You go Keith!

From Countdown's special comment april 16th 2009 Addressing president Obama's take on former president Bush's torture memos.
Mr. President, in acknowledging these science-fiction-like documents, you said that:
"This is a time for reflection, not retribution. I respect the strong views and emotions that these issues evoke."
"We have been through a dark and painful chapter in our history.
"But at a time of great challenges and disturbing disunity, nothing will be gained by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past.
Mr. President, you are wrong. What you describe would be not "spent energy" but catharsis.Not "blame laid," but responsibility ascribed. You continued:
"Our national greatness is embedded in America's ability to right its course in concert with our core values, and to move forward with confidence. That is why we must resist the forces that divide us, and instead come together on behalf of our common future."
Indeed we must, Mr. President. And the forces of which you speak are the ones lingering -- with pervasive stench -- from the previous administration. Far more than a criminal stench, Sir. An immoral one. One we cannot let be re-created.
One, President Obama, it is your responsibility to make sure cannot be re-created. Forgive me for quoting from a Comment I offered the night before the inauguration. But this goes to the core of the President's commendable, but wholly naive, intention. This country has never "moved forward with confidence".without first cleansing itself of its mistaken past.
In point of fact, every effort to merely draw a line in the sand and declare the past dead has served only to keep the past alive and often to strengthen it. We "moved forward" with slavery in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. And four score and nine years later, we had buried 600,000 of our sons and brothers, in a Civil War.
After that war's ending, we "moved forward" without the social restructuring -- and protection of the rights of minorities -- in the south. And a century later, we had not only not resolved anything, but black leaders were still being assassinated in our southern cities.
We "moved forward" with Germany in the reconstruction of Europe after the First World War.Nobody even arrested the German Kaiser, let alone conducted war crimes trials then. And 19 years later, there was an indescribably more evil Germany and a more heart-rending Second World War.
We "moved forward" with the trusts of the early 1900s. And today, we are at the mercy of corporations too big to fail. We "moved forward" with the Palmer Raids and got McCarthyism.And we "moved forward" with McCarthyism and got Watergate. We "moved forward" with Watergate and junior members of the Ford administration realized how little was ultimately at risk.
They grew up to be Paul Wolfowitz and Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney. But, Mr. President, when you say we must "come together on behalf of our common future" you are entirely correct. We must focus on getting things right in the future, as opposed to looking at what we got wrong in the past.
That means prosecuting all those involved in the Bush administration's torture of prisoners, even if the results are nominal punishments, or merely new laws. Your only other option is to let this set and fester indefinitely. Because, Sir, some day there will be another Republican president, or even a Democrat just as blind as Mr. Bush to ethics and this country's moral force. And he will look back to what you did about Mr. Bush. Or what you did not do.
And he will see precedent. Or as Cheney saw, he will see how not to get caught next time. Prosecute, Mr. President. Even if you get not one conviction, you will still have accomplished good for generations unborn. Merely by acting, you will deny a further wrong -- that this construction will enter the history books: Torture was legal. It worked. It saved the country.
The end. This must not be. "It is our intention," you said today, "to assure those who carried out their duties relying in good faith upon legal advice from the Department of Justice that they will not be subject to prosecution." Mr. President, you are making history's easiest, most often made, most dangerous mistake -- you are accepting the defense that somebody was "just following orders." At the end of his first year in office, Mr. Lincoln tried to contextualize the Civil War for those who still wanted to compromise with evils of secession and slavery. "The struggle of today," Lincoln wrote, "is not altogether for today. It is for a vast future also."
Mr. President, you have now been handed the beginning of that future. Use it to protect our children and our distant descendants from anything like this ever happening again -- by showing them that those who did this, were neither unfairly scapegoated nor absolved. It is good to say "we won't do it again." It is not, however...enough.

I am in complete agreement especially after reading the following:

A set of memos recently released by the Obama administration provide some support for allegations that the children of alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (KSM) were tortured to reveal their father’s whereabouts. A detainee’s relative said that they had been tortured with insects in 2007, and the newly released memos approve the use of insects as a part of the CIA’s enhanced interrogation techniques.
KSM’s two children were arrested in Pakistan on September 11, 2002, during a raid on an al-Qaeda safe house. However, their father slipped the net and was not captured until early the next year, reportedly on March 1, 2003.
Allegations
The first indications the children may have been tortured were reported in Ron Suskind’s 2006 book The One Percent Doctrine. When KSM was being held at a secret CIA facility in Thailand, apparently the revamped Vietnam War-era base at Udorn, according to Suskind, a message was passed to interrogators: “do whatever’s necessary.”
The interrogators then told KSM “his children would be hurt if he didn’t cooperate.” However, his response was, “so, fine, they’ll join Allah in a better place.”
More detailed allegations were made at a combatant status review tribunal in Guantanamo in the spring of 2007. According to a statement made by Ali Khan, the father of high value detainee Majid Khan, KSM’s children were “denied food and water by … guards.” In addition, “They were mentally tortured by having ants or other creatures put on their legs to scare them and get them to say where their father was hiding.” Accounts of the children’s ages at this time vary, although they are generally said to have been under ten.
Ali Khan said that he was told about the children by his son Mohammed, who was kept in the same detention center and obtained the information from Pakistani guards there. He also claimed that his son Majid was tortured, for example using stress positions, face slaps, hooding and cramped confinement.

