Saturday, January 31, 2009

01-31-09
  • RW Religious Wacko Watch:
    • GOP Senators Re-Introduce the Life at Conception Act (panhandleparade) - Always angling for ways to take away a woman's reproductive choice
    • Focus on the Family Gets Former Bush Administration Loyalist, Plagiarist as their Lobbyist (rightwingwatch) - How much firepower do liberals have in there to oppose Focus's fruitcake logic and intolerance?
    • They're organizing to protect DOMA already (washblade) - What are equality-in-marriage advocates doing to organize against DOMA?
    • Obama's Personal Religious Brainwashing is Frightening:
      • Obama Has Tapped a Pentecostal Minister for Bush's Old Office of Faith-Based Initiatives (nytimes) - This bright young go-getter is of the same faith that Sarah Palin grew up in. (wiki Pentecostalism) - Obama just can't do enough pandering to evangenitals. Of all the qualified main-stream religious, was there not one person at least as well qualified for this job? Will this office bear the personal evangenital biases its youthful leader will likely bring with him? Will he and Obama together permit intolerant discrimination toward prospective employees and clients? Will they permit churches to proselytize at all while they tend to the program needs of their clients? Will they permit project churches to simply shift their financial allocations around so they will effectively have more money available for their general religious programs, thus further subsidizing the spread of denominational dogmas?
  • Military-Industrial Complex:
  • Liberal Media:
    • The Crack Baby Myth: Now They Tell Us (fair) - Despite research to the contrary, despicable reporters won't give up idea of a 'Bio-Underclass'. Also file this story under "phony war on drugs".
    • With a Few Dozen--OR a Few Hundred--Well-Placed CIA Assets as Media Executives and Reporters - (wiki Operation Mockingbird - tmh Carl Bernstein's Rolling Stone Article)
      • Illegal Surveillance and the Media: Why the Silence on Tice’s Revelations? (emptywheel) - Duh.
  • Simeis 147: Supernova Remnant (apod)
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Friday, January 30, 2009

01-30-09
  • Class Warfare: 400 richest Americans’ incomes doubled under Bush (thinkprogress - bloomberg) - "Capital gains made up 63 percent of the richest 400 Americans’ adjusted gross income in 2006...." This is why Republicans are always screaming to lower tax rates. Enrichment of the rich. This is what it is all about for them. Obama has spoken of raising the capital gains rate, however “My guess is that Obama still will not rush to do anything on this” because of likely negative reactions from Republicans and the stock market, Dean Baker said. “We’re talking late in the year or early next year.” - In other words, because Obama is too timid to take strong, decisive action that might bring criticism. Sounds like a Democrat and sounds like Obama so far to me.
  • RW Evangenital Hypocrisy Watch:
    • The Whitewashed Ted Haggard (huffingtonpost) - Actually it was a year's salary of $138,000 severance, not $100,000, but who's counting?
    • Bail bondsman says he has uncovered seven cases of sexual misconduct by Haggard (gazette) that occurred before he was forced to resign over a sexual relationship with a male prostitute. Brown says he's close to going public on some of the cases.
    • Roy Zimmerman Song: 'Ted Haggard Is Complexly Heterosexual' (youtube) - Don't miss this one.
  • Viewing the Matrix - "National Interests" - What We Weren't Told in School:
    • John Perkins discusses the history and reasons we are at war in the Middle East, corporate globilization efforts in Central and South America, and successful campaigns to change the goal of global domination to one of global cooperation.
      • YouTube: "Confessions of an Economic Hitman" (youtube Part 1 - Part 2)
      • 'Keynote' Video: Creating a Sustainable, Just, and Peaceful World (freespeech)
  • United Police State of America:
    • Project Censored's # 6 story for 2009: The Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act (projectcensored) - Keep the Prozac coming, folks. Under the guise of fear of radical local Islamist radicalization inside the US, legislators recognize the growing anger of Americans over the government's contempt for the Constitution. More and more they fear violent citizen uprising. What a disruption to business profits that would be! Now that the moneyed oligarchy that rules behind the scenes is viciously raping the country even beyond it's cruelest earlier fumbles, the legitimate anger of ordinary Americans has every reason to turn to rage. Fortunately, the election of a so-called liberal Democrat, Barack Obama, to the nation's top post has at least somewhat temporarily mitigated that anger, though for how long remains to be seen. Multi-millionaire Rep. Jane Harman of Harman International Industries pushed through the passage of the House bill in 2007 that has thrown civil rights advocates into apoplexy, who see it as a precursor to greater limitations on individual civil freedoms in the US. Reports of the legislation's demise in the Senate are considerably overblown. - "This is the latest round of official conflation between terrorists and activists in the US. Is there a proven link between these aforementioned groups? No, there is not. But that didn’t stop people from simply saying so on the public record while providing no evidence. And Jane Harman, Democratic cosponsor of the bill, didn’t ask for any, nor did she invite rebuttal." - How far will President Obama go to nudge our adolescent U.S. police state along on its way to maturity? - See also my entry 01-26-09 (United Police States . . .)
