Undernews For January 16

Since 1964, the news while there's still time to do something about it

Catch editor Sam on Make It Plain, most Mondays at 7 pm Eastern (or shortly thereafter). Make It Plain, hosted by Mark Thompson (Matsimela Mapfumo) is a political, human rights, and breaking news program. You can hear it on Sirius channel 146 or XM channel 167.

Obama hires Wall Street welfare father as chief adviser

Sam Smith

For the second time in a row, Obama has hired as his chief advisor someone who directly benefited from the greed and stupidity that led the country's current financial crisis.

For the seven years William Daley was with JP Morgan Chase, including a tour as a member of its executive committee. During this time JP Morgan got over three times as much in TARP aid as was promised states to help millions of Americans facing foreclosure and 35 times the size of Obama's own foreclosure fund.

Daley's government experience has mainly been as Commerce Secretary under Clinton, a post designed to appease big business interests without interfering too much with the overall administration. He was also a major backer of the NAFTA agreement.

Worse, this is the second time in a row that Obama has named as chief of staff someone with deep involvement in the financial industry that brought the country down. The New York Times reported in 2008:

||||| In late 1998, while Washington was in the throes of the Monica Lewinsky scandal, Rahm Emanuel, a departing senior political aide to President Bill Clinton, ventured out to an elegant restaurant in Dupont Circle for something of a job interview. . .

John Simpson, who ran the Chicago office of the investment banking boutique, had flown to Washington to meet with Mr. Emanuel at the behest of Mr. Simpson’s boss, Bruce Wasserstein, a major Democratic donor and renowned Wall Street dealmaker who had gotten to know Mr. Emanuel. . .

Mr. Emanuel, who was chosen last month to become President-elect Barack Obama’s White House chief of staff, went on to make more than $18 million in just two-and-a-half years, turning many of his contacts in his substantial political Rolodex into paying clients and directing his negotiating prowess and trademark intensity to mergers and acquisitions. He also benefited from the opportune sale of Wasserstein Perella to a German bank, helping him to an unusually large payout. ||||

And the NY Post reported:

|||| Emanuel served on the Freddie Mac board of directors during the time that the government-backed lender lied about its earnings, a leading contributor to the current economic meltdown. The Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight Agency later singled out the Freddie Mac board as contributing to the fraud in 2000 and 2001 for "failing in its duty to follow up on matters brought to its attention." In other words, board members ignored the red flags waving in their faces. The SEC later fined Freddie $50 million for its deliberate fraud in 2000, 2001 and 2002. Meanwhile, Emanuel was paid more than $260,000 for his Freddie "service." Plus, after he resigned from the board to run for Congress in 2002, the troubled agency's PAC gave his campaign $25,000 - its largest single gift to a House candidate. ||||

Even during the presidential campaign, it as clear that on Wall Street matters - as on so many others - Obama was not who he pretended to be. Here were some of the Progressive Review's gleanings from before Obama was elected:

-- Cass Sunstein, a constitutional advisor to Obama, told Jeffrey Rosen of the NY Times: "I would be stunned to find an anti-business [Supreme Court] appointee from either [Clinton or Obama]. There's not a strong interest on the part of Obama or Clinton in demonizing business, and you wouldn't expect to see that in their Supreme Court nominees."

-- Obama wrote that conservatives and Bill Clinton were right to destroy social welfare

-- Supported making it harder to file class action suits in state courts

-- Voted for a business-friendly "tort reform" bill

-- Voted against a 30% interest rate cap on credit cards

-- Had the most number of foreign lobbyist contributors in the primaries

-- Is even more popular with Pentagon contractors than McCain

-- Was most popular of the candidates with K Street lobbyists In 2003, rightwing Democratic Leadership Council named Obama as one of its "100 to Watch." After he was criticized in the black media, Obama disassociated himself with the DLC. But his major economic advisor, Austan Goolsbee, is also chief economist of the conservative organization. Writes Doug Henwood, "Goolsbee has written gushingly about Milton Friedman and denounced the idea of a moratorium on mortgage foreclosures."

-- Doug Henwood, Left Business Observer: "Top hedge fund honcho Paul Tudor Jones threw a fundraiser for him at his Greenwich house last spring, 'The whole of Greenwich is backing Obama,' one source said of the posh headquarters of the hedge fund industry. They like him because they're socially liberal, up to a point, and probably eager for a little less war, and think he's the man to do their work. They're also confident he wouldn't undertake any renovations to the distribution of wealth."

In other words, Obama has once again successfully conned his constituency. Sorry, but it's not just the right that's deep into masochistic myth. Liberals have a destructive dream world, too -- it's called Obamaland.

Cable: Israel deliberately caused financial disaster in Gaza

AFP - Israel deliberately maintained the economy of the Gaza strip "on the brink of collapse" without "pushing it over the edge," a leaked US diplomatic cable from 2008 showed. . . "As part of their overall embargo plan against Gaza, Israeli officials have confirmed ... on multiple occasions that they intend to keep the Gazan economy on the brink of collapse without quite pushing it over the edge," the secret cable, posted online in its original version, read. . . The unemployment rate in Gaza stood at 35 percent last year, one of the highest in the world.

Army testing soldiers for 'spiritual fitness'

Jason Leopold, Truthout - An experimental, Army mental-health, fitness initiative designed by the same psychologist whose work heavily influenced the psychological aspects of the Bush administration's torture program is under fire by civil rights groups and hundreds of active-duty soldiers. They say it unconstitutionally requires enlistees to believe in God or a "higher power" in order to be deemed "spiritually fit" to serve in the Army.

Comprehensive Soldier Fitness is a $125 million "holistic fitness program" unveiled in late 2009 and aimed at reducing the number of suicides and post-traumatic stress disorder cases, which have reached epidemic proportions over the past year due to multiple deployments to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the substandard care soldiers have received when they return from combat. The Army states that it can accomplish its goal by teaching its service members how to be psychologically resilient and resist "catastrophizing" traumatic events. Defense Department documents obtained by Truthout state CSF is Army Chief of Staff George Casey's "third highest priority."

CSF is comprised of the Soldier Fitness Tracker and Global Assessment Tool, which measures soldiers' "resilience" in five core areas: emotional, physical, family, social and spiritual. Soldiers fill out an online survey made up of more than 100 questions, and if the results fall into a red area, they are required to participate in remedial courses in a classroom or online setting to strengthen their resilience in the disciplines in which they received low scores. The test is administered every two years. More than 800,000 Army soldiers have taken it thus far. .

Obama allows 13 oil companies to drill offshore under old safety standards

Alternet - If there was anything that Obama impressed upon the American public in the wake of the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, it was that if offshore drilling was to continue, it must be safer and better scrutinized. A few months ago, the administration said that it would require every oil company seeking to drill to pass a strict environmental review before getting the go-ahead from the feds. But it appears that this isn't quite the case for every drilling project -- news just broke that 13 companies will be allowed to drill under the same environmental review standards that stood before the BP Gulf spill.

These 13 companies, which include the likes of Chevron and Shell, were already drilling their wells without detailed environmental impact studies before the Deepwater blew, and are therefore exempt from the new environmental review standards, the administration says.

Newark schools already blow $1 million of Facebook donation

David Giambusso & Jessica Calefati, New Jersey Online - In the giddy days after a billionaire donated $100 million to Newark schools, the group created to gather input for reform sent an army of canvassers to knock on the doors of Newarkers asking how to fix the state's largest school system.

Thousands of doors and $1 million later, the effort has produced a mountain of survey answers so vague and simplistic that they are of little or no use, according to university professors and city educational leaders who reviewed the data. . .

Some consider PENewark's canvassing effort and it’s short form survey a misuse of precious funds. . .

PENewark has spent roughly $500,000 on advertising so far, and another $500,000 on salaries for staff and canvassers, officials said.

The war on government workers

Yves Smith, Naked Capitalism - If you live in the world according to the mainstream media, the row between state executives and unions is all about (by implication) greedy unions trying to preserve their perquisites when budget “realities” demand that they suffer. Consider this excerpt from a recent article New York Times article about the fight in New Jersey:

"Across the nation, a rising irritation with public employee unions is palpable, as a wounded economy has blown gaping holes in state, city and town budgets, and revealed that some public pension funds dangle perilously close to bankruptcy."

Funny how the article fails to point fingers at the real perp, which is the global financial crisis, brought to you by your friendly TBTF banks. Andrew Haldane, Executive Director of Financial Stability for the Bank of England estimated that the costs of the financial crisis was 1 to 5 times global GDP. If you were, as economists recommend, to try to tax them to recoup the cost of the damage they did over a period of 20 years, the charge would be over $1.5 trillion a year. That’s more than the market cap of the biggest global banks. Funny, their staff and executives got record bonuses in 2009. So maybe the unions have the wrong strategy. They need to screw up in a particularly destructive manner.

A more accurate rendition would be that, at least in New Jersey, the state has been raiding the pension kitty for over 15 years. This is not news to anyone who has been paying attention, any more than underfunding of corporate pensions. In the Garden State’s case, Governor Chris Christie skipped the required $3.1 billion pension fund contribution last year. He claimed this move was to force reform, but what impact does another $3.1 billion failure to pay have on an unfunded liability that was already over $50 billion?. . .

And what should the unions do now that they are in this mess? I’d fight for shared sacrifice. The dire state of the budgets is hitting everyone. The union members will have to take less, as many Americans have had to. But they need to recognize that these fights over pensions are an effort to eliminate public unions as a political force; the budget battles are simply a useful excuse for the right to break a long-standing foe. Thus the unions need to find a way to regain the moral high ground. New Jersey, one of the richest states in the US, has mismanaged its way into this mess. That fact needs to be hammered hard, and the unions also need to put forward a realistic plan in which they make concessions provided upper income earners do their part to address the budget shortfalls.

Robert Reich, Huffington Post - It's far more convenient to go after people who are doing the public's work -- sanitation workers, police officers, fire fighters, teachers, social workers, federal employees -- to call them "faceless bureaucrats" and portray them as hooligans who are making off with your money and crippling federal and state budgets. The story fits better with the Republican's Big Lie that our problems are due to a government that's too big.

Above all, Republicans don't want to have to justify continued tax cuts for the rich. As quietly as possible, they want to make them permanent.

But the right's argument is shot-through with bad data, twisted evidence, and unsupported assertions.

They say public employees earn far more than private-sector workers. That's untrue when you take account of level of education. Matched by education, public sector workers actually earn less than their private-sector counterparts.

The Republican trick is to compare apples with oranges -- the average wage of public employees with the average wage of all private-sector employees. But only 23 percent of private-sector employees have college degrees; 48 percent of government workers do. Teachers, social workers, public lawyers who bring companies to justice, government accountants who try to make sure money is spent as it should be -- all need at least four years of college.

Compare apples to apples and and you'd see that over the last fifteen years the pay of public sector workers has dropped relative to private-sector employees with the same level of education. Public sector workers now earn 11 percent less than comparable workers in the private sector, and local workers 12 percent less. (Even if you include health and retirement benefits, government employees still earn less than their private-sector counterparts with similar educations.)
Isn't there an easy solution to anything?
Recipeland - CBC News reported that reusable bags the “must-have for the eco-conscious shopper” may contain unsafe levels of lead. . . Health Canada is currently looking into the lead issue. Last year Health Canada issued an advisory warning consumers about the use of reusable shopping bags. However at that time their concern had nothing to do with lead but instead of E. coli and other food born cross-contamination.