Just as those who were just following orders should not be excused, ( but given light sentences if found guilty) it is imperative that those who authorised and gave the orders must be held to account. If we do not seek prosecution, how are we any different from Hitler's Germany? Is it because the number of tortured and killed pale in comparison? Is it fear of the CIA and the military industrial complex's long reaching tentacles? I mean I can understand your apprehension, those two entities involvement with JFK's assassination has never been made clear in my opinion. It can't be the belief that investigations into these crimes will divide the country at a time when we need to come together. Read the papers! We're about as divided as we've ever been. The political fall out from seeking prosecution of war crimes against those in the Bush administration would be a mere drop in the ocean. The Repubs in congress are already in opposition to everything you say and do. The media gives the lion's share of their coverage to the conservative right that distrust of you. You're never going to have a greater approval rating than you do right now. Strike while the iron is hot. Please, please, please . . . for God's sake . . . for the sake of justice . . . for the sake of American pride . . . for the sake of the children . . . for the sake of the parents that want to tell their children that when you break the law, when you commit crimes, when you are complicit in violent immoral acts . . . you will have to face the music. Executive branch sanctioned torture must not go unpunished, not here, not in this country.

Then after that fire Geithner and Summers and hire Paul Krugman and Robert Reich as Secretary of the treasury and your chief economic adviser. Then take over the Federal Reserve and keep Bernake on as the janitor. He needs to clean up this mess.

DaG Out
PS sorry readers for rehashing an old argument

Careful What You Wish For

I really didn't see it coming. I didn't fully buy into the hype because like my dad always said, " You don't judge a politician by what they say, rather by what they do." What has been said by my man Obama is such a refreshing change from the past 8 years. At his ignauguration, while re-inforcing the secular nature of this country he even gave a shout out to "non believers". That has never happened in my lifetime. I doubt that Thomas Jefferson ever gave a shout out to the agnostics or the atheists of his time. More recently, the new president candidly spoke of our country's less than perfect score card proving that humility and not huberous is back in fashion. He's opened the lines of communication to all countries of the world and reminded them that the United States will lead by example and reason and not excess and religous zealotry. All these spoken words are music to my ears but, some of his actions taken are a sour note. Namely his choices of economic advisors, Summers and Geithner. Two insiders of the Wall Street financial meltdown largest bank heist in history.

I don't understand why he is taking these guy's advise. I also failed to understand that money and greed have no political affiliation. I used to think that the Republicans much like money, were the root of all evil. I was mistaken. It just so happened that they were the party in power when I was paying attention. Wall Street and global corporations grease the palms of those who can pass legislation that benefits them regardless of the "R" or the "D" that proceeds their name. Money flows to those who are in power, period. When the country began to lose faith in Republican politicians so did those with deep pockets. Bill Clinton was president and signed the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, also known as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Financial Services Modernization Act, Pub.L. 106-102, 113 Stat. 1338, enacted November 12, 1999, is an Act of the 106th United States Congress which repealed part of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, opening up competition among banks, securities companies and insurance companies. The Glass-Steagall Act prohibited a bank from offering investment, commercial banking, and insurance services. And L. Summers just happened to be Secretary of the Treasury for the last year and a half of the Bill Clinton administration. As far as the catastrophic economic situation we find ourselves in, we need to look no further than this.

A door that had been shut and locked since the depression had just had it's lock picked. Once "W" took office it was kicked wide open. Summers, Obama's top economic recovery advisor was in on the whole thing and consequently made a fortune as a result. Timothy Geithner was Under Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs (1998–2001) under Treasury Secretaries Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers.[5] Summers was his mentor, now Geithner is Secretary Treasurer. Hmmmm.With Geithner and Summer's help the Obama administration, rather than chart a new course, seems to be intent on re-inflating the bubble that will burst and then what?????????

