Archive for July, 2009
Government Tightening Food Safety Standards
Government Tightening Food Safety Standards
New food safety standards for eggs, meat, vegetables being adopted by Obama administration
A food safety panel established by President Barack Obama developed the new rules for eggs, poultry, beef, leafy greens, melons and tomatoes as well as for better coordination and communication among the agencies overseeing the nation’s food supply.
The panel was to announce Tuesday that the Food and Drug Administration and the Agriculture Department would adopt the standards, which follow a string of breakdowns in food safety.
Earlier this year a massive salmonella outbreak in peanut products sickened hundreds, was suspected of causing nine deaths and led to one of the largest product recalls in U.S. history. In the past month, Nestle Toll House cookie dough and 380,000 pounds of beef produced by the JBS Swift Beef Co. of Greeley, Colo., have been recalled due to connections with outbreaks of E. coli.
via Government Tightening Food Safety Standards – ABC News.
Sessions Uses Sotomayor Nomination To Continue His Lifelong Crusade Against Civil Rights
Sessions Uses Sotomayor Nomination To Continue His Lifelong Crusade Against Civil Rights
Conservatives have chosen a strange leader to spearhead their charge against Judge Sotomayor — Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL). With only days remaining until Sotomayor’s confirmation hearings begin, Sessions has focused his attacks on Sotomayor’s past service on the board of the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund (PRLDEF), a leading civil rights organization that Sessions calls “extreme” because it “brought several race discrimination lawsuits for minorities” while Sotomayor sat on its board.
Setting aside the facial absurdity of this attack — race discrimination is illegal, a fact which apparently also bothers Sessions — it’s puzzling that conservatives would let Sessions be their public face of opposition against the first Latina nominated to the Supreme Court, especially in light of his own checkered history with race.
In 1986, Sessions’ nomination to the federal bench was rejected by the Senate because of Sessions’ deep-seated hostility to the very notion of civil rights. In comments that are strikingly similar to his recent attacks on PRLDEF, Sessions attacked the NAACP as an “un-American” and “Communist-inspired” organization that “forced civil rights down the throats of people.” When confronted about these statements at his confirmation hearing, Sessions reluctantly conceded that they “probably w[ere] wrong.” Watch:
Palin thinks there is a ‘Department of Law’ at the White House. (There isn’t.)
Palin thinks there is a ‘Department of Law’ at the White House. (There isn’t.)
In a new interview with ABC News, Sarah Palin left the door open to running for national political office in the future. She said that the “frivolous ethics violations” that plagued her during her time in Alaska wouldn’t be as much as a problem if she were in the White House because of the all-powerful “Department of Law” that the President has at his disposal:
I think on a national level, your department of law there in the White House would look at some of the things that we’ve been charged with and automatically throw them out.
For the record, no such agency exists at the national level. The state of Alaska does have a Department of Law, but it apparently wasn’t able to keep Palin safe from “some of the things [she's] been charged with.”
via Think Progress » Palin thinks there is a ‘Department of Law’ at the White House. (There isn’t.).
Whitehouse: Climate deniers are taken seriously only at ExxonMobil and in the Senate.
Whitehouse: Climate deniers are taken seriously only at ExxonMobil and in the Senate.
In the first Senate hearing today on clean energy legislation supported by President Barack Obama, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) compared the Senate to the “ExxonMobil board room.” Whitehouse expressed his concern that the United States would be left behind in the clean energy race, saying, “I do not want to see American industries at the back of that parade with a broom.” Addressing the Obama Cabinet members before him — Ken Salazar, Stephen Chu, Tom Vilsack, and Lisa Jackson — Whitehouse apologized for the denial of man-made climate change by his fellow senators:
We know that this is probably — along with the ExxonMobil board room — the last place that sober people debate whether or not these problems are real, but we intend to work with you anyway, and we hope to give you strong legislative support if we can.
Watch it:
Alberto Gonzales lands a teaching position at Texas Tech.
Alberto Gonzales lands a teaching position at Texas Tech.
Life has been tough for Alberto Gonzales since he stepped down as President Bush’s attorney general. He was, for a while, “unable to interest law firms in adding his name to their roster.” Gonzales blamed his bad luck on the “rough economy.” Last June he was finally able to get hired “to provide assistance to a special master on a patent case.” The Austin-American Statesman now reports that Gonzales has also “lined up a fall-semester teaching spot at Texas Tech University.” He will be working in the political science department on a “’special topics’ course on contemporary issues in the executive branch.
via Think Progress » Alberto Gonzales lands a teaching position at Texas Tech..
Pitting Bernie Sanders’ democracy against Max Baucus’ betrayal
Pitting Bernie Sanders’ democracy against Max Baucus’ betrayal
It was more than just the journalistic catnip of high political theatre that drew, almost exclusively, the Washington Post’s attention to the Senate Finance Committee, rather than to the committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, in yesterday’s above-the-fold story, “On Health Care, The Prognosis Is Compromise.”
It was, rather, an implicit recognition of where the power lies — as opposed to within the more optimistic, less compromised doings of HELP — and thus, unless reason should unexpectedly seize the Democratic Senate, where the darker probabilities of an eventual health-care bill emerge.
For example, in assessing what Finance has conjured to date, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, as the Post reports, predicts that “families with modest incomes that buy the lowest-cost coverage could face steep out-of-pocket costs if they experience a serious medical problem,” and other families — those just outside the income range for government subsidies –”could face daunting bills, with no relief.”
And, of course, there’s Finance’s seemingly insistent “alternatives to a government plan: a network of member-run health-care cooperatives” — which would assassinate the idea of effective cost controls — “and a fallback option that would allow the government to offer health coverage if the private market does not offer adequate choices” — which would only push authentic, comprehensive reform into the distant, elusive future, once again.
via Pitting Bernie Sanders’ democracy against Max Baucus’ betrayal | BuzzFlash.org.
Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens our Future (Hardcover, July 13th Release)
Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens our Future
A great companion book to “Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free”, but with more scientific detail and documentation. Less snarky and more serious in its warning that we abandon science as a nation at grave peril to our future.
This is a truly vital book for the future of our country, because we will fail to revive our nation if we continue to margianize science and the scientific community.
“For every five hours of cable news, less than a minute is devoted to science; 46 percent of Americans reject evolution and think the Earth is less than 10,000 years old; the number of newspapers with weekly science sections has shrunken by two-thirds over the past several decades. The public is polarized over climate change—an issue where political party affiliation determines one’s view of reality—and in dangerous retreat from childhood vaccinations. Meanwhile, only 18 percent of Americans have even met a scientist to begin with; more than half can’t name a living scientist role model.
via Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens our Future (Hardcover, July 13th Release).
Big box closures leave big blight across U.S.
‘Ghostboxes’ haunt communities across U.S.
As big retailers go under, consolidate, blight is monument to lost jobs
BISMARCK, N.D. – Hundreds of anxious shoppers watched as city officials used power saws to cut 2-by-4s during Home Depot Inc.’s ribbon-cutting ceremony for its 102,700-square-foot building center in Bismarck. Less than three years later, the home improvement retailer shuttered the underperforming store, leaving a big orange empty eyesore on the outskirts of town.
The building, sitting derelict and silent on acres of asphalt, is now listed for sale at $10.5 million. But there’s been little interest in the near windowless warehouse-like building that occupies a lot the size of a dozen football fields.
For potential tenants “it’s a hard pitch because for most uses it seems to be a bit of a tough fit,” said Brian Ritter, business development director of the Bismarck-Mandan Development Association.
via Big box closures leave big blight across U.S. – Real estate- msnbc.com.
Ex-Goldman employee accused of cyber-theft
Ex-Goldman employee accused of cyber-theft - FT.com
FBI alleges Aleynikov stole trading program codes
US law enforcement officials arrested a former Goldman Sachs employee over the weekend, accusing him of stealing sensitive automated trading codes and uploading them to a server based in Germany.
Sergey Aleynikov, a computer programmer who joined Goldman in May 2007 and resigned last month, was arrested as he disembarked from a flight at Newark airport and charged with theft of trade secrets and transfer of stolen property.
via FT.com / Companies / Banks – Ex-Goldman employee accused of cyber-theft.
California credit rating cut close to junk
California credit rating cut close to junk – FT.com
California’s debt rating was slashed by Fitch Ratings to triple B – two notches above junk – after the state was forced to issue IOUs for certain payments while it frantically tries to agree a budget.
Further downgrades are possible, Fitch said, if legislators and Arnold Schwarzenegger, governor, do not end a stalemate over how to close a $26bn budget gap. “This underscores the urgency to solve our entire deficit,” Mr Schwarzenegger said.
By issuing the IOUs for what is considered non-priority payments, including vendor bills and tax refunds, the state is taking steps to ensure debt service on California’s nearly $70bn in general obligations bonds, Douglas Offerman, an analyst at Fitch, said.
via FT.com / US / Politics & Foreign policy – California credit rating cut close to junk.
America’s Empire Burden
America’s Empire Burden
Empires come with spheres of influence that, historically, few nations have willingly relinquished altogether.
Despite President Barack Obama’s calls to ramp down the war in Iraq and focus more on Afghanistan, that could be much easier said than done, according to Newsweek’s Christopher Dickey.
Last week, the U.S. military took a step toward that goal by withdrawing 140,000 troops from Iraqi cities and towns. But, the American military’s “stand down” could be short lived.
Empires come with spheres of influence that, historically, few nations have willingly relinquished altogether. The cases of Afghanistan and Iraq may be yet another example.
“The Obama administration is learning that lesson. It came to office … committed to withdrawing from Iraq, and to stabilizing Afghanistan so it could get out of there, too,” Dickey writes. “But we heard recently from U.S. Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey that plans have been drawn up in case American fighting forces have to remain in Iraq for another decade—and this despite a written agreement with Baghdad to pull all troops out by the end of 2011. Why? Not least because the Iraqis that the Americans helped put in power think they may need those forces to stay.”
via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
How the U.S. Press Helped Destroy the Auto Industry
How the U.S. Press Helped Destroy the Auto Industry
For decades East Asian competition has played a controversial role in the decline of the American car industry.
The following article is an excerpt from the May 16-30 issue of CounterPunch.
For decades East Asian competition has played a controversial role in the decline of the American car industry. Both Japan and Korea have long been accused of unfair trade and closed markets. For their part Japanese and Korean officials have argued that their markets are open and that an incompetent and heedless Detroit doesn’t make the sort of cars their consumers want.
In all the charges and countercharges, little of the remarkable truth of Detroit’s trade problems has come out. To see how well — or rather how badly — you understand the background, try this quiz:
1. What was the Detroit companies’ share of the Japanese market in 1930? (a) About 90 per cent. (b) About 20 per cent. (c) Less than 4 per cent.
2. How many models do the Detroit corporations currently make with the steering wheel on the right (the standard configuration for Japan)? (a) More than 40. (b) 12. (c) 3.
3. What was the combined share of all foreign makers – American, European, and Japanese – in the Korean car market in the last decade? (a) Less than 2 per cent. (b) Around 15 per cent. (c) More than 70 per cent.
The correct answer in each case is (a).
via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
Hunter Thompson Knew It Well: Robert McNamara’s Vision for America Was Imperial and Elitist
Hunter Thompson Knew It Well: Robert McNamara’s Vision for America Was Imperial and Elitist
The death of Robert McNamara is a time to remember how dangerous the idea of technocrats running Washington has been.
The announcement of Robert McNamara‘s death brought the good Doctor Hunter S. Thompson to mind. These two men were contemporaries on the public and political stage. While vastly different in so many ways, Thompson and McNamara were profoundly American and their stories offer some thoughts on where we are today.
McNamara entered public view first, while entering the public stage as Defense Secretary for JFK, Thompson was hitching a ride on a smuggling boat to disembark on the shores of Columbia with a few dollars in his pocket, spending a couple years in South America honing his skills as a journalist. Thompson, though younger in age by a couple decades, was a much older American. Nietzsche said true radicals were much older than their times, and this was true of Hunter. Thompson was a son of the old republic; high school graduate, relished his independence, considered the Bill of Rights sacred, became an outstanding member of the free press, and in his one attempt in electoral politics ran locally for Sheriff of Pitkin County Colorado.
