assessing the financial and logistical challenges of mounting a race with less than 100 days until voting is likely to begin.

Yes, Florida broke the GOP rules by moving their primary date up. They should make those votes not count, just like what happened with Hillary. I haven’t heard what “slap on the wrist” this move will result in, but I bet those Florida votes will count. The NYT articles continues…

“They’re getting their arms around what’s going to be required,” said a political operative who has been briefed on the deliberations among Mr. Christie’s team. “What does an operation look like? What are the requirements in each of the states? What are the things that need to be done before we talk about people and résumés and office space?”

And that is a huge amount of girth they’ll need to get those arms around…Sorry I could not resist, but since it is sort of like the pot calling the kettle black…guess that makes it a bit better. Right?

You know it is all for naught, because just like Bachmann and Perry, Christie will be the favorite until the GOP gets bored with him. Wow, I thought my daughter’s little friend was fickle when it came to whom she was in love with this week…

This next article hits home, because when the immigration law was passed in Georgia, a boy named Jesus, one of my son’s good friends had to move out of the state. Hispanic Students Absent From Alabama Schools Following Controversial Immigration Law

Hispanic students have started vanishing from Alabama public schools in the wake of a court ruling that upheld the state’s tough new law cracking down on illegal immigration.

Education officials say scores of immigrant families have withdrawn their children from classes or kept them home this week, afraid that sending the kids to school would draw attention from authorities.

There are no precise statewide numbers. But several districts with large immigrant enrollments – from small towns to large urban districts – reported a sudden exodus of children of Hispanic parents, some of whom told officials they planned to leave the state to avoid trouble with the law, which requires schools to check students’ immigration status.

The anxiety has become so intense that the superintendent in one of the state’s largest cities, Huntsville, went on a Spanish-language television show Thursday to try to calm widespread worries.

“In the case of this law, our students do not have anything to fear,” Casey Wardynski said in halting Spanish. He urged families to send students to class and explained that the state is only trying to compile statistics.

Police, he insisted, were not getting involved in schools.

I don’t trust that statistics talk one bit…

A school worker in Albertville – a community with a large poultry industry that employs many Hispanic workers – said Friday that many families might leave town over the weekend for other states. About 22 percent of the community’s 4,200 students are Hispanic.

“I met a Hispanic mother in the hallway at our community learning center this morning, where enrollment and withdrawal happens. She looked at me with tears in her eyes. I asked, `Are you leaving?’ She said `Yes,’ and hugged me, crying,” said the worker, who spoke on condition of anonymity because she was not an authorized spokeswoman.

In Russellville, which has one of the largest immigrant populations in the state because of its poultry plants, overall school attendance was down more than 2 percent after the ruling, and the rate was higher among Hispanic students.

There’s “no firm data yet, but several students have related to their teachers that they may be moving soon,” said George Harper, who works in the central office.

Schools in Baldwin County, a heavily agricultural and tourist area near the Gulf Coast, and in Decatur in the Tennessee Valley also reported sudden decreases in Hispanic attendance.

The law does not require proof of citizenship to enroll, and it does not apply to any students who were enrolled before Sept. 1. While most students are not affected, school systems are supposed to begin checking the status of first-time enrollees now.

Like the children in this article, Jesus’ father and mother are undocumented. His older brother has moved in with a friend here in Banjoville so that he can finish up his last year of high school. Even though the Obama administration has filed court docs appealing the law, the families aren’t taking any chances. Can you blame them?

In Georgia, Family, friends celebrate Troy Davis’ life at funeral – CNN.com

It was inevitable that the fiery politics of the death penalty would punctuate Saturday’s remembrance of Troy Anthony Davis.

His 20 years of claims of innocence on Georgia’s death row earned him millions of supporters who believe the state wrongfully executed him on the night of September 21.

Saturday, Davis’ family and closest friends gathered inside the Jonesville Baptist Church to celebrate his life.

A mass of flowers covered Davis’ closed casket. Two photos flanked it — one a color portrait of a young boy who grew up on the streets of Savannah’s Cloverdale neighborhood and the other a black and white photo of a young man in a suit attending his murder trial.

