The official House of Representatives website of the former congressman resolves into one, where Office of the Clerk informs that:

“Office of the Twenty-Ninth Congressional District of New York
Formerly the Office of Representative Eric J. J. Massa

The Washington, D.C. office and the district of the Honorable Eric J. J. Massa will continue to serve the people of the Twenty-Ninth Congressional District of New York under the supervision of the Clerk of the House of Representatives. Representative Massa resigned on March 8, 2010. The vacancy became effective March 9, 2010.”

And what was the reason for the resignation? That’s all very unclear at this point.

The Atlantic’s Josh Green reports that Massa was “notorious for making unwanted advances toward subordinates” during his 20-year Naval career.

Massa, who is married and has four children, was never formally accused of inappropriate behavior. Asked by CNN’s Larry King if he is gay, he declined to answer the question and deemed it offensive.

The day before Massa told Fox News’ Glenn Beck that he had groped one of his staffers, though he said it had been non-sexual. He had previously said he told a male aide he should be “frakking” him while at a wedding.

Reports surfaced earlier in the day that Massa had been under investigation for allegedly groping multiple male staffers and behaving inappropriately with interns.

Eric Massa announced his resignation last week after it came to light that the House ethics committee was investigating him on sexual harassment charges. Massa said he had been pushed out because of his opposition to the health care reform bill, a charge the White House and top Democrats deemed ridiculous.

Massa has cited his battle with cancer as the primary reason he is leaving office.

As the Ides of March approach, we might all reflect on the age-old question: To grope, or not to grope?

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Here is a fragment of one of Washington Post’s Tuesday editorials:” THE OBAMA administration appears near to a diplomatic achievement it expected long ago: the relaunch of negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians. It will be a modest start – not a big conference or a convocation to Camp David but “proximity talks,” in which envoy George J. Mitchell will shuttle between the two camps. This is, in one sense, a step backward for Israeli-Palestinian relations, since the two sides have been talking directly to each other, off and on, since 1991. But Mr. Mitchell says he hopes his brokering will quickly lead to direct talks, and the administration believes that even this stunted process will be better than none at all.”

At the same time, Vice President Biden strongly criticized Israel on Tuesday for approving construction of 1,600 new housing units in the eastern part of Jerusalem, a decision announced a day after Israeli leaders and the Palestinians agreed to U.S.-mediated, indirect peace negotiations.

This is not the first time Israel has been criticized for building and expanding Jewish settlements on occupied Arab land. Both the U.N. Security Council and the General Assembly have passed well over 100 resolutions concerning Israel. Practically all of them went unheeded and any and all attempts to sanction Israel have been blocked by the United States. Those are facts and not commentary.

As a matter of fact, between 1967 and 2000, Iraq was the subject of 69 U.N. Security Council resolutions. By comparison, Israel, our closest “ally” in the Middle East, has been the subject of 138 resolutions. Not surprisingly, most of those resolutions call upon Israel to comply with basic principles of international law embodied by the UN Charter. Many of them condemn actions taken by Israel and call upon Israel on more than one occasion to comply with previous resolutions that Israel ignored and continues to ignore to this day.

This is not to say that the Palestinian side is totally blameless in this quagmire, but according to international law, the occupying power must assure the safety and well being of the population living under its occupation. Through Resolution No. 237, the U.N. Security Council called upon Israel to “ensure the safety, welfare and security of the inhabitants, facilitate the return of those inhabitants who have fled the areas since the outbreak of the hostilities and recommends the scrupulous respect of the humanitarian principles contained in the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949.” In subsequent resolutions, the Security Council deplored Israel for the delay in its implementation of Resolution 237. Yet, Israel continued to defy the world community, including the United States. The Security Council, in the face of Israel’s defiance, passed no less than five subsequent resolutions demanding that Israel comply but to this day the defiance continues.

This appears to be the crux of the matter. The whole issue does not seem to be just the fact of Israel existing as such, but the continuing occupation of the West Bank, the whole road, security and utility infrastructure built and maintained mostly to serve and secure the Jewish settlements. As of November 2009, approximately 400,000 Israelis lived in the 168 officially recognized settlements in the West Bank, and 280,000 Israelis lived in East Jerusalem. Every time we open a paper, still another settlement is about to be enlarged, or a new one built.

The latest problems and latest clashes have erupted in Hebron, after Israel’s decision to add Hebron’s Cave of the Patriarchs and Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem to Israel’s list of national heritage sites.

The sites are holy to both Jews and Muslims.

To make a long story short: For the benefit of Israel, the Palestinians and indeed the entire world, time is running short on actually coming to the negotiating table in earnest, to be ready to compromise, if needed – and lots of that, in addition to an open mind and a lot more good will be necessary – and finally agree on a workable framework, which will lead to a long-overdue Israeli-Palestinian agreement. We can only hope that this day will actually come soon, because the simmering conflict has already spread its tentacles worldwide and nobody, but nobody in his right mind needs, or wants still another war.

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Defending his role in the conflict, but at the same time cautious not to inflame tensions over the unpopular war ahead of a looming national election campaign, Brown said joining the 2003 U.S.-led invasion was a tough call.

“We have got to recognize that war may be necessary, but it is also tragic in the effect it has on people’s lives,” said Brown, who voted – like most British lawmakers – to approve Britain’s role in the war.

“These were difficult decisions. I believe they were the right decisions for the right reasons,” he said.

But he was critical of U.S. planning, saying American officials failed to heed warnings about the need for clarity on how to protect and govern Iraq in the aftermath of the invasion.

Unlike Tony Blair, who defiantly stood by the invasion and argued Saddam was a threat to the entire world; Brown said he believed the war was justified because Baghdad had breached international rules in failing to abide by U.N. resolutions.

If you do some searching, you will find that a number of countries, including the main U.S. ally in the Middle East have also failed to abide by a whole slew of U.N. resolutions. Nevertheless, the “coalition” has not invaded those countries.

Brown insisted that Iraq had posed the first serious test to the post-Cold War world, claiming that any failure to depose the Iraqi leader would have emboldened other dictators and stirred global tensions.

Brown also sought to distance himself from President George W. Bush, suggesting their relations were “amicable” and criticizing the doctrine of some members of Bush’s administration.

“I never subscribed to what you might call the neo-conservative proposition that somehow, at the barrel of a gun, overnight, liberty or democracy could be conjured up,” Brown told the panel.

Hard to believe that either Brown, or Blair could actually believe in the crud they were spewing. It was without a doubt still another case of justifying their crimes and of covering their well-fed asses.

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Crap! Remember the memoirs by other neocons, such as Douglas Feith, who has denied any responsibility in the Abu Ghraib prison-abuse scandal and really any responsibility for anything altogether?

While defending the Bush administration’s handling of Iraq, Rove concedes that the failure to find weapons of mass destruction damaged the administration’s credibility. And he blames himself for failing to set the record straight.

Yes, Karl, please DO blame somebody for not finding stacks and warehouses full of WMDs. You might as well blame yourself too for a very different than expected – by people like you – Iraqi reception of our invading troops. After all, some neocons claimed that the Iraqi people would line the streets and welcome us with flowers and tears in their eyes.

“When the pattern of the Democratic attacks became apparent in July 2003, we should have countered in a forceful and overwhelming way,” wrote Rove. “We should have seen this for what it was: a poison-tipped dagger aimed at the heart of the Bush presidency.”

Rove also comes up with all kinds of lame excuses for the administration’s abject failure after Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans and other parts of the Gulf coast.

We’ll keep this short and succint: Don’t waste your money buying another neocon memoir.

Technorati Tags: bush, Iraq War, justifying, Karl Rove, Katrina, memoir

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It was, we suppose a bit like a bad dream – a nation-wide late-night hallucination – in which way overpaid funnymen have retired, said farewell, switched time slots, spent millions of dollars on new studio sets, said hello again, launched pretty bad new shows, spoke badly of each other and of their employer. All of this to bring Leno back to his old slot as host of the venerable Tonight Show.

Leno said almost nothing about The Jay Leno Show, NBC’s abortive attempt last fall to reinvent the talk-comedy format five nights a week in the 10 p.m. time slot. And there was nothing about former Tonight Show host Conan O’Brien, who captained it for a little more than seven months. O’Brien taped his last episode on January 22, and walked away with millions of dollars.

Most of you will remember that during the Vancouver Olympics broadcasts NBC run frequent Tonight Show ads, featuring a smug-looking Jay Leno in a fancy sports car (probably one from his own collection) and snippets from the Beatles song Get Back (to where you once belonged).

It is pretty obvious that Leno’s talent is kind of mediocre. This of course gives TV viewers great comfort. He provided easily digested topical jokes, including one about Alan Greenspan, one on Dick Cheney’s heart problems and another about the end of Tiger Woods’ Gatorade contract.

Welcome back Jay! Thank God, we watch so little TV…

Technorati Tags: Conan O'Brien, Jay Leno, NBC, television, Tonight Show, tv

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The Canadian Olympic Committee has also launched the “Own the Podium -2010″ program.

Although Canada has won several gold medals in Olympic competitions, it had never won a gold medal during either of the first two earlier Olympics it hosted – the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal and the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary.

Despite placing third behind the U.S. and Germany in total medal count, Canada has won a record 14 gold medals in Vancouver, after beating the talented U.S. hockey team in hockey. It was a very, very closely fought game, with Canada winning the gold in overtime.

The only previous countries to win 13 gold medals in a Winter Games were the Soviet Union in 1976 and Norway in 2002.

The 13 (and now 14) gold medals is also a record for a host nation.

So, it appears that Canada’s “Own the Podium –2010” effort has paid off in spades.

Congratulations to our northern neighbors, to the organizers of the Vancouver Olympic Games and to the athletes of all the participating countries! Lets not forget that the U.S. has fielded probably the best Winter Olympic team in history as well.

__________________________________________________________________________________

The above was written and posted shortly after the Canada – U.S. hockey game has ended. The following are reflections gathered during the Vancouver Olympics closing ceremonies:

__________________________________________________________________________________

The low point of the closing ceremonies and maybe even of the entire Vancouver Games – besides the tragic death of Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili – was without a doubt the Soviet…well…Russian presentation, relating to the upcoming 2014 Sochi Winter Games. A Soviet choir sung the Soviet anthem. Yes, folks, the Soviet anthem. The very same one we all had to suffer through during many previous Olympics. As it happens, that Soviet musical “masterpiece” has been happily retired after the fall of the Soviet Union, but brought back at the specific request of the old Soviet himself: Vladimir Putin.

In any case, it seems to us that just like the Beijing Olympics opening, the Sochi one would be another worthwhile event to boycott, or at least totally ignore.

