Those of you over 30 may remember when we banned a whole slew of chemicals called CFCs were banned in the late 80s. They were used as aerosol propellants in consumer products, refrigerants, and a host of other uses. The more important and ubiquitous ones were phased out over several years. They were pretty widely believed, by climate scientists, to be a major cause of the emerging hole in the ozone layer. Industry, of course, talked about what damage this would do the economy, that the people who pushed this were alarmists, etc. Some on the right even accused them of being communists in environmentalist clothing who simply wanted to hurt business. Well, it looks like we have evidence that the scientists and environmentalists were right.

Maybe if this gets a bit more widespread publicity, it’ll help make the case for phasing out greenhouse gasses.

One of the most irritating bumper stickers that I see somewhat regularly (remember where I live) is You Can’t Be ‘Pro Child’ And ‘Pro Choice’. Today, I saw a car that had that sticker on one side of its bumper and an even more irritating one on its other side “there would be no christmas if mary had been pro choice”. Argh. What the fuck kind of moron doesn’t understand that being pro-choice doesn’t necessarily mean being pro-abortion and really definitely doesn’t mean that you have to have an abortion. My mom is pro-choice and gave birth 5 times and raised us to be pro-choice, too. I got irritated enough that I wrote a little slogan in MS Word, ran it over into MS paint, saved it as a PNG and created a cafepress store with it.

My slogan is the very simple “My Mom is Pro Choice”.

I’m not doing this to make money. I would really love nothing more than to see some kids in the kid clothing they let you sell, but if I ever see any adults wearing it, that would rock, too. I put a 5% markup on the items. If I ever make any money off this stuff, I’ll use it to hire someone to make a real logo out of this phrase and then the rest will go to NARAL. If someone (I’ve got a couple of friends who are graphic designers) makes me a logo, then any dime I make off selling this stuff will go

I keep a blogroll of news links about layoffs on the front page of this site. Those of you who read it through the RSS feed never see that. I really wish that this country had found some way to turn the anti-trust trends of the late 19th and early 20th centuries into a cultural tradition. There are few things I hate more than watching competing companies merge. It’s always bad for the workers involved. The “efficiencies” that are gained are really just a way to redistribute more wealth from workers to owners.

We’ve been seeing towns and regions devasted by this kind of thing for so long that people have grown used to it, at least when it’s not happening to them. But every time I read about some company ceasing production in the town where they were founded or have been in business for 80-150 years, it makes me literally a little sick in my stomach.

Personal life stuff has kept me from being too active here lately. I’m about to be away from the computer for nearly 3 weeks, so don’t expect much here until June. In the meantime, I thought I’d pass along this post from cpk that in a short, simple format unwinds the basis for the different media treatments of Patrick Kennedy and Rush Limbaugh. It’s not liberal bias. It’s the underlying facts.