Terror Threat 'Most Heightened' Since 9/11

So says Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.

"The terrorist threat facing our country has evolved significantly in the last ten years -- and continues to evolve -- so that, in some ways, the threat facing us is at its most heightened state since those attacks, she said before the House Homeland Security Committee.

"Homeland Security Officials Call Homegrown Radicalism a Game Changer." Yeah, she's been pushing that one a lot lately. I'm never sure if she's just taking about people who disagree with her, or people who are of a different skin color than her? If you're either one, or both - don't piss off the Secretary.

Read more ....

And wait, I thought America was totally blindsided on September 11, and then was outraged and completely and totally over-reacted (ask Japan the Sioux how that worked out) to the terrorist attacks. Does she mean since after September 11th? So, shouldn't she just say since 9/12? Or am I reading too much between the lines - again?

On the bright side - Suspects identified in the Russian airport bombing.

Egypt Fears

What, no 'Idi'? And why are all these guys white?

On a serious note - here's the REAL STORY of what's going on, on the ground. Minus the spin.
The tl;dr is this:

• Saturday was indescribable. Nothing that I write can describe the utter state of lawlessness that prevailed.

• Today the Egyptians are scared. They have been given a glimpse of hell and they don't like what they see. Contrary to Al Jazeera's propaganda, the Egyptian masses are not demonstrating anymore. They are protecting their homes and families. The demonstration last night had 5,000 political activists participating and not 150,000 as Al Jazeera insists. At this moment, no one outside of those political activists cares less now if the President will resign or not. They have more important concerns now; security and food.

• So where are we today? Well the answer is still not clear, yet a couple of conclusions are evident.

  1. The Gamal inheritance scenario is finished.

  2. Mubarak will not run for another Presidential term. His term ends in October and either he will serve the rest of his term or will resign once things cool down for health reasons, which are real. He is dying.

  3. The army is in control now. We are heading back to the "golden age" of army rule. The "kids" are no longer in charge. The "men' are.

  4. Until the economy fails again, the neo-liberal economic policies are over. Forget about an open economy for some time.

• Immediately the task of the army is to stabilize the situation and enforce order.

• Security wise the situation is a disaster. It might take months to arrest all those criminals again.

• Outside of Western media hype, El Baradei is nothing. A man that has spent less than 30 days in the past year in Egypt and hardly any time in the past 20 years is a nobody. It is entirely insulting to Egyptians to suggest otherwise.

• On the long run the Egyptian question remains the same. Nothing has changed in that regard.

Debt Ceiling

Top White House economic adviser Austan Goolsbee warned Sunday that a congressional failure to rise the nation's debt limit early this year would be "catastrophic."

"It pains me that we would even be talking about this," Goolsbee told ABC's "This Week." "This is not a game. You know, the debt ceiling is not something to toy with. … If we hit the debt ceiling, that's essentially defaulting on our obligations, which is totally unprecedented in American history. The impact on the economy would be catastrophic. I mean, that would be a worse financial economic crisis than anything we saw in 2008."More

Uh, yes. Catastrophic that two Administrations spent enough to have to even discuss raising the debt ceiling - again.

We'll just give the alcoholic driving the car in the school zone a couple more shots. I mean, what could possibly go wrong?

Hell - why even have a debt ceiling? They're spending like there's no tomorrow anyway - what's some arbitrary stop sign going to do to slow them down now? They'll just move the goal post a couple more times until we have to give everything back to the Cherokee Nation. Perhaps they'll buy it back for a necklace and some small pox infected blankets? They're going to be super pissed to see what we did to the place. We probably won't get our security deposit back.

WikiLeaks Bursts Climate Accord

What if WikiLeaks exposed a grand conspiracy, one that proved all conspiracy theorists not to be nuts, but to be right on the money?

According to the [Guardian] WikiLeaks cables reveal how US manipulated climate accord

Embassy dispatches show America used spying, threats and promises of aid to get support for Copenhagen accord.

From the article:

Hidden behind the save-the-world rhetoric of the global climate change negotiations lies the mucky realpolitik: money and threats buy political support; spying and cyberwarfare are used to seek out leverage.

The US diplomatic cables reveal how the US seeks dirt on nations opposed to its approach to tackling global warming; how financial and other aid is used by countries to gain political backing; how distrust, broken promises and creative accounting dog negotiations; and how the US mounted a secret global diplomatic offensive to overwhelm opposition to the controversial "Copenhagen accord", the unofficial document that emerged from the ruins of the Copenhagen climate change summit in 2009.

Negotiating a climate treaty is a high-stakes game, not just because of the danger warming poses to civilisation but also because re-engineering the global economy to a low-carbon model will see the flow of billions of dollars redirected.

Seeking negotiating chips, the US state department sent a secret cable on 31 July 2009 seeking human intelligence from UN diplomats across a range of issues, including climate change. The request originated with the CIA. As well as countries' negotiating positions for Copenhagen, diplomats were asked to provide evidence of UN environmental "treaty circumvention" and deals between nations.

Oooopppssss....
• WikiLeaks cables: Climate talks doomed, says EU president
• Wikileaks cables: America's secret climate diplomacy
• Cancún climate talks in danger of collapse

Point of order here... have you noticed that they completely ignore the fact that all nations are involved? I did. Maurice Strong, who's embroiled all the world’s weather and climate bureaucracies when he organized the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change through the WMO. Anthony Watts describes what the WikiLeaks material exposes. “What really strikes us is the fact that all this Copenhagen/Cancun stuff has nothing to do with the Climate, or saving the World. It’s about political positioning, money, and plain old fascism cult promotion.”

Harsh.

Scary too.
Figure 1: Sources: (Left and Right)
Figure 2: Average temperature versus # of stations, Source

WikiLeaks Brings "Patriot Act" to Internet

WikiLeaks Being Used to Justify "Patriot Act" Legislation For The Internet

[Repost] Senator Mitch McConnell called Assange a "high-tech terrorist" on NBC's Meet the Press Sunday and said, "if it‘s found that Assange hasn’t violated the law, then the law should be changed."

Over the weekend, an insightful article by Zen Gardner exposed how WikiLeaks resembles an establishment creation. The article correctly pointed out that the WikiLeaks storyline was conforming nicely to the elite's problem-reaction-solution method, with the solution of more tyranny for our safety.

WikiLeaks is being used to bring in the agenda on so many levels, but most importantly by setting the precedent of shutting down websites for politically "dangerous" content. Gardner writes:

After all, if information is now the enemy, we must carefully police any and every aspect of this dangerous medium -- all for the safety and protection of 'we the people.'

Oh, we’ll still have the Internet, just like you can still fly. You’ll just have to be on the 'approved' list, screened, stamped, zapped, mugged and molested if you want to get 'on the net.' No biggie. Thanks Julian -- job well done.

First, let's be clear, the 250,000 pages of cables amounted to some geopolitical Jerry Springer he-said she-said nonsense to make countries look petty and stupid. They revealed nothing new that wasn't already known or well suspected. The information simply stoked existing flames by airing geopolitical dirty laundry, nothing more -- no secret weapons, no major arms deals, no tactical locations of troops, and no revealing the ID of secret agents, etc.

Yet, the government has used its corporate muscle to illegally limit access to WikiLeaks. It was recently revealed that Amazon, the server host for WikiLeaks, caved to political pressure to drop the website. Then, in dictatorial fashion, PayPal removed its service for donations to WikiLeaks, and now their bank account has been frozen. And all this comes a week after the shutdown of 80-plus websites for "copyright infringement," apparently in preparation for passing the "Blacklist" bill.

Now, Gardner's weekend speculation and McConnell's call for action has turned into political reality. The Hill reports today that Senators unveil anti-WikiLeaks legislation, which seems to be a sort-of "Patriot Act" for the Internet. It's astonishing how fast these guys can write legislation when major events occur. And again, it's tyranny-saurus rex, Joe Lieberman, leading the charge with scandal-ridden Ensign (R-Nev.) and empty-suit Scott Brown (R-Mass.). Ensign was quoted:

WikiLeaks is not a whistleblower website and Assange is not a journalist.

