Sunday News Roundup

Good Morning Conflucians!!!

What a week. From the lamest of car bomb attempts in NY to oil leaking toward NOLA to tornados seemingly everywhere else, all while Washington elite have fun and party with their new found power and nearly unlimited riches. It’s definitely one of those weeks where you’d rather just stay in bed. Or at least do some serious drinking. Wonder what the new week will have in store for us. Can’t be worse. Oh, why on earth did I just say that. Let’s see what happening around the news.

NY Mayor is feeling very luck the bomb attempt was so pathetic:

A crude car bomb of propane, gasoline and fireworks was discovered in a smoking Nissan Pathfinder in the heart of Times Square on Saturday evening, prompting the evacuation of thousands of tourists and theatergoers on a warm and busy night. Although the device had apparently started to detonate, there was no explosion, and early on Sunday the authorities were still seeking a suspect and motive.

“We are very lucky,” Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said at a 2:15 a.m. press conference. “We avoided what could have been a very deadly event.”

A large swath of Midtown — from 43rd Street to 48th Street, and from Sixth to Eighth Avenues — was closed for much of the evening after the Pathfinder was discovered just off Broadway on 45th Street. Several theaters and stores, as well as the South Tower of the New York Marriott Marquis Hotel, were evacuated.

In a move that can only be described as signaling a shift from politics to comedy, Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is headed to the US to talk at a nuclear non proliferation conference:

Ahmadinejad will address the the United Nations Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty review conference in New York on Monday, spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast told Iran’s News Network.

Ahmadinejad told reporters in Tehran before his departure that the NPT has failed.

“The biggest threat to the world today is the production and stockpiling of nuclear weapons,” he said.

“Unfortunately the [International Atomic Energy Agency] in the past 40 years has not been successful in its mission. We have no disarmament or nonproliferation and some countries have even procured the nuclear bomb during this period,” Ahmadinejad said Sunday.

In another clear entry to the comedy circuit, President Obama is urging congress to act quickly on campaign finance reform:

Corporations will gain even more influence over American politics and government this year, President Obama said Saturday, unless Congress acts quickly to stop campaign spending by big government contractors and to force corporate donors to reveal who they are in broadcast campaign ads.

“The American people have a right to know when some group like “Citizens for a Better Future’ is actually funded by ‘Corporations for Weaker Oversight’,” Obama said during his weekly radio address.

Who knew, but so far I’m finding the news very funny this morning. Let’s see what else is happening. Nope, the comedy just ended, there was s correspondents dinner yesterday evening. I watched quite a bit of it. It was probably the worst TV I’ve seen since the GS/Wall Street sponsored 2008/2009 election show. Here’s CNN’s wrong take on it:

President Obama’s punch lines targeted a diverse group Saturday — from teen sensations the Jonas Brothers to comedian Jay Leno, whom he described as the only person with worse ratings than his.

“Jonas Brothers are here tonight,” the president said at the annual White House Correspondents’ dinner. Daughters “Sasha and Malia are huge fans. But boys, don’t get any ideas. Two words: predator drones.”

Obama said he was happy to address the crowd before Leno, who headlined the annual event.

“Glad to see the only person whose ratings fell more than mine last year. … I’m also glad that I’m speaking first,” he said.

“We’ve seen what happens when someone takes the time slot after Leno,” the president added, referring to comedian Conan O’Brien leaving NBC after an unsuccessful stint hosting “The Tonight Show.”

Oh it was bad. Embarrassingly bad. Actually the worst I’ve ever seen. In fact, I would say it was so bad, it was historic.

FBI is said to be investigating possible bribes from Massy, owner of the WV mine (though they deny it):

NPR News has learned that the Mine Safety and Health Administration is one subject of a federal criminal investigation surrounding the explosion of the Upper Big Branch mine in West Virginia three weeks ago — a disaster that killed 29 miners. The probe also looks at Massey Energy, the owner of the mine.

Sources familiar with the investigation say the FBI is looking into possible bribery of employees of the Mine Safety and Health Administration, the federal agency that inspects and regulates mining. The sources say FBI agents are also exploring potential criminal negligence on the part of Massey Energy, the owner of the Upper Big Branch mine.

Here’s a brief summary of what’s happening with the oil spill. First from Reuters:

Crude oil is pouring out at a rate of up to 5,000 barrels (210,000 gallons or 955,000 liters) a day. Forecasters predict the spill will soon invade the coastlines of Mississippi, Alabama and northwest Florida.

So far, efforts to stop the flow of oil have failed. If unchecked, it will take about 50 days for the leak to eclipse the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska, the worst U.S. oil spill, which sent 10.8 million gallons (49 million liters) of crude oil into Alaska’s Prince William Sound.

The accident forced Obama to put on hold politically sensitive plans to expand offshore U.S. oil drilling, which he unveiled last month, partly to try to win Republican support for climate change legislation.

Obama said domestic oil drilling remained an important part of the U.S. energy policy, but insisted it must be done responsibly.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said he told BP to “work harder and faster and smarter to get the job done.”

“We cannot rest and we will not rest until BP permanently seals the wellhead and cleans up every drop of oil,” Salazar said in Louisiana, where Governor Bobby Jindal has declared a state of emergency.

So, they’re not resting. Nope. You didn’t see them resting last night. They’re on the job. And a hell of a job it is too.

Discovery has a bit about it along with some nice details of the chemistry behind it all:

Among the plethora of poisonous chemicals that you can absorb into your body by just breathing or getting oil on your skin include benzene, toluene and xylene. These can cause everything from a quick sensation of drunkenness (coupled with hangover-from-hell symptoms), to cancers and other diseases of the kidneys, liver, bone marrow, lungs and central nervous system.

Even your skin isn’t safe, because the oil can cause chemical burns, Warnock said.

“You don’t want this on you,” said Warnock. “You don’t want to be breathing it.”

Other sure signs the oil spill has arrived are a sheen on the water, sticky tar balls on the shore, oiled wildlife on the beach and rafts of debris caught up in the oil.

“As this oil comes along it’s like a big, sticky sponge that’s picking things up,” said Christopher Reddy, oil spill researcher at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. At the same time, every hour that the oil is exposed to the air and water, it is rapidly being “weathered,” Reddy explained.

We are definitely hurting. And it’s just beginning. It’s heading to Florida too by the way. But Jindal is on the case:

In an afternoon news conference with Obama administration officials, Jindal said he was worried that miles of booms deployed offshore are “not effective” in preventing oil from damaging coastal areas, wildlife and the livelihoods of fishermen. He announced that he is seeking to mobilize 6,000 National Guard soldiers and airmen for 90 days of duty to help provide security and support the response to the oil spill.

“I do have concerns that BP’s current resources are not adequate” to meet three main challenges from the disaster: stopping the leak of oil from a damaged undersea well, protecting the coast and carrying out a swift cleanup.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, who visited the area with Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and other federal officials, stressed that BP, which owns the leaking oil, is “the responsible party” under U.S. law and is “required to fund the cost of cleanup operations.” She urged the company to “leverage additional assets” for the effort.

“We have anticipated and planned for a worst-case scenario from day one,” Napolitano said. She said the administration is using all available resources to respond to the disaster.

Shortly after this, they all went to a big giant party.

Let’s switch gears. It’s looking like Japan is heading to space, but in a greener way:

Could this be the start of greener space programs? Next month, Japan is launching a spacecraft powered by solar sails into deep space. The Ikaros, as the vessel has been dubbed, will take to the skies on May 18, 2010.

Ikaros stands for “Interplanetary Kite-craft Accelerated by Radiation of the Sun.” The name is also a reference to the Greek myth of Icarus, a young man who, with his father Daedalus, attempted to escape exile in Crete by fashioning wings of feathers and wax. According to the myth, Icarus flew too close to the sun, and the heat melted the wax in his wings, causing him to plummet to his death. We certainly hope Ikarus the spaceship meets a happier fate when the rocket that carries it takes off from the Tanegashima Space Center.

Its creators call the Ikaros a “space yacht.” Its 46-foot sails are thinner than human hair; they will propel the vessel by harnessing the pressure of sunlight particles as they collide with the sails. The Ikarus is also outfitted will thin solar cells to help generate electricity.

Here’s an interesting article about how the politics of immigration reform has shifted to the right since Democrats took over congress:

As protesters in 80 U.S. cities demanded an overhaul Saturday of the nation’s immigration laws, fueled in part by anger over a measure enacted two weeks ago in Arizona, a new proposal by Senate Democrats shows how far the debate has shifted to the right since Congress took up the issue in 2007, advocates on both sides said.

The Democrats’ legislative “framework” includes a slew of new immigration enforcement measures aimed at U.S. borders and workplaces. It would further expand the 20,000-member Border Patrol; triple fines against U.S. employers that hire illegal immigrants; and, most controversially, require all American workers — citizens and non-citizens alike — to get new Social Security cards linked to their fingerprints to ease work eligibility checks.

The plan’s emphasis on “securing the border first” before taking steps to allow many of an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants living in the United States to pay fines and apply for legal status was plainly a gesture to Republicans. Even so, no Republican is supporting it, not even Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), who has been working with Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) in bipartisan talks over the issue for months.

Wow, these new Dems have shifted to the right. Surprise, surprise. Oh wait, no I’m not, we’ve been talking about this new party and the faux progressives for years.

For more humor, Dems are asking the WH to stop bashing DC so much:

In a closed-door meeting on Thursday, Nancy Pelosi’s campaign chief and Majority Whip Jim Clyburn asked David Axelrod if the White House might be so kind as to stop talking so much trash about Washington, D.C. Their concern? Persistent White House attacks on D.C. culture reflect far worse on the Democrats, who are in charge, than Republicans. So they asked if the president could stop blaming “Washington” and “Congress” for everything and start blaming the GOP instead. According to Politico, David Axelrod basically told them to stop whining.

That cracks me up.

Big dawg is urging that the climate bill should come first:

Former president Bill Clinton said Wednesday that he’s hopeful climate bill negotiations will get back on track — even though he understands the frustrations of both Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Democrats looking to move forward on immigration.

“It would help a lot if they got something done because if you price carbon, then the industries of America that have the cash would respond to it. Most of the big manufacturers that I deal with and industrial users would want a deal very badly,” Clinton told POLITICO.

And here some interesting news. The Republican party has a record number of women running for house seats:

Nearly two years after Sarah Palin became the Republican Party’s first female vice presidential nominee, record numbers of Republican women are running for House seats, driving the overall count of women running for both the House and the Senate to a new high.

The surge in female candidates has taken place largely under the radar. The previous high came in 1992, the Year of the Woman, when the percentage of women in Congress reached double digits for the first time. That year, 222 women filed to run for the House and 29 for the Senate.

So far this year, 239 women are candidates for the House and 31 for the Senate, according to data from the Rutgers University’s Center for American Women and Politics. Among them, a record 107 Republican women have filed to run for a House seat, according to the National Republican Congressional Committee — surpassing a previous GOP high of 91 in 1994 and a sharp increase from the 65 who ran in 2008. And those numbers could grow. In each year that Rutgers has been keeping track, the final tally has exceeded the late April figure by more than 20.

“It looks like it is going to be a record year,” said Gilda Morales, who crunches the data for the Rutgers women’s center. “What’s bringing these numbers up is Republican women.”

The jump in female GOP candidates mirrors the enthusiasm among Republicans in general, said Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (Wash.), who leads efforts to recruit female candidates for the NRCC. “I just think overall candidate recruitment is going well for the Republicans after two cycles where it’s been more difficult for us.”

Anything to get the percentage up is a good thing. More power to them. I wish they would be on the side of women’s rights. Then again, I wish the Dems were on the side of women’s rights.

That’s a bit of what’s happening today. Chime in with what you’re seeing today.

Sunday News Roundup

Good Morning Conflucians!!

It’s been an amazing week with Blago and all the unseemly Chicago political dirt pointing to Obama and his henchmen at one end and Goldman Sachs and related financial revelations, or more accurately well timed releases of old news well after the damage was done for maximum benefit also pointing to Obama and his henchmen at the other. The corporatists and their puppet have been having a wild ride and collecting your money all the way. Ah, good times. Well, for those on the take.

It appears the efforts towards a bipartisan climate bill are collapsing:

In one of the proudest moments of his long legislative career, Senator John F. Kerry was poised to unveil a long-awaited climate change bill tomorrow that would put a price on carbon emissions and provide billions of dollars in incentives to industry to drastically cut greenhouse gases.

Kerry had brought business on board, and even forged something rare in Washington, a bipartisan compromise with a key Republican leader.

Then his effort ran headlong into the Senate’s partisan snarl, and last night the release of the bill was postponed indefinitely.

Senator Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican who had allied himself with Kerry on the issue, abruptly abandoned the effort last night, saying he was irate that the Senate’s Democratic leadership might proceed with a controversial immigration bill first.