      • Governments across Europe tremble as angry people take to the streets (guardian.co.uk) - "Europe's time of troubles is gathering depth and scale. Governments are trembling. Revolt is in the air."
        • U.S. May Not Be Far Behind (npr)
  • NGC 1579: Trifid of the North (apod)
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Thursday, January 29, 2009

01-29-09
  • War on Drugs:
    • I bought a lovely feline friend some new toys and a catnip-laced scratching pad. She was ecstatic. Catnip sometimes gives cats such a giddy, joyous rush, I sometimes wonder how Republicans ever let it escape their controlled-substances list in their phony 'war on drugs.' (CatnipFrenzy)
  • Bye, Bye Blago. (cnn) - You were so well suited to be a Republican but somehow missed your calling. I think I hate corrupt Democrats more than corrupt Republicans. Republicans by virtue of their perverted world view see corruption as normal business procedure and are therefore more predictable. I hold Democrats to a higher standard because we so desperately need good Democrats to fight the good fight.
  • Military-Industrial Complex:
    • Israeli/US-Palestinian Atrocities:
      • Let the Boycotts And Divestments Begin: For the first time, U.S. professors call for academic and cultural boycott of Israel (haaretz) - See also my entry 01-11-09 (Naomi Klein says . . .)
  • Change We Can Believe In:
    • GOP defies Obama overtures with 0 votes for his House stimulus plan (politico) - Good Boy Scout Barack extended the hand of friendship to the Grand Obstructionist Party and even unnecessarily gave away important parts of the store--without negotiating for value in return. Is this the way we can expect him to govern? What a pushover. Good for the GOP, bad for the nation. Is that how he will negotiate the security of our nation with really hostile governments? Did he learn nothing about Republican methods in his few short years in the Senate? Didn't he notice that they never, never play softball. Maybe he just wasn't there long enough. Now it seems he plans to respond to their natural meanness by talking about facts--the facts of how many jobs those House representatives voted against in their own individual states. Just how much do those GOP representatives care about what piss-ant individual Republican "constituents" think, when their real constituents, the ones who pay their way, are big, greedy corporations who want it all their way--and they want Obama to fail so they'll have another wallow in the slop trough? Democrats are good at listing facts--head stuff -- Republicans don't care about any of that. They respond to feelings--gut stuff. It's in their perverted psychological makeup. ------ I remember the last time we had a good Boy Scout running our government. We heard often about his Baptist upbringing, about the goodness of man, and life on his peanut farm -- and he let inflation run away so far that interest rates were in the upper teens. He mounted a poorly planned attempt to rescue the Iran hostages, and when his own military screwed him and the rescue mission over, he gave up and his CIA let George H.W. Bush get away with illegal Republican negotiations with the Iranians that enabled Reagan to be elected and initiate the Iran-Contra treason. Now that he is safely out of power, he does wonderful humanitarian work. A friend once told me he thought Jimmy Carter was the best president we've ever had. I often wondered what he meant, until I realized that he probably believed Carter enabled the Reagan Republican takeover of America to begin. Yeah, wonderful. I wonder if Boy Scout Barack will be as wonderful.
  • At the Center of the Milky Way (apod)
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Wednesday, January 28, 2009

01-28-09
  • Bastardos:
    • Did Holder Promise No Prosecutions? (emptywheel) - For a few brief moments it looked like we had gotten out from under GOP rule, but now it seems that was just as ruse. The GOP is now ruling under a proxy administration headed up by our first African-American president--an advance in the politics of race relations that in and of itself may end up being the greatest accomplishment of the November '08 election.
      • However, Leading Senate Dems Patrick Leahy and Sheldon Whitehouse Dismiss Report That Holder Promised No Torture Prosecutions (tpmdc). Referring to Kit Bond, a member of the ethically-challenged Republican Party, Leahy said, "No senator would make a request like that. It'd be improper." Wow! Such breathtaking logic! Sen. Leahy, I'm sure glad you're on our side!
