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Ok, what am I missing? The states want different (stricter) regulations regarding the greenhouse gas producers (autos and power plants). Why does the EPA have an issue with that

A better way to put this is conservatives believe that society works better when your reward is proportinoal to contribution.

Which is why they like regressive taxes (like the sales tax) or a flat tax on wages (so people who's income comes from investments wont pay a dime). Which is why they are freaking out that they might, *gasp*, have to pay taxes at at least the same rate as the middle class. Or as John Edwards likes to say: they believe in taxing work, not wealth.

The conservative way seems to be working better than every other method tried in the last 10,000 years...

The conservative way has royally cornholed the middle class, the economy, and created a new Gilded Age.

them to the Air Force base in question (Barksdale) because that is where the Iran war is being tasked out of for the Air Force.

See his article and resulting posts - some from knowledgeable people - here.

Money quotes:

"On September 6, 2007 - 7:12am thepeoplechoose said:

I find this hard to believe. That is, I agree with Larry that this isn't something that could occur very easily through oversight. The procedures that are established for weapons loads on aircraft are very rigid with all manner of checks. I find it hard to believe they were all overlooked. The number of screwups that would have to occur stretches the likelihood of probability to the breaking point. There are manuals and checklists for this type of thing that have to be rigidly followed and the process requires signatures for multiple discrete steps from qualified weapons teams etc. I just can't see where all the controls on this were violated. If this really happened as described we have some very big problems. And I know because I was an NCOIC for NAV/Weapons avionics computers in the USAF for 12 years. The workcenter / personnel I supervised serviced the on board computers that controlled the in flight release / launch of weaponry. I've been out for twenty years but it was very serious business then and it can't have changed in that sense. The screwup implies weapons load team and weapons load supervisor, ground crew personnel, line chief and air crew all screwed up. The sheer number of violations of discrete procedures that had to be violated is a stretch. And the aircraft was likely on alert status to have been loaded with said weapons. To make the transit to Barksdale it would first have to come off alert status. Coming off alert status automatically means the weapons would have to be off loaded. Flight (Wing) ops initiates the status change. Maintenance ops is informed and then has to dispatch a weapons team to off load the weapons payload. Until that happens the aircraft can't be released back to flight ops for flight. This entire process is controlled like crazy. It makes no sense. Statistically this is possible, but it is right up there with winning one of the multi-state lotteries. In fact, the number of controls probably makes it an even greater statistical improbability. One thing for sure. A lot of people will be standing tall in front of the 'old man' and they'll be hard pressed to answer his questions. If it even happened as stated."

Another poster offers another scenario:

"On September 6, 2007 - 8:52am Amyfw said:

I've never seen so many people who know so very, very little about nuclear weapons say so much of so very little consequence. I'd try to correct all the errors and misperceptions in these threads, but it would take all day and I have real work to do. Just a few comments related to a bunch of posts. First, the missiles in question, the Advanced Cruise missiles, are slated for retirement, and will be transported to Barksdale for that purpose. You can't tell by looking (from the outside) whether the missile is equipped with a warhead or not (so the bomber crew, even if it did a walk-around, could not tell). This is an error in the weapons-handling process, not an error of the bomber crew. This missile does not have a conventional variant (that would be the older, Air-launched cruise missile, which does look very different), so it was not a conventional/nuclear mix-up. Someone asked about the IMF Treaty. No such thing. Its the INF Treaty (Intermediate NUCLEAR Forces). It had nothing to do with air-launched cruise missiles, they are strategic, not intermediate, so its not relevant. As was noted, the warheads on the ACM are W-80s. Someone asked about the warhead size. Using the 15kt of Hiroshima to judge the size of this missile's warhead is irrelevant; we've long deployed warheads much larger than the Hiroshima warhead, and, yes, 140kt is the standard, unclassified size for the W-80. So there's no consp

Ex-CIA agent Larry Johnson has a different take on this incident:

http://tpmcafe.com/blog/coffeehouse/2007/sep/05/st aging_nuke_for_iran

Alert Level: Double Triple Jalapeno

Read about the Talibangelists
.

