Archive for April, 2009
Democrats’ ‘Battered Wife Syndrome’
Democrats’ ‘Battered Wife Syndrome’
By Robert Parry
In recent years, the Washington political dynamic has often resembled an abusive marriage, in which the bullying husband (the Republicans) slaps the wife and kids around, and the battered wife (the Democrats) makes excuses and hides the ugly bruises from outsiders to keep the family together.
So, when the Republicans are in a position of power, they throw their weight around, break the rules, and taunt: “Whaddya gonna do ‘bout it?”
Then, when the Republicans do the political equivalent of passing out on the couch, the Democrats use their time in control, tiptoeing around, tidying up the house and cringing at every angry grunt from the snoring figure on the couch.
This pattern, which now appears to be repeating itself with President Barack Obama’s unwillingness to hold ex-President George W. Bush and his subordinates accountable for a host of crimes including torture, may have had its origins 40 years ago in Campaign 1968 when the Vietnam War was raging.
President Lyndon Johnson felt he was on the verge of achieving a negotiated peace settlement when he learned in late October 1968 that operatives working for Republican presidential candidate Richard Nixon were secretly sabotaging the Paris peace talks.
via Consortiumnews.com.
Flu Kills The Torture Memos
Flu Kills The Torture Memos
In a ‘Holy convenience, Batman!’ moment, a ‘unique’ flu virus (one likely concocted in US Army labs) overtakes media coverage of revelations that the highest levels of the US government instructed the CIA (and private contractors) to torture terror suspects.
Scientists said the virus combines genetic material from pigs, birds and humans in a way researchers have not seen before. “We are very, very concerned,” World Health Organization spokesman Thomas Abraham said. “We have what appears to be a novel virus and it has spread from human to human,” he said. “It’s all hands on deck at the moment.”
Guess where the first swine flu outbreak occurred? That’s right, Fort Dix, New Jersey, in 1976. Also likely created in a US Army lab. Thirteen soldiers died, leading the US government to force a questionable vaccine on the population — backed by a legal liability escape clause mandated by and for the pharma-terrorists. Next, people started dying not from the flu — but from the *vaccine.*
via Citizens for Legitimate Government.
World first for strange molecule – Fermi’s theoretical molecule becomes a fact
World first for strange molecule
A molecule that until now existed only in theory has finally been made.
Known as a Rydberg molecule, it is formed through an elusive and extremely weak chemical bond between two atoms.
The new type of bonding, reported in Nature, occurs because one of the two atoms in the molecule has an electron very far from its nucleus or centre.
It reinforces fundamental quantum theories, developed by Nobel prize-winning physicist Enrico Fermi, about how electrons behave and interact.
The Rydberg molecules in question were formed from two atoms of rubidium – one a Rydberg atom, and one a “normal” atom.
The movement and position of electrons within an atom can be described as orbiting around a central nucleus – with each shell of orbiting electrons further from the centre.
via BBC NEWS | Science & Environment | World first for strange molecule.
Will the U.S. Ever Need to Build Another Coal or Nuclear Power Plant?
Will the U.S. Ever Need to Build Another Coal or Nuclear Power
Plant?
The new chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission doesn’t think so
No new nuclear or coal plants may ever be needed in the United States, the chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission said today.
“We may not need any, ever,” Jon Wellinghoff told reporters at a U.S. Energy Association forum.
The FERC chairman’s comments go beyond those of other Obama administration officials, who have strongly endorsed greater efficiency and renewables deployment but also say nuclear and fossil energies will continue playing a major role.
Wellinghoff’s view also goes beyond the consensus outlook in the electric power industry about future sources of electricity. The industry has assumed that more baseload generation would provide part of an increasing demand for power, along with a rapid deployment of renewable generation, smart grid technologies and demand reduction strategies.
via Will the U.S. Ever Need to Build Another Coal or Nuclear Power Plant?: Scientific American.
Microsoft to release version of Windows 7 next week
OPS: Thanks, but I’ll wait for SP2
Microsoft to release version of Windows 7 next week
SEATTLE (Reuters) – Microsoft Corp said on Friday a version of its long awaited Windows 7 operating system will be made available from next week.
The version, known as a ‘release candidate’, or RC, essentially means the world’s largest software company is in the final stages of completing the operating system, the successor to the unpopular Windows Vista.
Microsoft said the RC will be available for download by program developers and IT professionals subscribing to the MSDN and TechNet networks on April 30 and available more broadly on May 5.
The company has still not said when the finished version would begin to be installed on PCs or available to buy in shops, but the company’s chief financial officer said on Thursday it could be as early as July.
That would allow Microsoft to capitalize on back-to-school sales and set it up for a strong holiday shopping season.
via Microsoft to release version of Windows 7 next week | Reuters.
Putting the Bush Years on Trial
Putting the Bush Years on Trial
By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
The notion of putting the Bush years on trial has never held allure for President Obama; even less so that of putting Wall Street in the dock. From his lips has always dropped the catechism of uplift and forgiveness, of “moving forward”. He and his advisors had supposed that closing down Guantanamo and issuing a stern denunciation of torture would be sufficient advertisement of the new era; that a few terse reprimands for excessive bonuses for executives would slake the public appetite for retribution on the bankers and tycoons.
On torture, as he approaches the 100-day benchmark, Obama has been forced to change step, in response to public outrage at the chilling stream of memoranda documenting the savageries, and legal justifications for same, ordered and subsequently monitored in minute detail by the Bush high command. Obama’s continuing aversion to any serious calling to account of the sponsors of torture has been evident in his almost daily shifts in position. At the start of this last week he indicated that yes, those okaying the tortures might be legally answerable, that a “Truth Commission” might be the way forward. By Thursday he was backing into that, saying that a commission would “open the door to a protracted, backward-looking discussion” and in the language of his press secretary, “the president determined the concept didn’t seem altogether workable in this case” because of the intense partisan atmosphere built around the issue.
So it’s still not clear whether Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and their subordinates will have to endure the soft option of a bipartisan commission of enquiry, or face a special prosecutor, or sit back and watch political momentum flag as the issue devolves into lengthy and possibly closed hearings by the Senate Intelligence Committee. As Republicans have not been slow in pointing out, senior Democrats in Congress were certainly complicit in sanctioning torture as early as 2002. They say House Speaker Nancy Pelosi endorsed waterboarding. She says she did not.
via CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names.
Editorial – The Siegelman Case
Editorial - The Siegelman Case
Attorney General Eric Holder’s recent decision to drop all of the charges against Ted Stevens, the former Republican senator from Alaska, because of prosecutorial misconduct raises an important question: What about Don Siegelman? A bipartisan group of 75 former state attorneys general has written to Mr. Holder asking him to take a fresh look at the former Alabama governor’s case. He should do so right away.
Mr. Siegelman was convicted in 2006 on dubious corruption charges. He spent nine months in prison before being released on appeal, and he faces years more behind bars. He has long insisted that the case against him was politically motivated and that prosecutors engaged in an array of professional and ethical violations.
Many aspects of the case require further scrutiny. United States Attorney Leura Canary is the wife of a prominent Republican political operative who was a strong opponent of Mr. Siegelman. Her office prosecuted Mr. Siegelman. Ms. Canary said that she recused herself from the prosecution, but questions have been raised about whether she actually did.
via Editorial – The Siegelman Case – NYTimes.com.
Monsanto sues Germany over GMO maize ban
Monsanto sues Germany over GMO maize ban
FRANKFURT, April 21 (Reuters) – Monsanto Co (MON.N), the world’s biggest seed company, has filed suit against the German government’s decision to ban genetically modified (GMO) maize, the company said on Tuesday.
The German government banned the cultivation and sale of GMO maize despite European Union rulings that the biotech grain is safe. [ID:nLE218443]
The ban affects Monsanto’s MON 810 maize, which may no longer be sown for this summer’s harvest, the government said.
A Monsanto spokesman said Germany’s action to restrict Mon 810 was an “arbitrary ban” that violated EU rules.
He said EU member states can invoke a safeguard clause against an already approved plant but such a move required new scientific evidence and none existed to support the ban.
“They are in conflict with EU rules,” the spokesman said.
via Monsanto sues Germany over GMO maize ban | Markets | Markets News | Reuters.
Drowning in plastic: The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is twice the size of France
Drowning in plastic: The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is twice the size of France
There are now 46000 pieces of plastic per square kilometre of the world’s oceans killing a million seabirds and 100000 marine mammals each year. Worse still there seems to be nothing we can do to clean it up. So how do we turn the tide?
It was discovered in 1997 by a Californian sailor, surfer, volunteer environmentalist and early-retired furniture restorer named Charles Moore, who was heading home with his crew from a sailing race in Hawaii, at the helm of a 50ft catamaran that he had built himself.
For the hell of it, he decided to turn on the engine and take a shortcut across the edge of the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, a region that seafarers have long avoided. It is a perennial high pressure zone, an immense slowly spiralling vortex of warm equatorial air that pulls in winds and turns them gently until they expire. Several major sea currents also converge in the gyre and bring with them most of the flotsam from the Pacific coasts of Southeast Asia, North America, Canada and Mexico. Fifty years ago nearly all that flotsam was biodegradable. These days it is 90 per cent plastic.
via Desdemona Despair: Drowning in plastic: The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is twice the size of France.
New flu has spread widely, cannot be contained-CDC
New flu has spread widely, cannot be contained-CDC
WASHINGTON, April 25 (Reuters) – An unusual new flu virus has spread widely and cannot be contained, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed on Saturday.
“It is clear that this is widespread. And that is why we have let you know that we cannot contain the spread of this virus,” the CDC’s Dr. Anne Schuchat told reporters on a conference call.
The strain of swine flu is suspected of killing as many as 68 people in Mexico and infecting more than 1,000 more, including eight in the United States. (Reporting by Maggie Fox, editing by Patricia Zengerle)
via Reuters AlertNet – New flu has spread widely, cannot be contained-CDC.
National Guard May Be Sent to US-Mexico Border
Plan Would Deploy Guard Near Mexico
$350 million effort aimed at drug war.
The Pentagon and Homeland Security Department are developing contingency plans to send National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexican border under a $350 million initiative that would expand the U.S. military’s role in the drug war, according to Obama administration officials.
The circumstances under which the troops could be deployed have not been determined, the officials said. They said the proposal was designed to give President Obama additional flexibility to respond to drug-related violence that has threatened to spill into the United States from Mexico and to curb southbound smuggling of cash and weapons.
The initiative, which was tucked into the supplemental budget request sent to Congress this month, has raised concerns over what some U.S. officials perceive as an effort by the Pentagon to increase its counternarcotics profile through a large pot of money that comes with few visible requirements.
via t r u t h o u t | National Guard May Be Sent to US-Mexico Border.
Iceland’s Voters Are Poised to Punish Conservatives
OPS: As well they should. After all, as anyone who has been paying attentions now knows: The Conservative Movement, much like a Bowel Movement, is full of Shit.
Iceland’s Voters Are Poised to Punish Conservatives
REYKJAVIK, Iceland — It is a tale of light and dark — of a small but rugged country far from anywhere that has suffered as severely as any in the developed world at the hands of buccaneering free-marketeers, but which is now slowly digging itself out from the financial wreckage.
An important milestone was reached on Saturday, when the country’s voters went to the polls to elect a new government, three months after riotous street protests over the country’s banking collapse forced the country’s conservative-led administration from office. Leading one of the first governments anywhere to lose office because of the global financial crisis, the conservatives were blamed for their perceived complicity in the banks’ accumulating unsustainable, multibillion debts, and their partnership with a group of freewheeling Icelandic entrepreneurs known as the “New Vikings.”
via Iceland’s Voters Are Poised to Punish Conservatives – NYTimes.com.
Where’s My Change?
Where’s My Change?
by Ralph Nader
“No more fine print; no more confusing terms and conditions.” This is what Barack Obama told a White House gathering of leading credit card issuers this week.
Right afterward, President Obama told the press that “there has to be strong and reliable protections for consumers, protections that ban unfair rate increases and forbid abusive fees and penalties.” This soaring rhetoric places a heavy burden on Mr. Obama to stand up to the giant power of the credit card bosses and their monetized allies on Capitol Hill. Yet he has shown little interest in re-instating a Presidential consumer advisor as did Lyndon Johnson with the formidable Betty Furness and as did Jimmy Carter with the legendary Esther Peterson.
Deep recession times are tough for the nation’s over 200 million consumers. Still, no consumer voice in the White House, though consumer groups asked Mr. Obama to move promptly on this tiny advocacy office months ago.
The corporate chieftains have easy access to the White House and the new President, whether these bosses come on missions demanding power or missions of beggary for bailouts. When will he meet with the leading heads of consumer protection groups with millions of dues-paying members who could give him the base to hold accountable and regulate the democracy-denying, economy-wrecking corporate supremacists?
via Where’s My Change? | CommonDreams.org.
New Revelations Compel Obama and Congress to Prosecute Bush and Aides for War Crimes
New Revelations Compel Obama and Congress to Prosecute Bush and Aides for War Crimes – by Sherwood Ross
Revelations that high Bush administration officials both approved torture and knew that almost all of Guantanamo’s prisoners were innocent compel the nation to prosecute them for war crimes, a distinguished legal scholar writes.
Instead, the Obama administration and Congress have been “running away” from the prosecution of the Bush officials, writes Lawrence Velvel, dean of the Massachusetts School of Law in his blog VelvelonNationalAffairs.
For from discussing prosecutions, “we are hearing about possible, almost surely secret, investigations—which will keep facts away from the American public—in order to find out whether the Bush Administration kept information from Congress—which we already have known for years it certainly did,” Velvel writes.
“And we are hearing about truth and reconciliation commissions, with immunity given to arch criminals in exchange for testimony, in order to find out the facts—which already are largely known and, to the extent not known, would come out in criminal prosecutions,” he added.
The reason politicians are running may be because many of the members of Congressional intelligence committees “received briefings on what was going on” and are complicit.” Thus, ” Velvel writes, “The word on the street is that Nancy Pelosi and Jay Rockefeller are especially terrified and are working behind the scenes to kill any possibility of prosecutions.”
via New Revelations Compel Obama and Congress to Prosecute Bush and Aides for War Crimes.
Media Disinformation: Reframing the War in Afghanistan and Pakistan as a “Class War”
Media Disinformation: Reframing the War in Afghanistan and Pakistan as a “Class War” – by Michael Skinner
The fact that the Taliban is a party of the peasant classes, but certainly not the only one, is not news in Afghanistan or Pakistan. It is thus interesting that The New York Times (“Taliban Exploit Class Rifts to Gain Ground in Pakistan,” 16 April 2009) is now exploiting the fact the Taliban do represent significant groups of peasants as if this is news. This indication of a possible reframing of the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan as a class war is significant as the U.S. escalates the intensity and scale of warfare in the region.
My Afghan-Canadian research partner, Hamayon Rastgar, has said many times since we returned from a research trip in Afghanistan that “the West gives the monopoly of anti-imperialism to the Taliban” by crushing and continuing to suppress socialist forces in Afghanistan and by portraying the complex insurgency in the simplistic way Western governments and media do.
Many non-violent resisters as well as various insurgent groups oppose the Taliban, the mujaheddin, and imperialist forces. The complexity of the resistance and insurgent forces remain opaque to most Western analysts. Articles by Afghan intellectuals engaged in non-violent resistance against all the forces of repression – the Taliban, the mujaheddin, and the Western forces – are rarely translated for Western readers. Westerners believe all insurgents are under a Taliban banner. However, as an Afghan Maoist leader told us: “The government credits the Taliban for every insurgent attack; the Taliban like to take the credit; and that works for everyone else at this moment.”
via Media Disinformation: Reframing the War in Afghanistan and Pakistan as a “Class War”.
Army Looks to Keep Troops Forever Young
Army Looks to Keep Troops Forever Young
The U.S. Army has itself a problem: Its top troops don’t stay young forever. “Highly qualified and very experienced soldiers regularly leave the Army because their physical and/or cognitive performance capabilities are significantly less than that of a 20 year old,” Army researchers grumble. So they’ve come up with a new research push to fix all that — keeping G.I.s as fresh as the day they entered basic training.
It’s the latest in the Army’s continued efforts to toy with cellular aging. Mitochondria, responsible for converting glucose to energy, slow down as we age. Researchers suspect this deceleration is to blame for declines in physical and cognitive performance in our golden years. Last January, the Defense Department took note of progress in mitochondrial anti-aging research, and appealed for proposals that would find new ways to revamp our cellular powerhouses. Big-pharma is thinking along similar lines: GlaxoSmithKline has invested $720 million into resveratrol, a compound in red wine that’s been shown to enhance mitochondrial performance and retard age-related ailments.
via Army Looks to Keep Troops Forever Young | Danger Room from Wired.com.
GOP goes nuclear in policy pitch
OPS: INSANITY! The GOP – selling out their grandchildren for their wallets.
DU bloggers: Nuclear energy doesn’t lower costs. It’s extremely expensive. What are we going to do with 100 times more radioactive waste? Of course the AP just quotes them like they’re telling the truth or something.
GOP goes nuclear in policy pitch
WASHINGTON (CNN) — Sen. Lamar Alexander, chairman of the Senate Republican Conference, made a strong push Saturday for investment in a power source commonly used in France: nuclear energy.
“Now the debate in Congress is shifting to the size of your electric and gasoline bills and to climate change,” the Tennessee Republican said in the weekly GOP address Saturday. “So guess who has one of the lowest electric rates in Western Europe and the second lowest carbon emissions in the entire European Union. It’s France.”
Nuclear plants provide 80 percent of France’s electricity, according to Alexander, who added that the country even sells “electricity to Germany, whose politicians built windmills and solar panels and promised not to build nuclear plants.”
CIA official: no proof harsh techniques stopped terror attacks
CIA official: no proof harsh techniques stopped terror attacks
WASHINGTON — The CIA inspector general in 2004 found that there was no conclusive proof that waterboarding or other harsh interrogation techniques helped the Bush administration thwart any “specific imminent attacks,” according to recently declassified Justice Department memos.
That undercuts assertions by former vice president Dick Cheney and other former Bush administration officials that the use of harsh interrogation tactics including waterboarding, which is widely considered torture, was justified because it headed off terrorist attacks.
The risks and effectiveness of waterboarding and other enhanced techniques are at the center of an increasingly heated debate over how thoroughly to investigate the CIA’s secret detention and interrogation programs.
via CIA official: no proof harsh techniques stopped terror attacks | McClatchy.
WHO Chief: Swine Flu Has “Pandemic Potential”
Mexico City Cancels All Public Events
MEXICO CITY — A new swine flu strain that has killed as many as 68 people and sickened more than 1,000 across Mexico has “pandemic potential,” the World Health Organization chief said Saturday, and it may be too late to contain the sudden outbreak.
The disease has already reached Texas and California, and with 24 new suspected cases reported Saturday in Mexico City alone, schools were closed and all public events suspended in the capital until further notice _ including more than 500 concerts and other gatherings in the metropolis of 20 million.
A hot line fielded 2,366 calls in its first hours from frightened city residents who suspected they might have the disease. Soldiers and health workers handed out masks at subway stops, and hospitals dealt with crowds of people seeking help.
via WHO Chief: Swine Flu Has “Pandemic Potential”.
Is the Government Anti-Manufacturing?
OPS: Good Point! As twisted as that sounds, in retrospect, it’s obviously true. Wall Street is also anti-manufacturing
Is the Government Anti-Manufacturing? – Craig Harrington
This country needs manufacturing if it hopes to survive and flourish. If we continue down the path we have chosen thus far, it can only end in disaster.
The bailouts and stimulus packages doled out in the past year have not resulted in any major economic growth in the United States. On the contrary the United States economy has plummeted over the past several months, and only through artificial financial wizardry have a few banks shown “profits” in the past fiscal quarter.
Unfortunately, the United States government is more than happy to bail out its pals on Wall Street, but it absolutely refuses to stand firmly behind its manufacturing base. Joel Kotkin, writing for newgeography.com, believes that the government has adopted a policy that is decidedly anti-industry.
