I will be away, and won't be posting for the next week. I am going to greet my grandson, as he returns to the US from a tour of duty in Iraq. Will talk to you later.
I would have thought McDonalds would be all over biodiesel. Have half
the cars in town running about with the smell of McFries coming out of
the exhaust…..with a sign on the back saying ‘follow me to your nearest
Temple of the Clown’…
As rising energy prices trigger growing concerns on the part of Americans,the
energy industry is determined to maintain the status quo and stall on a
major opportunity to reduce energy dependence – the production of
biofuels.In Brazil, cars have been running on biodiesel for
years, while in Sweden, Ford's flex-fuel models are outselling its
ordinary petrol and diesel cars.
Energy industry officials have no shortage of excuses on why they
can’t move forward on biofuels. In a recent BBC article, one unnamed
industry official asserted that “there’s simply not enough foodstuff available
and not enough land to grow it on” to keep up with the “growing demand
for [grains] used to produce biodiesel.” A day earlier a New York Times
article quoted an agricultural expert warning that demand for foodstuff
for biofuels might mean higher food prices, instability and even corn shortages.
But the facts don’t back up their arguments. In the
face of growing energy demands from China and India and global
population growth, an international corn shortage isn’t possible
anytime soon:
First, developing a biofuel economy can actually help reduce hunger and poverty
by diversifying agricultural and forestry activities, attracting new
farmers, and investing in small and medium enterprises. Increased
investment in agricultural production has the potential to boost
incomes of the world’s poorest people.
Second, world hunger is not the result of absolute food scarcity in the world. Hunger has more to do with inadequate distribution and income. Presently, nearly 40 percent of global cereal crops are used to feed livestock, not humans.
Finally, biofuel refineries in the future will depend less on food crops and more on organic wastes and residues. The greatest potential from sustainable transportation fuels will come from emerging technologies that produce alcohol fuels from cellulose
(“cellulosic ethanol”) which unlike corn ethanol, also uses the stalks,
hulls and other woody, rigid material that makes up the plants.
Ethanol, coupled with strong efficiency and smart growth policies, could dramatically reduce, if not eliminate the United States’ need for oil. Don’t let the naysayers tell you any different. In Brazil, where biofuel cars now outsell ordinary cars,
a state-run bioethanol fuel programme was originally set up for
patriotic, not financial or environmental reasons. It was a strategic decision taken by the military
government that ran the country from 1964 to 1985, inspired by a desire
to reduce its dependence on petroleum imports following the 1970s oil
crisis.
Ethanol is biofuel, and it comes from plant matter/sugar in general.
If you read the thread further up, you’ll see discussions about it
being produced from sugars such as those in Corn and Sugar Cane (brazil
uses this path), but the real future lies in converting biomass agri
waste into ethanol. Unlike gasoline which burns fossilized carbon and
increases greenhouse gases with new carbon sources, this uses carbon
already in the current environment. It’s desirable from a global
warming perspective.
And yes, the E85 cars are great - ford has been making them in
brazil for years. A percentage of ‘flex fuel’ cars as they call them
which will burn either ethanol, gasoline or a dynamic mix of either is
required by law, and therefore common there. There’s no reason the
american car companies couldn’t build these same cars in the US, other
than their corporate ties to big oil.
But do not lose faith, true believers. The exhaust from Nelson's
diesel-powered Mercedes smells like peanuts, or French fries, or
whatever alternative fuel happens to be in his tank. Willie Nelson drives a Mercedes.
"I drove the car, loved the way it drove," Nelson said. "The tailpipe
smells like French fries. I bought me a Mercedes, and the Mercedes
people were a little nervous when I took a brand new Mercedes over and
filled it up with 100 percent vegetable oil coming from the grease
traps of Maui. I figured I'd be getting notices about the warranty and
that stuff. However, nobody said anything."
"I get better gas mileage, it runs better, the motor runs cleaner, so I swear by it," he added.
While Bono tries to change the world by hobnobbing with
politicians and Bob Geldof hosts his mega-benefit concerts, Willie
Nelson has birthed his own brand of alternative fuel. It is called,
fittingly enough, BioWillie. And in BioWillie, Nelson, 72, has blended
two of his biggest concerns — his love of family farmers and disdain
for the Iraq war.
BioWillie is a type of biodiesel, a fuel that can be made from any number of crops and run in a normal diesel engine.
I
knew we needed to have something that would keep us from being so
dependent on foreign oil, and when I heard about biodiesel, a light
come on, and I said, 'Hey, here's the future for the farmers, the
future for the environment, the future for the truckers," Nelson said
in an interview earlier this month. "It seems like that's good for the
whole world if we can start growing our own fuel instead of starting
wars over it."
In some ways, it is a return to the origins of the diesel
engine; some of Rudolf Diesel's first engines ran on peanut oil more
than a century ago. Biodiesel can cost as much as a $1 a gallon more than regular
diesel when pure, though it is typically sold as B20. Prices vary
depending on volume and region, and new tax incentives are aimed at
closing the cost gap. In fact, BioWillie was selling for $2.37 a gallon
on Thursday in Carl's Corner, Nelson's own truck stop in Texas that
serves as headquarters of his year-old company, Willie Nelson
BioDiesel. That was just 4 cents more than the conventional diesel
selling at another station nearby.
The best practical advise I have seen in a long time. Personally I have
started gardening and collecting useful non-electric handtools (and
learning how to use them!!). I have some ideas about being a
blacksmith, but where would you get decent coal post-PO? Never mind
Iron. I think it might be better to learn how to handle a horse. It
gets pretty chilly up past the 45th parrallel and hauling firewood can
be a task. Mules or even dogs can be used to pull carts. Dogs have the advantage of being able to eat intruders.
Pat Robertson's Counts His $14.4M Federal Blessings
Jesus was all about sucking up vast sums of money, casting stones at the lifestyles of others and waging war for oil. Have any of Robbersin’s & Fartwell’s followers ever even cracked the New Testament?
Under President Bush, right-wing fundamentalist Pat Robertson’s international “charity” Operation Blessing has increased its annual revenue from government grants from $108,000 to $14.4 million.
Operation Blessing, with a budget of $190 million, is an integral part
of the Robertson empire. Not only is he the chairman of the board, his
wife is listed on its latest financial report as its vice president,
and one of his sons is on the board of directors. Back in 1994, during the infamous Rwandan genocide, Robertson used his
700 Club’s daily cable operation to appeal to the American public for
donations to fly humanitarian supplies into Zaire to save the Rwandan
refugees. The planes purchased by Operation Blessing did a lot more than ferry relief supplies.
An investigation conducted by the Virginia attorney general’s office
concluded in 1999 that the planes were mostly used to transport mining
equipment for a diamond operation run by a for-profit company called
African Development Corp. I guess he Bush Administration never got the memo about the Virginia attorney general's investigation.
At least buying votes from the evangelical community gets you a second
term. The Pharisees spun capitalistic profits from their religious
order back in Biblical times and Jesus rebuked them. I’d really like to
get my hands on Robertson’s books…see if his association is TYCOING the
evangelical right at all — then create a plethora of negative publicity
rebuking Robertson’s association!
Our tax dollars helping Pat (and pal Mobutu Sese Seko) mine diamonds and call for the death of Hugo Chavez and the destruction of Dover, PA? No no no no no! Write to Pat and tell him to pray that someone or something will cause him to give the money to Katrina victims. We did!
So let's go back a couple of months to the budget debate in Congress.
Back then, Dems were called irresponsible and not serious about
trimming the budget because they opposed taking food out of the mouths
of poor families and school children. The GOP did it anyway. Anyway, where was this $14 million during that
discussion? How many families would that money put BACK into the food
stamp program? How many school lunches could it buy for how long? And
most importantly, what on earth is Robertson doing with the money? Is
HE feeding and providing healthcare to the poor? I doubt it.
Open source software such as Tor are not likely to have an explicit govt backdoor, as the developer community would find out. None
of the tools guarantee privacy or anonymity, but adopted in large
numbers they make the job of large-scale snoopers much harder. I
don't think that targeted lawful surveillance would be hindered
significantly by such tools, but large-scale fishing expeditions may
become impossible until the NSA has large-scale quantum computing -
which they may have ... soon?.
Anonymous Web surfing allows a user to visit Web sites without allowing
anyone to gather information about which sites the user visited.
Services that provide anonymity disable pop-up windows and cookie s and conceal the visitor" These services typically use a proxy server to process each HTTP request:. When the user requests a Web page by clicking a hyperlink or typing a URL
into their browser, the service retrieves and displays the information
using its own server. The remote server (where the requested Web page
resides) receives information about the anonymous Web surfing service
in place of the user's information.. Anonymous Web surfing is popular
for two reasons: to protect the user's privacy and/or to bypass
blocking applications that would prevent access to Web sites or parts
of sites that the user wants to visit.
Anonymous proxy servers hide your IP address and thereby prevent unauthorized access to your computer through the Internet. They do
not provide anyone with your IP address and effectively hide any
information about you and your reading interests. Besides that, they
don’t even let anyone know that you are surfing through a proxy server.
Anonymous proxy servers can be used for all kinds of Web-services, such
as Web-Mail (MSN Hot Mail, Yahoo mail), web-chat rooms, FTP archives,
etc. ProxySite.com - a place where the huge list of public proxies is
compiled. In a database you always can find the most modern lists, the
Proxy are checked every minute, and the list is updated daily from
various sources. The system uses the latest algorithm for set and
sortings of servers by proxy, servers for anonymous access are checked.
Any web resource you access can gather personal
information about you through your unique IP address – your ID in the
Internet. They can monitor your reading interests, spy upon you and,
according to some policies of the Internet resources, deny accessing
any information you might need. You might become a target for many
marketers and advertising agencies who, having information about your
interests and knowing your IP address as well as your e-mail, will be
able to send you regularly their spam and junk e-mails.
Anonymous surfing is a security issue for your computer, as well as a privacy issue for your identity. A web site can automatically exploit security
holes in your system using not-very-complex, ready-made, free hacking
programs. Some of such programs may just hang your machine, making you
reboot it, but other, more powerful ones, can get access to the content
of your hard drive or RAM including passwords, pin numbers and bank account info. Everything a web site may need for that is
only your IP address and some information about your operating system.
Increasingly, consumers appear to be downloading free anonymity
software like Tor, which makes it harder to trace visits to Web sites,
online posts, instant messages and other communication forms back to
their authors. Sales are also up at companies like Anonymizer.com, which among other things sells software that protects anonymity.
This New York Times article on Internet privacyinspired the thought that one good way to protest at least some of the
behavior of an American government acting like a third rate Stalinist
satellite is to make anonymous websurfing the standard.
You don't like
George Bush having the opportunity to spy on you? Make yourself
invisible, even when you surf for groceries. That way, simply using
anonymity software will not be considered suspicious in itself - hey, I
forgot to turn it off! And obviously, the more people who use anonymity
software, the less suspicious its use by any one person.
You might ask: How good is this
stuff? Does George Bush have a backdoor into these programs or their
techniques, rendering them useless against a malicious US
administration? Are they difficult to set up and use? Do they slow down
web surfing and emailing? I don't know. I've been told that PGP is
exactly what it says it is: pretty good privacy, meaning it takes a
very sophisticated computer program a considerable amount of time to
decrpyt. The others are new to me so if anyone has any info please drop
a note in the comments.
Anonymize.net - http://anonymize.net/ Providers of anonymous secured Internet access service where all traffic is routed through an encrypted VPN connection.
iPrive.com - http://www.iprive.com/ Web-based privacy enhancing proxy service. Offers URL encryption, advertisement blocking, anonymous email and an IE toolbar.
Somebody Anonymizer - http://somebody.net/ Commercial service
provides proxy, enhanced DNS, privacy protection, anonymous surfing,
anonymous mailing and anti-censorship services.
My advice if you want to try this, is to first select the free choices. Try one, if you like it, upgrade or use keep using it. If you don't like it, then choose another free one, and give it a test drive. I would also suggest visiting a "Proxy Stealth Test" and find out what private information about you that your browser is providing to the internet sites that you visit. If you pick an anonymizer, then return to the Proxy Stealth Test site to make certain the Anonymizer is truly doing it's job. Good luck.
Pentagon Study: US Army Could Be Near Breaking Point
Now,
why is it that Americans think Bush is making us safer when he is
literally destroying our military? No wonder Iran is making all those
nuclear noises.... they aren't afraid of Bush because they know we may
no longer possess the military means to make good on our threats.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Stretched by frequent troop
rotations to Iraq and Afghanistan, the Army has become a "thin green
line" that could snap unless relief comes soon, according to a study
for the Pentagon.
Andrew Krepinevich, a retired Army officer who wrote the report
under a Pentagon contract, concluded that the Army cannot sustain the
pace of troop deployments to Iraq long enough to break the back of the
insurgency. He also suggested that the Pentagon's decision, announced
in December, to begin reducing the force in Iraq this year was driven
in part by a realization that the Army was overextended.
As evidence, Krepinevich points to the Army's 2005 recruiting slump
- missing its recruiting goal for the first time since 1999 - and its
decision to offer much bigger enlistment bonuses and other incentives.
"You really begin to wonder just how much stress and strain there is
on the Army, how much longer it can continue," he said in an interview.
He added that the Army is still a highly effective fighting force and
is implementing a plan that will expand the number of combat brigades
available for rotations to Iraq and Afghanistan.
Krepinevich said in the interview that he
understands why Pentagon officials do not state publicly that they are
being forced to reduce troop levels in Iraq because of stress on the
Army. "That gives too much encouragement to the enemy," he said, even
if a number of signs, such as a recruiting slump, point in that
direction.
Krepinevich is executive director of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a nonprofit policy research institute.
So John Murtha was right after all!!!
Join the Army, It's not just a job but an adventure. While you are
fighting in a foreign land the company that is supposed to take care of
your nutritional needs will POISON YOUR WATER. The orders you take and
follow from your commanders will land you up to 10 YEARS IN JAIL. While
the Army will not provide you with body armor, if you buy your own and
get killed, THE ARMY WON'T PAY YOUR DEATH BENEFITS!!!! While you are
fighting your presidents war, he is back home CUTTING YOUR VETERAN
BENEFITS!!!! You get to see exotic locations, LIKE IRAQ, AGAIN AND
AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN........
Adding to all the manpower problems,
is the dirtiest little secret of Depleted Uranium. This week the American Free Press dropped a "dirty bomb" on the
Pentagon by reporting that eight out of 20 men who served in one unit
in the 2003 U.S. military offensive in Iraq now have malignancies. That
means that 40 percent of the soldiers in that unit have developed
malignancies in just 16 months.
Just like Agent Orange and Vietnam, they hope all of the injured will die before they have to pay.
"Bush's mistakes have consequences, and anyone who says that his errors
are water under the bridge doesn't understand that we're still standing
on that bridge, and it's crumbling."
Mistakes?...Has Bush made any mistakes?
The newest, thinest book ever just came out. Things Bush did right.
Chris Matthews:Media Matters disinformer of the year and as Bob Somerby
has noted he is the fakest man alive. Since I have low blood pressure, I tune in to
Hardball solely to raise my heart rate. It's cheap cardio although the
downside is a flat line Alpha wave.
Chris Matthews has a hard-hitting interview coming up with Tom Delay. During last night's Hardball, there was a preview. Watch it:
MATTHEWS: OK, I've got to ask you a cosmic question.
DELAY: OK
MATTHEWS: Tom DeLay, you are not in this business for the
money. You live modestly You commute back and forth from Washington to
Houston, Texas. Why? What drives you every day?
One thing's for sure: he doesn't live as "modestly" as those woman working for sub–minimum wage in Saipan
As Tom DeLay became a king of campaign
fund-raising, he lived like one, too. He visited cliff-top Caribbean
resorts, golf courses designed by PGA champions and four-star
restaurants, all courtesy of donors who bankrolled his political money
empire.
Over the past six years, the former House majority leader and his
associates have visited places of luxury most Americans have never
seen, often getting there aboard corporate jets arranged by lobbyists
and other special interests.
Public documents reviewed by the Associated Press tell the story: At
least 48 visits to golf clubs and resorts; 100 flights aboard company
planes; 200 stays at hotels, many world-class; and 500 meals at
restaurants, some averaging nearly $200 for a dinner for two.
Sugar Land is not "modest" relative to the rest of Houston. Here’s a blurb on it:
“As Sugar Land is widely considered one of the wealthiest suburbs in
the state, many celebrities live in and around Sugar Land, including
Houston Texans’ quarterback David Carr, Olympic gold medalist Tara
Lipinski, former Houston Astros great Terry Puhl and Destiny’s Child
singer Kelly Rowland. Still, more celebrities simply keep houses in the
upscale, but quaintly Sweetwater subdivision in the master-planned
community of First Colony, such as Hakeem Olajuwon, Charles Barkley,
Shaquille O’Neal, and other local luminaries. “
DELAY: What I believe in. The
constitution of the United States. Ronald Reagan got me involved in
this. I fight every day for what I believe in. Strong national
security. Protecting the American family. Values. I just, I want to see
this country led in a different direction than I found it when I got
into politics 20 some years ago.
We could rid ourselves of the dependence on oil if we could harness the energy of Tip O'neill spinning in his grave.
It is nice that he took some time out of his "Is Hillary good for
America?" rants to go spend some quality time with the most corrupt
politican ever.
Jan. 30, 2006 issue - The demonstration seemed harmless enough. Late on
a June afternoon in 2004, a motley group of about 10 peace activists
showed up outside the Houston headquarters of Halliburton, the giant
military contractor once headed by Vice President Dick Cheney. They
were there to protest the corporation's supposed "war profiteering."
The demonstrators wore papier-mache masks and handed out free
peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches to Halliburton employees as they
left work. The idea, according to organizer Scott Parkin, was to call
attention to allegations that the company was overcharging on a food
contract for troops in Iraq. "It was tongue-in-street political
theater," Parkin says.
But that's not how the Pentagon saw it. To U.S. Army analysts at the
top-secret Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA), the peanut-butter
protest was regarded as a potential threat to national security.
Created three years ago by the Defense Department, CIFA's role is
"force protection"—tracking threats and terrorist plots against
military installations and personnel inside the United States. In May
2003, Paul Wolfowitz, then deputy Defense secretary, authorized a
fact-gathering operation code-named TALON—short for Threat and Local
Observation Notice—that would collect "raw information" about
"suspicious incidents." The data would be fed to CIFA to help the
Pentagon's "terrorism threat warning process," according to an internal
Pentagon memo.
A Defense document shows that Army analysts
wrote a report on the Halliburton protest and stored it in CIFA's
database. It's not clear why the Pentagon considered the protest worthy
of attention—although organizer Parkin had previously been arrested
while demonstrating at ExxonMobil headquarters (the charges were
dropped). But there are now questions about whether CIFA exceeded its
authority and conducted unauthorized spying on innocent people and
organizations. A Pentagon memo obtained by NEWSWEEK shows that the
deputy Defense secretary now acknowledges that some TALON reports may
have contained information on U.S. citizens and groups that never
should have been retained. The number of reports with names of U.S.
persons could be in the thousands, says a senior Pentagon official who
asked not be named because of the sensitivity of the subject.
CIFA's
activities are the latest in a series of disclosures about secret
government programs that spy on Americans in the name of national
security. In December, the ACLU obtained documents showing the FBI had
investigated several activist groups, including People for the Ethical
Treatment of Animals and Greenpeace, supposedly in an effort to
discover possible ecoterror connections. At the same time, the White
House has spent weeks in damage-control mode, defending the
controversial program that allowed the National Security Agency to
monitor the telephone conversations of U.S. persons suspected of terror
links, without obtaining warrants.
It isn't clear how many groups and individuals were snagged by CIFA's
dragnet. Details about the program, including its size and budget, are
classified. In December, NBC News obtained a 400-page compilation of
reports that detailed a portion of TALON's surveillance efforts. It
showed the unit had collected information on nearly four dozen antiwar
meetings or protests, including one at a Quaker meetinghouse in Lake
Worth, Fla., and a Students Against War demonstration at a military
recruiting fair at the University of California, Santa Cruz. A Pentagon
spokesman declined to say why a private company like Halliburton would
be deserving of CIFA's protection. But in the past, Defense Department
officials have said that the "force protection" mission includes
military contractors since soldiers and Defense employees work closely
with them and therefore could be in danger.
Arkin says a close reading of internal CIFA
documents suggests the agency may be expanding its Internet monitoring,
and wants to be as surreptitious as possible. CIFA has contracted to
buy "identity masking" software that would allow the agency to create
phony Web identities and let them appear to be located in foreign
countries, according to a copy of the contract with Computer Sciences
Corp. (The firm declined to comment.)
Pentagon
officials have broadly defended CIFA as a legitimate response to the
domestic terror threat. But at the same time, they acknowledge that an
internal Pentagon review has found that CIFA's database contained some
information that may have violated regulations. The department is not
allowed to retain information about U.S. citizens for more than 90
days—unless they are "reasonably believed" to have some link to
terrorism, criminal wrongdoing or foreign intelligence. There was
information that was "improperly stored," says a Pentagon spokesman who
was authorized to talk about the program (but not to give his name).
"It was an oversight." In a memo last week, obtained by NEWSWEEK,
Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England ordered CIFA to purge such
information from its files—and directed that all Defense Department
intelligence personnel receive "refresher training" on department
policies.
That's not likely to stop the questions. Last week Democrats on the
Senate intelligence committee pushed for an inquiry into CIFA's
activities and who it's watching. "This is a significant Pandora's box
[Pentagon officials] don't want opened," says Arkin. "What we're
looking at is hints of what they're doing." As far as the Pentagon is
concerned, that means we've already seen too much.
Fool Me Once, Shame On You - Fool Me Me Twice, Shame On Me
Talking about Stolen Elections, is Mark Crispin Miller's new book, Fooled Again -- How the Right Stole the 2004 Election and Why They'll Steal the Next One, Too (Unless We Stop Them).
Miller has become a known and respected progressive figure, one of the
few in-your-face bespectacled lefty author types with any credibility.
But when it comes to promoting Fooled Again, the guy can't even
get arrested. No interviews, nothing. In fact, these days even his cash
bounces -- Miller can't even buy a spot on National Public Radio for
his book.
I came to this book with, I think, the usual preconceptions: it will
present a paranoid conspiracy theory, it 's just a Democrat's sour
grapes, it will be the left-wing equivalent of an Ann Coulter or Joe
Scarborough rant--in other words, nothing new to say, shrieked at top
volume. Instead I found that Miller has the rare courage to take on a
forbidden topic, one of the few remaining in America. He asks us to
consider the possibility that our cherished democracy, the very heart
of American exceptionalism and the thing that sets us apart from (and,
in the eyes of many Americans, above) all other nations, is not merely
flawed or compromised but actually in danger of disappearing. Perhaps
it has already disappeared. We are now a nation in which one political
party has no intention of ever releasing its hold on power and the
other is too cowed to defend itself against constant attacks, let alone
defend its constituents or the integrity of the process by which power
is allocated.
The most glaring suspicion that the result was fraudulent arose around
the massive discrepancies between the exit polls and the result in
several states. Exit polls have been accurate at every election in
living memory in the US - except in 2000, which we have since
discovered would have been won by Al Gore if the Supreme Court had not
stopped the count and handed `Dubya' the presidency. The exit polls in
2004 were dramatically at odds with the result, and every single
discrepancy favoured Bush. In March 2005, a study came out from US
Count Votes, computing that the odds against such an enormous error in
the exit polls were 959,000 - 1. In other words, the chances that the
2004 election was not rigged are nearly a million to one.
The examples are detailed, numerous, and specific: widespread and
systematic pre-election disenfranchisement by local Republican election
officials, failure to register Democratic voters, distributing absentee
ballots late or incorrectly, spreading false and misleading
information, refusing to register Democrats to vote, manipulating the
availability of working voting machines to favor Republican precincts,
intimidating voters on college campuses and at the polls,
undersupplying provisional ballots in Democratic districts, throwing
away Democratic votes, manipulating paperless electronic voting
machines manufactured by Republican supporters, and virtually
prohibiting millions of overseas absentee ballots from being counted.
Miller points out that the Republican Party not only engaged in all of
these vote suppression tactics and more, they simultaneously asserted
repeatedly that the Democratic Party was in fact the one that was
engaging in the same underhanded behaviors they were perpetrating!
One weakness of the book is that it focuses exclusively on anecdotal
evidence for election theft. There is another half of the story which
is told by numerical evidence. The widespread statistical anomalies in
the 2004 election provide a context for the anecdotes, so that they
cannot be dismissed as isolated aberrations. The statistical story will
be told in a forthcoming book by Steve Freeman.
It has always been the duty
of the press or a few spectacularly brave individuals to call attention
to such things. And on rare occasions the press has done just that. But
this is not one of those occasions. Not for CBS, NBC, ABC, PBS or NPR.
Especially not for NPR. Given that the Republicans have them by the
balls, it is easier, not to mention far safer, for everyone to deny
that criminals operate within our political system and have established
what amounts to a corporate/political underworld. We can smell it at
every turn, and have seen its very reflection in those exit poll
results.
At some deep national level we all know, George W. Bush
has no right to be farting into the Oval Office desk chair. As Helen
Caldicott recently put it: "What's to become of us? Ask any experienced
mental health practitioner what happens to a person who constructs and
tries to maintain a life based on denial of fundamental reality. It can
be done for a while, in spite of occasional outbursts of behavioral
oddities (remember Dr. Strangelove's disobedient arm that was always
popping up in an embarrassing Nazi salute). But how long can such a
pretense be maintained, even when the pretender is surrounded by the
best handlers moneycan buy?" Apparently, Helen, a damned long time. At least eight years.
Miller's incredulity is further bolstered by the number of former
Bush-supporting newspapers that changed sides, and a number of
Republican luminaries (eg. Thruston Morton - former RNC Chairman, Rep.
Bob Barr, Eisenhower's son, faculty members from the Harvard Business
School).
One certain conclusion: Election officials have no business being
involved in anyone's campaigns, whether in Ohio, Florida, or anywhere
else!
UPDATE: Hear Black Elk
Earth Prayer
"Grandfather, Great Spirit, once more behold me on earth and lean to
hear my feeble voice. You lived first, and you are older than all need,
older than all prayer. All things belong to you -- the two-legged, the
four-legged, the wings of the air, and all green things that live.
"You have set the powers of the four quarters of the earth to cross
each other. You have made me cross the good road and road of
difficulties, and where they cross, the place is holy. Day in, day out,
forevermore, you are the life of things."
Hey! Lean to hear my feeble voice.
At the center of the sacred hoop
You have said that I should make the tree to bloom.
With tears running, O Great Spirit, my Grandfather,
With running eyes I must say
The tree has never bloomed
Here I stand, and the tree is withered.
Again, I recall the great vision you gave me.
It may be that some little root of the sacred tree still lives.
Nourish it then
That it may leaf
And bloom
And fill with singing birds!
Hear me, that the people may once again
Find the good road
And the shielding tree.
If we shall fail to defend the Constitution, I shall fail in the attempt.
Instead travelling around the country trying to convince people that the Medicare drug plan isn't a total clusterfuck why don't you, you know, fix it.Clusterfuck is in the eye of the beholder. Billions in hand outs
to big phrama. Millions in extra costs to the states. What's to fix?
Everything is going according to plan.
President Bush's top health advisers will fan out across the country
this week to quell rising discontent with a new Medicare prescription
drug benefit that has tens of thousands of elderly and disabled
Americans, their pharmacists, and governors struggling to resolve
myriad start-up problems.
Even as federal leaders touted the enrollment figures, state
officials and health care experts continued to report widespread
difficulties, especially for the poorest and sickest seniors who were
forced to switch from state Medicaid programs to the new Medicare plans
on Jan. 1. Nearly two dozen states have intervened, saying they will
pay for medications for any low-income senior who is mistakenly
rejected. The District, Maryland and Virginia have not intervened.
Saying
"it is time for us to take care of our own," Republican Gov. Arnold
Schwarzenegger said California will spend as much as $150 million to
provide medications to as many as 1 million low-income seniors who have
been turned away by pharmacists or overcharged co-payments because of
glitches in computer databases.
"Right now, the new Medicare Part D prescription drug program is not working as intended," the governor said in a release.
One of the front page ledes in the Dallas Morning News this morning is "Drug Mess Leaves Pharmacists Dazed."
It's
not just the seniors who are going crazy trying to figure this out.
Everyone is. The general perception is and has been from the start that
this legislation stinks.
Kocot said Medicare had fixed technical problems that had initially
hobbled a database for pharmacists. The agency also urged companies
offering drug plans to beef up staffing at swamped telephone call
centers.
Advocates for the poor have reacted with dismay to the problems,
saying their warnings that a sudden transition would cause such
problems went unheeded.
"This is a public health disaster," said Jeanne Finberg, a lawyer
in the Oakland office of the National Senior Citizens Law Center.
"There are people going to pharmacies and being told they can't get
medications that are supposed to be covered. There are people who can't
get confirmation that they are in a plan."
When the Medicare drug benefit was under consideration, the
Administration and congressional leaders promised that a program
operated through many private plans would provide, through competition,
low drug prices. The Families USA survey belies that assertion.
"The huge prices paid by seniors and taxpayers could have been
avoided if Congress and the President had not caved in to the pressure
of the drug lobby," said Ron Pollack, Executive Director of Families
USA. "They prohibited Medicare from bargaining for cheaper prices and,
to ensure that this would never change, they delegated the
administration of the benefit to private plans, which have far less
bargaining clout.
"As a result, many seniors will be burdened with unaffordable, high drug costs, and America's taxpayers will be fleeced."
The survey found that the lowest VA price is much lower than the
lowest Medicare prescription drug plan (PDP) price for 19 of the top 20
drugs.
* For half of the top 20 drugs, the lowest Medicare prescription
drug plan price is at least one and one-half times higher than the
lowest VA price.
* For one-quarter of the top 20 drugs, the lowest Medicare
prescription drug plan price is at least twice as high as the lowest VA
price.
* For three of the top 20 drugs, the lowest Medicare prescription
drug plan price is at least four times grater than the lowest VA price.
Among the top seven drugs prescribed for seniors, the annual
difference between the lowest VA prices and lowest Medicare drug plan
prices are as follows:
* Plavix (75 mg., an anti-clotting agent): lowest VA price is
$887.16; lowest Medicare plan price is $1,229.64—a difference of
$342.48, or 38.6 percent.
* Lipitor (10 mg., cholesterol lowering agent): lowest VA price is
$497.16; lowest Medicare plan price is $717.84—a difference of $220.68,
or 44.4 percent.
* Fosamax (70 mg., osteoporosis treatment): lowest VA price is
$493.32; lowest Medicare plan price is $709.68—a difference of $216.36,
or 43.9 percent.
* Norvasc (5 mg., calcium channel blocker): lowest VA price is
$301.68; lowest Medicare plan price is $458.88—a difference of $157.20,
or 52.1 percent.
* Protonix (40 mg., gastrointestinal agent): lowest VA price is
$253.32; lowest Medicare plan price is $1,080—a difference of $826.68,
or 326.3 percent.
* Celebrex (200 mg., anti-inflammatory agent): lowest VA price is
$619.80; lowest Medicare plan price is $865.08—a difference of $245.28,
or 39.6 percent.
* Zocor (20 mg., cholesterol lowering agent): lowest VA price is
$167.80; lowest Medicare plan price is $1,323.72—a difference of
$1,155.92, or 688.9 percent.
No single Medicare plan offers the lowest price for all 20 drugs
compared to its plan competitors. As a result, for seniors who take
multiple medicines, the total difference between VA and Medicare plan
prices may be much larger than 48 percent.
For example, for a person purchasing a year's supply of the top five
drugs—Plavix, Lipitor, Fosamax, Norvasc, and Protonix—the lowest VA
price is $2,432.64. In comparison, the prices (paid partially by
Medicare beneficiaries and partially by taxpayers) for the five plans
recommended by the government's Web-based "Medicare Prescription Drug
Plan Finder" for a person purchasing those five drugs are:
* Humana, Inc.: $4,206-$1,773.36 (or 73 percent) higher than the lowest VA price
* First Health Premier: $5,010.60-$2,577.96 (or 106 percent) higher than the lowest VA price
* Medi-Care First: $4,530.48-$2,097.84 (or 86 percent) higher than the lowest VA price
* PacifiCare: $4,561.16-$2,128.52 (or 87 percent) higher than the lowest VA price
* WellCare: $4,348.80-$1,916.16 (or 79 percent) higher than the lowest VA price
According to the Families USA survey, VA prices are lower for both generic and brand-name drugs:
* 18 of the 20 most-prescribed medicines for seniors are brand-name
drugs. For 17 of those 18 brand-name drugs, the VA price was much lower
than Medicare drug plan prices. For those drugs, the median difference
between the lowest Medicare plan price and the lowest VA price is 44.1
percent.
* Two of the top 20 drugs are generics. For those drugs, the median
difference between the lowest Medicare drug plan and the lowest VA
price is 94.5 percent.
The Families USA report was based on a comparison of VA prices with
the prices in two Medicare drug regions: region 5 (covering the
District of Columbia, Maryland, and Delaware) and Region 14 (covering
Ohio). Only drugs that were on a Medicare prescription drug plan's
formulary—drugs for which the plan would have actively negotiated
prices—were included in the analysis. All data were collected during
the week of November 14, 2005 (when the new program's enrollment began)
from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Service's "Medicare
Prescription Drug Plan Finder" at www.medicare.gov.
This one just may put it over the top. Seniors are PISSED. And as many people have pointed out, they vote.
And
their families are also pissed that they've got to figure all this out
for grandma. And even once they figure it out -- grandma's still
screwed. And a lot of those family members also vote. Well at least when the elderly get shafted, they vote. Of course, I
haven't looked at the demographics, but aren't there alot of elderly
in, say, Florida and Arizona??
Georgia GOP Ask: Is Reed Worth The Gamble? Ralph Reed must be receiving punishment from God for his wickedness.
There's just no other explanation that's consistent with all of his
former success being brought by God.
Jesusistani leaders are well known for adultery, pedophilia, incest,
beastiality, procuring, and membership in the successor organizations
that sprang from the demise of the Klan.
But perhaps more than anything, Jesusistani leaders are greedy almost
to a man. Their alleged fealty to Jesus gives them control over large
groups of people, and large collection plates. Ralph, of course, was
nearly the king of that particular game, squeezing money out of
everyone from Microsoft to Aunt Mabel. But Ralph, like most of his
peers in the Jesusistani leadership, apparently never bothered to read
enough of his Bible to note the warnings about the worship of money.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
reports that Reed's fundraising is lagging behind his
no-name-recognition opponent, and that the bulk of the monies raised by
Reed over the last six months have been from out-of-staters.
Reed has support from only 5 of Georgia's top pols, to his opponent
State Sen. Casey Cagle's 63 -- out of a total pool of 133 Republican
lawmakers in the state capital.
And to make matters worse for Reed, even his supporters are saying things like this: "We don't need another four years of ethics inquiries." and "What should have been a shoo-in is a tough uphill battle." Ouch.
Documents
released by the committee also shed light on Abramoff's relationship
with Reed, currently a candidate for lieutenant governor in Georgia.
The committee included Reed in its investigation after learning that
Abramoff and Scanlon paid him to lobby the Texas Legislature to close
the Tigua tribe's casino in El Paso. The Tigua tribe had paid Scanlon
roughly $4 million to help it win back a casino license.
"On the
political front, did Ralph spend all the money he was given to fight
this _ or does he have some left?" Scanlon asked Abramoff in an e-mail,
the subject of which is blacked out on the documents released by the
committee.
"That's a silly question! He 'spent' it all the
moment it arrived in his account. He would NEVER admit he has money
left over," Abramoff e-mailed Scanlon. "Would we?
Oh yeah.
That's some ethical company to be keeping, now isn't it? Of course,
Reed can blame it all on Abramoff and company and claim to be duped,
right? It was never about the money for Ralphie Reed, right? Well...erm...Ralph's own words and actions tell a different story.
"I
need to start humping in corporate accounts," Reed wrote to Abramoff in
1998. "I'm counting on you to help me with some contacts."...
Reed
also depended on Abramoff to help his political campaigns. In one
e-mail exchange in 2001, he asked Abramoff to contribute to his
successful bid to become state Republican chairman in Georgia. When
Abramoff asked where to send the donation, Reed joked, "The actual
committee is `The Reed Family Retirement and Educational Foundation.'
The address is 200 Bay Drive, Grand Cayman, BCI, R59876."
Well,
praise the Lord and pass the collection plate, that's a pretty damn
good retirement scam. (Reed says he was joking, just FYI. Some joke.
I'm sure the Tiguas think it's hilarious.) Kind of tough to claim you
didn't know where the money was coming from when there's a big, long
e-mail trail, isn't it? Hypocrisy much?
I find it of passing interest that the Brothers Robertson and Falwell
are not in front of a camera condemning the ties to gambling.
Condemnation is what they are good at (Cities of Dover and New Orleans,
heads of state Clinton, Chavez and Sharon, gays, etc.) and they are
dead set against gambling. As a child, I was not allowed to play any
kind of card games.
Remember Esau? And Esau said to Jacob, Feed me, I pray thee,
with that same red pottage; for I am faint: therefore was his name
called Edom. And Jacob said, Sell me this day thy birthright.And Esau
said, Behold, I am at the point to die: and what profit shall this
birthright do to me? And Jacob said, Swear to me this day; and he sware
unto him: and he sold his birthright unto Jacob. Then Jacob gave Esau
bread and pottage of lentils; and he did eat and drink, and rose up,
and went his way: thus Esau despised his birthright. (KJV) Genesis 25:
30-34
Trading birthright for profit, gentlemen? Greedy Reedy is the worst kind of hypocrite. The former director of The
Christian Coalition bilked mucho moolah out of his faithful followers
with the promise to stem the creeping encroachment of gambling. All the
while taking lots
As rising energy prices trigger growing concerns on the part of Americans,
Under President Bush, right-wing fundamentalist Pat Robertson’s international “
Anonymous Web surfing allows a user to visit Web sites without allowing
anyone to gather information about which sites the user visited.
Services that provide anonymity disable pop-up windows and cookie s and conceal the visitor"
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Stretched by frequent troop
rotations to Iraq and Afghanistan, the Army has become a 
Jan. 30, 2006 issue - The demonstration seemed harmless enough. Late on
a June afternoon in 2004, a motley group of about 10 peace activists
showed up outside the Houston headquarters of Halliburton, the giant
military contractor once headed by Vice President Dick Cheney. They
were there to protest the corporation's supposed "war profiteering."
Talking about Stolen Elections, is Mark Crispin Miller's new book, Fooled Again -- How the Right Stole the 2004 Election and Why They'll Steal the Next One, Too (Unless We Stop Them).
Miller has become a known and respected progressive figure, one of the
few in-your-face bespectacled lefty author types with any credibility.
But when it comes to promoting Fooled Again, the guy can't even
get arrested. No interviews, nothing. In fact, these days even his cash
bounces -- 
Jesusistani leaders are well known for adultery, pedophilia, incest,
beastiality, procuring, and membership in the successor organizations
that sprang from the demise of the Klan.