HHS Makes $75 Million Available
to States to Expand Health Insurance
Coverage
HHS today announced the availability of
$75 million to help states expand health
insurance access to the uninsured.
"With these funds, states can look at the
most effective ways to provide affordable
health insurance to their uninsured residents,"
said HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.
"Many states have had great success in
recent years instituting health reforms
and these awards will make it possible
for more states to extend coverage to
more people."
Grants will be made in two categories.
Target grants of $2 million to $4 million
will be awarded to states with plans
to target specific groups of uninsured,
such as children, small businesses, or
uninsured seniors. Comprehensive grants
of $7 million to $10 million will be
awarded to states for extensive insurance
coverage initiatives.
The application deadline is June 15 and
all applications must have the support
of the state's governor.
The grants will be made over a five-year
period and require a 20 percent match
unless a state demonstrates a financial
hardship. In addition, states must demonstrate
their ability to sustain the program
after Federal funding has expired. The
impact and results of state projects
will be reported to Congress at the end
of the five-year grant period.
This new program will be overseen
by HHS's Health Resources and Services
Administration and is an outgrowth of
the agency's State Planning Grant program
that operated from 2000-2007. The previous
effort enabled many states to develop
innovative plans that increased health
insurance coverage for their uninsured
residents.
When it comes to solving the nation's energy
crisis utility bills hardly seem like
much of a big deal. But improving access
to the information in the billing records
of the nation's gas and electric utilities
could provide powerful tools to increase
the efficiency of energy use in the US.
This is particularly true in residential
and commercial buildings that consume
70% of US electricity and are responsible
for 40% of all US greenhouse gas emissions.
Unfortunately, utility bill information
is stored in a huge number of idiosyncratic
formats and is not accessible to individuals
and organizations that could use it.
This complex, un-standardized landscape
means that anyone interested in comparing
their energy use with national averages,
or understanding how their building is
performing in terms of energy consumption,
has to do an enormous amount of work
sorting through confusing bill information.
The small investment it would take to
get these billing records into standardized
formats, and making them easily available
to anyone with permission to use them,
would pay large dividends, for example
by helping individual consumers make
better decisions when they are purchasing
and operating buildings, and by helping
officials managing public programs designed
to encourage building energy efficiency
make better management decisions.
In the future, detailed information about
patterns of consumption may make sense
when there's widespread use of "smart
meters" that keep track of energy use
minute by minute, and possibly appliance
by appliance. But major gains are possible
simply by reporting energy use for each
month. Here are some examples:
*
Legislation could require that billing
records and benchmarking data be
disclosed to potential buyers at
time of sale. Labels providing data
on a building's energy use have
been developed in Europe and are
being considered in California and
other parts of the US. Most labels
being considered include both calculated
energy demand (called "asset rating")
and measured energy consumption
(called an "operational rating").
The US Environmental Protection
Agency has developed a tool called
a portfolio manager that lets building
owners compare the energy performance
of their buildings with the performance
of similar buildings in similar
climates. At present nothing similar
is available for residential buildings.
The burden on the user would be
greatly reduced if billing data
can be uploaded automatically, using
standardized formats.
*
If billing records for a building are
available online with suitable permissions,
a utility, or a third party like Google
could provide a service where a consumer
could go on line, identify themselves
with an appropriate password, and get
access to the building's history of energy
use by month – preferably several years
of data. This could then be automatically
compared with energy use from similar
structures in similar climates, and estimates
of the reductions likely to result from
cost-effective retrofits. Consumers might
well be motivated to take action. Benchmarking
tools for this purpose have already been
developed by the Environmental Protection
Agency.
*
Good building energy audits involve entering
data about a structure into a computer
model that estimates a building's energy
use and also computes the savings that
would result from different retrofit
measures that could be taken (adding
insulation, replacing windows, etc.)
Unfortunately these models are often
wrong since the outcome depends on the
skill and experience of the person using
them. Accuracy can be improved if the
models include an analysis of the actual
energy consumption of the structure.
Monthly consumption data, made available
to building auditors by permission of
the building owner, can be used to track
the sources of inaccuracy in the data
input and, and algorithms could be developed
over time that would suggest corrections
to the user. Improved models will lead
directly to retrofits that show better
performance and are more cost-effective.
The cost of doing this would be greatly
reduced if auditors could access consumption
data directly over the internet using
appropriate network security tools. In
the future most auditors are likely to
be using wireless, handheld units at
the building site to collect data and
perform the energy use estimates. These
could also have direct access to the
data. The software for these tools would
need to be adjusted for each utility
if each company keeps data in a different
format - at a significant increase in
cost.
*
Utility data available online could also
be used to strengthen project management
for retrofit programs. The performance
of individual auditing and contractor
teams could be continuously measured
and compared based on the actual impact
their work had on energy use in the buildings
they serviced. The persistence of savings
could be measured over a period of years
and the actual performance of different
approaches to retrofits compared in ways
that could lead to continuous improvement
of the programs. This, of course, would
require collecting and maintaining data
on the kinds of measures undertaken and
the cost of the installations in a standardized
format.
*
Energy use data collected in a consistent
form would also permit continuous analysis
of progress, or lack of progress, of
city, state, and national programs to
improve energy efficiency. It could be
used, for example, to compare programs
in different cities, and track the impact
of different policy interventions in
considerable detail. While care would
need to be taken to ensure that identifiable
personal information is not released,
statistical agencies have considerable
experience in analyzing data scheduled
for publication to ensure that this doesn't
happen – and they have a good track record
of success. The novelty in this new system,
of course, would be that the data would
be gathered online. Careful design of
network security would needed.
*
The introduction of "smart grid" technology
will open more opportunities for collecting
detailed information about building performance.
The new systems will let building owners
and utilities adjust consumption to avoid
system peaks and provide information
useful for understanding the consumption
of specific equipment in the buildings
that can, among other things, be used
to understand the impact of any retrofit
measures undertaken in the building —
with statistically significant samples.
The smart grid will require standardized
approaches to measuring and reporting
consumption data.
Taken together, the benefits of a consistent
national format for the energy consumption
of individual utility customers would
be considerable. The benefits would include
much improved management and accountability
for retrofit program funds, and more
energy savings per dollar invested. While
some utilities may complain about the
cost of converting existing data formats
to a new format, the overall costs would
be small compared with the savings that
could be achieved.
Who owns the Rain? Apparently Colorado
believes only certain people own
it.
Environmentalists
and others like to gather it in containers
for use in drier times. But state law
says it belongs to those who bought the
rights to waterways.
By Nicholas Riccardi
March 18, 2009
Reporting from Denver — Every time it rains
here, Kris Holstrom knowingly breaks the
law.
Holstrom's violation is the fancifully painted 55-gallon buckets underneath the
gutters of her farmhouse on a mesa 15 miles from the resort town of Telluride.
The barrels catch rain and snowmelt, which Holstrom uses to irrigate the small
vegetable garden she and her husband maintain.
But according to the state of Colorado, the rain that falls on Holstrom's property
is not hers to keep. It should be allowed to fall to the ground and flow unimpeded
into surrounding creeks and streams, the law states, to become the property of
farmers, ranchers, developers and water agencies that have bought the rights
to those waterways.
What Holstrom does is called rainwater harvesting. It's a practice that dates
back to the dawn of civilization, and is increasingly in vogue among environmentalists
and others who pursue sustainable lifestyles. They collect varying amounts of
water, depending on the rainfall and the vessels they collect it in. The only
risk involved is losing it to evaporation. Or running afoul of Western states'
water laws.
Those laws, some of them more than a century old, have governed the development
of the region since pioneer days.
"If you try to collect rainwater, well, that water really belongs to someone
else," said Doug Kemper, executive director of the Colorado Water Congress. "We
get into a very detailed accounting on every little drop."
Frank Jaeger of the Parker Water and Sanitation District, on the arid foothills
south of Denver, sees water harvesting as an insidious attempt to take water
from entities that have paid dearly for the resource.
"Every drop of water that comes down keeps the ground wet and helps the flow
of the river," Jaeger said. He scoffs at arguments that harvesters like Holstrom
only take a few drops from rivers. "Everything always starts with one little
bite at a time."
Increasingly, however, states are trying to make the practice more welcome. Bills
in Colorado and Utah, two states that have limited harvesting over the years,
would adjust their laws to allow it in certain scenarios, over the protest of
people like Jaeger.
Organic farmers and urban dreamers aren't the only people pushing to legalize
water harvesting. Developer Harold Smethills wants to build more than 10,000
homes southwest of Denver that would be supplied by giant cisterns that capture
the rain that falls on the 3,200-acre subdivision. He supports the change in
Colorado law.
"We believe there is something to rainwater harvesting," Smethills said. "We
believe it makes economic sense."
Collected rainwater is generally considered "gray water," or water that is not
reliably pure enough to drink but can be used to water yards, flush toilets and
power heaters. In some states, developers try to include a network of cisterns
and catchment pools in every subdivision, but in others, those who catch the
rain tend to do so covertly.
In Colorado, rights to bodies of water are held by entities who get preference
based on the dates of their claims. Like many other Western states, Colorado
has more claims than available water, and even those who hold rights dating back
to the late 19th century sometimes find they do not get all of the water they
should.
"If I decide to [take rainwater] in 2009, somewhere, maybe 100 miles downstream,
there's a water right that outdates me by 100 years" that's losing water, said
Kevin Rein, assistant state engineer.
State Sen. Chris Romer found out about this facet of state water policy when
he built his ecological dream house in Denver, entirely powered by solar energy.
He wanted to install a system to catch rainwater, but the state said it couldn't
be permitted.
"It was stunning to me that this common-sense thing couldn't be done," said
Romer, a Democrat. He sponsored a bill last year to allow water harvesting, but
it did not pass.
"Welcome to water politics in Colorado," Romer said. "You don't touch my gun,
you don't touch my whiskey, and you don't touch my water."
Romer and Republican state Rep. Marsha Looper introduced bills this year to allow
harvesting in certain circumstances. Armed with a study that shows that 97% of
rainwater that falls on the soil never makes it to streams, they propose to allow
harvesting in 11 pilot projects in urban areas, and for rural users like Kris
Holstrom whose wells are depleted by drought.
In contrast to the high-stakes maneuvering in the capital, Holstrom looks upon
the state's regulation of rainwater with exasperated amusement.
Holstrom, director of sustainability for Telluride, and her husband, John, have
lived on their farm since 1988. During the severe drought at the start of this
decade, their well began drying up. Placing rain barrels under the gutters was
the natural thing to do, said Holstrom, 51.
"Rain out here comes occasionally, and can come really hard," she said. "To
be able to store it for when you need it is really great."
Holstrom had a vague awareness of state regulations. She decided to test it last
summer when she was teaching a class on water harvesting. She called the state
water department, which told her it was technically illegal, though it was unlikely
that she would be cited.
Holstrom is known in southwestern Colorado for a lifestyle and causes that many
deem quixotic. The land she and her husband own holds a yurt and tepees to house "interns" who
help on their organic farm in the summers. It boasts a greenhouse, which even
on a recent snowy day held an oasis of rosemary, artichokes, salad greens and
a fig tree.
She plucked a bit of greens from one plant and munched on it as goldfish swam
in a small, algae-filled pond that helps heat the enclosure. "This has been my
passion for a long time -- trying to live the best way I know how," she said.
By RINKER BUCK |The Hartford Courant March
18, 2009
White-nose syndrome, the mysterious
plague that is decimating the Northeast's
bats, killed off about 90 percent of
Connecticut's bats over the winter and
is now galloping across the country so
quickly that it threatens the nation's
- and probably the world's - largest
bat populations in the American South...more
US researchers have revealed an
experimental battery that charges
about 100 times as fast as normal
lithium ion batteries – the breakthrough
could be a boost for green transport
The American people are bleeding to
death, and "in the midst of an economic debacle,
it is the rich who are being bailed out."
Of the 418 employees who received bonuses,
298 got more than $100,000, according to the New
York attorney general, Andrew M. Cuomo. The highest
bonus was $6.4 million, and 6 other employees received
more than $4 million. Fifteen other people received
bonuses of more than $2 million and 51 received
$1 million to $2 million.
[Taxpayers have already put
up $173 billion, or more than a thousand
times the amount of these bonuses, to
fund the government's AIG "rescue." Since
September 16, AIG has sent $120 billion in
cash, collateral and other payouts to banks,
municipal governments and other derivative
counterparties around the world. This includes
at least $20 billion to European banks. - "The
Real AIG Outrage", WSJ, March 17, 2009.]
AIG, received more than $170 billion
in emergency federal aid, has become the chief
exhibit for both sides of the bailout debate.
The Weatherization
Assistance Program can Jump Start Economy:
In an
interview with CBS's Katie Couric on Wednesday,
President Obama was asked about spending measures
in the House version of the stimulus package
that have been criticized by Sen. Mitch McConnell and
others, including $6.2 Billion for the Weatherization
Assistance Program. President Obama makes
the case for the weatherization program as a means to
jump start the economy by creating jobs immediately,
saying "We''re going to weatherize homes,
that immediately puts people back to work and we're
going to train people who are out of work, including
young people, to do the weatherization. As a consequence
of weatherization, our energy bills go down and we reduce
our dependence on foreign oil. What would be a more
effective stimulus package than that?"
The President is correct.
As a
paper by the Federation of American Scientists demonstrates,
the Weatherization Program is the longest
running, and perhaps the most successful
US Energy Efficiency Program. The program,
which underwrites a portion of the cost
for improving the energy efficiency of
low-income homes, reduces heating costs
by an average of 31 percent, resulting
in significantly lower energy bills that
are so important in trying economic times
like these. The program also creates
roughly 52 jobs for every $1 million
of federal investment. The stimulus package's
investment of $6.2 Billion into the Weatherization
program will result in roughly 300,000
jobs created.
The program carries a great potential to alleviate
both the economic and energy woes our country currently
faces. Investing in weatherization through the
stimulus bill also provides the opportunity to
create a more modern, streamlined and effective
system for improving residential energy efficiency
in the future. To do so, and to ensure the best
use of stimulus funds, the weatherization program
needs to improve the software tool that weatherization
centers use to determine which retrofits are cost-effective,
upgrade and standardize the training for energy
auditors and weatherization crews, and start collecting
data from the field about the real energy savings
and costs of different weatherization measures
to continuously improve the program.
FAS and Voice of Freedom applauds President
Obama and the members of congress for recognizing
the potential of the Weatherization Program, and
we look forward to seeing this potential realized.
Obama's first days:
Two years after launching the most technologically
savvy presidential campaign in history, Obama officials
ran smack into the constraints of the federal bureaucracy
yesterday, encountering a jumble of disconnected
phone lines, old computer software, and security
regulations forbidding outside e-mail accounts.
What does that mean in 21st-century terms? No Facebook
to communicate with supporters. No outside e-mail
log-ins. No instant messaging. Hard adjustments
for a staff that helped sweep Obama to power through,
among other things, relentless online social networking.
"It is kind of like going from
an Xbox to an Atari," Obama spokesman Bill Burton
said of his new digs.
...team members, accustomed to
working on Macintoshes, found computers outfitted
with six-year-old versions of Microsoft software.
But, All is not lost and the change
begins Now!
WASHINGTON - In a first-day flurry of
activity, President Barack Obama on Wednesday set
up shop in the Oval Office, summoned advisers to
begin dealing with war and recession and ordered
new lobbying rules for 'a clean break from
business as usual."
He also froze salaries for top White
House staff members, placed phone calls to Mideast
leaders and had aides circulate a draft executive
order that would close the detention center at
Guantanamo Bay within a year...
...Unveiling ethics rules that he portrayed
as the fulfillment of a major campaign promise,
Obama said that "the way to make government
responsible is to hold it accountable." The rules
are needed, he added, "to help restore faith in
government, without which we cannot deliver the
changes that we were sent here to make."
The pay freeze affects the roughly 100
White House employees who make more than $100,000
a year. "Families are tightening their belts, and
so should Washington," Obama said...
...In an attempt to deliver on pledges
of a transparent government, Obama said he would
change the way the federal government interprets
the Freedom of Information Act. He said he was
directing agencies that vet requests for information
to err on the side of making information public
— not to look for reasons to legally withhold it
— an alteration to the traditional standard of
evaluation.
Just because a government agency has the legal power
to keep information private does not mean that
it should, Obama said.
Change is coming, and Obama appears
to be keeping promises with his first days in
office.
Time 4 IL Black leaders to Distance
themselves from Blag.
Pointblank -For weeks I considered
Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich (Blag) to be
a fool, last weekend I thought Roland Burris was
an old fool for willing to be used by Blag.(What,
Alan Keyes was too busy?). It doesn't take a rocket
scientist to see the reasons Blag is fronting this
guy. Its got nothing to do with how qualified he
is to hold the post, it's got everything to do
with distraction and fear. People from the IL probably
haven't seen this kind of arrogance since Al Capone.
Like the depression era gangster, Blag is not really
in fear of being exposed. He is quite open about
his corruption...more
Worried About Antibiotics In Your Beef?
Vegetables May Be No Better
New studies show vegetables like lettuce
and potatoes--even organic ones--carry antibiotics
By Matthew Cimitile
For half a century, meat producers have fed antibiotics
to farm animals to increase their growth and stave off
infections. Now scientists have discovered that those
drugs are sprouting up in unexpected places: Vegetables
such as corn, potatoes and lettuce absorb antibiotics
when grown in soil fertilized with livestock manure,
according to tests conducted at the University of Minnesota.
Today, close to 70 percent of all antibiotics and related
drugs used in the United States are routinely fed to
cattle, pigs and poultry, according to the Union of
Concerned Scientists. Although this practice sustains
a growing demand for meat, it also generates public
health fears associated with the expanding presence
of antibiotics in the food chain.
People have long been exposed to antibiotics
in meat and milk. Now, the new research shows that they
also may be ingesting them from vegetables, perhaps
even ones grown on organic farms...more
Obama's First test?
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
CARACAS: In a mirrored office tower overlooking
Caracas, a top Venezuelan official said his government
was ready to accept Barack Obama's offer to talk with
U.S. adversaries - if the president-elect scraps George
W. Bush's division of the world into friends and foes.
Such categories are "simplistic," said Bernardo Álvarez,
Venezuela's former envoy to Washington. "Why do nations
have to be friends? What we have to do is sit down and
discuss issues."
Venezuela may provide a useful first test
for Obama's pledge to engage rather than isolate antagonists.
While President Hugo Chávez is one of Washington's noisiest
critics, frayed relations would likely be easier to
mend than those with nations like Iran and Cuba, whose
leaders are even more hostile toward the United States...more
Solar Powered Car...Good Morning Sunshine!
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Toyota won't just be adding solar panels
to its popular Prius gas-electric hybrid car—like
the solar electric conversion kit seen at left—it'll
be powering a version of it exclusively via sunshine,
according to The Nikkei, Japan's business newspaper.
In fact, Toyota will be relying on the solar-electric
car to "turn around its struggling business," which
resulted in its first operating loss in more than 70
years, the Associated Press reports...more
Community Car Wash
November 29, 2008
@
Preferred Physicians Group Parking Lot
& Pit Bulls Gym
2802 W. Waters Ave, Tampa Fla. 33614
(Corner of Waters & Habana)
All proceed will be donated to Children With a Vision, Inc
for the upcoming event on December 14, 2008 Toys 4 Tot drive.
The mission is to provide 5 organizations
children wish list, or come close to their wish. Below
is the front of the flyer, and One of the organizations
wish list.
If you want to be a sponsor. Please contact
Mrs. Tonya M. Lewis @ 813-235-5656
There will be over 2,000 to 3,000 motor
cycle Rider from all over the state, on December 14,
2008 @ Hip Hop Soda Shop, 1241 E. Fowler Ave, Tampa
Fla 33612. To drop off a toy or Toys.
Click the link below, to come aboard and
help the families in need. Thank you for taking out
your busy schedule. www.childrenwithavisioninc.com Mrs. Tonya M. Lewis
Children With A Vision,Inc.-Mrs.
Tonya M. Lewis, Founder
Keith Olberman on Gay Marriage
This is about the...
human heart, and if that sounds corny, so be it.
If you voted for this Proposition or support those who did
or the sentiment they expressed, I have some questions, because,
truly, I do not... understand. Why does this matter to you?
What is it to you? In a time of impermanence and fly-by-night
relationships, these people over here want the same chance
at permanence and happiness that is your option. They don't
want to deny you yours. They don't want to take anything
away from you. They want what you want -- a chance to be
a little less alone in the world.
Only now you are saying to them -- no. You can't have it on
these terms. Maybe something similar. If they behave. If
they don't cause too much trouble. You'll even give them
all the same legal rights -- even as you're taking away the
legal right, which they already had. A world around them,
still anchored in love and marriage, and you are saying,
no, you can't marry. What if somebody passed a law that said
you couldn't marry?
I keep hearing this term "re-defining" marriage.
If this country hadn't re-defined marriage, black people still
couldn't marry white people. Sixteen states had laws on the
books which made that illegal... in 1967. 1967.
The parents of the President-Elect of the
United States couldn't have married in nearly one third
of the states of the country their son grew up to lead.
But it's worse than that. If this country had not "re-defined" marriage, some black people
still couldn't marry...black people. It is one of the most
overlooked and cruelest parts of our sad story of slavery.
Marriages were not legally recognized, if the people were
slaves. Since slaves were property, they could not legally
be husband and wife, or mother and child. Their marriage
vows were different: not "Until Death, Do You Part," but "Until
Death or Distance, Do You Part." Marriages among slaves were
not legally recognized.
You know, just like marriages today in California are not legally
recognized, if the people are... gay.
And uncountable in our history are the number
of men and women, forced by society into marrying the
opposite sex, in sham marriages, or marriages of convenience,
or just marriages of not knowing -- centuries of men
and women who have lived their lives in shame and unhappiness,
and who have, through a lie to themselves or others,
broken countless other lives, of spouses and children...
All because we said a man couldn't marry another man,
or a woman couldn't marry another woman. The sanctity
of marriage. How many marriages like that have there
been and how on earth do they increase the "sanctity" of
marriage rather than render the term, meaningless?
What is this, to you? Nobody is asking you to embrace their
expression of love. But don't you, as human beings, have
to embrace... that love? The world is barren enough.
It is stacked against love, and against hope, and against those
very few and precious emotions that enable us to go forward.
Your marriage only stands a 50-50 chance of lasting, no matter
how much you feel and how hard you work.
And here are people overjoyed at the prospect of just that
chance, and that work, just for the hope of having that feeling.
With so much hate in the world, with so much meaningless
division, and people pitted against people for no good reason,
this is what your religion tells you to do? With your experience
of life and this world and all its sadnesses, this is what
your conscience tells you to do?
With your knowledge that life, with endless
vigor, seems to tilt the playing field on which we all
live, in favor of unhappiness and hate... this is what
your heart tells you to do? You want to sanctify marriage?
You want to honor your God and the universal love you
believe he represents? Then Spread happiness -- this
tiny, symbolic, semantical grain of happiness -- share
it with all those who seek it. Quote me anything from
your religious leader or book of choice telling you
to stand against this. And then tell me how you can
believe both that statement and another statement, another
one which reads only "do unto others as you would have them
do unto you."
---
You are asked now, by your country, and perhaps by your creator,
to stand on one side or another. You are asked now to stand,
not on a question of politics, not on a question of religion,
not on a question of gay or straight. You are asked now to
stand, on a question of...love. All you need do is stand,
and let the tiny ember of love meet its own fate. You don't
have to help it, you don't have it applaud it, you don't
have to fight for it. Just don't put it out. Just don't extinguish
it. Because while it may at first look like that love is
between two people you don't know and you don't understand
and maybe you don't even want to know...It is, in fact, the
ember of your love, for your fellow **person...
Just because this is the only world we have. And the other
guy counts, too.
This is the second time in ten days I find myself concluding
by turning to, of all things, the closing plea for mercy
by Clarence Darrow in a murder trial.
But what he said, fits what is really at the heart of this:
"I was reading last night of the aspiration of the old Persian
poet, Omar-Khayyam," he told the judge.
"It appealed to me as the highest that I
can vision. I wish it was in my heart, and I wish it
was in the hearts of all:
"So I be written in the Book of Love;
"I do not care about that Book above.
"Erase my name, or write it as you will,
"So I be written in the Book of Love."
---
Good night, and good luck.
The Ruler (from Malcolm to Barack) by Fly Gypsy
*
McCain/Palin call Obama's Economic Plan "Socialism"
Republican John McCain used the phrase "that's
not America" yesterday to describe Democrat Barack Obama's
plans for a middle-class tax cut, and Obama said McCain is
"throwing everything he's got at us, hoping something will
stick'"
McCain may not know it, being that a lot of christians
simply do not know what their own bible says, but we think
Jesus was "for" socialism. What Obama is
offering however is not. Click now and find out what
Joe Redner thinks about socialism.
McCain/Palin finally reap the rewards of their
constituency
Threatening Letter Causes Evacuation
At Obama Campaign Office
PHILADELPHIA (CBS 3) ― A
threatening letter containing a suspicious powder forced
evacuations at a Barack Obama campaign office in South Philadelphia
Tuesday afternoon.
According to police, a letter with a suspicious powder was
sent to an Obama-Biden field office in the 1500 block of
Christian Street. The letter was apparently opened by a volunteer
at the office.
"The letter was somewhat threatening in nature and it contained
a substance that we believe to be a hazmat," Captain Mike
Gillespie said shortly after the incident.
Police, fire and hazmat crews responded to the scene shortly
after a 911 call was placed. As a precaution, 15 people inside
the building were evacuated.
Investigators said initial field tests on the powder came
back negative and it was determined to be sugar.
"We want to look over the letter through the plastic bag
that we have it in to see what's actually being stated in
the letter to the best of our knowledge and then determine
the source," Captain Gillespie explained.
Sources said the letter did not reference the substance,
but the envelope contained enough sugar that it appeared
to be intentionally added to the threatening note to scare
or disrupt Obama supporters.
Philadelphia Police and Postal Inspection Police were joined
by the FBI and Secret Service in the investigation. The investigators
will attempt to determine if the threatening note was directed
at the volunteers or the candidates.
Everything Palin has said, everything McCain has
talked about regarding Obama has whipped their base to a
frenzy and now we have the threats to life and limb beginning. Is
this republicans at their finest? Can anyone doubt the "change"
wrought by the GOP?
The change needed in this country is not the actions
of the party of fear, the party of hate, the party of violence. We
need hope. Hope and trust in our leaders. Obama
has shown that hope and that fairness in his campaign.
Palin/McCain's campaigns have shown the country
again...that hate and fear is indeed part of what the republican
party stands for. I say this because if you don't
like Obama, then don't vote for him. You don't
send threatening letters to his supporters. Surely
that is not the idea that McCain had when he and his soul
mate were whipping up the fringes. Surely?
Let us hope that McCain/Palin can smooth the hate
and fear of its supporters so that there is not another attack,
perhaps a more dangerous one. I will not hold
my breath on that however, since McCain is sure to bring
up the Ayers issue at the next debate and it will be once
again a pot stirrer with the fringe of the GOP.
Do Something, Call Your News Stations, your
representatives, your Governors, let them know we don't need
these kinds of leaders.
The video leaves out the Senator's town hall last
Friday, where he corrected two audience members who expressed
concerns about Obama. But the spot is effective in reinforcing
the notion that McCain-Palin is the ticket of at best, fear
and at worse, xenophobia and bigotry.
Color for Change accompanied the release by sending members
an open letter to McCain; part of which
reads:
"In the last few weeks, Senator
McCain and Governor Palin, rhetoric at your campaign
events has taken an increasingly dangerous tone that
seems to ignore the precarious state of our progress
when it comes to race and ethnicity...
... For the most part, you have stood by in silence. In
addition, you have also repeatedly made statements that
somehow connect Senator Obama with terrorism; surrogates
of yours have emphasized his middle name. This is problematic
and dangerous, and I believe helps create the conditions
that have given rise to these incidents of violent rhetoric
from some of your supporters."
The story is all over Progressive Talk Radio
today about the McCain campaign sending absentee ballot applications
to registered democrats or people that have donated to Obama's
campaign in the swing states.
These ballots are deliberately
misleading and have postage paid return addresses that are
for an election clerk that is outside of your city or town.
What this will end up doing is either having your vote not
counted, or if you return one of these, they will cite you
for election fraud, saying that you already voted absentee.
The Columbus Dispatch reported the McCain
campaign sent out a million of the applications statewide.
Already, more than 740 ballots in Hamilton County have
been invalidated because of the mistake.
Voter caging in 2000 and 2004 was a long-recognized, controversial
Republican voter suppression tactic whereby a political party
or campaign sends mail that can't be forwarded to a targeted
group of registered voters. A "caging list" of
those whose mail is returned "undelivered" is then used
as the basis for getting them taken off the voter rolls,
on the grounds that the voter does not live at the address
where he or she is registered.
Just as I suspected....it's Palin/McCain not
McCain/Palin
A
Stick in the Eye of the Press: How
the McCain Campaign Repeats Lies Even After
They Are Debunked
As
the Associated Press wrote recently, “Politicians
usually modify or drop claims when a string of
newspaper and TV news accounts concludes they are
untrue or greatly exaggerated.” But this
campaign is seeing something different: A campaign
that tells a falsehood, sees that falsehood corrected
in the press, and continues
to repeat the falsehood.
In
recent days, John McCain's campaign has continued
to make claims in ads and stump speeches that have
been widely discredited. While much of the back-and-forth
of campaigns consists of the contenders arguing
about what is true and what isn't, the claims
cited here are not open to interpretation. The
statements are clearly and objectively false.
This
poses a direct challenge to the press. If they
are to be the referees of the claims made by the
two campaigns, they must impose some sort of cost
on a campaign when it persists in spreading falsehoods.
This document details some of the McCain campaign's
recent falsehoods, where and when they were debunked,
and how the campaign has continued to repeat them
nonetheless.
The
Bridge to Nowhere.
Almost every time Sarah Palin
has appeared in public since
becoming John McCain's
running mate, she has claimed
that she “told Congress, ‘Thanks,
but no thanks' on that
Bridge to Nowhere.” Even
after admitting
to ABC's Charlie Gibson that
the claim was false, she returned
to the stump and began repeating
the claim again.
“Obama voted
to raise taxes on
people making just 42,000 dollars.” Barack
Obama cast no such vote, and
his tax plan lowers taxes on
anyone making under $200,000.
This claim has appeared in
a McCain ad and has been repeated
by McCain surrogates and spokespeople
many times since it was debunked.
Obama
would raise taxes on 100 million
Americans. This
claim is based on two false
assertions: that 401(k) holders
would pay more taxes if the
capital gains tax were increased,
and that Obama's proposal
to increase capital gains taxes
affects all taxpayers and not
just wealthy taxpayers. Though
it was debunked, McCain and
his surrogates have continued
to repeat it.
Obama's
health-care plan would “force
families into a government-run
health-care system.” Obama's
health-care plan is centered
on private health insurance
and forces no one into any
government plan. McCain continues
to repeat this falsehood, even
after it was debunked by journalists
and independent fact-checkers
back when he was making the
claim about both Obama's
and Hillary Clinton's
health-care plans.
Obama
wants kindergartners “learning
about sex before learning to
read.” The
legislation Obama voted for
actually provides for teaching
young children to avoid sexual
predators. McCain's campaign
continues to defend the ad
in which this claim appears,
despite the fact that it has
been widely condemned.
Palin “championed
reform to end the abuses of
earmark spending by Congress.” McCain,
Palin, and their campaign have
repeatedly made this claim,
despite the fact that Palin
requested hundreds of millions
of dollars in federal earmarks
for Alaska.
Christian Right Voter Summit Sells Racist 'Obama Waffles' By Adele Stan, Media Consortium
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- At the annual Washington gathering of the
Christian right sponsored by the political arm of the Family
Research Council, the Republican Party's top emissaries have
come in past years to bow before some 2000 right-wing foot-soldiers
and the leaders who command them. However, this year's Value
Voter Summit, a bit light on GOP dignitaries, made less news
in its speaker line-up than it did for the sale of a particular
brand of breakfast food: Obama Waffles.
In the far corner of the exhibit hall at
the Values Voter Summit two gonzo entrepreneurs hawked
a product they described as "political
satire": a box of waffle mix emblazoned with a cartoon
image of a bug-eyed, toothy, dark-lipped Barack Obama eyeing
a plate of waffles. A pat of butter on the waffles is stamped "2008".
On the top flap, the Obama carton appears in a turban, next
to an arrow printed with the text: "Point box toward
Mecca for tastier waffles." The box of mix is a crude
send-up of Aunt Jemima's Pancake Mix, which once featured
stereotyped image of a round-faced, turbaned black woman
as its trademark.
Although FRC Action claimed in a statement
to have demanded that the exhibitors dismantle their
display "when the
content of the materials was brought to the attention of
FRC Action senior officials" on Saturday, the truth
is that by the time Obama Waffles creators W. Mark Whitlock
and Bob DeMoss began breaking down their display, the conference
was winding down and most exhibitors in the hall had already
pulled out of Dodge.
I made my way through a row of un staffed and
abandoned booths on Saturday afternoon, arriving just as
Whitlock was packing up unsold product. Although, according
to the FRC Action statement, Whitlock and DeMoss had already
received the equivalent of cease-and-desist orders from conference
organizers, Whitlock, dressed in a cook's apron and hat,
was happy to take my $10 and fork over a box.
Taking FRC Action at the word of its executive director, David
Nammo, a trusting reader may accept that the organization's
leaders were unaware of what Whitlock and DeMoss were hawking
for two and a half days before the exhibit was shut down.
But Whitlock and DeMoss are hardly strangers to leaders of
the religious right, and links to racists (and, indeed, the
use of dog-whistle references for racists) are hardly new
for Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council,
a spin-off of James Dobson's Focus on the Family empire.
According to a general letter of reference
written by DeMoss on behalf of Whitlock (posted by nisperos,
a savvy reader at the Denver Post's Web site), the two
men met when both met while working at Focus on the
Family, which Whitlock's resume dates at "1991 - 1992", when he served as
a producer on Dobson's "Focus on the Family" daily
radio program.
The two worked together again, some years
later, at FamilyLife Publishers, an endeavor of the
Campus Crusade for Christ -- one of the very first religious-right
organizations. Whitlock's resume shows him having worked
for FamilyLIfe from 1992 - 2004. During that time he
served one year on the event team putting together the
religious right's Congress on the Urban Family, which
perhaps explains where the author developed an apparent
affection for hip-hop music, as evidenced by the bonus "recipe rap" that
appears on the side of the Obama's Waffles box:
Barry's Bling Bling Waffle Ring
Yo, B-rock here droppin' waffle knowledge Spellin' it out,
'cause a graduated college Some say I waffle so fast, Barry's
causin' whiplash Just doin' my part, made wafflin' a fine
art For a waffle wit style, like Chicago's Magnificent Mile
Spray whipped crem around the edge Shake it first like Sister
Sledge
The say wit me, I can be as waffly as I wanna be! (That goes
out to my Ludacris posse)
Whitlock recently wrote a study guide to
accompany the movie "Nim's
Island," a production of FoxFaith, a division of Rupert
Murdoch's 20th Century Fox. (Hat tip: FireDogLake's Julia.)
DeMoss, Whitlock's partner in the OW venture, also has some
friends in high places, having served as the co-author of
four books with Tim LaHaye, best known at the multi-million-selling
author of the Left Behind series of novels.
With LaHaye,
DeMoss penned four novels targeted at young adults that include
a cautionary tale about an evil abortion doctor that centers
on a teen gone missing, his absence noticed only after days
after he has vanished because his household is headed by
a single mom who spends long hours at work.
LaHaye, DeMoss' co-author, is one of the
top leaders of the religious right, having co-founded the Council for National Policy,
the super-secret umbrella groups that reportedly vetted
GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin on the eve of the Republican National
Convention. LaHaye's wife, Beverly, is
the founder of the influential Concerned Women for America, which was
an early proponent of "gay recovery" therapy
designed to make heterosexuals out of LGBT people.
It is perhaps not surprising that material as racist as that
peddled by Whitlock and DeMoss at the Values Voter Summit
failed to set off alarm bells among Family Research Council
and FRC Action leaders until reporters began inquiring about
the Obama Waffles stand.
FRC President Tony Perkins spoke
as recently as 2001 before the Council of Conservative Citizens,
a well-documented white supremacist group, and directed the
1996 Louisiana congressional campaign of former Congressman
Woody Jenkins from the campaign lists of former Ku Klux Klan
Grand Wizard David Duke. Perkins paid Duke $82,000 for the
lists. Jenkins served as the first executive director of
the Council for National Policy, 1982-1985, and again in
1987.
More recently, while reporting for Church & State magazine,
I saw Perkins address a crowd of hard-core Christian right
believers in 2007 at the Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church
of the late Rev. D. James Kennedy. In his speech before those
assembled in the church sanctuary at the "Reclaiming
America for Christ" conference, Perkins blew the white
supremacist dog whistle known as the biblical story of Phineas.
(In this instance, Perkins used the Phineas story to make
the case against Muslims, urging the assembled Christians
to "take action" in the way of Phineas.)
"I am here advocating for Christian citizenship," Perkins
said.
Lest any of the assembled miss the point,
Perkins offered up the story of Phineas, grandson of
Moses' brother Aaron, from Numbers 25. Phineas was rewarded
by God with an "everlasting
priesthood" for killing an Israelite and his Midian
lover because God had forbidden the mixing of the men of
Israel with the women of that tribe.
"We read that Phineas
arose and he took action," Perkins
said.
"Not only is prayer required?," Perkins
continued. "I
warn you that if you begin to pray for our nation that, at
some point in time, you're gonna be prayin' and you're gonna
feel a tap on your shoulder and hear, 'Son, daughter, I've
heard your prayer; now I want you to do something about it.'"
Just in case his message should be misconstrued,
however, Perkins offered this caveat: "Now, let
me be clear, in case the media's here," he said, "I'm
not advocating you go home and get a pitchfork out of
your storage shed and run into your neighbor?s house." Phineas,
the Bible tells us, used a javelin.'
So maybe the FRC people, as their statement
suggests, did simply get sloppy and miss the fact that
a product to which they say they object for its "coarseness and bias" sat,
essentially, on the shelves of the conference store, for
a couple of days. Maybe the co-author of one of the religious
right's top honchos went unnoticed by FRC folks, mistaken
for just another yahoo hawking an amateur attempt at humor.
Maybe the leaders of the Values Voter Summit have a race
problem anyway.
Adele M. Stan is executive editor for The Media Consortium,
a network of progressive media organizations, including AlterNet.
Governor Sarah Palin: A Champion for Brutal Aerial Hunting
As Governor, Sarah Palin has championed aerial
hunting of wolves and bears. Please watch our new video,
learn more about Palin's record and help us spread the word
about her awful record...
Sarah Palin says aerial hunting of wolves and bears is need
to feed poor Alaskans.
If that's true then: Why are the major special
interest groups in Alaska pushing this program sport hunter
groups and not advocates for the poor? Why, in most of the
areas where aerial hunting is done, are most of the moose
and caribou taken by urban hunters and not true subsistence
hunters?
Why does she oppose what is called "rural preference"
which would give true rural subsistence hunters priority
access over sport hunters to the areas where aerial hunting
is conducted?
Under Alaska law, every citizen is a subsistence
user, even if they don't hunt and even if they do, but live
next to the local grocery store and don't rely on what they
kill to survive.
Can we say McCain, Liar Liar Pants on Fire!
I would like to remind everyone at this
time, before you read the article below, that John McCains
campaign manager said flatly that this election isn't
about the issues. So, what he means is that this election
isn't about America. Thats the point. Republicans just
want to win. They don't care about
the issues. They damn sure don't
care about you and me.
If all the politicians and pundits
are going to talk about fluff, if all they are going
to do is keep lying, and if all the media is going to
do is scratch their heads and go along, then I say the
lipstick fits and pigs are pigs no matter how you dress
them up!
Some American's are suffering from a vile
rot infecting their moral fiber. The
very people that claim "values" on a platform are the
very people that are most infected. Where are those
values they love so much to claim. The
ones like truth, honesty, fairness and civility?
Is American doomed to repeat another Bush-like
administration?
Altercation, by Eric Alterman
On Keith Olbermann's Countdown last
night, Barack Obama noted the media's lack of aggressiveness
when came to claims that John McCain's campaign has been
making, specifically at the Republican National Convention.
(He didn't specify, but let's just pick one at random: Obama
is a tax-raiser. Numerous outlets have
been allowing the McCain campaign to keep saying that without
challenge; in fact, Obama has proposed cutting taxes for
low- and middle-income families and raising them only on
households earning more than $250,000 per year. That's as
major point). Anyway, Obama used the phrase "working
the refs" -- that's the point we want to make here.
It's not exactly difficult to discern. We all can see it.
The McCain people surely know they're doing it. So why can't
these journalistic referees see it? Matt Yglesias catches an
interesting self-justification from political reporter Marc
Ambinder, who writes:
[T]he ad claims that Palin "stopped the Bridge to Nowhere," which
is technically true but functionally false. No blowback,
though: the electorate doesn't seem to penalize campaigns
for deliberately distorting the record of their candidate
and their opponent. It's probably an artifact of twenty
years' worth of campaign advertisements and has something
to do with the way consumers process news.
Yglesias makes the excellent point that Ambinder must not remember
the year 2000, when the electorate indeed did penalize a
campaign for what it perceived to be deliberate distortions. Exit
polls showed that among the 24 percent of voters who
said it was very important to have an "honest and trustworthy" president,
80 percent went for George W. Bush, due in part, we can assume,
to the barrage of media coverage that Gore was somehow prone
to stretching the truth, from Love Canal to the invention
of the Internet. Forget "the way consumers process news" --
of course the elite political media, of which Ambinder is
a member, has the ability to create narratives about, for
example, the veracity of a particular candidate. They have
just been worked by aggressive conservatives, in 2000, and
again now.
George Zornick
writes: You may have heard that Obama suffered
a "verbal slip" on Sunday, referring to "my Muslim faith" in
an interview with ABC's George Stephanopoulos on This
Week. Naturally Drudge featured it, linking to The
Washington Times, which seems to have been
the first to write a mainstream story. But then so did
Joel Thorton at The
Dallas Morning News, as did Fox
News, and the Chicago
Sun-Times, and UPI too.
Of course the "slip-up" was even more widely
disseminated by people on the Internet who are completely loonytunes.
The more responsible (relatively speaking) mainstream accounts
of this gaffe simply couched the story in terms of the fuel
it provided the Internet crazies, although of course Fox
News wondered "whether Obama's misstatement will continue
to fuel rumors of his faith, allegiances or patriotism."
Why all the coverage of what seems to be a simple misstatement
-- nobody actually thinks Obama just revealed he was Muslim,
and yes, there are outlandish people on the Internet. So
why take up valuable newshole with this? These questions
are made even better by the fact that Obama didn't even
make a verbal gaffe. He was incorrectly corrected by
Stephanopoulos, and then subsequently taken out of context
by these reports.
Obama was suggesting that Fox News and others "closely allied" with
Republicans were pushing the idea that he is a Muslim. Then
he said: "Let's not play games. What I was suggesting --
you're absolutely right that John McCain has not talked about
my Muslim faith. And you're absolutely right that that has
not come ..."
Stephanopoulos broke in and inexplicably "corrected" Obama,
interjecting: "your Christian faith." Obama momentarily agreed,
but then explained "well, what I'm saying is that he hasn't
suggested that I'm a Muslim." (The video is here,
and it makes this whole exchange even more clear).
So, in the course of an interview, Obama
strings together the three words "my Muslim faith," gets
a knee-jerk correction from the interviewer, has the
clip edited down and circulated all over the Internet,
and then has numerous mainstream outlets write about
it. How are we supposed to conduct democracy like this?
(Media Matters story, reprinted here because
this should be passed around infinitely for all, so the more
the merrier. Please
copy and send to all your friends.)
A few doofus republicans (I think they're
women, I'm not sure) have banded together to call
critics of Alaska Governor Sarah Louis Heath-Palin “sexists.” I
almost choked on my grits one evening upon hearing the
inflammatory accusation (yeah that's right I eat
grits, what about it?)...more
McCain picks
Palin - leaves dems and repubs scratching their head, wondering
why.
Republicans cry about Obama's
experience and then McCain picks Palin as a running mate. It
boggles the mind. Obama has been to Iraq,
Afghanistan, and Chad to visit refugees from Darfur. He's
met with foreign leaders. He has years of experience. Biden
has more foreign policy experience than almost anyone else
in the federal government.
Up to and including 2007, Governor Palin had no
official position on Iraq. That is how much John McCain thinks
of national security. Palin has not stated a formal
position on Iraq, immigration, Social Security or Medicare,
says spokeswoman Meghan Stapleton.
I only mention this because
McCain says Palin is in step with him, and will carry out
his agenda if he is unable to. Palin as his running
mate undermines everything his campaign has been trying to
say Obama lacks. Which of course is good for the democrats.
What an example for Bill Clinton's assertion that
the first Presidential decision is the choice of a running
mate, and that Obama "hit it out of the park." The
contrast of Obama's selection of Biden and McCain's selection
of Palin is enormous.
"Palin a first-term governor of a state
with more reindeer than people, will have to put
on a few pounds just to be a lightweight. Her personal
story is impressive: former fisherman, mother of
five. Life time member of the NRA. There is alledged
pressure from her and her office to have her ex-brother-in-law
(Trooper Wooten) fired from the State Troopers office. But
that hardly qualifies her to be a heartbeat away from
the presidency.
She is suing our federal government over
the indangered polar bear lawsuit because it hampers
Alaska's ability to hunt for oil. (think ANWR) Oh, her
husband works for an oil company.
For a man who is 72 years old and has
had four bouts with cancer to have chosen someone
so completely unqualified to become president is
shockingly irresponsible. Suddenly, McCain's age
and health become central issues in the campaign,
as does his judgment."
blogger:
"This is an important point. Rove, Rumsfeld,
and the entire Republican machine can continue their
existing policies, as Palin won't get in the way at
all. With Palin in, it will truly be Bush's third term.
Corporations will continue to reign supreme over White
House policy.
Republicans don't want a woman who will get in their way.
They want a nice quiet Miss Congenial cheerleader type.
Kay Hutchinson, being the fierce Texas fire
cracker that she is, would not fit the bill there. Linda
Lingle, also comes to mind, as a tough Republican who
can win in a very blue state like Hawaii (and she has
six times the executive experience of Palin, but I guess
experience doesn't matter now!)."
Senator McCaskill spoke at the Democratic Convention and asserted:
For eight years we have watched our government take care
of the powerful, the few and the extremely wealthy.
We have seen our dream put at risk by George Bush's
Washington. John McCain is running for four more years
of the same old politics and exact same failed policies
that we had under George Bush. They did tax cuts for
the wealthiest Americans, they're doing everything Big
Oil asks for, and look where we are.
Come on, America. Let's call on our common sense and stay
focused on what's important. We cannot choose that path
again. That's a risk the American people cannot afford
to take. I have seen Barack Obama in the Senate, and
I've been by his side on the campaign trail. I know
he will bring the change we need in Washington.
I saw him take on both parties to help pass the farthest-reaching
ethics reform since Watergate. That's the change we
need. I saw him run a campaign that hasn't taken a dime
from federal lobbyists and PACs. That's the change we
need. I know that this son of a single mom will stand
up for the dreams of our daughters. And I know that
John McCain won't.
There is only one candidate in this race who has fought
for equal pay for equal work by America's women. That
candidate is Barack Obama. There is only one candidate
offering real tax relief for the middle class, health
care that is affordable and accessible and protection
of Social Security today, tomorrow and forever. That
candidate is Barack Obama.
It all depends on how clearly you see America -- how clearly
you see the best of America. John McCain has been in
Washington for almost 30 years. Maybe that's why he
has a campaign run by Washington lobbyists and thinks
the fundamentals of the economy are strong. In Missouri
we have a ringside seat to the real America, and I can
assure you it looks much different.
Watch Obama's latest Television ad, here
Anthrax Attack: Revelations of 2001
Source: The New York Times [edited]
<http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/10/opinion/10andrews.html?ref=opinion>
8-12-08 On Wednesday [6 Aug 2008],
the United States Justice Department revealed its evidence
that Dr. Bruce E. Ivins, on his own, committed the worst
act of bioterrorism in the country's history. This 18-year
veteran scientist of the United States Army Medical
Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick
in Frederick, Md., is accused of killing 5 people and
sickening 17 others in the fall of 2001. Dr. Ivins died
on 29 Jul 2008 of an apparent suicide without a chance
to give his side of the story.
After reading the affidavits and listening to
the Justice Department briefing, I was both disheartened
and perplexed by the lack of physical evidence supporting
a conviction...read more of this revealing story
It's Never Too Late to Impeach Bush
"A moment I've been dreading. George
(Bush Sr.) brought his ne're-do-well son around this
morning and asked me to find the kid a job. Not the
political one who lives in Florida: the one who hangs
around here all the time looking shiftless. This so-called
kid is already almost 40 and has never had a real job.
Maybe I'll call Kinsley over at The New Republic and
see if they'll hire him as a contributing editor or
something. That looks like easy work." -- Ronald Reagan in his recently published diaries
, written May 17, 1986
8-12-08 It's good to know there are still
at least some politicians who are trying to oust the president.
Dennis Kucinich gave notice on 6/9/08 that he intended to
introduce 35 Articles of Impeachment to the House of Representatives
(Congress). The next day he was joined by Robert Wexler.
Reports say the House chamber was almost empty when he introduced
this resolution. In order to get an impeachment of the President,
the House must agree to pass a resolution that Bush is a
traitor or guilty of other high crimes...more
Former
aide to Dick Cheney I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby (L)
and former World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz.
Both men were instrumental in the creation of the "Wolfowitz
Doctrine," which advocates preemptive war and oil
security at all costs - a philosophy that lives
on in McCain's mindset, according to Elliot D.
Cohen. (Photo: Reuters)
John McCain has long been
a major player in a radical militaristic group
driven by an ideology of global expansionism and
dominance attained through perpetual, pre-emptive,
unilateral, multiple wars. The credo of this group
is "the end justifies the means," and the end of
establishing the United States as the world's sole
superpower justifies, in its estimation, anything
from military control over the information on the
Internet to the use of genocidal biological weapons.
Over its two terms, the George W. Bush administration
has planted the seeds for this geopolitical master
plan, and now appears to be counting on the McCain
administration, if one comes to power, to nurture
it.
The
Road Map to War
The blueprint for this "new
order" was drafted in February 1992, at the end
of the George H.W. Bush administration when Defense
Department staffers Paul Wolfowitz, I. Lewis Libby
and Zalmay Khalilzad, acting under then-Secretary
of Defense Dick Cheney, drafted the Defense Planning
Guidance (DPG). This document, also known as the "Wolfowitz
Doctrine," was an unofficial, internal document
that advocated massive increases in defense spending
for purposes of strategic proliferation and buildup
of the military in order to establish the pre-eminence
of the United States as the world's sole superpower.
Advocating pre-emptive attacks with nuclear, chemical
or biological weapons, it proclaimed that "the
U.S. must show the leadership necessary to establish
and protect a new order that holds the promise
of convincing potential competitors that they need
not aspire to a greater role or pursue a more aggressive
posture to protect their legitimate interests." The
document was also quite clear about what should
be the United States' main objective in the Middle
East, especially with regard to Iraq and Iran,
which was to "remain the predominant outside power
in the region and preserve U.S. and Western access
to the region's oil." The Wolfowitz Doctrine was
leaked to The New York Times and The Washington
Post, which published excerpts from it. Amid a
public outcry, President George H.W. Bush retracted
the document, and it was substantially revised.
The original mission of
the Wolfowitz Doctrine was not lost, however. In
1997, William Kristol and Robert Kagan founded
The Project for the New American Century (PNAC),
a nongovernment political action organization that
sought to develop and advocate for the militant,
geopolitical tenets contained in the Wolfowitz
Doctrine. PNAC's original members included Wolfowitz,
Cheney, Khalilzad, Libby, John Bolton, Elliott
Abrams, Donald Rumsfeld, William J. Bennett, and
other soon-to-be high officers in the Bush administration.
McCain's
Ties to PNAC
John McCain's connection
to PNAC can be traced back to before its formation
in 1997. In fact, he was president of the New Citizenship
Project, founded by Kristol in 1994. This organization
was parent to PNAC, and served as its chief fundraising
organ.
McCain also worked cooperatively
with PNAC and Wolfowitz in attempting to overthrow
the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq. In 1998, he
co-sponsored the Iraq Liberation Act-drafted by
PNAC-which decreed "regime change" in Iraq to be
U.S. policy, and which appropriated $97 million
in U.S. military aid to the Iraqi National Congress
(INC). The INC was a group of anti-Hussein Iraqi
militants whose purpose was to instigate a national
uprising against Hussein. It was led by Ahmed Chalabi,
the Iraqi informant whose subsequent faulty intelligence-claims
that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction and
ties to al-Qaida-was used to sell the Iraq war
to the American public. In 2004, in response to
accusations that he deliberately misled U.S. intelligence
agencies, Chalabi glibly stated, "We are heroes
in error."
McCain also was co-chair
(with Sen. Joseph Lieberman) of The Committee for
the Liberation of Iraq (CLI). Established by PNAC
in late 2002, this committee continued to finance
Chalabi's INC with millions of taxpayer dollars,
until shortly after the U.S. invasion of Iraq in
2003, when it was discontinued. In 2004, McCain
became a signatory of PNAC, ironically signing
on to a PNAC letter condemning Russian President
Vladimir Putin's foreign policy for its return
to the "rhetoric of militarism and empire."
McCain has accordingly been
a foot soldier for PNAC from its inception, and,
although this organization is no longer in existence,
its ideology and its signatories (many of whom
now serve as advisers to the McCain presidential
campaign) are still very much active.
The
Master Plan
In September 2000, prior
to the presidential election that year, PNAC carefully
formulated its chief tenets in a document called
Rebuilding America's Defenses (RAD). This document,
which was intended to guide the incoming administration,
had a substantial influence on the policies set
by the Bush administration and is likely to do
the same for a McCain administration if McCain
becomes president. Here are some of the recommendations
of the RAD report:
Fighting
and Winning Multiple, Simultaneous Major Wars
Among its core missions
was the rebuilding of America's defenses sufficient
to "fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous
major theater wars." And it explicitly advocated
sending troops into Iraq regardless of whether
Saddam Hussein was in power. According to RAD, "While
the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the
immediate justification, the need for a substantial
American force presence in the Gulf transcends
the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein."
The RAD report also admonished, "Iran
may well prove as large a threat to U.S. interests
in the Gulf as Iraq has. And even should U.S.-Iranian
relations improve, retaining forward-based forces
in the region would still be an essential element
in U.S. security strategy given the longstanding
American interests in the region." Therefore, it
had both Iraq and Iran in its sight as zones of
multiple, simultaneous major wars for purposes
of advancing "longstanding American interests in
the region"-in particular, its oil.
McCain's recent chanting
of "bomb, bomb, bomb; bomb, bomb Iran" to the
beat of an old Beach Boys tune, his suggestion
that the war with Iraq might last 100 years and
his recent statement that the war in Afghanistan
might also last 100 years-all of these pronouncements
are clearly in concert with the PNAC mission to "fight
and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major
theater wars."
RAD also stressed the need
to have additional forces equipped to handle ongoing "constabulary" duties
such as enforcement of no-fly zones and other operations
that fell short of full theater wars. It claimed
that unless the military was so equipped, its ability
to fight and win multiple, simultaneous wars would
be impaired. Along these same lines, McCain has
recently stated, "It's time to end the disingenuous
practice of stating that we have a two-war strategy
when we are paying for only a one-war military.
Either we must change our strategy-and accept the
risks-or we must properly fund and structure our
military."
Designing
and Deploying Global Missile Defense Systems
RAD also emphasized, as
an additional core value, the need to "transform
U.S. forces to exploit the 'revolution in military
affairs.' " This included the design and deployment
of a global ballistic missile defense system consisting
of land-, sea-, air- and space-based components
said to be capable of shielding the U.S. and its
allies from "limited strikes" in the future
by "rogue" nations such as Iraq, North Korea and
Iran.
Along these lines, McCain
has maintained that a ballistic missile defense
system was "indispensable"-even if this meant reneging
on the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty of 1972 at
the expense of angering the Russians. Unfortunately,
while RAD acknowledged the "limited" efficacy of
such a weapons system (presumably because it cannot
realistically provide a bulletproof shield, especially
against large-scale missile attacks), neither it
nor McCain addressed the problem that deployment
of such a system could be destabilizing: It could
encourage escalation, instead of de-escalation,
of ballistic missile arsenals by nations that fear
becoming sitting ducks, and might even provoke
a pre-emptive strike. Further, there is still the
question of whether the creation of such costly,
national defense shields is even technologically
feasible.
The Use
of Genocidal Biological Warfare for Political
Expediency
Not only did RAD advocate
the design and deployment of defensive weaponry,
it also stressed the updating of conventional offensive
weapons including cruise missiles along with stealthy
strike aircraft and longer-range Air Force strike
aircraft. But it went further in its offensive
posture by envisioning and supporting the use of
genotype-specific biological warfare. According
to RAD, "… advanced forms of biological warfare
that can 'target' specific genotypes may transform
biological warfare from the realm of terror to
a politically useful tool." In this chilling statement,
a double standard is evident. In the hands of al-Qaida,
such genocidal weapons would belong to "the realm
of terror," but in those of the U.S., they would
be "politically useful tools."
Rejection
of the United Nations
PNAC's double standard is
also inherent in its rejection of the idea of a
cooperative, neutral effort among the nations of
the world to address world problems, including
the problem of Iraq. "Nor can the United States
assume a UN-like stance of neutrality," states
the RAD report. "The preponderance of American
power is so great and its global interests so wide
that it cannot pretend to be indifferent to the
political outcome in the Balkans, the Persian Gulf
or even when it deploys forces in Africa. Finally,
these missions demand forces basically configured
for combat." Accordingly, a McCain administration
founded on a PNAC platform of self-interested exercise
of force would oppose giving the United Nations
any central role in setting and implementing foreign
affairs policy.
Control
of Space and Cyberspace
PNAC's quest for global
domination transcends any literal meaning of the
geopolitical, and extends also to the control,
rather than the sharing, of outer space. It also
has serious implications for cyber freedom. Thus
the RAD report states, "Much as control of the
high seas-and the protection of international commerce-defined
global powers in the past, so will control of the
new 'international commons' be a key to world power
in the future. An America incapable of protecting
its interests or that of its allies in space or
the 'infosphere' will find it difficult to exert
global political leadership. ... Access to and
use of cyberspace and the Internet are emerging
elements in global commerce, politics and power.
Any nation wishing to assert itself globally must
take account of this other new 'global commons.' "
There is a difference between
protecting the Internet from a cyber attack and
controlling it. The former is defensive while the
latter is offensive. But RAD also advocated going
on the offensive. It stated that "an offensive
capability could offer America's military and political
leaders an invaluable tool in disabling an adversary
in a decisive manner."
However, state control of
cyberspace for political purposes can have serious
implications for the Fourth Amendment right to
privacy. The Bush administration has already engaged
in mass illegal spying on the phone and e-mail
messages of millions of Americans through its National
Security Agency (NSA) surveillance program. As
a result of copying these messages and depositing
them into an NSA computer database, it began to
assemble a massive "Total Information Awareness" computer
network. The FBI has also begun to develop and
integrate such personal data with a biometric database
that includes digital iris prints and facial images.
Combine this with other computerized databases
including credit card information, banking records
and health files, and the result is an incredible
ability to exercise power and control over anyone
deemed by a political leader to be an "adversary"-including
journalists, political opponents and others who
might not see eye to eye with the administration.