This argument has some validity, in the face of what has happened in the wake of the economic collapse. The government rushed immediately to shore up banks and financials, but it largely ignored factories and blue-collar workers. Making matters worse is the fact that the government’s abandoning of manufacturing is not a new phenomenon. The policies which favor a “post-industrial economy” have been in place for decades.
The government seems to believe that manufacturing and industry are by their very nature dirty, polluting, and an antiquated means for economic growth. Certainly, the industrial sectors in the developing world – particularly China – are filthy places, but the United States has the technology to produce efficiently and in a way that is also environmentally friendly.
via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
China has a death grip on our country’s economy
Truth and Lies – by Jack Davis, with video by Craig Harrington -
China has a death grip on our country’s economy and President Obama is derelict in protecting American jobs.
The following article originally appeared on TradeReform.org.
The Obama administration, on April 15, failed to site China as a currency manipulator. The Treasury Department is mandated by Congress to report biannually on currency manipulation.
While a Senator, campaigning in Pennsylvania, Obama said; “We can’t have China manipulating its currency to make our exports more expensive and theirs cheaper.”
Then he endorsed the Bunning-Stabenow-Bayh currency bill which would have designated currency manipulation by any country as an illegal subsidy subject to countervailing duties (tariffs) under the U.S. Trade Law.
Large and small U.S. manufacturer’s labor and organized labor supported this bill and know China controls their currency.
Timothy Geithner, in confirmation hearings to be Secretary of Treasury, told the Senate that China was a currency manipulator.
China has a death grip on our country’s economy and President Obama is derelict in protecting American jobs.
The manipulation of currency by China and other countries has destroyed our jobs, farms and industries. Over the last 20 years we have lost complete industries including toys, entertainment, leather goods and electronics. The automobile industry is in severe decline with bankruptcy being considered.
via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
Military agency warned Bush administration in 2002 that its interrogation program was ‘torture.’
Military agency warned Bush administration in 2002 that its interrogation program was ‘torture.’
In a July 2002 document uncovered by the Washington Post, the military’s Joint Personnel Recovery Agency warned that the Bush administration’s interrogation program was “torture” and that it would produce “unreliable information.” JPRA is the military agency that ran the program known as Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE), “which trains pilots and others to resist hostile questioning.” JPRA warned in the 2002 document:
The unintended consequence of a U.S. policy that provides for the torture of prisoners is that it could be used by our adversaries as justification for the torture of captured U.S. personnel.
FLASHBACK: Powell’s U.N. Speech On Iraq Took Senate’s Attention Away From Bybee Confirmation Hearings
FLASHBACK: Powell’s U.N. Speech On Iraq Took Senate’s Attention Away From Bybee Confirmation Hearings
In a new video titled “The Problem of Jay Bybee,” American News Project’s David Murdoch asks how Bybee could have been confirmed by the U.S. Senate in Feb. 2003 for a lifetime appointment as a federal judge despite authoring memos justifying the legality of torture.
The answer is partly due to the fact that the Senate had no knowledge of Bybee’s role in the Bush administration’s authorization of torture because no secret memos on the subject had yet to be released. “Had the Senate known about these memos, there’s simply no way Bybee ever would have been confirmed as a federal judge to begin with,” Harpers editor Scott Horton noted.
Another reason the Senate let Bybee’s nomination fly through unchallenged was perhaps due to the fact that on the same day as his hearing, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell was delivering a speech to the United Nations making the case for invading Iraq. “Bybee was greatly advantaged by an accident,” Yale law professor Bruce Ackerman noted:
Jordan’s King Abdullah says U.S. tortured.
OPS: that’ll stir things up
Jordan’s King Abdullah says U.S. tortured.
Yesterday, NBC Meet the Press host David Gregory interviewed Jordan’s King Abduallah and asked him whether he believed the U.S. tortured detainees. “Well, from what we’ve seen and what we’ve heard, there are enough accounts to show that this is the case,” Abdullah said. Gregory pressed:
DAVID GREGORY: That’s an important point. You actually do believe that the United States engaged in torture.
KING ABDULLAH: What I see on the press … shows that there were illegal ways of dealing with detainees.
Watch it:
via Think Progress » Jordan’s King Abdullah says U.S. tortured..
Jay Bybee’s anonymous friends claim Bybee regrets his role in approving torture.
OPS: So?
Jay Bybee’s anonymous friends claim Bybee regrets his role in approving torture.
The Washington Post interviews a number of friends and colleagues of Jay Bybee, who anonymously tell the paper that the judge regrets writing the torture memos:
“I’ve heard him express regret at the contents of the memo,” said a fellow legal scholar and longtime friend, who spoke on the condition of anonymity while offering remarks that might appear as “piling on.” “I’ve heard him express regret that the memo was misused. I’ve heard him express regret at the lack of context — of the enormous pressure and the enormous time pressure that he was under. And anyone would have regrets simply because of the notoriety.”
via Think Progress » Jay Bybee’s anonymous friends claim Bybee regrets his role in approving torture..
Wilkerson on investigating or prosecuting Cheney and Rumsfeld: If the public wants it, ‘let’s do it.’
Wilkerson on investigating or prosecuting Cheney and Rumsfeld: If the public wants it, ‘let’s do it.’
Yesterday, former Colin Powell chief of staff Larry Wilkerson told Rachel Maddow that there are “six or seven, maybe even eight lawyers” from the Bush administration — including Jay Bybee — who should be “disbarred” for approving torture. “As far as going after leaders like Richard Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld,” Wilkerson said, “I just don`t think there’s the political will, and if there is, I don’t think there`s political skill to do it.” When Maddow pointed out that the public does support torture accountability, Wilkerson said, “then let’s do it”:
MADDOW: I’m with you on political skill. The question about whether or not it can be handled well. It seems like the political will may follow the public will, and if the polling data recently is anything to go by, the public is sort of all about seeking investigations at least, if not prosecutions in this case.
WILKERSON: And that’s what our country is all about, and if that’s the case, then let’s do it.
Watch it:
The GOP Is Acting Like a Guy Who Got Dumped
Bill Maher: The GOP Is Acting Like a Guy Who Got Dumped
By Bill Maher
Listen up Republicans: It’s been almost 100 days, and your country is not coming back to you. She’s found somebody new.
If conservatives don’t want to be seen as bitter people who cling to their guns and religion and anti-immigrant sentiments, they should stop being bitter and clinging to their guns, religion and anti-immigrant sentiments.
It’s been a week now, and I still don’t know what those “tea bag” protests were about. I saw signs protesting abortion, illegal immigrants, the bank bailout and that gay guy who’s going to win “American Idol.” But it wasn’t tax day that made them crazy; it was election day. Because that’s when Republicans became what they fear most: a minority.
The conservative base is absolutely apoplectic because, because … well, nobody knows. They’re mad as hell, and they’re not going to take it anymore. Even though they’re not quite sure what “it” is. But they know they’re fed up with “it,” and that “it” has got to stop.
via Bill Maher: The GOP Is Acting Like a Guy Who Got Dumped | | AlterNet.
Conservatives Live in a Different Moral Universe — And Here’s Why It Matters
OPS: Just an observation – most of the rabid Conservatives I know are barely religious or not religious at all.
Conservatives Live in a Different Moral Universe — And Here’s Why It Matters
Liberals and conservatives have highly different moral priorities. And we have to understand them if we want to accomplish anything.
Jonathan Haidt is hardly a road-rage kind of guy, but he does get irritated by self-righteous bumper stickers. The soft-spoken psychologist is acutely annoyed by certain smug slogans that adorn the cars of fellow liberals: “Support our troops: Bring them home” and “Dissent is the highest form of patriotism.”
“No conservative reads those bumper stickers and thinks, ‘Hmm — so liberals are patriotic!’” he says, in a sarcastic tone of voice that jarringly contrasts with his usual subdued sincerity. “We liberals are universalists and humanists; it’s not part of our morality to highly value nations. So to claim dissent is patriotic — or that we’re supporting the troops, when in fact we’re opposing the war — is disingenuous.
“It just pisses people off.”
The University of Virginia scholar views such slogans as clumsy attempts to insist we all share the same values. In his view, these catch phrases are not only insincere — they’re also fundamentally wrong. Liberals and conservatives, he insists, inhabit different moral universes. There is some overlap in belief systems, but huge differences in emphasis.
In a creative attempt to move beyond red-state/blue-state clichés, Haidt has created a framework that codifies mankind’s multiplicity of moralities. His outline is simultaneously startling and reassuring — startling in its stark depiction of our differences, and reassuring in that it brings welcome clarity to an arena where murkiness of motivation often breeds contention.
via Conservatives Live in a Different Moral Universe — And Here’s Why It Matters | | AlterNet.
Georgian opposition predicts Saakashvili to go in ‘several days’
Georgian opposition predicts Saakashvili to go in ‘several days’
TBILISI, April 24 (RIA Novosti) – Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili and his government will succumb to pressure to quit in several days, the country’s former foreign minister and an opposition leader said on Friday.
Protesters in the Geogrian capital, Tbilisi, have been on the streets since April 9 demanding the president’s resignation.
“Saakashvili’s regime has several days left. They will not be able to withstand the pressure from the people any longer,” said Salome Zurabishvili, who heads the Georgia’s Way opposition party.
The opposition leader said in her speech that “the nerves of Saakashvili and [Interior Minister Vano] Merabishvili were severely frayed” by the ongoing protests.
“We will not take a single step backwards,” Zurabishvili added.
via RIA Novosti – World – Georgian opposition predicts Saakashvili to go in ‘several days’.
Possible Swine Flu Outbreak At NYC Prep School
Possible Swine Flu Outbreak At NYC Prep School
Department Of Health Officials Testing 75 Students At St. Francis Preparatory School In Queens
As many as 75 students at St. Francis Preparatory School in Queens got sick on Thursday. More got sick on Friday. What health officials want to know is was it swine flu or something more benign.
There are mounting fears about a deadly swine flu virus that is reported to have killed as many as 60 people in Mexico, one that health officials fear has already seeped into the United States.
St. Francis Prep was ordered to cancel an evening program Friday night because the New York City Department of Health isn’t sure what made students sick Thursday and Friday with flu-like symptoms.
“I just saw lot a lot of kids lined up along the wall near the nurse’s office,” sophomore Kelsey Dittmeir said.
via Possible Swine Flu Outbreak At NYC Prep School – wcbstv.com.