Currently, the US intelligence infrastructure seems to have new missions.

It gathers intelligence from and about the American people.
It makes justifications for actions of the current administration.
I thinking that we should a lot more information about the amount of our taxes that are being used for these purposes, don't you?

Yes, those powers were given by an overzealous Congress recently in an effort to get reelected without even reading the bills.

Let's see, from my (incomplete) list: energy policy secrecy, nope. The war, yes but only due to mis-information (al qaida in iraq? WMD? Yellowcake?), so thats really a no. Torture, nope. Rendition, nope. Signing statements, nope. FEMA (by which i meant the politicization of the department, putting horribly inadequately experienced political buddies in charge), nope. Whether FEMA is part of DHS or not is not really relevant if the head is a horse lawyer. FISA & domestic wiretapping, nope. Habeas corpus revocation, yes sort of, again at the behest of the administration. Scientific report "editing", nope. US Attorney purge, not really. The purge has nothing to do with congress, the patriot act provision (which was slipped in by a republican senatorial aid after final negotiations were finished) was passed by congress, but that is ancillary to the purge.

So, no, claiming those behaviors were somehow "given" by congress is not an accurate description. That they occurred and congress chose to look the other way is the only possible argument you could make, and even that is weakened by the administration's strong-arming.

  It's not checks and balances when Congress is trying to micromanage the Iraq war and international relationships.

Congress is explicitly given the authority to fund (or not) military actions. The country has expressed a clear opinion (in polls and the last election) that the are not supportive of the war. It would be dereliction for the congress to sit back and not exercise their duty to impact foreign policy in the way they are allowed to. Micromanaging is when you tell military commanders that they will have to make do with a smaller invasion force than they want, like the administration did.

If you honestly think it's fine think about if Tom Delay did the same thing with a Democrat president.

Better example, what if Newt Gingrich did that with Clinton? Oh, right, he did.

  That's all moot anyway, and you should read a social studies textbook before you speak about the powers again -- several of the items you list are perfectly legal and in the purview of the president. I also supported Bill Clinton's "grabs at power" if that's what you consider firing AGs... and he fired every single one for political reasons.

Go through that list and tell which you think are legal and ethical. Clinton, like Bush I, like Reagan administration, replaced all USA's when he came into office. They are political appointees, and that is normal way of administration change. Firing USAs mid-term is nearly unprecedented, and doing so because the USA's unwillingness to subvert the justice system for political hay is beyond unethical, if still technically legal. However, lying to congress for the reasons behind the firing, and lying about whether you were involved, is quite illegal.

Whether this administration broke the law in every one of my list is not really a defense. They clearly acted in a horribly unethical way in each, and *did* clearly break the law in many of them, with no repercussions until very recently. The point of oversight it to make sure the branch responsible for executing the laws is at least not breaking them, and ideally enforcing them appropriately. Claiming that exercising oversight responsibility is a bad thing really just does not make sense.

-Ted

No it's not, because, frankly it doesn't affect anyone I know. People don't care. I don't care.

If an illegal alien can go and open a bank account, it's fine by me. Bank of America is not in the law enforcement business, it's in the banking business. This alien is supporting an American business by opening that bank account.

No, let's talk about predatory lending, sneaky credit card terms, deceitful charges, etc.

Let's talk about MBNA (now part of Bank of America) and BofA being some of the heaviest hitters to push through new bankruptcy law that makes everyone a peon to credit card companies, regardless of circumstances! Let's talk about the fact that an amendment to limit credit card interest rates to 30% (yes, that's thirty f'ing percent) was rejected last yaer. Yes, credit card companies did not want their interest rate limited to a cut-throat ceiling of 30%!