We also wonder if the International Olympic Committee will award some future Olympic Games to another “democratic” entity, such as possibly North Korea…

Technorati Tags: Canada Owns the Podium, gold medals, Vancouver Olympics

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President Obama urged lawmakers on both sides to focus on areas of agreement. An email from the so-called GOP Action Team in turn says in part: “After pledging to listen to Republican ideas at this Thursday’s photo op- er, “bipartisan health care summit,” President Obama has decided to stick with the Senate Democrats’ health care legislation, a bill that Americans have already rejected as a massive restructuring of our economy that is a short walk down the road to government run health care. He’s rejected alternative methods of tackling our health insurance crisis before hearing them. He’s betrayed the American people’s trust.”

Republicans and Democrats admit that they remain far apart on key provisions advocated by each side. There were also major unresolved divisions within the Democratic Party itself, whose leaders were looking beyond a meeting they expected to amount to little more than political theater and focusing on a final round of negotiations within the party.

The White House said discussions at the meeting would revolve around four main themes: controlling costs, reforming insurance coverage, reducing the federal deficit and expanding coverage.

Senator Lamar Alexander, speaking for the Republican side, said, “We want you to succeed, because if you succeed, our country succeeds.” But Alexander also said Republicans want to “change the direction” that Obama is pursuing, get rid of the bills already passed by the House and Senate and aim for less ambitious reforms.

Obama has said that his latest proposal, aimed at salvaging the stalled health-care legislation, would cover 31 million Americans who currently lack insurance and would cost about $950 billion over 10 years. It would require people to buy health-care insurance and would penalize large employers who do not offer it.

Republicans reject mandating the purchase of insurance and have advanced an alternative that would cover 3 million people at a cost of $61 billion.

What will the meeting actually achieve is anybody’s guess.

In the meantime, our health care and health insurance system needs reforming quite urgently. Are the GOPistas and the tea baggers listening?!

Technorati Tags: democrats, Health, obama, republicans, summit, white house

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The operation’s true goals are to convince Americans that a new era has arrived in the eight-year-long war and also to show Afghans that U.S. forces and the Afghan government can protect them from the Taliban.

Marja is indeed a Taliban stronghold and despite the fact that the Talib fighters are seriously outnumbered and even more seriously outgunned, at least nine coalition soldiers have died so far and dozens have been wounded. It is a serious, hard, no holds barred battle on the most basic level.

It is being hoped that a swift victory over the Taliban in Marja, followed by a robust development effort, could sway some Afghan fence sitters.

The important thing to realize is that Marja is not a place of any meaningful strategic, or even tactical importance, that even the quickest of victories there – although that doesn’t appear to be possible any longer – will not really influence the outcome of the war, except that the symbolism of a victory might somewhat help the coalition politically.

What might be more meaningful is actually straightening out the situation in Kandahar, with its tangled political rivalries. Among the local power brokers is Ahmed Wali Karzai, brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai. Ahmed Karzai has been accused of being a drug kingpin and, also, a paid CIA asset. He has of course denied both allegations.

So, it seems to us, that the battle of Marja is really just an excuse not to tangle with a much more difficult situation in Kandahar as yet. Too bad, that its cost in dead and wounded is as high as it is.

Technorati Tags: afghanistan, battle of Marja, corruption, Kandahar, Karzai, politics, Taliban

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Woods talked for more than 13 minutes Friday from the clubhouse at the TPC Sawgrass, home of the PGA Tour. About 40 people were in the room, including his mother. The event was tightly controlled, with only a few journalists allowed to watch Tiger live.

He said: “I was unfaithful. I had affairs. I cheated. What I did was not acceptable,” said Woods, looking composed and speaking in a steady voice. His wife, Elin, was not present in the room.

Tiger Woods also informed the public that he has undergone therapy for 45 days and that he will return for some more.

This is, as far as we are concerned the gist of the issue. Officially, the therapy was for so-called “sexual addiction”. The way we look at this is that if Tiger needed therapy for sex addition, the same kind of therapy should probably be administered to almost every man on the planet and some women as well.

What in the heck is “sex addiction”? Isn’t that the natural sexual drive which most of us have? It is also patently obvious that it is easier to enjoy this so-called affliction if one is famous, rich and successful. Not that we are being too permissive here, but that is simple, unadorned reality.

What is also pretty obvious is that Tiger’s wife Elin is pretty hot indeed, probably much hotter that any of his casual squeezes.

Yes, newness, excitement and all that do play an important role in sexual attraction, but since most of our sexual feelings appear to be centered in our brains, rather than crotches, we firmly believe that the therapy needed here would be one that would help enhance the subject’s thinking ability, rather than something called a “sexual addiction”.

There is a saying out there that:  “there is no cure for stupidity”. There is also probably no viable cure for what our social rule makers and the mental health industry label as “sexual addiction”.

Technorati Tags: apology, Cheating, golf, sexual addiction, therapy, tiger woods

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Tuesday’s meeting on Capitol Hill will mark the first time that a broad coalition of tea party organizers – who, let’s not forget – have railed against both the Democratic and the Republican establishments, will sit down and talk with GOP leaders. Top Republicans have been openly courting the organizers of the movement, looking to pick up their support before the November midterm elections.

Who are the “tea party” people? There have been all kinds of theories and statements about the movement, so it is probably time to clarify this issue a little.

The tea party movement emerged in early 2009 as a protest of President Obama’s economic policies and health-care agenda. It appears to be made up of hundreds of disparate regional groups, there doesn’t appear to be anything along the lines of a national leadership, and different organizers frequently have quarreled publicly about tactics, including at the inaugural, recent National Tea Party Convention in Nashville, where Sarah Palin became even more famous after the discovery that while she mocked President Obama’s use of a teleprompter, she actually had some simplistic notes scribbled on the palm of her hand.

Tea party participants have united around a conservative formula of smaller government, less federal spending and stronger national defense, but, despite rampant rumors, not all of them are Republicans. Many are registered independents and even disapprove of former president George W. Bush and the Republicans who controlled Congress in the mid-2000s just as much as they do of Obama and the current Democratic congressional leadership.

Although drinking hot tea might be considered anti-American by some, here in the land of iced tea and coffee, we certainly do hope that Michael Steele will have the presence of mind to actually serve some nice, hot tea during the meeting.

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The GOP’s latest effort is Valentine’s Day greeting e-cards. The mailing says among other things:” This Valentine’s Day, show the most important Republicans, Democrats and Independents in your life how much they mean to you by sending them a GOP Valentine’s E-Card.”

The email continues:” Pass along a special message from Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi that they didn’t craft this Valentine’s card behind closed doors like they did with their government-run health care experiment.

Or let President Obama extend your sincerest wishes to a loved one by claiming he’s saved or created millions of Valentine’s – - (We really hate people, who use the so-called “m-dashes”. Stick to single hyphens, please.) just like his party has claimed that the wasteful, pork-filled stimulus bill has created or saved thousands, 1.5 million or 2 million jobs depending on which Obama Administration official you ask.”

The email of course ends with a plea for money. We wonder what is the money going to be used for…maybe for creating Valentine cards, or for planning to deny everything, blindly criticize and put roadblocks against everything that the president is trying to achieve?

And now let us reward you with a few of the GOP’s loving Valentine “creations”.

We certainly hope that your sweetheart will appreciate these cards, created with the usual, subtle and tasteful Republican touch

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These facts of course are bringing up all kinds of “I told ya’!” comments from climate change deniers.

That great scientific mind, Fox News’ Sean Hannity has said, “It’s the most severe winter storm in years, which would seem to contradict Al Gore’s hysterical global warming theories.”

Republican Senator Jim DeMint posted in his Twitter feed: “It’s going to keep snowing in DC until Al Gore cries ‘uncle.’” And Republican Senator Jim Inhofe, took his family to the National Mall to build an igloo, which they christened “Al Gore’s new home.” Inhofe described the stunt as “really humorous.” Pretty creative building style for someone from Oklahoma, we think. What we really would love to see is Mr. Inhofe actually moving into the igloo and spending a few days there, freezing his butt off, even as he continues to curse Al Gore.

What all of these scientific geniuses do not seem to be able to comprehend is that weather is not the same thing as climate. Even with their undisguised glee, the deniers should probably beef up on their education, rather than on igloo-building skills.

It is quite possible that some will eventually realize that winter snows do not invalidate the reality that the planet just experienced the hottest decade on record. Scientists have been warning for decades that global warming would increase the severity of winter storms and as we can clearly see, the warning was perfectly justified.

National Wildlife Federation climate scientist Amanda Staudt explains that winter storms are getting fiercer even as the season gets warmer. “The last few years have brought several unusually heavy snowstorms as warmer and moister air over southern states has penetrated further north, colliding with bitter cold air masses,” she said.

In closing, please watch an excellent and very much to the point animation by Washington Post’s Ann Telnaes.

Technorati Tags: al gore, change, Climate, de Mint, deniers, global warming, Hannity, Inhofe, Science, snow storms

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It is all a part of an all-out drive by the world’s biggest automaker to redeem its once unassailable brand – under siege now as Toyota’s global recall expanded to some 8.5 million cars and trucks. The recall of 440,000 of its flagship and very trendy Prius and other hybrids, plus a Tokyo news conference where the company’s president read a statement in English pledging to “regain the confidence of our customers,” underscored a determination to keep buyers’ faith from sinking to depths from which it might not be able to recover again.

Facing U.S. congressional inquiries and government investigations, Toyota through its army of lawyers and lobbyists is working full-tilt to salvage its reputation. The confidential strategy – as Toyota will say little publicly about it – includes efforts to sway upcoming hearings on Capitol Hill and is based on experiences by companies that have survived similar consumer and political crises – and those that haven’t.

It was recently revealed that State Farm, the largest U.S. auto insurer, said it had informed federal regulators late in 2007 about growing reports of unexpected acceleration in Toyotas. That raised new questions about whether the government missed clues about the problems.

Federal safety officials said they were examining complaints from Toyota Corolla owners about steering problems.

Some say that the best strategy for Toyota would be apology, openness, details about a specific fix – plus a little help from friends on Capitol Hill.

Friendly legislators can limit the duration of congressional hearings and ask convenient questions that would give Toyota officials a chance to tell their side of the story. The goal would to limit unfavorable news stories about the hearings to as few days as possible, while making sure the company avoids being confrontational.

The Toyota recalls are the highest-profile congressional probe of the auto industry since a series of deadly accidents prompted the Firestone tire recall in 2000. Most of the tires were on popular Ford Explorer sport utility vehicles. Although the tires might have been defective, few other vehicles besides the Ford Explorer rolled when the Firestones blew out. Funny that Firestone seemed to take most of the blame for these design and manufacturing defects.