A research study by the University of Arizona and Loma Linda University in California found there is “a serious threat to public health, especially from E. coli” and that “consumers are alarmingly unaware of these risks”.

The best case scenario is that consumers sterilize their reusable shopping with bleach and hot water after use which will kill nearly all bacteria that accumulate. Of course, this would pose environmental risks to the water table with more chlorine bleach entering the water table as it is rinsed down the drain.

The largest problem comes from cross-contamination. By re-using a bag without sanitizing it between uses, which the study found 97% of consumers do not do, foods are allowed to contaminate the bag which then cross-contaminates the next purchase.

The National Post reported last year that two independent laboratories found unacceptably high level of bacterial, yeast, mold and coliform counts in the reusable bags. “The main risk is food poisoning” Dr. Richard Summerbell says.

WZZM an ABC affiliate TV station reported “Grocery bags may contain a deadly toxin” citing a recent investigation by The Tampa Tribune. The report mentions that several stores across the US have removed reusable shopping bags from their stores and are discouraging their use due to the risk to their customers.

It seems the best way for consumers to protect themselves is to demand the grocery store clerk washes their hands to avoid cross-contamination from previous customers filthy reusable bags. Then bag everything in plastic bags which you then place yourself into your own reusable bag. Once at home make sure you sanitize your reusable bag using chlorine bleach. Being green in this case appears to come at a cost, to your wallet and to the environment.
The real GOP platform
Rep Steve King (R-IA), apparently unaware of the 14th Amendment, has introduced an unconstitutional bill that “requires that only the children of citizens, legal immigrants permanently living in the country or immigrants in the military, be granted citizenship," reports Politico

Republicans further disenfranchise residents of District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam and American Samoa by taking away their limited House voting rights

House Republican wants to abolish the tax code

GOP Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina says he wants American officials to consider establishing permanent military bases in Afghanistan.

Republicans launch war on unions
Former Senator Alan Simpson calls America's seniors the "greediest generation."
Six GOP candidates could beat Obama today
The Progressive Review three poll moving average finds six GOP potential presidential candidates within striking distance of Obama. Charts show Obama's lead. (Note: The Christie number is based on just one poll). The only candidates he could definitely beat would be Trump, Rubio and Palin.

The single Zogby poll also has Christie leading the GOP pack with the rest bunched together except for Gingrich.

Fun fact: two of the GOP candidates - Palin and Christie - went AWOL on their governorship jobs - Christie staying on vacation during a major blizzard and Palin permanently deserting her post.
Even the establishment is getting tired of homeland insecurities
Anne Applebaum, Foreign Policy - DHS serves only one clear purpose: to provide unimaginable bonanzas for favored congressional districts around the United States, most of which face no statistically significant security threat at all. One thinks of the $436,504 that the Blackfeet Nation of Montana received in fiscal 2010 "to help strengthen the nation against risks associated with potential terrorist attacks"; the $1,000,000 that the village of Poynette, Wisconsin (pop. 2,266) received in fiscal 2009 for an "emergency operations center"; or the $67,000 worth of surveillance equipment purchased by Marin County, California, and discovered, still in its original packaging, four years later. And indeed, every U.S. state, no matter how landlocked or underpopulated, receives, by law, a fixed percentage of homeland security spending every year.

As for the TSA, I am not aware of a single bomber or bomb plot stopped by its time-wasting procedures. In fact, TSA screeners consistently fail to spot the majority of fake "bombs" and bomb parts the agency periodically plants to test their skills. In Los Angeles, whose airport was targeted by the "millennium plot" on New Year's 2000, screeners failed some 75 percent of these tests.