Let's talk about my platinum Bank of America card moving from 2 late payments (by even a day!) in 6 months to 2 late payments in 12 months to 1 late payment in 12 months before they bump your rate from a good APR to an insane 20%+ default APR. Let's talk about two-cycle billing (my roommate, who normally pays off his entire balance got bitten by this because he miscalculated and payed off a $1 less than the balance)

Let's talk about CapitalOne (and some other predatory lenders) not reporting your credit limit to the credit reporting agencies, which is ILLEGAL to do, but there is not enough activism or pressure to change that.

So yeah, let's talk about that, and then you can tell me why I should care that Bank of America issues a bank account to an illegal alien, when there are all these other topics out there that affect every damn American.

Are you talking about another guy? I can't find any reference to him working for a company making voting machines (rather, I can't find any reference to Yang Enterprises working on voting machines, but Google only helps so much).

In going to look for the story I recall reading about him, it appears I may have been crossing him with William Singer of Hart InterCivic, or perhaps someone else. At the very least, I can not locate the story I am remembering, which stated or implied that YEI was doing the software for a company which manufactures voting machines. So yes, if it turns out he wasn't actually involved in the software development in some way it does become harder to know what to make of him.

--MarkusQ

In other words, it's not even wrong.

There are serious questions about both Freeman's conclusions and his methodology used.

Most his argument is based upon the use of the early release unadjusted numbers and not the final release values, which were much closer. For those not acquainted with exit polling systems, the numbers are adjusted to coincide with the actual voter turnouts and remove disproportionate representation within the sample group. I.E. if your sample is made of 55% but actual voter turnout has a percentage of only 35% women than the polls are adjusted to compensate for the over representation.

He also tries to use mathematical comparisons where they simply don't work. For example, his comparison of response rates in Blue districts to Red Districts. According to his conclusion, if a GWB supporter has a 56% response rate in Texas they should also have a 56% response rate in L.A. As almost any Conservative living within a Liberal bastion can tell you, vocalizing your Conservative beliefs invokes about the same response as insulting someone's mother or worse, and in terms of vocalizing support for GWB, well you'd probably receive a more favourable response if you just hit someone.

And from his own book (thanks to the review at TPM Cafe):

"In addition to the 1988, 1992 and 2004 presidential elections and the 2000 vote for president in Florida, the only other significant unexplained US exit poll discrepancies on record are the Republican presidential primaries in New Hampshire in 1992 and Arizona in 1996."

As the reviewer points out, exit polling has only been used in the US since the 60's, so out of 11 or so federal elections, 4 have produced questionable results, that's hardly a great confidence builder in their accuracy. But even though Freeman clearly states this, he ignores any implications that may have and continues with his "exit polls are always accurate" argument.

The fact his co-author is the editor of a 'Progressive' magazine also does not help his image as a independant arbiter for truth much.

Overall, I'll stick with Mark Blumenthal's work when it comes to impartial polling analysis.

Once the Telcos own the internet, how long will things like this be convenient to use?

All it takes is a golf game between Gates and a few Telco CEO's, and suddenly ThinkFree has really really low bandwidth. Really low.

I don't know if this is threadjacking or having the insight to connect two apparently unrelated issues. I'll let the mods decide.

The US has now installed both Roberts and Alito onto our Supreme Court with their "judicial philosophy" of a "unitary executive". That is, the president runs the entire government from his Executive Branch, the Judicial Branch just finds ways to interpret the president's decisions, and Congress is a medium to the public, to be informed of policy details when it suits the president.

Just this week, Bush signed into law a bill that was not Constitutional, because it had not been agreed in the same terms by both Senate and House of Representatives. So he "fixed it" with a "signing statement" declaring how he will execute the law. Signing statements have no force of law, or any existence beyond a recent ceremonial ritual. But now someone can bring this unconstitutional law before the Supreme Court, where Roberts and Alito can lead a decision to create a precedent for making the signing statement the executable law.