“Moving forward on immigration — in this hurried, panicked manner — is nothing more than a cynical political ploy,’’ Graham said. “I know from my own personal experience the tremendous amounts of time, energy, and effort that must be devoted to this issue to make even limited progress.’’

Harry Reid signaled last week that he wanted to proceed with immigration reform before this climate bill. They had signaled just after the health insurance bailout catastrophe that they would likely postpone immigration reform until next year. I assume they got blowback from that and are pushing it forward. But who knows. This may be quite the political blunder, but it’s hard to imagine Republicans’ were really going to play along with a climate change bill anyway.

Though it’s been covered here this week, more fun bits about GS are worth monitoring. Here’s more WP on the GS emails cheering the housing market decline:

As the U.S. housing market began its epic fall nearly three years ago, top executives at Wall Street powerhouse Goldman Sachs cheered the large financial gains the firm stood to make on certain bets it had placed, according to newly released documents.

The documents show that the firm’s executives were celebrating earlier investments calculated to benefit if housing prices fell, a Senate investigative committee found. In an e-mail sent in the fall of 2007, for example, Goldman executive Donald Mullen predicted a windfall because credit-rating companies had downgraded mortgage-related investments, which caused losses for investors.

“Sounds like we will make some serious money,” Mullen wrote.

Lawmakers said the internal e-mails, released Saturday by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, contradict what they said are Goldman’s assertions that the bank was not trying to profit from the decline of the housing market in 2007 and was merely seeking to protect itself if prices collapsed.

The clash between Washington and Wall Street is intensifying ahead of the scheduled testimony this week of Goldman chief executive Lloyd C. Blankfein and fellow executives, which itself comes as Congress weighs legislation that would overhaul financial regulation in the United States. President Obama and congressional Democrats are pushing hard to finalize legislation that would much more strictly regulate the activities of Goldman and other Wall Street firms. The full Senate could begin to debate financial reform legislation — already passed by the House — as early as Monday.

“Investment banks such as Goldman Sachs . . . were self-interested promoters of risky and complicated financial schemes that helped trigger the crisis,” said Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), chairman of the Senate panel. “They bundled toxic mortgages into complex financial instruments, got the credit rating agencies to label them as AAA securities and sold them to investors, magnifying and spreading risk throughout the financial system and all too often betting against the instruments they sold and profiting at the expense of their clients.”

Here’s my favorite part:

“We did not make a significant amount of money in the mortgage market,” Lucas van Praag, a Goldman spokesman, said Saturday. Van Praag said Goldman, which turned over 18 million pages of documents to the Senate committee, lost $1.2 billion in its mortgage business in 2008. “As a firm, we obviously could not have been significantly net short since we lost money in a declining housing market,” van Praag said.

Levin said the documents obtained by his committee contradict Goldman’s assertion that it didn’t seek to profit from the housing downturn. “Goldman made a lot of money by betting against the mortgage market,” Levin said.

With friends like these. Here’s something to ponder, compare the damage done to this country by our own financial corporations and their government henchmen over recent years vs. the money we wasted on our unjustified and probably illegal war in Iraq. Which is the greater threat and thus more of an enemy of the country? Here’s another thought exercise, if you put this and the last corporatist puppet presidents back to back and the damage done on their watch, esp. debt racked up, and compare that to all the years and money spent on the cold war, which has been worse for the country, the cold war with the old Soviet Union, or Bush-Obama? Sadly I don’t think Bush-Obama/Corporatist bleeding of this country is over yet. After all, the insurance companies haven’t had the better part of their cut yet. Stay tuned.

And speaking of, what do both parties have in common, why donations from Wall Street of course:

Although painting Republicans as pawns of Wall Street is a cornerstone of the Democratic strategy to overhaul financial regulation, financial interests have given campaign money generously to both political parties for years.

“No one party has any firm hold on righteousness here,” said David Levinthal, a spokesman for the Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks donations.

In the past two election cycles, when Democrats controlled Congress, the Democrats benefited most. So far in the 2010 cycle, the finance/insurance/real estate sector has given $65.2 million, or 56 percent of its contributions, to Democrats. Republicans have received $51.7 million.

People and political committees affiliated with securities and investment banking interests have been particularly kind to Democrats, giving them $21.7 million, or 63 percent of their donations so far.

Commercial banks, though, prefer Republicans; they’ve given GOP hopefuls $4.7 million so far, or 54 percent of their total.

In recent days, critics and journalists have been asking lawmakers to return certain funds, notably those from Goldman Sachs. Most lawmakers find the suggestion ridiculous.

“This is our system,” Cornyn said. “I think the system needs more transparency, so people can more easily reach their own conclusions. But if you didn’t have this system, the alternative would be to have taxpayers fund elections, and I’m not in favor of that.”

Ah, so John Cornyn doesn’t want taxpayers to fund elections. He wants GS and insurance companies and big oil, etc. to fund it. So that the taxpayers can then give all their money to bail them all out I guess. You know John, I think if we had to fund elections, we’d save money. If anyone votes for an incumbent, they need their head examined.

And with all that’s going on, and being more tied to Obama and his gang, here comes the koolaid sipping Joe Klein to say:

The anti-Obama forces, it seems clear, are rooted in classic American know-nothing populism–nativist, isolationist, paranoid.

He uses as his example for today Drudge saying really crazy things about the new $100 dollar bill. Yea, Drudge is nuts. What else is new. But notice how Joe ties that in with anyone who is anti-Obama. Keep sipping Joe. Notice anything else going on in the news Joe? You might want to put down that drug. Just maybe there are actual rational reasons for being against Obama.

In the technical universe, a big earthquake hit with Facebook making some massive changes. The gist of what they’re doing is to reach out throughout the internet and figure out everything you do and who you’re connected too, and bring that into Facebook. You know, for your own good, so you can more easily find people and manage your identity. The last bit is of course the money line. As in irony and big money for them. Here are a few article on the subject.

Slate has an article about how their planning on taking over the internet:

Your favorite Web sites are now plugged in to the Facebook brain. On the streaming music service Pandora, you can now press “Like” on any song you hear; that preference will get shuttled back into the social network, alerting your friends to your newfound musical interest. You can do the same for a movie on IMDb, a restaurant on Yelp, a news story on CNN.com, cosmetics at Sephora.com, jeans at Levi’s, and dozens of other products and services all over the Web, including everything published here on Slate. These tiny, new “like” buttons look quite friendly and unassuming. Don’t be fooled. They’re the vanguard of Facebook’s brilliant, unstoppable plan to catalog the entire Web, and there’s a good chance that over the next few years they’ll help the social network remake everything online.

Techcrunch has an article about Facebook’s misuse of the term open for their open graph announcement (the taking over the internet bit again):

Grab the popcorn. There is a serious nerd fight brewing.

Following Facebook’s big Open Graph announcements at f8 a couple days ago, many of the leaders of the so-called “open web” are taking exception to Facebook’s use of the term “open” for its grandiose plans. While the Open Graph may be a lot of things, it is not open, is the feeling many of them have, as Erick laid out earlier.

Specifically, most of them are targeting the new Like button that is appearing everywhere on the web (including on TechCrunch). It’s an obvious target as it’s the most visible part (at least so far) of the Open Graph protocol. Investor/Hunch co-founder Chris Dixon is leading the effort for a new OpenLike button (though he wants someone else to be in charge). And Google’s Open Web Advocate, Chris Messina, has already ripped apart Facebook’s Like button in a blog post.

And the best for last, BuzzMachine has a thoughtful article about how what Facebook is doing is the opposite of what we want:

My identity already exists online. It is my name, my email address(s), my URL(s) (for my blog, work, etc.), my Twitter account, my Flickr, my YouTube, my reputation culled from various services, and more. It is distributed. I have control over most of that.

What’s needed versus the present? Three things, I think:

* Organization. As Google organized our information, the war here is to organize us.

* Verification. No one, I hope, wants to verify as passports do. But Facebook has a leg ahead of everyone else on nearly verified identity simply because of how its service works: fake identities tend to be ejected from the bloodstream because they are irrelevant and irritating; Facebook is about real identities and real relationships and the one feeds the other.

* Connections. That, I think, is what Mark Zuckerberg means when he talks about making things social, about the social graph. He wants to link us to each other and information and that enhances our identities (what do I like and do and think….).

Fine. But I don’t think Facebook approached that opportunity asking first, “What can we do for the world of users online,” and second, “How can Facebook benefit?” If Facebook adds value, I have no objection to it benefiting, just as I believe Google should benefit by organizing our information and creating platforms; it’s what makes that benefit sustainable. But Facebook clearly asked the questions in the wrong order: It figured out what would benefit it most and then we get a few dividends: we get to tell our friends what we like and find out what our friends like.

But in the process, Facebook controls our identities with no relationship to our true identities online — that list above from email addresses to blogs to photos. Indeed, I’d argue that Facebook separates us from our true identities, for that is in Facebook’s favor; it gives Facebook control.

And of course, just as you’d suspect, all this stuff happens by default. And to opt out is a bit of work. Here’s an article about how to control these issues and opt out of the new features. I’ll write more about these and other privacy related issues.

That’s a brief summary of the week. There is a lot more so please chime in with other things you’ve found and with what’s on your mind.

Sunday News Roundup

Good Morning Conflucians!! Let’s see what’s brewing in the news.

A secret memo from Gates was leaked:

U.S Defence Secretary Robert Gates has warned in a secret memo to senior White House officials that the United States does not have an effective long-term strategy for dealing with Iran’s nuclear programme.

The three page document, written in January, set off intense efforts within the Pentagon, White house and America’s intelligence agecies to come up with new options, including the use of the military, according to the New York Times newspaper.

Mr Gates outlined a number of concerns including the absence of an effective strategy if Iran managed to assemble all the major components for a nuclear weapon but stopped short of putting together a missile.

In that case, the Times said, Iran could remain a signatory of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty while still becoming a “virtual” nuclear weapons state.

The memorandum also urged new thinking about also urged the White House to consider how to contain Iran if it decided to produce a weapon and how to deal with the possibility that one of the terror groups supported by Iran might get hold of a nuclear weapon.

Apparently Goldman Sachs had 9 months warning from SEC:

Goldman Sachs Group Inc., which fell 13 percent yesterday after U.S. regulators announced fraud accusations, didn’t disclose that it was warned nine months ago that investigators wanted to bring a case, people with direct knowledge of the talks said.

Goldman Sachs responded to the so-called Wells notice from the Securities and Exchange Commission within months and met with the agency officials trying to fend off the civil lawsuit, said the people, who declined to be identified because the talks weren’t public. In March, the New York-based firm said it was cooperating with regulators’ “requests for information.”

“The question is whether a general disclaimer like that is rendered misleading because you left out the specifics,” said Adam Pritchard, a former SEC attorney who teaches law at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. “The prudent, conservative choice is to disclose more,” because omissions can lead to shareholder lawsuits, Pritchard said.

Lucas van Praag, a spokesman for Goldman Sachs in New York, declined to comment.

In a stunning non story, Palin makes hay out of Obama saying we’re a super power like it or not. Really, that’s the best the right can come up with:

Sarah Palin criticized President Barack Obama on Saturday for saying America is a military superpower “whether we like it or not,” saying she was taken aback by his comment.

“I would hope that our leaders in Washington, D.C., understand we like to be a dominant superpower,” the former Alaska governor said. “I don’t understand a world view where we have to question whether we like it or not that America is powerful.”

Obama said earlier this week that the United States must do its best to resolve conflicts around the world before they grow too serious.

“It is a vital national security interest of the United States to reduce these conflicts because whether we like it or not, we remain a dominant military superpower, and when conflicts break out, one way or another we get pulled into them,” Obama said. “And that ends up costing us significantly in terms of both blood and treasure.”

That’s pretty lame of Palin and the right. Hello, it’s a figure of speech. As in, we have to face facts here people, we’re a superpower, so we’ve got some responsibilities. Duh.

WW I buried arsenal uncovered at the nations capital:

A year ago, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers thought chances of finding any more chemical weapons in the front yard of a home in the nation’s capital were slim. So they removed an airtight protective structure from the World War I munitions cleanup site. Then, they uncovered a small arsenal.

The Corps discovered an open flask containing traces of the chemical agent mustard, another blistering agent called lewisite and munition shells with more digging near a one-time Army chemical warfare station at American University.

More recently, protective structures were rebuilt and digging continued. Workers found a larger jar with mustard, glassware that was smoking and fuming, scrap munitions and a shell containing a tear gas agent.

The Army Corps has removed more than 500 pounds of glassware and scrap metal and nearly 750 barrels of soil, some of it contaminated with chemical agents, said spokeswoman Joyce Conant.

“It’s a much larger disposal area than we predicted,” project manager Dan Noble told The Associated Press on Thursday. “The nature of debris is so different, perhaps it’s a different disposal area.”

It’s too soon to know, though, whether the Army Corps has uncovered a fourth major disposal area in the pricey Spring Valley neighborhood near American University, Nobel said.

