South by Southwest

Remembering others as we celebrate Christmas:

2011-12-25T07:47:00.001-06:00

Far to many people are without jobs this Christmas. The decisions they have made about how to celebrate the holidays are different than they would have made otherwise. The housing crisis still impacts many people, and the economic outlook remains poor as a result. Families face foreclosure, doubling up or even homelessness. Remember the faces of homeless people around the world. And a particular face of the U.S. recession belongs to homeless children. To quote from the Reuters story:

How does anyone explain to kids like Aeisha and countless others how they wound up homeless in the world's richest nation?
In a report issued earlier this month, the National Center on Family Homelessness, based in Needham, Massachusetts, said 1.6 million children were living on the streets of the United States last year or in shelters, motels and doubled-up with other families.
That marked a 38 percent jump in child homelessness since 2007. . .

Remember the needs of our Mother Earth. As the carbon dioxide output soars, the problem of climate change is big enough to be defined an a national security issue. "Water Poor" Will Suffer Most as Climate Change Hits Cities. To explain how the poor will suffer in India, for example:

Like many cities in the developing world, Indore's water infrastructure and institutions face the mounting pressures of population and growth and urbanization. Experts worry that global warming will compound these problems, enlarging a category of people they call the "water poor."

Astronauts and cosmonauts are away from their families this Christmas. The European Space Agency's International Space Station's representative just arrived on orbit. Andre Kuipers is featured in this story: "Space-Flying Dutchman's Must-Haves: Time, Space Stamps & Cheese," is the headline from a Space.com. To quote:

The first Dutch astronaut to return to space, André Kuipers is about to begin five and a half months on board the International Space Station (ISS), a mission the European Space Agency named "PromISSe."

Finally, if all this news is beginning to depress you, here are 8 Ways To Forget Your Troubles. My wishes are that you are having happy holidays, and that your 2012 is a good year.

Unexpectedly saddened

2011-12-16T08:40:00.002-06:00

. . . by the death of Christopher Hitchens. I often disagreed with his views. Sometimes I would change the channel to watch someone easier to take. But I always admired his capacity for sophisticated thought and his amazing articulation of those ideas. He died yesterday, according to a Reuters article from which I quote:

British-born journalist and atheist intellectual Christopher Hitchens, who made the United States his home and backed the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, died on Thursday at the age of 62.
Hitchens died in Houston of pneumonia, a complication of cancer of the esophagus, Vanity Fair magazine said.
"Christopher Hitchens - the incomparable critic, masterful rhetorician, fiery wit, and fearless bon vivant - died today at the age of 62," Vanity Fair said.
A heavy smoker and drinker, Hitchens cut short a book tour for his memoir "Hitch 22" last year to undergo chemotherapy after being diagnosed with cancer.
As a journalist, war correspondent and literary critic, Hitchens carved out a reputation for barbed repartee, scathing critiques of public figures and a fierce intelligence.

Over the years I came to admire Hitchens, not for his beliefs or lack of religious belief, but for the sheer power of his mind. No one in their right mind, except perhaps William Buckley, would take him on in a face to face debate. We who watched him over the years would often be rivited as his wonderfully upper crust British accent embellished his authority. I was not familiar with his writing, but he counted on it as "who he was" to the very end. The article concludes:

In his last essay on www.vanityfair.com, dated "January 2012," Hitchens said his illness made him question the saying attributed to German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche that "Whatever doesn't kill me makes me stronger."
A painkiller injection just before typing the article titled "Trial of the Will," Hitchens wrote, caused "numbness in the extremities, filling me with the not irrational fear that I shall lose the ability to write. Without that ability, I feel sure in advance, my 'will to live' would be hugely attenuated."

For such a wonderful raconteur to die of esophogeal cancer is terribly ironic. And that he died not long after writing his last piece for Vanity Fair I find very sad. He and Steve Jobs (another towering intellect) were too young to be victims of cancer.
How long do we have to wait for a cure for the scourge of early death from cancer? After all it is 2011. I am 74 and a breast cancer survivor, soon to be five years. I am optimistic about my chances because of a very early diagnosis. But I remain sad because others were not so lucky.
Rest in peace, Mr Hitchens. I am sorry your voice has been stilled too early.

Additional reading in the Washington Post.

It may be as bad as we fear when it comes to our long recession.