Grand Illusion: The Myth of Voter Choice in a Two-Party Tyranny
Grand Illusion: The Myth of Voter Choice in a Two-Party Tyranny
Third-party candidates are effectively shut out of the presidential race by the two major parties designed to squash the competition.
The following is an introduction and excerpt by Theresa Amato, author of Grand Illusion: The Myth of Voter Choice in a Two-Party Tyranny. Copyright 2009 Theresa Amato. Reprinted with permission by The New Press.
In the run up to the 2004 elections article after article appeared documenting the reigning chaos in our electoral procedures, and surmising that another “Florida 2000” could happen. After the election, questions were raised in Ohio and in the gubernatorial race in Washington State, but in 2008, the infatuation with the electoral system was otherwise directed to the early primaries and the “historic” potential to elect Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton. With neither election as razor-close as the 537 vote discrepancy in Florida 2000, some of the prior attention paid to our electoral systems has waned.
To the extent concern is shown, it tends to focus on the mechanics of registering to vote, keeping accurate lists, and having votes counted by machines of better-than-dubious programming or security. Less concern is directed to the far more disenfranchising systemic problems of having a “winner-take-all” system that results in uncompetitive elections in most congressional and local races. Nor is there a widespread movement toward choice maximizing voting systems, or just better competition by structuring campaign finance systems to encourage participation for more than our millionaires or those who have access to them.
via Grand Illusion: The Myth of Voter Choice in a Two-Party Tyranny | Politics | AlterNet.
The Dark Side of Climate Change: It’s Already Too Late, Cap and Trade Is a Scam, and Only the Few Will Survive
The Dark Side of Climate Change: It’s Already Too Late, Cap and Trade Is a Scam, and Only the Few Will Survive
Father of the Gaia Theory, James Lovelock says we can’t stop climate change, but that humanity will continue in some smaller form.
The recent narrow passage of the Waxman-Markey energy bill, better known as cap-and-trade, marks halftime in Congress’ first attempt to put a lid on national carbon emissions. The bill’s supporters ended the half on top in a squeaker — 219 yeas to 212 nays. But it’s far from clear what this lead means, either for the bill or the climate. The legislation’s fate remains as uncertain as our own.
We can, however, be sure about one thing. Between now and the autumn Senate debate, cap-and-trade’s right-wing critics will escalate their all-cannons assault on the idea that climate change is real and demands a response. They will call “crap-and-tax” the mother of all scams, a poorly cloaked state power grab, and a major goose step down the road to eco-fascism. Given the hyperbole already on display, it can’t be long before some conservative howler warns that the bill’s green facade shares hues with the Koran.
As the fight over cap-and-trade intensifies, human-driven climate change denialists like Rush Limbaugh and James Inhofe will draw the lion’s share of the media spotlight reserved for the bill’s critics. This is unfortunate. The real debate is not between the bill’s supporters and the dead-ender climate clown club. It is between cap-and-trade’s supporters and its critics within the scientific and environmental activist communities. Groups like Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth have science if not politics on their side when they decry Waxman-Markey as an industry diluted half-measure with soft gums that falls far short of what is necessary to avoid cataclysmic climate change later this century.
Dupont Corporation’s flexible photovoltaic cells
Two Delaware Senators authored a bill and politicked the Department of Energy to fund a phovoltaic cell project with Dupont Corp. One Senator is a former Dupont employee. The other Senator received substantial campaign and lobbying funds from Dupont. The usual Washington money go round. This time its “green”
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Dupont Corporation’s flexible photovoltaic cells
Dupont Corporation and the Department of Energy announced plans to develop a flexible photovoltaic (PV) cell covering on July 1, 2009. PV’s are the most promising solar energy system.
The problem with present PV technology is the cells degrade under atmospheric conditions and are presently covered in glass or other materials that do not lend themselves to building and construction easily. The three year program is planned to accelerate the development of a plastic sheeting covered module for PV cells that makes the cells flexible and form fitting to houses and other objects.
The starting point is the use of Copper Indium Gallium Selenide (CIGS) type thin film PV modules presently used.
Successful development could make entire houses and building into large PV cells reducing electric demand and reducing pollution from fossil fuels.
The total funding for the project is 9 million dollars. Dupont contributed 6 million dollars and the Department of Energy contributed 3 million dollars. The DOE money comes from the Recovery and Reinvestment Act, passed earlier this year with the support of U.S. Senators Tom Carper and Ted Kaufman. Both Senators represent Delaware where Dupont has huge plants.
Senator Kaufman is a former Dupont employee.
via Dupont Corporation’s flexible photovoltaic cells.
The United States has created a new system for waging war: private military contractors.
Video and transcript at link
Bill Moyers Journal : Jeremy Scahill
Bill Moyers sits down with award-winning investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill to examine the human and financial costs of America’s wars.
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BILL MOYERS: Welcome to the JOURNAL.
There was good news and bad news about Afghanistan this week. And it was the same news.
That’s right. The Senate held confirmation hearings for Lieutenant General Stanley McChrystal, slated to be the next commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan. Here’s how two different news organizations reported his testimony:
The Associated Press headline read, “War in Afghanistan is ‘Winnable,’” but the “Washington Independent” reported that the general had, quote, “painted a bleak picture of the Afghanistan war” and that the United States “needed to show significant progress within ’18 to 24 months’ or risk the war spiraling out of control.”
What we know for sure is that the fighting in Afghanistan is escalating. At least 21 thousand more American troops are going in and the number of private security contractors working for the military there jumped 29 percent in the last three months alone. Get this: there are now more private security contractors in Afghanistan than there are U.S. soldiers. And as of next year, according to new Pentagon documents, the war in Afghanistan will be costing more than the war in Iraq.
It’s the job of experienced, knowledgeable investigative reporters to throw a monkey wrench into the spin machine and try to make some sense of all this. They’re an endangered species, but one of the best in the business is Jeremy Scahill, who’s been digging into Pentagon documents and thick congressional hearings for several years now. He’s twice winner of the George Polk Award for special achievement in journalism, and author of this best selling book, BLACKWATER: THE RISE OF THE WORLD’S MOST POWERFUL MERCENARY ARMY. Jeremy now runs the new Web site, RebelReports. Jeremy Scahill, welcome back to the JOURNAL…
via Bill Moyers Journal . Transcripts | PBS.
Obama: Newest CEO of War Incorporated
Obama: Newest CEO of War Incorporated
The following are the final frightening remarks by Jeremy Scahill (author of BLACKWATER: THE RISE OF THE WORLD’S MOST POWERFUL MERCENARY ARMY) on a Bill Moyers Journal interview June 5th. He speaks of an eventual scenario, the way the Military Industrial Complex is evolving, whereby only corporations will wield private armies — militarized corporate/financial institutions wantonly and amorally preying on and devastating the lives of indigenous peoples, without even the cover of nationalistic and/or international law justification:
Well, I think that what we have seen happen, as a result of this incredible reliance on private military contractors, is that the United States has created a new system for waging war. Where you no longer have to depend exclusively on your own citizens to sign up for the military and say, “I believe in this war, so I’m willing to sign up and risk my life for it.” You turn the entire world into your recruiting ground. You intricately link corporate profits to an escalation of warfare and make it profitable for companies to participate in your wars.
In the process of doing that you undermine U.S. democratic processes. And you also violate the sovereignty of other nations, ’cause you’re making their citizens in combatants in a war to which their country is not a party. I feel that the end game of all of this could well be the disintegration of the nation state apparatus in the world. And it could be replaced by a scenario where you have corporations with their own private armies. To me, that would be a devastating development. But it’s on. It’s happening on a micro level. And I fear it will start to happen on a much bigger scale.
Scahill reveals that there are 250 thousand contractors fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, 50% of the fighting force, and that Barack Obama is continuing the “privatization of war”, though Scahill admits Obama is doing more to implement accountability over contractors than the Bush regime. But there is a 23% increase in armed contractors under Obama in Iraq. And a 29% increase in Afghanistan.
via Oxdown Gazette » Obama: Newest CEO of War Incorporated.
Right Wing Wishes America the Worst: Are They Enemy Agents, Working on Osama’s Payroll?
Right Wing Wishes America the Worst: Are They Enemy Agents, Working on Osama’s Payroll?
BUZZFLASH EDITOR’S BLOG By Mark Karlin
Yes, even to me, it seems a bit absurd to think that the right wing is on Al-Qaeda’s payroll — although the enemies of our nation are getting their money’s worth without paying a cent to the great Republican media noise machine.
Much has been made of Rush Limbaugh repeatedly wishing Obama fails — and therefore America deteriorates even further, destroyed to the ground. Isn’t Osama wishing the same thing?
And then there’s Glenn Beck who nightly — with a smirk on his face and a few million in his pocket for being a demagogic lynch mob television host — warns us that America is careening toward destruction. The other night he had a guest on who urged that only another 9/11 type terrorist attack would save our nation. Beck urged him on, with a smile and a barely concealed money-making strategic passion.
All around the right wing media echo chamber, the deceived dispossessed white working class masses — robbed of their wallets and jobs by the Reagan economic doctrine of “I’m rich I deserve it and make me richer at the expense of the working person in America” — are told that the U.S. under Obama is turning into a “dark” foreboding failure that must be met with resistance, some of them suggest “armed” rebellion.
Did Goldman Sachs cause both the 1929 and 2008 depressions?
Thom HArtmann discussing the Matt Taibbi article: The Great American Bubble Machine
YouTube – Did Goldman Sachs cause both the 1929 and 2008 depressions? (Part 1/2).
Researchers: Social Security Numbers Can Be Guessed
Researchers: Social Security Numbers Can Be Guessed
Researchers have found that it is possible to guess many — if not all — of the nine digits in an individual’s Social Security number using publicly available information, a finding they say compromises the security of one of the most widely used consumer identifiers in the United States.
Many numbers could be guessed at by simply knowing a person’s birth data, the researchers from Carnegie Mellon University said.
The results come as concern grows over identity theft and lawmakers in Washington push legislation that would bar businesses from requiring people to supply their Social Security number when purchasing a good or service.
“Our work shows that Social Security numbers are compromised as authentication devices, because if they are predictable from public data, then they cannot be considered sensitive,” said Alessandro Acquisti, assistant professor of information technology and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University, and a co-author of the study.
A Social Security Administration spokesman said the government has long cautioned the private sector against using a Social Security number as a personal identifier, even as it insists “there is no fool proof method for predicting a person’s Social Security Number.”
via Researchers: Social Security Numbers Can Be Guessed.
NSA Shields Government Networks With More AT&T Secret Rooms
Threat Level Privacy, Crime and Security Online
NSA Shields Government Networks With More AT&T Secret Rooms
Just a week after the Defense Department announced plans to put the National Security Agency in charge of military cyber defense and attack, the agency’s reach has already expanded to include monitoring of government civilian networks.
The Obama administration has decided to proceed with a classified Bush administration plan to let the NSA monitor traffic going to and from government civilian networks to protect the networks from malicious code and activity, according to a Washington Post story on Friday.
Given the NSA’s involvement in the Bush administration’s warrantless eavesdropping program, critics are concerned that the monitoring of government traffic on private-sector telecommunication networks that are used by the general public would allow the agency to once again spy on large swaths of non-government traffic without a warrant.
via NSA Shields Government Networks With More AT&T Secret Rooms | Threat Level | Wired.com.
What happens when all the lights go out?
What happens when all the lights go out? – Scholars and Rogues »
… all it takes is a single bomb detonated high in the atmosphere, two hundred miles above the continent.