Here's a guy that sees what I see . . .Chris Hedges Truthdig April 6, 2009 : America is devolving into a third-world nation. And if we do not immediately halt our elite’s rapacious looting of the public treasury we will be left with trillions in debts, which can never be repaid, and widespread human misery which we will be helpless to ameliorate. Our anemic democracy will be replaced with a robust national police state. The elite will withdraw into heavily guarded gated communities where they will have access to security, goods and services that cannot be afforded by the rest of us. Tens of millions of people, brutally controlled, will live in perpetual poverty. This is the inevitable result of unchecked corporate capitalism. The stimulus and bailout plans are not about saving us. They are about saving them. We can resist, which means street protests, disruptions of the system and demonstrations, or become serfs.
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OB14me has disappointed me in other ways as well, apparently he isn't going to reverse the Executive powers that Bush wrote into existence during his "reign". Obama spoke out against them during the campaign but, has taken measures not to reverse them as president. WASHINGTON – The U.S. Supreme Court today vacated a lower court decision giving the president the extraordinary power to seize and indefinitely detain U.S. citizens or residents without charge or trial. The case was brought by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, who, after being held for almost six years in military detention, was indicted last week in federal court and charged with two counts of material support for terrorism.In July 2008, the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ruled in a fractured decision that the president had legal authority to imprison al-Marri indefinitely without charge. As one judge noted in dissent, however, to accept the government's claim of extraordinary detention power would have "disastrous consequences for the Constitution—and the country." The Supreme Court vacated that decision and dismissed the case as moot.

The practice of Rendition (the kidnapping of someone thought to be a terrorists and transporting them to some secret place with no charges or trial, for an undetermined amount of time) Obama has kept this option in his administration. The right of Habeus Corpus is still being waved, which flies directly in the face of our constitution.

DaG Out

The Tea Party Propaganda

Just another day and just another conservative scandal. I thought the organization around Rick Santelli's rant was a little too smooth, a little too perfectly orchestrated for something not to be very, very wrong about it. The right wing moneychangers tried once again to control the message and lie to the American people to push their agenda that only hurts America. The right wing elite hated FDR because he turned on his own class of people and put the average American worker ahead of them. They were shocked that he would care about the state of our nation over the vested interests in a very small few. I did write that Rick's behavior was indicative of most talking heads that appear on the Wall Street shows because they are slaves to the very wealthy. These same people are terrified that Barack Obama may indeed reach America in the same way that FDR reached into the hearts of a depressed and hopeless American population that was beat down by the the depression back in 1929.
What a great job of reporting by Mark Ames and Yasha Levine of Playboy:
Last week, CNBC correspondent Rick Santelli rocketed from being a little-known second-string correspondent to a populist hero of the disenfranchised, a 21st-century Samuel Adams, the leader and symbol of the downtrodden American masses suffering under the onslaught of 21st century socialism and big government. Santelli’s “rant” last-week calling for a “Chicago Tea Party” to protest President Obama’s plans to help distressed American homeowners rapidly spread across the blogosphere and shot right up into White House spokesman Robert Gibbs’ craw, whose smackdown during a press conference was later characterized by Santelli as “a threat” from the White House. A nationwide “tea party” grassroots Internet protest movement has sprung up seemingly spontaneously, all inspired by Santelli, with rallies planned today in cities from coast to coast to protest against Obama’s economic policies.
What we discovered is that Santelli’s “rant” was not at all spontaneous as his alleged fans claim, but rather it was a carefully-planned trigger for the anti-Obama campaign. In PR terms, his February 19th call for a “Chicago Tea Party” was the launch event of a carefully organized and sophisticated PR campaign, one in which Santelli served as a frontman, using the CNBC airwaves for publicity, for the some of the craziest and sleaziest rightwing oligarch clans this country has ever produced. Namely, the Koch family, the multibilllionaire owners of the largest private corporation in America, and funders of scores of rightwing thinktanks and advocacy groups, from the Cato Institute and Reason Magazine to FreedomWorks. The scion of the Koch family, Fred Koch, was a co-founder of the notorious extremist-rightwing John Birch Society.
As you read this, Big Business is pouring tens of millions of dollars into their media machines in order to destroy just about every economic campaign promise Obama has made, as reported recently in the Wall Street Journal. At stake isn’t the little guy’s fight against big government, as Santelli and his bot-supporters claim, but rather the “upper 2 percent”’s war to protect their wealth from the Obama Adminstration’s economic plans. When this Santelli “grassroots” campaign is peeled open, what’s revealed is a glimpse of what is ahead and what is bound to be a hallmark of his presidency.

All I can say is thankfully we have blogs to help expose this massive corrosion that has seeped into the bowels of our nation and uses our national media on all levels to mainline their corruption. Shame on them all.
As whenwego at DKos writes:
It appears that this is the brain child of the shadowy Sam Adams project:
The Sam Adams Alliance, a nonprofit conservative organization, has started an ambitious project this year to encourage right-leaning activists and bloggers to get online and focus on local and state issues.
And the coordination is now expanding to business interests that are opposed to Obama's programs:
Industries from health care to agribusiness to mining that stand to lose under President Barack Obama's policy agenda are ramping up lobbying campaigns to derail or modify his plans.
The day after Mr. Obama formally laid out his policy goals in his first address to Congress, the former chief executive of HCA Inc. unveiled a $20 million campaign to pressure Democrats to enact health-care legislation based on free-market principles.
And don't bother to ask who is behind the Sam Adams Alliance, because all that is scrubbed:
But it’s the Alliance’s scrubbing of their link to Koch that is most telling. A cached page, erased on February 16, just three days before Santelli’s rant, shows that the Alliance also wanted to cover up its ties to the Koch family.