Both companies suffered damage to their reputations, but both bounced back. Ford was proactive, briefing officials with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and Congress and stressing that the safety of their customers was paramount. Firestone offered to replace its tires for free. Everything was pretty much forgotten and neatly swept under the carpet. We wonder if Toyota will manage to come out of this smelling like a rose…

Technorati Tags: accelerators, brakes, congress, hybrids, lobbying, recalls, reputation, steering, Toyota

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It appears that he has gotten the majority of votes largely thanks to the unwashed electoral majority, but the fact remains that the better educated Venezuelans are largely in opposition to his de facto dictatorship.

Chavez has closed pretty much every media outlet, that was not going along with his policies and which have refused to broadcast his frequent, multi-hour speeches. Doesn’t that remind you of his hero Fidel?

In any case, one of the strongest, bravest and most determined members of the Venezuelan opposition are the students.

Here’s a little video, portraying their brave struggle.

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The pre-treating of the roads with salt has actually created ice under the beautiful, dry and powdery snow. There was no reason for spreading chemicals, particularly in view of the fact that the temperatures were much too low for salt to do any good. What it indeed caused were numerous accidents, and often the inability to slow down, stop, or climb inclines – all courtesy of the Virginia, Maryland and District of Columbia departments of transportation.

Where a plowed (or even unplowed) roadway would have been fairly easily to negotiate without salt, the authorities – that are apparently already running out of money because of their extravagant use of chemicals and hiring of often unnecessary private trucks – the salt-melted and then re-frozen snow created expensive and often very dangerous skating rinks for cars, usually in all the worst places.

Seems like still another example of our tax dollars at work.

As we write this on Friday morning, another snowstorm, which is supposed to last more than 24 hours and dump around two feet of snow in the area, is fast approaching.

The snow blowers, snow shovels and bags of salt have long been unavailable. The authorities – such as they might be – have strongly recommended that everyone stay indoors for the duration and basically get ready to watch the Super Bowl. Consequently, the grocery stores got totally overwhelmed by mobs of often glassy-eyed shoppers, filling their carts to overflowing with milk, beer, Wonder “bread”, pretzels, bottled water and the inevitable soup cans, “flavored” with among other things high fructose corn syrup.

Even late in the evening on Wednesday and Thursday it was almost impossible to find a parking spot at any of the local supermarkets. Inside, practically every person pushing a shopping cart was breaking the indoor speed limits, the shelves were often bare and the lines at the registers snaked around into almost every aisle. It appeared that it would take at least an hour just to get to a cashier, or a self-checkout gizmo.

If six, or even 24 inches of snow can cause such mayhem, we wonder how things would look, if we actually faced a real, serious emergency…

Technorati Tags: Nation’s Capital, Panic, Snow salt, Snowmageddon, stores, washington

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That’s seems eminently reasonable to us and we are glad to see Paul Volcker brought to the front of the regulatory battle.

President Obama has embraced Volcker’s idea to prohibit large financial companies that have both commercial and investment functions, such as Goldman Sachs, from engaging in speculative trading.

Large banks have already said that they oppose the idea. Do you blame them? These guys had the best deal around, since mobsters built Las Vegas and they don’t want to give any of that up.

Volcker said commercial banks, whose deposits are insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation,  should not be allowed to engage in speculation that does not benefit their commercial customers.

The ban would distinguish between commercial and investment banks – a separation that had existed until 1999 when Congress, Alan Greenspan, Robert Rubin, Larry Summers and President Bill Clinton repealed major provisions of the Depression-era Glass-Steagall Act.

This wasn’t exactly the beginning of the wild ride on Wall Street, but most likely the beginning of the mortgage derivative schemes, the irresponsible lending practices and so forth – all leading to our present economic quagmire.

It appears that Paul Volcker has the right idea – to roll back some of the deregulatory schemes, which have turned the financial mills into legalized gambling houses.

One thing we wonder about, though… Why wasn’t he allowed to speak publicly before Scott Brown won the Massachusetts senatorial race?

Technorati Tags: banks, gambling, las vegas, regulations, Volcker, wall street

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Florida Governor Charlie Crist

It appears that despite the huge Haitian relief effort so far, the question of costs has stopped the transportation of critically ill, or injured Haitian patients to Florida hospitals.

Republican Florida Governor Charlie Crist (don’t for a moment confuse him with Christ) has asked the federal government to help pay for care. A reasonable request on the surface, but cannot the money issue get taken care of afterward? In the meantime, people are dying for Crist’s sakes!

Just to think that this “compassionate conservative” is running for the U.S. Senate this year. To quote from Crist’s campaign website: ” Charlie Crist strongly opposes the health care legislation being debated in Congress. A government run health care system is not the answer to our nation’s health care needs but instead it is the typical answer of liberals and Democrats in Congress. The American people need a health care system that provides choice and access to quality health care at affordable costs. These health care opportunities are not found in the legislation championed by President Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.”

Another great champion of health care for everybody and of human rights in general. Phooey!!!

Our friends at BadGalsRadio have another take on this. Take a look.

_________________________________________________________________________

Update, January 31, 2010: “Late Sunday, White House spokesman Tommy Vietor said the medical airlift was on track to resume by early Monday. The White House received assurances that additional medical capacity exists in the U.S. and among its international partners for the patients.”

So, we didn’t have “additional medical capacity”? Is that a joke? A few hundred patients would have strained our “medical capacity”? Don’t give us that. It was an issue of money, all along. Another argument for reforming our health care industry – the most expensive anywhere.

______________________________________________________________________________

Here is an Associated Press story on the original subject:
______________________________________________________
By JENNIFER KAY, Associated Press Writer

MIAMI – The U.S. military has halted flights carrying Haitian earthquake victims to the United States because of an apparent cost dispute, though a doctor warned that some injured patients faced imminent death if the flights don’t resume.

The evacuations were temporarily suspended Wednesday, said Capt. Kevin Aandahl, spokesman for U.S. Transportation Command. The flights were halted a day after Florida Gov. Charlie Crist asked the federal government to help pay for care.

However, Dr. Barth Green, a doctor involved in the relief effort in Port-au-Prince, warned that his patients needed to get to better hospitals.

“We have 100 critically ill patients who will die in the next day or two if we don’t Medevac them,” said Green, chairman of the University of Miami’s Global Institute for Community Health and Development.

At a temporary field hospital at Haiti’s international airport, set up with donations to Green’s institute, two men had already died of tetanus. Doctors said 5-year-old Betina Joseph faced a similar fate within 24 hours unless evacuated to a U.S. hospital where she can be put on a respirator.

The girl – infected with tetanus through a two-inch cut on her thigh – weakly shooed a fly buzzing around her face as her mother caressed her corn rows, apparently unaware that getting the girl out could mean life or death.

“If we can’t save her by getting her out right away, we won’t save her,” said Dr. David Pitcher, one of 34 surgeons staffing the field hospital.

“If we can’t save her by getting her out right away, we won’t save her,” said Dr. David Pitcher, one of 34 surgeons staffing the field hospital.

There were some states that would not accept patients who needed care in the U.S., and they could not be transported without a hospital to accept them, Aandahl said.

Aandahl declined to specify which states declined to accept patients, and he referred further questions to a Pentagon press office, where an after-hours answering service could not accept incoming messages Saturday.

Florida officials said Saturday that they were not aware of any hospital in the state refusing to take in the patients. However, in a letter Tuesday to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, the governor said “Florida’s health care system is quickly reaching saturation, especially in the area of high level trauma care.”

Crist asked Sebelius to activate the National Disaster Medical System, which is typically used in domestic disasters and pays for victims’ care. His letter noted the state’s health care system was already stretched by the winter tourism season and annual “snowbird” migration. South Florida hospitals also were preparing for a surge in visitors for the NFL Pro Bowl on Sunday and the Super Bowl next weekend.

While in Tampa on Saturday, Crist said Florida’s Department of Children and Families Secretary George Sheldon estimated the state’s costs had reached about $7 million.

Poor coordination and limited resources, not medical care costs, drove the governor’s request, said John Cherry, spokesman for the state Division of Emergency Management.

“We’ve made it clear that (the cost) is an issue we’ll deal with down the road,” he said.

Health officials say the medical flights landed without any advance notice, and the poor coordination may be keeping some survivors from getting the help they need, Cherry said. He cited the case of a burn victim flown earlier this week into Tampa, which is not equipped to treat those injuries.

Crist said his state remains committed to caring for injured earthquake victims and reuniting families, though he was reaching out to other states to help care for them as well.

As of Friday, the Florida Department of Health reported that 526 patients had been received at hospitals in the state: more than 400 in South Florida, 76 in the Orlando area and 37 in the Tampa area. Four burn victims were transported to North Carolina, Crist spokesman Sterling Ivey said.

“Recently we learned that federal planning is underway to move between 30-50 critically ill patients per day for an indefinite period of time,” Crist told Sebelius, saying Florida could not handle so many patients.

More than 135 patients remain hospitalized in South Florida, said Jeanne Eckes-Roper, the health and medical chairwoman of a state domestic security task force for the South Florida region.

She requested on Monday that new patients be taken elsewhere in Florida.

“We had to make sure we did not overwhelm our capacity,” she said. “We stand ready to take whatever the government wants to give us.”

Aandahl said no evacuation requests have been made by U.S. military medical facilities in Haiti, including the hospital ship the USNS Comfort, since the flights were suspended Wednesday.

There were only about a dozen medical evacuations by the U.S. military after the Jan. 12 earthquake, he said.

Associated Press writer Frank Bajak contributed to this report from Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

Technorati Tags: Crist, Dollar, evacuation, Florida, Haiti, Haitian, hospitals, medical, patients

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1- Fan of Polaroid
2- Inspirational
3- Creative
4- Connected to fans
5- Empowering

Lady Gaga expressed her enthusiasm about her new role, saying: “…what I’m excited about doing is working with Polaroid and taking the iconic image of the Polaroid instant film photo and bringing it into the digital age of cameras.”

New products (whatever they might be) from the partnership between Polaroid and Lady Gaga should be available by the end of this year.

Good luck to both.

Technorati Tags: creative director, Lady Gaga, Polaroid

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From top left: Kue Bui for Newsweek; Andrew Hetherington / Redux; James Keyser / Time Life Pictures-Getty Images; Richard A. Bloom / Corbis; Ahmad Al-Rubaye / AFP-Gettty Images; Brendan Hoffman / Getty Images

Newsweek magazine has a very interesting and lengthy article, entitled “The Return of the Neocons” by David Margolick.