William Forstchen has a bad dream—a really bad dream—that goes something like this:
A cataclysmic attack throws the United States back to the dark ages, with no electricity, no communication or transportation networks, and no medicines. The most vulnerable members of society—the very young and the very old—begin to die off first, but soon hundreds of thousands of people, millions of people, begin dying. Rogue bands of lawless predators, living by rule of force rather than by rule of law, prey on weakened communities. The government, crippled, can’t come to anyone’s rescue.
And all it takes is a single bomb detonated high in the atmosphere, two hundred miles above the continent.
“Welcome to my nightmare,” Forstchen says with the kind of grim chuckle usually reserved for gallows humor.
But this is no joke. “It sounds like it’s science fiction, Mayan-prophecy, end-of-the-world stuff,” Forstchen admits, “but it’s dead-on real.”
via Scholars and Rogues » What happens when all the lights go out?.
Single-payer system could remove burden from employers
Single-payer system could remove burden from employers – BizTimes
Think about it. They now have a filibuster-proof congress, and if health care fails in 2009, it’s the Democrats’ fault. They can’t even blame the Republicans for their normal obstruction, as they no longer need a bipartisan bill.
President Barack Obama didn’t count on that when he was making all those campaign promises, but now it’s 100-percent his baby. He supported a single-payer plan, though he left some wiggle room in case Congress split. But it didn’t. The Dems now have total control and they don’t want it!
Single-payer is the most cost efficient system for our nation and is the most humane. You get sick, you get care and the caregiver gets paid. Nothing could be simpler. And though Medicare is not perfect it is indeed the least costly system of all with full physician choice, no wait times and no rationing.
But our politicians have a problem. Both Democrats and Republicans have shared in the $46 million in campaign contributions from the insurance industry. Needless to say, what is in the best interest of the nation is exactly opposite to the best interest of the for-profit insurers. The 22-percent saved comes right out of their pocket.
via Single-payer system could remove burden from employers – BizTimes.
New Rules on Stem Cell Research Announced
New Rules on Stem Cell Research Announced - Washington Post
The Obama administration today announced far-reaching new guidelines on the use of stem cells in medical research, and promised federal funds to study many of the hundreds of stem cell lines whose use was prohibited by the Bush administration.
President Obama had promised during the presidential campaign to ease restrictions on the use of stem cells in research, and has cited the promise of stem cell research in finding cures for disorders that have so far proven intractable.
The new guidelines were announced today by officials at the National Institutes of Health. In an important shift from draft guidelines issued April 23, the NIH announced that stem lines developed before the guidelines go into effect tomorrow — Tuesday, July 7 — will not need to meet the letter of new ethics requirements.
This means that the conflict of interest policy articulated earlier — embryos must have been leftover from clinically necessary in-vitro fertilization procedures and full informed consent be given for their use — be a rule that is observed in principle. Programs that did not adhere to the standard on procedural grounds, but did adhere to the spirit of the standard, will now be deemed permissible, with an NIH committee making a case by case decision. Officials stressed that only ethically derived stem cell lines would be eligible for federally funded research.
via New Rules on Stem Cell Research Announced.
Justice Department probing telecommunications companies
Justice Department probing telecommunications companies
The US Justice Department is conducting an initial review to determine whether large US telecom companies have abused their market power, The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.
The newspaper, citing “people familiar with the matter,” said the review of potential anti-competitive practices by companies such as AT&T and Verizon is “in its very early stages.”
It said there was no formal investigation at this point and it was not clear whether the agency intends to launch an official inquiry.
The Journal said the review could look into whether wireless carriers were hurting smaller competitors by locking up popular phones through exclusive agreements with handset makers.
It noted that lawmakers and regulators have raised questions recently about deals such as AT&T’s exclusive service agreement with Apple, maker of the popular iPhone.
“The Justice Department may also review whether telecom carriers are unduly restricting the types of services other companies can offer on their networks,” the newspaper said.
via Raw Story » Justice Department probing telecommunications companies.
UK weapons inspector who was found dead was writing expose: paper
UK weapons inspector who was found dead was writing expose: paper
British weapons inspector Dr. David Kelly was writing an expose about his work with anthrax and his warnings that Iraq possessed no weapons of mass destruction at the time of his death in July 2003, according to a report published in a British newspaper.
Kelly’s death — said to have been a suicide — has stirred controversy, as it came on the heels of testimony to the House of Commons about a memo which purported that Britain had “sexed up” a dossier on Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction. A Parliamentary inquiry ruled that the death had been suicide, though it also included testimony from a former British ambassador who quotes Kelly as having said, “I will probably be found dead in the woods” if Iraq were invaded.
The new report says Kelly had spoken with an Oxford publisher several times about a book.
“He had several discussions with a publisher in Oxford and was seeking advice on how far he could go without breaking the law on secrets,” the UK Daily Express alleged.
via Raw Story » UK weapons inspector who was found dead was writing expose: paper.
Huckabee: Obama Needs To Stop Blaming Bush Because Bush Didn’t Complain About Inheriting Clinton’s Economy
Huckabee: Obama Needs To Stop Blaming Bush Because Bush Didn’t Complain About Inheriting Clinton’s Economy
On Fox and Friends this morning, host Gretchen Carlson asked former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee (R) about Vice President Biden’s comment that the Obama administration “misread the economy” when they made predictions about the impact of the stimulus earlier this year. “Here goes Biden again and he says something that is really in this case true,” said Huckabee. “They didn’t realize how bad things were.”
Huckabee claimed that “there’s one thing though that Biden and President Obama have got to get under control. And that is quit blaming George Bush.” He then made the common conservative claim that Bush inherited a recession from Bill Clinton, but didn’t complain about it:
Senate Finance Committee may deny access to abortion.
Senate Finance Committee may deny access to abortion.
As Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) prepares to unveil the Senate Finance Committee’s bipartisan health care reform legislation later this week, several blogs are reporting that Republicans on the Committee are pushing legislation that would require insurers operating within the new Exchange to to deny coverage for abortion services. From Raising Women’s Voices:
The Senate Finance Committee has been writing a health care reform bill and struggling to create legislation that will have bipartisan support. Chairman Max Baucus (pictured left) considered several compromises to win Republican support, so they can claim it is bipartisan legislation. One of these potential compromises comes in the form of an abortion exclusion, which would prevent abortion services from being covered by some or all insurance plans in the Health Insurance Exchange. We fear that members of the Senate Finance Committee are considering such a compromise.
via Think Progress » Senate Finance Committee may deny access to abortion..
Reefs could perish by end of century, experts warn
Reefs could perish by end of century, experts warn
LONDON (Reuters) – Increasingly acidic oceans and warming water temperatures due to carbon dioxide emissions could kill off the world’s ocean reefs by the end of this century, scientists warned on Monday.
The experts told a meeting in London the predicted pace of emissions means a level of 450 parts per million of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere will be reached by 2050, putting corals on a path to extinction in the following decades.
The two dozen coral reef specialists and climate change exerts represented universities, government research offices and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
“The kitchen is on fire and it’s spreading around the house,” Alex Rogers of the Zoological Society of London and the International Program on the State of the Ocean, said in a statement.
“If we act quickly and decisively we may be able to put it out before the damage becomes irreversible.”
via Reefs could perish by end of century, experts warn | Science | Reuters.
China officials call for displacing dollar, in time
China officials call for displacing dollar, in time | Reuters
BEIJING (Reuters) – The financial crisis has laid bare defects in the dollar-led global economy and the world should look to displace the U.S. currency, even if that will take many years, Chinese officials said in comments published on Monday.
The push for fundamental, if gradual, reform of the international financial system comes just before the Group of Eight summit in Italy, where China’s willingness to question the dollar’s role could fuel debate.
The Special Drawing Right (SDR), a unit of account used by the International Monetary Fund, presents a viable alternative to the dollar as a global reserve currency, said Li Ruogu, chairman of the Export-Import Bank of China, a major state-run bank.
“It is a feasible plan to reform the present SDR and make it into a real settlement currency, a universally accepted ‘currency basket’ that would replace the dollar at the heart of the monetary system,” Li was cited as saying in Financial News, a newspaper published by the central bank.
The People’s Bank of China made waves in March when it first suggested that the SDR, whose exchange rate is determined by a mixture of dollars, euros, sterling and yen, was better suited than any single currency to be a yardstick for global trade and a reliable store of value.
via China officials call for displacing dollar, in time | Reuters.
Saddam Hussein’s FBI Interviews
Intelligence and Meglomania
Saddam Hussein’s FBI Interviews
By PATRICK COCKBURN
Saddam Hussein was questioned by the FBI during 20 formal interviews and at least five “casual conversations” over a four-month period from February to May 2004 after his capture by US troops in December 2003.
Transcripts of the interviews were released last week in response to US Freedom of Information requests. Asked about his greatest achievements, the former Iraqi leader cited social progress for ordinary Iraqis, a temporary ceasefire with the Kurds in the early 1970s, the nationaliation of Iraq’s oil in 1972, and support for the Arab side during the 1973 Middle East war with Israel.
The Saddam Hussein interviews are interesting for what they reveal and what they conceal. Probably right up to the end, Saddam was talking up the Iranian threat to Iraq, knowing that this would confirm American suspicions of Iran. The Iraqi leader would recall that a joint front against Iran had been the basis of Iraqi-American co-operation in the 1980s.
“Hussein explained that Iraq could not appear weak to its enemies, especially Iran,” records FBI special agent George Piro who interviewed him. This is the explanation the Iraqi leader presents for keeping the world guessing if he had weapons of mass destruction. In reality, the Iraqi leader made every effort to prove that he had no WMD.
The anti-Iranian theme is constant throughout, and no doubt Saddam believed it as well as saying it out of political calculation. Of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, he says: “Khomeini and Iran would have occupied all of the Arab world if it had not been for Iraq.”
via CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names.
Today’s Quote
Major General Albert “Bert” N. Stubblebine III, head of all intelligence says:
- Pentagon NOT hit by a plane
- WTC 7 brought down by explosives
- Media in America is controlled
General of all American Intelligence: 911 was a fraud!
YouTube – General of all American Intelligence: 911 was a fraud!.
Major General Albert “Bert” N. Stubblebine III, head of all intelligence says:
- Pentagon NOT hit by a plane
- WTC 7 brought down by explosives
- Media in America is controlled
A terrible pilot hits pentagon accounting office holding records of missing 3 trillion in oil for money scheme & missing 2.3 trillion in DOD expenses
Pentagon debris a single 3 foot engine Proven not related to 757
FBI took all recordings & refuses to show
The FCC had all records on criminals like Paulson, Geithner, Ruben, Summers & others engaging in that illegal activity. But all the records of those illegal trades were destroyed when WTC 7 was brought down by thermite on 9/11!
911 was a public snuff film used to shock the public and enact the end of the Bill of Rights & invasion of oil bearing countries, & make money for private companies like Halliburton, (stock from 10 to 50 a share)!
By destroying the WTC, they were able to cover up theft of gold bullion & destroy illegal financial transaction records performed just prior to the attacks
Silverstein spends 140 million to make 7 billion almost over night; Silverstein said it was demolished by explosives, (pull it)
It reminds me of CIA man Byrd, the owner of TX School Book Depository, who turned a 2.5 million insider purchase into 26 million dollars thanks to JFK assassination!
Nafta Superhighway Returns From The Dead
Nafta Superhighway Returns From The Dead
Rick Perry set to push revamped agenda to sell freeways to foreign-owned private companies and convert them to toll roads
by Paul Joseph Watson
The Trans-Texas Corridor, part of the NAFTA Superhighway projected to link the United States with Canada and Mexico as an integral cog of the North American Union, is back on the agenda after Texas Governor Rick Perry lied in claiming that the proposal was dead earlier this year.
The open plan to merge the US with Mexico and Canada and create a Pan-American Union networked by a NAFTA Superhighway has long been a Globalist brainchild, but fierce opposition to the plan from activists across the country has stalled the plan at least temporarily.
A key component of the NAU transport system was the proposed Trans Texas Corridor, a massive 4,000 mile network of highways that were to be sold to the Spanish company Cintra and operated as toll roads – creating a huge new tax on the American people which would be paid directly to a foreign-owned private company.
