Monday, July 19, 2010
Out of control -- government secrecy
I'm tempted to say, "So what else is new?" Government secrecy has always been in place -- agencies designed to keep Americans and world citizens in the dark about everything are not something new....but, since 9-11, there are no doubt many more of them. Who controls them? No one. They ARE out of control -- and have been, for decades! The wealthy elite who run things on this planet, because of their greed and lust for power, have created a mess that can't be contained (the oil well spill is a perfect metaphor for the even bigger picture of the world at large).
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Dick Cheney's heart: how has he lasted so long?
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-07-15/multiple-heart-attacks-how-dick-cheney-keeps-going/
EXCERPT:
Oil baron, draft dodger, professional paranoid, and all-around Blue Meanie, Cheney’s miraculous longevity is nothing so much as the happy product of the heavily tax-subsidized and regulated American health-care system, exhibit A in the argument for intrusive and overarching government programs to ensure the public’s health. Though the free-marketeers would argue the exact opposite—that the invention of such sci-fi devices as the LVAD are the product of unfettered capitalism—this completely ignores the reality of how such inventions are tested, monitored, and reviewed. Devices are studied in hospitals propped up by Medicaid and Medicare dollars organized by doctors funded by federal grants. Patient safety is assured by government bean-counters spread throughout windowless Washington offices via a process that is noticeable only when it fails—when, for example, a pacemaker is found to be defective, or a medication proves toxic.
Cheney is alive today despite a lifetime spent trying to deprive the needy of basic human rights such as health care. Yet his continued survival shows both the impotency of his attempts and the potency of the American health-care system, a lumbering bureaucracy no doubt, but one that blindly cares for big-hearted Joes as well as heartless Dicks.
EXCELLENT: The Good News About Mel Gibson
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/18/opinion/18rich.html?_r=1 And good news for all of us -- how the mighty have fallen (a well-deserved fall).
Saturday, July 17, 2010
Banks are going to gouge even more $$ out of us
We need to pay attention to new charges banks will be demanding of us... It's not enough that they are charging usurious interest rates on credit cards and all kinds of surcharges on our bank accounts. They are lying awake nights thinking up new ways to get our money (if we even have any left). We'd be better off stashing it under our mattresses.
Getting closer to Doomsday for America - millions losing homes
by Susie Madrak
A new report predicts more than 1 million American households this year will lose their homes due to foreclosure:
Nearly 528,000 homes were foreclosed in the first six months of 2010. As lenders work through a huge backlog of borrowers behind on their mortgages, even more home repossessions could occur before the end of the year.
According to RealtyTrac, Inc., a foreclosure listing service, the number of households facing foreclosure in the first half of the year climbed 8 percent when compared to the same time frame last year. In June, 1 in every 411 households received a foreclosure filing.
The fastest growing group of foreclosures involved homeowners with good credit who took out conventional fixed-rate loans. Many of these borrowers have fallen behind in their mortgages due to unemployment or reduced income.
It takes about 15 months for a home loan to go from being 30 days late to the property being seized and sold. Between January and June of this year, about 1.7 million homeowners received a foreclosure-related warning. At the time of this writing, more than 7.3 million home loans are in some stage of delinquency. The states experiencing the highest foreclosure rates are California, Florida, Michigan, Illinois, Arizona and Nevada.
As Atrios points out, the HAMP program has been worse than a failure, because it prolonged the agony for homeowners and most of them lost their homes, anyway. "All carrot and no stick," as this blogger calls it. (Which seems to sum up the adminstration's attitude toward bankers in general.)
I was in the neighborhood pizza restaurant last night, and several of the diners were talking about unemployment extensions. Like most people, they're confused about the difference between next week's vote on unemployment extension, and Tier 5 benefits -- which Congress won't touch. They're hoping "someone will do something," because the alternative is too unthinkable.
The staff is worried, too. The pizza cook is an accountant with three kids who can't find anything above minimum wage. "When I've gotten an interview, I'm going up against people with ten years' experience and MBAs -- for jobs that pay $10 an hour," he told me. "I just don't know what I'm going to do."
And the delivery guy, a former IT programmer, is worried sick about his wife, who has COPD and internal bleeding they can't locate. They've been going to the local federally-funded public health center. "The doctors there are good, but they get a little antsy when you need a specialist," he said. "My unemployment runs out in September, and she's the only steady paycheck coming into the house."
He told me he has this idea for an invention, that when he was working, he invested $1000 in getting designs made. But now? "I need another ten thousand to move forward, and there's no way in hell I can ever afford that without a job," he said.