Obama touts plan to change college loan system
Obama touts plan to change college loan system
WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama on Friday renewed his call for the government to stop backing private loans to college students and replace them with direct government loans to young people, a challenge to a decades-old program with strong congressional support.
Obama’s plan to eliminate the Federal Family Education Loan program could save $48 billion for taxpayers over the next decade, but critics warn it could turn the Education Department into a national bank. Lenders and some college officials oppose the proposal, which Obama backed as a U.S. senator and pushed during the presidential campaign.
via Obama touts plan to change college loan system.
FAIR Study: Media Blackout on Single-Payer Healthcare
FAIR Study: Media Blackout on Single-Payer Healthcare
Proponents of popular policy shut out of debate
Major newspaper, broadcast and cable stories mentioning healthcare reform in the week leading up to President Barack Obama’s March 5 healthcare summit rarely mentioned the idea of a single-payer national health insurance program, according to a new FAIR study. And advocates of such a system–two of whom participated in yesterday’s summit–were almost entirely shut out, FAIR found.
Single-payer–a model in which healthcare delivery would remain largely private, but would be paid for by a single federal health insurance fund (much like Medicare provides for seniors, and comparable to Canada’s current system)–polls well with the public, who preferred it two-to-one over a privatized system in a recent survey (New York Times/CBS, 1/11-15/09). But a media consumer in the week leading up to the summit was more likely to read about single-payer from the hostile perspective of conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer than see an op-ed by a single-payer advocate in a major U.S. newspaper.
Over the past week, hundreds of stories in major newspapers and on NBC News, ABC News, CBS News, Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, NPR and PBS‘s NewsHour With Jim Lehrer mentioned healthcare reform, according to a search of the Nexis database (2/25/09-3/4/09). Yet all but 18 of these stories made no mention of “single-payer” (or synonyms commonly used by its proponents, such as “Medicare for all,” or the proposed single-payer bill, H.R. 676), and only five included the views of advocates of single-payer–none of which appeared on television.
via FAIR Study: Media Blackout on Single-Payer Healthcare.
Insurance Does Not Equal Health Care: Specious Arguments by ‘Free-Market’ Opponents of Colorado Single Payer Bill
Insurance Does Not Equal Health Care: Specious Arguments by ‘Free-Market’ Opponents of Colorado Single Payer Bill
Paralysis around health care reform is exacerbated by specious rhetoric surrounding Single-Payer health care. Lazy media fail to look behind corrupted rhetoric, while corporate interests spin the debate to serve their bottom lines.
Media Blackout on Single-Payer Healthcare, a report by FAIR reveals that proponents of single-payer health care reform have been virtually shut out of the debate, despite polls showing strong public support – 59-to-32 over a privatized system in a New York Times/CBS survey (January 2009). In the week prior to President Obama’s health summit, two of only three mentions of single-payer on TV outlets were by guests who strongly oppose it.
The Single-Payer discussion has been preempted – declared off the table by Congress before public discussion even begins, stifled by media blackouts, and dismissed without consideration as ‘politically unfeasible’ – shorthand for lack of political will to stand up to monied corporate lobbies.
Wall of Fear
“The fear crowd will cry weakness every step of the way. They will oppose the sanity of global cooperation and obfuscate the privileges and crimes of the governing status quo with every last resource at their disposal. If they can’t win Obama fully to their side, they’ll try to bring him down. Right now he’s straddling the future and the past, and it’s up to us — a passionate and vocal citizenry — to pull him to the future.”
Wall of Fear -by Bob Koehler
[snip]
“Jimmy Carter tried weakness, and the world got tougher and tougher . . .”
It doesn’t matter how stupid the arguments these people — Gingrich, most Republicans, far too many Democrats, the Washington Establishment, the mainstream media, the military industrial complex — put forth. What matters is the decibel level, the aggressive certainty and the presence of Satan (who eats weaklings for breakfast). Call it the Wall of Fear. Call it Godzilla. It’s alive, it’s visceral, it’s consistent: Be. Very. Afraid.
And it works. Americans are quick to pick up their guns and play Alamo. Any progressive agenda this country adapts, any global initiative that involves cooperation — talking to Iran, shaking hands with Venezuela — has to pass through the Wall of Fear.
Forget disarmament. Obama is kept busy having to defend a handshake . . . with a democratically elected “dictator” who somehow managed to bloodlessly dodge the 2002, U.S.-backed coup against him, and who isn’t implicated in death squads and other brutalities that were the standard practice of traditional U.S. allies in Latin America, such as Augusto Pinochet of Chile and Efrain (“If you cannot catch the fish, you have to drain the sea”) Rios Montt of Guatemala.
Kansas Governor Sebelius Vetoes Milk Labeling Bill and Protects Consumers
OPS: Thank You Governor
Kansas Governor Sebelius Vetoes Milk Labeling Bill and Protects Consumers
Statement of Food & Water Watch Executive Director Wenonah Hauter
“Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius made a strong stand for consumers yesterday by vetoing a milk labeling bill that would have taken away consumers’ right to know how their milk is produced. Had the governor not vetoed the bill, dairy farmers who do not use recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH) would have had trouble labeling their milk as such.
“Consumer groups, small dairy producers and retailers overwhelmingly opposed this proposed legislation. As the nominee to head the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Governor Sebelius leaves a legacy of support for the public interest in Kansas with this veto, which marks the third failure of this proposal in the state. We encourage the Kansas State Legislature to follow the governor’s lead in protecting consumers and farmers by upholding the veto.”
Food & Water Watch, a nonprofit consumer organization based in Washington, D.C., works to ensure clean water and safe food in the United States and around the world. We challenge the corporate control and abuse of our food and water resources by empowering people to take action and transforming the public consciousness about what we eat and drink. For more information, visit
via Kansas Governor Sebelius Vetoes Milk Labeling Bill and Protects Consumers — Food & Water Watch.
Hillary in Iraq: she still doesn’t see the reality, does she?
Hillary in Iraq: she still doesn’t see the reality, does she?
Hillary Clinton has used some very heavy duty rhetoric in the last few days, which is much too reminiscent of Bushspeak for comfort.
First she spoke of ‘crippling sanctions’ against Iran,- an ingredient that will not work well with easing of relations between our two countries. If that was for the benefit of the pro-Israel group in Congress, then she had to say it. In Pakistan, she accused the government of ‘abdicating’ to Taliban forces. This statement, once again, proves that Americans have stashed their history books in the attic, and do not bother to check their pages at all.
How can the US, in its right mind hopefully, expect Muslims to shoot Muslims because America tells them they should? Petraeus can tell them that Taliban is more dangerous than India, Mullen can tell them, Holbrooke can tell them. It’s meaningless. You cannot have an ally that is aiding and abetting the enemy, especially if its army has a protection plan in place. Pakistan’s sworn enemy, whatever the reality that we perceive and how it may differ, is India.
If the attacks in Mumbai didn’t open our eyes to that fact, let’s open them now. We are trying to use Cheney’s politics of fear with Pakistan, though the danger to us is real. The government is seen as a US puppet and that will not wash with the population, EVER. Same goes for Afghanistan, and for Iraq.
via NY Foreign Policy Examiner: Hillary in Iraq: she still doesn’t see the reality, does she?.
Quote of the Day
Real wealth doesn’t come from repackaging financial instruments like mortgage debts
It comes from making things.
- Dan Dimicco,
CEO Of Charlotte-based steelmaker Nucor
SWINE FLU: California, Texas Residents Diagnosed With Illness, Doctors Expect More Cases
SWINE FLU: California, Texas Residents Diagnosed With Illness, Doctors Expect More Cases
MEXICO CITY — A unique strain of swine flu is the suspected killer of dozens of people in Mexico, where authorities closed schools, museums, libraries and theaters in the capital on Friday to try to contain an outbreak that has spurred concerns of a global flu epidemic.
The worrisome new virus _ which combines genetic material from pigs, birds and humans in a way researchers have not seen before _ also sickened at least eight people in Texas and California, though there have been no deaths in the U.S.
“We are very, very concerned,” World Health Organization spokesman Thomas Abraham said. “We have what appears to be a novel virus and it has spread from human to human … It’s all hands on deck at the moment.”
via SWINE FLU: California, Texas Residents Diagnosed With Illness, Doctors Expect More Cases.
Part II: Soldier Who Killed Herself — After Refusing to Take Part in Torture
Part II: Soldier Who Killed Herself — After Refusing to Take Part in Torture
Yesterday, I posted a piece here that drew wide attention around the Web perhaps because of its tragic relevance to the current torture debate: The story of Spc. Alyssa Peterson, who committed suicide in September 2003 a few days after refusing to take part in interrogations that likely involved torture.
The piece has drawn more than 200 comments here, including one from Alyssa’s older brother, supporting the essence of my piece (I first wrote about Alyssa almost three years ago). I’ll return to that comment over the weekend.
Yesterday I promised a Part II, relating to a soldier who served with Alyssa. That woman, Kayla Williams, has posted here in the past, on a different subject.
They served in the same battalion in Iraq at the same time. Kayla Williams spoke with Alyssa Peterson about the young woman’s troubles a week before she died — and afterward, attended her memorial service. Williams even has her own Iraq interrogation horror story to tell. So what, in Williams’ view, caused Alyssa Peterson to put a bullet in her head in September 2003 after just a few weeks in Iraq? And why were the press and the public not told about it?
via Greg Mitchell: Part II: Soldier Who Killed Herself — After Refusing to Take Part in Torture.
GM Gets Another $2 Billion
GM Gets Another $2 Billion
WASHINGTON — Taxpayers invested another $2 billion in General Motors Corp. this week as the struggling auto giant continued efforts to restructure and avoid bankruptcy court.
The Treasury Department said Friday it lent the additional money to GM on Wednesday to provide working capital. The loan pushes the total amount of GM’s government aid to $15.4 billion after the company said it would need more money in the second quarter to stay afloat.
A government report revealed earlier this week that the Treasury was prepared to provide GM with up to $5 billion more in federal loans and Chrysler with up to $500 million more in bailout support as they race against deadlines to restructure.