When the Senate confirmed Alito everyone knew he considers Congress optional. Now they've sent him the legal tools to make that the force of law. Why should the UK have all the dictator fun?

"... you KNOW that you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people that you do." -- Annie Lamott

"You can tell you have created God in your own image when it turns out that he or she hates all the same people you do." -- Anne Lamott

"You can safely assume that you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do." -- Anne Lamott

Another article by Larry Johnson about how thin the Chicago Tribune article is.

Sure once you are told who might be a CIA agent you can find lots of information about them on the web. However, can you determine that a person is an agent from information on the web?

That is really the question.

The CIA is changing. Give them time.

The following article explains some of the issues behind the Tribune article
http://www.tpmcafe.com/node/26366

The agency is ... complicated, and often the left hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing. Its the nature of the beast it's riding. (well, technically, it's in the belly of the beast, or perhaps the cloaca if you are HQ)

I have no doubt Goss is horrified. He just took over the CIA, and what GS manager would enjoy an outsider showing him a clear look at his department? And Goss hasn't had a chance ot fix things yet. THat is, if that's his goal...with the CIA, who knows?

By the way, didn't Goss inherit an agency that was once run by George Bush? It would explain a lot.

The CIA has other problems as well. The worse is that it facing some competition from private firms like StratFor(sorta like the US Post Office and Federal Express). It can't be much fun to be a world famous secret agency and having to explain to the Intelligence committee why you are being scooped by some small company in Austin,

For those of you who haven't heard of it, StratFor (http://www.stratfor.com/) is a private intelligence firm, with several hundred thousand customers, that is the CIA for multinationals and private individuals. It is considered somewhat more accurate than the CIA. http://seekerblog.com/archives/20050313/is-stratfo r-credible/

Hmm.. if the CIA is getting rid of people, that means they are hiring. I would like to apply as an intelligence analyst, or maybe an In Tel Q VC... (There is a rumor the easiest way to apply for a job with the CIA is write in on your computer and wait for ADVISE to pick it up. http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0209/p01s02-uspo.htm l).

If the president had to sell the war on the cost up front there would have been no support whatever. The cost is now around $ 800 per citizen. If you are a middle class tax payer that is more around 2k per family member. Some are claiming much higher.

But Bush was able to sell the war on a deferred payment plan which includes record deficits and raiding surpluses. If Bush said we are going to war and we are going to tax petro an extra 10 cents a gallon to help pay for it he would have gotten booed of the stage. There should always be a cost for all citizens to go to war as some families are called to pay the ultimate sacrifice.

I swear the most important number on peoples mind is the price of gas at the pump. The president's approval rating inversely proportional to the price of gas that fuel pump.

Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha hah *deep breath* ha ha ha hah ha ha HA!

Ah, when conservative wackos dream, they really dream big, don't they. Good luck with that one.

As a former contributor to Greenpeace, in my "youthful days", I would agree wholeheartedly with your assessment that the environmental movement is primarily responsible for propagating irrational fear of nuclear power. The depth of their irrationality on the subject was made plain to me by their active opposition to the small radioisotope thermal power sources on deep space missions such as Galileo and Cassini. The most extreme environmentalists made claims like "millions would die" in the case of an accident. They seem to fear anything nuclear as the superstitious fear demons, and their fear spreads as a contagion. Of course, the Russians didn't help much with their miserly approach to safeguards; the very word "Chernobyl" entered the lexicon as a synonym for something like "hot radioactive wasteland".

Beyond the particular elements of Jimmy Carter's energy policies, what I admire about him most was he was the last President to take on a clear public leadership role in favor of energy independence. Carter's 1977 address to the nation on his National Energy Plan was unprecedented. Carter did much to open Federal Lands for oil and natural gas exploration and production. Like you, tjstork, I suspect that in the 1970's Carter would have supported drilling in the ANWR, if that had been an issue at the time. However, he is on record now as being opposed, due to global warming concerns (which I share). Although, as you point out, the Three Mile Island disaster was a major setback, I think the political symbolism of Ronald Reagan removing the solar panels from the White House marked the end to Carter's dream of energy independence for our country.

Interestingly, supplemental solar power was restored to the White House 23 years after it was first removed. In a world where the Future Shock-wave rolled over us long ago, 23 years is a long, long time. As it is with the environmentalists, so it is with the Lords of Industry; neither can be counted on to be rational players. A laissez-faire approach to markets cannot lead to an ultimate solution to our energy woes. Ultimately, Adam Smith's metaphorical "Invisible Hand" comes to grasp the throat of the common man. I believe more in the wisdom first explored by John Maynard Keynes, that the government's intervention in the market can be beneficial, not only to protect the public from the excesses of an unfettered market, but also to provide a guiding hand in rational long-term policy. Had we continued in the spirit of Jimmy Carter 23 years ago, striving towards national energy independence, then the guiding hand of government could have been gentle. Tax incentives, increased research funding for energy alternatives, small business initiatives, and reliable government support for pilot programs that promised future economic returns would have brought us far beyond where we are today. But now, 23 years later, even the basic task of maintaining a sufficient and affordable future energy supply is more akin in magnitude to President Kennedy's 1961 challenge to put a man on the moon, and can only be envisioned if we roll back the disastrous and irresponsible fiscal policies implemented by the current administration in the last five years.

Mr. Frist also voted "no" in the end, but in a purely parliamentary maneuver to allow him to try to bring up the bill again.

Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) was the only Senator to vote against the Patriot Act the first time around and rallied the opposition this time. Senator Feingold spent the week blogging on the floor fight at TPM Cafe.

Sen. Russ Feingold has been blogging twice daily about his (now successful) attempts to stop the bill

sPh

Sure the Commanding general of the Army Corps of Engineers says funding levels were fine, but what does he know?

In any engineering project, you never ask top management how things are going, you ask the guys on the ground. June 8, 2004 Times-Picayune:

What's new, said Morehiser [Mervin Morehiser, who manages the "Lake Pontchartrain and vicinity" levee project for the Army Corps of Engineers] and Naomi [Al Naomi, the corps' senior project manager], is that the agency has run out of money for the next round of lifts. Naomi said this is the first time a lack of money has stopped major corps work on the levees since the project began in 1967.

..."But I can tell you that we would be better off if the levees were raised, . . . and I think it's important and only fair that those people who live behind the levee know the status of these projects."

..."This project isn't expected to end for another 13 to 15 years," Morehiser said. "They aren't really finished levees at this point. We don't even turn them over to their local sponsors until we consider them stable, which is years from now."

The Bush administration's proposed fiscal 2005 budget includes only $3.9 million for the east bank hurricane project. Congress likely will increase that amount, although last year it bumped up the administration's $3 million proposal only to $5.5 million.

"I needed $11 million this year, and I got $5.5 million," Naomi said. "I need $22.5 million next year to do everything that needs doing, and the first $4.5 million of that will go to pay four contractors who couldn't get paid this year."

...The challenge now, said emergency management chiefs Walter Maestri in Jefferson Parish and Terry Tullier in New Orleans, is for southeast Louisiana somehow to persuade those who control federal spending that protection from major storms and flooding are matters of homeland security.

"It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay," Maestri said. "Nobody locally is happy that the levees can't be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us."

Unfortunately, Bush is partly to blame for this. Last year, the federal funds earmarked to maintain the levees around NO were cut by the Bush administration to a third of what they needed (though Congress bumped it up to a half). Also, 3000 National Guardsmen were in Iraq. If Bush doesn't deserve any blame for this, I don't know who does.

General Wesley clark sounds off on the disaster.

http://www.tpmcafe.com/story/2005/9/1/123536/7907

time for one of them good ole friday flamewars