That, we agree with. Yet, therein lies the concern for establishing new Internet rules of what can and can't be discussed, and who qualifies as a "journalist." Look, Assange is clearly either a kinda-smart "useful idiot" or a brilliant insider to the elite. He is certainly not a genuine whistleblower. Admittedly, though, for those of us who hoped he was the real thing, the elite have used some savvy tactics to boost WikiLeaks' rogue credibility in order to confuse us.

The White House has sent down a warning to government agencies to restrict employee access to WikiLeaks in order to make Assange and crew appear dangerously off limits. Apparently, this warning has already trickled down to "potential" government employees as well. It was revealed that the State Department warned Columbia University students who may apply for a Federal job:

DO NOT post links to these documents nor make comments on social media sites such as Facebook or through Twitter.

In other words, the Thought Police are out in full force telling job-hungry students to not apply if they discuss current events if authorities label those events dangerous or harmful to America. Soon, they'll most likely publicly fire a mid-level employee who went over the line to prove how serious they are. After all, they desperately need to keep the slaves on the plantation.

Furthermore, an Interpol arrest warrant has been issued for Julian Assange for shady rape charges, making him an internationally "wanted" man.

And Assange is playing the clever but likable villain part so well, too, claiming to have an encrypted "insurance" file in case anyone kills him or terminates the website. Assange is the perfect international man of mystery with the dark shades in press conferences; endless mainstream media interviews with his exotic accent and short temper; and his famous silver-blond locks. What a great show they're putting on for us. I'm sure the movie industry is already clamoring for the rights to the script.

In the meantime, it has become the typical political game show. Only in America could Cablegate become such a divide-and-conquer partisan issue. The Right have successfully defined WikiLeaks as a dangerous terrorist organization and desire the assassination of its leader, while the Left defends the public's right to knowledge, but disparages the damage the documents may cause, thus setting up the obvious bipartisan compromise: tighter control and surveillance of the Internet.

It will go down like this: the Right's extreme calls for Assange's execution will give the establishment the publicly defensible compromise to at least shut down their website by way of pressuring their service providers, etc. And the wimpy Left will compromise by letting it happen, while Assange will be allowed to remain alive and free.

It fits ever so perfectly for them to extend the definition of an "enemy combatant" to a website that publishes "anti-government" material. Enter Attorney General Eric Holder, who has authorized "significant" action into the probe of WikiLeaks. Can't you just smell the tyranny coming to the Internet?

Ron Paul said it best in his book Revolution: A Manifesto: "Truth is treason in an empire of lies." Paul reiterated this principle of transparency in a recent interview. Paul said we need more WikiLeaks if we expect to live in a free society:

'In a free society we're supposed to know the truth,' Paul insisted. 'In a society where truth becomes treason, then we're in big trouble.'

Given the angry calls for action and today's developments of government proposals, not to mention the blight of Internet legislation already on the table, we will likely get the exact opposite of the free-flow of information that Paul is advocating. In fact, if history is any indicator, get ready for nothing less than the Patriot Act for the Internet!

[Author of this post is Eric Blair]

Daisy 2010

It’s from the American Values Network, a hard-left progressive faith group:

Burns Strider, the group’s founder, was a former aide to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and was a faith advisor to the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign. In other words, this is a Democratic ad blitz using the most outlandish fearmongering imaginable. The original “Daisy Girl” ran at the height of the Cold War. It came in response to Barry Goldwater’s bellicose comments on the use of nuclear weapons against the Soviets. There’s little of that kind of rhetoric in today’s GOP — and we’re not on the brink of a nuclear holocaust — and the ad’s claims on inspections under the new START are entirely dependent on Moscow’s compliance and transparency. When Obama signed the treaty in April, our Czech allies dissed it as “appeasing Russia.” “Trust Russia on START?”

Now, in case you missed it, here's the original scare the hell out of you ad from LBJ's camp against Barry Goldwater.

Fear The Boom and Bust

Filed under Saturday morning cartoons: bonus time... here's the EconStories guys are back with three video lectures about "Fear The Boom And Bust"

Part III: The Cluster of Errors

The Next Economy and America's Future

"The perfect storm: An unprecedented concentration of income and wealth at the top; a record amount of secret money flooding our democracy; and a public becoming increasingly angry and cynical about a gov't that's raising its taxes, reducing its services, and unable to get it back to work. We're losing our democracy to a different system. It's called plutocracy." ~ Robert Reich

Everybody knows the dice are loaded.

Congress: Audit the Fed! Fed: Go On, We Dare You!

Federal Reserve Threatens Congress Over HR 1207

Last week, the Federal Reserve’s vice chairman, Donald Kohn, threatened to jack up interest rates if Congress continues to expose “some of the U.S. central bank’s most sensitive decisions to political scrutiny,” Reuters reported. “Any substantial erosion of the Federal Reserve’s monetary independence likely would lead to higher long-term interest rates as investors begin to fear future inflation,” Kohn told a House of Representatives Financial Services subcommittee.

Kohn’s threat came as Ron Paul’s bill to audit the Federal Reserve (HR 1207) has picked up 256 co-sponsors — more than 55% of the House of Representatives. HR 1207’s companion bill in the Senate, S 604, has already attracted 8 co-sponsors. Kohn and his boss Ben Bernanke are obviously very concerned over the prospect that the American people may soon have a look at their books. (more)

My concern, is that Congress doesn't have the balls or the leadership to follow through. There's also little to no chance this bill would survive a day in the Senate.

Overcoming Fear

So as I'm sitting here watching my life savings disappear (I guess I'm the only moron still paying my mortgage) the value of my house go away, the prospects of actually making a living... and since no one who comes to Blasphemes ever clicks on an ad...

I'm kind of getting nervous.
Maybe you are too?

Perhaps you are still employed, but there have been so many cuts, you're doing the job of the three idiots who used to work around you - not the forth one, she's still asleep in the corner and you still have to cover her. But the threat of a bloody axe keeps you in line...

You've lost half your retirement, your savings and stocks, after you did everything you were supposed to to secure it, and were all on the up-and-up...

The sleepless nights wondering if you'll be able to buy that beach house in Florida... then you wake up in a flop sweat realizing that you could be saving an extra 30 bucks a month on your DirecTV, as long as you don't mind only watching the "Family Package." In my case, that's about all we watch anyway, so let's save the thirty and apply it to the electricity. Can't get the juice, no point in putting into a dark television set? I figured that one out already.

It's Fear. Crippling Fear. The fear...
When the hell will we just say Enough! This has got to end.

Let's all just DECIDE, RIGHT NOW to step out of the paralyzing fear that's stalking all of us right now.

Hey, Cap'n? What can I do?

Start by asking yourself 5 questions.

1. What do I want? Money

2. What have I been putting off doing that I know I need to do? Bathing.

3. What is good in my life right now? Uh... Skip, come back.

4. What are the 3 most important things I need to be focusing 80% of my time on in the next 30 days? Three, Jebus! Narrow it down to three? Well, there's the FIRST thing on the list... Second, make a list!

5. How can I add fun to my life today? Hopefully make someone who came to Blasphemes crack a smile. Failing that, crack a beer.

Fear comes from an unfortunate ability to imagine the worst case scenario. It's possible that by obsessing on your fear, you fulfill the prophecy. When you focus on what you want instead, you drive yourself towards that and away from what you fear.

Fear can paralyze. Next you question everything you do while feeling imprisoned and refuse to act. You know the things you need to do that you've been putting off. Action beats inaction every time- schedule it and get 'er done. Lists. Lots of lists.

When the fear crushes you the best way to negate it, is to examine how much "good" is in your life right now. Got a family? Laid off? Silver lining is extra time with the kids right now. Single? Silver lining is that you don't have kids to worry about. Fear destroys, but gratitude strengthens. Cash helps too. Just spend a minute to focus on what's working out in your life. That builds momentum. Stops the screaming in your head for about a minute.

