Catfish Wallow

05-21-09

The latest MIT study of global warming has now been published in the Journal of Climate, and its conclusions are grim (motherjones) "In the middle latitudes, they project warming of nearly 5ºC compared to previous projections of about 2ºC. At the poles, they project warming of 8-10ºC compared to 5-6ºC."
4ºC Rise in Temperature Could Cull 90 Percent of Human Population (shortnews - news.com.au) "Some fear it could happen by 2050" -- Has the human virus finally given Mother Earth a fever that will kill off most of the virus? That would take us back to the global population we had sometime after Columbus and before the Industrial Revolution. Too bad world politicians don't have the foresight and political will to set severe limits NOW on population growth, instead of suicidally calling for more breeding so there will be more people driving up special interest political power blocs -- and corporate profits.

Securing uniformly fair and transparent elections - hardly possible without nationwide uniformity of election standards that force it to happen (along with speedy and severe penalties for violation) -- something Obama is hardly interested in and that will probably be his undoing as president after enough people have become disenchanted with him that any election could be construed by the right-leaning mainstream media as "close":

Bev Harris: DuPage County, Illinois - one of the two "worst places to vote in America" (along with Riverside County, California) (bradblog)

Elizabeth Edwards: $1 Of Every $700 Went To Pay Salary Of UnitedHealth CEO (wonkroom) "the President of UnitedHealth made so much money, that one of every $700 that was spent in this country on health care went to pay him"

Greenwald: Obama's civil liberties speech (salon) -- How long will we let Obama play us for fools?
Does Obama Plan to Give Up a Little Liberty to Get a Little Safety? (firedoglake)

The President's Own Private Army (Of Which He Appears To Be Afraid) Can Do No Wrong:

History of CIA Torture: Unraveling the Web of Deceit, Part III (bradblog)
Madsen says David Atlee Phillips admitted shortly before his death in 1988 that the CIA had to remove JFK because they thought he was getting too close to communism (waynemadsenreport - google). Is the CIA also afraid of a president they think is getting too close to socialism? Is that the reason Obama has made so many deplorable moves in his approach to cleaning up what years of greedy capitalist deregulation created - and has taken a 'public=socialist' option in health care off the table? Is he that afraid of standing up for what is right? Did anyone ever happen to ask him during the campaign if he was willing to die for his country?

Obama Issues Signing Statement, Can Withhold Information from Pecora Commission (firedoglake) "As head of the New York Fed, Timothy Geithner was smack in the middle of many conflicts of interest surrounding Goldman Sachs, AIG, and the bank bailout. This signing statement could be used to protect him from inquiry."

Isn't this the point in California Gov. Gray Davis's administration when he was unceremoniously kicked out of office by recall?

Voters want to stop balancing the budget on the backs of average Californians (sfgate) -- OK, Californians, time to put together that recall of the Hitler-admiring Gropinator.

The “Christian” Right’s still wrong and singing the same old song: Part 2 (onlinejournal)

Madsen: The history of the synthetic H1N1 flu virus and a not-so-rosy future (onlinejournal)

Thursday, May 21, 2009