Sunday, May 31, 2009
The Bankruptcy Parasites...............
Who's getting rich billing for the cost of billing?The American system of bankruptcy is quite efficient at handling the disappointment of parties to whom much is owed and little may be coming. The bankruptcy code sets up a hierarchy of the unpaid in which any sums of cash given to those highest on the ladder mean less money for those on the bottom rungs. Frequently, stockholders are simply wiped out, and the value they once held goes to creditors...Link
Saturday, May 30, 2009
US violated Geneva Conventions...........
The head of the US Central Command, General David Petraeus, said Friday that the US had violated the Geneva Conventions in a stunning admission from President Bush’s onetime top general in Iraq that the US may have violated international law...Link
Gigantic Belgian Monster Cows.............
Originating in 19th century Belgium by crossing local cattle with British cattle, the Belgian Blue cattle are gigantic bovine wonders. Their enormous size and muscle mass, sometimes called "double muscling," is a naturally occurring mutation of the gene for myostatin, a protein that regulates muscle growth. This mutation results in accelerated lean muscle growth.....Link
Friday, May 29, 2009
No one wants your garbage..........
The title may be frightening but it shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise. GM’s financial position has been declining for years and despite all efforts to avoid it, a court-mediated process appears to have nearly no alternative. According to Bloomberg, citing persons familiar with the matter, the 77 year old company plans to file for bankruptcy protection on Monday June 1. That same day will bring with it a press conference by President Obama. If it occurs, this would be the fourth largest bankruptcy in US history and the largest for an industrial company...Link
Thursday, May 28, 2009
One Million possible terrorist...........
Hundreds of thousands of people are being wrongly identified because of the government’s wasteful and inefficient management of the nation’s one million-strong terrorist watchlist, according to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)...Link
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
It gets worse...................
Unreleased photographs of alleged abuse by U.S. military personnel of prisoners at Iraqi prisons – which President Obama refused to release earlier this month – include images of rape and sexual abuse, according to a new report. Speaking to the Daily Telegraph, Major General Antonio Taguba, the former army officer who in 2004 investigated and wrote a report on allegations of detainee abuse in U.S. prisons in Iraq, has confirmed the existence of graphic photographs depicting the following:...Link
The Greatest Swindle Ever Sold...............
On October 3, as the spreading economic meltdown threatened to topple financial behemoths like American International Group (AIG) and Bank of America and plunged global markets into freefall, the US government responded with the largest bailout in American history. The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, better known as the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), authorized the use of $700 billion to stabilize the nation's failing financial systems and restore the flow of credit in the economy...Link
Scientists Discover How to Grow Plastic...
We tend not to acknowledge it, but our dependence on oil is not limited to the consumption of fossil fuels for energy and transportation. Finding an alternative to plastic (which is also made from oil), is proving to be one of the most difficult problems we face today. Recently scientists at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory have announced a groundbreaking development that provides a simple solution to the problem, transforming plant cellulose into plastic in one single step...Link
Mexican cartels and vast US illegal drug market.
NEW YORK (AP) - The Mexican drug cartels battling viciously to expand and survive have a powerful financial incentive: Across the border to the north is a market for illegal drugs unsurpassed for its wealth, diversity and voraciousness. Homeless heroin addicts in big cities, "meth heads' in Midwest trailer parks, pop culture and sports stars, teens smoking marijuana with their Baby Boomer parents in Vermont—in all, 46 percent of Americans 12 and older have indulged in the often destructive national pastime of illicit drug use...Link
A national sales tax..................
With budget deficits soaring and President Obama pushing a trillion-dollar-plus expansion of health coverage, some Washington policymakers are taking a fresh look at a money-making idea long considered politically taboo: a national sales tax...Link
"The Goode Family"..............
Meet the "Goode Family". Mike Judge and the people behind "Beavis and Butthead" and "King of the Hill" are going green with their new animated series for ABC....Link
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
We are never leaving.................
