Water on the Brain

Author Elizabeth Royte chats about the bottled-water boom and backlash

By Michelle Nijhuis

 

Journalist Elizabeth Royte drinks tap water, but she spends a lot of time thinking about the bottled kind. In her new book, Bottlemania: How Water Went on Sale and Why We Bought It, Royte investigates the causes and consequences of the bottled-water industry's astounding growth.

With her refillable water bottle in hand, Royte travels to Fryeburg, Maine, where a water-pumping operation for Nestle's Poland Spring label divides the town. In the course of her research, she also tastes fancy bottled waters with a water connoisseur, monitors her eight-year-old daughter's water intake, and conducts an informal poll of friends and acquaintances, asking whether they know where their tap water comes from. "Most people, even those who knew exactly how many miles the arugula on their plate had traveled, had no idea," she writes. Royte's own tap water comes from the famously high-quality New York City system -- a network of reservoirs that, with the blessing of the U.S. EPA, makes up the largest unfiltered water supply in the nation.

Grist recently caught up with Royte to talk about hydration myths, anti-bottle mayors, and water snobbery.

Twenty years ago, you write, bottled water was a niche market in the U.S. Today, it's a more than $10 billion business. What the heck happened? Why did Americans start drinking so much bottled water?

The simplest reason is marketing. Hundreds of millions of dollars were spent on advertising that either told us explicitly or implied that bottled water was better. [Bottled-water companies] used words like pure and natural, and used images of athletes and models and celebrities -- the advertisements were aspirational, they told us we'd be more like these people if we drank this product.

While this marketing juggernaut was going on, there was also, until quite recently, a total absence of criticism. There was no competition from tap water, because utilities don't have their own marketing budgets or ad budgets to tell us, "Tap water is great! Drink more tap water, and you'll be thin, and look more beautiful, and do better yoga poses."

 

http://grist.org/feature/2008/07/18/

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Star Wars photoshopping contest

Link

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Shanghainese disco bunny steals UK govt official's heart, nicks his Blackberry

A top aide to UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown was seduced by a hot woman he met in a Shanghai disco, who came back to his hotel room. In the morning, his (unencrypted) Blackberry was gone. Crypto: 1, Penis: 0.

The group stayed at the disco for at least two hours. One senior aide was approached by an attractive Chinese woman. The couple danced and later disappeared together.

The security official said: "In these circumstances it was not wise. Nobody knows exactly what happened after they left. But the next morning he came forward and said: "My BlackBerry is missing." The prime minister's Special Branch protection team were alerted.

Link (via /.)

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GOP Candidate Quits, Cites Broken Republican Brand

Sure, the Republican brand is broken, adrift without core principles, or at least nobody in the party will abide by what they say are their principles. So Congressional candidate Carl Mumpower has suspended his campaign in protest of the broken Republican brand. Of course, he's getting free press while his campaign is suspended.

Commentary By: Steven Reynolds

Heath Shuler, the Democratic rookie from the 11th District of North Carolina, is going to have a much easier race this November than previously predicted. His opponent, Dr. Carl Mumpower, has suspended his campaign. This has been reported in some Washington DC outlets like Politico, The Hill, and CQPolitics, but the story is told best from the 11th District and the Ashville Citizen-Times:

"I am grateful for this strong signal of unity from the District leaders and honored that my home county and the people who know me best were the first to officially get on board," Mumpower said. "When we get at least seven more county commitments out of the fifteen, then the people of WNC will know that our Republican Party organization stands for something they can count on. The campaign remains on hold until that foundation is firmly in place, and I will not yield."

In a Saturday letter to the 11th Congressional District Chair, Stephen Duncan, Mumpower announced his campaign was on hold until his party formally committed to its core principles and developed a process for holding Republican elected representatives to those principles.

Mumpower faces an uphill battle in unseating incumbent Congressman Heath Shuler, D-Waynesville, who was elected in 2006. But he said Monday he felt he must take this step before proceeding with his campaign.

"I'm not going to be doing any fundraising or advertising — there won't be any active campaigning for the Republican Party," Mumpower said Monday. "I'll put things on hold until I get party officials to commit to the principles and to the process of holding elected officials accountable."

Mumpower, an Asheville City Councilman, said he was particularly troubled by a recent vote in Congress to override President Bush's veto of the Farm Bill. U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Dole, R-N.C., and Shuler, a Waynesville Democrat, both voted to override a bill that Mumpower says is laden with "pork and special interests."

Citing core principles of small government, fiscal restraint and stricter immigration enforcement, Mumpower said his party has strayed from what the American people want.