GM has until June 1 to complete restructuring plans that satisfy the government’s auto task force.
via GM Gets Another $2 Billion.
Conficker virus begins to attack PCs
Conficker virus begins to attack PCs: experts
Conflicker virus starts using PCs to spam
A malicious software program known as Conficker that many feared would wreak havoc on April 1 is slowly being activated, weeks after being dismissed as a false alarm, security experts said.
Conficker, also known as Downadup or Kido, is quietly turning thousands of personal computers into servers of e-mail spam and installing spyware, they said.
The worm started spreading late last year, infecting millions of computers and turning them into “slaves” that respond to commands sent from a remote server that effectively controls an army of computers known as a botnet.
Its unidentified creators started using those machines for criminal purposes in recent weeks by loading more malicious software onto a small percentage of computers under their control, said Vincent Weafer, a vice president with Symantec Security Response, the research arm of the world’s largest security software maker, Symantec Corp.
“Expect this to be long-term, slowly changing,” he said of the worm. “It’s not going to be fast, aggressive.”
via Conficker virus begins to attack PCs: experts by Reuters: Yahoo! Tech.
Appeals court rules Gitmo detainees are not ‘persons’
OPS: From the Department of WTF! people are not persons – but CORPORATIONS ARE?! We may have fallen down the rabbit hole past the point of no return.
Appeals court rules Gitmo detainees are not ‘persons’
A Court of Appeals for the Washington, D.C. Circuit ruled Friday that detainees at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, are not “persons” according to it’s interpretation of a statute involving religious freedom.
The ruling sprang from an appeal of Rasul v. Rumsfeld, which was thrown out in Jan. 2008. “The court affirmed the district court’s dismissal of the constitutional and international law claims, and reversed the district court’s decision that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) applied to Guantanamo detainees, dismissing those claims as well,” the Center for Constitutional Rights said.
After the Supreme Court recognized, over objections from the Bush administration, that terror war prisoners have the right to habeas corpus petitions, it also directed the D.C. court of appeals to reexamine the case.
via The Raw Story | Appeals court rules Gitmo detainees are not ‘persons’.
Pentagon may have up to 2,000 photographs of prisoner abuse
OPS: This album will be like a marital aid for the wingnuts
Pentagon may have up to 2,000 photographs of prisoner abuse
The Pentagon will release for the first time 44 photographs depicting prisoner abuse after the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) won a court ruling in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed in 2004.
A “substantial number of other images” are also being processed for release, the Department of Justice wrote in a letter to a US federal court: according to the Guardian, citing an unnamed official, that “substantial number” could be as many as 2,000 photos.
“These photographs provide visual proof that prisoner abuse by US personnel was not aberrational but widespread, reaching far beyond the walls of Abu Ghraib,” ACLU staff attorney Amrit Singh said in a release.
via The Raw Story | Pentagon may have up to 2,000 photographs of prisoner abuse.
Gingrich adds new term to coal industry’s propaganda lexicon: ‘green coal.’
Gingrich adds new term to coal industry’s propaganda lexicon: ‘green coal.’
In testimony before the House Energy and Commerce Committee today, Newt Gingrich suggested a number of alternatives to implementing the Waxman-Markey clean energy economy legislation, which Gingrich called a “massive energy tax increase.” In the course of summarizing a few of these alternatives, Gingrich added a new term to the coal industry’s propaganda lexicon by calling on Congress to incentivize research on and the development of “green coal” technology:
GINGRICH: I do think that green coal and carbon sequestration is the most important single breakthrough we can make. … Unless you get to an affordable green technology for coal there is no possibility that American developments are going to affect the amount of carbon in the atmosphere.
Watch it:
via Think Progress » Gingrich adds new term to coal industry’s propaganda lexicon: ‘green coal.’.
Gingrich uses climate change hearing to personally slam Gore.
Gingrich uses climate change hearing to personally slam Gore.
Today, both Newt Gingrich and Al Gore testified before Congress on the Waxman-Markey clean energy economy legislation. While Gore spent the majority of his time explaining the global warming crisis and how investing in clean energy can simultaneously solve the problems of climate, economy and national security, Gingrich chose to spend his time launching into a set of attacks focused at Gore:
GINGRICH: I am an amateur paleontologist. I would be glad to take the Vice President to the Smithsonian or the American Museum of Natural History, where we can all look at all sorts of marine invertebrate life, which is collected as fossils because in fact, they use carbon quite effectively.
ThinkProgress assembled a compilation of Gingrich’s personal attacks on Gore. Watch it:
via Think Progress » Gingrich uses climate change hearing to personally slam Gore..
Military agency warned Bush administration in 2002 that its interrogation program was ‘torture.’
Military agency warned Bush administration in 2002 that its interrogation program was ‘torture.’
In a July 2002 document uncovered by the Washington Post, the military’s Joint Personnel Recovery Agency warned that the Bush administration’s interrogation program was “torture” and that it would produce “unreliable information.” JPRA is the military agency that ran the program known as Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE), “which trains pilots and others to resist hostile questioning.” JPRA warned in the 2002 document:
The unintended consequence of a U.S. policy that provides for the torture of prisoners is that it could be used by our adversaries as justification for the torture of captured U.S. personnel.
Former KKK leader detained in Prague
Former KKK leader detained in Prague
PRAGUE (AP) – Former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke was detained by police in the Czech Republic on Friday on suspicion of denying the Holocaust.
Police spokesman Jan Mikulovsky said the action was taken because Duke does that in his book “My Awakening,” which is punishable by up to three years in Czech prisons.
Duke traveled to the republic to promote the book’s Czech translation of the book at the invitation of neo-Nazis.
Mikulovsky declined to give any further details, citing an ongoing investigation.
via AT&T.
Mexico shuts schools, museums to stop flu outbreak
Mexico shuts schools, museums to stop flu outbreak
MEXICO CITY – Mexico shut down schools, museums, libraries and state-run theaters across its overcrowded capital Friday in hopes of containing a swine flu outbreak that authorities say killed at least 20 people — and perhaps dozens more. World health authorities worried openly that the strange new virus could become a global epidemic.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said tests show some of the Mexico victims died from the same new strain of swine flu that sickened eight people in Texas and California.
Mexico put the confirmed toll at 20 dead, but 40 other fatalities were being probed, and at least 943 nationwide were sick from the suspected flu, the health department said.
Scientists said the virus combines genetic material from pigs, birds and humans in a way researchers have not seen before.
“We are very, very concerned,” spokesman Thomas Abraham said.
“We have what appears to be a novel virus and it has spread from human to human,” he said. “It’s all hands on deck at the moment.”
President Felipe Calderon cancelled a trip and met with his Cabinet to coordinate Mexico’s response.
via Mexico shuts schools, museums to stop flu outbreak.
Gore tells GOP deniers they’re victims of ‘the Bernie Madoffs of global warming.’
Gore tells GOP deniers they’re victims of ‘the Bernie Madoffs of global warming.’
Vice President Al Gore, testifying to Congress, told GOP global warming deniers that they are the victims of “the Bernie Madoffs of global warming.” After Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) mocked global warming as being responsible for the woes of the Dallas Cowboys, Gore said that he and other climate change deniers have been receiving bad information. He pointed out that a front-page story in today’s New York Times reveals that the largest corporate polluters in the United States censored their climate scientists in 1995:
The largest corporate carbon polluters in America, 14 years ago, asked their own people to conduct a review of all of this science. And their own people told them, “What the international scientific community is saying is correct, there is no legitimate basis for denying it.” Then, these large polluters committed a massive fraud far larger than Bernie Madoff’s fraud. They are the Bernie Madoffs of global warming. They ordered the censoring and removal of the scientific review that they themselves conducted, and like Bernie Madoff, they lied to the people who trusted them in order to make money.
Watch it:
via Think Progress » Gore tells GOP deniers they’re victims of ‘the Bernie Madoffs of global warming.’.
Ben Nelson to oppose OLC nominee Johnsen because of her ‘outspoken pro-choice views.’
Ben Nelson to oppose OLC nominee Johnsen because of her ‘outspoken pro-choice views.’
Greg Sargent reports that centrist Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson (NE) — who voted to confirm both Sam Alito and John Roberts — will oppose Dawn Johnsen’s nomination to lead the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel. Nelson says he opposes Johnsen, a noted legal scholar and outspoken critic of the Bush administration’s torture program, because of her pro-choice views:
Senator Nelson is very concerned about the nomination of Dawn Johnson, based on her previous position as Counsel for NARAL. He believes that the Office of Legal Counsel is a position in which personal views can have an impact and is concerned about her outspoken pro-choice views on abortion.
Rep. King: Jay Bybee ’should be given a medal for what he did.’
OPS: republicans are on a mission to destroy this country. There is no other explanation.
Rep. King: Jay Bybee ’should be given a medal for what he did.’
This afternoon on Fox News, correspondent Brian Wilson reported that “left leaning groups and some Democrats” believe torture architect Judge Jay Bybee should be impeached. Responding to a question from Wilson, Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) said, “I think someone who writes a how-to memo on how to break the law should not be a federal judge.” The ultra conservative Rep. Peter King (R-NY) took the polar opposite view, telling Wilson that Bybee should be “given a medal” for authorizing torture:
KING: I think that Judge Bybee should be given a medal for what he did. But even if I disagreed with those memos, these are memos written in good faith. These well written, well reasoned memos. People may disagree with them, but he belongs on the bench. He should stay on the bench. And I think talk of impeaching him or going after him is again the worst type of political vindictiveness.
Watch it:
via Think Progress » Rep. King: Jay Bybee ’should be given a medal for what he did.’.
Deadly new flu breaks out in Mexico, U.S.
Deadly new flu breaks out in Mexico, U.S.
* New mixture of viruses in flu never seen before
* Eight cases found in California and Texas
* WHO says Mexico, U.S. well-equipped to handle outbreak
* No need to change travel plans, say WHO and CDC (Adds eighth case in United States; details)
By Alistair Bell and Noel Randewich
MEXICO CITY, April 24 (Reuters) – A strain of flu never seen before has killed as many as 61 people in Mexico and has spread into the United States, where eight people have been infected but recovered, health officials said on friday.
Mexico’s government said at least 16 people have died of the disease in central Mexico and that it may also have been responsible for 45 other deaths.
