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I mistyped. It's $5 trillion over 10 years. It's Monday and brain's on auto.

Still pretty damn good. We could pay off the national debt in about 40 years. Not my lifetime, but my kid's.

See here. US' healthcare system is crazy bad. It's rife with inefficiencies. Google the phrase "Wallet Biopsy" sometime too while you're at it.

Other countries send everyone to college just fine. If anything we could use a few people hitting the economy later.

The Green New Deal is _supposed_ to be a money sink. The New Deal was a jobs program. The fact that we get clean air and maybe less climate change is just a cherry on the cake.

The tax system can't be simplified. As soon as you try there are loop holes, so you write laws to close the loop holes and it gets complicated fast. Making the ruling class pay for the civilization they enjoy is just a complicated process, there's no getting around it. Flat taxes just become regressive. They're a dodge by the rich to avoid paying. Don't fall for it.

with the money we'd save by giving everybody healthcare

If we're going to pay that debt down we need to start being more efficient in how we spend money. Our healthcare system is the Whole Foods of medicine: overpriced crap sold to folks who aren't paying attention.

7 years with the money we would save from Medicare for All. We could pay the rest of it in about 40 years, which would be in my kid's lifetime (not mine, I'm old :) ).

And we could do it faster if we'd stop meddling in other country's affairs for the sake of our mega corporations.

I keep on saying this, but vote, vote in your primary, and vote for candidates who refuse corporate PAC money. That's how you fix this.

another guy accused of rape

Julian Assange has not been charged of anything by any authority of any kind. He is wanted for questioning on allegations of sexual misconduct Source

leaves the country when his lawyer tells him that he is wanted for questioning

Before leaving the country he consulted with the judge, who decided there was nothing holding him there and he could leave Swedish soil.

caught in Britain

Not caught, he turned himself to the police after it became clear that the illegal (or at least illegitimate) Interpol red notice was not going away. This, in the hope of resolving the matter.

then disappearing into some embassy

He did not disappear, he sought asylum. That's quite a difference.

in breach of his bail conditions

Because it was the only choice he had left to avoid being ultimately handed over to a country where he would be tortured or executed, thus breaching the Geneva Conventions

which _does_ make him a criminal in the UK

He has not been charged nor convicted of any crime by any government yet, not Sweden, not the USA, not even the UK as far as I can tell. (prove me otherwise)

On the other hand, Augusto Pinochet, charged by Spain for the killing of 3000 Chilean people, and torturing 30 000 more, including the raping of political prisoners with trained dogs, was not only not extradited by the UK but often drank tea with Margaret Tacher


This just goes to show you how much lies we are being fed by governments and medias alike. It's fairly easy to hear officials make the same mistakes as you did.
Not because they are ignorant. Then know very well the details of this case. They're not stupid. They just choose to deliberately lie.

You can agree or disagree with the importance of what Wikileaks does, and the importance of what Assange and Manning do for our society, but that doesn't make your claims any less WRONG

I read this apology from the USA troops involved but no explanation for their actions.

There's no doubt that; the video is real. The actions were real.

But the question still remains is why they did it. Personally from me, it looks like they made a mistake and just accepted it without attempting to make up for it (They emphasise this to other troops in the letter).

I hope you weren't speeding!

Or laying on the ground in handcuffs."

Or entering a jail cell.

Or going through a DUI checkpoint sober.

Or being argumentative.

Or not doing anything while cops plant drugs on you.

Or be suspected of a "future crime", in which case cops can keep you locked up indefinitely.

So watch these and try and tell me I'm guilty of hyperbole. The scary thing is that NONE OF THESE COPS WERE HELD ACCOUNTABLE FOR THEIR ACTIONS. COPS CAN DO ANYTHING THEY WANT TO YOU.

The first half of your post (increased drone usage radicalizing Pakistani opinion) conflicts with the second half of your post (Obama is soothing Muslim opinion), mainly because Obama has dramatically increased the number of Predator drone attacks in... Pakistan!

