September 2009 archive

The American Family Association (AFA) is a hate mongering group headquartered in Tupelo, MS.  They have been around for quite some time, and are tax exempt because they are a “ministry”.

One of their “ministries” is One News Now (ONN), their “news” outlet.  In addition to some of their in house writers, they regularly repost the bile vented by Michelle Malkin, Thomas Sowell, and several other wingnut writers.

Here is recent sampling.  I reluctantly link to the original article so you can see that I am not distorting it.  Within the boundaries of Fair Use I quote a couple of lines from the story, then peruse and reply to some of the comments.  The comments there are cut and pasted, so I do not alter them at all.  

I will present the snippets, along with links, to the original stories in blockquotes, comments at ONN in italics, otherwise unaltered, my response to them in bold, and my final thoughts in normal type. Here we go.

Living in lush green neighborhoods has provided the rich with a life-saving advantage over the poor who suffer from sweltering heat in concrete jungles.  Transforming green open lands into a maze of buildings and roads of cities provided benefits to all of society, but it also creates urban heat islands that cause illness, death and misery that is disproportionately imposed on poor communities.

Urban heat islands were first described over 200 years ago. Concrete structures create both surface and air urban heat islands of double-digit temperature differentials between cities and rural areas.

For years, the rich bought their escape.  A new study reveals it only costs $10,000 to decrease outside temperature by ½ degree Fahrenheit.

One inadvertent “benefit” of climate change is the growing awareness of this phenomenon of “cooking by day and night.” Fortunately, some are working to reduce the devastating impacts of urban heat islands.

Research done.  Or rather I am convinced the vaccine is debilitating, people will line up, even pay to get it, the cops will round people up and America as it was last month is no more.  It is what Eisenhower warned us of the military industrial complex.  Well now we have the MMIC, the militarized medical industrial complex.  The War of Error is over, the War of Drugs begins.

Lest anyone think that the US had suddenly reversed centuries of supporting and/or creating rightwing, military coups all across Latin America and was going to stand firm in support of restoring democracy in Honduras, today the US sent unmistakable signs that it wasn’t changing anything.  It was sticking with historical tradition. The US today lashed out at Manual Zelaya for returning to the country of which he is the legitimate president.

Join me in Tegucigalpa.

1. The Guardian reports the president of the World Bank predicts the U.S. dollar is set to be eclipsed. World Bank president Robert Zoellick warned the the U.S. dollar will no longer be the world’s reserve currency. The dollar will be replaced by the Chinese renminbi and the euro.

   “The United States would be mistaken to take for granted the dollar’s place as the world’s predominant reserve currency. Looking forward, there will increasingly be other options to the dollar,” Zoellick said.

2. The NY Times reports an Oil spill is seen as a warning. An oil well off Australia’s northwest coast “has been spewing thousands of gallons of crude oil into the Timor Sea since Aug. 21, when a blowout forced the evacuation of all 69 workers on the platform. Emergency crews have been working overtime to contain the spill, but officials say it could take about three more weeks to plug the leak.”

   The oil slick is now “25 miles wide and 85 miles long” and along with “more than 50 wells were drilled in the tropical waters off western Australia” could threaten the marine life of the reefs and atolls. As it is today, “conservationists worry that the spill could take a heavy toll on marine animals that feed and travel on or close to the ocean’s surface.”

3. The CS Monitor asks How can 40,000 troops fix chronic corruption in Afghanistan? The White House is concerned “that the Afghan government has become so rotted with corruption that it cannot consolidate the gains the US military makes.” Afghanistan may be a “narco-kleptocracy” where government positions go “to the highest bidder and opium money fueling corruption on a massive scale.”

   Gen. Stanley McChrystal “made fighting corruption a top priority of his assessment… He wants to use the 40,000 additional troops to protect Afghans from all threats – including their own government.” So, how can U.S. soldiers fight Afghan government corruption?

4. The Guardian reports U.S. inertia could scupper world climate deal in Copenhagen. American “ignorance about the risks and reality of global warming” will likely ruin any chance of an agreement to “control greenhouse gas emissions at December’s climate talks in Copenhagen” according John Schellnhuber, an advisor to the German government.

   “If the US doesn’t move then nothing will happen.”

   He added: “The US in a sense is climate illiterate. It is a deeper problem in the US, if you look at global polls about what the public knows about climate change. Even in Brazil and China, you have more people who know the problem, who think that deep cuts in emissions are needed.” …

   “The political chances seem very slim that something will happen in Copenhagen and even in the years after,” he said.

   A two-thirds majority vote in the Senate would be needed to ratify any international climate treaty.

I’m not making this up but I wish I were.

If you really want to see some horrifying developments in the Pentagon’s War On All That Is Decent, just google DARPA sometime and see what they’re up to.  

One of the things they’re working on is creating cyborg insects.   (Cyborg soldiers are on their plate as well).    They seem to have succeeded with a Cyborg Beetle, able to control the bug with remote-control.  

I suppose for those on whom Fox News doesn’t work, people will soon be manipulated in other, more direct ways (that’s a joke, sort of).

The creation of a cyborg insect army has just taken a step closer to reality. A research team at the University of California Berkeley recently announced that it has successfully implanted electrodes into a beetle allowing scientists to control the insect’s movements in flight. “We demonstrated the remote control of insects in free flight via an implantable radioequipped miniature neural stimulating system,” the researchers reported in their new paper for Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience. ” The pronotum mounted system consisted of neural stimulators, muscular stimulators, a radio transceiver-equipped microcontroller and a microbattery.”

The research, supported by the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, is part of a broader effort, called the HI-MEMS program, which has been looking specifically at different approaches to implanting micro-mechanical systems into insects in order to control their movements.

A number of research teams working on this ambitious project have reported specific successes. For example, researchers at the University of Michigan have demonstrated implants in a flying moth, but the Berkeley scientists appear to have demonstrated an impressive degree of control over their insect’s flight; they report being able to use an implant for neural stimulation of the beetle’s brain to start, stop, and control the insect in flight. They could even command turns by stimulating the basalar muscles.

Eventually, the mind-controlled insects could be used to “serve as couriers to locations not easily accessible to humans or terrestrial robots,” they note.

Just another lovely development in the War On terror drugs humanity.

For more nightmare-inducing DARPA projects, just click here:

http://gizmodo.com/tag/darpa/

Keep in mind, this is the stuff they LET us know about.

2009 Federal Employee of the Year

This medal recognizes a federal employee whose professional contributions exemplify the highest attributes of public service.

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Cross-posted at Dkos and MyDD

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We can christen this bus the We Want Obama To Ramp It Up In Afghan Straight Talk Express.

Senators McCain, Graham and Lieberman want you to know that

We are confident that not only is it winnable, but that we have no choice. We must prevail in Afghanistan.

and

At last, we have the right strategy and the civilian and military leaders on the ground in Afghanistan to carry it out. This is a must-win war. And now is the time to commit the decisive military force necessary to prevail.

And, you TRUST these nice folks, right?