Oh, this could very well be a "tactic," but the reasons behind Mumpower's decision are telling. He's saying that Republicans in this country are not living up to their principles. In short, he is acknowledging that the Republican Brand is broken. Given Republicans and their hesitancy in recognizing that they've spoiled their reputation, it is also surprising that other Republicans agree with Mumpower that the Republican brand is broken:

http://allspinzone.com/wp/2008/07/17/gop-candidate-quits-cites-broken-republican-brand/

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Media Coverage of Obama and McCain: "Nuts" or a "Disgrace"?

 

By Eric Boehlert

The Beltway press has become dysfunctional, failing to see news when it happens and hyping non-stories that require no real reporting.

Journalism, by nature, is not difficult. It really isn't. Most of the key attributes for solid reporting and editing come naturally to most people; fairness, hard work, and -- most important -- common sense.

News judgment, for instance, consists mostly of editors and producers using common sense to determine, based on the limited resources at hand, which breaking events and stories should be covered, and which ones can be set aside as less important.

During the slow summer months of a presidential campaign, that judgment and that common sense is usually even easier to put into practice because, traditionally, so little happens on the campaign trail with the candidates that what ought to be covered becomes self-evident.

Yet the Beltway press corps has become so borderline dysfunctional that even the simplest tasks, such as selecting which stories to cover -- such as using common sense -- now escape most of the major players at the mainstream news organizations.

Two events in recent days reaffirmed that sad conclusion, when entire news organizations opted to throw all sorts of time and attention at what was essentially a pointless campaign-related sideshow, while simultaneously displaying blanket indifference to what should have been the campaign story of the week, if not the month or possibly the entire summer.

http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/91776/?page=1

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The Real Joker

 

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Officials spread false 'not a drop spilled after Katrina' talking point in support of offshore oil drilling

by Nick Langewis

Former Senator turned energy lobbyist Trent Lott (R-MS) falsely claimed, during a Tuesday MSNBC appearance in support of drilling for oil offshore and in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, that Hurricane Katrina didn't cause oil spills.

"We didn't have one drop of oil [spilled] when we had the biggest hurricane in recent history, Hurricane Katrina," Lott said on Tuesday. "I think that the American people," he added, "are saying 'Look, do whatever is necessary, do it all, and do it now.'"

Former Senator and lobbyist John Breaux, a Democrat hailing from the gulf state of Louisiana, said that opponents of offshore drilling should reconsider. "We've shown that for the last sixty years you can do it safely, you can develop all natural domestic resources here in the United States, and it can be done safely."

Oil spills, in fact, numbered over 100 in the hurricane's aftermath, plaguing New Orleans and nearby areas and also contaminating the Mississippi River. The Coast Guard, MSNBC itself reported in September of 2005, estimated that 7 million gallons of oil, between 44 separate facilities around southeastern Louisiana, had been spilled as a result of the storm.

http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Officials_lobbyists_spread_false_not_drop_0716.html

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Risk

 

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After 30 years, US to send diplomats to Iran

by Ewen MacAskill

A school boy poses in front of an anti-US mural in Tehran, Iran. Photograph: Morteza Nikoubazl/Reuters

The US is planning to establish a diplomatic presence in Tehran for the first time in 30 years, a remarkable turnaround in policy by president George Bush who has pursued a hawkish approach to Iran throughout his time in office.

The Guardian has learned that an announcement will be made in the next month to establish a US interests section in Tehran, a halfway house to setting up a full embassy. The move will see US diplomats stationed in the country.

The news comes at a critical time in US-Iranian relations. After weeks that have seen tensions rise with Israel conducting war games aimed at Iran and Tehran carrying out long-range missile tests, a thaw appears to be under way.

The White House announced today that William Burns, a senior state department official, is to be sent to Switzerland on Saturday to hear Tehran's response to a European offer aimed at resolving the nuclear standoff.

Burns is to sit down at the table with Iranian officials in spite of Bush repeatedly ruling out direct talks on the nuclear issue until Iran suspended its uranium enrichment progamme, a possible first step on the way to building a nuclear weapon capability.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jul/16/usa.iran

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The Irascible Professor

"The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet."... 

...Aristotle.
 

Guest commentary by Poor Elijah (Peter Berger).

Classrooms may shut down in June, but the education world never rests.  Across the nation administrators, experts, and freelance consultants are culling through their bright ideas, devising agendas and mission statements for the coming year, and writing applications for the grants that will hopefully fund those next new things.  Here's a summer sampler of what they have on their minds so you know what to expect in September.

No Child Left Behind, the nation's federal education law, may have taken a backseat to the rocketing price of gasoline in the public mind, but policymakers haven't lost their focus.  In an effort to rationalize the billions of dollars and classroom hours devoured by NCLB, the Center on Education Policy, a Washington think tank, recently released a double dose of "good news" that "student achievement is increasing, and the [racial] achievement gap is narrowing."  The evidence underlying this optimistic conclusion was spelled out in Education Week's definitive headline "Since NCLB Law, Test Scores on Rise."