2011-12-15T06:58:00.001-06:00

The United States and other nations, for that matter, are far from being out of the woods economically. Almost half the people in the United States are poor or low income, according to recent census data. Congress is unable to get its act together and the government may just shut down. Republicans and Democrats differ wildly on the reality of the current situation. To quote from CBS News,

Congressional Republicans and Democrats are sparring over legislation that would renew a Social Security payroll tax cut, part of a year-end political showdown over economic priorities that could also trim unemployment benefits, freeze federal pay and reduce entitlement spending.

Robert Rector, a senior research fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, questioned whether some people classified as poor or low-income actually suffer material hardship. He said that while safety-net programs have helped many Americans, they have gone too far, citing poor people who live in decent-size homes, drive cars and own wide-screen TVs.

A compassion deficit within the Far Right seems apparent. Politics trumps concern about what is currently happening to the so-called "99%" of us. Reuters reports that, "Republicans introduced a $915 billion spending bill in the House of Representatives early on Thursday in an attempt to force Democrats to finalize legislation that would keep the U.S. government operating beyond the weekend." We are again into hostage taking mode. Too many House Members and Senators have been "purchased" by corporate money. Fiscal ignorance and greed abounds. We are at risk until Congress comes to understand the peril into which they are propelling us.

Read further and come to your own conclusion. Joseph Stiglitz, Pulitzer prize winning economist, explained a great deal about our long term economic and fiscal crisis in a recent Vanity Fair article, "A Banking System Is Supposed To Serve Society, Not the Other Way Around." HT to @mattyglesias for the article.

Poverty Digest - for Thanksgiving Week, 2011

2011-11-21T08:33:00.001-06:00

This from Twitter provoked me to prepare a short digest on the subject of U.S. poverty:

@kfedor79 Ken Fedor

Millions face #poverty without #unemployment benefits. Tell Congress to extend UI benefits now! bit.ly/qf0LnV @usaction #P2

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About the rise in U.S. poverty rates, David Hawkings sent a Roll Call newsletter on Nov. 7 with astounding new figures. To quote:

POVERTY DATA: The government today increased by 2.9 million its estimate of the number of Americans living in poverty. The new total is 49.1 million, or 16 percent of the population, the Census Bureau said. In September, the agency pegged the numbers at 46.2 million, or 15.1 percent. Much of the increase came because of a recalculation of everyday costs, especially inflation in non-prescription health care items. As a result, the population 65 and older had the biggest poverty jump — to 15.9 percent from 9 percent. But the poverty rate for Hispanics rose to 28.2 percent, surpassing that of African-Americans for the first time.

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Newt Gingrich supports child labor as a solution to poverty explains Michael Stickings at The Reaction.

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The following chart is from Mother Jones,— "Child Poverty in the Great Recession," By Tim Murphy| Thu Sep. 29, 2011

Latino child poverty has skyrocketed during the recession: Courtesy of Pew Research

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Closer to home, in Fort Worth, according to the Star Telegram, the author of a book on poverty is again trying to climb out.

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So, as you approach your heavily-laden Thanksgiving table on Thursday, take a moment to reflect. Some, indeed will still be hungry this Thanksgiving.

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The Surveillance State(s)

2011-11-20T16:18:00.003-06:00

The cliche "big brother is watching you" is now becoming more the reality. These stories caught my eye just in the last couple of days.

New York's finest, detectives working on gathering intelligence entered church sanctuaries and basements to surveil Occupy Wall Street protestors. Words and phrases found on Twitter will be data mined for clues to possible uprisings and unrest. Texas border patrol agents may soon be the recipients of night vision equipment and unmanned drones that come home from the Middle East. And with U.S. financing, Afghanistan has plans to gather biometric data on all coming and going to or from the country, and eventually will fingerprint, photograph and scan the irises of all Afghans. Seen together it is a not a picture that matches with our vision of assumptions about freedom, privacy or justice. Not to mention spending inordinate amounts of public money on such ventures.

Even in Churches, Wall Street protesters can’t escape the watch of police.* (After their encampent in Zucotti Park was destroyed by the highly militarized NYC police department), protestors had been allowed to sleep in welcoming churches. The police entered the churches with the excuse of needing a bathroom. To quote from the New York Times story,

. . . demonstrators were sleeping on the cushioned pews of a United Methodist church on the Upper West Side on Thursday morning when one of them spotted a man in plainclothes wandering through the sanctuary, apparently counting heads.

