Peanut Plant Knew Product was Tainted with Salmonella; Took No Action – The maker of peanut butter linked to a nationwide outbreak of salmonella shipped tainted product it knew had tested positive for the bacteria, the Food and Drug Administration said Wednesday. The FDA report said the Peanut Corporation of America’s own testing program found strains of salmonella 12 times in 2007 and 2008 at its Blakely, Georgia, plant. The problem does not appear to have been resolved. According to the inspection report, posted on the FDA’s Web site, the “firm’s own internal microbiological testing” found salmonella in peanut paste, peanut butter, peanut meal, peanut granules and oil-roasted, salted peanuts.

However, it added, “After the firm retested the product and received a negative status, the product was shipped.” That’s not the way it ought to have been handled, according to one expert. “They were lab shopping,” said Tommy Irvin, Georgia’s agriculture commissioner. “They were trying to find a way to clear their product, so they can ship their product out,” he told CNN.

[This is what happens when government's moral responsibility to protect its citizens is left to the free market - death and no accountability to we the people.]

Halliburton Firm Responsible for 231 Electrical Shocks of Troops in Iraq in Two Years – U.S. troops in Iraq suffered electrical shocks about every three days in a two-year period — or 231 incidents in all, from a single company, the former Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root, according to an internal Defense Contract Management Agency report. Texas-based military contractor KBR Inc. failed to properly ground and bond its electrical systems. The report comes just a day after Halliburton was fined more than $500 million for bribery in Nigeria.

[Profiteering puts profit above citizen safety.]

Bill O’Reilly Thinks He’s Smarter Than Actress; Then He Proves Himself to be Dumber – BillO was obviously still smarting last week after Jessica Alba called him an a-hole. So he followed up on his Jan. 21 show by calling her a “pinhead” and painting her as just another one of those airheaded Hollywood elites. His reasoning? Well, when Alba was again cornered by one of Fox’s ambush-squad camera crews, she turned the tables by getting out her camera and asking questions of her inquisitor. When he refused to answer because he’s a “journalist” (note: this is a fake excuse) she asked, “Why not? Be neutral. Be Sweden about it.”

O’Reilly: “Be Sweden about it? Ah, that’s Switzerland, Jessica. Sweden is a very nice country but Switzerland is the land of neutrality.”

Ah, that’s also Sweden, BillO.

As Alba put it at her MySpace page:

I want to clear some things up that have been bothering me lately. I find it depressing that in the midst of perhaps the most salient time in our country’s history, individuals are taking it upon themselves to encourage negativity and stupidity. Last week, Mr. Bill O’Reilly and some really classy sites (i.e.TMZ) insinuated I was dumb by claiming Sweden was a neutral country. I appreciate the fact that he is a news anchor and that gossip sites are inundated with intelligent reporting, but seriously people…it’s so sad to me that you think the only neutral country during WWII was Switzerland. Check out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweden_during_World_War_II if you want to see what I was referring to. I appreciate the name calling and the accurate reporting. Keep it up!!

As MSNBC’s Courtney Hazlett notes: “Although Switzerland is more frequently cited as an example of neutrality, Sweden did indeed follow a policy of neutrality during World War II. History point to Alba.” If Alba’s an airhead/pinhead, what does that make O’Reilly?

Bill O’Reilly Spreads Caroline Kennedy Rumors O’Reilly insists that he wouldn’t report on rumors about Caroline Kennedy, then he talks about rumors about Caroline Kennedy. What a hypocrite!

Bailout Recipients Urged to Send Money to Republican Candidates – Three days after receiving $25 billion in federal bailout funds, Bank of America Corp. hosted a conference call with conservative activists and business officials to organize opposition to the U.S. labor community’s top legislative priority.

Participants on the October 17 call — including at least one representative from another bailout recipient, AIG — were urged to persuade their clients to send “large contributions” to groups working against the Employee Free Trade Act (EFCA), as well as to vulnerable Senate Republicans, who could help block passage of the bill.

…Donations of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars to Republican senatorial campaigns were needed, they argued…”If a retailer has not gotten involved in this, if he has not spent money on this election, if he has not sent money to [former Sen.] Norm Coleman and all these other guys, they should be shot. They should be thrown out their goddamn jobs,” Marcus declared.

The Republicans Voted Against America Yesterday – The Republicans voted against their country yesterday. Their fellow citizens needed them to act on their behalf and instead they chose to abandon them. The American Society of Civil Engineers released a report today documenting the nation’s crumbling infrastructure. The GOP agenda of starving the public sector while spending lavishly on war and corporate welfare has allowed the nation’s bridges, roads, and levees to reach this sorry state. Here’s a little of what the report from the American Society of Civil Engineers had to say:

Crumbling infrastructure has a direct impact on our personal and economic health, and the nation’s infrastructure crisis is endangering our future prosperity. Our leaders are looking for solutions to the nation’s current economic crisis. Not only could investment in these critical foundations have a positive impact, but if done responsibly, it would also provide tangible benefits to the American people, such as reduced traffic congestion, improved air quality, clean and abundant water supplies and protection against natural hazards.

These Retro-Hooverites want to block President Barack Obama from undoing part of the damage thirty years of failed Republican economic policies has produced. If Republican economics worked we wouldn’t be in this predicament.

El Paso’s Resolution Asking for Honest, Open Debate Gets Nixed by the Feds - The drug-related violence in Juarez, Mexico has reached epic proportions, so in a show of solidarity with their sister city, the El Paso City Council voted in favor of a resolution that included “an honest, open national debate on ending the prohibition of narcotics.” Never mind that the resolution also called for clamping down on gun running and money laundering. It was the desire to debate, and perhaps focus less on incarceration for drug offenses that made the resolution go over like a lead Zeppelin. The Mayor vetoed it, and the council members started getting pressure from as high as the US Congress to shut up.

The standard means of the federal government to squash an open, honest debate about drugs and the laws which apply to them is to threaten state and local governments with withholding federal funds. El Paso was told, in no uncertain terms, that continuing with their call for debate jeopardized their slice of the bailout pie. The city council buckled and did not overturn the mayor’s veto of the resolution.

Bush’s Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel Says Bush Okayed Torture to Outwit Defense Lawyers - John Yoo, the former Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel, explained that the Bush administration’s torture programs, for which he co-authored the legal justifications, were initially designed to outwit crafty defense attorneys.

Cable News Has Republican Lawmakers On Air Twice as Much as Democratic Lawmakers In Stimulus Debate - On Sunday, conservatives began an all-out assault on President Obama’s economic recovery plan. The media have been aiding their efforts. In a new analysis, ThinkProgress has found that the five cable news networks — CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, Fox Business and CNBC — have hosted more Republican lawmakers to discuss the plan than Democrats by a 2 to 1 ratio this week.

Regards,

FBI Saw Mortgage Fraud Early; Took No Action – The FBI was aware for years of “pervasive and growing” fraud in the mortgage industry that eventually contributed to America’s financial meltdown, but did not take definitive action to stop it.

“It is clear that we had good intelligence on the mortgage-fraud schemes, the corrupt attorneys, the corrupt appraisers, the insider schemes,” said a recently retired, high FBI official. Another retired top FBI official confirmed that such intelligence went back to 2002.

The problem, according to the two FBI retirees and several other current and former bureau colleagues, is that the bureau was stretched so thin that no one noticed when those lenders began packaging bad mortgages into bad securities.

“We knew that the mortgage-brokerage industry was corrupt,” the first of the retired FBI officials told the Seattle P-I. “Where we would have gotten a sense of what was really going on was the point where the mortgage was sold knowing that it was a piece of dung and it would be turned into a security. But the agents with the expertise had been diverted to counterterrorism.”

PBS: NSA Had Information to Prevent 9/11 Hijackings; Took No Action – The National Security Agency (NSA) had been closely monitoring the 9/11 hijackers as they moved freely around the United States and communicated with Osama bin Laden’s operations center in Yemen. The NSA had even tapped bin Laden’s satellite phone, starting in 1996. “The NSA never alerted any other agency that the terrorists were in the United States and moving across the country towards Washington,” James Bamford, author of The Shadow Factory told PBS.

In a review of Bamford’s book, former senator and 9/11 Commission member Bob Kerrey wrote, “As the 9/11 Commission later established, U.S. intelligence officials knew that al-Qaeda had held a planning meeting in Malaysia, found out the names of two recruits who had been present — Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi — and suspected that one and maybe both of them had flown to Los Angeles. Bamford reveals that the NSA had been eavesdropping for months on their calls to Yemen, yet the agency ‘never made the effort’ to trace where the calls originated. ‘At any time, had the FBI been notified, they could have found Hazmi in a matter of seconds.’”

The Spy Factory will be shown over most PBS stations on February 3, 2009 at 7 pm CST.

U.S. Infrastructure Identified as Poor in 2005; Administration Took No Action – U.S. roads, airports, schools, levees, dams, and other infrastructure are in overall poor shape and require a $2.2 trillion investment to bring them up to par, an engineering group said on Wednesday. The American Society of Civil Engineers gave infrastructure a grade of “D” as U.S. President Barack Obama seeks $825 billion in extra government spending and tax cuts to ease the economic crisis. Infrastructure earned the same dismal grade in 2005, but the group’s estimated five-year price tag to fix it rose by $600 billion to $2.2 trillion. Earlier this month, the engineers estimated that the president’s stimulus package contained some $90 billion in infrastructure spending. It called that amount a down payment that was long overdue.

FDA Was Informed of Mercury in Much U.S. Corn Syrup; Took No Action – Many common foods made using commercial high fructose corn syrup contain mercury as well, researchers reported, while another study suggested the corn syrup itself is contaminated. Former Food and Drug Administration scientist Renee Dufault and colleagues tested 20 samples of high fructose corn syrup and found detectable mercury in nine of the 20 samples. Dufault said in a statement that she told the FDA about her findings but the agency did not follow up.

Donald Rumsfeld Authorized Torture Despite Warnings From Legal Council of the Navy – Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld clearly authorized torture methods and he was told at that time by Alberto Mora, the legal council of the Navy, ‘Mr. Secretary, what you are actual ordering here amounts to torture.’ A bipartisan Senate report released last month found Rumsfeld and other top administration officials responsible for abuse of Guantanamo detainees in US custody. The coercive measures were based on a document signed by Bush in February, 2002.

Black Church Burned as Payback for the Election of the Country’s First African-American President – Just hours after Barack Obama was elected president last November, three men set ablaze a predominantly African-American church in Massachusetts to “interfere” with the civil rights of its congregants, the U.S. Department of Justice said Tuesday. Macedonia Church of God in Christ was burned to the ground in the early hours of Nov. 5th as payback for the election of the country’s first African-American president, the department’s indictment alleges.

Appeals Court Rules That Schools Can Expel Students That Seem Gay – (The following is another reason why conservatives want privatization of public schools.) A California appeals court ruled Monday that a Christian high school can expel students perceived to be lesbians, upholding a 2008 lower court ruling that there were “no triable” elements to the case. The two 16-year-old girls sued the school for expelling them on the basis of a “bond of intimacy” “characteristic of a lesbian relationship,” under a California discrimination law. “It is almost like it could roll back 20 to 30 years of progress we have made in this area,” Kirk Hanson, said the girls’ attorney. “Basically, this decision gives private schools the license to discriminate.”

Two Judges Make Money by Sending Children to Detention Facilities – (The following is another reason why conservatives want privatization of everything.) Federal authorities say President Judge Mark Ciavarella and Senior Judge Michael Conahan were involved in a $2.6 million scheme to place juvenile offenders into facilities in which the judges had a financial interest. Court documents state that in some cases, Ciavarella ordered children into detention even when juvenile probation officers did not recommend it.

Republican Leadership Opposing Stimulus Plan That Most Economists Say Should Work – Economists think the stimulus plan that the House of Representatives will vote on Wednesday, while far from perfect, will help stimulate the moribund U.S. economy. There’s no panacea for what ails the economy. A stimulus plan will work only in combination with other actions, such as more aid to the banking system to spark lending and boost consumer confidence, and the implementation of any plan will be as important as what’s in it. However, most leading economists who are experienced in public policy generally favor the stimulus plan that the House is considering because through it the government will step up spending at a time when private-sector spending has fallen off sharply. “I think it’s a reasonably well-designed package,” said Mark Zandi, the chief economist for forecaster Moody’s Economy.com and a former adviser to the presidential campaign of Republican Arizona Sen. John McCain. The key to the plan’s success won’t be its design, but its implementation, he cautioned, particularly the public works spending on roads, schools, ports and military bases.

Car Companies Take Bailout Money And Sue Government To Prevent Stricter Fuel-Efficiency Standards
It might be hard to find a better example of biting the hand that feeds you. American automakers, the subject of much attention and beneficiaries of a major financial bailout, are suing the federal government to prevent stricter fuel standards. In a telephone interview, Charles Territo, a spokesman for the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, which is a party to two of the lawsuits now in federal court, said that the association had no intention of altering its strategy just because some of its members had recently received billions in public money.

Bailout Recipients Hosted Call To Defeat Key Labor Bill – Three days after receiving $25 billion in federal bailout funds, Bank of America Corp. hosted a conference call with conservative activists and business officials to organize opposition to the U.S. labor community’s top legislative priority. Participants on the October 17 call — including at least one representative from another bailout recipient, AIG — were urged to persuade their clients to send “large contributions” to groups working against the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), as well as to vulnerable Senate Republicans, who could help block passage of the bill. Bernie Marcus, the charismatic co-founder of Home Depot, led the call along with Rick Berman, an aggressive EFCA opponent and founder of the Center for Union Facts. Over the course of an hour, the two framed the legislation as an existential threat to American capitalism, or worse. “This is the demise of a civilization,” said Marcus.

Bill O’Reilly Says Officials Not Guilty of Torture Because It’s Not in a Book – According to Bill O’Reilly, there is now a tell-all-book standard for determining whether or not political officials should be investigated. If it’s not in the tell-all books available, it’s not there. And according to Tammy Bruce, “enhanced interrogation” is really not much different than a bad shopping day in West Hollywood.

Discussing the “far left” push to look into potential prosecutions of Bush administration officials for war crimes and various other misdeeds, O’Reilly argued that the absence of any evidence of criminal wrongdoing in books by Scott McLellan and Bob Woodward about insiders’ views of the White House pretty much means there isn’t any evidence to be had.

Border Cameras Allocated $2 Million, Only $625 Thousand Spent, Results: 3 Arrests – A virtual border surveillance program Gov. Rick Perry has committed millions of taxpayer dollars to fell far short of expectations during the first six months of operation. The Texas Border Sheriffs Coalition, who Perry gave $2 million to line the Texas-Mexico border with hundreds of Web cameras, installed only about a dozen and made just three arrests as a result of tips from online viewers. In the first six months of the grant period, the coalition spent $625,000 to get the cameras running.

Of some 4,500 suspected immigration violations they expected to report to U.S. Border Patrol in the year, the first six months produced only six. The plan originally called for 200 cameras, the equivalent of one camera for every six miles of the Texas-Mexico border. Now, they will likely install about 15 cameras for public viewing, the equivalent of one camera every 80 miles. A previous month-long test with 21 cameras in November 2006 resulted in the apprehension of 10 undocumented immigrants, one drug bust and interruption of one smuggling route.

The El Paso Times states, “A good part of that failure might be due to the lackluster participation of the Border Sheriffs Coalition. … The theory of a virtual border fence has a lot of merit, but it must be given a chance to work. There must be long-term testing involving more than a couple of cameras here and there. Cameras are not nearly as obtrusive as a towering, ugly, rusting border fence — or wall.” Virtual border surveillance program ineffective, cost millions

John Cornyn Makes Unethical Demands to Protect the Bush Administration – Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) tried to muscle Atty. Gen.-designate Eric H. Holder Jr. into promising not to conduct “witch hunts”– code language for criminal prosecutions — of intelligence operatives who engaged in torture during the Bush administration. It’s an outrageous demand, and it would be unethical for Holder to accede to it. Cornyn is free to endorse torture and to vote against Holder’s confirmation in the Judiciary Committee (which is expected to vote today) or in the full Senate. But asking that a prospective attorney general commit in advance to prosecute — or not prosecute — potential defendants crosses an ethical line. Cornyn, a former state Supreme Court justice, should know that. No less than a nominee for the federal courts, a prospective attorney general shouldn’t put himself in the position of prejudging cases in exchange for Senate confirmation.

Judge OKs Continued Holding of Taliban Cook At Guantanamo After Seven Years in Confinement - A Guantanamo Bay prisoner who says he merely cooked meals for Taliban forces and never fired a shot in battle lost his petition to be released Wednesday after being held for more than seven years. U.S. District Judge Richard Leon said that Ghaleb Nassar Al Bihani’s work as an assistant cook with Taliban fighters made him an enemy combatant of the United States, nevertheless, and is reason enough for the U.S. military to continue holding him.

Former Taliban Kitchen Slave Also Held at Guantanamo - The United States Guantanamo Bay detainment camps in Cuba contains a dozen or more American prisoners who were also Taliban prisoners. Some examples:

Ilkham Turdbyavich Batayev – Used as a kitchen slave by the Taliban.
Adil Uqla Hassan Al Nusayri – A Saudi police officer, who visited Afghanistan shortly before 9-11, was thrown into prison by the Taliban, only to be sold, for a bounty, by the Taliban to the Americans.

Jamal Udeen Al-Harith – Paid a driver to take him from Pakistan to Iran, without realizing that his driver would take him near the Afghanistan border, where the Taliban seized him as an American spy, based on his British passport. Went directly from custody in a Taliban jail to US custody.
Etc., etc.

Regards,

Jim

Disgraced Rove Aide Named Top Lobbyist for Focus on the Family – Tim Goeglein has been named the top Washington, D.C., lobbyist for Focus on the Family. Goeglein was personally recruited in 2001 by political mastermind Karl Rove to work in the Bush White House as chief liaison to conservative religious groups. There Goeglein rubbed elbows with some of the most powerful men in the evangelical movement — Focus on the Family’s James Dobson [strict father evangilist], Ralph Reed of the Christian Coalition, convicted Watergate felon Chuck Colson who runs Prison Fellowships Ministries and then-president of the National Association of Evangelicals Ted Haggard. He had plagiarized 20 of 38 columns and cited the works of such luminaries as the Dartmouth Review, Nixon speechwriter-cum-game show host Ben Stein and the Pope without credit. Goeglein resigned his position with the White House by that afternoon and has apparently been kicking around the nation’s capital until his political rebirth as Focus’ primo lobbyist.

Conservative Pundits Distort Comments by Obama’s Economic Transition Advisory Board – Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich wrote an open letter to Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and Michelle Malkin in response to their distortion of his comments about including minorities in the stimulus package. Reich wrote: “In a time like this, when tempers are riding high and many Americans are close to panic about their jobs and finances, you have a special responsibility to consider the accuracy of what you say and the consequences of inflammatory and erroneous statements. In the last few days, manifestly distorting my words and pulling them out of context, you have accused me of wanting to exclude white males from jobs generated by the stimulus package. Anyone who takes a moment to examine what I actually said and wrote knows this to be an absurd misrepresentation of my position (see this). My goal is and has always been to create as many opportunities for as wide a group as possible, and not exclude anyone from access. There is and has never been any ambiguity about this. The hate mail I have received since your broadcast suggests that the mischievous consequences of your demagoguery are potentially dangerous, in addition to being destructive of rational and constructive political discourse. I urge you to take responsibility for your words. Words and ideas have real world consequences, and you have demonstrated a cavalier disregard for both.” Details of the distortions

Rush Limbaugh Says Obama is ‘frightened of me’ – Radio host Rush Limbaugh said Monday that President Obama is “frightened of me.” “He’s obviously more frightened of me than he is [Senate Minority Leader] Mitch McConnell,” Limbaugh told listeners. “He’s more frightened of me, then he is of say, [House Minority Leader] John Boehner, which doesn’t say much about our party.” Limbaugh’s comments followed reports Obama warned GOP congressional leaders last week that they should stop listening to the conservative talker, who had said on air he wanted the new president to fail.

The Newest Addition to the Bill of Rights: The Conservative Hissy Fit Exception – An additional amendment has been added to the Bill of Rights. It’s called The Republican Hissy Fit Exception.

No matter what harm has been caused by the Republican party to our country and applies especially when they have been voted out of office because of that harm, any piece of Democratic legislation being discussed may be attacked with the intent of watering it down or destroying it completely (voided) at any time as long as one conservative in Congress has a hissy fit.

The traditional media must immediately validate their hissy fit by repeating said hissy fit talking points over and over again in print, on the Internets, on radio and on TV as many times as necessary to accomplish said goal of compromising the legislation that the hissy fit is applicable to.

False information is also allowed to be transmitted by the hissy fitter and the media in an effort to implement the Conservative Hissy Fit exception. An alternative name that may be used is the Republican Hissy Fit exception.

Regards,

Jim

Sarah Palin Opposes Protection for Beluga Whales – Last week, the state of Alaska announced it plans to mount a legal challenge to the listing of the Cook Inlet beluga whale under the Endangered Species Act. At the heart of Palin’s objections are concerns that additional safeguards will interfere with oil and gas development, among other lucrative projects. Similar fears led Palin’s administration to launch a legal challenge in August to the listing of polar bears as a threatened species. (And it was no surprise when a host of business groups, including the American Petroleum Institute, followed her lead. Objecting to ESA protections on economic grounds is one thing, but Palin’s team has in the past sought to cast doubt on the science underlying the listings. Fighting back against efforts to list the polar bear, for instance, her administration cited the work of global warming skeptics, one of whom acknowledged receiving funding from the American Petroleum Institute and ExxonMobil for his work. (She not pro-life, she’s pro-profit. – JLV)

Ex-CEO of Lehman Brothers Transferred Ownership of his $13.75 Million Mansion to his Wife for $100 – The disgraced ex-CEO of Lehman Brothers transferred ownership of his $13.75 million Jupiter Island mansion to his wife, Kathy, on November 10th. Could Fuld be worried about the flurry of lawsuits from incensed shareholders and creditors? Possibly! According to Martin County, Florida property records, the home was previously owned by the couple jointly. Until, that is, Fuld transferred it to his wife for the princely sum of $100 on November 10, less than two months after the firm went under.

Access to Medical Care in the Some Parts of the U.S. Worse Than in the Amazon Jungle – In rural Kentucky, where people have driven within a 200-mile radius to wait in line in the early morning for a spot in line to see a volunteer doctor thanks to the efforts of Remote Access Medical, who originally set out to help people in the Amazon jungle, but now focus 60% of their time on Americans. “The need is enormous,” said the organization’s founder Stan Brock. “We discovered…there are people here that need help just as much as they do in Guatemala or in the Amazon and all these other places we go to.”

Medical Insurance is Way More Costly Than Comparable Medicare – By almost every measure, private insurance plans are costlier and less effective than Medicare , according to government and academic research. Medicare spends 2% on overhead; private insurers typically spend 25% to 27% for overhead and profit. A recent Congressional Budget Office report comparing healthcare reform options found that allowing Americans to buy into Medicare before turning 65 would lead to more people with coverage at lower costs. The CBO estimated that a Medicare buy-in for those between 62 and 64 years old would cost $7,600 a year, including drug coverage. A comparable policy on the private market at that age costs $10,000 and up — way up — in combined premiums and deductibles, and is, unlike Medicare, available only to the healthiest seniors. A UC Berkeley study last month found that a public option like Medicare could result in $1 trillion in national savings over 10 years by driving down costs, improving efficiencies and fostering innovation. Studies by AARP and the Commonwealth Fund also show that Medicare patients are more satisfied with every aspect of their care than patients with private plans.

Citigroup Gets $45 Billion in Government Bailout; Purchases $50 Million Luxury Jet – Citigroup, which has received $45 billion in government bailout funds, is about to upgrade to a new $50 million, twelve-seat corporate jet. The plane, the Dassault Falcon 7X, is a luxurious jet with a range of 5,950 nautical miles (meaning it can fly from New York to all of Europe and South America, as far east as Riyadh, and as far west as Honolulu or Petropavlovsk, Russia). It has “plush interior with leather seats, sofas and a customizable entertainment center.

Twenty-Five People at the Heart of the Economic Meltdown, and Six Who Warned it Was Coming – The article at the link lists 25 people who have led us into the current crisis: Republicans, Democrats, CEOs, and others. And at the bottom of the article are six people who got it right and tried to warn the others of what was coming. Road to Ruin series.

Study on Stimulus Package Cited by Republicans and Libertarians Does Not Exist - Reports of a recent study by the Congressional Budget Office, showing that the vast majority of the money in the stimulus package won’t be spent until after 2010, have Democrats on the defensive and the GOP calling for a pullback in wasteful spending. Funny thing is, there is no such report. “We did not issue any report, any analysis or any study,” a CBO aide said.

Regards,

Jim

The following was originally posted on The Citizens Briefing Book:

Our nation is not at war with the nation of Iraq. Referring to the Iraq War is absurd!

Our nation is not at war with the nation of Afghanistan.

We need to refer to our presence in Iraq and Afghanistan as an occupation. Using the occupation frame eliminates the fear of losing, enables our departure, reduces the chances of bankrupting our nation, and supports our troops by bring them home.

——–

Terror is a state of mind. We can’t win a “War on Terror.” We will never defeat terrorism with just military action. We are only creating more terrorists with our military actions. Worse yet, we elevate these criminals to warrior status in a jihad. We give them far more credit than they are due and enable recruitment. We must treat them as lowly “common criminals.”

As Colin Powell said on September 13, 2001 in an interview with Jim Lehrer, “We are asking all the nations to join together to use political action, diplomatic action, economic action, legal action, law enforcement action, and if necessary, join with us as appropriate and if necessary in military action when we have identified the perpetrators and decided what military action might be appropriate. And so there is a lot that we can do. And the point I also want to make is that no country is safe from this kind of attack. It crosses every geographic boundary, social boundary, religious boundary, cultural boundary. And we must see it in those terms and respond in a unified way.”

We have many tools to use against these [common criminals]. Using only the military, we will never never succeed!

Republican Silliness Goes Way Back – Air and Simple Gifts is a classical quartet by American composer John Williams composed for the January 20, 2009, inauguration of Barack Obama as President of the United States. The source piece is famous for its appearance in Aaron Copland’s ballet Appalachian Spring. Williams chose the selection from Copland, one of Obama’s favorite classical composers. Copland’s Lincoln Portrait was supposed to be featured in a pre-inauguration concert by the National Symphony Orchestra for Dwight Eisenhower in 1953, but was pulled from the performance when a Republican congressman from Illinois suggested Copland was too liberal, and perhaps a Communist sympathizer. (I guess that’s not as silly as objecting to French fries.)

Merrill Lynch’s CEO Spent Over $1 Million to Redecorate his Office as the Firm Faced Financial Crisis - In early 2008, just as Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain was preparing to slash expenses, cut thousands of jobs and exit businesses to fix the ailing securities firm, he was also spending company money on himself. Thain spent $1.22 million of company money to refurbish his office.

Republicans and Lobbyists Just Don’t Get the Ethics Message – Lobbyists willing to pay a $25,000 fee will mingle with House Republicans at their annual winter retreat next week in Hot Springs, Va. “Of course it’s about access and building relationships — that’s what this town is all about,” said one lawmaker who has attended the retreats for years. He said lobbyists who travel to the retreats often stay on for after-hours socializing throughout the weekend. “It’s not like they’re sitting there plugging their corporate issues — but as with anything, their clients’ interests inevitably come up.” No one attending the conference — lawmakers or lobbyists — are breaking any House rules. (but maybe the rules are pretty lax?)

Coal Industry Pressured EPA Head Into Ignoring Coal Ash 8 Years Ago – In March of 2000, during the last days of the Clinton administration, the EPA decided coal ash was a hazardous waste. Then, two months later, it flipped. If the EPA had stuck to its guns, the Kingston Coal Ash disaster in Tennessee might have been averted. Now, momentum is building to federally regulate coal ash. Video at the link.

Coal Combustion in This Country Produces 130 Million Tons of Coal Ash Every Year – Senator Barbara Boxer of California noted that coal combustion in this country produces 130 million tons of coal ash every year — enough to fill a train of boxcars stretching from Washington, D.C., to Australia. Amazingly, the task of regulating the more than 600 landfills and impoundments holding this ash is left to the states, which are more often lax than not.

The coal industry has been running a cheery “clean coal” campaign, whose ads would have us believe that low-polluting coal is here or just around the corner. It is neither. Coal remains an inherently dirty fuel, and a huge contributor to not only ground-level pollution — including acid rain and smog — but also global warming. The sooner the country understands that, the closer it will be to mitigating the damage.

Most Hospitals Are Demanding Cash Up Front Before Treatment – Fifty-three-year-old Lisa Kelly is fighting Leukemia. With $37,000 of annual hospital coverage, she thought it would at least get her in the door at M.D. Anderson, a leading cancer center. But they told her it was not enough. So Kelly cashed in some of her husband’s inheritance and came in with a check for $45,000. When her tests showed she needed immediate cancer treatment, the hospital asked for another $60,000 to admit her that day. Kelly’s situation is not unique. Nearly 4,200 out of the nation’s 4,900 hospitals are beginning to require proof of payment up front for non-emergency needs. (Only in America!) [Profit before compassion.]

Glenn Beck Makes Stuff Up About President Obama’s Swearing In - Yesterday on his new Fox News show, Glenn Beck panicked about the re-do oath of office President Obama took last night, because Obama did not place his hand on a Bible. “I checked. We have never had a president sworn into office without a Bible,” he intoned dramatically. Beck is simply wrong. As Slate recently reported, official records kept by the Architect of the Capitol show that Teddy Roosevelt did not use a Bible in 1901; and Lyndon Johnson is rumored to have used “a Catholic missal aboard Air Force One after Kennedy’s assassination.” According to his own letters, John Quincy Adams placed his hand on a constitutional law book rather than the Bible. Beck’s vaunted devotion to research must have taken a dive when he moved from CNN to Fox.

Bill O’Reilly says, “This is not the time for ideology” — Then he presents his ideology - O’Reilly has never been short on self-conflict. BillO, The Walking Oxymoron, said the following:

You may have noticed that “The Factor” has not nitpicked Barack Obama. We don’t play the gotcha game because that doesn’t do you any good. This is not a time for ideology. This is a time for problem-solving.

Far-left zealots want to destroy America so they can rebuild it as a socialistic paradise, a hyper-Sweden. Those people are dangerous, and we will watch them closely.

(O’Reilly seems to use a template that says, “Tell the audience that it’s not good to do XXX, then do XXX.)

Schoolgirls Banned From Lessons for Being ‘Too Blonde’ – A headteacher has come under fire from parents and pupils after banning two 16-year-olds from school for being ‘too blonde’. Raegan Booth, 16, and Aby Western, 15, say they were threatened with expulsion by David Alexander unless they dyed their hair brown. The girls claim they are being forced to adhere to the strict dress code of Rednock School in Dursley, Gloucestershire, UK. The school rules clearly state that there are to be no “unnatural” hair colours on students. ‘Unnatural hair colours are blue, purple, green and bright red. Blonde is considered a natural hair colour and there are many different shades. The headmaster claims that he must follow the rules. The headmaster said, “‘I think the problem is how you interpret the rules and we need to make it clearer for the students and parents.” (Maybe it’s how he interpret the rules – a classic problem for authoritarians.) Judge for yourself: photo at the link.

British Bishop Says Nazi Gas Cambers Did Not Exist – British bishop, Richard Williamson, 68, said on Sweden’s SVT television channel this week, “I believe there were no gas chambers … I think that 200,000 to 300,000 Jews perished in Nazi concentration camps but none of them by gas chambers,” he said. “There was not one Jew killed by the gas chambers. It was all lies, lies, lies!”

Global Warming Killing Trees Faster in the Pacific Northwest – Forests in the Pacific Northwest are dying twice as fast as they were 17 years ago, and scientists blame warming temperatures for the trend, according to a new study. “Much of the world’s population in North America, Europe, most of China and large portions of Russia live near temperate forests, so what happens in these forests has global importance,” said Jerry Franklin, a professor of forest resources at the University of Washington whose work was instrumental in maintaining the research plots.

Cheney Says Bush Should Have Pardoned Libby – George Bush should have pardoned I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Dick Cheney said after stepping down as vice president this week. Libby, Cheney’s former chief of staff, was convicted of obstructing a federal investigation into the revelation that Valerie Plame Wilson was a CIA agent. (Mr. “Protect America” thinks it’s OK to reveal the identity of our CIA agents and to lie about it. – JLV)

[Libby was showing his 'moral' discipline by unquestioningly accepting Cheney's authority and following Cheney's commands. Libby was loyal to Cheney so pardoning Libby would give recognition to Cheney's 'moral' authority.]

Rush Limbaugh Says, “Racism in this country is the exclusive province of the left.” – In an interview on Sean Hannity’s Jan 21, 2009, show on Fox News, Rush Limbaugh said, “Racism in this country is the exclusive province of the left.” And what did Hannity say to Limbaugh? He said, “You have defined conservatives for over two decades.” Would you want to [be] defined by that?

Coal Plant Spill Worse Than Exxon Valdez - Burning coal is a leading source of global warming pollution. As the recent environmental disaster at the TVA Kingston Fossil Plant in Tennessee proves, coal plants represent a major danger to the environment in more ways than one. On December 22, 1.1 billion gallons of coal fly ash slurry spilled at the Kingston Fossil Plant. Fly ash is a byproduct of coal combustion. The slurry (a mixture of the ash and water) traveled downhill, covering the surrounding land with up to six feet of sludge, damaging homes and flowing into nearby waterways. It was the largest coal slurry spill in U.S. history, and the amount released was more than 50 times larger than the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill.

Yet the story has not received the level of press coverage it deserves. The first independent test results showed significantly elevated levels of toxic metals in samples of slurry and river water, which can cause cancer and liver damage, among other health issues. The devastating environmental impact of the spill has yet to be fully determined. Hopefully the spill will ignite the debate over the environmental safety of coal power plants.

Global Warming is Causing an Increase in the Frequency of Storms According to NASA - The frequency of extremely high clouds in Earth’s tropics — the type associated with severe storms and rainfall — is increasing as a result of global warming, according to a study by scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

In a presentation to the recent meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco, JPL Senior Research Scientist Hartmut Aumann outlined the results of a study based on five years of data from the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument on NASA’s Aqua spacecraft. The AIRS data were used to observe certain types of tropical clouds linked with severe storms, torrential rain and hail. The instrument typically detects about 6,000 of these clouds each day. Aumann and his team found a strong correlation between the frequency of these clouds and seasonal variations in the average sea surface temperature of the tropical oceans.

For every degree Centigrade (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) increase in average ocean surface temperature, the team observed a 45-percent increase in the frequency of the very high clouds. At the present rate of global warming of 0.13 degrees Celsius (0.23 degrees Fahrenheit) per decade, the team inferred the frequency of these storms can be expected to increase by six percent per decade.

Regards,

Jim

Your conservative worldview has held sway for many years. Your conservative cognitive policy has changed the minds of many and perpetuated many unfortunate ideas, values and principles. But we the people have started to recognize what has happened, what has gone terribly wrong and that there is a lot we have to fix.

Your team has lost. Your core membership represents less than a quarter of the voting public.

Your moral authority is badly tarnished and waning.

Your principles of the unquestioning obedience to authority, the “you’re on your own” view of those not like you, the blind support of the imperfect free market, and the insistence on pull yourself up – are on their way out.

Your belief in direct causation and a male dominated identity limits your understand of all those who voted Democrat.

Your preference for profits and profiteering over supporting the common wealth, which helped create the profit, says clearly that helping we the people is secondary to your helping corporations.

Your insistence on turning over governance of we the people to corporations means our safety, education, welfare, health and security are secondary to profits.

Your ideas for what is right for America are wrong. Your ideas are not what the authors of our Declaration of Independence and Constitution had in mind when they broke with the single-party authoritarian rule of England. In fact, your ideas are probably the same as the Loyalists of the late 1700’s.

The bottom line is that “conservatives without conscience” lack empathy, respect and responsibility for those fellow citizens not like them – the majority of us.

Please stop insisting the you want to do what is right for America. You’ve had decades to prove that your ideas work, but they have failed. You can’t pass the buck for our situation to others below you. You and your recently departed leaders are entirely responsible for the mess we are in.

Please stop your petty attempts to delay our inevitable change and start helping to fix what you broke.

We no longer want what you have to offer.

With respect,

All American’s Communications Were Monitored by the NSA – Despite all the assurances of the Bush administration that their wiretapping activities were only to protect Americans from terrorists and that only concerned foreign targets, that was not true. To be clear, it was not even close to being true. Whistleblower Russell Tice, who back in 2006 had exposed the NSA program illegalities went even further than his earlier allegations, things he was perhaps afraid to say while Bush was still in office considering the smear job they did on him the first time around: The NSA, under the direction of George Bush, was monitoring ALL Americans’ communications, specifically targeting journalists and news organizations.

Sean Hannity Blames Sen. Charles Schumer and GeesePeace For US Airways Crash – Sean Hannity, ever on the lookout for new ways to smear Democrats, achieved a creative breakthrough on his 1/17/09 show. Without bothering to investigate any other facts beyond Senator Charles Schumer’s 2004 earmark for a group called GeesePeace, Hannity and FOX News were ready to allege that Schumer is to blame for the crash of the US Airways flight last week. Later in the program, Hannity warned that if it happens again, Schumer would be responsible for any ensuing deaths. Hannity did not bother to find out that GeesePeace is actually trying to control the over-population of geese. The funds provided by Schumer’s earmark were helping to reduce the number of geese. But, when has Fox News ever seen a need to check facts before smearing someone?

Regards,

Jim

In my previous post, I reviewed the conservative and progressive worldviews from a historical and family model perspective. In this posting, I review these two worldviews according to set of critical factors and how they help define each worldview.

This summary is primarily based on Thinking Points by George Lakoff and The Rockridge Institute. Additional information was taken from The Political Mind.

I have also added a few applicable quotes from President Obama’s inaugural speech.

Before reviewing this table, make a note as to your preferred worldview.

After reviewing the above information, has your worldview preference changed any? Either way, add a comment and let me know.

Rush Limbaugh Proclaims, “I Hope Obama Fails” – President Obama’s message today was:

• choose hope over fear
• unity of purpose over conflict and discord
• remain faithful to the ideals of our forbearers
• overcome the economic crisis
• stop protecting narrow interests
• mutual interest and mutual respect
• a new era of responsibility
• defeat those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents
• lessen the nuclear threat
• roll back the specter of a warming planet

But Rush Limbaugh’s message is, “I Hope Obama Fails.” Yes, that was the subject of Limbaugh’s radio show on January 16.

(Is this what happens when someone puts ideology before the common good? Does it come to the point where you don’t care what happens to our nation and our people, just as long as your guys are in charge? Limbaugh is now providing real competition to when Bill O’Reilly publicly wished for a terrorist attack on San Francisco because he doesn’t like their liberal policies. – JLV)

Regards,

Jim