Note the amount of coverage (advertisement) this movement has received from Fox and conservative talk radio. The Newt Gingrich Repubs are jumping all over this and several of the up and comers are attending these rallies and giving speeches. It amazes me how gullible and easily swayed we the people have become. The people that attend these things are literally supporting ideas that benefit them the least.

The East India Company long held a privileged position in relation to the English, and later the British, government. As a result, it was frequently granted special rights and privileges, including trade monopolies and exemptions. In 1773 the East India Company was one of the strongholds of British economy. Suddenly it found itself at odds with the American non-importation restrictions on tea and with a huge inventory it could not move. The company was not able to meet its payment on dividends and loans and was moving towards bankruptcy. Of course the British government was reluctant to let it happen from fear that this may disrupt financial markets. As an alternative to a direct loan the Ministry decided to allow the company to send tea to America without paying an export duty.

Only a few of the history books note this underlying reason for the uprising. Most merely say it was due to England imposing the "Stamp Act" and other taxation without representation. It's also left out of most history books that the so called uprising was very peaceful and orderly. The participants actually swept the decks of the boats clean after tossing East India company's tea into the harbor. The original Boston Tea Party was a million dollar act of vandalism against one of the largest global corporations in the world. The East India company. The colonists were protesting the lowering of taxes on the East India company. (the Walmart of the 1700's) The lowered tax on the tea enabled the company to repay their debt to England and made it all but impossible for American businesses to compete. (sound familiar?) The Boston Tea party has been co opted by the Right much like the Evangelicals co opted Christianity, convincing their followers believe that Jesus wants you to be rich.

Another incident of the right co opting progressive or democratic socialist ideals is Glen Beck's latest fascination with Thomas Paine. He's had an actor dressing up like Paine ranting against this administration. The actor rants from the writings of Paine and uses selective quotations completely misrepresenting Paine's beliefs. Thomas Paine would be today's right wing conservatives nightmare. He was for labor, taxing the rich and giving it to the youth of America so they could have free college education. He believed in setting up social safety nets like social security and unemployment insurance. on. It would do Glen Beck good to read Prof. Harvey Kaye's "Thomas Paine and the Promise of America". Since Beck is going to cherry pick some of Paine's quotes, I thought
I'd give you some that I will just bet don't get mentioned.

1. "Any system of religion that has anything in it that shocks the mind of a child, cannot be true."
2. "All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit."

3. (this one is for the past administration) "He who is the author of a war lets loose the whole contagion of hell and opens a vein that bleeds a nation to death."

4. "Is it not a species of blasphemy to call the New Testament revealed religion, when we see in it such contradictions and absurdities."

5. (Attention Repubs and Blue dog Dems!) "Lead, follow, or get out of the way."

6. "My mind is my own church."

7. "One good schoolmaster is of more use than a hundred priests."

8. "Suspicion is the companion of mean souls, and the bane of all good society."

9. "The Vatican is a dagger in the heart of Italy."

10. "To establish any mode to abolish war, however advantageous it might be to Nations, would be to take from such Government the most lucrative of its branches. "

11. "War involves in its progress such a train of unforeseen circumstances that no human wisdom can calculate the end; it has but one thing certain, and that is to increase taxes."
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While I agree that our government is spending way too much it must be noted that trillions of dollars in spending were purposefully left out of the budget during the past 8 years. None of the cost of the Iraq war was included in the Bush administration's budgets. This omission artificially lowered the budgets expenditures. Obama's budget includes this cost and naturally increases hid budget. Military spending under Obama's budget actually went up contrary to what the right wing pundits have been saying. They report cuts in antiquated war planes and ships that have little effectiveness in modern guerrilla type warfare. Obama increased spending for supplies that the soldiers can actually use as well as medical benefits when they return home. Even though the budget is the largest spending bill ever it at least attempts to address things that have been neglected for years and years. Infrastructure, education, and health care.
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In closing note to those who thought that Obama is secretly a Muslim. He gave the orders to the Navy snipers to "shoot to kill" those Muslim pirates. I guess for the unwavering haters that means that he's blood thirsty and a loose cannon.

DaG Out

Too little too late

PARIS (AFP) – The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) said the breakway of a Jamaica-sized ice shelf from the Antarctic peninsula could accelerate global warming in this already vulnerable region.
Satellite pictures show a 40-kilometre (25-mile) ice bridge that was the Wilkins Ice Shelf's last link to the coast had now shattered at its narrowest point, about 500 metres (yards) wide, UNEP said.
The Wilkins Ice Shelf once covered around 16,000 square kilometres (6,000 square miles) before it began to retreat in the 1990s, and by last May the ice bridge was all that connected it to Charcot and Latady islands.
The loss of the bridge "may now allow ocean currents to wash away far more of the shelf," UNEP said.
Christian Lambrechts, a policy and programme officer with UNEP's Division of Early Warning and Assessment, said this would expose more of the sea's surface to sunlight, rather than reflect it, in turn "contributing to continued and accelerated warming."
The Antarctic peninsula -- the tongue of land that juts up towards South America -- has been hit by greater warming than almost any other region on Earth.
In the past 50 years, temperatures have risen by 2.5 degrees Celsius (4.5 degrees Fahrenheit), around six times the global average.
Ice shelves are ledges of thick ice that float on the sea and are attached to the land. They are formed when ice is exuded from ice sheet on land.
The Antarctic ice shelves do not add to sea levels when they melt. Like the Arctic ice cap, they float on the sea and thus displace their own volume.
But the loss of an ice shelf means that the glaciers that feed it may flow out straight to the sea, as if from an uncorked bottle.
"Although the Wilkins ice bridge collapse will have no direct consequence on sea level rise, it might have an indirect impact, as the decay of the ice shelf will reduce the stability of the glaciers that are feeding it," said Lambrechts.
In the past 20 years, Antarctica has lost seven ice shelves.
The process is marked by shrinkage and the breakaway of increasingly bigger chunks before the remainder of the shelf snaps away from the coast.
It then disintegrates into debris or into icebergs that eventually melt as they drift northwards.
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Also today:
By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer
WASHINGTON – Tinkering with Earth's climate to chill runaway global warming — a radical idea once dismissed out of hand — is being discussed by the White House as a potential emergency option, the president's new science adviser said Wednesday.
That's because global warming is happening so rapidly, John Holdren told The Associated Press in his first interview since being confirmed last month.
The concept of using technology to purposely cool the climate is called geoengineering. One option raised by Holdren and proposed by a Nobel Prize-winning scientist includes shooting pollution particles into the upper atmosphere to reflect the sun's rays.
Using such an experimental measure is only being thought of as a last resort, Holdren said.
"It's got to be looked at," he said. "We don't have the luxury ... of ruling any approach off the table."
His concern is that the United States and other nations won't slow global warming fast enough and that several "tipping points" could be fast approaching. Once such milestones are reached, such as complete loss of summer sea ice in the Arctic, it increases chances of "really intolerable consequences," he said.
Twice in a half-hour interview, Holdren compared global warming to being "in a car with bad brakes driving toward a cliff in the fog."
He and many experts believe that warming of a few degrees more would lead to disastrous drought conditions and food shortages in some regions, rising seas and more powerful coastal storms in others.
At first, Holdren characterized the potential need to technologically tinker with the climate as just his personal view. However, he went on to say he has raised it in administration discussions.
"We're talking about all these issues in the White House," Holdren said. "There's a very vigorous process going on of discussing all the options for addressing the energy climate challenge."
Holdren said discussions include Cabinet officials and heads of sub-Cabinet level agencies, such as NASA and the Environmental Protection Agency.
The 65-year-old physicist is far from alone in taking geoengineering seriously. The National Academy of Sciences is making it the subject of the first workshop in its new climate challenges program for policymakers, scientists and the public. The British Parliament has also discussed the idea. At an international meeting of climate scientists last month in Copenhagen, 15 talks dealt with different aspects of geoengineering.
The American Meteorological Society is crafting a policy statement that says "it is prudent to consider geoengineering's potential, to understand its limits and to avoid rash deployment."
Last week, Princeton scientist Robert Socolow told the National Academy that geoengineering should be an available option in case climate worsens dramatically.
Holdren, a 1981 winner of a MacArthur Foundation "genius" grant, outlined these possible geoengineering options:
• Shooting sulfur particles (like those produced by power plants and volcanoes, for example) into the upper atmosphere, an idea that gained steam when it was proposed by Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen in 2006. It would be "basically mimicking the effect of volcanoes in screening out the incoming sunlight," Holdren said.
• Creating artificial "trees" — giant towers that suck carbon dioxide out of the air and store it.
The first approach would "try to produce a cooling effect to offset the heating effect of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases," Holdren said.
But he said there could be grave side effects. Studies suggest that might include eating away a large chunk of the ozone layer above the poles and causing the Mediterranean and the Mideast to be much drier.
And those are just the predicted problems. Scientists say they worry about side effects that they don't anticipate.
While the idea could strike some people as too risky, the Obama administration could get unusual support on the idea from groups that have often denied the harm of global warming in the past.
The conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute has its own geoengineering project, saying it could be "feasible and cost-effective." And Cato Institute scholar Jerry Taylor said Wednesday: "Very few people would rule out geoengineering on its face."
Holdren didn't spell out under what circumstances such extreme measures might ever be called for. And he emphasized they are not something to rely on.
"It would be preferable by far," he said, "to solve this problem by reducing emissions of greenhouse gases."
Yet there is already significant opposition building to the House Democratic leaders' bill aimed at achieving President Barack Obama's goal of cutting greenhouse gas emissions 20 percent by 2020 and 80 percent by 2050.
Holdren said temperatures should be kept from rising more than 3.6 degrees. To get there, he said the U.S. and other industrial nations have to begin permanent dramatic cuts in carbon dioxide pollution by 2015, with developing countries following suit within a decade.
Those efforts are racing against three tipping points he cited: Earth could be as close as six years away from the loss of Arctic summer sea ice, he said, and that has the potential of altering the climate in unforeseen ways. Other elements that could dramatically speed up climate change include the release of frozen methane from thawing permafrost in Siberia, and more and bigger wildfires worldwide.
The trouble is that no one knows when these things are coming, he said.
Holdren also addressed other topics during the interview:
• The U.S. anti-ballistic missile program is not ready to work and shouldn't be used unless it is 100 percent effective. The system, which would be used to shoot down missiles from countries like North Korea or Iran "needs to be essentially perfect ... that's going to be hard to achieve."
• Holdren said NASA needs some changes. He said the Bush administration's plan to return astronauts to the moon was underfunded so money was taken from science and aeronautics. Those areas, including climate change research, were "decimated," he said.
The administration will "rebalance NASA's programs so that we have in space exploration, a suitable mix of manned activities and robotic activities," Holdren said. Doing that "will only get under way in earnest when a new administrator is in place."
Holdren, who advises the president on such decisions, said he hopes Obama will pick a new NASA boss soon.
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Well, since a conservative think tank acknowledges global warming as a problem, will Limbaugh, Hannity and the rest continue to say that it is a myth and a left wing scare tactic? I guess the good news is the multi trillion dollar debt we're in isn't going to matter in the least.
DaG out