Texas Governor and Bilderberg invitee Rick Perry launched a PR stunt in January when he claimed that the Trans Texas Corridor was dead, when in reality as Jerome Corsi and others pointed out, the project was merely to have its name changed and its design slightly altered.
“Close examination shows Perry’s declaration from Iraq involves yet more public relations efforts by the governor and TxDOT to defuse criticism from voters and reposition a hugely unpopular initiative by dropping the designation ‘Trans-Texas Corridor,’ or ‘TTC,’ while still allowing TxDOT to proceed with the components of the original TTC plan that had been scheduled for implementation now,” wrote Corsi.
via Nafta Superhighway Returns From The Dead.
GOP full of hot air about Obama’s “light switch tax”
GOP full of hot air about Obama’s “light switch tax” – PolitiFact |
“The administration raises revenue for nationalized health care through a series of new taxes, including a light switch tax that would cost every American household $3,128 a year.”
Taxpayers may have been shocked to learn from House Republicans that President Barack Obama wants to pay for health care by charging them to turn on a light.
“The administration raises revenue for nationalized health care through a series of new taxes, including a light switch tax that would cost every American household $3,128 a year,” the House Republican Conference said in a Web post and press release titled “Questions on the Budget for President Obama,” distributed March 24. ”What effect will this have on Americans struggling to pay their mortgages?” it asked.
via PolitiFact | GOP full of hot air about Obama’s “light switch tax”.
Climate and the $3,100 Lie Detector
Climate and the $3,100 Lie Detector - – Renewable Energy World
How can you tell when a politician in Washington isn’t telling the truth? When they claim that the cost of capping carbon emissions and reducing foreign oil dependence will cost American families “$3,100.”
It’s become Talking Point Number One for opponents of action on climate change. Problem is, it’s entirely made up — so don’t get fooled. Ask where that number comes from.
The claim that The American Clean Energy and Security Act, with its cap on carbon pollution, will cost families “$3,100″ was first made in a March press release from the National Republican Congressional Committee. The NRCC said its number was based on an MIT analysis of cap and trade legislation.
Here’s what John Reilly, the author of the MIT study told Politifact about the NRCC’s claim: “It’s just wrong. It’s wrong in so many ways it’s hard to begin.”
In two recent letters to House Republican Leader John Boehner, MIT’s Reilly asked that the NRCC stop using the “misleading” figure, noting that MIT’s estimates are less than one thirtieth of what the NRCC is claiming. “A correct estimate of that cost … for the average household just in 2015 is about $80 per family, or $65 if more appropriately staed in present value terms discounted at an annual 4% rate,” he said.
via Climate and the $3,100 Lie Detector – Renewable Energy World.
Fascism Coming to a Court Near You
Fascism Coming to a Court Near You | CommonDreams.org
Corporate Personhood and the Roberts’ Court
As the 1983 American Heritage Dictionary noted, fascism is: “A system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with belligerent nationalism.”
Get ready.
Last year a right-wing group put together a 90-minute hit-job on Hillary Clinton, and wanted to run it on TV stations in strategic states. The Federal Election Commission ruled that the “documentary” was actually a “campaign ad” and thus fell under the restrictions on campaign spending of McCain-Feingold, and thus stopped it from airing. (Corporate contributions to campaigns have been banned repeatedly and in various ways since 1907 when Teddy Roosevelt pushed through the Tillman Act.)
Citizens United, the right-wing group, sued the Supreme Court, with right-wing hit man and former Reagan solicitor general Ted Olson as their lead lawyer.
This new case, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, presents the best opportunity for the Roberts Court to use its five vote majority to totally re-write the face of politics in America, rolling us back to the pre-1907 era of the Robber Barons.
via Fascism Coming to a Court Near You | CommonDreams.org.
EXCLUSIVE: PALIN RESIGNATION ‘DAMAGE CONTROL’ FOR COMING ‘ICEBERG SCANDAL’ … MORE: EMBEZZLEMENT INDICTMENTS COMING?
EXCLUSIVE: PALIN RESIGNATION ‘DAMAGE CONTROL’ FOR COMING ‘ICEBERG SCANDAL’ … MORE: EMBEZZLEMENT INDICTMENTS COMING?
The BRAD BLOG
UPDATED: Alaskan reporter Shannyn Moore offers The BRAD BLOG hints about reasons for Alaska Gov’s resignation
FURTHER UPDATE: Sources say embezzlement scandal, federal indictments may soon break concerning use of Wasilla Sport Complex building materials for Palin’s home…
[See update below for exclusive source details from Alaska...FURTHER UPDATE now added below: AK sources say 'embezzlement' scandal related to Palin's house, federal indictments may be in offing. MUCH MORE now added below... UPDATE 7/4: Palin issues rebuttals, legal threats...]
Palin resigns. She was to have been in office until 2010. Something else is going on here above and beyond what she’s saying, though I don’t know what yet. Josh Marshall seems to agree, noting in his “first signs of what happened” coverage:
Iran’s Revolutionary Guard takes command
Iran’s Revolutionary Guard takes command – - Los Angeles Times
Calling the move “a new phase of the revolution,” leaders insist there is no room for compromise on Ahmadinejad’s reelection.
Maj. Gen. Mohammad Ali Jafari, commander of the elite military branch, said the Guard’s takeover of the country had led to “a revival of the revolution and clarification of the value positions of the establishment at home and abroad.”
“These events put us in a new stage of the revolution and political struggles, and all of us must fully comprehend its dimensions,” he said at a Sunday press conference, according to reports that surfaced today.
“Because the Revolutionary Guard was assigned the task of controlling the situation, [it] took the initiative to quell a spiraling unrest. This event pushed us into a new phase of the revolution and political struggles and we have to understand all its dimensions.”
via Iran’s Revolutionary Guard takes command – Los Angeles Times.
Electric cars forced to make noise
Electric cars forced to make noise – - Telegraph
Electric car manufacturers may be forced to add noise emitting devices to vehicles in a bid to stop accidents involving pedestrians, according to a new Japanese government review.
The silent hum of hybrid petrol-electric vehicles, which recently became number one best-selling cars in Japan, has been deemed dangerous to pedestrians, in particular the visually impaired.
When switched from fuel to battery mode, the vehicles make a barely perceptible noise, prompting campaigners to urge the installation of noise devices to prevent accidents.
via Electric cars forced to make noise – Telegraph.
Oldest Bible made whole again online
Oldest Bible made whole again online | Reuters
LONDON (Reuters) – The surviving parts of the world’s oldest Bible were reunited online Monday, generating excitement among scholars striving to unlock its mysteries.
The Codex Sinaiticus was hand-written by four scribes in Greek on animal hide, known as vellum, in the mid-fourth century around the time of the Roman emperor Constantine the Great who embraced Christianity.
Not all of it has withstood the ravages of time, but the pages that have include the whole of the New Testament and the earliest surviving copy of the Gospels written at different times after Christ’s death by the four Evangelists: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
The Bible’s remaining 800 pages and fragments — it was originally some 1,400 pages long — also contain half of a copy of the Old Testament. The other half has been lost.
“The Codex Sinaiticus is one of the world’s greatest written treasures,” said Scot McKendrick, head of Western manuscripts at the British Library.
“This 1,600-year-old manuscript offers a window into the development of early Christianity and first-hand evidence of how the text of the Bible was transmitted from generation to generation,” he said.
via Oldest Bible made whole again online | Reuters.
Homeownership’s Downsides
Homeownership’s Downsides
One consequence of the economic crisis is that the rate of home ownership has been slipping, as the chart below shows
A growing number of economists and urbanists question whether the United States has put too much emphasis on homeownership and over-invested in housing. Ever since the Great Depression, America has generously subsidized homeownership through the tax code and by other means. Housing does take up a significant share of U.S. investment comparatively speaking; and, in some regions, real estate, housing, and construction made up a huge share of the local economy, as high as 25 to 30 percent at the height of the bubble, bigger than education, health-care, government, or manufacturing. I’ve argued elsewhere that the two American dreams – of homeownership and of unfettered economic mobility – may be in conflict, as homeownership, especially in downturns like today, impedes mobility and makes it harder for individuals to move to work and the labor market on the whole to adjust.
The benefits versus costs of homeownership is an important debate. On the pro-side, Joel Kotkin makes the case for homeownership in his recent Forbes column. Stephen Slivinski provides a thorough review (via Tyler Cowen) of the downsides of what he calls America’s homeownership bias.
via Homeownership’s Downsides – Richard Florida.
Coffee ‘may reverse Alzheimer’s’
Coffee ‘may reverse Alzheimer’s' - BBC NEWS
A possible treatment for dementia?
Drinking five cups of coffee a day could reverse memory problems seen in Alzheimer’s disease, US scientists say
The Florida research, carried out on mice, also suggested caffeine hampered the production of the protein plaques which are the hallmark of the disease.
Previous research has also suggested a protective effect from caffeine.
But British experts said the Journal of Alzheimer’s disease study did not mean that dementia patients should start using caffeine supplements.
The 55 mice used in the University of Florida study had been bred to develop symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease.
via BBC NEWS | Health | Coffee ‘may reverse Alzheimer’s’.
Wall Street Meltdown Panel Forming
OPS: It’s been well established that congress is owned by Wall Street and the Banks. Don’t be expecting anything out of this except cover up
Wall Street Meltdown Panel Forming
Congress is organizing a 10-member panel to investigate the causes of instability and the individuals who should be held accountable – with the ability to subpoena individuals for official inquiry.
In light of the collapse of the financial industry, Congress is organizing a panel to investigate the causes of instability and the individuals who should be held accountable. This 10-member panel will be empowered with the ability to subpoena individuals for official inquiry.
According to Reuters, there are several nominees already being considered for a position on the congressional Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission. The short list includes former Republican congressman and presidential candidate Fred Thompson, American Enterprise Institute fellow Alex Pollock, and former head of the Commodities Futures Trading Commission Brooksley Born.
Born made a name for herself in 1998 when she attempted to rein in the then infant derivatives market. The attempt was crushed by a coordinated effort from Arthur Levitt Jr., Robert Rubin and Alan Greenspan. Each man has since seen the error of running Mrs. Born out of Washington. Her inclusion on any potential investigation panel on Wall Street would certainly be a huge positive for those looking for answers.
via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
POLITICS LIKE CANCER
POLITICS LIKE CANCER
After subprime mortgages, derivatives, and credit default swaps, we should have learned by now to never let the big banks or financial crowd take charge of the U. S. economy.
Sen. Ernest F. “Fritz” Hollings, with video by Craig Harrington
Politics is like cancer – if you don’t catch it in time, you don’t have a chance. If the budget deficits and deficits in jobs from offshoring are not caught now, by 2012 we’ll give it back to the Republicans.
After subprime mortgages, derivatives, and credit default swaps, we should have learned by now to never let the big banks or financial crowd take charge of the U. S. economy. Banks love debt – the more debt, the more fees, the more interest costs. Debt is the lifeblood of bankers … not the economy. If there is such a thing as greed, the big bankers have it. Overcome with greed, the big bankers knew their subprime mortgages were a ponzi scheme, but “outgreeded” each other to collapse. The big bankers could care less about the U. S. economy. They are concerned about financing and profits from global trade, trade deficits, household debt, business debt and government debt.
Last September when the collapse of the economy was imminent, the Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Paulson, started bailing out the big banks and insurance companies and his old firm, Goldman-Sachs, changed to a bank to qualify for stimulus money. But stimulus was the problem. Stimulus for infrastructure, business development, education, health care is always good. But stimulus for consumption was the problem. The economy had been stimulated for eight years by an astounding $5 trillion increase in the national debt, and the economy was exhausted from stimulation. Moreover, household debt had increased $7 trillion in the same period and consumers had begun to save. They weren’t looking for loans. Paulson’s concern about confidence in the failed financial system was just a cover for bailouts. Moreover, our economy’s investment, research, development, production and jobs were being forced offshore by a fraudulent free trade policy, and there was little left to stimulate.
via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
America’s Smart Power Grid
OPS: The ‘Grid’ is 19th century technology. For several reasons it is, and always will be, the weakest link in the system. Decentralized, localized and diverse sources for our power are the Future. No one seems to be facing that. Like Obama attempting to re-inflate the Bush Economic Bubble, the ‘experts’ are trying to revive the glory days.