Those in attendance repeatedly chanted: “I am Troy Davis,” the slogan adopted in the campaign to spare his life and one that went viral on social media networks.

“Look at those last two lines of your program today,” said Benjamin Jealous, president of the NAACP. “I am Troy Davis. And I am free.”

[…]

“We’re going to keep on fighting until his name is finally cleared and Georgia admits what it has done,” Jealous said. “We’re going to keep on fighting until the death penalty is abolished and this can never be done to anyone else.”

I hope this doesn’t happen to anyone else, but with Obama assassinating US citizens abroad without due process, it doesn’t look promising. Times have changed, and the society is not going forward…but backward. (Take a look at that link, it is from Juan Cole. I mentioned it yesterday in the comments of Boston Boomer’s excellent post. Check both out if you missed them.)

On to some global climate news…With Deaths of Forests, a Loss of Crucial Climate Protectors – NYTimes.com

The trees spanning many of the mountainsides of western Montana glow an earthy red, like a broadleaf forest at the beginning of autumn.

But these trees are not supposed to turn red. They are evergreens, falling victim to beetles that used to be controlled in part by bitterly cold winters. As the climate warms, scientists say, that control is no longer happening.

Across millions of acres, the pines of the northern and central Rockies are dying, just one among many types of forests that are showing signs of distress these days.

From the mountainous Southwest deep into Texas, wildfires raced across parched landscapes this summer, burning millions more acres. In Colorado, at least 15 percent of that state’s spectacular aspen forests have gone into decline because of a lack of water.

The devastation extends worldwide. The great euphorbia trees of southern Africa are succumbing to heat and water stress. So are the Atlas cedars of northern Algeria. Fires fed by hot, dry weather are killing enormous stretches of Siberian forest. Eucalyptus trees are succumbing on a large scale to a heat blast in Australia, and the Amazon recently suffered two “once a century” droughts just five years apart, killing many large trees.

Experts are scrambling to understand the situation, and to predict how serious it may become.

Hmmm, I wonder, what would cause the droughts…could it be satan?

Scientists have figured out — with the precise numbers deduced only recently — that forests have been absorbing more than a quarter of the carbon dioxide that people are putting into the air by burning fossil fuels and other activities. It is an amount so large that trees are effectively absorbing the emissions from all the world’s cars and trucks.

Without that disposal service, the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would be rising faster. The gas traps heat from the sun, and human emissions are causing the planet to warm.

Yet the forests have only been able to restrain the increase, not halt it. And some scientists are increasingly worried that as the warming accelerates, trees themselves could become climate-change victims on a massive scale.

That is just a sample. Give this NYT piece a read, it is very long…five pages.

Y’all remember that Stupor Committee, oops…I mean Super Committee. Well in an op/ed in the New York Times Sunday Review, “possible” outcomes are discussed: The Supercommittee’s Stark Choice – NYTimes.com

Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona, who is happy to cut virtually anything else, says military cuts could lead to job losses. Representative Howard McKeon of California, the Armed Services Committee chairman, is so rattled by the law that he used an old scare tactic, saying the cuts could produce a new military draft. “It is my suspicion that the White House and Congressional Democrats insisted on that defense number for one purpose: to force Republicans to choose between raising taxes or gutting defense,” Mr. McKeon said.

That is exactly the choice, and Republicans brought it on themselves by turning the routine debt-ceiling vote into a life-or-death struggle over the unrelated issue of taxes and spending. They have a way out, however. President Obama has given the supercommittee a clear blueprint for $3.6 trillion in deficit reduction through a mix of spending cuts and tax increases on the rich. If the committee followed even half of that program, it could exceed its original mandate, wrap up its work quickly and accomplish a great deal.

Mr. McKeon is a rare Republican who says he would prefer the tax increases to military spending cuts. But the White House proposal, like virtually every good idea that has come up, has been removed from the table by Republican leaders, who have resisted even Democratic demands to allow the panel to add job creation to its mandate.