      • Even cable news knows who's really running things: GOP Lawmakers Outnumber Democratic Lawmakers 2 To 1 In Stimulus Debate On Cable News (thinkprogress)
  • Stimulus:
    • Failing U.S. Infrastructure: Engineers give U.S. infrastructure poor grades (reuters - wonkroom) - "Earlier this month, the engineers estimated that the president's stimulus package contained some $90 billion in infrastructure spending." If that amount is accurate, then after Larry Summers' recent hatchet job on the $825 billion package, peeling away 33% for tax reductions instead, it would now contain considerably less for infrastructure projects, perhaps around $62 billion. (caps.fool) - That's sure a lot less than we understood from Candidate Obama's campaign speeches.
  • Viewing the Matrix:
  • Prison-Industrial Complex:
    • US 2.3 million prison population dwarfs that of other nations (iht) - The phony 'war on drugs' is one of the reasons. Lazy, cowardly politicians is another. Politically motivated judges is another. Prison-Industrial Complex profit motive is another.
    • Double-Standard Justice:
      • Greenwald: The definition of a "two-tiered justice system" (salon) - "Our political class has embraced mandatory minimum sentencing schemes as a way to eliminate mercy and sentencing flexibility for ordinary people who break the law (as opposed to Bush officials who do)." Our vaunted political representatives argue for immunity for high-level government officials who commit felonies, while a homeless man gets 15 years for stealing $100 so he could stay at the detox center and get some food. The "United States imprisons more of its population than any other country on the planet, and most astoundingly, we account for less than 5% of the world's population yet close to 25% of the world's prisoners are located in American prisons."
      • US: More Whites Use Drugs, More Blacks Imprisoned (mapinc) - "These racial disparities are a national scandal." "Black and white drug offenders get radically different treatment in the American justice system. This is not only profoundly unfair to blacks, it also corrodes the American ideal of equal justice for all." Reality certainly shreds the Pledge of Allegiance, doesn't it? Kinda like George W. Bush and his 'goddamned piece of paper.'
  • Military-Industrial Complex:
    • It's official: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton mouths the same neocon drivel as Obama--that Israel has a right to defend itself--and should--while completely ignoring Israel's persistent crushing abuse of Palestinians and lack of any humane sense of proportionality. (haaretz) - See also my entries on 01-25-09 (Israel/U.S. Shame . . .) and on 01-24-09 (Military-Industrial Complex . . .)
    • Palestinian Apartheid: '60 Minutes' Tells the Truth (cbsnews) - In dribs and drabs the truth comes out to Americans. How did this story get past the CBS 'Establishment Censors'?
      • Greenwald: The 60 Minutes report on growing West Bank settlements (salon)
  • A Partial Eclipse Over Manila Bay (apod)
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Tuesday, January 27, 2009

01-27-09
  • Religious Wacko Watch:
    • Nature documentarian David Attenborough has revealed that he receives hate mail from creationists for failing to credit God in his documentaries. (guardian.co.uk) - "They always mean beautiful things like hummingbirds. I always reply by saying that I think of a little child in east Africa with a worm burrowing through his eyeball. The worm cannot live in any other way, except by burrowing through eyeballs. I find that hard to reconcile with the notion of a divine and benevolent creator." "They tell me to burn in hell and good riddance."
  • Health Care Reform in Danger of Democrats:
    • Key Democrat, dinosaur James Clyburn (SC) trying to kill health care reform (thehill) - House Majority Whip wants tiny, incremental change -- you know, the kind that never does the job. I'm so tired of Democratic corporate water carriers standing in the way of change for the common good. It revives my belief that progressives desperately need to split off from the centrist and right-wing Democrats, form their own 3rd party, and thus exercise greater control over what the anachronistic Democrat Party does with its occasional, precious, and accidental time in power.
  • Military-Industrial Complex:
    • On Arab TV, Obama makes overture to Muslims (iht) - In a search for common ground from which to move forward, "Obama did something in the interview Monday that he had not done during the presidential campaign: He mentioned the Muslim background of many of his Kenyan relatives and alluded to his childhood in predominantly Muslim Indonesia." However, Obama's poison pill was his consistent stalwart defense of Israel right or wrong.