Also, planes smashing in skyscrapers and big chunks of the Pentagon being blown up happened just eight months into the Bush administration. At that point, he had pretty much been completely focused on domestic affairs (tax cuts and No Child Left Behind). Unless you really think that lowering American taxes inflamed Saudi and Afghani public opinion, your post doesn't make much sense. More quasi-successful small-scale terror attacks on the US have occurred in the past eight months (Fort Hood Shooting, Christmas Day Bomber, Times Square Bomber - all of whom were mentored by Anwar al-Awlaki) than in the last couple of years of the Bush administration. A year's worth of soothing didn't seem to accomplish much.

Not saying that Bush=good or Obama=bad (or vice versa), just that I think that the motivations of recent Islamic terrorism are a bit more complex than the identity of the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Gas was about $1.26 a gallon when he took office and oil was under $20 per barrel.

So quadrupling the price to over $5.00 per gallon then getting it back 'back under $3 a gallon' is not much of an accomplishment. It started its trend upward in mid 2003.

The fact that G.W. stood up to the V.P. and opposed the use of military force on U.S. soil surprised me and is something to remember Bush for.

Gas 'under $3'? We had that before he took office and well after 9/11.

If I missed your sarcasm tags, then I'm sorry

I'm from an EU country so i simply can't understand a lot of this in th USA, but the way i see it, Dennis Kucinich is the REAL CHANGE, not Obama!
Obama is just another wall street puppet!

"Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), who was the sponsor of an amendment that would have allowed individual states to create a single-payer system - essentially a Medicare-for-all bill - voted against the legislation. Kucinich's amendment was stripped from the House bill at the request of the Obama administration when it wasunveiled more than a week ago.

"Instead of working toward the elimination of for-profit insurance, HR 3962 would put the government in the role of accelerating the privatization of health care," Kucinich said in a statement explaining why he voted against the bill. "In HR 3962, the government is requiring at least 21 million Americans to buy private health insurance from the very industry that causes costs to be so high, which will result in at least $70 billion in new annual revenue, much of which is coming from taxpayers. This inevitably will lead to even more costs, more subsidies, and higher profits for insurance companies - a bailout under a blue cross."
http://www.truthout.org/1108091

...when the miltary industrial complex pays for games like America's Army, when the same complex pays and gives tips to hollywood, what do you think they're doing? Thursday 06 August 2009 by: Dahr Jamail and Jason Coppola, t r u t h o u t | Perspective http://www.truthout.org/080609A

This finding is just another piece in a century's worth of evidence that drup prohibition just plain does not work. It doesn't reduce drug use, it doesn't reduce addiction rates, it doesn't reduce the harms inflicted on society due to drug abuse, it doesn't protect kids... In short, it doesn't accomplish any of the things it claims to accomplish. It does do an enormous amount of harm.

If these teabaggers actually cared about small government, privacy, individual liberty, government staying out of health care, etc, they should start fighting drug prohibition, asset forfeiture, and all the screwed up big government, big brother crap that comes out of drug prohibition. The reason why they don't is of course obvious: These teabaggers are essentialy modern day brownshirts screwing up democratic processes in an orgy of racism: usually as subtext, but more and more out in the open. The modern system of drug prohibition is of course our strongest form of institutionalized racism. These guys don't mind big government poking around in our private lives, and making decisions about our health, as long as they are targeting hispanics and blacks vastly more than whites.

It is of course an indisputable fact that the first Marijuana laws were nothing more than a legislative method of screwing hispanics in California, but I always figured the racist outcomes of drug prohibition were an accidental by-product of faulty and emotional thinking. Nowadays, when I see the overlap between the hard-line prohibitionists and the teabaggers, I start thinking, yeah, maybe deep down a lot of it is just plain racially motivated. Maybe.

I do regret letting this post devolve into a flaming of tea baggers, but I just can't help myself. I find it awesome that they chose to name themselves after the practice of laying your testicles on something. I always knew all those right wing fundamentalists were total perverts. I don't live in the states, but can I suggest that those of you living there start going to teabagger meeting with large photo collections of your testacles layed out on various things? Start whipping that tea-bag out and laying it on the speaking podium or coffee machine and taking pictures.

it has got to be pretty clear by now that no one in Washington has the balls to even utter the word "treason" -- which is effectively what the blatant ignorance of the Supreme Law of the Land amounts to

I have always felt, and have said repeatedly on this Web site, that anyone who wants political power needs to be held to a stricter standard than the average citizen. That's especially true when you consider that nearly all politicians are also lawyers, so it's not like they are unclear on the meaning of "shall not be infringed." I do indeed consider it treason when a politician knowingly creates or votes for a law that is in any way unconstitional. Just as the Constitution demands, I would like to see vigorous enforcement of the death penalty (legally and with due process, of course) attached to anyone who holds public office and takes any action, knowingly or otherwise, that contradicts the Constitution. Let us decide that one can live a long and happy life without ever having political power; that if someone wants political power anyway, let them accept a very high standard of personal accountability to go with it.

it has got to be pretty clear by now that no one in Washington has the balls to even utter the word "treason" -- which is effectively what the blatant ignorance of the Supreme Law of the Land amounts to

Wow! Source? Haven't seen anything like that.

That's a bit like asking for a source that the sky is blue, because you've never noticed... Of course, you couldn't be bothered to do the simplest search for yourself.

http://thinkprogress.org/2005/08/30/bush-blames/
http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/200601012_bush_blames_clinton_again/
http://www.davidcogswell.com/Political/BushBlamesClinton.html
http://www.pensitoreview.com/2008/07/28/bush-administration-blames-bill-clinton-for-deficit/
http://www.truthout.org/article/keith-olbermann-a-textbook-definition-cowardice
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0006/23/se.02.html
http://zzpat.tripod.com/cvb/impeach44.html#Bush_Blames_Clinton_For_N_Korea_Debacle
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2004-04-13-attacks-panel_x.htm

And, of course:
http://homepage.mac.com/garyligi/iblog/C1957607809/E20080429161904/index.html

Will these feminizing chemicals mean women who were already women end up with larger... tracks of land?

Can't say if this results in larger breasts *after* everyone is normally supposed to finish growing, but it certainly results in them before that point.

Early puberty for girls has been a cause of concern in recent decades as people have started to notice. Girls starting to develop breasts at age 2 and pubic hair at 4 are not unheard of now in poorer communities (which are likely to suffer from all of the potential risk factors: unhealthy diet & weight gain, low birth weight, exposure to pollutants, hormones in cheaper food, minority racial backgrounds, exposure to a hypersexualized culture, etc.).

Also, we don't have evidence that early physical sexualization has coincided with any earlier mental and emotional maturation. So, the old, "If there's grass on the field" half-joke has become a bit sicker in recent times.

This is not in the bag.

The Ugly Secret

Here's an ugly little secret about American democracy: We don't count all the votes. In 2004, based on the data from the US Elections Assistance Commission, 3,006,080 votes were not counted: "spoiled," unreadable and blank ballots; "provisional" ballots rejected; mail-in ballots disqualified.

This Tuesday, it will be worse. Much worse.

That's what I found while traveling the nation over the last year for BBC Television and Rolling Stone Magazine, working with voting rights attorney Robert F. Kennedy Jr. This we guarantee: there will be far more votes disappeared by Tuesday night than the three million lost in 2004. A six-million vote swipe, quite likely, shifts 4 percent of the ballots, within the margin of error of the tightest polls.

Begin with this harsh statistic: since the last election, more than ten million voters have been purged from the nation's vote registries. And that's just the start of the steal.

Read the rest here.

