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to Karl and Christine: Evangelicals haven't become 'green' as much as the younger evangelicals have read the Bible and see the reality of environmental destruction as an abomination of desolation upon creation. The environment is another area where the so-called 'ends of the spectrum' agree: except for profiteers and maniacs no one will speak against protecting the envronment = our Mother Earth.
It is just a dream but, Francis Boyle for Supreme Court Justice.
Watching Innocent Iraqis Die
By Robert Parry
April 9, 2010
Not only did a U.S. military helicopter gunship mow them down amid macho jokes and chuckling – after mistaking a couple of cameras for weapons – but the American attackers then blew away several Iraqis who arrived in a van and tried to take one of the wounded newsmen to a hospital. Two children in the van were badly wounded.
“Well, it’s their fault for bringing their kids into a battle,” one American remarked.
The videotaped incident – entitled “Collateral Murder” by Wikileaks – occurred on July 12, 2007, in the midst of President Bush’s much-heralded troop “surge,” which the U.S. news media has widely credited for reducing violence in Iraq and bringing something close to victory for the United States.
But the U.S. press corps rarely mentions that the “surge” represented one of the bloodiest periods of the war. Beyond the horrific – and untallied – death toll of Iraqis, more than 1,000 U.S. soldiers died during Bush’s “surge” of an additional 30,000 troops into Iraq.
It’s also unclear that the “surge” deserves much if any credit for the gradual decline in Iraqi violence, which had already reached turning points in 2006 with the death of al-Qaeda leader Musab al-Zarqawi and the U.S.-funded Sunni Awakening against al-Qaeda in Iraq.
Gates Defends Soldiers in Iraq Shooting Video, Says Footage Lacks Context
FOXNews.com
Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Sunday defended the soldiers shown firing on a group of people near Baghdad in a classified military video released last week, saying the troops were caught in a "split-second" situation and the video doesn't show the "broader picture."
The broader picture is of course, that this was/is an illegal war of aggression based on lies from the get go. Gates/Obama & Co. have said that dead Iraqi civilians don't amount to diddily squat.
How come everyone agrees there should be laws to protect us from drunk drivers, yet the banksters try to argue there should be no laws to protect us from their greed driven drunkenous? In both cases the public at large suffers from the pile ups they cause.
Re: Financial crisis
I find it amusing when the banks claim to loose money (and ask for a bail out). How can you loose something that did not exist in the first place? It's all created out of thin air...
Careful with the prepositions there, Carl!
You asked the Mother Jones guy about "reform that works FOR Wall Street". The current system works JUST FINE for Wall Street, thanks.
What we NEED is reform ON Wall Street that works FOR Main Street!
Arbiters Wait on Declaring End to Recession
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/13/business/economy/13recession.html?ref=business
"For the record, this recession isn’t over yet."
'Ya think?!
Paul Krugman continues to argue that "small" is just as dangerous as "big" if banks aren't regulated:
"Georgia on My Mind"
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/12/opinion/12krugman.html?ref=opinion
Excerpt:
"
And for all the concern about banks that are too big to fail, Georgia suffered, if anything, from a proliferation of small banks. Actually, the worst offenders in the lending spree tended to be relatively small start-ups that attracted customers by playing to a specific community. Thus Georgian Bank, founded in 2001, catered to the state’s elite, some of whom were entertained on the C.E.O.’s yacht and private jet. Meanwhile, Integrity Bank, founded in 2000, played up its “faith based” business model — it was featured in a 2005 Time magazine article titled “Praying for Profits.” Both banks have now gone bust.
So what’s the moral of this story? As I see it, it’s a caution against silver-bullet views of reform, the idea that cracking down on just one thing — in particular, breaking up big banks — will solve our problems. The case of Georgia shows that bad behavior by many small banks can do as much damage as misbehavior by a few financial giants.
And the contrast between Texas and Georgia suggests that consumer protection is an essential element of reform. By all means, let’s limit the power of the big banks. But if we don’t also protect consumers from predatory lending, there are plenty of smaller players — both small banks and the nonbank “mortgage originators” responsible for many of the worst subprime abuses — that will step in and fill the gap."
WAMU Investigation Critical to Financial Reform:
"U.S. Faults Regulators Over a Bank"
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/12/business/12wamu.html?ref=business
Frank Rich had a wonderful column in the Sunday NYTimes. It expands on comments by Monday's first guest:
"No One Is to Blame for Anything"
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/11/opinion/11rich.html
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04022010/watch2.html
The more equal the society, they found, the longer its people live, while the most unequal countries have more homicide, more obesity, more mental illness, more teen pregnancy, more high-school dropouts, and more people in prison. The United States, they report, has the greatest inequality of income of any major developed country. That's the betrayal of the American promise.
I'm a journalist, not an epidemiologist. But I've been listening to America for a long time now, and I've come to understand that what the richest and strongest among us want for their families is what most all members of society want for theirs, too: a home, steady work, enough money for a comfortable life and secure old age, the means to cope with illness and other misfortunes, and the happiness of living freely as citizens without fear.
