It's Time to Vote: Choose Your Science Idol!

 

This spring, to draw humorous attention to the serious issue of political interference in science, we offered Union of Concerned Scientists supporters the chance to enter Science Idol: the Scientific Integrity Editorial Cartoon Contest. Please vote on the right for your favorite of the 12 finalists. You'll be entered to win some great prizes! Click thumbnail for full size version. 1 2 3 4   5   6   7   8   9   10   11   12   Voting will close on Friday, August 8, 2008, at 11:59 p.m. EST.

 

http://ucsaction.org/campaign/science_idol_2008_vote/w363n3k4o7ewtbk3?

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Quote of the day

"Belief is the death of intelligence. As soon as one believes a doctrine of any sort, or assumes certitude, one stops thinking about that aspect of existence."

- Robert Anton Wilson -

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Ignored, Scorned, Belittled and ... Right

by Stephen Pizzo

Have you forgotten what real leadership and real straight talk look and sound like? No wonder.

Well here's a refreshing refresher course. Back in 1977 the much maligned, President Jimmy Carter, showed genuine leadership and political courage, two traits almost entirely missing from today's "leaders." Following the Arab oil boycott of 1973, Carter took a cold, hard look at world oil supplies and declared them a national security threat just waiting to happen. He laid out a vision of what must be done, and done quickly to avoid just such a threat to America's robust, but excessive, lifestyle. Carter, as was his wonkish wont, laid out both his vision and his solutions in painstaking detail in a prime-time television address.

It was filled with hard truths and bitter pills, neither of which pampered Americans had (and still have) no use for and conservatives scorn as "defeatism" and "surrender." On a ship of fools it's always "full speed ahead -- and stop with the iceberg business! Yahooooooo."

When I came across this speech yesterday I intended to only quote from it. That was until I began reading it. I simply could not stop. It could have been written yesterday.

Carter was prophetic in nearly every detail. And, like most prophets, his warnings were ignored -- ignored by the American people because it called on them to trim their consumption. And it was ignored by members of Congress because it required them to do something that, while the rigth thing to do, would have been unpopular. Genuine profiles in cowardice.

If you're one of those "damn the facts, full speed ahead" conservatives who still thinks Carter was wrong then and anyone making similar noises is wrong today, read this and tell me why it's so. But, before you start ragging on me about how all this could have been averted if only we'd drilled more in Alaska and offshore, click the link at the end of Carter's speech and read the pdf file linked on that page. I know conservatives like to live in fact-free, care-free, ignorance-is-bliss environment, but that reports contains facts you cannot ignore and still be right.

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/15730

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Mount Shasta glaciers growing, despite warming

by Samantha Young

A truck moves past Mt. Shasta, background, on Highway 97 near Weed, Calif., Thursday, June 19, 2008. The Hotlum glacier, seen on the northeast face of Mt. Shasta, left, is the largest glacier by area in California, and it is getting bigger. The Hotlum glacier is one of seven ice fields that stretch down the volcanic flanks and fills nearly two square miles of valleys and ragged edges of the 14,000 foot high Mt. Shasta.(AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)

The northeast face of Mt. Shasta, Calif., showing the Hotlum glacier, dominates the horizon Thursday, June 19, 2008. The Hotlum glacier is one of seven ice fields that stretch down the mountain's volcanic flanks and fills nearly two square miles of valleys and ragged edges of the 14,162 foot high Mt. Shasta. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)

The Hotlum glacier is seen on the northeast face of Mt. Shasta, Thursday, June 19, 2008. While global warming is causing the retreat in glaciers in the Sierra Nevada, Cascades and the Rocky Mountains, the seven glaciers on Mt. Shasta are growing. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)

 

 

MOUNT SHASTA — Global warming is shrinking glaciers all over the world, but the seven tongues of ice creeping down Mount Shasta's flanks are a rare exception: They are the only long-established glaciers in the lower 48 states that are growing.

Reaching more than 14,000 feet above sea level, Mount Shasta is one of the state's tallest peaks, dominating the landscape of high plains and conifer forests in far Northern California. Nearby Indian tribes referred to its glaciers as the footsteps made by the creator when he descended to Earth. Hikers flock to Shasta every summer to scale them.

With glaciers retreating in the Sierra Nevada, the Rocky Mountains and elsewhere in the Cascades, those on Mount Shasta — a volcanic peak at the southern end of the Cascade range — are actually benefiting from changing weather patterns over the Pacific Ocean.

http://www.newsvine.com/_news/2008/07/08/1648776-mount-shasta-glaciers-growing-despite-warming

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Slavery!

Obsidian Wings

by hilzoy

Jonah Goldberg strikes again:

"There's a weird irony at work when Sen. Barack Obama, the black presidential candidate who will allegedly scrub the stain of racism from the nation, vows to run afoul of the constitutional amendment that abolished slavery.

For those who don't remember, the 13th Amendment says: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime ... shall exist within the United States."