The World Health Organization said tests showed the virus in 12 of the Mexican patients had the same genetic structure as a new strain of swine flu, designated H1N1, seen in eight people in California and Texas. [nLO274836]
Because there is clearly human-to-human spread of the new virus, raising fears of a major outbreak, Mexico’s government canceled classes for millions of children in its sprawling capital city and surrounding areas.
via Reuters AlertNet – Deadly new flu breaks out in Mexico, U.S..
Two Federal Reserve Myths That Need Debunking
Two Federal Reserve Myths That Need Debunking 
NEW YORK (Fortune) — There are two things you may have heard about the Federal Reserve Board, both of which are wrong.
The first is that the Fed controls U.S. interest rates.
The second is that the Fed has made so many commitments that it’s in danger of running out of cash or Treasury securities. Which would mean it couldn’t carry out its declared policy of putting cash into the world financial system or its undeclared policy of keeping institutions that it deems worthy afloat. Let me show you why both of these beliefs are myths, not reality.
-OR-
Read the latest on the Huffington Post’s Ben
via Two Federal Reserve Myths That Need Debunking.
Myths vs. Realities for the U.S. Federal Reserve System
Myths vs. Realties for the United States Federal Reserve System
The Internet gives a forum to all sorts of crackpot theories, many of which sound convincing, but contain blatant historical inaccuracies. Here are a few about the Fed, along with a response. The research into the myths below was done by Edward Flaherty, who has a web site devoted to debunking conspiracy theories and myths. (http://members.home.net/flaherty15/conspire.htm)
Myth #1: The Federal Reserve Act of 1913 was the result of a secret meeting between Wall Street Bankers and government officials on Jekyll Island, Georgia and gave New York City banks control over the money supply.
Reality: The meeting did take place, but it was not a secret. Congress rejected the plan for a central banking system that came out of this meeting. The control over monetary policy was given to the Federal Reserve Board, a government body, not to banks.
Myth #2: The Federal Reserve Act is unconstitutional. The Constitution does not give Congress the power to create a central bank.
Reality: Federal and Supreme Court rulings have found the Federal Reserve to be constitutional, under the “necessary and proper” clause of the U.S. Constitution (Article I, Section 8, clause 19).
Myth #3: The Federal Reserve is a privately owned bank that profits at taxpayer expense.
Reality: The member banks in each district privately own each of the 12 Federal Reserve banks. However, the government-appointed Board of Governors controls these banks. Also, the Federal Reserve System rebates almost all of its profits to the Treasury each year, actually REDUCING the taxpayer burden.
Myth #4: The Federal Reserve is owned and controlled by foreigners, who dictate monetary policy for their own benefit.
Reality: This is just not true. Each Federal Reserve bank is owned by member banks in that district. Individuals and non-bank institutions, foreign or domestic, are not allowed to own shares in any Federal Reserve bank. Again, the Board sets monetary policy not the Federal Reserve banks.
Myth #5: The Federal Reserve had President Kennedy killed because he tried to usurp the Fed’s power by authorizing the Treasury to issue silver-backed currency.
Reality: This is my personal favorite. Kennedy actually wanted to phase out silver certificates, and agreed with the Federal Reserve on most policy matters. He actually favored legislation to give the Fed more power, not less.
via Myths vs. Realities for the U.S. Federal Reserve System.
WHO worries Mexico flu deaths could mark pandemic
Mexico flu deaths raise worries of global epidemic
“We are very, very concerned,” WHO spokesman Thomas Abraham said. “We have what appears to be a novel virus and it has spread from human to human.”
MEXICO CITY (AP) — At least 16 people – and possibly dozens more – have died from a swine flu virus in Mexico, and world health officials worry it could unleash a global flu epidemic. Mexico City closed schools across the metropolis Friday in hopes of containing the outbreak, and tougher measures were being considered.
Scientists were trying to determine if the deaths involved the same new strain of swine flu that sickened seven people in Texas and California – a disturbing disease that combines pig, bird and human viruses in a way that researchers have not seen before.
The World Health Organization counted at least 57 deaths in Mexico, but said it wasn’t yet clear what flu they died from.
via The Saratogian – News from the Associated Press.
Selling Out Single-Payer
The Public Option Con - Selling Out Single-Payer
By HELEN REDMOND
“As we roll out new products we will continue to price businesses for appropriate margins. We will not sacrifice profitability for membership.”
– Angela Braly, Wellpoint CEO
At the Health Care for America Now (HCAN) and Citizen Action Illinois sponsored rally in Chicago last weekend, single-payer advocates confronted HCAN leadership and Democratic Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky (D-Illinois) who instead of working to pass HR 676, John Conyers single-payer bill titled the United States National Health Insurance Act, are supporting the so called “public option.”
What the public option plan is, no one can exactly say. There are no concrete proposals spelling out what the plan would include, who could join it, how much it would cost, or how it would be funded. But the details don’t matter, they advocated for it anyway.
In a heated exchange with Schakowsky before the rally, she argued HR 676 (she is a cosponsor of the bill, yes that’s right) has no chance of passing and something has to be passed this year. She lied and said there isn’t enough support for single-payer, but there is for a public option. I and other activists challenged Schakowsky on every assertion and demanded she fight to pass HR 676. We said the insurance industry is going to fight just as hard against a public option as it will single-payer so let’s have a smackdown for single-payer. We argued the passage of HR 676 would guarantee an end to the crisis and finally make health care a human right that could never be taken away. She got pissed and complained loudly to her staff as she walked into the building, “Can you believe she is lecturing me?” I yelled after her, “I’m just expressing my opinion, I’m your constituency.”
via Helen Redmond: Selling Out Single-Payer.
US Must Prosecute Bush Torture Memo Lawyers: UN Torture Envoy
US Must Prosecute Bush Torture Memo Lawyers: UN Torture Envoy
via US Must Prosecute Bush Torture Memo Lawyers: UN Torture Envoy.
Benjamin Franklin Letters Found In London
Benjamin Franklin Letters Found In London
University of California – San Diego professor Alan Houston has discovered 47 copies of letters written by Benjamin Franklin in the Spring and Summer of 1755 that are said to have been previously unknown to Franklin scholars, the New York Times reports. The letters were housed in a London library where Houston had been doing research back in 2007 and are said to have been transcribed by Thomas Birch — a Franklin contemporary and a recognizable name to historians for his later role in the Royal Society. According to the Times:
They were written to and from Franklin’s son William and his wife, Deborah, as well as the British general Edward Braddock, and cover a period during the French and Indian War when Franklin helped organize a Pennsylvania militia against the forces that threatened the colonies.
Houston, describing the find to the Washington Post, said, “I felt kind of a lump in my chest. I started to bounce. I wanted like a rocket to shoot out of my chair….It’s an example of Franklin’s skill of working with people of different agendas and different concerns, appealing to their interests, appealing to their passions, appealing to their political beliefs.”
via Benjamin Franklin Letters Found In London.
Bachmann: CO2 ‘is a natural byproduct of nature.’
Bachmann: CO2 ‘is a natural byproduct of nature.’
On the House floor on Earth Day, April 22, 2009, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) argued that threat of manmade global warming doesn’t make any sense because “carbon dioxide is a natural byproduct of nature”:
Carbon dioxide, Mister Speaker, is a natural byproduct of nature. Carbon dioxide is natural. It occurs in Earth. It is a part of the regular lifecycle of Earth. In fact, life on planet Earth can’t even exist without carbon dioxide. So necessary is it to human life, to animal life, to plant life, to the oceans, to the vegetation that’s on the Earth, to the, to the fowl that — that flies in the air, we need to have carbon dioxide as part of the fundamental lifecycle of Earth.
Watch it:
via Think Progress » Bachmann: CO2 ‘is a natural byproduct of nature.’.
After Appearing In Gore Ads Last Year, Gingrich Now Decries Green Economy Bill As ‘Path Of Destruction’
After Appearing In Gore Ads Last Year, Gingrich Now Decries Green Economy Bill As ‘Path Of Destruction’
Last year, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich appeared in a “We Campaign” advertisement for former Vice President Al Gore’s Alliance for Climate Protection to promote the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. Speaking alongside Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Gingrich said, “We do agree, our country must take action to address climate change,” adding, “if enough of us demand action from our leaders, we can spark the innovation we need.” Watch it:
Populism comes on strong as elite politicians falter
Populism comes on strong as elite politicians falter
In 2006, journalist Christopher Hayes wrote a little-noticed article for In These Times magazine about a proposal in Oregon to crack down on predatory lending. The initiative had become so popular that conservative legislators supported it fearing that if it were put on the state’s ballot, the resulting gusher of grassroots support would not only ratify the measure, but depose the bank-allied Republican Party, too.
Hayes’ piece was titled “Economic Populism Proves Popular,” the headline a sarcastic middle finger flashed at a political and media Establishment that portrays policies “supporting the rights and power of the people” – i.e., the dictionary definition of “populism” – as somehow anathema to the people.
That depiction, of course, continues today. But now, populism isn’t just popular in America; it is becoming the dominant paradigm, and that has the Establishment frightened.
via SunJournal.com – Populism comes on strong as elite politicians falter.
McCain: Prosecutions Would Make Us “No Better Than a Banana Republic”
OPS: Apparently Grampy does not know the definition of a Banana Republic
YouTube – McCain: Prosecutions Would Make Us “No Better Than a Banana Republic”.
U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders: Credit Card Cap Statement
Credit Card Cap Statement
To download the video right click here and select ‘save target as’.
To download the audio right click here and select ‘save target as’.
via U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders.
BREAKING NEWS: Earthquake Reported in Southeast Ohio
BREAKING NEWS: Earthquake Reported in Southeast Ohio
GALLIA COUNTY, Ohio (WSAZ) — The U.S. Geological Survey reports that a 3.4 magnitude earthquake hit in southeast Ohio Friday morning.
WSAZ.com has received dozens of breaking news reports via web, e-mail, and phone from people in and around Gallia and Jackson counties in Ohio who felt the quake.
According to the USGS Website, a 3.4 magnitude earthquake has been reported about five miles northwest of Oak Hill, Ohio. It appears to have centered between Oak Hill and Jackson. According to government officials, the earthquake centered about 3 miles underground.