During World War I, the Army used the university as an experiment station to develop and test chemical weapons. Some munitions were fired into a nearby wooded area during testing. When the Army station closed, the leftover munitions and chemicals were buried behind the school in what was then rural farmland.

Right in their own backyard too. Silly government.

The ultimate haters of freedom, privacy and general decency in all of humanity, the recording industry (RIAA) and motion picture industry (MPAA) associations want you to have spyware that monitors your computers:

We’re not easily shocked by entertainment industry overreaching; unfortunately, it’s par for the course. But we were taken aback by the wish list the industry submitted in response to the Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator’s request for comments on the forthcoming “Joint Strategic Plan” for intellectual property enforcement. The comments submitted by various organizations provide a kind of window into how these organizations view both intellectual property and the public interest. For example, EFF and other public interest groups have asked the IPEC to take a balanced approach to intellectual property enforcement, paying close attention to the actual harm caused, the potential unexpected consequences of government intervention, and compelling countervailing priorities.

The joint comment filed by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and others stands as a sharp contrast, mapping out a vision of the future where Big Media priorities are woven deep into the Internet, law enforcement, and educational institutions.

Consider the following, all taken from the entertainment industry’s submission to the IPEC.

“There are several technologies and methods that can be used by network administrators and providers…these include [consumer] tools for managing copyright infringement from the home (based on tools used to protect consumers from viruses and malware).”

In other words, the entertainment industry thinks consumers should voluntarily install software that constantly scans our computers and identifies (and perhaps deletes) files found to be “infringing.” It’s hard to believe the industry thinks savvy, security-conscious consumers would voluntarily do so. But those who remember the Sony BMG rootkit debacle know that the entertainment industry is all too willing to sacrifice consumers at the altar of copyright enforcement.

Pervasive copyright filtering

“Network administrators and providers should be encouraged to implement those solutions that are available and reasonable to address infringement on their networks. [This suggestion is preceded by a list of filtering methods, like protocol filtering, fingerprint-based filtering, bandwidth throttling, etc.]“

The entertainment industry loves widespread filtering as a “solution” to online copyright infringement — in fact, it has successfully persuaded Congress to push these technologies on institutions of higher-education.

But, but, but, isn’t corporate America just looking out for our best interest. It’s interesting to note that the majority of legal staff Obama has brought into the white house are former RIAA and/or MPAA lawyers. They and their practices is why I fly a pirate flag.

A koolaid drinkers take on Obama’s late night order for gay rights (hospital visits):

President Obama’s decision Thursday night to grant same-sex couples hospital visitation rights is the latest and most visible example of a strategy to make concrete steps toward equality for gays and lesbians without sparking a broad cultural debate or a fight with Congress.

The approach has angered some of the president’s fiercest supporters, who are eager for bold change, but other politically savvy activists have encouraged Obama to act in small ways to reshape government rules and regulations on behalf of gays and lesbians.

If you don’t like his pace or the brilliant and thorough changes he’s making, then you’re just not savvy enough to understand.

Obama Administration won’t share Ft. Hood information with the Senate, and so they may subpoena:

The Obama administration, facing a subpoena threat from Congress, will not share information that could compromise its prosecution of the suspected gunman in last year’s Fort Hood shooting, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on Friday.

Two U.S. senators vowed on Thursday to subpoena the Obama administration next week unless it produces information sought in a congressional investigation of last year’s rampage at the Texas military base in which 13 soldiers were killed.

They said the Justice and Defense departments had until Monday to provide the information or face legal action.

Gates, speaking to reporters after attending a Caribbean security conference in Barbados, said the U.S. government had no interest in hiding information from Congress but the legal case against Major Nidal Malik Hasan had to take priority.

“Anything that does not have any impact on that prosecution, we are more than willing to share,” Gates said.

“But what’s most important is this prosecution. And we will cooperate with the committee in every way — with that single caveat, that whatever we provide doesn’t compromise the prosecution.”

Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Joe Lieberman, an independent, and Susan Collins, the panel’s top Republican, have been trying for months to obtain specific information about the rampage, which also left many wounded.

Perhaps the Senate is also not savvy enough to understand what the whitehouse is up too. It’s the new transparent, because the old way of being transparent is just, well, old.

And speaking of what the Democratic party has been up to recently, there’s an interesting story about cannibalism. It may turn out that the Donner Party (or Dinner Party for those comedians out there) may not have gone as far as cannibalism:

Gwen Robbins, an anthropologist at Appalachian State University, has found “no evidence of cannibalism among the 84 members of the Donner Party who were trapped by a snowstorm in the Sierra Nevada Mountains in the mid-1840s.”

Robbins is hardly the first scholar to assert that the Donner Party cannibalism story was perhaps just a story. As the A.S.U. press release puts it: “The legend of the Donner party was primarily created by print journalists, who embellished the tales based on their own Victorian macabre sensibilities and their desire to sell more newspapers.”

There’s some of the report with a link in the article. They’ve taken all the fun out of that story for me.

And finally, here’s a lovely image from Herschel Space Observatory:

The Herschel Space Observatory has uncovered a cosmic garden of budding stars, each expected to grow to 10 times the mass of our sun.

The new image can be seen online here. It was taken using infrared light by Herschel, a European Space Agency mission with important NASA participation.

“Herschel can see through cold thickets of dust to where big, baby stars are forming,” said Paul Goldsmith, the NASA project scientist for the mission at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

The image shows most of the cloud associated with the Rosette nebula, located about 5,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Monoceros, the Unicorn. The region contains a family of growing stars, with the oldest and most massive members in the center of the nebula, and younger and less massive generations located farther out in the associated cloud. The nebula’s cluster of the most massive stars, located beyond the right edge of the picture, is responsible for hollowing out the cavity. There’s enough dust and gas in the entire Rosette cloud to make about 10,000 suns.

The large, embryonic stars uncovered by Herschel are thought to be a younger generation. They are located inside the tips of pillars that appear to branch out from thicker cloud material. The pillars were, in fact, excavated by the nebula’s massive star cluster. Winds and radiation from those stars pushed less dense material away from the pillars, and probably triggered the birth of the big stars inside the finger-like structures. In fact, the pillars point to the location of the massive nebula stars.

That’s a bit of what’s happening. Post anything else you find, good or bad or just plain loopy. Loopy is good.

Sunday Morning News – Happy Easter!

Good morning Conflucians!! And Happy Easter!!

Today is the most important religious holiday to Christians. May they and everyone find peace and bliss in their lives. The picture above is not really about Easter, but Easter Island looks pretty cool.

On to some news. It looks like Justice Stevens will be retiring pretty soon:

Stevens, who turns 90 later this month, isn’t quite ready to say. “I can tell you that I love the job, and deciding whether to leave it is a very difficult decision,” he said in an interview. “But I want to make it in a way that’s best for the court.”

That would mean a decision sooner rather than later, in time for the nomination and confirmation process to be completed before a new term begins in October, he said. He acknowledged that he told a reporter early last month that he would decide in about 30 days, but he said with a laugh that he hoped “that wasn’t being treated as a statute of limitations.”

His departure will hand President Obama his second chance to leave a lasting mark on the nine-member Supreme Court. “I will surely do it while he’s still president,” Stevens said, who plans to leave either this year or next.

NYT has an article about it as well. Nothing definite, but it sounds very likely to be soon.

Post says Dems have been raising more money than GOP despite the polls:

Democrats in both chambers are enjoying the traditional advantages of majority-party status — and then some. They lead in donations by political action committees, by committees affiliated with the national political parties or with House and Senate leaders, and in individual contributions to incumbent lawmakers. In some instances, their lead exceeds what the Republicans had when that party controlled both chambers in the 2005-06 midterm election cycle.

To no surprise, analysts differ by party on the causes and significance of the disparity. Some Republicans say a donation surge may still come, particularly as the party courts new, small donors outside Washington. They also complain that donations to party stalwarts have been affected by internal squabbles with rebellious “tea partiers,” which they hope will end soon.

So not a surprise given the incumbent, large majority status. Then why is it news he asked knowing full well they’re all in it together. I’d guess the money isn’t coming from the lowly voting peasants out here given the polls. So it’s most likely their getting money from their corporate bosses. It will be interesting to see if the bosses turn on them even though they’ve done their bidding so nicely.

Pilots are now permitted to fly on antidepressant medication:

The Federal Aviation Administration will let some pilots who take four popular antidepressants return to the skies, saying Friday that it is easing its long-standing ban on psychiatric medications.

The old policy stemmed in part from concerns over possible side effects of psychiatric drugs, including sedation. But newer medications have fewer side effects, and pilots’ associations have pressured the agency to reconsider the ban.

FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt said some pilots with depression likely weren’t being treated or were doing so in secret out of fear of losing their jobs. “We need to change the culture and remove the stigma associated with depression,” said Mr. Babbitt.

Starting Monday, the agency will consider granting waivers that will allow pilots to fly while taking Prozac, Zoloft, Celexa or Lexapro, as well as their generic equivalents.

Medical experts and mental-health organizations supported the move, noting that untreated depression itself has an impact on job performance. They cautioned that the FAA needed to monitor the changes and keep pilots’ confidentiality in mind.

On the one hand, drugs, that is, more drugs? On the other hand, depressed and pilot don’t sound like a good combination.

Apparently the census is a disorganized mess:

In their ambitious effort to count every citizen, U.S. Census Bureau officials formed 125 committees in the Chicago area, many composed of community organizers who saturated ethnic neighborhoods with volunteers to allay fears and encourage people to fill out their forms.

But some community activists say the effort was disorganized and that local census officials provided little support, leaving them to devise their own plans. Census officials complain that some community groups may have confused wary immigrants by asking them to sign pledge cards and, in some cases, asking sensitive questions about citizenship.

Those were some of the problems that came to light this week after census officials reported that Chicago had one of the lowest response rates in the country, despite a regional promotion campaign heralded as a national model.

The mail return rate in Chicago rose to 44 percent Friday, but it was still lower than the national rate of 56 percent.

Some of us have been quite enjoying basketball this season. But apparently the NCAA is going to ruin everything by some big changes for next year:

Beware the man who stares at perfection and proclaims, “I can improve this!” He most certainly can’t, and if you dare let him try, the only thing that’s certain is that he’ll end up ruining it.

And ruin, sadly enough, is the near-certain fate of what for a quarter-century has stood as one of the sports world’s last pillars of unspoiled perfection: the NCAA basketball tournament. As this year’s edition of March Madness climaxes in Indianapolis, it has become clear that the NCAA will junk the current tournament format and expand to a 96-team field starting next season.

A few days ago, the NCAA released a blueprint for its beefed-up bracket, laughably claiming that it was all theoretical and that no decisions had yet been made. Don’t be fooled. It was only the latest step in a tightly scripted rollout that began a year ago. Soon, the NCAA will sever its tournament contract with CBS and ratify the new postseason format. Then the bidding will begin.

And money, no matter what they claim, is what this is about. More than ever, television advertisers covet live events like the tournament, which still deliver the large, broad audiences that scripted sitcoms, dramas and movies-of-the-week delivered a generation ago. To accommodate 96 teams, 16 games– spaced out over two days — will be added to tournament. A few years ago, ESPN (which can blow the broadcast networks out of the water, thanks to cable subscriber fees) bid more than $1 billion to air one NFL game a week. Imagine what it’ll pay for 79 do-or-die basketball games.

Time will tell.

According to this report, after the oh so rough and tumble bitter battle over healthcare (president’n is hard), Obama is not inclined to have a battle over immigration or climate change. Of course not:

President Obama’s victory on healthcare gave him some much-needed political momentum. But he seems disinclined to ride that into another all-in battle this year on his keystone domestic agenda items of climate change and immigration.

Instead, the White House is planning to focus on narrower efforts to pump up the economy, rewrite financial regulation, amend campaign finance laws to limit corporate donations and impose new fees on banks to repay federal bailout funds.

The White House is careful to say that it remains strongly committed to overhauling immigration and limiting greenhouse gases. But so far, the Obama administration has shown little appetite to engage aggressively in crafting legislation and rounding up votes on Capitol Hill for what would probably be deeply partisan fights over those issues as congressional elections near.

Significantly, regardless of the specific issue, Obama so far is following the same playbook he used in the early phase of the healthcare fight: deferring to Congress and giving lawmakers wide latitude in writing legislation and plotting strategy.

“Our approach is to lay out the parameters and to challenge the Congress” to pass bills, said White House senior advisor David Axelrod, adding: “There’s this myth that if the president arrives on the steps of the Capitol with stone tablets, people will bow and vote accordingly. I think that’s a naive view of how laws are made.”

The prospect that the administration will not go all in this year on its signature initiatives alarms several Democratic interest groups. They say a firmer White House hand is needed for the bills to have any chance of passing before November’s midterm elections.

Frank Sharry, executive director of America’s Voice, which advocates for a new immigration system, said that with healthcare, “the mistake [the White House] made was to wait too long and leave Congress in charge of the process for too long. And quite frankly, they’re on the verge of making a similar mistake with immigration reform.”

Similarly, environmentalists want to see action in the Senate on the energy bill that would establish a controversial emissions cap-and-trade system to reduce greenhouse gases.

Stanley Greenberg, a Democratic pollster, said the White House and Democratic congressional leadership “should not . . . move anything that shows gridlock or Democratic division.”

Silly liberals, Obama is for big corporations. And well, that all sounds like really hard work.

After getting Sarah Palin to campaign for him, John McCain now has a comfortable lead of 57-32 in his primary:

A new Research 2000 poll sponsored by Daily Kos, out Friday, showed McCain beating Hayworth easily, 52-37. Meanwhile, McCain ended the first quarter of 2010 with $4.5 million in the bank, after raising more than $2.2 million this year so far. Hayworth announced that he raised more than $1 million, but didn’t say exactly how much. (And one of his top advisors, Arizona public relations mogul Jason Rose, recently quit because Hayworth couldn’t, or wouldn’t, give him a paying contract to keep working on the campaign.)

McCain is taking the race deadly seriously, running all over Arizona in an effort not to let Hayworth carve out much space to his right. His campaign aides push back against the slightest provocation from Hayworth with overwhelming force. And of course, Sarah Palin — who he launched from Alaska to global superstardom in 2008 — came through to rally the faithful for him last weekend. True, the state’s Republicans are rabidly conservative, and some of them have never liked McCain; his push a few years ago for immigration reform hurt him among some segments of the GOP base. Hayworth has had some luck raising money from tea party groups outside Arizona who think McCain is an apostate.

Clearly Palin is still a superstar, and I’m sure that drives the Republican establishment that hates here and the Democratic establishment that keeps bipartisaning in their pants.

Grammy-nominated Deborah Henson-Conant is known as the 'Hip Harpist'

Hey, how come we don’t have these? Wales had a pop harp festival:

Wales is thought to have more harpists per head of population than any other country, so it’s a natural setting for an international harp festival.

From Sunday 4 April the Galeri arts centre is the venue for the second Wales International Harp Festival, with concerts and competitions, lectures and master classes.

It also incorporates the celebration of an important anniversary as John Parry, the blind musician who put Welsh harp music on the map, was born 300 years ago this year.

“He was born in Nefyn to a poor family, but had a great talent,” explained festival director Elinor Bennett.

“He came to the attention of Sir Watkin Williams-Wynn and went to London and mixed with the gentry, playing with people like the composer Handel. He published the first collection of Welsh harp music in 1742.”

To commemorate his contribution each competitor in the festival must play one of his works, as well as a piece by a modern Welsh composer.

“It’s nicer performing in front of the public and not just three judges. The performance element is always important, right from the beginning.”

But you don’t have to be an experienced harpist to take part. There will be a taster session for adult beginners.

Meinir Llwyd explained: “It seems that a lot of adults wanted to play as children, but didn’t get the chance, so now they’re retired they’ve decided to fulfil their dreams.”

Elinor Bennet now hopes the festival will be held every four years.

She said: “We’ve had a harp festival in the William Mathias Music Centre in Caernarfon since it opened in 1999, but we wanted to lift the profile of the harp not only in Wales, but on an international scale.

“That was the idea behind the festival in 2006 and it was so successful that we wanted to do it again.”

Shuttle Discovery is readying for launch on Monday. The Shuttle program is coming to a close:

Only three shuttle flights remain after this one. President Barack Obama will visit the Cape Canaveral area April 15 – while Discovery is in orbit – to elaborate on his post-shuttle plans. He created a furor in the aerospace community in February when he killed NASA’s Constellation program, which had been aimed at returning astronauts to the moon. That will mean even more lost jobs for Kennedy Space Center and NASA’s other hubs for human spaceflight operation.

Launch manager Mike Moses told reporters that even as the shuttle program winds down, the work force remains as loyal and dedicated to the job as ever.

“But I don’t want to take away from the fact that this is a very human space program, not just with the humans flying in the shuttle, but the folks building it and preparing it and getting ready to launch it,” he said.

As excitement builds toward Monday morning’s launch, “I don’t think there are too many people out there right now at their desks, worried that we’re about to end,” Moses said. “You ask that question on Tuesday, we might get a little different answer. But right now, I think spirits are very high and geared up toward that launch.”

Discovery will spend 13 days in orbit, on its next-to-last flight.

After that we’ll have to do much of our work via broken down Russian rockets. The symbolism is interesting.

What does the easter bunny have to do with Easter. Nothing, but…

Bunnies, eggs, Easter gifts and fluffy, yellow chicks in gardening hats all stem from pagan roots. They were incorporated into the celebration of Easter separately from the Christian tradition of honoring the day Jesus Christ rose from the dead.

According to University of Florida’s Center for Children’s Literature and Culture, the origin of the celebration — and the Easter bunny — can be traced back to 13th century, pre-Christian Germany, when people worshiped several gods and goddesses. The Teutonic deity Eostra was the goddess of spring and fertility, and feasts were held in her honor on the Vernal Equinox. Her symbol was the rabbit because of the animal’s high reproduction rate.

Spring also symbolized new life and rebirth; eggs were an ancient symbol of fertility. According to History.com, Easter eggs represent Jesus’ resurrection. However, this association came much later when Roman Catholicism became the dominant religion in Germany in the 15th century and merged with already ingrained pagan beliefs.

The first Easter bunny legend was documented in the 1500s. By 1680, the first story about a rabbit laying eggs and hiding them in a garden was published. These legends were brought to the United States in the 1700s when German immigrants settled in Pennsylvania Dutch country, according to the Center for Children’s Literature and Culture.

The tradition of making nests for the rabbit to lay its eggs in soon followed. Eventually, nests became decorated baskets and colorful eggs were swapped for candy, treats and other small gifts.

So in addition to technologically stripping us (with later photos on the internet to prove it) and poking and prodding us, it looks like the US is finally going to start officially profiling us as well:

The United States will announce Friday it plans to begin profiling U.S.-bound passengers in a major shake up of air travel security measures.

Under the new measures to begin this month, which will apply to U.S. citizens as well, the level of screening of travelers will depend on how closely their personal characteristics match against intelligence on potential terrorists.

The measures will replace mandatory enhanced screening of all passengers traveling to the United States from 14 mostly-Muslim nations, put into place following a failed Al-Qaeda attempt to blow up a Detroit-bound flight on Christmas Day.

“It’s much more tailored to what intelligence is telling us and what the threat is telling us, as opposed to stopping all individuals from a particular nationality,” said an unnamed U.S. official quoted by The Washington Post.

Forbes has an article about how and why big corporations pay little or no taxes:

As you work on your taxes this month, here’s something to raise your hackles: Some of the world’s biggest, most profitable corporations enjoy a far lower tax rate than you do–that is, if they pay taxes at all.

The most egregious example is General Electric. Last year the conglomerate generated $10.3 billion in pretax income, but ended up owing nothing to Uncle Sam. In fact, it recorded a tax benefit of $1.1 billion.

Avoiding taxes is nothing new for General Electric. In 2008 its effective tax rate was 5.3%; in 2007 it was 15%. The marginal U.S. corporate rate is 35%.

Read on for their logic of why.

That’s a bit of the news today. Chime in with what you’re hearing and reading, and what’s on your mind.

Sunday Morning News

Good Morning Conflucians!!!

Open those eyes, sip some coffee, here are a few things happening to get the engines running.

As was done by Bush and previous presidents, Obama made some recess appointments. In this case 15:

An emboldened President Obama filled 15 key administration posts Saturday by bypassing the Senate, defying the GOP as he announced his first recess appointments since taking office.

Among the appointees was Craig Becker, a Chicago-based labor attorney whose nomination to the National Labor Relations Board was blocked last month in the Senate.

Business groups had said that Becker was too supportive of organized labor to serve on the five-member board, which rules on unfair-labor-practice claims, and Republican senators had warned Obama not to use the congressional Easter recess to appoint him.

Obama said last month that he would use recess appointments unless Senate Republicans stopped blocking scores of his nominees. Even so, his move Saturday suggested a new political confidence days after he signed the health-care overhaul into law, as well as his continued frustration with partisanship on Capitol Hill that has been inflamed by his push to secure the legislation.

In NCAA Basketball news, West Virginia upset favored Kentucky to go to the final four. Saturday they will play either Duke or Baylor in the semifinals in Indianapolis for the first time since 1959. Let’s Goooo Mountaineers. Butler will also be going to the final four after beating higher ranked Kansas. Butler will be playing either Michigan State or Tennessee with home court advantage in Indianapolis. Should be an exciting final four.

In fun behind the scenes HCR gossip, there is some talk about David Frum since he was recently fired from the American Enterprise Institute, most likely for writing that Republican’s should have engaged in the HCR bill activities since they like it (since it’s theirs). From Bartlett:

Since, he is no longer affiliated with AEI, I feel free to say publicly something he told me in private a few months ago. He asked if I had noticed any comments by AEI “scholars” on the subject of health care reform. I said no and he said that was because they had been ordered not to speak to the media because they agreed with too much of what Obama was trying to do.

Obama is expected to nominate a pediatrician and professor Donald Berwick as head of Medicare/Medicaid. From the AP:

President Barack Obama intends to nominate Massachusetts pediatrician Donald Berwick, known for his work to improve patient care, to oversee Medicare and Medicaid.

Berwick, a Harvard professor, also leads a nonprofit organization that seeks to improve the efficiency of the health care industry.

The timing of the nomination is important because Berwick, if confirmed by the Senate, would take over an agency that has not had a permanent chief executive since Mark McClellan stepped down in the fall of 2006.

…

Berwick is the president and CEO of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, a nonprofit organization in Cambridge, Mass. that works to eliminate “needless” problems within health care systems across the globe, such as needless deaths, suffering, waiting for help, or waste. Berwick is also a professor of pediatrics and health care policy at the Harvard Medical School and a professor of health policy and management at the Harvard School of Public Health.

After a second nominee for head of TSA withdraws, the TSA may be leaderless for some time. So much for bashing Republican’s for holding up an earlier nomination. You can’t complain about them holding this position up if you take this long and your nominee picks are so bad they keep bailing out.

The agency that guards airline security inside the United States is likely to remain without a Senate-confirmed leader for months to come after President Obama’s nominee for the position abruptly withdrew late Friday night amid questions from Congress about his work as a defense contractor.

The nominee, Maj. Gen. Robert A. Harding, a retired Army intelligence officer, pulled out of contention for director of the agency, the Transportation Security Administration, just two and a half weeks after Mr. Obama submitted his nomination. Mr. Obama’s first pick for the position also withdrew under fire this year, and the administration has not announced a third choice.

The agency is facing a range of policy questions about potential changes, including the deployment of full-body scanners at security checkpoints and whether to allow its work force to unionize. Paul Rosenzweig, a former policy adviser to the Homeland Security Department in the Bush administration, said the lack of stable leadership at the top would make it harder to achieve goals.

“The lack of a confirmed leader disables the ability of any administration to effect the type of change that it wants to,” Mr. Rosenzweig said. “Change comes slow to the federal government. It’s a bureaucracy, and it’s impossible to achieve change without concerted leadership.”

General Harding’s bid for the job fell apart after reports that his company had collected more federal money than it was entitled to for providing interrogators in Iraq.

“I felt that I could bring some leadership, vision and intelligence expertise” to the transportation security post, General Harding said in a statement issued late Friday. “However, I feel that the distractions caused by my work as a defense contractor would not be good for this administration.”

One administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said General Harding had raised the issue of withdrawing earlier in the week, saying he was frustrated by the scrutiny of the Senate confirmation process.

The president’s first nominee for the position, Erroll G. Southers, a former F.B.I. agent and counterterrorism supervisor for the Los Angeles airport police, withdrew his nomination in January after giving conflicting answers about conducting police background checks on a man his estranged wife was seeing.

Clearly they’re not even trying hard to get this position filled. Rather pathetic.

Sarah Palin kicked off the Tea Party Express tour in Searchlight, NV, near Harry Reid’s home.

Organizers described this gathering Saturday of thousands of Tea Partiers minutes from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s home in desolate Nevada scrub as a “conservative Woodstock.”

But instead of gorging on LSD, free love and Jimi Hendrix, thousands of attendees binged on seething anger at Washington and swooned to former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as the Tea Party Express kicked off a 43-city cross-country bus tour that’s intended to rouse voters to their cause.

“We’re sending a message to Washington,” Palin told the crowd that exploded in chants of “Sarah! Sarah!” when she took the stage.

“The big government, big tax Obama-Pelosi-Reid spending spree is over,” she said, referring also to the president and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco. “You’re fired.”

Oh brother. Wrong ideas yet again. Can’t we ever get a break? I don’t like this administration either, but not because their “socialist”, instead because they’re fricken Republicans. Hold on folks, I think it’s going to be a bumpy ride. Palin is also stumping for struggling McCain in AZ.

The Arab League calls for a Nuclear-free Middle East:

Arab leaders on Sunday called for a Middle East free of nuclear weapons during a closed-door session at the Arab League summit in Libya, diplomats at the meeting said.

Many Arab countries view Israel’s alleged nuclear program and Iran’s nuclear programs with alarm, and have repeatedly called for an agreement to ban nuclear weapons from the region.

In their closing statements, leaders stressed that the development of nuclear weapons threatened peace and security, diplomats who attended the closed-door session told the German Press Agency DPA.

They called for a review of the 1970 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in order to create a definitive plan for eliminating nuclear weapons development.

They further called upon the UN to hold a conference to establish the Middle East as a nuclear-weapons-free region. However, it is unclear how much weight their calls will carry with Iran or Israel, neither of which is a member in the Arab League.

Almost not worth pointing out, but Frank Rich show’s he’s still sucking on the koolaid with his op-ed. He’s pushing the talking points about how crazy and violent Republicans are of late. Yawn. Saw that one coming from a mile away. My favorite, right at the beginning is this:

On ABC’s “This Week,” a frothing and filibustering Karl Rove all but lost it in a debate with the Obama strategist David Plouffe.

Notice the almost lost. Yea, Rove mopped the floor with Plouffe as you’d sort of expect. It was rather sad and perhaps a sign of things to come. Rove pointed out what we all know, as any real Democrat should know, are bad things about the HCR bill, that is how it’s all about giving lots of money to the health insurance industry. Yep, Karl did some jujitsu, throwing Plouffe to the floor with what should have been a move by a Democrat arguing against RomneyCare. Then Frank goes on and on about how Republican’s are all crazy and violent and such. But then, in a slight turnabout, he admits:

No less curious is how disproportionate this red-hot anger is to its proximate cause. The historic Obama-Pelosi health care victory is a big deal, all right, so much so it doesn’t need Joe Biden’s adjective to hype it. But the bill does not erect a huge New Deal-Great Society-style government program. In lieu of a public option, it delivers 32 million newly insured Americans to private insurers. As no less a conservative authority than The Wall Street Journal editorial page observed last week, the bill’s prototype is the health care legislation Mitt Romney signed into law in Massachusetts. It contains what used to be considered Republican ideas.

And then sadly he goes back to more talk of crazy violence/anger stuff, this time pointing out how it doesn’t make sense given that this is a GOP bill. But then he gets to some more interesting bits about how the anger has been there before the bill. Sadly he goes in the predicable direction of racism behind the anger instead of the more obvious, it’s the economy stupid. Sigh.

Looks like the “special” relationship between the UK and the US is over:

The committee said although Britain and the US still had close ties, the UK’s influence had “diminished” as its economic and military power had waned.

“The use of the phrase ‘the special relationship’ in its historical sense, to describe the totality of the ever-evolving UK-US relationship, is potentially misleading, and we recommend that its use should be avoided,” the committee said.

“The overuse of the phrase by some politicians and many in the media serves simultaneously to de-value its meaning and to raise unrealistic expectations about the benefits the relationship can deliver to the UK.”

Three Labour MPs and two Conservatives voted unsuccessfully for the recommendation to be dropped but were over-ruled.

The committee said that the relationship was more associated now with the perceived support Britain gave to President George W Bush over the Iraq war.

“The perception that the British government was a subservient ‘poodle’ to the US administration leading up to the period of the invasion of Iraq and its aftermath is widespread both among the British public and overseas,” it said.

“This perception, whatever its relation to reality, is deeply damaging to the reputation and interests of the UK.”

The committee also said US President Barack Obama had taken the same “pragmatic” attitude as it was recommending now since entering the White House in 2009.

It said: “The UK needs to be less deferential and more willing to say no to the US on those issues where the two countries’ interests and values diverge.

“The UK’s relationship should be principally driven by the UK’s national interests within individual policy areas. It needs to be characterised by a hard-headed political approach to the relationship and a realistic sense of the UK’s limits.”

Well, duh.

There’s an interesting article on the governments war on WikiLeaks by Glenn Greenwald:

A newly leaked CIA report prepared earlier this month (.pdf) analyzes how the U.S. Government can best manipulate public opinion in Germany and France — in order to ensure that those countries continue to fight in Afghanistan.  The Report celebrates the fact that the governments of those two nations continue to fight the war in defiance of overwhelming public opinion which opposes it — so much for all the recent veneration of “consent of the governed” — and it notes that this is possible due to lack of interest among their citizenry:   “Public Apathy Enables Leaders to Ignore Voters,” proclaims the title of one section.

…

It’s both interesting and revealing that the CIA sees Obama as a valuable asset in putting a pretty face on our wars in the eyes of foreign populations. It is odious — though, of course, completely unsurprising — that the CIA plots ways to manipulate public opinion in foreign countries in order to sustain support for our wars.  Now that this is a Democratic administration doing this and a Democratic war at issue, I doubt many people will object to any of this.  But what is worth noting is how and why this classified Report was made publicly available:  because it was leaked to and then posted by WikiLeaks.org, the site run by the non-profit group Sunshine Press, that is devoted to exposing suppressed government and corporate corruption by publicizing many of their most closely guarded secrets.

…

Over the past several years, WikiLeaks — which aptly calls itself “the intelligence agency of the people” — has obtained and then published a wide array of secret, incriminating documents (similar to this CIA Report) that expose the activities of numerous governments and corporations.  Among many others, they posted the Standard Operating Manual for Guantanamo, documents showing how corrupt offshore loans precipitated the economic collapse in Iceland, the notorious emails between climate scientists, documents showing toxic dumping off the coast of Africa, and many others.  They have recently come into possession of classified videos relating to civilian causalities under the command of Gen. David Petraeus, as well as documentation relating to civilian-slaughtering airstrikes in Afghanistan which the U.S. military had agreed to release, only to change their mind.

All of this has made WikiLeaks an increasingly hated target of numerous government and economic elites around the world, including the U.S. Government.  As The New York Times put it last week:  ”To the list of the enemies threatening the security of the United States, the Pentagon has added WikiLeaks.org, a tiny online source of information and documents that governments and corporations around the world would prefer to keep secret.”  In 2008, the U.S. Army Counterintelligence Center prepared a secret report — obtained and posted by WikiLeaks — devoted to this website and detailing, in a section entitled “Is it Free Speech or Illegal Speech?”, ways it would seek to destroy the organization.  It discusses the possibility that, for some governments, not merely contributing to WikiLeaks, but “even accessing the website itself is a crime,” and outlines its proposal for WikiLeaks’ destruction.

…

All of this is based in the same rationale invoked by President Obama and the Democratic Congress when they re-wrote the Freedom of Information Act last year in order to suppress America’s torture photos.  It’s the same rationale used by all governments to conceal evidence of their wrongdoing:   we need to suppress our activities for your own good.  WikiLeaks is devoted to subverting that mentality and, relatively speaking, has been quite successful in doing so.

Highly recommended read.

Obama and Medvedev seal the deal on nuclear arms pact:

After months of deadlock and delay, a breakthrough deal on a replacement for the Cold War-era START pact marked Obama’s most significant foreign policy achievement since taking office and also bolsters his effort to “reset” ties with Moscow.

…

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the new pact sends a message to Iran and North Korea, both locked in nuclear standoffs with the West, of a commitment to thwart nuclear proliferation.

…

German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle called it “a milestone that will promote overall nuclear disarmament,” and European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso congratulated Obama and Medvedev on “this historic agreement.”

The treaty adds another chapter in a quarter century of efforts to make the world safer through nuclear arms control, after a 1986 summit between U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev laid the groundwork.

Thanks Hillary.

That’s a bit of what’s happening today. Add any thing you’re hearing, and of course anything that’s on your mind.

Sunday News – Late Hangover Edition

The Hangover by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

Good Morning Conflucians!!!

Ouch, keep it down out there, my head is still throbbing. We had quite a late night of drinking, pounding the table (with our heads), and complete disbelief that the Democratic party will destroy themselves for this insurance industry bailout legislation. What a drama they have orchestrated. What a slaughter we will see in November. Most of the ousted Dems will no doubt be on K street getting their payoff. And the zombie faux progressives will cheer until they notice, or more likely told by head zombies, that they’ve been sold down the river. Then they’ll conveniently blame someone other than themselves.

Since it’s late and our collective heads can’t take too much, here are a few quick news items.

Hoyer says they have the votes for today’s vote.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer says Democrats will have the 216 votes needed to pass health care reform when it comes to the floor for a vote.

The Maryland Democrat predicts that the bill, President Barack Obama’s signature domestic policy, will pass on Sunday because the majority of Americans want it.

But House Republican leader John Boehner says the Democrats have yet to lock in the 216 votes required for passage. The Ohio Republican says the plan is a government takeover opposed by the vast majority of Americans.

The House leaders, speaking on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” condemned the racial taunts hurled at congressmen during protests on Capitol Hill on Saturday.

Yea, yea, yea, they’ve had the votes for some time or we would not have seen yesterday’s theatre.

The Pope says don’t blame the sinner:

Pope Benedict XVI is urging Catholics to be intransigent toward sin but not to judge the sinner.

The pontiff addressed pilgrims in St. Peter’s Square on Sunday but didn’t mention his rebuke to Irish bishops a day earlier for their handling of decades of clergy sexual abuse of minors. He told English-speaking pilgrims they should humbly beg forgiveness for their own failings.

CA Gov. race is getting interesting:

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown ramped up his attacks on former eBay CEO Meg Whitman on Saturday, saying she has proposed policies to put California “in the loving embrace of Wall Street” while trying to “scapegoat” immigrants and silence working people with what he called an unprecedented effort to “buy the election.”

“When things get tough … do we crush the poor even more, do we scapegoat the immigrants, do we make the enemy the public servants who serve us in all manner of capacity?” he said. “That’s the temptation we have to fight. Now, more than ever, a sense of morality … and the true spirit of democracy has to be the spirit going forward.”

Moonbeam’s my guy. Go Jerry go!

A volcano erupted in Iceland. Even the planet is pissed at the stupid Dems.

The IMF is on the case against wealthy nations and their debt:

The global economic crisis has left “deep scars” in the fiscal balances of the world’s advanced economies, which should begin to rein in spending next year as the recovery continues, the No.2 official at the International Monetary Fund said Sunday.

In a speech at the China Development Forum in Beijing, the I.M.F. official, John Lipsky, who is the deputy managing director, offered a grim prognosis for the world’s wealthiest nations, which are at a level of indebtedness not seen since the aftermath of World War II.

For the United States, “a higher public savings rate will be required to ensure long-term fiscal sustainability,” Mr. Lipsky said.

Mr. Lipsky said the average ratio of debt to gross domestic product in advanced economies was expected this year to reach the level that prevailed in 1950. Even assuming that fiscal stimulus programs are withdrawn in the next few years, that ratio is projected to rise to 110 percent by the end of 2014, from 75 percent at the end of 2007.

Yea, we know, we know. Could you say it more quietly.

Tobacco rule passed in ’95 about to go into effect:

Fifteen years after the Food and Drug Administration first proposed banning the sale and marketing of tobacco products to teenagers, top government officials announced Thursday that they would finally put the rule into effect.

The rule was hugely controversial when first proposed in 1995 and was never adopted by the agency because of a Supreme Court ruling that legislation was needed to empower the F.D.A. to regulate tobacco products. That legislation was passed and signed by President Obama last June. The rule goes into effect on June 22.

The tobacco industry adopted most of the rule’s provisions in 1998 as a result of litigation. And every state bans tobacco sales to minors, although enforcement provisions vary widely. The new rule provides consistent enforcement mechanisms across the country.

“The historic rule we’re issuing today will help our kids to stay healthy,” Kathleen Sebelius, the Health and Human Services secretary, said at a news conference.

Other provisions not adopted by the industry are still contentious and may end up in court, and even those that are not controversial may lead to changes across the country. For instance, the rule prohibits tobacco companies from using color advertising in store displays, a provision that a federal judge in Kentucky recently found unconstitutional.

The rule also bars sponsorship of sporting or entertainment events by tobacco companies, even by smokeless tobacco products. It would not allow non-tobacco products to have the same names as those on tobacco products and it restricts outdoor advertisements near schools.

How many here would be surprised if this new Dem party somehow undid this legislation and mandated that everyone smoke in order to help the long suffering tobacco industry. True story.

New trend, multiple generations living together. Well, perhaps that’s one good thing about the demise of the country.

Teens are getting carpel tunnel from texting. It hurts when I text. Don’t text.

And like we’ve been hearing in a number of quarters, the GOP is preparing to fight the HCR in court when it passes:

Republican prosecutors from South Carolina and Florida said Friday they were preparing to file a lawsuit if the health care bill before Congress becomes law, challenging its requirement that all Americans buy insurance.

South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster said he and Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum spoke with other top state prosecutors Thursday in a conference call about possible legal action.

McMaster said the proposed federal mandate for individuals to purchase health insurance – or face a fine of as much as $750 for most people – is unconstitutional.