WASHINGTON – The Pentagon is prepared to leave fighting forces in Iraq for as long as a decade despite an agreement between the United States and Iraq that would bring all American troops home by 2012, the top U.S. Army officer said Tuesday. Gen. George Casey, the Army chief of staff, said the world remains dangerous and unpredictable, and the Pentagon must plan for extended U.S. combat and stability operations in two wars. "Global trends are pushing in the wrong direction," Casey said. "They fundamentally will change how the Army works."...Link
Judge threatens to penalize Obama lawyers...
A District court judge is threatening to "sanction" Obama Justice Department lawyers who've refused to respond to an order requiring the Department to provide a plan for how the case of a charity caught in a warrantless wiretap should proceed. Reports The Washington Post's Carrie Johnson...Link
Obama nominates Sotomayor..............
If confirmed, Sotomayor, 54, would be the first Hispanic U.S. Supreme Court justice and the third woman to serve on the high court. Sotomayor "is an inspiring woman who I believe will make a great justice," Obama said at a White House announcement...Link
Monday, May 25, 2009
U.S. holds journalist without charges in Iraq....
Reporting from Baghdad -- The soldiers came at 1:30 a.m, rousing family members who were sleeping on the roof to escape the late-summer heat. They broke down the front door. Accompanied by dogs, American and Iraqi troops burst into the Jassam family home in the town of Mahmoudiya south of Baghdad...Link
President Obama's extraordinary proposal....
The backlash against President Obama's extraordinary proposal for indefinite "preventive detention" -- already widespread in the immediate aftermath of his speech -- continues to grow. On Friday, Sen. Russ Feingold sent a letter (.pdf) to Obama which, while praising some aspects of his speech, vowed to hold hearings on his detention proposal, and in the letter, Feingold rather emphatically highlighted the radical and dangerous aspects of Obama's approach...Link
I'm Still Tortured by What I Saw in Iraq.......
I should have felt triumphant when I returned from Iraq in August 2006. Instead, I was worried and exhausted. My team of interrogators had successfully hunted down one of the most notorious mass murderers of our generation, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq and the mastermind of the campaign of suicide bombings that had helped plunge Iraq into civil war. But instead of celebrating our success, my mind was consumed with the unfinished business of our mission: fixing the deeply flawed, ineffective and un-American way the U.S. military conducts interrogations in Iraq. I'm still alarmed about that today...Link
They May Not Want The Bomb................
Everything you know about Iran is wrong, or at least more complicated than you think. Take the bomb. The regime wants to be a nuclear power but could well be happy with a peaceful civilian program (which could make the challenge it poses more complex). What's the evidence? Well, over the last five years, senior Iranian officials at every level have repeatedly asserted that they do not intend to build nuclear weapons. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has quoted the regime's founding father, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who asserted that such weapons were "un-Islamic." The country's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, issued a fatwa in 2004 describing the use of nuclear weapons as immoral. In a subsequent sermon, he declared that "developing, producing or stockpiling nuclear weapons is forbidden under Islam." Last year Khamenei reiterated all these points after meeting with the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei. Now, of course, they could all be lying. But it seems odd for a regime that derives its legitimacy from its fidelity to Islam to declare constantly that these weapons are un-Islamic if it intends to develop them. It would be far shrewder to stop reminding people of Khomeini's statements and stop issuing new fatwas against nukes...Link
Sunday, May 24, 2009
Netherlands to close prisons...no criminals...
The Dutch justice ministry has announced it will close eight prisons and cut 1,200 jobs in the prison system. A decline in crime has left many cells empty. During the 1990s the Netherlands faced a shortage of prison cells, but a decline in crime has since led to overcapacity in the prison system. The country now has capacity for 14,000 prisoners but only 12,000 detainees...Link
Netherlands to close prisons for lack of criminals.
The Dutch justice ministry has announced it will close eight prisons and cut 1,200 jobs in the prison system. A decline in crime has left many cells empty. During the 1990s the Netherlands faced a shortage of prison cells, but a decline in crime has since led to overcapacity in the prison system. The country now has capacity for 14,000 prisoners but only 12,000 detainees...Link
Saturday, May 23, 2009
Federal judge threatens to sanction Obama.
