What's Holding Up Holder in Firing Bushevik U.S. Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan?

Ask Dr. Cyril Wecht, a Partisan Victim

by Meg White

There is no doubt in my mind that U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder is a busy guy. His plate overflows with thorny questions over detainees, the Defense of Marriage Act, trafficking, discrimination, corruption and dozens of other issues spanning the capital, country and globe.

That said, there is some wisdom to cleaning one's own house before taking on the neighborhood. In that vein, Holder has no excuse for failing to have requested the resignation of U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania Mary Beth Buchanan. Nor, for that matter, having taken this long to respond to an ethics complaint filed by forensic pathologist and Buchanan victim Cyril Wecht.

Wecht is the former coroner and medical examiner of Allegheny County, PA, and a doctor and lawyer who has lent his expert opinion to autopsies ranging from John F. Kennedy to JonBenet Ramsey. An outspoken Democrat in Pennsylvania, he quickly earned the ire of the FBI and local law enforcement by investigating deaths occurring in police custody.

Buchanan's case against Wecht was politically-motivated from the very beginning. The raid that initiated the case was eventually declared unconstitutional. The mistrial's aftermath also reeked of federal folly, with the FBI accused of contacting jurors after the trial to find out how deliberations went, in preparation for a retrial.

Furthermore, around half of the original 84 charges were dropped before the trial even opened. Some of the more fantastic claims -- such as Wecht trading cadavers in exchange for lab space rental -- were never substantiated, with supposed witnesses never having been even interviewed by the prosecution. As we reported earlier this year:

Buchanan's first attempt to prosecute Wecht ended last year with a hung jury, after which the judge on the case was ordered replaced. In May 2009, the new retrial judge threw out the bulk of Buchanan's evidence -- evidence that had been swept up in "a spectacular raid" four years earlier, as the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reported. To appeal the judge's ruling against her evidence, Buchanan would have needed approval from Obama Administration Solicitor General Elena Kagan.

Clearly upset at the verdict, Buchanan held a press conference in which she insisted Wecht was indeed guilty, and that if she had another chance she'd pursue him all over again.

Countless people, from the jurors on Wecht's case to conservative lawyers and other prominent Pennsylvanians to members of Congress have said the charges were unfounded and blatantly partisan. The former attorney general under President Reagan, Dick Thornburgh (who represented Wecht) told Congress that Wecht "would qualify as an ideal target for a Republican U.S. attorney trying to curry favor with a department which demonstrated that if you play by its rules, you will advance."

Now Thornburgh is advocating for an investigation of Buchanan's actions, having signed on to Wecht's formal complaint to Holder. In fact, Wecht said that some four weeks ago, Thornburgh ran into the current attorney General at a conference and Holder told him the department is following through on it.

Wecht told me in a phone interview Wednesday that he has no idea what the hold-up is, since most everything he's accused B

http://blog.buzzflash.com/analysis/885

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The Landmark Forum: 42 Hours, $500, 65 Breakdowns

My lost weekend with the trademark happy, bathroom-break hating, slightly spooky inheritors of est.

By Laura McClure

AFTER NEARLY 40 HOURS inside the basement of Landmark Education's world headquarters, I have not Transformed. Nor have I "popped" like microwave popcorn, as the Forum Leader striding back and forth at the front of the windowless gray room has promised. In fact, by the time he starts yelling and stabbing the board with a piece of chalk around hour 36, it's become clear that I'll be the hard kernel left at the bottom of this three-and-a-half-day Landmark Forum. I have, however, Invented the Possibility of a Future in which I get a big, fat raise, a Future I'll Choose to Powerfully Enroll my bosses in, now that I am open to Miracles Around Money.

My reluctance to achieve Breakthrough Results is clearly not shared by many of my fellow Forum attendees. Even on day one, most seem positively elated to have plunked down 500 bucks for a more efficient, passionate, powerful life. "Hey, it's cheaper than therapy," a therapist-turned-real estate agent tells me. He ponders how to persuade one of his employees to pony up for the Forum. She's going through a rough patch, he explains—the recession, her marriage.

Not that being broke or brokenhearted would make her a minority in this room; several attendees talk about being between jobs, and one woman says she's on welfare. In the scribbled shorthand of my furtive notes, PW stands for "incidents of public weeping." I lose track after the PW count hits 65.

Landmark Education, a for-profit "employee-owned" private company, took in $89 million last year offering leadership and development seminars (and cruises, and dating services, and courses for kids and teens). It claims that more than 1 million seekers have sat through its basic training, which is offered in seven languages in 20 countries. Its consulting firm, the Vanto Group, has coached employees from Apple, ExxonMobil, JPMorgan Chase, and the Pentagon.

Though it's hardly a secret, Landmark does not advertise that it is the buttoned-down reincarnation of the ultimate '70s self-actualization philosophy, est. Erhard Seminars Training was founded by Werner Erhard, a former used car salesman who'd changed his name from Jack Rosenberg, moved to Northern California, and dabbled in Dale Carnegie, Zen, and Scientology before seizing upon the idea that you, and only you, are responsible for your own happiness or unhappiness, success or failure. Est's marathon Transformation sessions were legendary for their confrontational tactics (Erhard calling his students "assholes"), inscrutable platitudes ("What is, is, and what ain't, ain't"), and the pressure put on participants to bring in new recruits for the next cycle of seminars.

http://www.motherjones.com/media/2009/07/landmark-42-hours-500-65-breakdowns

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Best anti-car texting ad ever

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Priority Test: Health Care or Prisons?

At a time when we Americans may abandon health care reform because it supposedly is "too expensive," how is it that we can afford to imprison people like Curtis Wilkerson?

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

 

Mr. Wilkerson is serving a life sentence in California — for stealing a $2.50 pair of socks. As The Economist noted recently, he already had two offenses on his record (both for abetting robbery at age 19), and so the "three strikes" law resulted in a life sentence.

This is unjust, of course. But considering that California spends almost $49,000 annually per prison inmate, it's also an extraordinary waste of money.

Astonishingly, many politicians seem to think that we should lead the world in prisons, not in health care or education. The United States is anomalous among industrialized countries in the high proportion of people we incarcerate; likewise, we stand out in the high proportion of people who have no medical care — and partly as a result, our health care outcomes such as life expectancy and infant mortality are unusually poor.

It's time for a fundamental re-evaluation of the criminal justice system, as legislation sponsored by Senator Jim Webb has called for, so that we're no longer squandering money that would be far better spent on education or health. Consider a few facts:

¶The United States incarcerates people at nearly five times the world average. Of those sentenced to state prisons, 82 percent were convicted of nonviolent crimes, according to one study.

¶California spends $216,000 annually on each inmate in the juvenile justice system. In contrast, it spends only $8,000 on each child attending the troubled Oakland public school system, according to the Urban Strategies Council.

¶For most of American history, we had incarceration rates similar to those in other countries. Then with the "war on drugs" and the focus on law and order in the 1970s, incarceration rates soared.

¶One in 10 black men ages 25 to 29 were imprisoned last year, partly because possession of crack cocaine (disproportionately used in black communities) draws sentences equivalent to having 100 times as much powder cocaine. Black men in the United States have a 32 percent chance of serving time in prison at some point in their lives, according to the Sentencing Project.

Look, there's no doubt that many people in prison are cold-blooded monsters who deserve to be there. But over all, in a time of limited resources, we're overinvesting in prisons and under investing in schools.

Indeed, education spending may reduce the need for incarceration. The evidence on this isn't conclusive, but it's noteworthy that graduates of the Perry Preschool program in Michigan, an intensive effort for disadvantaged children in the 1960s, were some 40 percent less likely to be arrested than those in a control group.

Above all, it's time for a rethink of our drug policy. The point is not to surrender to narcotics, but to learn from our approach to both tobacco and alcohol. Over time, we have developed public health strategies that have been quite successful in reducing the harm from smoking and drinking.

If we want to try a public health approach to drugs, we could learn from Portugal. In 2001, it decriminalized the possession of all drugs for personal use. Ordinary drug users can still be required to participate in a treatment program, but they are no longer dispatched to jail.

"Decriminalization has had no adverse effect on drug usage rates in Portugal," notes a report this year from the Cato Institute. It notes that drug use appears to be lower in Portugal than in most other European countries, and that Portuguese public opinion is strongly behind this approach.

A new United Nations study, World Drug Report 2009, commends the Portuguese experiment and urges countries to continue to pursue traffickers while largely avoiding imprisoning users. Instead, it suggests that users, particularly addicts, should get treatment.

Senator Webb has introduced legislation that would create a national commission to investigate criminal justice issues — for such a commission may be the best way to depoliticize the issue and give feckless politicians the cover they need to institute changes.

"There are only two possibilities here," Mr. Webb said in introducing his bill, noting that America imprisons so many more people than other countries. "Either we have the most evil people on earth living in the United States, or we are doing something dramatically wrong in terms of how we approach the issue of criminal justice."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/20/opinion/20kristof.html?th&emc=th

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Nataline Sarkisyan and private insurance "death panels"

by Richard Cranium

In December, 2007, Cigna Insurance conducted a cost / benefit analysis and made a risk management decision when it denied Nataline Sarkisyan a liver transplant. In doing so, they established the dollar value of this young woman's life. At the end of the day, she died at the hands of a for-profit insurance industry "death panel" rather than the decisions of a physician.

AP/AR is is business shorthand for "accounts payable / accounts receivable". In theory, as long as AR > AP on the corporate ledger, a company is profitable and satisfies the needs of its stakeholders (business partners, customers, vendors, employees, and stockholders). So, most large companies employ teams of individuals who manage corporate risk. Guidelines and protocols are established to enable these teams to make decisions on when it makes economic sense to spend money, approve projects, and invest in research and development.

It's all about risk management. Keep this in mind as you read further — because you are a risk, not a client — to your healthcare, life, auto, and homeowners insurance providers.

Many Americans were outraged in Dec., 2007 by the case of 17 year old Nataline Sarkisyan. The short story, for those who may need their memories refreshed:

Ms. Sarkysian had leukemia, and was admitted to a California hospital for a bone marrow transplant. As is possible with such procedures, there were complications, and her kidneys and liver failed. Her brother donated a kidney. She was ready for a liver transplant (a relatively routine procedure in this day and age), but even though hers had failed, her family's insurance company would not approve the procedure by claiming it was "experimental". In other words, a bean counter at Cigna made the decision that since they had already shelled out a lot of cash for the bone marrow and kidney transplant, that the cost of a liver transplant and followup care was just too high.

The bean counter at Cigna effectively sentenced Nataline Sarkisyan to death. Even after Cigna reversed course following a public outcry, it was too late. Ms. Sarkisyan passed away the evening that Cigna finally agreed to cover her procedure.

So, what was the value of Nataline's life to the risk managers at Cigna? I did about two minutes worth of research, and found the following:

   

According to the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS), estimated charges for liver transplantation are:

   Estimated First-Year Charge: $314,600
   Estimated Annual Follow-up Charge: $21,900

To Cigna, the cost of Nataline's transplant was like buying a Nintendo Wii. When you buy a Wii, it's not so much the initial investment in the game machine, but the ongoing followup costs in purchasing games and other hardware add-ons. The risk managers at Cigna who made the decisions in Nataline's case weren't so much looking at the cost of the initial transplantation procedure, but the annual cost of followup care and medication.

Nataline was 17 years old. The average lifespan of a woman in America is 79.1 years. So, rounding off, for actuarial purposes she had the potential to live another 62 years. In effect, the costs of the transplant and her first year care ($314,000) were chump change to Cigna. Plus, there were already "sunk costs" - business jargon for payouts already made for her prior procedures. So what was the value of Nataline's life to Cigna?

The cost of her followup care for the next (projected) 62 years: $1,302,000.

When I first heard the story of Cigna's denial of coverage for Nataline, two thoughts entered my mind. Why doesn't the hospital just do the damn procedure, then sort out the financial details afterwards? The second thing: where are the screaming hoards that descended upon Terri Schiavo's deathbed in Florida back in March of 2005? Wasn't Nataline's life just as important? Wasn't Cigna (in effect) removing her feeding tube by denying coverage?

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/8/11/764866/-Nataline-Sarkisyan-and-private-insurance-death-panels

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Sit tight

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How Much Do Protests Matter? A Freakonomics Quorum

 

 

By Stephen J. Dubner

Iran's citizens take to the streets en masse after a disputed election. Gay men in Salt Lake City hold a kissing protest. Members of the Westboro Baptist Church voice their anti-just-about-everything views to military funerals and elsewhere.

Beyond the media attention they inevitably garner, what do protests actually accomplish?

We rounded up a few people who have thought a lot about this topic — Chester Crocker, Bernardine Dohrn, Donna Lieberman, Juan E. Méndez, David S. Meyer, and Howard Zinn — and asked them how much protest matters in this day and age, and why.

Here are their answers.

Howard Zinn is professor emeritus in the political science department at Boston University, and author of the book A People's History of the United States.

"Testing is always a gamble, but one worth taking, because if you don't take the risk, you will be stuck with the status quo and I suppose we all agree: the status quo is extremely undesirable."

Do protests work? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Sometimes very soon, sometimes there is a long-term effect. Sometimes you can see a direct connection between the protest and the result, and sometimes it's difficult to trace.

What this means is that you must not desist from protesting because you don't see an immediate result. What immediately looks like a failure may turn out to be a success. Testing is always a gamble, but one worth taking, because if you don't take the risk, you will be stuck with the status quo and I suppose we all agree: the status quo is extremely undesirable.

Some examples:

There was protest when the founding fathers concluded their work in drafting the Constitution in Philadelphia because there was no Bill of Rights. With the protests threatening the successful ratification (the vote was close in major states: New York, Massachusetts, Virginia) the Founders agreed they would add it, and they did in 1791.

The anti-slavery movement had to keep protesting for decades, from the 1830's to the early 1860's, until it had an effect on Lincoln and the Congress, first with the Emancipation Proclamation, then with the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution.