"U.S. Spy Agency to Use Twitter to Forecast Unrest" is the headline. According to Scientific American, a US intelligence agency aims to forecast unrest by studying . . . social media. This is the use of so-called open source intelligence and it amounts to more widespread domestic surveillance. To quote:

It is every government's dream: a system that can predict future events such as riots, political upheavals and the outbreak of wars.The Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA), a research arm of the US intelligence community, is sponsoring the work under the Open Source Indicators (OSI) program. The three-year project, with an unspecified budget, is designed to gather digital data from a range of sources, from traffic webcams to television to Twitter. The goal, according to IARPA, is to provide the intelligence community with predictions of social and political events that can "beat the news".

Here is a recent tweet I posted regarding the possiblity of widespread coordination of recent police actions:
GeeCarol Nov 16, 4:08pm via HootBar

A long list of possibilities for #OWS raid coordination via DHS | Fusion Center Locations/Contact Information: is.gd/wvMo1Z

Using left-over war-zone equipment along the Texas border is the idea of Rep. Ted Poe (R-TX). More and more we see evidence that domestic security is becoming militarized. To quote from the New York Times,

The Send Equipment for National Defense Act, written by RepresentativeTed Poe, a Republican from Humble, would require that 10 percent of certain equipment returned from Iraq — like Humvees, night-vision equipment and unmanned aerial surveillance craft — be made available to state and local agencies for border-security operations.

Afghanistan has big plans for obtaining biometric data. And the United States will pay for it. (Note also recent news of far more widespread demand for identity cards for voting).To quote from the New York Times:

A handful of other countries fingerprint arriving foreigners, but no country has ever sought to gather biometric data on everyone who comes and goes, whatever their nationality. Nor do Afghan authorities plan to stop there: their avowed goal is to fingerprint, photograph and scan the irises of every living Afghan. It is a goal heartily endorsed by the American military, which has already gathered biometric data on two million Afghans who have been encountered by soldiers on the battlefield, or who have just applied for a job with the coalition military or its civilian contractors.The Kabul airport program is also financed by the United States, with money and training provided by the American Embassy. Americans, like all other travelers, are subject to it.

*In conclusion, for years I have blogged about civil liberties or security. Despite the fact that "the war on terror" was always a misnomer, Fourth amendment protection from unreasonable search or seizure remains at increased risk for citizens of states becoming more and more militarized.

Rick Perry Roundup

2011-11-14T08:49:00.001-06:00

Every day I receive a number of news feeds. I save them in Gmail and often do a search of these newslteers to see what dominated the news opinion about a certain subject. Today's theme is Governor Rick Perry, Republican of Texas.

Having lived in the state all of my adult life, I watched its evolution from a Democratic to a Republican dominated state. And it has been painful because I am a progressive Democrat. And my Republican governor has decided to run for POTUS. Here are a few items to help you understand why I am embarrassed by his attempt.

The loner from the Lone Star state - I have taken this paragraph from CQ Homeland Security Behind the Lines for Friday, Nov. 11, 2011 — 3 P.M. By David C. Morrison, Special to Congressional Quarterly. To quote:

“If the White House is out,” besieged GOP wannabe prez Herman Cain has “a future in airport security,” National Journal’s Theresa Poulson headlines — while Indybay’s Juan Batista alleges that also-running Rick Perry once “sought the support of the Republic of Texas militia, which has a long history of terrorism,” and Calvin Woodward’s Associated Press issues round-up hears the Texas gov terming it “unprincipled” for Republicans to have voted to create DHS. In Wednesday’s debate, meantime, libertarian long shot Ron Paul invoked DHS, natch, as the epitome of overweening federal incompetence, Time Magazine’s Michael Sherer summarizes.

The speedy spin - This is by David Hawkings at Congressional Quarterly [Nov. 10, 2011]

MAKING THE BEST OF IT: Rick Perry’s campaign quickly found a way to spin his epic “oops” from last night’s debate. This morning the Texas governor’s supporters were greeted by a fundraising e-mail that played up the incident as a “human moment” and announced the creation of an email address — forgetmenot@rickperry.org — where people can send suggestions about which federal agencies should be eliminated.

Perry himself did multiple TV interviews this morning, noting that the third agency he’d eliminate — in addition to the departments of Commerce and Education — indeed would be the Energy Department. (He’s been on the record about the three-department hit list in the past, but couldn’t recall Energy last night.) And what about ending his campaign? “This ain’t a day for quitting nothing,” he told the Associated Press this morning.

In the end, Perry’s forgetfulness squares well with his well-noted disdain for Washington, D.C. And Washington doesn’t have much to offer in return. He hasn’t pursued congressional endorsements with much vigor, and the federal workforce is an unlikely base of support for a candidate who makes no bones about his desire to shrink the government drastically.

It has gone from bad to worse - This is from David Hawkings at Congressional Quarterly [Nov. 8, 2011] To quote:

. . . polls out today . . . An NBC/Wall Street Journal survey found . . . the Rick Perry candidacy slides toward the abyss. He has only 10 percent support now, a drop of 6 points in a month — to fourth place behind Newt Gingrich, who’s up to 13 percent.

My senator, Kay Bailey Hutchison Stands by Criticism of Perry. The story is by Melanie Starkey [from Roll Call Politics, Nov. 7, 2011]

Retiring Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison refused Sunday to soften any of the criticisms she leveled at Texas Gov. Rick Perry when she challenged him in last year’s GOP gubernatorial primary. Full Story

"Read my book" urged the governor at the beginning of his run. Read a review of Rick Perry's "Fed Up.", from Congress.org[Oct. 17, 2011]

In conclusion, we know our governor will return before long, a bit chastened, I fear. But I predict he will glad to be home, glad to be out of the blinding glare of national Republican politics.

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Reich knows my thoughts:

2011-11-14T08:21:00.001-06:00

Since it is less than a year until the U.S. presidential election is held, we are getting more and more into campaign mode. I do not have to think about for whom I will vote; it will be the incumbant. But my trip to the polling place will be less enthusiastic than the first time I voted for Senator Barack Obama. I was not sure why this is the case, but a blog post by Robert Reich gave me the reasons. To quote (emphasis mine),

Robert Reich (Why We May Be In Store for a Passionless Presidential Race) [Nov. 11, 2011] To quote:

President Obama will be supported by progressives and the Democratic base, but without enthusiasm. His notorious caves to Republicans and Wall Street — failing to put conditions on the Street’s bailout (such as demanding the Street help stranded home owners), or to resurrect Glass-Steagall, or include a public option in health care, or assert his constitutional responsibility to raise the debt limit, or protect Medicare and Social Security, or push for cap-and-trade, or close Guantanamo, or, in general, confront the regressive Republican nay-sayers and do-nothings with toughness rather than begin negotiations by giving them much of what they want — are not the stuff that stirs a passionate following.

In conclusion, I add a few other Presidential complaints not mentioned by Mr. Reich. I am disappointed by his failure to roll back the assaults on the Fourth Amendment in the name of national security and by the President's remaining in Afghanistan far too long. However, I still like the President enormously and think he is doing a great job with foreign policy.

More about the direction of Occupy Wall Street

2011-11-14T05:08:00.001-06:00

Demanding the the OWS dissenters announce their purpose or agenda is not a good idea at this point. If you cannot determine or infer what is going on with the Occupiers, then you are not reading between the lines well enough.

The best way to learn is to watch the process in action. There is lots of video out there. The other is to read the various news items with an eye for trends, for how they are evolving over time. You might also learn by reading the items for what is bedrock, what stays the same along the way.

Amplify’d from www.mcclatchydc.com

Posted on Sunday, November 13, 2011

Occupy Wall Street is many things, but one thing it's not is partisan

By Gianna Palmer | McClatchy Newspapers

NEW YORK, N.Y. — The Occupy Wall Street protest may be a movement, a momentary phenomenon or something in between, but one thing its most fervent activists insist that it's not is a team of shock troops for any partisan political campaign.

Yet though most activists at Occupy Wall Street claim to be dissatisfied with the state of American government and politics, their views come in many flavors. Some are leftists of the '60s generation, others are curious newcomers to political activism. Still others are Ron Paul supporters, anarchists, or soured Obama campaign volunteers — and many more. How this chorus of interests will evolve politically is, they say, yet to be determined.

Last Wednesday, a group of protesters left for a two-week march to Washington D.C., with plans to arrive by Nov. 23, the deadline for the congressional supercommittee to decide how to deal with federal budget deficits. The activists plan to protest extending the Bush-era tax cuts.

But beyond such singular acts of protest, most Occupy Wall Street activists hope their movement will remain outside formal politics for now. They offer several explanations.