America’s Smart Power Grid
Dr. Steven Chu announced a new $3.9 billion proposal to invest in a “smart grid” for the U.S., which would reorganize the existing system and make this country more suitable to alternative energy production.
A few days ago EconomyinCrisis.org ran a piece detailing America’s need for renewed dedication to an alternative energy future. Other than the obvious need to invest in research and development, which will increase incentives for skilled professionals and students to join the workforce, there is a hidden problem for any energy initiative. In its current form the electrical grid in the United States is not nearly capable of transporting new forms of energy from power stations to consumers.
However, on June 25 Dr. Steven Chu, the Secretary of the Department of Energy, announced a new $3.9 billion proposal to accomplish just that. His plan is to invest in a “smart grid” for the United States, which would reorganize the existing system, put up new high-transmission wires, and make this country more suitable to alternative forms of energy production.
Chu alluded to the possibility that some of the funding may be used for implementing plug-in hybrid battery systems that could feed back into the grid during charge time, but the most reasonable and alluring of projects is definitely an upgrade to the national power grid.
via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
Super-size Deposits Of Frozen Carbon In Arctic Could Worsen Climate Change
Super-size Deposits Of Frozen Carbon In Arctic Could Worsen Climate Change
The vast amount of carbon stored in the arctic and boreal regions of the world is more than double that previously estimated, according to a study published this week.
The amount of carbon in frozen soils, sediments and river deltas (permafrost) raises new concerns over the role of the northern regions as future sources of greenhouse gases.
“We now estimate the deposits contain over 1.5 trillion tons of frozen carbon, about twice as much carbon as contained in the atmosphere”, said Dr. Charles Tarnocai, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Ottawa, and lead author.
Dr. Pep Canadell, Executive Director of the Global Carbon Project at CSIRO, Australia, and co-author of the study says that the existence of these super-sized deposits of frozen carbon means that any thawing of permafrost due to global warming may lead to significant emissions of the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide and methane.
via Super-size Deposits Of Frozen Carbon In Arctic Could Worsen Climate Change.
We Are Headed Toward a Breakdown in Our Food System
Michael Pollan: We Are Headed Toward a Breakdown in Our Food System
Pollan gives a glimpse at the current state of food politics inside the White House and within his own home.
Michael Pollan’s famous motto for a smart, healthy diet is “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” Add to that: “And when you happen to be on your publisher’s expense account, splurge.” The night we met up to chat at a place of his choosing, he tucked into a roasted slab of B.C. wild Chinook salmon, a tangle of salad greens and several glasses of good Okanagan Pinot Gris in the swank environs of the Blue Water Café in Vancouver’s Yaletown neighbourhood.
Pollan, who lives in Berkeley, California, has championed the cause of stronger local food networks with his bestsellers The Omnivore’s Dilemma and In Defense of Food. He was in town to sign books and headline a sold-out picnic fundraiser to preserve the University of British Columbia’s urban farm as a working laboratory for sustainable agriculture. His rousing talk drew a standing ovation, and even a few tears.
As a dinner companion, Pollan is loose, friendly, and, as you might expect, intellectually omnivorous, peppering his interviewer with more questions than he was asked.
via Michael Pollan: We Are Headed Toward a Breakdown in Our Food System | Environment | AlterNet.
Major Media Seems to Shy From Fire-Climate Stories
Media Cool to Linking Wildfires, Climate Change – | Miller-McCune
In the wake of some devastating blazes, Sam Kornell asks why few major media properties have explored the connection between the changing complexion of wildfires and climate change.
Early last summer, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger announced that California’s fire season now lasts all 365 days of the year. At the time, nearly 2,000 separate wildfires were burning across the Golden State; the governor made his declaration during a press conference in Santa Barbara, Calif., where a major conflagration was scorching the hills just north of the city.
Since then, Santa Barbara, where Miller-McCune is headquartered, has endured two more major fires — one in November and one in May, both well out of what in past years was considered the natural fire season. These fires have attracted national media coverage, possibly in part because they threatened — and often burned — large homes owned by wealthy, occasionally famous people. The Jesusita fire, which began on May 5, was especially fearsome, reducing 80 homes to rubble and resulting in more than 30,000 evacuations, and it was covered by all of the major national media outlets.
With one notable exception, from the San Francisco Chronicle, none of the coverage explored the possibility that the fire might be linked to climate change, despite ample evidence that such a link exists. A few major outlets, such as Time, did posit such a connection after Australia’s Black Saturday fires in February, although that country has a former Australian of the Year focusing attention to the connection.
Perhaps editors didn’t see the upside of filtering a visually rich story packed full of human drama through the sieve of a politically divisive issue that appears — although it can be hard to tell — yet to gain really serious traction among many Americans. This seems particularly plausible in light of a recent Gallup study finding that 41 percent of respondents believe that the press overstates the evidence of global warming.
via Media Articles | Major Media Seems to Shy From Fire-Climate Stories | Miller-McCune Online Magazine.
Ten Commandments of the Antichrist: The Georgia Guidestones
Ten Commandments of the Antichrist: The Georgia Guidestones
Back in 1980, a mysterious set of stones bearing a message for civilization in various languages appeared in Georgia. From Christian dispensationalist symbol of the New World Order to Native American “power-nexus” to the interpretations of Contemporary Pagans, UFO buffs, and New Agers, the Guidestones are a spiritual and political Rorschach test.
Back in April, Wired magazine published a story on the history of a strange monument in rural Elberton, Georgia (“granite capital of the world”) known as the Georgia Guidestones. The monument consists of four 16-foot-high slabs of granite arranged around a central column and topped with a capstone weighing 25,000 pounds. Carved onto the face of each slab is a list of ten precepts for creating a better society, written in eight modern languages. On the four sides of the capstone are written the words, “Let These Be Guidestones to An Age of Reason” in Sanskrit, Babylonian cuneiform, Classical Greek, and Egyptian hieroglyphs. The central column and capstone are also equipped with holes, astronomically aligned so that the Guidestones can serve as a compass and clock.
The popular consensus is that these stones were meant to survive a global apocalypse and aid survivors in creating a new, enlightened society. Unveiled in 1980, and built by an unknown party, the monument has stood for nearly thirty years outside of town, attracting the curious to Elberton. However, in the last ten years the Guidestones have garnered the attention of conspiracy theorists, who see their message as anti-Christian and a call for a global government. This new reading of the Guidestones ultimately led vandals to deface the monument sometime in December 2008.
Meatless Mondays: Do Something Good for the Earth and Your Health
Meatless Mondays: Do Something Good for the Earth and Your Health
A new campaign is focused on convincing the world not to eat chickens, pigs, and other animals — just one day per week.
I love a practical solution, especially when it’s good all around — for personal health, the environment, and for living consciously. So when I received an email from Chris Elam, the director of the Meatless Monday campaign — a project of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Columbia University School of Public Health, in association with twenty-seven other public health schools — I was thrilled.
The campaign is focused on convincing the world not to eat chickens, pigs, and other animals — just one day per week (on Mondays, as you may have guessed).
via Meatless Mondays: Do Something Good for the Earth and Your Health | Immigration | AlterNet.
Unemployed and on the Verge of Losing Everything: “I Don’t Know How I’ll Make It”
Unemployed and on the Verge of Losing Everything: “I Don’t Know How I’ll Make It”
Luz Guerra has already lost her job. Now she might lose her car, her home and her health insurance.
It’s summer and finally warm without being too hot. U.S. troops have withdrawn from Iraq. The kids are sleeping. It’s the perfect time to just relax and enjoy the sunny weekends. Unless, of course, one is a part of the 50 percent of working Americans who said they are too “stressed” about losing their jobs to relax. The Bureau of Labor Statistics just released their report that 467,000 people lost their jobs in June. Those jobs came from every major industry sector, with the largest declines occurring in “manufacturing, professional and business services, and construction.”
The closer one looks at the numbers, the worse they look. In June 2007, the official U.S. unemployment rate was 4.5%. The just-released official unemployment rate for June 2009, is 9.5%, for blacks it’s 14.7 percent, for Hispanics, 12.2 percent. When that number is adjusted to include those who have given up looking for work and the underemployed — those people who can only find a part-time job and other “marginally-attached” workers, the actual unemployment rate is 16.5%, pretty high numbers for a country that has spent an additional $14.5 billion (of the $787 billion dedicated since Obama’s election) to putting people “back to work.” Additionally, the amount of people out of work for over four months has grown significantly. People who are being laid off are being laid off permanently, not temporarily “let go” until the situation improves.
HELP Is on the Way
HELP Is on the Way - – NYTimes.com
Paul Krugman
The Congressional Budget Office has looked at the future of American health insurance, and it works.
A few weeks ago there was a furor when the budget office “scored” two incomplete Senate health reform proposals — that is, estimated their costs and likely impacts over the next 10 years. One proposal came in more expensive than expected; the other didn’t cover enough people. Health reform, it seemed, was in trouble.
But last week the budget office scored the full proposed legislation from the Senate committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP). And the news — which got far less play in the media than the downbeat earlier analysis — was very, very good. Yes, we can reform health care.
Let me start by pointing out something serious health economists have known all along: on general principles, universal health insurance should be eminently affordable.
via Op-Ed Columnist – HELP Is on the Way – NYTimes.com.
Former Lawmakers and Congressional Staffers Hired to Lobby on Health Care
WP: Health-care companies have hired An Armada of more than 350 former government staffers and members of Congress to try and keep the cost of healthcare up and defeat a government option that would reveal the private industry’s gross profiteering and denial of care
Familiar Players in Health Bill Lobbying – washingtonpost.com
Firms Are Enlisting Ex-Lawmakers, Aides
The tactic is so widespread that three of every four major health-care firms have at least one former insider on their lobbying payrolls, according to The Washington Post’s analysis.
Nearly half of the insiders previously worked for the key committees and lawmakers, including Sens. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), debating whether to adopt a public insurance option opposed by major industry groups. At least 10 others have been members of Congress, such as former House majority leaders Richard K. Armey (R-Tex.) and Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.), both of whom represent a New Jersey pharmaceutical firm.
The hirings are part of a record-breaking influence campaign by the health-care industry, which is spending more than $1.4 million a day on lobbying in the current fight, according to disclosure records. And even in a city where lobbying is a part of life, the scale of the effort has drawn attention. For example, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) doubled its spending to nearly $7 million in the first quarter of 2009, followed by Pfizer, with more than $6 million.
via Former Lawmakers and Congressional Staffers Hired to Lobby on Health Care – washingtonpost.com.
U.S. Job Report Suggests that Green Shoots are Mostly Yellow Weeds
U.S. Job Report Suggests that Green Shoots are Mostly Yellow Weeds
The June employment report suggests that the alleged ‘green shoots’ are mostly yellow weeds that may eventually turn into brown manure. The employment report shows that conditions in the labor market continue to be extremely weak, with job losses in June of over 460,000. With the current rate of job losses, it is very clear that the unemployment rate could reach 10 percent by later this summer, around August or September, and will be closer to 10.5 percent if not 11 percent by year-end. I expect the unemployment rate is going to peak at around 11 percent at some point in 2010, well above historical standards for even severe recessions.
It’s clear that even if the recession were to be over anytime soon – and it’s not going to be over before the end of the year – job losses are going to continue for at least another year and a half. Historically, during the last two recessions, job losses continued for at least a year and a half after the recession was over. During the 2001 recession, the recession was over in November 2001, and job losses continued through August 2003 for a cumulative loss of jobs of over 5 million; this time we are already seeing more than 6 million job losses and the recession is not over.