I guess in Obama's mind it must be a crime to be born or to go to college.

In his speech on national service Wednesday at the University of Colorado, Obama promised that as president he would "set a goal for all American middle and high school students to perform 50 hours of service a year, and for all college students to perform 100 hours of service a year."

He would see that these goals are met by, among other things, attaching strings to federal education dollars. If you don't make the kids report for duty, he's essentially telling schools and college kids, you'll lose money you can't afford to lose. In short, he'll make service compulsory by merely compelling schools to make it compulsory."

Maybe in the schools Jonah Goldberg attended, they didn't require things like homework, or attendance, or reading, or math. It would explain a lot. (The idea that he wasn't asked to work his way through all those analogies in preparation for the SATs alone would probably explain most of the "arguments" in Liberal Fascism.)

For the rest of us, though, there have always been lots of compulsory things in schools. If this counts as slavery, children have been enslaved since compulsory schooling began.

I can't wait for Jonah Goldberg's sudden discovery that some children are told -- told!! -- to clean their rooms.

UPDATE: Obama's actual plan is here.

http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings/2008/07/slavery.html

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MAD AS HELL: Should McCain Sport a Scarlet Letter?

 

Cheri DelBrocco

Republicans are campaigning on their own Audacity of Hope. They are hoping no one will have the audacity to bring up the unmentionable: John McCain is The Adulterer and Cindy McCain is The Other Woman. They are hopeful that voters are so consumed by their struggles of filling up gas tanks and putting untainted food on the table, that the memory of that atrocious summer of self-righteousness from ten years ago has long been forgotten. But what goes around comes around.

It was the Summer of '98, that the Gladiators of Virtue were riding high. They were strutting their stuff with Ken Starr and his seven million dollar witch-hunt. They had Bill Clinton just where they wanted him. He had done the hot and nasty with a young intern, and was lying about it, so by God, he was going to pay for his sins. Many of those sultans of sanctimony, who are now surrogates and staff for the McCain campaign, have strangely become as quiet as little church mice when it comes to discussing the fact that John McCain has always had a reputation for being as horny as a three-balled tomcat. Loving the sinner, but hating the sin, the Moralizing Crusaders in the Republican party have suddenly laid down their swords.

It is downright hilarious to hear Senator Lindsey Graham wax rhapsodic about the personal integrity of the senator from Arizona. His pronouncements of McCain's principled, virtuous wisdom are as convoluted as a stand-up routine on The Comedy Channel. This is the same Lindsey Graham who rose to prominence in 1998 as a manager in the House prosecution and impeachment trial. Never hesitating to intone with umbrage the moral malfeasance of Bill Clinton, Graham possessed high-toned puffery that was legendary. Forced to discuss every subject from thongs to fellatio in the House impeachment hearings, poor Lindsey shouldered the burden of more righteous indignation than any one man should ever have to bear. Ten years hence, however, he stands reverentially beside his buddy McCain, as if fooling around and family abandonment have simply ceased to be biggies.

After the infamous Senate floor blistering of the President for his sexual affairs, one might conclude that Senator Joe Lieberman, a Republican by any other name, would be much too ashamed ever to support a candidate whose moral compass had directed him to cheat on his wife and leave his family. Yet, Lieberman, seemingly ever-present on the campaign trail, advises McCain and lavishes him with such obsequious praise that the affair between John and Cindy seems considered to be nothing more than a dusty memory that is gone with the wind.

Imagine, for one moment, that it had been Barack Obama instead of John McCain who had cheated on his wife by having multiple affairs. Suppose it was Barack Obama who had married his mistress, a younger heiress of a billion dollar beer empire only a month after the ink was dry on the divorce papers. Pretend it was Michelle Obama instead of Cindy McCain who had been so addicted to painkillers that she stole money from her own charity and had been investigated by the Drug Enforcement Administration.

The vilifications, smears, and berating from conservatives would be louder than a 747 takeoff.

http://www.memphisflyer.com/memphis/Content?oid=oid%3A45446

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'Goodnight Bush' Closes Chapter On Bush Years

Listen Now [5 min 59 sec]

Goodnight Bush, by Gan Golan and Erich Origen. Little, Brown and Co.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

All Things Considered, July 8, 2008 · Open Goodnight Bush: An Unauthorized Parody, and you might recognize the cozy green room with striped curtains, a fire glowing in the fireplace, a full moon outside in the starry sky.

But look closer and you'll see that the painting over the fireplace shows an oil derrick with stealth bombers flying around it. In the fireplace, there's a ballot box burning that says, "Florida 2000." And snaking around the side of the fireplace is a tiny microphone.

Goodnight Bush riffs off Margaret Wise Brown's classic children's book Goodnight Moon to satirize the Bush administration, co-authors Erich Origen and Gan Golan tell Melissa Block.