“It is my belief and that of other attorneys general that this is clearly unconstitutional,” he told McClatchy Newspapers. “That’s why we’re moving forward. We need to protect the sovereignty of our states and the liberty of our people.”

The only thing that would make any reasonable healthcare reform work, including everyone, is the one thing the GOP doesn’t like. Of course. And of course the irony in this case is that the bill is something they actually secretly like because the insurance industry are their bosses too. But they have to make noise like this. They will likely continue to make noise for political reasons, but they secretly love this bill too. True story.

Congress is supposed to start to work today at 1pm. We’ll watch for when any public action starts up. Stay tuned.

OK, that’s all my head can take. Chime in with any news or of course any good hangover cures.

Sunday News Roundup

Good Morning Conflucians!!!

Don’t forget to set your clocks forward an hour for daylight savings time if you didn’t do it last night. Here’s to more daylight.

Big news of the week has been the healthcare fiasco, aka, insurance company bailout, and will likely be big news this week. Nancy Pelosi is playing the typical speaker bluff of pretending the votes are there in a ploy to strong arm holdouts into voting, usually telling them their vote doesn’t matter now, so they have no leverage, but just the same, they should vote with the majority less their careers and even family be destroyed. Apparently the majority leader says the vote may not be there and the majority vote counter says he hasn’t even started counting votes. The stakes are high. For any vulnerable member voting for the measure, it will likely be the end of their career. Any member voting against it faces the wrath of Nancy and some friendly Chicago henchmen (as an example, see Massa). At least that’s what they will hear from Nancy and her friends. If I were them, I’d call her bluff. If the bill goes down to defeat, she may not have the power to back up those threats. Speakers that use such tactics and fail tend to have short careers.

First we heard that Obama postponed his trip overseas for three whole days to rally support for the bill.

Obama pushed back a scheduled March 18 departure on his first overseas trip of the year to March 21 to help rally support in the days before the House vote.

The House Budget Committee will meet on Monday to take the first steps toward passage of the healthcare overhaul, Obama’s top legislative priority, with final votes planned in the full House by the end of the week.

“I’m delighted that the president will be here for the passage of the bill,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said. “It’s going to be historic.”

Given that this will be a major boondoggle and bail out for insurance companies, it’s interesting that their stock prices dropped a bit on Friday. Perhaps there are doubts about the bill passing:

Health insurer shares dropped on Friday even though the broader market was little changed. The Morgan Stanley Healthcare Payor index ended 1.4 percent lower and the S&P Managed Health Care index dropped 1.8 percent.

When a health insurance bill has seemed more likely, insurance company stocks have tended upward. So this might be telling.

An assistant to Nancy sends memo that outlines schedule and plans:

The office of Rep. Chris Van Hollen, who is the assistant to Speaker Pelosi, sent a memo to Democratic staffers today telling them to clear members’ schedule for next weekend, saying a vote could come as early as Friday or Saturday, and noting that it was no coincidence that President Obama pushed back his trip abroad from March 18 to March 21st.

And similar to that propaganda talking point great piece of journalism, we have a similar pushed talking point:

Democratic leaders on Friday stoked expectations that the year-long debate in Congress over health care may be coming to an end, after President Obama delayed his upcoming trip to the South Pacific and House leaders indicated they could deliver a final bill for his signature by the end of next week.

The House is preparing to vote, perhaps Friday or next Saturday, on the legislation that passed the Senate on Christmas Eve, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said she was “delighted that the president will be here for the passage of the bill. It’s going to be historic.”

There is one thing I like that Byrd is trying to squeeze in. He’s trying to fix the black lung rules that raygun screwed with:

The Chamber of Commerce is targeting a provision in the Senate health care bill it says is a special legislative deal inserted by Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) that threatens the solvency of a trust fund created to help mine workers suffering from black lung disease.

“This had to be another one of those backrooms deals that was put into the larger bill to cobble votes together,” said Bruce Josten, the Chamber’s top lobbyist.

The special legislative deals Democratic leaders cut to win votes for the Senate bill, including the Cornhusker Kickback and Louisiana Purchase, helped sour the public on reform. So the prospect of yet another questionable provision is like candy for opponents.

The Byrd provision unwinds a 29-year-old requirement that people applying for benefits from the Black Lung Disability Trust Fund show x-ray proof that they suffer from the condition. Byrd’s provision presumes workers who spent 15 years or more in the coal pits qualify for benefits. The Byrd provision returns the law to a standard that was in place prior to reforms passed in 1981, which were designed to steady the financially faltering program, according to the Chamber’s research.

You can always count on the Chamber of Commerce to be evil. I’m still hoping the bill fails, but that’s one bit I like.

Catholic hospitals are now supporting the bill. Apparently they’re getting that good old fashion feeling about the anti-choice language that will likely make it through:

Keehan said in an interview that she believes the approach now in the bill would work just as well to keep federal dollars from being used to pay for abortion.

“On the moral issue of abortion, there is no disagreement,” Keehan said. “On the technical issue of whether this bill prevents federal funding of abortions, we differ with Right to Life.”

The current legislation would allow private insurance plans operating in a new insurance marketplace to cover abortions, provided they do not use taxpayer funds. What makes that tricky is that many of the plans’ customers would be receiving federal subsidies to help pay their premiums. So the legislation requires plans offering abortion coverage to collect a separate premium from their policyholders. Those separate checks would have to be kept in a different account from money for other health care services.

The abortion provisions Obama’s bill are identical to those in the Senate legislation that passed on Christmas Eve. But the bishops and National Right to Life prefer the approach in the House bill.

The House bill prohibited any plans receiving federal subsidies from covering abortion. Women desiring insurance coverage for the procedure would have to buy a separate policy.

Here is a bit about the parliamentarian at the Senate and what his role will be:

Frumin labors in relative obscurity as the Senate’s chief parliamentarian, a post he has held under both Democratic and Republican majorities. His job: making sure Capitol Hill combatants play by the rules.

Already, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate majority leader Harry Reid are wrestling over Frumin’s procedural verdicts. It is with Frumin’s guidance that Democrats must engineer a legislative triple bank shot to win a health care bill — first passing a Senate version of the proposed law in the House and then pushing through a set of repairs to the measure, which must pass both chambers.

The Senate Democrats’ plan to use “budget reconciliation,’’ which allows them to skirt a Republican filibuster, promises to keep Frumin in the middle of the action.

Republicans, planning a variety of procedural challenges, have argued that reconciliation has never before been used for something as sweeping as an overhaul of the health care system.

Past parliamentarians have lost their jobs with less at stake.

The great O is making noises behind the curtain again. This time about education reform, specifically reforming Every No Child Left Behind:

President Obama proposed overhauling the No Child Left Behind law that was his predecessor’s hallmark education initiative, aiming to eliminate several of the measure’s controversial mandates on public schools but adding new ones.

Students would still be tested every year in reading and math under Obama’s proposal, but scores in other subjects could also be used to measure progress, addressing concerns of parents and teachers who say the law has shortchanged such topics as history and science.

The president’s proposal to Congress, released Saturday, would place more importance on academic growth than the current pass-fail approach to judging schools. If a student were to start class work three grade levels behind and move up two by the end of the school year, that would count as a victory. Now, it is rated a failure because the student is still behind.

In the 41-page blueprint, Obama wrote that his proposal “is not only a plan to renovate a flawed law, but also an outline for a re-envisioned federal role in education.”

Somehow after seeing what they’ve worked out as a healthcare bill, pardon me for being a bit skeptical. But we’ll have to dig into it to see what it’s all about. Stay tuned to this story as it develops.

Ah, some are noticing the grand flip flopper of all flip floppers, our flip flopper in chief and are all miffed, well, not really, they still love him:

Obama in December fired shots at “fat cat bankers,” then told bankers at the White House the next day he didn’t mean to vilify anyone or dictate their pay.

He denounced the “twisted logic” of big Wall Street bonuses, then suggested recently he doesn’t begrudge the mega-buck payouts.

Ten days ago, Obama confronted health insurance CEOs during a White House meeting with a letter from a woman whose premiums went up 40 percent.

It had the makings of a signature moment in the health care fight — the president standing up for average Americans — yet just before Obama arrived, reporters were escorted out of the room. So there was no footage of the exchange and no record of the insurance executives’ reaction.

You mean, you never noticed this about him before Carol? Really? And she goes on:

Obama the politician matched the moment back in November 2008, when voters weary of President George W. Bush flocked to his promise of change.

Now the times have changed, and they’re looking to Obama to feel as angry as they are about the failing economy and the sense that Wall Street is out of whack and that Washington seems incapable of doing anything about it. That mood, plus a strong disdain of Obama, has fueled the conservative tea party movement, but it’s not strictly partisan. A lot of voters are mad, and many want a sense the president is mad too.

That kind of populism demands a stark view of the world, a clear-cut villain, good guys vs. bad guys, or big guys vs. little guys. Obama comes across as far more cerebral, a figure who embraces nuance, who is hesitant to single out a boogeyman. But populism and nuance don’t mix — and for Obama, that seems to muffle his message, when a satisfying shotgun blast might do.

Sigh. She sees something’s not right, but just can’t quite figure it out. Poor Obama, he’s just too cerebral. Gag.

FEMA is selling off the tainted trailers set up to be used after Katrina:

In a giant auction, the federal government has agreed to sell for pennies on the dollar most of the 120,000 formaldehyde-tainted trailers it bought nearly five years ago for Hurricane Katrina victims. But the sale of the units, perhaps the most visible symbol of the government’s bungled response to the hurricane, has triggered a new round of charges that it is endangering future buyers for years to come.

Mmm, get those while they’re hot. And lest we forget, this is the Obama administration trying to pawn these toxic waste, killing trailers off on people. Heck of a job Obie.

In cultural news, Lady Gaga and Beyonce have a video out. Here’s a short article with the video. Catchy.

Bill says Chelsea and Hillary are having a good time planning the wedding.

Century’s old shipwrecks were found in the baltic:

A dozen centuries-old shipwrecks — some of them unusually well-preserved — have been found in the Baltic Sea by a gas company building an underwater pipeline between Russia and Germany.

The oldest wreck probably dates back to medieval times and could be up to 800 years old, while the others are likely from the 17th to 19th centuries, Peter Norman of Sweden’s National Heritage Board said Tuesday.

“They could be interesting, but we have only seen pictures of their exterior. Many of them are considered to be fully intact. They look very well-preserved,” Norman told The Associated Press.

A pregnant male seahorse was filmed giving birth.

Slate has an article about what Whale tastes like. OK, everyone together, it tastes like chicken. No, they say it’s more like moose. Though I like the funny commentor who says: “Whale tastes a lot like dog. Less stringy than cat and with much more robust flavor, like hamster.” Probably tastes like whale. Wouldn’t you have to have a really big mouth to eat one of those, and be really, really hungry?

Moon astronauts say Obama’s NASA plans will be catastrophic:

Jim Lovell, commander of the ill-fated Apollo 13 mission, said Mr Obama’s decision would have “catastrophic consequences” for US space exploration.

The last man on the Moon, Eugene Cernan, said it was “disappointing”.

Last month Mr Obama cancelled Nasa’s Constellation Moon landings programme, approved by ex-President George W Bush.

Nasa still aims to send astronauts back to the Moon, but it is likely to take decades and some believe that it will never happen again.

Ah, the sunday propaganda blubber fest. Here’s the lineup if you have the stomach for it:

Axelrod appears on ABC’s “This Week,” NBC’s “Meet the Press” and CNN’s “State of the Union,” while Gibbs is on “Fox News Sunday” and CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

ABC also has Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and former White House Communications Director Anita Dunn. ABC News White House correspondent Jake Tapper is the guest anchor.

CBS also hosts Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) and Karen Ignagni, president of America’s Health Insurance Plans.

(snip)

Fox also interviews Reps. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) and Eric Cantor (R-Va.). And former President George W. Bush’s political guru, Karl Rove, now a Fox News contributor, discusses his new book “Courage and Consequence: My Life as a Conservative in the Fight.”

NBC also has Rove, along with Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.).

CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria GPS” has Richard Holbrooke, the special U.S. envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan.

What’s cook’in in your backyard? Post any news you find for more discussion, screaming, pulling hair out or laughing ’till you drop.

Sunday News Roundup

Good morning Conflucians!!

It’s been an interesting week in congress. Well, not if you’re one of the many who are leaving or the many who are being squeezed between your constituents not wanting the horrible healthcare reform insurance big bonanza giveaway and Nancy and Obama wanting your soul for pennies on the dollar. I think perhaps just leaving is better than selling your soul to the insurance industry via their puppets N and O. Better yet, how about if some of them grow a spine and just say NO to the N and O puppet show.

Elections in Iraq are marked by mortar rounds. Of course.

Dozens of mortar rounds thudded across Baghdad on Sunday morning and at least 12 people were killed as Iraqis went to the polls in an election testing the stability of the country’s still-fragile democracy.