  • Global Warming:
    • Change We Can Believe In: Driven by facts, Obama issues a flurry of environment-related orders (gristmill)
    • Oops, Too Late: Many damaging effects of climate change are already largely irreversible. (boston.com) - Even if carbon emissions could somehow be halted, temperatures around the globe will remain high for 1000 years. The damage that man has already done has set into irresistible motion a catastrophic sequence of events that at best we could only hope to mitigate, not cure.
    • Too late? Why scientists say we should expect the worst (guardian.co.uk) - A rise of 4 °C above preindustrial temperatures is more probable than not, and would lead to massive dislocation of millions of people and the destruction of countless additional species.
    • X-Files Warning: Even though global warming is now out of control and there is little hope of deliberately mitigating it substantially by human intervention, we could look at a severe global recession, possibly even one deliberately set into motion, as a benefit, in that emissions would be significantly reduced worldwide. If that actually happened, how long would the powers-that-be cause such a recession--or depression--to continue in their effort to limit those emissions? -- My gawd! I'm beginning to sound like a right-wing paranoid. Time to listen again to Roy Zimmerman's song (top of right column). Where are Mulder and Scully when you need them?
  • Economic Shakedown:
    • Congress is poised to give the Federal Reserve significant new powers to regulate the financial system. (washingtonpost) - They should instead probably be eliminating the Federal Reserve completely as a destructive, exploitative, and failed experiment.
    • Rachel Maddow looks at why critical transit funding was slashed in Obama's stimulus plan (grist). Clinton administration holdover, dinosaur Larry Summers is the man to thank. Way to go, Mr. President! Isn't broad inclusion a wonderful thing! See also my entries on 01-24-09 (Stimulus Package Success . . . and Chief Obama Adviser . . .)
    • Stimulus Includes Tax Cuts That Even Obama Economists Panned As Ineffective (huffingtonpost) - But what's another wasted $23.8 billion (that's 23,800,000,000 U.S. dollars)? Oh, it's just the price of cooperation with the obstructionists. I've been watching these "cooperation" payments adding up since Paulson first dropped his little 3-page declaration of war on the common man. The total extortion money has reached astronomical proportions and has watered down whatever legislation it has touched. Obama's world view includes this as an ordinary cost of doing business. Mr. Obama, in case you haven't noticed, you have more power at this moment than any Democratic president in scores of years. You have the power to put the obstructionists, Republican and Democrat alike, into their proper place in the corner and use your popular support to fulfill your promises. Instead, what you're giving us is the usual spineless Democratic pablum that has allowed extremist Republicans to take over this country for decades and bring her to the point of collapse. I don't believe the people who worked for you and voted you into office want you to play footsies with obstructionists at a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars and milquetoast legislation. They want you to get in there and fulfill the promises you made.
  • The Milky Way Over Mauna Kea (apod)
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Monday, January 26, 2009

01-26-09
  • GOP - The Grand Obstructionist Party:
    • Paul Krugman: Bad Faith GOP Economics (nytimes) - "Conservatives really, really don’t want to see a second New Deal, and . . . are throwing any" fraudulent "objection they can think of against the Obama plan, hoping that something will stick."
  • Accountability:
    • Conyers Subpoenas Rove on Firing of U.S. Attorneys And on Prosecution of Don Siegelman (google/ap) - More greased pig chasing.
  • Military-Industrial Complex Under Threat:
    • Obama seeks space weapons ban (reuters) - Careful, Mr. President! These neocon boys and girls have lots of potential profits to lose and not much in the way of scruples.
  • Obamamania:
    • West Wing on steroids in Obama W.H. (politico)
  • United Police States of America:
    • Project Censored's # 5 story for 2009: Seizing War Protesters’ Assets (projectcensored) Will Obama overturn these and other police-state orders or ignore them completely? The corporate media bury stories that reveal such draconian laws, so who is there to know about them and protest? The police state is definitely steadily advancing in the United States, unchecked by our representatives in Congress, who all too often push for more of it (Jane Harman, for example). How far will President Obama nudge the U.S. police state along?
    • Supremes pushing it too (google/ap) - Rule that police officers have leeway to frisk a passenger in a car stopped for a traffic violation even if nothing indicates the passenger has committed a crime or is about to do so. It all depends on the "officer's suspicion that the passenger may be armed and dangerous." How many more citizens are going to be frisked because they are guilty only of being non-Caucasian passengers?
  • USA Is Morally Bankrupt or Was That Already Obvious?
    • Bay City, Michigan municipally-owned power company murders 93-year-old man by shutting off his electric power in the dead of winter. (suntumes) City Manager says "he didn’t believe the city did anything wrong." Unpaid bills found on kitchen table with cash clipped to them.
