Quote of the day - "I won't believe corporations are people until Texas executes one".
1/ President Obama has a decision coming up - whether to approve the oil pipeline from Alberta to Texas. The shale oil from Alberta is the dirtiest oil produced anywhere,
with the explicit intent to block the U.S. from buying Canadian tar sands oil -- considered the dirtiest oil on the planet.
Scientists agree if the pipeline is approved it's "game over" for the planet.....
And it's his decision - the scum in Congress don't have to agree, it's up to him.... we will see if he can resist the pressure from the oil lobby and the Koch Brothers.......
If President Obama elects to unilaterally disregard Section 526, the planet may be doomed. According to Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org and one of the leaders of the Keystone pipeline protests, the burning of the recoverable oil in the Alberta tar sands by itself would raise the carbon in the atmosphere by 200 parts per million (ppm). It wasn't hard to figure out that this would increase the 390 ppm carbon in the atmosphere today by more than half. Indeed, it would increase the gap between the current level and the safe level of 350 ppm five-fold.
The leading NASA climate change specialist Jim Hansen summed up what's at stake, saying: "If the tar sands are thrown into the mix it is essentially game over" for a viable planet.
While protecting the climate will ultimately require legislation and treaties, in the meantime it is essential to prevent the use of "extreme energy" fuels like the Alberta tar sands oil that will rapidly make climate change far worse.
2/ Excellent column from the conservative Ross Douhat, and he points out the execution of an innocent man by the redneck State of Georgia emphasises a dirty little fact - there are many people behind bars, mainly minorities, who are there because they were wrongly convicted.
But there’s a danger here for advocates of criminal justice reform. After all, in a world without the death penalty, Davis probably wouldn’t have been retried or exonerated. His appeals would still have been denied, he would have spent the rest of his life in prison, and far fewer people would have known or cared about his fate.
Instead, he received a level of legal assistance, media attention and activist support that few convicts can ever hope for. And his case became an example of how the very finality of the death penalty can focus the public’s attention on issues that many Americans prefer to ignore: the overzealousness of cops and prosecutors, the limits of the appeals process and the ugly conditions faced by many of the more than two million Americans currently behind bars.
3/ I missed the Thursday Republican debate because of a power outage on our street [tree on powerline!!!], so it was great to see SNL has done a synopsis for us all......very funny......11 minutes.....
Saturday Night Live opened its 37th season with a send-up of the seemingly endless parade of GOP debates.
This one, entitled "Either The 7th or 8th GOP Debate," started out by tackling the inappropriate cheering of previous audiences, and then made it clear that Mitt Romney (Jason Sudeikis) and Rick Perry (host Alec Baldwin) were the only candidates worth the attention of moderator Shepard Smith (Bill Hader).
After briefly introducing the other "six people who will never be president but showed up anyway," the sketch tackled Rick Perry's inconsistent performances -- "Can you speak for 10 seconds without alienating your base?" -- Romney's inability to connect, and the rest of the field's general lack of gravitas. An extended bit with Taran Killam as Jon Huntsman, addressed the former ambassador's two years in China in a way that had us both squirming and laughing out loud.
Kristen Wiig, Paul Brittain and Kenan Thompson also had fun turns as Michele Bachmann, Ron Paul and Herman Cain respectively, and given that Cain just won the Florida straw poll by a healthy margin, maybe Thompson will get to roll out this impression a few more times before the season is over.
4/ I got a call from the Obama 2102 campaign last week [because I'm on the list of people who donated in 08], but this time I told them to call Goldman Sachs because my money won't make a difference....
.
And as this story says, there are a lot out there like me......
Don't know what to tell you......
They were once among President Obama’s most loyal supporters and a potent symbol of his political brand: voters of moderate means who dug deep for the candidate and his message of hope and change, sending him $10 or $25 or $50 every few weeks or months.
But in recent months, the frustration and disillusionment that have dragged down Mr. Obama’s approval ratings have crept into the ranks of his vaunted small-donor army, underscoring the challenges he faces as he seeks to rekindle grass-roots enthusiasm for his re-election bid.
In interviews with dozens of low-dollar contributors in the past two weeks, some said they were unhappy with what they viewed as Mr. Obama’s overly conciliatory approach to Congressional Republicans. Others cited what they saw as a lack of passion in the president, or said the sour economy had drained both their enthusiasm and their pocketbooks.
For still others, high hopes that Mr. Obama would deliver a new kind of politics in his first term have been dashed by the emergence of something that, to them, more resembles politics as usual.
“When I was pro-Obama in 2008, I was thinking of him as a leader who could face the challenges that we were tackling,” said Adnan Alasadi, who works in behavioral health in Mesa, Ariz. Mr. Alasadi contributed repeatedly to Mr. Obama during his first campaign but says he will not give the president — or anyone else — any more money.
“Now I am seeing him as just an opportunistic politician,” Mr. Alasadi said.
Such defections are not merely symbolic. About a quarter of Mr. Obama’s record haul during the 2008 cycle came from donors giving $200 or less, supporters who could be tapped again and again without hitting federal contribution limits. Many of those same people were also volunteers in his campaign, knocking on doors, calling friends and neighbors and helping turn out the voters that fall.
5/ Julia Sweeney explains sex to her 8 year old.....a most amusing 10 minutes.....
6/ The Haqqani clan in Afghanistan is beating us, and they are a major reason why we will never, ever, ever, ever win in this medieval rathole. They beat the British, they beat the Russians and now they are thrashing us.....but since the military-industrial complex needs a war to keep the money flowing and our President either won't stand up to the Generals or is getting really bad advice, we'll be there for 20 years or until President Perry decides to nuke them....
WASHINGTON — They are the Sopranos of the Afghanistan war, a ruthless crime family that built an empire out of kidnapping, extortion, smuggling, even trucking. They have trafficked in precious gems, stolen lumber and demanded protection money from businesses building roads and schools with American reconstruction funds.
They safeguard their mountainous turf by planting deadly roadside bombs and shelling remote American military bases. And they are accused by American officials of being guns for hire: a proxy force used by the Pakistani intelligence service to carry out grisly, high-profile attacks in Kabul and throughout the country.
Today, American intelligence and military officials call the crime clan known as the Haqqani network — led by a wizened militant named Jalaluddin Haqqani who has allied himself over the years with the C.I.A., Saudi Arabia’s spy service and Osama bin Laden — the most deadly insurgent group in Afghanistan. In the latest of a series of ever bolder strikes, the group staged a daylong assault on the United States Embassy in Kabul, an attack Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,charged Thursday was aided by Pakistan’s military spy agency, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI.
7/ One of the truly scary things about this country is the incredibly stupid ideas that have become entrenched in our politics.....how did this happen to climate change? This article takes a stab at explaining the rationale behing the denial of science on the right, but Perry said it again in the Republican debates and not one of the other candidates disagreed with him....
Amazing.....
Meanwhile, other powerful evidence poured in over those decades, showing the "greenhouse effect" is real and is happening. And yet resistance to the idea among many in the U.S. appears to have hardened.
What's going on?
"The desire to disbelieve deepens as the scale of the threat grows," concludes economist-ethicist Clive Hamilton.
He and others who track what they call "denialism" find that its nature is changing in America, last redoubt of climate naysayers. It has taken on a more partisan, ideological tone. Polls find a widening Republican-Democratic gap on climate. Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry even accuses climate scientists of lying for money. Global warming looms as a debatable question in yet another U.S. election campaign.
From his big-windowed office overlooking the wooded campus of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, N.Y., Broecker has observed this deepening of the desire to disbelieve.
"The opposition by the Republicans has gotten stronger and stronger," the 79-year-old "grandfather of climate science" said in an interview. "But, of course, the push by the Democrats has become stronger and stronger, and as it has become a more important issue, it has become more polarized."
The solution: "Eventually it'll become damned clear that the Earth is warming and the warming is beyond anything we have experienced in millions of years, and people will have to admit..." He stopped and laughed.
"Well, I suppose they could say God is burning us up."
8/ Evanescence with "Call me When You're Sober"........a powerful rock song verging on metal but with some melodic bits too.....really good. Lead singer is cute...
The video is set in a baroque castle like something out of Dracula....cool!
9/ There has been a week of protests on Wall Street by thousands of demonstrators, but almost zero media coverage.....Keith Olbermann comments on this with a very good guest, and although they dance around the issue they don't come right out and say the reason there's no media is that the oligarchy have shut down mainstream TV coverage.....but I will.....
This weekend the police started tasering protesters and arresting many....why not - they won't get any publicity....
Keith and author Will Bunch, senior writer, Philadelphia Daily News, call out the New York Times and other mainstream outlets for failing to cover the Wall Street protests that began on September 17. Comparing their social media strategy to that of the Arab Spring, Bunch hopes that the protesters — promoted on Twitter and by the magazine “Adbusters” and other alternative news sources — refine their goals to appeal to a broader audience.
10/ A story about a good corporation!! Marvin Windows and Doors has taken an unusual strategy with their workforce to weather the recession - they have kept all employees on payroll, no layoffs, and everyone's belt is tightened.
If you are replacing any windows in your house, give your business to a decent American company.....
THREE THINGS matter big in this flyspeck city just south of the Canadian border: hockey, walleye and Marvin.
Not necessarily in that order. Yes, Warroad, nicknamed “Hockeytown, U.S.A.,” has sent six of its sons to the N.H.L. And the walleye plucked from Lake of the Woods are served for breakfast, lunch and dinner down at the Lakeview Restaurant.
But Marvin — as in, Marvin Windows and Doors — is the commercial engine in these parts and has been since George G. Marvin arrived in 1904. So when times get tough at Marvin, as they are now, the 1,700 or so residents of Warroad hold their collective breath.
But in this season of economic unease, when neither Washington nor Wall Street seems to have the answers, the descendants of George Marvin are going against the grain. Unlike so many other companies, Marvin Windows has neither laid off workers nor reduced health insurance benefits. And, its executives vow, it won’t.
Marvin Windows might seem like a footnote in the nation’s economic ledger. It employs roughly 4,300 people, about 2,000 of them here, and has annual sales somewhere from $500 million to $1 billion. But what this company is doing — and, more to the point, what it is not doing — is worth knowing.
Marvin Windows and Doors is a throwback to another era. For starters, it is a private company. No public stockholders are complaining that the latest numbers fell short, that the share price is down.
What’s more, Marvin takes an old-fashioned, even paternal view of its role here in Warroad, where the Marvin family has run things for just about as long as anyone can remember. The company has cut employees’ pay and reduced perks like tuition reimbursement and 401(k) matching. Employees haven’t received profit-sharing checks in two years, nor have the 16 members of the Marvin family who work for the company.
But, unlike its top competitors, Marvin has refused to fire people.
11/ New footage of the Japanese Tsunami taken from a delivery truck - you can see it all, from the earthquake itself to the flooding....wow....4 minutes of the frightening power of nature....
12/ Those of you who have HBO have a treat coming - a three hour documentary on the life of George Harrison, "the quiet Beatle", directed by Martin Scorsese.....his widow Olivia has opened up Harrison's archives......
“When he used to be asked how he’d like to be remembered, he said, ‘I don’t care, I don’t care if I’m remembered,’ ” Ms. Harrison said in an interview, affectionately imitating George’s clenched Liverpool accent. “And I really think he meant that. Not in a sarcastic way, but it’s like: Why do you have to be remembered? What’s the big deal?”
These many sides of Harrison — the artist and the archivist; the mystic and the mystery — are all on display in a new documentary, “George Harrison: Living in the Material World,” directed by Martin Scorsese, which HBO will show in two parts on Oct. 5 and 6.
Though the story of the Beatles has been told in many forms before, including in “The Beatles Anthology,” the documentary, record and book series released by Harrison, Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney beginning in 1995, “Living in the Material World” is a significant and substantially new take on the band and its most elusive member. It is the first film to center on Harrison, the so-called quiet Beatle, and the first time Mr. Scorsese, whose roster of rock documentaries is gradually rivaling his celebrated résumé of fiction features, has focused on the Beatles.
13/ What are the slimy pit dwellers of Tallahassee up to this week? They are about to make it much easier to foreclose on your house, and bankers everywhere are salivating....
TALLAHASSEE—
Floridians facing foreclosure could be stripped of their homes faster and have routine access to the courts limited under a proposal likely to come before Gov. Rick Scott and the Legislature in the coming months.Bankers see it as a speedy and efficient way to manage foreclosure cases and get tens of thousands of Florida properties in ownership limbo back on the market, helping pull the state out of its economic doldrums.
"Obviously there's a lot of fraud being perpetrated by the banks in these cases," said Michael Redman, a Palm Beach County resident who founded the Website 4closurefraud.org to chronicle Florida's ongoing foreclosure crisis. "At this point in the game, it's almost ridiculous to take it out of the court system."
But the Florida Bankers Association, which has pushed the plan over the past few years, has key allies. Scott voiced support for the proposal at a Florida Bar convention this summer and told reporters Wednesday he is still interested in it. Some lawmakers have already jumped on board.
14/ Unusual - a big name movie for intelligent people out this week...."Moneyball" with Brad Pitt - sounds like a great film....
Good trailer - shows that although the movie is set in the world of baseball it's more about business and technology.....and people with a dream.....
Todays video - A DDD favourite - "Spanish For Your nanny"
Todays Middle Eastern joke
A fleeing Taliban, desperate for water, was plodding through the
Afghan desert when he saw something far off in the distance.
Hoping to find water, he hurried toward the oasis, only to find a
little old Jewish man at a small stand, selling ties.
The Taliban asked, "Do you have water?"
The Jewish man replied, "I have no water. Would you like to buy a tie?
They are only $5."
The Taliban shouted, "Idiot! I do not need an over-priced tie. I need
water! I should kill you, but I must find water first!"
"OK," said the old Jewish man, "It does not matter that you do not
want to buy a tie and that you hate me. I will show you
that I am bigger than that. If you continue over that hill to the east
for about two miles, you will find a lovely restaurant.
It has all the ice cold water you need.
Shalom."
Cursing, the Taliban staggered away over the hill Several hours later
he staggered back, almost dead & said,
"Your fxxking brother won't let me in without a tie!"
Todays Little Old Lady joke
A little old lady was walking down the street dragging two large plastic garbage bags behind her. One of the bags was ripped and every once in a while a $20 fell out onto the sidewalk.
Noticing this, a policeman stopped her, and said, "Ma'am, there are $20 bills falling out of that bag."
"Oh, really? Darn it!" said the little old lady. "I'd better go back and see if I can find them.. Thanks for telling me officer."
"Oh, really? Darn it!" said the little old lady. "I'd better go back and see if I can find them.. Thanks for telling me officer."
Well, now, not so fast," said the cop. Where did you get all that money? You didn't steal it, did you?"
"Oh, no, no", said the old lady. "You see, my back yard is right next to a Golf course.
A lot of Golfers come and pee through a knot hole in my fence, right into my flower garden. It used to really tick me off. Kills the flowers, you know.
Then I thought, why not make the best of it?
So, now, I stand behind the fence by the knot hole, real quiet, with my hedge clippers.
Every time some guy sticks his thing through my fence, I surprise him, grab hold of it and say, 'O.K., buddy! Give me $20, or off it comes.'
"Well, that seems only fair," said the cop, laughing. "OK. Good luck! Oh, by the way, what's in the other bag?"
"Not everybody pays."
A lot of Golfers come and pee through a knot hole in my fence, right into my flower garden. It used to really tick me off. Kills the flowers, you know.
Then I thought, why not make the best of it?
So, now, I stand behind the fence by the knot hole, real quiet, with my hedge clippers.
Every time some guy sticks his thing through my fence, I surprise him, grab hold of it and say, 'O.K., buddy! Give me $20, or off it comes.'
"Well, that seems only fair," said the cop, laughing. "OK. Good luck! Oh, by the way, what's in the other bag?"
"Not everybody pays."
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