Some say they feel the political status quo is so corrupt, it's best not to engage with it at all. Elisa Miller, 38, a New Orleans resident who came to New York for the protests in late September, said she was personally boycotting the 2012 elections.

Several protesters said they want their effort to avoid being co-opted by or beholden to a particular party or candidate.

Many praised the protests as a space to nurture the exchange of new, progressive political ideas entirely outside of the two-party system.

Others said that the question of what would become of the protests, politically or otherwise, was missing the point.

"The question to me is, what's the right way to come up with an answer to that, based on democratic principles?" said Bray, the press team member.

Or, as one middle-aged woman who wished to remain anonymous said: "The model is the message."

Above all, most protesters said they felt it was simply too early in the organizing process to get involved formally with politics.

Organizers from various working groups echoed this statement, saying that they were now most concerned with the logistics getting their individual groups off the ground. Indeed, the majority of proposals passed so far by the General Assembly here have not been about ideologies, but requests for funding, many related to keeping the physical camp up and running. Proposals for funding storage bins, walkie talkies, and laundry were all approved in October, for example.

One notable exception came on Thursday night, when the General Assembly passed a $29,000 proposal to send a delegation of Occupy Wall Street activists to Egypt to serve as international observers in the country's parliamentary elections later this month. The proposal was sparked by a letter from a coalition of civil society organizations in Egypt, who requested a delegation from Occupy Wall Street.
Read more at www.mcclatchydc.com

See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/a1hyx5

Drill versus Spill

2011-11-11T09:02:00.000-06:00

There are recent news stories regarding the BP Deepwater Horizon Gulf oil spill. They follow, along with further references.

Gulf Oil Spill? What Gulf Oil Spill? From Mother Jones , by Kate Sheppard, Nov. 9, 2011. Tweet: "Feds leave Gulf spill out of economic impact analysis for new offshore drilling plan: http://t.co/KY1Ihv3Q . Also, recent RT @thegoodhuman Government officials have decided to let BP end its cleanup efforts http://t.co/bewwpBHT

Disc Spins Its Way to $1-Million Oil Spill Cleanup Prize -- Is there a better way to clean up the next oil spill disaster? FromScientific American , David Biello reports October 16, 2011.

U.S. blames BP for Gulf spill : from Reuters , by Ayesha Rascoe and Anna Driver Sep 14, 2011. - The United States heaped the lion's share of blame for the country's biggest ever offshore oil spill on BP on Wednesday as the government issued its final assessment of last year's Gulf disaster.

Here is a list of my South by Southwest blog posts written when the story was happening last year:

More on the Gulf Oil Spill - 7/29/10
On living near the Gulf - 6/27/10
Skimming reactions to the Oval Office Speech yields little lubrication for Presidential ego. - 6/16/10
Updating the energy lexicon - 6/15/10
Presidential field trip full of potential - 6/14/10
Above and Below - Worlds Far Apart? - 5/21/10
Contra catastrophe - 5/19/10

Other references:
Deepwater Oil Spill - McClatchy Newspapers
Deepwater stories, etc. - Huffington Post
Deepwater Horizon oil spill - Wikipedia

Some Legal Thoughts For Today

2011-11-07T07:26:00.004-06:00

Image via Wikipedia

Today is Monday, November 7, 2011 - It is a good day to be alive, despite the bad things that are happening. What I have read in the news this morning raises for me a number of important questions in the legal realm.

As the Feds seek unfettered GPS surveillance power as location-tracking flourishes, I feel alarmed at the growth of domestic sureillance in our day to day lives. Tomorrow the Supreme Court of the United States will hear arguments about whether law enforcement can attach a GPS tracking device to a vehicle without a probable cause warrant from a judge. Where is the Constitution's Fourth Amendment protection? As Wired blogger David Kravets wrote,

Technology has advanced since both of these cases, feeding the government’s growing hunger for cost-efficient, easy-to-use spy tools, and making the latest debate before the justices seem Orwellian. Today, one’s exact position on Earth can easily be secretly monitored with devices costing less than $200. Add to this the government’s argument in court briefs that “a person has no reasonable expectation of privacy in his movements from one place to another,” and you have the makings for widespread, unchecked surveillance.

The Implications of DOJ’s FOIA “Lies,” according to blogger emptywheel, have all kinds of possibilities for the abuse of our civil liberties. How is it that the government can lie when it comes to matters involving the lega lights of citizens? To quote and list:

. . . the practice of DOJ for nearly a quarter century to provide misleading information in response to FOIAs asking for certain kinds of information–broadly, ongoing investigations, informants, and foreign intelligence. In this post I want to consider how the practice may be ripe for abuse.