  • Economic Shakedown:
    • Twenty-five people at the heart of the meltdown ... (guardian.co.uk) - "The worst economic turmoil since the Great Depression is not a natural phenomenon but a man-made disaster . . . ."
    • Infrastructure Heavy Equipment Manufacturer Caterpillar lowers profit expectations and expects to cut 20,000 jobs in 2009, most of which have already been done. (yahoo/ap) - More than 200,000 jobs lost so far this month; nearly 2.6 million jobs lost in 2008 - Only one reason to mention this here: As long as you see companies laying off more people or warning that they may do so, don't expect an upturn in the economy. Look to job loss or job growth as a guide. The bleating and breathless reporters and guests at the CNBC and Fast Money casinos may proclaim an imminent economic upturn, but remember that many of them under their expensive suits and impressive job titles are just salesmen and traders, with undeclared financial or politically ideological agendas on their minds. Bush and his greedy pals have so viciously raped this country, it probably will take years to recover -- if other prevailing conditions allow for it then.
  • AE Aurigae and the Flaming Star Nebula (apod)
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Sunday, January 25, 2009

01-25-09
  • Economic Shakedown:
    • The Banks Have Stolen Enough; It’s Time to Take Them Over, by Dean Baker (firedoglake) - Long overdue. Banks all over Europe have already been nationalized. It is well past the time to do the same here with every bank that has had to be bailed out with taxpayer billions. Then they will make the loans necessary to help get this country back on its feet.
      • UPDATE 01-26-09: Pssst, Let’s Nationalize The Banks. We Just Won’t Talk About It. (firedoglake)
      • UPDATE 01-26-09: Nationalization of U.S. banks gets a new, serious look (iht)
  • Conservative Media Watch:
    • Buzzflash comments, "Why Does the Corporate Mainstream Media Act Like Lapdogs for Republican Presidents and Attack Dogs for Democratic Presidents? Good Question, But Look at Who is Holding Their Leash and You'll Find Your Answer." (mediamatters)
      • The Refs (digbysblog)
      • See also my entry 01-19-09 (After failing to . . .)
      • U.S. Media Ignore Call for 'Criminal Investigation' of Bush Torture (fair)
    • Links to track: Media Matters For America - FAIR
  • Obamamania:
    • Bill Moyers Journal: Williams and Harris-Lacewell (pbs) - His inauguration, expectations of his administration.
    • 01/24/09: President Obama's Weekly Address (youtube) - WH You Tube Channel (youtube)
  • Military-Industrial Complex:
    • Obama's War on Terror - First Blood:
      • President Obama orders air strikes on villages in Pakistan tribal area, killing 18 (guardian) - "The first attack yesterday . . . destroyed two houses and killed 10 people. One villager told Reuters . . . that of nine bodies pulled from the rubble of one house, six were its owner and his relatives; Reuters added that intelligence officials said some foreign militants were also killed. A second attack hours later also in Warizistan killed eight people." How many military targets were killed? Who were they? After these incidences, the military nearly always says they successfully took out military targets with minimal "collateral damage". Later investigation often proves otherwise (example). So far, the "collateral damage" in Iraq adds up to more than 100,000+ dead innocent men, women and children. How many will it be in Pakistan and Afghanistan? See also my entry on 01-01-09 (Palestinian Massacre in . . .).
    • U.S. Shame - Guantanamo/Secret Prisons:
      • Obama 'whitewash' can't repay prison horror: ex-inmate (afp) - What compensation for false imprisonment and abusive treatment will the U.S. afford those prisoners deemed unnecessarily imprisoned?
      • Guantanamo Case Files in Disarray (washingtonpost) - Individual prisoner information scattered among agencies and files incomplete.
        • Obama Staff Finds White House in the Technological Dark Ages (washingtonpost)
        • UPDATE 01-26-09: Crappy Record-Keeping: A Feature, Not a Bug (emptywheel)
    • Israel/U.S. Shame - Palestinian Oppression/Atrocities Using U.S. Supplied Weapons of War:
  • Global Warming:
    • A Drop of Sea Water Teaming With Life at the Bottom of the Marine Food Chain (microscopyu)
    • Warmer Seas Will Wipe Out Plankton, Source of Ocean Life (commondreams)
      • UPDATE 01-28-09: Krill in decline: Antarctic food chain under threat (bbc) - "Experts reckon that global warming may be affecting the krill population."
  • Annular Eclipse: The Ring of Fire (apod)
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