In place of the bunny rabbit character in the children's book, a childlike George Bush is tucked safely in bed "surrounded by toys that represent different facets of the Bush administration's legacy," Golan says. A tiny Osama bin Laden peeks out from many of the pages, and a shotgun-toting Dick Cheney whispers, "Hush."

Those who hold the original dear to their hearts might say Goodnight Bush amounts to sacrilege, that Origen and Golan have turned something beloved into something really dark. One illustration, for example, shows a plane knocking over two towers made of building blocks, and it says "Goodnight towers," a reference to the World Trade Center towers destroyed on Sept. 11, 2001.

"The book obviously isn't for children," Origen says. "At the same time, it lets us look at the past eight years through the eyes of a child. And it lets us see how far Bush's reality is from the reality anyone would want for their children."

The authors say the book is illustrated with "naked simplicity" to show respect and sensitivity.

"I think people really understand there's a real poignancy to many of those images, and that's the way it was intended," Golan says, "because the last eight years have been full of all these tragic incidents and it's really that combination of kind of flippant absurdity that we've sometimes seen from the president, and that's in the book, but at the same time a real seriousness about what it is that we've lost."

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=92325702

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Detective Fiction Weekly

 

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In 2004, McCain Admitted We'd Leave Iraq if the Iraqi's Wanted Us To

by Adam Blickstein

With news coming from Nouri al-Maliki that he is leaning towards a security pact with the U.S. that would include language describing the "departure of [American] forces or a memorandum of understanding to put a timetable on their withdrawal," one wonders how this would affect John McCain's plan for perpetual troop presence in Iraq. Well, at the Council of Foreign Relations, the John McCain of 2004 gave us a pretty clear answer:

Question: "What would or should we do if, in the post-June 30th period, a so-called sovereign Iraqi government asks us to leave, even if we are unhappy about the security situation there?"

McCain's Answer: "Well, if that scenario evolves than I think it's obvious that we would have to leave because -- if it was an elected government of Iraq, and we've been asked to leave other places in the world. If it were an extremist government then I think we would have other challenges, but I don't see how we could stay when our whole emphasis and policy has been based on turning the Iraqi government over to the Iraqi people."

Does the John McCain of 2008 agree with this assessment?

http://www.democracyarsenal.org/2008/07/in-2004-mccain.html

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Raging wildfire...

 

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Maliki Stunner: He Wants US Pullout Timetable

by Robert Dreyfuss

The long-running showdown over the proposed US-Iraq treaty, aimed at legitimizing the American occupation of Iraq, is coming to a head, and it doesn't look good for the United States.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki tossed a bombshell today. In a news conference about the still-secret US-Iraqi talks, which began in March, Maliki for the first time said that the chances of securing the pact are just about nil, and instead he said Iraq will seek a limited, ad hoc renewal of the US authority to remain in Iraq, rather than a broad-based accord.

More important, Maliki and his top security adviser, Mouwaffak al-Rubaie added that Iraq intends to link even a limited accord to a timetable for the withdrawal of US forces. Reports the Sydney Morning Herald:

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki raised the prospect of setting a timetable for the withdrawal of US troops as part of negotiations over a new security agreement with Washington.

It was the first time the US-backed Shi'ite-led government has floated the idea of a timetable for the removal of American forces from Iraq. The Bush administration has always opposed such a move, saying it would benefit militant groups.

[UPDATE July 8: Rubaie was even stronger today: "There should not be any permanent bases in Iraq unless these bases are under Iraqi control. ... We would not accept any memorandum of understanding with (the US) side that has no obvious and specific dates for the foreign troops' withdrawal from Iraq."]

Here's the quote from Maliki:

"The current trend is to reach an agreement on a memorandum of understanding either for the departure of the forces or a memorandum of understanding to put a timetable on their withdrawal."

Don't think for a minute that Maliki, or his Shiite allies, want the US forces to leave. But they are under a lot of pressure.

http://www.thenation.com/blogs/dreyfuss/334991

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HOW TO make a giant cardboard Gandhi

Randi sez, "Perhaps you would be interested in a 17 foot tall Ghandi avatar made out of cardboard? An artist by the name of Joseph DeLappe made this for his Eyebeam spring residency. Should you want to make your own, the process is well documented on Instructables."

After walking with Gandhi in Second Life for 240 miles I decided it would be interesting to extract my avatar from this online world and recreate him in monumental scale. This instructable takes you through the process of creating the 17' tall cardboard Gandhi using a variety of readily accessible (mostly free!) software tools, cardboard and a hot glue gun. The production of this sculpture took a total of 4 weeks, 6 days a week, 9-11 hour days with the assistance of an intern for two-three days of each week.

Link

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Sex Crimes in the White House

By Naomi Wolf

How Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay basically turned into an organized sex-crime ring in which the trafficked sex slaves were US-held prisoners.

Sex crime has a telltale signature, even when those directing the outrages are some of the most powerful men and women in the United States. How extraordinary, then, to learn that one of the perpetrators of these crimes, Condoleezza Rice, has just led the debate in a special session of the United Nations Security Council on the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war.