A society whose economic system cannot make those opportunities widely available is in deep trouble, the dreams of its people mocked and denied.
-Bill Moyers
Well, hopefully Blankenship will have to pay for not keeping the mine up to code and safety standards. I think if he wanted to become governor, this just sunk his chances. Prayers are going out to the families.
Is this activity a truly Christian way of life?
http://www.thememoryhole.org/war/thisiswar/
http://www.pdamerica.org/articles/news/2010-03-29-08-32-45-news.php
My old computer died on me and so I needed a new computer. It seems more complicated and intricate for me but I will try to adjust.
@Zero G: Im still not convinced. I can see steel beams weakening with thousands of gallons of flaming fuel cascading down them. One floor falls onto another, pancaking. I assumed that the burning fuel was cascading down the beams. Assuming that, it fell exactly as I would have expected. WE had a high rise with a fire here. It didn't fall, but it was felled because it was no longer safe. And that involved a lot less heat and flaming fuel than did 911,
Harry,
I initially thought that the idea of controlled demolition of the WTC towers was part of disinformation campaign made to cover up the bin Laden-US connection.
However, the buildings did not fall as one would have expected. They fell into the steel infrastructure, or as Richard Gage puts it, "into the path of greatest resistance."
Prior to 9/11 no steel framed highrise had ever been brought down by fire. That day three steel framed highrises failed. The fires were not hot enough to melt steel, especially at the lower floors.
Check Richard Gage's presentation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8wSquKIBog&feature=PlayList&p=CC38E1B63B3EA74D&playnext_from=PL&playnext=1&index=6
Our breathless friend trying to convince us all to not attack Iran by calling progressive radio has it all wrong. One he is preaching to the choir and two it is not the question nukes that will be the bloody flag that causes any potential invasion. It will most likely be a stupid statement about switching from oil-dollars to oil-euros.
In spite of the “Brave beyond the point of foolhardy” posturing of Iran’s tin-pot version of GWBush, nothing said either way the idiot will ever mean that Iran won’t figure out what goes into making a nuke. It only takes crude tech and high school calculus to produce a true nuke. It takes even less to pack a conventional warhead with low to medium-grade radioactive materials. The issue is that the technology cat is outta the bag . . . AND this is not about Iran or any bad actors at the national level. Nations have reason to not piss off other folk . . . Like their own destruction or the loss of their own dirt.
Now it is about keeping radioactive materials outta the hand of non-governmental types.
Focus needs to be directed at the fear-filled folk of an authoritarian bent especially those in office . . . He NEEDs to call Coburn and McChinless . . . Of course, they won’t be listening BUT it is fearful tiny-hearted fear-posturing wimps like that need to get the message.
www.pahrumplife.org writes: I would like to share an email letter written to Nevada’s Senator Reid after a missed opportunity to speak with him due to weather conditions and his subsequent late arrival to a Meet and Greet session at the local Democratic Headquarters. And I was thinking that it would be educational and constructive if others would share letters they have written to their congressmen and others in government, especially on these “anything goes” Fridays. Cutting, pasting, signing and sending letters en masse to government offices on key issues is a way the people can change government.
Here’s my unmade speech emailed to Senator Harry Reid:
Hi Senator Reid
Sorry I missed you on Monday, April 5, at the Democratic Headquarters in Pahrump. The weather-induced traffic coming over the hill made a long day for you and your supporters. I thank you for making the effort and hope to be able to talk with you on some future occasion. I was hoping to get to talk to you on Monday about some of our concerns here in Pahrump but was unable to do so because of previous engagements. We had a good time chatting with the folks at the Democratic Headquarters here in Pahrump for a few hours awaiting your arrival. I am including the statement that I wished to make to you on Monday, the following:
My question is where do we go from here? But let me tell you why I ask that question.
· We are worried for the future of Pahrump. Neither the privateers nor the government can handle the contamination now. How do they purport to handle the much greater problem of the tremendous load of sewage, rife with high BOD (Biochemical Oxygen Demand) coliforms and antidepressant drugs and other psychotic drugs that would come from the prison? We are worried about our aquifer and about what might be blowing in the wind as effluent sprays dry on lawns and are cast into the air.
All the best
re: 911: I think the gov't was at least guilty by omission via stupidity and incompetence. I don't think the buildings had demolition charges set in them. They fell like I would have expected them to fall.
Yes, Peter B - shouting is the Republican method of communication. It's all they know.
It makes no sense, not even the fact that the BBC announced the demise of WTC 7 twenty minutes before the fact...
Netanyahu Cancels trip to Obama's Nuclear Summitby Douglas Hamilton and Dan Williams
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has cancelled a planned trip to Washington next week for President Barack Obama's 47-country nuclear security conference.
He made the decision after learning Egypt and Turkey intended to raise the issue of Israel's assumed atomic arsenal at the meeting, a senior government official said on Friday.
Somehow the second paragraph didn't come out italisized, despite trying to edit it to do so...the first paragraph worked.
Phunny, mentioning Cass Sunstein after having Richard Gage on the air: