May 24, 2009 archive

May 24 2009

BPA Revisted: More Craptastic Plastic and Lobbyists

A little over a year ago I posted an essay here and at DK about the potential health hazards of Bisphenol A  (BPA), a chemical commonly found in polycarbonate plastic containers for many consumer products, including drinking vessels like baby bottles.  BPA is also an ingredient in some epoxy compounds. Here is a link to the original piece.  Start with a Clear Silicone Nipple: Craptastic Plastic, BPA and you!. I encourage you to revisit it for a refresher on some of the chemistry, hazards and politics involved if you’ve forgotten about it.  At the very least, this is the Society of Plastics Industry (SPI) code that requires your attention, as it includes the BPA containing plastics.

May 24 2009

Conservatives will lose the Plains next

It’s already happened in the Northeast, and the Pacific Coast. The process is well under way in the Great Lakes region, the mid-Atlantic region, and the Mountain West (excluding the Mormon Belt) . . . yep, except for the South, Americans are turning against conservative values like homophobia, intolerance, and racism in huge numbers, as the overwhelming majorities that Democrats have won in 2006 & 2008, and the overwhelming popularity of President Obama show.

I submit to you that there is area of the US which has only just begun to change though – and that would be the Great Plains states – North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Kansas – as well as Montana, which I’m including in this analysis. It’s already been widely reported here, here and elsewhere that RepubliCon strength is overwhelmingly over-represented in the South – defined as the 11 states of the confederacy plus Oklahoma and Kentucky in the first hyperlink from the National Journal. DailyKos blogger Steve Singiser notes in that second link that:

At the Congressional level, the disparities are, if possible, even more stark. In the United States Senate, Republicans control 19 of the 26 seats in the South. Outside the South, Democrats control 53 seats. The GOP controls just 21 seats outside of the South.

What this means, in a nutshell, is that outside of the South, Democrats come very close to controlling three-quarters of the seats in the United States Senate.

The other major area of RepubliCon strength is the Mormon Belt.

May 24 2009

Considered Forthwith: House Energy and Commerce Committee

Note: This essay turns Orange around 8 p.m. Sunday. It will also be on Congress Matters and is posted on my own blog.

Welcome to the ninth installment of “Considered Forthwith.”

This weekly series looks at the various committees in the House and the Senate. Committees are the workshops of our democracy. This is where bills are considered, revised, and occasionally advance for consideration by the House and Senate. Most committees also have the authority to exercise oversight of related executive branch agencies. If you want to read previous dairies in the series, search using the “forthwith” tag. I welcome criticisms and corrections in the comments.

This week, I will examine the House Energy and Commerce Committee. There is a lot going on in this committee, including speed reading to neutralize a GOP stalling tactic.

May 24 2009

Doing America Harm….

Where are all of these hordes of jihadists wishing to harm America?

How many active Taliban are there? How many of them would become inactive….if we uninvaded their country?

How many active Al Qaeda are there? And where are they?

And how would they get here to harm America? Where is their Navy and Airforce?

What resources does the jihadi threat possess to harm America with?

Why aren’t they using those WMD’s that would threaten real harm against us in Iraq or AfPak?

Cheney said torture foiled plots. Everybody else says, uh, no. So there have been no real threats of harm to the “Homeland” since 9/11?

Our fearsome enemies are armed with rifles, improvised bombs, and RPG’s. The most effective weapon they have ever wielded to harm America has been…..box cutters.

Hell they don’t even have missiles to shoot down our helicopters, apparently.

They can only, it seems, attack us when we invade their countries. Or perhaps, once in a blue moon, when we have a president that ignores the threat. And a confluence of circumstance that can easily be ascribed to luck occurs. We haven’t been attacked, and I am NOT crediting Cheney for this, in eight years

Yet we have changed our entire way of life and are fighting two wars and our politics are still full of fear of the terrorists and our national psyche is still obsessed with the events of nearly eight years ago, is still bent on demonizing and inflating this relatively tiny group of people and we are still making policy and reacting as if hordes of Brown People are swimming to America with curved knives clenched in their teeth even as we speak, to kill us in our beds and make our wimmens wear burkhas.

Can someone tell me how these folks are able to harm America to the point where we have to live our lives and conduct our politics in fear of them?

Please?

May 24 2009

Sunday music retrospective: Animusic

Animusic



Future Retro



Starship Groove

May 24 2009

Change officially put on “Prolonged Detention”

     

The rule of law can be wiped out in one misguided, no matter how well-intentioned, generation

American Bar Association President William T. Gossette, 1969

   “Absolutist(s)” is the term President Obama used to describe people who expect laws to mean something. If I believe in the absolute nature of the rule of law, I am an “absolutist”. What President Obama said, in a way, is that the left demanding justice is equivalent to the right who demand immunity from the rule of law.

    President Obama, who I voted for and want to support, just said “neither side is right.”

    “If the law supposes that,” said Mr. Bumble, “the law is an ass, a idiot.”

Charles Dickins

    Of course Obama is wrong on this, because two wrongs do not make a right.

May 24 2009

End Hate

Are we free to hate?  If so, why?  We have freedom of speech, but hate speech is a crime.  

Hate is acceptable except for under the most extreme circumstances…  Why do we do it?  Because we can.  Because we can’t help it.  Because we like to.  We’re human beings with human emotions and one of those emotions is hate.  The problem is that hate is normal.  We all do it.  We really don’t think about it.  We always worry about the hate of others.  That is… unless their hates match our own.  We all feel justified in our hate.  It fills us with a sense of superiority and control.  What useful or positive purpose does hate serve under any circumstances?  It just seems a bit hypocritical of us to condemn only certain kinds of hate.  Can’t we just somehow decide as a species that hate is not a behaviorally correct attitude?

Photobucket

We can never bring an end to war or bigotry without ending the hatred first.  As long as we continue to allow ourselves this acidic emotion we are no better than those haters we criticize.  We can’t end hate with hate.  We can’t end war with war.  We can’t end torture with torture.  We can’t end terrorism with terrorism.  We can’t end bigotry with bigotry.  Sometimes you fight fire with fire…  most times you use a hose.  

You can’t end hate with hate.  

May 24 2009

OMG…. Mandated Paid Vacation

This past week some screaming radical leftist in Congress dared to introduce a proposal that would mandate paid vacation for workers.

Holy fuck some government bureaucrat is going to try and violate your civil right to work until you are dead. Will horrors in the American work place ever cease?

So on Thursday, the Florida Democrat will introduce the Paid Vacation Act – legislation that would be the first to make paid vacation time a requirement under federal law.

The bill would require companies with more than 100 employees to offer a week of paid vacation for both full-time and part-time employees after they’ve put in a year on the job. Three years after the effective date of the law, those same companies would be required to provide two weeks of paid vacation, and companies with 50 or more employees would have to provide one week

Could capitalism survive this? I mean, well rested workers might start thinking about stuff and enjoying their lives and recognizing their children. Over worked spouses doing opposite shifts from one another to accommodate the reality of little affordable child care in this country might have conversations with one another!

Over at Politico, it is noted that…

According to the Center for Economic and Policy Research, 28 million Americans – or about a quarter of the work force – don’t get any paid vacation. The center says that a lack of vacation causes stress and workplace burnout and that those evil twins cost the economy more than $300 billion each year.

One more if-you’re-reading-this-then-you’re-probably-not-on-vacation fact: The United States is dead last among 21 industrial countries when it comes to mandatory R&R.

France currently requires employers to provide 30 days of paid leave.

Isn’t that silly? We want American workers to be burned out. That is the whole point of America. Stressed out Americans are good for capitalism. Then when they get a free moment they go out and buy stuff to prove to their neighbors how hard they work. Besides we don’t want workers being mentally alert, they might become more mindful of workplace safety and go organize unions.

May 24 2009

Bob & Lee Woodruff’s New Cause

A Memorial Day Goal for Bob and Lee Woodruff

“Hey Friends —  Would you give a dollar to someone who risked their life for you?  We are in a big push this weekend to try to get every American to give $1.00 (or better yet $5.25 – to signify the date of Memorial Day) to help our wounded troops. This is what Memorial Day is all about.

“Yesterday by being on CNN and CNBC to talk about it– Bob and I raised $21,000 just from people twittering and going to the website to give.”…………

May 24 2009

Docudharma Times Sunday May 24

Memorial Day  




Sunrday’s Headlines:

For Baucus, Health Care Is the Issue Of a Lifetime

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad tries to silence rivals in the run-up to elections in Iran

Israelis may emigrate over nuclear threat

Sex, drugs, rock’n’roll and the Palme d’Or

Al Qaeda recruits back in Europe, but why?

Battle for a Taliban town of terror

Mongolians vote for new president

Now at last it’s time for Shell to atone for my father’s death

‘Cuba’ by Julia E. Sweig

U.S. Relies More on Aid of Allies in Terror Cases



By ERIC SCHMITT and MARK MAZZETTI

Published: May 23, 2009

WASHINGTON – The United States is now relying heavily on foreign intelligence services to capture, interrogate and detain all but the highest-level terrorist suspects seized outside the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, according to current and former American government officials.

The change represents a significant loosening of the reins for the United States, which has worked closely with allies to combat violent extremism since the 9/11 attacks but is now pushing that cooperation to new limits.

In the past 10 months, for example, about a half-dozen midlevel financiers and logistics experts working with Al Qaeda have been captured and are being held by intelligence services in four Middle Eastern countries after the United States provided information that led to their arrests by local security services, a former American counterterrorism official said.

UN chief flies into Sri Lanka as Tamils’ tales of terror emerge

250,000 Tamil civilians are held behind the wire of one refugee camp. Many have stories of a desperate escape. Most go unheard – but 10-year-old Sopika’s account is a testimony to brutality

Gethin Chamberlain in Colombo

The Observer, Sunday 24 May 2009

The UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon yesterday visited a mass displacement camp packed with Tamil civilians as he appealed to Sri Lanka’s triumphant government to “heal the wounds” after three decades of civil war. As he surveyed the beleaguered and shell-shocked refugees held there and as the army searched for Tamil Tiger fighters among them, he would not have found time to talk to Sopika, aged 10.

Sopika is one of at least 250,000 Tamil civilians being held in Menik Farm in the north of the country. Barbed-wire fences encircle the endless rows of white tents, preventing civilians from getting out and journalists from getting in, as the government continues to prevent the stories of Sopika and thousands like her from being told.

USA

Dust storms speed snowmelt in the West

An unusually high number of the storms has left a film of dust on the Rocky Mountain snowpack, causing it to melt earlier and forcing farmers to adjust. This could be the new normal, scientists say.

By Nicholas Riccardi

May 24, 2009

Reporting from Denver — A series of unusual spring dust storms has left the snowcapped mountains of western Colorado stained brown and red, even a bit pink. The dust is speeding up the runoff to rivers that supply millions of people with water and raising fears of an increasingly arid West.

Twelve dust storms barreled into the southern Rockies from the deserts of Arizona, Utah and New Mexico so far this year. In contrast, four storms hit the mountains all year long in 2003. Eight occurred in each of the last three years.

“This year’s been really, really strong,” said Jason Neff, a hydrologist at the University of Colorado-Boulder. “Something’s been going on, and I don’t think we’re exactly sure what.”

The storms leave a dark film on snow that melts it faster by hastening its absorption of the sun’s energy. That, coupled with unseasonably warm temperatures, has sped up the runoff here, swelling rivers to near flood stage, threatening to make reservoirs overflow and fueling fears that there will not be enough water left for late-summer crops.

May 24 2009

Late Night Karaoke

Look Inside Its Dishwasher Safe

May 24 2009

We Got Played

(Crossposted from The Free Speech Zone)

Center for Constitutional Rights President Michael Ratner and Managing Attorney for CCR’s Guantanamo project Shayana Kadidal responded with disappointment to President Obama’s speech this morning. CCR represents the detainees at Guantánamo and is part of the key FOIA lawsuit surrounding the torture photo disclosures.

Ratner and Kadidal were disturbed by the direction the Obama administration is taking on questions of human rights, transparency, accountability and the law. CCR’s Executive Director, who met with the president yesterday, briefed his colleagues before boarding a plane this morning.

Said Ratner, “The president wrapped himself in the Constitution and then proceeded to violate it by announcing he would send people before irredeemably flawed military commissions and seek to create a preventive detention scheme that only serves to move Guantanamo to a new location and give it a new name.”

Said Kadidal, “Preventive detention goes against every principle our nation was founded on. We have courts and laws in place that we respect and rely on because we have been a nation of laws for hundreds of years; we should not simply discard them when they are inconvenient. The new president is looking a lot like the old.”

http://ccrjustice.org/newsroom…

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