Here’s a short excerpt: “One prominent activist on the libertarian end of the party – who hates what he sees as their costly foreign – policy adventurism and the GOP electoral losses (i.e., the presidency and both houses of Congress) he attributes to them – calls them ‘parasites’: with little electoral power of their own, he claims, they have had to attach themselves to others, like George W. Bush. Comfortably ensconced behind a cloak of anonymity, he bristles, but also marvels, at their endurance and effectiveness, comparing them to ‘an infection that keeps coming back.’ “They’ve perfected this absolutely incredible thing: they announce who they are, how powerful they are, how influential they are, and get people to write articles about them,” he says. “But when their policies are perceived to have caused mass chaos, they don’t exist, they didn’t have anything to do with it, they weren’t there, and they get really snotty. And anyone who attacks them is anti-Semitic.”

Worth a read we think.

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Under mounting pressure to curb government spending, the president is to propose in his State of the Union address a three-year freeze on federal funding that is not related to national security. That being clearly a concession to public concern about government spending and which could dramatically curtail Obama’s legislative ambitions.

The freeze would take effect in October and limit the overall budget for agencies other than the military, veterans affairs, homeland security and certain international programs to $447 billion a year for the remainder of Obama’s first term.

On the surface it sounds like a step ahead, doesn’t it? But do your math. $447 billion per year, as compared to the ever-rising national debt – as of today already surpassing $13 trillion…

At the same time, when “overseas contingency operations” expenses are added to the U.S. defense budget, it comes up to $663.8 billion for 2010 alone. As a matter of fact, the real figure is even higher, reaching between $880 billion and $1.03 trillion in fiscal year 2010.

All in all the 2009 U.S. military budget is almost as much as the rest of the world’s defense spending combined and is variously calculated as being some nine times larger than the military budget of China. The United States and its close allies are responsible for about two-thirds of the world’s military spending – of which, the U.S. is responsible for the majority of the expenditures.

Understandably, this is a huge and seemingly never-ending source of income for our overbuilt defense industry. Seemingly the very appropriate warning of President Dwight Eisenhower went unheeded. Eisenhower three days before the end of his second term has warned among other things about the military/industrial complex, saying: “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”

If Eisenhower only knew how much the influence of the military/industrial complex has grown since his day…

At least it could seem to be a step in the right direction for President Obama to propose some saving measures in the State of the Union address. Unfortunately, the spending freeze will only address about 1/8 of our total budget and might actually cut into programs and operational budget of needed and necessary agencies, in many case to the detriment of us all.

Meanwhile, we still have well over 100,000 troops in Iraq, along with an even larger number of mercenaries, are beefing up our forces and spending for the most likely unwinnable war in Afghanistan and are maintaining the budgets of the Department of Homeland Security, which includes the FBI, recently made famous by the discovery that it has been collaborating with telecom companies to routinely violate federal wiretapping laws for four years, as agents got access to reporters’ and citizens’ phone records using fake emergency declarations or simply asking for them.

Let’s not forget the case of the Spanish lawmaker Gaspar Llamazares, who learned that the FBI used an online photograph of him to create an image showing what Osama bin Laden might look like today.

The image using Llamazares’ photo appeared on a wanted poster updating the U.S. government’s 1998 photo of the al Qaeda leader.

FBI spokesman Ken Hoffman acknowledged that the agency used a picture of Llamazares taken from Google Images.

Let’s hope that we are not rewarding incompetence, with ever-larger budgets.

Meanwhile, we don’t really know where more than $3 trillion in bailout money has disappeared to and whether it has done anybody – besides the people and the corporations, who have caused the crisis – any measurable good.

As the popular saying goes: “easy come, easy go”.

Technorati Tags: bailout, defense budget, military/industrial complex, money, President Obama, spending freeze, State of the Union address

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There is no doubt that the Democrats have screwed up on many fronts. Having a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate should have given them the opportunity to take care of many, long-overdue issues, but considering the fact that too many of them – Christopher Dodd comes to mind among others – were really taking care of somebody else’s business, things simply didn’t get done and the American electorate, including a whole slew of liberal Democrats felt downright betrayed.

There is the definite possibility that the Obama voters were really under the impression that the movement created around the candidate actually represented the man. Surprisingly, the man was and is different from what the voters imagined him to be. Just look at the bailouts of the messed up financial mills, which were ostensibly “too big to fail”. Now the biggies are paying multi-million-dollar bonuses, possible only because of the taxpayer-funded bailout.

Let’s not forget that in 2009 the U.S. has reportedly printed more money than in the entire 20th century…successfully bailing out the Wall Street shysters, called by some bonus-happy executives  “their best people”. Wouldn’t these “best people” be more appropriately employed producing our license plates for the next 20 years in some federal penitentiary?

In any case, practically exit Tim Geithner and finally re-enter Paul Volcker, who seems to have saner ideas. We also welcome the return of David Plouffe,  Obama’s campaign manager. As expected Obama’s chief political strategist, David Axelrod says that there is no major White House shakeup in the works. Why not, we wonder?

In closing, enjoy another excellent cartoon by Washington Post’s Tom Toles. If one picture is worth 1,000 words, these two combined must be worth quite a bit more

Technorati Tags: democrats, Health Care reform, obama, politics, republicans

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But was there ever any real need to have Catie Couric, Diane Sawyer, or Brian Williams anchor the evening newscasts from the Port-au-Prince airport?

Of course, large contingents of reporters, technical crews and equipment are still there. Just imagine how much actual help could have been delivered to the people of Haiti, instead of the tons of TV people and their equipment.

Reporting on the Haitian tragedy is obviously needed, but the taste and the usual modus operandi of television leaves a lot to be desired.

Remember the historic trip to Cuba by Pope John Paul II? All of the anchors were of course in Havana for the event, but as soon as the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal has surfaced, all of the anchors very quickly high-tailed it back to the U.S.

That should pretty much sum it up, we suppose…

Technorati Tags: Anchors, Brian Williams, Catie Couric, Crews Crowd Into Haiti, Diane Sawyer, earhquake, Reporters

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The problem is that many of those plans, despite requiring fairly high premiums from both employees and of employers are really not that great at all. The Senate finance committee’s thinking is not along the lines of quality coverage, but rather along the actual cost of the plan.

There is a big difference between the $40,000-a-year plan offered to Goldman Sachs CEOs, with no co-payments, no deductibles, few limits on how much you can spend, and no need for prior authorization, before you get treated and other, run-of-the-mill “Cadillac plans” offered to average government, or corporate employees.

Many not so fancy plans, which also qualify as “Cadillacs” under the finance committee’s definition are so defined because the term refers to total cost – and not a particular set of benefits – and many factors, like for example the state you live in, the size of your company, and the makeup of that company’s work force, which can affect costs.

Premiums tend to be significantly higher in some states. The employer/employee contribution also varies by state. In addition, the smaller the business, the fewer employees who participate, the less leverage the organization has to negotiate lower premiums. And if the workers have an average age of, say, 55, their premiums are going to be a lot higher than if the average is 24.

As it stands, there should be considerably more emphasis on improving the coverage of existing health insurance plans, rather than just emphasizing the total cost. There is no doubt that the cost of health care in the United States has gone through the roof a long time ago and that issue needs to be urgently addressed, rather than only worrying whether the reform is going to increase our already skyrocketing deficit. Just think about the trillions of dollars doled out to banks and other financial conglomerates. That seemed to be quite painless to those who are now worrying about increasing our deficit. Couldn’t we have used that money to improve our health insurance system and our crumbling infrastructure, rather than bailing out the fat cats, who have actually caused the financial disaster?

If we are to truly reform the U.S. health care insurance system, along with the health care itself, the main points of the so-called reform should be: how to reduce the exorbitant costs of both the care and the insurance, to improve the quality of often substandard care (unless you are willing and able to pay for the very best care available) and to broaden, rather than reduce the coverage that the health plans offer.

Providing health care insurance to the uninsured is a noble quest, to be sure, but to further penalize others, who are ‘covered”, but who do pay their premiums, their ever-rising co-pays and who’s “Cadillac” plans do not offer coverage for such common procedures such as dental care in general, specifically root canals, crowns and necessary oral surgery is the wrong way to go about it.

We have strongly supported the reform of U.S. health care system as a whole for some time now, but taxing the people, already penalized by the inadequacies of some of our health insurance plans, including some of the “Cadillac” ones, seems more like an idea of still another bean counter, rather than a true reformer.

Let’s get this done now and lets get it done right!

Technorati Tags: banks, cadillac, financial institutions, Health care, health insurance, plans, reform, taxing

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But when they do so by the way of their credit cards, in most cases the credit card companies keep 3 percent of the donation as a “transaction fee,” even though that is considerably more than it costs them to process the donation.

There is a petition in the works to the CEOs of the major credit card companies demanding that they waive their processing fees for all charitable donations.

American Express is trying to get ahead of this story, announcing that they will temporarily waive the fees they charge on some Haiti-related charitable contributions for the next six weeks. That’s commendable, but not near enough.

The goal is to have all American credit card companies announce that they will waive ALL fees on charitable contributions, starting today, and in the future.

The credit card companies of course are not the only hyenas out there, trying to profit on the Haiti disaster and on the people’s good will.  As with almost any emergency situation, requiring charitable donations, all kinds of scams have cropped up all over the place.

Be careful how and to whom you send your contribution.

Technorati Tags: companies, credit card, Disaster, getting, Haiti, off, petition, rich, scams

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Robertson has said and we quote: “Something happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it,” he said. “They were under the heel of the French … and they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, ‘We will serve you if you’ll get us free from the French.’ True story. And the devil said, ‘OK, it’s a deal,’ Ever since, they have been cursed by one thing after another.”

After 9/11, after Katrina, or after Ariel Sharon’s stroke Robertson was there to explain to the victims and to anyone who would listen why they deserved it.

And they do listen. Pat Robertson is not only one of “our” televangelists, he is also founder and chairman, of The Christian Broadcasting Network, making it very easy to express his opinions.

We always wondered how and why did these “men of God” felt that they “knew” something more that the rest of us, or why do they feel that they are authorized by anyone, particularly God to express their harebrained points of view.

Even though he wasn’t a televangelist, George W. Bush did mention that God told him to invade Iraq. We always thought that was the low point of our presidential history as a whole.

Don’t also forget for a minute that Robertson has also run for the White House at one time…

At the same time, the darling of the conservatives Rush Limbaugh has voiced the opinion that…”We’ve already donated to Haiti “It’s called the U.S. income tax.”

Technorati Tags: 9/11, bush, evangelical, Haiti Quake, Katrina, Pat Robertson, tasteless, televangelist

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It is the poorest country in the Western hemisphere. The International Red Cross says the 7.0 earthquake in Haiti leaves close to a third of the population in need of emergency aid.  Thousands or even tens of thousands are feared dead.

President Barack Obama says the United States will do all it can to help the victims of the Haitian earthquake.  American rescue teams have already been dispatched to the disaster area.

Planes from the U.S., Canada and others countries are arriving at the Port-au-Prince airport. Naval forces are offshore.

It is a heartening feeling that people are willing and able to help, rather than just destroy.

At the same time, the already desperately poor Haiti will require many years and many billions of dollars, just to rebuild from this latest disaster.

Technorati Tags: aid, eartquake, Haiti, international, poverty

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At this point there’s a whole slew of official, Federal Heritage Months.

Some are obviously appropriate, a whole bunch is very obviously missing from the list and some are at least somewhat questionable.

You be the judge:

February is Black History Month

March is Women’s History Month

March is also Irish American Heritage Month

We can only assume that Irish women are officially celebrated in March as well.

March is also Greek American Heritage Month

May is National Asian Pacific American Month and Jewish American Heritage Month

June is Gay and Lesbian Pride Month as well as Caribbean American Heritage Month

For August the Back to School Month was created.

We always dreaded going back to school after the summer vacations, so what are we celebrating here?

September 15, to October 15 is National Hispanic Heritage Month

Strange definition of a month in our opinion…

At the same time, September is also German American Heritage Month, Italian American Heritage Month and Polish American Heritage Month.
What is it about September that so many categories were lumped in there?

October is National Disability Employment Awareness Month

Doesn’t that overlap a bit the National Hispanic Heritage Month, by any chance?

November is American Indian Heritage Month and Alaska Native Heritage Month
Considering that these are the original inhabitants of this continent, shouldn’t they get more than just a measly month?

And December is Universal Human Rights Month

All fine and dandy, it would seem, except for the almost unlimited number of nationalities, cultures “preferences”, genders and so forth that seem to be missing from this list.

As you might have guessed, there is considerable lobbying going on by all kinds of groups, to be included in this Federal Heritage Month extravaganza. At the same time not many slots are still available. Our preference would be to change the whole heritage month concept to a heritage week, or even a heritage day.

Just imagine a Federal Internet Blogger Heritage Day, or a Federal Incorrigible Heterosexual Day, a Federal Spouse that Doesn’t Cheat Day, a Federal Taxpayer’s Day, or even a Federal Honest Politician Who’s Not a Lawyer Day.

Don’t you think that this would be just as dignified as the present arrangement and a whole lot more fun?

We would love to hear your opinions and suggestions on this one.

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When rainwater falls on the filled-in valley, it trickles through the rubble and picks up pollutants off rocks that came from deep underground. The water emerges mixed with pollutants such as metals and chemicals called sulfates, which can be toxic to the insects and fish in small Appalachian streams. It is also toxic and damaging to other animals, humans and entire ecosystems.

Although the companies are required by existing laws to “rehabilitate” the damaged areas, the wanton destruction of the mountains is more than obvious to anyone who sees it.

The latest development in the mountaintop removal battle is a study published by a group, headed by a University of Maryland researcher, who said it performed the most comprehensive study to date of the controversial practice, also known as “mountaintop removal.”

They also did something that scientists usually don’t: step beyond data-gathering to take a political stand.

“The science is so overwhelming that the only conclusion that one can reach is that mountaintop mining needs to be stopped,” said Margaret Palmer, a professor at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Sciences and the study’s lead author.

The group’s paper, published in the journal Science, was released in the same week that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency – which has been scrutinizing these mines – angered environmentalists by supporting a new mine permit. The EPA said the Hobet 45 mine, in West Virginia, had made changes that would eliminate nearly 50 percent of the environmental impacts and protect 460 union mining jobs.

Palmer said the group’s work did not echo the idea implicit in this EPA decision: that there could be a “good” mountaintop mine, whose environmental consequences were acceptable.

So, the fight goes on, but this time it seems that the advantage has shifted a notch to the good guys.

Technorati Tags: coal, destruction, Environment, EPA, Mountaintop Removal, pollution, study

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Here’s Anne Applebaum’s article:

___________________________________________________________________________________

All of you frequent fliers out there, you know the drill. Take off your shoes, because of Richard Reid, the “shoe bomber.” Remove your hair gel from your backpack because of the bombers who targeted Heathrow using liquid hydrogen peroxide. When you get on a plane, you must also, from now on, be prepared to remove any blankets from your lap before landing – too bad if you’re asleep! – because of the Christmas Day underwear bomber.

When someone invents a way to hide explosive powder inside a toothbrush case, prepare to remove your toothbrush. And while you’re at it, throw a pinch of salt over your left shoulder as you board the plane. But never, at any moment, imagine that the rigamarole of airport security is guaranteed to make you safer – for no one knows which of these measures, if any, is actually necessary.

Worse, no one has any financial or political incentive to find out. The fact is, since the hurried and heavily politicized creation of the Department of Homeland Security and its junior partner, the Transportation Security Administration, neither their priorities nor their spending patterns has been subject to serious scrutiny. They have never been forced to make hard choices. On the contrary, both have been encouraged by their congressional funders to spend money in reaction to every perceived new threat, real or otherwise: Thus full-body scanners, unacceptable as recently as last summer, will now be rushed into use. In just a few years – under a Republican administration and mostly Republican Congresses – these institutions thus grew into vast, unruly bureaucracies, some of whose activities bear only a distant relationship to public safety.

So customary has it become to repeat old, familiar lists of ludicrous public projects that readers who cannot bear to read the litany one more time might want to skip to the next paragraph. For yes, it is true: Having started with 13 employees in January 2002, the TSA now employs 60,000, and in the process of its expansion the organization found it had money for all kinds of extras. As I wrote in 2005, some $350,000 of its $6 billion budget once was spent on a gym; $500,000 was spent on artwork and silk plants, and untold millions are annually spent in overhiring, since determining when there will be long security lines at an airport has never been the sort of thing at which the federal government excels.

As for the DHS, its 2010 budget came in at $55 billion, some of which (according to the economist Veronique de Rugy, writing in 2006) will invariably be spent on things like the $63,000 decontamination unit in rural Washington, where no one was trained to use it, more biochemical suits for Grand Forks, Nev., than the town has police officers to wear them and $557,400 worth of rescue and communications equipment for some 1,500 residents of the town of North Pole, Alaska. Not to mention what is spent on the “needs” of the constituents of other important members of Congress.

It is not actually DHS or TSA employees who are at fault for these kinds of decisions. From the very beginning, security experts and even the agencies’ own inspectors general have pointed to the absurdity of TSA and DHS spending patterns, many of which are driven by the latest scare story (I wish I’d been at the celebratory New Year’s Eve party undoubtedly thrown by the manufacturers of those full-body scanners). And from the very beginning, Congress has fought back against critics, repeatedly allocating funds to unnecessary local projects, reacting to sensational news stories, spending money in ways that suit its members and then declaring itself shocked – shocked! – to discover that our multibillion-dollar homeland security apparatus was unable to stop a clearly disturbed Nigerian from boarding a Detroit-bound plane.

Imagine if the TSA’s vast budget were dedicated to the creation of a cutting-edge computer network that could have made security officers in Amsterdam instantly aware of the warning from the Detroit bombing suspect’s father. Imagine that, instead of relying on full-body X-ray scanners or long-haul flight-blanket deprivation, we had highly paid and trained consular officers in places such as Nigeria. Even then security would not be perfect (and I’m not sure that airborne terrorism is even the worst thing we have to worry about). But it would make sense to have a smaller, less expensive and less wasteful system. It would make sense to have a system based on real risks and priorities, instead of the stories featured on cable news. It would make sense to fight the next battle, for once, instead of the last one. “Sense,” though, is not the criterion by which public money is spent in this country – and hasn’t been for a long time.

Technorati Tags: airline security, Anne Applebaum, knee jerk reactions

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At the same time, there are some still unanswered questions about Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s failed attempt to destroy Northwest Airlines flight 253.

According to some passengers of flight 253, there were some pretty suspicious things going on both before the boarding of the plane in Amsterdam and during the flight itself.

Take a look at this video.

No proof as yet, but the whole thing looks mighty fishy…again.

At the same time, new rules imposed by the Transportation Security Administration limit on-board activities by passengers and crew in U.S. airspace. Apparently, during the final hour of flight passengers must remain seated. They won’t be allowed access to carry-on baggage or to have any items on their laps.

Sounds like still another great idea. We suppose that somebody “in the know”, must know something, such as that a potential, or real terrorist will only perform his, or her dirty deeds ONLY in the last hour of the flight.

This could be great material for a show such as Saturday Night Live, or the Colbert Report, or maybe even for a third installment of the movie Airplane.

Just think of a terrorist, who is determined enough to kill himself, along with everyone on board, waiting for the last hour of the flight to do it…geez…

Technorati Tags: Events, Flight 253, Lieberman, nigerian, suspicious, Terrorism, Yemen

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Post tags: Events, Flight 253, Lieberman, nigerian, suspicious, Terrorism, Yemen

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It is called The Flat-D (flatulence deodorizer). According to the seller “is a high-tech filter that was originally designed to defend against chemical warfare. It was used in chemical warfare suits”.

What caught our immediate attention was the fact that one of the Flat-D’s selling points is that it provides protection for our friends. The sellers say in fact:  “Protect your friends, family and coworkers from your gas with the Flat-D. Then you can enjoy your guilty pleasure without losing those important people in your life.”

We realize that many of us might have and even indulge in all kinds of guilty pleasures, but this kind of a pleasure is certainly news to us.

As related to our previous story, these butt filters might come in useful, when security concerns force us to fly butt-naked.  As such, they might be the only “garment” allowed on board passenger aircraft. Better than nothing, we suppose…Filtering out the methane might also do wonders in reducing our CO2 emissions and fight global warming. What a product!!!

Not having had the opportunity to field-test the Flat-D, we would like to include some of the customer reviews, from the seller’s website:

“My girlfriend got these for me (thanks a lot, right?!) but … they really diffuse the smell of gas. Now all I eat is beans, and no one is the wiser.”

“It works great, ideal for nervous travelers. Capture efficiency is impressive but like everything, it has it’s limits. After snacking on a bag of bing cherries and having Indian food for dinner rich in lamb, raisins, and cumin; I discovered this insert has limits.”

It has limits?! You might have to use two, or even three Flat-Ds, buddy!

“I am back for more. I’m a gassy dude, and these filters really help. Now they just need to make one that buffers the noise.”

“These filters are great! will you be coming out with something for sharts (sic), maybe like a thin diaper?”

Technorati Tags: air travel, Fart, filter, friend protection

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Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab

The latest – fortunately failed – attempt to bring down an airliner has been on top of the news for about a week now.

We do know that a Nigerian, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who has joined al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, has tried to detonate an explosive charge, hidden in his underwear.

We also know that a quick reaction by a passenger and by the cabin crew prevented the creep from successfully completing his mission.

There have been all kinds of talk about deploying more body scanners at the airports. There is no doubt that these expensive and at least partly effective devices might help to a degree, but it this the Holy Grail as far as security is concerned?

If the U.S. authorities have connected the warning that the terrorist’s own father has voiced, to the fact that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab had multiple U.S. entry visas, the little creep should have never even been on a flight bound for the United States.

At the same time, we had the opportunity to fly between two U.S. cities, both before and after the thwarted terrorist event.

The strange thing is that on the flight before Christmas and before the burning of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s crotch, the airport security appeared to be stricter than after his cojones got singed.

As a matter of fact, on the way back, I realized after checking in my bag that I have forgotten to pack away my old, but perfectly serviceable brass Zippo lighter. Not wanting to lose the item, to which I am quite attached and not really having another alternative, since my suitcase has long disappeared into the baggage system – and I assure you that I had no evil intentions whatsoever – I simply packed it the best way I could think of into my camera bag. The Zippo got nestled next to the battery charger and put through the x-ray machine, emerging from the other end with no problems.

The bag also contained a perfectly harmless, stainless steel pill container, the size and shape of an average rifle cartridge…

As most of you know, lighters are not allowed in the cabins of airliners, after Richard Reid has failed to light his fuse/shoe laces with matches in 2001.

We do hope that our airline security administration people are reading this; simply as proof that pre-flight passenger screening needs to be done more carefully. Once again, I would like to emphasize that I obviously had no evil, or terrorist intentions, but that there seem to be numerous holes in our security arrangements, which are in need of improvement.

Although the full-body scanner machines might help, there is no substitute for human intelligence, known in the business as HUMINT. Let’s just hope that the terrorists will not force us to fly butt-naked and with no carry-on baggage whatsoever. Wait! Come to think of it, such nudist camps in the sky might be kind of fun 

Technorati Tags: air travel, security, Terrorism

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Post tags: air travel, security, Terrorism

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Our advice would be for the deniers to come back when they actually manage to learn the difference between climate and weather.

It should be noted that increased temperatures and increased aberrant weather patterns are not mutually exclusive.

One of the most noticeable effects of global warming is extreme weather. In 2007 we had the California wildfires, the worst flooding in England since the 18th century, severe water shortage in the southern U.S. Now, at the end of 2009 we have unseasonably cold temperatures and record, or nearly record snowfalls on several continents. One can only guess what climate and weather changes 2010 will bring.

So, for those affected by the wintery weather, dress warm, shovel your driveways with a smile, since it might be years, or even decades, before you will be seeing the beautiful white stuff again in such quantities.

Technorati Tags: change, china, Climate, cold, europe, Globa warming, snow, US, Weather

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The strange thing is that for years Lieberman has been a strong advocate of universal health care. Campaigning for vice-president in 2000, he first proposed resolving the plight of the uninsured by allowing them to buy into Medicare and Medicaid – a plan he endorsed even in September 2009 in an interview with a Connecticut newspaper.

Yet when that very same plan was added to Senate health care legislation, Lieberman told Majority Leader Harry Reid that he could not support it. He also threatened to invoke the power of a one-man filibuster to prevent the legislation from even coming to a vote on the Senate floor.

It could in part be simple revenge. Ever since being rejected by the Connecticut Democrats in the 2006 primary, and somehow getting re-elected as an Independent, Lieberman’s been itching for payback. He endorsed John McCain for president, campaigned for him practically full-time and even spoke at the Republican National Convention, declaring Barack Obama as unqualified to be president.

For such a petty man and such a big ego, what better way there is to get even than to derail the president’s number one legislative priority, even if it means leaving 47 million Americans without health insurance?

As we always said, there’s no substitute for backbone, decency, honesty and intelligence.

And in closing, a very telling cartoon, by Bob Rogers from the Pittsburgh Post Gazette.

Thanks to Cher from AskCherlock for pointing it out to us.

Technorati Tags: backbone, democrats, Health Care reform, Independent, Lieberman, mccain, obama, senate

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The news reports say, “President Barack Obama has ordered the federal government to acquire an underused state prison”, the Thomson Correctional Center in rural Illinois.

According to the Illinois Department of Corrections’ website, Thomson is not so much “underused”, as empty.

According to a letter to Illinois Governor Pat Quinn signed by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, Attorney General Eric Holder and Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair Thomson will be upgraded and transformed into a facility that exceeds “supermax standards.”

The real question is whether the Guantanamo inmates will actually be charged with crimes and whether they will be properly tried, according to our law, or will Thomson simply become an extension of Gitmo, this time on U.S. territory?

U.S. officials said military tribunals for potential detainees would be held at Thomson. They also said that the facility could house detainees whom the president determines must be held indefinitely but can’t be tried.

Thomson will not solve all the administration’s Guantanamo-related problems. There still will be dozens of detainees not relocated to Thomson, myriad legal issues and potential resistance from Congress.

Technorati Tags: congress, guantanamo, military tribunals, obama, Prison, Thompson

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We also wonder if Accenture being directly linked to Arthur Andersen and its connections with Enron could possibly be considered any better that Tiger’s infidelity, screwing around and so forth. That in fact seems like a no-brainer. Enron has hurt not only the economy, but also thousands, upon thousands of people, maybe even millions.

Tiger in turn, has seemed to hurt Elin, but probably mostly himself…

We haven’t checked all of Tiger’s sponsors. We do know for a fact that Nike, has been widely criticized for the use of child slave labor. We also wonder if Blackwater, er… Xe is among his sponsors. How about Altria, formerly Philip Morris, or Exxon, so very famous for not paying up for the damages of the Exxon Valdez disaster?

______________________________________________________________________________________

There’s been an avalanche of company name changes in the past few years. In some cases this was done in order to make the name more marketable, or maybe easier on the eyes, or hopefully easier to remember. More often rebranding came about in the wake of some unsavory event, practice, or even a conviction.

Many people don’t even realize that so very often the very same and often unchanged company lurks under a completely new name. That of course is often the whole idea behind the change and rebranding has become a big business in its own right.

Andersen Consulting, linked to Arthur Andersen and its conviction for that super shady Enron outfit is now called Accenture. The Tiger Woods ads have been pretty effective and hardly anyone even thinks of Accenture as anything but a successful, modern consulting firm…now registered in Hamilton, Bermuda.

Exxon’s switch from Esso came about because of myriad legal challenges between different spin-offs of the Standard Oil Company and Humble oil. It did take us all a while to figure out how to pronounce this weird combination of letters. Now, of course it is called ExxonMobil and as far as we know, neither the old, nor the new entity has paid for the damages caused by the drunken captain of the Exxon Valdez and the huge oil spill in Alaska.

The infamous mercenary company Blackwater has re branded itself as Xe – supposedly pronounced as “zee”. A Pretty innocuous name it would seem for a company, whose employees have shot a whole bunch of unarmed civilians in Iraq. The problem is that there is already a company named Xe…

Who hasn’t heard about Phillip Morris, the class action suits, the chemicals, including extra nicotine added to their cigarettes and all the other machinations?

As it turns out, Phillip Morris is called Altria now. Almost sounds like one of those drugs, which we keep seeing advertised during the evening network news. Maybe like something to shrink an enlarged prostate, or to help you fall asleep?

How about the Value Jet Airlines? After the infamous crash in the Everglades with the loss of 108 people, it has come to life again under the name of Air Tran.

Technorati Tags: accenture, Adultery, andersen consulting, blackwater, esso, exxon, Rebranding, sponsorship, tiger woods, Value Jet Air Tran, xe

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Post tags: accenture, Adultery, andersen consulting, blackwater, esso, exxon, Rebranding, sponsorship, tiger woods, Value Jet Air Tran, xe

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Mr. Obama’s speech was twice as long as his inaugural address. He spoke at length about the circumstances that push nations to war and those that prompt them to seek peace.

He also admitted that the controversy surrounding the award is due in part to: “…this is because I am at the beginning, and not the end, of my labors on the world stage.”

The Nobel Committee, in announcing its choice for the 2009 Peace Prize, cited Barack Obama’s efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation.  It also said he has captured the imagination of the world with his message of hope.

Public opinion polls in the United States indicate that many Americans believe the honor has come far too soon.

Technorati Tags: Nobel Peace Prize, obama, Oslo, speech, war

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At this point, nearly every Afghan province has two governors – one belonging to the Karzai regime and the other to the Taliban one.

At the same time, it appears that many Afghans prefer a decisive rule to the disarray of the Karzai government.

The Taliban has established an elaborate shadow government of governors, police chiefs, district administrators and judges that in many cases already has more bearing on the lives of Afghans than the real government.

U.S. military officials say that getting rid of the Taliban’s shadow government and establishing the authority of the Karzai administration over the next 18 months will be critical to the success of President Obama’s surge strategy. But this has been complicated by the fact that in many areas, Afghans prefer the severe but decisive authority of the Taliban to the corruption and inefficiency of Karzai’s appointees.

For many Afghans, there is little, or no choice. Across broad areas of the country, especially Afghanistan’s vast rural areas, the government has little to no presence, leaving the Taliban as the only authority.

After been forced underground or into exile in 2001, the Taliban has returned not just to wage war but also to demonstrate that it is capable of delivering a different model of governance from the one offered by Karzai and his allies. Afghans who live under Taliban control say the group’s weaknesses remain the same as during the movement’s previous five-year rule. The Taliban provides virtually no social services, leaving Afghans on their own when it comes to health care, education and development.

Most Afghans celebrated Taliban’s ouster on 2001, but after eight years of Karzai’s government, many say they would happily welcome the Taliban’s return.

It appears then that whatever is defined as a “victory” in Afghanistan will not be a military one, but rather a very strong push to improve the efficiency of the central government, while cleaning out the ever-present corruption. In addition, the Afghan government forces will have to actually establish a strong, viable presence even in areas presently considered to be Taliban strongholds.

Whether the U.S. and NATO will be able to achieve that within the next 18 to 24 months remains to be seen, but the prospects do not look promising at all at this point.

Maybe if we finally gave up the search for the mythical Osama bin Laden, more resources could be channeled into actually fighting for the hearts and minds of the Afghan people and to offer them a viable future, which for so many decades has seemed to slip almost out of reach?

