Eric Boehlert has one of those nice, thorough pieces he does so well, pointing out just how Rove-inspired is the writing of this Associated Press political “journalist.”

A real eye-opener. I keep telling you: The media is not our friend.

On my ride to work this morning, I saw cars lined up at the gas pumps - for $3.77 a gallon.

Go read the whole thing. Matt Taibbi:

A few weeks back, I got a call from someone in the office of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. Sanders wanted to tell me about an effort his office had recently made to solicit information about his constituents? economic problems. He sent out a notice on his e-mail list asking Vermont residents to “tell me what was going on in their lives economically.” He expected a few dozen letters at best — but got, instead, more than 700 in the first week alone. Some, like the excerpt posted above, sounded like typical tales of life for struggling single-parent families below the poverty line. More unnerving, however, were the stories Sanders received from people who held one or two or even three jobs, from families in which both spouses held at least one regular job — in other words, from people one would normally describe as middle-class. For example, this letter came from the owner of his own commercial cleaning service:

My 90-year-old father in Connecticut has recently become ill and asked me to visit him. I want to drop everything I am doing and go visit him, however, I am finding it hard to save enough money to add to the extra gas I’ll need to get there. I make more than I did a year ago and I don’t have enough to pay my property taxes this quarter for the first time in many years. They are due tomorrow.

This single mother buys clothes from thrift stores and unsuccessfully tried to sell her house to pay for her son’s schooling:

I don’t go to church many Sundays, because the gasoline is too expensive to drive there. Every thought of an activity is dependent on the cost.

Sanders got letters from working people who have been reduced to eating “cereal and toast” for dinner, from a 71-year-old man who has been forced to go back to work to pay for heating oil and property taxes, from a worker in an oncology department of a hospital who reports that clinically ill patients are foregoing cancer treatments because the cost of gas makes it too expensive to reach the hospital. The recurring theme is that employment, even dual employment, is no longer any kind of barrier against poverty. Not economic discomfort, mind you, but actual poverty. Meaning, having less than you need to eat and live in heated shelter — forgetting entirely about health care and dentistry, which has long ceased to be considered an automatic component of American middle-class life. The key factors in almost all of the Sanders letters are exploding gas and heating oil costs, reduced salaries and benefits, and sharply increased property taxes (a phenomenon I hear about all across the country at campaign trail stops, something that seems to me to be directly tied to the Bush tax cuts and the consequent reduced federal aid to states). And it all adds up to one thing.

“The middle class is disappearing,” says Sanders. “In real ways we’re becoming more like a third-world country.”

Really not a good idea:

The director of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute and UPMC Cancer Centers plans to issue an advisory to about 3,000 faculty and staff tomorrow about the possible health risks associated with cellular phone use. The document suggests certain measures to limit exposure to the electromagnetic fields emitted by the devices, such as limiting the length of conversations or keeping the phones away from the head by using headsets or speaker phone options. It also recommends that children not use cell phones except in emergencies.

A child’s developing organs “are the most likely to be sensitive to any possible effects of exposure to electromagnetic fields,” according to the document.

For the financial crisis? Hint: Not us.

I think this is my new favorite site.

The political hacks at the DoL are trying to obstruct the next administration from changing their awesome rules that allow employers to treat employees as cheap, disposable labor:

Political appointees at the Department of Labor are moving with unusual speed to push through in the final months of the Bush administration a rule making it tougher to regulate workers’ on-the-job exposure to chemicals and toxins.

The agency did not disclose the proposal, as required, in public notices of regulatory plans that it filed in December and May. Instead, Labor Secretary Elaine L. Chao’s intention to push for the rule first surfaced on July 7, when the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) posted on its Web site that it was reviewing the proposal, identified only by its nine-word title.

The text of the proposed rule has not been made public, but according to sources briefed on the change and to an early draft obtained by The Washington Post, it would call for reexamining the methods used to measure risks posed by workplace exposure to toxins. The change would address long-standing complaints from businesses that the government overestimates the risk posed by job exposure to chemicals.

The rule would also require the agency to take an extra step before setting new limits on chemicals in the workplace by allowing an additional round of challenges to agency risk assessments.

The department’s speed in trying to make the regulatory change contrasts with its reluctance to alter workplace safety rules over the past 7 1/2 years. In that time, the department adopted only one major health rule for a chemical in the workplace, and it did so under a court order.

Juan Cole says Obama is saying the wrong things.

Pretty funny parody ad:

From Georgia Women Vote via Culture Kitchen. It actually looks a lot more exciting than I imagined…

So I bought this stuff labeled “Organic Fertilizer” and I put it on my plants yesterday. The problem is, this potash and nitrogen mixture is a very fine powder and I ended up inhaling a bunch of it. Now my throat is very sore and I guess I have to wait around and see if this crap will kill me. Oh well.

Hi there- my name is Alex Urevick-Ackelsberg and I’m a compulsive pontificator.

Ok, I know this isn’t a support group, but I couldn’t think of a clever way to start off my blogging here. I’ll introduce myself more later (for those of you who are too curious to wait, you can find a short bio on my company’s site), but first I’d just like to say thank Susie for bravely allowing me to spout off here (I promise not to piss too many people off… oh who am I kidding) and tell you the story of how Susie and I met, which is both a funny story and a good illustration of how we roll here in the City of Brotherly Love. Continue Reading »

Tags: Drinking Liberally, Philadelphia

And yet, they say Jon Stewart is “fake news.”

Look at all the great things that happen when you let Republicans take control:

ScienceDaily (July 22, 2008) — If you are living in the eastern United States, the environment around you is being harmed by air pollution. From Adirondack forests and Shenandoah streams to Appalachian wetlands and the Chesapeake Bay, a new report by the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies and The Nature Conservancy has found that air pollution is degrading every major ecosystem type in the northeastern and mid-Atlantic United States.

The report, Threats From Above: Air Pollution Impacts on Ecosystems and Biological Diversity in the Eastern United States, is the first to analyze the large-scale effects that four air pollutants are having across a broad range of habitat types. The majority of recent studies focus on one individual pollutant. Over 32 experts contributed to the effort; the prognosis is not good.

“Everywhere we looked, we found evidence of air pollution harming natural resources,” comments Dr. Gary M. Lovett, an ecologist at the Cary Institute and the lead author of the report. “Decisive action is needed if we plan on preserving functioning ecosystems for future generations.”

Estelle Getty, 84.

What Melissa said. All of it. Every last damned word.

I can’t wait to see the list!

With six months to go before President Bush leaves office, the White House is receiving a flurry of pardon applications. The New York Times reported that “several members of the conservative legal community” are pushing for the White House to grant pre-emptive pardons for officials involved in counterterrorism programs. Wait—can a president really pardon someone who hasn’t even been charged with a crime?

Yep. In 1866, the Supreme Court ruled in Ex parte Garland that the pardon power “extends to every offence known to the law, and may be exercised at any time after its commission, either before legal proceedings are taken, or during their pendency, or after conviction and judgment.” (In that case, a former Confederate senator successfully petitioned the court to uphold a pardon that prevented him from being disbarred.) Generally speaking, once an act has been committed, the president can issue a pardon at any time—regardless of whether charges have even been filed.

You can all relax now:

Federal officials investigating a three-month-old salmonella outbreak have isolated the bacteria in a jalapeño pepper from a small distribution facility in McAllen, Tex., and yesterday warned consumers nationwide to avoid eating raw jalapeños or products that contain them until more is known.

You know, if I thought his Middle East policies would be different, I could be a lot more enthusiastic about Obama:

AMMAN, Jordan — For what feels like forever, Israelis and their Arab neighbors have been hopelessly deadlocked on how to resolve the Palestinian crisis. But there is one point they may now agree on: If elected president, Senator Barack Obama will not fundamentally recalibrate America’s relationship with Israel, or the Arab world.

“What’s going to be different?” says Jasser Shehadi, who sells shoes in Amman.

From the religious center of Jerusalem to the rolling hills of Amman to the crowded streets of Cairo, dozens of interviews revealed a similar sentiment: the United States will ultimately support Israel over the Palestinians, no matter who the president is. That presumption promoted a degree of relief in Israel and resignation here in Jordan and in Israel’s other Arab neighbors.

“What we know is American presidents all support Israel,” said Muhammad Ibrahim, 23, a university student who works part time selling watermelons on the street in the southern part of this city. “It is hopeless. This one is like the other one. They are all the same. Nothing will change. Don’t expect change.”

This is some good news:

PARIS — Radovan Karadzic, one of the world’s most wanted war criminals for his part in the massacre of nearly 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica in 1995, was arrested Monday in a raid in Serbia that ended a 13-year hunt.

And let’s not forget the use of rape as a weapon of war.

Imagine that - women really aren’t staying home to raise their kids!

When economists first started noticing this trend two or three years ago, many suggested that the pullback from paid employment was a matter of the women themselves deciding to stay home — to raise children or because their husbands were doing well or because, more than men, they felt committed to running their households.

But now, a different explanation is turning up in government data, in the research of a few economists and in a Congressional study, to be released Tuesday, that follows the women’s story through the end of 2007.

After moving into virtually every occupation, women are being afflicted on a large scale by the same troubles as men: downturns, layoffs, outsourcing, stagnant wages or the discouraging prospect of an outright pay cut. And they are responding as men have, by dropping out or disappearing for a while.

“When we saw women starting to drop out in the early part of this decade, we thought it was the motherhood movement, women staying home to raise their kids,” Heather Boushey, a senior economist at the Joint Economic Committee of Congress, which did the Congressional study, said in an interview. “We did not think it was the economy, but when we looked into it, we realized that it was.”

Make your own chocolate cake in 5 minutes!

Ken Silverstein in Harpers:

Back in January of 2007, the House Ethics Committee (“Press 1 if you are a member of Congress covering up a criminal offense. Press 2 if…”) released a statement saying that it had reviewed a foreign trip by Congressman Curt Weldon and determined that he had violated the gift-rule ban. Weldon, said the statement–which was signed by Republican Doc Hastings, then the Committee chairman, and Howard Berman, then the ranking Democrat–had traveled abroad in January 2003 with “several” unnamed family members. “Donors,” who were also not identified, picked up the tab for much of the trip, said the committee. The statement also failed to disclose where precisely Weldon & Co. had traveled, but did say that the congressman had been told to reimburse the trip’s financial sponsors for some $23,000 in expenses.

So where did Curt Weldon go? I’ve learned that he traveled to Europe and Russia (stops included Vienna and Moscow) with ten family members and acquaintances. The trip was paid for by three private foreign groups, including a Russian aerospace manufacturer and members of a controversial Serb family who were barred from entering the United States due to their alleged ties to war criminal Slobodan Milosevic. Very soon after the trip the Russian firm and the Serb family retained Karen Weldon, the congressman’s young, politically inexperienced daughter, to be their Washington lobbyist–which led to charges about whether her father was steering business to her, charges that are currently the subject of a federal investigation.

This was all known to the Ethics Committee when it released its statement in January of 2007. As is inevitably the case, the committee opted for covering up for one of its own rather than holding members of Congress accountable.
He simply ignored the committee’s advice and ethics rules and went anyway, with the tab being picked up by outside sponsors

According to the committee’s statement and other evidence I have obtained, prior to traveling Weldon had disclosed his trip and sought a waiver from the gift-rule provisions that at the time permitted a member of Congress to accept “travel and other benefits resulting from outside activities that are unrelated to official duties.” Weldon argued that his trip was unrelated to official duties because the invitation to travel to Eastern Europe (to give a speech) was made on the basis of his membership in the Russian Academy of Sciences–not because he was a member of Congress. Even the typically lame Ethics Committee rejected that argument, recognizing (for obvious reasons we’ll soon see) that the trip was connected to Weldon’s position in the U.S. government. So Weldon, according to the January 2007 statement, “then sought a gift rule waiver from the committee, but withdrew his request prior to receiving a formal written response from the Committee.”

In other words: Weldon apparently didn’t get the answer he wanted, so he simply ignored the committee’s advice and ethics rules and went anyway, with the tab being picked up by outside sponsors.

Continue Reading »

A repackaging campaign!

MOYOCK, N.C. (AP) — Contractor Blackwater Worldwide plans a shift away from the private security business that brought it unwelcome attention following a deadly shooting in Baghdad last year.

Executives told The Associated Press Monday that the negative media coverage and intense government scrutiny has made the cost of doing business too high. They say the company has unfairly come to symbolize all Iraq contractors and thus is a flash point for those opposed to the war.

Blackwater contractors are under investigation for their involvement in a shooting in Baghdad in September that left 17 Iraqis dead.

Regardless of the outcome of that case, Blackwater executives say the company will survive with a focus on international training, aviation and construction.

I know I do:

WASHINGTON — More than a half-million tractor-trailer and bus drivers who have commercial licenses also have medical conditions that qualify them for full federal disability payments.

That’s just one startling fact in a new safety study obtained by The Associated Press.

Every year, hundreds of deaths and injuries are blamed on commercial truck and bus drivers who suffer medical emergencies while driving vehicles sometimes weighing over 40 tons.

An AP review of federal records finds that truckers violating federal medical rules have been caught in every state.

The federal agency that oversees truck drivers admits it hasn’t completed any of eight recommendations safety regulators have proposed since 2001. One would set minimum standards to determine who is medically fit to drive commercially. Another would prohibit “doctor shopping” to find a physician who might overlook a risky health condition.

A Florida bus driver who will figure prominently in a congressional hearing this week suffers from lung disease and uses three daily inhalers to control breathing. He told congressional investigators he “occasionally blacks out and forgets things.” His commercial license expires in 2010.

You have to see this one:

Pretty cool. Both baseball fans and geeks will like this.

Your bad news is their good news!

July 21 (Bloomberg) — Crude oil rose from a six-week low in New York as a tropical storm headed toward the Gulf of Mexico, home to more than a quarter of U.S. oil production

U.S. forecasters said there is a 29 percent chance Tropical Storm Dolly may strengthen to a hurricane after it enters the Gulf of Mexico. The weather system’s projected path will take it across Yucatan peninsula today, close to Mexico’s largest oil field, the U.S. National Hurricane center said.

“U.S. refinery operations in the Gulf of Mexico are safe at present, but Mexico’s oil operations are at risk,” said Robert Laughlin, senior broker at MF Global Ltd. in London. “If the direction was to change, a protective shut in of production facilities across the Gulf of Mexico is likely.”

Very interesting discussion of whether colleges and universities should be forced to spend more of their endowments on their students.

In Brazil:

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (AP) — Hundreds of baby penguins swept from the icy shores of Antarctica and Patagonia are washing up dead on Rio de Janeiro’s tropical beaches, rescuers and penguin experts said Friday.

More than 400 penguins, most of them young, have been found dead on the beaches of Rio de Janeiro state over the past two months, according to Eduardo Pimenta, superintendent for the state coastal protection and environment agency in the resort city of Cabo Frio.

While it is common here to find some penguins - both dead and alive - swept by strong ocean currents from the Strait of Magellan, Pimenta said there have been more this year than at any time in recent memory.