The Gulf spill - knowing the enemy
The anger in our nation over the Big Spill is a good thing. It is past time for we the people to get fired up over the wholesale environmental destruction that our lifestyle has been perpetuating. The Spill is nothing more the finally visible result of the type of destruction that has been proceeding, right under our noses, for decades. While progressives and conservatives have spent a decade fighting over climate change, the foundation of the world's fisheries has been under assault. It is little consolation that some of the conservatives fighting to politicize scientific issues, will live long enough to see deep sea fishing become an extinct industry.
So the anger is real; the anger is just. I am here today, however, with a plea for better targeting. The Spill, along with the other less visible manifestations of environmental destruction, are not the product of any single political group or corporation. They exist because of a set of philosophies that we the people propagate. Currently, we focus our anger at a number of targets; Bush, Cheney, B.P., Halliburton, Obama, Corporatism, Palin. This kind of targeting, while understandable, is thoroughly ineffective. Howling at the Moon may resonate with your own primal tuning fork, but in the end, it accomplishes nothing. Twitter is alive with calls for the boycott of British Petroleum, and action that feels good, but only serves to damage innocent station owners. I have often written of the environmental movement's complete misunderstanding of the fossil fuel industry; I am compelled now to restate that position.
Know thy enemy! Oil companies make money refining and selling oil products to end use distributors. Much farther down the value chain (at the end, in fact), franchised station owners make precious little on a gallon of gas. As a former district manager in a major chain, I can tell you that most of the time my franchisees were being yelled at for price-gouging, that they were losing money on every gallon they sold. It is a tough business, and yelling at them (or forcing their bankruptcy) won't change parent company behavior. Currently, we are directing our anger in precisely the same fashion as we did during the financial debate; we are shooting up the expendable little fish, and missing the big fish entirely.
The speculation in futures markets on oil, coal, natural gas, electricity, and unleaded gasoline, drives most of the unearned profits for the industry. We the people fight gas taxes, the profits of which could fund a renewable energy infrastructure, while we sit back and allow speculators to charge what is effectively a gas tax; one that goes to fund their personal infrastructures and the windfall profits of the companies themselves. Real change will happen when we the people demand full exposure and accounting for all of the externalities incurred by fossil fuel providers. This won't happen if we picket the local Mom and Pop, and it won't happen if we waste time arguing with infantile halfwits like Liz Cheney.
Lobby your Congressman today! Tell them you aren't afraid to pay a major tax on gasoline and kilowatt hours. Tell them that if the tax is scaled in over a 10 year period, and spent on a smart-grid to support wind and solar, and competitive bids to help energy providers convert current capital projects, that you will support it. Get on the bandwagon for a real change; the Spill is precisely the catastrophe that environmentalists have been predicting for years.
The real tragedy will come to be if we can't use this great evil in the service of a greater good.
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Personally, I am quite relieved there is no one critical of administration or Israeli policy left in the WH press corpse. Not that there is any difference. All those pesky questions about Afghanistan and Iraq and human rights were kind of annoying and got into the way of more substantive stuff, such as questions like this:
Q: Can you talk about the criticism that the President isn't making that emotional connection with people over the spill?
***Q: Does the White House believe that it was a mistake for the President not to meet with fishermen or other local business people during his last visit?
***Q Did anyone in the White House yell at him {BP's Hayward} for making those comments?
I think our democracy will be stronger and more informed as a result of this. If only she'd had the common sense to call them goat fucking child molesters.
Three months after 9/11, every major Taliban city in Afghanistan had fallen — first Mazar-i-Sharif, then Kabul, finally Kandahar. Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar were on the run. It looked as if the war was over, and the Americans and their Afghan allies had won.
Butch Ivie, then a school administrator in Winfield, Ala., remembers, "We thought we'd soon have it tied up in a neat little bag."
But bin Laden and Omar eluded capture. The Taliban regrouped. Today, Kandahar again is up for grabs. And soon, Afghanistan will pass Vietnam as America's longest war.
...
Insurgents killed 10 NATO soldiers on Monday, seven of them Americans, military officials said. It was the worst single day for the foreign forces operating in Afghanistan in the past seven months.The deaths came in five separate attacks in the south and east of the country, according to statements from the International Security Assistance Force, as the NATO force in Afghanistan is known.
In addition, a civilian American security guard was killed Monday, along with another guard whose nationality was not immediately clear, in a suicide attack on the police training center in the southern city of Kandahar.
Horrible. Although I'm sure we'll be greeted shortly with the cheery news that an Al Qaeda #3 was just killed in a drone attack.
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As the wingnut's heads begin to explode
MONDAY, June 7 (HealthDay News) -- When compared to teens of the same age, adolescents raised by lesbian parents are doing just fine socially, psychologically and academically, new research finds.
Not only that, they have fewer social problems, and less aggressive and rule-breaking behaviors than other teens.
The nearly 20-year study has followed 78 teens since their lesbian mothers were planning their pregnancies, and concluded that these children "demonstrate healthy psychological adjustment." These findings stand in contrast to what some vocal opponents of gay or lesbian parents might have expected.
This would be like the Feds telling a Mafia loan shark that he only has to pay back a small percentage of the vig and that he can keep the rest.
I have not laughed this hard since the last time I laughed this hard!
Notorious Real Estate Agent-Dentist-Lawyer Orly Taitz the Birther Queen is on the GOP ballot in Californiastan to be the nominee for Secretary of State; and she stands a chance of winning!
Politico tells us…
…Now she's running for the GOP nomination for secretary of state, and with her establishment-backed primary opponent mounting a less-than-stellar campaign against her, operatives say there's a chance she could win.
"It'd be a disaster for the Republican party," says James Lacy, a conservative GOP operative in the state. "Can you imagine if [gubernatorial candidate] Meg Whitman and [candidate for Lt. Gov.] Abel Maldonado — both of whom might have a chance to win in November — had to run with Orly Taitz as secretary of state, who would make her cockamamie issues about Obama's birth certificate problems at the forefront of her activities?"
(Via Gawker)
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Rocketman serenades the Pigman - For a $1M fee, Elton John entertained at Junkie Limbaugh's farce of a fourth marriage. It should be noted that in most places in the US gay people cannot get married even once. Guests at the wedding included Turdblossom; actor-politician Daddy-Grandpa (Fred Thompson); former Kansas City Royals slugger George Brett; Fox News commentator and water-boarding aficionado, Sean Hannity; former New York City Mayor and opportunist, serial philanderer Rudolph Giuliani; New England Patriots owner Bob Kraft; former Clinton adviser and one-man freak-show James Carville and his dog-faced Franken-bride, GOP analyst Mary Matalin; and silent Supreme Court Justice and notorious napper, the self-loathing Clarence Thomas.
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On Saturday, President Obama announced that he will be nominating Defense Department intelligence chief James Clapper to be the new Director of National Intelligence (DNI). Clapper said it was 'unquestionably' true that Iraq had moved all the WMD to Syria.
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What to do with old tires:
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"Helen Thomas declared that Jews should get the hell out of Palestine and go back to Germany and Poland. " Sam Stein, lying about what Helen Thomas said over at HuffingtonPost.com, Link
Why do they keep lying about what she said?
Are the pro-Israel "reporters" intentionally lying?
What else could explain it?
If they tell the truth, the quote isn't so bad, so they change what she said to make it seem harsher.
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Wisco: Media is no help in oil disaster.
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20/20 takes a look at the kids of the Westboro Baptist Church, including one daughter who was been cast out after rejecting their hate. Watch this.
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.The one thing to remember when listening to bigoted fools like Tom Tancredo is that they are a minority.
I used to think, I used to believe that the greatest threat we ever had to this country — I remember when I was a kid, it used to be Russia with the atomic bombs, and after that it was al Qaeda — but there is somebody who is a greater threat to American liberty today than anybody else I can think of. His name is Barack Obama. He does not see the America that you and I see. He looks at a different place. He looks at the America that you and I love, he looks at the America that the Founders put together, and he says, "I don't like that, I'm going to create something else." And he says, when his friend, the President of Mexico is here, he says, "We are not defined by borders." Well maybe he isn't defined by borders. Citizenship is not important. I can understand why somebody like Barack Obama would say citizenship is not important since he refuses to even produce his own birth certificate!
Good one, Tom. What does a Kenyan know about American citizenship, right?
Pathetic little man. He wanted to be a president.