The nation-wide strikes in the 1880's resulted in winning the eight-hour work day in many places. The demands of the Populist movement resulted in regulatory legislation in various states and resulted in national reforms years later in the New Deal measures to help farmers.

The sit-down strikes of 1936 to 1937 led to recognition of the C.I.O. unions and contracts and better wages and conditions.

The wave of protests in the early 1930's — by the Unemployed Councils blocking evictions; by the Tenants of organizations winning rent control in the Bronx, for instance, but also other places — led to the New Deal measures that helped the poor.

The various protests against racial segregation, taking various forms, are well known — the Montgomery bus boycott, the sit-ins, the various demonstrations in the South — and all led to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and various Supreme Court decisions that effectively ended legal racial segregation in the South.

The protests against the Vietnam War certainly helped Lyndon Johnson come to his conclusion in early 1968 that he would not run for president again, that he would begin negotiating with the North Vietnamese, and that he would not send more troops to Vietnam as General Westmoreland had requested.

The protests of G.I.'s during the Vietnam War — desertions, fragging, public disclosure of massacres — helped build public opinion against the war; and if you study the Pentagon Papers you will see how often the officials in Washington worried about public opinion, and why Nixon promised an end to the war, though it took years.

After the Vietnam-Watergate era, the protests of disabled people certainly led to the Disabled Persons Rights Act.

The feminist movement of the 1960's and 1970s undoubtedly led to affirmative action for women, moving more women into better positions in the economy.

There is much more historical evidence, but I am running out of space and time.

http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/20/do-protests-matter-a-freakonomics-quorum/

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Neo-nazi hate blogger paid by FBI to incite, says attorney

 

 

Posted by Xeni Jardin

 

David Kravets at Wired Threat Level blog reports that Hal Turner, a notorious shitbag "hate blogger" in New Jersey who was charged two months ago with threatening to kill judges and lawmakers, was secretly an FBI "agent provocateur" paid tens of thousands of dollars by our government to broadcast white supremacist rhetoric. Snip:

Hal Turner, the blogger and radio personality, remains jailed pending charges over his recent online rants, which prosecutors claim amounted to an invitation for someone to kill Connecticut lawmakers and Chicago federal appeals court judges. But behind the scenes the reformed white supremacist was holding clandestine meetings with FBI agents who taught him how to spew hate "without crossing the line," according to his lawyer, Michael Orozco.

"Almost everything was at the behest of the Federal Bureau of Investigation," Orozco said in a 45-minute telephone interview from New Jersey. "Their job was to pick up information on the responses of what he was saying and see where that led them. It was an interesting dynamic on what he was being asked to do."

Lawyer: FBI Paid Right-Wing Blogger Charged With Threats (wired.com, via Oxblood Ruffin)

Los del Dramatica have a lot to say about this. May he serve 420 years in jail.

The Southern Poverty Law Center saw this one coming. Did COINTELPRO ever really end?

http://www.boingboing.net/2009/08/20/right-wing-hate-blog.html

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A celebration at FreedomWorks Headquarters...

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Cosmic Joke Funnies

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Letting the Banking Rats Out of the Bag

AP / Susan Walsh

Bank of America Chief Executive Officer Kenneth Lewis prepares to testify on Capitol Hill in Washington before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on June 11.

By Robert Scheer

The good judge smelled a rat.

"Was there some sort of ghost that performed these actions?" New York federal Judge Jed S. Rakoff demanded to know Monday in rejecting a deal that would let Bank of America off the hook in yet another banker bonus scandal. The Securities and Exchange Commission had charged the bank with covering up for outrageous bonuses given out at Merrill Lynch as the bank acquired the failed stockbrokerage, and now it was letting the bank off the hook with a chicken-feed fine.

"Do Wall Street people expect to be paid large bonuses in years when their company lost $27 billion?" the judge asked, and Lewis J. Liman, the lawyer for Bank of America, assured him they do: "My God! Bonuses on Wall Street? It is not a matter of surprise."
 
But for those of us less sophisticated in the ways of Wall Street, it is a surprise that Merrill Lynch executives were rewarded for failure at the same time Bank of America was using $45 billion in taxpayer funds to take over the brokerage house. Six hundred ninety-six executives who helped run Merrill into the ground were granted more than a million bucks each. 

BofA lawyer Liman attempted to put an egalitarian spin on this government-sponsored welfare for the superrich by pointing out that all told, another 39,000 Merrill employees averaged only $91,000 in bonuses, but the judge wasn't having it: "I'm glad you think that $91,000 is not a lot of money; I wish the average American was making $91,000."

That's the point; the average American is paying for the banking debacle not only in taxes for the bailout but with lost jobs and homes. Yet the SEC, which is supposed to be protecting the ordinary citizen's interests, decided to give BofA execs a bye. The question is why Bank of America and Merrill failed to inform their shareholders that such payoffs were part of the deal. The details of the bonuses were known to BofA CEO Kenneth Lewis and other top bank executives but not mentioned in the merger agreement or proxy statements sent to the company's shareholders for approval.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090811_robert_scheer_august_12_column/

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Tons of Imperial Fun: Hellfire Hillary Pours Oil on Somalia's Fire

 

by Chris Floyd

There is apparently no path blazed by George W. Bush that Barack Obama will not eagerly follow. Surges, assassinations, indefinite detention, defense of torture, senseless wars and rampant militarism -- in just a few short months, we've seen it all.

To this dismaying record of complicity and continuity, we can add an increasing direct involvement in the horrific, hydra-headed conflict in Somalia, whose latest round of fiery hell was instigated by the American-backed invasion of Somalia by Ethiopia in late 2006. Under Bush, U.S. forces were deeply and directly enmeshed in the murderous action, dropping bombs on fleeing refugees, "renditioning" other refugees to the tender mercies of Ethiopia's notorious prisons, and even sending in death squads to clean up after missile strikes and bombings. (For background, see "Silent Surge: Bipartisan Terror War Intensifies in Somalia.")

The result of that intervention has been the deaths of thousands of innocent people, the displacement and ruination of hundreds of thousands, and the creation of what many experts call the most dire humanitarian crisis in the world today. It has also resulted in the empowerment of violent sectarian groups and criminal gangs, who have stepped forth to fill the gaps of the fledgling state that the American-Ethiopian "regime change" operation destroyed.

So what do we see from the administration of "hope and change"? We see -- wait for it -- a new "surge" of direct American involvement in the war, with Obama's most ferocious war hawk -- sorry, his top diplomat -- Hillary "The Obliterator" Clinton leading the charge. As Jason Ditz at Antiwar.com reports, Clinton has pledged to double the recently announced supply of American weapons to Somalia's "transitional government" -- a weak reed cobbled together by Western interests from various CIA-paid warlords and other factions, and now headed, ironically, by the former leader of the aforementioned fledgling state overthrown by Washington. (Yes, it is hard to tell the players without a scorecard -- or even with one. But if you follow the weapons and the money, you can usually tell who is temporarily on which side at any given moment.)