The committee has only one option, Speaker John Boehner said a few days ago: cutting domestic spending and social-insurance programs, including Medicare and Social Security.

Yes…lets hit the people who matter least…but then the op/ed takes the usual turn.

The opposite is true. Mr. Obama identified $570 billion in detailed cuts to mandatory spending programs over 10 years. If committee members actually looked at the plan, instead of dismissing it, they would find scores of useful proposals for savings: $31 billion in agriculture subsidies; $18.6 billion in Postal Service reform, including ending Saturday delivery; $27.5 billion in increased fees charged to lenders by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac; $42.5 billion in higher health premiums and pension contributions for federal and military workers; $135 billion in less generous Medicare payments to drug makers.

Most important, Mr. Obama would cut the deficit by $1.57 trillion with new tax revenue. It is a good bet the Republican side of the panel will reject it. Republicans want to preserve the programs they care about, at the expense of programs for the elderly, the middle class and the poor. But the president’s strong defense of his plan should at least stiffen the spines of the six Democrats on the panel to refuse any plan that relies entirely on cuts.

Oh yes, all those progressive policies Obama has been so “strong” to defend…laugh…cough, oh that was a good one! I won’t even mention the lack of stiff spines in the Democratic Party, especially the spine of the “Dem” in Chief.

I want to put this link up: Occupy Wall Street Protests Continue In Manhattan, Begin Elsewhere [LATEST UPDATES]

At the time of writing this post, Dakinikat said the news was reporting over 700 arrested. The numbers may have changed since then.

If you have the time read some of the I am the 99 percent post: We Are the 99 Percent

We are the 99 percent. We are getting kicked out of our homes. We are forced to choose between groceries and rent. We are denied quality medical care. We are suffering from environmental pollution. We are working long hours for little pay and no rights, if we’re working at all. We are getting nothing while the other 1 percent is getting everything. We are the 99 percent.

I’ll be working on my contribution later today.

Anyway, that will bring you up to date on what has gone on this weekend.

From Minx’s Missing Link File: Okay, when I saw the title of this article, I immediately thought of Charlton Heston, and Marabunta! Anyway, check it out: Hairy, Crazy Ants Invade From Texas To Miss.

NEW ORLEANS — It sounds like a horror movie: Biting ants invade by the millions. A camper’s metal walls bulge from the pressure of ants nesting behind them. A circle of poison stops them for only a day, and then a fresh horde shows up, bringing babies. Stand in the yard, and in seconds ants cover your shoes.

It’s an extreme example of what can happen when the ants – which also can disable huge industrial plants – go unchecked. Controlling them can cost thousands of dollars. But the story is real, told by someone who’s been studying ants for a decade.

“Months later, I could close my eyes and see them moving,” said Joe MacGown, who curates the ant, mosquito and scarab collections at the Mississippi State Entomological Museum at Mississippi State University.

He’s been back to check on the hairy crazy ants. They’re still around. The occupant isn’t.

Oh, if only there was someone who could save us from being eaten alive by these ants!

The ants don’t dig out anthills and prefer to nest in sheltered, moist spots. In MacGown’s extreme example in Waveland, Miss., the house was out in woods with many fallen trees and piles of debris. They will eat just about anything – plant or animal.

Yup, they’ll eat anything…so for your amusement, a couple of video clips for you.

And if that doesn’t get you pumped up…I know this will…check out Heston as he runs through fields of ants, and accomplishes the impossible. What else would you expect from Moses himself?

Easy Like Sunday Morning Link of the Week: This one is just a link to the TCM schedule, and a few links to some classic horror movies you shouldn’t miss. Classic Horror Introduction

Taking viewers through their darkest hours are five full nights of horror classics, arranged roughly by decade and ranging from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919) to Repulsion (1965). Also raising goosebumps will be such masterworks of the genre as Nosferatu (1922), Frankenstein (1931), Cat People (1942), House of Wax (1953) and Night of the Living Dead (1968).

Some of my favorites, I hope you can catch some of these, all times are Eastern: