Checks & Balances Org.

Solar Storm Bombards Earth

2012-01-24T12:35:00.000-08:00

"It begins on the sun's surface: a broad, hellish plain of boiling 5,700 degree gas. Powerful magnetic fields arc upwards from the surface, rising high into the solar atmosphere to form giant, twisting arcades of energy. Matter streams up these arches to be gripped in a magnetic vise a million miles above the surface. Then something happens. Something shifts. Magnetic lines of force in the arcade snap like steel cables on the bridge to heaven. Billions of tons of solar gas are suddenly blown outward, exploding across interplanetary space. Three days later the shimmering ball of energy smashes head-on into the unsuspecting Earth.

While the paragraph above might sound like the beginning of a bad science fiction movie it's really nothing more than a slightly hyperbolic description of the last three days. The only error in my description of the solar storm that struck us today is that we were not caught unawares. We have been watching the whole time. In that fact lays a deeper truth speaking to much more than solar activity.

Yesterday I received an email from NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center. They had issued a watch for a "geomagnetic storm" associated with a bright flare on the sun Sunday evening. The expectation was that storm would arrive today "with possible impacts to navigation, the power grid and satellites." NOAA says it's the most powerful such event to hit Earth since 2005.

Space weather, as it is called, originates with solar magnetic activity. The sun is a giant spinning ball of charged particles. In addition to its spin, the heat released from the core through nuclear fusion eventually sets the upper layers of the sun into a kind of boiling motion called convection. All that motion — spin and convection — means lots of charged particles streaming this way and that. Since current (the flow of charges) produces magnetic fields, the outer domains of the sun are ruled by magnetism. Magnetic fields are the source of all those cool images of giant flares erupting in planet-spanning arcades of super-hot plasma. It's also the source of so-called Coronal Mass Ejections or CMEs, which are, essentially, the space storms that space weather is all about.

CMEs are eruptions of matter and magnetism from the sun into space. A typical CME will blow 10 billion kilograms (about 22 billion pounds) of solar plasma into space along with enough energy to represent a flotilla of 220 aircraft carriers moving at 500 km/s. The fact the CME's are quite common says a lot about the power locked up in an ordinary star like the sun.

While 1 to 3 CMEs may occur every day, we only notice the ones that slam into the Earth on their journey across the solar system. When a CME crosses the Earth it runs into our planet's own magnetic field. Charged particles from the CME get trapped by the Earth's magnetic field and stream down toward the planet's surface near the poles.

When those CME particles, running down magnetic field lines, strike atmospheric gas atoms, the collisions cause the atoms to light up like Christmas tree bulbs. That is the origin of the simmering walls of color we called aurora. There was a time when pretty lights were all there was to space weather. Those days are over.

Before we became a high-tech culture, the collision of the CME with the Earth was no cause for alarm. Now space weather poses serious risks for everyone. For astronauts, the torrent of high-energy particles pose health risks via heavy doses of ionizing radiation. Orbiting satellites used for communications, weather prediction and a 100 other purposes can feel the blow too, as CME particles destroy solar panels and sensitive electronics.

Sprawling grids of power-lines on Earth can also feel the effect of all that CME current dumped suddenly into the atmosphere. Electric grids can overload and, without warning, millions of people might be plunged into darkness (as occurred in 1989, when a severe space storm caused a system-wide power failure in Quebec).

To deal with the problem, NASA and other space agencies have begun to continually monitor the Sun. As soon as a CME is observed, powerful supercomputers are engaged to predict its path through space. If the storm of matter and magnetism appears headed toward Earth then precautions can be taken like bringing astronauts in from space walks or putting satellites into "safe-modes" where their electronics will be less likely to suffer damage.

While there is enough remarkable science related to space weather to fill 20 blog posts, I want to end this description with the briefest of thoughts which never fails to astonish me. For thousands of generations the human habitation of this planet knew nothing of space weather. We knew Earth-bound winds and even learned to use those winds to become a sea faring race. When gossamer veils of light appeared in the northern skies we watched, wondered and prayed and then went about our business.

Now we have crossed a threshold. Now we have become a high-tech, space-faring race encircling the planet's surface with power-lines and its skies with orbiting satellites. There are other winds and other storms we must now be attentive to as we go about our business. In this way, as in so many others, our long childhood as a species has ended for better or for worse."

http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2012/01/24/145700040/storms-in-the-void-space-weather-and-childhoods-end

Economy: 'It Can't Get Any Worse'

2011-12-06T11:48:00.000-08:00

Coming after Gen X and Gen Y, the next generation of young people have been called "Gen Wrong Place, Wrong Time." With unemployment and college costs both sky-high and the housing market in collapse, young people today are facing extraordinary economic uncertainty.

Perhaps nowhere is that more clear than in a small town like East Millinocket, Maine.

Try to ask young folks here how they feel about their economic future, and you pretty much have your answer before you even start.

"There are not a lot of 22-year-olds in the area," says school superintendent Quenten Clark. "They're gone."

Clark has seen it, both personally and professionally. The once-booming mill town used to offer residents what was basically a guaranteed ticket into the middle class. Young families flocked here, and the high school was bursting with 100 to 200 students per grade.

But today, as the paper industry has declined and young people have left town for college and jobs, classes have shrunk to 20 or 30 students. Clark's own kids left town to start their careers in Beijing and Africa, a completely foreign idea when Clark was a kid.

More On East Millinocket, Maine

Hard Times: A Journey Across America
Reduced Wages At Reopened Maine Mill Divide Town"It used to be that opportunity was a quarter-mile away — at the bottom of the hill," he says, pointing toward the mill from his office at the high school.

Indeed, high school kids used to literally run the day they graduated to the paper mill, where they were guaranteed a good job — at a good wage for life. The mill once employed about 4,000; today, just 200 or so work there.

"It's a little scary, because it's going to be tough," says Jared Lyons, a senior at Schenck High School. As an honor roll student and captain of the soccer team, Lyons is the kind of kid who should be feeling downright cocky about his future. But having watched his father — and so many others — lose their mill jobs and seeing the economy crumble, he worries about how he'll afford college and achieve his dream to become a doctor.

"It really can't get worse than it is now," he says.

Looking For Work

Matt Morris, a junior who also wants to make a career in the medical field, agrees.

"The whole economy sucks, for lack of a better term," he says. "We're going to have to work very hard — and a lot of it isn't in our hands, either."

View Hard Times road trip in a larger map That can be the hardest part for kids who've always been told that if they just study hard and get good grades, they could do whatever they want.

Instead, students like these — who've done everything they're supposed to — have a hard time finding even an after-school job for minimum wage. There are very few options in East Millinocket, where there is little more left than the pharmacy, two bars and a gas station.

Crystal Rodrigues, 17, has been looking for a job, to no avail, while she studies for the GED. She didn't want to talk about it herself, but her dad, Duane, says Crystal's job search has been almost unbearable.

"She seems really depressed about it," he says. "She's really down. She feels like there's no hope, and she just stays in her room all day. And then sometimes she'll have more hope again, and she'll go, 'I'm going to go out today, and I'm going to go look again.' "

But with unemployment around 17 percent around here, the competition for jobs is fierce. Even if you are lucky enough to have a car so you can make the trek to one of the larger surrounding towns, it's not much easier.

"I tried at McDonald's and at the grocery store and stuff," says Tayla Federico, 17. But she has yet to hear back. "They already have people working there — like old people."

"A lot of these kids are competing now in the workplace with people who have 25 years' experience who are not too good to be working for $7.50 an hour behind the fryolator," says Nancy McKechnie, youth manager for the Eastern Maine Development Corp. "And so that adds a whole other layer to kids' challenges."

The EMDC is a nonprofit that offers job training, career counseling, and classes to both young and older folks here. It's not unusual to find parents and their children enrolled in the same courses or both working in the computer room looking for jobs.

Elizabeth Haven, 18, is enrolled in medical classes through Eastern Maine Community College and is hoping to become a nurse.

"The odds are stacked against us younger kids," Haven says. "But they'll always need nurses and doctors, and you'll be set for life if you go in the medical field. So, I should be fine."

Administrators describe Haven as one of the most driven kids they've met. She undoubtedly will be fine, they say. It's the less motivated kids they worry about.

Gone are the good old days, when everyone — valedictorian or not — could count on a mill job. But Schenck High School Principal John Farrington says that idea has been deeply ingrained in the culture here, and some have yet to adapt.

"The window of opportunity is a lot smaller now than it was for my generation," Farrington says. "I wonder all the time what is going to become of young men and women if they don't get their act together in a hurry. And how do we light the fire under them? It's a tough job."

'You're Tougher'

Motivating and navigating the college application and career planning process can be especially challenging for kids whose parents never went through it themselves.

Toni Federico signed up her daughter, Tayla, for help studying for her GED and preparing for a job in the medical field. "You need someone to guide you," Federico says.

Jared Lyons has that part figured out — he has known he wants to be a doctor since he was a little kid. He also knows his path will be much longer than his father's short walk down to the mill. But it's worth it, Jared says, if that's what it takes to make sure that he doesn't find himself 20 years from now out of work, like his father and so many others.

"I wouldn't trade [places]," he says. "I'd rather be in this situation and be more prepared. You're tougher if you get through it."

"That's your dream," says his mom, Kim. "You want him to go farther than we did. Shoot for the moon, but hope you land among the stars. Even if you don't get to exactly where you wanted to go, at least you've gone somewhere."

The sad part, she says, is that "somewhere" will most likely not be East Millinocket.

For Jared, achieving that American dream of prosperity will almost surely mean leaving the place where his entire family has lived — and prospered — for generations.

2012 a fake?

2011-06-15T19:23:00.000-07:00

"David Morrison,
NAI Senior Scientist
June 1, 2009

1. What is the origin of the prediction that the world will end in December 2012?
The story started with claims that Nibiru, a supposed planet discovered by the Sumerians, is headed toward Earth. Zecharia Sitchin, who writes fiction about the ancient Mesopotamian civilization of Sumer, claimed in several books (e.g., The Twelfth Planet, published in 1976) that he has found and translated Sumerian documents that identify the planet Nibiru, orbiting the Sun every 3600 years. These Sumerian fables include stories of “ancient astronauts” visiting Earth from a civilization of aliens called the Anunnaki. Then Nancy Lieder, a self-declared psychic who claims she is channeling aliens, wrote on her website Zetatalk that the inhabitants of a fictional planet around the star Zeta Reticuli warned her that the Earth was in danger from Planet X or Nibiru. This catastrophe was initially predicted for May 2003, but when nothing happened the doomsday date was moved forward to December 2012. Only recently have these two fables been linked to the end of the Mayan long-count at the winter solstice in 2012 – hence the predicted doomsday date of December 21, 2012.

2. The Sumerians were the first great civilization, and they made many accurate astronomical predictions, including the existence of the planets Uranus, Neptune and Pluto. So why should we not believe their predictions about Nibiru?
Nibiru is a name in Babylonian astrology sometimes associated with the god Marduk. Nibiru appears as a minor character in the Babylonian creation poem Enuma Elish as recorded in the library of Assurbanipal, King of Assyria (668-627 BCE). Sumer flourished much earlier, from about the 23rd century to the 17th century BCE. The claims that Nibiru is a planet and was known to the Sumerians are contradicted by scholars who (unlike Zecharia Sitchin) study and translate the written records of ancient Mesopotamia. Sumer was indeed a great civilization, important for the development of agriculture, water management, urban life, and especially writing. However, they left very few records dealing with astronomy. Certainly they did not know about the existence of Uranus, Neptune or Pluto. They also had no understanding that the planets orbited the Sun, an idea that first developed in ancient Greece two millennia after the end of Sumer. Claims that Sumerians had a sophisticated astronomy, or that they even had a god named Nibiru, are the product of Sitchin’s imagination.

3. How can you deny the existence of Nibiru when NASA discovered it in 1983 and the story appeared in leading newspapers? At that time you called it Planet X, and later it was named Xena or Eris.
IRAS (the NASA Infrared Astronomy Satellite, which carried out a sky survey for 10 months in 1983) discovered many infrared sources, but none of them was Nibiru or Planet X or any other objects in the outer solar system. There is a good discussion from Caltech to be found at (spider.ipac.caltech.edu/staff/tchester/iras/no_tenth_planet_yet.html). Briefly, IRAS cataloged 350,000 infrared sources, and initially many of these sources were unidentified (which was the point, of course, of making such a survey). All of these observations have been followed up by subsequent studies with more powerful instruments both on the ground and in space. The rumor about a “tenth planet” erupted in 1984 after a scientific paper was published in Astrophysical Journal Letters titled “Unidentified point sources in the IRAS minisurvey”, which discussed several infrared sources with “no counterparts”. But these “mystery objects” were subsequently found to be distant galaxies (except one, which was a wisp of “infrared cirrus”), as published in 1987. No IRAS source has ever turned out to be a planet. A good discussion of this whole issue is to be found on Phil Plait’s website (www.badastronomy.com/bad/misc/planetx/science.html#iras). The bottom line is that Nibiru is a myth, with no basis in fact. To an astronomer, persistent claims about a planet that is “nearby” but “invisible” are just plain silly.

4. Maybe we should be asking about Planet X or Eris, not Nibiru. Why does NASA keep secret the orbit of Eris?
“Planet X” is an oxymoron when applied to a real object. The term has been used by astronomers over the past century for a possible or suspected object. Once the object is found, it is given a real name, as was done with Pluto and Eris, both of which were at some time referred to as Planet X. If a new object turns out to be not real, or not a planet, then you won’t hear about it again. If it is real, it is not called Planet X.

Eris is one of several dwarf planets recently found by astronomers in the outer solar system, all of them on normal orbits that will never bring them near Earth. Like Pluto, Eris is smaller than our Moon. It is very far away, and its orbit never brings it closer than about 4 billion miles. There is no secret about Eris and its orbit, as you can easily verify by googling it or looking it up in Wikipedia.

5. Do you deny that NASA built a South Pole Telescope (SPT) to track Nibiru? Why else would they build a telescope at the South Pole?
There is a telescope at the South Pole, but it was not built by NASA and not used to study Nibiru. The South Pole Telescope was supported by the National Science Foundation, and it is a radio telescope, not an optical instrument. It cannot take images or photos. You can look it up on Wikipedia. The Antarctic is a great place for astronomical infrared and short-wave-radio observations, and it also has the advantage that objects can be observed continuously without the interference of the day-night cycle.

I should add that it is impossible to imagine a geometry in which an object can be seen only from the South Pole. Even if it were due south of the Earth, it could be seen from the entire southern hemisphere.

6. There are many photos and videos of Nibiru on the Internet. Isn’t that proof that it exists?
The great majority of the photos and videos on the Internet are of some feature near the Sun (apparently supporting the claim that Nibiru has been hiding behind the Sun for the past several years.) These are actually false images of the Sun caused by internal reflections in the lens, often called lens flare. You can identify them easily by the fact that they appear diametrically opposite the real solar image, as if reflected across the center of the image. This is especially obvious in videos, where as the camera moves, the false image dances about always exactly opposite the real image. Similar lens flare is a source of many UFO photos taken at night with strong light sources such as streetlights in the frame. I am surprised that people don’t recognize this common photo artifact. I am also amazed that these photos showing something nearly as large and bright as the Sun (a “second sun”) are accepted together with claims made on some of the same websites that Nibiru is too faint to be seen or photographed except with large telescopes.

One widely reported telescopic photo (www.greatdreams.com/nibiru-possible.jpg) shows two views of an expanding gas cloud far beyond the solar system, which is not moving; you can see this from the fact that the stars are the same in both pictures. A sharp-eyed reader of this website identified these photos as a gas shell around the star V838 Mon. Wikipedia has a nice write-up and a beautiful photo of it from Hubble. Another high school student was initially impressed by posted images of a red blob that were said to be of Nibiru. Then he worked out in his Photoshop class how to make just such pictures starting from scratch.
One video posted in summer 2008 on Youtube (www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDKtkWIx00A) shows a guy standing in his kitchen claiming that one of the objects discovered by a NASA x-ray telescope is Nibiru. What is his evidence? That since this false-color x-ray image released by NASA is blue, this must really be a nearby planet with an ocean. This would be hilarious if it were not used to frighten people.

7. Can you explain the fact that the area at (5h 53m 27s, -6 10’ 58”) has been blackened out in Google Sky and Microsoft Telescope? People suggest that these have been blackened out because those are the co-ordinates where Nibiru is located at present.
Several people have asked me about this blank rectangle in Orion in Google Sky, which is a presentation of images from the Sloan Digital Survey. This can’t be a “hiding place” for Nibiru, since it is a part of the sky that could be seen from almost everywhere on the Earth in the winter of 2007-08 when much of the talk about Nibiru began. That would contradict the claims that Nibiru was hiding behind the Sun or that it could be seen only from the southern hemisphere. But I too was curious about this blank rectangle, so I asked a friend who is a senior scientist at Google. He replied that he “found out that the missing data is due to a processing error in the image stitching program we use to display the Sloan survey images. The team assures me that in the next run through, this will be fixed!”

8. If the government knew about Nibiru, wouldn’t they keep it a secret to avoid panic? Isn’t it the government’s job to keep the population at ease?
There are many objectives of government, but they do not include keeping the population at ease. My experience is that sometimes parts of the government do just the opposite, as in the frequent references to various terrorist threats or warnings about driving accidents on long holiday weekends, which are no more dangerous than any other time. There is a long history of associating bad things with political opponents (older readers will remember the “missile gap” in the 1960 election, younger ones will note the many current references to who is or is not keeping the U.S. safe from terrorists). Further, social scientists have pointed out that many of our concepts of public panic are the product of Hollywood, while in the real world people have a good record of helping each other in a time of danger. I think everyone also recognizes that keeping bad news secret usually backfires, making the issue even worse when the facts finally come out. And in the case of Nibiru, these facts would come out very soon indeed.

Even if they wanted to, the government could not keep Nibiru a secret. If it were real, it would be tracked by thousands of astronomers, amateurs as well a professional. These astronomers are spread all over the world. I know the astronomy community, and these scientists would not keep a secret even if ordered to. You just can’t hide a planet on its way to the inner solar system!

9. Why does the Mayan calendar say the world will end in 2012? I have heard that they have been pretty accurate in the past with other planetary predictions. How can you be sure you know more than they did?
Calendars exist for keeping track of the passage of time, not for predicting the future. The Mayan astronomers were clever, and they developed a very complex calendar. Ancient calendars are interesting to historians, but of they cannot match the ability we have today to keep track of time, or the precision of the calendars currently in use. The main point, however, is that calendars, whether contemporary or ancient, cannot predict the future of our planet or warn of things to happen on a specific date such as 2012.

I note that my desk calendar ends much sooner, on December 31 2009, but I do not interpret this as a prediction of Armageddon. It is just the beginning of a new year.

10. What is the polar shift theory? Is it true that the earth’s crust does a 180-degree rotation around the core in a matter of days if not hours? Does this have something to do to do with our solar system dipping beneath the galactic equator?
A reversal in the rotation of Earth is impossible. It has never happened and never will. There are slow movements of the continents (for example Antarctica was near the equator hundreds of millions of years ago), but that is irrelevant to claims of reversal of the rotational poles. However, many of the disaster websites pull a bait-and-shift to fool people. They claim a relationship between the rotation and the magnetic polarity of Earth, which does change irregularly with a magnetic reversal taking place every 400,000 years on average. As far as we know, such a magnetic reversal doesn’t cause any harm to life on Earth. A magnetic reversal is very unlikely to happen in the next few millennia, anyway. But they falsely claim that a magnetic reversal is coming soon (in 2012) and that this is the same as, or will trigger, a reversal of rotational poles. The bottom line is: (a) Rotation direction and magnetic polarity are not related. (b) There is no reason to expect a reversal of magnetic polarity any time soon, or to anticipate any bad effects on life when it does eventually happen. © A sudden shift in rotational pole with disastrous consequences is impossible. Also, none of this has anything to do with the galactic equator or any of the other nonsense about alignments that appears on many of the conspiracy theory websites.

11. When most of the planets align in 2012 and planet Earth is in the center of the Milky Way, what will the effects of this be on planet Earth? Could it cause a pole shift, and if so what could we expect?
There is no planet alignment in 2012 or any other time in the next several decades. As to the Earth being in the center of the Milky Way, I don’t know what this phrase means. If you are referring to the Milky Way Galaxy, we are rather far toward the edge of this spiral galaxy, some 30,000 light years from the center. We circle the galactic center in a period of 225-250 million years, always keeping approximately the same distance. Concerning a pole shift, I also don’t know what this means. If it means some sudden change in the position of the pole (that is, the rotation axis of the Earth), then that is impossible, as noted in the answer to Question 10. What many websites do discuss is the alignment of the Earth and Sun with the center of the Milky Way in the constellation of Sagittarius. This happens every December, with no bad consequences, and there is no reason to expect 2012 to be different from any other year.

12. When the sun and the Earth line up on the galactic plane at the same time with the black whole being in the center couldn’t that cause something to happen, due to the fact that the black hole has such a strong gravitational pull.
There is a giant black hole in the center of our Milky Way galaxy, and like any concentration of mass it exerts gravitational force on the rest of the Galaxy. However, the galactic center is very far away, approximately 30,000 light years, so it has negligible effects on the solar system or the Earth. There are no special forces from the galactic plane or the galactic center. The only important force that acts on the Earth is the gravitation of the Sun and Moon. As far as the influence of the galactic plane, there is nothing special about this location. The last time the Earth was in the galactic plane was several million years ago. Claims that we are about to cross the galactic plane are untrue.

13. I am scared about the fact that the Earth will enter the Dark Rift in the Milky Way. What will this do? Will the Earth be swallowed up?
The “dark rift” is a popular name for the broad and diffuse dust clouds in the
inner arm of the Milky Way Galaxy, which block our view of the galactic
center. The entire “galactic alignment” scare is pretty crazy. Late in
December the Sun is always approximately in the direction of the center of
the Galaxy as seen from the Earth, but so what? Apparently the con-men who are trying to scare you have decided to use these meaningless phrases about “alignments” and the “dark rift” and “photon belt” precisely because they are not understood by the public. It is too bad, but there is no law against lying on the Internet or anywhere else except in a court of law. As far as the safety of the Earth is concerned, the important threats are from global warming and loss of biological diversity, and perhaps someday from collision with an asteroid or comet, not the pseudoscientific claims about 2012.

14. I have heard that the Earth’s magnetic field will flip in 2012 just when the strongest level of solar storms in history is predicted to take place. Will this kill us or destroy our civilization?
Near solar maximum (which happens every 11 years approximately), there are many more solar flares and coronal mass ejections than near solar minimum. Flares and mass ejections are no danger for humans or other life on Earth. They could endanger astronauts in deep space or on the Moon, and this is something that NASA must learn to deal with, but it is not a problem for you or me. Large outbursts can interrupt radio transmission, cause bright displays of the aurora (Northern and Southern Lights), and damage the electronics of some satellites in space. Today many satellites are designed to deal with this possibility, for example by switching off some of their more delicate circuits and going into a “safe” mode for a few hours. In extreme cases solar activity can also disrupt electrical transmissions on the ground, possibly leading to electrical blackouts, but this is rare.

The last solar maximum occurred in 2001, so the next one was predicted for around 2012, 11 years later. However, the most recent solar minimum was unusual, with a period of a couple of years with almost no sunspots or other indications of solar activity, so scientists now guess that the next maximum will be delayed, perhaps to 2013. However, the details of the solar cycle remain basically unpredictable.

You are correct that the Earth’s magnetic field protects us by creating a large region in space, called the Earth’s magnetosphere, within which most of the material ejected from the Sun is captured or deflected, but there is no reason to expect a reversal of magnetic polarity any time soon. These magnetic reversals happen only once in 400,000 years on average.

15. I am confused about a report on the Fox News website that in 2012 a “Powerful Solar Storm Could Shut Down U.S. for Months”. They referred to a report from the National Academy of Sciences that was commissioned and paid for by NASA. If nothing is going to happen as a result of the event in 2012, why would NASA allow such nonsense to be reported?
NASA is pleased with the National Research Council report on heliophysics. As you note, this report includes a worst-case analysis of what could happen today if there were a repetition of the biggest solar storm ever recorded (in 1859). The problem is the way such information can be used out of context. There is no reason to expect such a large solar storm in the near future, certainly not in 2012 specifically. Your reference to “the event in 2012” illustrates this problem. There is no prediction of an “event in 2012”. We don’t even know if the next solar maximum will take place in that year. The whole 2012 disaster scenario is a hoax, fueled by ads for the Hollywood science-fiction disaster film “2012”. I can only hope that most people are able to distinguish Hollywood film plots from reality.

16. All my school friends are telling me that we are all going to die in the year 2012 due to a meteor hitting earth. Is this true?
Your friends are wrong. The Earth has always been subject to impacts by comets and asteroids, although big hits are very rare. The last big impact was 65 million years ago, and that led to the extinction of the dinosaurs. Today NASA astronomers are carrying out a survey called the Spaceguard Survey to find any large near-Earth asteroids long before they hit. We have already determined that there are no threatening asteroids as large as the one that killed the dinosaurs. All this work is done openly with the discoveries posted every day on the NASA NEO Program Office website (neo.jpl.nasa.gov), so you can see for yourself that nothing is predicted to hit in 2012.

17. If Nibiru is a hoax, why doesn’t NASA issue a denial? How can you permit these stores to circulate and frighten people? Why doesn’t the U.S. government do something about it!
If you go to the NASA home page, nasa.gov, you will see many stories that expose the Nibiru-2012 hoax. Try searching nasa.com under “Nibiru” or “2012”. There is not much more that NASA can do. These hoaxes have nothing to do with NASA and are not based on NASA data, so we as an agency are not directly involved. But scientists, both within NASA and outside, recognize that this hoax with its effort to frighten people is a distraction from more important science concerns, such as global warming and loss of biological diversity. We live in a country where there is freedom of speech, and that includes freedom to lie. You should be glad there are no censors. But if you will just use common sense I am sure you can recognize the lies. As we approach 2012, the lies will be come even more obvious.

18. Can you prove to me that Nibiru is a hoax? There are so many reports that something terrible will happen in 2012. I need proof because the government and NASA are keeping so much from us.
It is not logical to ask for proof that the 2012 doomsday is a hoax. Your questions should be to the doomsday advocates to prove that what they are saying is true, not to NASA to prove it is false. If someone claimed on the Internet that there were 50-foot tall purple elephants walking through Cleveland, would anyone expect NASA to prove this wrong? The burden of proof falls on those who make wild claims. Remember the often-quoted comment from Carl Sagan that extraordinary claims demand extraordinary levels of evidence if they are to be believed.

However, I think that astronomers have reached the point where we can offer extremely strong arguments that Nibiru does not exist. A large planet (or a brown dwarf) in our solar system would have been known to astronomers for many years, both indirectly from its gravitational perturbations on other objects and by direct detection in the infrared. The NASA Infrared Astronomy Satellite (IRAS) carried out the first all-sky survey in 1983, and several subsequent surveys would also have seen Nibiru if it were there. Further, if a large mass passed through the inner solar system every 3600 years, we would see its disruptive effects on the orbits of the inner planets, and we don’t.

You don’t need to take my word for it. Just use common sense. Have you seen Nibiru? In 2008 many websites said it would be visible to the naked eye in spring 2009. If a large planet or brown dwarf were headed for the inner solar system in 2012, it would already be tracked by hundreds of thousands of astronomers, professional and amateur, all over the world. Do you know any amateur astronomers who are watching it? Have you seen any photos or discussion of it in the big popular astronomy magazines like Sky & Telescope? Just think about it. No one could hide Nibiru if it existed.

19. What about the scary ads for the new film 2012? They tell us to look at these Internet sites to verify the doomsday threat.
The pseudoscientific claims about Nibiru and a doomsday in 2012, together with distrust of the government, are being amplified by publicity for the new film from Columbia Pictures titled 2012, to be released in November 2009. The film’s trailer, appearing in theaters and on their website , shows a tidal wave breaking over the Himalayas, with only the following words: “How would the governments of our planet prepare 6 billion people for the end of the world? [long pause] They wouldn’t. [long pause] Find out the Truth. Google search 2012”.

The film publicity includes creation of a faux scientific website (www.instituteforhumancontinuity.org/) for “The Institute for Human Continuity”, which is entirely fictitious. According to this website, the IHC is dedicated to scientific research and public preparedness. Its mission is the survival of mankind. The website explains that the Institute was founded 1978 by international leaders of government, business, and science. They say that in 2004, IHC scientists confirmed with 94% certainty that the world would be destroyed in 2012. This website encourages people to register for a lottery to select those who will be saved; a colleague submitted the name of her cat, which was accepted. I learned from Wikipedia that creating this sort of fake website is a new advertising technique called “Viral Marketing”, by analogy with computer viruses.

20. Is it possible that the influx of questions you describe is part of some kind of campaign for a book or movie, in the hopes that the volume of denials is taken as more “evidence” that there is a conspiracy?
I ask myself the same questions every day, as the volume of mail I receive about Nibiru (along with various alignments and pole shifts) keeps increasing — now more than 20 per week. Clearly there is money to be made from people’s fear about an approaching doomsday. Some of this hype is apparently advertising for the science fiction disaster movie 2012 (see Question 19). Many websites are selling books and tapes about Nibiru or even “survival kits”. It is all very sad, that with so many real issues (such as global warming and financial collapse) people are being taken in by these lies. In the final chapter of a new astronomy book (The Hunt for Planet X) by Govert Shilling, he writes: “There is plenty to do for the debunkers – the archaeologists and astronomers who take a long and skeptical look at the tidal wave of Nibiru nonsense and explain with scientific precision what is wrong with this cosmic fairy-tale. They will have their work cut out in the next few years. And on December 22, 2012 there will be a new pseudoscientific cock-and-bull story doing the rounds and the whole circus will start all over again. Because no matter how many new celestial bodies are found in our solar system, there will always be a need for a mysterious Planet X.”

USA Locates & Kills Bin Laden

2011-05-02T02:26:00.000-07:00

The White House

Office of the Press Secretary

For Immediate Release May 02, 2011 Press Briefing by Senior Administration Officials on the Killing of Osama bin Laden
Via Conference Call

12:03 A.M. EDT

MR. VIETOR: Thank you, everyone, for joining us, especially so late. We wanted to get you on the line quickly with some senior administration officials to talk about the operation today regarding Osama bin Laden. And with that I’ll turn it over to our first senior administration official.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Thanks for joining us, everybody, at this late hour. It’s much appreciated. From the outset of the administration, the President has placed the highest priority in protecting the nation from the threat of terrorism. In line with this, we have pursued an intensified, targeted, and global effort to degrade and defeat al Qaeda. Included in this effort has been a relentless set of steps that we’ve taken to locate and bring Osama bin Laden to justice. Indeed, in the earliest days of the administration, the President formally instructed the intelligence community and his counterterrorism advisors to make the pursuit of Osama bin Laden, as the leader of al Qaeda, as a top priority.

In the beginning of September of last year, the CIA began to work with the President on a set of assessments that led it to believe that in fact it was possible that Osama bin Laden may be located at a compound in Pakistan. By mid-February, through a series of intensive meetings at the White House and with the President, we had determined there was a sound intelligence basis for pursuing this in an aggressive way and developing courses of action to pursue Osama bin Laden at this location.

In the middle of March, the President began a series of National Security Council meetings that he chaired to pursue again the intelligence basis and to develop courses of action to bring justice to Osama bin Laden. Indeed, by my count, the President chaired no fewer than five National Security Council meetings on the topic from the middle of March -- March 14th, March 29th, April 12th, April 19th, and April 28th. And the President gave the final order to pursue the operation that he announced to the nation tonight on the morning -- Friday morning of April 29th.

The President mentioned tonight that the pursuit of Osama bin Laden and the defeat of al Qaeda has been a bipartisan exercise in this nation since September 11, 2001, and indeed, this evening before he spoke to the nation, President Obama did speak to President Bush 43 and President Clinton this evening to review with them the events of today and to preview his statement to the nation tonight.

And with that, I’ll turn it over to my colleague to go through some of the details. Thank you.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: As you heard, the President ordered a raid earlier today against an al Qaeda compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. Based on intelligence collection analysis, a small U.S. team found Osama bin Laden living in a large home on a secured compound in an affluent suburb of Islamabad. The raid occurred in the early morning hours in Pakistan and accomplished its objective. Osama bin Laden is now no longer a threat to America.

This remarkable achievement could not have happened without persistent effort and careful planning over many years. Our national security professionals did a superb job. They deserve tremendous credit for serving justice to Osama bin Laden.

Bin Laden was a sworn enemy of the United States and a danger to all humanity; a man who called for the murder of any American anywhere on Earth. His death is central to the President’s goal of disrupting, dismantling, and ultimately defeating al Qaeda and its violent allies. He was responsible for killing thousands of innocent men and women not only on 9/11, but in the 1998 East Africa embassy bombing, the attack of the USS Cole, and many other acts of brutality.

He was the leader of a violent extremist movement with affiliates across the globe that had taken up arms against the United States and its allies. Bin Laden’s most influential role has been to designate the United States as al Qaeda’s primary target and to maintain organizational focus on that objective. This strategic objective, which was first made in a 1996 declaration of jihad against Americans, was the cornerstone of bin Laden’s message.

Since 9/11, multiple agencies within our intelligence community have worked tirelessly to track down bin Laden, knowing that his removal from al Qaeda would strike a crippling blow to the organization and its militant allies. And last September the President was made aware of a compound in Abbottabad, where a key al Qaeda facilitator appeared to be harboring a high-value target. He received regular intelligence updates, as was just mentioned, on the compound in September, and he directed that action be taken as soon as he concluded that the intelligence case was sufficiently strong. A range of options for achieving the mission were developed, and on Friday he authorized the operation.

Now I’ll turn it to my colleagues to go through the intelligence.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Thank you. First I want to point out that today’s success was a team effort. It was a model of really seamless collaboration across our government. Since 9/11, this is what the American people have expected of us, and today, in this critical operation, we were able to finally deliver.

The operation itself was the culmination of years of careful and highly advanced intelligence work. Officers from the CIA, the NGA, the NSA all worked very hard as a team to analyze and pinpoint this compound. Together they applied their very unique expertise and capabilities to America’s most vexing intelligence problem, where to find bin Laden.

When the case had been made that this was a critical target, we began to prepare this mission in conjunction with the U.S. military. In the end, it was the matchless skill and courage of these Americans that secured this triumph for our country and the world. I’m very proud of the entire team that worked on this operation, and am very thankful to the President for the courage that he displayed in making the decision to proceed with this operation.

With that, let me turn to my colleague to give you details on the intelligence background.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Thank you. The bottom line of our collection and our analysis was that we had high confidence that the compound harbored a high-value terrorist target. The experts who worked this issue for years assessed that there was a strong probability that the terrorist that was hiding there was Osama bin Laden.

What I’d like to do is walk you through the key points in that intelligence trail that led us to that conclusion. From the time that we first recognized bin Laden as a threat, the CIA gathered leads on individuals in bin Laden’s inner circle, including his personal couriers. Detainees in the post-9/11 period flagged for us individuals who may have been providing direct support to bin Laden and his deputy, Zawahiri, after their escape from Afghanistan.

One courier in particular had our constant attention. Detainees gave us his nom de guerre or his nickname and identified him as both a protégé of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of September 11th, and a trusted assistant of Abu Faraj al-Libbi, the former number three of al Qaeda who was captured in 2005.

Detainees also identified this man as one of the few al Qaeda couriers trusted by bin Laden. They indicated he might be living with and protecting bin Laden. But for years, we were unable to identify his true name or his location.

Four years ago, we uncovered his identity, and for operational reasons, I can’t go into details about his name or how we identified him, but about two years ago, after months of persistent effort, we identified areas in Pakistan where the courier and his brother operated. Still we were unable to pinpoint exactly where they lived, due to extensive operational security on their part. The fact that they were being so careful reinforced our belief that we were on the right track.

Then in August 2010, we found their residence, a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, a town about 35 miles north of Islamabad. The area is relatively affluent, with lots of retired military. It’s also insolated from the natural disasters and terrorist attacks that have afflicted other parts of Pakistan. When we saw the compound where the brothers lived, we were shocked by what we saw -- an extraordinarily unique compound. The compound sits on a large plot of land in an area that was relatively secluded when it was built. It is roughly eight times larger than the other homes in the area.

When the compound was built in 2005, it was on the outskirts of the town center, at the end of a narrow dirt road. In the last six years, some residential homes have been built nearby. The physical security measures of the compound are extraordinary. It has 12- to 18-foot walls topped with barbed wire. Internal wall sections -- internal walls sectioned off different portions of the compound to provide extra privacy. Access to the compound is restricted by two security gates, and the residents of the compound burn their trash, unlike their neighbors, who put the trash out for collection.

The main structure, a three-story building, has few windows facing the outside of the compound. A terrace on the third floor has a seven-foot wall privacy -- has a seven-foot privacy wall.

It’s also noteworthy that the property is valued at approximately $1 million but has no telephone or Internet service connected to it. The brothers had no explainable source of wealth.

Intelligence analysts concluded that this compound was custom built to hide someone of significance. We soon learned that more people were living at the compound than the two brothers and their families. A third family lived there -- one whose size and whose makeup matched the bin Laden family members that we believed most likely to be with Osama bin Laden. Our best assessment, based on a large body of reporting from multiple sources, was that bin Laden was living there with several family members, including his youngest wife.

Everything we saw -- the extremely elaborate operational security, the brothers’ background and their behavior, and the location and the design of the compound itself was perfectly consistent with what our experts expected bin Laden’s hideout to look like. Keep in mind that two of bin Laden’s gatekeepers, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Abu Faraj al-Libbi, were arrested in the settled areas of Pakistan.

Our analysts looked at this from every angle, considering carefully who other than bin Laden could be at the compound. We conducted red team exercises and other forms of alternative analysis to check our work. No other candidate fit the bill as well as bin Laden did.

So the final conclusion, from an intelligence standpoint, was twofold. We had high confidence that a high-value target was being harbored by the brothers on the compound, and we assessed that there was a strong probability that that person was Osama bin Laden.

Now let me turn it over to my colleague.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Thank you. Earlier this afternoon, a small U.S. team conducted a helicopter raid on the compound. Considerable planning helped prepare our operators for this very complex mission. Senior officials have been involved in the decision-making and planning for this operation for months, and briefed the President regularly. My colleague has already mentioned the unusual characteristics of this compound. Each of these, including the high walls, security features, suburban location, and proximity to Islamabad made this an especially dangerous operation.

The men who executed this mission accepted this risk, practiced to minimize those risks, and understood the importance of the target to the national security of the United States.

I know you understand that I can’t and won’t get into many details of this mission, but I’ll share what I can. This operation was a surgical raid by a small team designed to minimize collateral damage and to pose as little risk as possible to non-combatants on the compound or to Pakistani civilians in the neighborhood.

Our team was on the compound for under 40 minutes and did not encounter any local authorities while performing the raid. In addition to Osama bin Laden, three adult males were killed in the raid. We believe two were the couriers and the third was bin Laden’s adult son.

There were several women and children at the compound. One woman was killed when she was used as a shield by a male combatant. Two other women were injured.

During the raid, we lost one helicopter due to mechanical failure. The aircraft was destroyed by the crew and the assault force and crew members boarded the remaining aircraft to exit the compound. All non-combatants were moved safely away from the compound before the detonation.

That’s all I have at this time. I’ll turn it back to my colleague.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: We shared our intelligence on this bin Laden compound with no other country, including Pakistan. That was for one reason and one reason alone: We believed it was essential to the security of the operation and our personnel. In fact, only a very small group of people inside our own government knew of this operation in advance.

Shortly after the raid, U.S. officials contacted senior Pakistani leaders to brief them on the intent and the results of the raid. We have also contacted a number of our close allies and partners throughout the world.

Sine 9/11, the United States has made it clear to Pakistan that we would pursue bin Laden wherever he might be. Pakistan has long understood that we are at war with al Qaeda. The United States had a legal and moral obligation to act on the information it had.

And let me emphasize that great care was taken to ensure operational success, minimize the possibility of non-combatant casualties, and to adhere to American and international law in carrying out the mission.

I should note that in the wake of this operation, there may be a heightened threat to the homeland and to U.S. citizens and facilities abroad. Al Qaeda operatives and sympathizers may try to respond violently to avenge bin Laden’s death, and other terrorist leaders may try to accelerate their efforts to strike the United States. But the United States is taking every possible precaution to protect Americans here at home and overseas. The State Department has sent guidance to embassies worldwide and a travel advisory has been issued for Pakistan.

And without a doubt, the United States will continue to face terrorist threats. The United States will continue to fight those threats. We have always understood that this fight would be a marathon and not a sprint.

There’s also no doubt that the death of Osama bin Laden marks the single greatest victory in the U.S.-led campaign to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al Qaeda. It is a major and essential step in bringing about al Qaeda’s eventual destruction.

Bin Laden was al Qaeda’s only (inaudible) commander in its 22-year history, and was largely responsible for the organization’s mystique, its attraction among violent jihadists, and its focus on America as a terrorist target. As the only al Qaeda leader whose authority was universally respected, he also maintained his cohesion, and his likely successor, Ayman al-Zawahiri, is far less charismatic and not as well respected within the organization, according to comments from several captured al Qaeda leaders. He probably will have difficulty maintaining the loyalty of bin Laden’s largely Gulf Arab followers.

Although al Qaeda may not fragment immediately, the loss of bin Laden puts the group on a path of decline that will be difficult to reverse.

And finally, it’s important to note that it is most fitting that bin Laden’s death comes at a time of great movement towards freedom and democracy that is sweeping the Arab world. He stood in direct opposition to what the greatest men and women throughout the Middle East and North Africa are risking their lives for: individual rights and human dignity.

MR. VIETOR: With that we’re ready to take a couple questions.

Q One question. You said “a small U.S. team.” Were these military personnel, can you say, or non-military?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Can’t go into further details at this time; just a small U.S. team.

Q Good morning. Can you tell us specifically what contact there was with bin Laden at the compound? You referred to someone using a woman as a shield that was not bin Laden. But how was he killed? Where? What occurred at the compound?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: As the President said this evening, bin Laden was killed in a firefight as our operators came onto the compound.

Q Thank you. Just to go back to what you were talking about with the attacks in response to this operation, are you hearing any specific threats against specific targets?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: No. But any type of event like this, it is very prudent for us to take measures so that we can ensure that the security measures that we need to institute here and throughout the world are in place. This is just something that we normally would do. We don’t have any specific threats at this time related to this. But we are ensuring that every possible precaution is taken in advance.

Q Yes, hey, how are you doing? My question would be, what was the type of the helicopter that failed? And what was the nature of that mechanical failure?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Can’t go into details at this time.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: We didn’t say it was mechanical.

Q Was bin Laden involved in firing himself or defending himself? And then any chronology of the raid itself?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: He did resist the assault force. And he was killed in a firefight.

Q Thank you. Thank you for taking this call. Can you give me a comment on the very fact that Osama bin Laden was just in Islamabad -- and has long been (inaudible) Afghanistan (inaudible) also from India, that Osama bin Laden is hiding somewhere near Islamabad? What does it signify, that? Does it signify any cooperation or any kind of link that he had with establishments in Pakistan?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: As the President said, Pakistani cooperation had assisted in this lead, as we pursued it. So we’re continuing to work this issue right now. We are very concerned about -- that he was inside of Pakistan, but this is something that we’re going to continue to work with the Pakistani government on.

Q But the very fact you didn’t inform the Pakistani authorities -- did you have any suspicion that if you informed them, the information might lead somewhere?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: An operation like this that is conducted has the utmost operational security attached to it. I said that we had shared this information with no other country, and that a very, very small group of individuals within the United States government was aware of this. That is for operational security purposes.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I would also just add to that that President Obama, over a period of several years now, has repeatedly made it clear that if we had actionable intelligence about Osama bin Laden’s whereabouts, we would act. So President Obama has been very clear in delivering that message publicly over a period of years. And that’s what led President Obama to order this operation. When he determined that the intelligence was actionable and the intelligence case was sufficient, he gave us high confidence that bin Laden indeed was at the compound.

Q Thank you. What is going to happen next? And what is the U.S. going to do with bin Laden’s body?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: We are ensuring that it is handled in accordance with Islamic practice and tradition. This is something that we take very seriously. And so therefore this is being handled in an appropriate manner.

MR. VIETOR: Great, thanks. Just to remind everyone, this call is on background, as senior administration officials. We have time for one more question, and we’re going to go to bed.

Q Do you have a sense of the vintage of the compound and how long bin Laden had been there?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: The compound has been in existence for roughly five years, but we don’t know how long bin Laden lived there. We assess that the compound was built for the purpose of harboring him. But again, don’t know how long he’s been there.

MR. VIETOR: Great, thank you all. We’ll talk more tomorrow.

END 12:24 A.M. EDT

EU bans cat, dog fur from its markets

2011-04-19T14:39:00.000-07:00

Inside the Cat and Dog Meat Market in China

2011-04-19T14:34:00.000-07:00

Time to Recall Rick Scott

2011-04-18T13:57:00.000-07:00

Florida's Governor Rick Scott has made the decision in April 2011 to not sue BP for its role in the oil spill of 2010. This brings rise to the question of who is Rick Scott working for; this move proves his intentions are not aimed at the good of the state.

"By Ralph De
La Cruz Florida Center for Investigative Reporting

Rick Scott came into the governor’s office without having ever governed. Not even a term on a school board. He never even had to get folks to reach consensus in a precinct. Scott’s main qualification to be governor was that he was CEO of an HMO found guilty of the worst case of Medicare fraud in U.S. history. He’s such a newbie that he doesn’t grasp the most fundamental concept about governing: Politics is the art of compromise. FCIR relies on grants from foundations and donations from readers. Donate today to support investigative journalism in Florida. Academics Donald J. Boudreaux and Dwight H. Lee, writing for no less a conservative voice than the Cato Institute, can explain: “Regardless of the terms employed, few doubt that politics is indeed the art of compromise. Politicians unwilling to compromise are typically labeled ideologues — a label not regarded as a badge of honor among members of the political class. Moreover, politicians who refuse to compromise seldom win and hold on to office …” Being CEO, on the other hand, is the art of applying force and pressure. Running a company is nothing like running a state. And that’s becoming clearer with each passing day of Scott’s term. The tea party’s governor came into office in January like a man possessed — and unconcerned about anyone but his business buddies and the tea party set. He showed little interest in building compromise or coalitions, immediately going after teachers and county and state workers as if they were his employees. Pawns to be moved and sacrificed as only he sees fit. He has shown a disinterest in working with minorities. When Scott met with black lawmakers who were concerned he does not have a single minority in his cabinet, he tried to ingratiate himself by saying he could relate to them: He had grown up in public housing with a parent who had a sixth-grade education. How charming. Scott, who was viewed with suspicion by Hispanics during the campaign because of his promise to bring harsh Arizona-style immigration enforcement to the state, briefly softened his stance — at least until after his brief appearance at the Hispanic Leadership Network. Then he reverted back to his old rhetoric. His budget, presented to a tea party rally as if the rest of the state didn’t matter, pushed corporate tax cuts onto the backs of teachers, county and state workers, and correctional officers. Maybe if those correctional officers had contributed $100,000 at his inauguration, which was a dolled-up fundraiser for him and the Florida Republican Party, things might have been different. But instead, it was the Geo Group — which runs private prisons and employs Scott’s close chum, Bill Rubin, as its lobbyist – handing out the checks. And surprise, one of the first targets of Scott’s decimation of the state infrastructure was … the state prison system. Scott campaigned against the hiring of state lobbyists, then hired state lobbyists. The difference, he explained, was that these were his lobbyists. He threw state Sen. Paula Dockery, one of his earliest political supporters, under the political bus (or train) by rejecting $2.4 billion in federal money for a high-speed rail project that she had been working on for years. That decision reportedly occurred after he met with tea partiers in his office. Hey, appeasing those loyal tea partiers by making an anti-Obama statement comes before political loyalty — or creating upwards of 20,000 Florida jobs. It is as if we suddenly have en emperor in Tallahassee, issuing policy by decree. That might be the way to run a corporation. But it’s no way to run a state. The way Scott has acted, running roughshod over constituents and supporters alike, you’d think the man had won his election by a massive margin — what politicians call a “mandate.” But actually, Scott beat a Democrat in a ruby-red Republican state by one percentage point. Less than 62,000 votes gave him the keys to the mansion. And that sliver of a margin came after spending $73 million of his personal fortune, avoiding the press and opponents until the very end of the campaign, and relying on his mother and wife to be his political face during the campaign. Looking back, it was an impressive blueprint for how to win an electoral victory. Not so much for how to be successful at governing. Now, he occupies office with few allies other than tea partiers and the business elite. Even Republicans and early political supporters — burned by Scott’s sudden, bizarre and illogical decisions such as killing a database tracking addictive pill prescriptions — seem perplexed. Last week, the Senate, overwhelmingly controlled by his party, voted by a veto-proof majority to continue going after the money for the Central Florida rail project. Republican Sen. J.D. Alexander questioned whether Scott had the legal authority to do what he had done, and another Republican senator, David Simmons, vowed to lobby fellow legislators to overturn Scott’s decision. It’s hard to find anyone other than tea party zealots who have a kind word to say about Scott. The other day, a short story in a Treasure Coast/Palm Beach County publication simply announcing a Scott appearance at a Republican fundraiser in Martin County drew a rash of angry comments, such as, “I wonder if Gov. Scott will share the fact that his budget proposal includes increasing his executive office’s budget by over $300 million?” And, “If you’re a senior citizen attending this event, hide your medicare card. Just saying …” Citizens have now formed a Facebook group to advocate his recall. This after less than two months in office. But they should probably speak with Rep. Rick Kriseman first. Last week, Kriseman introduced a bill that would allow the recall of state officials. I know what you’re thinking: Scary that we don’t already have that right. Yep. It’s past time. Thank you, Rep. Kriseman. HB 787 should be automatic, considering the legislature is controlled by Republicans, who often tout accountability as a cornerstone of their party. We’ll soon see whether for them (and their tea party supporters), accountability only applies to teachers and welfare recipients. Or whether it’s for all Floridians, regardless of position, pocketbook or political persuasion."

Florida School Board Meeting Shooting - Full WMBB Video - December 14, 2010

2010-12-15T21:49:00.000-08:00

President Barack Obama Town Hall meeting on 9 20 2010 Monday September 2...

2010-09-20T21:16:00.000-07:00

Thousands flee fierce Colorado wildfire

2010-09-07T14:45:00.000-07:00

A fierce wildfire west of Boulder, Colo., which destroyed dozens of homes and caused 3,000 people to flee Monday, continued to rage uncontained Tuesday afternoon.
Boulder County Sheriff Joe Pelle says the fire has burned about 7,100 acres, or 11 square miles. Authorities previously estimated the fire at 3,500 acres. Additional evacuations are expected.
Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter says he has declared a state of emergency and authorized $5 million for the fire.
According to Mike Banuelos, Boulder County public information officer, as of Tuesday afternoon, there is no information about containment yet.
About 175 firefighters from 30 local agencies are battling the blaze, he said.
MILD FIRES:USA catches a break this year with mild wildfire season
Four homes belonging to firefighters were destroyed. Those firefighters were allowed to leave to attend to their families and personal affairs, said Laura McConnell, a spokeswoman for the fire management team.
The weather is far better for firefighters Tuesday than it was Monday. "We have nothing like the extreme conditions we had yesterday," said Chad Gimmestad, a forecaster with the National Weather Service in Boulder.
He said Monday's wild winds and parched, hot conditions helped spread the fire. "At the top of the ridges, winds blew at 40-50 mph for several hours," Gimmestad said. The wind was coupled with humidity levels of 5% to 10%, a day after a near-record high of 94 degrees was recorded.
"The fire moved too quickly and was much more active than anticipated," said Brett Haberstick of the Sunshine Fire Protection District.
It's still unclear what sparked the Fourmile Canyon Fire, as it has been named, although authorities are investigating reports that the fire started Monday when a car crashed into a propane tank.
"We do have an investigative team set up that has started to investigate the cause of the fire and go up into the burned area to document what structures have been involved, what structures have been destroyed," Cmdr. Rick Brough of the Boulder County Emergency Management said during a Tuesday morning news conference.
Although no injuries have been reported in the wildfire, a number of people woke up Tuesday fearing the loss of their homes.
Nancy Engellenner and her husband, Philip Helper, assume their house was lost because so much was destroyed in the surrounding area.
"The way the wind was, it was just spitting flames everywhere," Engellenner said.
Resident David Myers also feared his house burned after he fled. At one point, he said heavy smoke obscured flames from the fire but he could still hear it. He described the sound as a cross between a freight train and a long roll of thunder.
"You can hear the crackling, you can hear just this consumption of fuel, just crackling and burning. And the hardest thing is you couldn't see it because at the point the smoke was that thick. And at that point, it was time to go," he said.
The weather for the rest of the week in the area should continue to be dry and windy, predicts Gimmestad, with little chance of rain.

Best chance for life beyond Earth # 2: Enceladus

2010-08-03T23:36:00.000-07:00

After Mars, Saturn and its several moons is the nearest best chance for finding life beyond Earth. In addition to the possibility of life the Saturn system possesses the best chance for finding natural resources such as methane and water.

The next large moon is Enceladus, measuring 504 km across, and orbiting at 238,000 km from the center of Saturn. NASA's Cassini spacecraft recently discovered geysers of water ice pouring out of Enceladus' southern pole. Astronomers think that there could be vast reserves of liquid water underneath the moon's icy surface.

Enceladus has the highest albedo (>0.9) of any body in the solar system. Its surface is dominated by fresh, clean ice.

At least five different types of terrain have been identified on Enceladus. In addition to craters there are smooth plains and extensive linear cracks and ridges. At least some of the surface is relatively young, probably less than 100 million years.

This means that Enceladus must have been active until very recently (and perhaps is still active today). Perhaps some sort of "water volcanism" is at work.

Enceladus is much too small to be heated solely by the decay of radioactive material in its interior at present. But briefly after its formation 4.5 billion years ago short-lived radioisotopes may have provided enough heat to melt and differentiate the interior. That combined with modest present day heating from long-lived isotopes and tidal heating may account for the present day activity on Enceladus.

Cassini closeup view (looks like Europa?) Enceladus is locked in a 1:2 resonance with Dione (similar to the situation between Io and Europa). This may provide a heating mechanism but it is probably insufficient to melt water ice. Enceladus may therefore be composed of some low-melting point material rather than pure water.

Enceladus is very likely the source of the material in Saturn's tenuous E ring. And since the material cannot persist in the ring for more than a few thousand years, it must be due to very recent activity on Enceladus. A less likely possibility is that the rings are maintained by high-velocity collisions between dust particles and the various moons.

Source: http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap060608.html

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/10/enceladus_up_close.html

Best chance for life beyond Earth # 3: Europa

2010-07-21T02:00:00.000-07:00

Europa (pronounced /jʊˈroʊpə/ ( listen); or as Greek Ευρώπη) is the sixth moon of the planet Jupiter, and the smallest of its four Galilean satellites. Europa was discovered in 1610 by Galileo Galilei (and possibly independently by Simon Marius), and named after a mythical Phoenician noblewoman, Europa, who was courted by Zeus and became the queen of Crete.

Roughly the size of Earth's Moon, Europa is primarily made of silicate rock and likely has an iron core. It has a tenuous atmosphere composed primarily of oxygen. Its surface is composed of ice and is one of the smoothest in the Solar System. This surface is striated by cracks and streaks, while craters are relatively infrequent. The apparent youth and smoothness of the surface have led to the hypothesis that a water ocean exists beneath it, which could conceivably serve as an abode for extraterrestrial life.[12] This hypothesis proposes that heat energy from tidal flexing causes the ocean to remain liquid and drives geological activity similar to plate tectonics.[13]

Although only fly-by missions have visited the moon, the intriguing characteristics of Europa have led to several ambitious exploration proposals. The Galileo mission provided the bulk of current data on Europa. A new mission to Jupiter's icy moons, the Europa Jupiter System Mission (EJSM), is proposed for a launch in 2020.[14] Conjecture on extraterrestrial life has ensured a high profile for the moon and has led to steady lobbying for future missions.

Discovery: Jan 7, 1610 by Galileo Galilei
Diameter (km): 3,138
Mass (kg): 4.8e22 kg
Mass (Earth = 1) 0.0083021
Surface Gravity (Earth = 1): 0.135
Mean Distance from Jupiter (km): 670,900
Mean Distance From Jupiter (Rj): 9.5
Mean Distance from Sun (AU): 5.203
Orbital period (days): 3.551181
Rotational period (days): 3.551181
Density (gm/cm³) 3.01
Orbit Eccentricity: 0.009
Orbit Inclination (degrees): 0.470
Orbit Speed (km/sec): 13.74
Escape velocity (km/sec): 2.02
Visual Albedo: 0.64
Surface Composition: Water Ice

http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/galileo/europa/#overview

Is The Last Airbender Racist

2010-07-01T17:33:00.000-07:00

"Some viewers heads are spinning over the look of 'The Last Airbender,' which opens July 1. Not over the fantasy-action 3-D special effects, but over the faces of the main characters, which are largely white in the movie but Asian and Inuit in the popular Nickelodeon cartoon that inspired the film.

Complicating the accusations of racial insensitivity over the casting is the fact that those casting decisions were made by director M. Night Shyamalan, who is of Asian descent himself. In fact, Shyamalan bristles at the accusations and insists that, not only is his cast as multicultural as possible, but also that it's his critics who are the real racists.

The characters in the TV series 'Avatar: The Last Airbender,' created by Bryan Konietzko and Michael Dante DiMartino, are clearly drawn from Asian and Inuit cultures, from their names to their costumes to their martial arts styles. The hero, Aang, is inspired by Tibetan Buddhist monks. His friends, Katara and Sokka, live in a realm of anoraks and igloos. Antagonist Zuko and his tribe appear as classical Chinese warriors.

In the movie, all four characters were initially cast as Caucasian actors: Noah Ringer (Aang), Nicola Peltz (Katara), Jackson Rathbone (Sokka), and Jesse McCartney (Zuko). Before shooting began, however, McCartney was replaced by Dev Patel, of 'Slumdog Millionaire' fame. That change did not appease the project's critics, who noted that the heroes were still all white Westerners, while the only Asian in the principal cast was the villain.

The clearinghouse for the protests has been the website Racebending, which is calling for a boycott of the film. "American actors of color rarely get to play the hero, if ever," said Marissa Lee, one of Racebending's co-founders, in a statement. "We're really disappointed. Paramount felt that white actors were better suited to play heroes of color than hardworking, underrepresented actors who are actually of Asian or Inuit descent."

Shyamalan has insisted he had no intention of whitewashing the characters. In a recent interview with Indie Movies Online, he went into great detail about the casting choices, which he said were entirely his and not Paramount's. He argued that the complaints didn't look beyond the principal players to note the entire cast, which consists of actors from multiple cultures and racial backgrounds playing the 'Airbender' world's four tribes. Of the protest, he said, "The irony of this statement enrages me to the point of ... not even the accusation, but the misplacement of it. You're coming at me, the one Asian filmmaker who has the right to cast anybody I want, and I'm casting this entire movie in this color blind way where everyone is represented. I even had one section of the Earth kingdom as African American, which obviously isn't in the show, but I wanted to represent them, too!"

Why, then, did he cast white actors in the leads? "Noah Ringer walked in the door -- and there was no other human being on the planet that could play Aang except for this kid," the director said. "To me, he felt mixed race with an Asian quality to him. I made all the Air nomads mixed race – some of them are Hispanic, some of them are Korean." Patel's people had to look like him, too, which is the reason the members of the hot-tempered Fire tribe are all played by darker-hued actors.

With three of the tribes played by non-Caucasian actors, Shyamalan said he felt the fourth group, Katara and Sokka's Water tribe, could be played by white actors. "If you don't have an edict of "don't put white people in the movie" then the Water tribe can be European/Caucasian," he said. So, by his logic, casting white actors as Katara and Sokka was actually an act of inclusion, not exclusion. (It's worth noting here, as Shyamalan has, that the cartoon's adherence to the visual conventions of Japanese anime, including round eyes and light skin, have added to the racial confusion. If the characters are drawn with racially indeterminate features, why shouldn't his casting follow suit?) "

5 Stars
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US General Petraeus collapses at Senate hearing on Afghanistan

2010-06-15T16:39:00.000-07:00

Massive sun storms may impact Earth

2010-06-15T00:49:00.000-07:00

Massive space storms forecast as sun awakens from ‘deep slumber’
By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 5:38 PM on 14th June 2010

Comments (47) Add to My Stories .
Scientists have warned that massive space storms could be on the way as the Sun wakes from a ‘deep slumber’.

The Sun follows an 11-year cycle of high and low periods of solar activity. It is now leaving a notably quiet phase and scientists expect to see a sharp increase in the number of solar flares as well as unprecedented levels of magnetic energy.

This could have catastrophic consequences for Earth.

The rings of fire, which have the power of 100 hydrogen bombs, could cause twenty times more economic damage than Hurricane Katrina.

Experts met in Washington DC last week to discuss how to protect Earth from the ferocious flares, which are expected sometime around 2013.

The 'space conference' was attended by scientists, government policy-makers and researchers.

Richard Fisher, head of Nasa's Heliophysics Division, explained: 'The Sun is waking up from a deep slumber, and in the next few years we expect to see much higher levels of solar activity.

‘At the same time, our technological society has developed an unprecedented sensitivity to solar storms.’

Nasa is using dozens of satellites – including the Solar Dynamics Observatory – to study the threat.

The problem was investigated in depth two years ago by the National Academy of Sciences, in a report which outlined the social and economic impacts of severe space weather events.

It noted how people of the 21st-century rely on high-tech systems for the basics of daily life.

Smart power grids, GPS navigation, air travel, financial services and emergency radio communications can all be knocked out by intense solar activity.

But much of the damage could be minimised if there was foreknowledge that the storm was approaching.

Putting satellites in 'safe mode' and disconnecting transformers could protect them from damaging electrical surges.

Preventative action, however, requires accurate forecasting - a job that has been assigned to The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA.)

'Space weather forecasting is still in its infancy, but we're making rapid progress,' says Thomas Bogdan, director of NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder, Colorado.

Bogdan sees the collaboration between Nasa and NOAA as key.

'NASA's fleet of heliophysics research spacecraft provides us with up-to-the-minute information about what's happening on the Sun. They are an important complement to our own GOES and POES satellites, which focus more on the near-Earth environment.'

Cilantro: The Controversial Herb

2010-05-26T12:49:00.000-07:00

Why is this ancient, worldly herb so polarizing? There are theories that nature plays a role: Some people may be genetically predisposed to cilantro intolerance. ... For the rest of us, nurture or environment may be a factor.

text size A A A May 25, 2010 When you are a cooking instructor, the last thing you want is for a student to flee your class. It happened to me, but I swear it wasn't my fault. It was the cilantro.

The cooking class featured a Southwest American menu that embraced cilantro. Not 10 minutes into the introduction of the cuisine, one student's eyes began to water and her throat constricted. She admitted she didn't like cilantro, and she believed her reaction was due to her close proximity to the springy bouquets I had placed around my kitchen as edible decoration. She didn't have to ingest it; simply sharing a room with this herb was enough to set off her attack. Apologizing profusely with tears streaming down her face, she clutched her purse and fled my home. There were no other casualties that afternoon, but it did get me thinking about cilantro.

Like politics and religion, cilantro elicits strong opinions. People love it or hate it. For some, it's an acquired taste, thus attracting its share of proselytizing converts, such as myself. Even the name of the plant can be controversial. In the U.S., the leaves are called cilantro, while the seeds are called coriander. In Europe, the leaves are called coriander, while the seeds are also called coriander. To confuse matters further, cilantro leaves are also known as Chinese parsley.

About The Author
Lynda Balslev moved to Paris to study cooking in 1991. She returned to the U.S. 17 years later with a Danish husband, two children and previous addresses in Geneva, London and Copenhagen. During that time, she worked as a freelance food writer, caterer, cooking instructor and food editor for the Danish magazine Sphere. Currently she lives in California's Bay Area, where she writes about food and culinary travel on her blog TasteFood, teaches cooking and is relieved to be speaking English again.

A French Culinary Love Affair

Jan. 26, 2010
Whatever your culinary or linguistic disposition, this is one herb the world apparently can't live without. Featured in the cuisines of the Middle East, North Africa, Europe and Asia, cilantro has a culinary history dating back millennia. Its seeds were found in 8,000-year-old caves in Israel. There are ancient Sanskrit and biblical references to coriander. Even King Tut claimed a piece of the cilantro action with seeds scattered in his tomb. Introduced to the Americas by Europeans in the 1600s, the coriander plant is a relative newcomer to this part of the world. It's been growing like the dickens ever since, making up for any lost epochal time while achieving a prominent place in American Southwestern, Mexican and Latin American cuisines.

The entire cilantro plant is edible, including its root. The seeds, known as coriander, are the dried ripe fruit of the plant, frequently used whole for pickling and spicing, or toasted and finely ground into the dried spice also known as coriander. Dried coriander seeds bear no resemblance in flavor to the fresh leaves. Fresh coriander leaves are delicate and lacy, imparting a unique soapy aroma that either attracts or repels, depending on which side of the cilantro fence you sit. Cilantro leaves are best served fresh and used as a final flourish to dishes, because their fragility does not lend well to the heat of cooking.

Cilantro is easy to grow, which helps to explain its abundance. It is a hardy annual herb and a member of the parsley family, related to other lacy-leaved plants such as fennel, dill, chervil and carrots. It bolts quickly in warm temperatures, so it's best grown in the spring or fall. As soon as it flowers, it makes seeds that can be harvested and replanted. With some planning and routine, cilantro can grow all season long.

So, why is this ancient, worldly herb so polarizing? There are theories that nature plays a role: Some people may be genetically predisposed to cilantro intolerance. This can manifest itself in an intense aversion to the aroma and flavor of the leaves, and, in rare cases, a physical reaction similar to my student's. For the rest of us, nurture or environment may be a factor. Chances are that if you were raised in a culture where coriander is a kitchen staple, you are a cilantro lover. If you had little exposure, cilantro might take some getting used to. It's worth the effort. Fueled by culinary curiosity, I have grown to love cilantro. Now, pots of coriander grow year round in my California garden, and I frequently cook with it while happily considering myself a cilantro convert. If King Tut passed into the afterlife accompanied by coriander seeds, then this herb is worthy of our respect

Scientist make synthetic cell

2010-05-20T11:42:00.000-07:00

Scientists are reporting that they have made a living cell from DNA that was originally synthesized in a lab. This isn't quite a synthetic organism. But the result is an important, and some would say troubling step on the road to creating life in the lab.

Craig Venter is the scientist behind the effort. Many scientists have strong opinions about Venter, but even his detractors will admit he's a man who thinks big.

Venter and his team have been working to create a synthetic cell since 1995. The idea is to use the 4 chemical constituents of DNA — named A, T, C and G — to put together a synthetic genome. Then they would put that synthetic genome into a cell, and have it direct the cell as it grew and multiplied. Now they've has succeeded.

Venter says there were two enormous hurdles to accomplishing his goals. First, he needed to figure out how to make a very big piece of DNA. Most chemical synthesis techniques stop working when you get to a few thousand of DNA letters. That means you can't copy a whole genome — you have to do it in parts.

But Venter says, "we wanted to make something close to a million." Solving all the chemistry has taken much of the last 15 years.

Venter and his colleagues eventually solved this problem by putting smaller fragments of synthesized DNA first into bacterial cells where they assembled into large fragments, and then into yeast cells that stitched those fragments together.

The second hurdle was figuring out how to transfer that large chunk of DNA into a cell without breaking it. To begin with, he wanted to show he could transfer a working chromosome from one species of bacteria to another.

Synthesizing Life

So he took the genome from a simple cell, a small bacteria called Mycoplasma mycoides, and spent several years trying to transfer it's genome into a related species, Mycoplasma capricolum. He finally succeeded.

"So it was the capricolum cell, with the mycoides genome in it," says Venter.

After he cleared those two hurdles, the last step was to make an exact copy of the mycoides genome in the lab, and transfer that synthetic genome into capricolum.

It took several more years of work, including determining a more accurate DNA sequence for the mycoides genome, to get the system to work. But now, as he and colleagues report in the journal Science, they've done it.

But this isn't really a new life form, says Jim Collins, a synthetic biologist at Boston University. "Its genome is a stitched together copy of the DNA of an organism that exists in nature."

Collins says Venter has created something remarkable, but it's not creating life.

"We don't know enough biology to create or synthesize life," says Collins. "I think we're far removed from understanding how would you build a truly artificial genome from scratch."

Even so, Venter's accomplishment of using DNA created in the lab to control a cell's behavior is bound to raise questions about whether the work is morally acceptable. That's a discussion bioethicists have been having for some time.

Inevitable Dilemmas

It's not as though we suddenly got to the point where particular moral questions are raised here that weren't already present in the field, says Gregory Kaebnick, a scholar at the Hasting Center, a bioethics think tank.

Kaebnick says there are two basic concerns about what Venter and others in the new field of synthetic biology are doing. First, that one of these synthetic organisms will escape from the lab and run amok. And the other is whether this kind of work crosses a line where humans start playing God.

"Up until now, organisms have come into being on their own as it were, they've evolved on their own." But Kaebnick says Venter's work says that may not longer be the case. "And for some that's a troubling development.

But for Venter, that's exactly the point of doing the work in the first place.

"We decided that writing new biological software and creating new species, we could create new species to what we want them to do, not what they evolved to do, says Venter.

Venter has founded a company called Synthetic Genomics where he intends to use these new species to do things like make new fuels and new vaccines.

For the moment, Venter and his colleagues are the only ones with the money and techniques to do this kind of genomic manipulation. But others are working in related areas, and a new world of synthetic microorganisms might not be far off.

For Airport Security, Size Matters

2010-05-06T15:26:00.000-07:00

For Airport Security, Size Matters

Cops: New high-tech screener triggered fight over manhood insult

MAY 6--A Transportation Security Administration screener is facing an assault rap after he allegedly beat a co-worker who joked about the size of the man's genitalia after he walked through a security scanner. The May 4 confrontation involved Rolando Negrin, 44, and other TSA employees who had previously taken part in a training session at Miami International Airport, according to the below Miami-Dade Police Department reports. Negrin, pictured in the mug shot at right, and his co-workers had been training with new "whole body image" machines--the controversial kind that provide very revealing images of a traveler--when Negrin walked through the scanner. "The X-ray revealed that [Negrin] has a small penis and co-workers made fun of him on a daily basis," reported cops. Following his arrest, Negrin told police that he "could not take the jokes anymore and lost his mind." After work Tuesday evening, Negrin confronted fellow TSA screener Hugo Osorno in an airport parking lot. Negrin wanted to "resolve a problem," and get Osorno, 34, to "finally respect him." Instead, Negrin allegedly pulled out a police baton and began striking Osorno, while demanding an apology. A witness told cops that Negrin told Osorno, in Spanish, "Get on your knees or I will kill you and you better apologize." When Negrin, wearing his TSA uniform, arrived for work yesterday, he was arrested on an aggravated battery count and booked into the Miami-Dade lockup. Osorno, police reported, suffered "bruises and abrasions on his back and arms" during the attack.

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Disputes continue over adoptions

2010-04-15T18:56:00.000-07:00

"Russia believes that only an agreement that contains effective tools for Russian and U.S. officials to monitor the living conditions of adopted Russian children will ensure that recent tragedies in the United States will not be repeated," he said.
But the Russia Education and Science Ministry, which oversees international adoptions, said it had no knowledge of an official freeze. A spokeswoman for the Kremlin's children's rights ombudsman said that organization also knew nothing of a suspension.
And in Washington, the U.S. State Department said the administration had gotten conflicting information when it sought clarification from Russian officials about the status of adoptions. Spokesman P.J. Crowley said the U.S. was continuing to seek clarification. "Right now, to be honest, we've received conflicting information," he said.
The boy's return — with little supervision or explanation, aside from a note he carried from his adoptive mother saying he had psychological problems — outraged Russian authorities and the public.
Russia has a large population of abused and neglected children, many of them the children of alcoholics. Many of these children wind up living in large institutions, because adoption by Russian families is still relatively uncommon.
But as Russia has prospered over the past decade, the fate of these children, especially of those sent abroad, has increasingly been the focus of concern.
Russian lawmakers for years have suggested suspending foreign adoptions, citing a few high-publicized cases of abuse and killings of Russian children adopted by U.S. families.
The Tennessee woman who sent back her adopted Russian son last Thursday claimed she had been misled by his Russian orphanage about his condition.
Russians were outraged that no charges were filed against her in the United States.
"How can we prosecute a person who abused the rights of a Russian child abroad?" the children's rights ombudsman, Pavel Astakhov, said in a televised interview Wednesday. "If there was an adoption treaty in place, we would have legal means to protect Russian children abroad.
Some 3,000 U.S. applications for adopting Russian children are now pending, according to the Joint Council on International Children's Services, which represents many U.S. agencies engaged in international adoption.
But the numbers have declined sharply in recent years — with only 1,586 U.S. adoptions from Russia last year, compared with more than 5,800 in 2004.
The decline is due in part to concerns by U.S. parents about reports of fetal alcohol syndrome and other problems faced by some Russian children.
Thousands of American adoption advocates had hoped this week to petition Russian and U.S. leaders to prevent the halt in adoptions announced Thursday. Poignant pleas from would-be adoptive parents were included in an online petition, signed by more than 11,000 people and addressed to President Obama and his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev, the council said.
U.S. officials appeared willing to consider Russia's demand for a formal bilateral adoption pact, after years of resisting such entreaties while arguing that an international accord called the Hague Convention would be sufficient once Russia ratified it.
"We're willing to talk about some sort of bilateral understanding where we would ensure that these kinds of things could not happen," the U.S. ambassador to Russia, John Beyrle, told CBS television this week.
Crowley said that the group of U.S. officials from the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security will be traveling to Moscow this weekend for meetings early next week with Russian officials to clarify the situation.
"We're really going to Moscow next week to address what are serious and legitimate concerns about our processes regarding adoptions between Russia and the United States," he said. "We certainly think that there are many thousands of Russian children who are not adopted by Russian families; we have the same objective as Russia has: to find loving, safe and permanent homes, some of which would be here in the United States."

DOE - Fossil Energy: Solid Oxide Fuel Cell Technology

2010-02-24T19:15:00.001-08:00

DOE - Fossil Energy: Solid Oxide Fuel Cell Technology

Images show gushing geysers on Saturn moon - Space.com- msnbc.com

2010-02-24T19:15:00.000-08:00

Images show gushing geysers on Saturn moon - Space.com- msnbc.com: "Like sprinklers hidden beneath the surface, a series of geysers — more than previously thought — are gushing water ice from fissures near the south pole of Saturn's icy moon Enceladus, new images reveal."

Bloom Debuts Clean Energy Power Box -- Clean Energy -- InformationWeek

2010-02-24T19:13:00.000-08:00

Bloom Debuts Clean Energy Power Box -- Clean Energy -- InformationWeek: "The company says its 'power plant-in-a-box' is a breakthrough in fuel cell-driven clean energy, but some question whether the price is too high.
By Antone Gonsalves
InformationWeek
February 24, 2010 03:20 PM

Bloom Energy debuted on Wednesday its highly anticipated power plant-in-a-box that supporters claim represents a breakthrough in clean energy produced from solid oxide fuel cells.
The company unveiled the Bloom Energy Server, dubbed the 'Bloom Box,' at eBay's San Jose, Calif., headquarters. Attendees at the highly orchestrated media event included California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and former Secretary of State Colin Powell."

NASA Looks to Fly Commercial

2009-08-16T20:25:00.000-07:00

NASA Looks to Fly Commercial
Irene Klotz, Discovery News

Aug. 14, 2009 -- NASA will spend $50 million of federal economic stimulus funds to seed development of commercial passenger spaceships; however, a presidential panel reviewing the U.S. space program says that may be just the beginning.
According to the recommendations of the U.S. Human Space Flight Plans committee, which delivered its preliminary findings to the White House on Friday, NASA should set aside $2.4 billion between 2011 and 2014 for rides to the International Space Station on commercial U.S. carriers.
"There are companies that would love to move forward with orbital launch service on their own, using only private funds, but it just wouldn't happen for many, many years," John Gedmark, executive director of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, a Washington, D.C.-based industry trade group, told Discovery News. "What the government funding would do is basically allow these companies to accelerate these efforts."
With the government as a base customer, commercial firms would be able to develop an array of new markets for orbital launch services, including tourism and scientific research, Gedmark added.
"When you have multiple companies doing this as part of their core business, you open the doors for all sorts of things that you can do in space," he said.
The agency has $50 million available for firms to flesh out plans to provide astronauts rides to and from space station, which orbits about 225 miles above Earth. Proposals are due by Sept. 22.

NASA is retiring the shuttle fleet after seven more missions to complete construction of the orbital outpost. The current plan is to buy rides from the Russian government until a new U.S. spaceship, called Orion, debuts in 2016, or so.
The panel reviewing the space program, however, sees another path.
"We'd like to get NASA out of the business of flying people to low-Earth orbit," said panel member and former astronaut Sally Ride.
Fifty firms told NASA they were interested in the work, including United Space Alliance, which operates the space shuttles for NASA, and Lockheed Martin, which is designing the shuttle replacement spaceship. Among the dozens of smaller firms that contacted NASA were Space Exploration Technologies and Orbital Sciences Corp., both of which are developing cargo ships to fly to the station under NASA contracts worth $500 million, and the secretive Amazon-backed firm Blue Origin.
Absent from the list was Virgin Galactic, which plans to offer suborbital passenger space flights out of Mojave, Calif., beginning in 2010 or 2011.
"There are a lot of companies interested in what could become a new commercial spaceflight industry," Gedmark said.

Hav-A-Tampa cigar closing

2009-06-25T21:00:00.000-07:00

"TAMPA - The Tampa area will lose part of its cigar heritage in August when Hav-A-Tampa shuts its factory near Seffner and lays off about 495 employees, closing a factory that has been operating since 1902.
Company officials announced the closing Tuesday.

Many employees there make Hav-A-Tampa's iconic Jewels, inexpensive machine-made cigars known for their birchwood tips. Some workers have labored there for two decades or longer, including one who's been there for 50 years, said Richard McKenzie, a senior vice president of human resources for Altadis USA, which owns Hav-A-Tampa.

Altadis tried to keep the plant open by closing it for a week or two at a time and furloughing workers. Eventually, though, the company couldn't cope with a steep drop in consumer demand brought on by the recession and a large new tax on tobacco products, McKenzie said.

Work that had been done in Seffner will now be performed in an Altadis plant in Puerto Rico, where it has extra manufacturing capacity, McKenzie said.

The company is not closing its nearby distribution center off U.S. 301, where it employs about 150 people.

Employees on Tuesday were digesting how they would find work in an economy where more than one in 10 people in the area are unemployed.
"I've been here 12 years. I know someone who's been there 20 years, 22 years," said Denise Harrison, an office manager at Hav-A-Tampa. "I'm sure we'll all land on our feet, but it will be harder for some people other than me who may have done nothing else."

Altadis USA plans to begin laying off workers immediately and will continue until closing the plant in late August. Workers will receive their pay through August, even if they are let go before that, McKenzie said. Employees also are receiving severance packages and job placement assistance.

Several things conspired to hurt Altadis' sales, McKenzie said, including the recession and the growth of indoor smoking bans. The bans have especially hurt sales in cold-weather states, where it's impractical to smoke a cigar outdoors in the winter, he said.

However, the company attributed much of its trouble to the State Children's Health Insurance Program, or SCHIP, a federal program that provides health insurance to low-income children. It is funded in part by a new federal tax on cigars and cigarettes. McKenzie couldn't say how much sales of Hav-A-Tampa cigars had fallen off, but the numbers have dropped significantly, he said.

Previously, federal excise taxes on cigars were limited to no more than a nickel, said Norman Sharp, president of the Cigar Association of America trade group. The tax increase, which took effect April 1, raises the maximum tax on cigars to about 40 cents, Sharp said.

Before the increase was passed, the cigar industry warned that consumption of cigars could fall as much as 30 percent in the year after its passage. It's not clear yet how big of an impact the law is having on sales, Sharp said.

Harrison said she understands the company's predicament and that Altadis has tried to treat its employees fairly, including guaranteeing employees two months of pay. Like her employer, she put part of the blame on the SCHIP tax hike.
"We can't afford to make these cigars in the U.S. anymore," she said.
Unlike its more upscale rivals, which favored hand-rolling and unionized labor, Hav-A-Tampa turned to machines and nonunionized labor to mass produce cigars, said Gary Mormino, a history professor at the University of South Florida in St. Petersburg. Company founder Eli Witt also was a pioneer in the use of wood tips and wrapping cigars in cellophane - practices that are now standard in the machine-made cigar industry, Mormino said.
"Hav-a-Tampa has to be one of the greatest commercial names," he said. "It just seems right."

With the company now set to stop producing in Seffner, the last major cigar maker left in the Bay area will be J.C. Newman, which owns premium brands including Cuesta-Rey, Diamond Crown and La Unica. While those premium brands are made outside the United States, Newman still makes as many as 40,000 cigars a day in Tampa under its less-expensive brands, Rigoletto Black Jack, Factory No. 59 and Mexican Segundos, said company co-owner Bobby Newman.

When J.C. Newman moved from Cleveland in 1954, there were 10 large cigar factories here.
"It's a sad day," Newman said. "We are the last ones left out of those."

Campaign to save NASA shuttle

2009-02-17T17:11:00.000-08:00

Space shuttle era may end in 2010. It is a disappointing reality the USA is placing science and the potential profits of space exploration on the back burner. In my humble opinion the shuttle should be ran right up to the point that a new shuttle is put into operation. Let me re state a new and improved shuttle is the practical next step for NASA but the powers to be have opted to back slide by developing the Orion, a smaller spacecraft that would launch from Florida's Kennedy Space Center and parachute landings in the western United States. The Orion is not a shuttle but a crew space exploration capsule.

We must launch our own mission, to contine the space shuttle program so the United States never looses the capacity to send astronauts into space until the Orion's first lift off.

Iraq

2009-02-17T17:05:00.000-08:00

Iraqis gather to watch televised coverage of the inauguration of U.S. President Barack Obama at a cafe in the Shiite stronghold of Sadr City in Baghdad, Iraq on Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2009.

43rd and 44th

2009-02-17T16:55:00.000-08:00

President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle stand with former US president George W. Bush and Laura Bush on the steps of the US Capitol following the inaugural ceremony for Obama as 44th US president in Washington on January 20, 2009.

Guantanamo Bay chain of command

2009-02-17T16:52:00.000-08:00

U.S. Navy Chief Petty Officer Bill Mesta replaces an official picture of outgoing President George W. Bush with that of newly-sworn-in U.S. President Barack Obama, in the lobby of the headquarters of the U.S. Naval Base January 20, 2009 in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. (Brennan Linsley-Pool/Getty Images)

President Barack Obama and his family

2009-02-17T16:51:00.000-08:00

Obama talks with McCain

2009-02-17T16:46:00.000-08:00

U.S. President Barack Obama talks with U.S. Sen. John McCain after arriving at the luncheon at Statuary Hall the luncheon at Statuary Hall in the U.S. Capitol on January 20, 2009 in Washington, DC.

Obama retakes oath

2009-01-22T04:51:00.000-08:00

"WASHINGTON – After the flub heard around the world, President Barack Obama has taken the oath of office. Again. Chief Justice John Roberts delivered the oath to Obama on Wednesday night at the White House — a rare do-over. The surprise moment came in response to Tuesday's much-noticed stumble, when Roberts got the words of the oath a little off, which prompted Obama to do so, too.

Don't worry, the White House says: Obama has still been president since noon on Inauguration Day.

Nevertheless, Obama and Roberts went through the drill again out of what White House counsel Greg Craig called "an abundance of caution."
This time, the scene was the White House Map Room"

Economic Stimulus Package

2009-01-19T20:56:00.000-08:00

It’s good to be back to work after a long sabbatical following the victory of President Barrack Obama relieving the stress of the Bush error. Let me go on record in voicing opposition to any economic stimulus. What America needs is stricter regulation upon all financial institutions, ceilings on home prices which will jump start the economic and infuse wealth. Continued readjustments within the housing market on a downward trend is actually good for America. I can remember a conversation with a colleague a couple years ago in regards to buying a home, then a dream unattainable at our salaries. Those in the business of selling homes hope the decrease in home values in some markets is temproary, the fact of the matter is housing has faced a readjustment, prices have reached their peak. Current prices as of January 2009 may be the ceiling for some time in my observation. We as leaders of this new economic and political error must direct our collective competitive drive towards success in a direction void of corruption, always seeking to implement business practices that generate profit, are pleasing to the common worker, and beneficial to the common good of the nation (A.T. Brooks).

"As state legislators worked through a special session to address the budget deficit, Governor Crist announced a new economic stimulus plan for Florida's small businesses.

The two-pronged plan requires an initial $10 million investment from the state. $8.5 million will be used for a pilot loan program to provide up to $250,000 in loans to companies with 10 to 99 employees. The loans can be used to purchase capital, train employees, or provide salaries for new positions. The remaining $1.5 million will be used for additional economic stimulus initiatives.
The Governor's Office noted that this type of stimulus plan is particularly useful given that between 1997 and 2007, 17 percent of the new jobs created in Florida came from small businesses that expanded, exceeding the new jobs created by newly opened businesses or companies that relocated to Florida.

The Governor's Economic Stimulus approach is based on research showing that a small group of high-growth, high-potential businesses can generate a large number of new sustainable jobs. Littleton, Colorado successfully implemented this economic strategy starting in 1987, and between 1990 and 2005 saw an employment growth rate of 135 percent - compared to 47.2 percent for the state as a whole, and 21.4 percent nationwide " (The LeMieux Report ).

Seal - Get It Together (Peter Rauhofer Remix)

2008-11-20T19:02:00.001-08:00

TOP 5 REASONS OBAMA SUPPORTERS SHOULDN'T REST

2008-10-21T21:40:00.000-07:00

1. The polls may be wrong. This is an unprecedented election. No one knows how racism may affect what voters tell pollsters—or what they do in the voting booth. And the polls are narrowing anyway. In the last few days, John McCain has gained ground in most national polls, as his campaign has gone even more negative.

2. Dirty tricks. Republicans are already illegally purging voters from the rolls in some states. They're whipping up hysteria over ACORN to justify more challenges to new voters. Misleading flyers about the voting process have started appearing in black neighborhoods. And of course, many counties still use unsecure voting machines.

3. October surprise. In politics, 15 days is a long time. The next McCain smear could dominate the news for a week. There could be a crisis with Iran, or Bin Laden could release another tape, or worse.

4. Those who forget history... In 2000, Al Gore won the popular vote after trailing by seven points in the final days of the race. In 1980, Reagan was eight points down in the polls in late October and came back to win. Races can shift—fast!

5. Landslide. Even with Barack Obama in the White House, passing universal health care and a new clean-energy policy is going to be hard. Insurance, drug and oil companies will fight us every step of the way. We need the kind of landslide that will give Barack a huge mandate.

Election 2008: Mid October Analysis

2008-10-18T06:36:00.000-07:00

Will Barrack Obama win? What would happen if the Bradley Effect plays a significant role in this election? This is a discrepancy between voter opinion polls and election outcomes in American political campaigns. The theory of the Bradley effect is that the inaccurate polls have been skewed by the phenomenon of social desirability bias. Specifically, some white voters give inaccurate polling responses for fear that, by stating their true preference, they will open themselves to criticism of racial motivation. The reluctance to give accurate polling answers has sometimes extended to post-election exit polls as well.

How ironic that John McCain’s best strategy is based of Obama’s primary mantra of hope. Hope the Bradley Effect has skewed polling significantly enough to error on the side of John McCain. In the past however we have seen with victories of President George W. Bush that a well-built political machine can overcome seemingly insurmountable odds. This is to the advantage of Barrack Obama who has put together the most disciplined political ground force seen in my life time.

Obama Puts Money and Manpower in Florida

2008-10-18T06:27:00.000-07:00

The caption is of Barack Obama speaking in Florida (with FAMU Marching Band).

"By Indira A.R. Lakshmanan

Oct. 16 (Bloomberg) -- Barack Obama's campaign is pouring $39 million into Florida and sending some of its most senior people there in a bid to win the 27 electoral votes of a state that has voted Republican in the last two presidential elections.

Florida is considered a must-win state for Republican candidate John McCain, and polls show the race is close, less than three weeks before Election Day.

``There's an opening we see in Florida, and we like our chances,'' Temo Figueroa, national Latino vote director for Obama, an Illinois Democrat, said in an interview. Hispanics represent 14 percent of the electorate in Florida, making them a key to victory in this battleground state.
Paul Tewes, who directed Obama's victory in Iowa's caucuses in January, has relocated to Florida for the duration of the campaign. Tewes left the Democratic National Committee, where he coordinated efforts with the Obama camp.

Obama's deputy national campaign manager, Steve Hildebrand, has been in Florida since last week, and Figueroa will join him this weekend.

Florida has 415,000 newly registered Democrats, about 50,000 more than newly registered Republicans, according to estimates based on the secretary of state's data. Tewes, Figueroa and Hildebrand want to ensure the new Democrats make it to the voting booths on Nov. 4.

``The polling trends have been going our way for the last month,'' Figueroa said.
A CNN/Time poll conducted in Florida from Oct. 11-14 has Obama leading McCain 51 percent to 46 percent. A Fox/Rasmussen poll on Oct. 12 found an identical spread.
Twice the Ads
Obama is running twice as many television advertisements and three times as many radio ads as McCain in Spanish-language media in Florida, Figueroa said.

``You're going to see lots of Barack Obama, Michelle Obama, Joe Biden and Jill Biden on the ground in Florida'' for the remainder of the campaign, he said. ``If we win Florida, Barack Obama is president. There's no way for John McCain to win without Florida.''
Mike DuHaime, McCain's national political director, said the Arizona senator's campaign is vigorously contesting the state.

Voters in the coming days ``are going to see a lot of Governor Sarah Palin, Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Senator Joe Lieberman and other prominent surrogates,'' he said.
McCain himself is scheduled to address rallies tomorrow in Miami and Melbourne.
Absentee Ballots

DuHaime said the campaign's TV and radio ads, direct-mail efforts and get-out-the-vote drives in Florida will carry a price-tag in the ``tens of millions'' of dollars, although he declined to be more specific.

He also said 218,000 more Republicans than Democrats so far have requested absentee ballots, which he said is a promising sign for McCain's hopes of carrying Florida.
Cuban-Americans, a reliably Republican voting bloc in South Florida, are among those likely to vote for McCain.

Still, Figueroa said Obama has openings with the growing number of Puerto Ricans in Orlando and Tampa, and with other new immigrants in South Florida who have largely registered and voted for Democrats.

This is the first election year that Cuban-Americans are no longer the majority of Hispanic registered voters in Florida, according to state figures.

``People in Florida are worried about their jobs, their pensions, their mortgages, they get angry every time they gas up,'' Figueroa said. ``We're going to fight like hell for every vote.'' "

Source: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=email_en&refer=home&sid=azZry8NsHBhw

Alaska Beluga whales endangered

2008-10-18T05:47:00.000-07:00

"The depleted population of beluga whales that swim off the coast of Alaska's largest city was listed as endangered on Friday by the federal government.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said it has determined that belugas in Cook Inlet, the channel that flows from Anchorage to the Gulf of Alaska, are at risk of extinction and deserving of strict protections under the Endangered Species Act.
The population, which fell to a low of 278 in 2005 from 653 in 1994, has yet to rebound from a period of over-harvesting by the region's Native hunters, officials said.
Hunting of Cook Inlet belugas largely ceased in 1999, but the population continues to struggle, officials said.

"In spite of protections already in place, Cook Inlet beluga whales are not recovering," James Balsinger, acting assistant administrator for NOAA's Fisheries Service, said in a statement.
Environmentalists hailed the listing decision, but criticized the time it took to materialize.
"This ends the debate about whether the beluga should be protected under the Endangered Species Act, and starts the critically important process of actually working to recover the species and protect its habitat," Brendan Cummings, oceans program director for the Center for Biological Diversity said in a statement.

"Hopefully the State of Alaska will now work toward protecting the beluga rather than, as with the polar bear, denying the science and suing to overturn the listing."
The endangered listing comes despite objections from Gov. Sarah Palin, the Republican candidate for vice president. At the urging of the Palin administration, NOAA delayed a listing decision that had been expected in April so that it could conduct one additional summer population survey.

Various industry groups have also fought the listing, which they fear will hamper Cook Inlet oil and gas development, cargo shipping, commercial fishing and major construction projects.
The beluga population of Cook Inlet is among five beluga populations in Alaska waters."

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/email/idUSTRE49G6JD20081017

American vs. Japanese - Gas Mileage Comparison

2008-09-11T05:24:00.000-07:00

Talking heads like Rush Limbaugh whom assert lies such as environmentalist and fuel economy standards harm the automobile industry could do more good by sticking the facts. If Japan can build it why then not America now! Bottom line Toyota has surpassed American Automobile makers in sales because of its practical approach to the reality of what drivers today need. American automobile makes on the other hand are loyal to gas inefficient SUV that are simply unaffordable. On a personal note being a musician I need more space to transport my instrument. Thinking the Toyota Matrix would be good on gas and is big enough. Comments welcome. Peace.

For years and years it was considered un-American to buy a car or truck that wasn’t manufactured by one of the major American manufacturers. Whether it was Ford, General Motors or Dodge, you’d better have had one of these vehicles parked in your driveway, or you weren’t doing your civic duty.

Right around the 1973 gas and energy crisis, and again during the 1979 energy crisis, it suddenly became okay to buy foreign cars - especially Japanese cars - because of their remarkably better fuel economy as well as their increased life span.

Ever since, it seems that American auto manufacturers have been playing catch up, and lately, it seems the distance in popularity between Japanese and American cars is as large as it has ever been. This is probably linked to the fact that as gas prices have dramatically increased, foreign car manufactures - especially Japanese cars - have introduced a myriad of gas saving measures, with the most popular being hybrid technologies.
All that being said, I wanted to see how vast the difference in gas mileage really is between the top five most fuel efficient American cars vs. the top five most fuel efficient Japanese cars:

Top 5 Most Fuel Efficient American Cars:
Ford Escape Hybrid - 36 mpg city / 31 mpg highway
Chevy Aveo - 26 mpg city / 35 mpg highway
Ford Focus - 26 mpg city / 34 mpg highway
Chevy Cobalt - 25 mpg city / 34 mpg highway
Ford Fusion - 24 mpg city / 32 mpg highway

Top 5 Most Fuel Efficient Japanese Cars:
Honda Insight - 60 mpg city / 66 mpg highway
Toyota Prius - 60 mpg city / 51 mpg highway
Honda Civic Hybrid - 49 mpg city / 51 highway
Toyota Corolla - 32 mpg city / 41 mpg highway
Toyota Matrix - 30 mpg city / 36 mpg highway

After doing some math, I figured the average of the top five American cars gets 27.4 mpg in the city and 33.2 mpg on the highway, while the average of the top five Japanese cars get 46.2 mpg in the city and 49 mpg on the highway. This equates to 68% better gas mileage in the city and 48% better gas mileage on the highway for Japanese cars.

The most obvious cause for the difference is due to the fact there are three hybrid cars included on the Japanese list while there is only one hybrid car on the American list.

While gas mileage certainly isn’t the only indicator as to why certain cars sell better than others, I don’t think you can discount the fact Japanese cars tend to get much better gas mileage than their American counterparts when looking at the dramatic rise in sales of Japanese cars vs. an equally dramatic fall in the sales of American cars.

Report: Bush misused Iraq intelligence

2008-07-26T11:08:00.000-07:00

By Randall Mikkelsen

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush and his top policymakers misstated Saddam Hussein's links to terrorism and ignored doubts among intelligence agencies about Iraq's arms programs as they made a case for war, the Senate intelligence committee reported on Thursday.

The report shows an administration that "led the nation to war on false premises," said the committee's Democratic Chairman, Sen. John Rockefeller of West Virginia. Several Republicans on the committee protested its findings as a "partisan exercise."

The committee studied major speeches by Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and other officials in advance of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, and compared key assertions with intelligence available at the time.

Statements that Iraq had a partnership with al Qaeda were wrong and unsupported by intelligence, the report said.

It said that Bush's and Cheney's assertions that Saddam was prepared to arm terrorist groups with weapons of mass destruction for attacks on the United States contradicted available intelligence.

Such assertions had a strong resonance with a U.S. public, still reeling after al Qaeda's September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. Polls showed that many Americans believed Iraq played a role in the attacks, even long after Bush acknowledged in September 2003 that there was no evidence Saddam was involved.

The report also said administration prewar statements on Iraq's weapons programs were backed up in most cases by available U.S. intelligence, but officials failed to reflect internal debate over those findings, which proved wrong."

Ford to cut white-collar expenses by 15 percent

2008-07-26T11:06:00.000-07:00

"DETROIT (Reuters) - Ford Motor Co said on Thursday it will cut expenses for its white-collar work force by 15 percent over the next two months through job cuts, attrition and other actions.

The cuts, telegraphed by Ford in May, when it warned it would not meet its long-standing goal of returning to profitability in 2009, will come as the automaker adjusts to a deeper-than-expected slump in U.S. vehicle sales, led by declines in sales of pickup trucks and SUVs.

"We told employees today we are going to cut salaried work force-related expenses by 15 percent and complete the actions by August 1," said Ford spokeswoman Marcey Evans.
"This does include reductions in headcount and contract jobs, attrition and consolidation of positions," she said.

Ford, the No. 2 U.S. automaker, has about 24,300 salaried workers in North America. It warned employees in May that cuts in production would force a reduction in its salaried and hourly work force.
Salaried workers who are dismissed will be offered standard company severance packages. Ford does not disclose details of the packages.
The automaker plans to offer buyouts to union-represented hourly workers at plants where the company has excess capacity due to declining demand for specific vehicles such as trucks and SUVs.

More than 38,000 United Auto Workers union-represented workers have left Ford through buyout programs, including about 4,200 who accepted offers that wrapped up in early 2008.
Ford executives have said the sharp rise in U.S. gas prices above $3.50 per gallon triggered a permanent shift in demand to cars and crossovers and away from larger vehicles.
The company has been shifting production plans toward smaller vehicles, including introducing a Fiesta subcompact in North America in 2010 that will be built in Mexico.
(Reporting by Soyoung Kim and David Bailey, editing by Gerald E. McCormick/Jeffrey Benkoe)"

Supreme Court Backs Rights for Terror Detainees

2008-07-26T11:04:00.001-07:00

"The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that foreign terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have a constitutional right to challenge their detention in U.S. civilian courts.

In a 5-4 ruling, the court also said the Bush administration's system for classifying detainees as enemy combatants does not meet basic legal standards.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the majority, said, "The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times." He was joined by the court's four more liberal justices, Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, David Souter and John Paul Stevens.
This is the third time the justices have told President Bush that his plan for handling foreign terrorists violates the Constitution. This time, the president had Congress on his side. In 2006, the Republican-controlled Congress passed a law called the Military Commissions Act. It closed the courthouse doors to Guantanamo detainees and set up a new system for terrorism trials at the camp in Cuba.
The Supreme Court now says the 2006 law unconstitutionally suspended habeas corpus — a prisoner's right to challenge his detention. The ruling overturns a lower court decision that said the law was constitutional.

Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Antonin Scalia each wrote a dissent on behalf of the court's more conservative bloc, which includes Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas. Roberts criticized his fellow justices for striking down what he called "the most generous set of procedural protections ever afforded aliens detained by this country as enemy combatants." Scalia wrote that the majority opinion "will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed."
Congressional Democrats and human-rights groups hailed the decision. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy called the ruling "a stinging rebuke of the Bush administration's flawed detention policies." Vincent Warren, director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which represents many Guantanamo detainees, said, "The Supreme Court has finally brought an end to one of our nation's most egregious injustices."
On Thursday, President Bush said, "We'll abide by the court's decision. That doesn't mean I have to agree with it."

The ruling could resuscitate several court cases that have been on hold pending the high court's decision. There are nearly 200 Guantanamo detainee cases on the docket of the District Court in Washington, D.C. Those cases include claims from detainees who argue that they are being unlawfully held at the prison camp, that they are innocent, or that they were tortured during interrogations.

Chief Judge Royce Lamberth of the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., said the court's judges will meet in the coming days to decide how to proceed. "I expect we'll call in the lawyers from both sides to see what suggestions they have for how we can approach our task most effectively and efficiently," Lamberth said.

It is not clear what impact the ruling will have on the eventual fate of detainees. President Bush and presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain have all said they support shutting down Guantanamo, but there is no clear consensus on where the detainees should go. In the past, some were released without charge. Others were transferred to foreign countries. About 270 men captured in Afghanistan and Iraq are currently at the prison camp. Some have been there for more than six years.

The Associated Press contributed to this report."

Rise corruption at Mexico border

2008-07-26T11:01:00.000-07:00

"SAN DIEGO, May 27 (UPI) -- U.S. Homeland Security (OTCBB:HSCC) officials are concerned that the growing ranks of the Border Patrol will lead to a coinciding increase in corruption.
The New York Times (NYSE:NYT) said Tuesday that the fears of individual agents working for smuggling rings has led the Department of Homeland Security to reconstitute the internal affairs unit of the Customs and Border Protection agency, and to begin subjecting recruits to lie-detector exams.

"If you can get a corrupt inspector, you have the keys to the kingdom," said FBI Agent Andrew Black, who supervises a task force focused on border corruption in the San Diego area.
The Times said increased security along the border has made it more likely that Mexican gangs will pay off a U.S. agent or even have a mole get a job with the agency.
The Times said the number of internal affairs investigations along the entire Mexican border grew from 31 in 2003 to 79 last year.

Earlier this month, a rookie border agent was arrested for allegedly carrying drugs and illegal immigrants through the San Diego border crossing. He was allegedly conspiring with his uncle. "

Day as a Hindu Monk

2008-07-26T11:00:00.001-07:00

"There's not much traffic on First Avenue in lower Manhattan at 5:15 a.m. But in the building between a darkened tattoo shop and electronic store, a light shines bright from the second floor.
Inside is the New York City headquarters of the Interfaith League, a Hare Krishna group. A visitor is greeted with a blast of sights and sounds: Thirteen men and one woman are twirling and dancing, playing cymbals and drums and chanting Hindu tunes. Hare Krishna monks are in orange or white robes. Civilians are in business suits or jeans. They all face an altar adorned with flowers and statues of the supreme Hindu God, Krishna, and his female counterpart, Radha.
A little over an hour later, a 35-year-old monk named Gadadhara Pandit Dasa blows into a conch shell and pours a water offering. This marks the half-way point in this three-hour morning worship service, a daily celebration.

"I just can't think of a better way to start the day," he says, grinning. "It's such a devotional activity, so deeply moving for the soul, that the rest of your day is much more clear, because you've nourished the mind and soul from the morning."
Searching for Answers
Pandit – whose name means "saint"— sits cross-legged on the hardwood floor of this urban temple. He begins to chant the Hare Krishna mantra. He explains that repeating the names for Krishna is a spiritual event of sorts, allowing God to enter his soul.
"Our focus is on the sound vibration itself, because we know that sound is an incredibly powerful tool," he later explains. "It can cause avalanches, and sound, through music, can move our emotions in all different directions. The same with spiritual sound. When I'm calling out to Krishna, saying the Hare Krishna mantra — Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna, Krishna, Hare Hare — Krishna is actually present there."
Pandit grew up in an observant Hindu family. He was an only child. They moved from India to California when he was 7, and as his father's business fortunes ebbed and flowed, he began asking existential questions.
In his early 20s, Pandit moved to Bulgaria to help his father with his import-export business. Unable to speak the language, he had few friends. He spent evenings alone and lonely, and one night, began reading the sacred Hindu text, the Bhagavad Gita.
"That's when it really took off for me," he recalls, "because for the first time in my spiritual life, I was being given answers."
Beyond Material Wealth
Pandit found solace in Hare Krishna explanations for Hindu beliefs: why life fluctuates (it's karma, because you reap what you sow); why reincarnation occurs (because one life may not be enough to pay off past debts); why Hinduism has thousands of gods (because Krishna is the supreme God, and lesser gods help run creation).
When Pandit returned from Bulgaria, he began studying with a monk. Then he moved in — temporarily, he thought.
"I was taking it one step at a time, one month at a time," Pandit says. "And at some point, after maybe a year or so, I said, maybe this is something I should consider. And now it's eight years later."
Pandit says initially, the questions haunted him: Can I live this way the rest of my life without income or savings for old age, fitting all my possessions in a locker? Yet he found that the material deprivations paled next to the wealth in his spiritual life and his friendships.
"I really don't feel like I'm missing anything," he says. "The deepest thing any human being looks for is relationships. That's where we get the most joy. And there's no shortage of relationships for me here."
The monks eat together, wake up together and worship together. "We spend more time together than most couples and families do," Pandit says.
Drawn to Monastic Life
By mid-morning, eight monks, ages 21 to 48, have gathered for spiritual reading and discussion. A long, narrow room serves as dining room, living room and bedroom for the men. They sleep on the hardwood floor and store their sleeping bags in lockers with all their other possessions: coat, sweaters, robes, laptop computers.
At this moment, they're each peering into their laptops, reading the Bhagavad Gita online. The day's reading concerns the pain of leaving all for the higher love for Krishna.
But why enter a monastery?
Matthew Hall, who left his Protestant family in Houston three years ago, says he was looking for peace, love and satisfaction — something that eluded his friends with good jobs and money.
"They end up with a bunch of bills, stress, a whole bunch of anxieties," Hall says. "People weren't truly satisfied. And so I figured, why should I put any endeavor in material prosperity? Let me just find a monastery and dedicate my life to spirituality, because this is what's giving me happiness."
Life in Close Quarters
Of course, it can be trying living in such close quarters. And Ari Weiss, a Jew just testing the waters of monastic life, says it can be equally trying for the monks' families.
"One of the hardest things for me is having my parents on the periphery thinking, 'Is my son a fanatic?'" he said, laughing nervously. "They love me so much, but at the same time, this question is in their mind."
His parents, of course, remember the Hare Krishna monks of the '60s and '70s, who danced in the city streets and gave away carnations at airports. Pandit says while there are about 100,000 Hare Krishna followers in the U.S., there aren't enough monks to do that now: Their ranks dwindled as young devotees traded their robes and sleeping bags for families, houses and jobs.
Generally, Pandit takes a nap in the morning. But not today: He's on lunch duty. The special today: A traditional Indian stew called kichiri, with butternut squash, broccoli, green peas and potatoes. Hare Krishnas don't eat meat.
Pandit says the way he cooks reflects his faith, right down to honoring — rather than eating — those he says are also children of God.
"If we're trying to love [God] but simultaneously causing harm and violence to his children, he's not going to be all that pleased," Pandit says. "'OK, you love my two-legged children, what about my four-legged ones?'"
Engaging the World
Nine monks and a few visitors sit in a line, cross-legged on the floor of the all-purpose room. Pandit ladles stew into their bowls. Pandit says every monk knows how to cook, clean, play musical instruments and sing. But for Hare Krishnas, he says, the most important worship is done outside, by engaging the world.
"Some people may think that a monk is somewhat reclusive — kind of isolated, in a bubble, meditating all day. But it's quite the opposite. I'm on the computer, e-mailing. I'm driving, using cell phones and using Facebook. I have my own Web site."
Facebook, he notes, is "great for connecting to college students." And that is where Pandit's calling lies: He is the first Hindu chaplain at Columbia University and New York University.
At 4:30 p.m., Pandit and fellow monk Dave Jenkins run through their checklist: rolling pins, pots and pans, flour, vegetarian stew, side dishes – everything they'll need to teach some 50 Columbia students how to cook a vegetarian meal, as Pandit does every Tuesday night.
Students begin streaming in around 6:45 p.m. — some Hindu, most not.
"Someone gave me a flyer that said, free vegetarian food, and he was obviously Hindu," says Sanali Phatak. "I was like 'Indian food! I'm going to this.'"
Cooking with Consciousness
Phatak is getting her master's at Columbia Teachers College. The first-generation Indian-American has grown close to Pandit. She attends his Bhagavad Gita study groups on Friday afternoons and says he helps her understand her faith.
"In most traditional Hindu households, you don't want to ask too racy questions," she said with a laugh, adding, "You know, 'Why is drinking looked down upon?' Your parents are like, 'Oh, drinking is just bad.' But what's the more spiritual reason for that?"
Mukund Sanghi, another regular, says his engineering background made him skeptical of his family's Hindu faith. But Pandit's rational arguments have drawn him back.
"There is a reason behind whatever he says, and it sounds so much more sane," Sanghi says. "It's practical, and yes, I can listen to him, I can talk to him. It will always be a new learning experience."
With a critical mass of about 50 students, Pandit announces that they're going to make samosas — deep-fried vegetable turnovers — and the crowd lets out a whoop. He banters with the students, commenting that one student's samosa resembles the state of California or that another's looks a little greasy. The lesson ends, but before the students can eat, they must listen to five minutes of Hindu philosophy:
"Food absorbs consciousness," he says to the polite crowd, "so when you're eating, you can ask yourself, 'Whose consciousness am I eating today?'"
Pandit knows most of these students will not convert to Hinduism. Still, he hopes to give them tools as they head into a world of achievement, stress and possible burnout.
"Prozac is not going to be the solution," Pandit says. "It's going to be spirituality. It's going to be meditation. It's going to be practice of yoga. And it's going to be connecting with God and our inner self."
At least that's what he hopes. And it's why Pandit will arrive home at 11 at night, crawl into his sleeping bag and get up at 4 the next morning for another day of worship."

Muslims Increasingly Turn to Polygamy

2008-07-26T10:59:00.001-07:00

"Polygamy in the U.S. is not limited to remote enclaves in the West or breakaway sects once affiliated with the Mormon Church. Several scholars say it's growing among black Muslims in the inner city — and particularly in Philadelphia, which is known for its large orthodox black Muslim community.

No one knows exactly how many people live in polygamous families in the U.S. Estimates from academics researching the issue range from 50,000 to 100,000 people.
Take Zaki and Mecca, who have been married for nearly 12 years. In their late 20s, they live in the Philadelphia suburbs, have a 5-year-old son and own a real estate business.
Zaki also has something else: a second wife.
Two years ago, Mecca told her husband she wanted to study Arabic in the Middle East, which would mean a lot of time away from home. (NPR is not using any full names in this story because some of those we interviewed could be prosecuted for bigamy.)
"We were talking about it," Mecca recalls, "and the first thing that came to my mind was, 'I'm going to have to find you another wife!'"
Zaki was game. After all, he had been raised in a polygamous home in Philadelphia. Like many black Muslims, his father subscribed to an orthodox view of Islam that allows a man to marry several women. Zaki says he loved having seven siblings and four mothers, especially at dinnertime.
"I would find out who's making what that particular night. I know that this mom makes barbequed chicken better than my other mom makes fried chicken, so I'm going with the barbequed chicken tonight. Things of that nature," he says with a laugh.
Unlike Zaki, Mecca was raised by a single mother and converted from Southern Baptist to Muslim when she was 16.
Finding Another Wife
When it came to finding a second wife, Zaki said he had no one in mind, and he asked Mecca to conduct the search.
"You know, he gave me the baton, and I took it and ran with it," Mecca says.
Mecca launched a nationwide search. She found candidates by word of mouth. She scoured the Internet. Eventually, she interviewed about a dozen women.
"I had to make sure that she'd be the right fit — not just for my husband, but for our whole family," Mecca says.
But the ultimate match was right under their noses: 20-year-old Aminah, who was a friend of Zaki's younger sister. Aminah knew Mecca was looking for a second wife but thought she was too young. That is, until one night after a dinner party when Mecca pulled her aside. Mecca asked Aminah if she would consider marrying Zaki.
"And I said, 'That's funny, because I was thinking the same thing,'" Aminah says.
Zaki was the last to know the identity of the final candidate to be his bride. He could have vetoed the choice, of course, but he was delighted.
In October 2007, he and Aminah married in a religious, not civil, ceremony. Many polygamous marriages are conducted in secret and are not legally binding because state laws prohibit them.
Aminah recalls that Mecca helped prepare the wedding feast.
Aminah, who's finishing college, lives in an apartment a few miles away from Mecca's house. Zaki moves between homes on alternating nights. But every week after Friday prayers, they get together as a family.
"It can be a variety of things," Zaki says. "Going to a nice restaurant, catching a movie, going bowling, maybe seeing a concert. All kind of things."
"I always call it family date night, because it's one big date," Mecca says. "We just chill. I always look forward to it. We always have a ball, laughing, goofing around."
Treating Each Wife Equally
On a recent day, Zaki's attention is on Aminah. Riding the elevator to her penthouse apartment, he explains that it's Aminah's 21st birthday and he's taking her to New York to see a Broadway show.
"She has no idea what she's going to do today," he whispers. And so while Zaki's second wife is changing for a surprise trip, his first wife is getting the train tickets and making the arrangements.
"See, you got to work as a unit or it's very inconvenient otherwise," he laughs.
As Zaki hurries Aminah along, he says he will do something equivalent for Mecca on her birthday. Islam requires that the husband treat each wife equally. Zaki explains that doesn't mean he gives them the same things. For example, Mecca likes jewelry but Aminah doesn't.
But, he says, "If I upgrade one, then I have to upgrade the other. But the upgrade may not be the same because you have two different women with two different tastes."
They've worked out a system. Even still, why would a woman want to share her husband?
"Well, I'm looking at it more as a spiritual perspective," Mecca says. "Zaki is a blessing — just like everything else. He is a loan from God, is the way I look at it. And in my religion, if he's able and capable to [marry another wife], I wouldn't want to hold him back. So, why not?"
She acknowledges that there have been "a few bumps in the road." But she hasn't once second-guessed sharing Zaki with Aminah.
As Mecca speaks, Aminah nods in agreement.
"I might have certain feelings when my husband walks out the door and I haven't seen him all day, but I know his responsibility is not only to me. And the respect I have for my co-wife, all that plays a role in how I handle my emotions," Aminah says.
'Two, Three, Four'
Zaki believes ultimately, polygamy is good for society — especially in the inner city, where intact families are rare and many kids grow up without their fathers.
"There are a lot of blessings in it because you're helping legitimize and build a family that's rooted in values and commitment. And the children that come out of those types of relationships only become a benefit to society at large."
Many orthodox Muslims agree. You can find them on Fridays at a mosque in South Philadelphia.
The congregation that has gathered in a slim townhouse is largely African-American. The rules are orthodox, and the prayers (if not the sermon) are in classical Arabic.
Abdullah, the imam, has conducted religious ceremonies for a dozen polygamous marriages.
Abdullah says polygamy in Islam dates back to the 7th century, when battles were killing off Muslim men and leaving widows and children unprotected.
As a result, Abdullah says, the Koran specifies that a man can marry "women of your choice: two, three, four, and if you fear you cannot be just, then marry one."
"And so, a lot of scholars look at it sequentially," he says. "Two is optimum, then three, then four, then as a last resort, one!"
A Shortage of Men
And while polygamy may seem like a man's paradise, Abdullah says, often an unmarried woman initiates it.
"Sometimes a woman may be interested in a man, but he's off limits. That's not the case in Islam. Does he have four wives? No? Then he's still available."
That's how Abdullah met his second wife. A divorcee, she heard Abdullah preach a few sermons and approached his wife to ask if he would be interested in a second wife. Soon she married Abdullah and now the imam cares for two families — with 13 children and another on the way.
The single women at the mosque say polygamy is a fact of life. But it's not their first choice.
"Every woman has a preference to be the sole wife," says Aliya, echoing the sentiments of the others. Aliya is a 28-year-old single woman who is finishing up a master's degree. She says that South Philadelphia in the 21st century is a little like Arabia in the 7th century. There is a dearth of men to marry.
"We're dealing with brothers who are incarcerated — that is, unavailable," she says. "And then unfortunately, you have the AIDS and HIV crisis, where HIV has struck the African-American community disproportionately to others. So when you look at it that way, there is a shortage."
Shaheed's Story
With this numerical advantage, some men collect wives for the sex. But some men also marry out of altruism. Consider 43-year-old Shaheed, who is married to Alieah.
Fourteen years ago, his friend died. The friend's wife, Nadirah, was 30 and expecting her third child. That brought her to Shaheed's attention.
"When we came to the grave site — I remember it as if it were yesterday — what stuck out was that her demeanor was so calm," Shaheed says.
Nadirah is an elegant, contained woman. After becoming a widow, she decided the only way she would marry again was as a second wife.
"At that point in my life, I was used to being alone," she says, running her household as she liked, "as opposed to constantly being with someone and attending to someone else's needs."
She accepted Shaheed's proposal. But she quickly saw the tricky relationship was not with Shaheed. It was with his wife.
"We met, and we had dinner, and we had lunch and we went out and shopped and did different things at that point. As the marriage got closer, I think she was more apprehensive and more unnerved by the pending situation."
"I remember me telling him, 'Please don't go,'" Alieah says. "He's like 'What do you mean? The wedding is today, you're telling me not to go today?' I'm like, 'Just don't go!'"
Alieah, who is 40, says she considered Shaheed's commitment to a widow "noble." Afterward, however, she considered divorce. She eventually decided she did not want to start over. After two years of misery, Alieah says, she had a spiritual epiphany.
"I literally just got up one morning and said [to God], 'OK, this is what you want me to do. I'm going to handle it in a civil manner, and I'm going to do X, Y, Z about it,'" Alieah says. "And from that point on, it was the strangest thing, because it never bothered me anymore. I never even thought about it."
The family began to operate like a well-oiled machine and a model of polygamy in their Muslim community. Shaheed runs his own security company. Alieah teaches first grade, and Nadirah home-schools some of the family's 10 children.
"We really depend on each other," says Nadirah, who considers Alieah a friend.
What About the Heart?
There are benefits to polygamy for the wives, Nadirah says.
"She could fill something that even a husband couldn't fill. It was a cross between a sister and a friend and a co-worker," she says. "You have a cushion or a help that you didn't have before."
At first, the two families lived in separate homes. Now Shaheed, his two wives and nine of his 10 children live in one house. Each wife has a bedroom on a separate floor, but everything else is communal, including cooking and eating. Shaheed says it's not easy to treat his two very different wives equally, but he tries.
"I'm not going to be overly affectionate with this one as opposed to this one out in the open," he explains.
And what about controlling his heart when it comes to these two women?
"That's something that you can't really control," he says. "But materially, you want to do that as adequately as possible."
For her part, Alieah is philosophical about love.
"You cannot blame someone for where their heart lies."
Did she have a sense of whether her husband was falling for someone else?
She pauses.
"It really didn't matter," she eventually answers. "I just knew he had someone else in his life, and it wasn't me."
Alieah says polygamy isn't easy for either wife, though she believes it is harder on the first.
"The second wife is receiving something, where a first wife will feel that something is being taken away from her," she says. "I mean, I'm devoted to you for my whole life, but you're only devoted to half of my life."
Alieah's youngest child is 4 years old. Her oldest — a 17-year-old daughter — says she's had a happy childhood in a polygamous family. But she hopes she won't have to share her husband with anyone else."

Vindication for the Bush Critique

2008-07-26T10:57:00.000-07:00

"As the response to former White House press secretary Scott McClellan's new book enters its second week, the focus has shifted to the messenger rather than his message.
McClellan is a flawed vessel for any serious communication. From behind the podium, he made a mockery of the press and the public's right to know, most notably by repeating non-responsive and sometimes ludicrous talking points. He has yet to persuasively explain his change of heart. And his insistence that self-deception rather than a conscious disregard for the truth was behind what he now describes as the White House's consistent lack of candor is spectacularly self-serving.
But the significance of McClellan's book is that his detailed recounting of what he saw from the inside vindicates pretty much all the central pillars of the Bush critique that have been chronicled here and elsewhere for many years now. Among them:
* That Bush and his top aides manipulated the country into embarking upon an unnecessary war on false pretenses;
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* That Bush is an incurious man, happily protected from dissenting views inside the White House's bubble of self-delusion;
* That Karl Rove's huge influence on the Bush White House erased any distinction between policy and politics, so governing became about achieving partisan goals, not the common good;
* That Vice President Cheney manipulates the levers of power;
* That all those people who denied White House involvement in the leak of CIA agent Valerie Plame's identity were either lying or had been lied to;
* That the mainstream media were complicit enablers of the Bush White House and that its members didn't understand how badly they were being played.
By coming back again and again to the CIA leak story, McClellan also validates a key theme of the Bush critique: That the Plame case was a microcosm of much that was wrong with the way the Bush White House did business.
No one could have predicted that the Plame case would play such a central role in McClellan's personal conversion to Bush critic. But his eventual recognition that Rove and then-vice presidential chief of staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby had flatly lied to him when they denied any involvement in the leak, along with his sudden realization that Bush and Cheney declassified secrets when it was politically convenient, were evidently two major factors. (A third was his unceremonious firing by Chief of Staff Josh Bolten.)
McClellan's revelation that on Oct. 4, 2003, Bush and Cheney directed him to vouch for Libby's innocence once again raises the question of how the president and particularly the vice president have been able to avoid any kind of public accountability. McClellan even raises the possibility, repeatedly hinted at by special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, that Cheney directed Libby to disclose Plame's identity. "

Miracle Fruit

2008-07-26T10:53:00.000-07:00

CARRIE DASHOW dropped a large dollop of lemon sorbet into a glass of Guinness, stirred, drank and proclaimed that it tasted like a “chocolate shake.”
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Joe Fornabaio for The New York Times
HOW’S IT DO THAT? Franz Aliquo, who calls himself Supreme Commander, right, supplied miracle berries grown by Curtis Mozie, left, to party-goers in Long Island City, Queens, last weekend.

Joe Fornabaio for The New York Times
Those who attended sampled the red berries then tasted foods, including cheese, beer and brussels sprouts, finding the flavors transformed. Beer can taste like chocolate, lemons like candy. Mr. Aliquo says he holds the parties to “turn on a bunch of people’s taste buds.”
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Joe Fornabaio for The New York Times

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Nearby, Yuka Yoneda tilted her head back as her boyfriend, Albert Yuen, drizzled Tabasco sauce onto her tongue. She swallowed and considered the flavor: “Doughnut glaze, hot doughnut glaze!”
They were among 40 or so people who were tasting under the influence of a small red berry called miracle fruit at a rooftop party in Long Island City, Queens, last Friday night. The berry rewires the way the palate perceives sour flavors for an hour or so, rendering lemons as sweet as candy.
The host was Franz Aliquo, 32, a lawyer who styles himself Supreme Commander (Supreme for short) when he’s presiding over what he calls “flavor tripping parties.” Mr. Aliquo greeted new arrivals and took their $15 entrance fees. In return, he handed each one a single berry from his jacket pocket.
“You pop it in your mouth and scrape the pulp off the seed, swirl it around and hold it in your mouth for about a minute,” he said. “Then you’re ready to go.” He ushered his guests to a table piled with citrus wedges, cheeses, Brussels sprouts, mustard, vinegars, pickles, dark beers, strawberries and cheap tequila, which Mr. Aliquo promised would now taste like top-shelf Patrón.
The miracle fruit, Synsepalum dulcificum, is native to West Africa and has been known to Westerners since the 18th century. The cause of the reaction is a protein called miraculin, which binds with the taste buds and acts as a sweetness inducer when it comes in contact with acids, according to a scientist who has studied the fruit, Linda Bartoshuk at the University of Florida’s Center for Smell and Taste. Dr. Bartoshuk said she did not know of any dangers associated with eating miracle fruit.
During the 1970s, a ruling by the Food and Drug Administration dashed hopes that an extract of miraculin could be sold as a sugar substitute. In the absence of any plausible commercial application, the miracle fruit has acquired a bit of a cult following.
Sina Najafi, editor in chief of the art magazine Cabinet, has featured miracle fruits at some of the publication’s events. At a party in London last October, the fruit, he said, “had people testifying like some baptismal thing.”
The berries were passed out last week at a reading of “The Fruit Hunters,” a new book by Adam Leith Gollner with a chapter about miracle fruit.
Bartenders have been experimenting with the fruit as well. Don Lee, a beverage director at the East Village bar Please Don’t Tell, has been making miracle fruit cocktails on his own time, but the bar probably won’t offer them anytime soon. The fruit is highly perishable and expensive — a single berry goes for $2 or more.
Lance J. Mayhew developed a series of drink recipes with miracle fruit foams and extracts for a recent issue of the cocktail magazine Imbibe and may create others for Beaker & Flask, a restaurant opening later this year in Portland, Ore.
He cautioned that not everyone enjoys the berry’s long-lasting effects. Despite warnings, he said, one woman became irate after drinking one of his cocktails. He said, “She was, like, ‘What did you do to my mouth?’ ”
Mr. Aliquo issues his own warnings. “It will make all wine taste like Manischewitz,” he said. And already sweet foods like candy can become cloying.
He said that he had learned about miracle fruit while searching ethnobotany Web sites for foods he could make for a diabetic friend.
The party last week was his sixth “flavor tripping” event. He hopes to put on a much larger, more expensive affair in June. Although he does sell the berries on his blog, www.flavortripping.wordpress.com, Mr. Aliquo maintains that he isn’t in it for the money. (He said he made about $100 on Friday.) Rather, he said, he does it to “turn on a bunch of people’s taste buds.”
He believes that the best way to encounter the fruit is in a group. “You need other people to benchmark the experience,” he said. At his first party, a small gathering at his apartment in January, guests murmured with delight as they tasted citrus wedges and goat cheese. Then things got trippy.
“You kept hearing ‘oh, oh, oh,’ ” he said, and then the guests became “literally like wild animals, tearing apart everything on the table.”
“It was like no holds barred in terms of what people would try to eat, so they opened my fridge and started downing Tabasco and maple syrup,” he said.
Many of the guests last week found the party through a posting at www.tThrillist.com. Mr. Aliquo sent invitations to a list of contacts he has been gathering since he and a friend began organizing StreetWars, a popular urban assassination game using water guns.
One woman wanted to see Mr. Aliquo eat a berry before she tried one. “What, you don’t trust me?” he said.
She replied, “Well, I just met you.”
Another guest said, “But you met him on the Internet, so it’s safe.”
The fruits are available by special order from specialty suppliers in New York, including Baldor Specialty Foods and S. Katzman Produce. Katzman sells the berries for about $2.50 a piece, and has been offering them to chefs.
Mr. Aliquo gets his miracle fruit from Curtis Mozie, 64, a Florida grower who sells thousands of the berries each year through his Web site, www.miraclefruitman.com. (A freezer pack of 30 berries costs about $90 with overnight shipping.) Mr. Mozie, who was in New York for Mr. Gollner’s reading, stopped by the flavor-tripping party.
Mr. Mozie listed his favorite miracle fruit pairings, which included green mangoes and raw aloe. “I like oysters with some lemon juice,” he said. “Usually you just swallow them, but I just chew like it was chewing gum.”
A large group of guests reached its own consensus: limes were candied, vinegar resembled apple juice, goat cheese tasted like cheesecake on the tongue and goat cheese on the throat. Bananas were just bananas.
For all the excitement it inspires, the miracle fruit does not make much of an impression on its own. It has a mildly sweet tang, with firm pulp surrounding an edible, but bitter, seed. Mr. Aliquo said it reminded him of a less flavorful cranberry. “It’s not something I’d just want to eat,” he said.

T. Kennedy, Jr. on cancer recovery

2008-06-23T15:11:00.000-07:00

"By Adele Slaughter, Spotlight Health, with medical adviser Stephen A. Shoop, M.D.
As a healthcare attorney, Ted Kennedy, Jr. is a passionate advocate for cancer patients and people with disabilities. Kennedy is particularly dedicated to this work because he knows the anguish of surviving cancer intimately — 30 years ago he lost his leg to a type of bone cancer called osteogenic sarcoma.

"I remember the emotional isolation I experienced, losing my hair, and dealing with that as a seventh grader," says Kennedy. "No one ever asked me how I was doing, or thought that my mental attitude would have an impact on how I approached the challenges I faced. Even though my parents found the best, most brilliant doctors that existed at the time to treat the cancer in my body, no one really ever addressed how I was doing emotionally."

With Kennedy's help, The Wellness Community (TWC) launched Virtual Wellness Community, sponsored by Amgen. VWC is a place on the internet where cancer patients can join professionally moderated support groups. Kennedy remains passionate about the message that no one has to face cancer and the process of recovery without emotional support.
"I didn't know any other kids that had this kind of cancer," says Kennedy, who serves on the board of TWC. "It was a rare type of bone cancer. What I found helpful at the time was my parents identified a ski camp for kids who had lost a leg. I wanted to learn how to ski on one ski. I said to myself 'If they can do it, I can do it too.' A lot of times it's not what people say, it is simply that they show up, sit in a seat, are a source of strength, and provide the power of example."
Recently, TWC celebrated 20 years of providing free emotional support, education, and hope for people with cancer and their families.

"We're having a luncheon to celebrate the 20th year of The Wellness Community," says Kennedy. "It's interesting because I am right across the street from where I was diagnosed with cancer and lost my leg in 1973 — just a stone's throw away."

"Osteogenic sarcoma or osteosarcoma, is the primary tumor of bone cells, it arises from the cells that form bone," explains Stuart E. Siegel, Director of the Children's Center for Cancer and Blood Diseases, Children's Hospital Los Angeles. "The other tumor that commonly occurs in children is Ewing's sarcoma. About 7% of childhood cancers are bone cancers. Of those, Ewing's comprises 2.3% while 4.6% is osteosarcoma."

Approximately 12,500 children from birth to 21 years-old are diagnosed with cancer in the US every year. About 600 youngsters will develop osteosarcoma.
"It can occur in any bone and most commonly occurs in long bones and is in the legs and arms, but any bone can develop the tumor," says Siegel, who is also a professor of pediatrics at the University of Southern California's Keck School of Medicine. "The usual symptoms that bring tumors to the attention of doctors are pain, a lump, or abnormality in the bone. Some patients actually present with a fracture and an x-ray is taken. Generally, the break is through the tumor which is discovered through the x-ray."

"I was 12 years old and noticed a pain in my leg and insisted that I have it looked at," says Kennedy. "The first doctor that I saw told me to soak my leg in Epsom salt and come back in a month."

"Obviously the pain didn't go away, and I came back and they did a quick biopsy and determined it was cancer," adds Kennedy. "I lost my leg the very next day and went through two years of chemotherapy."

Once diagnosed, the principles of treatment for children with bone cancer are similar.
"Today, treatment begins with chemotherapy since the cancer often gets into the muscles and the bone. We want to de-bulk the tumor before we take it out," says Siegel. "Once the tumor shrinks down in about two to three weeks we remove it. Then after about 12 weeks of chemotherapy we perform a 'limb salvage' procedure. We are able to remove the parts of the bone involved in the tumor and place advanced metal prostheses or cadaver bones to preserve the leg or the arm and its function. After surgery, additional chemotherapy is required for about nine to 18 months."

The vast majority of patients, about 80%, experience remission. Today, almost 70% of patients with osteosarcoma are long-term survivors and appear to be cured of the disease.

Well-being
"There are 8.5 million cancer survivors in the US today," says Mitch Golant psychologist and vice-president of research and development of TWC. "With the new treatments available, there will be more and more survivors and the need for support will increase dramatically."
Addressing the growing population of people living with cancer as a chronic disease, TWC has 22 facilities in the United States and two Wellness Communities overseas. Last year they served over 25,000 people living with cancer.

"Because of my personal experience," says Kennedy. "I know that patients who are more involved and have their questions answered feel more positively about their course of treatment and are less likely to get stressed out or depressed. It is so important for patients to ask a lot of questions and educate themselves about the different treatment options."
"We were founded on the Patient Active concept," says Kim Thiboldeaux, president and CEO of TWC. "This concept says that patients who participate in their recovery and are empowered by working with their physician will improve the quality of their life. The data show that the three most common things people with cancer face are a loss of control, isolation, and a loss of hope. Our programs combat those things."

In a study conducted by TWC, University of California San Francisco, and Stanford, 65 women were recruited to look at the efficacy of online support groups. The women were suffering from breast cancer and two-thirds were from rural areas. These women showed a decrease in depression and anxiety, and an increase in their knowledge about the disease and zest for life. Using the results of that study, TCW launched an online community last February.
In addition to professionally moderated, online groups in a secure site, patients can download information about the following:
mind / body programs
nutritional guidance
educational and research information

With communities like TWC and advocates like Kennedy, there is critical support for those living with cancer.

"Cancer had an enormous impact on how I approach my everyday life," says Kennedy. "It sensitized me to a lot of issues for people facing cancer and not just the psychosocial issues but the legal issues as well. That is why I'm a health advocate. I also learned to pay attention to my body, not in a hypochondriac way, but to listen to what my body tells me. I think anyone who has faced a life-threatening disease really has a chance to reflect on his or her life. For me, I am incredibly grateful for everything today.""

Chuck Hagel for Vice President

2008-06-21T09:27:00.000-07:00

A U.S. senator, corporate executive, and veteran affairs secretary not to mention being an independent republican Chuck Hagel is the best choice to fill any voids voters may see in Barack Obama. Checks & Balance Blog officially supports Senator Chuck Hagel (NE) as Obama’s Vice- Presidential pick

American Racism Emerges

2008-06-21T09:13:00.000-07:00

The White Stuff

In Tampa Bay during the week that Barrack Obama wins the Democratic presidential nomination a local group which claims heritage in the old confederacy, which lost the Civil War, began flying its flag above a major Hillsborough County throughway. White voters nationally also are reluctant to support Oabama solely based on racial prejudice even though doing so is a better choice for their economic & political interest. The solution in my opinion is for the revitalize Democratic Party machine to ignore courting these small minorities of whites and focus on turning out votes in its the base, not putting aside one state. It is time for change in America.

"Even as he closes in on the Democratic nomination for the presidency, is facing lingering problems winning the support of white voters--including some in his own party. In a new NEWSWEEK Poll of registered voters, Obama trails presumptive Republican nominee 40 percent to 52 percent among whites. , Obama's challenger for the Democratic nomination, also trails McCain among white voters but by a smaller margin, 44 percent to 48 percent. (For the complete results, click here).

Among voters overall, however, Obama fares better, tying McCain 46 percent to 46 percent in a hypothetical match-up. (That's down slightly, within the margin of error, from the last NEWSWEEK Poll, conducted in late April, in which Obama led McCain 47 percent to 44 percent). In that contest, he is boosted by a strong showing among nonwhites, leading McCain 68 percent to 25 percent (Clinton leads McCain 65 percent to 25 percent among nonwhites). But even this result shows some of the electoral challenges facing Obama in a year when Democrats generally appear to hold an electoral advantage--boasting a 15 point advantage in generic party identification over Republicans, 53 percent to 38 percent. Clinton fares slightly better against McCain: 48 percent to 44 percent (within the margin of error). She enjoys this slight edge even though Obama leads Clinton 50 percent to 42 percent as the choice of registered Democrats for the party's nomination. Clinton's white support is unusually high: at a comparable point in the 2004 election, Democratic nominee John Kerry received the support of 36 percent of white voters, compared to George W. Bush's 48 percent, and in June of 2000, Bush led Al Gore 48 percent to 39 percent.

Obama's race may well explain his difficulty in winning over white voters. In the NEWSWEEK Poll, participants were asked to answer questions on a variety of race-related topics including racial preferences, interracial marriage, attitudes toward social welfare and general attitudes toward African-Americans. Respondents were grouped according to their answers on a "Racial Resentment Index." Among white Democrats with a low Racial Resentment Index rating, Obama beat McCain in a hypothetical match-up 78 percent to 17 percent. That is virtually identical to Clinton's margin in the category, 79 percent to 13 percent. But among white Democrats with high scores on the Racial Resentment Index, the picture was very different: Obama led McCain by only 18 points (51 to 33) while Clinton maintained a much larger 59-point lead (78 to 18).Who exactly are these high Racial Resentment Index voters? A majority, 61 percent, have less than a four-year college education, many are older (44 percent were over the age of 60 compared to just 18 percent under the age of 40) and nearly half (46 percent) live in the South.

Confusion over Obama's religious background may also be hindering his ability to attract white support. Asked to name Obama's faith, 58 percent of participants said Christian (the correct answer), compared with 11 percent who answered Muslim, 22 percent who did not know and 9 percent who said something else. Obama's name could be contributing to the confusion; 18 percent of white Democratic voters say they judge the Illinois senator less favorably because of his name, compared to only 4 percent of white Democrats who say it makes them judge Obama more favorably."

Barack’s Bounce

2008-06-21T08:39:00.000-07:00

Obama's 15-point lead over McCain.

" finally has his bounce. For weeks many political experts and pollsters have been wondering why the race between Democrat Barack Obama and had stayed so tight, even after the Illinois senator wrested the nomination from . With numbers consistently showing rock-bottom approval ratings for President Bush and a large majority of Americans unhappy with the country's direction, the opposing-party candidate should, in the normal course, have attracted more disaffected voters. Now it looks as if Obama is doing just that. A new NEWSWEEK Poll shows that he has a substantial double-digit lead, 51 percent to 36 percent, over McCain among registered voters nationwide.

In the previous NEWSWEEK Poll, completed in late May when Clinton was still fighting him hard for the Democratic nomination, Obama managed no better than a 46 percent tie with McCain. But as pollster Larry Hugick points out, that may have had a lot to do with all the mutual mudslinging going on between the two Democrats. By contrast, in recent weeks Clinton has not only endorsed Obama but has made plans to campaign with him. "They were in a pitched battle, and that's going to impact things. Now that we've gotten away from that period, this is the kind of bounce they've been talking about," said Hugick.

The latest numbers on voter dissatisfaction suggest that Obama may enjoy more than one bounce. The new poll finds that only 14 percent of Americans say they are satisfied with the direction of the country. That matches the previous low point on this measure recorded in June 1992, when a brief recession contributed to Bill Clinton's victory over Bush's father, incumbent . Overall, voters see Obama as the preferred agent of "change" by a margin of 51 percent to 27 percent. Younger voters, in particular, are more likely to see Obama that way: those 18 to 39 favor the Illinois senator by 66 percent to 27 percent. The two candidates are statistically tied among older voters.
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Obama's current lead also reflects the large party-identification advantage the Democrats now enjoy—55 percent of all voters call themselves Democrats or say they lean toward the party while just 36 percent call themselves Republicans or lean that way. Even as McCain seeks to gain voters by distancing himself from the unpopular Bush and emphasizing his maverick image, he is suffering from the GOP's poor reputation among many voters. Still, history provides hope for the GOP. Hugick points out that in May 1988 when the primaries ended, Democrat Michael Dukakis enjoyed a 54 percent to 38 percent lead over George H.W. Bush. But Bush wound up winning handily. "Those results should give people pause," Hugick says, saying that a substantial number of voters, about 5 percent, have also moved into the undecided column. A significant improvement in the economy, or continued advances in Iraq—an issue McCain has identified with strongly as the senator who championed the "surge" first—could alter the Republican's fortunes.

For now, however, Obama is running much stronger at this point in the race than his two most recent Democratic predecessors, Sen. John Kerry and Vice President Al Gore, who both failed in their bids to win the White House. In a July 2004 NEWSWEEK Poll, Kerry led Bush by only 6 points (51 percent to 45 percent). In June 2000, Gore was in a dead heat with Bush (45 percent to 45 percent)—which is essentially where he ended up when that razor-thin election was finally decided.

Most other national polls have shown Obama with a 4 to 5 point lead over McCain so far. Random statistical error can explain some of the difference in poll results. The NEWSWEEK survey of 1,010 adults nationwide on June 18 and 19, 2008, has a margin of error of 4 points. But the latest evidence of his gaining ground goes well beyond that margin."

Gas Rant

2008-06-18T15:23:00.001-07:00

Increases in domestic oil production as advocated by President G.W. and Republican John McCain as a solution to prices at the pump is disingenuous. Prices at the pump are a direct result of corporate price fixing. This is fact as evident when the price of a barrel of crude oil decreases prices at the pump continue to rise, in addition to actual increases in crude oil prices resulting in heavier increase at the pump. The level of supply of oil is adequate globally as stated by those within the industry.

Friend of God

2008-06-11T21:20:00.000-07:00

Who am I? “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends” (john 15:13). I am a friend of God.

Bio-fuels fuel Food Crisis

2008-06-03T10:07:00.000-07:00

The United States especially have the power to shape the outcome of this international food crisis by waging a war to increase biofuels consumption simultaneous without cutting production of food crops.

“World leaders are meeting Tuesday in Rome to tackle the problem that is pushing an estimated 100 million people into hunger: soaring food prices.”

Source: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91098056

Clinton’ (s) Last Campaign

2008-06-03T10:00:00.000-07:00

"I predict Hillary Clinton will suspend her presidential campaign by June 6, 2008.

President Bill Clinton’s recent remarks are a clear foreshadow of news to come.

Bill Clinton said Monday that "this may be the last day I'm ever invovled in a campaign of this kind."

Source: http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Vote2008/story?id=4981193&page=1

Cheney disregards America's will

2008-06-03T09:53:00.000-07:00

On the Iraq War, Vice President Cheney disregards will of American people.

"ABC’s Good Morning America aired an interview with Vice President Cheney on the war. During the segment, Cheney flatly told White House correspondent Martha Raddatz that he doesn’t care about the American public’s views on the war:

CHENEY: On the security front, I think there’s a general consensus that we’ve made major progress, that the surge has worked. That’s been a major success.

RADDATZ: Two-third of Americans say it’s not worth fighting.

CHENEY: So?

RADDATZ So? You don’t care what the American people think?

CHENEY: No. I think you cannot be blown off course by the fluctuations in the public opinion polls."

Source: http://thinkprogress.org/2008/03/19/cheney-poll-iraq/

Ahmadinejad: Oil, prices artificial

2008-06-03T09:49:00.000-07:00

Tue Jun 03 14:44:42 UTC 2008
"ROME (Reuters) - The global market is "full of oil" and rising crude prices are being artificially driven by forces trying to further their geopolitical aims, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Tuesday.
"While the growth of consumption is lower than that of production and the market is full of oil, prices continue to rise and this situation is completely manipulated," Ahmadinejad said in his address to a U.N. food summit in Rome.
Without naming countries, the Iranian leader said "hidden and unhidden hands are at work to control the prices mendaciously to pursue their political and economic aims."
He said the goal of "powerful and international capitalists" was to keep the price of oil and energy "artificially high" in part to justify new explorations in the North Pole and the deep seas.
In an apparent reference to the United States, he said the international community should have a mechanism to force "the bullying powers to resort to peace and amity instead of occupation and warmongering...."
(Reporting by Robin Pomeroy)"

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/email/idUSL0380762720080603

Chile Volcano At Critical Stage

2008-05-10T11:49:00.000-07:00

Chile’s Chaitén volcano. The plume of ash is thought to generate enough static electricity to cause what is called a “dirty thunderstorm” in the same way that colliding ice particles provide the juice for regular thunderstorms.

"A Chilean official warned Friday that a seven-mile column of ash that spirals from an erupting volcano in Patagonia could collapse, devastating the area।
Luis Lara, a government geologist, said the soaring column is at a critical stage. A sudden collapse would shroud vast areas with hot gas, ash and molten rock and kill anything in its way.Authorities have evacuated thousands of people from the immediate vicinity of Chaiten volcano, 760 miles south of the capital city of Santiago. The volcano began erupting eight days ago for the first time in thousands of years.
Volcanic ash also hung over towns on the Argentine side of the border. American and United airlines canceled all flights to Buenos Aires Thursday night because of the damage that the ash can cause to planes' engines.
Experts said the volcano could erupt again at any time, and it may continue spewing ash for months or years। "

Sऑउर्स http://www.ohgizmo.com/2008/05/08/eye-candy-chilean-volcanic-thunderstorm/

Must Florida pay for felled citrus trees?

2008-05-10T11:46:00.000-07:00

"FORT LAUDERDALE - A jury is set to begin deliberations Monday in a case that could cost the Florida Department of Agriculture tens of millions of dollars for cutting down backyard citrus trees over the objections of homeowners.

At issue in the three-week trial is how much compensation the state should pay to 58,225 Broward County residents who lost 133,720 orange, grapefruit, tangerine, lemon, and lime trees in a controversial program aimed at preventing the spread of citrus canker disease.
The case is being closely watched because it is the first of five class-action lawsuits seeking full compensation from the state government for its canker eradication program. More than 577,000 backyard citrus trees were destroyed from 2000 to 2006 in Broward, Miami-Dade, Palm Beach, Lee, and Orange counties, although the trees were never determined to have the canker disease.
Instead, state officials ordered that every citrus tree within a 1,900-foot radius of a confirmed diseased tree be cut down and removed. Residents received a $100 payment for the first tree cut, and $55 for each additional citrus tree destroyed.

The state justified the expansive eradication zone as a precaution to bring the canker outbreak under control before it spread to the 65 million trees in Florida's commercial citrus groves.
Homeowners fought the action in court, complaining that their beloved backyard citrus trees were being destroyed without any proof that the trees were, in fact, diseased.

In February, Circuit Judge Ronald Rothschild rejected the Department of Agriculture's defense that it was using the government's police powers to protect the state's food supply from a public nuisance. The judge said the state has the power to remove diseased trees, but that the Florida constitution requires the government to pay "full compensation" when healthy trees are removed as part of the program.

A jury was empaneled to decide how much compensation would be full compensation for the destroyed trees.

Agriculture Department lawyer Wesley Parsons told the jurors in closing arguments on Friday that residents should receive "zero" compensation because their trees were exposed to canker and had no value. "The trees within the 1,900-foot-radius were doomed," he said, because it was only a matter of time before they, too, would become diseased.

Mr. Parsons likened the spread of citrus canker to the spread of wildfire. Trees in the path of the flames have no value, he said. "A menace is approaching. It is not only going to debilitate the tree in the backyard, it is also going to debilitate other trees in the neighborhood," he told the jurors.
Nancy LaVista, a West Palm Beach lawyer for the residents, told the jury that the state had no evidence that the destroyed trees were infected. "If they truly believed those trees were infected a new arc would be drawn at 1,900 feet," she said. "

Source: http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0505/p02s04-usju.html

Less About 'Sick,' More About 'Normal'

2008-05-10T11:35:00.000-07:00

"If you had died 50 years ago, your body would have stood a pretty good chance of serving science. In the 1960s, autopsy rates at US hospitals exceeded 50 percent. Pathologists weren't necessarily looking for what killed people — they were taking advantage of the fact that a body was available and ready for inspection. There was still much to learn about normal human biology, the thinking went, so every corpse was an educational opportunity.

These days, autopsy rates have fallen below 10 percent, a decline that's symptomatic of a larger deficiency. Medicine has become all about finding a problem — a tumor, a heart attack, a failing kidney — and deploying advanced treatment technologies. In the process, we seem to have given up on measuring and tracking what constitutes normal. That's an alarming — and potentially dangerous — trend.

What's normal matters because we're entering a new era of health care, one in which we look not for causes of illness but for risks. It's called predictive medicine, and its primary tool is the screening test. A good screening test should provide a range of results, distinguishing between a condition within normal parameters — which doesn't require intervention — and an anomaly, which demands it. That's how most blood tests work, for instance. But for all sorts of conditions, there's often no definition of normal. In heart disease, for example, CT screening tests can spot abnormalities in arterial plaque — but no research exists on whether that information is actually predictive of heart disease or stroke. "We need to know normal variation," says Pat Brown, a professor of biochemistry at Stanford University School of Medicine. "It's really underappreciated as a part of science." In too many areas, Brown argues, we're too quick to jump at any blip without understanding whether it's a true red alert or just normal background noise.

Consider prostate cancer. Right now, about two-thirds of men diagnosed with the disease get treated with surgery or radiation (both of which carry a significant risk of impotence or incontinence). But in February, researchers at the Cancer Institute of New Jersey found that 80 percent of men over age 66 with detectable prostate cancer who do nothing (so-called watchful waiting) will likely die of something else. In other words, most of those who get treatment — and could be impotent as a result — should have gone without it. "We're way overtreating the disease," says Peter Nelson, an oncologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle. "Really, you only want to know about the ones that are potentially fatal."

Ironically, this problem is brought on by technology. Imaging and scanning tools are now so good at peering inside our bodies, they've surpassed our capacity to interpret the results. Many findings are what doctors call "incidentalomas," smudges that look like cancer but turn out — often after surgery — to be benign. Though new detection technologies like proteomics have made great progress in associating particular biomarkers with certain cancers or diseases, we still don't know how often those same markers turn up in nondisease situations.

It seems like it would be easy just to step back and survey the broad picture. But research costs money, and studying what's normal is generally considered trivial, dismissed as mere butterfly collecting. At the National Institutes for Health, for instance, all grants are given a "priority score," an indication of a project's novelty, originality, and "scientific merit." Normal need not apply.

But in these data-rich days, studying what's normal could be a project of startling originality and merit. With petabytes of storage and ample processing power at hand, there's an opportunity to create a sort of Normal Human Project — a macro understanding of human biology on a micro scale. Or, as Stanford's Brown describes it, a "comprehensive, quantitative molecular and cellular characterization of the normal human.'" That may sound daunting, but complementary projects are already under way. Seattle's Allen Institute for Brain Science, having completed a 3-D model of the mouse brain in 2006, is now aiming to model the human brain in its normal state. Even postmortem examinations are coming back into vogue, via high-volume autopsy centers, which can add their results to resources like Johns Hopkins' online autopsy database.

The annals of medicine are full of tidy explanations of how the body works, from Dr. Atkins all the way back to Hippocrates. Inevitably, though, someone comes along and shows that there's a little more to it. It would be wise, as Brown suggests, "to accept the fact that we don't know a tremendous amount about things we think we know. We could learn some humility." That, however, may be asking too much of science.

Deputy editor Thomas Goetz (thomas@wired.com) wrote about personal genomics in issue 15.12."

Source: http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/magazine/16-05/st_essay/

Florida lawmakers end yearly session

2008-05-10T11:34:00.000-07:00

"Published: May 3, 2008 at 5:55 PMTALLAHASSEE, Fla., May 3 (UPI) --

Florida legislators closed their yearly session by passing a penny-pinching budget and making health insurance plans for autistic children, officials said.Despite the tight budget, lawmakers also managed to make health insurance plans for working citizens living in poverty and small businesses, The Miami Herald reported.''Some great things happened today. Historic things happened today,'' Gov. Charlie Crist said of the Friday session.With an all-time high $4 billion in budget cutbacks and a stalling economy looming this year, lawmakers reportedly had to leave behind some high-priority proposals, including a sales-tax holiday and a central Florida rail line.It is reported that public education saw the most severe cutbacks -- $2.3 billion -- while increased funds were given to private schools in the form of vouchers. ''There are corpses strewn about the Capitol. This year there is no money to grease the wheels," Fort Lauderdale Rep. Jack Seiler said."

Gas costs have been manipulated

2008-05-10T11:31:00.000-07:00

Clinton: Gas costs have been manipulated

"Published: May 4, 2008 at 5:50 PMINDIANAPOLIS, May 4 (UPI) --

U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., Sunday blamed market manipulation as the likely cause of record high gas prices in the United States.Appearing on ABC's "This Week With George Stephanopoulos," the Democratic presidential contender said if she is elected in November, she will immediately order an investigation into the industry."We know that there's market manipulation going on. So I would launch an investigation if I were president right now by the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission," Clinton said.The New York senator said any attempts to lower gas prices should require the participation of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries."I would begin to go directly at OPEC," she said. "I think it's been 25 years where we've, you know, largely just been at the mercy of the OPEC countries."Clinton said in addition to taking on OPEC members, she would confront oil companies about the rising cost of gasoline."You see, I really believe we've got to start right now demonstrating a willingness to take on these oil companies," she said in response to a "This Week" audience question."

Source: http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/Top_News/2008/05/04/clinton_gas_costs_have_been_manipulated/2133/

Economic cloud over sunny Florida

2008-05-03T09:39:00.000-07:00

"By Tom Brown

MIAMI (Reuters) - Economic data continues to suggest that fears of a new "Great Depression" in the United States are overblown. But in places like Miami and Fort Lauderdale, where the housing bust has bitten hard and prices are rising fast, the specter of economic stagnation twinned with inflation looms all too real.

"Since the 1970s we haven't really seen this simultaneous threat of an economic slowdown, and recession, side by side with the threat of inflation," said Sean Snaith, an economics professor at the University of Central Florida.

Nationally, inflation was flat in February, according to the U.S. Labor Department's consumer price index, the most widely used gauge.

But in Miami and Fort Lauderdale, prices were up by 5.3 percent that month, according to the department's southeastern office, in Atlanta, the highest of any metropolitan area in the country.
The department gives national figures for March on Wednesday. The regional figures are released every two months, with the next ones out in May.

For many in Florida, a state that people are leaving in droves because of high property tax and home insurance rates, the biggest and harshest rise has been in energy costs, up 18 percent in the 12 months to the end of February.

And they could continue surging amid Energy Department warnings that gasoline prices could soon hit $4 a gallon in some areas.

"Everything is high. Everything is going up," said Cookie Elias, a Miami-based mother of three as she packed her young children into a minivan after shopping at a local Costco discount retailer in Miami."

Japanese Pay Less for More Health Care

2008-05-03T09:36:00.000-07:00

Japan has the longest life span on the planet.

"Japan produces cars, color TVs and computers, but it also produces the world's healthiest people. It has the longest healthy life expectancy on Earth and spends half as much on health care as the United States.

That long life expectancy is partly due to diet and lifestyle, but the country's universal health care system plays a key role, too.

Everyone in Japan is required to get a health insurance policy, either at work or through a community-based insurer. The government picks up the tab for those who are too poor.
It's a model of social insurance that is used in many wealthy countries. But it's definitely not "socialized medicine." Eighty percent of Japan's hospitals are privately owned — more than in the United States — and almost every doctor's office is a private business.

Health Care for Anyone at Anytime
Dr. Kono Hitoshi is a typical doctor. He runs a private, 19-bed hospital in the Tokyo neighborhood of Soshigaya.

"The best thing about the Japanese medical system is that all citizens are covered," Kono says. "Anyone, anywhere, anytime — and it's cheap."
Patients don't have to make appointments at his hospital, either.
The Japanese go to the doctor about three times as often as Americans. Because there are no gatekeepers, they can see any specialist they want.

Keeping Costs Low
Japanese patients also stay in the hospital much longer than Americans, on average. They love technology such as magnetic resonance imaging; they have nearly twice as many scans per capita as Americans do. A neck scan can cost $1,200 in the United States.
Professor Ikegami Naoki, Japan's top health economist, explains how Japan keeps MRIs affordable.

"Well, in 2002, the government says that the MRIs, we are paying too much. So in order to be within the total budget, we will cut them by 35 percent," Ikegami says.
This is how Japan keeps cost so low. The Japanese Health Ministry tightly controls the price of health care down to the smallest detail. Every two years, the health care industry and the health ministry negotiate a fixed price for every procedure and every drug.
That helps keep premiums to around $280 a month for the average Japanese family, a lot less than Americans pay. And Japan's employers pick up at least half of that. If you lose your job, you keep your health insurance.

An Accommodating Insurance System
Japanese insurers are a lot more accommodating than their American counterparts. For one thing, they can't deny a claim. And they have to cover everybody.
Even an applicant with heart disease can't be turned down, says Ikegami, the professor. "That is forbidden."

Nor do health care plans covering basic health care for workers and their families make a profit.
"Anything left over is carried over to the next year," Ikegami says. If the carryover was big, "then the premium rate would go down." "

Med records subject to security breach

2008-05-03T09:34:00.000-07:00

"CHICAGO, April 16 (UPI) -- Indiana-based Wellpoint Inc. says a security breach may have allowed Internet access to the personal medical information of 130,000 customers.The health insurance giant says "for a period of time" the Social Security numbers, pharmacy records and other personal health data of customers in several states, including Illinois, "were not properly secured," The Chicago Tribune reported Wednesday.The problem involved two computer servers maintained by a third-party vendor that Wellpoint declined to name, the Tribune said.Wellpoint has been notifying customers of the problem by letter and offering them one year of free credit-monitoring services.Company spokeswoman Cheryl Leamon says outside consultants have already been hired to reduce the risk of future incidents."We have not received any reports of identify theft or credit fraud," Leamon said. "We take the security of our members' personal health information very seriously.""

Internet Med Records: Convenience at a Cost?

2008-05-03T09:31:00.000-07:00

"There are Web sites that allow you to keep information about your medical treatment online, where you and your doctor can access it easily. An article in the New England Journal of Medicine on Thursday asks if electronic medical records are the next big thing in health care. The answer? When it comes to keeping these records yourself, it depends.

Debbie Witchey is like many Americans: She wants to have all her medical records accessible online. Dozens of Internet sites offer the service, some free, some not.
Witchey knows about personal health records. She's senior vice president of government affairs for the Healthcare Leadership Council, a Washington, D.C.-based lobbying group for the health care industry. It's pushing something different: electronic health records, which doctors and hospitals keep on computers so they're quickly available to any doctor at any hospital. The council doesn't have a position on personal health records, which individuals maintain.

A Personal Experiment
But Witchey, 44, was curious about the benefits of personal health records. She checked out promotional materials from one of the biggest sites, Revolution Health. "I was just about to switch doctors, and one of the things they talked about was how great it was to be able to keep all your records in one place," Witchey says. "I was having to go through the process of getting all my records and moving them around, and I thought, 'Well, this would be a good opportunity to give it a try.' So I signed up."

By filling out a few forms, she was able to get her old records scanned and uploaded onto the site, where she could print them out and bring them to her new doctor.
The doctor reviewed the records and put them into Witchey's file.
Then, during the physical exam, the doctor noticed Witchey's blood pressure was high and recommended medication. Witchey wanted to try diet first. The doctor said OK, so long as Witchey monitored herself closely, which she realized she could do easily on the Web.
"I tracked my weight and my blood pressure on the Revolution Health site, and then I printed it out and took it to her every month," Witchey says.

She weighed herself weekly and took her blood pressure every day, entering the information in a minute or two. The fact that she was paying daily attention helped her a lot, she says. She lost 50 pounds and dropped her blood pressure from 135/105 to 107/71.

A Time-Consuming Effort
For now, Witchey has to input everything she wants on the site — prescriptions, vaccinations, details of hospitalizations — because her doctor isn't connected to the system.
That's one of the drawbacks of personal health records, says medical records expert Joy Pritts of Georgetown University.
"The problem now is getting information from your family physician, for example," Pritts says. Such doctors typically have "small practices, and most of them don't have their health information in electronic form."
So they can't send it to a Web site.
That could change as big companies get involved. Right now, Microsoft and Google are in various stages of developing online medical records systems. Some major employers, including Intel and Wal-Mart, are piloting programs as well. Some health insurers already let you have access to your records, which includes some information from your doctors.
At the moment, however, creating and maintaining a full health record may be a job for the compulsive, Witchey says.

"When I first sat down to sign up and get started, I had this vision that I was going to put all my information in here in one sitting, and I'd be all set and ready to go," she says. "And it quickly became clear to me, there's a lot more time to invest in it than I had originally thought about."
She hasn't put in her records from before 2003, for example. "

Into the Brain of a Liar

2008-05-03T09:27:00.000-07:00

"We all lie — once a day or so, according to most studies. But usually we tell little lies, like "your new haircut looks great!" And most of us can control when we lie or what we lie about. But some people lie repeatedly and compulsively, about things both big and small.

In 2005, a study published in The British Journal of Psychiatry provided the first evidence of structural differences in the brains of people with a history of persistent lying. The study was led by Yaling Yang, a doctoral student in psychology at the University of Southern California, and Adrian Raine, an expert on antisocial disorders who is now at University of Pennsylvania.
They expected to see some kind of deficit in the brains of these liars, Yang says. But surprisingly, the liars in their study actually had a surplus — specifically, they had more connections in the part of their brains responsible for complex thinking.

Finding Liars
The label "pathological liar" gets used in a variety of ways, and there's no standard psychological definition or test to measure if someone is a pathological liar. So Yang and her team chose to focus their study on people who have a history of repeated lying and seem not to be able to control their lying (hereafter called simply, "liars"). The researchers began by gathering volunteers from temporary employment agencies in the Los Angeles area. The idea was that liars would be over-represented at these agencies; a history of repeated lying would likely make it hard to keep a steady job.

Then they ran 108 volunteers through extensive interviews and a battery of tests that measure patterns of deception. In the end, the team found 12 people who showed strong evidence of repeated and compulsive lying. For control groups, they identified 16 people who had antisocial tendencies but no history of lying and 21 people with no history of either lying or antisocial behavior.

Into the Scanner
Yang and her colleagues put all 49 people, both the liars and the non-liars, into a magnetic resonance imaging scanner and took pictures of their prefrontal cortex. They chose to focus on this area of the brain because previous studies had shown that the prefrontal cortex plays a role in both lying and in antisocial behaviors.

If you could look into this part of the brain, which sits right behind your forehead, you would see two kinds of matter: gray and white. Gray matter is the groups of brain cells that process information. Most neuroscience studies focus on gray matter. But nearly half the brain is composed of connective tissues that carry electrical signals from one group of neurons to another. This is white matter. Roughly, gray matter is where the processing happens, and white matter connects different parts of the brain, helping us to bring different ideas together.
The liars in Yang's study had on average 22 percent to 26 percent more white matter in their prefrontal cortex than both the normal and antisocial controls.

More Connections
Yang speculates that the increase in white matter means that people who lie repeatedly and compulsively are better at making connections between thoughts that aren't connected in reality — like, say, "me" and "fighter pilot." Consequently, while some of us struggle to come up with reasons why we were late for work, or can't go out with someone we don't really like, Yang's liars impulsively serve up a heaping helping of excuses and stories, and fast.
"By having more connections," Yang says, "you can jump from one idea to another and you can come up with more random stories and ideas."

Admittedly, this study is just a first step. It doesn't show that more white matter in the prefrontal cortex accounts for all lying or that it's the only part of the brain involved. And the study does not establish whether the brain differences lead to lying or whether repeated lying somehow "exercises" connections in the brain. While the study was carefully designed to exclude differences that could be due to age, ethnicity, IQ, brain injury or substance abuse, the small sample size means the results need to be replicated. More research is needed to define what behaviors count as pathological lying and to establish the mechanism behind those behaviors. "

Pope Bendict Come To Ground Zero

2008-04-20T10:37:00.000-07:00

"We ask you in your goodness to give eternal light and peace to all who died here -- the heroic first-responders, our fire fighters, police officers, emergency service workers, and Port Authority personnel, along with all the innocent men and women who were victims of this tragedy simply because their work or service brought them here on September 11, 2001," the pontiff said.
He greeted dignitaries, including New York Gov. David Paterson, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine.
He was joined by 24 people he had invited to join him, including family members of people killed in the terrorist attacks and rescue workers who survived the attacks.
"We ask you, in your compassion, to bring healing to those who, because of their presence here that day, suffer from injuries and illness," he said. "Heal, too, the pain of still-grieving families and all who lost loved ones in this tragedy. Give them strength to continue their lives with courage and hope." Watch the pope pray for the grieving at Ground Zero »
The pope also prayed for "those who suffered death, injury and loss on the same day at the Pentagon and in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Our hearts are one with theirs as our prayer embraces their pain and suffering."
He asked God to "bring your peace to our violent world -- peace in the hearts of all men and women and peace among the nations of the Earth. Turn to your way of love those whose hearts and minds are consumed with hatred."

He ended the prayer saying, "God of understanding, overwhelmed by the magnitude of this tragedy, we seek your light and guidance as we confront such terrible events. See photos from the pope's visit »
"Grant that those whose lives were spared may live so that the lives lost here may not have been lost in vain. Comfort and console us, strengthen us in hope, and give us the wisdom and courage to work tirelessly for a world where true peace and love reign among nations and in the hearts of all." See how far young people trekked to hear pope »
New York Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said before the event that "it means a lot to the first responders, and it means a lot to the city."
Asked about the pope's inclusion of a prayer for those "consumed with hatred" Kelly said, "The pope is concerned about world peace ... and every pope is attempting to facilitate that."
As a youth in Germany, Benedict -- then Joseph Ratzinger -- was forced to join the Hitler Youth. He has spoken in the past about the hatred represented by that regime. Watch Benedict talk about the 'sinister' regime »
Sunday marks the last day of his trip to the United States. He is scheduled to celebrate Mass at Yankee Stadium before a crowd of 60,000 people.
Benedict's three-day visit to New York is the second leg of his six-day trip to the United States -- his first since he was elected to the papacy. See where the pope has visited »
On Friday, he visited the United Nations, where he addressed the General Assembly and urged diplomats to intervene in nations unable to protect their populations from human rights violations.
He was only the third pope to address the General Assembly. Pope Paul VI visited in 1965, and Pope John Paul II visited in 1979 and 1995."

We're in a recession

2008-04-17T10:36:00.000-07:00

We're in a recession

By Joseph A. Giannone

NEW YORK (Reuters) - New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine, who once led Wall Street giant Goldman Sachs, on Wednesday told Reuters the U.S. economy already is in a recession that could persist, and that federal authorities have only taken the first steps toward turning things around.
"I certainly concur with the view that we are in a recession," Corzine said in an exclusive interview at Reuters' U.S. headquarters in New York. "We have pretty strong indications that we have seen a major, major downshift in the economy. I think we'll find we started in the last quarter of last year."

The New Jersey Democrat became governor of the 11th largest state last year after a short stint as U.S. senator and a 24-year career at Goldman Sachs. Corzine rose through the ranks as a bond trader to become chairman and CEO of what is now the world's largest securities firm, and he played a key role in its 1999 conversion from a partnership to a public company.
Corzine spoke the same day a quarterly survey of corporate finance chiefs found 54 percent believed recession has already begun and would last longer than other recent downturns.
The U.S. central bank, eager to stave off an economic contraction, has cut benchmark rates five times by a combined 2.25 percentage points since September to 3.0 percent.
And on Tuesday, the U.S. Federal Reserve said it would lend $200 billion of Treasuries to primary dealers and accept mortgages as collateral to ease liquidity pressures on banks. These efforts, Corzine said, are only a start.

While "$200 billion is a very large number, it is relatively insignificant in the overall scheme: trillions of dollars in the mortgage market," he said. "It's a really good start, but it's probably not going to change the ocean of credit that's extended in the mortgage arena."
Corzine suggested the Fed would cut benchmark rates again next week, lowering yields for low risk assets and putting pressure on investors to buy other assets. He also predicted that the Fed may intervene again to support the banking system, though it tends to take small steps.

The Opiate of Tax Cuts

2008-04-07T16:34:00.000-07:00

Nothing feels as good as a hit of taxcut.

In 2000, for the first time in a long while, the US government enjoyed a true surplus of revenue. Presidential candidate George W. Bush assured Americans that, under the circumstances, it was their Right to take a hit of taxcut now. They had earned it. And Americans agreed.

In 2001, the US economy started sagging. Now George W. Bush and the Republicans declared that we Needed a hit of taxcut. The nation could not agree more. The US government would lose income it needed to support itself and share with state and local governments, but each hit of taxcut would feel sOooo gOOood!

So why stop at the Federal level? Florida Republicans knew they had a good product to offer. Give Floridians hits of state taxcuts and they would be happy, and they would vote to keep Republicans in power. Sure the State of Florida would have less money to support itself and contribute to local governments and schools. But each hit of taxcut would feel very, very good.

So why stop there? How can you stop there? We still had the taxes for local governments and school districts. Sure the local governments and school districts needed this money to support themselves, especially given the reduced contributions from the State and Federal governments…but we could still get a hit of taxcut out of them! So a cry went up, especially from rich property owners in Florida, that we needed yet another hit of taxcut, this time out of local revenue.

Florida’s Republican governor and legislators heard those cries, especially the cries from the wealthy property owners. With “Amendment 1” and other measures they moved to ensure that Floridians, particularly rich property owners, could get a hit of taxcut out of local government revenue. And it felt so pleasant to get another hit of taxcut.

Unfortunately, the Federal government can no longer fully support itself. The State of Florida can’t support itself, either, and has to continuously slash departments, staff, and services. Now the local governments and school districts have to do the same. We’re going to feel the hurt from lack of services, and soon. And when that happens, people are going to remember who was pushing taxcut after taxcut. I’m betting that the taxcut pushers will be run out of government.

Postscript: Taxes are the “maintenance fees” for governments, like the maintenance fees for condominium associations. Maintenance fees should be set, raised and lowered in a pragmatic manner, according to needs and capacities determined by the community. To lower them for other reasons is irresponsible.

Seven modern mortal sins

2008-03-24T14:37:00.000-07:00

Pride, Envy, Gluttony, Lust, Anger, Greed, Sloth, Environmental pollution,Genetic manipulation, Accumulating excessive wealth, Inflicting poverty, Drug trafficking and consumption, Morally debatable experiments, Violation of fundamental rights of human nature.

"The Vatican has brought up to date the traditional seven deadly sins by adding seven modern mortal sins it claims are becoming prevalent in what it calls an era of "unstoppable globalisation".

Those newly risking eternal punishment include drug pushers, the obscenely wealthy, and scientists who manipulate human genes. So "thou shalt not carry out morally dubious scientific experiments" or "thou shalt not pollute the earth" might one day be added to the Ten Commandments.
MODERN EVILS

Environmental pollution
Genetic manipulation
Accumulating excessive wealth
Inflicting poverty
Drug trafficking and consumption
Morally debatable experiments

Violation of fundamental rights of human natureThe Catechism of the Catholic Church states that "immediately after death the souls of those who die in a state of mortal sin descend into Hell".
The new mortal sins were listed by Archbishop Gianfranco Girotti at the end of a week-long training seminar in Rome for priests, aimed at encouraging a revival of the practice of confession - or the Sacrament of Penance in Church jargon.
According to a survey carried out here 10 years ago by the Catholic University, 60% of Italians have stopped going to confession altogether. The situation has certainly not improved during the past decade.
Catholics are supposed to confess their sins to a priest at least once a year. The priest absolves them in God's name.

Talking to course members at the end of the seminar organised by the Apostolic Penitentiary, the Vatican department in charge of fixing the punishments and indulgences handed down to sinners, Pope Benedict added his own personal voice of disquiet.

The seven deadly sins don't need modernising, secular law will suffice.
Chris Ashworth, Australia

"We are losing the notion of sin," he said. "If people do not confess regularly, they risk slowing their spiritual rhythm," he added. The Pope confesses his sins regularly once a week.
Greatest sins of our times
In an interview with the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano, Archbishop Girotti said he thought the most dangerous areas for committing new types of sins lay in the fields of bio-ethics and ecology.
He also named abortion and paedophilia as two of the greatest sins of our times. The archbishop brushed off cases of sexual violence against minors committed by priests as "exaggerations by the mass media aimed at discrediting the Church".
ORIGINAL DEADLY SINS

Pride
Envy
Gluttony
Lust
Anger
Greed

SlothFather Gerald O'Collins, former professor of moral theology at the Papal University in Rome, and teacher of many of the Catholic Church's current top Cardinals and Bishops, welcomed the new catalogue of modern sins.

"I think the major point is that priests who are hearing confessions are not sufficiently attuned to some of the real evils in our world," he told the BBC News website. "They need to be more aware today of the social face of sin - the inequalities at the social level. They think of sin too much on an individual level.

"I think priests who hear confession should have a deeper sense of the violence and injustice of such problems - and the fact that people collaborate simply by doing nothing. One of the original deadly sins is sloth - disengagement and not getting involved," Father O'Collins said. The Jesuit professor now teaches at St Mary's University in Twickenham.

"It was interesting that these remarks came from the head of the Apostolic Penitentiary," he said. "I can't remember a time when it was so concerned about issues such as environmental pollution and social injustice. It's a new way of thinking." "

Slave Trade, a global stable market

2008-03-24T14:33:00.000-07:00

"With $50 and a plane ticket to Haiti, one can buy a slave. This was just one of the difficult lessons writer Benjamin Skinner learned while researching his book, A Crime So Monstrous: Face-to-Face with Modern-Day Slavery.

Skinner met with slaves and traffickers in 12 different countries, filling in the substance around a startling fact: there are more slaves on the planet today than at any time in human history. Skinner speaks with Anthony Brooks about his experience researching slavery.
Though now illegal throughout the world, slavery is more or less the same as it was hundreds of years ago, Skinner explains. Slaves are still "those that are forced to work under threat of violence for no pay beyond sustenance."

Something disturbing has changed however — the price of a human. After adjusting for inflation, Skinner found that, "In 1850, a slave would cost roughly $30,000 to $40,000 — in other words it was like investing in a Mercedes. Today you can go to Haiti and buy a 9-year-old girl to use as a sexual and domestic slave for $50. The devaluation of human life is incredibly pronounced."
Skinner obtained this specific figure through a very hands-on process. In the fall of 2005, he visited Haiti, which has one of the highest concentrations of slaves anywhere in the world.
"I pulled up in a car and rolled down the window," he recalls. "Someone said, 'Do you want to get a person?'"

Though the country was in a time of political chaos, the street where he met the trafficker was clean and relatively quiet. A tape of the conversation reveals a calm, concise transaction. He was initially told he could get a 9-year-old sex partner/house slave for $100, but he bargained it down to $50.

"The thing that struck me more than anything afterwards was how incredibly banal the transaction was. It was as if I was negotiating on the street for a used stereo."
In the end, he agreed on the price, but told the trader not to make any moves.
"When I was talking to traffickers, I had a principle that I wouldn't pay for human life," he says.
This principle enabled him to keep a certain distance from the system, but not giving in to the temptation to free a suffering human being was an emotionally taxing struggle, he says.
"It's one thing when you are planning an effort like this, this is a work of journalism — I'm not going to interfere with my subjects. It's another thing when you are in an underground brothel in Bucharest, who has this girl with Down Syndrome, who you know is undergoing rape several times a day. When this girl is offered to me in trade for a used car ... I walk away ... it's not an easy thing to do," he says.

At one point, he did violate his principal — helping a mother free her daughter from slavery. He says he does not regret his decision, however, and continues to track her progress through a local NGO in Haiti. She's now in school, he says, and wrote him a letter over Christmas.
Slavery consumes Skinner, he says.

"When I come back to a nice loft in Brooklyn and I have to think about writing this thing — that drove me. I knew that I had to write as compelling a book as possible. This is a life-long commitment for me.""

2 fired in passport case

2008-03-24T14:12:00.000-07:00

"Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice tells reporters that she has apologized to Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill. for an incident in which State Department contractors unnecessarily reviewed his passport file, Friday, March 21, 2008, at the State Department in Washington, during a meeting with Brazil's Defense Minister Nelson Jobim. Rice said she would be 'disturbed' if her passport file was viewed in such an unauthorized manner."

"By ANNE FLAHERTY, Associated Press Writer Fri Mar 21, 4:42 PM ET
WASHINGTON - The Associated Press has learned that the two contractors fired for snooping into Barack Obama's passport records worked for a Virginia-based company called Stanley Inc.

Earlier this week, the 3,500-person company won a five-year, $570-million contract to support passport services at the State Department.
The company is referring all questions to the State Department. An agency official confirmed that the two contractors had been employed at Stanley. The official requested anonymity because the information had not been publicly released.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

WASHINGTON (AP) — State Department employees snooped through the passport files of three presidential candidates — Sens. Barack Obama, Hillary Rodham Clinton and John McCain — and the department's inspector general is investigating.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the violations of McCain and Clinton's passport files were not discovered until Friday, after officials were made aware of the unauthorized access of Obama's records and a separate search was conducted.
The incidents raise questions as to whether the information was accessed for political purposes and why two contractors involved in the Obama search were dismissed before investigators had a chance to interview them. It recalled an incident in 1992, when a Republican political appointee at the State Department was demoted over a search of presidential candidate Bill Clinton's passport records. At the time, Clinton was challenging President George H.W. Bush.
McCormack said one of the individuals who accessed Obama's files also reviewed McCain's file earlier this year. This contract employee has been reprimanded, but not fired. The individual no longer has access to passport records, he said.

"I can assure you that person's going to be at the top of the list of the inspector general when they talk to people, and we are currently reviewing our (disciplinary) options with respect to that person," McCormack said.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice spoke with all three candidates on Friday and expressed her regrets. In the meantime, State Department officials headed to Capitol Hill to brief the candidates' staffs.

After speaking with Obama, Rice told reporters: "I told him that I was sorry, and I told him that I myself would be very disturbed."
Obama said Congress should be part of any investigation.
"When you have not just one but a series of attempts to tap into peoples' personal records, that's a problem not just for me but for how our government functions," Obama told reporters in Portland, Ore. "I expect a full and thorough investigation. It should be done in conjunction with those congressional committees that have oversight so it's not simply an internal matter."
The State Department said the Justice Department would be monitoring the probe in case it needs to get involved.

Attorney General Michael Mukasey said the case has not yet been referred to the Justice Department for investigation, and indicated prosecutors likely would wait until the State Department's inspector general concludes its inquiry. But Mukasey did not rule out the possibility of the Justice Department taking an independent look at the passport breach.
"Have they asked us to become involved — no," Mukasey told reporters during a Friday briefing. "When, as, and if we have a basis for an investigation, including a reference — that is, one basis would be a reference — we could conduct one."

Asked what another basis could be, Mukasey said: "I don't want to speculate but if somebody walked in here with a box full of evidence, they wouldn't be turned away."
In Clinton's case, an individual last summer accessed her file as part of a training session involving another State Department worker. McCormack said the one-time violation was immediately recognized and the person was admonished.
Obama's records were accessed without permission on three separate occasions — Jan. 9, Feb. 21 and as recently as last week, on March 14.

McCormack declined to name the companies that employed the contractors, despite demands by a senior House Democrat that such information is in the public interest.
"At this point, we just started an investigation," he said. "We want to err on the side of caution."
McCain, who was in Paris on Friday, said any breach of passport privacy deserves an apology and a full investigation.

"The United States of America values everyone's privacy and corrective action should be taken," he said.
It is not clear whether the employees saw anything other than the basic personal data such as name, citizenship, age, Social Security number and place of birth, which is required when a person fills out a passport application.

Aside from the file, the information could allow critics to dig deeper into the candidates' private lives. While the file includes date and place of birth, address at time of application and the countries the person has traveled to, the most important detail would be their Social Security number, which can be used to pull credit reports and other personal information.
The firings and unspecified discipline of the third employee already had occurred when senior State Department officials learned of the break-ins to the files. Rice learned about it Thursday, after a reporter inquired about Obama's case.
The violations were detected by internal State Department computer checks because certain records, including those of high-profile people, are "flagged" with a computer tag that tips off supervisors when someone tries to view the records without a proper reason.
The Washington Times first reported the incident involving Obama.

Former Independent Counsel Joseph diGenova said the firings of the contract employees will make the investigation more difficult because the inspector general can't compel them to talk.
"My guess is if he tries to talk to them now, in all likelihood they will take the Fifth," diGenova said, referring to the Fifth Amendment's protection against self-incrimination.
The State Department's top management officer, Undersecretary Patrick Kennedy, briefed members of the Clinton, Obama and McCain staffs in a Senate Foreign Relations Committee room midday Friday.

"Mistakes and errors happen from time to time. ... We caught these and we've got to work and correct that process," Kennedy said after the more than 90-minute session.
Kennedy had said Thursday that the incident was not handled properly.
"I will fully acknowledge this information should have been passed up the line," Kennedy told reporters in a conference call. "It was dealt with at the office level.""

Feature: Cars and Oil

2008-03-17T14:28:00.000-07:00

$1.85 was the price for a gallon of gas until Hurricane Katrina which decreased refining capacity in the Gulf of Mexico then immediately went up to $2.70. We were told the price would go down when the refiners got back up to capacity, it then went to around $2.10 then back up to about $2.30 because Oil companies said they had to change the gas make up do to seasonal changes. Now we’re up to $3.25. This is not natural economic factors at work: it’s the result of price gauging by the Oil companies in an attempt to grab every red cent with no concern for everybody else. My friends bare in mind the following fact: after Hurricane Katrina when the refiners came back online the price of gas never never came back down to its previous amount. The price at the pump is artificially high; it does not have to be $3.50. It does not have anything to do with OPEC because globally there is an over production of oil on the markets. American oil companies (not oil producing countries) have no reason to decrease prices if we continue to pay. I’m no economist but I did minor in economics: ideally the government would be advised to aggressively regulate the price of gas (similar to how some cities have price ceilings on apartment prices) however this could only happen in a utopian world so I offer the following capitalistic tangible ideas. To decrease the price of gas the consumer must cut back on driving therefore decreasing demand in addition to the private sector ramping up competition targeted within automotive industry: The United States producing quality durable cars, economical affordable cars, fuel efficient cars, and hastening innovation where technologies are available but motivation to change is absent – hybrids, hydrogen is the way to go. Such a hastening is to be directed by corporate CEO/Presidents. No one can argue with my stance because it is fact that auto makers that valued quality, affordability, and fuel efficiency (Toyota) have surpassed FORD and GMC in their share of American auto sells. This will be the salvation of U.S. economy. Open your eyes business! Cars and Oil.

-A.T. Brooks

Where's the money?

2008-03-17T09:47:00.000-07:00

The money is there for a different economic approach in America. Some however say there is no money. Why then was funding for War in Iraq immediately budgeted? The stance of Checks & Balances is that spending on Social Programs would result in far more in advancements in the economy and jobs than military spending because the benefits are domestic. It is estimated the Iraq War will cost the U.S. a trillion dollars. It has in fact cost $90 Billion every year since its inception. Now more facts; they say there is no money to solvate Social Security however one infusion of $90 Billion can completely revitalize the program. It is fact that they say there is no funding for a nationalized healthcare however combined with Medicare, Medicaid, fee for service and insurance in addition to annual government funding of $5 Billion per year such a program is achievable.

I wish the politics of government to be simpler where profit motives and partisan baloney has no place.

Gas Price Tracker - $3.25

2008-03-17T09:03:00.000-07:00

$3.25

Tampa Bay

Crude Oil $112.00

Gas Price Tracker - $3.21

2008-03-13T08:02:00.000-07:00

$3.21

Tampa, FL

Crude Oil $107. 58

Gov. Spitzer Resigns

2008-03-10T12:09:00.000-07:00

The New York Times is reporting Monday March 10, 2008 that Spitzer has told senior advisers that he had been involved in a prostitution ring.

Spitzer, who is married with three daughters, was scheduled to make an announcement Monday afternoon. Spitzer officials wouldn't immediately comment on the story.
The Times reported that a person with knowledge of the governor's role believes the governor is identified as a client in court papers. Four people allegedly connected to a high-end prostitution ring called Emperors Club VIP were arrested last week.

Update: Spitzer Resigns After Sex Scandal, Pressure

New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer has resigned, bowing to enormous pressure for him to leave public office in the wake of allegations that he has repeatedly used the services of a high-priced prostitution ring. Spitzer has not denied those allegations.
A somber Spitzer, flanked by his wife, Silda, stepped to the podium to give up the office he assumed just 14 months ago.

"I look at my time as governor with a sense of what might have been," Spitzer said.
"The remorse I feel will always be with me," he told gathered reporters. "I cannot allow for my private failings to disrupt the people's work."
Referring to the high standards he has expected from others, "I can and will expect no less of myself," he said.

The governor's resignation will have an effective date of Monday, March 17, one week after the case first became public knowledge. Lt. Gov. David Paterson, 53, now becomes New York's first black governor. Paterson, who is legally blind, will serve out Spitzer's term, which ends on Dec. 31, 2010.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=88134976

High on Mount Sinai?

2008-03-07T15:33:00.001-08:00

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - The biblical Israelites may have been high on a hallucinogenic plant when Moses brought the Ten Commandments down from Mount Sinai, according to a new study by an Israeli psychology professor.

Writing in the British journal Time and Mind, Benny Shanon of Jerusalem's Hebrew University said two plants in the Sinai desert contain the same psychoactive molecules as those found in plants from which the powerful Amazonian hallucinogenic brew ayahuasca is prepared.
The thunder, lightning and blaring of a trumpet which the Book of Exodus says emanated from Mount Sinai could just have been the imaginings of a people in an "altered state of awareness," Shanon hypothesized.

"In advanced forms of ayahuasca inebriation, the seeing of light is accompanied by profound religious and spiritual feelings," Shanon wrote.
"On such occasions, one often feels that in seeing the light, one is encountering the ground of all Being ... many identify this power as God."

Shanon wrote that he was very familiar with the affects of the ayahuasca plant, having "partaken of the ... brew about 160 times in various locales and contexts."
He said one of the psychoactive plants, harmal, found in the Sinai and elsewhere in the Middle East, has long been regarded by Jews in the region as having magical and curative powers.
Some biblical scholars were unimpressed. Orthodox rabbi Yuval Sherlow told Israel Radio: "The Bible is trying to convey a very profound event. We have to fear not for the fate of the biblical Moses, but for the fate of science."

(Writing by Jeffrey Heller, Editing by Alastair Macdonald)"

Latinos' Job Fatality Rate Highest

2008-03-07T15:32:00.001-08:00

Each year, nearly 6,000 workers die on the job in the United States. They fall from scaffoldings, get pulled into industrial machines or are exposed to toxic chemicals. Since the federal government began compiling these statistics, the number of workplace fatalities has been fairly constant — except among Latinos. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that Latino workers' fatality rate was 21 percent higher than all workers in 2006.

Source: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=87837162&sc=emaf

Broad Support for Requiring Health Coverage

2008-03-07T15:29:00.001-08:00

A new poll on health care from NPR, the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Harvard School of Public Health finds that a majority of Americans are backing key elements in the health reform proposals of Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

Broad Support for Requiring Health Coverage

2008-03-07T15:29:00.000-08:00

" New poll on health care from NPR, the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Harvard School of Public Health finds that a majority of Americans are backing key elements in the health reform proposals of Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.
The poll also found very strong support for doing something about the problem of 50 million Americans being uninsured — 93 percent call it a serious problem, with 74 percent saying it's a very serious problem.

"One thing that the survey shows is that Americans are concerned about the problem of the uninsured," says Mollyann Brodie of the Kaiser Family Foundation, co-director of the NPR/Kaiser/Harvard polling project. "We see a universal sort of agreement that they'd like to see more people covered — that it's a good goal to go after."

One aim of the poll was to find out how people feel about the idea of requiring all individuals to buy health insurance. That's a centerpiece of Clinton's plan.

When asked whether they would support a broad proposal that would require everyone to get coverage, 59 percent said they would support it. Such a proposal would require employers to provide coverage or pay into a pool. The government would help low-income people get coverage, and insurance companies would be required to take anyone who applies. People who don't get coverage through one of these channels or purchase it themselves would pay a fine.
But when the question was asked a different way — without emphasizing government subsidies, employer mandates and requirements on insurance companies — support dropped to 47 percent in favor and 44 percent against. That's an even split, given the poll's margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

The finding suggests that support for requiring everyone to buy insurance may be iffy.
One of the people responding to the poll was Jeffreyna Harper of St. Clair Shores, Mich. She likes Clinton's plan better than Obama's, which would not require all adults to have coverage but would require that parents get their children covered.
"It's good that your children have insurance," Harper told NPR. "The parents need insurance too. Who's going to take care of the kids if the parents are sick?"
The poll finds most independents also support a requirement that everybody buy insurance. But many independents have trouble with that, including Lori Moyer of Roanoke, Va.
"That's a tough call for me because I don't know that the government should be requiring people to buy it," she says. "To me, that's too much involvement from the government by saying that you have to purchase health care."
Moyer favors Republican John McCain. But she also likes Obama's plan to require coverage for children.
"My main concern is children that are uninsured," she says. "I think it's important for the children to get the vaccines that they need and not be afraid to take them to the doctor because they can't afford a doctor visit to make them well."
Covering Children First
When asked whether they would favor a proposal that would not require all adults to get insurance, but one that would require parents to get health coverage for their children, support was higher: 65 percent support that proposal, including a majority (54 percent) of Republicans.
Robert Blendon of the Harvard School of Public Health, a co-director of the polling project, says support for covering children first may have something to do with last year's debate over the State Children's Health Insurance Plan. President Bush vetoed the proposal by Congress as too expansive. But the debate brought the problem of uninsured children to the public's attention.
"There was extraordinary support in this poll among all groups — Democrats, Republicans and independents — for the idea of requiring that every child has a health insurance policy and then provid[ing] help to parents that can't afford it," he says. "And we don't have as wide a consensus for what to do about adults. So it's the childrens' side of this which offers the possibility of a very quick breakthrough in the next Congress."

On the issue of employers' responsibilities, there's sharp difference between the parties. Three-quarters of Americans say employers should offer health insurance or pay into a government pool to provide coverage. But about twice as many Democrats as Republicans are strongly in favor of this approach.

"The employer issue is, I think, going to be a very important issue because that's going to be quite popular from the Democratic side — that the employers be asked to contribute," Blendon says. "And Sen. McCain is going to say absolutely no requirement for individuals and absolutely no requirements for business."

The poll also showed that there is a fairly low level of understanding about what the presidential candidates have proposed regarding health care. Only 48 percent could correctly answer the question, "Have any of the current candidates for president proposed a health plan requiring all Americans to have health insurance, or not?"
Some 42 percent correctly identified Clinton as having proposed such a plan, but only 11 percent knew correctly that Obama had not."

Ginkgo helps memory, raises stroke

2008-03-03T15:34:00.000-08:00

'By David Liu, Ph. D.Mar 2, 2008 - 10:17:50 PM

SUNDAY MARCH 2, 2008 (Foodconsumer.org) -- A study published online Wednesday Feb 27 in the journal Neurology suggests taking a ginkgo biloba extract may help maintain memory in elderly people.But the same study also showed that the users of ginkgo biloba extract were at higher risk of mini-strokes or mild strokes.

Ginkgo biloba extracts are sold as dietary supplements to enhance memory as some studies found that it may help improve memory and other mental functions in people with dementia.Dr. Hiroko H. Dodge at the Oregon State University in Corvallis and colleagues followed 118 people aged 85, half taking ginkgo biloba and half taking a placebo, for three years during which 21 of them developed mild memory problems or signs of dementia.Among those who had the memory problems, 14 took a placebo while only 7 took the ginkgo biloba extract. The researchers said although there was a trend showing that taking the ginkgo biloba extract seemed to reduce the risk for memory loss, the effect was not statistically significant.Among those who strictly followed the supplementation regimen, the risk for memory problems for those who took the ginkgo biloba extract was only 32 % of that for those who did not.However, a higher risk of strokes or mini strokes in the ginkgo biloba group was observed. What is interesting is that the type of stroke observed was vessel blockages, not bleeding, a finding that contradicts early studies."Further studies are needed to determine whether ginkgo biloba has any benefits in preventing cognitive decline and whether it is safe," Dodge said."

Ginkgo: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ginkgo

Florida’s Democratic Delegates

2008-03-03T15:23:00.000-08:00

The elites loitering at the DNC are making an immense mistake in denying Florida the right to seat its 2008 Presidential primary delegates. The DEMS have traditional been the party of the people. Such a regression from this basic principle may further cause schisms. Like Governor Dean rose to be the chief donkey DEMS locally are discussing action to replace him along with rules committee members. The donkey elites are advised to respect the Florida voters, seat or delegates and mind the business of Washington.

Telecom Immunity Threatens the Constitution

2008-02-29T19:46:00.000-08:00

George W. Bush and other Republican leaders have admitted that they oppose the extension of the "Protect America Act" passed by the House of Representatives because it does not give immunity to those telecommunications companies who willingly handed over the personal data of US citizens based on nothing more than a request from the Administration. Their reason? They claim that those telecommunications companies might not cooperate next time.

More than one blogger has pointed out that, if telecommunications companies were given warrants and subpoenas, they would have to cooperate next time, or suffer severe consequences. But I haven't seen anyone else make this point: we citizens don't want those telecommunications companies giving up our private data based on nothing more than a request from the government.

In appealing to one fear, the fear of terrorists, Bush and his enablers overlook a greater fear woven into the US Constitution: An authoritarian government represents a greater potential threat to its citizens than any potential terrorist. That's why the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution says:

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

The "Founding Fathers" knew from experience that a government's powers are so vast, the potential for abuse so real, and the possible damage so grave, that restrictions on the government's powers had to be established. And one of those "safety clauses" was a requirement that the government be forced to show "probable cause" before searching and seizing our effects. I submit that this would include our electronic "effects".

Alex Budarin http://jeffersonsparlor.blogspot.com

A Gospel According to Yoda

2008-02-23T10:39:00.000-08:00

"Daniel Jones noticed, as did many other people, that more than 390,000 people across England and Wales had claimed "Jedi" as their religion on the U.K.'s 2001 census. An Internet campaign may have driven up those numbers, but the results held a deeper meaning for Daniel and his brother Barney. That census report became their impetus to start the U.K. Church of the Jedi.

Daniel took on the name Master Morda Hehol and opened the main chapter in Anglesey, Wales, where he lives. Another is open in Surrey, England, and they've had calls from would-be Jedis in Washington and Colorado, people hoping to open chapters stateside. It's no joke to Daniel, who was atheist before adopting Jediism.

"We don't have a deity, we have the Force," says Daniel. "It's more like self-belief. If you believe in yourself, and you manipulate the Force, you can achieve great things."
Services have been held in his backyard garden, with plans to move to a building soon.
"The first part of the sermons we do 'Theory of the Force.'" The group then moves on to classes. "It may be lightsaber training, one month. The next month it may be technology and mind control."

Yes, that includes Jedi Mind Tricks."

Companies Use Fees to Counter Bargains

2008-02-23T10:38:00.001-08:00

"From hotels to cell phone bills, companies attach a barrage of hidden, extra charges. One reason is the Internet. Online shopping permits consumers to comparison shop for bargains. So companies are countering low prices with hefty fees. So if a $99 room is snagged at a nice hotel via Priceline.com, then the hotel tends to attach a "resort fee" for towels at the pool or removing something from the mini-bar – even it put back 60 seconds later.

Bob Sullivan, author of Gotcha Capitalism, talks with Steve Inskeep about deceptive fees and why U.S. businesses are so dependent on them."

News web sites draw record viewers

2008-02-23T10:36:00.000-08:00

"NEW YORK (Reuters) - A record number of readers visited U.S. online newspaper sites last year, according to figures released on Thursday, confirming the Web as one of the few bright spots for the struggling newspaper industry.

The Newspaper Association of America reported the number of unique visitors to newspaper Web sites last year rose more than 6 percent to a monthly average of 60 million. Monthly visits climbed 9 percent in the fourth quarter from a year ago."

American Express Hit by Slowing Economy

2008-02-23T10:35:00.000-08:00

"One of the country's biggest credit card companies says the slowing economy is hurting its business. American Express says credit card charges began to tail off in December. It's also warning Wall Street that its profits will be lower as more cardholders fail to repay their debts. The CEO of American Express says card spending is still strong, but he pointed to problems among consumers in California, Florida and other parts of the country most affected by the downturn in housing."

Iraqi Death Toll at 151,000

2008-02-23T10:33:00.000-08:00

"by Brenda Wilson
A study conducted by the World Health Organization and the Iraq Health Ministry estimates that more than 150,000 Iraqis suffered violent deaths in the first three years after the U.S. invasion.

That's about a fourth of the number of deaths found in an earlier controversial study.
The World Health Organization's study of violent deaths is based on visits to more than 10,000 households throughout Iraq. Ties Boerma, WHO's director of Measurements and Health Information, says the results include the deaths of civilians and soldiers who were part of those households.

"They don't include car accidents and they don't include unintentional injuries," says Boerma. "They just include intentional injuries and armed conflict. In fact, the armed conflict deaths are more than 80 percent of the deaths we got reported."

Researchers left it up to the respondents to define the cause of death.
"If they said someone died while trying to avoid a bomb blast, (you) could define it as an armed conflict death, but that was up to the respondents," says Boerma.
Boerma and his team looked at the period between March 2003 and June 2006, and estimated 151,000 violent deaths in Iraq.

That's a fraction of the more than 600,000 violent deaths reported for the same period by researchers at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health in 2006, a survey that continues to be debated in the press and political circles.

Both studies counted civilian and combatant fatalities. Boerma thinks the difference in their findings is that the earlier Hopkins study visited far fewer neighborhoods and villages. Researchers working with Hopkins visited 47 so-called clusters; researchers with WHO visited more than 1,000 clusters.

"Because we are talking about a survey that is much larger, we have a little bit more confidence in that method than in a very small cluster survey," says Boerma.
Boerma admits that even the bigger survey missed areas that were too violent to get into and so they made adjustments for that.

Les Roberts was the co-author of the Johns Hopkins study. He says that they can produce a death certificate for every violent death in their tally and he doubts the surveyors working for Iraq's Ministry of Health can produce the same.

"Every graveyard tally, every morgue description I've seen suggests the majority of deaths are from violence," Roberts says. "There are two possibilities. Our estimate has too many. Theirs has too few." Roberts says he thinks in the case of the WHO study, families were reluctant to admit a family member died a violent death.
However, there are other reports on increases in violent deaths whose trends are closer to those reported by WHO.

It is unlikely that this latest research will settle the question of the exact magnitude of death the Iraq conflict has caused."

Nation's Health Care Bill Hits All-Time High

2008-02-23T10:30:00.000-08:00

" by Joanne Silberner"

"For the first time ever, the total spent on health care topped $2 trillion in 2006, according to a government analysis. The details are in the current issue of the journal Health Affairs.
Fortunately, the rate of growth is slowing down.

But that news may not be as good as it sounds.
The analysis was headed by Aaron Catlin, an economist with the Department of Health and Human Services.

"Health spending in the U.S. accelerated slightly," he says. "It picked up in growth to 6.7 percent in 2006. That's up two-tenths of a percentage point from 2005."
That's not much of an increase in growth if you're an economist, especially when you consider it's been twice that rate in previous years.

But in one area, there was a pretty dramatic increase. Spending on prescription drugs went up 8.5 percent. That's $16 billion.

"We attribute about 50 percent of the increase in spending to increase in use," Catlin says. "Some of that increased use came from beneficiaries under Part D."
The Part D beneficiaries are people who have bought prescription drug insurance through Medicare. Some of them didn't have drug insurance until they purchased it through Medicare and were unable to afford certain prescription medications before the plan went into effect.

Where is the health care economy going? The government won't come out with its projections for the next decade until the end of February. But some other health experts say there are big problems ahead: Health care inflation is far from solved.

Health care consultant Bob Lasziewski says it's like a ship sinking at a reduced rate from how it was sinking before.
"Health care is still increasing at twice the rate of inflation," he says. "Five years ago, it was four times the rate of inflation."
But twice the rate of inflation is still unsustainable, he says, especially given what he sees for the future: Doctors and hospitals joining together to resist insurers' cost cutting, and baby boomers continuing to age.

Paul Ginsburg sees other problems. He's president of the Center for Studying Health Systems Change, which has been studying health care costs in 25 communities around the country. For one thing, Ginsburg says, if the economy hits a downturn and wages slump, health care costs will take a bigger bite out of every paycheck.

Plus he expects that the nation's obesity epidemic is going to drive up health costs. And in travelling around the country he's seen marketplace changes that worry him.
"What we've seen is that the hospitals and physicians have identified which services are the most profitable," he says. "So hospitals identify cardiac procedures and physicians have identified imaging. So what's profitable, they're building."

When a new hospital wing gets built, or doctors buy fancy new machines, those new buildings and machines are going to be used. And when they're used, somebody has to pay for them."

Document Shows Army Blocked Help for Soldiers

2008-02-15T15:56:00.000-08:00

"by Ari Shapiro

A document from the Department of Veterans Affairs contradicts an assertion made by the Army surgeon general that his office did not tell VA officials to stop helping injured soldiers with their military disability paperwork at a New York Army post.

The paperwork can help determine health care and disability benefits for wounded soldiers.
Last week, NPR first described a meeting last March between an Army team from Washington and VA officials at Fort Drum Army base in upstate New York. NPR reported that Army representatives told the VA not to review the narrative summaries of soldiers' injuries, and that the VA complied with the Army's request.

The day the NPR story aired, Army Surgeon General Eric B. Schoomaker denied parts of the report. Rep. John McHugh (R-NY), who represents the Fort Drum area, told North Country Public Radio, that "The Surgeon General of the Army told me very flatly that it was not the Army that told the VA to stop this help."

Now, NPR has obtained a four-page VA document that contradicts the surgeon general's statement to McHugh. It was written by one of the VA officials at Fort Drum on March 31, the day after the meeting. The document says Col. Becky Baker of the Army Surgeon General's office told the VA to discontinue counseling soldiers on the appropriateness of Defense Department ratings because "there exists a conflict of interest."

When contacted by NPR, Baker referred an interview request to the Army Surgeon General's spokeswoman. The spokeswoman rejected requests for interviews with Baker and Schoomaker.
The document says that before the Army team's visit, people from the Army Inspector General's office came to Fort Drum and told the VA it was providing a useful service to soldiers by reviewing their disability paperwork.

According to the document, joining Baker on the Army team at the Fort Drum meeting was Dr. Alan Janusziewicz. He retired as deputy assistant surgeon general for the Army in October.
"I was part of the team, and I was probably instrumental in the surgeon general denying that the Army had instructed the VA" to stop reviewing soldiers' Army medical documents, Janusziewicz told NPR in a phone interview.

Janusziewicz says he has no memory of Baker telling the VA to stop helping soldiers with their military paperwork. In fact, he says, he thought the VA at Fort Drum was doing the best job of any base he visited. But he also says his recollection of the meeting is spotty, since it took place almost a year ago.

"I believe that document is more likely to represent a miscommunication of intent between what Col. Baker was trying to get across and what folks on the receiving end of that communication likely heard," Janusziewicz said.
The document describing the meeting at Fort Drum says the primary purpose for the visit was to "ensure that there are no other 'Walter Reed' situations at other Army installations." That's a reference to the scandal at Walter Reed Army hospital in Washington, which detailed reports of neglect of soldiers recovering from injuries sustained in Iraq and Afghanistan.

According to the document, Rosie Taylor, who recently retired as Fort Drum's Disability Program manager, described soldiers at the base in conditions of squalor and neglect. In an interview on Wednesday, Taylor described "soldiers crawling on their bellies to go to the bathroom, or soldiers who'd had surgery who couldn't go to chow because they had no way to get there."

The document says one soldier was bedridden for three days without a change of clothes or meal. Taylor says nobody listened to her complaints until the Walter Reed scandal.
"Every time I walked into a meeting before, it was like 'Oh my God, there goes $70,000.' And after Walter Reed hit the fan, it was like I was getting phone calls, 'Rosie we're doing over a building and we need your advice on access,'" Taylor says.

Taylor says the accessibility problems have generally been solved.
She doesn't remember whether the Army told the VA to stop helping soldiers with their disability paperwork. But she will say this about Fort Drum's VA workers: "They stand on their heads for soldiers. They put their jobs on the line for soldiers. They don't care if they're not supposed to do something; if a soldier needs something done, they do it anyway."
Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) has already asked the Army to investigate the situation at Fort Drum. She called the allegations in last week's report "deeply disturbing."

Whether the situation at the Army base is a result of poor communication, poor memory or something else altogether, the result is the same: For the last year, hundreds of disabled soldiers at Fort Drum have received less help with their disability paperwork than the soldiers who came before them."

Iraq Vets Charged with Murder of Fellow Soldier

2008-02-15T15:53:00.000-08:00

"by John McChesney

February 8, 2008 · A soldier who had survived two tours in Iraq and had been sent home after suffering traumatic brain injury was murdered in December in Colorado Springs near Fort Carson, Colo. Army Spc. Kevin Shields was killed, according to police, by three fellow soldiers who had served with him in Iraq.

People in Colorado Springs were shocked and puzzled. Some contend that the alleged killers were just bad apples. Others questioned whether the accused should have been allowed to join the Army in the first place. The Army said the alleged shooter had post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. It is still unclear how that diagnosis will play out as the case goes to court.
Shields was out celebrating his 24th birthday the night he was shot. He had been sent home from Iraq with traumatic brain injury and was waiting for a medical discharge. His mother, Debra Pearson, lives in Roscoe, Ill., where Kevin grew up.

Pearson recalled the night she learned of her son's death. "I talked to my mom," she said, "and we had decided that at 12:30 I was going to call him with her and wish him a happy birthday. That didn't happen. At 11:15, I got the call that he'd been killed."
Shields had been shot in the face, the neck and the groin with a .38-caliber pistol. The night before, he had been out drinking in downtown Colorado Springs with three Army acquaintances, Louis Bressler, Kenneth Eastridge and Bruce Bastien.

Police quickly picked up Bastien, who began to talk. In a document filed with the court by the district attorney, Bastien said he and the other men had gotten so drunk that they had to stop the car at least twice to vomit.
According to the document, after one of those stops, Bastien said he was walking back toward the car when "he saw Louis Bressler shoot Kevin Shields. Kevin Shields immediately fell to the ground. … Bressler then walked over to where Kevin Shields was lying and shot him four more times."

Bressler, the alleged shooter, had been sent home early from Iraq because he had been diagnosed with PTSD. He had received a medical discharge and was taking medications.
Ominous Signals in MySpace Pages
The suspects all have MySpace pages. Bressler and his wife, Tira, each have pages there, which Bressler's lawyer, Ed Farry, describe as "a kind of prototypical page by young people in America today."
"Both he and his wife discuss their adoration of each other," Farry says, adding, "It doesn't show any of the pathologies that — where certain other Web pages show — where people are contemplating bad acts."

True, Bressler and his wife do express their mutual affection on their MySpace pages. But the headline on Bressler's page reads "Chillin an Killin."
Tira Bressler's moniker is Devil's Angel, and buried in her dozens of online photos is a picture of a .38-caliber revolver with five shiny bullets in front of it. Police say Shields was killed with a revolver like that. Bressler was raised by his father in Charlotte, N.C., and did not graduate from high school.
'

Killin Is Just What I Do'
Then there's Kenneth Eastridge, whose MySpace headline is "Killin is just what I do." There are plenty of pictures of his tattoos: the slogan "born to kill" and a Nazi SS insignia on one arm.
Michael De Yoanna reported on military affairs in Colorado Springs for a local paper, the Independent, and has looked at many military personnel Web pages. He says most are designed to convey reassurances to families.

"What I'm seeing here is a stark contrast," De Yoanna said. "I'm seeing violent statements and a tattoo that's hard to construe any way [but] as racist."
Such tattoos are forbidden by the military.
One photo shows Eastridge in uniform holding a cat with a gaping wound. The caption reads: "Killed another Iraqi pussy." Another shows both an M-16 and an AK-47. The caption reads: Ready for Whatever.

The AK-47 is not issued by the U.S. military, but it is commonly used by Iraqi insurgents. "This is a weapon that should have been turned over to higher commanders and stored," De Yoanna said.
Relating to 'Real Life'
Defendant Bastien told police that he saw Eastridge fire at Iraqi civilians with an AK-47 to make it seem like enemy fire. The Army's Criminal Investigative Division has investigated and so far has not been able to substantiate that charge. Eastridge earned a Purple Heart while in Iraq. His high school near Louisville, Ky., says he dropped out.

Bastien's MySpace page is kept private. He is from Fairfield, Conn., and has a wife and daughter. He returned home on personal leave from Iraq, where he was a medic, and was then held over by the Army because of a charge of domestic violence. Bastien is still on active duty.
Bastien's court-appointed lawyer, Rick Bednarski, would only say this about the case: "I think the military is sending kids over to fight a war, and then coming back and not giving them the right treatment in order to get them to relate back to real life, rather than life back in Iraq."
Shields' family finds it hard to take that Kevin survived two tours in Iraq, only to be killed by fellow soldiers on American soil. Kevin's grandfather, Ivan Shields, raised him from age 3, after Kevin's mother got involved in an abusive marriage. Like lawyer Bednarski, he says the military is mismanaging soldiers' return to civilian life.

"We just feel that the commander out there of that base don't have too good a control over these people," Ivan Shields said. "I thought they run a tighter ship than that."

Questioning Army Admissions
Fort Carson officials say they can't comment on the case while it is under investigation.
Kevin Shields' mother, Debra Pearson, believes the problem isn't so much what happens to soldiers after they get back from Iraq, but how they got in the Army in the first place.
"I believe Bressler and Eastridge had mental problems even before they enlisted," Pearson said. "I just feel that what I know of their background, they weren't very good people before they went in. And I guess I feel that they should have been screened closer before joining."
There is no evidence that any of the three had mental problems before enlisting. Whether they should have been screened more closely before enlisting may emerge as the investigation proceeds.

The PTSD Factor
There is, however, the issue of Bressler's Army-diagnosed PTSD.
PTSD has been used as an explanation, if not an excuse, in other criminal cases. But Bressler's attorney, Farry, says he won't do that.

"I'm of the opinion that the fact that he does have post-traumatic stress disorder has been used successfully by some of the co-defendants in this case," Farry said.
Farry thinks Bastien and Eastridge have fingered Bressler as the triggerman because they think a jury would believe him most likely to have committed a seemingly senseless murder.
Unfortunately, there's more to this case. Bressler and Bastien have also been charged with the murder of Pfc. Robert James. Bressler allegedly gunned James down in a parking lot as James begged not to be hurt. James was robbed of $45.

Police say the three defendants in the Shields murder case may have committed or planned other crimes as well. What may be argued out in court is whether this is just a group of thugs who shouldn't have been in the Army in the first place, or a group unable or unwilling to put aside the mindset they forged in combat."

Arguing the Upside of Being Down

2008-02-15T15:49:00.000-08:00

"Author Eric G. Wilson has come to realize he was born to the blues, and he has made peace with his melancholy state. But it took some time, as he writes in his new book, a polemic titled Against Happiness: In Praise of Melancholy.

At the behest of well-meaning friends, I have purchased books on how to be happy. I have tried to turn my chronic scowl into a bright smile. I have attempted to become more active, to get away from my dark house and away from my somber books and participate in the world of meaningful action. … I have contemplated getting a dog. I have started eating salads. I have tried to discipline myself in nodding knowingly. … I have undertaken yoga. I have stopped yoga and gone into tai chi. I have thought of going to psychiatrists and getting some drugs. I have quit all of this and then started again and then once more quit. Now I plan to stay quit. The road to hell is paved with happy plans.

Wilson has embraced his inner gloom, and he wishes more people would do the same.
The English professor at Wake Forest University wants to be clear that he is not "romanticizing" clinical depression and that he believes it is a serious condition that should be treated.
But he worries that today's cornucopia of antidepressants — used to treat even what he calls "mild to moderate sadness" — might make "sweet sorrow" a thing of the past.
"And if that happens, I wonder, what will the future hold? Will our culture become less vital? Will it become less creative?" he asks.

Wilson talks to Melissa Block about why the world needs melancholy — how it pushes people to think about their relation to the world in new ways and ultimately to relate to the world in a richer, deeper way.

He also explores the link between sadness, artistic creation and depression — which has led to suicide in many well-known cases: Virginia Woolf, Vincent Van Gogh, Hart Crane and Ernest Hemingway, for instance.
Wilson says perhaps this is "just part of the tragic nature of existence, that sometimes there's a great price to be paid for great works or beauty, for truth."

"We can look at the lives of Dylan Thomas, Virginia Woolf, Hart Crane and others and lament the fact that they suffered so. Yet at the same time, we're buoyed, we're overjoyed by the works they left behind," Wilson says.
The husband and father of a young daughter also acknowledges that melancholy is "difficult terrain to negotiate in domestic situations." He says there are certainly times when his family hoped he would be "happier," and yet they would not want him to pretend to feel something he doesn't.

Wilson says that by taking his melancholy seriously, his family ultimately will get to know him more deeply and develop a more intimate relationship with him.
"To get to know your partner, your spouse, your friend fully, you really have to find a way to embrace the dark as well as the light. Only then can you know that person," he says."

Source: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=18885211&sc=emaf

Breaking News! Obama DEM Front Runner

2008-02-15T09:54:00.001-08:00

With the Honorable John Lewis, one of America’s respected black political leaders switching support from Clinton to Obama the democratic nomination changes hands. As you all know until now I have been a Clinton supporter however I too am contemplating backing Obama’s message of hope.

"MILWAUKEE — Representative John Lewis, an elder statesman from the civil rights era and one of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s most prominent black supporters, said Thursday night that he planned to cast his vote as a superdelegate for Senator Barack Obama in hopes of preventing a fight at the Democratic convention.

“In recent days, there is a sense of movement and a sense of spirit,” said Mr. Lewis, a Georgia Democrat who endorsed Mrs. Clinton last fall. “Something is happening in America, and people are prepared and ready to make that great leap.”
Mr. Lewis, who carries great influence among other members of Congress, disclosed his decision in an interview in which he said that as a superdelegate he could “never, ever do anything to reverse the action” of the voters of his district, who overwhelmingly supported Mr. Obama.
“I’ve been very impressed with the campaign of Senator Obama,” Mr. Lewis said. “He’s getting better and better every single day.”
His comments came as fresh signs emerged that Mrs. Clinton’s support was beginning to erode from some other African-American lawmakers who also serve as superdelegates. Representative David Scott of Georgia, who was among the first to defect, said he, too, would not go against the will of voters in his district.

The developments came on a day in which Mrs. Clinton set out anew to prove that the fight for the Democratic nomination was far from over. Campaigning in Ohio, she pursued a new strategy of biting attack lines against Mr. Obama, while adopting a newly populist tone as she courted blue-collar voters.
Mrs. Clinton also intensified her efforts in Wisconsin, which holds its primary on Tuesday and where she and Mr. Obama now have the first dueling negative television advertisements of the campaign.

In the ads, Mrs. Clinton taunted Mr. Obama for refusing to debate her in Wisconsin. And she and former President Bill Clinton prepared for a new fund-raising blitz to try to counter Mr. Obama’s edge of several million dollars in campaign cash.
Yet even as the Democratic rivals looked ahead to the primaries in Wisconsin, Ohio and Texas, Mr. Lewis said he and other prominent African-American party leaders had been moved by Mr. Obama’s recent victories and his ability to transcend racial and geographic lines.

Though Mr. Lewis had praise for Mrs. Clinton and for her historic candidacy, he said he could decide within days whether to formally endorse Mr. Obama.
He also said he and other lawmakers would meet in the coming days to decide how they intended to weigh in on the nominating fight. If neither Mrs. Clinton nor Mr. Obama receive enough pledged delegates to win the nomination, superdelegates like Mr. Lewis may play the deciding role in who wins.

“If I can be used as a mediator, a negotiator or a peacemaker, I’d be happy to step in,” Mr. Lewis said, adding that he intends to speak to both candidates in hopes of ending the race amicably in the next month. “I don’t want to see Mrs. Clinton damaged or Mr. Obama damaged.”
Jay Carson, a spokesman for Mrs. Clinton, said Thursday: “Congressman Lewis is a true American hero, and we have the utmost respect for him and understand the great pressure he faced. And Senator Clinton enjoys incredibly strong support from superdelegates around the country from all regions and races.”

The comments by Mr. Lewis underscored a growing sentiment among some of the party’s black leaders that they should not stand in the way of Mr. Obama’s historic quest for the nomination and should not go against the will of their constituents. As superdelegates, they may have the final say, which is something Mr. Lewis said he feared would weaken Democrats and raise Republicans’ chances of winning the White House.

Still, the Democratic nominating fight clearly has many turns ahead. On Thursday, Mrs. Clinton unleashed the most ambitious mobilization of her forces in weeks, reflecting the intense pressure she is under from Mr. Obama, the political necessity for her of towering performances in the delegate-rich primaries in Ohio and Texas on March 4, and her fresh hope of an upset victory in Wisconsin.

Specifically, Mrs. Clinton is hoping to gain political mileage by turning one of Mr. Obama’s attributes, his oratory, against him. She is warning voters about politicians who give great speeches and make big promises but ultimately do not deliver on them."

If God Wanted W to be President

2008-02-14T05:44:00.000-08:00

George W. Bush reportedly told a friend, when he began his second term as governor of Texas, that he believed God wanted him to be President. Well, what if it was true? Judging from the fruits of W’s presidency, I think it’s clear that God wanted George W. Bush to be President so Americans would see that

“Supply-side” and “trickle-down” economics don’t work.
National arrogance and recklessness is self-destructive.
Politics based on fear cannot endure.
Faith and optimism do not create reality.
Republicans are not more “moral” than Democrats, just more hypocritical.

And

Politicians who put little value in government won’t take care of it.

Economic Leadership

2008-01-28T15:53:00.000-08:00

What America needs are level headed leaders employing a more pragmatic business approach in addition to an embrace of ethics on policy. A balance of opportunity that favors the worker versus the imaginary rights of businesses and corporations. Not an endeavor to place owners at a disadvantage but an excursion focused on stability, growth and longevity for the worker and ethical business practices towards the consumer.

Recently aggressive legal alterations in the tax code, bankruptcy laws, and courts allowing corporations to renege on many employee agreements such as earned pensions have empowered greed to suck the blood out of the United States' economy.The monetary bowl within the United Sates is finite, especially today as our economy has not seen a major expansion in over 6 Years. As static financial sectors specifically oil, lenders, and housing artificially inflate their pricing; money is siphoned from other industries. This act of being ‘ripped off’ mixed with corruption renders normal economic checks useless in being able to keep our economy in balance. No wonder Former FED Chair Allan Green Span has retired.

In other words as one Industry increases its profit margins by artificially raising its prices, added fees, and variable rate increases it is tantamount to their actually cost of production decreasing. Specific industries engaging in these acts are: the Oil Industry, Health Care, Pharmaceuticals, Energy, and Military & Securities Companies. These practices lead to profits being taking from another industry either through direct business loss or indirectly thru increased cost of production (Ex: the Automobile Industry, Airlines). In essence causing a devastating negative economic prosperity busting domino down effect. A question for you? Has the U.S. economy expanded at a rate greater than prices in gas and housing? If your answer is no then I predict as of January 28, 2008 the United States is currently in recession.

Vouchers/Grants for Private Education

2008-01-28T15:23:00.001-08:00

After extensive research the position of Checks & Balances blog in regards to vouchers and or Pell grants generously handed out to families for the purposes of sending children to private schools is in opposition to all such programs. The conclusion is simple; public funds ought to be efficiently used to elevate an education received in public secondary schools to the standards and results seen in private schools. Private institutions inherently create an exclusive infrastructure for creating inequality in the type of students admitted, furthermore certain lower socio economic classes may be priced out while more well to do families would unethically use vouchers on top of personal resources, thirdly using tax payer dollars to fund religious private schools is against the spirit of our Constitution.

Romney Most Disliked Republican

2008-01-24T14:30:00.000-08:00

"Romney Leads in Ill Will Among Rivals

TAMPA, Fla. (Jan. 24) — At the end of the Republican presidential debate in New Hampshire this month, when the Democrats joined the candidates on stage, Mitt Romney found himself momentarily alone as his counterparts mingled, looking around a bit stiffly for a companion.

Mitt Romney talks to supporters Tuesday in Coral Springs, Fla. While Romney is surrounded by friendly faces at his campaign events, it's a different story when he's with his rivals for the Republican presidential nomination. They seem to have a deeply felt scorn for him.

The moment was emblematic of a broader reality that has helped shape the Republican contest and could take center stage again on Thursday at a debate in Florida. Within the small circle of contenders, Mr. Romney has become the most disliked.

With so much attention recently on the sniping between Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama on the Democratic side, the almost visceral scorn directed at Mr. Romney by his rivals has been overshadowed.“Never get into a wrestling match with a pig,” Senator John McCain said in New Hampshire this month after reporters asked him about Mr. Romney. “You both get dirty, and the pig likes it.”Mike Huckabee’s pugilistic campaign chairman, Ed Rollins, appeared to stop just short of threatening

Mr. Romney with physical violence at one point.“What I have to do is make sure that my anger with a guy like Romney, whose teeth I want to knock out, doesn’t get in the way of my thought process,” Mr. Rollins said.Campaign insiders and outside strategists point to several factors driving the ill will, most notably, Mr. Romney’s attacks on opponents in television commercials, the perception of him as an ideological panderer and resentment about his seemingly unlimited resources as others have struggled to raise cash.Mr. Romney’s campaign contends that the hostility is driven by the fact that he has aggressively sought to win the early primaries, setting himself up as the chief antagonist, first, to Mr. Huckabee in Iowa and then to Mr. McCain in New Hampshire.

Mr. Romney continues to be a mountain in the paths of both men, as well as Rudolph W. Giuliani, to the nomination."