-FL

If we're talking the NSA program to secretly mass-monitor electronic communications of US citizens **whether or not** they're guilty, and with no judicial oversight - this program was actually approved by Bush **right after he got into office in January 2001**.

http://www.truthout.org/article/jason-leopold-bush-authorized-domestic-spying-before-911

Declassified doc showing that's the case, here: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB24/nsa25.pdf

This is an easy mistake to make - because whenever this program is mentioned, it's always deliberately mentioned in the context of 9/11, and mentions changes made after 9/11. But that is all spin.

It's a shame that we have to look that far into the details to find out when a program was started - but with this administration we apparently do.

And as a side note, it's important to know that this was started well before 9/11 - because it also proves it did nothing to stop the 9/11 attacks. This is more proof that this kind of mass warrantless eavesdropping with no oversight doesn't even make us safer from terrorists - it only puts us in more danger from our government.

Posting this note to the original article also.

What they had was greywater—wastewater that is undrinkable but perfectly useful for simple jobs like filling the toilet tank for flushing. Re-use of greywater is a well-known practice among conservationists and environmentalists and anyone concerned about fresh water usage. I'm in Saint Paul, and I know folks hosting protesters. I'm not making this up.

Think for a second... How practical would it be—even for a so-called "anarchist"—to store and tote buckets of urine up the hill to the convention site and fling it at anyone? A five-gallon bucket of water would weigh over 40lbs. If someone were aiming at causing that kind of trouble there are better, easier ways I'm sure.

The reports I have read from local sources indicate that the raid in Saint Paul was lead by the county sheriff, not by St. Paul police (though St. Paul officers were present). The Saint Paul police have saved my tail more than once and have my respect. I hope they don't get mired in this mess.

The impending demise of social security has been greatly exaggerated. I will refer you to another article by Paul Krugman. When that article was written, the very conservative estimates of the Social Security Administration had the trust fund running out in 2042.

That's not what he said back in 1996

The source you linked says "Both John McCain and Barack Obama have proposed tax plans that would substantially increase the national debt over the next ten years..." So, yea, no difference.

Well, if you look past the abstract, the report estimates that Obama's proposals would raise the debt by $3.5 trillion, and McCain's proposals would raise it by $5 trillion. Neither is good, but there is certainly a difference.

The sunsetting of the Bush tax cuts alone will cut my income, and I am barely middle class.

Obama's plan does not call for sunsetting of the middle-class provisions of the Bush tax cuts. Paul Krugman's column last Friday has a more thorough analysis of how the middle-class is affected by the two candidates' tax proposals. As for the payroll tax increase not included in the analysis I cited, it would only affect those earning over $250 thousand, hardly the middle class, however I won't deny that it may be quite large.

Of course, that's just a scheme to extend the viability of Social Security for a few more years, so people will ignore its impending collapse for a while longer. McCain isn't really addressing it at all.

The impending demise of social security has been greatly exaggerated. I will refer you to another article by Paul Krugman. When that article was written, the very conservative estimates of the Social Security Administration had the trust fund running out in 2042.

It appears that your main concern is the national debt. Based on recent history, the Democrats and Republicans are hardly the same when it comes to national debt.

But where there's no credible service alternative--for example, writing fiction--then giving it away doesn't help you.

But there is. First to market is often sufficient to recoup costs and then some.

First of all I'm sure your cousin built upon decades of patentable work when figuring out her cure.

Says who? That's an awful presumption.

Further, mathematicians and programmers build on decades of work too, yet algorithms are not patentable, nor should they be. The idea that patents are required for the advancement of a field should not be accepted a priori, but only when rigourously supported by evidence. The evidence is thin my friends.

I personally know how much money pharma spends selling and marketing drugs, and not all in ethical ways, that could be better spent increasing production and cutting costs. In a more competitive market, the measures they are currently taking just wouldn't pay off. The luxury of monopoly results in unethical kickback schemes to push expensive brands over equally good generics.

AOL, Hotmail and Yahoo have already blocked email based on political content. We can be sure that ISPs will abuse "porn lists" too.

The right thing to do about kiddie porn is to catch the people who make it.

The right thing to do to censors is to show them out of office.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/050508R.shtml

'''
The Federal Communications Commission has recently encountered mounting scrutiny in response to its broad deregulatory practices. Public frustration regarding the FCC has peaked at a time of fierce debate on net neutrality.

        In a memo obtained Tuesday by The Washington Post, 30 current and former commission employees complained about the leadership of FCC Chairman Kevin Martin.

        Staff members observed that "the FCC process appears broken and most of the blame appears to rest with Chairman Martin."

        The memo, written to chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee John Dingell and chairman of the House Energy Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations Bart Stupak, increases pressure on the FCC chairman, who, in particular, has been accused of a rigidly anti-regulatory, pro-corporate approach. Many critics assert that his approach has contributed to a lack of oversight over network providers.
'''

What's a little deregulation between friends, right?

I remember! And I remember the "out of band" communications. Nice to hear from you. Glad you enjoyed it, yourself.

Yeah. I gotta go lighter! I was coming down with the flu when I saw this - and got grumpier from there...

Still - the film seems to promote some fantasy about who the military/industrial elite are, and that there are individuals in those positions who can act singularly - out of conscience - for the benefit of humanity.

Tony Stark is like a comic book John Galt. I can't stand Ayn Rand, either. :-)

Ultimately, the film was produced with help and cooperation of the USAF.

The "chair force" have moved themselves to the forefront of the Military mission of generating propaganda and conducting surveillance on the world's civilian populations - including US domestic operations. You don't need to do much more than search for "Air Force" on Slashdot and Wired.com's Danger Room to see how insidious and corrupting this has become.

Nick Turse talks about how this has evolved: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/032008T.shtml

But Marvel Comics has gone as far as hiring Active Duty USAF officers on duty in Israel to write for them! And they boast about it!

So, yeah. I had a hard time seeing this as an entertainment, when I had the continual creepy feeling it was a PsyOp.

I'd rather see The Ipcress File, The Conversation, or Three Days of the Condor.

Your reply brings up some valid points. Let me help you tie it up in a nice neat little package that will bring you back to your last question.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/121004A.shtml

Here you are, there is just one of BILLIONS of examples of why this make sense, and why there is a big difference between the two.

Oh and in case you were wondering, Dick and Bush have nothing to do with any of these companies getting billion dollar contracts. Anyone who tells you that is a democratic heathen.

Allowing you around kids makes as much sense as letting Michael Jackson run a preschool. A woman dating you is like a woman seeing Jack the Ripper.

Carping about Democrats who actually stick up for your rights instead of complaining about the Republicans who have spent the last 8 years shredding the Constitution is like being the biggest fucking idiot on the face of the planet.

Insurance companies profit when you stay healthy and don't cash in.

They are also going to decide to prosecute or not. This is not nearly good enough and it stinks of cover up. Check out what the Wall Street Journal and ACLU have to say about this.

I wonder if they consider cell phones a listening device.

Coal gets more subsidies than we of nuclear power do, not to mention "clean energy" initiatives.

According to TFA in Bush's energy proposal coal gets 21%n increase in federal funding and nuclear energy research gets a 40% increase, alternative and renewable resources on the other hand don't get as much. Wind for instance get 6%, a $3,000,000 increase. And "solar energy would decrease by $12 million, a 7 percent reduction from this year." Together for solar and wind that's $15 million yet the total proposal for climate change programs is $8.6 billion, so even if other alternative sources get another $70 million that's still only 1% of the total. Where's the other 99% going? I doubt coal and nuclear don't get more that 75% of the total. As compared to solar, wind, and others that sounds massive to me.

I'll note this new solar CSP plant they want to build in Arizona. It's noted here that this will cost somewhere in the 4 billion range and generate 280 megawatts, with a ground footprint of 1900 acres. Compare this to my plants, which generates nearly 2,000 megawatts with a ground footprint of maybe 20 acres.

You left a large use of land for nuclear, the mining. Then you have land needed for long term storage of the waste. As uranium mining is volume intensive, the concentration of uranium in the ore is so low, so it requires a lot of land. And it's environmentally destructive. The Navajo have basically been dumped on, uranium mining threatens their source of water, the aquifers under the land.

Call me prejudiced, but I'll stick to nuclear thanks.

Go ahead, and store it in your back yard too. You can also mine uranium from your back yard.

According to this official - who wished to remain anonymous - in a report handed over to the Committee, Washington acknowledged that the abusive treatment inflicted on prisoners at the hands of American forces could be considered torture in the sense of the International Convention against Torture. ... "They said that it was a matter of isolated cases, that there was nothing systematic and that the guilty parties were now in the process of being punished."

I'm pretty sure it HAS happened, though: I've heard of a case of someone in one european country, where abortions were legal but not after the first trimester, travelled to a different european country, got an abortion, returned, and was charged with murder. Recent, too - heard about it here on /.. Found something about it here.

Link, redux.

Right... because there wasn't a single shred of possible evidence to NYT's claims.

On US Interrogation (sadly I cannot find the SF field manual): http://www.aclu.org/safefree/general/18779prs20041207.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_interrogation_techniques http://www.americanthinker.com/2004/10/torture_as_an_interrogation_te.html http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1212197,00.html http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/16/washington/16cnd-formica.html http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/080305I.shtml http://news.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=1227&id=893492006 On the US School of Americas: http://www.soaw.org/ On Secret US Prisons: http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1237589,00.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/01/AR2005110101644.html http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4461470.stm http://hrw.org/english/docs/2005/12/19/afghan12319.htm http://hrw.org/english/docs/2005/12/19/afghan12319.htm http://www.truthout.org/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi/64/22567 Now why is this important? Since the US keeps these prisons in secret locations which are never disclosed, the international red cross is never permitted to inspect them. Therefore, any sort of interrogation and torture technique used is carte blanche.

On US Interrogation (sadly I cannot find the SF field manual): http://www.aclu.org/safefree/general/18779prs20041207.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_interrogation_techniques http://www.americanthinker.com/2004/10/torture_as_an_interrogation_te.html http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1212197,00.html http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/16/washington/16cnd-formica.html http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/080305I.shtml http://news.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=1227&id=893492006 On the US School of Americas: http://www.soaw.org/ On Secret US Prisons: http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1237589,00.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/01/AR2005110101644.html http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4461470.stm http://hrw.org/english/docs/2005/12/19/afghan12319.htm http://hrw.org/english/docs/2005/12/19/afghan12319.htm http://www.truthout.org/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi/64/22567 Now why is this important? Since the US keeps these prisons in secret locations which are never disclosed, the international red cross is never permitted to inspect them. Therefore, any sort of interrogation and torture technique used is carte blanche.

There's good reason to doubt. Maybe it's all a conspiracy to make us completely unsure of what's real.

Here are some reasons to doubt news stories:
http://www.truthout.org/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi/37/9592
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A36694-2005Mar15.html
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21490838/
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article621189.ece

Major news outlets carried falsified stories in order to gauge citizen reaction. Of course, the catch-22 is that if you feel that the above stories might be fake, we're in the same boat--not knowing what to believe.

Now about those "mistakes were made" issues? According to Knight-Ridder's senior military correspondent

Cheney and Rumsfeld were so convinced that they believed the invasion could be done on the cheap. The generals wanted an invasion and follow-on force of nearly 300,000 troops. Rumsfeld thought it could be done, a la Afghanistan, with fewer than 50,000. After all, there would be no need for an occupation force or any nation rebuilding.

So Rumsfeld hammered the head of the U.S. Central Command, Gen. Tommy Franks, to reduce the force to just over 200,000, cut two divisions out of the follow-on force, and reduce the total U.S. force to 138,000 to deal with occupying and keeping the peace in a fractious country the size of California with a population of 25 million, divided into ethnic and religious groups.

When the whole deal went south on them in the summer of 2003, Cheney and Rumsfeld stuck with the idea of fighting this war on the cheap. American armored divisions, the deadliest in the world, were ordered to leave most of their armor at home, because it cost too much to run them. Tank crews dismounted and became infantry patrolling the deadly roads and streets in Humvees, slightly heavier versions of the old Jeep. Ditto artillery crews.

That bears repeating: the Rumsfeld Doctrine depended on high technology. So now, in 2007 in Wired, Noah Shachtman tells us that the geeks implementing the high tech are responsible for the mess. Shachtman frames the issue in a way that assumes the Rumsfeld Doctrine is correct and blames the geeks! Gosh, other than Noah Shachtman, how many supporters of the Rumsfeld Doctrine do you think you can find in the punditocracy? Does this framing tell us where Shachtman was cheerleading in the run-up to the Iraq war? I do believe it does. Shachtman appears to be one of the last true believers in the discredited Rumsfeld Doctrine, and the Wired article that sparked this story is his declaration of faith.

It is ironic to me that much of the same sentiment that thwarted the nuclear power industry back in the 80's is partially responsible for reviving it.

The Public Utilities Holding Company Act (PUHCA) was, somewhat covertly, repealed in the 2005 Energy Bill and passed by the senate in July 2005. PUCHA was put into law in 1935 to stop a re-occurance of the 1929 stock market crash, because during the '20's utility companies became cash cows for energy tycoons who set up complex holding companies to milk income from ratepayers (like ma and pa Tilley) to fuel speculative investment. The stock market crash of 1929 destroyed the holding companies, devastated ratepayers and investors alike. PUCHA was designed to outlaw these structures and protect the American economy from a repeat of the circumstances that led to the events of 1929.

With limited oversight under the new laws the scene is set for consortium's to form those structures again, and how can any regulatory body, with limited staff have the capability to understand - much less control - the books of a huge conglomerate? Of course, it's the oil companies that are best positioned to benefit from the change in these laws. Anyone care to imagine what the future of renewable energy will be like if the Oil companies have a monopoly on energy utilities as well. It would make MicroSoft's monopoly look innocuous by comparison as the NRC will not allow challenges based on the need for the electricity or disposal of the waste.

Public participation or intevention is excluded because the reactor design is "approved", the procuring company get's half a billion dollars worth of subsidies even if they do nothing and a 1.8 cent per kilowatt hour tax credit if they do, truly a lose lose situation for all American taxpayers. The reality is if the Nuclear power industry was forced to cover it's own liability it would cease to exist and the hope of it operating without subsidies is totally unrealistic.

So who are you subsidising?

One is the Nustart Consortium consists of Excelon, Etergy, Constellation Energy Group, Duke Energy Group, EDF International, Electricite de France (as Florida Power and Light) Progress Energy, Southern, Tenessee Valley Authority, GE and Westinghouse.

For a country built upon the principles of economic pragmatism and unadulterated capitalism, how have such dubious investment's been forced upon it with barely a whisper of debate? It's clearly contrary to the interests of both sides of the political spectrum, so how can America, of all countries, continue to justify this form of corporate welfare?

For more information, have a look at this article . ~

In my experience, abuse of prisoners often produces bad intelligence because under torture a person will say anything he thinks his captors want to hear-whether it is true or false-if he believes it will relieve his suffering. I was once physically coerced to provide my enemies with the names of the members of my flight squadron ... I gave them the names of the Green Bay Packers' offensive line, knowing that providing them false information was sufficient to suspend the abuse.

Try this page out: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/07607T.shtml I'll admit that it's possible that weren't thinking specifically about some type of national identity system, but from what I've read about the founding fathers, and what I've read of their statements, I find that line of thinking highly improbable.

The Afghanistan war was planned before 9/11.

The decision to launch the Iraq war was made before 9/11.

The decision to launch a war against Iran was made before 9/11.

The Patriot Act was written before 9/11.

The government's spying on Americans began before 9/11.

The government knew that terrorists could use planes as weapons -- and had even run its own drills of planes being used as weapons against the World Trade Center and other U.S. high-profile buildings, using REAL airplanes -- all before 9/11.

The government heard the 9/11 plans from the hijackers' own mouths before 9/11.

No steel-framed high-rise building had ever collapsed due to fire before 9/11.

The neocons who now run the U.S. government lamented, before 9/11, that they could not institute their plans for global domination without a "new Pearl Harbor".

Did 9/11 really "change everything"? Or was everything we're seeing now planned before 9/11?

...if one of these DNA databases gets hacked??? What if a criminal's DNA entry gets transposed with that of someone else??? I mean it's not like government agencies are known for securing their networks very well...

Cheney described Iraq as "the geographic base of the terrorists who have had us under assault for many years, but most especially on 9/11."

I doubt that anyone would argue that we have fucked it up quite badly over there, but Iraq was never sold as retribution for 9/11

I call bullshit

Vice President Dick Cheney, lashing out at Democrats for the first time since the felony conviction of Lewis "Scooter" Libby, his former top deputy, resumed his controversial claims Monday that the war in Iraq is the central front in the worldwide U.S. response to the Sept. 11 attacks.

Thanks for conveniently omitting the part about the FBI agent alerting the FBI and Gov't. about the flight classes and an imminent attack ahead of 9/11.

Too bad the FBI discarded threats in July 2001 about Bin Laden sending terrorists to the U.S.

If you haven't read the report of Libby's own testimony, you may be missing something.

Fact checking please.

That quote originates from a politically-biased blogger. He said three people overheard the quote. One of three people he named as sources, is someone he commonly names, only it turns out said source doesn't exist.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_03/071003K.shtml

When that blogger is caught lying and making up sources, said blogger loses respectability.

Unless you can find actual proof for the quote, I wouldn't toss it around as fact. If anything there is evidence to suggest the source is known to lie.

Lazy much? Google "cheney iraq 911":

http://www.truthout.org/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.c gi/4/5151 : "The vice president has asserted long-standing links between the former Iraqi president and Osama Bin Laden's Islamist militant network."

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0616-01.ht m : "The Bush administration has long claimed links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida, and cited them as one reason for last year's invasion of Iraq.
On Monday, Vice President Dick Cheney said in a speech that the Iraqi dictator ``had long established ties with al-Qaida.''"

Check out a video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJiNtpIpD6k About 20 seconds before the end Cheney is quoted on Meet the Press talking about an alleged meeting between Iraqi intelligence and Al-Qaida 5 months before 9/11.

And finally: http://www.ontheissues.org/2004/Dick_Cheney_War_+_ Peace.htm : "FACT CHECK: The Washington Post reported Oct. 6 that Cheney often "skated close to the line in ways that may have certainly left that impression on viewers," especially by repeatedly citing the possibility that hijacker Mohamed Atta met with an Iraqi official, a theory disputed by the 9/11 Commission."

"Tyrants almost always disguise their lust for power as sympathy for the persecuted and downtrodden .."

Who did the following George Dubya or Chavez.

Pass a law giving him total authority over the entire federal government.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/05/20 070509-12.html

Plotted to steal an election through a rigged electronic voting machine, targeting ethnecally unsound voters. Eg blacks and Hispanics and overseas members of the armed forces who were also black or Hispanic.

http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/1725601 2.htm

Invaded a country and steal the oil and sell it back to them.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/052607Z.shtml

Revoke the US commitment to the Geneva Conventions, something that was implimented by the US in the aftermath of the nazi excesses of WW2.

http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Cheney_criticizes_Ge neva_Convention_in_Military_0526.html

Dispense with the right to a fair trial

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2007/05/20/AR2007052001409.html

Announce you are planning to cancel the nuclear arms reduction treaty with the Russian Federation and put missiles in Bulgaria, Romania and Poland.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2007/05/20/AR2007052001409.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/6708459.st m

Enthuse the police to shoot anti globalization protestors

http://youtube.com/watch?v=G63FEamhpA0&mode=relate d&search=