The earthquake was first reported at 9:42 a.m. Friday.
Residents living in and around Gallia County have called to report they felt the ground shake, as well as some office and apartment buildings.
So far no damage has been reported.
A 3.4 magnitude earthquake is considered minor and often felt, but no serious damage is reported.
via BREAKING NEWS: Earthquake Reported in Southeast Ohio.
Our Schindler’s List Moment?
Thom talks about the day Americans will come to terms with what we’ve done during the Bush administration.
via YouTube – Our Schindler’s List Moment?.
Capitol Evacuated, White House Locked Down Over Airspace Violation
Capitol Evacuated, White House Locked Down Over Airspace Violation
WASHINGTON — A single-engine plane strayed into restricted air space near the U.S. Capitol on Friday, forcing officials to place the White House in temporary lockdown and take steps to evacuate the U.S. Capitol.
The episode was over within minutes as two F-16 fighter jets and two Coast Guard helicopters were dispatched and intercepted the plane. U.S. Northern Command spokesman Michael Kucharek says two helicopters established communications with the pilot and escorted the plane. The FAA says it landed at Indian Head Airport in Charles County, Maryland.
Gil Bauserman, owner of the airport, said the plane was flying from Maine to North Carolina. Bauserman said the airport was notified by the military that the plane would be making an unscheduled landing at the airport.
via Capitol Evacuated, White House Locked Down Over Airspace Violation.
Budget deal includes fast-track for health reform
Budget deal includes fast-track for health reform
Democrats in Congress and the White House have struck a tentative budget deal that includes reconciliation instructions that will make it easier to push through healthcare reform this year.
The deal, which still needs approval from the full House and Senate, would allow Democrats to pass healthcare reform with just a simple majority in the Senate instead of the 60 votes needed to pass most controversial legislation, according to a congressional aide.
via TheHill.com – Budget deal includes fast-track for health reform.
Three key rules of media behavior shape their discussions of “the ‘torture’ debate”
Three key rules of media behavior shape their discussions of “the ‘torture’ debate” – - Glenn Greenwald
(updated below – Update II- Update III)
Karl Rove on torture prosecutions:
It is now clear that the Obama White House didn’t think before it tried to appease the hard left of the Democratic Party.
Gloria Borger on Karl Rove:
When Rove speaks, the political class pays attention — usually with good reason.
Chuck Todd on Obama’s concession that the DOJ decides whether to prosecute:
There does seem to be a little bit of a reaction to how this was received on the left. . . frankly this feels like a political food fight now. . .. The hard left, the hard right, fighting over this in the blogosphere.
Chris Matthews on the same topic:
This whole torture debate is likely to tell us a lot about the kind of president Barack Obama intends to be. Will he buckle to the left, the netroots, and pursue an investigation into torture having said he didn’t want to? Or will he go post-partisan and leave the past to the historians?
David Gregory on what he calls (with scare quotes) “the politics of the ‘torture’ debate”:
What [Obama officials] got on their hands is a highly politicized and very partisan issue about the treatment of 9/11 prisoners. . . . At a time when the administration and the President will already be under scrutiny for being tough enough, is this a fight they really want to have? I would also point you to, if you haven’t see this already, the Wall St. Journal Editorial Page today, which I think raises some really tough points about not only what signal you’re sending to the rest of the world, but also to potential Terrorists out there, about just what it is that U.S. interrogators would do and not do, but also the point that’s raised there is: did the Bush administration go out of its way to make sure they were adhering to the law and not crossing over that bridge when it came to getting into torture?
Minnesota won’t hear Franken case until June
Minnesota won’t hear Franken case until June
Minnesota will head into June without a second U.S. senator under the Supreme Court’s schedule for hearing Republican Norm Coleman’s appeal.
The court says that it won’t hold oral arguments until June 1, later than Democrat Al Franken had hoped. In the intervening weeks, the schedule announced Friday gives the two sides various deadlines for written filings and respo
via The Raw Story | Minnesota won’t hear Franken case until June.
Obama Moving Against Abusive Credit Card Practices
Obama Moving Against Abusive Credit Card Practices
President Obama called 14 bank executives to a White House meeting today to talk about questionable practices in the credit card industry. There’s no doubt that some predatory credit card interest rates, fees and penalties will be prohibited. The question is, how strong will the regulation be and how soon will it take effect?
Before taking up the current political situation, let’s remember how we got here.
Through the late 1970’s, credit cards were primarily a convenience for customers and retailers so neither had to deal with cash or personal checks. Regulation by states kept credit card practices modest, straightforward, and reasonably fair.
Then in 1978, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that states could not limit credit card interest rates simply because the card was used in-state. Rather, the law of the state where the bank was headquartered controlled interest rates. A race-to-the-bottom quickly occurred, with South Dakota and Delaware leading the charge to permit high interest rates. That’s why Citibank’s credit card subsidiary is headquartered in South Dakota and Bank of America’s is in Delaware.
Through the 1980s and 90s, Congress, states, and the Supreme Court continued to wipe out credit card regulations based on an assumption that deregulation was good for consumers. Today we know that unfettered deregulation is a disaster for both consumers and the economy as a whole.
via Obama Moving Against Abusive Credit Card Practices | OurFuture.org.
Household Wealth in Freefall
Household Wealth in Freefall
Family wealth in the United States continues to take a beating as its housing market and financial markets suffer from the 16-month-and-running Bush recession. Household wealth in our country dropped sharply after reaching an $81 trillion peak in June 2007. By the end of December 2008—the last full quarter for which data are available and one full year into the current recession—about $15 trillion in private family wealth had evaporated.
This is the sharpest relative wealth decline in more than 50 years. Between June 2007 and December 2008, inflation-adjusted personal wealth fell by 22.8 percent—the fastest decline since the Federal Reserve began collecting this information in 1952. And what a drop it was. The previous record for an 18-month decline in wealth—between March 1973 and September 1974 amid the first oil price crisis—was only 12 percent.
via Household Wealth in Freefall.
How Bernie Madoff pulled off his massive swindle
How Bernie did it
Madoff’s Right Hand Man To Name Names
Madoff is behind bars and isn’t talking. But a Fortune investigation uncovers secrets of his massive swindle.
NEW YORK (Fortune) — The employees were transfixed. Standing on the mid-Manhattan trading floor of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities in late 2007, a half-dozen staffers stared up at the ceiling-mounted TV as CNBC aired a report on the mysterious Palm Beach death of a hedge fund manager who had been leading a double life. The police, it appeared, were even considering the possibility that he had been murdered. “Bernie,” someone casually asked as Madoff happened to walk by, “have you heard of this guy?”
Madoff glanced at the screen, blanched, and exploded: “Why the fuck would I be interested in some shit like that?” The employees recoiled. “I never saw him react like that before,” says a Madoff trader who witnessed the outburst. “It obviously hit a nerve.”
via How Bernie Madoff pulled off his massive swindle – Apr. 24, 2009.
Cao open to torture prosecutions.
Cao open to torture prosecutions.
Yesterday, the Times-Picayune reported that Rep. Anh “Joseph” Cao (LA) is one of the few Republicans in Congress who have agreed that the door to possible prosecutions for torture architects in the Bush administration should be left open:
But on Monday, Obama, while maintaining that CIA operatives should be spared legal scrutiny, said: “With respect to those who formulated those legal decisions, I would say that that is going to be more of a decision for the attorney general, within the perimeters of various laws.”
Rep. Anh “Joseph” Cao, R-New Orleans, whose father, a former South Vietnamese Army officer who spent seven years in a North Vietnamese re-education camp after the fall of South Vietnam, expressed a similar view.
“I agree we have to look to the future, not the past, but if people broke the law, I believe that no one is above the law and if people violate the law they have to face the consequences of what the law dictates.”
via Think Progress » Cao open to torture prosecutions..
The Kiss of Debt – Credit Cards Still Suck Life from Youth
The Kiss of Debt
With the Credit Card Holder’s Bill of Rights voted out of committee yesterday, the full House goes to vote next week. According to the Speaker’s Blog
[snip]
While the economy is in freefall and CEOs are jumping out of windows, Americans are seeking refuge in bankruptcy courts and in the offices of credit counselors across the country. Young people are no different.
What predatory lenders peppering corners with high interest pay-day loans are to the poor, blood sucking credit card companies offering free t-shirts and unlimited cash on campuses are to youth.
via The Kiss of Debt | Future Majority.
Don’t Pooh-Pooh Populism
Don’t Pooh-Pooh Populism by David Sirota
In 2006, journalist Christopher Hayes wrote a little-noticed article for In These Times magazine about a proposal in Oregon to crack down on predatory lending. The initiative had become so popular that conservative legislators supported it fearing that if it were put on the state’s ballot, the resulting gusher of grass-roots support would not only ratify the measure, but depose the bank-allied Republican Party, too.
Hayes’ piece was titled “Economic Populism Proves Popular,” the headline a sarcastic middle finger flashed at a political and media Establishment that portrays policies “supporting the rights and power of the people” — i.e., the dictionary definition of “populism” — as somehow anathema to the people.
That depiction, of course, continues today. But now, populism isn’t just popular in America; it is becoming the dominant paradigm, and that has the Establishment frightened.
via Don’t Pooh-Pooh Populism | CommonDreams.org.
Industry Ignored Its Scientists on Climate
Industry Ignored Its Scientists on Climate – by Andrew C. Revkin
For more than a decade the Global Climate Coalition, a group representing industries with profits tied to fossil fuels, led an aggressive lobbying and public relations campaign against the idea that emissions of heat-trapping gases could lead to global warming.
“The role of greenhouse gases in climate change is not well understood,” the coalition said in a scientific “backgrounder” provided to lawmakers and journalists through the early 1990s, adding that “scientists differ” on the issue.
But a document filed in a federal lawsuit demonstrates that even as the coalition worked to sway opinion, its own scientific and technical experts were advising that the science backing the role of greenhouse gases in global warming could not be refuted.
“The scientific basis for the Greenhouse Effect and the potential impact of human emissions of greenhouse gases such as CO2 on climate is well established and cannot be denied,” the experts wrote in an internal report compiled for the coalition in 1995.