U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker of San Francisco warned the Obama administration on Friday of severe sanctions if it does not comply with the court’s order to turn over a secret document an Islamic group says proves they were illegally spied upon. The case, Al-Haramain v. Obama (see also: Al-Haramain V. Bush), springs out of a government mistake in which a secret document detailing the wiretapping of calls between attorneys and Saudi charity Al-Haramain was turned over to the charity’s counsel. The document was taken back by the government, and the Department of Justice has since maintained that the attorneys who read it should not be allowed to use their memories to pursue litigation over the illegal spying.
U.S. Relies More on Allies..............
WASHINGTON — The United States is now relying heavily on foreign intelligence services to capture, interrogate and detain all but the highest-level terrorist suspects seized outside the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, according to current and former American government officials...Link
Obama's preventive detention proposal......
In the wake of Obama's speech yesterday, there are vast numbers of new converts who now support indefinite "preventive detention." It thus seems constructive to have as dispassionate and fact-based discussion as possible of the implications of "preventive detention" and Obama's related detention proposals (military commissions). I'll have a podcast discussion on this topic a little bit later today with the ACLU's Ben Wizner, which I'll add below, but until then, here are some facts and other points worth noting...Link
Tesla now worth half GM's value...........
From the what-a-world department: Daimler AG's $50 million investment in Tesla Motors this week means the San Carlos electric car maker is worth roughly half the value of the world's largest auto manufacturer, General Motors Corp. With one roadster on the market and one sedan in prototype, Tesla, thanks to Daimler's 9 percent stake, is valued at $550 million. GM sold 8.35 million vehicles worldwide in 2008; its market value as of Thursday was $1.17 billion, based on the closing stock price of $1.92...Link
Friday, May 22, 2009
HR 1207 Now Up To 179 co-sponsors..........
Title: To amend title 31, United States Code, to reform the manner in which the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System is audited by the Comptroller General of the United States and the manner in which such audits are reported, and for other purposes....Link
Legal Drinking Age In Different Countries....
Alcohol has become an integral part of celebration in our society. Wedding, college graduation or a friendly get together,alcohol is usually there. There are some countries that prohibit alcohol drinking altogether, and then there are some where laws prohibit you from drinking until you turn 21. I am sure most of you have wondered what the legal drinking age is in some countries are as compared to United States and that is exactly what this post is all about. Below you will find over 80 countries with different legal drinking age...Link
Ventura is on like every show.................
After ripping George W. Bush and expressing his desire to waterboard Dick Cheney, former governor Jesse Ventura continues his media storm, this time in a sitdown with Huffington Post. The ex-pro wrestler minced no words, as usual. Americans have changed “in that we have a paranoia that there’s a crazy Arab around every tree,” Ventura told Marcus Baram. “We’re walking on eggshells now, when in reality you have as much chance of running into a terrorist as winning the Powerball.”...link
Senate Votes to Block Release of Photos...
"The Senate late Thursday easily passed a $91 billion spending bill for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. After stripping it of funds to close the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and placing restrictions on the transfer of its detainees, the bill was adopted 86 to 3. "The Senate included an amendment to prevent the public release of photographs that reportedly document the mistreatment of post-Sept. 11 detainees in U.S. custody. "The language is aimed at preventing a court from ordering their release in response to a freedom of information lawsuit...Link
Now he Thinks it's Torture...................
Chicago radio host Erich "Mancow" Muller decided he'd get himself waterboarded to prove the technique wasn't torture. It didn't turn out that way. "Mancow," in fact, lasted just six or seven seconds before crying foul. Apparently, the experience went pretty badly -- "Witnesses said Muller thrashed on the table, and even instantly threw the toy cow he was holding as his emergency tool to signify when he wanted the experiment to stop," according to NBC Chicago...LinkTwo Bush officials fire back at Cheney...