The details of the unemployment report are even worse than the headline. Not only are there large job losses right now, but as a way of sharing the pain, firms are inducing workers to reduce hours and hourly wages. Therefore, when we’re looking at the effect of the labor market on labor income, we should consider that the total value of labor income is the product of jobs, hours, and average hourly wages – and that all three elements are falling right now. So the effect on labor income is much more significant than job losses alone.
via RGE – U.S. Job Report Suggests that Green Shoots are Mostly Yellow Weeds.
Indiana Bridge Collapse: Overload After Fireworks Show Eyed As Cause, 25 Hurt
Indiana Bridge Collapse: Overload After Fireworks Show Eyed As Cause, 25 Hurt
MERRILLVILLE, Ind. (AP) — Spectators leaving a Fourth of July fireworks show overloaded a pedestrian bridge to about twice its capacity before it collapsed and sent about 50 people tumbling into a lake, the township trustee in charge of the bridge said Sunday.
About 25 people were injured. None of the injuries was life-threatening and all victims were accounted for, Merrillville Police Chief Joseph Petruch said in a statement.
The wooden bridge suspended by cables at Hidden Lake Park in Merrillville, about 45 miles southeast of Chicago, collapsed around 10 p.m. Saturday. The bridge can handle about 40 people at a time but as many as 80 were on it when it fell, said Ross Township Trustee John Rooda, who attended the fireworks show and was on the scene within a few minutes. The township operates the park.
“The problem is it was overloaded,” Rooda said. “We say 20 (people), it would have handled 40, but it was probably twice that.”
via Indiana Bridge Collapse: Overload After Fireworks Show Eyed As Cause, 25 Hurt.
Wall Street gears up to trade California IOUs
Wall Street gears up to trade California IOUs - FT.com
Payment promise offer posted on Craigslist
Amid the vacation rentals and used cars for sale, browsers of the website Craigslist will now find a unique offer: for California IOUs.
“If you are receiving a California IOU and you need cash immediately, please contact me. I may be of assistance,” reads one posting.
via FT.com / US & Canada – Wall Street gears up to trade California IOUs.
Securitisation reinvented to cut costs
OPS; They should have tried a stake of Holly through it’s black little heart.
Securitisation reinvented to cut costs - FT.com
Financial innovation is far from dead
Investment banks, including Goldman Sachs and Barclays Capital, are inventing schemes to reduce the capital cost of risky assets on banks’ balance sheets, in the latest sign that financial market innovation is far from dead.
The schemes, which Goldman insiders refer to as “insurance” and BarCap calls “smart securitisation”, use different mechanisms to achieve the same goal: cutting capital costs by up to half in some cases, at the same time as regulators are threatening to force banks to increase their capital requirements.
via FT.com / Companies / Banks – Securitisation reinvented to cut costs.
Nafta Superhighway Returns From The Dead
Nafta Superhighway Returns From The Dead
The Trans-Texas Corridor, part of the NAFTA Superhighway projected to link the United States with Canada and Mexico as an integral cog of the North American Union, is back on the agenda after Texas Governor Rick Perry lied in claiming that the proposal was dead earlier this year.
The open plan to merge the US with Mexico and Canada and create a Pan-American Union networked by a NAFTA Superhighway has long been a Globalist brainchild, but fierce opposition to the plan from activists across the country has stalled the plan at least temporarily.
A key component of the NAU transport system was the proposed Trans Texas Corridor, a massive 4,000 mile network of highways that were to be sold to the Spanish company Cintra and operated as toll roads – creating a huge new tax on the American people which would be paid directly to a foreign-owned private company.
via Nafta Superhighway Returns From The Dead >> Four Winds 10 – fourwinds10.com.
Administration plans for end of ‘too big to fail’
OPS: So far, Obama has been impotent, at best, in curbing Big Money. Too big to fail should invoke the Corporate Death Sentence. Instead, BO has allowed them to get even larger.
Administration plans for end of ‘too big to fail’
Megabanks may be slimmed down, told to prepare plans for own demise
They are the biggest of the big — the Citigroups, the Goldman Sachses, the AIGs and other financial behemoths. The Obama administration doesn’t want so many around anymore.
Financial regulations proposed by the president would result in leaner and simpler institutions that don’t carry the weight of the system on their marble columns.
Around Washington and Wall Street they have come to be known as TBTF — too big to fail. It’s not just size, though. These companies are so far-flung, so intertwined and so precariously leveraged that a single one’s collapse can create systemwide tremors that imperil the finances of millions of Americans.
via Administration plans for end of ‘too big to fail’ – Stocks & economy- msnbc.com.
Britain’s National Health Service: Simple, Sensible and Civilized
Britain’s National Health Service: Simple, Sensible and Civilized | CommonDreams.org
A former NHS patient has some advice for Americans skeptical of single-payer, government-run healthcare: You’ll get over it.
For the first couple of years I lived in Britain, I was an illegal immigrant from the United States, visaless with an expired passport and looking over my shoulder all the time. Even so, from the very first day I arrived at Victoria Station in London, suffering from bronchitis, I was accepted in the NHS — the national health scheme, we called it — no questions asked and no ID required.
After I’d become a legal resident, I asked my doctor why he had taken me, almost literally off the boat, with so little fuss. Weren’t foreigners a drain on his time and the National Health Service? He shrugged. “If you come here with a contagious disease, we don’t want you infecting the rest of us. So of course we give you medical care. Purely selfish on our part.”
via Britain’s National Health Service: Simple, Sensible and Civilized | CommonDreams.org.
Republicans, a Threat to the Republic?
OPS: Is this a trick question?
Republicans, a Threat to the Republic? | CommonDreams.org
by Robert Parry
Sarah Palin’s abrupt decision to resign as Alaska’s governor – and her rambling explanation – underscore again how the Republican Party over the past dozen years has put up candidates for top national offices who are unqualified or ill-suited for those sensitive positions.
Like Palin, George W. Bush was a charismatic underachiever who hadn’t accomplished much in life and showed little intellectual firepower but was nevertheless presented by the GOP as its candidate for one of the most powerful jobs on earth.
However, unlike Palin who lost her vice presidential bid, Bush won the presidency for two terms – in two dubious elections – with disastrous consequences for the nation.
Then, even amid the wreckage of the Bush administration’s final days, the Republican Party enthusiastically nominated first-term Alaska Gov. Palin to be a heartbeat away from the presidency, which they hoped would be filled by 72-year-old cancer survivor John McCain.
via Republicans, a Threat to the Republic? | CommonDreams.org.
Hope for blindness cure with laser breakthrough
Hope for blindness cure with laser breakthrough
Pulses of light clean key membrane to prevent the onset of macular degeneration
Millions of people could have their eyesight saved thanks to ground-breaking laser treatment that has the potential to eradicate the most common cause of blindness.
One of Britain’s leading eye experts has developed a technique to reverse the disabling effects of age-related macular degeneration (AMD), which leaves many older people unable to read, drive or live independently, and eventually robs them of sight in one or both eyes.
Professor John Marshall has developed a way of “cleaning” eyes which, due to the ageing process, have accumulated tiny particles of debris which start to cloud their sight. His pioneering technique uses a painless “short pulse” laser to solve the otherwise intractable problem of how to help the eye’s waste disposal system do its job after it has been weakened by age.
via Hope for blindness cure with laser breakthrough | Science | The Observer.
Biden: US won’t stop Israel attack on Iran
Biden: US won’t stop Israel attack on Iran
A controversy is brewing in Israel over whether Saudi Arabia has tacitly agreed to allow Israel to use its airspace in any potential future attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
A report in the Jerusalem Post cites an article in the UK’s Sunday Times that “the head of Mossad, Israel’s overseas intelligence service, has assured Benjamin Netanyahu, its prime minister, that Saudi Arabia would turn a blind eye to Israeli jets flying over the kingdom during any future raid on Iran’s nuclear sites.”
The Israeli press has already carried unconfirmed reports that high-ranking officials, including Ehud Olmert, the former prime minister, held meetings with Saudi colleagues. The reports were denied by Saudi officials.
Israel’s Haaretz newspaper is reporting that the Israeli prime minister’s office denies the allegation.
via Raw Story » Biden: US won’t stop Israel attack on Iran.
Biden: ‘We misread how bad the economy was’
OPS: After recycling the very Bush and Clinton criminals that set us up for this fall, and then listening to them, and EXECUTing their plan – to sell us out…. BIDEN AND OBMAMA ARE GOING TO PLEAD STUPIDITY?!? Are you phucking kidding me? Robert Reich didn’t ‘misread’ a goddamn thing. Neither did Paul Krugman, Max Keiser, Ravi Batra , Nouriel Roubini, Thom Hartmann, Dennis Kucinich, or Bernie Sanders……
Biden: ‘We misread how bad the economy was’
The Obama administration warned earlier this year that unemployment would climb to 8% if the recovery plan was not passed in Congress. New reports now show a 9.5% unemployment rate in June.
ABC’s George Stephanopoulos asked Vice President Joe Biden to explain why the Obama administration prediction was wrong.
“The truth is, we and everyone else misread the economy,” confessed Biden.
“There was a misreading of just how bad an economy we inherited,” Biden said on ABC’s This Week. “Did the economic package we put in place, including the recovery act, is it the right package, given the circumstances we’re in? We believe it is the right package, given the circumstances we’re in.”
This video is from ABC’s This Week, broadcast July 5, 200
via Raw Story » Biden: ‘We misread how bad the economy was’.
Will Supreme Court allow unlimited corporate contributions to election campaigns?
OPS: THIS will be the Coup de Grace to Democracy. IF they do this – it’s OVER. Fascism will be the rule of law
Will Supreme Court allow unlimited corporate contributions to election campaigns?
The most troubling part of the court’s action is the brave new world of politics it could usher in. Auto companies that receive multibillion-dollar bailouts could spend vast sums to re-elect the same officials who hand them the money. If Exxon Mobil or Wal-Mart wants something from a member of Congress, it could threaten to spend as much as it takes to defeat him or her in the next election.
– From an editorial in the New York Times, July 4, 2009
If this editorial in the Times has it right, American democracy could be in for a rough ride in the coming years.
A largely-overlooked order from the United States Supreme Court last week suggests the nation’s highest court wants to revisit long-standing restrictions on campaign contributions from corporations.
On the last day of its current session, the Supreme Court surprised observers by declining to return a ruling in the case of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, instead asking lawyers on both sides of the case to return in September for an unusual pre-session hearing on the validity of various electoral laws pertaining to the case.
via Raw Story » Will Supreme Court allow unlimited corporate contributions to election campaigns?.
Palin threatens to sue media outlets for publication of investigation rumors.
Palin threatens to sue media outlets for publication of investigation rumors.
In the wake of her resignation speech on Friday, Max Blumenthal reported for The Daily Beast that Sarah Palin may have quit her job in order to avert a major, yet-to-be-disclosed corruption scandal. Blumenthal explained that “political observers in Alaska are fixated on rumors that federal investigators…[are] searching for evidence that Palin and her husband Todd steered lucrative contracts to the well-connected company in exchange for gifts like the construction of their home.” In response, Palin’s attorney sent a letter to several major news outlets threatening to sue for republishing rumors of any federal investigation:
Gov. Sarah Palin’s attorney threatened Saturday to sue mainstream news organizations if they publish “defamatory” stories relating to whether Palin is under federal investigation.
This is to provide notice to Ms. Moore, and those who re-publish the defamation, such as Huffington Post, MSNBC, the New York Times and The Washington Post, that the Palins will not allow them to propagate defamatory material without answering to this in a court of law,” Van Flein warned, citing Alaska liberal blogger Shannyn Moore.
via Think Progress » Palin threatens to sue media outlets for publication of investigation rumors..
