A Nation of Whiners? Perhaps

by Froma Harrop

You won't hear me straining to defend Phil Gramm, the Texas Republican whose penchant for grating commentary sunk his 1996 bid for the presidency before the New Hampshire primary. It was really just a matter of time before the former senator, serving as John McCain's economic advisor, put his foot in it: Gramm opined that Americans complaining about the economy were "whiners."

It's not good politics to call any voter a whiner, and Gramm had to leave the campaign. But honesty impels one to grant him this: The point about America being "a nation of whiners" is not without merit.

Yes, losing one's job or home is traumatic, and having both taken away more so. But the average citizens facing $4-a-gallon gas and learning that their hacienda isn't the money factory they thought it was haven't exactly been thrown into the Dust Bowl. Some Europeans pay twice as much for gas and live in half the space, and no one is passing around the hat for them.

I spent last week replaying Ken Burns' searing series on World War II. "The War" follows several American families ranging from working class to upper-middle class. None of them, not even the fancy folks in Mobile, Ala., lived as large as today's typical McMansion family.

These people also had to endure the war's horrific sacrifice, made more unbearable by the youth of the dead. Nearly 7,000 Americans perished on the tiny island of Iwo Jima alone, with several times that number injured, many grievously. It was a hideous battle in a long parade of gruesome campaigns. Over 400,000 Americans died in that war.

One of the documentary's running themes was that of servicemen pining for their loved ones back home. And their homes were modest triple-deckers in Connecticut, farmhouses in Minnesota or bungalows in California.

When the war ended, Americans soon resumed their historic quest for bigger and better.But even then, the returning soldier's idea of palatial living was a 750-square-foot house in Levittown, one-third the average size of a new home in 2006. The accommodations in Americans, by the way, were the envy of ruined Europe.

So the recent economic downturn hasn't made Americans poor by any sane measurement.

http://www.creators.com/opinion/froma-harrop/a-nation-of-whiners-perhaps.html

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No respect

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7 worrisome signs for Obama

by Glenn Thrush

A few weeks back, Time magazine was musing that John McCain was in danger of sliding from "a long shot" to a "no-shot." Around the same time, a hard-nosed former Hillary Clinton insider declared the race "effectively over" thanks to the McCain campaign's ineptitude, the tanking U.S. economy and Obama's advantages in cash, charisma and hope. And Obama, up by three to six points nationally, was about to leverage a much-anticipated trip to Iraq, Afghanistan and Europe into a pre-convention poll surge.

Instead, his supporters are now suffering a pre-Denver panic attack, watching as John McCain draws incrementally closer in state and national polls – with Rasmussen's most recent daily national tracker showing a statistical dead heat.

Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton has been privately enumerating her doubts about Obama to supporters, according to people who have spoken with her. Clinton's pollster Mark Penn recently unveiled a PowerPoint presentation red-flagging Obama's lukewarm leads among white female voters and Hispanics – while predicting a five-point swing could turn a presumed Obama win into a McCain landslide.

"It's not that people think McCain will win – it's that they are realizing that McCain could win," says Quinnipiac University pollster Peter Brown, whose surveys show tight races in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida. "This election is about Barack Obama — not John McCain — it's about whether Barack Obama passes muster. Every poll shows that people want a Democratic president, the problem is they're not sure they want Barack Obama."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/20080811/pl_politico/12433

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Who Framed George Lakoff?

A noted linguist reflects on his tumultuous foray into politics

 

By EVAN R. GOLDSTEIN

George P. Lakoff is falling asleep. It is a bright summer afternoon in San Francisco, and Lakoff is nursing a latte at a small table near the entrance of a bustling, sun-dappled cafe. "This is what happens when you are 67," he explains sheepishly after dozing off midsentence. A stocky man with a wide smile and a well-trimmed white beard, Lakoff doesn't seem tired so much as beleaguered.

For years he's been at the center of some of the biggest intellectual disagreements in linguistics (most famously with Noam Chomsky) and has helped create an important interdisciplinary field of study, cognitive linguistics, that is reshaping our understanding of the complex relationship between language and thought. More recently he has been vying for respect among people notoriously hard to persuade about anything — politicians and their financial backers. So this summer he has been on the road promoting his new book, The Political Mind: Why You Can't Understand 21st-Century American Politics With an 18th-Century Brain (Viking), which argues that liberals have clung to the false belief that people think in a conscious, logical, and unemotional manner and that this belief has doomed Democrats' chances with voters.

But transferring scholarly ideas into political practice can be tricky. After a heady few years when he seemed the person Democratic policy makers wanted on the other end of the telephone, Lakoff is finding that what they're asking for — and are willing to put money behind — is not always what he can provide. Lakoff's foray into politics is a story marked by intellectual breakthroughs, the allure of influence, and a fall from great heights. Yet his lifetime work permeates several disciplines and continues to spur cognitive researchers to go off in new directions.

http://chronicle.com/free/v54/i49/49b00601.htm

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Oil execs for McCain

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Should a president be computer literate?

 

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How to Blow It

It's the most winnable presidential election in American history - but the Democrats are old hands at losing. Michael Moore offers some helpful hints on how they might gift it all to the Republicans.

by Michael Moore

"Let's snatch defeat from the jaws of victory."
"We never met an election we'd like to win."
"Why get elected when you can be defeated!"