Clinton, bellicose as ever, accompanied the shipment of 80 tons of death-dealing hardware with a heavy dose of the wild fearmongering rhetoric we've come to know so well in this New American Century. As AP reports, she declared that the radical faction al-Shabab, now leading the insurgency against the transitional government, has only one goal in mind: bring in al Qaeda and destabilizing the whole entire world.

Yes, dear hearts, once again the survival of the planet -- not to mention the sacred American way of life -- is under imminent threat from a gang of evil maniacs; a threat requiring the urgent enrichment of the U.S. arms industry -- sorry, I mean the urgent intervention of American know-how. For as the history of American foreign policy in the last 60 years has clearly shown us, there has never been an internal conflict in any country of the world that was not actually, deep down, a direct threat to all the sweet American babies sleeping in their cribs.

http://www.chris-floyd.com/component/content/article/1-latest-news/1813-tons-of-imperial-fun-hellfire-hillary-pours-oil-on-somalias-fire.html

 

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Robert Novak Was a Liar

Independent Investigative Journalism Since 1995

By Robert Parry

Washington's punditocracy is in mourning over the death of right-wing columnist Robert Novak, with many warm remembrances about his outsized personality and his supposed love of reporting. But Novak often served as a dishonest propagandist and would have been condemned in a healthy journalistic world.

For instance, not only did Novak disclose the identity of covert CIA officer Valerie Plame in 2003 – in line with a White House campaign to discredit her husband, former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson, for criticizing the deceptions behind the Iraq invasion – but Novak continued a jihad of lies against Wilson and Plame for the next several years.

In one such attack on March 22, 2007, Novak reprised right-wing myths that had been disseminated about the Plame-gate case to protect the political flanks of President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and other participants in the anti-Wilson campaign.

Despite containing a litany of lies, Novak's column was uncritically published in the Washington Post's editorial section, which even cribbed from Novak's disinformation for use in the Post's own ugly attacks on Wilson, whose principal sin appears to have been that he was the first Washington insider to accuse Bush of having "twisted" the WMD intelligence on Iraq.

The March 22 column stands out as a particularly notable measure of Novak's dishonesty because it came almost four years after Wilson began challenging Bush's false claims about Iraq allegedly seeking yellow-cake uranium from Niger. Novak's article was not some early rendition of a story that wasn't fully understood; it was a premeditated act of lying in defense of a cover-up.

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2009/081909.html

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Huffington Post + Facebook = the Future of Journalism

 

Should we be giddy or terrified?

By Chadwick Matlin

I am no fan of the Huffington Post. Its journalistic ethics are questionable—see Nico Pitney prearranging a question with the White House and HuffPost's repurposing of other sites' intellectual property; its thirst for page views often overshadows any cultural standards—see "Ashley Greene NUDE PHOTOS: Naked Pics of Twilight Star" and "Sisters or Mother and Daughter? Hot Hollywood Moms (PHOTOS, Poll)." Its aesthetic, all capital letters and stock photography, may as well be from 1999—see the home page that Slate's Jack Shafer immortally called "ugly like a bleeding naked mole rat painted DayGlo." The site is anathema to what I hope to see from the future of journalism.

I'm sharing my HuffPo distaste so you know that I don't take the following statement lightly: On Monday, Huffington Post unveiled the future of journalism.

Huffington Post has released a new feature called HuffPost Social News. It's a partnership with Facebook that tracks what Huffington Post articles you and all of your Facebook friends are reading, commenting on, and voting on. It uses a technology called Facebook Connect, Facebook's most unheralded weapon in the battle for ownership of everything we do online. Connect basically serves as a conduit between Facebook and another Web site, allowing data to be sent between the two. Facebook sends profile information. In return, the site sends details on what the user is doing. Web sites, of course, have always tracked what pages their users visit. Now HuffPost is broadcasting that information to all of your friends. It has become a loudmouthed Big Brother.

Once a HuffPost reader logs into Huffington Post with her Facebook account—more on how she does this in a second—the site starts tracking everything she does on any huffingtonpost.com page. The site is also tracking all of her Facebook friends who have also logged on to Huffington Post. All of this can be seen by you and your friends on a page that looks like a mashup of Huffington Post and a Facebook wall feed. This makes for an intriguingly muted kaffeeklatsch: Everybody knows what everybody's reading, but nobody necessarily has to talk about it. A layer of news has been placed on top of the social network. Now not only can you know what your freshman-year roommate did on Friday night, you also can find out what she read right before she left the house.

It's the personal element that makes HuffPost Social such an intriguing and promising experiment. The point of reading news is not just to keep abreast about what's happening in the world, it's to keep up with what your friends know is happening in the world. Reading and watching news is an inherently social process; to have a debate, you have to have a shared set of facts. (Or at least that's how it's supposed to work.)

http://www.thebigmoney.com/articles/impressions/2009/08/18/huffington-post-facebook-future-journalism

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The Good War by Ted Rall

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The Beloit College Mindset List for the Class of 2013

If the entering college class of 2013 had been more alert back in 1991 when most of them were born, they would now be experiencing a severe case of déjà vu. The headlines that year railed about government interventions, bailouts, bad loans, unemployment and greater regulation of the finance industry. The Tonight Show changed hosts for the first time in decades, and the nation asked "was Iraq worth a war?" 

Each August since 1998, Beloit College has released the Beloit College Mindset List. It provides a look at the cultural touchstones that shape the lives of students entering college. It is the creation of Beloit's Keefer Professor of the Humanities Tom McBride and Emeritus Public Affairs Director Ron Nief.  It is used around the world as the school year begins, as a reminder of the rapidly changing frame of reference for this new generation. It is widely reprinted and the Mindset List website at http://www.beloit.edu/mindset/ receives more than 300,000 hits annually.

As millions of students head off to college this fall, most will continue to experience the economic anxiety that marked their first two years of life just as it has marked their last two years of high school. Fears of the middle class--including their parents--about retirement and health care have been a part of their lives. Now however, they can turn to technology and text a friend: "Momdad still worried bout stocks. urs 2? PAW PCM".

Members of the class of 2013 won't be surprised when they can charge a latté on their cell phone and curl up in the corner to read a textbook on an electronic screen. The migration of once independent media—radio, TV, videos and CDs—to the computer has never amazed them. They have grown up in a politically correct universe in which multi-culturalism has been a given.  It is a world organized around globalization, with McDonald's everywhere on the planet. Carter and Reagan are as distant to them as Truman and Eisenhower were to their parents. Tattoos, once thought "lower class," are, to them, quite chic. Everybody knows the news before the evening news comes on.

Thus the class of 2013 heads off to college as tolerant, global, and technologically hip…and with another new host of The Tonight Show.  

---

The Beloit College Mindset List for the Class of 2013

   Most students entering college for the first time this fall were born in 1991.

1. For these students, Martha Graham, Pan American Airways, Michael Landon, Dr. Seuss, Miles Davis, The Dallas Times Herald, Gene Roddenberry, and Freddie Mercury have always been dead.
2. Dan Rostenkowski, Jack Kevorkian, and Mike Tyson have always been felons.
3. The Green Giant has always been Shrek, not the big guy picking vegetables.
4. They have never used a card catalog to find a book.
5. Margaret Thatcher has always been a former prime minister.
6. Salsa has always outsold ketchup.
7. Earvin "Magic" Johnson has always been HIV-positive.
8. Tattoos have always been very chic and highly visible.
9. They have been preparing for the arrival of HDTV all their lives.
10. Rap music has always been main stream.
11. Chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream has always been a flavor choice.
12. Someone has always been building something taller than the Willis (née Sears) Tower in Chicago.
13. The KGB has never officially existed.
14. Text has always been hyper.
15. They never saw the "Scud Stud" (but there have always been electromagnetic stud finders.)
16. Babies have always had a Social Security Number.
17. They have never had to "shake down" an oral thermometer.
18. Bungee jumping has always been socially acceptable.
19. They have never understood the meaning of R.S.V.P.
20. American students have always lived anxiously with high-stakes educational testing.
21. Except for the present incumbent, the President has never inhaled.
22. State abbreviations in addresses have never had periods.
23. The European Union has always existed.
24. McDonald's has always been serving Happy Meals in China.
25. Condoms have always been advertised on television.
26. Cable television systems have always offered telephone service and vice versa.
27. Christopher Columbus has always been getting a bad rap.
28. The American health care system has always been in critical condition.
29. Bobby Cox has always managed the Atlanta Braves.
30. Desperate smokers have always been able to turn to Nicoderm skin patches.
31. There has always been a Cartoon Network.
32. The nation's key economic indicator has always been the Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
33. Their folks could always reach for a Zoloft.
34. They have always been able to read books on an electronic screen.
35. Women have always outnumbered men in college.
36. We have always watched wars, coups, and police arrests unfold on television in real time.
37. Amateur radio operators have never needed to know Morse code.
38. Belarus, Moldova, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Armenia, Latvia, Georgia, Lithuania, and Estonia have always been independent nations.
39. It's always been official: President Zachary Taylor did not die of arsenic poisoning.
40. Madonna's perspective on Sex has always been well documented.
41. Phil Jackson has always been coaching championship basketball.
42. Ozzy Osbourne has always been coming back.
43. Kevin Costner has always been Dancing with Wolves, especially on cable.
44. There have always been flat screen televisions.
45. They have always eaten Berry Berry Kix.
46. Disney's Fantasia has always been available on video, and It's a Wonderful Life has always been on Moscow television.
47. Smokers have never been promoted as an economic force that deserves respect.
48. Elite American colleges have never been able to fix the price of tuition.
49. Nobody has been able to make a deposit in the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI).
50. Everyone has always known what the evening news was before the Evening News came on.

http://www.beloit.edu/mindset/2013.php

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Why Does the Media Pay Attention to the “Opinions” of Fucking Idiots?

by Richard Metzger

There should be a SPECIAL Darwin Award for Pamela Pilger, the crazy lady who yelled "Heil Hitler" to an Israeli Jew in Las Vegas the other day at the health care town meeting, I'm sure she needs no further introduction, we've all seen her act like a complete fool in this clip.

But have you seen this one? Gawker posted this hilarious… well, at least unintentionally comic video of Pilger being interviewed about her "political views" before the meeting started. This lady is one SERIOUSLY stupid human being. She fits into the category of "so stupid she doesn't know how stupid she is." How do I know this? Because her husband has "two, no three jobs" and he doesn't have health insurance… and she is still against universal coverage! Amazing but true. How much dumber could you be than Pamela Pilger?!?!?! She's the new low IQ poster child!

But I ask you, how is it possible that the likes of Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh can convince these poor dumbasses to be against the very things that would actually benefit them the most—guaranteed health care in a cruel fuckin' world—in the one life they'll ever get?!?! It boggles the mind. Pamela Pilger in her staggering stupidity is a one-woman microcosm of the wider conservative KNOW-NOTHING mindset these people have. Facts? Who cares about FACTS? THIS is who is fighting against health care for all, a woman whose very own husband lacks coverage!

WHY ARE THE MEDIA PAYING ATTENTION TO THE OPINIONS OF FUCKING IDIOTS?

http://www.dangerousminds.net/index.php/site/comments/why_does_the_media_pay_attention_to_the_opinions_of_fucking_idiots/

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Hippocrates taking his oath

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News Break: Record Month for Renewable Energy in the U.S.

By Thomas Schueneman

The latest Electric Power Monthly Report released by the Energy Information Administration (EIA) shows net U.S. electrical generation from renewable sources (biomass, geothermal, solar, hydro, and wind) reached an all-time high in May of 2009, comprising 13% of the total electrical generation for the month.

Renewable sources for May '09 generated 40,395,000 Megawatt hours (Mwh), 7.7% higher than for May of 2008, and thus far the highest figure ever reported by the EIA.

Total generations for all sources, including fossil and renewable, was down for May of 2009 from the previous year by 4.1%, representing the third-largest percentage decline in national power generation since 1974.

Of the 13% from renewable for May of '09, 9.4% came from conventional hydropower and 3.6% from non-hydro renewables. From that 3.6% of non-hydro, 1.8% came from wind, 1.3% from biomass, 0.4% from geothermal, and 0.3% from solar thermal and photovoltaics (the numbers are rounded). Compared to May of 2008 wind net generation increased by 12.5% (with generation increases in the state of Iowa representing 52.2% of the national increase). Conventional hydro increased by 10.2% from May of 2008, and solar thermal and photovoltaics were up 3.5%.

Coal generation fell by 14.8% and petroleum liquids by 8.3% from May of 2008 to May of 2009. This is the fifth consecutive month of historically steep declines in coal-fired generation as compared with the same month from the previous year.

http://www.globalwarmingisreal.com/blog/2009/08/16/news-break-record-month-for-renewable-energy-in-the-u-s/

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Bible Study in Public Schools: Let's Pray on It

by Jeff Schweitzer

The Legislature in Texas in a fit of religious fervor mandated in 2007 that starting in 2009 public schools must teach the "literature and history" of the Good Book. To avoid the obvious constitutional problems of separating Church and State, the law is carefully worded to provide a fig leaf to cover true and rather obvious intent , much akin to how Creationists attempt to hide religious purpose behind the guise of academic freedom.

But rather than continue to engage in this tiresome battle, I say let's fight fire with fire, or at least brimstone with brimstone. Let's agree to teach the bible in all of its bloody, misogynous, murderous, fratricidal glory. Let's teach our impressionable children the following facts about the word of god:

• Exodus 21:20-21
It's OK to kill a slave, because he is nothing but property, but only as long as he does not die from a beating until at least one day later.

• Exodus 21:7
If in need of a little extra income, a father could simply sell his daughter. And of course a female slave is worse off than a male slave; a male slave is automatically freed after 6 years; the woman is never freed.

• Exodus 21:17
The penalty for cursing your parents is death. Perhaps this is not such a bad idea...

• Deuteronomy 22:21
If a woman presents herself as a virgin but is not, on the wedding night, she is to be taken to her father's house and stoned to death. Notice that men do not suffer such a fate. Coincidentally, only men wrote the 66 books that constitute the bible. Women might have fared better with a bit more gender diversity in authorship.

• Leviticus 20:13
Of the exclusively male homosexual acts prohibited by the bible, the penalty for any transgression is death. (Nothing in the bible prohibits lesbian sex).

• Leviticus 16:1-34
God seems to kill people simply for disobeying his word; to get on his good side, these passages in the bible tell how to sacrifice bulls, rams and goats to atone for sins and please god.

But don't think only the Old Testament is nasty and brutish.

• Matthew 10:34
Jesus is no man of peace by his own words: Think not that I am come to send peace on earth; I come not to send peace, but a sword.

• Matthew 10:21
Jesus will tear families apart: brother will kill brother, father will kill child, and children will kill parents. That is all OK because it is more important to love Jesus, as we learn next:

• Matthew 10:36
A man's foe shall be they of his own household. Jesus tells us here that if we love our mother and father more than him, we are not worthy. Now there are some family values!

• Matthew 11:20-24
Jesus condemns entire cities to dreadful deaths and eternal damnation because they did not like his sermons.

• Mark 7:9-10
Jesus supports the Old Testament view that disobedient children should be killed, and then criticizes the Jews for not following that law.

• Luke 12:5
Jesus says that we should fear God since he has the power to kill us and then torture us forever in hell; classic effort by religion to frighten people into belief

• John 3:36
If we didn't get the point in Luke, John tells us here that if you don't believe in God, you will feel his wrath forever in hell. Again, not a loving God, but one to be feared as mean and spiteful.

Let us also teach our kids about the amazing inconsistencies in the bible about critical issues. The many authors, none of whom ever met Jesus, can't even agree on when Jesus was born.

• Matthew 2:1
Here Matthew claims that Jesus was born when King Herod was alive:
"Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea in the days of Herod the king..."

Matthew goes on to say Joseph and Mary only returned to Egypt with their infant son after Herod died. The timing is unambiguous.

• Luke 2:1-5
Luke claims that Jesus was born when Cyrenius was governor of Syria, which did not take place until at least ten years after Herod's death.

He specifically mentions the time Mary is pregnant with Jesus when Caesar Augusts imposes a new tax when Cyrenius was governor of Syria; but he did not become governor of Syria until at least 10 years after Herod died.

So even with the most generous interpretation, Matthew and Luke differ by more than 10 years on the year Jesus was born. That diminishes the credibility of both given that they cannot even get correct this basic bit of biography.

Genesis is equally confusing, giving us two completely different accounts on the creation of man between two passages just a stone's throw apart one chapter away. On the one hand we are told god made Adam, anesthetized him to extract a rib from which he made Eve, and sewed him back up, completing the world's first surgical procedure. We are then informed that no, in fact god made Adam and Eve at the same time. Specifically,

• Genesis 1:26
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

But wait, that is not quite right. We are told just a few passages later that god made only Adam first, and then Eve.

• Genesis 2:7
And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

• Genesis 2:19
And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept; and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; and the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.

The bible cannot even get the story of creation right. If Adam had his rib removed for nothing we could be witnessing the first case of medical malpractice.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-schweitzer/bible-study-in-public-sch_b_254677.html

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Seniors reliving prohibition days

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Weed making inroads among retirees

by Tom Barlow

 

Although California has a huge population of residents carrying prescriptions for medical marijuana, the social stigma attached to the drug has led the elderly to be very hesitant about adopting it as a palliative for age-related problems such as loss of appetite, nausea and chronic pain.

Now a luxury retirement community in Orange County, Laguna Woods Village, whose residents have discovered pot's benefits, has made weed easier to obtain by establishing its own pot collective.

The community set up its collective because, although there are thousands of clinics in the state selling marijuana, none were convenient to the residents, some of whom have very limited mobility.

For the greatest generation, taught to believe that marijuana was as addictive and deadly as drugs such as heroin, the reality has come as a pleasant surprise to many. NPR reports on the epiphany of a 73-year-old Leisure World resident and synchronized swimmer who found it effective in countering her nausea.
The fact that the retirees are receiving recommendations to try pot for their ills from their peers leads me to believe that the use of it on the West Coast has reached a critical mass. We could well see demand for legalization, at least for medical reasons, swell among the retiree community across the country.

 

http://www.walletpop.com/blog/2009/08/15/weed-making-inroads-among-retirees/?icid=main|htmlws-sb|dl3|link5|http%3A%2F%2Fwww.walletpop.com%2Fblog%2F2009%2F08%2F15%2Fweed-making-inroads-among-retirees%2F

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It's Time to Legalize Drugs

 

By Peter Moskos and Stanford "Neill" Franklin

Undercover Baltimore police officer Dante Arthur was doing what he does well, arresting drug dealers, when he approached a group in January. What he didn't know was that one of suspects knew from a previous arrest that Arthur was police. Arthur was shot twice in the face. In the gunfight that ensued, Arthur's partner returned fire and shot one of the suspects, three of whom were later arrested.

In many ways, Dante Arthur was lucky. He lived. Nationwide, a police officer dies on duty nearly every other day. Too often a flag-draped casket is followed by miles of flashing red and blue lights. Even more officers are shot and wounded, too many fighting the war on drugs. The prohibition on drugs leads to unregulated, and often violent, public drug dealing. Perhaps counterintuitively, better police training and bigger guns are not the answer.

When it makes sense to deal drugs in public, a neighborhood becomes home to drug violence. For a low-level drug dealer, working the street means more money and fewer economic risks. If police come, and they will, some young kid will be left holding the bag while the dealer walks around the block. But if the dealer sells inside, one raid, by either police or robbers, can put him out of business for good. Only those virtually immune from arrests (much less imprisonment) -- college students, the wealthy and those who never buy or sell from strangers -- can deal indoors.

Six years ago one of us wrote a column on this page, "Victims of the War on Drugs." It discussed violence, poor community relations, overly aggressive policing and riots. It failed to mention one important harm: the drug war's clear and present danger toward men and women in blue.

Drug users generally aren't violent. Most simply want to be left alone to enjoy their high. It's the corner slinger who terrifies neighbors and invites rivals to attack. Public drug dealing creates an environment where disputes about money or respect are settled with guns.

In high-crime areas, police spend much of their time answering drug-related calls for service, clearing dealers off corners, responding to shootings and homicides, and making lots of drug-related arrests.

One of us (Franklin) was the commanding officer at the police academy when Arthur (as well as Moskos) graduated. We all learned similar lessons. Police officers are taught about the evils of the drug trade and given the knowledge and tools to inflict as much damage as possible upon the people who constitute the drug community. Policymakers tell us to fight this unwinnable war.

Only after years of witnessing the ineffectiveness of drug policies -- and the disproportionate impact the drug war has on young black men -- have we and other police officers begun to question the system.

Cities and states license beer and tobacco sellers to control where, when and to whom drugs are sold. Ending Prohibition saved lives because it took gangsters out of the game. Regulated alcohol doesn't work perfectly, but it works well enough. Prescription drugs are regulated, and while there is a huge problem with abuse, at least a system of distribution involving doctors and pharmacists works without violence and high-volume incarceration. Regulating drugs would work similarly: not a cure-all, but a vast improvement on the status quo.

