We have five "Floriduh" stories this week......
1/ The President has said Congress should vote on whether we should take any military action in Syria, which may be a brilliant political move to get himself out of the box he put himself in when he said chemical weapons were "a line in the sand"......I don't know about you but the thought of this country being involved in another Middle East "adventure" is insane.
Noone has mentioned why this has come to pass - the with the winding down of Iraq and Afghanistan the military-industrial complex is seeing it's cash flow drop, and they are lobbying hard for another war.....and our Corpocrat President is listening.....
Follow the money folks.....it's the deep corruption at work.......
Anyway good column from Charles Blow in the Times......
OP-ED COLUMNIST
War-Weariness
By CHARLES M. BLOW
Published: August 30, 2013 464 Comments
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America may have lost its stomach for military intervention.
The Obama administration has made its case that the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, used chemical weapons against his own people and that a “limited” military response is in order to demonstrate that international norms will — and must — be enforced.
President Obama said during a news conference on Friday, “It’s important for us to recognize that when over a thousand people are killed, including hundreds of innocent children, through the use of a weapon that 98 or 99 percent of humanity says should not be used even in war, and there is no action, then we’re sending a signal.”
The president is attempting to assure the American people that any action in Syria will not involve American boots on the ground and will not be a sinkhole like the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, but that is a hard case to make.
The problem is that America seems war weary.
If the administration is correct, this is a human rights tragedy. Something should be done. But must we always be the ones to do it? Does protecting America’s interest mean policing the world’s horrors?
When innocent lives are taken in the most reprehensible of ways, to whom do their souls cry? Whence comes their justice? Is America’s moral leadership in the world carved out by the tip of its sword?
These are profound questions that go straight to the heart of how we see ourselves on a rapidly changing planet. Are we the arbiters of the world’s atrocities?
It would seem that Americans are conflicted about that role, at least in this case.
An NBC News poll released Friday found that while 58 percent of Americans believe that the use of chemical weapons by any country is a “red line” requiring a significant United States response, including military action, only 42 percent believe that we should take such action in Syria and only 21 percent are convinced that such action is in our national interest. Fifty percent of Americans believe that we should take no significant military action.
To put that in context, according to data from Gallup, the highest disapproval rate for military action in the last 30 years was 45 percent for military action in Haiti in 1994 and in Kosovo and the Balkans in 1999.
Our current conflicts, no doubt, weigh heavily on Americans’ minds.
2/ Bill Moyers is a wonderful, intelligent commentator on politics and governance, and in this three minute video essay he muses on the state of our democracy.....and it's not in good shape. It's a summary of "where we are", and be prepared to be depressed, and angry.....
3/ Ah technology, wonderful technology, from how software has made business incomparably more efficient to robotics which have revolutionised our factories. But what has this done to the job market?
In this excellent article the authors look at how this drive for cost reduction and efficiency have affected the middle class.....and it's not good news.......
THE GREAT DIVIDE August 24, 2013, 2:35 pm 716 Comments
How Technology Wrecks the Middle Class
By DAVID H. AUTOR AND DAVID DORN
Bill Pugliano/Getty ImagesRobot arms welded a vehicle on the assembly line at a General Motors plant in Lansing, Mich., in 2010.
The Great Divide is a series about inequality.
In the four years since the Great Recession officially ended, the productivity of American workers — those lucky enough to have jobs — has risen smartly. But the United States still has two million fewer jobs than before the downturn, the unemployment rate is stuck at levels not seen since the early 1990s and the proportion of adults who are working is four percentage points off its peak in 2000.
This job drought has spurred pundits to wonder whether a profound employment sickness has overtaken us. And from there, it’s only a short leap to ask whether that illness isn’t productivity itself. Have we mechanized and computerized ourselves into obsolescence?