Let's face it, fear doesn't do anything good. You frenetically try to do as many things as you can. 20% of what we do brings in 80% of the result. That's what I find I'm doing. Now I'm going to focus 80% of your time on the 3 most important things that will bring in the most results.

Fun is important, it relaxes you, energizes you, invigorates you, and refreshes you. Besides, now I have the time. I'm going to TRY to enjoy it. I'm not sitting in the basement watching TV all day - as much as I'd like to - no, I'm trying to generate some new junk.

We either need to all just pretend that we're no longer putting up with this bad economy crap, or we need to figure something else out.

So, anyone interested in buying a Blasphemes T-Shirt?
How about just clicking on some ads?

1976 Swine Flu Propaganda

Depression Longer Than Expected

Everyone's ready for Depression 2.0 to be over with already. Economists think it will be over by the middle of next year. What, hey, what if it isn't?

The current contraction was a year old before we even figured out it was happening (according to someone?), which makes it longer than the average postwar recession. Bail outs and Ponzi schemes are failing. Retail stores and Car dealerships are shutting down. It's quite an entertaining train wreck. Here's a couple ideas on why it could be an exceptional soup line forming mess...

In the middle of this decade, His Holiness Federal Reserve chief Alan Greenspan believed that information technology had transformed the very nature of recession. Just-in-time inventory, supply-chain dashboards, and an army of permalancers made adapting to changing business conditions so easy, so quick, that old-school recessions, defined by two consecutive quarters of economic shrinkage, would be a thing of the past. Instead, we would experience a series of microrecessions — a down month here or there, followed by upticks — all happening so quickly we barely felt it.

Ah, for the good old days of microrecessions, eh? Let's throw some more bad mortgages on that theory.

What's happened now is something akin to the introduction of automated trading on Wall Street. What made 1987's Black Monday stock-market crash so devastating was the unforeseen triggering of an avalanche of selling by computer. After that, the market installed circuit breakers to prevent a recurrence.

What Wall Street had two decades ago, we now have business at large... Like that scene in Idiocracy, (the hilarious other Mike Judge movie) where the clueless CEO of a giant corporation complains that the computers laid everyone off when the stock dropped. That's something close to what happened in the Panic of '08. As bad news cascaded through the system, they triggered layoffs and cutbacks, which then prompted consumers to cut spending, causing problems for retail chains that overextended with cheap credit... see where this is heading?

And all of this unfolded amidst a global economy already in recession. China and India, once seen as engines of growth for the world, are in parlous states. Which is awesome - but China's imports have propped up old-world economies like Germany, dropped 18 percent from a year ago. India, already running a large budget deficit, has little room to stimulate its economy. Dropping oil prices, meanwhile, have taken the wind out of petroeconomies like Russia, Venezuela, and Saudi Arabia.

And it's pretty much causing all those anti-petro Green Industries to bleed Dark Red ink too.

That's why I think the recession could be far longer than the 18 months most economists are predicting. Where, exactly, is growth supposed to come from? U.S. consumers and businesses are reeling from debt problems. The rest of the world is hardly better off. The expectation that government spending will lift us out of this mess seems akin to expecting that President Change will deliver us all a new bicycle. Who's going to pay for that?

The Pollyanna response is that the same information technology which helped the recession unfold so quickly will help businesses spot opportunities for growth, making the recovery all the quicker. I seriously doubt it. You think Microsoft or Yahoo can pull us out of this one, really?

Human psychology, and Gordon Gecko taught us that we are far more motivated by fear of loss than the promise of gain. (Greed, it turns out, is good — because it's so much scarcer than we imagine.) Singed by the suddenness of panic, we will be much less likely to respond to glimmers of hope. 18 months? We should be so lucky. Try three years — or longer?

Discuss.

Foie Gras is Back, Baby!

Chicago City Council acknowledges its prior stupidity, repeals foie gras ban. Residents can now eat all the goose liver they want in smoke-free restaurants.