Well, not exactly.  Looking behind the headline, the scores in question are actually the percentages of each state's students that have satisfied their state's own definition of "proficient" on their state's own test.  With reviews of modern assessment typically running somewhere between skeptical and scathing, these often subjectively-derived rubric ratings dressed up as data have been further compromised by NCLB's looming 2014 deadline, by which date all of each state's students must be performing at the "proficient" level, or else.  Since human beings of any age will never all be academically proficient by any date, state definitions of proficiency have eased as the deadline has loomed closer.

Further dimming the rosy first impression, while student scores appear to have risen somewhat on state tests, scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the "nation's report card," haven't shown the same gains.  In 2007 the National Center for Education Statistics found not only "absolutely huge" variations among states' standards, but also that the "gaps" between NAEP data and states' own testing results "have grown to unprecedented levels" since NCLB became law.  Many states claiming more widespread "proficiency" have simply "set less stringent standards for meeting that threshold," leading to grave doubts as to whether gains on state tests are "real or illusory."  Even if the improved scores were in any way meaningful, the report concludes that it's "impossible" from their results to determine whether NCLB has "produced gains or decreases in student learning."

NCLB's excesses aside, the present decade has seen schools beginning to veer back from the touchy-feely, content-light "reforms" that have governed public education since the 1970s.  Perhaps students are learning more now because more schools are rightfully refocusing on core academics.

Don't start celebrating yet.  The experts who helped bring you the past thirty years of education decline are attempting to capitalize on the understandable dissatisfaction with NCLB and to resuscitate their old bankrupt reforms as if they weren't responsible for the scholastic disaster NCLB was commissioned to repair.  One resuscitator calls for "new forms of school and schooling."  He faults "traditional" schools because they "cannot ensure that all students will learn."  In short, he rejects nearly everything about NCLB except its impossible objective.

http://irascibleprofessor.com/comments-07-14-08.htm

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Synthetic Pot as a Military Weapon? Meet the Man Who Ran the Secret Program

By Martin A. Lee

Dr. James Ketchum tested a potent form of synthetic marijuana on soldiers to develop a secret weapon in the '60s. Now he's telling the tale.

It was billed as a panel discussion on "the global shift in human consciousness." A half-dozen speakers had assembled inside the Heebie Jeebie Healers tent at Burning Man, the annual post-hippie celebration in Black Rock, Nev., where 50,000 stalwarts braved intense dust storms and flash floods last August. Among the notables who spoke at the early evening forum was Dr. Alexander "Sasha" Shulgin, the Bay Area-based psychochemical genius much beloved among the Burners, who synthesized Ecstasy and 200 other psychoactive drugs and tested each one on himself during his unique, offbeat career.

Sitting on the panel next to Shulgin was an unlikely expositor. Dr. James S. Ketchum, a retired U.S. Army colonel, told the audience, "When Sasha was trying to open minds with chemicals to achieve greater awareness, I was busy trying to subdue people."

Ketchum was referring to his work at Edgewood Arsenal, headquarters of the U.S. Army Chemical Corps, in the 1960s, when America's national security strategists were high on the prospect of developing a nonlethal incapacitating agent, a so-called humane weapon, that could knock people out without necessarily killing anyone. Top military officers hyped the notion of "war without death," conjuring visions of aircraft swooping over enemy territory releasing clouds of "madness gas" that would disorient the bad guys and dissolve their will to resist, while U.S. soldiers moved in and took over.

http://www.alternet.org/drugreporter/92049/?page=1

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Terrorism Funds May Let Brass Fly in Style

Luxury Pods for Air Force Debated

An Air Force document specified that the capsule's seats are to swivel such that "the longitudinal axis of the seat is parallel to the longitudinal axis of the aircraft" regardless of where the capsules are facing.

 

The Air Force's new capsules, which will fit in large aircraft, are meant to ensure that senior military officers and civilian leaders can travel in comfort.

By R. Jeffrey Smith

 

 

The Air Force's top leadership sought for three years to spend counterterrorism funds on "comfort capsules" to be installed on military planes that ferry senior officers and civilian leaders around the world, with at least four top generals involved in design details such as the color of the capsules' carpet and leather chairs, according to internal e-mails and budget documents.

Production of the first capsule -- consisting of two sealed rooms that can fit into the fuselage of a large military aircraft -- has already begun.

Air Force officials say the government needs the new capsules to ensure that leaders can talk, work and rest comfortably in the air. But the top brass's preoccupation with creating new luxury in wartime has alienated lower-ranking Air Force officers familiar with the effort, as well as congressional staff members and a nonprofit group that calls the program a waste of money.