Terrorists have been stopped since 2001 and plots prevented, but always by other means. After the Nigerian "underwear bomber" of Christmas Day 2009 was foiled, DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano claimed "the system worked" -- but the bomber was caught by a passenger, not the feds. Richard Reid, the 2001 shoe bomber, was undone by an alert stewardess who smelled something funny. The 2006 Heathrow Airport plot was uncovered by an intelligence tip. Al Qaeda's recent attempt to explode cargo planes was caught by a human intelligence source, not an X-ray machine. Yet the TSA responds to these events by placing restrictions on shoes, liquids, and now perhaps printer cartridges. . .
Even conservatives may not be that crazy about Palin
Sean Bugg, writing in the DC's gay Metro Weekly:

I love my family more than I love my political opinions, in general. There are some specifics that may still be up for debate, but I've decided that holidays are a season to take a break. This year I studiously avoided talking about my personal opinion beyond expressing some happiness over the repeal of ''Don't Ask, Don't Tell,'' a position that's totally noncontroversial in my fairly conservative family.

It's worth remembering that about the only place where repealing DADT was controversial was within the confines of John McCain's brain.

Anyway, although I avoided talking politics and did a bang-up job of not getting baited into a discussion of health care, Mitch McConnell or Fox News ¬ oh, the temptation ¬ I did listen to what other people were saying, especially one thing that kept cropping up.

People really don't like Sarah Palin.

Honestly, I did nothing to prompt the comment, regarding Barack Obama, that ''at least he's not Sarah Palin.'' I did not encourage the consistent eye-rolling that accompanied nearly every utterance of the half-term former governor's name. . .

These are not Democrats I'm talking about. I am from Kentucky, after all. And none of this means that any of them are likely to stop sending Republicans to Congress. But, being from a part of rural America where guns and hunting are common, where hauling hay was the most desirable summer job, where my uncle's cattle outnumbered the population of my hometown, you might think they would have a little more admiration for the Alaskan presidential hopeful. . .

But I'll just take a cue from my family, say a quick ''thank you'' that she's on television and not in the White House, roll my eyes a bit, and move on to the next one. Lest we forget, there are plenty of anti-gay politicians out there who haven't quit their day jobs.
Bill proposes to slash First Amendment
Geoffrey R, Stone, NY Times - The so-called Shield bill, which was recently introduced in both houses of Congress in response to the WikiLeaks disclosures, would amend the Espionage Act of 1917 to make it a crime for any person knowingly and willfully to disseminate, “in any manner prejudicial to the safety or interest of the United States,” any classified information “concerning the human intelligence activities of the United States.”

Although this proposed law may be constitutional as applied to government employees who unlawfully leak such material to people who are unauthorized to receive it, it would plainly violate the First Amendment to punish anyone who might publish or otherwise circulate the information after it has been leaked.
Boehnercare: Blue Shield of California seeks rate hikes of as much as 59%
LA Times - Another big California health insurer has stunned individual policyholders with huge rate increases ¬ this time it's Blue Shield of California seeking cumulative hikes of as much as 59% for tens of thousands of customers March 1. Blue Shield's action comes less than a year after Anthem Blue Cross tried and failed to raise rates as much as 39% for about 700,000 California customers.

In all, Blue Shield said, 193,000 policyholders would see increases averaging 30% to 35%, the result of three separate rate hikes since October. Nearly 1 in 4 of the affected customers will see cumulative increases of more than 50% over five months.
UnAmerica: Professor arrested for carrying bagel on plane
NBC Miami - A Florida professor was arrested and removed from a plane Monday after his fellow passengers alerted crew members they thought he had a suspicious package in the overhead compartment. That "suspicious package" turned out to be keys, a bagel with cream cheese and a hat. Ognjen Milatovic, 35, was flying from Boston to Washington D.C. on US Airways when he was escorted off the plane for disorderly conduct following the incident.

Milatovic, who is a mathematics and statistics professor at the University of North Florida, was minding his business when other passengers turned into super sleuths.

When confronted by the US Airways crew about his "suspicious package," Milatovic got on his cell phone. The crew asked him to hang it up and sit down. When he refused, he was cuffed. Milatovic was also charged with interfering with the operation of an aircraft.
Bookshelf: ComeHomeAmerica.US

Last winter a cross-ideological group got together for a day to discuss an antiwar coalition. Out of that session has come this book edited by Paul Buhle, Bill Kauffman, George O’Neill Jr. and Kevin Zeese. Among the contributors: Jesse Walker, Doug Bandow, Bill Kauffman, Cindy Sheehan, Ralph Nader and Sam Smith

As the book describes itself, "Throughout American history there have been times when movements developed that were outside the limited political dialogue of the two major parties, such as the abolitionists, the Anti-Imperialist League, the Non-Partisan League, and aspects of the Old Right and the New Left. Sometimes those movements have broken through and created paradigm shifting moments. Some of the materials in this book describe the Populist Movement of the late 1800s to provide an example of the type of movement that can influence politics, even though it starts outside of the acceptable political spectrum. Our hope is that this meeting will be the first step toward building effective advocacy against war and militarism which pulls in the majority of Americans who recognize that war should truly be a last resort limited to the real defense of our nation."

ORDER
Psychologists urge end of Manning mistreatment
Raw Story - A psychologists' group has sent a letter to Defense Secretary Robert Gates asking him to "rectify the inhumane, harmful, and counterproductive treatment" of the Army private accused of being WikiLeaks' source for the US State Department cables.

In a letter dated Monday, Psychologists for Social Responsibility argued that PFC Bradley Manning, who has been held in solitary confinement at the Marine Corps brig in Quantico for the past five months, may be the victim of political retribution. The group also suggested that the psychological damage Manning may be suffering from spending 23 hours a day alone may ruin his bid for a fair trial.

"History suggests that solitary confinement, rather than being a rational response to a risk, is more often used as a punishment for someone who is considered to be a member of a despised or 'dangerous' group," the letter stated. "In any case, PFC Manning has not been convicted of a crime and, under our system of justice, is at this point presumed to be innocent."
Obama wants lie detectors, psychiatrists to spy on federal workers
BBC - The White House is telling US agencies to create "insider threat" programs to ferret out disgruntled workers who may leak state secrets, reports say.

The move follows the leaking of thousands of secret US cables to the whistle-blowing website Wikileaks.

An 11-page memo by US intelligence officials detailing the advice has been published by US broadcaster NBC.

Agency officials are being urged to find ways to "detect behavioral changes" among those employees who might have access to secret documents.

The memo suggests the use of psychiatrists and sociologists to measure the "relative happiness" of workers or their "despondence and grumpiness" as a way to assess their trustworthiness.

It also asks whether agencies are using lie-detector tests or are trying to identify "unusually high occurrences of foreign travel, contacts or foreign preference" by members of staff.
Tea Party gang embraces the old Washington
LA Times - The new class of Republican lawmakers who charged into office promising to shun the ways of Washington officially arrives on Capitol Hill on Wednesday. But even as they publicly bash the capital's culture, many have quietly begun to embrace it.

Several freshmen have hired lobbyists ¬ the ultimate Washington insiders ¬ to lead their congressional staffs. In the weeks leading up to Wednesday's swearing-in, dozens of the newcomers joined other lawmakers in turning to lobbyists for campaign cash. And on Wednesday, congressional offices will be packed with lawmakers' relatives, friends, constituents and lobbyists, all invited to celebrate the new Congress.
House Republican wants to abolish the tax code
TPM - A source passed along a "Dear Colleague" letter from Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-VA), who proposes "terminating" the tax code and calling on a future Congress to write a new one.

"I will re-introduce legislation that will terminate our broken tax code," Goodlatte writes. "The Tax Code Termination Act will accomplish two goals. It will abolish the Internal Revenue Code by December 31, 2015, and call on Congress to approve a new federal tax system by July of the same year."

So what happens if there's no consensus on tax reform by the end of 2015?

"Although many questions remain about the best way to reform our tax system, I am certain that if Congress is forced to address the issue we can create a tax code that is simpler, fairer, and better for our economy than the one we are forced to comply with today," Goodlatte adds. "Congress won't reach a consensus on such a contentious issue unless it is forced to do so."
Meanwhile. . .
Stupid Chicago parking tricks

Man gets ticket while paying for his parking meter

Stupid GOP politician tricks

I’m absolutely delighted that The New York Times would attack me .. I have nothing but contempt for them. They should be indicted under the Espionage Act. - Rep. Pete King, chair of the Homeland Security Commission

Word

Everybody always says say "No!" to drugs, but I'm thinking that if you're talking to drugs, it's too late. - idillionaire

Local heroes

Minnesota's new governor, Mark Dayton, handles an angry crowd

The free market strikes again. . .

Over two million Brits have used credit cards to pay for mortgages or rent

If you're going to have the government interfere in healthcare, then let's rip it off

[New Flordia Governor Rick] Scott is a millionaire and the former CEO of the nation's largest for-profit hospital chain, Columbia/HCA. Shortly after he stepped down, the company paid the largest fine for Medicare fraud ever assessed. He won the governor's race by running as an outsider ¬ spending some $70 million of his own money. He has promised to streamline government and weed out unnecessary regulations. In his inaugural address, Scott said the government should be lean ¬ and do little more than provide a safety net. "Prosperity," he said, "comes from the private sector."

Polls

29% of Americans say it's difficult to afford food. 48% say it's hard to pay their heating and electric bills

84% of workers say they'll be looking for a new job

Bill O'Reilly proves the existence of God

In an interview with atheist Dave Silverman:

O’Reilly: I’ll tell you why [religion's] not a scam. In my opinion, all right? Tide goes in, tide goes out. Never a miscommunication. You can’t explain that. You can explain why the tide goes in...

Silverman: Tide goes in, tide goes out...?

O’Reilly: Yeah, see, the water ¬ the tide comes in and it goes out, Mr. Silverman. It always goes in...

Silverman: Maybe it’s Thor up on Mount Olympus who’s making the tides go in and out...

O’Reilly: No no, but you can’t explain that... you can’t explain it...

UnAmerica

Milwaukee - Montel Williams was cited for possession of drug paraphernalia at the Milwaukee airport . . .Williams uses pot to treat chronic pain caused by multiple sclerosis.

Washington DC - For the second time, the DC government has banned an Undernews post to one of its staffer for "unacceptable words or phrases."

Obama administration - Torturing political prisoner Private Manning

Republicans are not only dumb about climate change, they're getting dumber

A 53%-majority of Republicans say there is no solid evidence the earth is warming. Among Tea Party Republicans, fully 70% say there is no evidence. Disbelief in global warming in the GOP is a recent occurrence. In 2007, a 62%-majority of Republicans said there is solid evidence of global warming, while less than a third (31%) said there is no solid evidence. Few Republicans see global warming as a very serious problem (14%) or in need of immediate government action (24%).

On the other hand, 97 out of 100 scientists that believe in man-made climate change

All those bird and fish deaths

• Hundred of dead snappers wash ashore in New Zealand
• Dead birds fall from the sky in Sweden
• Two million dead fish in Chesapeake Bay
• One hundred tons of dead sardines et al in Brazil
• Initial tests conducted by biologists revealed that the birds suffered internal injuries that formed deadly blood clots.
• Heart attacks from fireworks?
• Cold front?
• A search of USGS records shows there have been 16 events in the past 30 years involving blackbirds where at least 1,000 of the birds have died seemingly all at once
• The Maryland Department of the Environment said that tens of thousands of small fish have died in the Chesapeake Bay due to the stress of the cold water.
• Same in Kentucky: One top biologist from Cornell University said the birds were "probably asleep in a single tree when a washing machine-type thunderstorm sucked them up into the air, disoriented them, and even fatally soaked and chilled them."
• Furthermore. . .

Ecuador becomes fifth Latin American state to recognize Palestine as a state

48 million Americans live in poverty

ENDS

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