In concert with the PNAC
mission of control over cyberspace, McCain has
supported making warrantless spying on American
citizens legal. When asked if he believed that
Bush's warrantless surveillance program was legal,
McCain responded, "You know, I don't think
so, but why not come to Congress? We can sort this
out. ... I think they will get that authority,
whatever is reasonable and needed, and increased
abilities to monitor communications are clearly
in order."
Consistent with his conviction
that such extended powers should be granted to
the president, McCain has also recently voted for
Senate Bill S.2248, which vacates substantial civil
liberties protections included in the 1978 Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). In contrast
to the 1978 FISA, S.2248 would allow the president,
acting through the attorney general, to spy on
the phone and e-mail communications of Americans
without individual court warrants or the need to
judicially show probable cause.
Despite the fact that McCain
has said that Bush's NSA spying program was not
legal, he has also supported granting retroactive
legal immunity to the telecommunication companies
(such as AT&T and Verizon) that helped Bush
illegally spy on millions of Americans. This means
that he has openly admitted that the Bush administration
acted unlawfully in eavesdropping on Americans'
phone and e-mail messages, while at the same time
opted for taking away their legal right to redress
this violation. And this unequivocally means that
McCain is prepared to allow executive authority
to trump the rule of law.
Meet
the McCain Team
Given John McCain's firm
allegiance to the core missions of PNAC, it should
come as no surprise that many of the old PNAC guard
have shown up as foreign policy advisers in McCain's
current presidential campaign, and are likely re-emerge
as high officials in his administration if he becomes
president. Here are snapshots of some of these
potential members of a McCain Cabinet, giving their
PNAC profiles, their advisory capacities in the
McCain 2008 presidential campaign, and their politics.
William
Kristol
Editor and founder of Washington-based political
magazine, Weekly Standard.
PNAC co-founder.
Foreign policy adviser.
Has consistently been wrong in his foreign policy
analyses regarding Iraq. For example, on March
5, 2003, he stated, "I think we'll be vindicated
when we discover the weapons of mass destruction
and when we liberate the people of Iraq."
Robert
Kagan
Served in State Department in Reagan administration
on Policy Planning Staff.
PNAC co-founder.
Foreign policy adviser.
Has defended global expansionism by claiming it
is an American tradition: "Americans' belief in
the possibility of global transformation-the 'messianic'
impulse-is and always has been the more dominant
strain in the nation's character."
Randy
Scheunemann
Former adviser to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
Co-director and executive director of Committee
for Liberation of Iraq.
Defense and foreign policy coordinator.
With regard to recent National Intelligence Estimate
finding that Iran discontinued its nuclear weapons
program in 2003, stated "a careful reading of the
NIE indicates that it is misleading." And he claimed
that the NIE harmed our efforts to achieve a "greater
diplomatic consensus" to crack down on Iran.
James
Woolsey
Director of CIA, Clinton administration, 1993-1995.
(Reported to have met only twice with Clinton during
time as CIA chief.)
PNAC signatory.
Energy and national security adviser.
Speaking to a group of college students in 2003
about Iraq, he stated that "… the United States
is engaged in World War IV." Described the Cold
War as the third world war. Then said, "This fourth
world war, I think, will last considerably longer
than either World Wars I or II did for us. Hopefully
not the full four-plus decades of the Cold War."
John
R. Bolton
Former U.S. ambassador to U.N. (Nomination to U.N.
rejected by Senate, but George
W. Bush put him in place on a recess appointment.
Name floated for possible secretary of state for
McCain.
PNAC director.
Ardent supporter of McCain for president in 2009.
Publicly derided the United Nations: In 1994, he
stated "there is no United Nations. There is an
international community that occasionally can be
led by the only real power left in the world, and
that's the United States, when it suits our interest,
and when we can get others to go along." Advocates
attacking Iran.
Robert
B. Zollick
President, World Bank.
PNAC signatory.
Announced in 2006 he would be joining McCain presidential
campaign for domestic and foreign policy but instead
replaced Wolfowitz as president of World Bank in
2007.
Has touted virtues of corporate globalization under
the rubric of "comprehensive free trade." But as
Kevin Watkins, head researcher for Oxfan, stated,
he pays no heed to the effects of the "blind pursuit
of US economic and corporate special interests" on
the world's poor.
Gary
Schmitt
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy
Research (home to other PNAC members including
Wolfowitz and Pearle.)
PNAC director.
Foreign policy adviser.
Defended warrantless eavesdropping on Americans
by claiming that Constitution "created a unitary
chief executive. That chief executive could, in
times of war or emergency, act with the decisiveness,
dispatch and, yes, secrecy, needed to protect the
country and its citizens."
Richard
L. Armitage
Former deputy secretary of state in George W. Bush
administration.
PNAC signatory.
Foreign policy adviser.
By his own admission, was responsible for leaking
CIA agent Valerie Plame's CIA identity to the press.
Allegedly involved in Iran-Contra affair during
Reagan administration.
Max
Boot
Council on Foreign Relations.
PNAC signatory.
Foreign policy adviser.
Stating that U.S. should "unambiguously ... embrace
its imperial role," has advocated attacking
other Middle East countries in addition to Iraq
and Iran, including Syria. Said McCain's "bellicose
aura" could "scare the snot out of our enemies," who "would
be more afraid to mess with him" than with other
then-potential presidential candidates.
Henry
A. Kissinger
President Nixon's secretary of state.
Embraces expansionist power politics.
Consultant.
Played major role in secret bombings of Cambodia
during Nixon administration as well as having had
alleged involvement in covert assassination plots
and human rights violations in Latin America.
What's
in Store for Us if McCain Becomes President
That McCain has surrounded
himself with such like-minded advisers who support
the narrow PNAC agenda speaks to his unwillingness
to hear and consider alternative perspectives.
In fact, six out of 10 civilian foreign advisers
to McCain are PNAC veterans. Even the newly appointed
deputy communications director of the McCain campaign,
Michael Goldfard, has been a research associate
for PNAC. A die-hard adherent of the "unitary authority" of
the chief executive, he recently stated that the
framers of the United States Constitution advocated
an "executive with near dictatorial power in pursuing
foreign policy and war."
Add to this list other
major PNAC figures such as Paul Wolfowitz, Richard
Pearle, Zalmay Khalilzad, and Dick Cheney who would
probably play a significant role in a McCain administration
and it is clear in what direction this nation would
be moving.
A McCain administration
would be likely to:
Invest incredible
amounts of money in sustaining multiple, simultaneous
wars overseas at the expense of neglecting pressing
concerns at home, including the economy, health
care, the environment and education. Stockpile
nuclear weapons, while seeking to prohibit its
adversaries from having them. Attempt to shield
the U.S. with a multilayered missile defense system
based on land, at sea, in the air and in space,
while demanding that nations that are not its allies
become sitting ducks. Strive to develop more potent
chemical and biological weapons-not to mention
the genotype-specific variety, while at the same
time claiming to be fighting a "war on terror." Legalize "Total
Information Awareness"-going through all Americans'
phone calls, e-mail messages and other personal
records without needing probable cause. Take control
of the Internet, globally using it as an offensive
political weapon-while claiming to be spreading
democracy throughout the world. Dispense with checks
and balances in favor of the "unitary executive
authority" of the president. Alienate nations that
refuse to join our war coalitions. Deny that there
is (or can be) a United Nations.
A McCain administration
would rule by fear, perceive right in terms of
military might and subscribe to the idea of "do
as I say and not as I do." As a consequence,
instead of rebuilding the image of America as a
model of justice and civility, it would further
sully respect for this nation throughout the world.
Elliot
D. Cohen, Ph.D., is a political analyst and
media critic. His most recent book is "The
Last Days of Democracy: How Big Media and
Power-Hungry Government Are Turning America
Into a Dictatorship." He was first-prize winner
of the 2007 Project Censored Award.
What Brain Science Tells Us About Religious
Belief
Pew Forum Faith Angle Conference,
Key West, Florida
June 4, 2008
What does brain science add to age-old debates about the
existence of God and the value of religion? Can political
parties and religious groups use scientific insights to influence
the beliefs of others? Are scientists as a group becoming
more open to ideas of religion and spirituality? Recent advances
in neuroscience and brain-imaging technology have offered
researchers a look into the physiology of religious experiences.
In observing Buddhist monks as they meditate, Franciscan
nuns as they pray and Pentecostals as they speak in tongues,
Dr. Andrew Newberg, a radiologist at the University of Pennsylvania,
has found that measurable brain activity matches up with
the religious experiences described by worshippers. The social,
political and religious implications of these and other findings
are just beginning to permeate the broader culture, according
to New York Times columnist David Brooks, who has been tracking
new developments in the field.
Speakers:
David Brooks, Columnist, The New York Times
Andrew Newberg, Assistant Professor, Department of Radiology,
University of Pennsylvania
Moderator:
Michael Cromartie, Vice President, Ethics and Public Policy
Center; Senior Advisor, Pew Forum on Religion & Public
Life
In the following excerpted transcript, ellipses
have been omitted to improve readability.
Andrew Newberg, Michael Cromartie and David Brooks
Andrew Newberg: How does the
brain tell us when we are free? What goes on within us that
the brain says to us "Yes, you're okay, you can do whatever
you want to do," or "No, this is not okay?" How does our
brain actually change or transform? This is a critical issue
if we're going to change the views of a voter, if we're going
to change a person's religion. If one of these things happens
to a person, something's got to be changing in the brain
as well. How do we understand what the brain can do?
I wrote, with my colleague, a paper on forgiveness
and revenge several years ago, about what would be the neuropsychological
correlates of that. It becomes very interesting: how we think
about ourselves, how we have a construction of ourselves,
and how that self relates to other individuals, and how we
reconcile when somebody has injured or harmed us. This is
part of how I can tie in some of the topics I'll be covering
with some of the topics that have been more broadly discussed
here at Key West.
Liberal and conservative brains
There have been some studies that have looked
at political perspectives, trying to understand what happens
in the brain of people who are Republicans and the brains
of people who are Democrats. We talked about some of this,
and I'd just highlight a couple of interesting studies. One
was an fMRI study, which is a magnetic resonance imaging
that looks at blood flow and activity in the brain, and it
showed that people who scored higher on liberalism tended
to be associated with stronger what they called conflict-related
anterior cingulate activity. Now, what that means is, you
have a part of your brain called the anterior cingulate,
which helps you mediate when things are in conflict with
the way you already believe.
The researchers then interpreted this, and we
can go into all the questions about how should we interpret
these studies. People who had greater liberalism seemed to
do better or were more sensitive to altering some habitual
response pattern, implying that they were more open to change,
more open to other ideas, more open to conflict, than people
who scored lower on liberalism. Does that mean something
about people who consider themselves to be liberals versus
conservatives, Republicans versus Democrats?
Of course all people, regardless of what their
particular perspectives are, when they're viewing their own
candidate, that has a different effect in their brain than
when they are viewing a candidate from the opposite party.
When you're looking at somebody from the opposite party,
or thinking about them, it tends to activate the amygdala,
the limbic areas, again, that tend to trigger more of an
emotional response, whereas when you're looking at people
who are concordant with your views and beliefs, that tends
to activate some of the areas of the frontal lobe and also
that anterior cingulate that helps you mediate your conflict-resolution
powers.
To me, one of the most interesting aspects of
this whole area is more philosophical, more theological,
and thinking about what does this mean in terms of how we
believe in religion, and the religious beliefs that people
hold. Does this tell us something about those beliefs and
experiences? When somebody has the experience of being in
God's presence, and we can get a brain scan of that, what
does that mean, what does that say, and how can we interpret
that either for religion, against religion, or in some other
alternative perspective of simply just trying to understand
it better?
Now, beliefs themselves have a tremendous power
over us, and I look at this all the time in the context of
the placebo effect. Unfortunately, I think the healthcare
system severely overlooks how beliefs have power over what
happens to somebody. I'm sure probably all of you know somebody
who's dealt with a severe medical problem, maybe cancer or
heart disease. We have always noted, at least anecdotally,
that when people have that spirit and drive to get better,
they seem to have a much higher likelihood of doing that,
whereas those who are ready to give up tend not to do that
well. That also goes to the importance of how beliefs affect
our whole body, not just the brain itself.
Of course, we can also look at religious and spiritual
beliefs, which is what I will try to focus my talk on throughout
the day here. I always try to come at this from a philosophical
perspective. Why do we believe anything at all? It is an
infinite universe for all intents and purposes. We are able
to be subjected to only a very, very small amount of that
information [and] an even smaller amount of that information
is ultimately put into your consciousness. If you talk to
somebody for 45 minutes, they are going to remember maybe
three or four things. So our brain is trying to put together
a construction of our reality, a perspective on that reality,
which we rely on heavily for our survival, for figuring out
how to behave and how to act and how to vote.
So what are beliefs? Again, I apologize, but I
always come at this from a scientific perspective. I am defining
beliefs biologically and psychologically as any perception,
cognition, emotion, or memory that a person consciously or
unconsciously assumes to be true. The reasons I define beliefs
in this way are several-fold. One is that we can begin to
look at the various components that make up our beliefs.
We can talk about our perceptions. We can talk about our
cognitive processes. We can talk about how our emotions affect
our beliefs. And we can also look at how they ultimately
affect us. Are we aware of the beliefs we hold? Or are they
unconscious? And which ones are unconscious and which ones
are conscious?
Several interesting studies have shown that when
you show faces of a person of a different race to people,
it activates the amygdala, the area that lights up when something
of motivational importance happens to us. But if you show
pictures of people of a different race that are people they
know, and maybe it is a famous person or a friend, then the
amygdala doesn't light up. So they tend to have this ability
to culturally, cognitively overcome what might be their initial
response.
We can look at all these different forces on our
beliefs. We can look at our perceptual processes, our cognitive
processes, the emotions we have, the social interactions
we have, to see how beliefs are so heavily influenced. One
of the take-home points I always hope to get across is that
as much as we hold onto our own beliefs very strongly --
and I think it is appropriate for us to do so -- we also
have to keep in mind they are far more tenuous than we often
like to believe.
Let me go through some of these processes in a
bit more detail. Let's talk about our perceptions. The brain
is out there trying to take in a huge amount of information
and make some coherent picture of the world for us. But,
unfortunately, the brain makes lots of mistakes along the
way. The most important problem with that is it doesn't bother
to tell us when it does make a mistake.
If we are listening to a speech, if we are thinking
about an idea, if a friend is telling us something, how well
are we really doing at gathering that information out there?
How easy is it for us to be manipulated in terms of the beliefs
we hold?
Now we move over to the cognitive functions of
the brain. We talk about the parietal lobe, which is very
involved in abstract reasoning and quantization. Parts of
the parietal lobe are involved in helping us orient our self
in the world and establishing a relationship between our
self and the rest of the world. The temporal lobe, which
is along the side of the brain; the cortex areas help us
to understand language; and the inner parts of the temporal
lobe are where our limbic system is -- I'll talk about that
in just a second -- that helps us with understanding our
emotional responses to whatever stimuli are out there in
the world.
The frontal lobe helps us with our behaviors and
executive functions, the functions of deciding what we need
to do: what we're going to do tomorrow, keeping our schedule,
keeping our checkbook, and so forth, while also mediating
our emotional responses. There is a push-pull between our
frontal lobe and limbic system that can get out of whack
sometimes. If we get overly emotional, our frontal lobes
shut down, and if we become over-logical, our emotional areas
shut down. There is a lot of push and pull that goes on in
these different parts of the brain.
Emotions are also important for placing value
on beliefs. So it's not just that we feel we should do something
for the environment, it's not just that we feel we should
be a Republican or a Democrat, but we start to imbue those
choices with emotions. We feel strongly about the ways in
which we believe, and of course this can help us form beliefs.
The downside of our emotions can be in how they help us defend
our beliefs. There has been a lot of research looking at
when people start to feel combative and antagonistic toward
people who disagree with them. This can be how we start to
see religious conflicts occur throughout the world: It is
not just that people disagree with each other, but that they
get emotional about it. They start to feel hatred.
The emotional areas of the brain are in part of
the brain called the limbic system, which is embedded in
the more interior parts of the brain. Here is that amygdala,
which tends to light up whenever something of motivational
importance happens to us. The hippocampus, which is right
behind that, helps to regulate our beliefs, but also helps
to regulate our emotions and write into our memories the
ideas that come about from emotionally salient events. That
is why we all remember exactly what was happening to us on
September 11, 2001.
As we were talking earlier today, the social milieu
we are in becomes very important in influencing our beliefs.
We are continuously influenced by those around us. This goes
all the way back to when we are a child and the influence
of our parents helps us form our initial beliefs, which write
into our brain at a very early age the beliefs we carry with
us throughout our lives. That is why it is difficult to change
your religious beliefs. It is difficult to even change your
political beliefs as time goes on. If you look at the large
population, very few people ultimately do change their beliefs
in any very dramatic way because those are written very deeply
into our brain at very early ages. But ultimately, as we
do grow up, we can be influenced, and we can change those
beliefs, and that is part of what we have to look at: exactly
how and why this happens.
The physiology of beliefs
So how do these beliefs form physiologically,
and what does this tell us about religious and spiritual
ideas, and why religion and spirituality are so ingrained
in so many individuals and have been in every culture and
every time? There are a couple of statements I like to use.
One is that neurons that fire together, wire together. There
is physiological support for that, that the more you use
a particular pathway of neurons, the more strongly they become
connected to each other. We prune back a lot of the neural
connections we have as a child, so we ultimately go forward
in our lives with a set of parameters through which we look
at the world.
The other idea about neurons is the old use-it-or-lose-it
concept, that when you stop thinking about certain things,
when you stop focusing on something, then those connections
go away. We all probably took courses in college we remembered
a lot of at the time, but if we are not doing it anymore,
then we don't remember it anymore.
How do we begin to invoke that? The practices
and rituals that exist within both religious and non-religious
groups become a strong and powerful way to write these ideas
into our brain. The more you focus on a particular idea,
whether it is political or religious or athletic, the more
that gets written down into your brain and the more that
becomes your reality. So that is why when you go to a church
or a synagogue or a mosque, and they repeat the same stories,
and you celebrate the same holidays that reinforce that,
you do the prayers, and you say these things over and over
again, those are the neural connections that get stimulated
and strengthened. That is a strong part of why religion and
spirituality make use of various practices valuable for writing
those beliefs strongly into who you are.
Brains in meditation, prayer and worship
We have looked at a number of different religious
and spiritual practices over the last decade or so. [These]
SPECT (Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography) look at
blood flow in the brain. We capture a picture of a person's
brain when they are at rest or when they are in some kind
of comparison state, and then when they are engaged in the
practice, a practice like meditation, for example.
This is actually a slice through the brain. You
are slicing through the brain, popping the top of the head
off, and looking at what areas of the brain are the most
active. The red areas are more active than what you see in
the yellow, and then ultimately in the purple and the black
areas. In this part of the brain called the frontal lobes,
which I have labeled as an "attention area," because it helps
focus our attention, we see a lot more of this red activity
while the person is actively engaged in meditation than when
the person is in the baseline state.
In the normal waking state, which was the baseline
state, there is still a fair amount of activity in the frontal
lobes because you have to be ready to attend to whatever
is going on around you. But it is activated that much more
when the person does this particular practice. I mentioned
earlier the parietal lobe, which often functions as the orienting
part of the brain. We have argued in some of our hypotheses
that when people engage in these practices in a very deep
way, they do two things. First, you are focusing on something,
usually it is a sacred object or an image or something like
that, but, second, you also screen out irrelevant information.
As you do this, more and more information that normally goes
to the orienting parts of your brain doesn't go there. So
it keeps trying to give you a sense of yourself, an orientation
of that self in the world, but it no longer has the information
upon which to do that.
And if you look at the orientation area, it goes
dramatically down in its activity during the meditation practice.
It is mostly yellow and just a little bit of red, compared
to what you see in the normal waking state. So this area
of the brain becomes much less active. We think this is part
of what is associated with somebody losing that sense of
self. They feel at one with God, at one with their spiritual
mantra, whatever it is they are looking at. This was a group
of Tibetan Buddhist meditators.