Air Force documents spell out how each of the capsules is to be "aesthetically pleasing and furnished to reflect the rank of the senior leaders using the capsule," with beds, a couch, a table, a 37-inch flat-screen monitor with stereo speakers, and a full-length mirror.

The effort has been slowed, however, by congressional resistance to using counterterrorism funds for the project and by lengthy internal deliberations about a series of demands for modifications by Air Force generals. One request was that the color of the leather for the seats and seat belts in the mobile pallets be changed from brown to Air Force blue and that seat pockets be added; another was that the color of the table's wood be darkened.

Changing the seat color and pockets alone was estimated in a March 12 internal document to cost at least $68,240.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/17/AR2008071703161.html

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Fertilizer

Not to be outdone in the hopeless military adventurism department, Barack Obama promises a "surge"--not in Iraq, but against the people of Afghanistan, who are even more fiercely opposed to U.S. occupation than Iraqis.

http://www.rall.com/rants.html Sphere: Related Content

Senate: UBS, Liechtenstein aided US tax cheats

GENEVA (AP) - A U.S. Senate subcommittee accused banks in Switzerland and Liechtenstein of helping wealthy Americans evade billions in taxes each year, and urged the establishment of tougher laws to combat offshore tax havens around the world.

In a report released late Wednesday, the Senate subcommittee on investigations estimated that offshore abuses were costing U.S. taxpayers about $100 billion a year.

It recommended a range of reforms to squeeze tax cheats, including more stringent U.S. requirements for foreign banks and harsher penalties for financial institutions failing to provide the Internal Revenue Service with details on all accounts their American clients are holding.

http://news.moneycentral.msn.com/provider/providerarticle.aspx?feed=AP&date=20080717&id=8905641

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Thanks

 

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The economy is basically sound

 

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Saudi Overture

by: Le Monde | Editorial

Saudi King Abdallah shakes rabbis' hands at the interreligious conference sponsored by King Juan Carlos of Spain. Le Monde's editorialist notes, "The first Saudi sovereign to visit the Vatican, where he met Benedict XVI [in 2007], today Abdullah does not fear evoking the common values of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam." (Photo: AP)

    No one would have ever imagined associating Saudi Arabia with audacity in religious matters. Islam is practiced there in its most intransigent form - Wahabism, a variant on one of Sunni Islam's four great schools of thought, Hanbalism. The kingdom is also well-known for its inflexibility with respect to other religions - which may be practiced in that country underground only and in the most complete secrecy. This intransigence pertains as much to the thousands of - mostly Catholic - Philippine immigrants as to Shiite and Ismaelian Saudis of the Hasa and Najran provinces, whom the most radical Sunni sheiks too often hold to be miscreants.

    Yet it's the Saudi sovereign, King Abdullah Ben Abdelaziz Al-Saud, who, on Wednesday, in the so very symbolic land of Spain, opened an interreligious conference that proclaims its intention of bringing together the three great religions of the Book, accustomed up until now to separate dialogues. Coming from a man who was long presented as an out-and-out conservative, and who, in the evening of his life in 2005, succeeded to the highest responsibilities in the land of Mecca and Medina, the initiative compels respect.

    The first Saudi sovereign to visit the Vatican, where he met Benedict XVI, today Abdullah does not fear evoking the common values of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. In the same spirit, he multiplies overtures to the Shiites, in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere, even though there still remains much to be done to disarm sectarian hatreds.

http://www.truthout.org/article/saudi-overture

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It Gets Worse

The wheels are in motion, things are happening!

by Brad

So I tried to escape the toxic levels of wingnuttery this evening by flipping through my roommate's copy of Newsweek. Amazingly, I flipped to page 36 and found this:

The Truth About Torture

To get a full accounting of how U.S. interrogation methods were used, the president should give those accused of 'war crimes' a pass.

By Stuart Taylor Jr. | NEWSWEEK

Dark deeds have been conducted in the name of the United States government in recent years: the gruesome, late-night circus at Abu Ghraib, the beating to death of captives in Afghanistan, and the officially sanctioned waterboarding and brutalization of high-value Qaeda prisoners. Now demands are growing for senior administration officials to be held accountable and punished. Congressional liberals, human-rights groups and other activists are urging a criminal investigation into high-level "war crimes," including the Bush administration's approval of interrogation methods considered by many to be torture.

It's a bad idea. In fact, President George W. Bush ought to pardon any official from cabinet secretary on down who might plausibly face prosecution for interrogation methods approved by administration lawyers.

Question: why did we ever develop the Geneva Conventions in the first place? Why does the Constitution ban cruel and unusual punishment? Hell, for that matter, why did we ever sign the goddamn Magna Carta*? Because what Stuart Taylor, Jr. is telling us is that government officials should simply be able to break the fucking law. And not just the laws against lying about blowjobs under oath — we're talking about laws against goddamn torture. We're talking about laws that for years have prohibited the government from performing cruel and heinous acts on prisoners. This is important shit. But to Stuart Taylor? Pfffffft, yeah it's bad, but so what? We'll only learn the truth about this stuff if we just pardon everyone beforehand. Because fuck it, laws are only meant to be obeyed by the little people.

http://www.sadlyno.com/archives/9894.html

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Nine House Republicans Vote for Impeachment Hearing

10 Republicans Abstain, Measure Passes 238-180...

Guest blogged by Jon Ponder, Pensito Review.

There will be a hearing related to Rep. Dennis Kucinich's Article of Impeachment against George Bush in the House Judiciary Committee. That was assured by a vote of 238 to 180 on Tuesday. (Details on that hearing, now posted here.)

An unidentified government official of a U.S. ally wants to participate if and when Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich makes his case to impeach Bush before the House Judiciary Committee.

But, according to Keith Olbermann on MSNBC's "Countdown" last night, Speaker Nancy Pelosi has mandated that questioning in the hearing be relegated to Bush's abuses of power, not his criminal wrongdoing.

"There's never been one [hearing] that accumulated all the things that constitute an imperial presidency," said Judiciary Chairman John Conyers, according to CQ Politics. He indicated topics covered in the hearing would include the firing of U.S. attorneys for political reasons, the betrayal of CIA agent Valerie Plame and Bush's alleged lying to Congress about the reasons for invading Iraq.

Kucinich's single Article of Impeachment only deals with Bush's lies to Congress.

There were no Democratic votes against holding the hearing. While 180 Republicans voted to follow their Dear Leader lock-step over the cliff, 10 Republicans abstained and nine Republican members of Congress voted with the Democrats. Here are their names...

Rep. Kevin Brady (Texas)
Rep. Wayne Gilchrest (Md.)
Rep. Walter B. Jones (N.C.)
Rep. Don Manzullo (Ill.)
Rep. Tim Murphy (Penn.)
Rep. Ron Paul (Texas)
Rep. Dave Reichert (Wash.)
Rep. Christopher Shays (Conn.)
Rep. Mike Turner (Ohio)

Kucinich, who earlier this week smartly summarized why Impeachment matters, promises a surprise witness against Bush. Also from CQ Politics: "An unidentified government official of a U.S. ally wants to participate if and when Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich makes his case to impeach President Bush before the House Judiciary Committee, according to the Ohio Democrat."

http://www.bradblog.com/?p=6186

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Romney not getting his $45m back

 Says he won't seek gifts to repay campaign loans

Some analysts said Senator John McCain, shown with Mitt Romney in Denver in March, might undermine his reform message if he picks Romney, someone who bankrolled so much of his own campaign in the primary. (Mary Altaffer/associated press/file)

 

By Michael Kranish

 

WASHINGTON - Mitt Romney, whose prospects of becoming John McCain's running mate appear on the rise, is preparing to formally declare he will not seek donations to repay $45 million in personal loans he made to his failed presidential bid - the biggest ever made by a candidate in a primary campaign.

 

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/07/17/romney_not_getting_his_45m_back/?page=1

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John McCain Thinks Social Security Is A "Disgrace"

On Monday, during a town hall in Denver, John McCain proposed a radical "fix" for the way Social Security is funded. Responding to a questioner who claimed Social Security "will not be there" when current workers retire (which is wrong), McCain said this:

Americans have got to understand that we are paying present-day retirees with the taxes paid by young workers in America today. And that's a disgrace. It's an absolute disgrace, and it's got to be fixed.

As anyone who knows anything about Social Security understands, "paying present-day retirees with the taxes paid by young workers" is pretty much the functional definition of Social Security. Always has been. That's what John McCain is calling an "absolute disgrace."

http://www.motherjones.com/mojoblog/archives/2008/07/8936_mccain_social_security_disgrace.html

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His master's voice

 

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WAR ZERO

by Ted Rall

Nothing Honorable About the Vietnam War

Every presidential candidacy relies on a myth. Reagan was a great communicator; Clinton felt your pain. Both storylines were ridiculous. But rarely are the constructs used to market a party nominee as transparent or as fictional as those we're being asked to swallow in 2008.

On the left--OK, not--we have Barack Obama. "The best orator of his generation!" says Ed Rendell, the Democratic power broker who has a day job as governor of Pennsylvania. "The best orator since Cicero!" Republican strategist Mary Matalin swoons. No doubt, Obama reads a mean speech. Take his Teleprompter away, though, and the dude is as lost as George Bush at a semiotics class. Forced to answer reporters' questions off the cuff, Obama is so afraid of messing up that he...carefully...spaces...each...word...apart...
so...he...can...see...them...
coming...wayyy...in...advance.

Still more laughable than the notion of Obama as the second coming of JFK is the founding myth of the McCain campaign: (a) he is a war hero, and (b) said heroism increases his credibility on national security issues. "A Vietnam hero and national security pro," The New York Times calls him in a typical media blandishment.

John McCain fought in Vietnam. There was nothing noble, much less heroic, about fighting in that war.

Some Americans may be suffering another of the periodic attacks of national amnesia that prevent us from honestly assessing our place in the world and its history, but others recall the truth about Vietnam: it was a disastrous, unjustifiable mess that anyone with an ounce of sense was against at the time.

http://www.rall.com/rants.html

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The Three Biggest Myths the Bush Administration Wants You to Believe About Offshore Drilling

 

By Faiz Shakir, The Progress Report. Posted July 15, 2008.

Conservatives are preying on concern over gas prices by propagating false myths that drilling for oil off our coasts will lower the cost of gas.

This story was written by Faiz Shakir, Amanda Terkel, Satyam Khanna, Matt Corley, Ali Frick, Benjamin Armbruster, and Brad Johnson.

Yesterday, citing the "squeeze of rising prices at the pump," President Bush rescinded the presidential moratorium on offshore drilling.

The moratorium on lease sales in the Outer Continental Shelf was established in 1990 by his father, George H.W. Bush, in response to the devastating Exxon Valdez oil spill and extended by President Clinton.

Bush's action pressures Congress to follow him in "capitulation to the oil companies" by lifting their moratorium, which must be renewed annually. In response, Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA) said at a press conference that Bush "is invoking the specter of another WMD: wells of mass deception."

http://www.alternet.org/environment/91588/?page=1

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our illegal immigration plan is working

 

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Bush is enjoying his post-presidential lazy days

July 18th, 2008 A busy news week around the world and in celebrity uteri. The Pitt-Jolie babies came out, and Brad blogged on News Groper: "I wanted to name one of the babies Georgeclooneyisnumber1 but Angie said baby names aren't passwords." Obama responded to the Times criticism that there's nothing funny about him with a list of humorous factoids such as: "I was born in Hawaii. That's a weird state, right?" Read about those stories and more of our best below... Me so happy by Brad Pitt Plenty of funny things about this guy! by Barack Obama Are these extra Eddie Murphys overcompensating for original Eddie Murphy not being funny? by Eddie Murphy I'm converting my dollars to euros and so should you by Donald Trump The economy is so bad, I'm taking a second job selling Cutco knives by John Mayer My typical day as the former president by George W. Bush Regards, The News Groper Editors www.newsgroper.com

News Groper is a network of fake parody blogs. Address: News Groper LLC, 18 Bridge St., Suite 2E, Brooklyn, NY 11201, USA. Copyright © 2008 News Groper LLC. All rights reserved.

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feel the excitement

 

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Can cartoonists go too far? Yes. Should we go too far? Yes

 by Steve Bell

 

The New Yorker's controversial cover and Steve Bell's recent Obama cartoon (right)

Irony is a difficult beast to control. Your intention as a cartoonist may be perfectly clear to you, but how some psycho in Toadsuck, Nebraska, is going to read your cartoon is anyone's guess, and the psycho's privilege, and you can never second guess a psycho, as was demonstrated in the Coen brothers' film No Country for Old Men. Psychos tend to take things very literally and often carry around captive bolts powered by large canisters of compressed air, especially in the US.

So should we tread warily, lest we are misunderstood? Of course we should. Cartoonists are some of the most painstaking, careful, shy and sensitive people on earth, yet we do play with fire, toying with other people's (and of course our own) most deeply held beliefs and most cherished illusions. Is it possible to go too far? Of course it is? Should we go too far? Of course we should. That's what makes our job so interesting. There's no better feeling than, having taken a risk in a drawing, seeing the thing in print and knowing it works. The converse is also true, which is why I work in a bunker on the south coast.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/jul/16/pressandpublishing.barackobama

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Judge: Man dressed as penis must apologize

By DENNIS YUSKO

SARATOGA SPRINGS -- A 19-year-old man must make an apology to the city of Saratoga Springs for dressing as an inflatable 6-foot penis and then parading across SPAC's stage at the high school's graduation last month.

Calvin Morett of 337 Pyramid Pine Estates must also pay to have the letter published in the Saratogian newspaper as part of a City Court sentence that calls for him to pay $95 in court fees and perform 24 hours of community service. Morett had previously pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct, a violation.

The sentence draws the curtain on Morett's case. His appearance at the June 26 graduation at Saratoga Performing Arts Center caused, a stir and a video of the incident later appeared on YouTube.

http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=703993&category=&BCCode=

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Reuters/Zogby Index Slips As Economic Worries Grow

Survey shows just 10% give U.S. economic policy a positive rating; Three in four believe the nation is headed on the wrong track

UTICA, New York – Likely voters are increasingly dissatisfied with U.S. economic policy as worries about inflation and a slowing U.S. economy leave Americans in a dismal mood, a new Reuters/Zogby poll shows.

Data from this poll is available here

The Reuters/Zogby Index, which measures American confidence, has fallen slightly to 88.7, down from 90.4 in June, and continues to remain just above the all-time low of 87.7 it hit in March. The Reuters/Zogby Index includes 10 poll questions that gauge perception of the state of the country and the economy. The telephone survey of 1,039 likely voters nationwide was conducted July 9-13, 2008. It carries a margin of error of +/- 3.1 percentage points.

	July 2008	June 2008	May 2008	April 2008	March 2008	Feb. 2008	Jan. 2008	Dec. 2007	Nov. 2007	Oct. 2007	Sept. 2007	Aug. 2007
Reuters/Zogby Index	88.7	90.4	87.9	95.5	87.7	99.3	94.2	97.3	94.9	96.0	98.8	100

Nine in 10 likely voters dissatisfied with U.S. economic policy

Dissatisfaction with U.S. economic policy continues to increase, with 89% who now view the nation's economic policy as fair or poor, up from 84% who said the same last month – 55% now give U.S. economic policy a "poor" rating. The vast majority of Democrats (96%) and political independents (91%) have a negative view of the nation's economic policy, while 80% of Republicans now share those feelings, an increase from 71% who said the same in June.

Likely voters also maintain their pessimistic views about the direction in which the country is headed, with 73% who believe the nation is on the wrong track, compared to 74% who said the same in June. Democrats are most likely to take a negative view of the country's direction, with 84% who now say the U.S. is on the wrong track, a slight decrease from 86% who said the same in June. The vast majority of independents take a similar view, with 82% who said the country is on the wrong track, falling from 86% who said the same last month. More than half of Republicans now believe the nation is headed on the wrong track (55%), up from 51% in June.

http://www.zogby.com/news/ReadNews.dbm?ID=1528

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Eccentric dude puts lyrics to famous film scores (like Batman!)

Posted by Xeni Jardin, permalink

David Markland, the Captain/Author of LA Metblogs (formerly Metroblogging LA) says:

This dude, Andrew Goldenberg, has a bunch of music videos he's made putting lyrics to every note of some of the best known film themes of our times. Absolutely brilliant. Take note of Batman and Back to the Future especially!

Odd L.A. Spotlight: Andrew Goldenberg [LA Metblogs]

 

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High Corn Prices Cast Shadow Over Ethanol Plants

by Robert Siegel

 

AltraBiofuel CEO Ken DeCubellis says the company must watch its costs very carefully. "We are one bad day of ethanol pricing from having to decide to shut the plant down," he says of the company's Indiana facility.

 

 

Profit margins for ethanol producers over the past year have been slim, and sometimes the companies have gone into the red. The spike in corn prices in June reflects the flooding that occurred in the Midwest. Courtesy of Purdue University.

 

 

AltraBiofuels opened its $170 million ethanol plant in Cloverdale, Ind., in April.

 

All Things Considered, July 15, 2008 · A rush to cash in on ethanol has slowed as soaring corn prices squeeze profit margins for producers of the alternative fuel. At a recent high of $7 per bushel, the corn used to make ethanol has tripled in price since many plants were built two years ago, and some facilities have been shut down or put on hold.

Ethanol took off in 2006, in response to two federal policies.

One policy was longstanding: Most gasoline had to include an additive that would oxygenate it, make it burn cleaner and reduce air pollution. The other policy was new: The government decided not to shield the oil companies against lawsuits over the additive that they had been using — methyl tertiary-butyl ether, or MTBE, which was found to contaminate groundwater.

So there had to be a different additive. Ethanol, a type of alcohol that is distilled from corn, fit the bill. And the oil companies could get a 51-cent-per-gallon tax credit for using ethanol.

The rush was on, and producers moved quickly to get ethanol plants online.

But recent ethanol news from the Corn Belt has been a lot less upbeat, as many ethanol-plant projects have stalled.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=92559699

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Radar tracked unidentified craft near Crawford, group's report says

By MATT FRAZIER and MARK AGEE

Federal Aviation Administration radar appears to confirm the presence of unidentified aircraft on Jan. 8 over the Stephenville-Dublin area, with at least one appearing to head toward President Bush's Crawford Ranch, the same night that dozens of people reported seeing UFOs, according to a report released Thursday by a national group that studies reports of unidentified flying objects.

According to the Mutual UFO Network report, the FAA radar indicated that several craft were moving in the same compass direction and time frame as those cited by Erath County residents. The craft were not military and did not have transponders that relay information about themselves to radar operators.

Radar tracked a Crawford-bound craft for more than an hour, according to the MUFON report. Witnesses said they saw two large glowing amber lights similar in size and color to the lights on the back of a school bus.

The object seemed to be stationary or moving at speeds of less than 60 mph most of the time, but at one point it accelerated to 532 mph in 30 seconds, according to the report. It did not seem to reach the property.

"The object was traveling to the southeast on a direct course towards the Crawford Ranch," the report states.

http://www.star-telegram.com/northeast/story/756596.html

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Progressive geek looking for 3,000 people to help him win Kansas election against dinosauric anti-science/pro-surveillance dude

 
Sean Tevis is a geeky geek from Kansas who's fed up with his state rep, an anti-abortion, anti-evolution, pro-censorship, pro-surveillance, anti-gay incumbent. Tevis -- an unknown -- is polling within three points of his opponent, and is looking to raise some Internet dough to kick this guy's (extremely tight) ass, and to promote his cause, he's made a fantastic, XKCD-style toon called "It's Like A Flamewar with a Forum Troll, but with an Eventual Winner." Specifically, he's looking to raise $8.34 from 3,000 people (no state rep in Kansas history has ever had more than 644 donors). I'm in*. Who's with me? Link Sphere: Related Content

Frantic rescue effort saves doll, not baby

True to life ... Vynette Cernik with one of her dolls.

By Glenis Green

• Cops mistake doll in car for unconscious baby
• So they smash vehicle's windows to rescue bub
• Officers say it was frightening for police and public

FRANTIC police smashed a window to rescue a seemingly unconscious baby from a locked vehicle in Queensland last week only to find it was an extremely lifelike doll.

The embarrassing mistake, made in regional Gympie, is not an isolated incident and passionate creator of the "reborn" baby dolls Vynette Cernik knows just how easily they can be mistaken for the real thing.

Ms Cernik said last week's case of mistaken identity mirrored a similar incident in the US when the window of a new Hummer was broken by police trying to rescue a "baby" that turned out to be a doll belonging to the owner's wife.

Selling for up to $1000, the painstakingly hand-painted dolls were so lifelike with eyelashes, fingernails, milk spots and wispy hair that they were constantly fooling people, Ms Cernik said.

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,24019578-1248,00.html

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Elizabeth Dole proposes naming AIDS bill after homophobe Jesse Helms

 

Good god, this is disgusting. Perhaps all that work on Sen. Liddy Dole has caused something to snap. Out of all the people to try to honor in an Act dedicated to fighting AIDS, Elizabeth Dole spits in the face of LGBTs by proposing the now-dead Jesse Helms be added to the "Tom Lantos and Henry J. Hyde United States Global Leadership Against HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria Reauthorization Act of 2008." Here's the Congressional Record:

SA 5074. Mrs. DOLE submitted an amendment intended to be proposed by her to the bill S. 2731, to authorize appropriations for fiscal years 2009 through 2013 to provide assistance to foreign countries to combat HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, and for other purposes; which was ordered to lie on the table; as follows: On page 1, line 5, strike ''and Henry J. Hyde'' and insert '', Henry J. Hyde, and Jesse Helms''.

Thousands died because of Helms's bigotry. There are so many reasons why Liddy needs to be defeated, and this only adds to the pile.

http://pandagon.net/index.php/site/comments/elizabeth_dole_proposes_naming_aids_bill_after_homophobe_jesse_helms/

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The New Yorker

 

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Flashback: McCain joked about how much women love to be raped.

 

The blog Rum, Romanism and Rebellion pulls out a 1986 Tucson Citizen article recounting a joke about rape told by Sen. John McCain (R-AZ). Speaking to the National League of Cities and Towns in Washington, DC, McCain allegedly said:

Did you hear the one about the woman who is attacked on the street by a gorilla, beaten senseless, raped repeatedly and left to die? When she finally regains consciousness and tries to speak, her doctor leans over to hear her sigh contently and to feebly ask, "Where is that marvelous ape?"

McCain was swiftly criticized by women's groups. A spokeswoman for NOW in Arizona said the organization's members were "incensed by his cruel and sexist remark." McCain said he did not "recall" telling the joke. More recently, the McCain campaign scheduled a fundraiser with a Texas oilman who compared rape to the weather while running for governor. "As long as it's inevitable, you might as well lie back and enjoy it," said Clayton Williams in 1990. After public outcry, the event was "postponed."

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/07/15/mccain-finds-rape-hilarious/

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