"THE SILLIEST LAW EVER WRITTEN" - Mayor Daley

By a vote of 37-6, the foie gras ban that Daley claims made Chicago an international laughingstock was repealed, thanks to a legislative end-run that set a new standard for violating protocol and rolling over the opposition. (here's more details about the Robert's Rules of Order and the committee side action that rammed the foie gras ban in the first place... it's funny if you're a big Robert's Rules of Order stickler.)

When Moore tried to debate the merits, Daley ruled that the measure was not debatable. He ordered the clerk to call the roll and to continue, even as Moore shouted for the right to be heard.

"If it can happen to me, tomorrow it could happen to you," Moore warned his colleagues.

"Thank you, Ald. Joe ‘Foie Gras’ Moore," Daley said.

Another funny note... Julie Janovsky, a spokesperson for the animal protection group Farm Sanctuary, argued that the foie gras ban had "massive public support" and that the City Council’s repeal "effectively endorsed animal cruelty."

"Chicagoans were proud to live in a city that took a stand for humanity. To reverse a compassionate and admirable decision under pressure from political bullies and special interests shows a cowardly brand of cynicism unlike any we have seen in our efforts to give voice to the most vulnerable beings in society -- animals raised for food," Janovsky said.

Dear Julie, What town do you live in again? Please read how Daley shot this thing down, probably not illegally - but he didn't exactly follow the Robert's Rules of Order correctly. Now Joe Moore is being laughed at for being shut down so humiliatingly.

1. Question one - why not shut Moore down when this crap got started?
2. Question two - any chance I can eat the AFLAC duck's liver - I'm sick of that fuggin' Duck!

High Price of Hunger

The uproar this week has been the increasing cost of food around the globe. (link to NPR)

Consumers (and that would be everyone who eats) worldwide are facing rising food prices. There are couple of reasons given: A storm in Indonesia was a factor in the rice crop. But more important is higher oil prices, lower food reserves and growing consumer demand in China and India. The UN even given the food price crisis a hip name, "Silent Tsunami."

And it's not so much a shortage of food... it's much more about the price of food. Food prices have risen in price 83% says the The World Bank. The price of rice has more than doubled in the last five weeks.

What's the real reason? Midwest farmers selling corn to make ethanol instead of feed for cattle or for people.

Who's going to suffer? Poor people. There have already been riots in Egypt killed at least two people last week, and similar food riots broke out in Burkina Faso and Cameroon this month. Never mind that these foodstuffs are heavily controlled by despotic nations. There have even been food protests in Italy. And while the price of spaghetti has doubled in Haiti, the cost of miso is packing a hit in Japan. 33 countries are in danger of being in turmoil as a result of expensive food.

How did prices jump so high, and so quickly?

It doesn't take a genius to figure this one out. I'm not. But I'll give it a shot.

An ex-Presidential candidate makes a PowerPoint Presentation (full of all kinds of Special Effects, and makes things look even better than reality - and it is since said footage was 'borrowed' CGI from Hollywood. Link to that story)

Polar Bears are dying!
People start to panic.

"We've got to get off the oil!," the people say. Companies like Arthur Daniels Midland (ADM) - and others - have been making ethanol from corn sugars for years, and says, "Hey, we can help!" "We'll get you off that oil, lickity split."

Let's forget for a second that ethanol doesn't make a whole hell-of-a-lot of sense. What I mean is that on the simple argument that ethanol is more environmentally safe for the planet. Ethanol is one of many alternative fuels used in order to solve the ex-Presidential candidate's Carbon issue, raised in the PowerPoint.

If there's too much carbon from petroleum use, why then would you farm the land in the Midwest of the USA with tractors, and chemicals, and cut and transport that corn to silos - then transport it again by diesel train to processing plants. Those plants burn more fuel to grind the corn, strip the corn to compound sugars with more fuel, then take the extracted sugars to be distilled using more fuel it to create alcohol, and then mixing it with other compounds to make it capable of firing in an internal combustion engine...


...when oil is cheaper and cleaner THAN ALL THAT?

Perhaps having our Presidential Primary season start in Iowa has a little something to do with this? Nah. That's too easy.