These have been the mantras of the Democratic Party. Beginning with their stunning inability to defeat the most detested politician in American history, Richard Nixon, and continuing through their stunning inability to defeat the most detested politician in the world, George II, the Democrats are the masters of blowing it. And they don't just simply "blow it" - they blow it especially when the electorate seems desperate to give it to them.

After eight years of Ronald Reagan in the Oval Office, the public had seen enough. The Democrats chose Michael Dukakis as their nominee. Two months before the election, he was ahead of Bush I in the polls. Then he went to an army tank factory in Michigan, put on some kind of stupid-fitting helmet and rode around in a tank with a goofy smile on his face. Weeks later, when asked what kind of punishment he would like to see given to someone who might rape his wife, he started mumbling some sort of bleeding-heart gibberish instead of just saying what anyone would say: "I'd like to tear the bastard limb from limb!" The voters were so put off by his wimpiness, they elected an actual wimp over him, George H W Bush.

For years now, nearly every poll has shown that the American people are right in sync with the platform of the Democratic Party. They are pro-environment, pro-women's rights, pro-choice, they don't like war, they want the minimum wage raised, and they want a single-payer universal healthcare system. The American public agrees with the Republican Party on only one major issue: they support the death penalty.

So you would think, with more than 200 million eligible voters, the Dems would be cleaning up, election after election. Obviously not. The Democrats appear to be professional losers. They are so pathetic in their ability to win elections, they even lose when they win! Al Gore won the 2000 election, but for some strange reason he didn't become the president of the United States.

If you are unable as a party to get the landlord to turn over the keys to a house that is yours, what the hell good are you?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/aug/09/michael.moore.us.elections.barack.obama

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Tear down that wall

 

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Top 9 best new drugs

One pill makes you larger, and one pill makes you small. Take one, take them all!

Researchers are reporting that an experimental drug can mimic the results of an exercise regimen — with no exercise required. [Called "the couch potato experiment,"] after four weeks of taking the pill, mice who hadn't worked out displayed a 44 percent increase in their running endurance. —Wired

---

1. Scientists at the Ronald Reagan School for Pschyoeconomic Paroxysms have reportedly developed a new drug that, after just a few weeks, induces random bouts of forgetfulness combined with the ability to reverse ideological direction in an instant, most notably when large amounts of cash are placed directly in front of the face.

   Code-named "the McCain," users report random outbreaks of very bad jokes coupled with an extremely combative nature, acute desire to detonate large explosive devices across multiple desert nations and a general feeling that the real problem with the world today is all the gul-dang gay young peacenik whippersnapper environmentalists who like to rub their iPods all over their Googles. Common prescription: "Take two McCains and call me in 1957."

2. Following research at Harvard and McGill universities where scientists have been testing new drugs that "delete" bad memories, researchers in Washington, D.C., have found a new compound that tricks the brain into believing great progressive accomplishments are being made and tremendous strides have been taken to reverse all sorts of previous damage, when in fact very little has been done and mostly what's happening is a lot of general whimpering wrapped in a great many false gestures, all while promising even more super-positive changes ahead, but if only someone really good steps in as leader and tells everyone what to do.

   Introduced to great excitement and fanfare when it first hit the market in November of 2006, "the congressional Democrat" has only proven moderately effective as a radical stimulant, and is currently considered a big, fat disappointment.

3. Drug researchers in Gnowangerup, Australia, are reporting successful Stage II testing of a rather sour new pill known as "The Gawker" (also known as "PWND," "OMG," "Get a Life," "Perez Hilton"). A neural inhibitor that blocks cognitive maturation, this new drug reportedly affects speech patterns and triggers an alarming increase in jackassianic peptides in the brain, the chemical most associated with extreme self-absorption, chronic masturbation, general mean-spiritedness and excessive use of the word "whatEVs."

   Time-released. Effects reportedly last approximately six years, roughly from ages 19-25, at which time serious users suddenly awaken to fact of own adorable irrelevance, write vacuous memoir, take job as assistant manager of American Apparel outlet in south Jersey shopping mall.

4. Ironically, just a few years ago, this global toxin was thought to be generally harmless, albeit a huge irritant. Now "the Bush," secretly developed by teams of starved eunuchs in the dungeons of the GOP research labs between the years 1950 to 1998 and whose real toxicity only became known on Sept. 12, 2001, is widely regarded as "the bitterest pill we've ever had to swallow."

   Set to expire in January 2009, notable side effects include retching, fatalism, monosyllabism, spiritual coagulation, complete intellectual stasis, and a strange, painful condition known only as "squinty face." Believed to be on track to replace "the Nixon" as worst drug ever invented.

   WARNING: Contraindicated by a highly volatile ointment — "the Cheney" — containing shards of glass and the blood of insane Amazonian scorpions, which induces instant shriveling of any living tissue with which it come into contact.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2008/08/08/notes080808.DTL

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Nine out of ten oil execs

 

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Dead Monster Washes Ashore in Montauk

by disinfogreg

No, Lizzie Grubman's still alive. This is an actual monster, some sort of rodent-like creature with a dinosaur beak. A tipster says that there is "a government animal testing facility very close by in Long Island," but unless the government is trying to design horrible Montauk monsters that will eat IEDs and fart fire at bad Iraqis, we're not sure why they would create such an unthinkable beast. Our guess is that it's viral marketing for something. Ali Lohan's new album perhaps.

 

http://www.disinfo.com/content/story.php?title=Dead-Monster-Washes-Ashore-in-Montauk

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Election Shocker! Senator John McCain may be the Antichrist.