The 2009 Food ‘Safety’ Bills Harmonize Agribusiness Practices in Service of Corporate Global Governance
The 2009 Food ‘Safety’ Bills Harmonize Agribusiness Practices in Service of Corporate Global Governance
“I think it’s time to de-professionalize the public debate on matters that vitally affect the lives of ordinary people. It’s time to snatch our futures back from the “experts.” Time to ask, in ordinary language, the public question and to demand, in ordinary language, the public answer.” – Arundhati Roy, Power Politics
It’s enough to make you so queasy you lose your lunch. HR 875, the “Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009,” is a head-spinning piece of legislation that would radically change the structure of the US government’s regulatory agencies, usurping states rights to federalize food inspection and determine what agricultural practices are permissible. Considerable concern has been voiced about what this bill would mean for small and medium sized farmers, organic farming, the future of conventional and organic seeds, the food localization movement, and even home gardens. HR 875 would give regulators the power to enter private property, which is conveniently redefined as “premises,” and impose enormous fines for noncompliance. Though not discussed in the corporate media, numerous articles about it appear on the internet, launching a debate about whether or not Monsanto is behind the bill.
In response to these articles, Brad Mitchell, a member of Monsanto’s public relations staff who writes for the company’s new blog — a less-than-stealth effort to counter the public’s deep distrust of the predatory corporation — has gone on record stating that Monsanto has absolutely nothing at all to do with the bill.
Think of D.C. and the Ruling Oligarachy that Runs the Capitol as a Gated Community: The American People are Denied Entrance
Think of D.C. and the Ruling Oligarachy that Runs the Capitol as a Gated Community: The American People are Denied Entrance
BUZZFLASH EDITOR’S BLOG By Mark Karlin
Okay, you need to be a resident of a gated community — or get a call-down from one of the insiders to let you in as a visitor — to partake of private luxuries.
But when that gated community has the destiny of our nation’s economic future inside it — which is gambled away legally and illegally by many of what Brazilian President Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva calls the soucrce of the global economic crisis “created by men with blue eyes.”
In America, we’ve been played like fools by a game that’s fixed from the top to make ensure that only members of the gated community are allowed to abscond with huge chunks of the American economy — send jobs overseas, receive taxpayer funded corporate welfare, get their taxes cut as a gift of thievery from the working class, and gets hundreds of billions of dollars in “stimulus” money from us to stimulate themselves economically.
Years back songwriter/singer Leonard Cohen wrote “Everybody Knows,” which succinctly captures our unending dilemma:
Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows that the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
Thats how it goes
Everybody knows
Only the rich in the gated community are getting richer and the working class is getting poorer. Mass E-mails to congress, as we noted yesterday, short of mass protests (like the ceaseless, impassioned kind that ended the Vietnam War) are a con. The fix is in.
The Real Story Behind Palin’s Bombshell
The Real Story Behind Palin’s Bombshell - Geoffrey Dunn:
Anyone who is in any way surprised by Sarah Palin’s announcement today that she will not be seeking re-election, and, even more significantly, is stepping down as Governor of Alaska, has not been paying close attention. The signs have been everywhere.
Palin has absolutely zero interest in running the State of Alaska. She steadfastly refused to live in Juneau after her first year there, had the gall to charge the state for residing at her home in Wasilla 600 miles away, and she basically mailed in her performance as the state’s top administrator during Alaska’s most recent legislative session. She has alienated virtually all the key legislators in her own party — that’s right, Republicans — and had failed to move any key legislation forward since her return to Alaska from the national campaign trail last November.
In fact, her bizarre appointment for Attorney General, Wayne Anthony Ross, was rejected nearly unanimously by the state legislature — a first in Alaskan history. Even in respect to energy policy, her supposed bailiwick, she has been categorically ineffective. When I asked those in-the-know what role Palin had played in putting together the recent pipeline deal between TransCanada and Exxon, their response was simple: “None.”
None. That about sums up Palin’s accomplishments as Governor of the Last Frontier.
via Geoffrey Dunn: The Real Story Behind Palin’s Bombshell.
Televangelist Building $4 Million Home Despite Layoffs At His Ministry
Televangelist Building $4 Million Home Despite Layoffs At His Ministry - | digtriad.com
Charlotte, NC — A religious broadcaster is reportedly building a $4 million home at the same time his ministry has cut jobs and reset thermostats to save money in its new headquarters.
The Charlotte Observer reports that Inspiration Networks’ CEO David Cerullo is building the 9,000-square-foot lakefront home in a gated community in South Carolina.
Meanwhile, the newspaper reports that the ministry is laying off workers and has frozen wages and stopped making contributions to employee retirement accounts.
Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley is investigating the finances of other religious broadcasters and told the newspaper that televangelists should not spend viewers’ tax-exempt donations on extravagant lifestyles.
Cerullo, who receives $1.5 million in compensation, has said that 80 cents of each donated dollar is used to spread the Gospel.
Palin attorney warns press on ‘defamatory material’
Palin attorney warns press on ‘defamatory material’ – - POLITICO.com
Ratcheting up her offensive against the news media, Gov. Sarah Palin’s attorney threatened Saturday to sue mainstream news organizations if they publish “defamatory” stories relating to whether Palin is under federal investigation.
In an extraordinary four-page letter, Alaska-based attorney Thomas Van Flein warns of severe consequences should speculation that until now has largely been confined to blogs about whether Palin embezzled funds in the construction of a Wasilla, Alaska, sports arena find its way into print.
“This is to provide notice to Ms. Moore, and those who re-publish the defamation, such as Huffington Post, MSNBC, the New York Times and The Washington Post, that the Palins will not allow them to propagate defamatory material without answering to this in a court of law,” Van Flein warned, citing Alaska liberal blogger Shannyn Moore.
Much like Palin did in her Facebook statement Saturday, Van Flein savages the news media in his letter.
via Palin attorney warns press on ‘defamatory material’ – Jonathan Martin – POLITICO.com.
Marion Barry Taken Into Custody
OPS: Stalking?
Barry Taken Into Custody, Police Say – washingtonpost.com
D.C. Council member Marion Barry was taken into custody last night by the U.S. Park Police, a police official said.
“It’s my understanding that he was taken into custody,” Park Police Chief Sal Lauro said in a brief interview. Lauro said he believed that Barry (D-Ward 
was picked up in the Anacostia Park area.
Lauro said he did not have details of the incident and could not say whether Barry had been arrested.
via Marion Barry Taken Into Custody – washingtonpost.com.
Advocacy Groups Should Halt Attacks on Moderate Democrats, Obama Says
OPS: DLC and Blue Dogs are not “moderate” and they are not Democrats. They are Republicans disguised as Human Beings. We would have a better Government if they did a reverse Specter and took over the Republican party where they belong. That would dilute and marginalize the Reichwing Fascists now controlling the Republican Party, leave REAL Democrats on the left and move the Center BACK to the Left where it once was and belongs. …..We haven’t pushed them or BO hard enough
Obama Urges Groups to Stop Attacks
Advocates Should Turn Attention to Promoting Legislation, President Says
President Obama, strategizing yesterday with congressional leaders about health-care reform, complained that liberal advocacy groups ought to drop their attacks on Democratic lawmakers and devote their energy to promoting passage of comprehensive legislation.
In a pre-holiday call with half a dozen top House and Senate Democrats, Obama expressed his concern over advertisements and online campaigns targeting moderate Democrats, whom they criticize for not being fully devoted to “true” health-care reform.
“We shouldn’t be focusing resources on each other,” Obama opined in the call, according to three sources who participated in or listened to the conversation. “We ought to be focused on winning this debate.”
via Advocacy Groups Should Halt Attacks on Moderate Democrats, Obama Says – washingtonpost.com.
Another wave of foreclosures is poised to strike
Another wave of foreclosures is poised to strike - Los Angeles Times
Mortgage defaults have surged to record levels amid rising unemployment and falling home prices. Lenders are expected to move quickly to clear up backlogs as moratoriums on foreclosures expire.
Just as the nation’s housing market has begun showing signs of stabilizing, another wave of foreclosures is poised to strike, possibly as early as this summer, inflicting new punishment on families, communities and the still-troubled national economy.
Amid rising unemployment and falling home prices, mortgage defaults have surged to record levels this year. Until recently, many banks have put off launching foreclosure action on the troubled properties, in part because they had signed up for the Obama administration’s home-stability plan, which required them to consider the alternative of modifying loans to make it easier for borrowers to make payments.
via Another wave of foreclosures is poised to strike – Los Angeles Times.
Taibbi: NYSE ends transparency to protect Goldman Sachs
Taibbi: NYSE ends transparency to protect Goldman Sachs
New Secrecy Rule Lets Goldman Sachs Control Stock Prices Unmolested by Public Scrutiny
The New York Stock Exchange quietly announced last week that it would end its practice of requiring companies to report all their program trading — a move that helps shield large investment banks, particularly Goldman Sachs, from public scrutiny.
The new rule means the public will no longer be able to tell if large investment banks are manipulating the stock market for their own gain, says Matt Taibbi, the journalist whose Rolling Stone article on Goldman Sachs’ role in asset bubbles over the past century has rocked the financial world.
According to previous NYSE rules, any company that carried out program trading — essentially, large computer-automated trades worth more than $1 million — had to report the trades to the NYSE, which then made the information publicly available.
But, under new regulations (PDF) published last week, that requirement has been removed.
“The NYSE announced that it will no longer be releasing its weekly program trading data,” Taibbi wrote in a blog posting. “This is quiet obviously a move designed to make it even more impossible to track what’s going on in the NYSE and shield, in particular, Goldman Sachs.”
via Raw Story » Taibbi: NYSE ends transparency to protect Goldman Sachs.
Fears for the world’s poor countries as the rich grab land to grow food
Fears for the world’s poor countries as the rich grab land to grow food
- UN sounds warning after 30m hectares bought up
- G8 leaders to discuss ‘neo-colonialism’
The acquisition of farmland from the world’s poor by rich countries and international corporations is accelerating at an alarming rate, with an area half the size of Europe’s farmland targeted in the last six months, reports from UN officials and agriculture experts say.
New reports from the UN and analysts in India, Washington and London estimate that at least 30m hectares is being acquired to grow food for countries such as China and the Gulf states who cannot produce enough for their populations. According to the UN, the trend is accelerating and could severely impair the ability of poor countries to feed themselves.
Today it emerged that world leaders are to discuss what is being described as “land grabbing” or “neo-colonialism” at the G8 meeting next week. A spokesman for Japan’s ministry of foreign affairs confirmed that it would raise the issue: “We feel there should be a code of conduct for investment in farmland that will be a win-win situation for both producing and consuming countries,” he said.
via Fears for the world’s poor countries as the rich grab land to grow food | Environment | The Guardian.
Bernie Madoff Is No John Dillinger
Bernie Madoff Is No John Dillinger - NYTimes.com
Frank Rich
THE judge condemned Bernie Madoff’s crimes as “extraordinarily evil.” The New York Daily News, whose publisher was a Madoff victim, chose “The Pariah” as its front-page headline and promised that the dastardly villain would suffer “everlasting consumption in the jaws of the devil.” The Times declared that the Madoff case, by attaching a human face to a financial meltdown that produced fear, panic and loss, had “put an entire era on trial.”
But for all this rhetorical thunder, Madoff’s 150-year sentence still seemed an anticlimax, as if the trial of the century had ended without a verdict. There was no national catharsis. The news landed with something of a thud. On the most-watched network newscast, “NBC Nightly News,” it received second billing to Day Four of updates on Michael Jackson’s death.
Madoff, it turned out, was no Public Enemy No. 1 to rival John Dillinger, the Great Depression thug at the center of Hollywood’s timely release this holiday weekend, “Public Enemies.” In the context of our own Great Recession, Madoff’s old-fashioned Ponzi scheme was merely a one-off next to the esoteric and (often legal) heists by banks and bankers. They gamed the entire system, then took the money and ran before the bubble burst, sticking the rest of us with that fear, panic and loss.
via Op-Ed Columnist – Bernie Madoff Is No John Dillinger – NYTimes.com.