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Why aren't Tony Hayward or BP paying for private security for his family? Why are they getting police protection on the British taxpayers' quid instead of private security? We understand that death threats and hate mail can make one "rather uncomfortable" but honestly, we understand the rage directed at the Haywards, even if we don't approve of targeting the families of the culprits who run the truly evil BP.
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"Today, I do not trust McChrystal anymore than some people trust the New York Times, Obama or Bush. If McChrystal could be trusted, I would go back to my better life. McChrystal is a great killer but this war is above his head." --Michael Yon
That was the "losing Cronkite" moment for the war in Afghanistan, whether people fully realize it yet or not. There was no one - no one more ready, willing and eager to embrace COIN and the mindset that necessarily goes along with it. That is because he was a warrior before he was a journalist, and he is no ordinary journalist. Hell, Yon is no ordinary war correspondent. He is a former Green Beret and he has spent more time embedded with troops in Iraq and Afghanistan than any other reporter. He has spent more time in the field than just about anyone. I don't have to agree with him to respect his work and his dedication and the fact that he is not a member of the 101st Fighting Keyboardists Chairborne Brigade and has earned the right to his point of view by putting his ass on the line forming it.
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And with that, the meme is set ...
Cue the faux outrage and the cries of "we told you he was just another angry black man!" Matt Drudge has decreed that the President went "street" so that will be the meme that is pushed by the worthless sycophants and whores in the right-wing controlled corporate media.
In case you have missed it, the President sat down with Matt Lauer for a Today Show interview that aired this morning. In the interview Lauer asks the President whether he should "kick butt" - that bit of context is conveniently left out of the clip NBC has been playing on a loop for the last 12 hours. The clip just shows the President answering. "A month ago," he explains, "I was meeting with fishermen down there, standing in the rain talking about what a potential crisis this could be. And I don't sit around just talking to experts because this is a college seminar -- we talk to these folks because they potentially have the best answers, so I know whose ass to kick."
For weeks now the punditocracy has been shrieking that the President has not been showing enough anger and emotion, and Maureen Down even trotted out the weariest cliche of them all, the one that casts "Obama-as-Spock" when what America really wants - nay, demands is President Camacho.
For the MoDos of the Village, it will not be enough, while the purveyors of faux outrage are surely clutching their pearls and calling for the fainting couch because the President was angry and coarse, and said mean things about Tony Hayward, who just wants his life back, and if BP stock keeps falling, it will be all Obama's fault.
Wait and see.
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So let's see if we have this straight - Bernie Madoff thinks he's the victim? That's what it sounds like to us when he is quoted as saying "Fuck my victims. I carried them for twenty years, and now I'm doing 150 years," in a long article in New York magazine. He comes off as not sorry he stole billions of dollars, but sorry he got caught. The way he tells it, his victims were rich and greedy and wanted more, so they deserved it. Of course, he was rich and greedy and wanted more, so he just took it, and deserves his prison sentence, too, whether he believes so or not.
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With Dems like this, who needs Republicans
Congress... on behalf of the corporate whore M$M... just took the first step in eliminating or at least crippling the only source of real information available to the American public untainted by Wall Street dollars and the corporate agenda.
74 Democrats signed a joint letter to the FCC supporting internet throttling by Verizon, ATT and Comcast. Throttling lets carriers slow or block internet traffic. This is a clear attack on net neutrality.House Speaker Nancy Pelosi just endorsed net neutrality. But The Money Party is busy buying votes. Here's a Top Ten list of the biggest rake-offs by the 74 Democrats. They had a total take of $2.8 million with an average of $37,000 a piece from industry sources and lobbyists. No telling how many jobs, trips, and other favors were provided. The Money Party is nothing, if not thorough.
Michael Collins, the author of the linked article has a bit different take on it than I do. He seems to feel it's a simple matter of economics:
Why would the major carriers want to control internet traffic by slowing it down or blocking it on occasion?We'll call it the BP syndrome. They're excessively cheap. In the good old days, the original internet (Telenet's public data network) built network capacity based on "the Mother's Day" principle. The network was built to tolerate peak loads with the same level of service it normally provided, which was excellent.
Since the cable and telephone companies bought up the original network providers, a race to the bottom has begun in terms of quality of service. Instead of maximum quality at all times, the new motto is, "let them eat crap." If the network is too busy, just cut off the public in favor of the higher paying corporate and government customers.