We also looked Franciscan nuns in prayer. We saw
some interesting similarities and differences. The nuns were
doing a prayer called centering prayer, which is kind of
meditation. They were focusing on a particular phrase or
prayer. It is much more verbally based, I guess, than the
meditation of the Tibetans. Again, one of the similarities
we saw was a fair amount of increase in this red activity
in the frontal lobes. So they activated their frontal lobes
as they were
focusing on this particular prayer or phrase from the Bible.
They also activated the IPL or parietal lobe area.
There is a much bigger glob of red in the prayer scan than
what you see in the baseline scan. This is part of that verbal
conceptual area in the temporal lobes, in the parietal lobes,
that helps us think about abstract ideas and language. We
didn't see this in the Buddhist meditators, who had a more
visual practice. But we did see a similarity of decreases
of activity in this orienting part of the brain; again, it's
all more yellow with just a little bit of red, compared to
what we saw in the original baseline state.
One of the more recent studies we did, which was
very interesting, was a study of Pentecostals speaking in
tongues. This was a much more exciting study for me because
when you're looking at people who are meditating or in deep
prayer, they're just sitting there and all the exciting stuff
is going on inside, whereas when people are speaking in tongues
all the exciting part is on the outside.
We had to come up with a different baseline because
obviously if I showed you a person's scan while he or she
was simply resting quietly, versus up and about and dancing
and singing in tongues, of course you would see all kinds
of changes in the brain. So the comparison state here was
doing gospel-singing worship. They were up and about, dancing
around, singing in English, compared to up and about, dancing
around, singing but singing in tongues. One of the most interesting
findings we saw in this particular study --these are four
slices of the brain while they were singing, so these are
just different levels through the brain.
The next slide is going to be the same person,
now speaking in tongues. If you look in the frontal lobe
area, where the arrows are pointing, as I toggle back and
forth, you can see there's a lot less activity in the frontal
lobes when the person is speaking in tongues. So when they
started to speak in tongues, and we see this in all the people
we studied, their frontal lobe activity goes down.
This actually makes a lot of sense because in
contrast to the meditators and nuns, who are focusing on
doing something, the way the Pentecostals describe speaking
in tongues is they are not focusing on doing it; they let
it happen. They just let their own will go away and allow
this whole thing to take place. They don't feel like they're
in control of this process. And the findings on the scan
at least support the phenomenological experience they have.
I'm sure we'll get into a lot of interesting philosophical
discussions on, "What is the reality here?" Obviously, for
the Pentecostals speaking in tongues, they say this is God
or the Holy Spirit who is speaking through them. What one
might argue in that context is, "Your brain shuts down so
you can allow the Holy Spirit to speak through you; this
is how it works." On the other hand, if you don't believe
speaking in tongues is really a spiritual event, then you
might say, "Perhaps there's some other part of the brain
that is taking over, that is causing this thing to happen.
It's not the normal parts of the brain doing it, but it's
some other part of the brain."
At this point we don't have that answer and this
is, again, the big epistemological question about how we
understand what reality is, how we begin to think about our
beliefs about reality and what we can say, ultimately, about
what these scans mean in the context of what's really going
on. But I think there's still some very valuable information
in at least understanding what's going on inside the person
who is having this particular experience.
So if we're talking about religion as affecting
our brain and our beliefs, we have to acknowledge that it
must have some pretty profound effect on our brain if it
is going to be something that has such a profound effect
on us as people.
I have argued in the past that the brain's role
in our overall life is to help us make some sense out of
the world, and in so doing, to help maintain us. That's how
it helps us to survive. We have to know not to cross the
street when there's a red light, and what's okay to eat,
and what's not okay to eat. It helps to make sure we do all
the right things in the world.
It also helps us transcend ourselves, and by that
I don't necessarily mean a religious transcendence, although
that may be the ultimate expression of this, but we always
grow and develop over time. There is this continual struggle,
if you will, between wanting to maintain the status quo within
ourselves and also knowing that we need to adapt and change
as we go through our life, and our brain is capable of doing
both. It holds onto beliefs very strongly to helps us figure
out what we need to do in our world, but it can also change
over time. All of us are still the same person we were when
we were three years old, but we've learned a lot, and we've
changed a lot over time. As we've gone through our lives,
our brain has changed with us to adapt and help us survive.
Let me pause for a second and ask what we talk
about when we're talking about people who are not religious.
There is some evidence to suggest there are differences.
Some of you may have read a book called The God Gene.
It was an interesting study that showed there was a significant,
although relatively mild, correlation between a gene that
coded for what's called the VMAT-2 receptor, which has to
do with serotonin and dopamine, two very important neurotransmitters
in the brain, and feelings of self-transcendence. The fact
that there's a correlation between the neurotransmitters
and some feeling that's related to spirituality is interesting.
Maybe there is something physiologically to this.
In our studies, we found -- going back to the
thalamus that we talked about earlier -- that people who
were long-term practitioners and meditators tended to have
a lot more asymmetry: One side of their thalamus was much
more active than the other, compared to the normal population
of people who are not long-term meditators. I don't know
what that means per se, but it seems to suggest that the
ways in which we process information about the world might
be fundamentally different.
One of the questions we have to ask is, if you
are a non-believer or an atheist, is that the result of a
lack of having such experiences, or are you having these
experiences and then ultimately rejecting them? One of the
examples we talked about in our last book was a woman who
had a near-death experience. She described it as the full-blown
near-death experience, with the light and all this kind of
stuff, but said, "That was my brain dying." That was her
interpretation of it, whereas other people have that experience,
and they say, "That was me transcending into the next realm;
that was my spiritual experience, and it was transformative;
it changed who I was."
Here are a couple of websites if any of you are
interested. We have a Center for Spirituality and the Mind
[http://www.uphs.upenn.edu/radiology/csm/] that we've started
at Penn, which is helping us consolidate a lot of the research.
If any of you are interested in that survey I was mentioning
you can go to the website, neurotheology.net. https://somapps.med.upenn.edu/neuro_t/
Read the full transcript and see the full set
of slides at pewforum.org.
DeLauro Presses Defense Department Inspector
General for Answers on Propaganda Program
Washington , D.C. – To hold the Pentagon accountable
for its propaganda program, Congresswoman Rosa L. DeLauro
(CT-3), a senior member of the House Appropriations Committee,
lead a coalition of 40 Members in sending a letter to the
Department of Defense Inspector General Claude M. Kicklighter
to press for answers about the program. Specifically, the
Members are seeking information, including whether the IG
investigated the program or senior officials involved in
the program, believes the program to be illegal, or feels
that military contracting waste and fraud and abuse occurred.
"This extensive propaganda program should have
been revealed, not by a newspaper, but long-ago by the DoD
Office of the Inspector General, which is responsible for
eliminating waste, fraud and abuse at the department, as
well as promoting integrity and serving the public interest,"
said DeLauro. "Now that the program has been halted, we must
take the next steps to determine how high-ranking officials
within the Pentagon were allowed to operate a program aimed
at deceiving the American people.
"Not only must the Inspector General now account
for what it did and did not know about this state-sponsored
propaganda effort, but they must also explain why if they
knew about the propaganda campaign it was allowed to proceed.
Additionally, we are calling for the Inspector General to
launch an investigation to ensure no detail surrounding this
program remains hidden."
"When the Department of Defense misleads the American
people by having them believe that they are listening to
the views of objective military analysts when in fact these
individuals are simply replaying DoD talking points, the
department is clearly betraying the public trust," the letter
concludes.
May 2, 2008
The Honorable Claude M. Kicklighter
Inspector General
U.S. Department of Defense
The Pentagon
Washington , DC 20301
Dear Inspector General Kicklighter:
We write to express our deep concern over an
extremely troubling report recently published in The New
York Times detailing a high-level, well thought out and extensive
program within the Department of Defense to use military
analysts to generate positive news coverage of the war in
Iraq, conditions at the Guantánamo Bay detention center and
other activities associated with the Global War on Terror.
We believe that this unethical, and potentially illegal,
propaganda campaign aimed at deliberately misleading the
American public should have been disclosed long ago by your
office, and not by a newspaper that needed to resort to suing
the DoD for the information.
According to the report, in the earliest days
of the Bush Administration, former Secretary of Defense for
Public Affairs Torie Clarke began to build a network of "key
influentials" that could generate support for then Secretary
of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's priorities and achieve what
she called "information dominance." In 2002, Ms. Clarke allegedly
made a decision to make these "key influentials," former
military officers often with impressive military backgrounds,
the main focus of the department's public relations push
to make the case to go to war. Responding to an interest
from the White House, Ms. Clarke's staff wrote summaries
describing these analysts' backgrounds, business affiliations
and positions on the war.
At it's peak, the Times reports that this behind
the scenes network included more than 75 retired military
analysts who were being briefed, often by high-level officials
in a "powerfully seductive environment" (analysts reportedly
met 18 times with Mr. Rumsfeld). The analysts then parroted
the administration's talking points on major television news
programs and 24-hour cable news outlets, as well as over
the radio and through op-ed articles or quotes in magazines,
websites and newspapers. According to the article, internal
Pentagon documents describe these military analysts as "message
force multipliers" or "surrogates" who could be counted on
to deliver administration "themes and messages" to millions
of Americans "in the form of their own opinions." Along with
making the case for invading Iraq, these "themes and messages"
included repudiating claims that U.S. troops were dying because
of inadequate body armor, pushing back on reports of detainee
mistreatment at the Guantánamo Bay prison facility and, according
to Lawrence Di Rita, a former top aide to Mr. Rumsfeld, counteracting
"the increasingly negative view of the war" that came with
the rise of the insurgency. The DoD is even reported to have
hired a private contractor to monitor and track the public
comments of their military analyst surrogates. As one of
them put it, this was "psyops on steroids."
While we are deeply disturbed by the Pentagon's
taxpayer funded propaganda campaign, we find it equally troubling
that the Pentagon used high-level access to DoD contracting
officials as an enticement for these analysts to report the
Bush Administration's talking points on the war in Iraq .
The military analysts involved in the Pentagon network reportedly
represent more than 150 military contractors competing for
the hundreds of billions of dollars made available by the
Global War on Terror. These analysts were granted special
access to the high ranking civilian and military leaders
directly involved in determining how war funding should be
spent. Such access gave the companies they represent a clear
competitive advantage and may have created a culture in which
analysts felt they needed to serve as the mouthpiece for
the administration in order to gain military contracts for
the companies they represent.
Your office is directly responsible for eliminating
waste, fraud and abuse at the Department of Defense. Moreover,
your mission includes promoting integrity and serving the
public interest. This appears to be a high-level, well orchestrated
program that was put in place that we presume your office
is aware of. We therefore request your response to the following
questions:
1) When did your office first become aware of
this program and did you investigate the matter? If you did
open an investigation please provide us with your report.
If not, please explain why?
2) In every fiscal year since this program's inception,
Section 8001 of the yearly Defense Appropriations bills signed
into law has made clear that "No part of any appropriation
contained in this Act shall be used for publicity or propaganda
purposes not authorized by the Congress." Do you believe
that the activities conducted through this program are in
violation of that law or any other? If not, given that this
program certainly cost money and was not authorized by Congress,
please explain.
3) Do you believe that a situation in which individuals
representing military contractors obtain unrivaled access
to key senior officials and carry out the wishes of those
officials creates an environment that is ripe for waste,
fraud and abuse?
4) Your office includes a unit specifically charged
with investigating senior officials. Along with Mr. Rumsfeld
and Ms. Clarke, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
General Peter Pace and then Director of Operations for the
Joint Chiefs James T. Conway were allegedly involved in the
program. High-level officials outside of DoD were also reportedly
involved, including Vice President Dick Cheney, and perhaps
others inside the DoD as well. Has your office investigated
any senior level DoD officials? If so, please provide your
findings? If not, please explain why?
5) Has your office investigated whether any contract
awards were compromised or tainted as a result of the special
access granted to the military analysts?
6) We understand that in the aftermath of The
New York Times story and facing criticism from Congress,
Robert Hastings, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of
Defense for Public Affairs determined the program should
be suspended indefinitely pending an internal review. Can
you please confirm whether your office is conducting this
internal review and if so whether you believe the program
should be permanently terminated and whether any similar
programs in the future should be banned?
When the Department of Defense misleads the American
people by having them believe that they are listening to
the views of objective military analysts when in fact these
individuals are simply replaying DoD talking points, the
department is clearly betraying the public trust. Moreover,
when these analysts are simultaneously representing defense
contractors, the apparent conflict of interest can easily
lead to fraud and abuse. We find this deeply troubling, and
expect you will share our deep concern.
We thank you in advance for your prompt attention
to this matter.
Sincerely,
Rosa DeLauro
Earl Blumenauer
Lois Capps
Joe Courtney
Susan Davis
Anna Eshoo
Chaka Fattah
Barney Frank
Raúl Grijalva
Maurice Hinchey
Mazie Hirono
Paul Hodes
Michael Honda
Darlene Hooley
Steve Kagen
Patrick Kennedy
Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrck
Dennis Kucinich
John Larson
Nita M. Lowey
Carolyn Maloney
Ed Markey
Betty McCollum
Jim McDermott
Jim McGovern
Chris Murphy
Dave Obey
Jesse Jackson Jr.
Bill Pascrell
Ed Pastor
Tim Ryan
Jose Serrano
Louise Slaughter
John Olver
Jan Schakowsky
Pete Stark
Betty Sutton
John Tierney
Mark Udall
Robert Wexler
John Yarmuth
The oil industry low-balls profits and
the press goes along COMMENTARY | May 12,
2008
One more time: in a free market system, profits are return
on dollars invested, not return on sales or revenue.
Is that too complicated, Mr. Will?
By Henry Banta
This is not another piece about oil prices. It
is about how the media cover the oil industry and its political
machinations. Over the past year, and with increasing intensity
lately, the oil industry has engaged in a massive propaganda
offensive claiming that its profits are no higher than many
other industries. It makes this claim by comparing its return
on sales with those of other industries. This is intentionally
misleading and deceptive.
The very fact that a major industry is devoting
massive resources to what is nothing more than an outrageous
lie should be major news. Suppose Clinton, Obama, or McCain
set out on a campaign of conspicuous lying? Wouldn't it be
news? Why should an industry with hundreds of billions of
dollars in resources and a political agenda be immune? Why
does it get a pass?
To understand why this is such an outrage and
not just a dust-up over an arcane accounting issue requires
a small – actually very small – bit of reflection of what
profit means in a free market system. In the most basic sense
it is the reward that the entrepreneurs get for taking the
risks and putting up the money. Profit is what the investors
get back for putting up money. Profit is not the return on
sales or revenue; it is the return on the dollars invested.
It is this return on capital that enables the market to direct
investment where it will make the most money, and be used
most efficiently. It is at the heart of why we consider our
economic system efficient. It is why we call it "capitalism."
Comparing the return on sales for firms in different industries
is meaningless. It tells you nothing to know that Microsoft
earned a 27 percent return on revenue while Verizon earned
only 6.6 percent on its sales.
By using a return on sales to make comparisons
between industries, the oil industry is engaging in a gross
deception. It is simply lying. No other word works. And the
oil firms know better. They certainly do not talk that way
to investors or the financial community. As Peter Ashton pointed
out on Nieman Watchdog last year (June 15, 2007), ExxonMobil
got it right in its annual Financial and Operating Review
for 2006. The quote is worth repeating:
The corporation's total ROCE [return on capital
employed] is net income excluding the after-tax cost
of financing, divided by total corporate average capital
employed. The corporation has consistently applied its
ROCE definition for many years and views it as the best
measure of historical capital productivity in our capital-intensive,
long-term industry, both to evaluate management's performance
and to demonstrate to shareholders that capital has
been used wisely over the long term.
[And also see
this by Morton Mintz in Nieman Watchdog on how to
report profits.]
The oil industry's massive effort to divert the
public's attention has an obvious purpose. Why the major
media don't confront the issue is less obvious. Last year
Tim Russert, Washington bureau chief of NBC News, treated
us to an interview with a CEO of a major oil company. One
would have thought this would have presented a sitting duck
for his brand of gotcha journalism. Alas, the subject never
came up. Do his producers think that an issue so important
to the industry has no real significance? Do they not read
annual reports or financial statements? Do they need a refresher
in Econ 101?
In fairness, one must admit that Mr. Russert has
never pretended to have much interest in economic issues. George
Will, on the other hand, would admit to no such limitation.
Moreover, it is one thing to ignore the issue; it is another
to join in the deception. In
a Newsweek column (April 26, 2008) Mr. Will propounded
questions for Senator Obama including this incantation of
the industry line:
ExxonMobil's profit of $40.6 billion annoys
you. Do you know that its profit, relative to its revenue,
was smaller that Microsoft's and many other corporations'?
Coming from an intrepid defender of the free market
this is no minor gaffe. He might be forgiven if he had noted
that the nation's largest corporation last year only earned
a modest 3.4 percent on revenue. Of course, that would have
exposed how silly his question was and how inappropriate
his comparison.
I'd be remiss if I failed to mention an article
that got it right – really right. Marianne
Lavelle writing in U.S. News & World Report (February
1, 2008) observed that "There's no business on the planet
that gushes forth more profit than selling oil—nothing even
close." Making a comparison that should make Mr. Will blush,
she notes that "If Exxon Mobil were a country, its 2007 profit
would exceed the gross domestic product of nearly of nearly
two thirds of the 183 nations in the World Bank's economic
rankings." She goes on to explain the difference between
return on sales and return on equity in language that even
the laziest journalist could understand. She understands
the significance of the fact that the oil industry as a whole
earned a 27 percent return on equity and that this was 10
points higher than all other industries.
There are other issues raised by the industry's
propaganda offensive, like the amounts being reinvested.
While these numbers in absolute terms seem large, over the
last several years the actual rate of reinvestment has not
been particularly high. In fact, the major companies have
spent considerable sums buying back their own stock. For
example, ExxonMobil's capital and exploration expenditures
in 2007 were $20.9 billion. But it spent $31.8 billion buying
back its own stock, which certainly did nothing for meeting
anyone's energy needs.
What does all this matter anyhow? Doesn't everyone
expect the oil industry to lie? A long time ago, while working
at the FTC on advertising issues, I had occasion to visit
a considerable number of advertising agencies where, as a
matter professional curiosity, I asked if one could sell
a product with a claim that the consumer knew was untrue.
Universally, the question provoked a laugh; of course they
could. They all cited what they had learned from the world
of political propaganda.
Henry M. Banta is a partner in
the Washington, DC, law firm of Lobel, Novins & Lamont.
McCain's Media Free Pass
Bravenewfilm and Mother Jones
You may have heard of Rev. John Hagee,
the McCain supporter who said God created Hurricane Katrina
to punish New Orleans for its homosexual "sins."
Well now meet Rev. Rod Parsley, the televangelist megachurch
pastor from Ohio who hates Islam. According to David Corn
of Mother
Jones, Parsley has called on Christians to wage war against
Islam, which he considers to be a "false religion." In the
past, Parsley has also railed against the separation of church
and state, homosexuals, and abortion rights, comparing
Planned Parenthood to Nazis.
John McCain actively sought and received
Parsley's endorsement in the presidential race. McCain
has called Parsley "a spiritual guide," and he hasn't
said whether he shares Parsley's vicious anti-Islam
views. That's because the mainstream media refuses
to ask. And so, we've taken matters into our own hands,
joining Mother Jones to present the truth about McCain's
pastor.
Since the media won't question McCain about his deeply
bigoted pastor, it's up to you to call attention to
this issue. Make McCain's pastor problem a major story
by forwarding this video to your family, friends, and
colleagues.
We can't let McCain get away with aligning himself with
a religious leader who's called for an all-out war on
Islam, someone who draws no distinctions between Muslims
and violent Islamic extremists. Now is the crucial
time to act.
"End the denial of one, a fewor
many, all of the time; give all men and women a fair
share for sustenance only; and goodness will mobilize.
It does not take a village, nor its privateer corporation;
it takes a good man, a good woman and, yes, freedom
to trade. Inequity, interfering government and its surrogates
are the problem, the unnecessary costs and producers
of nothing, except human misery."
Prison and Tax Relief: A New Mind
Set/The New Way
by R.O.Wirengard
Dear Governor,
It is hard for government to forsake the prison
investor, who gave amply to campaigns; and the fundamentalist
believing in an angry, full of vengeance and wrathful god,
who votes for that government, so as to pre-empt and choke
out any notion of the loving and forgiving god, of Jesus.
But even our dark age, brutal hangings of children
in public squares, for stealing bread, did not solve the
problem of hunger, and other children continued stealing
bread, or they would die, regardless. Succeeding as thieves,
however, it became a way of life for them and continues so
today, where jobs and income are not available or insufficient
to live on. The permanence of poverty and its vicious circle
of denying some bread, all of the time, causing the theft
of bread to recur, all of the time, they - a permanent miscarriage
of Justice and its illegal but rational reaction for survival
- are what needs to be broken.
I have heard it said that at least ninety-five
percent of prisoners are not violent, and the remainder,
I believe, belong in maximum security hospital wings; but
it is for one, a few or many of the none-violent ones that
I petition you, as follows.
Whereas our Florida spends an average of seventeen
thousand dollars per year, per prisoner, this approaching
a two billion dollar industry; therefor, let us free none-violent
prisoner(s), pay each one a thousand dollars per month to
access food and shelter, and place the remaining five thousand
dollars into a healthcare pool, from which each will be dispensed/vouchered
at the going rates of healthcare incidents, as need arises;
provided that:
(1) Each will agree to forego, under our Florida
Right to Work law, and we will exempt employers from minimum
wage laws (in accordance with U.S. Constitution, Section
10, that no state shall make a law impairing contracts),
and
(2) All agree that such employers pay seventy
percent above agreed to wages into the fund that is costing
us taxpayers seventeen thousand dollars per year, per prisoner.
In the long run, this simple, yet robust, program
becomes self-sustaining, because, at the start, jobs become
available easily, as freed prisoners can afford to work as
apprentices, for nothing, or at low wages of a dollar an
hour, because they have a living income, so as to improve
skills and command higher and higher wages, in the longer
run. They and we overcome our vicious, impoverishing processes
- hunger - and private employers become allowed to employ
- not reform, but overcome the cost of training people -
for the ultimately higher paying , skilled job, from which
everyone else also benefits.
I hereby petition you to release my none-violent
nephew, Alfonso Antonio Gonzales, considered a career criminal,
though he did not steal when he lived with me and my wife
for free, for two years, tried desperately to work legitimately,
but now is, for prior crimes and ineffective counsel, a prisoner,
number 506332, A2-108L, at Apalachee Correctional Institution,
in Sneads, Florida, to be released to me, under the above
provisions, and a few other none-violent prisoners, who also
are agreeable to the provisions.
We, with the help of a few others, perhaps Pastor
Clark, will prove the new way; and Dr. Blass, if not your
own staff, can set forth the computer program and hardware,
to serve, track, and report results instantly of this, the
new way of a new mind set.
It is a new way to reduce our prisons, which
are not corrective anyway - crime goes up when our economy
goes down, because we have more hunger and fewer jobs - meaning
also that our freed prisoners, foregoing minimum wage barriers
to work, can get jobs and will improve our economy; and reverse
the tilt for crime to decline; and for tax relief also to
be mobilized, which desperately is needed for our citizens,
not just to balance budgets, but also to lower prices and
eliminate costs of none-productive institutions
Sincerely submitted, petitioned and prayed for,
R.O.Wirengard
"from a military point of view, the penalty,
2,400 (4,000+ in 2008) brave Americans whom we lost,
3,000 in an hour and 15 minutes, is relative." said
Pentagon Military Analyst.
The effort, which began with the buildup to the
Iraq war and continues to this day, has sought to exploit
ideological and military allegiances, and also a powerful
financial dynamic: Most of the analysts have ties to military
contractors vested in the very war policies they are asked
to assess on air.
Those business relationships are hardly ever disclosed
to the viewers, and sometimes not even to the networks themselves.
But collectively, the men on the plane and several dozen
other military analysts represent more than 150 military
contractors either as lobbyists, senior executives, board
members or consultants. The companies include defense heavyweights,
but also scores of smaller companies, all part of a vast
assemblage of contractors scrambling for hundreds of billions
in military business generated by the administration's war
on terror. It is a furious competition, one in which inside
information and easy access to senior officials are highly
prized……….John C. Garrett is a retired Army colonel and unpaid
analyst for Fox News TV and radio. He is also a lobbyist
at Patton Boggs who helps firms win Pentagon contracts, including
in Iraq. In promotional materials, he states that as a military
analyst he "is privy to weekly access and briefings with
the secretary of defense, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff and other high level policy makers in the administration."
One client told
Federal agencies, for example, have paid columnists
to write favorably about the administration. They have distributed
to local TV stations hundreds of fake news segments with
fawning accounts of administration accomplishments Mr. Garrett's
special access and decades of experience helped him "to know
in advance — and in detail — how best to meet the needs"
of the Defense Department and other agencies.
In interviews Mr. Garrett said there was an inevitable
overlap between his dual roles. He said he had gotten "information
you just otherwise would not get," from the briefings and
three Pentagon-sponsored trips to Iraq. He also acknowledged
using this access and information to identify opportunities
for clients. "You can't help but look for that," he said,
adding, "If you know a capability that would fill a niche
or need, you try to fill it. "That's good for everybody."
There was little discussion about the actual criticism
pouring forth from Mr. Rumsfeld's former generals. Analysts
argued that opposition to the war was rooted in perceptions
fed by the news media, not reality. The administration's
overall war strategy, they counseled, was "brilliant" and
"very successful."
"Frankly," one participant said, "from a military
point of view, the penalty, 2,400 brave Americans whom we lost,
3,000 in an hour and 15 minutes, is relative." CNN, however, said it did not know the nature
of McNeil's military business or what General Marks did for the
company. If he was bidding on Pentagon contracts, CNN said, that
should have disqualified him from being a military analyst for
the network. But in the summer and fall of 2006, even as he was
regularly asked to comment on conditions in Iraq, General Marks
was working intensively on bidding for a $4.6 billion contract
to provide thousands of translators to United States forces in
Iraq. In fact, General Marks was made president of the McNeil
spin-off that won the huge contract in December 2006.
CNN, however, said it did not know the nature
of McNeil's military business or what General Marks
did for the company. If he was bidding on Pentagon contracts,
CNN said, that should have disqualified him from being
a military analyst for the network. But in the summer
and fall of 2006, even as he was regularly asked to
comment on conditions in Iraq, General Marks was working
intensively on bidding for a $4.6 billion contract to
provide thousands of translators to United States forces
in Iraq. In fact, General Marks was made president of
the McNeil spin-off that won the huge contract in December
2006.
General Marks said his work on the contract
did not affect his commentary on CNN. "I've got zero
challenge separating myself from a business interest,"
he said.
But CNN said it had no idea about his role
in the contract until July 2007, when it reviewed his
most recent disclosure form, submitted months earlier,
and finally made inquiries about his new job.
"We saw the extent of his dealings and determined
at that time we should end our relationship with him,"
CNN said.
It is self-evident the GW Bush administration
is corrupt to its core. Contracts are awarded to select
corporations without or little oversight by Congress, brazenly ignoring
the bidding process. Without shame they bask in the
glory of their collective gains from those alliances,
some of which are teetering on the edge of being enemies
of the United States.
What started out as retaliation against
a nation and its government (Afghanistan and the Taliban)
who conscripted by Osama Bin Laden's Al Qaeda or acting
on its own in the deliberate attack on 9/11 was a not
the true objective of the Bush administration. It turns
out those who advised and aligned with GW Bush to retaliate
did so but with an ulterior motive, to attack Iraq.
Our soldiers were winning the war against Afghanistan
and its government. American troops were within reach
of capturing Osama Bin Laden, destroying the Al Qaeda
network and the surrender of the Taliban. But that never
happened. Instead those aligned to GW Bush diminished and
practically stopped the pursuit of Osama Bin Laden,
the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan in order to orchestrate their
grand scheme for a "New American Century." Unbeknownst
to the American people, the invasion of Iraq had been
forethought. The corporate aristocracy of the Bush
administration invaded Iraq under false pretenses. They
knew it would be a "Long War." A war reaping huge profits
for corporate military contractors and the oil industry.
They are a threat because their allegiance to greed,
money and power far supersedes their allegiance to the
Constitution of the United States.
Abraham Lincoln foretold of such an enemy:
"I see in the near future a crisis approaching
that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety
of my country. Corporations have been enthroned, an
era of corruption in high places will follow, and the
money power of the country will endeavor to prolong
its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people
until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the
Republic is destroyed"
I am a firm believer in the Democratic process
and the peaceful transition of power. However, to maintain
order and a government of the people, by the people
and for the people, the people must step-up to the plate.
Each and every American citizen of legal age must use
their ultimate weapon against those who corrupt, coerce
and exploit our form of government. The weapon? To cast
one's ballot.
If the people do nothing?
Corporations will tell us what to do.
Studies point to new understanding of
phantom noises in the ear By Kate Murphy
Wednesday, April 2, 2008 International Herald Tribune
Modern life is loud. The jolting buzz of an alarm
clock awakens the ears to a daily din of trucks idling, sirens
blaring, televisions droning, computers pinging and phones
ringing - not to mention refrigerators humming and air-conditioners
thrumming. But for the millions who suffer from severe tinnitus,
the phantom tones inside their head are louder than anything
else.
Often caused by prolonged or sudden exposure to
loud noises, tinnitus is becoming an increasingly common
complaint, particularly among soldiers returning from combat,
users of portable music players, and aging baby boomers reared
on rock 'n' roll. Other causes include stress, some kinds
of chemotherapy, head and neck trauma, sinus infections,
and multiple sclerosis.
Although there is no cure, researchers say they
have never had a better understanding of the cascade of physiological
and psychological mechanisms responsible for tinnitus. As
a result, new treatments under investigation show promise
in helping patients manage the ringing, pinging and hissing
that otherwise drives them to distraction.
The most promising therapies, experts say, are
based on discoveries made in the last five years about the
brain activity of people with tinnitus. With brain-scanning
equipment like functional magnetic resonance imaging, researchers
in the United States and Europe have independently discovered
that the brain areas responsible for interpreting sound and
producing fearful emotions are exceptionally active in people
who complain of tinnitus.
"We've discovered that tinnitus is not so
much ringing in the ears as ringing in the brain," said
Thomas Brozoski, a tinnitus researcher at Southern Illinois
University School of Medicine, in Springfield.
Indeed, tinnitus can be intense in people with
hearing loss and even those whose auditory nerves have been
completely severed. In the absence of normal auditory stimulation,
the brain is like a driver trying to tune in to a radio station
that is out of range. It turns up the volume trying but gets
only annoying static. Richard Salvi, director of the Center
for Hearing and Deafness at the State University of New York
at Buffalo, said the static could be "neural noise" -
the sound of nerves firing. Or, he said, it could be a leftover
sound memory.
Adam Edwards, 34, co-owner of a wheel repair shop
in Dallas, said he developed tinnitus four years ago after
target-shooting with a pistol. "I had all the risk factors," he
said. "I grew up hunting, I played drums in a band,
I went to loud concerts, I have a loud work environment -
everything but living next to a missile launch site." His
tinnitus, which he described as a "computer beeping" sound,
was so intense and persistent that he needed sedatives to
sleep at night.
Edwards says he has gotten relief from a device
developed by an Australian audiologist. Manufactured by Neuromonics,
of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, it looks like an MP3 player and
delivers sound spanning the full auditory spectrum, digitally
embedded in soothing music.
Similar to white noise, the broadband sound, tailored
to each patient's hearing ability, masks the tinnitus. (The
music is intended to ease the anxiety that often accompanies
the disorder.) Patients wear the $5,000 device for a minimum
of two hours a day for six months. Since completing the treatment
regimen last year, Edwards said his tinnitus had "become
sort of like Muzak at a department store - you hear it if
you think about it, but otherwise you don't really notice."
A small, company-financed study in the journal
Ear & Hearing in April 2007 indicated that the Neuromonics
method was 90 percent successful at reducing tinnitus. A
larger study is under way to determine its long-term effectiveness.
Anne Howell, an audiologist at the Callier Center
for Communication Disorders at the University of Texas at
Dallas, said the Neuromonics device was a big improvement
over older sound therapies that required wearing something
that looked like a hearing aid all the time and took 18 to
24 months.
Other treatments showing promise include surgically
implanted electrodes and noninvasive magnetic stimulation,
both intended to disrupt and possibly reset the faulty brain
signals responsible for tinnitus. Using functional MRI to
guide them, neurosurgeons in Belgium have performed the implant
procedure on several patients in the last year and say it
has suppressed tinnitus entirely.
But the treatment is controversial.
The magnetic therapy, similar to treatments used
for depression and chronic pain, involves holding a magnet
in the shape of an 8 over the skull. Clinicians use functional
MRI to aim the magnetic pulses so they reach regions of the
brain responsible for interpreting sound.
Patients receive a pulse every second for about
20 minutes. "It works for some people but not for others," said
Anthony Cacace, professor of communication science and nerve
disorders at Wayne State University, in Detroit.
Researchers in Brazil have published a study indicating
that a treatment called cranial-sacral trigger-point therapy
can relieve tinnitus in some head and neck trauma cases by
releasing muscles that constrict hearing and neural pathways.
And drugs intended to treat alcoholism,
epilepsy, Alzheimer's and depression that alter levels
of various neurotransmitters in the brain like serotonin,
dopamine and gamma-aminobutyric acid have quieted tinnitus
in some published animal and human studies.
Medical Errors Costing U.S. Billions
Tuesday, April 8, 2008; 12:00 AM
TUESDAY, April 8 (HealthDay News) -- From 2004
through 2006, patient safety errors resulted in 238,337 potentially
preventable deaths of U.S. Medicare patients and cost the
Medicare program $8.8 billion, according to the fifth annual
Patient Safety in American Hospitals Study.
This analysis of 41 million Medicare patient records,
released April 8 by HealthGrades, a health care ratings organization,
found that patients treated at top-performing hospitals were,
on average, 43 percent less likely to experience one or more
medical errors than patients at the poorest-performing hospitals.
The overall medical error rate was about 3 percent
for all Medicare patients, which works out to about 1.1 million
patient safety incidents during the three years included
in the analysis.
Among the other findings:
Patients who experienced a patient safety incident
had a 20 percent chance of dying as a result of the incident.The
overall death rate among patients who experienced one or
more patient safety incidents fell by almost 5 percent between
2004 and 2006.However, over that time, there were increases
in post-operative respiratory failure, post-operative pulmonary
embolism or deep vein thrombosis, post-operative sepsis (blood
infection), and post-operative abdominal wound separation/splitting.The
most common types of medical errors were bed sores, failure
to rescue, and post-operative respiratory failure. Together,
they accounted for 63.4 percent of incidents. Failure to
rescue improved 11.1 percent from 2004 to 2006, while both
bed sores and post-operative respiratory failure worsened
during that time.Of the 270,491 deaths that occurred among
patients who experienced one or more patient safety incidents,
238,337 were potentially preventable, the researchers said.If
all hospitals performed at the level of the top-ranked hospitals,
about 220,106 patient safety incidents and 37,214 patient
deaths could have been avoided, and about $2 billion could
have been saved.
"While many U.S. hospitals have taken extensive
action to prevent medical errors, the prevalence of likely
preventable patient safety incidents is taking a costly toll
on our health care systems -- in both lives and dollars," Dr.
Samantha Collier, HealthGrades' chief medical officer and
primary author of the study, said in a prepared statement.
"HealthGrades has documented in numerous
studies the significant and largely unchanging gap between
top-performing and poor-performing hospitals. It is imperative
that hospitals recognize the benchmarks set by the Distinguished
Hospitals for Patient Safety are achievable and associated
with higher safety and markedly lower cost," Collier
said.
Starting Oct. 1, the federal Centers for Medicare
and Medicaid Services will stop reimbursing hospitals for
the treatment of eight major preventable errors, including
objects left in the body after surgery and certain kinds
of post-surgical infections.
Volcanologist Ármann Höskuldsson from the
University of Iceland and a team of scientists recently
discovered a more than 50-square-kilometer volcano off
Reykjanes peninsula, southwest Iceland, and expect it
to erupt at any time.
In the center of the volcano there is a caldera
measuring ten kilometers in diameter.
"People shouldn't be surprised if there would
be an extensive volcanic eruption underwater there soon.
Nothing has happened for hundreds of years and it is in fact
only a matter of time before there will be an eruption,"
Höskuldsson told DV.
Since the volcano is at a depth of 1,500 meters
eruptions would not have any effect on Iceland, except perhaps
causing earthquakes.
The volcano's discovery is considered significant
because geographers believed it couldn't exist in that area.
"Such large volcanoes are not located on oceanic ridges.
They are always drifting apart and that prevents a volcano
from being created. This is why the volcano's existence came
as a surprise," Höskuldsson said.
In summer, Höskuldsson and his team will present
the conclusions of their studies at the annual conference
of the International Association of Volcanologists, which
will be held in Iceland. Nine hundred people have already
registered for the conference.
In summer 2009 they plan use a small submarine
to undertake more detailed research of the underwater
volcano.
Merck, Schering Call on Doctors to Boost Vytorin Use (Update1)
By Michelle Fay Cortez and Shannon Pettypiece
March 27 (Bloomberg) -- Merck & Co. and Schering-Plough
Corp. are telling physicians to ignore research showing their
jointly marketed cholesterol-drug Vytorin failed to halt
progression of artery disease. It's unlikely they will listen.
Preliminary findings of the study, called Enhance
and released in January, drove Vytorin prescriptions down
18 percent and slashed $49 billion from the drugmakers' market
value. In an effort to retain the pill's $2.8 billion in
annual sales, Merck and Schering-Plough are doing the unprecedented:
discrediting research they funded and helped design.
The trial, intended to show Vytorin can reduce
artery clogging, was created to help the drug compete against
Pfizer Inc.'s Lipitor for a share of the $35 billion worldwide
cholesterol market. The failure of Vytorin to outperform
an older drug means doctors have little reason to use it.
The final report, to be presented Sunday at the American
College of Cardiology meeting in Chicago, won't help, researchers
say.
``The study results aren't going to influence
practice much,'' said Randy Thomas, a cardiologist at the Mayo
Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. ``The question we're
asking is does it lower heart attack risk. We won't know
that from Enhance.''
Sekar Kathiresan, director of preventive cardiology
at Boston's Massachusetts
General Hospital, says research may eventually show that
Vytorin and Zetia, one of the two medicines that make up
Vytorin, will prevent heart attacks, strokes and death. Until
studies prove that, he plans to rely on older so- called
statins like Lipitor and simvastatin, a generic version of
Merck's Zocor, the other component in Vytorin.
The full story behind Rev. Jeremiah Wright's
9/11 sermon
Posted: 10:09 AM ET
As this whole sordid episode regarding the
sermons of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright has
played out over the last week, I wanted to understand
what he ACTUALLY said in this speech. I've been saying
all week on CNN that context is important, and I just
wanted to know what the heck is going on.
I have now actually listened to the
sermon Rev. Wright gave after September 11 titled, "The
Day of Jerusalem's Fall." It was delivered
on Sept. 16, 2001.
One of the most controversial statements
in this sermon was when he mentioned "chickens
coming home to roost." He was actually quoting
Edward Peck, former U.S. Ambassador to Iraq and deputy
director of President Reagan's terrorism task force,
who was speaking on FOX News. That's what he told the
congregation...more
What are the candidates thinking? Here
is a quick look to Iraq.
Here are the core elements of Barack
Obama's strategy to address our critical national
security challenges in the 21st century:
End the war in Iraq, removing our troops
at a pace of 1 to 2 combat brigades per month;
Finally finish the fight against the Taliban,
root out al Qaeda and invest in the people of Afghanistan
and Pakistan, while making aid to the Pakistani government
conditional;
Act aggressively to stop nuclear proliferation
and to secure all loose nuclear materials around the
world;
Double our foreign assistance to cut extreme
poverty in half;
Invest in a clean energy future to wean
the U.S. off of foreign oil and to lead the world against
the threat of global climate change;
Rebuild our military capability by increasing
the number of soldiers, marines, and special forces
troops, and insist on adequate training and time off
between deployments;
Renew American diplomacy by talking to our
adversaries as well as our friends; increasing the size
of the Foreign Service and the Peace Corps; and creating
an America's Voice Corps.
Here are the core elements of Hillary
Clinton's strategy to address issue's in Iraq:
Starting Phased Redeployment within Hillary's
First Days in Office
he most important part of Hillary's plan is the first:
to end our military engagement in Iraq's civil war and
immediately start bringing our troops home.
Securing Stability in Iraq as we Bring our
Troops Home
Hillary would focus American aid efforts during our
redeployment on stabilizing Iraq, not propping up the
Iraqi government. She would direct aid to the entities
-- whether governmental or non-governmental -- most
likely to get it into the hands of the Iraqi people.
A New Intensive Diplomatic Initiative in
the Region
Hillary would convene a regional stabilization group
composed of key allies, other global powers, and all
of the states bordering Iraq. Non-interference. Working with the U.N.
representative, the group would work to convince Iraq's
neighbors to refrain from getting involved in the civil
war. Mediation. The group would attempt to
mediate among the different sectarian groups in Iraq
with the goal of attaining compromises on fundamental
points of disputes. Reconstruction funding. The members
of the group would hold themselves and other countries
to their past pledges to provide funding to Iraq and
will encourage additional contributions to meet Iraq's
extensive needs.
Create the security necessary for political
progress and stability
Accelerate political and economic reconstruction
in a secure environment
Keep Senior Officers in Place
Call for International Pressure on Syria
and Iran
Win the Homefront
Beware News Of Superdelegates, Done
Deals and Orange Alerts (and just vote for Obama).
By Chris Stevenson
Feb. 25, 2008
Plans to discourage you from voting for
he whom will eventually become the Democratic Party
nominee; Barack Obama are already being drawn. No I
can't swear by that but trust my paranoid intuition
(which rarely fails if ever). It seems to me the more
voters go to the polls, the less credit is given to
them nowadays for ushering in a winner. A couple weeks
back CNN (and according to a friend of mine ABC) only
highlighted Hillary's and McCain's voter count during
the primaries, basically censoring Obama's results in
order to give you the impression that Hil was dominating.
On Super Tuesday CNN only acknowledged 2 or 3 states
that Obama won while Ms. Clinton was ahead by at least
3 or 4 states.
I went to bed that night only to wake up hearing
on the radio (on a right wing talk station at that) that
Obama had won decisively 13 states to 9 for Clinton. The
fix was on I thought to myself, the big networks were trying
to manipulate the election updates pretty much the same way
they left off with the 2000 general election. Desperate measures
were being used to hide the true ongoing Tally's by making
the loser look important. But it didn't work on Super Tuesday
and it shouldn't work today. Historically in this nation
nothing was more feared than the black vote, lives were lost
just on the suspicion of a black contemplating a trip to
the booth. Couple that with the majority of the nation's
blacks voting for a black candidate and you got a nightmare
that even the most poker-faced white network power broker
can't endure.
Not only are blacks voting for Obama, whites
males, youths who ordinarily would not have registered this
soon; including college students, and the same white females
Hil's "cry me a river" tears won over in New Hampshire,
are starting to desert her in other states. This isn't good
news for Hil because according to a recent Economist women
make up 60% of the democratic vote. Another element to throw
off your enthusiasm for voting for Obama is the sidebar discussion
of this years campaign buzz-term "Super delegates."
These mysterious powerful democrats are being
touted as the final decision makers as to whether or not
that candidate receives the democratic party nomination.
In 2000 the word "delegate" was taken out the deep
freeze and mentioned around the nation. This time around,
the implication is, you need Super delegates to stop the
tide of a super candidate or perhaps black candidate with
super national appeal. Super delegates wield considerable
power, they comprise almost 800 of the 4,049 delegates at
a convention (20%) and are made up of ex-presidents, senators,
congressmen and high ranking shot callers. Reportedly one
of them is worth 10,000 votes. As powerful as they are however,
they have one kryptonite, you. The more the nation leans
towards a candidate, the more likely voters influence the
delegates and the least likely the Super delegate will vote
against the tide.
Super delegates don't call themselves Super delegates
nor are they a new phenomenon. They really like to be known
as un pledged party members and they have been around officially
since 1980 in order to give a greater role to active politicians.
Your vote can still beat out the ruling of a Super delegate,
Howard Dean was way ahead in the delegate count back in '04
but still lost due to caucus votes. This role of these un
pledged decision makers could become a major factor this
fall if Obama and Clinton still aren't able to get the needed
delegates to win the democratic nomination. If this is the
case then a scenario known as the brokered convention enters
the picture. This is when a nomination is decided by a smoking
room decision by a select few with little regard for the
public. Ironically enough, one of y'all's previous black
presidents was selected in this manner in Obama's home town
of Chicago. Only this was back in 1920 when republican senators
selected Warren G. Harding as their next President.
I tossed in the threat of an Orange Alert as
a possible last resort scare tactic in case Obama wins the
nomination and someone decides the only way to get white
guy back into the Oval Office is to raise news of a terror-threat
and hope Americans respond by voting republican (even though
our last 2 domestic hits were planned during republican administrations).
In the meantime don't be swayed away from the caucuses by
too much news of election outcomes by any other factors than
you the voter. This is a historic time and you don't want
to be on the sidelines giving your voting power away to rumors
and haters.
Nothing is a "Done Deal" unless you
done decided not to Get out and Vote.
Bats are dying by the thousands from who
knows what. EEEK!!! Good riddance, you say? Think again.
Combined with the loss of bees from Colony Collapse
Disorder, this new plague among the voracious bats could
have additional, far reaching consequences on agriculture,
public health and our increasingly precarious ecological
equilibrium. Not to mention we do not, at this time,
know whether the disease that is killing the bats will
affect humans or be transmissible to humans.
Bats eat insects, especially moths, that
threaten crops. They help hold down the mosquito population.
A single little brown bat can scarf down up to 1,000
mosquitoes an hour and can live to be 40 years old.
Without bats, we'd be knee-deep in bugs. Hell, in Florida
we are practically knee-deep now in bugs, I sure don't
want to see this place without our bug eating friends!
"I am deeply concerned about the
allegations made regarding inhumane handling
of non-ambulatory disabled cattle in a federally
inspected slaughter establishment…. We are
confident in our inspection system and the
food safety regulations that ensure the safety
and wholesomeness of the food supply. Among
the federal safeguards in place, the U.S.
Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Food Safety
and Inspection Service (FSIS) prohibits non-ambulatory
disabled cattle and cattle tissue identified
as specified risk materials for use in human
food.
USDA study published in August 2004
that found that downer cows had three times more E.
coli O15:H7 than other cows. We worry
about abused cows, or dogs and cats being poisoned
by the Chinese, but do we worry about feeding cow
shit to our kids?…
Marler
Blog tell us subscribing to Marler Blog keeps
you up on what is going on in the food industry,
and it does…how many people know this information
about Downer Cattle other than the few that do
keep up with the food and disease industries.
There are already laws against this treatment
of sick animals. Contact your State Reps and Congressmen
and let them know that you will not stand for the abuse
of sick and dying animals, and the slaughter of sick
and downed animals for human consumption. Tell them
that you will spread the word about this abuse until
they take action and do something to stop these sick
and dying animals being abused and slaughtered for
human consumption.
Art or Obscenity? Unusual Case
Draws Controversy
Child Rape Fiction
Case Tests if Writers Can Be Punished Under Federal
Obscenity Law
By SCOTT MICHELS
Jan 31 2008 For
about the last eight years, Karen Fletcher has rarely left
her run-down house outside Pittsburgh, she says. Described
by her lawyers as timid and reclusive, Fletcher recently
began posting short stories on the Internet that describe,
in graphic detail, the sexual abuse and torture of young
children in order, she says, to cope with her own history
of abuse.
But amid the ubiquitous pornography
available on the Internet, those stories, read by about 29
paying subscribers, have made Fletcher one of the few people
facing federal criminal charges for obscenity.
Once relatively common, federal obscenity
cases in the last 15 years have become something of a rarity,
law professors and former prosecutors say. Though child pornography
prosecutions are increasing, adult obscenity laws are unevenly
enforced across the country, taking a back seat to high-profile
areas like terrorism cases and drug enforcement.
"A straight adult obscenity
case is fairly far down in the pecking order" of priorities
for prosecutors, said Teree Bowers, who was the U.S. Attorney
in Los Angeles from 1992 to 1994.
Fletcher's case has generated even
more attention because, unlike the vast majority of material
thought to be obscene, Fletcher's stories have no accompanying
photographs or images. In the 35 years since the Supreme
Court's seminal case defining obscenity, it appears that
not a single successful federal obscenity prosecution has
been based solely on the written word.
"We haven't seen anything like
that since the '60's," said Tim Wu, a Columbia University
law professor who has written about obscenity law. He called
Fletcher's case "astonishing."
Under the Supreme Court's 1973 decision
in Miller v. California, pornography can be prosecuted as
obscene if, taken as a whole, it lacks artistic, literary
or scientific merit; depicts certain sexual conduct in an
offensive way; and is prurient as measured by contemporary
community standards. In a separate case decided that year,
the court held that written descriptions alone, without pictures,
can be obscene.
Fletcher's stories, prosecutors say,
go so far beyond what is acceptable even in today's permissive
culture that they warrant criminal charges. She faces up
to 30 years in prison if convicted on all counts.
"The U.S. Attorney's office
and I felt that the stories involved here are extremely graphic,
depicting the torture and rape of children, and thought they
were worthy of prosecution," said Assistant U.S. Attorney
Stephen Kaufman, who is prosecuting the case.
Mary Beth Buchanan, the US Attorney
in Pittsburgh, who has a reputation as one of the federal
prosecutors to aggressively pursue obscenity cases, was unavailable
for comment. Kaufman said, "[Former] Attorney General
[John] Ashcroft made obscenity prosecutions a priority and
[Buchanan] took it seriously."
Now 56 and living off of disability
payments, Fletcher claims in an affidavit that she ran away
from home at age 14 after being physically and sexually abused
as a child. The stories, and the online communication among
some of her 29 paid subscribers, were therapeutic and helped
her cope with her own abuse, she said.
The Web site, Red Rose, which has
since been taken down, was intended to be "a safe place
for cathartic writing for people to express themselves
and use their own imagery & not to have pictures to potentially
excite or be suggestive to readers," Fletcher said in
the affidavit. Through her lawyers, she declined to be interviewed
for this story.
"If she hadn't been writing
these stories, she probably wouldn't be alive today," said
Jerome Mooney, one of Fletcher's attorneys. Mooney and Fletcher's
affidavit say she is a recluse who is afraid of other people
and rarely leaves the house. She has avoided going to court
for hearings.
"I don't think she's even in
posture where she can imagine what it would be like" to
go to prison, Mooney said. "She has difficulty leaving
her own home. I can't imagine what would happen if she ended
up in prison. I suspect it would be devastating. I don't
think she'd survive it."
Her case began when the FBI received
a complaint of suspicious activity from PayPal, according
to a search warrant. Fletcher admitted to the FBI that she
had about 29 subscribers, who paid $10 a month for access
to the site.
In court papers, the government argued
that the fact that Fletcher charged for access to the site
made it illegal. Mooney said Fletcher charged subscribers
to pay for the cost of running the site and to keep children
from accessing it. This week, a judge refused to suppress
Fletcher's statements to the FBI. She is expected to go to
trial later this year.
Much pornography may meet the technical
definition of obscenity. But many prosecutors, faced with
the immensity of potentially obscene material on the Internet,
tend to focus on child pornography and abuse, said Bowers
and Joseph DeMarco, a former federal prosecutor in New York.
Those cases are more likely to lead to other charges; pornography
that features torture or rape is often made in the third
world and may involve sexual slavery, DeMarco said.
In 2006, there were about 2,500 federal
child pornography prosecutions, according to the Bureau of
Justice Statistics. Though both former attorneys general
John Ashcroft and Alberto Gonzales said they planned to make
obscenity a priority, there have been comparatively few obscenity
cases brought separately from allegations of child pornography
or sexual abuse.
"The idea that you can arrest
someone for looking at dirty pictures seems antiquated today," Wu
said. "It's close to being a dead law."
Cases attacking words alone have
not fared well in the appellate courts. State obscenity charges
against the rap group 2 Live Crew for their explicit lyrics
were thrown out. An Ohio man pleaded guilty to state obscenity
charges in 2005 for diary entries that described fantasies
of sexually abusing children but was granted a new trial
after a court ruled that his lawyers were ineffective because
they advised him not to pursue a first amendment defense.
Though Fletcher's lawyers argue that
it should never be constitutional to prosecute text-only
cases, her trial will probably focus on whether her stories
have literary or scientific merit. Her lawyers cite episodes
of the television show South Park and Norman Mailer's novel
The Castle and the Forest, which describes sex between a
teenage boy and an older man, as examples of socially acceptable
explicit content.
Speech isn't enough
01-21-08 When
politicians are having difficulty getting themselves out
of a controversial situation, pundits like Chris Matthews
are quick to offer a diagnosis: The politician, they tell
us, should immediately come clean, take responsibility and,
if necessary, apologize. Get it over quickly; don't let it
drag out -- and don't make it worse with evasive answers
or half-hearted explanations.
Chris Matthews and MSNBC should have followed
that advice...more
Former Republican US congressmancharged in
terror case
Published: Thursday 17 January 2008 10:43 UTC
Last updated: Thursday 17 January 2008 15:02 UTC
Washington - A federal grand jury in the Western
District of Missouri has returned a superseding indictment
that charges the Islamic American Relief Agency (IARA) and
several of its former officers with eight new counts of engaging
in prohibited financial transactions for the benefit of U.S.-designated
terrorist Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. The indictment also charges
former Republican U.S. Congressman (Mi) Mark Deli Siljander
with money laundering, conspiracy and obstruction of justice
in the case.
Funds raised by the IARA reportedly went to the
radical rebel leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who is hiding in
the Pakistan-Afghanistan border region. The indictment against
Mr Siljander says the IARA hired Mr Siljander in 2004 to
lobby Congress to remove the group from a list of non-profit
organisations suspected of supporting international terrorism.
He is also accused of engaging in money laundering and obstruction
of a federal investigation...more
Who Do We Vote For This Time Around?
A Letter from Michael Moore
01.02.08
Friends,
A new year has begun. And before we've had a
chance to break our New Year's resolutions, we find ourselves
with a little more than 24 hours before the good people of
Iowa tell us whom they would like to replace the man who
now occupies three countries and a white house.
Twice before, we have begun the process to stop
this man, and twice we have failed. Eight years of our lives
as Americans will have been lost, the world left in upheaval
against us... and yet now, today, we hope against hope that
our moment has finally arrived, that the amazingly powerful
force of the Republican Party will somehow be halted. But
we know that the Democrats are experts at snatching defeat
from the jaws of victory, and if there's a way to blow this
election, they will find it and do it with gusto.
Do you feel the same as me? That the Democratic
front-runners are a less-than-stellar group of candidates,
and that none of them are the "slam dunk" we wish they were?
Of course, there are wonderful things about each of them.
Any one of them would be infinitely better than what we have
now. Personally, Congressman Kucinich, more than any other
candidate, shares the same positions that I have on the issues
(although the UFO that picked ME up would only take me as
far as Kalamazoo). But let's not waste time talking about
Dennis. Even he is resigned to losing, with statements like
the one he made yesterday to his supporters in Iowa to throw
their support to Senator Obama as their "second choice."
So, it's Hillary, Obama, Edwards -- now what
do we do?
Two months ago, Rolling Stone magazine asked me
to do a cover story where I would ask the hard questions
that no one was asking in one-on-one interviews with Senators
Clinton, Obama and Edwards. "The Top Democrats Face Off with
Michael Moore." The deal was that all three candidates had
to agree to let me interview them or there was no story.
Obama and Edwards agreed. Mrs. Clinton said no, and the cover
story was thus killed.
Why would the love of my life, Hillary Clinton,
not sit down to talk with me? What was she afraid of?
Those of you who are longtime readers of mine
may remember that 11 years ago I wrote a chapter (in my first
book) entitled, "My Forbidden Love for Hillary." I was fed
up with the treatment she was getting, most of it boringly
sexist, and I thought somebody should stand up for her. I
later met her and she thanked me for referring to her as "one
hot s***kicking feminist babe." I supported and contributed
to her run for the U.S. Senate. I think she is a decent and
smart person who loves this country, cares deeply about kids,
and has put up with more crap than anyone I know of (other
than me) from the Crazy Right. Her inauguration would be
a thrilling sight, ending 218 years of white male rule in
a country where 51% of its citizens are female and 64% are
either female or people of color.
And yet, I am sad to say, nothing has disappointed
me more than the disastrous, premeditated vote by Senator
Hillary Clinton to send us to war in Iraq. I'm not only talking
about her first vote that gave Mr. Bush his "authorization" to
invade -- I'm talking about every single OTHER vote she then
cast for the next four years, backing and funding Bush's
illegal war, and doing so with verve. She never met a request
from the White House for war authorization that she didn't
like. Unlike the Kerrys and the Bidens who initially voted
for authorization but later came to realize the folly of
their decision, Mrs. Clinton continued to cast numerous votes
for the war until last March -- four long years of pro-war
votes, even after 70% of the American public had turned against
the war. She has steadfastly refused to say that she was
wrong about any of this, and she will not apologize for her
culpability in America's worst-ever foreign policy disaster.
All she can bring herself to say is that she was "misled" by "faulty
intelligence."
Let's assume that's true. Do you want a President
who is so easily misled? I wasn't "misled," and millions
of others who took to the streets in February of 2003 weren't "misled" either.
It was simply amazing that we knew the war was wrong when
none of us had been briefed by the CIA, none of us were national
security experts, and none of us had gone on a weapons inspection
tour of Iraq. And yet... we knew we were being lied to! Let
me ask those of you reading this letter: Were YOU "misled" --
or did you figure it out sometime between October of 2002
and March of 2007 that George W. Bush was up to something
rotten? Twenty-three other senators were smart enough to
figure it out and vote against the war from the get-go. Why
wasn't Senator Clinton?
I have a theory: Hillary knows the sexist country
we still live in and that one of the reasons the public,
in the past, would never consider a woman as president is
because she would also be commander in chief. The majority
of Americans were concerned that a woman would not be as
likely to go to war as a man (horror of horrors!). So, in
order to placate that mindset, perhaps she believed she had
to be as "tough" as a man, she had to be willing to push
The Button if necessary, and give the generals whatever they
wanted. If this is, in fact, what has motivated her pro-war
votes, then this would truly make her a scary first-term
president. If the U.S. is faced with some unforeseen threat
in her first years, she knows that in order to get re-elected
she'd better be ready to go all Maggie Thatcher on whoever
sneezes in our direction. Do we want to risk this, hoping
the world makes it in one piece to her second term?
I have not even touched on her other numerous
-- and horrendous -- votes in the Senate, especially those
that have made the middle class suffer even more (she voted
for Bush's first bankruptcy bill, and she is now the leading
recipient of payoff money -- I mean campaign contributions
-- from the health care industry). I know a lot of you want
to see her elected, and there is a very good chance that
will happen. There will be plenty of time to vote for her
in the general election if all the pollsters are correct.
But in the primaries and caucuses, isn't this the time to
vote for the person who most reflects the values and politics
you hold dear? Can you, in good conscience, vote for someone
who so energetically voted over and over and over again for
the war in Iraq? Please give this serious consideration.
Now, on to the two candidates who did agree to
do the interview with me...
Barack Obama is a good and inspiring man. What
a breath of fresh air! There's no doubting his sincerity
or his commitment to trying to straighten things out in this
country. But who is he? I mean, other than a guy who gives
a great speech? How much do any of us really know about him?
I know he was against the war. How do I know that? He gave
a speech before the war started. But since he joined the
senate, he has voted for the funds for the war, while at
the same time saying we should get out. He says he's for
the little guy, but then he votes for a corporate-backed
bill to make it harder for the little guy to file a class
action suit when his kid swallows lead paint from a Chinese-made
toy. In fact, Obama doesn't think Wall Street is a bad place.
He wants the insurance companies to help us develop a new
health care plan -- the same companies who have created the
mess in the first place. He's such a feel-good kinda guy,
I get the sense that, if elected, the Republicans will eat
him for breakfast. He won't even have time to make a good
speech about it.
But this may be a bit harsh. Senator Obama has
a big heart, and that heart is in the right place. Is he
electable? Will more than 50% of America vote for him? We'd
like to believe they would. We'd like to believe America
has changed, wouldn't we? Obama lets us feel better about
ourselves -- and as we look out the window at the guy snowplowing
his driveway across the street, we want to believe he's changed,
too. But are we dreaming?
And then there's John Edwards.
It's hard to get past the hair, isn't it? But
once you do -- and recently I have chosen to try -- you find
a man who is out to take on the wealthy and powerful who
have made life so miserable for so many. A candidate who
says things like this: "I absolutely believe to my soul that
this corporate greed and corporate power has an ironclad
hold on our democracy." Whoa. We haven't heard anyone talk
like that in a while, at least not anyone who is near the
top of the polls. I suspect this is why Edwards is doing
so well in Iowa, even though he has nowhere near the stash
of cash the other two have. He won't take the big checks
from the corporate PACs, and he is alone among the top three
candidates in agreeing to limit his spending and be publicly
funded. He has said, point-blank, that he's going after the
drug companies and the oil companies and anyone else who
is messing with the American worker. The media clearly find
him to be a threat, probably because he will go after their
monopolistic power, too. This is Roosevelt/Truman kind of
talk. That's why it's resonating with people in Iowa, even
though he doesn't get the attention Obama and Hillary get
-- and that lack of coverage may cost him the first place
spot tomorrow night. After all, he is one of those white
guys who's been running things for far too long.
And he voted for the war. But unlike Senator Clinton,
he has stated quite forcefully that he was wrong. And he
has remorse. Should he be forgiven? Did he learn his lesson?
Like Hillary and Obama, he refused to promise in a September
debate that there will be no U.S. troops in Iraq by the end
of his first term in 2013. But this week in Iowa, he changed
his mind. He went further than Clinton and Obama and said
he'd have all the troops home in less than a year.
Edwards is the only one of the three front-runners
who has a universal health care plan that will lead to the
single-payer kind all other civilized countries have. His
plan doesn't go as fast as I would like, but he is the only
one who has correctly pointed out that the health insurance
companies are the enemy and should not have a seat at the
table.
I am not endorsing anyone at this point. This
is simply how I feel in the first week of the process to
replace George W. Bush. For months I've been wanting to ask
the question, "Where are you, Al Gore?" You can only polish
that Oscar for so long. And the Nobel was decided by Scandinavians!
I don't blame you for not wanting to enter the viper pit
again after you already won. But getting us to change out
our incandescent light bulbs for some irritating fluorescent
ones isn't going to save the world. All it's going to do
is make us more agitated and jumpy and feeling like once
we get home we haven't really left the office.
On second thought, would you even be willing to
utter the words, "I absolutely believe to my soul that this
corporate greed and corporate power has an ironclad hold
on our democracy?" 'Cause the candidate who understands that,
and who sees it as the root of all evil -- including the
root of global warming -- is the President who may lead us
to a place of sanity, justice and peace.
Yours,
Michael Moore (not an Iowa voter, but appreciative
of any state that has a town named after a sofa) MMFlint@aol.com MichaelMoore.com
Ringing in the New Year with New Laws
New laws target text messaging, light bulbs, smoking,
civil unions and bus safety.
DENVER - A host of new laws on topics ranging
from allowing civil unions in New Hampshire to prohibiting
text messaging while driving in Washington state become effective
Jan. 1, 2008. The National Conference of State Legislatures
found a host of state laws in 31 states ranging from controversial
to clever that will become law on New Year's Day.
New Hampshire and Oregon will have new provisions
regarding same sex couples. In Illinois, there will be a
new law prohibiting smoking in public places while in California,
smoking will not be allowed in a car when a minor is present.
Washington and Oregon will prohibit typing
messages while driving. In Minnesota, bus cushions must
meet new depths. Three states will issue license plates
to veterans or family members of military personnel
killed in combat. Illinois will allow pets to be included
in protection orders. If you sell American flags in
Minnesota, they will have to be made in the United States.
The minimum wage will rise in New Mexico, and homeowners
in Illinois will have new protections to avert foreclosures.
Airline passengers will have a bill of rights in New
York state. And bad news if you are an old light bulb in
Illinois or mercury in Minnesota, you will see new restrictions.
Parents of a newborn in South Carolina will have to watch
a video on the dangers of shaking a baby.
Below is a compilation of selected legislation, organized
by issue, scheduled to go into effect on Jan. 1, 2008.
CRIMINAL JUSTICE
Ohio will revise certain penalties
in its Sex Offender Registration and Notification Law
in order to meet recently enacted federal requirements
of the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act
of 2006. States have until mid-2009 to comply with
the federal act. If not, they face a 10 percent
reduction in federal crime funds. (Ohio 127th
General Assembly,SB
10)
Illinois will amend its Domestic Violence
Act of 1986 to protect pets. Under the provision, the
court can grant a petitioner exclusive care and
custody of a pet or animal. (Illinois 95th General
Assembly, HB
9)
If a child is at risk of being abused in
Oregon, the state Department of Human Services will
not have to gain written permission from the alleged
abuser in order to run a criminal background check. (Oregon
207th Legislative Assembly, HB
2179)
DRIVER'S LICENSES
Alaska's driver's licenses and identification
cards will be marked if a person is restricted
from consuming alcoholic beverages as a result of a
conviction or condition of probation or parole. (Alaska
25th Legislature, HB
90)
In an effort to reduce youth access to alcohol,
drivers under the age of 21 in New Hampshire will have
a driver's license that is vertical, compared to the
horizontal version for those of the legal drinking age. (New
Hampshire 94th General Court, HB
1581)
PRIMARY ELECTIONS
Come Jan. 1, California and Florida will
be two additional states to host their primary
or caucus on or before February 5, 2007. Click
here for a complete list of states. (California
Legislature, SB
513; Florida Legislature, HB
537)
ENVIRONMENT
In order to reduce energy consumption,
all buildings owned or leased by the state
of Illinois that are larger than 1,000 square feet
must use Energy Star-labeled light bulbs. Historic
buildings that are listed on the Illinois Register of
Historic Places are exempt from this requirement.
(Illinois 95th General Assembly, HB
1460)
Several products sold in Minnesota must
be mercury free. This includes stoves, barometers,
cooking thermometers, over-the-counter pharmaceutical
products, cosmetics, toiletries and fragrances.
(Minnesota 85th Legislature, HB
1316)
ETHICS
Oregon has a sweeping government ethics
bill that will limit officials to $50 gifts, provide
stable funding for the Ethics Commission, increase
penalties for ethics violations,
and make financial disclosure forms
filed by officials more accessible to the public
and easier to understand. (Oregon 207th Legislative
Assembly, SB
10)
HEALTH
In South Carolina, hospitals must show new parents a
video on the dangers of shaking infants and the importance
of child CPR. This video must also be made
available to all child care facilities and child care
providers so they can include the video presentation
in the training of the facility's caregivers. (South
Carolina117th General Assembly, SB 518)
Insurance companies will have to include
coverage for contraceptives if they provide benefits
for other drugs in Oregon. (Oregon 207th Legislative
Assembly, HB
2700)
IMMIGRATION
The Uniform Child Abduction Prevention Act
in Utah sets guidelines for judges to use when children
of immigrants, who legal status has changed, are at
risk of abduction. Three other states (Colo., Kan.,
LA.) have enacted similar measures. (Utah Legislature, SB
35)
LABOR
In Kentucky, a new law will allow
spouses of miners who are killed in mine accidents,
injured miners and miners who are otherwise affected
by possible safety violations full intervention rights
in disciplinary actions before the state Mine Safety
Review Commission. (Kentucky 82nd General Assembly, HB
207)
New Mexico will have a minimum wage increases
in two phases. Employers must pay $6.50 an hour
with an increase to $7.50 an hour on Jan. 1, 2009. (New
Mexico48th Legislature, First Regular SessionSB
324)
American flags sold in Minnesota must
be manufactured in the United States. (Minnesota85th
Regular Session, HB
122)
REAL ESTATE
California and Colorado will require state-regulated
banks and mortgage brokers to follow federal lending
guidelines of non-traditional mortgages. Banks and lenders will
have to evaluate a borrower's repayment ability and
make sure the borrower understands the loan terms and
risks before they are issued. (Colorado 66th
General Assembly, SB
216 ; California Legislature, SB
385)
A homeowner in Illinois will have the right
to keep living in a mortgaged property during foreclosure,
with exceptions. Renters also will be allowed
to stay in a home that is being foreclosed for
the length of the rental agreement or for
120 days as long as the tenant continues to pay
rent. (Illinois 95th General Assembly, SB
258)
A home seller in Texas must disclose
whether the home was used in the manufacture of methamphetamine.
(Texas 80th Legislature, HB
271)
SAME SEX MARRIAGES
In New Hampshire, same sex couples may enter
civil unions and have the same rights, responsibilities
and obligations as married couples. (New Hampshire94th
General Court, HB
437)
Oregon has new procedures for domestic
partnership agreements among same-sex couples. (Oregon
207th Legislative Assembly, HB
2007)
SMOKING
Illinois will prohibit smoking in public
places, places of employment, and governmental vehicles. "No
Smoking" signs will also have to be posted in each public
space and place of employment where smoking is prohibited.
(Illinois 95th General Assembly, SB
500)
In California, no one can smoke a pipe, cigar
or cigarette in a car, whether in motion or at
rest, if there is a minor inside. (California
Legislature, SB
7)
STATE GOVERNMENT / REGULATION
Each year, amusement rides in Minnesota
will have to be inspected by a certified inspector.
Additionally, ride owners and operators will make daily
inspections of the rides and may enforce safety rules
regarding the riders' behaviors. (Minnesota
85th Legislature, HB
1824)
TRANSPORTATION
A New York state law will penalize
airlines failing to provide adequate services to
passengers trapped on the tarmac for more than
three hours. (New York Legislature, SB
5050C)
In Oregon, youth under the age of 18
will be banned from talking on a cell phone while
driving. (Oregon 207th Legislative Assembly, HB
2872)
In Minnesota, school bus seating must have
a minimum cushion depth of 15 inches and a seat
back height of at least 20 inches. (Minnesota
85th Regular Session, HB
2245)
Drivers will not be allowed to read,
write or send electronic messages while operating
a motor vehicle in Washington state. (Washington's
60th First Regular Session,HG
1214)
VETERANS
Montana will issue special military or veteran
license plates for military personnel, veterans,
or spouses. (Montana 60th Legislature, HB
274)
Illinois and Iowa will issue a Gold Star
license plates for residents who are the surviving
widow, widower or parent of a person who served in the
Armed Forces and was killed in combat. (Illinois
95th General Assembly, HB
167; Iowa 81st General Assembly,SB
586)
VOTING
Colorado and Washington are among
a number of states trying to streamline the
voting process for American citizens and military
personnel living overseas. (Colorado66th
General Assembly, SB
234; Washington 60th Legislature, HB
1528)
Florida legislation includes
a second wave of major election reform, including expanded
absentee voting and paper audit trail of all electronic
voting machines. (Florida Legislature, HB
537)
The California Nurses Association cheering
Michael Moore at a single-payer rally in Sacramento in June
2007. (AP photo)
The press needs to tell us more about Canada's
single-payer health-care system COMMENTARY |
International data have long been easily available;
they show Americans spending more but slipping in rankings
for life expectancy and other key health issues. But
few news organizations pay attention—not even
to our nearest neighbor—and commentators deluge
the public with false, misleading punditry.
Substantial mainstream reporting on single-payer
health insurance should have been triggered—or so one
might think—by a succession of studies over the years
that establish that Canada's health-care system saves or
improves large numbers of lives while not wasting money on
administrative expenses and fat executive-pay packages. Almost
without fail, Canada gets higher ratings than the U.S.
In 2000, for example, the World Health Organization
examined and rated the health systems of 191 nations. The
United States ranked 37th. Canada scored significantly better although
it was not outstanding—it placed 30th. But
this study was only one of many that had Canada topping the
U.S. (Click
here and go to pages 152 to 155 in a PDF file for the
rankings of all 191 countries.)
Between November 2002 and March 2003, the official
statistics agencies of the United States and Canada did their
first-ever joint survey of the health status, rates of illness,
behavioral risk factors, use of health care, and access to
health care. The survey included 3,505 Canadians and 5,183
U.S. residents. The results were analyzed by two associate
professors of medicine at Harvard Medical School......more
ENVIRONMENT: Planetary
Check-Up Starts With the Oceans By Stephen Leahy
BROOKLIN, Canada, Nov 27 (IPS) - If continents
are the Earth's sturdy bones and the atmosphere its thin
skin, then the oceans are its heart, circulatory system and
blood. And despite the crucial role played by the oceans
in the health of the planet, and to our own health and well-being,
there is little monitoring of ocean health.
Once the oceans were too big and too deep to
probe, measure and observe, but between satellites, undersea
robots, electronically tagged fish and deep sea sensors,
scientists now have the tools.
On Tuesday, high-level officials began meeting
in Cape Town, South Africa to see if governments have the
will to create a Partnership for Observation of the Global
Oceans (POGO) -- a 10-year project to create a comprehensive
monitoring system of what has been described as the last
frontier.
"We have pathetically few measurements of the
oceans relative to their importance to life on Earth and
the extent to which we rely on them for energy, weather,
food and recreation," said D. James Baker, former administrator
of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Humans are creatures of the land and do not fully
understand that the seas create the conditions that make
life possible. Seawater covers 71 percent of the planet,
and we often think of oceans only in terms of beaches and
fish, said Howard Roe, director emeritus of the National
Oceanography Centre in Southampton, England, and past POGO
chair.
"The oceans control the global climate and our
weather," Roe told IPS.
Direct ocean temperature measurements from an
array of 3,000 free-drifting "Argo buoys" provides crucial
information that enables weather forecasters to make long
range predictions, he said.
"Every successful El Nino prediction saves at
least a billion dollars by allowing people to react in time," he
noted.
Advance warnings of the Indian Ocean tsunami
of December 2004 would have saved thousands of lives and
billions of dollars. A new system of 32 additional Deep Ocean
Assessment and Reporting of Tsunami stations are to be deployed
in the Indian, Caribbean and Atlantic Oceans and would be
part of POGO.
"A system for ocean observing and forecasting
that covers the world's oceans and their major uses can reduce
growing risks, protect human interests and monitor the health
of our precious oceans," said Tony Haymet, director of the
Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of
California in San Diego and chair of POGO's executive
committee.
It would cost an estimated two to three billion
dollars to create a stable network of satellites surveying
vast extents of the surface of the oceans, along with fixed
stations taking continuous measurements on the seafloor or
as floats and buoys moored in the water column and at the
surface. To supplement this, POGO would employ a fleet of
small robot submarine ocean monitors and marine animals outfitted
with tiny electronic tags that capture and transmit data
about the environments they visit.
This marine data would be analysed and integrated
with observations from the atmosphere and other sources,
and then used in models to produce forecasts useful to the
public and policy makers.
Over-fishing, pollution and climate change have
spurred major scientific efforts to study oceans and marine
life, resulting in enormous amounts of data from hundreds
of different research centres. Even though there are clear
connections, the fisheries experts aren't always talking
to each other, let alone with the climate experts, said Jesse
Ausubel, director of the Census of Marine Life Programme
at the Sloan Foundation in New York.
"It's time for integrated ocean management," Ausubel
said in an interview.
POGO doesn't require a new international institution,
it can be a network of institutions that United Nations agencies
coordinate, he said.
However, it will require long-term government
financial support.
The proposed system is akin to monitoring equipment
in the atmosphere that allowed the detection of the thinning
ozone layer and the build-up of carbon dioxide. When complete,
POGO will authoritatively diagnose and anticipate changing
global ocean conditions.
"A continuous, integrated ocean observing system
will return the investment many times over in safer maritime
operations, storm damage mitigation, and conservation of
living marine resources, as well as collecting the vital
signs of the ocean that are needed to monitor climate change," said
Haymet.
POGO is a major component of a 10-year effort
by 71 nations in the intergovernmental Group on Earth Observations
to create a ground-based, ocean-drifting, air-borne and space-based
Global Earth Observation System of Systems to monitor all
of Earth's environmental conditions.
"Government ministers can really make a difference
in Cape Town by supporting POGO," said Ausubel.
There are massive changes happening in the oceans
from the effects of over-fishing and climate change. And
these have and will continue to have impacts on the land.
"A global ocean observing system with timely
reports and forecasts can help us be prepared and adapt to
these changes," he said.
The observations of the judicious
Blackstone . . . are well worthy
of recital: 'To bereave a man of
life. . . or by violence to confiscate
his estate, without accusation or
trial, would be so gross and notorious
an act of despotism as must at once
convey the alarm of tyranny throughout
the whole nation; but confinement
of the person, by secretly hurrying
him to jail, where his sufferings
are unknown or forgotten, is a less
public, a less striking, and therefore
a more dangerous engine of arbitrary
government.'"
WATCH
REUTERS TOP NEWS Video's
Now on Voice of Freedom
Not talking about sex or the Mons
Venus or XXX videos, Joe Redner,
owner of Redner Enterprises, recently
sold an original investment in the financial
comedy website Wallstrip.com --
an irreverent video news site that's
generating big buzz on Wall Street
with its wit -- to the interactive
arm of CBS Corp. Tampa Bay's Media
Talk hosts: Janet Sherer & Rob
Tiisler. Economics
- What's That?
Joe
Redner the Movie This independent
documentary explores the life of
Tampa, Florida local legend, Joe
Redner.
With interviews
from family members, friends,
and foes, this documentary
explores the many facets of
the enigma Joe Redner, not
just what you see in the newspapers
and television news stories.
Whether you love him
or hate him you will want to watch
him!!
This documentary will
be complete this Summer 2007.
"My country,
right or wrong"
is a thing no patriot would
ever think of saying except
in a desperate case. It is
like saying "My mother,
drunk or sober." - G.K.
Chesterton
"The
notion that a radical
is one who hates his country
is naive and usually idiotic.
He is, more likely, one
who likes his country
more than the rest of
us, and is thus more disturbed
than the rest of us when
he sees it debauched.
He is not a bad citizen
turning to crime; he is
a good citizen driven
to despair." - H.L.
Mencken
"Each man must
for himself alone decide what
is right and what is wrong,
which course is patriotic and
which isn't. You cannot shirk
this and be a man. To decide
against your conviction is
to be an unqualified and excusable
traitor, both to yourself and
to your country, let me label
you as they may." - Mark
Twain
"When a whole
nation is roaring Patriotism
at the top of its voice, I
am fain to explore the cleanness
of its hands and the purity
of its heart." - Ralph
Waldo Emerson
"To announce
that there must be no criticism
of the president, or that we
are to stand by the president,
right or wrong, is not only
unpatriotic and servile, but
is morally treasonable to the
American public." - Theodore
Roosevelt
and finally - a
quote that has shown up on
these pages many times.....
"Naturally
the common people don't want
war; neither in Russia, nor
in England, nor in America,
nor in Germany. That is understood.
But after all, it is the leaders
of the country who determine
policy, and it is always a
simple matter to drag the people
along, whether it is a democracy,
or a fascist dictatorship,
or a parliament, or a communist
dictatorship. Voice or no voice,
the people can always be brought
to the bidding of the leaders.
That is easy. All you have
to do is to tell them they
are being attacked, and denounce
the pacifists for lack of patriotism
and exposing the country to
danger. It works the same in
any country." - Rumsfeld?
No. Herman Goering
Consult the formerly secret publication National
Attack Scenarios, recently left available for public
scrutiny by a careless admin working with the Hawaii state
government.
Take
Action Now!
Find your Representatives, Current Legislative Information,
Etc.
General information about disaster
relief, preparation and emergency services to U.S.
Citizens abroad can be found at the State Department
Web page http://travel.state.gov/travel/crisismg.html