Study Finds a Frayed Safety Net for the Desperately Poor
Safety Net Is Fraying for the Very Poor – NYTimes.com
Government “safety net” programs like Social Security and food stamps have pulled growing numbers of Americans out of poverty since the mid-1990s. But even before the current recession, these programs were providing less help to the most desperately poor, mainly nonworking families with children, according to a new study by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a private group in Washington.
The recession is expected to raise poverty rates, economists agree, although the impact is being softened by the federal stimulus package adopted this year, which temporarily expanded measures like food stamps, child tax credits, unemployment benefits and housing and tuition aid.
In view of the gloomy employment report last week, economists are debating whether to increase stimulus funds over all. But in a side argument, poverty experts are also asking whether elements of the package aimed at the most vulnerable Americans should be extended beyond their scheduled expiration in two years or even made permanent.
via Study Finds a Frayed Safety Net for the Desperately Poor – NYTimes.com.
Leading Clerics Defy Ayatollah on Disputed Iran Election
Leading Clerics Defy Ayatollah on Disputed Iran Election – NYTimes.com
CAIRO — The most important group of religious leaders in Iran called the disputed presidential election and the new government illegitimate on Saturday, an act of defiance against the country’s supreme leader and the most public sign of a major split in the country’s clerical establishment.
A statement by the group, the Association of Researchers and Teachers of Qum, represents a significant, if so far symbolic, setback for the government and especially the authority of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, whose word is supposed to be final. The government has tried to paint the opposition and its top presidential candidate, Mir Hussein Moussavi, as criminals and traitors, a strategy that now becomes more difficult — if not impossible.
via Leading Clerics Defy Ayatollah on Disputed Iran Election – NYTimes.com.
World Bank Chief Warns Against Protectionism
OPS: Screw him. American’s best interest is NOT his motivation. We are the only industrialized Nation that is NOT protecting their economy. It’s time to return to policies that WORKED for over 200 years. Tariffs and protectionist policies
World Bank Chief Warns Against Protectionism – washingtonpost.com
World Bank President Robert B. Zoellick warned at a meeting with Latin finance ministers in Chile yesterday that trade protectionism could threaten recovery from a global recession.
Restrictive trade measures could lead to the sort of tariffs that worsened the Great Depression, Zoellick said. A recording of his remarks was provided to The Washington Post by the World Bank.
“It seems appealing in countries to buy their own national products,” Zoellick said in remarks delivered in Viña del Mar. “Buy America. Buy Canada. Buy Chile. Buy China. But that’s the road to the problem that exacerbated the downturn in the 1930s and led to the Great Depression.”
via World Bank Chief Warns Against Protectionism – washingtonpost.com.
How Much Money Do Some Conservative ‘Media’ Outlets Lose Each Year?
The first 1:21 is setup for the rest of the segment.
YouTube – TYT Hits 100 Million Views On You Tube.
Single-Payers Crashing the Gates
Single-Payers Crashing the Gates
One of the many frustrations for advocates of single-payer health care is the relentless drive to marginalize us, not only by conservatives but also by members of our own party.
Case in point: the accounting arm of Congress, the Congressional Budget Office, has yet to perform a financial analysis of the cost of implementing single payer, a system whereby taxpayers–businesses and individuals–pay into a single general fund which covers everyone’s health care for the rest of their lives, regardless of job or health status. Studies in California and Colorado have shown that a single payer system would save money for businesses, families, and government by eliminating private insurance overhead and creating enormous purchasing power that would drive down the costs of care.
I wanted to know why we don’t have federal government cost projections for single payer, so I called the Congressional Budget Office — and reached an answering machine.
Two days later, Melissa Merson, the Communications Director with the CBO, called me back and left a polite message, explaining that the CBO takes its orders from Congress, specifically the leadership, (House Speaker and Senate Majority Leader), as well as the chairs of various committees:
via Marcy Winograd: Single-Payers Crashing the Gates.
“Criminal Investigation” Reason For Palin’s Resignation?
OPS: Is Palin about to be Arrested?
MSNBC’s Guest Progressive Radio Host Shannyn Moore Floats “Criminal Investigation” As Reason For Sarah Palin’s Resignation As Alaska Governor
YouTube – MSNBC: “Criminal Investigation” Reason For Palin’s Resignation?.
Why Didn’t Governor Sanford Suppress His E-Love-Letters?
Why Didn’t Governor Sanford Suppress His E-Love-Letters?
By JOHN W. DEAN
It is never pretty watching a public figure fall from grace, whether you agree or disagree with that person’s politics, and South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford is in freefall. Most recently, a South Carolina newspaper, The State, revealed explicit love-letter emails (on June 24, 2009 and June 25, 2009) between the Governor and his Argentinean lady-friend. The emails have placed him somewhere between frustrated Lothario and a national joke. His political opponents are calling for his resignation. His presidential aspirations are history.
While I am no expert on copyright law, I know enough to understand that those laws could apply in situations like this, and throughout history, they have been so invoked. For example, I recently wrote the foreword to the forthcoming The Harding Affair: Love and Espionage during the Great War (to be published this fall), which is based on Harding’s love letters to Carrie Phillips written during their fifteen-year affair, which ended before he ran for president.
When the Harding letters first surfaced in 1964 (forty-one years after his death), the Harding family went to court to block their publication. They claimed the family had inherited Harding’s copyright interest in the letters. The case was settled out of court, with the letters being sent to the Library of Congress, where they will remain sealed until 2014. (James Robenalt, the author of The Harding Affair and a practicing Ohio attorney and serious student of the state’s history, obtained a microfilm copy of the letters that was outside the settlement, and the copyright on the letters expired several years ago – notwithstanding the fact that the originals remained sealed. In addition, Robenalt advised the Harding family that he had no interest in sensationalizing the letters; rather, his interest was in the significant insights they provide into this much-maligned former president.)
via Why Didn’t Governor Sanford Suppress His E-Love-Letters?.
5 Fun Food Facts To Share At Your BBQ
Dinner Conversation: 5 Fun Food Facts To Share At Your BBQ
Happy Independence Day! If you’re one of the 66 million people headed to a barbeque today, consider taking the hot dog out of your mouth for just two seconds to wow your friends with these five fun food facts about the Fourth.
1) Speaking of that hot dog in your mouth…there’s a 25% chance that it came from somewhere in Iowa, where 17.6 million market hogs and pigs call home. And over 150 million hot dogs will be eaten today. But if you subtract Kobayashi‘s contribution, about six hot dogs will be eaten today.
via Lindsay Mannering: Dinner Conversation: 5 Fun Food Facts To Share At Your BBQ.
All Bets Off for Russia’s Casinos?
All Bets Off for Russia’s Casinos?
More than 400,000 out of Work as Russia’s Casinos Close Under Anti-Vice Law
via All Bets Off for Russia’s Casinos? – ABC News.
Honeybee mobs overpower hornets
Honeybee mobs overpower hornets – BBC NEWS
Honeybees mount a very effective mobbing defence
Honeybee hordes use two weapons – heat and carbon dioxide – to kill their natural enemies, giant hornets.
Japanese honeybees form “bee balls” – mobbing and smothering the predators.
This has previously been referred to as “heat-balling”, but a study has now shown that carbon dioxide also plays a role in its lethal effectiveness.
In the journal Naturwissenschaften, the scientists describe how hornets are killed within 10 minutes when they are trapped inside a ball of bees.
Japanese giant hornets, which can be up to 5cm long, are voracious predators that can devastate bees’ nests and consume their larvae.
But, if the bees spot their attacker in time, they mount a powerful defence in the form of a bee ball. This study found that the heat inside the bee ball alone was not enough to reliably kill the hornets.
via BBC NEWS | Science & Environment | Honeybee mobs overpower hornets.
Costa Rica is world’s greenest, happiest country
Costa Rica is world’s greenest, happiest country
Latin American nation tops index ranking countries by ecological footprint and happiness of their citizens
Costa Rica is the greenest and happiest country in the world, according to a new list that ranks nations by combining measures of their ecological footprint with the happiness of their citizens.
Britain is only halfway up the Happy Planet Index (HPI), calculated by the New Economics Foundation (NEF), in 74th place of 143 nations surveyed. The United States features in the 114th slot in the table. The top 10 is dominated by countries from Latin America, while African countries bulk out the bottom of the table.
The HPI measures how much of the Earth’s resources nations use and how long and happy a life their citizens enjoy as a result. First calculated in 2006, the second edition adds data on almost all the world’s countries and now covers 99% of the world’s population.
NEF says the HPI is a much better way of looking the success of countries than through standard measures of economic growth. The HPI shows, for example, that fast-growing economies such as the US, China and India were all greener and happier 20 years ago than they are today.
via Costa Rica is world’s greenest, happiest country | Environment | guardian.co.uk.
‘The Israelis hijacked us,’ McKinney says in call from prison
‘The Israelis hijacked us,’ McKinney says in call from prison
“Most members of a group of foreign peace activists seized at sea by the Israeli navy remained in custody Friday, three days after their failed attempt to run Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip, relatives and supporters said,” the Associated Press reports.
The AP add that “the Free Gaza Movement sent the ship loaded with humanitarian supplies and 21 activists and crew from Cyprus.”
“Because we wouldn’t turn around, the Israelis hijacked us,” former Rep. Cynthia McKinney told WBAIX in a phone call from Ramle jail, near Ben-Gurion airport. “Because we wanted to give crayons to the children of Gaza.”
Along with McKinney, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mairead Corrigan Maguire is still being held by Israel.
“It is incumbent upon President Obama to stand by his reported policy of easing the Gazan blockade and of allowing building supplies, medical supplies, and school supplies to go through,” McKinney said. “We call upon President Obama to use the highest level of his authority to transmit this message to the Israelis.”
via Raw Story » ‘The Israelis hijacked us,’ McKinney says in call from prison.
Personal Finance Disclosures Reveal Leading F-22 Defender Phil Gingrey Owns Boeing Stock
Personal Finance Disclosures Reveal Leading F-22 Defender Phil Gingrey Owns Boeing Stock
Last week, Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-GA) and VoteVets Chairman Jon Soltz sparred on MSNBC about reinstating funds for new F-22s. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has called for capping production of the F-22 Raptor, a fighter that has never seen combat in the Iraq or Afghanistan theaters. Despite the fact that the OMB recommended a veto if the defense authorization budget contains new F-22s, members of Congress in the House Armed Services committee, lead by Gingrey, slipped the funding in anyways. In his debate with Gingrey, Soltz said:
The Congressman cares about the Lockheed Martin stock price, and I care about the men and women who fight on the group. And this weapon system does nothing for us.
Watch it:
Grassley tells constituent: If you want good health insurance, ‘go work for the government.’
OPS: To the Fascists health care is a privilege for the rich, not a right for everyone.
Grassley tells constituent: If you want good health insurance, ‘go work for the government.’
During a townhall in Waukon, IA Tuesday, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) was asked by a constituent of his: “Why is your insurance so much cheaper than my insurance and so better than my insurance?” When Grassley struggled to explain the details of his own health care plan, the elderly man followed up, “Okay, so how come I can’t have the same thing you have?” Grassley said, “You can. Just go work for the federal government.” Watch it:
The End of Free Checking?
OPS: Unforseen? another step on the road to a cashless society. A society that runs on plastic is much easier to control
The End of Free Checking?
Oftentimes the most well-intentioned legislation has unforeseen and negative consequences.
Oftentimes the most well-intentioned legislation has unforeseen and negative consequences. That appears to be the case with H.R. 1456, The Consumer Overdraft Protection Fair Practices Act.
Introduced by Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), the bill would provide consumers with protection against unfair banking practices that are designed to maximize the number of overdraft charges and gouge consumers.
However, the bill may also spell the end of the free checking account, according to CNNMoney.com.
“Bank customers used to the perks of free checking accounts — unlimited check writing, online banking, debit card use and ATM access, to name a few — might have to recalibrate their expectations soon,” writes Ismat Sarah Mangla.
Banks can afford to offer free checking accounts because they are subsidized with the fees from overdraft charges.
via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
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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. 