This well could be a more rational view than my little conspiracy theory but I'm betting that if they win this round we'll soon be seeing more attacks on net neutrality and only viable competition the M$M has and it won't involve just throughput speeds next time.
These people are out to stifle any form of meaningful and collective dissent and just where is it you find most of the dissent today? Just sayin', that's all.
Copy of the letter HERE:
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Blue Girl:
A little over a year ago, when I learned that medical personnel had been complicit in the torture of "war on terror" detainees, I felt like I had been punched in the gut. It was appalling, staggering even, to learn that the people who promise to "first, do no harm" went along with the architects of the Bush administration's torture policy. I literally was sick to my stomach learning what medical people had gone along with, and I thought it couldn't possibly get any worse than that.
Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) today released evidence it says indicates that the Bush administration conducted "illegal and unethical human experimentation and research" on detainees' response to torture while in CIA custody after 9/11. The group says such illegal activity would violate the Nuremburg Code, and could open the door to prosecutions. Their report is based on publicly available documents, and explores the participation of medical professionals in the CIA's "enhanced interrogation program." Download the full report at phrtorturepapers.org.Boing Boing spoke with the lead medical author of the report, Dr. Scott Allen, who is co-director of the Center For Prisoner Health and Human Rights at Brown University, and Medical Advisor to PHR.
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Boing Boing: The first thing that came to mind as I read this report is that we're really talking about treating a vulnerable population-prisoners, war detainees-like lab rats.PHR: Correct. I am a former prison doctor and have conducted some research in prisons. I speak from direct experience in understanding what is allowable, and why there is a rigorous regime of human subject protections, especially for vulnerable subject populations.
Boing Boing: What is the significance of the report you and your colleagues are releasing today?
PHR: This is the first report to describe evidence that the CIA interrogation program not only involved torture, but it also involved human experimentation. That experimentation is related to the role of the "medical monitors," the doctors and psychologists who are directed by policy to monitor torture techniques.
As a framing exercise: if you are an M.D. who is tasked with keeping torture safe, you have a practical problem. Set aside the ethical problem for a moment. How do you know how to do it? We were pretty thorough in thinking through it: we scoured the literature and found what experience was on the scientific record about the effects of these techniques. There's one body of evidence out there from torture survivors, which is in our prior report, "Leave No Marks." Everything in that report points to the understanding that this cannot be made safe. It is all very dangerous, and it's designed to harm, so it's ridiculous to think you can make it safe.
The other body of evidence was the experience of investigators who worked with soldiers. In that program they did limited application of these techniques on volunteer subjects. The mock interrogations never went beyond 2 or 3 days, the waterboarding when it happened was limited to 1 or 2 short exposures, and in a technique that was dramatically different than what was applied to detainees in the black sites.
No one really understands the long or short term effects of these techniques.
So, in order to do the job the medical monitors were given to do, it left them two choices, both of which were awful:
One, they could just wing it. You're talking about techniques that carry high risks of PTSD, but also high risks of physical injury and death (we know that there is public evidence that at least 4, maybe as many as 8 detainee deaths are related to these techniques)-you don't want to wing it. So I think it's certainly possible that while they weren't eagerly looking forward to setting up research they might have been backed into this by saying, let's take notes. That citation we note of Appendix F in the CIA 2004 Inspector General's report, the one that describes the directives to doctors, says, 'Take these notes in a very meticulous way about how detainees respond to waterboarding so we can better inform our procedures in future.' That's describing the framework of a research protocol.
Now, whether they considered it research or not is irrelevant. There are some crimes for which you must prove intent. Human subject protections have no such qualifier. Particularly when there's risk for injury to the subject, you've crossed that line.
A year ago, when I found out that medical personnel had been complicit in torture, I said that healthcare professionals have a place in detention facilities, but it is by definition an advocacy role. Anything less is unconscionable, and the personnel who participated in the torture of detainees should all be stripped of their license and livelihood, and imprisoned for a long, long, long, long time.
And after those sentences are served, they should face a jury of their professional peers.
Those of us who have been tarred with the brush used to paint those thugs should have some sort of say in their ultimate fate.
I am doubling down on that sentiment now that I know medical people were not merely complicit in torture, they engaged in experimentation on human beings.
If that is not a prosecutable war crime, then we may as well cashier the republic and close up shop today, because we have no right to continued existence.
