December 6, 2009 archive

Dec 06 2009

I got a job as a paid Progressive Activist

     Crossposted at Daily Kos

    After months of looking for work my search is over. I am now a paid progressive activist with Fund for the Public Interest.

The Fund: Experts In Building Organizations, Winning Campaigns & Training Activists

    Fund for the Public Interest’s 25-year commitment to professional, systematic grassroots action has made us the go-to group in our field. When it comes to building organizations and creating the groundswell of public support needed to overcome powerful special interest opposition, our effectiveness is unrivaled.

    In 20 states, the Fund trains our staff to raise money, recruit members and do grassroots political work on behalf of more than 50 progressive organizations – including the Sierra Club, the Human Rights Campaign and Environment America. Meanwhile, hundreds of Fund alumni lead the way for hundreds of other effective political organizations, elected officials, and socially-conscious businesses.

Fund for the Public Interest

    Just when you think things can’t get any worse, a door opens somewhere.

    More below the fold. . .  

Dec 06 2009

Clean Energy Jobs go swimming

Clean Energy Jobs Go Swimming: $300 million per year for 10,000 jobs

This is part of a series of brief posts on ‘clean energy jobs‘ opportunities for sparking meaningful employment, quickly, in the United States.

Legislation is, they say, analogous to making sausage. Sometimes, in the mixing and mashing, seemingly well-intentioned and sensible options can create counter-productive situations and leave many valued goods on the table. One small example of this could open the door to creating employment, lowering costs for state & local governments (including educational institutions), improving ‘customer’ satisfaction, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

When it came to the stimulus package earlier this year, “swimming pools” were explicitly excluded from ARRA funding mechanisms.  While, amid serious economic stress and government investment to keep the economic from continuing in freefall, it might have seemed morally appropriate to do this, this restriction simply flies in the face of reality and good sense.

Dec 06 2009

Weekend News Digest

Weekend News Digest is an Open Thread

Now with World and U.S. News.  53 Story Final.

From Yahoo News Top Stories

1 US to launch new bid to hunt down Bin Laden

by Dan De Luce, AFP

33 mins ago

WASHINGTON (AFP) – The United States will launch a new effort to track down Osama bin Laden who is believed to be hiding in the mountains along the Afghan-Pakistan border, a senior US official said on Sunday.

Intelligence reports suggest the Al-Qaeda chief “is somewhere inside north Waziristan, sometimes on the Pakistani side of the border, sometimes on the Afghan side of the border,” said national security adviser James Jones.

Asked if President Barack Obama’s administration planned a fresh attempt to go after Al-Qaeda’s leader, Jones said: “I think so.”

Dec 06 2009

Solar Cell 40% Efficiency Breakthough, becomes Product Ready

This 40% breakthrough … has finally become available for your home (maybe?) and office use …

Solar cell breaks efficiency record

Michael Kanellos, CNET News — December 6, 2006

Boeing-Spectrolab has developed a solar cell that can convert almost 41 percent of the sunlight that strikes it into electricity, the latest step in trying to drop the cost of solar power.

Potentially, the solar cell could bring the cost of solar power down to around $3 a watt, after installation costs and other expenses are factored in, over the life of the panel.

[…]

Current silicon solar cells provide electricity at about $8 a watt, before government rebates. The goal is to bring it to $1 a watt without rebates or incentives.

http://news.cnet.com/Solar-cel…

Here is the Final Product from Spectrolab for your Home use. from this week’s news.

Dec 06 2009

I Need Help….a VERY personal essay

Much like Christians testify and AA folks make amends, as part of my personal process of growth, I need to do this publicly, please bear with me and feel free to completely ignore!

I need help.

Ten years ago I could not have said those words if Dick Cheney himself was electrifying my …er, genitals.

Which I am sure he would enjoy after what I have written about him, lol.

But now I have to say it, not just to get the help I need but as part of my long, hard, but VERY rewarding journey along the path of my Dharma…or whatever you want to call our journey through this sometimes horrifying and sometimes glorious life.

Dec 06 2009

What’s wrong with this headline?

Senate Dems Reject GOP Move To Block Medicare Home Health Care Cuts

I read this headline several times and just couldn’t get past it.  

PhotobucketFirst, there is the way it is structured.   It’s like someone is working realllly hard not to tell us something.  Something like Democrats insist that Medicare be cut over the objections of the Republicans – and win.

Second, how much more bizaare can it get than having them on opposing sides fighting against themselves.  GOP is now voting to protect Medicare and the Democrats are voting to cut a deal with insurance and pharma to force people to buy their insurance.  There is no way this is anything but farce.    

Last but not least is the “how stupid can they be” quotient. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot.  Now Republicans can go on the stump and declare that Democrats cut Granny’s Medicare and are now going to cut her Social Security to pay for socialized medicine for immigrants.  

Who needs death panels when you have Democrats.    

Dec 06 2009

Open Pothole

Dec 06 2009

Open Source

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Dec 06 2009

Science, Our Last Defense

Science has always been under attack from the Right, who never let things like factsiness get in the way of their guts. Hell, Mulder had nothing on the right-wing tribe of “we want to believe.” Look at the Warren Report. Science is their Enemy. Logic the Anti-Christ.

It is no surprise that after the 60’s revolution, there was a concerted effort to dumb down the Population, discourage critical thinking and demonize science while elevating Religious Radicalism in the National center stage. Reagan was a direct result of Nixon, not so much as direct revenge, but the result of think tanks using logic to create a more manageable populace.

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Science is painted as cold, impersonal, arrogant. People may be all of those things, but science cannot. Science is merely a process, devoid of all anthropomorphism.

It is a PROCESS of applying LOGICAL thinking to known data.

Like, say, a bullet cannot make 5 both lateral and vertical turns, through bone and erupt in a pristine state.

Or that DNA evidence proves we are all related, moving from the cradle of life in Africa outward.

Dec 06 2009

“We Are Not Talking Exit Strategy”

The dissembling has already begun. HuffPo reports this morning on Clinton and Gates talking with David Gregory on Meet The Press this morning:

Clinton, Gates Walk Back On Obama’s “Locked In” Afghan Withdrawal

Don’t be confused by President Obama’s speech on Afghanistan. Despite the president’s word on Tuesday that a surge of US and international troops in Afghanistan would “allow us to begin the transfer of our forces out of Afghanistan in July of 2011,” that date is not a “drop dead deadline”–at least according to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Clinton and Defense Secretary Robert Gates recorded an interview this week with NBC’s David Gregory on Meet The Press. Set to air Sunday morning, both Obama advisers will walk back on Obama’s withdrawal language. While the president did say during his speech that conditions on the ground would be considered before a transition, Clinton and Gates seem to go a step further:

HILLARY CLINTON: We’re not talking about an exit strategy or a drop dead deadline. What we’re talking about is an assessment that in January 2011, we can begin a transition. A transition to hand off — responsibility to the Afghan forces.

ROBERT GATES: We’re not talking about an abrupt withdrawal. We’re talking about something that will take place over a period of time. Our commanders think that these additional forces, and one of the reasons for the President’s decision to try and accelerate their deployment is– is the view that this extended surge has the opportunity to make significant gains in terms of reversing the momentum of the Taliban, denying them control of Afghan territory, and degrading their capabilities.

WATCH:

Dec 06 2009

Roll Tide! (please indulge me).

.

 I’ve taken a much needed break from politics and political blogging.  I haven’t been on Orange for of months, ever since it totally sold out with that PBS “skin” and then its founder went on a couple of tirades against the very people who built-up his little bloggy empire (and who’ve made him his pile over the past 5 years).  At this point, I’ve no intention of going back.

 Docudharma is the quieter, saner, version of Orange:  all the politics, half the freakyness (well, 1/10th of the freakyness).  So this is where I now come to lurk or very occasionally comment or diary.  But I haven’t come here very much lately.

 But today, this Sunday morning, in the full flush of last night’s walloping of Florida by Alabama (and humiliation of that sanctimonious twit, Tebow), I simply feel compelled to visit this Best Political Blog and (virtually) shout:  Roll Tide!

 In Alabama we have one of the top aerospace research and development cities in all the world (Huntsville), the thriving and tradition-steeped-yet-forward-thinking deep water port city of Mobile, one of the globe’s most innovated bio-tech and bio-med hubs in Birmingham and beautiful sites and scenery, from the pristine Cahaba River to the glorious Little River Canyon.  Yet, sadly, especially in the world of politics, Alabama is burdened with disappointments.  

 So that’s why it’s so damn nice when — even if it’s in the realm of college football and not in the realm of Senatorial elections — there’s something to celebrate here.  And celebrating we are!  Except for the Auburn people.  But they don’t really count.

 All the best – and, again, Roll Tide.

Mu . . .

Dec 06 2009

Iraq War Inquiry, Day Eight

Friday, 12.04.09, was the eighth day of the British Iraq War Inquiry which has been bringing forth some very interesting, and adding to the possibility of incriminating, pieces of information pertaining to what had been going on within the administration of President Bush prior to what happened on Sept 11 2001, on the day of the destructive deadly attacks of Sept 11 2001 and in the immediate days following and leading up to the invasion and lack of concern about after the destruction and then occupation of Iraq.

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