What's he doing?

03/26/09 WASHINGTON – Concerned about the faltering war in Afghanistan, President Barack Obama plans to dispatch thousands more military and civilian trainers on top of the 17,000 fresh combat troops he's already ordered, people familiar with the forthcoming plan said Thursday.

03/27/09 WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama on Friday ordered 4,000 more military troops into Afghanistan, vowing to "disrupt, dismantle and defeat" the terrorist al-Qaida network in Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan.
In a war that still has no end in sight, Obama said the fresh infusion of U.S. forces is designed to bolster the Afghan army and turn up the heat on terrorists that he said are plotting new attacks against Americans. The plan takes aim at terrorist havens in Pakistan and challenges the government there and in Afghanistan to show more results.

C'mon man, we can not win this thing. There will be no surrender, we're not going to kill them all, and we're not going to win their hearts and minds with military force. Is there an exit strategy? What's to keep the Tali Ban or Al Qaida or the terrorists from regrouping after we leave? We can not prevent terrorists from setting up training camps. If we clean out Afghanistan they'll set up shop in Pakistan, If we clean up Pakistan, they set back up in Afghanistan. Or move to any one of a hundred other places around the mid east. Jesus, this is a dumb idea! Remember what happened when Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, the Persians, the British empire, and Russia invaded Afghanistan? They all lost.
Damn it all I thought you were smarter than this. I still believe you are smarter than this, I voted for you man. You were a breath of fresh air. I hope and pray that this thing isn't your Viet Nam. We're just going to get our guys killed, kill countless numbers of Afghan civilians, turn hundreds of thousands of Afghans against us, re-enforce the hatred that many Middle Easterners have against our foreign policy, all while spending billions and billions on a complete waste of time in a time. If we're going to invest so much blood and treasure on this endeavor lets do it on nation building and not a man hunt with our military. A large part of the reason that Hamas won in Palestine was due to the fact that they poured money into medicines and healthcare for the people as well as school construction. That's how to win the hearts and minds. America should do the same in Afghanistan. Since we destroyed large parts of it lets help rebuild it. This will not only make the Afghans happy but, our military industrial complex as well. After all, part of the reason we blow things up is so we can have our contractors rebuild them. So let's have less destruction and more construction. Roads, sewers, electricity, and so on. Let our foot print be a positive and not a negative. It's not going to win over everyone but, nothing will win over everyone. At a time when our economy is on the verge of imploding and if we're going to deficit spend in a foreign country anyway why not do it in a constructive way. It certain;y beats the shit we keep piling on the heap that is our national debt.