Two top Bush-era officials on Friday rejected ex-vice president Dick Cheney’s scathing criticism of US President Barack Obama, saying the country’s national security was not in jeopardy. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who served in the same post under former president George W. Bush, and Tom Ridge, the former head of homeland security, both voiced disagreement with Cheney a day after he attacked Obama’s performance as the new commander-in-chief...Link
Momentum Builds For "Fed Transparency" Act.
For years, Ron Paul has been a lone voice in Congress, questioning the wisdom of the Federal Reserve -- both its various chairmans and the institution itself. His dogged questioning of Alan Greenspan, and then Ben Bernanke, make for great TV (otherwise, those hearings are total snoozefests). But now, as America wakes up to its dire financial situation and average people talk about things like "fractional reserve lending", the gold standard, and Zimbabwe-like inflation, he's finally getting some momentum...Link
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Marijuana’s tipping point..................
Sometime in the last few months, the notion of legalizing marijuana crossed an invisible threshold. Long relegated to the margins of political discourse by the conventional wisdom, pot freedom has this year gone mainstream. Public support for legalization is climbing to a majority position, with a just-released Zogby poll finding that 52 percent support the legalization, taxation and regulation of pot. In California, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger seems to have softened his position on pot by calling for an “open debate” on the subject. Meanwhile, Democratic Assemblyman Tom Ammiano of San Francisco introduced Assembly Bill 390, legislation that would tax and regulate marijuana in a manner similar to alcohol...Link
HR 1207 Now Up To 175 co-sponsors......
Title: To amend title 31, United States Code, to reform the manner in which the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System is audited by the Comptroller General of the United States and the manner in which such audits are reported, and for other purposes....Link
FCC can search homes without a warrant...
Have a Wi-Fi router? If you do — and it uses an unlicensed frequency — you could be subject to a warrantless search of your home. Federal Communications Commission guidelines stipulate that the agency can enter property when it suspects radio frequency energy is being abused. The provision, which was originally intended to aid the monitoring of unlicensed radio and tv stations, now has a broader range of application as more consumers join the wi-fi ranks....Link
Democrats block probe.............
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi on Thursday easily dodged a Republican push to launch a special investigation into her charges that the CIA misled her on the Bush administration’s torture program. The legislation, sponsored by Rep. Rob Bishop (R-UT), failed in the full House by a vote of 252-172, mostly on party lines. Republicans Ron Paul of Texas and Walter Jones of North Carolina voted with Democrats...Link
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Torture under Obama..................
Jeremy Scahill reports the Obama administration is continuing to use a notorious military police unit at Guantanamo that regularly brutalizes unarmed prisoners, including gang-beating them, breaking their bones, gouging their eyes and dousing them with chemicals. This force, officially known as the Immediate Reaction Force, has been labeled the “Extreme Repression Force” by Guantanamo prisoners, and human rights lawyers call their actions illegal...Link
Oh.....it gets worse...........
A military attorney who represented a now-freed Guantanamo detainee told CNN on Wednesday that waterboarding is only “the tip of the iceberg” Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Yvonne Bradley was the lawyer for Binyam Mohamed, an Ethiopian national who was arrested by the Pakistani government in April 2002 on suspicion of being a member of al Qaeda. He was then shuffled through a series of CIA “ghost prisons” before being imprisoned at Guantanamo for five years. Last winter, President Obama ordered him released to the United Kingdom, where he had been a legal resident...Link
Investigate already..................
Congressional Democrats and many Washington journalists are predicting that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s current dispute with the Central Intelligence Agency may ultimately hasten the push toward the last thing Republicans want -- a comprehensive investigation of prisoner detention and interrogation during the administration of former President George W. Bush. The Pelosi controversy centers on whether the House’s top Democrat was briefed in 2002 by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) that waterboarding and other abusive interrogation techniques were being used when she was chair of the House Intelligence Committee...Link
Irony............................