Insurgents had vowed to disrupt the elections — which they see as validating the Shiite-led government and the U.S. presence — with violence in order to increase uncertainty over a looming U.S. troop drawdown and widen still jagged sectarian divisions.

As the polls opened at 7 a.m., bombs began exploding and mortar rounds landing across the city.

Oscars are tonight. Yea, that just happened, I juxtaposed the Oscars with Iraq. There maybe some upsets tonight. And of course as we know, a woman has never one for best director. We’ll see if that changes tonight.

By many counts, 2009 was a great year for women in Hollywood. Female directors knocked out such hits as “The Proposal,” “Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel,” “It’s Complicated” and “Julie & Julia,” as well as the Oscar contenders “The Hurt Locker” and “An Education.”

Sandra Bullock and Meryl Streep outperformed most of their male counterparts dollar for dollar at the box office, nabbing Oscar nominations to boot. The elusive female movie-going audience has started to gel into a potent force, driving such hits as the “Twilight” franchise, “The Blind Side” and this weekend’s “Alice in Wonderland.”

Now comes the capper, as Kathryn Bigelow stands poised to become the first woman to win an Oscar for directing, after spending seven years in proverbial director’s jail because her last film, “K-19: The Widowmaker,” flopped at the box office.

After winning numerous critic awards and the prestigious Directors Guild of America directing award, Bigelow is favored to take tonight’s prize for directing “The Hurt Locker,” her film about bomb-disposal technicians in Iraq that is also nominated for best picture.

Obama might have to make a decision:

President Obama’s top national security advisers will within days present him with an agonizing choice on how to guide U.S. nuclear weapons policy for the rest of his term.

Does he substantially advance his bold pledge to seek a world free of nuclear weapons by declaring that the “sole purpose” of the U.S. arsenal is to deter other nations from using them? Or does he embrace a more modest option, supported by some senior military officials, that deterrence is the “primary purpose”?

Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) is in some trouble:

Democratic activists flooding money into a primary challenge against Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) say the race isn’t simply about defeating the incumbent. It is also about rebuking a Democratic-controlled Congress that they say isn’t pursuing an aggressive, populist agenda.

After Arkansas Lt. Gov. Bill Halter announced Monday that he would challenge Lincoln, liberal donors from groups such as MoveOn.org poured more than $1 million into his campaign, an unusually high sum for the first two days of campaigning. Liberals blasted Lincoln with anti-Washington rhetoric that sounded more like the conservative tea party movement. The groups are particularly critical of her opposition to the public option, as it is known, in the health-care bill and her support in 2008 for a Wall Street bailout.

The message are mixed and tricky to read. The media that still loves Obama will probably think the voters want to put in people that will support him more and miss the point of the anti-incumbancy mood. As well as of course real liberals specifically not wanting someone who will support the new Dubya. We’ll see how this race shapes up.

The issues and problems with the Greece bailout and it’s GS connections continue to cause trouble. And now we’re seeing some wacky ideas about how to fix it. Yikes, there are some old issues being dredged up there.

And speaking of debt, Iceland is having a referendum on theirs:

Iceland’s 320,000 citizens voted on whether their government should repay Britain and the Netherlands more than 3.8bn euros (£3.4bn) – equivalent to each person contributing 99 euros a month for eight years.

Britain and the Netherlands say they are due the money following Iceland’s financial meltdown in 2008. But Icelanders say the terms of the repayment are too onerous and rejected the package in its current form.

The collapse of three of Iceland’s biggest banks overwhelmed the country’s deposit-insurance scheme.

Some 340,000 British and Dutch depositors in the Icesave online bank (owned by Landsbanki) had to be bailed out by their domestic compensation scheme.

Now these two countries want their money back from Reykjavik.

(snip)

Most Icelanders argue that they should not be penalised for their government’s failure to rein in spending and for the excesses of a few banks.

As we are seeing in Greece, and elsewhere in Europe, the majority of people don’t want to be penalised for the actions of a few.

Iceland’s rising unemployment and high living costs means the country is taking longer to emerge from recession. The economy shrank 6.5% last year and is forecast to shrink about 2.5% this year.

There is also a lingering dislike at the way Britain has conducted itself.

London used anti-terrorist legislation to freeze the assets of Icelandic banks, sparking the worst diplomatic row between the two countries since the Cod Wars fishing dispute in the 1970s.

And the vote is in, Icelanders rejected the deal to repay.

In the “you’ve got to be kidding me” news, insurance rates may go up in Boston:

Three weeks after Governor Deval Patrick warned that his administration might turn down health insurance premium increases it deemed excessive for individuals and small businesses, insurers have asked the state to approve rate hikes of 8 to 32 percent for April 1.

Patrick last month said the state Division of Insurance would review rate increases exceeding 4.8 percent as part of a broader effort to rein in health care expenses. If the insurers’ latest round of increases is rejected, it would mark the first time Massachusetts has capped health insurance rates.

Insurers say such a move would cause confusion in the marketplace, as they already have negotiated contracts with many individuals and small businesses at the new rates. Capping the rates would also result in immediate financial losses, insurers assert, forcing them to cut payments to health providers and threatening the viability of weaker hospitals.

Poor poor insurance companies. They’re suffering so. They’ve been going up in VA (mine went up 30% this month). Looks like a trend.

Batshit crazy Dowd has a column talking about Obama and the whole he’s got muslim roots thingy and how that was supposed to help in the ME. I’m not going to link to it because, we’ll, she’s really loony. But take a look of you have the stomach for her.

Just what you were all waiting for, Karl Rove has his memoirs out. Here’s a bit about them from the BBC. Ug. Of course, we’ve got the political re-runs in the white house now. I’m not sure what the difference is between the teams of dubya/rove and obama/axelrove.

Slight change of pace. The european iF design awards took place recently. Take a look for some fun items. And the almanac of architectural design is out. Also some nice items. And speaking of wild design, apparently Di Vinci’s huge horse statute was technically feasible. And we have the top 10 geekiest decorations for your home or office. My favorite is the red swingline stapler modeled after the one used in the cult classic movie, Office Space. And apparently 3D TV’s are all the rage. Here’s one getting ready to go to the stores. And just when I was thinking I was all caught up by getting a flat screen TV. Silly me. Here’s a fun one from the “somehow that makes sense department”, marijuana research offers hope for male birth control pill. Let the speculation about insurance coverage begin. And for one more distraction, here’s a good looking Tunisian Frittata recipe. Mmmm.

That’s some of the news today. Please chime in with any juicy bits you find.

Sunday News Roundup

Good morning Conflucians!

The big news is still the massive 8.8 earthquake in Chile and the luckily mild tsunami that followed. Here’s an update, though I’m sure there will be more today.

The NYTimes Caucus Blog has the sunday political show line up, for whatever that is worth. Sounds like Nancy Pelosi is planning on making appearances to continue slamming Republicans for not taking the healthcare show circus debate seriously. Riiight. Nancy, we noticed how seriously you took those by the fact that it was the one and only discussion to be held. If Obama and the Democrats were serious, they would keep those coming every day to hammer out something. Nonetheless, the earthquake news I’m sure will take up some of that space that would otherwise be used for the usual hot air generation.

Since we’ve been all about exercise the last few weeks. What? You know, because of what’s happening in Canada. Anyway, here’s some interesting exercise news. Interval training can cut exercise hours sharply:

People who complain they have no time to exercise may soon need another excuse.

Some experts say intense exercise sessions could help people squeeze an entire week’s workout into less than an hour. Intense exercise regimens, or interval training, was originally developed for Olympic athletes and thought to be too strenuous for normal people.

“High-intensity interval training is twice as effective as normal exercise,” said Jan Helgerud, an exercise expert at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. “This is like finding a new pill that works twice as well … we should immediately throw out the old way of exercising.”

The 2010 winter olympics will close today, with I’m sure a lovely closing ceremony this evening. Canada has the most golds which is a big change from previous times Canada hosted the olympics where they won no gold medals. Some memorable events included South Korea’s Kim Yu-Na winning gold for women’s figure skating where South Korea had never one any medal before. Here are some links for those so inclined to read further: official olympics page, NYTimes olympics page, and an interesting wrap up from Slate.

And while we’re still flipping through Discover News from the exercise article, there seems to be some promising development towards a perfect insulator which could eliminate the need for heating systems in the home:

A perfect insulator, or a material that reflects heat while absorbing none of it, has been created by scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Sandia National Laboratories.

Besides eliminating your heating bill, perfect insulators could make computers cooler and speed up cell phone downloads.

“All the heat that hits it gets shot back in the other direction,” said Edwin Thomas, a scientist at MIT and co-author of a recent paper in the journal ACS Nano Letters describing the creation of a low-temperature perfect insulator. “If you could put the right material on the wall (of a home), the heat from your body would be enough to heat it.”

In ever so slightly less fun news, here’s an article about how this new jobless era will transform America:

After nearly two brutal years, the Great Recession appears to be over, at least technically. Yet a return to normalcy seems far off. By some measures, each recession since the 1980s has retreated more slowly than the one before it.

(snip)

The unemployment rate hit 10 percent in October, and there are good reasons to believe that by 2011, 2012, even 2014, it will have declined only a little. Late last year, the average duration of unemployment surpassed six months, the first time that has happened since 1948, when the Bureau of Labor Statistics began tracking that number. As of this writing, for every open job in the U.S., six people are actively looking for work.

(snip)

If it persists much longer, this era of high joblessness will likely change the life course and character of a generation of young adults—and quite possibly those of the children behind them as well. It will leave an indelible imprint on many blue-collar white men—and on white culture. It could change the nature of modern marriage, and also cripple marriage as an institution in many communities. It may already be plunging many inner cities into a kind of despair and dysfunction not seen for decades. Ultimately, it is likely to warp our politics, our culture, and the character of our society for years.

(snip)

Historically, financial crises have spawned long periods of economic malaise, and this crisis, so far, has been true to form. Despite the bailouts, many banks’ balance sheets remain weak; more than 140 banks failed in 2009. As a result, banks have kept lending standards tight, frustrating the efforts of small businesses—which have accounted for almost half of all job losses—to invest or rehire.

(snip)

It’s likely, then, that for the next several years or more, the jobs environment will more closely resemble today’s environment than that of 2006 or 2007—or for that matter, the environment to which we were accustomed for a generation. Heidi Shierholz, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, notes that if the recovery follows the same basic path as the last two (in 1991 and 2001), unemployment will stand at roughly 8 percent in 2014.

“We haven’t seen anything like this before: a really deep recession combined with a really extended period, maybe as much as eight years, all told, of highly elevated unemployment,” Shierholz told me. “We’re about to see a big national experiment on stress.”

And speaking of jobs and how to make them, this article discusses how entrepreneurs are made not born:

Silicon Valley investors often have a picture in their heads of the type of person who is worthy of funding: young, brash, stubborn, and arrogant. They believe that successful entrepreneurs come from entrepreneurial families and that they start their entrepreneurial journey by selling lemonade while in grade school. (snip)

Jason, Fred, and Silicon Valley VCs, I’ve got news for you: you’ve got it all wrong. Entrepreneurs aren’t born, they’re made. And they aren’t anything like you think they are. My team surveyed 549 successful entrepreneurs. We found that the majority didn’t have entrepreneurial parents. They didn’t even have entrepreneurial aspirations while going to school. They simply got tired of working for others, had a great idea they wanted to commercialize, or woke up one day with an urgent desire to build wealth before they retired. So they took the big leap.

We found that 52% of the successful entrepreneurs were the first in their immediate families to start a business — just like Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Larry Page, Sergei Brin, and Russell Simons (Def Jam founder). Their parents were academics, lawyers, factory workers, priests, bureaucrats, etc. About 39% had an entrepreneurial father, and 7% had an entrepreneurial mother. (Some had both.)

(snip)

What did affect their successes?  Education — but not the college they graduate from. In a different study of the 652 CEOs and CTOs of 502 tech companies, we researched the correlation between education and the sales and headcount of companies founded. We learned that the there was a significant difference between companies started by founders with just high-school diplomas and the rest. Education provided a huge advantage. But there wasn’t a big difference between firms founded by Ivy-league graduates and the graduates of other universities.

So there you have it. No jobs to be had, but if you want to create some you don’t need an ivy league education or to come from an entrepreneurial family. Just don’t ask me where you get the funding however.

Roger Ebert has his voice back due to some neat technology:

Nearly four years after a battle with thyroid cancer robbed him of the ability to speak, iconic film critic Roger Ebert sounded like his former self Friday during a taping of “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” the show’s producer said.

It was no medical miracle, but rather a demonstration of new software using audio recordings of Ebert to create a synthetic voice that sounds like his own.

CereProc, a company based in Edinburgh, Scotland, created the voice for him using mostly audio of Ebert’s DVD commentaries on “Citizen Kane” and ” Casablanca.”