I had a sense of deja vu when I saw the photos that emerged in 2004 from Abu Ghraib prison. Even as the Bush administration was spinning the notion that the torture of prisoners was the work of "a few bad apples" low in the military hierarchy, I knew that we were seeing evidence of a systemic policy set at the top. It's not that I am a genius. It's simply that, having worked at a rape crisis center and been trained in the basics of sex crime, I have learned that all sex predators go about things in certain recognizable ways.

We now know that the torture of prisoners was the result of a policy set in the White House by former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Vice President Dick Cheney, and Rice -- who actually chaired the torture meetings. The Pentagon has also acknowledged that it had authorized sexualized abuse of detainees as part of interrogation practices to be performed by female operatives. And documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union have Rumsfeld, in his own words, checking in on the sexualized humiliation of prisoners.

The sexualization of torture from the top basically turned Abu Ghraib and Guantnamo Bay into an organized sex-crime ring in which the trafficked sex slaves were US-held prisoners. Looking at the classic S and M nature of some of this torture, it is hard not to speculate that someone setting policy was aroused by all of this. And Phillipe Sands' impeccably documented Torture Team: Rumsfeld's Memo and the Betrayal of American Values, now proves that sex crime was authorized and, at least one source reports, eroticized: Diane Beaver, the Staff Judge Advocate at Guantanamo who signed off on many torture techniques, told Sands about brainstorming sessions that included the use of sexual tension, which was "culturally taboo, disrespectful, humiliating and potentially unexpected."

http://www.alternet.org/rights/90657/

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Want some torture with your peanuts?

 

 Aviation Security

By Jeffrey Denning

Just when you thought you've heard it all...

A senior government official with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has expressed great interest in a so-called safety bracelet that would serve as a stun device, similar to that of a police Taser®. According to this promotional video found at the Lamperd Less Lethal, Inc. website, the bracelet would be worn by all airline passengers (video also shown below).

This bracelet would:

• Take the place of an airline boarding pass

• Contain personal information about the traveler

• Be able to monitor the whereabouts of each passenger and his/her luggage

• Shock the wearer on command, completely immobilizing him/her for several minutes
 
The Electronic ID Bracelet, as it's referred to, would be worn by every traveler "until they disembark the flight at their destination."  Yes, you read that correctly. Every airline passenger would be tracked by a government-funded GPS, containing personal, private and confidential information, and would shock the customer worse than an electronic dog collar if the passenger got out of line.

Clearly the Electronic ID Bracelet is a euphemism for the EMD Safety Bracelet, or at least it has a nefarious hidden ability (thus the term ID Bracelet is ambiguous at best). EMD stands for Electro-Musclar Disruption. Again, according to the promotional video, the bracelet can completely immobilize the wearer for several minutes.

So is the government really that interested in this bracelet? 

Apparently so.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/weblogs/aviation-security/2008/Jul/01/want-some-torture-with-your-peanuts/

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Saddam's replacement

 

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Harry Reid Honors Jesse Helms???

 Posted by Joseph

Yesterday Harry Reid [D-NV] introduced Senate Resolution 608 - "A resolution relative to the death of Jesse Alexander Helms, Jr., former United States Senator for the State of North Carolina" - and the entire Sentate signed on as co-sponsors.

The resolution expresses "profound sorrow and deep regret" over the death of this racist prick and claims he "made invaluable contributions to his community, State, Nation, and the World."

Un-fucking-believable.

When did gay bashing and race baiting become invaluable contributions to any community?

http://www.plunderbund.com/2008/07/08/harry-reid-honors-jesse-helms/

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Big Pharma Is in a Frenzy to Bring Cannabis-Based Medicines to Market

By Paul Armentano.

While the the American Medical Association claims pot has no medical value, Big Pharma is busy getting patents for marijuana products.

The US government's longstanding denial of medical marijuana research and use is an irrational and morally bankrupt public policy. On this point, few Americans disagree. As for the question of "why" federal officials maintain this inflexible and inhumane policy, well that's another story

One of the more popular theories seeking to explain the Feds' seemingly inexplicable ban on medical pot goes like this: Neither the US government nor the pharmaceutical industry will allow for the use of medical marijuana because they can't patent it or profit from it.

It's an appealing theory, yet I've found it to be neither accurate nor persuasive. Here's why.

First, let me state the obvious. Big Pharma is busily applying for -- and has already received -- multiple patents for the medical properties of pot. These include patents for synthetic pot derivatives (such as the oral THC pill Marinol), cannabinoid agonists (synthetic agents that bind to the brain's endocannabinoid receptors) like HU-210 and cannabis antagonists such as Rimonabant. This trend was most recently summarized in the NIH paper (pdf), "The endocannabinoid system as an emerging target of pharmacotherapy," which concluded, "The growing interest in the underlying science has been matched by a growth in the number of cannabinoid drugs in pharmaceutical development from two in 1995 to 27 in 2004." In other words, at the same time the American Medical Association is proclaiming that pot has no medical value, Big Pharma is in a frenzy to bring dozens of new, cannabis-based medicines to market.