Technorati Tags: afghanistan, government, politics, shadow, Taliban

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U.S. National Security Adviser, James Jones, says bin Laden, believed hiding mainly in a rugged area of western Pakistan, may be periodically slipping back into Afghanistan as well. At the same time, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, says the U.S. has lacked good intelligence on bin Laden for a long time – “I think it has been years” – and did not confirm that he’d slipped into Afghanistan.

The failed hunt for bin Laden has been one of the signature elements of the global “war on terror” that George W. Bush launched after the Sept. 11 attacks. The principal explanations given by both the Bush and Obama administrations for not getting bin Laden is that they simply don’t know where he is.
“If we did, we’d go get him,” Gates said.

Jones, a retired Marine general, stressed the urgency of targeting bin Laden, and spoke of a renewed campaign to capture or kill him. Bin Laden had been allowed to operate in Afghanistan by his Taliban allies while allegedly plotting the Sept. 11 attacks. When U.S. forces ousted the Taliban from power in late 2001, bin Laden reportedly fled into Pakistan from what was generally described as a complex of caves in the Tora Bora area.

Asked whether the administration has reliable intelligence on bin Laden’s whereabouts, James Jones replied, “The best estimate is that he is somewhere in North Waziristan, sometimes on the Pakistani side of the border, sometimes on the Afghan side of the border.” He did not elaborate on the intelligence behind that estimate, nor did he cite a time period or describe more specifically bin Laden’s apparent border crossings.

Robert Gates in turn, said: that “we don’t know for a fact where Osama bin Laden is,” although he agreed that his likely hideout is in North Waziristan.

The U.S. has targeted North Waziristan and other areas on the Pakistani side of the border with drone-launched missile strikes, killing a number of militants as well as Pakistani civilians. The Pakistani army has undertaken an offensive against the Taliban in South Waziristan but it has not expanded it into North Waziristan.

Obama administration officials have often asserted, as did the Bush administration, that they believe bin Laden is being sheltered on the Pakistani side of the border, along with other senior al-Qaida leaders. But Jones’s assertion that al-Qaida chief may have slipped back into Afghanistan puts a new twist on the issue.

Senator John McCain said: “that knowledgeable people have told him that bin Laden ‘moves back and forth.’”
McCain did not elaborate, except to say that although bin Laden is not currently able to establish bases for training and equipping terrorists who would attack the United States, “I think it’s important to get him.”

Gates said he does not blame a lack of Pakistani cooperation for the absence of intelligence on bin Laden. “No, I think it’s because if, as we suspect, he is in North Waziristan, it is an area that the Pakistani government has not had a presence in, in quite some time,” he said.

During a visit to Pakistan in October, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton caused a stir by chiding Pakistani officials for failing to press the hunt for al-Qaida inside their borders. She said she found it “hard to believe” that no one in Islamabad knows where the al-Qaida leaders are hiding and couldn’t get them “if they really wanted to.”

A recent Senate report said bin Laden was unquestionably within reach of U.S. troops in the mountains of Tora Bora only three months after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, when American military leaders made the crucial decision not to pursue him with massive force.

Some Pakistanis believe that Osama bin Laden is actually a CIA agent.

Take a look at this video:

So, it appears that we are as much in the dark about bin Laden’s whereabouts, as we seem to be about what really and truly transpired on September 11, 2001. Lets just hope that our intelligence regarding both Afghan and Pakistani Taliban is more accurate, since nobody in his right mind wants the Afghan war to drag on forever.

Technorati Tags: afghanistan, al-qaida, bin laden, cia, clinton, gates, jones, Pakistan, Terrorism, US

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As most of you have also heard, the rumor goes that Tiger’s wife Elin Nordegren after hearing the crash outside their Florida house went to her husband’s aid and smashed the rear window with (what else?) a golf club, to allow him to escape the wreck.

Another rumor says that Elin was the one who scratched Tiger’s face, after hearing news about his affair with Rachel Uchitel – a Manhattan hostess who lost a fiancé in the World Trade Center on 9/11.

Tiger admits on his website that  “As you all know, I had a single-car accident earlier this week, and sustained some injuries. I have some cuts, bruising and right now I’m pretty sore.

This situation is my fault, and it’s obviously embarrassing to my family and me. I’m human and I’m not perfect. I will certainly make sure this doesn’t happen again.”

Woods, who was expected to host and play in the 2009 Chevron World Challenge golf tournament this week, canceled his participation, citing the injuries he incurred in the accident.

Wherever the truth might lie, there is no doubt that Tiger has ceased to be the media virgin he has been up to this point.

And in closing we would like to present another excellent cartoon on the subject by Washington Post’s Tom Toles.

Technorati Tags: accident, affair, tiger woods

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FIFA’s President Sepp Blatter in South Africa's Robben Island prison, 03 Dec 2009

Preparations for the first football (soccer) World Cup to be held on the African continent are in full swing in South Africa.

Billions of dollars have been invested, several new stadiums have been built and the pride and excitement seem to be overflowing.

At first sight, this would seem to be a very positive development, but there are some nasty, dark secrets, not generally reported by the South African media and government that cast a doubt whether the country truly deserves to be awarded the event.

FIFA has just held what was termed on its website as “… a very special meeting in Robben Island, Cape Town, the place where Nelson Mandela spent 18 years in prison during the apartheid era in South Africa and where the inmates founded the Makana Football Association, recognised by FIFA as its first honorary member association in 2007. The meeting was opened with an emotive speech from Tokyo Sexwale, former prisoner in Robben Island and currently a member of FIFA’s Committee for Fair Play and Social Responsibility.”

One issue that hasn’t been addressed is the racially motivated black on white crime details and statistics, or the issue of security in South Africa, which has been described by Nick Buckles, the CEO of the world’s biggest security firm, Securicor, in this manner: “South Africa was the most dangerous country in the world to work in – ahead of Iraq and Afghanistan.”

Pat Symcox, former South African cricketer has been quoted as saying: ”The government should deal with our crime situation. If they cannot, they should cancel the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. Countries worldwide should call for the event to be taken away…”

For every 1,000 crimes reported in South Africa, only 430 criminals are arrested. Of these, only 77 are convicted and barely 8 of these are sentenced to two or more years of imprisonment.

There are no official figures but, since the election of Nelson Mandela in 1994, farmers’ organizations say 3,000 whites in rural areas have been killed. The independent South African Human Rights Commission, set up by Mandela’s government, says the number is 2,500.

A child bludgeoned to death, his parents murdered

What is even less known is the particular viciousness of such attacks, the hate, torture, rape disembowelments, multiple stabbings and the like.

Attackers seem to be so filled with hate that there have been documented cases of them finding only dogs in empty, white-owned farmhouses. The dogs have first been tortured with boiling water, before being soaked in gasoline and set on fire.

Men, women and children are often accorded a similar “treatment”, with a frequent and widespread addition of brutal rape, usually before death,  sometimes even afterward.

This after all is a country where President Jacob Zuma, used as his election campaign song an old war chant from his days in the ANC’s military wing, Mshini wami -Bring me my machine-gun and where YouTube posts include footage of Nelson Mandela singing another song, Kill the Boer, Kill the Farmer.

Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe may be a pariah across the world but in South Africa he has long been given standing ovations and rapturous applause at ANC events. He can after all boast of long-standing “success” in ousting the white farmers, having them murdered and turning Zimbabwe into a basket case.

We wonder if FIFA has studied these issues sufficiently, before giving South Africa the 2010 World Cup, or whether political correctness has once again taken precedence over reality…

FIFA’s President Sepp Blatter states in his blog article entitled “Football has a socio-cultural dimension” that among other things:”… Another crucial area is the fight against racism. To my mind, fining the clubs ‘responsible’ does not work. They need to be docked points in the league and in European competitions and kicked out altogether if need be. Such punishment is actually envisaged in our Disciplinary Code and without it we cannot hope to eradicate this problem.

Additionally, the FIFA Confederations Cup in Africa has allowed us to identify the areas in which we need to make improvements, particularly in transport and accommodation…”

Mr. Blatter, there seems to be other issues at stake here, besides transport and accommodations.

Technorati Tags: Crime, fifa, murders, south africa, white farmers, world cup

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“After 18 months, our troops will begin to come home. These are the resources that we need to seize the initiative, while building the Afghan capacity that can allow for a responsible transition of our forces out of Afghanistan,” said President Barack Obama, speaking at the United States Military Academy at West Point on Tuesday evening.

We can only hope that the Taliban will not simply lay down their arms and wait, until we leave, or take Caribbean vacations in preparation for the U.S. troop departure and then come back all rested and refreshed to wreak more havoc.

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At least, the president is reportedly going to address his planned exit strategy. That’s better than nothing, but are we waiting for a few more ministers of the Karzai government to be indicted for corruption, before we withdraw the troops which – at a cost of $1 million per year, per soldier – are propping up his regime?

The mission objectives should of course be the absolute first thing to be addressed and that’s why we have decided to re-post this article, originally published here on November 3, 2009.

Since the original article was posted there have been some overtures by the Karzai government to engage “moderate elements” of the Taliban, so we stand corrected on that point.

______________________________________________________________________________________

While the Obama administration ponders whether to send tens of thousands of additional U.S. troops to Afghanistan, as General Stanley McChrystal proposed and as everybody is trying to figure out what impact the Afghan run-off election, which has never taken place will have on the overall situation there, we still haven’t really figured out what it is that we are trying to achieve there.

“A foreign army alone cannot beat an insurgency; the insurgency in Afghanistan requires an Afghan solution,” wrote General McChrystal. In view of that probably sound assessment, why would we need an additional 40,000 U.S. troops?

Lets first of all decide what is it that we are trying to achieve in Afghanistan. Is it hunting down the remains of al-Qaida and maybe finally catching up with Osama bin-Laden? Or maybe something that sells in Washington, DC, but it doesn’t sell in Afghanistan – a stable Karzai government? Or maybe we are trying to defeat the resurgent Taliban? Or are we trying to transform the Afghan society? Are we including Pakistan in our grand plan?

Speaking of the Taliban, we haven’t heard any proposals to include this group in possible talks about forming a coalition government. No doubt that this omission is a really big mistake.

As things stand, eight years into an occupation of Afghanistan even the military are saying that we have not achieved anything, but that the situation on the ground has in fact deteriorated. What in fact appears to be the main problem is not the remains of al-Qaida, or the Taliban itself, or even the rampant corruption among the ruling clique, but rather the militarization of the Afghan conflict.

The military “solution” is obviously not working in an environment as complex as the one in Afghanistan and Pakistan for that matter.

One cannot expect the average U.S. serviceman to understand the very complicated tribal, ethnic, or language problems of the country he, or she has been shipped to.

The actual solution to the problem staring us in the eye appears to be getting the foreigners out of Afghanistan, rather than increasing their number.

When in 2001-2003 troops were truly needed in Afghanistan, they got diverted to the insane invasion and occupation of Iraq.

To make a long story short: we don’t even know what problem, or problems that we are trying to solve in Afghanistan are and we are still talking about changing our military strategy and increasing the number of troops. What are those troops supposed to do there? What do we expect from them? What is their mission? Nobody seems to have an answer to any of these questions.

Our advice to the White House team is to first come up with a mission statement, to nail down what it is that we are trying to achieve in Afghanistan and whether getting involved in that country is really in the U.S., or the world’s interest.

Throwing more troops into the Afghan quagmire, without even having a clear objective is clearly not the way to proceed.

Technorati Tags: Afghan, al-qaida, election, mission, obama, objectives, Pakistan, politics, Taliban, war

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There’s nothing wrong with of at all… except that the pervading myth about the whole feast and its de rigueur menu, which supposedly originated with the Pilgrims in the first half of the 17^th century isn’t strictly true at all.

In addition, the Pilgrims were really a very unsavory bunch of Puritans, who had the leave England,  where they have overstayed their welcome by a long, long shot.

So, fortunately, the so-called Pilgrims had very little to do with the whole thing. As it happened, it was a creation of 19^th century Americans, particularly New Englanders, who wanted to have another national holiday. At the time, we had only two of those: Washington’s Birthday and the Fourth of July. There was also Christmas of course, which wasn’t really counted as a National Holiday.

Abraham Lincoln's presidential order establishing the Thanksgiving Holiday

From the beginning Thanksgiving was a holiday very directly related to food. Something along the lines of a harvest feast, which by that time was celebrated in practically every country of the world in some form.

What really and truly started the whole thing was Sarah Josepha Hale, probably the first female American novelist of note, who has written books, such as Northwood: A Tale of New England and Mary had a Little Lamb. Ms. Hale has written a whole chapter in which she described Thanksgiving in minute detail, with the turkey and the dressing and the gravy and all the other things and ingredients that we now think of as an integral part of the holiday.

Her novel turned out to be extremely popular and Sarah Josepha Hale became the editor a popular woman’s magazine, creating in the process a lot of the mid-19^th century fashion trends, one of which was, as you might have guessed, the Thanksgiving dinner.

Thanksgiving officially became a National Holiday in 1863, when President Abraham Lincoln after some important Union victories during the Civil War issued a presidential order, making it official.

We hope that these tidbits of historical information do not disappoint those who believe in the traditional Pilgrim/Indian-related lore. It still remains a very nice holiday. Probably even nicer, without the nasty Pilgrim/Puritan connotations.

If only the artificially-fattened turkeys tasted better…and if the NFL football games were not a part of it all…

We get the feeling that if Sarah Josepha Hale was faced with both of the above, she would have given up on Thanksgiving altogether.

In any case, a Very Happy Thanksgiving to all! Just don’t overeat, please.

Technorati Tags: football, Indians, nfl, Origins, Pilgrims, puritans, Real, Sarah Josepha Hale, Thanksgiving, Turkey

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The Republican’s position does indeed appear to be a continuation of the campaign to defeat the president’s initiatives, rather than proposing anything constructive and helpful to the American people. The desire to “show him” seems stronger than the desire to actually achieve something that’s needed and at least in the long run – beneficial. That’s nothing new, of course. Just listen to the de-facto leader of the Republican Party, Rush Limbaugh, or any of the other conservative blabbermouths. There is no doubt that the interest of the country as a whole has been put on the back burner, in favor of hurting, or even destroying anything that Barack Obama is doing.

The 60-39 vote cleared the way for a full-scale debate beginning after Thanksgiving on the legislation, which is designed to extend coverage to roughly 31 million who do not have it, control insurance company practices that deny or dilute benefits and curtail the growth of spending on medical care.

Majority Leader Harry Reid accused Republicans of trying to prevent a historic debate that the nation needed.

“Imagine if, instead of debating whether to abolish slavery, instead of debating whether giving women and minorities the right to vote, those who disagreed had muted discussion and killed any vote,” he said.

The Republican leader, Senator Mitch McConnell said the vote was anything but procedural – describing it as a referendum on the bill itself, which he said would raise taxes, cut Medicare and create a “massive and unsustainable debt.”

The fate of the Saturday night showdown had been sealed hours earlier, when two final Democratic holdouts, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana and Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, announced they would join in clearing the way for a full debate.

We will be watching the upcoming debate, although we do not intend to waste our time in hearing the usual, vicious opinions of the conservative pundits.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs issued a statement saying the president was gratified by the vote, which he says “brings us one step closer to ending insurance company abuses, reining in spiraling health care costs, providing stability and security to those with health insurance, and extending quality health coverage to those who lack it.”

The legislation would require most Americans to carry insurance and provide subsidies to those who cannot afford it. Large companies could incur penalties if they do not provide coverage to their workforce. The insurance industry would come under significant new regulation under the bill, which would first ease and then ban the practice of denying coverage on the basis of pre-existing medical conditions.

Congressional budget analysts put the legislation’s cost at $979 billion over a decade and said it would reduce deficits over the same period while extending coverage to 94 percent of the eligible population.

In relation to the health-care reform debate and to the Republican (and Joe Lieberman’s) opposition to it, it might be worthwhile to quote a letter by George Washington to his nephew supporting adoption of the Constitution, to which there was considerable opposition as well..

General Washington castigated critics of the Constitution and stated that they seek to “rouse the apprehensions of the ignorant & unthinking . . . [with] objections . . . better calculated to alarm the fears, than to convince the judgement of their readers.”

These comments seem equally applicable to those Republican senators opposed to health-care reform.

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And since the new mammography recommendations seem to have brought outrage from both sides of the aisle, we would like to present another incisive cartoon on the subject from Washington Post’s Tom Toles.

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Post tags: bill, Clears, democrats, Health care, Hurdle, insurance industry, reform, republicans, senate

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Volkswagen has made it clear that it considers Russia to be a great market for its cars.

That, considering the rate of car destruction in Russia, could very well be true. Has anybody considered that building additional vodka distilleries could increase the demand even more?

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There certainly is no shortage of Russians who like to have a good time. Even though their definition of a good time might be quite different from yours.  Click on the video and see for yourself.

Couldn’t resist posting this great video heralding communism’s great achievements in the area of automobile manufacturing. Our thanks to Harrison Price for pointing it out.

Technorati Tags: accidents, drunks, fashin, mud, rats, russia, video

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In addition, livestock accounts for at least 21 percent of greenhouse-gas emissions globally – more than all forms of transportation combined. Domestic animals – most of them healthy – consume (not by their choice, mind you) about 70 percent of all the antibiotics produced. Undigested antibiotics leach from manure into freshwater systems, impairing the sex organs of fish. The antibiotic use in animals has also contributed to the growing antibiotic resistance in bacteria, which infect humans.

It takes a gallon of gasoline to produce a pound of conventional beef. If all the grain fed to animals fed people instead, you could feed China and India.

Meat that’s produced according to “alternative” standards (accounting for about one percent of meat in the United States) might be a better choice but not nearly so much better as some would have us believe. “Free-range chickens” would theoretically have access to the outdoors. But many of the so-called “free-range” chickens never see the light of day because they cannot make it through the crowded shed to the opening, which leads usually to a patch of concrete, anyway.

“Grass-fed” cows produce four times the methane – a greenhouse gas 21 times as powerful as carbon dioxide – and many grass-fed cows are raised on heavily fertilized and irrigated grass. Pastured pigs are still typically mutilated, fed commercial feed and prevented from rooting – their most basic instinct besides sex.

Deforestation is the single largest contributor to climate change – far larger that all the transportation-related pollution, power generation and livestock flatulence. As it stands, huge tracts of forests are cut down for a variety of reasons – for wood, farming, industry, human habitation and yes: the factory farming of livestock.

Issues of animal welfare are also related to all forms of meat production. Domestic animals suffer immensely, feel pain and may even realize the fate that awaits them. In an egg factory, male chicks (economically worthless) are summarily run through a grinder. Pigs are castrated without anesthesia, crated, tail-docked and nose-ringed. Milk cows are repeatedly impregnated through artificial insemination, confined to milking stalls and milked to yield 15 times the amount of milk they would produce under normal circumstances. When calves are removed from their mothers at birth, the mothers mourn their loss with heart-rending moans.

Then comes the slaughterhouse, an operation that’s left with millions of pounds of carcasses – called deadstock – that are incinerated or dumped in landfills.

If someone told you that a particular corporation was trashing the air, water and soil, causing more global warming than the transportation industry, consuming massive amounts of fossil fuels; unleashing the cruelest sort of suffering on innocent and defenseless beings; failing to recycle its waste, and clogging our arteries in the process, how would you react?

We are looking forward to hearing from all of you out there. This isn’t an attempt to turn everybody into vegetarians, or vegans, but for a variety of reasons we believe that meat consumption and large-scale livestock farming should be reduced by a noticeable margin.

There are horror stories and horrific videos being leaked out of factory farms everywhere. This PETA video is just one example, featuring a factory pig farm in North Carolina. It is patently obvious the the “people” involved in this sadistic acts are the real animals. To put it politely – scum of the earth. And to think that our jails are full of people sentenced for writing a bad check, or for possessing a small amount of marijuana…

Technorati Tags: climate change, cruelty, Environment, factory, farming, global warming, Health, Livestock, meat, pollution, production

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The official launch of the RiceHadley Group, which styles itself as a “strategic advisory firm” for international companies, is scheduled soon. The firm registered its Web site domain name in October.

It will not be exactly a localized operation. Rice, who was Hadley’s boss at the National Security Council during Bush’s first term, will be teaching at Stanford while Hadley remains in Washington as a senior adviser for international affairs at the government-funded think-tank the U.S. Institute of Peace. A third founding partner, Washington lawyer Anja Manuel, is also heading to Stanford to teach international studies.

Manuel was an aide from 2005 to 2007 to former undersecretary of state for political affairs Nicholas Burns. Her firm bio says she “managed [Burns's] involvement in South and Central Asia policy, congressional outreach and legal matters. Among other projects, she negotiated the U.S.-India civilian nuclear accord, and helped to secure passage . . . of the India civilian nuclear legislation.” She was also “extensively involved in U.S. policy toward Afghanistan and Pakistan, among other issues,”

In case you are thinking of doing business overseas, especially in South Asia and supposed “emerging markets” in the Middle East and Latin America, you do want to get some serious strategic advice. To paraphrase Condi’s famous statement, you wouldn’t want to find your business under “a mushroom cloud.”

Technorati Tags: Condi, Condoleezza Rice, groups, RiceHadley, Stephen Hadley

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