The WAWG Blog

Palin Endorsee Plagiarized President Obama’s Speech – Vaughn Ward, a GOP candidate for Idaho’s First Congressional district who is endorsed by Sarah Palin, is facing charges that he swiped key passages from Barack Obama’s iconic 2004 Democratic National Convention speech for his own campaign kickoff speech in January.

Fox News Falsely Reports That Elena Kagan Filed Brief to Support Vatican Immunity – Fox News reports, “The office, headed by Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan, argued that the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals — which lifted the Vatican’s immunity in the Oregon priest case — should not have treated the case as an exception to a 1976 federal law that limits when foreign countries can face charges in the U.S. judicial system.”
But Kagan’s name doesn’t appear anywhere in the brief, since she stepped aside over two weeks ago, as the Associated Press noted last week.

Fox News Edited Out Applause During Obama Speech to Military Cadets – Fox News video broadcast May 22 as President Barack Obama delivered a speech to military cadets at West Point, appears to omit applause Obama received during the speech.

Fox News Lie Is So Bad That Republican Rep. Slams Them : ‘I Don’t Know What They’re Doing At Fox News, But They Should Stop Smoking It’ – Fox and Friends characterized Sen. Bob Casey’s (D-PA) Create Jobs & Save Benefits Act as a “$165 billion bailout” of union pensions. “It has been decades since you’ve seen an administration so prone to the influence of unions as this one is. I’m not going to say this is owned by the unions, but their influence on this administration is simply enormous,” Fox Business Network’s Stuart Varney claimed of the legislation, which is actually designed to partition “specific types of union pensions that are deemed to be insolvent.” Later in the day, the network went after House Republicans for co-sponsoring similar legislation in the House. On America Live with Megyn Kelly, the network showed a chart of the nine Republicans supporting the measure and questioned their sanity.

This didn’t go over well with Rep. Steve LaTourette (R-OH), a co-sponsor of the House measure, who took to the floor this afternoon to criticize Fox for its coverage. “I think as a Republican, I’m supposed to love Fox News and hate MSNBC,” he began. “Now, I’m going to tell you, I do hate MSNBC, but something just happened on Fox News that compelled me to come to the floor”:

LATOURETTE: They’ve run this diagram and it really is a, I think, blaspheming my good friend Pat Tiberi from Ohio and indicating that there are nine Republicans supporting a bill that will bail out unions. Well, that’s nonsense and I don’t know who the pin head and weenie is at Fox News that decided to put that story together. But the true facts of this piece of legislation are as follows. This bill will save the taxpayers by saying to those corporations that have union pension plans, if you find yourselves in a bind, rather than thrusting that upon the taxpayer, it spreads out over five years the ability to bring those pension plans up to speed. That’s good government, it’s a good bill. It’s a good Tiberi bill and I don’t know what they’re doing at Fox News, but they should stop smoking it and get back to reporting the facts.

Republicans Say No to Fund Health Program for 9/11 Rescue Workers – Republicans argued Tuesday that it would put the nation’s finances at risk if Congress gave aiing Sept. 11 responders a permanent, guaranteed program to ensure they get health care. Republicans want the responders to come back to Congress every year to make their case

The whole debate over whether the program should be mandatory or an annual discretionary program misses the point, said Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-Brooklyn-Queens), saying it was Congress’ obligation to help the people who answered the call almost nine years ago.

And, he noted, the health fund could not be an endless and growing entitlement like Medicare.
“There’s a finite number of people,” Weiner said. “That finite number of people is getting smaller and smaller every day because they’re dying.”

“Coming back and forth every year is not easy for people who are ill,” said William Romaka, the Uniformed Firefighters Association’s sergeant at arms.

Rush Limbaugh Fill-in Walter Williams Tells Caller: “I believe in keeping wives under control” – On the May 25 edition of Premiere Radio Network’s The Rush Limbaugh Show, fill-in host Walter E. Williams, in order to prove he’s a real conservative, said, “I believe in keeping wives under control.”

Fox News Commentator Asks Viewers to Contribute to Republicans – Political consultant Dick Morris took advantage of an appearance as a commentator on the Fox News program Fox & Friends on Wednesday to appeal for viewers to donate to Republican candidates through his own website.

Congress Tells FCC to Halt All Efforts to Protect Internet Users – Net Neutrality – the principle that would keep users in control of the Internet – was the top communications policy of President Obama when he came into office last year. Obama has repeated his support for an open Internet on several occasions since, and last summer appointed Julius Genachowski to lead the FCC and fulfill this presidential promise.

But, Congress just sold you out to Comcast, Verizon and AT&T.

Big phone and cable companies are so determined to dismantle consumer protections on the open Internet that they’ve spent millions to flip Congress against you. Earlier this week, many in Congress delivered.

On Monday, 74 House Democrats joined 37 Senate Republicans to sign an industry-written letter that tells the Federal Communications Commission to halt all efforts to protect Internet users and stop big companies from blocking Internet traffic.

Their letter warns Chairman Genachowski against pursuing a plan that would enable the FCC to act as a watchdog and serve the public interest over the Internet, preventing phone and cable companies from blocking access to websites and services, while promoting policies that ensure universal and affordable access.

In response, Free Press is urging hundreds of thousands of people to sign our own letter telling the FCC that Congress doesn’t speak for you, President Obama or the millions of other Americans who support a fast, open and affordable Internet. Please sign it.

It’s Happened Before; Will We Ever Learn? – On 3 June 1979 (31 years ago), the Ixtoc oil well in the Gulf of Mexico suffered a blowout and is recognized as the second largest oil spill and the largest accidental spill in history. The blowout preventer failed. An explosion resulted and the rig sunk into the Gulf. A top-hat device (called sombrero) did not work to stop the leak. It took 10 months before the well was capped.

Prevailing currents carried the oil towards the Texas coastline. The US government had two months to prepare booms to protect major inlets. Eventually, in the US, 162 miles of beaches and 1421 birds were affected by 3,000,000 barrels of oil. The oil company spent only $100 million to clean up the spill and avoided paying compensation by asserting sovereign immunity.

The oil slick surrounded Rancho Nuevo, in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, which is one of the few nesting sites for Kemp’s Ridley sea turtles.

Drug Plant That Recalled Children’s Tylenol Had Cut Staff – A Pennsylvania drug plant plagued by quality-control problems that prompted a nationwide recall of children’s Tylenol and dozens of other pediatric medicines drastically reduced its workforce in recent years, according to local government tax records.

And a Food and Drug Administration inspection report earlier this year cited failure to properly train contract and temporary employees as part of a catalogue of problems at the plant run by McNeil Consumer Healthcare, a subsidiary of pharmaceuticals giant Johnson & Johnson.
Other deficiencies included bacterial contamination of raw materials, shoddy equipment maintenance and failure to investigate 46 consumer complaints “regarding foreign materials, black or dark specks” stretching back almost a year before the recall, the FDA reported.

Rand Paul Suggests Law of Gravity Be Left to States 😉 – In a recent interview with Rachel Maddow of MSNBC, Senatorial candidate Rand Paul (R, Ky) expressed controversial views concerning a number of issues thought to be a matter of settled law. While his statements concerning civil rights received the most attention, his position on a heretofore unchallenged law seems to have escaped media analysis … the law of gravity.

“I’m not in favor of discrimination in any form. I would never belong to any private club that denied gravity for any race of people,” Paul said. “But we still have plenty of American space rockets where gravity does not exist. Are we to tell our country’s hard working astronauts that they are no longer allowed to spend time in areas that might discriminate against gravity?”

Paul told Maddow that he agrees with most parts of the law of gravity; however, people who want to float away should have the freedom to do so.

Regards,

Jim

The problem with illegal immigration is US consumers and employers. Consumers want cheap stuff and employers hire cheap labor to give consumers what they want. We get what we pay for, including trashy side effects in the deserts of Arizona.

WE GET WHAT WE PAY FOR.

Oil Hits Louisiana Wetlands – Crude oil spread through fragile US marshlands Thursday, a month after a drilling rig blast released a devastating spill that now threatens Florida, Cuba and even beyond. Photos

Costly, Time-Consuming Test of Cement Linings in Deepwater Horizon Rig Was Omitted, Spokesman Says – BP hired a top oilfield service company to test the strength of cement linings on the Deepwater Horizon’s well, but sent the firm’s workers home 11 hours before the rig exploded April 20 without performing a final check that a top cementing company executive called “the only test that can really determine the actual effectiveness” of the well’s seal.

A spokesman for the testing firm, Schlumberger, said BP had a Schlumberger team and equipment for sending acoustic testing lines down the well “on standby” from April 18 to April 20. But BP never asked the Schlumberger crew to perform the acoustic test and sent its members back to Louisiana on a regularly scheduled helicopter flight at 11 a.m., Schlumberger spokesman Stephen T. Harris said.

At a few minutes before 10 p.m., a belch of natural gas shot out of the well, up a riser pipe to the rig above, igniting massive explosions, killing 11 crewmembers and sending millions of gallons of crude oil into the Gulf. The rig’s owner, Transocean, blames failed cement seals, installed by Halliburton, for the disastrous blowout.

BP, Coast Guard Officers Block Journalists From Filming Oil-Covered Beach – When CBS tried to film a beach with heavy oil on the shore in South Pass, Louisiana, a boat of BP contractors, and two Coast Guard officers, told them to turn around, or be arrested.

“This is BP’s rules, it’s not ours,” someone aboard the boat said. Coast Guard officials told CBS that they’re looking into it.

As the Coast Guard is a branch of the Armed Forces, it brings into question how closely the government and BP are working together to keep details of the disaster in the dark.

BP is making the rules? Kind of hard to argue that we aren’t a full-blown corporatocracy, when BP–that’s British Petroleum–is leading the United States Coast Guard on this.

Affluent People Supporting Taliban Heroin Trade (Perhaps Unknowingly) – Since September, 2008, Friendswood (Texas) Police have made 70 arrests in conjunction with drug investigations and 40 of those felony charges were related to heroin and prescription drugs. There have also been seven federal indictments handed down as a result of the investigation. This is the first heroin-related arrest in Friendswood in 2010.

Lt. Josh Rogers of the Friendswood Police says he believes the Friendswood area is being targeted because of its affluence and that users may not be aware that they are even using heroin because of the way it is marketed.

The dark brown sticky substance is known as Liquid O, sludge, tar, Liquid Heroin, or just “O” and is distributed in eye dropper vials. The “O” is derived from the word opium, the main ingredient in heroin.

Liquid Heroin is inhaled through the nose and goes for $5 to $10 a drop. One gram of black tar heroin that sells for $400 can yield up to 90 doses of liquid heroin. It is believed that the heroin comes from Mexico, South America or Afghanistan and is being distributed from southeast Houston to North Galveston County.

Domestic Terrorist Strikes America! – On May 10th, a middle-aged man carried a can of gasoline and a pipe bomb into the Jacksonville Islamic Center of Northeast Florida during evening prayers and detonated it. Fortunately, there were no injuries to people, though the bomb did damage property. The surveillance video gives a fairly decent picture of this man, who is clearly white, middle-aged, and on a mission.

So, a mosque is bombed by a white guy and the bomb isn’t exactly small, but the national media sees no value in reporting it? Really? And yet, that is evidently the case.

Anti-Muslim sentiments in Florida have been bubbling to the surface, particularly after Republican Dan Fanelli’s campaign commercial was aired asking if a man appearing to be from the Middle East “looked like a terrorist.” According to Yahoo News, there were two other ads with even more pointed messages against Muslims:

Another ad has Fanelli saying, “This is a terrorist,” as he presents a “Middle Eastern” man strapped with a “bomb” and wearing what appears to be a dish towel “turban.”

Yet another ad shows two Arabic-speaking “terrorists” constructing a bomb while discussing “martyrdom” and “killing infidels.” The ad also mocks long-standing due process rights such as Miranda warnings and access to lawyers.

Rifle-Toting Republican Candidate Does Crazy Ad, Gets Spoofed – With a horse by his side in his ad for Agriculture Commissioner in Alabama, Dale Peterson complains of “illegals bussed in by the thousands.” Will Ferrell’s Funny or Die website spoofs the ad by the Republican candidate. Watch ‘em both.

Regards,

Jim

All-Time Hypocrisy Award Winner – Republican Rep. Mark Souder, an ardent “family values” congressman, not only had an extramarital affair with a staffer; he recorded a video with his mistress about sexual abstinence education.

Rewriting History – Social conservatives on the 15-member Republican-dominated Texas State Board of Education are optimistic they will be able to push through curriculum changes that, according to board member and conservative Texas lawyer Cynthia Noland Dunbar, “promote patriotism.”
Among the recommendations facing a final vote: adding language saying the country’s Founding Fathers were guided by Christian principles and including positive references to the Moral Majority, the National Rifle Association and the GOP’s Contract with America.

Other amendments to the state’s curriculum standards for kindergarten through 12th grade would minimize Thomas Jefferson’s role in world and U.S. history because he advocated the separation of church and state; require that students learn about “the unintended consequences” of affirmative action; assert that “the right to keep and bear arms” is an important element of a democratic society; and rename the slave trade to the “Atlantic triangular trade.”

(After this, Texas graduates may be required to take remedial history if they move to another state. – JLV)

Democratic Candidate Falsely Says He Served in Vietnam – At a ceremony honoring veterans and senior citizens who sent presents to soldiers overseas, Attorney General and Democratic candidate for the U. S. Senate, Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, said, “We have learned something important since the days that I served in Vietnam.”
There was one problem: Mr. Blumenthal never served in Vietnam. He obtained at least five military deferments from 1965 to 1970 and took repeated steps that enabled him to avoid going to war, according to records.

Republicans Support Fat Cats Over Regular People – Senate Republicans blocked Democrats from voting on three amendments Tuesday that are strongly opposed by Wall Street.

Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, the top-ranking Republican on the Banking Committee, rose to object to a vote on one of the most talked-about amendments, cosponsored by Sens. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.). Levin-Merkley would ban commercial banks from trading for their own benefit with taxpayer-backed money.

Shelby also objected to an amendment from Sen. Kay Hagan (D-N.C.) that would rein in predatory practices of payday lenders and one from Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) that would have banned naked credit default swaps, which were at the heart of the financial crisis. Dorgan’s amendment was expected to fail, but Levin-Merkley had been surging in recent days. [UPDATE: The floor chaos continued late into the night.]

When it looked as if Levin-Merkley had at least 50 votes, the threshold was moved up to 60. Now that it appears within striking distance of 60 votes, the new tactic is to deny it a vote altogether.

English Teachers With Accents Not Allowed in Arizona – The Arizona Department of Education recently began telling school districts that teachers whose spoken English it deems to be heavily accented or ungrammatical must be removed from classes for students still learning English, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.

The crackdown applies to classes deemed to have students who are learning English, mostly as a second language. Federal No Child Left Behind regulations call for students to be taught by persons fluent in English. The determination of fluency is left up to individual states.

Arizona seems to think that includes accents. Of course, they are wrong – accents do not by themselves measure fluency. And almost every person who is a native speaker of another language is going to have an accent when speaking English, unless they learned English at a young age.

“This is just one more indication of the incredible anti-immigrant sentiment in the state,” said Bruce Merrill, a professor emeritus at Arizona State University who conducts public-opinion research.

Indeed. Arizona’s action against immigrants didn’t begin with the recent passage of the “show me your papers” bill, but it emboldened anti-immigrant sentiment in other states around the country, and apparently in the Arizona educational system too.

Arizona’s education department has sent people into schools to audit teachers on comprehensible pronunciation, correct grammar and good writing. Teachers who fail are given the chance to improve, but if not, they must be fired or reassigned.

What America would be like if public figures with accents, like Albert Einstein, had their contributions eliminated from the American landscape

Regards,

Jim

Rick Perry Rental Mansion Costs Texas $600,000 While He Tells State to Cut Costs – With the state facing a budget shortfall of at least $11 billion, Texas Gov. Rick Perry has spent almost $600,000 in public money during the past two years to live in a sprawling rental home in the hills above the capital, according to records obtained by The Associated Press.

The public spending on Perry’s rental comes as the state grapples with a budget shortfall forecast to reach at least $11 billion over the next two years. Perry has asked state agencies to cut their budgets by 5 percent and the Republican House speaker has begun to consider furloughs and shortened workweeks for state employees.

Ethics watchdogs, meanwhile, say Perry’s campaign may have violated state disclosure laws because of the vague way he’s reported what his staff calls “incidental” spending at the mansion.
Democrat Bill White, the former Houston mayor and multimillionaire lawyer challenging Perry’s bid for a third full term, told the AP he would rent his own home until the mansion is repaired.

Agricultural Pesticides May Be the Missing Link to ADHD In Children – A new analysis of U.S. health data links children’s attention-deficit disorder with exposure to common pesticides used on fruits and vegetables. While the study couldn’t prove that pesticides used in agriculture contribute to childhood learning problems, experts said the research is persuasive.

Giant Oil Plumes Under Gulf 10 Miles Long, 3 Miles Wide – Scientists are finding enormous oil plumes in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, including one as large as 10 miles long, 3 miles wide and 300 feet thick. The discovery is fresh evidence that the leak from the broken undersea well could be substantially worse than estimates that the government and BP have given.

“There’s a shocking amount of oil in the deep water, relative to what you see in the surface water,” said Samantha Joye, a researcher at the University of Georgia, who is involved in one of the first scientific missions to gather details about what is happening in the gulf. “There’s a tremendous amount of oil in multiple layers, three or four or five layers deep in the water column.”
The plumes are depleting the oxygen dissolved in the gulf, worrying scientists, who fear that the oxygen level could eventually fall so low as to kill off much of the sea life near the plumes.

Gas Leak at Gulf Rig 3,000 Times Worse Than Oil Spill – This repost of a diary from 2 days ago describes the fact that there is 3000 times more natural gas coming out of the leak than oil. All of the gas is currently staying in the water because the ocean has the capacity to hold large quantities of methane in solution.

When methane breaks down it depletes oxygen in the water. Then, when it continues to break down it produces hydrogen sulfate.

Oxygen levels in some areas have dropped 30 percent, and should continue to drop, said Samantha Joye, a marine science professor at the University of Georgia. “It could take years, possibly decades, for the system to recover from an infusion of this quantity of oil and gas,” Joye said. “We’ve never seen anything like this before. It’s impossible to fathom the impact.”

Republican Senator Blocks Bill to Raise Oil Spill Liability Cap – In the wake of last month’s catastrophic Gulf Coast oil spill, Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski blocked a bill that would have raised the maximum liability for oil companies after a spill from a paltry $75 million to $10 billion.

Murkowski’s move came just hours after Washington’s top oil lobby, the American Petroleum Institute (API) expressed vociferous opposition to raising the cap. It argued that doing so would “threaten the viability of deep-water operations, significantly reduce U.S. domestic oil production and harm U.S. energy security.” API’s membership includes large oil companies like ExxonMobil and BP America, as well as smaller ones.

Republicans Kill Science Jobs Bill By Forcing Democrats To Vote For Porn – In an example of Republican obstructionism rendered beautiful by its simplicity, the GOP yesterday killed a House bill that would increase funding for scientific research and math and science education by forcing Democrats to vote in favor of federal employees viewing pornography.

Rep. Ralph Hall (R-TX), the ranking member of the House science committee, introduced a motion to recommit, a last-ditch effort to change a bill by sending it back to the committee with mandatory instructions.

In this case, Republicans included a provision that would bar the federal government from paying the salaries of employees who’ve been disciplined for viewing pornography at work.

To proceed with the bill and bring it to a final vote, Democrats would have had to vote against the motion to recommit, and against the porn ban.

But they didn’t have the stomach for it, and 121 Democrats jumped ship and voted with Republicans to kill the bill.

“We’re all opposed to federal employees watching pornography. That is not a question; but that’s not what this was about,” Rep. Bart Gordon (D-TN) said. “The Motion to Recommit was about gutting funding for our science agencies.”

Tea Party Doesn’t Want You to Vote for Your Senators – The tea party is calling to repeal the 17th Amendment — taking the selection of U.S. Senators out of the hands of voters and putting it in the hands of state governments. Supporters of the plan say that ending the public vote for Senators would give the states more power to protect their own interests in Washington (and of course, give all of us “more liberty” in the process.) As their process of “vetting” candidates, some tea party groups have required candidates to weigh in on the idea of repeal in questionnaires.

In Just 40 Years, You Won’t Be Able to Find Nemo – The world faces the nightmare possibility of fishless oceans by 2050 without fundamental restructuring of the fishing industry, UN experts said Monday.

“If the various estimates we have received… come true, then we are in the situation where 40 years down the line we, effectively, are out of fish,” Pavan Sukhdev, head of the UN Environment Program’s green economy initiative, told journalists in New York.

The report, which was opened to preview Monday, also assesses how surging global demand in other key areas including energy and fresh water can be met while preventing ecological destruction around the planet.

Conservatives Have Been Lying About “Global Cooling” – It was the hottest April on record in the NASA dataset. More significantly, following fast on the heels of the hottest March and hottest Jan-Feb-March on record, it’s also the hottest Jan-Feb-March-April on record.

The record temperatures we’re seeing now are especially impressive because we’ve been in “the deepest solar minimum in nearly a century.” It now appears to be over. It’s just hard to stop the march of manmade global warming, well, other than by reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Most significantly, NASA’s March prediction has come true: “It is nearly certain that a new record 12-month global temperature will be set in 2010.

Software engineer Timothy Chase put together a spreadsheet using the data from NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies. In NASA’s dataset, the 12-month running average temperature record was actually just barely set in March – and then easily set in April.

Actually, NASA first made its prediction back in January 2009:

Given our expectation of the next El Niño beginning in 2009 or 2010, it still seems likely that a new global temperature record will be set within the next 1-2 years, despite the moderate negative effect of the reduced solar irradiance.”

Of course, there never was any global cooling – see Must-read AP story: Statisticians reject global cooling; Caldeira – “To talk about global cooling at the end of the hottest decade the planet has experienced in many thousands of years is ridiculous.”

In fact, the 12-month record we just beat was set in 2007!

And, some good news…

U. S. Government Management of GM Restores Company to Profitability – US auto giant General Motors reported Monday a post-bankruptcy quarterly profit for the first time in three years of nearly 900 million dollars. The net income during the January-March period came on the back of sales and revenue of 31.5 billion dollars, up from 22.4 billion dollars in the corresponding period in 2009.

Bottom line: Jobs saved, supplier companies saved, communities saved, people can get parts, service and repairs, economy boosted, products improved, people can buy American with trust. Final cost to taxpayers: zero.

Regards,

Jim

AT&T Front Group Plans Campaign of Lies – AT&T front group Americans for Prosperity is stooping to new lows in fearmongering. It announced a $1.4 million advertising plan to try to convince Americans that the FCC is plotting to “take over the Internet.” “This is a $1.4 million campaign to tell the American people that the world is flat. Net Neutrality is the opposite of a government takeover of the Internet. But the truth is irrelevant to front groups like AFP, which think that if you lie often and loudly enough, you can brand any issue as its opposite. They are stoking fear to achieve the goals of their corporate funders, like AT&T. “Net Neutrality means that nobody – not the cable and phone companies, and not the government – can choose winners and losers on the Internet. The Federal Communications Commission is simply pursuing a path that will ensure that the free market works for the American public, something that prior FCCs failed to do.

Telecoms Plan to Use Fake ‘Citizen’s Groups’ to Kill Net Neutrality – The telcos and cable operators got a huge public subsidy when we agreed to let them use our public sewers, tunnels and streets (not to mention our houses and basements) for their wires. We give them all this for free or far below the market costs. Now they’re saying they don’t want to give us the service we want.

ThinkProgress has a leaked copy of a telcoms industry PowerPoint presentation laying out their plans to use astroturf to kill Network Neutrality. The industry is hiring the same turfers who work with the Tea Party movement to carry their message to the people.

What the telcos want to do is reduce your access to websites and services unless those services have paid a bribe for “premium carriage” to you. So Google buys its bandwidth from its ISP. You buy your bandwidth from your ISP. Then your ISP goes to Google and says, “If you want to send your bits to our customers when they ask for them, you’ll have to pay us too.” If Google doesn’t pay, the ISP slows down its bits when you ask for them.

Telecoms’ Secret Plan to Attack Net Neutrality: Target Video Gamers and Stoke Fear of Chinese Censorship – ThinkProgress has obtained a PowerPoint document which reveals how the telecom industry is orchestrating the latest campaign against Net Neutrality. Authored by representatives from the Atlas Network — a shell think tank used to coordinate corporate front group efforts worldwide — the document lays out the following strategy:

– Slides 7-8 calls for the campaign to target “libertarian minded internet users and video gamers” and “social conservative activists” with anti-government messages and a rebranding of net neutrality as “Net Brutality.”

– Slide 9 calls for a strategy of creating a Chinese blog to compare net neutrality to Chinese government censorship, outreach via social networking platforms like Twitter and Facebook.

– Slides 10-11 detail how representatives met at Grover Norquist’s infamous “Wednesday morning meeting” to orchestrate the new campaign. Norquist is known to use his Wednesday meetings to plot strategy and conservative coalition building towards lobbying goals.

The PowerPoint was created on April 14th, shortly before the campaign website officially launched. The “Net Brutality” website relies heavily on Americans for Prosperity sources, as well as a website called NetCompetition.org — which is openly funded by the American Cable Association, At&T, Comcast, and the US Telecom Association.

During the Jack Abramoff investigation, Norquist was exposed for selling support from his front groups to corporations. In one damning e-mail, Norquist is promised $50,000 in exchange for providing his Americans for Tax Reform support to one of Abramoff’s clients. Today, Norquist was not only parroting the PowerPoint talking points at the press conference, but he also brought in other key conservative movement leaders and Republican lawmakers to the event.

Fox News’ Megyn Kelly Gives a Nice Demonstration in Corporate Censorship – One of libertarians’ real blind spots is that they seem to believe that only government is capable of taking away your freedoms and your rights. It never seems to occur to them that lots of other people are perfectly capable of taking away your freedoms. Especially the giant corporations who control our media.

Megyn Kelly gave a succinct demonstration of how this works at propaganda shops like Fox News yesterday on her America Live program. To discuss net neutrality, she brought on Jim Harper of the libertarian Cato Institute and Josh Silver of Free Press.

Kelly proceeded to let Harper ramble uninterrupted at length, pitching the hogwash notion that “free enterprise created the Internet” (um, no it didn’t). Then, when it was Silver’s turn to talk, Kelly aggressively interrupted him, notably just as he was getting to the major point: Maintaining net neutrality is about ensuring that there will be no corporate censorship of content — in other words, about maintaining the architecture that made the Internet the free and open medium that it is.

Then, when Silver finally got a chance to raise that point again, Kelly again interrupted:

Kelly: Is that right, Jim? Because everything I’ve read about this says this is a push, the beginnings of a push by the Obama administration to control the Internet to some extent — more so than they had in the past.

Well, she’s obviously reading from diverse sources, isn’t she?

In any event, Kelly again let Harper ramble on, speculating that taxes would be imposed, blah blah blah — and cut the segment off before Silver could point out the blatant falsity of his claims.

Stand Up to the Enemies of Internet Freedom – If human rights and democracy advocates refused to compromise their principles and used the Internet to defend freedom of expression, repression would be much more difficult. In 2015, 3-1/2 billion people – half of mankind – will have access to the Internet. There has never been such a revolution in freedom of communication and freedom of expression. But how will this new medium be used? What new distortions and obstacles will the enemies of the Internet come up with?

Regards,

Jim

Republicans Plan to Protest Democratic/Labor Rally for NASA Jobs – The Galveston County Democratic Party and local labor unions have organized a rally to support NASA employees and their jobs this Friday, May 14, 7 p.m., at the Chester L. Davis Sportsplex, 1251 League City Parkway (SH 96) in League City.

The local Galveston County Republican Party and local Republican leaders have are organizing a protest of those who are working to save NASA jobs in the area. The details on the protest, organized by the tea baggers and Republican Galveston County Commissioner, Ken Clark, have been circulating in an email. They claim this is just a “grass roots” event, but the link to their site is hosted on the Galveston County Republican Party site.

Republican Candidate Wants to Hunt Liberals, Thin the Herd – Congressional District 11 Republican candidate Brad Goehring is drawing fire for his confrontational Facebook statement: [note: page has been deleted]

“If I could issue hunting permits, I would officially declare today opening day for liberals. The season would extend through November 2 and have no limits on how many taken as we desperately need to “thin” the herd.”

Minerals Management Service Rubber Stamps Drilling Applications – It was known long before the Obama administration took over that the Minerals Management Service was rubber stamping every drilling application that came along. So why didn’t they clamp down on this from the beginning?

Regulators at the Minerals Management Service exempted 27 additional offshore drilling projects in the Gulf of Mexico from performing an in-depth environmental analysis—even after the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded, according to reporting by McClatchy. One of those exemptions went to BP.

The Deepwater Horizon rig had also been exempted from having to perform an in-depth environmental analysis using something known as a “categorical exclusion.” Categorical exclusions are used to fast-track drilling plans by eliminating paperwork that is deemed to be unnecessary or redundant because the drilling would probably have no significant effect on the environment.

Republicans Spread Lies About Illegal Immigrants and Crime Rates – High levels of illegal immigration and crimes committed by unauthorized immigrants are among the key rationales cited by some supporters of a tough new immigration law in Arizona.

According to FBI statistics, violent crimes reported in Arizona dropped by nearly 1,500 reported incidents between 2005 and 2008. Reported property crimes also fell, from about 287,000 reported incidents to 279,000 in the same period.

According to the nonpartisan Immigration Policy Institute, proponents of the bill “overlook two salient points: Crime rates have already been falling in Arizona for years despite the presence of unauthorized immigrants, and a century’s worth of research has demonstrated that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes or be behind bars than the native-born.”

Police Kicked Latino Innocent Suspect in the Face, Used Ethnic Slur – A Seattle freelance videographer recently captured a local cop kicking a man in the head while prone on the ground and using ethnic slurs. The Police Department disclosed Friday that it has launched an internal investigation into the incident, in which the gang detective, Shandy Cobane, can be heard on video telling a man lying on a concrete sidewalk, “I’m going to beat the [expletive] Mexican piss out of you, homey. You feel me?”

One of the most disturbing aspects of the incident is that it turned out that the man being kicked and verbally assaulted had nothing to do with the crime being investigated.

Hypocrites – In 2005, when then-President George W. Bush nominated Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court, plenty of Republicans said they found it refreshing that Miers’ experience amounted primarily to her time as a corporate lawyer and Bush aide.

That included Texas Sen. John Cornyn, who noted then that “40 percent of the men and women who have served as Supreme Court justices” had no judicial experience.

“One reason I felt so strongly about Harriet Miers’ qualifications is I thought she would fill some very important gaps in the Supreme Court,” Cornyn said in 2005. “Because right now you have people who’ve been federal judges, circuit judges most of their lives or academicians.”

Now, with a Democrat in the White House, what Cornyn once considered refreshing in a high court nominee is in Kagan’s case “surprising.”

“Ms. Kagan is … a surprising choice because she lacks judicial experience,” Cornyn said Monday. “Most Americans believe that prior judicial experience is a necessary credential for a Supreme Court Justice.”

The top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, likewise found Miers’ qualifications suitable five years ago: “It is not necessary that she have previous experience as a judge in order to serve on the Supreme Court,” Sessions said. “It’s perfectly acceptable to nominate outstanding lawyers to that position.”

But on Monday, Sessions was seeing things differently. Kagan, he said, “warrants great scrutiny” because of her lack of time as a judge. “Ms. Kagan’s lack of judicial experience and short time as solicitor general … is troubling,” he said.

And the list goes on. Republican Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson of Texas thought Miers was a “wonderful choice” in 2005, but today she “has some concerns over Elena Kagan’s lack of judicial experience.”

Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., said Monday that Kagan’s lack of judicial record raises questions – though he said in 2005 that he was not troubled by Miers’ lack of judicial experience.

Another Republican, Alabama Sen. Richard Shelby, likewise didn’t see Miers’ lack of time on the bench as a holdup. On Monday, he said the same factor is a cause for further scrutiny of Kagan.

You Decide – From time to time, I like to take a look at the Alvin Sun newspaper’s opinion section. They have a “View From the Right” column and a “View From the Left” column. One usually seems like fearful ranting, and the other is more logical thought. I will leave it to you to decide which description goes with which column.

Regards,

Jim

Waste From Overkill: The U.S. Navy Battle Fleet is Larger Than the Next 13 Navies Combined – Defense Secretary Robert Gates asked in a weekend speech at the Eisenhower Presidential Library in Abilene, Kansas, “Does the number of warships we have and are building really put America at risk when the U.S. battle fleet is larger than the next 13 navies combined, 11 of which belong to allies and partners? Is it a dire threat that by 2020 the United States will have only 20 times more advanced stealth fighters than China?”

Gates said defense spending was roughly twice the share of the U.S. economy in Eisenhower’s day — “but today, we face a very different set of American economic and fiscal realities.”

The U.S. defense budget has more than doubled since the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington and the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Since taking office in 2006, Gates has managed to cut some of the Pentagon’s major weapons systems, but efforts to kill other programs have been defeated under heavy pressure from military contractors and members of Congress.

Oil Drilling and Mining is Killing the Earth (and Us) – As oil continues to flood into the Gulf of Mexico, we are reminded of just how environmentally destructive humans can be. But this isn’t the first time a drilling rig has caused a major catastrophe. Here are some major disasters where people have completely ruined the environment:

Picher, Oklahoma
Called the most toxic place in the United States by the EPA, it was once the world’s richest lead and zinc mining field, and home to 20,000 people. Now fewer than 25 people remain. Acidic water seeped up from the underground mining tunnels and turned the creek that runs through the area red and poisonous. The deteriorating underground mines threaten to swallow the streets whole, and mountains of mining waste contaminated with lead loom over the empty town.

The Gates Of Hell, Turkmenistan
In the desert in Turkmenistan is a hole 328 ft. wide that has been on fire, continuously, for 38 years. In 1971, a Soviet drilling rig accidentally punched into a massive underground natural gas cavern, causing the ground to collapse and the entire drilling rig to fall in. Poisonous fumes began leaking from the hole. To head off a potential deadly catastrophe, the hole was set aflame.
The Berkeley Pit, Montana

The Berkeley Pit Lake is a copper mine filled with more than 40 billion gallons of acidic water and heavy metals. In November 1995, a flock of migrating snow geese landed there, resulting in the death of 342 birds.

The Sidoarjo Mud Volcano
In May 2006, gas drilling on the Indonesian island of Java triggered a “mud volcano” killing 13 people. Since then, hot sulfuric mud has been continually gushing from the ground in Sidoarjo. The steaming pool of mud already covers more than 25 square kilometers and is growing at an estimated 50,000 cubic meters–the equivalent of a dozen Olympic swimming pools–every day. Scientists expect the mud volcano to continue erupting for another 30 years.

Centralia, Pennsylvania
The massive coal fire underneath Centralia, Pennsylvania ignited sometime in 1962 and has been burning since. National awareness of Centralia’s unending environmental catastrophe came in 1981 when a 12-year-old boy fell into a 150-foot hole that suddenly appeared in his back yard. Most residents were relocated in 1984, and in 1992 the entire town was condemned.

West Virginia Mountain Top Removal Mines
Entire green mountains gone, streams filed with debris and sludge. They are so big that they are easily visible on Google Maps satellite view.

Nauru, Micronesia
Decades of strip mining for phosphorus have devastated over 80 percent of Nauru’s land, leaving it a barren wasteland of jagged limestone pinnacles up to 49 ft. high. With its reserves depleted, the country’s economy collapsed, and the devastation left by strip mining mostly eliminated the chance of establishing a tourist industry. Today Nauru has just a 150-meter-wide strip of fertile land left along one of its shores.

Top Republican Strategist Advises GOP To Prolong SCOTUS Fight To Block Obama Agenda – For Republicans, it’s about gaining power, not about what’s good for our country.

In an April 22 conference call with RNC members, activist Curt Levey, director of the conservative Committee for Justice, offered Republican operatives candid strategic advice, pressing them to put up a fight against even the most moderate of judges, and providing a glimpse of the GOP’s playbook for obstructing Obama nominees.

The crux of the GOP’s strategy is to use Obama’s nominee to wedge vulnerable Democratic senators away from the party, and drag the confirmation fight out until the August congressional recess, to eat up precious time Democrats need to round out their agenda.

“[I]t wouldn’t take much GOP resistance to push a final vote into early August,” Levey advised. “And, look, the closer we could get it to the election, frankly, the better. It would be great if we could push it past the August recess because that forces the red and purple state Democrats to have to go home and face their constituents.”

Republican Lie: Taxes Have Gone Up – Amid complaints about high taxes and calls for a smaller government, Americans paid their lowest level of taxes last year since Harry Truman’s presidency, a USA TODAY analysis of federal data found.

Some conservative political movements such as the “Tea Party” have criticized federal spending as being out of control. While spending is up, taxes have fallen to exceptionally low levels.

Federal, state and local taxes — including income, property, sales and other taxes — consumed 9.2% of all personal income in 2009, the lowest rate since 1950, the Bureau of Economic Analysis reports. That rate is far below the historic average of 12% for the last half-century. The overall tax burden hit bottom in December at 8.8.% of income before rising slightly in the first three months of 2010.

Look How Your Tax Bill has Changed Over the Years – This tax calculator will give you a rough idea of your federal tax bill — and where your tax money went — from 1940 through 2010, adjusted for inflation.

You’re Guilty – While Republicans decry the encroachments into the Constitution by the federal government’s social programs under a Democratic administration, some have no hesitancy in encroaching on the Bill of Rights in the name of national security. With the arrest of Faisal Shahzad, the Times Square bomber, they have renewed their clamor that terrorist suspects should not be given Miranda warnings or other constitutional rights; that they should be subjected to “enhanced interrogation”; and that they should be processed in military tribunals rather than civilian courts.

The entire argument is predicated upon the presumption of guilt. Let’s look at facts of this very case. For a considerable period of time, law enforcement (and I imagine a vast majority of the world) suspected the man seen on a security camera taking off and changing his shirt and looking furtively at the car with the bomb in it was the terrorist. He turned out to be completely innocent, but for some time, he was clearly a suspect. If arrested, should he have been given his Miranda warnings and other constitutional rights; should he have been subjected to “enhanced interrogation”; should he have been processed in a military tribunal, if they decided to proceed against him?

We cannot have two systems of justice depending on how strong the case is against the suspected terrorist — the person probably guilty forfeiting constitutional rights and the person possibly innocent retaining them. Neither anger nor fear is sufficient to diminish constitutional rights which protect us all — the innocent along with the guilty.

Regards,

Jim

First, the Good News

The worst month (most job losses) was January, 2008. What happened then? G. W. Bush left the White House, and it’s been improving ever since.

And now, the Bad Deeds:

How Did We Get So Much Debt?

‘Nuff said.

A Problem of the Economy, Then and Now –

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement.

We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. This is, I repeat, the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron. … Is there no other way the world may live?

Dwight D. Eisenhower
Speech to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, “The Chance for Peace”

Oklahoma Republican Used Taxpayer Dollars to Tout Reducing the Tax Burden on Americans – In a piece of campaign-like literature, which declares that the congresswoman wants to “reduce the tax burden on all Americans,” Rep. Mary Faillin (R-OK), complains of wasteful government spending.

The message would seem sincere, were it not for a block of small text noting that the congresswoman paid for the mailer with taxpayer funds.

Political Hacks – The Washington Post asked various luminaries to name one thing the world should just get rid of and political pundit Donna Brazile offered a suggestion that would afford her considerably more free time: get rid of the pundits:

“Get rid of the left-vs.-right commentators who are just out scoring points for their team. This sort of opinion-mongering is not only boring and predictable, it is destructive of the truth. If your only credentials are “GOP shill” or “Democratic hack,” you’ve no business cluttering up the airwaves or the op-ed pages. My momma always told me that if you don’t know what you’re talking about, it’s best to keep your mouth shut. That’s good advice.

Whom do we put in their place? I say replace the pundits with people who have genuine expertise — whether from their academic work, professional life or personal experience — on the key issues of the day. Instead of partisan talking heads or mad hatters from the “tea party” preaching their views on, say, health care and taxes, let’s hear from doctors and insurance professionals, or the number-crunchers from the Congressional Budget Office. They’re much better equipped to help viewers, listeners and readers wade through the facts, arguments and data.”

The White House Should Stop Pandering to Wall Street – The White House opposes three important financial reforms that have drawn bipartisan support in the Senate. It should reverse course.

1. Require the Fed to disclose the entities it lends to.
2. Require big banks to spin off their derivative businesses.
3. Cap the size of the biggest banks.

The White House dismisses all three of these three measures “populist,” as if that adjective is the equivalent of “irresponsible.” But in fact, these amendments are necessary in order to restore trust in our financial system. They would reduce Wall Street’s tendency to take huge risks, pocket the wins, and fob off the losses on the public.

Wall Street’s lobbyists have been fighting these amendments tooth and nail. The Street is willing to accept the Dodd bill that emerged from the Banking Committee, but no more. Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein told Congress last week he is “generally supportive” of the Dodd bill — which should be evidence enough of how weak it really is. The bi-partisan amendments just introduced would give it the backbone it needs. The White House should reverse course and support them. Senate Democrats (and Republicans) who want to be remembered for reining in rather than pandering to Wall Street should, too.

Republicans Insert Name ‘Kagan’ Into Speeches Opposing Obama’s Supreme Court Pick – Moments after news of President Obama’s choice for Supreme Court justice spread across Washington, congressional Republicans rushed to insert the name “Elena Kagan” into speeches opposing the President’s judicial nominee.