And along the lines of our horrible economic situation. What's with the Geithner and Summers recruitment? As I'm sure you are aware these two were major players in the chicanery that got us into this mess. What made you go with these two? Did they have a sudden come to Jesus moment? What's wrong with some fresh faces and some new ideas? Is Geithner going to hold his old running buddies to account? I doubt it seriously. An administration official said the Treasury Department did its own legal analysis and concluded that those contracts could not be broken. Oh really! When the major airlines broke all those contracts with their pilots and attendants forcing them to take a cut in pay nobody from the government said it couldn't be done. When the major auto manufactures break contracts with the Unions, for some strange reason congress and the senate give their blessings. Does anyone else see a pattern here? Geithner, Summers, and their ilk are holding the world economy hostage and demanding ransom from the US tax payer. If we don't meet their demands they'll crash the economy. It's all a confidence game. When things go their (Wall Street and global corporation's) way the stock market goes up. Whenever Labor and the Unions triumph, (which is a rare occasion indeed) the power brokers will drive the market into the toilet.

And finally,from the UK Telegraph 03/26/09
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has pledged $80 million (£55m) to Mexico to acquire Blackhawk helicopters to fight drug gangs threatening the country's stability.

We're going to give Mexico $80 million so they can buy helicopters. Why don't we just give them to Mexico? I guess once you've sanctioned the printing of a few trillion un-backed U.S. dollars by the Federal Reserve another 80 million is chicken feed. So, let me get this straight: we're going to give $80 million to the Mexican authorities who will in turn buy Blackhawk Helicopters from us in order to better fight the drug cartels. Are you kidding me? I don't know who is advising you on these matters but maybe you aught to fire them and get someone else. Most Mexican police officials are bought and paid for buy the drug cartels. The Mexican government much like our own is corrupt and can't compete with the drug cartels deep pockets. Most of the police are bought and paid for by the same cartels they are hired to fight.

The US secretary of state also acknowledged America's "inability" to stop weapons being smuggled across the border from the US and being used by the drug cartels in a bloody turf war.

Yes it's true illegals give a legal a few hundred $ to go into 1 of 2000 or more gun shops located along the Mexican -United States border. They buy military type weaponry as well as ammunition and sneak it back into Mexico. We're supplying the people were fighting! Why don't we just monitor theses shops more closely or make it unlawful to have a gun shop within 250 miles of the border?
In a previous post I explained how the legalization of drugs could not only reduce crime, eliminate prison overcrowding, increase tax revenues, and create jobs. Now I would like to add that legalizing drugs would devastate the Cartels and reduce the need for further bloodshed and ridiculous deficit spending.

While my man OB14me has already done some very good things, stem cell research, actually allowed the press to ask tough questions, brought to the forefront the need for health and education reforms, spoke in complete sentences, etc etc. He has also shown that while he was elected president of the United States . . . the military industrial complex, Global corporations, and Greed make the rules by which you have to play.

DaG Out

Fox News "We distort - You abide"

Here's a story that actually happened and I can find zero mainstream coverage of it. It happened about 10 years ago: A large share of America’s milk supply has quietly become adulterated with the effects of a synthetic hormone (bovine growth hormone, or BGH) secretly injected into cows. The hormone maker Monsanto led Fox TV to fire two of its award-winning reporters and sweep under the rug much of what they discovered but were never allowed to broadcast.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8932894636742527407

8/23/2004
(TAMPA)--A Florida judge has denied a Fox Television motion that would have forced its former investigative reporters Jane Akre and Steve Wilson to pay nearly $2 million in legal fees and court costs the broadcaster spent to defend itself at trial in the landmark whistleblower suit brought by the journalists.
In her ruling which followed a lengthy hearing in Tampa Wednesday (August 18), Judge Vivian Maye cited previous court decisions that allow judicial discretion in deciding whether whistleblowers must reimburse defense costs if they ultimately lose.
Still at issue are some additional court costs that Fox says it is entitled to collect from the journalists under different rules that apply at the appellate level. Fox took the case there and ultimately overturned the jury on a legal technicality last year. (There, the party that ultimately wins is generally allowed to collect appellate costs and fees from the losing party.)
Ironically, the ruling came four years to the very day and exact hour that a jury returned its landmark ruling in the case and a $425,000 award to reporter Jane Akre.
This latest decision stems from a case filed in 1998 by former Fox journalists Akre and Wilson who charged they were pressured to broadcast what they knew and documented to be lies about an artificial hormone injected into dairy cows, then fired when they refused and threatened to report the matter to the Federal Communications Commission.
After a five-week trial in 2000, a jury decided unanimously that Akre was fired solely because she threatened to blow the whistle to the FCC the broadcast of a false, distorted or slanted news report. The panel that found in Akre's favor awarded nothing to Wilson who represented himself at trial.
The Fox appeal was largely on an argument that it is not technically illegal for a broadcaster to deliberately distort the news on television. The appellate justices reasoned that since state law provides whistleblower protection only for employees who object to misconduct which is against an "adopted law, rule, or regulation" and they decided prohibitions against news distortion are merely a "policy" of the FCC, the reporters' eight-year-old lawsuit must have been without merit from itsinception.
"The appellate judges were wrong to overturn the jury on the notion that it's not illegal for a broadcaster to lie in a television news report," Akre said.
"And what's even more shameful is that a broadcaster would argue that the First Amendment is broad enough to protect outright lies and deliberate distortion," Wilson added. "Remember this case the next time you hear `fair and balanced,' or `we report, you decide'."
In her ruling yesterday, Judge Maye noted, "Three different trial court judges believed this case had legal merit." Six times before Fox appealed its loss, those judges rejected that very same argument, deciding prohibitions against deliberate distortion of the news on the public airwaves was more than a mere violation of government policy.
Reading from the Jury Verdict Form, she also noted that six disinterested jurors decided Fox fired Akre for no other reason than her objection to airing a report the jurors agreed was "false, distorted, or slanted."