In social networking etiquete news and views, here’s an article on how to decline Facebook friends without offense:

A colleague I just met at work has invited me to be their friend on Facebook. I don’t want to offend them, but nor do I want to share my candid photos and lousy Scrabble scores with someone I hardly know. (snip)

Of course, many people don’t have a problem with being Facebook friends with colleagues, especially those they know well. But for those who would rather keep their work and private lives separate, there are options other than ignoring an unwanted friend request.

One is to accept the invitation and then use Facebook’s privacy settings to limit the flow of information between you and your new “friend.” To do this, you can create a “colleagues” list from the Friends menu and then add to it your new friend. Then navigate to the privacy settings and use the “Profile Information” section to control what information people on the “colleagues” list can see.

An alternative, says workplace etiquette expert Barbara Pachter, is to suggest to the colleague that you connect instead on LinkedIn, a social network for professional relationships.

Did I just accidentally put something useful in a post?

In other news:

Ron Paul is getting blowback from the CPAC straw poll.

Three of London’s most prestigious hotels may end up in the hands of the Irish government.

Some updates on Obama’s home foreclosure program, it’s not doing well.

UK in Israel probing use of fake passports.

Germany, France, Netherlands to buy Greek bonds. What a pickle.

Mmmm, every day is hot chocolate day.

What’s new in your neck of the woods?

Sunday News Roundup

Top of the morning to you! Welcome to a new week. Let’s hope it’s a good one. After some seriously rough weather, we’re finally getting back to the 50′s this week here near Jefferson’s Monticello. Speaking of Tommy, I wonder what he would think of a wall street owned president following an oil owned president. He’d probably head back to France. Or perhaps he’d organize people to try to make some changes. I’d like to think the latter. Let’s see what’s in the news this fine morning. Something good I hope.

Apparently there are some Olympic Games going on. And like any good sports fan, I get all my news from BoingBoing via Cory Doctorow. The Olympic organization is up to its usual bullying:

Barry sez, “UVEX, the ski goggle maker, got a nastygram from an Olympics Committee IP lawyer, forbidding them from using any images — or even mentioning — that gold medal winner Lindsey Vonn uses their equipment.”

So UVEX turned to verse:

Blonde Who Uses Our Stuff Wins Downhill (Last Name Rhymes With “Bonn”)

There once was a lawyer from the IOC,
who called us to protect “intellectual property.”
“During the Olympics”, she said with a sneer
“your site can’t use an Olympian’s name even if they use your gear.”

“No pictures, no video, no blog posts can be used…”
Even if they are old? “No!”, she enthused.

While Olympians chase gold the IOC pursues green.
Cough up millions, or your logo cannot be seen . . .

Theoretically, a trademark claim is partly about protecting a company’s name from “tarnishment,” but it’s hard to imagine how one could tarnish the IOC’s reputation any further, between the naked greed, the unchecked bullying, the corruption and bribery, the doping, and the censorship. Oh, and the thousands of poor people inevitably evicted whenever the Olympics come to town. Is there any way the IOC’s reputation could sink lower?

And some people got some medals, some other people didn’t. The Georgians buried their Olympic luger. The Olympic uniforms are getting better reviews. Sad news and silliness aside, there have been some pretty fun events. I especially have been liking the short track skating. It’s intense, it’s scary, it’s rough and there’s a bit of cheating now and then. But it’s damn exciting.

In addition, the snowboarding has been pretty neat. Go here for the snowboarding results. And go here for all of the results so far. And don’t forget to have a read in the NYTimes Olympic section, and in Reuters Olympics Notebook. What events and particular athletes have you been following? And no, Tiger Woods doesn’t count.

Sort of related to RD’s discussion of bad network coverage of the Olympics, here’s some interesting news: Even though NBC and their partner Microsoft have been heavily promoting NBC’s Olympic website, Yahoo’s Olympic website has been eating them alive in ratings. Yet anther sign of the networks loosing their grip on the media and viewers perhaps.

Some news close to home, the Metro seems to be falling apart:

Washington’s Metro system, once a national model for urban transit systems, has deteriorated so badly that the National Transportation Safety Board plans to use a hearing this week into the June 22 crash that killed nine people and injured 80 as a case study for the adequacy of state and federal oversight at subways across the country.

The most sobering manifestation of Metro’s decline is a series of fatal accidents over the past seven months. Since the crash on the Red Line, four workers have been killed on the tracks and a subcontractor was electrocuted while working at a bus garage.

Metro, which opened in 1976, has earned an embarrassing distinction.

“No one can recall another time when the NTSB has had four open investigations involving a single transit system,” NTSB spokesman Peter Knudson said. “When we see numerous accidents in a relatively short period of time, we want to determine what, if any, common elements there are that may need to be addressed.”

I go to DC quite often, and I usually ride the Metro when I’m there. I have been there twice when there were crashes. Luckily I haven’t been in one. But it’s making me worry. What does this say about the state of our country and its infrastructure if we can’t even keep the Metro running?

In fun news, Cirque du Soleil is doing Elvis in Las Vegas (also reviewed here):

Three decades after Elvis Presley took his last bow on the Las Vegas Strip, where he once reigned as king, the magicians of Cirque du Soleil have tried to summon back the power of this supreme entertainer in a show titled, ”Viva Elvis.”

They have mixed a dizzying array of dance, acrobatics, live musicians, over-the-top stage sets, and glitzy costumes with gigantic videos of Elvis in his most legendary performances and memorable life events.

In the words of an Elvis song, the result is ”Too Much.”

The Dalai Lama visited Obama. He didn’t care about the low key treatment. And of course, what did the press ask him when they got the chance to talk, why they asked him about Tiger Woods of course, wouldn’t you? (that was a snark):

The Tibetan spiritual leader also briefly addressed the Tiger Woods scandal and the golf star’s public comments Friday about straying from his Buddhist faith. Woods said he was raised Buddhist but needed to focus anew on finding balance between his faith and professional life.

The Dalai Lama said he did not know who Woods was, but said self-discipline is among Buddhism’s highest values.

When it comes to adultery, he said, “all religions have the same idea.”

“I think mainly whether you call it Buddhism or another religion, self-discipline, that’s important,” he said. “Self-discipline with awareness of consequences.”

And what do you know, the Conservative Political Action Conference, that has been in the news during the week, had a straw poll. You’ll never guess who won. No, you’re wrong. It was Ron Paul. I think they’re positively batty.

Representative Ron Paul of Texas won a straw poll for the 2012 Republican U.S. presidential nomination conducted among activists at the Conservative Action Political Conference.

Paul, a former Libertarian Party presidential candidate, received 31 percent of the vote, followed by former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney with 22 percent, former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin with 7 percent and Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty with 6 percent.

Less than 25 percent of the more than 10,000 people attending the conference voted, according to poll results released by the event’s organizers. Students accounted for 48 percent of those voting. Young people were among Paul’s supporters when he sought the 2008 Republican nomination, with more than 200 Students for Ron Paul chapters formed at U.S. colleges.

The usual nutjobs gave nutty speeches. Beck apparently outdid himself for even more craziness. I was going to quote some of his ramblings, but I think I would hurt something in my head. Interestingly Palin did not attend. Probably smart. Politico has a bit more about it too.

Amazingly, we have a bit of snark from the NYTimes on Obamacare:

Coming soon to daytime television: America’s long-running civic drama over how to provide better health care to more of its people without breaking the bank.

President Barack Obama summons anxious Democrats and aloof Republicans to a White House summit Thursday — live on C-SPAN and perhaps cable — and gambles that he can save his embattled health care overhaul by the power of persuasion. Adversaries and allies alike were surprised by Obama’s invitation to reason together at an open forum, as risky as it is unusual.

…snip…

”It’s a high-stakes situation for him more than anybody else,” said Gerald Shea, the top health care adviser for the AFL-CIO. ”If the judgment is either that it’s a political farce, or if it fails to move the ball forward significantly … that would be very damaging to the issue and to him.”

That will be fun to watch. Not. I think I’ll go ride the Metro instead and take my chances.

There are some promising results reported showing that singing “rewires” damaged brains of stroke patients:

By singing, patients use a different area of the brain from the area involved in speech.

If a person’s “speech centre” is damaged by a stroke, they can learn to use their “singing centre” instead.

Researchers presented these findings at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in San Diego.

If you’re going to sing, might as well make it as silly as possible:

Too silly. Now back to the news. Alexander Haig died yesterday. Of course he’s most famous for saying he was in charge when he wasn’t.

Politico has their usual Sunday talk show tip sheet. Handy to know what to avoid. Frankly I think I’ll avoid them all, bypassing the middle man, and just stick something in my eye myself.

Across the pond, the Labor, oops, I mean the Labour election campaign is going to adopt Obama’s blueprint including yes we can:

In 1992 and 1996 Tony Blair and Gordon Brown came back from the Clinton Democrats with a suitcase of tools – the soundbite, the war room and rapid rebuttal – tools that helped them deliver an election landslide in 1997. Now Labour, facing a most difficult election, has returned to the Democrats for inspiration and insight.

In January 2009 Douglas Alexander, Labour’s election coordinator, went to speak to the Obama team expecting them to tell him “modern campaigning begins and ends with the internet”.

One of the great students of American politics, Alexander recalls: “Actually they said this is about to peer-to-peer communication – the internet just gives you new ways of having that conversation.”

Alexander quotes David Plouffe, Obama’s campaign manager arguing: “What people on the ground said to one another was just as important, if not more important, than what Obama said himself. We could not put a price on it — regular people briefing Obama’s message to their neighbours, serving as our ambassadors, block by block, throughout the battleground states.”

Oh dear. Does that mean they want a corrupt corporatist in their supposedly left party too?

Dean Baker has the bad news about unemployment:

The Labor Department reported an increase of 31,000 initial claims for unemployment insurance last week. The weekly data are always erratic, but there has been a clear upward movement since December numbers. The four-week average was 467,500, which is considerably higher than a level consistent with job growth (@400,000).

Also, last week’s numbers were almost certainly depressed by bad weather on the East Coast. Many people who would have otherwise filed claims were unable to get to unemployment offices as a result of snow storms. Therefore, we may expect a jump in the current week. The number of claims deserved far more attention than it received.

I thought I was going to find some good news out there. It might be time to stick my head in the sand.

Oh, no, just in time, here’s something fun. So a Chinese factory in Mexico forced the workers to work overtime. And so of course the workers burned the factory down:

Apparently at the end of the work day on Friday, supervisors at the Foxconn factory in Juarez, Mexico weren’t quite ready to wrap up for the weekend, so they told the workers that the transportation trucks that take them home everyday were being held up at a military checkpoint. In the meantime, the workers were forced to keep toiling away without any extra compensation.

Well, that bit about the military checkpoint wasn’t entirely true, and when the workers found out that the trucks were just being blocked-in in the parking lot, they expressed their anger by setting fire to the gymnasium, the area of the building in which the factory’s finished computers and cell phones are stored.

This reportedly isn’t the first time the slimy managers at the Juarez plant had tried to strong arm their employees into staying overtime without extra pay, so the explosive reaction is not entirely surprising. Sometimes you just gotta fight fire with arson.

In slightly more fun news, students at CalPoly made a car that gets 2752MPG:

Engineering students at the California Polytechnic State University are showing off the updated Black Widow, their entry for the upcoming Shell Eco-Marathon contest, and it involves some unusual numbers: 3 (wheels); 3 (horsepower engine); and 2,752 (miles per gallon).

Happiness, a study finds, is found in looking forward to your vacation:

…The author assessed how vacations impact happiness among 1,530 Dutch adults, 974 of whom took a vacation during the study period. In particular, Nawijn looked at differences in happiness levels between vacationers and those not going on vacation, as well as whether a trip away boosts post-trip happiness. Jeroen Nawijn found that those planning a vacation were happier than those not going away, and suggests that this may be due to their anticipation of the break.

Following a trip, there was no difference between vacationers’ and non-vacationers’ happiness, unless the time off was very relaxing, in which case the slightly increased happiness was particularly noticeable in the first two weeks back. The effect wore off completely after eight weeks. The author explains that it is not surprising that trips do not have a prolonged effect on happiness, since most vacationers return to work or other daily tasks and therefore fall straight back into their normal routine fairly quickly.

Jeroen Nawijn concludes by looking at possible implications from three points of view. From an individual point of view, he suggests that people are likely to derive more happiness from two or more short breaks spread throughout the year, rather than having just a single longer vacation once a year. From a policy perspective, in order for families to be able to stagger their trips throughout the year, the school system would need to become more flexible. And lastly, from a managerial point of view, the author would advise tourism managers to provide vacation products which are as stress-free as possible.

So a number of smaller vacations so you can spend more and more time planning and anticipating your vacation is better than one big vacation. This all predisposes you have a job and can take vacations.

In some more fun science news, flexible working arrangements improve blood pressure, sleep, and mental health. Salt reduction my offer cardioprotective effects beyond blood pressure reduction. Sleep disturbances improve after retirement. Duh. But retiring early is not linked to longer life.

That’s a bit of what’s been happening. What’s new in your neck of the woods?