In the text of a speech released Sunday, hours before Ms. Kagan was selected, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) states, “I opposed the nomination of BLANK because I believe BLANK would lead the court down a dangerous path towards judicial activism. In short, I cannot think of a worse choice for Supreme Court than BLANK.”

The anti-Kagan speeches were generated last week before Ms. Kagan was nominated, GOP insiders said, by using a new iPhone app called iOppose.

Regards,

Jim

Lois “Brooksie” Hailey

1/18/1915 to 4/24/2010

Lois Brooks Hailey, 95, passed away April 24, 2010 at her son’s home in Friendswood, Texas. She was born on January 18, 1915, in the house where she would grow up in Reno, Nevada, to Charles W. Brooks and Harriet Peckham Brooks. Lois was preceded in death by her brother Ernest Brooks and four sisters; Ethel Gadda, Myrtle Sanford, Carol Lyons, and Louise Marsh.

As a tomboy and free spirit Lois learned early in life that she could be whatever she wanted to be. Lois attended Reno High School and then the University of Nevada, Reno where she received a bachelor’s degree in Education with a minor in Spanish. During her senior year, she took care of her ailing mother, who was stricken with cancer. She did not know it at the time, but cancer would come into her life again and again.

After graduation in 1936 from U of N, Lois took a teaching job in Minden, NV, south of Reno. She organized and directed the school band and gave private music lessons to interested students. She was also taught photography. Her plan was to save enough money to fulfill her dream of attending Julliard’s School of Music.

All was going as planned until June 7, 1939, when Jim Peckham, a cousin, convinced her to join him and learn to fly. She immediately fell in love with flying. On December 3, 1939, Lois flew her first solo flight and by April 17, 1940, she had her private license.

On December 1, 1940, Lois, Jim and Vic Spezia pooled their funds and bought a single engine Taylorcraft airplane. Since they were sharing the plane they divided up the time so that Jim and Vic got the plane during the week and Lois got it on weekends. Lois loved soaring over the Sierra Nevada mountains and taking photos.

Just as WWII was starting Lois bought out her flying partners. While still fulfilling her teaching duties, she kept flying by doing spot landings, cross-country, chandelles, eights, spins, and stalls. Finally, on July 11, 1941, with over 300 hours, she passed her commercial license test and became the first female pilot in the state of Nevada to do so.

As the war progressed, flying became restricted and fuel was rationed. She was grounded and on August 29, 1942; with just over 500 hours of flying time, she sold her Taylorcraft to a training school so it could be put to better use.

That didn’t keep her from flying though. In September of that year, her brother Ernest had started an unsuccessful run for Congress and she borrowed a plane to fly him around northern Nevada to campaign.

Because Lois had over 500 flying hours, she received an invitation to join the Women’s Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron (WAFS). She declined but then received a telegram from Jacqueline Cochran to meet her for an interview in San Francisco to join the Women’s Ferrying Training Detachment (WFTD). Both groups were part of the Army at the time.

Lois was interested in meeting Jacqueline, but not in joining the Army. So, she and a friend; who also got an invitation to join the WFTD, went to see what it was all about. Lois told them she wasn’t interested in joining and asked about meeting Jacqueline. They told her that Jacqueline was not there but she should take the physical just to see if she could pass. Well she passed and ended up joining. She joined the third WFTD class and started training on January 15, 1943.

After training for twelve months, including 6 months for tow target, she took on her next teaching job. While in the Sixth Tow Target squadron at Biggs Army Air Field in El Paso, Texas, she assisted in the training of Army personnel by towing a target behind her plane so that the men could learn how to use machine guns and larger artillery to hit moving targets. She also flew at night so they could learn how to use search lights and strafed infantry with tear gas.

In December of 1944, the WASP (Women Airforce Service Pilots – a merging of the WAFS and WFTD) were disbanded and all records were classified. The jobs they were performing were now going back to the men who were returning home.

As the end of the WASP drew near, Lois and her best WASP friend Holly, started training to get their civilian instructor licenses in El Paso. When they left the WASP, they joined Border Flying Service and started teaching GIs how to fly civilian aircraft.

By this time, Lois had accumulated over 1,300 flying hours. For the next five years she and Holly supported themselves as flight instructors. They even pooled their earnings to buy a house.

In 1946, she also became the first chairperson of the El Paso Chapter of the 99s, the International Organization of Women Pilots. In March of 1947, she soloed Sam Hailey, her husband to be and in June of that same year, she soloed her father at age 65. At this point, Lois had over 3,000 hours flying. During this time, she also wrote a column, “El Paso Air Lanes” for the El Paso Times newspaper.

Lois married Sam Hailey in 1947. In April of 1948, they became the proud parents of Charles Andrew Hailey. Their marriage didn’t last and they divorced when Andrew was two. She never remarried and raised her son alone.

In the fall of 1949, she gave up teaching flying and went back to teaching band and orchestra with the El Paso Independent School District. Lois’ teaching career in El Paso spanned 31 years and during this time she earned a Masters degree in Education with a minor in Music from Texas Western College (which is now the University of Texas of El Paso) in 1953.

She typically taught at three different schools each day for a given school year and provided instruction at more than 10 different schools. At Austin High School, she taught a course in aeronautics, but most classes were band or orchestra. During that time she continued to fly, but by 1978, she had only added about 600 hours to her pilot log.

In 1980, three years after the WASP were finally recognized as veterans by an act passed by the Congress, she retired from teaching. During retirement, she continued to support flying through membership in the 99s and volunteering at the War Eagles Museum near El Paso. She also attended WASP reunions until they disbanded in 2008. She also traveled to other activities honoring the WASP.

Lois was inducted into the El Paso Aviation Hall of Fame in 1985 and the Texas Aviation Hall of Fame in 2004. On the May 23, 2005, Lois was honored by the El Paso County Commissioners Court for her WASP service, her services to El Paso ISD, and becoming the first chairperson of the El Paso chapter of the 99s. On March 10 of this year, she, and her fellow WASP were awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in Washington, DC for their service to the country during WWII.

Lois is survived by her son, Charles “Andy” Hailey, his wife Mary and granddaughter Dawn of Friendswood, TX and her stepbrother George Peckham of Fort Myers, Florida.