A 26-year-old Phoenix man accidentally killed himself early Sunday while explaining gun safety to two Sierra Vista residents. Samuel Benally Jr. was at an apartment on West Tacoma Street when he said guns should be kept unloaded because people could point them at their heads, said Sierra Vista police Sgt. Brett Mitchell...Link
What Pelosi Knew About Torture.........
One thing that’s getting lost in the noise: House GOP leader John Boehner, a leading critic of Nancy Pelosi on the question of what she was told and when about torture, actually opposes a formal investigation into what she knew. By contrast, Pelosi herself has said she wants the CIA to release the notes and memos that critics claim will prove she had been told waterboarding was used. Boehner made a big splash yesterday by demanding that Pelosi provide evidence of her claim that the CIA lied in saying she’d been told about the use of waterboarding. Asked this morning on Fox if he favored a formal probe of this, Boehner replied that first she should back up her claim...Link
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Rumsfeld was even worse than you thought...
Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is not a popular guy, and his tenure during the Bush administration isn't generally well-regarded. He even became the fall guy for Republicans' disastrous losses in the 2006 midterm elections, as then-President Bush very publicly accepted his resignation one day after the GOP lost control of both houses of Congress. Now, though, a new article in GQ by Robert Draper is doing more damage to Rumsfeld's already-tarnished reputation. Veterans of the Bush administration, who'd apparently been waiting for the opportunity to unload on an old foe, dished plenty of dirt on the former defense secretary, and delivered some truly amazing images to go along with it...Link
Bankruptcy plan eyes quick sale to gov't.....
NEW YORK, May 19 (Reuters) - General Motors Corp's (GM.N) plan for a bankruptcy filing involves a quick sale of the company's healthy assets to a new company initially owned by the U.S. government, a source familiar with the situation said on Tuesday. The source, who would not be named because he was not cleared to speak with the media, did not specify a purchase price. The new company is expected to honor the claims of secured lenders, possibly in full, according to the source...link
Democrats concede on Guantanamo Bay......
In a clear setback for President Barack Obama, Senate Democrats moved Tuesday to both wipe out $80 million in new funding for the closing the Guantanamo detention facility and bar the administration from moving prisoners to U.S. soil until there is a more detailed plan provided to lawmakers. Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) confirmed the decision, which follows intense pressure from Republicans going into debate over a $91.3 billion wartime spending bill expected to come to the floor late Tuesday. “We’ll wipe out all the money,” Inouye said, “And I’ll put in a provision that says none of the funds in this bill or any other bill can be used to pay for the transfer of detainees from Guantanamo to the United States.”...Link
Scientists hail stunning fossil..................
The beautifully preserved remains of a 47-million-year-old, lemur-like creature have been unveiled in the US. The preservation is so good, it is possible to see the outline of its fur and even traces of its last meal. The fossil, nicknamed Ida, is claimed to be a "missing link" between today's higher primates - monkeys, apes and humans - and more distant relatives. But some independent experts, awaiting an opportunity to see the new fossil, are sceptical of the claim. And they have been critical of the hype surrounding the presentation of Ida...Link
I dare You.............
Vice President Cheney is daring the Obama administration to indict him for authorizing torture, according to a former White House lawyer, and it’s time to call him out on his bluff. “I have written many times in this space that I oppose any criminal prosecution of prior-administration officials on torture or other issues relating to the Iraq War and the war on terrorism, especially those CIA interrogators who relied in good faith on the instructions of policymakers and the legal opinions issued by Justice Department senior officials,” former Special Counsel to the President for Bill Clinton Lanny Davis writes in a column published by the Washington Times Monday. “I have agreed with President Obama on the need to look forward, not backward.”...Link
Monday, May 18, 2009
Defending Patriot Act ‘gag order’ letters.....
The Obama administration will not ask the Supreme Court to review the national security letter provision of the Patriot Act, which has been criticized as unconstitutional by civil rights groups and curtailed by a lower court following a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union...Link
The 13 people who made torture possible........