Not all of these medicines will be synthetic pills either. Most notably, GW Pharmaceutical's oral marijuana spray, Sativex, is a patented standardized dose of natural cannabis extracts. (The extracts, primarily THC and the non-psychoactive, anxiolytic compound CBD, are taken directly from marijuana plants grown at an undisclosed, company warehouse.)

Does Big Pharma's sudden and growing interest in the research and development of pot-based medicines mean that the industry is proactively supporting marijuana prohibition? Not if they know what's good for them.

http://www.alternet.org/drugreporter/90469/?page=1

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US Dollar Mighty No More

Experts Worry Euro Might Replace US Dollar as Primary Reserve Currency

WASHINGTON - Things in the U.S. sure are tough. Brother, can you spare a euro?

Signs saying "We accept euros" are cropping up in the windows of some Manhattan retailers. A Belgium company is trying to gobble up St. Louis-based Anheuser-Busch, the nation's largest brewer and iconic Super Bowl advertiser.

The almighty U.S. dollar is mighty no more. It has been declining steadily for six years against other major currencies, undercutting its role as the leading international banking currency. The long slide is fanning inflation in the U.S. and playing a major role in the run-up of oil and gasoline prices everywhere.

Vacationing Europeans are finding bargains in the U.S., while Americans in Paris and other world capitals are being clobbered by sky-high tabs for hotels, travel and even sidewalk cafes. Northern border-city Americans who once flocked into Canada for shopping deals are staying home; it's the Canadians flocking across the border now.

Everything made in America - from goods to entire companies - is near dirt cheap to many foreigners. Meanwhile, American consumers, both those who travel and those who stay at home, are seeing big price increases in energy, food and imported goods. The dollar has lost roughly a quarter of its purchasing power against the currencies of major U.S. trading partners from its peak in 2002.

Since oil is bought and sold in dollars worldwide, the devalued dollar has made the recent surge in energy prices even worse for Americans, leading to $4 gasoline in the United States (all figures U.S.). Analysts suggest that of the $140 a barrel that oil fetches globally, some $25 may be due to the devalued dollar.

Further declines in the dollar will add to oil's appeal as a commodity to be traded.

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/07/06/10152/

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Calif. group proposes George W. Bush Sewage Plant

Exterior view of the Oceanside Water Pollution Control Plant is shown in San Francisco, Monday, July 7, 2008. Supporters of the Presidential Memorial Commission have turned in their application to propose to rename the Oceanside Water Pollution Control Plant to the George W. Bush Sewage Plant. The supporters are hoping to put the idea before San Francisco voters as a November ballot issue.

By MICHELLE LOCKE

SAN FRANCISCO - A California group submitted a proposal Monday to rename a sewage treatment plant after President Bush, calling the initiative a fitting tribute to the outgoing chief executive and the "mess" he'll leave behind.

The Presidential Memorial Commission of San Francisco wants to switch the name of the Oceanside Water Pollution Control Plant to the George W. Bush Sewage Plant.

Supporters hoping to put the issue on the November ballot turned in more than 10,000 signatures to San Francisco election officials, organizer Brian McConnell said. The measure needs just over 7,000 valid names to qualify and McConnell expects to find out later this month whether they made it.

Proponents of the renaming plan see it as fitting tribute to a president they contend has plumbed the depths of incompetence.

"We think that it's important to remember our leaders in the right historical context," said McConnell, a member of the group that was formed after friends came up with the renaming idea.

"In President Bush's case, we think that we will be cleaning up a substantial mess for the next 10 or 20 years," he said. "The sewage treatment facility's job is to clean up a mess, so we think it's a fitting tribute."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080707/ap_on_re_us/presidential_putdown

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Wolf Blitzer looks back at 10 years of Iraq War Bush lies

By: SilentPatriot

 

During a 10 year tribute to his show "Late Edition" this morning, Wolf Blitzer opened up the CNN vaults to revisit some of the most deceptive things Bush administration officials have said to him throughout the years about Iraq and the reasons for the invasion. Oh, memories…

 Download | Play   Download | Play 

Cheney in Jan 2007: You can go back and argue the whole thing all over again, Wolf, but what we did in Iraq in taking down Saddam Hussein was exactly the right thing to do.

Full transcript

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/07/06/wolf-blitzer-looks-back-at-10-years-of-iraq-war-bush-lies/

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Lieberman: After Iran wipes out Israel and ‘Arab countries’ in the Middle East, ‘we’re next!

Yesterday on ABC's This Week, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I- CT), chief surrogate for Sen. John McCain's (R-AZ) presidential campaign, complained that the "Iranians have consistently" refused to suspend its uranium enrichment. When host George Stephanopoulos asked if Israel should then attack Iran, Lieberman said, "That's up to Israel," warning that Iran not only represents an "existential threat" to Israel but also the Middle East and the United States:

LIEBERMAN: That's up to Israel obviously, but I would say that obviously Israel is first in the line of Iranian fire. And it represents an existential threat to Israel. But you know who is next? The Arab countries in the Middle East and they're worried about the Iranian program and want us to ask strongly to stop it. And we're next! Because Ahmadinejad in Tehran constantly leads the mobs in shouts of death to America. And they mean it.

Watch it:

 

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/07/07/lieberman-were-next/

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Summit that's hard to swallow

World leaders enjoy 18-course banquet as they discuss how to solve global food crisis

By James Chapman

Just two days ago, Gordon Brown was urging us all to stop wasting food and combat rising prices and a global shortage of provisions.

But yesterday the Prime Minister and other world leaders sat down to an 18-course gastronomic extravaganza at a G8 summit in Japan, which is focusing on the food crisis.

The dinner, and a six-course lunch, at the summit of leading industrialised nations on the island of Hokkaido, included delicacies such as caviar, milkfed lamb, sea urchin and tuna, with champagne and wines flown in from Europe and the U.S.

G8 leaders discussing the world food crisis in Japan raise their glasses ahead of an 18-course dinner

But the extravagance of the menus drew disapproval from critics who thought it hypocritical to produce such a lavish meal when world food supplies are under threat.

On Sunday, Mr Brown called for prudence and thrift in our kitchens, after a Government report concluded that 4.1million tonnes of food was being wasted by householders.

He suggested we could save up to £8 a week by making our shopping go further. It was vital to reduce 'unnecessary demand' for food, he said.

Last night's dinner menu was created by Katsuhiro Nakamura, the first Japanese chef to win a Michelin star. It was themed: Hokkaido, blessings of the earth and the sea.

But Dominic Nutt, of the charity Save the Children, did not approve.

'It is deeply hypocritical that they should be lavishing course after course on world leaders when there is a food crisis and millions cannot afford a decent meal,' he said.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1032909/Summit-thats-hard-swallow--world-leaders-enjoy-18-course-banquet-discuss-solve-global-food-crisis.html

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G8

 

Activists from Oxfam, wearing masks depicting G8 leaders, place an activist dressed as a corn cob into an oil barrel during an anti-G8 event in Sapporo during the Group of Eight (G8) Hokkaido Toyako summit, July 7, 2008.
Photo by Vivek Prakash

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Mercedes to be Gas-Free by 2015

From the Left

Pssssst, don't tell King Abdullah.

Proving that with leadership and innovation anything is possible (are your listening Detroit?) Mercedes-Benz is aiming to phase out fossil-fuel powered vehicles over the next seven years, replacing its entire lineup with autos powered by electric motors, fuel cells, and biofuels.

The company has already invested almost $4 million in its Sustainable Mobility program, and plans to invest another $14 million by 2014.

Imagine? Within 7 years, no Mercedes will need fossil fuel to zip down the highway. Call it, the seven year ditch.

http://fromtheleft.wordpress.com/2008/07/05/mercedes-to-be-gas-free-by-2015/

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CONSTITUTION À LA CARTE

 

by Ted Rall

One Amendment from Column A, Another from Column B

Antonin Scalia's dissent--"[granting Guantánamo detainees the right to a fair trial] will almost certainly cause more Americans to get killed"--was widely ridiculed as baseless and hysterical.

What a difference a week--and your politics--make.

Then Kennedy cast the swing vote in another major decision. Declaring Washington D.C.'s handgun ban unconstitutional, he accepted the NRA's argument that the Second Amendment's reference to "a well-regulated militia" is not a conditional clause. Wherever they live, Americans are indeed entitled to purchase and keep a handgun.

"What an idiot!" my friend e-mailed me. "Doesn't he get it? Kids are going to die!" Shades of Scalia; irony included free.

"À la carte" airline pricing--$2 for a Coke, $15 to check a bag, $30 for a coach seat that sucks 95% as much as the regular ones--pisses people off. When it comes to constitutional questions, however, we Americans like to pick and choose our favorite parts of the Bill of Rights like items from a Chinese menu: one from column A, another in column B.

Liberals revere the right to free speech enshrined in the First Amendment. The right to bear arms, not so much. With conservatives, it's the other way around. Sometimes they clash over the meaning of the original ten amendments. It's freedom of, not from, religion, say right-wingers. Freedom from, argue advocates of the separation of church and state.

http://www.uexpress.com/tedrall/

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YouTube Users Vent Anger In Anti-Viacom Videos

 

By Thomas Claburn

Viacom has reassured the YouTube community that it only wants YouTube viewer log data to prove its copyright case against Google, but the YouTube community hasn't gotten the message.

Rather, the video-sharing site's users have launched an expletive-laden counterattack, calling for a boycott of the media giant.