Are we in danger of losing the “race against the machine,” as the M.I.T. scholars Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee argue in a recent book? Are we becoming enslaved to our “robot overlords,” as the journalist Kevin Drum warned in Mother Jones? Do “smart machines” threaten us with “long-term misery,” as the economists Jeffrey D. Sachs and Laurence J. Kotlikoff prophesied earlier this year? Have we reached “the end of labor,” as Noah Smithlaments in The Atlantic?
Of course, anxiety, and even hysteria, about the adverse effects of technological change on employment have a venerable history. In the early 19th century a group of English textile artisans calling themselves the Luddites staged a machine-trashing rebellion. Their brashness earned them a place (rarely positive) in the lexicon, but they had legitimate reasons for concern.
Economists have historically rejected what we call the “lump of labor” fallacy: the supposition that an increase in labor productivity inevitably reduces employment because there is only a finite amount of work to do. While intuitively appealing, this idea is demonstrably false. In 1900, for example, 41 percent of the United States work force was in agriculture. By 2000, that share had fallen to 2 percent, after the Green Revolution transformed crop yields. But the employment-to-population ratio rose over the 20th century as women moved from home to market, and the unemployment rate fluctuated cyclically, with no long-term increase.
4/ An old Bill Maher but a relevant one considering the football season is upon us - he compares the economic models of pro football and baseball with analogies to our politics......a very good five minutes......
5/ One of the stories bubbling in the media is who will replace Ben Bernanke as Chairman of the Federal Reserve, a crucial appointment which will be decided by the President. The leading name being touted by the White House is Larry Summers, and there is a groundswell of opposition to this corrupt bastard because he had some of the responsibility for the Wall Street meltdown in 2007....he actually caused it!
This story details a memo from Tim Geithner to Summers in 1997 advising Summers to call the private lines of Wall Street bankers, presumably for instructions on how and what deregulation to implement....
Obama knows this, but still wants him in a key financial position....OR the banks are pressuring him really, really hard and he is, of course, caving. If he appoints Summers it's all over folks......
When a little birdie dropped the End Game memo through my window, its content was so explosive, so sick and plain evil, I just couldn't believe it.
The Memo confirmed every conspiracy freak’s fantasy: that in the late 1990s, the top US Treasury officials secretly conspired with a small cabal of banker big-shots to rip apart financial regulation across the planet. When you see 26.3 percent unemployment in Spain, desperation and hunger inGreece, riots in Indonesia and Detroit in bankruptcy, go back to this End Game memo, the genesis of the blood and tears.
The Treasury official playing the bankers’ secret End Game was Larry Summers. Today, Summers is Barack Obama’s leading choice for Chairman of the US Federal Reserve, the world’s central bank. If the confidential memo is authentic, then Summers shouldn’t be serving on the Fed, he should be serving hard time in some dungeon reserved for the criminally insane of the finance world.
The memo is authentic.
I had to fly to Geneva to get confirmation and wangle a meeting with the Secretary General of the World Trade Organisation, Pascal Lamy. Lamy, the Generalissimo of Globalisation, told me,
“The WTO was not created as some dark cabal of multinationals secretly cooking plots against the people... We don’t have cigar-smoking, rich, crazy bankers negotiating.”
Then I showed him the memo.
It begins with Larry Summers’ flunky, Timothy Geithner, reminding his boss to call the Bank bigshots to order their lobbyist armies to march:
“As we enter the end-game of the WTO financial services negotiations, I believe it would be a good idea for you to touch base with the CEOs…”
To avoid Summers having to call his office to get the phone numbers (which, under US law, would have to appear on public logs), Geithner listed the private lines of what were then the five most powerful CEOs on the planet. And here they are:
Goldman Sachs: John Corzine (212)902-8281
Merrill Lynch: David Kamanski (212)449-6868
Bank of America: David Coulter (415)622-2255
Citibank: John Reed (212)559-2732
Chase Manhattan: Walter Shipley (212)270-1380
6/ Todays music clip is Joe Cocker at Woodstock singing[?] "With A Little Help From My Friends"......you may find it difficult to understand Joe's lyrics, so subtitles are provided for you......
An amusing four minutes........
7/ Beautiful three minute nature film, shot in the Rockies by the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation......this won a best wildlife film award......set to "Over The Rainbow".......
Just a lovely video.....a nice one.....
8/ An amusing two minutes about how to deal with climate change denier politicians - name hurricanes after them.......
If only we could do this.....
9/ Little cloud following you around? That stupid ad got you wanting to take a pill?
You're not alone - Big Pharma wants you hooked on these awful drugs, and are targeting women......
THE CONSUMER AUGUST 12, 2013, 2:53 PM 445 Comments
A Glut of Antidepressants
By RONI CARYN RABIN- GOOGLE+
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David PlunkertTHE CONSUMER
Advice on money and health.
Over the past two decades, the use of antidepressants has skyrocketed. One in 10 Americans now takes an antidepressant medication; among women in their 40s and 50s, the figure is one in four.
Experts have offered numerous reasons. Depression is common, and economic struggles have added to our stress and anxiety. Television ads promote antidepressants, and insurance plans usually cover them, even while limiting talk therapy. But a recent study suggests another explanation: that the condition is being overdiagnosed on a remarkable scale.
The study, published in April in the journal Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, found that nearly two-thirds of a sample of more than 5,000 patients who had been given a diagnosis of depression within the previous 12 months did not meet the criteria for major depressive episode as described by the psychiatrists’ bible, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (or D.S.M.).
The study is not the first to find that patients frequently get “false positive” diagnoses for depression. Several earlier review studies have reported that diagnostic accuracy is low in general practice offices, in large part because serious depression is so rare in that setting.
Elderly patients were most likely to be misdiagnosed, the latest study found. Six out of seven patients age 65 and older who had been given a diagnosis of depression did not fit the criteria. More educated patients and those in poor health were less likely to receive an inaccurate diagnosis.
The vast majority of individuals diagnosed with depression, rightly or wrongly, were given medication, said the paper’s lead author, Dr. Ramin Mojtabai, an associate professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Most people stay on the drugs, which can have a variety of side effects, for at least two years. Some take them for a decade or more.
“It’s not only that physicians are prescribing more, the population is demanding more,” Dr. Mojtabai said. “Feelings of sadness, the stresses of daily life and relationship problems can all cause feelings of upset or sadness that may be passing and not last long. But Americans have become more and more willing to use medication to address them.”
110/ Wow - a trailer for the new movie "Gravity", with Sandra Bullock and George Clooney, directed by Alfonso Cuaron. This is one of the most powerful trailers ever - you know they aren't going to sacrifice Sandra Bullock, but how do they save her?
This debuted at the Venice Film Festival, and got rave reviews....coming Oct. 4th.....
11/ An important South Florida story, but the beginning of the serious consequences of rising seas and [soon to be] nastier storms. The beaches of Miami, Broward and Palm Beach are running out of sand....
Think SF tourism without beaches.......eeeek.....
Where Sand Is Gold, the Reserves Are Running Dry
Angel Valentin for The New York Times
Erosion at Haulover Beach Park in Miami-Dade County.
By LIZETTE ALVAREZ
Published: August 24, 2013
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FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — With inviting beaches that run for miles along South Florida’s shores, it is easy to put sand into the same category as turbo air-conditioning and a decent mojito — something ever present and easily taken for granted.
As it turns out, though, sand is not forever. Constant erosion from storms and tides and a rising sea level continue to swallow up chunks of beach along Florida’s Atlantic coastline. Communities have spent the last few decades replenishing their beaches with dredged-up sand.
But in South Florida — Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach Counties — concerns over erosion and the quest for sand are particularly urgent for one reason: there is almost no sand left offshore to replenish the beaches.
In these communities, sand is far from disposable; it is a precious commodity. So precious, in fact, that it has set off skirmishes among counties and has unleashed an intense hunt for more offshore sand by federal, state and local officials who are already fretting over the next big storm. No idea is too far-fetched in this quest, not even a proposal to grind down recycled glass and transform it into beach sand. The once-shelved idea is now being reconsidered by Broward County.
The situation is so dire that two counties to the north — St. Lucie and Martin — are being asked to donate their own offshore sand in the spirit of neighborliness.
“You have counties starting wars with each other over sand,” said Kristin Jacobs, the Broward County mayor, who has embraced the recycled glass idea as a possible stopgap. “Everybody feels like these other counties are going to steal their sand.”
St. Lucie and Martin Counties are none too keen to sacrifice their sand for the pleasures of South Florida. The last time the idea was mentioned, in 2006, it engendered accusations of subterfuge and raised so much ire that it was dropped. If recent public meetings on the issue held by the Army Corps of Engineers are any measure, little has changed, despite a new study by the corps that says the two counties have enough offshore sand for at least 50 years.
12/ Just when you think you have seen the nadir of stupidity, cruelty to the poor and the corruption of the Republican Legislature and the unspeakably awful Rick Scott, they top themselves.
Florida Insurers Are Now Free to Screw Consumers and Must, By Law, Blame Obamacare
First do no harm. That's a tenet of medical ethics that future doctors worldwide are taught in medical school.
If only the people we elect to represent us were required to take such an oath when they're sworn into office.
Because they aren't, folks in Florida are facing having to pay far more for health insurance over the next two years than necessary. And health insurance executives will be laughing all the way to the bank.
Florida state lawmakers, in their ongoing efforts to block the implementation of Obamacare in the Sunshine State, recently passed a law that will allow health insurance companies to gouge Floridians more than any corporate boss dreamed was possible.
And if that weren't bad enough, insurers will actually be required by law to mislead their Florida customers about why they're hiking their premiums.
Republicans, who control the governor's office as well as both houses of the Florida legislature, were confident the U.S. Supreme Court would declare the Affordable Care Act unconstitutional. Not only did they vote to prohibit the state from spending money to implement a law they just knew would be overturned by the high court, they refused to accept money from the federal government that would have enabled the state's department of insurance to do a better job of regulating health insurers and enforcing new consumer protections in the law.
When the Supreme Court shocked Obamacare opponents last year by upholding the law, Florida lawmakers were in a pickle.
Their response? They passed a bill that prohibits the state's Office of Insurance Regulation from protecting consumers from unreasonable rate increases for two years.
13/ The excellent Carl Hiaasen with more on our hopeless Governor........
Clueless to crisis in our environment
BY CARL HIAASEN
CHIAASEN@MIAMIHERALD.COM
Governor Clueless showed up the other day for a photo-op at the St. Lucie Lock and Dam.
The mission was to display concern over the billions of gallons of cruddy water being dumped from Lake Okeechobee into the St. Lucie River, a criminal act of pollution that’s poisoning the St. Lucie Estuary and Indian River Lagoon.
Hundreds of demonstrators, many worried about their jobs, showed up at the dam. Rick Scott didn’t stop to talk to them.
He spoke for a short time to the media, saying he wants to spend $40 million on a reservoir to filter some of the runoff before it can reach the estuary.
He blamed the Army Corps of Engineers for moving too slowly to upgrade the old Herbert Hoover Dike around Lake Okeechobee. He also blamed Congress for failing to release the money committed for Everglades restoration projects.
The governor wasn’t so chatty on the subject of Big Sugar, which has donated a pile to his political action committee with the goal of getting him reelected.
A major reason all that lake slop is being pumped toward the residential areas of both coasts (the Caloosahatchee River carries it west) is that the cane growers don’t want it pumped in their direction.
Fearful that the dike will give way, the Corps drains Lake Okeechobee when water levels get high. Last week, the outflow was reduced from 3.1 billion gallons a day to about 1.8 billion gallons a day, still a massive deluge from what is basically a giant latrine for agricultural waste.
Since the most recent discharges from Lake O began in May, more than 1 million pounds of nitrogen and 260,000 pounds of phosphorus have been flushed into the St. Lucie River and on to the estuary.
Now we get to watch Scott, another Republican whiner about federal spending, bash the feds for not spending enough and not spending it fast enough. Somewhere in the folds of the governor’s brain has stirred a fuzzy awareness that clean healthy water is really important to Floridians, and also essential to the economy.
14/ And just in case you are wondering who is responsible for Lake Okeechobee being disgustingly contaminated, look no further than Big Sugar and the politicians that protect them......
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| St. Lucie Estuary |
The rampant pollution flooding out of the diseased liquid heart of Florida, Lake Okeechobee, is splashing onto the orthodoxy that holds Big Sugar, first in the heart of Tallahassee. You can feel the first, tentative shivering of political uncertainty in Tallhassee.
Big Sugar's privileged status has never been in doubt. Its BS will never be in question until voters throw out the bums who have been coddling and protecting the polluters for decades.
The question is whether public opinion, now more fierce against Big Sugar than ever before, will materialize into political opposition. It never happened on a scale large enough to matter, before.
It might happen, especially if well-heeled and wealthy property owners come to realize the only way to protect their real estate and equity and quality of life is to invest in political campaigning to unseat those senators and representatives who shelter Big Sugar.
Big Sugar pollutes Florida by obstructing the purchase by the state and the use of sugar lands for the creation of a flow-way adequate to the purpose of diminishing the pile up of poisonous water in Lake Okeechobee.
Because fresh water is obstructed by Big Sugar's manipulation of the politics of water management in Florida, coastal private property takes it in the teeth. This year's high rainfall has decimated the estuaries on which local economies and quality of life depend.
15/ Hmmm.......the Central Florida aquifer is very close to being maxed out - time to give Niagara another permit! For more free water!
Analysis: Floridan Aquifer can only handle 6% more pumping before serious environmental harm
Florida Sinkholes MapA Sinkhole Company Rated #1 In The Satisfaction Of Customers. Call Us!TBBSinkhole.Com/
SinkholeInspection
By Kevin Spear, Orlando Sentinel
6:33 p.m. EDT, August 25, 2013
Just how much more water can Central Florida pump from the Floridan Aquifer without causing real harm to the region's environment? After years of debate, study and anxiety, state authorities say they have finally — and officially — figured it out.
The answer: hardly any.
Using the most advanced databases and computing methodology yet developed for such a task, a consortium of state water managers and local utilities have calculated that the current amount of water pumped from the underground aquifer each day can be increased by only about 6 percent — which means the region is already exploiting the huge, life-sustaining aquifer for nearly every drop it can safely offer
For the past several years, Central Florida's demand for aquifer water by all users — homes, businesses and agriculture — has averaged 800 million gallons a day. But that demand is expected to rise during three decades to 1.1 billion gallons a day. The problem is, pumping more than 850 million gallons a day from the aquifer will inflict a significant amount of damage to wetlands, springs and rivers, according to the consortium's new analysis, unless a lot of costly environmental splints and bandages are applied.
"This should come as no surprise," said Hal Wilkening, a director with the St. Johns River Water Management District. The consortium, called the Central Florida Water Initiative, hopes its new calculations will give utilities the financial courage to spend large sums of money on meeting the region's rising water needs by pumping water from relatively distant rivers, lakes or even the ocean rather than from the aquifer.
Another option — one not considered likely by state officials — is to improve existing conservation measures so that demand for water is kept in check even as Central Florida's population grows from nearly 3 million today to 4.1 million in 2035.
16/ Oops. The City of Mount Dora forgot to collect millions from a developer for connection fees to utilities, and various officials have been fired for negligence. The "oops" came to light by the persistence of a clerk in the billing department.
Is this just bureaucratic stupidity at it's finest, or is there more to it? Hmmm.....
Great story from Lauren Ritchie in the Orlando Sentinel......
Lauren RitchieCOMMENTARY
August 2, 2013
This report ought to make Mount Dora officials squirm in their chairs.
Remember that the city let the nation's largest homebuilding corporation connect about 435 houses to its water and sewer system without collecting the required fees.
The result was that Centex Homes owes the city $2.3 million for homes it built in the Sullivan Ranch subdivision off Round Lake Road from 2009 to March this year.
Now, a report by the city attorney on the mistake shows that while Mount Dora was allowing the developer to connect for free, the city also was refusing to take money that the developer was trying to pay.
In addition — this is almost unbelievable — city officials actually refunded $23,000 they accidentally accepted but then declared that Centex didn't really owe.
Wow.
Talk about compounding error on top of error. The report states that the city had "multiple opportunities" to discover its error and failed.
Recently, city finance director Jim Williams resigned over the fiasco, but City Manager Mike Quinn said this week that no other employees will be disciplined. Others were culpable enough to be dismissed, he said, but all of them have already left the city.
The situation came to light only through the persistence of a utility billing specialist employee who has worked there for nearly 19 years.
Toni DeLand said she and her supervisor brought the issue forward a number of times without results.
"We just kept always asking. Finally, we just demanded more," said DeLand, the reluctant hero.
Quinn said he is considering whether to reward her with a bonus.
On Tuesday night, City Council members accepted a settlement offer from Centex. The builder will pay the "current total amount" of impact fees it owes through April 1 at the "out-of-city" rate, which is $2.1 million. (The total was $2.3 million, but Centex put down $200,000 a couple months ago while the parties worked out the precise numbers.) The money would be paid within 45 days.
Todays video - a rerun but it's good.....Jeff Gordon [star NASCAR driver] pranks a used car salesman......
Todays religious joke
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A man stood up and walked slowly to the podium. He said, "I'm Phil." The entire congregation held its breath.
Todays golfers joke
Tiger Woods, touring around
the British isles, drives his rented Mercedes 500 SL into a petrol
station in a very remote part of the Irish countryside.
the British isles, drives his rented Mercedes 500 SL into a petrol
station in a very remote part of the Irish countryside.
An elderly man,
sitting on a beat-up chair in front of the station-----who obviously
knows nothing about golf-----greets Woods him in a typical Irish manner,
completely unaware of who the celebrity golfer is.
sitting on a beat-up chair in front of the station-----who obviously
knows nothing about golf-----greets Woods him in a typical Irish manner,
completely unaware of who the celebrity golfer is.
"Top of the mornin' toyer, sir", says the old man.
Tiger nods a quick "hello" and bends forward to pick up the nozzle. As he does so, two tees fall out of his shirt pocket onto the ground.
"And what might those be?", asks the man.
"They're called tees," replies Tiger.
"Well, and what on God's earth might dey be for?", inquires the Irishman.
"They're for resting my balls on when I'm driving", says Tiger.
"Fookin Jaysus", says the Irishman, "Mercedes thinks of everything!
Todays biker joke
Last Saturday, a group of Pekin, Illinois bikers were riding west on I-74 when they saw a girl about to jump off the Murray Baker Bridge. So they stopped.
Jeff, their leader, a big burly man of 53, gets off his Harley, walks through a group of gawkers, past the State Trooper who was trying to talk her down off the railing, and says,"Hey Baby.....whatcha doin' up there on that railin'?"She says tearfully, "I'm going to commit suicide!!"While he didn't want to appear "sensitive," Jeff also didn't want to miss this "be-a-legend" opportunity either so he asked ..."Well, before you jump, Honey-Babe...why don't you give ole George here your best last kiss?"So, with no hesitation at all, she leaned back over the railing and did just that ... and it was a long, deep, lingering kiss followed immediately by another even better one.After they breathlessly finished, Jeff gets a big thumbs-up approval from his biker-buddies, the onlookers, and even the State Trooper, and then says,"Wow! That was the best kiss I have ever had, Honey! That's a real talent you're wasting, Sugar Shorts. You could be famous if you rode with me. Why the hell are you committing suicide?""My parents don't like me dressing up like a girl."It's still unclear whether she jumped or was pushed.
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