iEat Green – Denise O’Brien – 06.09.16

Denise O’Brien is a farmer and community organizer from Atlantic, Iowa. She has farmed with her husband, Larry Harris, for 40 years. She maintains sixteen acres of organic fruit and vegetable production incorporating high tunnel production. O’Brien also raises turkeys and chickens for meat and egg production. Denise mentors many women who are the next generation of farmers.

Through farming, Denise has had numerous opportunities to work within the agricultural community working on policy development on the state, national and international level and becoming involved in the community of women in agriculture, organic production, local food systems and conservation issues.

Denise has been involved in her community as well as in the agricultural sector. She is the founder of Women Food and Agriculture Network. O’Brien was a Food and Society Fellow, a W.K. Kellogg funded program from 2001 to 2003. She currently serves on the board of the Pest Action Network and the Sustainable Iowa Land Trust. In 2012 O’Brien completed a year assignment with the United States Department of Agriculture as an Agriculture Adviser in Afghanistan.

Baba Ghannouj 3 lg Eggplants, roasted, 1 cup Tahini 2/3 cup lemon juice 2 Tbs. chopped garlic 1 Tbs. cumin 1 ½ t. salt ¼ t. pepper ¼ cup chopped Parsley In a food processor, pulse eggplant until blended. Add remaining ingredients and process until smooth. Add water, and puree until desired consistency.Adjust seasonings for taste. *Garnish with Olive Oil, pine nuts and parsley or pomegranate

Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman – Why Can’t the Nation & the Left Deal With Election Theft?

There are two things we all need to know about the upcoming 2016 election:
1. Millions of likely Democratic voters have already been stripped from the voter rolls in critical states like Ohio. The key reporting on this has been done by the great Greg Palast, who has shown that a computer program coordinated by the Republican secretary of state of Kansas is being used in some two dozen states to steal from a substantial percentage of the citizenry their right to vote. The raw numbers are high enough that they could have a significant impact on the presidential, US Senate, House and many other elections this fall. The ACLU has now sued Jon Husted, Ohio’s secretary of state, over the stripping of two million citizens from Ohio’s voter rolls.

Pam Martens and Russ Martens – Hedge Funds Are Part of a Tricky Money Maneuver to Put Hillary in the White House

At the Democratic debate at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa on November 14, 2015, Hillary Clinton attempted to portray herself as the fierce enemy of hedge funds. She told the audience the following: “You have two billionaire hedge fund managers who started a Super PAC and they’re advertising against me in Iowa as we speak. So they clearly think …

GMO crops in US threaten to exterminate monarch butterflies

Monarch butterflies depend on milkweed as a food source and habitat, but crops like Monsanto’s Roundup Ready soy and corn are killing off these plants. While the monarch butterfly population made a comeback this year, the past two decades have been a major struggle for the vanishing species, and GMO crops in the United States along the migration route are …

Steve Horn – Fracking Supply Chain a Climate Disaster, Doing Little to Uplift Poor Communities: Studies

Two recent studies further call into question the oil and gas industry’s claims of the climate benefits and community benefits of hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”). One of those studies, published in Environmental Research Letters and titled, “Just fracking: a distributive environmental justice analysis of unconventional gas development in Pennsylvania, USA,” concludes that “the income distribution of the population nearer to shale gas wells …

MATT TAIBBI – How America Made Donald Trump Unstoppable

The first thing you notice at Donald Trump’s rallies is the confidence. Amateur psychologists have wishfully diagnosed him from afar as insecure, but in person the notion seems absurd. Donald Trump, insecure? We should all have such problems. At the Verizon Giganto-Center in Manchester the night before the New Hampshire primary, Trump bounds onstage to raucous applause and the booming …

Laurie Penny – Why the rest of the world should get a vote in the greatest reality TV show on Earth – the US election

I’ve been watching so closely, I am now able to tell Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio apart almost 50 per cent of the time, though it’s still like watching the Chuckle Brothers trying to lead a fascist rally. We’re only halfway through, and I’m already sick of the US presidential race. As reality television goes, it’s a hackneyed format. The narrative …

Leid Stories – 02.18.16

Election Primaries 2016: The Republicans’ Offensive Counteroffensive to the Democrats’ Shenanigans

The presidential race is at full throttle. Skirmishes earlier this month in Iowa and New Hampshire have winnowed the ranks of contenders, and a further culling might occur before Super Tuesday (March 1) after primaries in Nevada and South Carolina. Leid Stories has been discussing the shenanigans on the Democratic side, a fierce battle between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders to be the standard bearer in the general election. We look at how the other wing of the duopoly is faring as six survivors of a brutal political editing execute an offensive counteroffensive.

ROBERT REICH – The Death of the Republican Party

I’m writing to you today to announce the death of the Republican Party. It is no longer a living, vital, animate organization. It died in 2016. RIP. It has been replaced by warring tribes: Evangelicals opposed to abortion, gay marriage, and science. Libertarians opposed to any government constraint on private behavior. Market fundamentalists convinced the “free market” can do no …

Leid Stories – 02.15.16

With Justice Scalia’s Death, A Return of ‘Constitutional Originalism’

Election Follies: Hillary, Bernie Seek Salvation in Nevada

The death over the weekend of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has added yet another dimension to the 2016 presidential race: Who will President Barack Obama appoint to replace the right-leaning constitutional originalist? While the president says he will not be rushed or pressured about a nominee, U.S. Supreme Court pundits and congressional pols are already making noises about which ideological camp the prospective nominee should stand call home. John Friedl, professor of political science at the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga, provides a backgrounder that dispels the myth that the U.S. Supreme Court is apolitical.

Bernie Sanders thought he’d clinched an appearance at Victory Missionary Baptist Church in Las Vegas, ahead of Nevada’s Feb. 20 primary. When he got there, he found Hillary Clinton, civil-rights icon Rep. John Lewis in tow to introduce her. In a commentary, Leid stories says black voters appear not to be safe anywhere.