The coalition was financed by fees from large corporations and trade groups representing the oil, coal and auto industries, among others. In 1997, the year an international climate agreement that came to be known as the Kyoto Protocol was negotiated, its budget totaled $1.68 million, according to tax records obtained by environmental groups.
via Industry Ignored Its Scientists on Climate | CommonDreams.org.
New Promise of a Nuclear-Free World
New Promise of a Nuclear-Free World
BERLIN – Leading supporters of disarmament see new hope arising from the announcement by the U.S. and Russian presidents that they are willing to replace the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) with a new one.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and U.S. President Barack Obama made that announcement in London Apr. 1 on the eve of the G20 summit.
“We committed our two countries to achieving a nuclear free world,” the leaders said jointly. Russia and the United States possess about 95 percent of nuclear weapons.
The who’s who of the disarmament world agreed to take that impetus forward at a conference held in Rome Apr. 16-17. The Conference on Overcoming Nuclear Dangers was attended by 70 former and current government officials and experts from about 20 countries.
via New Promise of a Nuclear-Free World | CommonDreams.org.
Rep. Schiff: Leahy was right, Bybee ‘ought to consider resigning from the bench.’
Rep. Schiff: Leahy was right, Bybee ‘ought to consider resigning from the bench.’
Last night on MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Show, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) joined Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Pat Leahy’s (D-VT) recent call for torture architect Judge Jay Bybee to do the “decent and honorable thing” and step down from the bench. While believing it likely that Bybee ought to resign, Schiff urged some caution saying there “should be a complete investigation” before Congress considers what he called the “extreme remedy” of impeachment proceedings:
via Think Progress » Rep. Schiff: Leahy was right, Bybee ‘ought to consider resigning from the bench.’.
Russia, China sign oil deal, start new pipeline branch
Russia, China sign oil deal, start new pipeline branch
Russia and China signed an intergovernmental agreement on oil cooperation in Beijing on Tuesday, under which a new branch from the East Siberia-Pacific Ocean (ESPO) pipeline will be built toward China.
The agreement sets out terms for oil cooperation between the countries, in particular on the laying of a pipeline from the Skovorodino refinery in Russia’s Far East to Mohe County in China’s Heilongjiang province. Under the deal, the pipeline must be completed by the end of next year.
After signing the deal, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin, who chairs the state oil company Rosneft, said the agreement “creates a new foundation for developing our energy cooperation.”
“This is a unique agreement of a long-term nature, which is accompanied by financial agreements, and to implement it we have already begun building a branch from the main pipeline toward China,” he said.
Vice Premier Wang Qishan, who signed the deal on behalf of China, said the deal brings into force “a packet of agreements and contracts on building the pipeline, buying and selling crude, and providing of credit between the companies of our two countries, which represents a significant breakthrough in bilateral energy relations.”
via Russia, China sign oil deal, start new pipeline branch.
What We Know So Far: A Torture Timeline (Updated)
So much information about the Bush administration’s torture policies and rationales has surfaced in recent days that, contrary to the secrecy meme of those days, we are now in danger of suffering from TMI – too much information.
So I thought it would be helpful to put together a timeline of known facts, reports and claims to try to give some chronological perspective to it all. As with any such collection, the selections are somewhat subjective, but I have tried to be fair (but not balanced; this isn’t a sporting event) in including what is known, admitted or reasonably validated. And – for once – I will leave speculation to the comments.
It turns out there is so much information already known that just summarizing it is torture. The timeline thus focuses mainly on the torture memos themselves and the events occurring at the time they were written, tested and replaced.
[Updated] Updated to include some of the Bush administration denials, and the Red Cross report.
via Daily Kos: State of the Nation.
Torture Is a Crime, and Crimes Demand Prosecution
Torture Is a Crime, and Crimes Demand Prosecution
By Eugene Robinson
The many roads of inquiry into the Bush administration’s abusive “interrogation techniques” all lead to one stubborn, inconvenient fact: Torture is not just immoral, but also illegal. This means that once we learn the whole truth, the law will oblige us to act on it.
Understandably, the Obama administration wants to avoid getting bogged down in a long, wrenching legal drama that almost certainly would be partisan and divisive. But I’m not sure it’s possible to skirt the criminal implications of what we already know, let alone what we might find out in a full-scale “truth commission” investigation with access to all relevant witnesses and documents.
On the moral question, the administration has been straightforward and righteous. One of President Obama’s first acts was to declare that the United States will no longer practice waterboarding or other abusive interrogation methods, saying that such depredations are inimical to our nation’s values and traditions. Attorney General Eric Holder stated at his confirmation hearings that “waterboarding is torture.” This refreshing and admirable clarity stands in stark contrast to the fog of legalistic sophistry in which the Bush administration cloaked its secret prisons.
via Truthdig – Reports – Torture Is a Crime, and Crimes Demand Prosecution.
The GOP: divorced from reality
The GOP: divorced from reality
The Republican base is behaving like a guy who just got dumped by his wife.
If conservatives don’t want to be seen as bitter people who cling to their guns and religion and anti-immigrant sentiments, they should stop being bitter and clinging to their guns, religion and anti-immigrant sentiments.
It’s been a week now, and I still don’t know what those “tea bag” protests were about. I saw signs protesting abortion, illegal immigrants, the bank bailout and that gay guy who’s going to win “American Idol.” But it wasn’t tax day that made them crazy; it was election day. Because that’s when Republicans became what they fear most: a minority.
The conservative base is absolutely apoplectic because, because … well, nobody knows. They’re mad as hell, and they’re not going to take it anymore. Even though they’re not quite sure what “it” is. But they know they’re fed up with “it,” and that “it” has got to stop.
via The GOP: divorced from reality – Los Angeles Times.
‘Limits to Growth’ predictions surprisingly accurate after 37 years
‘Limits to Growth’ predictions surprisingly accurate after 37 years
From The Oil Drum:
This post relates to an article written by my advisor Charles Hall and a close friend of his. The article is available online, but is behind a paywall for nonacademic IPs.
There are only finite resources in the world, but population continues to grow. How will this situation resolve itself? This was a question a group of scientists (Meadows et al), commissioned by the “Club of Rome,” attempted to answer back in 1972, in a book called Limits to Growth. The model they presented predicted growing resource scarcity, increasing pollution, and eventual population decline, all prior to 2100.
Charles A. S. Hall and John W. Day revisit these predictions in an article published this month in American Scientist called Revisiting the Limits to Growth After Peak Oil. Their analysis indicates that the predictions from 1972 were surprisingly accurate, considering how long ago they were made:
via Technozoic: ‘Limits to Growth’ predictions surprisingly accurate after 37 years.
The Great Credit Card Battle To Come
The Great Credit Card Battle To Come
Robert Reich
The next front in the banking wars will be over credit cards. Some of the nation’s biggest bankers — including representatives of Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase, and other recipients of billions of taxpayer dollars — are meeting today with the President to ask him back off his move to reform credit-card lending practices.
What’s happening to credit card lending is a smaller replay of what happened to mortgage lending. For years, banks used every gimmick possible to get the public to use their cards — regardless of the credit worthiness of the customer. They lured borrowers with low “teaser” rates. They told borrowers they could get by paying minimum balances.
And now that tens of millions of Americans are poorer than they used to be, the credit-card bubble is bursting. Credit card delinquencies are soaring. At the Bank of America, the largest U.S. lender by assets, 7.8 percent of credit-card accounts were delinquent in February by more than 30 days, up from 5.9 percent last August. Yesterday, Bank of America reported a $1.8 billion first-quarter loss in its credit-card services unit.
As delinquencies mount and profits shrink, card lenders are raising fees and interest rates, including rates on existing balances. They’re also charging higher fees when customers exceed their credit limits, and shortening the duration of the teaser rates. When a customer makes a payment in excess of what’s owed, card companies now routinely apply the excess to balances with the lowest rates rather than those carrying the highest rates. And banks disclose very little of relevance: For example, most customers have no idea how long it will take them to pay off their balances if they make minimum repayments, or what interest they’re actually paying on their balances.
via The Great Credit Card Battle To Come | Robert Reich’s Blog.
UN says nearly 6,500 civilians dead in Sri Lanka
UN says nearly 6,500 civilians dead in Sri Lanka
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) — Two top Indian officials met with Sri Lanka’s president Friday to demand an immediate cease-fire in the bloody civil war as the U.N. reported that nearly 6,500 ethnic Tamil civilians were killed in the last three months of fighting.
Concern for the safety of the civilians trapped in the war zone has increased in recent weeks as the government pushed ahead with its offensive to crush the Tamil Tiger rebels and end the nation’s quarter-century civil war.
On Monday, the military broke through rebel fortifications on the edge of a previously declared “no-fire” zone along the northeastern coast, sparking an exodus of more than 100,000 civilians. The rebels said at least 1,000 civilians were killed in that battle and the Red Cross said hundreds had been killed or wounded.
via The Associated Press: UN says nearly 6,500 civilians dead in Sri Lanka.
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Republicans Don't Care about Voter Fraud....owa Republicans are trying to dismiss claims that the vote count in Tuesday's Iowa Caucus was wrong. An Iowa voter told a local TV station yesterday that he noticed a 20-vote discrepancy in the count - and that Rick Santorum was the real winner of the Caucuses. Republican Party officials, though, are sticking to their first count - showing Mitt Romney as the winner by 8-votes - and there will be no recount.The Republican Party has launched a war on voters around the nation this year with strict new laws that will disenfranchise over 5 million Americans. They claim these laws are necessary to combat so-called voter fraud. Yet in Iowa - where there are no such laws - and where a very, very close and questionable election was just held - Republicans don't seem to care at all about getting it right.Clearly - the war on voters isn't about making sure the people's voices are represented accurately - it's about making sure poor people, young people, and minorities who tend to vote for Democrats - can't vote at all.-Thom(Who do you think won? Tell us here.) -
LEGALIZE Democracy
" We the corporations" On January 21, 2010, with its ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the Supreme Court ruled that corporations are persons, entitled by the U.S. Constitution to buy elections and run our government. __________
MOVE to AMEND
a project of the CAMPAIGN TO LEGALIZE Democracy
Help end Corporate personhood
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The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. 