He paused. "Let alone a house. I just don't know what we're gonna do."
And in stark contrast to the burdens carried by these decent, hard-working people, Americans who got the education and prepared themselves to be self-sufficient, stand the just plain mean denizens of Beck Nation. A friend of mine was looking in a store yesterday and told the owner she wouldn't be buying anything just yet because she was unemployed. The woman snapped, started wagging a finger in her face and told her she "shouldn't be here, you should be out looking for a job!"
"Practically snarling at me," my friend told me. "Can you imagine?" Yes, I can.
How are we ever going to bridge this divide? You just can't leave this many people without help, but the politicans are mostly spineless. What is going to happen to us?
Why I find it hard to trust western medicine these days
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/17/health/17columbia.html?_r=1&hp
Thursday, July 15, 2010
Cheney may need heart transplant--has no discernible pulse
But it could take years to find a donor, if ever -- there aren't that many reptilian aliens on the planet who would be willing to donate their organs to save one of their own. Their hearts are known to be very small, black and pinched, which is no doubt why Cheney has had so much trouble adjusting to this planet. Maybe his daughter Liz could be convinced to donate her extremely tiny, almost invisible heart to save her Dad. (Don't hold your breath on that one, Big Dick.)
Vatican says ordaining women is a "grave crime"
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/15/vatican-ordination-of-wom_n_647296.html
EXCERPT:
The new rules make no mention of the need for bishops to report clerical sex abuse to police, provide no canonical sanctions for bishops who cover up for abusers and do not include any "one-strike and you're out" policy for pedophile priests as demanded by some victims.
As a result, they failed to satisfy victims' advocates, who said the revised rules amounted to little more than "administrative housekeeping" of existing practice when what was needed were bold new rules threatening bishops who fail to report molester priests.
The rules cover the canonical penalties and procedures used for the most grave crimes in the church, both sacramental and moral, and double the statute of limitations applied to them. One new element included lists the attempted ordination of women as a "grave crime" subject to the same set of procedures and punishments meted out for sex abuse.
Jeb Bush to run for president in 2012?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/15/the-bush-revival-how-jeb_n_647403.html
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Here's Part I of Goodman's essay
consortiumnews.com
What Eisenhower Could Teach Obama
Editor’s Note: This is Part I of a series by former CIA analyst Melvin A. Goodman addressing the presidency and the Pentagon.
Part II will deal with President Obama’s difficult inheritance of two wars in addition to a war on terrorism as well as the legacy of presidents who contributed to the militarization of national security policy. Part III will deal with President Obama’s mishandling of this inheritance and what the Obama administration needs to do to reverse the situation:
Fifty years ago, President Dwight D. Eisenhower told his senior advisers in the Oval Office of the White House, “God help this country when someone sits in this chair who doesn’t know the military as well as I do.” Several months later, he issued his famous warning about the military-industrial complex.
Now the United States finds itself in a cul-de-sac, with no way out of increased military deployments and expenditures, and no evidence that President Obama has a firm hand on the national security tiller.
A central problem for the nation is the increased power and influence of the Pentagon over the foreign and national security policies of the United States.
No president since Eisenhower has fully understood the Pentagon’s dominant position in military and security policy. Armed with his knowledge and experience as World War II’s Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, Eisenhower made sure that he could not be outmaneuvered by his military advisers, particularly on such key issues as the Vietnam War and tensions with the Soviet Union.
However, his immediate successors thoroughly bungled the decision-making process. President John F. Kennedy never understood that the Pentagon anticipated the failure of the CIA in Cuba in 1961 and expected to use its air power to finish the job.
President Lyndon B. Johnson knew that Vietnam was a fool’s errand but failed to challenge the pleas from the Pentagon for more force and additional troops – or the strategic views of the Rostow and Bundy brothers.
By contrast, Eisenhower ignored the hysteria of the bomber and missile gaps in the 1950s, claimed by Senators Stuart Symington and Kennedy as well as by such key advisors as Paul Nitze.
Nitze had unnecessarily heightened concerns about U.S. security in National Security Council Report 68 (known as NSC-68) in the late 1940s, and he was the chief author of the overwrought Gaither Report, which called for unnecessary increases in the strategic arsenal.
Eisenhower ignored these advocates for increased defense spending and even cut the military budget by 20 percent between 1953 and 1955 on the way to balancing the budget by 1956. Eisenhower started no wars and was willing to settle for a stalemate in ending the Korea War.