 

by Robert Dreyfuss

Biblical scholars in Colorado Springs have uncovered startling evidence that Senator John McCain may be the Antichrist. Their conclusions, while highly controversial, may have a dramatic impact on the 2008 elections, since many Bible-believing Christians have already expressed doubts about McCain's fealty to Christianity.

The analysis was conducted by the respected True Bible Society, and it will be published next month in the End Times Journal.

The analysis was especially ironic, given that it came out just one day after McCain was accused of subtly hinting that Barack Obama could be the Antichrist. McCain ran a commercial depicting Obama as "The One," giving rise to charges that he was sending a subliminal messages to anti-Obama Christians.

"What started us looking at this issue is the fact that Senator McCain has declared his intention to maintain US forces in Iraq for a hundred years," said David Jenkins, a leading Biblical scholar. "That means that McCain wants to control Babylon for at least a century." According to many scholars of the Book of Revelation, the Antichrist will try to rebuild the ancient city of Babylon in order to use it as a springboard for an international effort at world domination. Ultimately, the Antichrist will marshal forces from Babylon to spark a showdown with Christian and Jewish-led forces in the battle of Armageddon.

http://www.thenation.com/blogs/dreyfuss/343356

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Starve The Beast: Appetite For Distortion

 

by Mark @ 3:24 pm

Almost exactly one year ago I published a comprehensive examination of the futility of appearances on Fox News by Democrats and progressives: Starve The Beast. The thrust of the article argued that…

"Every time one of our representatives appears on Fox, they are setting back our agenda. They are not just wasting a little time trying to confront the enemy in its lair. They are literally causing harm to the efforts of the rest of us who are fervently struggling to repair and improve our country."

The case was supported by studies that showed that Fox News audiences supported Republicans by overwhelming margins and that they were significantly more likely to have misperceptions about current news events. I also provided evidence that the centerpiece in Rupert Murdoch's empire was a far less ominous presence in the mediasphere than they liked to imagine themselves.

It's all still true. Rasmussen conducted a new study that affirms the previous studies. Their survey shows that Fox News viewers are still a species apart from the rest of the television population.

When nine out of ten Fox viewers say that they will vote for John McCain, you have an audience that may be more accurately described as a cult (as I described it in The Cult Of Foxonality). And while viewers at both CNN and MSNBC express a solid two to one majority for Barack Obama, that is a far cry from the near unanimous, block mentality of Fox viewers. The fact that the CNN and MSNBC audience compositions agree with one another suggests that they may be a better reflection of the population as a whole. They certainly come much closer to public opinion polling on the presidential race. Another indication of the disparity between Fox and its competitors is that 43% of CNN viewers and 38% of MSNBC viewers have a favorable opinion of McCain. However, only 14% of Fox viewers have a favorable opinion of Obama.

http://www.newscorpse.com/ncWP/

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Where have all the real men gone?

 

Top American columnist Kathleen Parker is causing a furore with her new book Save the Males, in which she argues that feminism has neutered men and deprived them of their noble, protective role in society

I know. Saving the males is an unlikely vocation for a 21st-century woman. Most men don't know they need saving; most women consider the idea absurd. When I tell my women friends that I want to save the males, they look at me as if noticing for the first time that I am insane. Then they say something like: "Are you out of your mind? This is still a male-dominated world. It's women who need saving. Screw the men!"

Actually, that's a direct quote. The reality is that men already have been screwed – and not in the way they prefer. For the past 30 years or so, males have been under siege by a culture that too often embraces the notion that men are to blame for all of life's ills. Males as a group – not random men – are bad by virtue of their DNA.

While women have been cast as victims, martyrs, mystics or saints, men have quietly retreated into their caves, the better to muffle emotions that fluctuate between hilarity (are these bitches crazy or what?) and rage (yes, they are and they've got our kids).

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/book_extracts/article4448371.ece

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human rights

 

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After rape victim used cell phone to call for help, KBR bans use of personal phones in Iraq

This weekend, defense contracting giant KBR announced it would ban the use of personal cell phones by its employees in Iraq, citing no specific reason. Though KBR has not indicated the ban is related to the numerous allegations of rape by female KBR employees by their male coworkers, the ban could endanger future victims. Jamie Leigh Jones, the first victim to come forward publicly, explained that after she was gang-raped by coworkers and held in a shipping container for days, "she convinced a sympathetic guard to loan her a cell phone so she could call her father in Texas."

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/08/04/after-rape-victim-used-cell-phone-to-call-for-help-kbr-bans-personal-phones-in-iraq/

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a war on terror update

 

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One Nation, Under a New Obama Salute

by Paul Bedard

George Bush had his three-fingered W salute that supporters flashed when greeting him at presidential campaign events in 2000. And now, if a Los Angeles creative agency gets its way, Sen. Barack Obama will see fans meet him with his own salute like the one above. "Our goal is to see a crowd of 75,000 people at Obama's nomination speech holding their hands above their heads, fingers laced together in support of a new direction for this country, a renewed hope, and acceptance of responsibility for our future," says Rick Husong, owner of The Loyalty Inc. Husong tells me that he got the idea after seeing the famous Obama-Progress poster by artist Shepherd Fairey. "We wanted to get involved some way," he says. So, the agency came up with their own a symbol of hope and progress that also plays off Obama's name. "We thought, 'Let's try and start a movement where even while walking down the street, people would hold up the O and you would know that they were for Obama,' " says Husong. Much thought went into the relatively simple idea. "You interlace your hands in a circle, the interlacing being a symbol of different types of people coming together and the circle a symbol of unity," he says. Their design, unlike Fairey's, is free, and Husong is urging people to download it and print it on posters and T-shirts. "We want to see it everywhere, but more importantly we want this sign to take the world by storm."

http://www.usnews.com/blogs/washington-whispers/2008/8/7/one-nation-under-a-new-obama-salute.html

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New evidence suggests Ron Suskind is right

What was an Iraqi politician doing at CIA headquarters just days before he distributed a fake memo incriminating Saddam Hussein in 9/11?

