Author: Brian

Police informants had already infiltrated. A hidden camera and a microphone had already recorded meetings. Her phones were tapped early in Sarah Palin’s run for office. The mother of Bristol Palin’s beau sent text messages discussing drug transactions less than a month after Sarah Palin was nominated.

The case involves 179 OxyContin tablets. A trooper’s affidavit reveals, as it’s said in the Washington Post, that Sarah Palin’s candidacy factored into the investigation with state officials delaying execution of a search warrant.

Bristol Palin and Levi Johnston were expecting their child December 18.

Growing list of Republicans charged with criminal activity.

Graft. Perjury. Voter fraud. At least 60 are charged as pedophiles.

Outright mania excluded.

Too many Republican offenders!

Familiar with many many things, she can be elected merely because she will scorn our media.

The New York Times interviewers asked,

“Could you, for the sake of storytelling, could you tell us a little bit about that moment, like, where you were, what you said to [your husband] about your decision, how that played out?”

Caroline Kennedy sniped, “Have you guys ever thought about writing for, like, a woman’s magazine or something?”

NYT: “What do you have against women’s magazines?”
CK: “Nothing at all, but I thought you were the crack political team here.”

interview transcript here

As costly and as dominant as it has become, is there one division of government not damaged?

More people in this country are getting away with murder.

FBI figures show that the homicide clearance rate, as detectives call it, dropped from 91 percent in 1963 — the first year records were kept in the manner they are now — to 61 percent in 2007.

Source: washingtonpost.com

It’s difficult to get a sense of scale with mere numbers. TVA is surveying the damage of more than 5 million tons of burnt coal and mud spilled over 3000 acres.

Notice how near to streams and wetland these pond levee were first built. Drinking water is an immediate concern but the damage will remain for decades and spread into dozens of jurisdictions.

Notice how far the mud flood has traveled from the power plant.

Notice how deep.

These photos are part of a thorough slide show at the Knoxville News Sentinel.

An aerial video is here that will also be surprising.

[Tip to Citizen K]

If there’s a chain gang needed, we can collect the crews on Wall Street.

Authorities are taking the conventional approach. Knoxville activists were detained by the Tennessee Valley Authority police for photographing the site, although it’s said they were scuttled off private ground.

Poison is never private.

One way or the right way.

USA Schools avoid ‘education’ and specialize in ‘training’

Jonathan Kozol, way back in his first or second book, in the ’60s, noted that that those who believe USA schools are failures do not understand the true purpose of the schools. American schools function to ensure that as few children as humanly possible are able to escape the socio-economic niches for which they were born.

The true purpose of schooling in America is to imbue students with ‘virtues’ of obedience and passivity, while uprooting as completely as possible any inclination toward critique, skepticism or even mild curiosity.

As another noted education scholar, Joel Spring, put it (albeit somewhat harshly or indelicately) around the same time, USA schools are part of a national sorting system by which children are assessed according to their abilities to meet the needs of elites for manpower.

There’s a world of literature about ‘drop-outs’, but that term blames the victim.

Only 3 percent of kids’ meals served at fast-food restaurants meet federal guidelines.

Twenty-five percent of children aged 4 to 8 years consume fast food on a typical day. This is the first study to examine the nutrient quality of fast food meals in a major U.S. metropolitan market.

Fast-food companies are not required to sell nutritious meals. More than 65 percent sell too much fat. More than 75 percent are deficient in calcium, iron and vitamins.

The first study to examine the nutrient quality!!!

“My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right.”

[link]

Carl Schurz was our 13th Secretary of the Interior.

“The man who in times of popular excitement boldly and unflinchingly resists hot-tempered clamor for an unnecessary war, and thus exposes himself to the opprobrious imputation of a lack of patriotism or of courage, to the end of saving his country from a great calamity, is, as to “loving and faithfully serving his country,” at least as good a patriot as the hero of the most daring feat of arms, and a far better one than those who, with an ostentatious pretense of superior patriotism, cry for war before it is needed, especially if then they let others do the fighting.”

He fought to stop political appointments in government. Positions and promotions were based on merit, not politics and patronage, not ideology and lobbying. He propelled requiring a cause to be fired. He also pioneered forest preservation.

Speaking about a rule of honor in America, Carl Schurz said in 1898 [wiki]:

“Of course I do not expect it meekly to pocket real insults if they should be offered to it.

“But, surely, it should not, as our boyish jingoes wish it to do, swagger about among the nations of the world, with a chip on its shoulder, shaking its fist in everybody’s face.

“Of course, it should not tamely submit to real encroachments upon its rights.

“But, surely, it should not, whenever its own notions of right or interest collide with the notions of others, fall into hysterics and act as if it really feared for its own security and its very independence.

“As a true gentleman, conscious of his strength and his dignity, it should be slow to take offense.

“In its dealings with other nations it should have scrupulous regard, not only for their rights, but also for their self-respect.

“With all its latent resources for war, it should be the great peace power of the world. It should never forget what a proud privilege and what an inestimable blessing it is not to need and not to have big armies or navies to support.

“It should seek to influence mankind, not by heavy artillery, but by good example and wise counsel.

“It should see its highest glory, not in battles won, but in wars prevented.

“It should be so invariably just and fair, so trustworthy, so good tempered, so conciliatory, that other nations would instinctively turn to it as their mutual friend and the natural adjuster of their differences, thus making it the greatest preserver of the world’s peace.

“This is not a mere idealistic fancy. It is the natural position of this great republic among the nations of the earth.

“It is its noblest vocation, and it will be a glorious day for the United States when the good sense and the self-respect of the American people see in this their “manifest destiny.”

“It all rests upon peace.

“Is not this peace with honor? There has, of late, been much loose speech about ‘Americanism’. Is not this good Americanism? It is surely today the Americanism of those who love their country most. And I fervently hope that it will be and ever remain the Americanism of our children and our children’s children.”

Mike Masnick at Techdirt is always explaining something to somebody.

Basically, there is some amount of irrationality in the system, but over time, as more and more people seem to be making money against the irrationality, more and more explanations are made for why that irrationality is actually rational. And since the irrational activity goes on for so long, it becomes nearly impossible for most people to really believe that things are so irrational. So, it’s not that there’s anyone who did anything wrong that needs to be blamed, so much as we need to blame ourselves, for not taking enough time to recognize that what seems irrational in the beginning actually is irrational.

sassy outspoken and noisy hippie girl living in Utah

I can hear the whispers at next year’s neighborhood holiday gathering now. “Oh, yes, that’s Nakedjen. And her seven husbands. Yes, seven husbands. I hear they spend all day wandering the house naked! She never allows them to wear clothes unless they’re going outside and sometimes not even then. Betty told me that she’s seen them over the back fence having a naked BBQ! I mean, really. Who does she think she is?”

Hello, I’m Nakedjen. I believe that relationships should be defined by the adults who actually participate in them.

There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if everything is a miracle. – Albert Einstein

OK:

Current ways of doing business have contributed to climate change, resource depletion, habitat destruction, and increasing rates of cancer and other diseases. In contrast, clean technologies are products, services, and production processes that greatly reduce or eliminate negative environmental and health impacts, and use resources more responsibly. They reduce our exposures to toxins in our work, homes, and environment; reduce pollution, waste, energy, and water use; and provide good jobs, from entry level to executive.

Santa’s looking for all the help he can get and has outsourced the entire North Pole operation to Bangalore.

In an economic slump and a subprime mortgage crisis, it’s expensive caring for a workforce of elves and a herd of magical reindeer. “Dashing through the snow appears wasteful,” wrote Jon Methvan, “Certainly not a prudent act in uncertain times.”

The Bangalore work for one-quarter the cost of North Pole elves. The real cost savings is replacing the reindeer, but water buffalo won’t fly or dash or prance so Santa is mostly herding them down the street.

Now Amar, now Kalik, now Lakshmin and Dharmesh
On Vishnu, on Sandeep, on Rajiv and Mukesh
To the top of the porch, to the top of the wall
Now go eat some hay. But not too much.

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“You’d better watch out, get ready to cry, You’d better go hide, I’m telling you why ‘cuz Santa Claus will take you to hell. He is your favorite idol, you worship at his feet, but when you stand before your God He won’t help you take the heat. So get this fact straight: you’re feeling God’s hate, Santa’s to blame for the economy’s fate, Santa Claus will take you to hell.” – Westboro Baptist Church

Fishers.
Master Assimilators of Agglomeration

It is as if there’s been only bullies since the Inquisition.
We are closer to a rational age, but it’s not in my lifetime.

washingtonpost.com: Thomas A. Schweich served the Bush administration as ambassador for counter-narcotics in Afghanistan and deputy assistant secretary of state for international law enforcement affairs.

“The Pentagon is muscling in everywhere.

“It’s time to stop the mission creep.

“We no longer have a civilian-led government.

“It is hard for a lifelong Republican and son of a retired Air Force colonel to say this, but the most unnerving legacy of the Bush administration is the encroachment of the Department of Defense into a striking number of aspects of civilian government.

“Our Constitution is at risk.”

I’m angry my blog turns to political crap but I know mainstream media seeks to calm us (!) and will fail to paint the picture.

Bush Push:

The Environmental Protection Agency routinely allows companies to keep new information about their chemicals secret, including compounds that have been shown to cause cancer and respiratory problems, the Journal Sentinel has found.

The newspaper examined more than 2,000 filings in the EPA’s registry of dangerous chemicals for the past three years. In more than half the cases, the EPA agreed to keep the chemical name a secret. In hundreds of other cases, it allowed the company filing the report to keep its name and address confidential.

This is despite a federal law calling for public notice of any new information through the EPA’s program monitoring chemicals that pose substantial risk. The whole idea of the program is to warn the public of newfound dangers.

EPA veils hazardous substances, by Susanne Rust and Meg Kissinger of the Journal Sentinel: “Legal experts and environmental advocates say the practice of “sanitizing,” or blacking out, this information not only strips vital information from the public, it violates the agency’s own law.”

An unpublished federal report has concluded the US reconstruction effort in Iraq has been a $100 billion failure.

Bush blew $100 Billion reconstructing Iraq…

But time and again, the issue is, we’ve had a government which has been really shrunk and hollowed out in terms of its ability to oversee and regulate private businesses, private corporations and what it is they’re doing.

And that is the function of government, is to make sure that everybody plays fair. They’re referees.

And if there’s not enough referees around, the game gets ugly.

our government has been decimated

The financial crisis is not only a cause of our national malaise, but also a symptom of the deeper wrong turn that America made decades ago, when Ronald Reagan declared that government had to get out of the way to restore the national economy.

…Reagan made government the enemy.

There was never much validity to Reagan’s viewpoint. The antigovernment view had no basis in fact—rather, it was a convenient way for the rich to say they had no responsibilities…

…a green light to the greed and corner-cutting that laid the base for reckless financial deregulation and the wheeling and dealing that has now brought the economy to its knees.

But, most important, it undermined Americans’ sense of community, both as citizens within the United States and as citizens of the world. There were no longer shared goals, only individual attainment.

…
We will now enter a new era, in which practical problem solving will be key, and in which we will understand our problems not mainly as individuals, but as members of a generation confronted with unique challenges.

I’m sure that in the coming years, the Obama generation will feel like the Kennedy generation of the 1960s, the one that JFK boldly addressed in his inaugural address when he said, “I do not believe that any of us would exchange places with any other people or any other generation. The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it—and the glow from that fire can truly light the world.”

The Obama Generation Takes the Helm, by Jeffrey Sachs

Eugene Jarecki’s film The Trials of Henry Kissinger was widely acclaimed and won the 2002 Amnesty International Award.

He spoke to the BBC about his new film Why We Fight.

“Eisenhower believed that no nation could ever achieve perfect security, any more than we [as individuals] can. We all know that we could walk out of the house tomorrow morning and get hit by a car; that’s just part of being alive. Yet nations, particularly the United States, tell their people that it’s possible to destroy evil in the world. Eisenhower viewed this as illusory and dangerous. A nation trying to achieve perfect security will never get there, but along the way it can bankrupt itself on several levels: militarily, economically, politically, and of course spiritually.

The picture I have in my mind is of a house: That’s America.

As America got richer and more powerful, it had all sorts of riches in the house that it increasingly worried about the world envying. As we become more and more of an empire, of course, the barbarians are always at the gate. We become that much more paranoid, like a paranoid tycoon who thinks everyone wants a piece of him. So the richer the house got, the more fearful we got of it being under threat, as ironic as that might seem.

So what do you do? You get a gun.

Increasingly, you start pawning the articles in the house to get a bigger and bigger gun. After a while, if you take that to its logical extreme, you will pawn the entire house to get the biggest gun, and you forsake all of the things that made the house valuable.

At the end of the day, you’re standing in front of an empty house with a great big gun.

Executive – one who can make significant decisions on his own authority.

wonkroom.thinkprogress.org
Recent executive orders of G.W.Bush:

ADMINISTRATION
– Move political appointees to permanent posts

HEALTH CARE
– Cut Medicaid
– Workers to refuse “morally objectionable” procedures
– Revising rules for international drug trials
– Narrowing the definition of combat related disability
– Allowing states to set premiums and raise co-payments

ENVIRONMENT
– Mining near the Grand Canyon
– Discounting global warming when assessing species risks
– Weakening the Endangered Species Act
– Eliminating review of fishing regulations
– Allowing more emissions from power plants
– Opening protected land to energy development
– Allowing factory farms to self-regulate waste
– Altering solid waste definition
– Allowing snowmobiles in Yellowstone
– Allowing coal companies to dump dirt and rock into streams

CIVIL LIBERTIES
– Allowing guns in national parks
– Allowing broader law-enforcement monitoring
– Implementing the REAL ID Act

LABOR
– Truckers to work 14 hour days
– Requiring labor unions to file extensive financial reports
– Making it harder to regulate toxic substances on the job
– Stripping collective bargaining rights from federal employees
– Relaxing rules on investment adviser conflicts of interest
– Revising H-2A visa rules to lower wages

TAXES
– Reducing corporate taxes

FACT — Poverty Increased Under Bush

The poverty rate has risen each year since 2001. Bailout or not, corporate profits have risen more than 50 percent since 2001. Household income has fallen each year Bush has been in office.

US Census: Official statistics on poverty in the United States. Roughly 40% fall below the poverty line at some time within a 10 year span. [wiki on US poverty]

Growth and Free Markets? Government versus Free Markets? Bah! Republican policies have created the largest redistribution of wealth in history.

The poverty rate for children [chart] is the highest in the industrial world.

The Pew Internet & American Life Project asked the experts to assess the Internet in the year 2020:

• The mobile device will be the primary connection tool to the internet for most people in the world in 2020.
• The transparency of people and organizations will increase, but that will not necessarily yield more personal integrity, social tolerance, or forgiveness.
• Voice recognition and touch user-interfaces with the internet will be more prevalent and accepted by 2020.
• Those working to enforce intellectual property law and copyright protection will remain in a continuing “arms race,” with the “crackers” who will find ways to copy and share content without payment.
• The divisions between personal time and work time and between physical and virtual reality will be further erased for everyone who is connected, and the results will be mixed in their impact on basic social relations.
• “Next-generation” engineering of the network to improve the current internet architecture is more likely than an effort to rebuild the architecture from scratch.

Someday we’ll understand things we thought we already knew. For example, the primary purpose of yawning is to control brain temperature. Exhaustion increases deep brain temperature and a yawn cools it down.

It is so difficult on cities. Revenues falling. Budgets going bust.

Because of great public debt in California, there is a new campaign to save money by reducing inflow to wastewater plants.

I hope the idea works.