Eisenhower clashed with the military mindset from the very beginning of his presidency. He knew that his generals were wrong in proclaiming “political will” as the major factor in military victory.
A five-star general, Eisenhower would have shuddered when four-star General David Petraeus, like so many military commanders of recent decades, proclaimed last week that U.S. political will is the key factor for success in Afghanistan.
How Much is Sufficiency?
Eisenhower knew that military demands for weaponry and resources were always based on inexplicable notions of “sufficiency,” and he made sure that Pentagon briefings on the Hill were countered by testimony from the national security bureaucracy.
Henry A. Kissinger was one of the rare national security advisers and secretaries of state who understood Eisenhower’s point of view.
During the ratification process for the SALT I agreement in 1972, Kissinger countered conservative and military opposition to SALT and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with two questions they could never answer: What is strategic sufficiency? What would we do with strategic sufficiency if we had it?
In his Farewell Address in 1961, Eisenhower warned that the United States should not become a “garrison state,” but nearly 50 years later we have developed a garrison mentality with unprecedented military spending; continuous military deployments; hyped fears about “Islamo-terrorism” and now cyberwars; and exaggerated aspirations with regard to counterinsurgency and nation-building.
Eisenhower understood that it was the military-industrial complex that fostered an inordinate belief in the omnipotence of American military power. Eisenhower made sure that the Pentagon and the Dulles brothers, who were in command at the State Department and the CIA, respectively, did not over-reach with the U.S. role overseas.
Finally, although Eisenhower signed off on some aggressive, even violent, CIA operations, such as in Iran in 1953, Guatemala in 1954, and the Congo in 1960, he did not authorize the more grandiose actions that characterized later presidencies, the likes of Kennedy’s Bay of Pigs; Johnson’s Vietnam; Reagan’s Grenada; Bush II’s Iraq; and now Obama’s Afghanistan.
Eisenhower opposed and reversed the British-French-Israeli invasion of Egypt in 1956, and withstood criticism for not assisting the Hungarian uprising weeks later. Thirty years after the fact, President Ronald Reagan joined in criticizing Eisenhower’s restraint regarding Hungary.
With the possible exception of President Richard Nixon, no recent president has understood the military mindset and was willing to limit the military’s influence. Democrats, such as Kennedy, Johnson and Bill Clinton as well as Republicans such as Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush deferred too readily to the military; devoted too many resources to the military; and often resorted to the use of power instead of diplomacy and statecraft.
Now President Obama has found himself in a position where the military wields far too much influence on Capitol Hill; controls too much of the depleted U.S. Treasury; and has the leading policy voice on both security and diplomatic issues.
Obama proclaims Reinhold Niebuhr as his favorite philosopher. But he would do well to take heed of the philosophy and advice of Eisenhower, who had a far better understanding of America’s infatuation with military power.
Melvin A. Goodman, a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy and adjunct professor of government at Johns Hopkins University, spent 42 years with the CIA, the National War College, and the U.S. Army. His latest book is Failure of Intelligence: The Decline and Fall of the CIA.
The Military-Industrial Complex's Win
This author knows what he is talking about!
The Military-Industrial Complex's Win
Melvin A. Goodman, a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy and adjunct professor of government at Johns Hopkins University, spent 42 years with the CIA, the National War College, and the U.S. Army. His latest book is Failure of Intelligence: The Decline and Fall of the CIA.
Editor’s Note: This is Part II of a series by former CIA analyst Melvin A. Goodman addressing the presidency and the Pentagon.
Part I examined what President Dwight Eisenhower knew about the military as a retired five-star general and what he tried to impart to his successors. Part III will deal with President Obama’s mishandling of the military-industrial complex's power and what he should do:
Barack Obama’s crippling inheritance as President of the United States is the near-five-decade failure of the nation’s political leadership to heed President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s warning that “in the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.”
This complex, according to Tom Barry of the Center for International Policy, has now “morphed into a new type of public-private partnership — one that spans military, intelligence, and homeland-security contracting — that amounts to a ‘national security complex’.”
Over the past three decades, despite the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and the end of the Cold War, U.S. presidents have done next to nothing to challenge or limit the national security complex, which continues to drain the federal treasury and block any potential political threat to the military-industrial status quo.
Through this period, reaching from Ronald Reagan to Obama, military spending has continued to increase, with the United States outspending the entire rest of the world on weapons systems.