By Joe Conason

Aug. 08, 2008 | If Ron Suskind's sensational charge that the White House and CIA colluded in forging evidence to justify the Iraq invasion isn't proved conclusively in his new book, "The Way of the World," then the sorry record of the Bush administration offers no basis to dismiss his allegation. Setting aside the relative credibility of the author and the government, the relevant question is whether the available facts demand a full investigation by a congressional committee, with testimony under oath.

When we look back at the events surrounding the emergence of the faked letter that is at the center of this controversy, a strong circumstantial case certainly can be made in support of Suskind's story.

That story begins during the final weeks of 2003, when everyone in the White House was suffering severe embarrassment over both the origins and the consequences of the invasion of Iraq. No weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq. No evidence of significant connections between Saddam Hussein's regime and the al-Qaida terrorist organization had been discovered there either. Nothing in this costly misadventure was turning out as advertised by the Bush administration.

According to Suskind, the administration's highest officials -- presumably meaning President Bush and Vice President Cheney -- solved this problem by ordering the CIA to manufacture a document "proving" that Saddam had indeed been trying to build nuclear weapons and that he was also working with al-Qaida. The reported product of that order was a fake memorandum from Tahir Jalil Habbush, then chief of Saddam's intelligence service, to the dictator himself, dated July 1, 2001. The memo not only explicitly confirmed that 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta had received training in Baghdad for "attacking the targets that we have agreed to destroy" but also carefully noted the arrival of a "shipment" from Niger via Libya, presumably of uranium yellowcake, the sole export of that impoverished African country.

Very incriminating, very convenient and not very believable. Indeed, it may be hard to imagine that even the CIA at its bumbling worst would concoct such a blatant counterfeit. But there are a few reasons to believe that, too.

On Dec. 14, 2003, the Sunday Telegraph hyped the phony Habbush memo as a front-page exclusive over the byline of Con Coughlin, the paper's foreign editor and chief Mideast correspondent, who has earned a reputation for promoting neoconservative claptrap. As I explained in a Salon blog post on Dec. 18, the story's sudden appearance in London was the harbinger of a disinformation campaign that quickly blew back to the United States -- where it was cited by William Safire on the New York Times Op-Ed page. Ignoring the bizarre Niger yellowcake reference, which practically screamed bullshit, Safire seized on Coughlin's story as proof of his own cherished theory about Saddam's sponsorship of 9/11.

Soon enough, however, the Habbush memo was discredited in Newsweek and elsewhere as a forgery for many reasons, notably including its contradiction of established facts concerning Atta's travels during 2001.

But the credulous Telegraph coverage is still significant now, because Coughlin identified the source of his amazing scoop as Ayad Allawi. For those who have forgotten the ambitious Allawi, he is a former Baathist who rebelled against Saddam, formed the Iraqi National Accord movement to fight the dictator, and was appointed to Iraq's interim Governing Council by the U.S. occupation authorities after the invasion.

Although Coughlin quoted Allawi at some length, neither he nor his source revealed how the Habbush memo had fallen into the hands of the Iraqi politician. But the Safire column made an allusion that now seems crucial, describing Allawi as "an Iraqi leader long considered reliable by intelligence agencies."

Specifically, Allawi was a longtime asset of the Central Intelligence Agency, which had funded his struggle against Saddam for years prior to the invasion. His CIA sponsorship is noted in nearly every news article about Allawi, usually contrasted with the Pentagon sponsorship of his political rival, Ahmed Chalabi, the infamous fabricator of WMD intelligence (and suspected double agent for Iran).

Obviously, Allawi's relationship with the CIA is worth reconsidering today in light of the charges in Suskind's book, even though by itself that relationship proves nothing. There is more, however.

On Dec. 11, 2003 -- three days before the Telegraph launched its "exclusive" on the Habbush memo -- the Washington Post published an article by Dana Priest and Robin Wright headlined "Iraq Spy Service Planned by U.S. to Stem Attacks." Buried inside on Page A41, their story outlined the CIA's efforts to create a new Iraqi intelligence agency:

"The new service will be trained, financed and equipped largely by the CIA with help from Jordan. Initially the agency will be headed by Iraqi Interior Minister Nouri Badran, a secular Shiite and activist in the Jordan-based Iraqi National Accord, a former exile group that includes former Baath Party military and intelligence officials.

"Badran and Ayad Allawi, leader of the INA, are spending much of this week at CIA headquarters in Langley to work out the details of the new program. Both men have worked closely with the CIA over the past decade in unsuccessful efforts to incite coups against Saddam Hussein." (The Web link to the full story is broken but it can be found on Nexis.)

So Allawi was at the CIA during the week before Coughlin got that wonderful scoop. That may not be proof of anything, either, but a picture is beginning to form.

That picture becomes sharper in the months that followed Allawi's release of the Habbush forgery, when he suddenly returned to favor in Baghdad and eclipsed Chalabi, at least for a while. Five months later, in May 2004, the Iraqi Governing Council elected Allawi as his country's interim prime minister, reportedly under pressure from the American authorities. Combining subservience to the occupiers with iron-fisted tactics, he quickly squandered any popularity he might have enjoyed, and his INA party placed a humiliating third in the 2005 national elections.

That was the end of Allawi as a politician, yet perhaps he had already served his purpose. And it might be very interesting to hear what he would say today about the Habbush forgery -- and his broader relationship to the CIA and the Bush White House -- especially if he were to tell his story in a congressional hearing.

Until then there is much more to learn from Suskind's reporting, including new evidence that Bush and other officials knew there were no WMD in Iraq. Read an excerpt from "The Way of the World" here (where you can also sign up to receive a copy for $1 from Progressive Book Club, which happens to be run by my wife, Elizabeth Wagley).

http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2008/08/08/suskind/print.html

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buddies

 

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military tribunals

 

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MASSIVE US NAVAL ARMADA HEADS for IRAN

Operation Brimstone ended only one week ago.

 

This was the joint US/UK/French naval war games in the Atlantic Ocean preparing for a naval blockade of Iran and the likely resulting war in the Persian Gulf area. The massive war games included a US Navy supercarrier battle group, an US Navy expeditionary carrier battle group, a Royal Navy carrier battle group, a French nuclear hunter-killer submarine plus a large number of US Navy cruisers, destroyers and frigates playing the "enemy force".

The lead American ship in these war games, the USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN71) and its Carrier Strike Group Two (CCSG-2) are now headed towards Iran along with the USS Ronald Reagon (CVN76) and its Carrier Strike Group Seven (CCSG-7) coming from Japan.

They are joining two existing USN battle groups in the Gulf area: the USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN72) with its Carrier Strike Group Nine (CCSG-9); and the USS Peleliu (LHA-5) with its expeditionary strike group.

Likely also under way towards the Persian Gulf is the USS Iwo Jima (LHD-7) and its expeditionary strike group, the UK Royal Navy HMS Ark Royal (R07) carrier battle group, assorted French naval assets including the nuclear hunter-killer submarine Amethyste and French Naval Rafale fighter jets on-board the USS Theodore Roosevelt. These ships took part in the just completed Operation Brimstone.

The build up of naval forces in the Gulf will be one of the largest multi-national naval armadas since the First and Second Gulf Wars. The intent is to create a US/EU naval blockade (which is an Act of War under international law) around Iran (with supporting air and land elements) to prevent the shipment of benzene and certain other refined oil products headed to Iranian ports. Iran has limited domestic oil refining capacity and imports 40% of its benzene. Cutting off benzene and other key products would cripple the Iranian economy. The neo-cons are counting on such a blockade launching a war with Iran.

The US Naval forces being assembled include the following:

Carrier Strike Group Nine
USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN72) nuclear powered supercarrier
With its Carrier Air Wing Two
Destroyer Squadron Nine:
USS Mobile Bay (CG53) guided missile cruiser
USS Russell (DDG59) guided missile destroyer
USS Momsen (DDG92) guided missile destroyer
USS Shoup (DDG86) guided missile destroyer
USS Ford (FFG54) guided missile frigate
USS Ingraham (FFG61) guided missile frigate
USS Rodney M. Davis (FFG60) guided missile frigate
USS Curts (FFG38) guided missile frigate
Plus one or more nuclear hunter-killer submarines

Peleliu Expeditionary Strike Group
USS Peleliu (LHA-5) a Tarawa-class amphibious assault carrier
USS Pearl Harbor (LSD52) assult ship
USS Dubuque (LPD8) assult ship/landing dock
USS Cape St. George (CG71) guided missile cruiser
USS Halsey (DDG97) guided missile destroyer
USS Benfold (DDG65) guided missile destroyer

Carrier Strike Group Two
USS Theodore Roosevelt (DVN71) nuclear powered supercarrier
With its Carrier Air Wing Eight
Destroyer Squadron 22
USS Monterey (CG61) guided missile cruiser
USS Mason (DDG87) guided missile destroyer
USS Nitze (DDG94) guided missile destroyer
USS Sullivans (DDG68) guided missile destroyer

USS Springfield (SSN761) nuclear powered hunter-killer submarine

IWO ESG ~ Iwo Jima Expeditionary Strike Group
USS Iwo Jima (LHD7) amphibious assault carrier
With its Amphibious Squadron Four
And with its 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit
USS San Antonio (LPD17) assault ship
USS Velia Gulf (CG72) guided missile cruiser
USS Ramage (DDG61) guided missile destroyer
USS Carter Hall (LSD50) assault ship
USS Roosevelt (DDG80) guided missile destroyer

USS Hartfore (SSN768) nuclear powered hunter-killer submarine

Carrier Strike Group Seven
USS Ronald Reagan (CVN76) nuclear powered supercarrier
With its Carrier Air Wing 14
Destroyer Squadron 7
USS Chancellorsville (CG62) guided missile cruiser
USS Howard (DDG83) guided missile destroyer
USS Gridley (DDG101) guided missile destroyer
USS Decatur (DDG73) guided missile destroyer
USS Thach (FFG43) guided missile frigate
USNS Rainier (T-AOE-7) fast combat support ship