May 18, 2009 | On April 16, the Obama administration released four memos that were used to authorize torture in interrogations during the Bush administration. When President Obama released the memos, he said, "It is our intention to assure those who carried out their duties relying in good faith upon legal advice from the Department of Justice that they will not be subject to prosecution." Yet 13 key people in the Bush administration cannot claim they relied on the memos from the DOJ's Office of Legal Counsel. Some of the 13 manipulated the federal bureaucracy and the legal process to "preauthorize" torture in the days after 9/11. Others helped implement torture, and still others helped write the memos that provided the Bush administration with a legal fig leaf after torture had already begun....Link
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Obama Can’t Turn the Page on Bush............
TO paraphrase Al Pacino in “Godfather III,” just when we thought we were out, the Bush mob keeps pulling us back in. And will keep doing so. No matter how hard President Obama tries to turn the page on the previous administration, he can’t. Until there is true transparency and true accountability, revelations of that unresolved eight-year nightmare will keep raining down drip by drip, disrupting the new administration’s high ambitions....Link
"Barack Obama Has Become George Bush"...
That quote above comes from one of the dyed-in-the-wool Barack Obama supporters who rent art studios near mine. I think it is so cool, because this guy, and a couple of other guys I work near, are all starting to see that Barack Obama is doing the same things George Bush did. For a couple of years I have been telling them that Democrats are not much different than Republicans, and that corporations are the ones who really call the shots in America. Their answer was always that Barack Obama would be different...Link
Legalization? Now for the Hard Question..........
ETHAN NADELMANN, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, has been advocating for legalization of marijuana for 20 years and says he’s seen more progress in the last four months than in the previous two decades. “It’s starting to cascade,” he said. “Our model is the gay rights movement and their recent string of successes with gay marriage.”...Link
FED UP!............
The Federal Reserve's recent and unprecedented actions in the realm of monetary policy have provoked a backlash among the American people. Trillions of dollars worth of loans and guarantees have been provided to Wall Street firms, while Main Street Americans suffocate under harsh taxation, the prospect of higher debt levels and increasing inflation. These events have awakened many Americans to problems with the Fed's loose monetary policy, the bubbles it has created in the past and the potential hyperinflation it might cause in the future....Link
Saturday, May 16, 2009
The Ball keeps Rolling...................
U.S. air strikes on Afghanistan’s Farah province on May 4 left 140 dead, an Afghan investigation has concluded. According to reports, 118 of the victims were women and children, the youngest an 8-day-old baby boy. “Afghans have heard promises from the US before that they would take all possible steps to avoid civilian casualties,” Human Rights Watch’s Asia director, Brad Adams, said in a statement. “But if the US is to have any credibility, this latest outrage needs to be the last of its kind,” he said...Link
Military tribunals will return, says Obama.......
President Barack Obama has revived Bush-era military tribunals for top Guantanamo Bay terror suspects that he once branded a “failure,” but proposed new rules on evidence and detainee rights. Rights campaigners reacted angrily, warning the move would prolong the “injustice” of the war on terror camp, days after Obama dismayed some backers by deciding to oppose the release of photos of Iraq and Afghan prison abuses...Link
Friday, May 15, 2009
HR 1207 Now Up To 165 co-sponsors.......
Title: To amend title 31, United States Code, to reform the manner in which the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System is audited by the Comptroller General of the United States and the manner in which such audits are reported, and for other purposes.
America's growing surveillance state...........
The US department of homeland security has once again run afoul of cultural and political conservatives. Last month, a leaked report on rightwing extremism sparked an outcry for suggesting that returning veterans from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq could become domestic terrorists – the next Timothy McVeigh. Now, another document has come to light, and conservatives are having another aneurism....Link
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Who is meeting this weekend...............
From today until May 17, approximately 150 of the most influential members of the world's elite will be meeting behind closed doors at a hotel in Greece. They are called the Bilderberg Group or the "Bilderbergers," and you have probably never heard of them. The group, co-founded by Prince Bernard of the Netherlands, has been meeting in secret every year since 1954. This year, says the British broadsheet The Times, they are meeting at the Nafsika Astir Palace in Vouliagmeni...Link
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