As a result 1/4 of US corn is now used in Ethanol production.

Now the demand for corn has going up quicker than after the invention of Corn Flakes. There's money to be made in them-thar-fields... more than ever. And corn is the big money crop. Wheat, alfalfa sprouts, and other staples of America's bread basket are being plowed over in favor of more corn. There was more corn produced in the USA since WWII last year. Here's a link to some notes of last year's crop. (also check the Dept of Ag)

Great, where's it all going? A quarter going to the gas tank but I can't say I've had an ear of corn since -

Hold on bucko. America's junk food empire "Big Food" (kind of like Big Tobacco, but with food) is fueled by: ...wait for it... corn! High fructose corn syrup makes the sodas sweet, corn-fed beef makes the burgers fat, and corn oil crisps the fries. I contend this is the ingredient that has caused adult onset Type II Diabetes to show up in US children. It's blowing out their pancreas' ability to produce sufficient amounts of insulin to regulate blood sugar.

I've written about High Fructose Corn Syrup before. But now it seems as the West is getting plump and fat - the poor in Africa and Asia are going to die.

King Corn.

Big demand for corn.
Less other food being grown.
Planet still burning fuel.
Fuel prices continue to rise.
There's less to eat - well, less CHEEP food to eat.

Less cheep food, less rice, less eating = more hunger.
People are getting uncomfortable.
Prices continue to rise.
Riots start.
Polar Bears are dying
People are going to start dying soon.
Polar Bears and now People.

Happy Earth Day.

It's only mildly ironic - perhaps moronic that the ex-Presidential candidate's discussion concluded that climate change would cause refugees into other countries and cause starvation and topple stability of political systems.

It looks more to me like a PowerPoint Presentation has had some Unintended Consequences.


Hey, look on the bright side, maybe at this year's Farm Aid the rich farmers will write checks to urban children who can't afford their insulin? Oprah can get involved too. It'll be America's Heartland's Big Give!

Massive Attack

The risk of a nuclear attack on U.S. cities has grown in the past five years due to the spread of nuclear technology and the growth of the global terrorist movement.

The Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs looked at the horrific consequences of a nuclear strike by terrorists, and experts said more could be done to save lives, the Washington Post reported.

"I definitely conclude the threat is greater and is increasing every year with the march of technology," said Cham E. Dallas, director of the Institute for Health Management and Mass Destruction Defense at the University of Georgia.

Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, the panel’s chairman, said: "The scenarios we discuss today are so hard for us to contemplate and so emotionally traumatic that it is tempting to push them aside. However, now is the time to have this difficult conversation, to ask the tough questions, then to get answers."

Dallas gave the panel a report on the effects of a small nuclear device exploding near the White House. A 1-kiloton device that could fit into a suitcase could kill about 25,000 people, Dallas said. A 10-kiloton explosive, which could be hidden in a van, could kill about 100,000.

The 10-kiloton blast would destroy almost all buildings within a half-mile radius, and the intense heat would burn people for many blocks and spark fires, according to Dallas.

In addition, a radioactive plume would begin drifting from the blast point, subjecting those in its path to lethal levels of radiation, Dallas said.

"With proper communication, people can flee from the plume area," Dallas said. But, he added, authorities need to "put more effort" into testing their ability to swiftly alert those in danger, according to the Post.

Ashton B. Carter, co-director of the Preventive Defense Project at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, agreed, telling the committee that "much could be done to save lives" if the government made the right preparations in advance.

Dallas suggested training medical professionals such as pharmacists and veterinarians to provide burn care, and organizing community volunteers to clean wounds and help in other ways.

"Burn care is a nightmare, and we’re completely unprepared," he said. "Ninety-five percent of burn victims will not receive care. And most of them will die."

I'm really glad we're tapping everyone's phone and making sure that the politics of fear aren't driving the electorate this time aroun... wait, who was that chairfellow again?

Sen. Lieberman? The Democrat-in-name-only Lieberman? The John McCain of the Democratic Party? Best friend of John McCain, Joe Lieberman?

Why? No reason. Just checking.