In a nut shell the Florida Appealate court is in the pockett of Jeb Bush and his state's big businesses.

DaG Out

Short term memory

Turn on any news program today and listen to pundits and politicians feign outrage at the executive bonus compensation that AIG is giving out. While it is egregious that AIG is giving away millions of tax payers money to the very people who actively participated in fraud, and the bilking of billions, it is important to remember that in the original draft of the TARP bill there was a $500,000 executive compensation cap. The very same people currently bitching and moaning about how poorly the Obama administration handled the TARP disbursement are the ones who spoke loudly against any kind of limits on executive compensation. They even managed to get the limit exemption dropped from the final bill. I guess they know the public can't remember what was said 2 months ago. (Unless they happen to turn on the Daily Show with John Stewart and he plays the video. The corporate media sure as hell ain't going to show us.)

A mere 4 years ago in 2005, a repub led congress, senate, and executive branch passed new bankruptcy laws that snuck in credit default swap and derivative contingencies. Basically this new legislation put the holders of the derivatives to the front of the line should a financial institution file for bankruptcy. While this law made it far tougher for the average citizen to stay afloat when filing for bankruptcy it made it so much easier for financial institutions to disperse whatever capital they had left to their wealthiest investors be they national or foreign. Even a Bank or investment houses employees and stock holders got pushed to the back of the line. Interesting to note that blame for this crap piece of legislation can be directly placed on both sides of the isle. Even our current VP Joe Biden voted for this thing.

This all leads one to believe that they all knew this was coming. The finger pointing and accusations are nothing more than posturing in an effort to cover their asses. Are you listening Chris Dodd?! Yes it's true that you wrote the amendment granting the compensation exemption that limited bonuses to $500,000 however, you're not above suspicion as last year you received a sweetheart deal on two of your mortgages, saving upwards of $75,000 courtesy of Countrywide, one of the biggest pushers of the subprime mortgages. As head of the U.S. banking committee he could have spoken out over the past 2 years when the Dems had a majority but, said nothing. (The Right has lied to the public about Dodd's amendment. Rush and Fox news report Dodd's amendment as the "exemption that allowed AIG to pay out executive bonuses. They conveniently leave out the cap amount he put in.)

The main reason this corruption has been allowed to take place is the repeal of the Glass Steagal act of 1933 . . . . Specifically the second act. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, bankers and brokers were sometimes indistinguishable. Then, in the Great Depression after 1929, Congress examined the mixing of the “commercial” and “investment” banking industries that occurred in the 1920s. (Sound familiar?) Hearings revealed conflicts of interest and fraud in some banking institutions’ securities activities. A formidable barrier to the mixing of these activities was then set up by the Glass Steagall Act. (My my how history does seem to repeat itself. See what I mean by our collective short term memory? For the record, both Glass and Steagal were Democrats) The first Act established the Federal deposit Insurance Corp. The FDIC.

Now just out of curiosity let's see when and who was responsible for the repeal of Glass Steagal. Ah yes, back in 1999, the distinguished gentleman from Texas Senator Phil Gramm and in the House of Representatives by Jim Leach (Repub -Iowa) brought forth this dastardly piece of legislation. The bills were passed by Republican majorities on party lines, but the Dems are not completely absolved of responsibility as President Clinton signed the repeal into law. After that, brokerage houses and Banks could do as they pleased, they could create investments out of thin air and they did. With AIG's help these investments got AAA rated and insured for the maximum amount. In addition, the cancer of stocks as compensation became all the rage so that CEO's no longer cared about a companies health in the long term only how high they could get the stock to go. The financial market became a football game with no referees. The financial institutions could hold, clip, facemask, chop block, illegally forward pass all they wanted. And boy did they want to . . . .a lot. In case you didn't realize, you, me and damn near everybody else in the civilized world were and are the opposing team.

What can be done? How can this all be fixed? Got me? Short of a reboot . . .Wipe the slate clean and start all over again, I don't see how it can. Don't forget, the outstanding bill that is past due is more than the GDP of the entire planet.

DaG out