Also likely to join the battle armada:

UK Royal Navy HMS Ark Royal Carrier Strike Group with assorted guided missile destroyers and frigates, nuclear hunter-killer submarines and support ships

French Navy nuclear powered hunter-killer submarines (likely the Amethyste and perhaps others), plus French Naval Rafale fighter jets operating off of the USS Theodore Roosevelt as the French Carrier Charles de Gaulle is in dry dock, and assorted surface warships

Various other US Navy warships and submarines and support ships. The following USN ships took part (as the "enemy" forces) in Operation Brimstone and several may join in:

USS San Jacinto (CG56) guided missile cruiser
USS Anzio (CG68) guided missile cruiser
USS Normandy (CG60) guided missile cruiser
USS Carney (DDG64) guided missile destroyer
USS Oscar Austin (DDG79) guided missile destroyer
USS Winston S. Churchill (DDG81) guided missile destroyer
USS Carr (FFG52) guided missile frigate

The USS Iwo Jima and USS Peleliu Expeditionary Strike Groups have USMC Harrier jump jets and an assortment of assault and attack helicopters. The Expeditionary Strike Groups have powerful USMC Expeditionary Units with amphibious armor and ground forces trained for operating in shallow waters and in seizures of land assets, such as Qeshm Island (a 50 mile long island off of Bandar Abbas in the Gulf of Hormuz and headquarters of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps).


http://europebusines.blogspot.com/2008/08/massive-us-naval-armada-heads-for-iran.html

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Superbugs

by Jerome Groopman

Dr. Rajendra Kapila of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey in Newark, New Jersey, shows X-rays of a patient with an antibiotic-resistant staph infection. (Photo: Daniel Hulshizer / The Associated Press)

The new generation of resistant infections is almost impossible to treat.

    In August, 2000, Dr. Roger Wetherbee, an infectious-disease expert at New York University's Tisch Hospital, received a disturbing call from the hospital's microbiology laboratory. At the time, Wetherbee was in charge of handling outbreaks of dangerous microbes in the hospital, and the laboratory had isolated a bacterium called Klebsiella pneumoniae from a patient in an intensive-care unit. "It was literally resistant to every meaningful antibiotic that we had," Wetherbee recalled recently. The microbe was sensitive only to a drug called colistin, which had been developed decades earlier and largely abandoned as a systemic treatment, because it can severely damage the kidneys. "So we had this report, and I looked at it and said to myself, 'My God, this is an organism that basically we can't treat.'"

    Klebsiella is in a class of bacteria called gram-negative, based on its failure to pick up the dye in a Gram's stain test. (Gram-positive organisms, which include Streptococcus and Staphylococcus , have a different cellular structure.) It inhabits both humans and animals and can survive in water and on inanimate objects. We can carry it on our skin and in our noses and throats, but it is most often found in our stool, and fecal contamination on the hands of caregivers is the most frequent source of infection among patients. Healthy people can harbor Klebsiella to no detrimental effect; those with debilitating conditions, like liver disease or severe diabetes, or those recovering from major surgery, are most likely to fall ill. The bacterium is oval in shape, resembling a TicTac, and has a thick, sugar-filled outer coat, which makes it difficult for white blood cells to engulf and destroy it. Fimbria-fine, hairlike extensions that enable Klebsiella to adhere to the lining of the throat, trachea, and bronchi-project from the bacteria's surface; the attached microbes can travel deep into our lungs, where they destroy the delicate alveoli, the air sacs that allow us to obtain oxygen. The resulting hemorrhage produces a blood-filled sputum, nicknamed "currant jelly." Klebsiella can also attach to the urinary tract and infect the kidneys. When the bacteria enter the bloodstream, they release a fatty substance known as an endotoxin, which injures the lining of the blood vessels and can cause fatal shock.

    Tisch Hospital has four intensive-care units, all in the east wing on the fifteenth floor, and at the time of the outbreak there were thirty-two intensive-care beds. The I.C.U.s were built in 1961, and although the equipment had been modernized over the years, the units had otherwise remained relatively unchanged: the beds were close to each other, with I.V. pumps and respirators between them, and doctors and nursing staff were shared among the various I.C.U.s. This was an ideal environment for a highly infectious bacterium.

    It was the first major outbreak of this multidrug-resistant strain of Klebsiella in the United States, and Wetherbee was concerned that the bacterium had become so well adapted in the I.C.U. that it could not be killed with the usual ammonia and phenol disinfectants. Only bleach seemed able to destroy it. Wetherbee and his team instructed doctors, nurses, and custodial staff to perform meticulous hand washing, and had them wear gowns and gloves when attending to infected patients. He instituted strict protocols to insure that gloves were changed and hands vigorously disinfected after handling the tubing on each patient's ventilator. Spray bottles with bleach solutions were installed in the I.C.U.s, and surfaces and equipment were cleaned several times a day. Nevertheless, in the ensuing months Klebsiella infected more than a dozen patients.

http://www.truthout.org/article/superbugs

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The pot and the kettle

 

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Barack Obama Is Flip-Flopping Himself to a November Defeat

by Bonnie Erbe

I said it three weeks ago. And I've been sensing it ever since Sen. Barack Obama won the Democratic presidential nomination two months ago. Where's his massive lead in the polls? Democrats score higher than Republicans on generic polls this season. And why wouldn't they, given the destructive impact of the Republican Bush administration on our nation's economy, military prowess, and strength as the world's leader? Nonetheless, Senator Obama has failed to pull convincingly ahead of rival Sen. John McCain, and some daily presidential tracking polls show them dead even. As I wrote way back in July:

Taking all these caveats into account, Obama should still be ahead by 10 to 15 percentage points at this moment in the contest. It is a tight race, when it should have been an easy sprint for the Democratic nominee.

Now, the New York Times's David Brooks is asking, "Where's the Landslide?" He attributes Obama's problem to his aloof demeanor:

There is a sense that because of his unique background and temperament, Obama lives apart. He put one foot in the institutions he rose through on his journey but never fully engaged.

Perhaps that's a factor. And it is well put by Brooks, an eminent scribe. But it's not THE answer, IMHO.

THE answer is that the far-left wing of the Democratic Party nominated a charismatic unknown, who has turned out not to be ready for primetime politics. His impeccably choreographed jaunt through the Middle East and Europe last week produced an 8-point bounce in the polls that lasted for about eight seconds.

The boost from his trip was wide, but it wasn't deep. And since Obama clinched the nomination, he has alienated important segments of his young, liberal base by flip-flopping on a range of issues from offshore oil drilling, to government surveillance to gun control and abortion rights.

Why can't Obama hold on to a credible lead in the polls? Because the Democrats nominated an off-the-charts liberal and the United States is a moderate-to-conservative nation. As he changes positions seeking the support of independents and alienated Republicans this fall, he turns off the far-left base that got him the nomination in the first place.

http://www.usnews.com/blogs/erbe/2008/8/5/barack-obama-is-flip-flopping-himself-to-a-november-defeat.html

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Yo-yo champion

 

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EPA: Corn ethanol is awesome!

 

The discredited agency upholds the biofuel mandate

by Tom Philpott

The environmental value of corn ethanol got a ringing endorsement Thursday from EPA chief Stephen Johnson.

Johnson declined a request to cut the Renewable Fuel Standard embedded in the 2007 Energy Act. The RFS mandates 9 billion gallons of corn-based ethanol be blended into the fuel supply this year, rising steadily to 15 billion gallons by 2015, and then holding steady at 15 billion gallons until 2022.

To produce 9 billion gallons this year, ethanol makers will churn through about a third of the U.S. corn crop. If corn production holds steady through 2015 -- not an unreasonable assumption, considering that it's already pretty much maxed out -- we'll be turning 55 percent of the U.S. corn crop into car fuel within seven years.

Consider that the U.S produces about 40 percent of the world's corn -- more than any other nation by a wide margin. The U.S. mandate has been pretty definitively linked to a rise in global food prices that could push 100 million additional people into poverty conditions.

Consider also that corn is an extremely heavy user of synthetic nitrogen fertilizer, which emits a greenhouse gas called nitrous oxide. The EPA itself terms nitrous oxide a greenhouse gas "about 310 times more powerful than carbon dioxide."

Finally, consider that every gallon of ethanol that gets mixed into the fuel supply costs taxpayers $0.51. Given the mounting challenges of climate change and energy scarcity, do we really have $4.5 billion-$7.5 billion to drop on a program that most serious people consider environmentally worthless, at best?

http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/8/7/141938/2550?source=daily

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Hu Jintao: "There are no Olympics, go away"

August 8th, 2008 The Olympics begin today ... if you buy into the media lies. Hu Jintao thinks otherwise. Read his Olympic blog on News Groper. Elsewhere on NG, Morgan Freeman had a terrible, no good, very bad week and Ahmadinejad wonders if this is a world he wants to raise his nuclear weapons in... Don't believe the media's lies, we aren't hosting any Olympics by Hu Jintao Morgan and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad week by Morgan Freeman I'm not racist, I passed the home racism test by Bill Clinton Is this a world I want to raise my nuclear weapons in? by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Between the rich white guy and the attention whore, I don't know who I love more! by Donald Trump Top six actors I refuse to act with by Samuel L. Jackson Regards, The News Groper Editors www.newsgroper.com

 

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Denver bars poop protests during Dem convention

DENVER (AP) — The Denver City Council has passed an ordinance barring protesters from carrying buckets of feces during the Democratic National Convention. Three protest groups say they've already promised not to toss, smear or spray feces, and they call the new ordinance insulting and excessive. The council approved the ordinance 12-0 on Monday. It also bars protesters from possessing chains, locks or other materials they could use to create human barricades or cause other disruptions. Members of Re-create 68, Unconventional Action and Tent State University say the ordinance is overkill because they have signed an agreement not to use excrement. The convention will take place Aug. 25-28. http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/election2008/2008-08-05-denver-poop_N.htm

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Fiscal conservatives

 

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Can’t Win in Afghanistan? Blame Pakistan

	uruknet.info   اوروكنت.إنفو
	informazione dall'iraq occupato     information from occupied iraq     أخبار من العراق المحتل

by Eric Margolis

Soon after the US invaded Afghanistan and overthrew the Taliban government in 2001, I predicted that Taliban resistance would resume in four years. My fellow pundits, who were ****-a-hoop over the US military victory over a bunch of lightly-armed medieval tribesmen, became drunk on old-fashioned imperial triumphalism, and denounced me as "crazy," or worse. But most of them had never been to Afghanistan and knew nothing about the Pashtun tribal people. I had covered the struggle against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan during the 1980's and was well aware of the leisurely pace of warfare favored by Pashtun warriors. "Do not stay in Afghanistan," I warned in a 2001 article in the Los Angeles Times. The longer foreign forces remained in Afghanistan, the more the tribes would fight against their continued presence. Taliban resumed fighting in 2005. Now, as resistance to the US-led occupation of Afghanistan intensifies, the increasingly frustrated Bush administration is venting its anger against Pakistan and its military intelligence agency, Inter-Service Intelligence, better known as ISI. The White House just leaked claims ISI is in cahoots with pro-Taliban groups in Pakistan's tribal agency along the Afghan border and warns them of impending US attacks. The New York Times, which allowed the Bush administration to use it as a mouthpiece for Iraq War propaganda, dutifully featured the leaks about ISI on front page. Other administration officials have been claiming that ISI may even be hiding Osama bin Laden and other senior al-Qaida leaders. The Bush administration claims that CIA had electronic intercepts proving ISI was behind the recent bombing of India's embassy in Kabul. India and Afghanistan echo this charge. No hard evidence has yet been produced, but the US media has been lustily condemning Pakistan for pretending to be an ally of the US while acting like an enemy.

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Harmful if swallowed

 

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How to Put Rove Behind Bars for Years

By David Swanson

Last August, a group of Congressman Henry Waxman's constituents met with him and urged him to make use of inherent contempt. They were then obliged to explain to him what inherent contempt is. While the current (110th) Congress has probably seen more requests, subpoenas, and contempt citations ignored than all previous Congresses combined, Waxman has certainly endured more such insult than all other committee chairs combined in the current Congress. He's single-handedly destroyed whole forests with the flood of letters and requests and subpoenas he's sent down Pennsylvania Avenue, and yet he was apparently unaware of a procedure commonly used by Congress through most of this nation's history that would actually compel people to show up and answer questions and produce documents.

Over the past 12 months a vague sort of awareness of inherent contempt has crept into the minds of certain committee members and party leaders, almost entirely as a result of thousands of citizens demanding that they immediately make use of it. Quasi-grass-roots groups afraid to demand impeachment have taken up the cry for inherent contempt, but pro-impeachment groups have not all paid sufficient attention to it, their eyes set on a bigger and better prize. And, of course, in a sane world we would see impeachment happening. The latest overwhelming piece of evidence of the most egregious impeachable offense conceivable comes from Ron Suskind's book released this week reporting that Iraq's intelligence chief had informed the United States prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq that Iraq possessed no weapons of mass destruction. George Tenet and the White House have admitted the truth of this, but absurdly dismissed it as unimportant.

However, here's an additional vital piece of information: our so-called representatives only intend to pretend to work for two more weeks this year, and those two weeks are scheduled for September. If anything could move them to impeachment (and more days at the office), perhaps a fight over inherent contempt could. Therefore, I propose we all demand one. (And if you bear with me, I'll tell you exactly what inherent contempt is.)

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/35360

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Big Brother Is Watching: Orwell's Diaries to Be Published as Blog

 by Julie Hanus

Beginning August 9^th, the late George Orwell's diary will be published as a blog, each entry appearing 70 years to the day after the British writer first penned it. Orwell (1903-1950) is best known for the classics 1984 and Animal Farm, although he was also a fiery essayist. The online publication of his diary is a project of the Orwell Prize, a British award for political writing.

Orwell kept his diary from 1938 to 1942.

http://www.utne.com/2008-07-31/GreatWriting/Big-Brother-is-Watching-Orwells-Diaries-to-Be-Published-as-Blog.aspx?blogid=38&utm_medium=email&utm_source=iPost

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The duty of the patriot

 

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Sumo

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The LA Times Book Review Is Dead, but There's a Takeaway

by Julie Hanus

The Los Angeles Times published its last standalone Book Review (LATBR) on Sunday, July 27. It must have been difficult reading for subscribers who've been lamenting the loss of the LATBR since news of its demise broke on July 21. L.A. Times book coverage, what remains, supposedly will be grafted into the larger paper. Cue my unimpressed cheer.

It's not that you couldn't have seen this coming. Over the past year, death knells have been sounding ad nauseam for every subsidiary of the printed word. Newspapers are dying; publishers are struggling; essayists are flopping; book reviews are becoming extinct. No one is reading, at least not as much as they used to, and with less patience.

It's still remarkable to witness one of the Goliaths fall—if only for how it exposes the flawed sense that something so established couldn't be flushed away so fast. A July 7^th memo from the Tribune Company's chief innovation officer seems to rail against just this outcome. "Heard a conversation about how Book reporting doesn't generate revenue and may have to go away," writes Lee Abrams. "WAIT! Maybe Book reviews and coverage are one of those things that don't generate revenue right now, BUT—are trademarks for newspapers and elicit high passion from readers."

Abrams is on to something, until he offers a less-than-innovative plan for revamping book sections—which are "maybe too scholarly"—by including more popular, retail-oriented picks. If the Tribune Company messed up in axing the LATBR, at least it got one thing right: Abrams' fix wouldn't have made anyone any less upset.

We want our culture, and we want it uncompromising. In a public letter, four former editors of the Review condemn the decision as a "philistine blunder that insults the cultural ambition of [Los Angeles] and the region."

http://www.utne.com/2008-07-31/GreatWriting/Big-Brother-is-Watching-Orwells-Diaries-to-Be-Published-as-Blog.aspx?blogid=38&utm_medium=email&utm_source=iPost

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The deficit

 

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