In the past week, the number of videos associated with the search keyword "Viacom" has increased by 871, more than 28.5%. Already on Monday, 341 new videos associated with the "Viacom" search keyword have been uploaded. (In a subsequent search, the number dropped to 320, suggesting that some anti-Viacom videos are being removed.) Mostly, the videos are critical of Viacom.

Among titles that can be reprinted on the InformationWeek Web site, user sentiment is evident: "Viacom is a Copyright Bully," "VIACOM VS YOU = BOYCOTT," and "Screw You, Viacom."

A Viacom spokesperson declined to comment. However, Viacom's publication of a statement on its corporate Web site promising to keep YouTube's data confidential shows that the company is aware of the sensitive nature of this issue.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/cmp/208803047;_ylt=AhfGwRnxCg4ZX1dv5V7SCsIDW7oF

 

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Big brother is watching you

 

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I cannot tell the truth

 

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With his gun-case majority opinion, Antonin Scalia proved that he's a fraud

 

By TOM DANEHY

 Antonin Scalia is a fraud.

This man who claims to have studied the Constitution his entire life and to have dedicated his professional career to upholding the document exactly as it was written has, through some of the clumsiest legal verbiage ever put down on paper, shown his true stripe, that of an opportunist laying in wait. In doing so, he joins the sad historical pantheon of people who, through happenstance and circumstance, wound up with too much power and not enough heart.

By providing the only written opinion for the 5-4 majority in the Washington, D.C., handgun case, he wiped away just about everything he has ever said or written about what he claimed to be his beloved Constitution. If this is the way he treats the things he loves, I feel sorry for his wife.

Scalia had always come off as the unashamed martinet, a Napoleonic little twit who was smarter than everybody else in the room. I've got no problem with people who disagree with me, as long as they walk their own talk. In his writings and speeches, Scalia always claimed only to care about the Constitution. He said that he went by what it said, not by what people thought the Framers had meant. He bristled at those who used the term "living document" to describe the Constitution. Nothing could be further from the truth, he argued; the Constitution was perfect as-is, and its meanings were clear, and its writers had written down exactly what they had meant to say.

That would have been fine with me had he been a man of his word. But his actions belied his words. This "man of integrity" went duck-hunting with Vice President Dick Cheney and then refused to recuse himself when a case came before the court with Cheney smack-dab in the middle of it. Then Scalia nibbled around the edges and cherry-picked facts to bolster his wafer-thin case for handing George W. Bush the presidency in 2000. (When questioned about that case these days, he invariably snaps, "What, that? That's old news.")

Even so, when I saw him on 60 Minutes a few months back, I listened intently as he spoke of his devotion to the Constitution and how he held it in such high regard. Now all I can think about is Roy McAvoy in Tin Cup, asking: When a man's defining moment comes along, how will he handle it? Scalia's defining moment came last week when he had the opportunity to state clearly what the Constitution says (quite clearly). Well, the moment played him. He swung and missed. He evacuated himself, then sat down to play in the dookie. He spiraled out of control like those he has been quick to heap derision upon in the past.

He made stuff up; he distorted facts; he wove new "rights" out of thin air. And that was only in the first couple of pages. Then things got seriously weird. He spent pages on British history, this after he (and his right-wing political and talk-radio buddies) went out of their way to ridicule that approach in others' written decisions. He referred to common law, which, while important, is not in the Constitution! He then deigned to tell us that not only did the writers of the Constitution get the Second Amendment wrong; he knows why they got it wrong, and he feels it's his destiny to set it right for all time.

http://www.tucsonweekly.com/gbase/Opinion/Content?oid=oid:112530

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Roadmap to victory

 

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Judging the Torture Presidency of George W. Bush

Building a case for a prosecution that likely won't happen

by Nat Hentoff

 

In Standard Operating Procedure, a definitive account of what happened at Abu Ghraib published by Penguin Press, author Philip Gourevitch writes of the American interrogators who so degraded the humanity of prisoners:

"Even as they sank into a routine of depravity, [the interrogators] showed by their picture taking that they did not accept it as normal. They never fully got with the program. Is it not to their credit that they were profoundly demoralized?"

The much more compelling question—in view of the extent to which Abu Ghraib and other American war crimes have degraded us around the world—is whether the president and all the others at the top of the chain of command ever felt themselves in the least demoralized by the results of their orders.

And, even more important, will these perpetrators ever be put on trial as a deterrent to future presidents, Defense Department and CIA heads, and their eager lawyer-accomplices in these crimes?

General Ricardo Sanchez, former commander of the coalition forces in Iraq, in his recent memoir Wiser in Battle, writes that George W. Bush's 2002 memorandum—that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to our "detainees" suspected of terrorist ties—"constituted a watershed event in U.S. military history. . . . And that guidance set America on a path to torture." (Emphasis added.)

Article 3 of the 1949 Geneva Conventions, signed by the United States and thereby part of our law, guarantees that any detained person has the right to be free from "cruel treatment and torture; outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment."

This right applies whether the detainee is a prisoner of war, an "unprivileged" belligerent, a terrorist, or a noncombatant. Moreover, this right is in effect "in all circumstances" and "at any time and in any place whatsoever."

http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0827,judging-the-torture-presidency,499204,4.html

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Jefferson Bible reveals Founding Father's view of God, faith

 

Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times

SCHOLAR: Robert C. Ritchie says many people would consider it desecration to take a scissors to the Bible. "Yet, it gives a reading into Jefferson's take on the Bible, which was not as divine word put into print, but as a book that can be cut up," he says.

He compiled the four Gospels into one text without miracles, ending with Jesus' burial rather than the resurrection.

By Louis Sahagun, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

Making good on a promise to a friend to summarize his views on Christianity, Thomas Jefferson set to work with scissors, snipping out every miracle and inconsistency he could find in the New Testament Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

 

Then, relying on a cut-and-paste technique, he reassembled the excerpts into what he believed was a more coherent narrative and pasted them onto blank paper -- alongside translations in French, Greek and Latin.

In a letter sent from Monticello to John Adams in 1813, Jefferson said his "wee little book" of 46 pages was based on a lifetime of inquiry and reflection and contained "the most sublime and benevolent code of morals which has ever been offered to man."

He called the book "The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth." Friends dubbed it the Jefferson Bible. It remains perhaps the most comprehensive expression of what the nation's third president and principal author of the Declaration of Independence found ethically interesting about the Gospels and their depiction of Jesus.

"I have performed the operation for my own use," he continued, "by cutting verse by verse out of the printed book, and arranging the matter, which is evidently his and which is as easily distinguished as diamonds in a dunghill."

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-beliefs5-2008jul05,0,7730914.story

 

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Don't go mum on us, Obama

 by Garrison Keillor

I was at a playground with my daughter the other day, reading "The Two Kinds of Decay" by Sarah Manguso (good book) and watching my girl as she stood at the perimeter of children playing and studied them, exactly as I did when I was a kid, working up the nerve to plunge into the fray. She is braver than I—she plunges. I tended to retreat and have been backpedaling ever since.

I was sitting on a bench in the shade with the nannies and mommies, most of them on cell phones, talking about problem men, problem cleaning ladies, problem mothers, and the woman sitting next to me got up to go see to her child, and then stopped and came back and got her purse out of the stroller and took it with her. I was offended. I am an author, not a purse snatcher. Does a purse snatcher sit on a bench reading the latest Manguso book?

When she came back I wanted to tell her, "I am not a crook," but remembered Richard Nixon saying that and how the very words immediately told you what a liar he was, so I sat and brooded, and then it occurred to me that if you play it cool and don't talk to people, then people are entitled to assume the worst. I hadn't said so much as "Good morning" to her and so she was wary.

The willingness to put yourself out there and let people poke you and examine your teeth and look in your ears and up your nose and trot when they tell you to trot is what good politicians have in common, unlike us writers who are secretive brooders, observers on the perimeter, and what's notable about Barack Obama is that he is both: He has the self-confidence but also the smarts and integrity to put himself down on paper. His is the only candidacy I can think of that was launched by an autobiography. Usually that comes later and is written by a ghost.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-oped0626keillorjun26,0,3557698.column

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Rainbow Family of Living Light Attacked

by Wes Unruh

Victim Account 6 minute MP3 - Download

Fortunately there was a radio show with a contact on a cellphone who were able to cover the event as it happened.  Look for the July 3rd episode, with the above victim account taken from a few minutes in during the second hour: Hour 1, Hour 2

My initial coverage: Police Fire Pepper Spray Into Crowd In Attempt To Start Riot

Here's a short video clip of the gathering before the event happened:

 

I find the way the RFLL is covered in the various news articles fascinating:

Before Attack - News Coverage: 'Om'-ing in Wyoming

Rainbow gathering inspires odd jurisprudence

Current News Reports:

400 members of Rainbow Family surround, attack federal officers
Forest Service officials stoned by hippie group allowed to displace Boy Scouts' service project

ACLU plans to investigate Rainbow Family treatment

http://key64.net/article/1402-rainbow-family-of-living-light-attacked

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Nation Buys Porn With Stimulus Package

President Bush's economic stimulus package, which appears so far to have been ineffective in stroking the economy to life, is giving an unexpected raise to the porn industry.

From an Adult Internet Market Research Company press release:

An independent market-research firm, AIMRCo (Adult Internet Market Research Company), has discovered that many websites focused on adult or erotic material have experienced an upswing in sales in the recent weeks since checks have appeared in millions of Americans' mailboxes across the country.

According to Kirk Mishkin, Head Research Consultant for AIMRCo, "Many of the sites we surveyed have reported 20-30% growth in membership rates since mid-May when the checks were first sent out, and typically the summer is a slow period for this market."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/07/02/nation-buys-porn-with-sti_n_110457.html

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