Legalization would not create a drug free-for-all. In fact, regulation reins in the mess we already have. If prohibition decreased drug use and drug arrests acted as a deterrent, America would not lead the world in illegal drug use and incarceration for drug crimes.

Drug manufacturing and distribution is too dangerous to remain in the hands of unregulated criminals. Drug distribution needs to be the combined responsibility of doctors, the government, and a legal and regulated free market. This simple step would quickly eliminate the greatest threat of violence: street-corner drug dealing.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/16/AR2009081601758.html

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Death panel

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GOP logic

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The Fifty Top U.S. War Criminals Who Need To Be Prosecuted

 

By David Swanson

The former Bush administration officials rank at the top of the list of the 50 most notorious war criminals living in the U.S.

Compiled below, in hopes that it may be of some assistance to Eric Holder, John Conyers, Patrick Leahy, active citizens, foreign courts, the International Criminal Court, law firms preparing civil suits, and local or state prosecutors with decency and nerve is a list of 50 top living U.S. war criminals. These are men and women who helped to launch wars of aggression or who have been complicit in lesser war crimes. These are not the lowest-ranking employees or troops who managed to stray from official criminal policies. These are the makers of those policies.

The occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan have seen the United States target civilians, journalists, hospitals, and ambulances, use antipersonnel weapons including cluster bombs in densely settled urban areas, use white phosphorous as a weapon, use depleted uranium weapons, employ a new version of napalm found in Mark 77 firebombs, engage in collective punishment of Iraqi civilian populations — including by blocking roads, cutting electricity and water, destroying fuel stations, planting bombs in farm fields, demolishing houses, and plowing down orchards — detain people without charge or legal process without the rights of prisoners of war, imprison children, torture, and murder.

The list below does not include those responsible for war crimes prior to 2001. Nor does it include those currently in power who are making themselves complicit by failing to prosecute or cease commission of these crimes. The list could be greatly expanded. It could also be narrowed. I would argue, however, that it presents a more reasonable starting place than Holder's reported proposal to investigate only CIA employees who failed to comply with criminal torture policies, of whom there are no doubt more than 50.

Because each of the people on this list should be nonviolently protested everywhere they go (more on that below), I have organized them by location. Please post updates on where they are as comments at http://afterdowningstreet.org/warcriminals

CALIFORNIA

1. John Yoo: Professor of Law at Boalt Hall School of Law in Berkeley, California, with house at 1241 Grizzly Peak Blvd., Berkeley, (but a lawyer with the Pennsylvania bar from which he should be disbarred and would be if enough people demanded it) counseled the White House on how to get away with war crimes, wrote this memo promoting presidential power to launch aggressive war, and claimed the power to decree that the federal statutes against torture, assault, maiming, and stalking do not apply to the military in the conduct of the war, and to announce a new definition of torture limiting it to acts causing intense pain or suffering equivalent to pain associated with serious physical injury so severe that death, organ failure or permanent damage resulting in loss of significant body functions will likely result. Yoo claimed in 2005 that a president has the right to enhance an interrogation by crushing the testicles of someone's child. Yoo has been confronted in his classroom: video, and defended by the Washington Post, and again confronted in the classroom.

Additional collaborators:
2. Robert J. Delahunty, Yoo colleague, should be disbarred in NY
3. Patrick F. Philbin, Yoo colleague, Deputy, should be disbarred in D.C. and MA

4. Jay Bybee: federal judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, headquartered in San Francisco, California (but Bybee based in Las Vegas), counseled the White House on how to get away with war crimes, including by helping Yoo draft the memo linked above. He signed not only torture memos but also a memo purporting to legalize illegal and unconstitutional wars. BYBEE SHOULD BE IMPEACHED. He works, among other places, at the James R. Browning Courthouse, 95 7th Street, San Francisco, CA 94103, — This is a giant marble building in the center of the city represented in Congress by the Speaker of the House.

5. William J. "Jim" Haynes, II: was General Counsel to the Department of War ("Defense"). He is now Chief Corporate Counsel at the Chevron Corporate Office in San Ramon, California. He counseled the White House on how to get away with war crimes, including by drafting memos for Yoo. Works at Chevron Headquarters, 6001 Bollinger Canyon Road, San Ramon, CA 94583. Member of bar in GA, NC, DC.

More collaborators:
6. Major General (Ret.) Michael E. Dunlavey, (now Judge, Erie County Court, Common Pleas, Erie, PA
7. Diane Beaver, top military lawyer at Gitmo
8. Jack Landman Goldsmith, III, [the illegal transfer memo in March 2004], DoD General Counsel's Office at Pentagon
9. Ms. Eliana Davidson, International Law Division, Office of the General Counsel, Office of the Secretary of "Defense"

10. Colin Powell: strategic limited partner with Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm, appears as a speaker in a series of motivational events called Get Motivated, board member of Revolution Health and of the Council on Foreign Relations, took part in White House meetings personally overseeing and approving torture by authorizing the use of specific torture techniques including waterboarding on specific people, lied to the United Nations about the grounds for war in a failed attempt to legalize a war of aggression, and was in fact a leading liar in making the false case for an illegal war of aggression.

Remember: Not every man in a dark suit is a war criminal. Check for blood under their fingernails to confirm identification.

http://pubrecord.org/commentary/3717/fifty-criminals-prosecuted/

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Backbone

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NASA Researchers Make First Discovery of Life’s Building Block in Comet

By Klaus Schmidt

PASADENA, Calif., (NASA) — NASA scientists have discovered glycine, a fundamental building block of life, in samples of comet Wild 2 returned by NASA's Stardust spacecraft.

"Glycine is an amino acid used by living organisms to make proteins, and this is the first time an amino acid has been found in a comet," said Jamie Elsila of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "Our discovery supports the theory that some of life's ingredients formed in space and were delivered to Earth long ago by meteorite and comet impacts."

This is an artist's concept of the Stardust spacecraft beginning its flight through gas and dust around comet Wild 2. The white area represents the comet. The collection grid is the tennis-racket-shaped object extending out from the back of the spacecraft. Credit: NASA/JPL

Elsila is the lead author of a paper on this research accepted for publication in the journal Meteoritics and Planetary Science. The research was presented during the meeting of the American Chemical Society at the Marriott Metro Center in Washington, D.C., August 16.

"The discovery of glycine in a comet supports the idea that the fundamental building blocks of life are prevalent in space, and strengthens the argument that life in the universe may be common rather than rare," said Carl Pilcher, director of the NASA Astrobiology Institute, which co-funded the research.

Proteins are the workhorse molecules of life, used in everything from structures like hair to enzymes, the catalysts that speed up or regulate chemical reactions. Just as the 26 letters of the alphabet are arranged in limitless combinations to make words, life uses 20 different amino acids in a huge variety of arrangements to build millions of different proteins.

Stardust passed through dense gas and dust surrounding the icy nucleus of Wild 2 (pronounced "Vilt-2″) on Jan. 2, 2004. As the spacecraft flew through this material, a special collection grid filled with aerogel – a novel sponge-like material that's more than 99 percent empty space – gently captured samples of the comet's gas and dust. The grid was stowed in a capsule that detached from the spacecraft and parachuted to Earth on Jan. 15, 2006. Since then, scientists around the world have been busy analyzing the samples to learn the secrets of comet formation and our solar system's history.

http://spacefellowship.com/2009/08/18/nasa-researchers-make-first-discovery-of-lifes-building-block-in-comet/

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Even more advertisers leave Glenn Beck

by Stephen C. Webster

When RAW STORY ran a blog just last week detailing the stunning success of a campaign to knock advertisers off the Glenn Beck television show and radio program, our story was stunningly successful, with almost 3,000 votes on Digg and tens of thousands of page views.

But that kind of response is likely just a taste of the pressure to drop Beck currently being applied to numerous major U.S. corporations.

Because of that pressure, Color of Change announced today that Walmart, a key bank with GMAC Financial Services, Best Buy, CVS, Travelocity, Re-Bath, Broadview Security and Allergan have all backed out, bringing the list of former Glenn Beck advertisers to Twenty.

Other high-profile companies shaken loose from the Fox editorialist's fold include Lawyers.com, Procter & Gamble, Progressive Insurance, State Farm, S.C. Johnson, GEICO, Men's Wearhouse, Sargento, ConAgra, Roche, Sanofi-Aventis and RadioShack.

"We are heartened to see so many corporate citizens step up in support of our campaign against Glenn Beck," said James Rucker, executive director of Color of Change, in a media advisory. "Their action sends a clear a message to Glenn Beck: Broadcasters shouldn't abuse the privilege they enjoy by spewing dangerous and racially charged hate language over the air. No matter their political affiliation, hate language doesn't belong in our national dialogue."

http://rawstory.com/blog/2009/08/even-more-advertisers-leave-glenn-beck/

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Rethink Afghanistan (Part 6): Security

The war in Afghanistan is increasing the likelihood that American civilians will be killed in a future terrorist attack.

Part 6 of Rethink Afghanistan, Security, brings you three former high-ranking CIA agents to explain why.

There is no "victory" to be won in Afghanistan. It is the most important video about U.S. Security today.

Become a Rethink Afghanistan Producer: http://rethinkafghanistan.com

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Obama tells veterans Afghanistan is a 'war of necessity'

His speech before the Veterans of Foreign Wars conference gave the president a chance to tout efforts to modernize the military, boost veterans' medical care and eliminate wasteful spending.

By Maeve Reston

 

Reporting from Phoenix - Speaking to more than 5,500 veterans, President Obama on Monday renewed his commitment to dismantling Al Qaeda in Afghanistan -- a struggle he said was "fundamental to the defense of our people" -- and offered assurances that his healthcare overhaul would not touch veterans' medical benefits.

"This is not a war of choice. This is a war of necessity," Obama told the annual Veterans of Foreign Wars conference -- cautioning that the insurgency would not be defeated overnight. "Those who attacked America on 9/11 are plotting to do so again. If left unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean an even larger safe haven from which Al Qaeda would plot to kill more Americans."

With U.S. forces scheduled to leave Iraq by 2011, Obama pledged that in the future, he would only send service members "into harm's way when it is absolutely necessary."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-obama-vfw18-2009aug18,0,838307.story

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Fox News's Live Desk completely misplaces Iraq

By GottaLaff

Via Raw Story:

As Tweetpic'ed from user stefanoscalia, this image was broadcast by Fox News on July 27, 2009, during Live Desk.

Maybe you can spot the problem here ...

Pssst... ClusterFox! Hint:

http://thepoliticalcarnival.blogspot.com/2009/08/fox-newss-live-desk-completely.html

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What if Democrats behaved more like Republicans???

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New Rule: A-hole in One Shouldn't Be Obama's Game

by Bill Maher

New Rule: President Obama must give up that awful habit that sets such a bad example for young people. I'm talking, of course ... about golf.

Golf, if you're not familiar, is a pastime where you basically walk outdoors with a bag, muttering and cursing. It's like being homeless in loud pants. Anyway, Time magazine is reporting that since he became president, Barack Obama has taken up golf with a passion, playing almost every weekend for the past few months -- and I feel betrayed. He campaigned as a basketball player. It said to us, "I'm urban and athletic and hip and a team player." Golf says, "I like Lipitor and white collar crime." And it's not just golf -- he's been purposefully eating a lot of hamburgers in public lately, to prove he loves meat. And he said that, unlike before he became president, he prays all the time now and that his Faith and Neighbor Initiatives Director sends him scripture on his Blackberry to start every day. Jesus, is there something about that house that turns people into assholes?

I kid the Commander in Chief, he's very far from an asshole, he's a cool dude, and I want to keep him that way! I don't want a regular guy running the country. We tried that for eight years and New Orleans still smells like mildew. Obama was different. He wasn't Joe Six-Pack. He had a six-pack. And when he gave a speech it didn't make English teachers cry. He wasn't some regular schmuck who spent five hours a weekend on the golf course. Why? Because he actually likes his family!

But Democrats have this bad habit of letting the Republicans scare them into acting more "regular guy" than they really are, and then they look inauthentic. Like Hillary drinking shooters. Like Dukakis in the tank. So I'm putting you on notice, Barack Obama: you're from Chicago, the day I see you in a duck blind, I'm taking my hope elsewhere.

So that's why I'm so worried when I see my president playing golf, because golf is a slippery slope. First comes the golf attire, then the golf stories and pretty soon you're telling black jokes. What's worse is that you know Obama doesn't really wanna be golfing, he's just doing it because he thinks it will relax the white people. "How could I be a socialist, I'm putting!" Well, I've got news for you, Mr. President, the people who think you want to kill their Great Aunt Millie aren't going to be swayed by a photo-op on the golf course. They see those photos, they're not thinking you're just like Tiger Woods, they're thinking, "Here comes the Angel of Death, and he's got a nine iron."

There is also a more serious side to this, because golf, hamburgers, and religion are all things that are incredibly bad for the environment. According to the U.N., in 15 years almost two billion people will be living in conditions of absolute water scarcity. And yet, a golf course in Palm Springs consumes as much water per day as an American family uses in four years. Golf courses in America consume over 114 million gallons of water a year on grass that doesn't even get you high. Golf courses also need large quantities of fertilizers and pesticides whose run-off pollutes the ground water for miles around.

This isn't just a third world problem -- there's a water shortage right now in the western United States. If I surpass my monthly water allotment here in Los Angeles, I'll get fined by the city. If I do it twice, they'll send 40,000 prisoners to live in my backyard.

But when it comes to bad for the environment, nothing -- literally -- compares with eating meat. The business of raising animals for food causes about 40 percent more global warming than all cars, trucks, and planes combined. If you care about the planet, it's actually better to eat a salad in a Hummer than a cheeseburger in a Prius.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-maher/new-rule-a-hole-in-one-sh_b_259281.html

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