The $708 billion defense budget for 2011 is higher than at any point in America’s post-World War II history. It is 16 percent higher than the 1952 Korean War budget peak and 36 percent higher than the 1968 Vietnam War budget peak in constant dollars.
Yet some Pentagon leaders see this spending level as restraint. Defense Secretary Robert Gates argues that the budget plan “rebalances” spending by emphasizing near-term challenges of counter-insurgency, counter-terrorism, and stabilization operations.
But the current budget plan makes no effort at prioritizing these near-term commitments against funding for long-term commitments. Instead, it increases funding for both near-term and long-term programs. Despite complaints from deficit hawks, the military-industrial hawks still rule the roost.
Overall procurement spending will rise by nearly 8 percent in the 2011 budget, covering virtually all of the equipment the services wanted. Historically, the costs to operate and maintain the U.S. military tend to grow at about 2.5 percent. Not this year. The basic defense budget request seeks more than $200 billion, or an 8.5 percent increase, in funding for Operations and Maintenance.
Over the past three decades, the military tool also has become the leading instrument of American statecraft. The defense budget is 13 times larger than all U.S. civilian foreign policy budgets combined, and the Defense Department’s share of U.S. security assistance has grown from 6 percent in 2002 to more than 50 percent in 2009, when Obama was inaugurated.
There are more members of the military in marching bands than there are Foreign Service Officers, and the Defense Department spends more on fuel ($16 billion) than the State Department spends on operating costs ($13 billion). More than half of U.S. discretionary spending is in the defense budget, and war spending only accounts for half of the increase in defense spending since 1998.
All at Fault
All U.S. presidents since 1981 have contributed to the militarization of national security policy.
President Ronald Reagan was responsible for unprecedented peacetime increases in defense spending even though the Soviet Union was in decline; he also endorsed the Goldwater-Nichols Act in 1986 that enhanced the political role of the regional commanders-in-chief (CINCs) and marginalized the State Department.
President George H.W. Bush’s deployment of 26,000 troops (Operation Just Cause) to Panama only one month after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, indicated that the use of force would play a greater role in the new international environment, which Bush dubbed “the new world order.”
President Bill Clinton weakened the role of the State Department in implementing foreign policy, when he abolished the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency and the United States Information Agency and substantially reduced funding for the Agency for International Development.
Clinton became the first president in three decades to fail to stand up to the Pentagon on arms control, when he was unwilling to challenge the military’s opposition to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.
President George W. Bush ushered in the doctrine of preemptive war in Iraq and, by declaring a counterproductive “war on terror,” assured that the Pentagon would be the leading policy agency in combating terrorism around the world. Bush’s policies of unilateralism, proclaimed at West Point in 2002, marked a radical revolution in American foreign policy.
President Bush ineffectually relied on saber-rattling against the nuclear programs of Iran and North Korea. While doing so, he abrogated the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, the cornerstone of deterrence since 1972, and funded a national missile defense system that is not workable but remains the largest line item for a weapons system in the current defense budget.
The Bush administration was also responsible for militarizing (and further politicizing) the intelligence community, which reached its nadir in 2002 when the CIA prepared a phony National Intelligence Estimate to justify the war against Iraq.
The attacks on 9/11 and the declaration of “the war on terror” brought a new dimension to the national security state: the formation of largely unaccountable security contractors, such as Blackwater, without any code of conduct, and various consulting agencies that act as intermediaries between the federal government and the defense contractors.
The illegalities of Blackwater (now called Xe) are well known and, thanks to Tom Barry, we have a better understanding of the consulting agencies managed by former high-level officials of the Bush administration, including Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, national security adviser Stephen Hadley, directors of homeland security Michael Chertoff and Tom Ridge, and CIA director Michael Hayden.
Nearly a quarter of the federal budget is devoted to contracts to the private sector, with the new Department of Homeland Security and Office of National Intelligence serving as conduits for this money.
Private contracts are now responsible for 70 percent of the intelligence budget, and private contractors represent more than half of the employees of the new National Counterterrorism Center. The trumpeting of “cyber war” marks the next cash cow for the defense industry.
Pentagon’s Leverage
In addition to unprecedented military spending, the Pentagon has gained increased leverage over the $70 billion intelligence community as well as increased influence over the national security and foreign policies of the United States.
With the State Department and the CIA in decline, the Pentagon’s role in intelligence, nation building, and Third World assistance grows significantly. Congressional armed services committees have become sounding boards for the Pentagon, and the increased absence of military experience on the part of congressional representatives contributes to less oversight.
Recent presidents also have retreated from the principle of meaningful civilian control over military policy. George W. Bush, for instance, identified the chief lesson from the Vietnam War as the need to avoid interference from politicians in Washington with the military commanders on the ground.
As for Obama, while deliberating whether to escalate the war in Afghanistan, he allowed himself to be blindsided by the self-serving leak of Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s recommendation for more troops, a policy also pushed by Gen. David Petraeus and one that Obama ultimately bowed to.
President Eisenhower’s warning about the military-industrial complex and the need for commanders-in-chief who actually understood – and knew how to resist – the Pentagon’s clarion calls have never been more germane.
In addition to inheriting two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, President Obama inherited the so-called war on terror, particularly the psychology of that war, which promised a never-ending struggle against faceless Muslim insurgents and Islamic fundamentalists around the world.
This psychology has led to a decade of wireless wiretapping, the abrogation of habeas corpus, torture and abuse, and an atmosphere of fear and anxiety, which have combined to make us less secure.
With a justice system that defers to the national security state, a compliant Congress all but dysfunctional, and a corporate media abandoning its watchdog role, there has been little consistent criticism of the illegal excesses of the national security state.
In the wake of 9/11, Bush brandished a belief in the necessity of American hegemony and turned increasingly to the Pentagon to enforce this global “full-spectrum dominance.”
By the time of Obama’s election in 2008, the United States was alienated from much of the world – and the new President faced a difficult choice: either chart a dramatically new (and surely harrowing) course or accept a subservient place within the entrenched military-industrial complex. (Unfortunately for our country and the world, Obama sold us out when he aligned himself with the ruling elite and chose the cowardly second course.)
Saturday, July 10, 2010
Sarah Trainwreck Strikes Again
When Palin was rolled out by McCain in 2008 it didn't take too long to notice she was woefully unprepared for even the simplest interviews. Questions such as "What do you read?" by Katie Couric were greeted with consternation; or "What is the Bush doctrine?" by Charlie Gibson just threw her for a loop, and invited numerous parodies. So you'd expect two years later, on a sympathetic network FOX News, on a subject Republicans have reduced to a check list of boilerplate talking points that Palin would be both in her element and comfortable with the subject. Unfortunately for her that turned out not to be the case at all. In the end even Bill O'Reilly looked a bit taken aback by her evasiveness and non-answers, like when a teacher gives you that "Did you even study for this test?" look.
And it's evident in their respective body language: O'Reilly quizzical, raised eyebrows, prompting her answers at times; Palin hesitant, clasping her hands together, biting her lips, as if afraid she'll make a slip-up and start parroting George Bush or pre-2010 John McCain on immigration reform.
Ellen at News Hounds captured some of the exchange like this:
O’Reilly interrupted again. “So no amnesty. But what do you do with these folks? Do you make them register with the federal government? Do you tell ‘em they have 60 days to get out of here before we put you in jail? What do you do with them?”
Now Palin had an answer. “Do we make them register with the federal government? Yes, we do.”
“And if they don’t register with the federal (government)? Say you give them 60 days to register with the federal government… Say they didn’t do it.”
"You deport ‘em," Palin said.
So O’Reilly asked what she would do with those who do register. “Then what? Do you give them green cards to work right away? What do you do with them?”
Palin obviously had no idea. “You know, there has to be that expectation that they will work and that they will contribute.” Then, she changed the subject by saying, “Bill, it makes me uncomfortable that we’re even going down that path...”
O'Reilly shot back, "You have to go down the path because it’s gonna come up."Palin, in her condescending, schoolmarm tone, lectured, “American citizens who are here lawfully, they need to be the ones with the first shot at getting these jobs. We cannot make it easy on those who have chosen to be illegally here."
But O'Reilly was not going to be lectured by her. "They’re here and we can’t starve ‘em to death… This is where it gets very complicated, Governor."
Palin pursed her lips even tighter. Don’t tell me she wasn’t piqued. “Then we won’t complicate it any more. Let’s keep it simple and let’s say no. If you are here illegally and if you don't follow the steps... to somehow allow you to work, if you're not gonna do that, you're gonna be deported."
O’Reilly got the last word, underscoring her poor command of policy. He reiterated, “Whoever the next president is, is going to have to deal with 12 million people and that’s going to be very, very difficult."
And therein lies the rub for Sarah Palin's future political aspirations: how to avoid the vexing questions of real world problems when you're completely clueless. That the Half-term Governor has gotten this far on so little says something more than most of us ever need to know about the political process.
Wednesday, July 07, 2010
Climategate Investigation: Scientists found to be reliable
I have a feeling that folks in the eastern U.S. right now, who doubted the Al Gore predictions of higher temperatures, are beginning to drop some of those doubts. All except for the most right-wing fanatics among them, who will never change their minds because of their hatred for all things--and people--progressive/liberal. Closed minds of the Tea Party kind can never be reached by rationality or even proven evidence. (Just look at Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh. Now, there's a ticket for the GOP in 2012.)
Monday, July 05, 2010
Calculation for heart rate in exercising women has been wrong
EXCERPT: The new study shows that for women, the number typically derived from the standard formula is far off the mark. Using the old formula of 220 minus age, a 40-year-old woman would achieve an average maximum heart rate of 180 beats per minute. That means her pulse should stay around 153 beats per minute during her workout to achieve a target heart rate of 85 percent.
But based on the new calculation, the same woman’s average maximum heart rate is 171 beats per minute, meaning her desired target heart rate is just 145 beats per minute, 8 beats a minute slower than under the old formula. Although the gap seems small on paper, it can be the difference between an exhilarating workout or a frustrating one that ends in exhaustion.
Michael Crawford and Sarah Brightman -- Music of the Night
No one can sing it like Michael Crawford.
Let 'em eat cake
PUNISHING THE JOBLESS
By Paul Krugman
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/05/opinion/05krugman.html?_r=1
EXCERPT: We’re facing a coalition of the heartless, the clueless and the confused. Nothing can be done about the first group, and probably not much about the second. But maybe it’s possible to clear up some of the confusion.
By the heartless, I mean Republicans who have made the cynical calculation that blocking anything President Obama tries to do — including, or perhaps especially, anything that might alleviate the nation’s economic pain — improves their chances in the midterm elections. Don’t pretend to be shocked: you know they’re out there, and make up a large share of the G.O.P. caucus.
By the clueless I mean people like Sharron Angle, the Republican candidate for senator from Nevada, who has repeatedly insisted that the unemployed are deliberately choosing to stay jobless, so that they can keep collecting benefits.Are Eastern Religions More Science-Friendly? Good Question.
My answer would be "Yes." This article seems to agree.
EXCERPT: The interaction of Eastern spirituality and Western science has expanded methods of stress reduction, treatment of chronic disease, psychotherapy and other areas. But that is only part of the story. Hindu and Buddhist descriptions of higher stages of consciousness have expanded psychology's understanding of human development and inspired the formation of provocative new theories of consciousness itself. Their ancient philosophies have also influenced physicists, among them Erwin Schrödinger, Werner Heisenberg and J. Robert Oppenheimer, who read from the Bhagavad Gita at a memorial service for President Franklin D. Roosevelt. In his landmark TV series Cosmos, Carl Sagan called Hinduism the only religion whose time-scale for the universe matches the billions of years documented by modern science.
Saturday, July 03, 2010
Little No. Korean girl guitar virtuoso
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/03/north-korean-girl-guitar_n_634770.html
Friday, July 02, 2010
I hope the Republicans keep Steele as chief of RNC
Steele Says Get Out of Afghanistan
by Jason Sigger
From TPM, evidence that Michael Steele really has no right talking on behalf of the Republican National Committee or, in fact, any legitimate political organization that has any sense at all.
"The McChrystal incident, to me, was very comical. And I think it's a reflection of the frustration that a lot of our military leaders have with this Administration and their prosecution of the war in Afghanistan," said Steele. "Keep in mind again, federal candidates, this was a war of Obama's choosing. This is not something the United States had actively prosecuted or wanted to engage in."
Really?? Where was this guy in October 2001? Or for that matter, was he awake at any point in time between2001 and the end of 200? Really love this line also:
"Well, if [Obama is] such a student of history, has he not understood that you know that's the one thing you don't do, is engage in a land war in Afghanistan? All right, because everyone who has tried, over a thousand years of history, has failed. And there are reasons for that."
It's "never get involved in a land war in ASIA," asshole, a reference to Southeast Asia, not Central Asia. And is he seriously suggesting that the Republican position is to have our troops leave Afghanistan? as Obama's proposing to do starting in 2011? Michael Steele's spokesman later explained that Steele has also missed the numerous times where Obama has explained his strategy for Afghanistan. But hey, keep this good man at his post in the RNC. By the Republican politicians' silence, that must mean they endorse his idiotic comments. And that goes to show, once again, that the Republicans have absolutely no credibility discussing national security issues.
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