Headlines - Thursday

Partners in Health:

 

Cliff Landis is a librarian in Valdosta, Georgia who, until last week, was planning on a post-holiday replenish of his savings account. However, upon hearing about the suffering the earthquake has wrought, he decided to further deplete his own savings in favor of contributing to PIH's relief efforts in Haiti.

But Cliff didn't stop there. He also encouraged friends, family, and readers of his blog to give, promising them he would match every gift up to $10,000. Watch a video of what happened next:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZck7GTW9dY&feature=player_embedded

 

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Glad we've been over there for almost a decade when this is the result...

 

Though not given as high a profile by the NATO forces as the growing insurgency or the opium trade, a new report suggests that corruption and bribery costs Afghans $2.5 billion every year, roughly a quarter of the nation's economy. 

 

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"The Kennedy legacy goes down to a naked guy who owns a truck." -- Jon Stewart

 

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Plitvice Lakes National Park is the most popular tourist attraction in Croatia. The place is pretty stunning.

 

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Haiti is not Gaza

A great, impassioned op-ed piece in Haaretz about the limits of compassion in Israel, which has sent scores of rescuers to the victims in Haiti, but remains indifferent to the Israeli-made suffering an hour away in Gaza. 

"The disaster in Haiti is a natural one; the one in Gaza is the unproud handiwork of man. Our handiwork."

--Abby Zimet

 

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Edley, Jr
Professor of Law and Dean
Boalt Hall School of Law
University of California, Berkeley

Dear Dr. Edley,

I like the idea of holding former Bush inquisitor John Yoo's classes at a secret, undisclosed location. It's the kind of thing that weeds out the less dedicated law students from those who'll do whatever it takes to achieve their goals--people like Prof. Yoo. Those who wish to emulate him will quickly snatch the facilities manager, deny him or her habeas corpus, and proceed straight to the waterboarding, beatings, hosting the Tonight Show, and all the other intensive interrogation techniques for which Mr Yoo showed so much enthusiasm.

But I wonder if allowing them to do it without any kind of supervision is the best way to prepare them for the next Republican administration. Shouldn't they be required to do some lab time, so they learn how to properly conduct such interrogations--they'll need to know things like the optimum amount of volts and amps one should apply to a goatherd's testicles. And shouldn't there be some kind of lab the students could use to waterboard the facilities manager in a comfortable learning environment?

I'd like to head up an effort to raise funds for such a facility. We could call it the Dick Cheney Center for Positive Sadism and use that honor to lure him to Boalt Halll for a seminar on the "disposable sections of the constitution," or better yet, a demonstration on the proper way to eat the hearts of your enemies.

I'd like to start working on this immediately. Please respond at your earliest opportunity.

Heterosexually yours,

Gen. JC Christian, patriot

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What year is this?

New basketball league open to white only, to get away from 'street,ball' played by 'people of color'

A new professional basketball league called the All-American Basketball Alliance (AABA) sent out a press release on Sunday saying that it intends to start its inaugural season in June, with teams in 12 U.S. cities. However, the AABA is different from other sports leagues because only players who are "natural born United States citizens with both parents of Caucasian race are eligible to play in the league." AABA commissioner Don "Moose" Lewis insists that he's not racist, but he just wants to get away from the "street-ball" played by "people of color" and back to "fundamental basketball." Lewis cited the recent incidents of bad behavior by NBA players, implying that such actions would never happen with white players: http://thinkprogress.org/2010/01/20/white-basketball/

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For tea baggers, the future looks dumb

One thing tea baggers object to is "government schools," or as normal people call them, public schools. You see, at the government schools, kids are forced to learn science, to associate with others not exactly like them, and every now and then, be subjected to an address from their president asking them to do their homework and become successful. And you know where all this leads. That's right, buddy, the big "S." Socialism with a capital…Well anyway. So following Trish's Law of Coincidences, which states that there are no coincidences, a recent increase in home schooling must be correlated to rising numbers of tea baggers. In fact, one unscientific (how fitting!) online poll shows just that.
http://www.pensitoreview.com/2010/01/20/for-tea-baggers-the-future-looks-dumb/ 

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Krugman:

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But I have to say, I'm pretty close to giving up on Mr. Obama, who seems determined to confirm every doubt I and others ever had about whether he was ready to fight for what his supporters believed in.

I think it's the absence of leadership that bothers me the most. Single-payer, public health care should have been a slam-dunk and signed into law before the August break last year. In the absence of leadership from the White House, we have Harry Reid playing that role and you see where that's gotten us.

But it's our fault ...

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The Rude Pundit is finally PO'd (foul languange alert): http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/2010/01/random-observations-on-last-nights.html

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Somebody smack the president, please - and jolt some sense into his head: http://eb-misfit.blogspot.com/2010/01/somebody-smack-president-please.html 

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GOP says divine intervention helped elect Scott Brown.

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Blue Dog Senator from Katrina-ravaged Louisiana collaborates to block climate action. 

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Obama's first-round draft pick for Transportation Security Administration leadership has withdrawn his name from consideration. He used a federal database to stalk his wife's boyfriend, is the thing with him. Washington Post

 

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Newly elected Massachusetts senator Scott Brown hopes Dems don't treat him like his party treated Al Franken.

 

And in a related story, Hitler finds out Scott Brown won.

 

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Today the President will propose sweeping changes that will give bank regulators the authority to actually regulate the nations largest banks and limit the risk-taking behaviors and activities that took the world economy to the brink of a global depression.

The president, for the first time, will throw his weight behind an approach long championed by Paul A. Volcker, former chairman of the Federal Reserve and an adviser to the Obama administration. The proposal will put limits on bank size and prohibit commercial banks from trading for their own accounts - known as proprietary trading.

The White House intends to work closely with the House and Senate to include these proposals in whatever bill dealing with financial regulation finally emerges from Congress.

Mr. Volcker flew to Washington for the announcement on Thursday. His chief goal has been to prohibit proprietary trading of financial securities, including mortgage-backed securities, by commercial banks using deposits in their commercial banking sectors. Big losses in the trading of those securities precipitated the credit crisis in 2008 and the federal bailout.

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Finding still more troops for Haiti. "The US is sending another 4,000 sailors and marines to Haiti for the earthquake relief effort, diverting them from deployments in the Gulf and Africa. The 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit and USS Nassau Amphibious Ready Group would "significantly" increase the ability to quickly provide aid, the navy said. The move will increase the number of US troops involved to around 16,000. Earlier, a strong aftershock rocked the capital, Port-au-Prince, but did not seem to cause further casualties there. Away from the city, survivors in some towns are still waiting for help after the original 7.0-magnitude earthquake struck eight days ago."