Ongoing Legal Investigation - The first exclusion–for information that might tip the subject of an investigation into a potential crime to that investigation and therefore lead her to, for example, destroy evidence–makes a bit of sense. But it seems ripe for abuse in several ways.
Informants - The second exclusion prevents people from asking for information on people they suspect might be informants by name. So, for example, if a peace group thinks Joe Smith asks too many question about group members’ pot smoking and therefore might be an informant, their FOIA request for information on him could be excluded.
Classified FBI records on “foreign intelligence or counterintelligence, or international terrorism” - As with the other two exclusions, there’s some logic to the third, covering classified FBI records on foreign intelligence, counterintelligence, or international terrorism. . . . logic held before 9/11 turned the “foreign intelligence” category into a giant grab bag.

A Pennsylvania man gets jail for paying judges for favors, according to this (11/5/11) Reuters story. This is one of the dangers that come in when we make something the State should do on its own into a profit-making scheme. How is it that anyone should profit for providing juvenile detention? Here are the pertinent details:

A . . . man who owned for-profit juvenile detention centers was sentenced to 18 months in prison . . . for paying judges to send youths to his facilities in a so-called "kids for cash" scheme. Robert Powell, 53, a former trial lawyer . . . also must pay $60,000 for his involvement in the scheme. He was found guilty in 2009 of paying $770,000 in kickbacks to then-judges Mark Ciavarella Jr. and Michael Conahan, who in return sent youths to his detention centers.

Mississippi [is] to decide if [a] fertilized egg is a human being on Tuesday. If the proposition wins it could put women's lives in jeopardy, threaten birth control and would certainly be legally challenged in many different ways. Will it truly put Roe vs. Wade in the biggest danger since it was adopted? Reuters has the story.

Mississippi . . . could be the first state in the nation to define a fertilized egg as a person, a controversial concept aimed at outlawing abortion, some types of birth control and infertility methods that result in the loss of embryos. The so-called "personhood amendment" to the state constitution represents a twist in strategy for anti-abortion efforts, which have notched great success across the country this year with dozens of new restrictions put into law.

From a constitutional, ethical or procedural point of view, these news stories raise important questions. What questions do you have?

Posted via email from Southwest Postings

Trade-offs within your national security protection -

2011-11-03T07:24:00.001-05:00

There is no easy way to cover our nation's security needs. And its success is always a mixed bag. Here are a few current examples of how easy it is to get off track --

This overcompensation in airport security may pose a health risk to travellers.

U.S. Glossed Over Cancer Concerns Associated with Airport X-Ray Scanners -- Experts say the dose from the backscatter is negligible when compared with naturally occurring background radiation, but a linear model shows even such trivial amounts increase the number of cancer cases . . . [via Scientific American]

The slowdown of donations to WikiLeaks is threatening its very existence. Moreover, Julian Assange can now be extradited. Free speech remains at risk.

@wikileaks WikiLeaks Free speech isn't free: WikiLeaks needs you wikileaks.org/support [via Twitter]

Those in Congress who voted for this legislation did not do their homework. Money may have been wasted, that could have provided security elsewhere

DHS Doesn’t Want Its New Spy Drones: Department officials were surprised, to say the least. See, new Predators weren’t exactly on their surveillance gear wish list. “We didn’t ask for them,” an unnamed official told the Los Angeles Times. DHS is already struggling to operate their seven existing drones. [via Wired.com]

The Federal Bureau of Investigation, the main investigative arm of the U.S. government, is supposed to do more than merely domestic surveillance. They are also charged with investigating white collar crimes. Bank fraud may go unpunished.

The FBI: Now, with 48% More Domestic Surveillance … but No Banksters. . . It has netted precisely zero of those who propagated the complex fraud that brought down our country–not even Angelo Mozilo or anyone from Goldman Sachs, against whom they’ve got reams of evidence. The FBI calls this emphasis on terrorism (and spies and hackers and corrupt politicians and Japanese gangsters) over white collar crime a “strategic” focus. Sort of makes you wonder what objective this strategy is supposed to accomplish. [via emptywheel.com]

The focus on national security too often gets blurred. Citizens can become more at risk than protected when an agency goes off course. Constitutionally protected rights can be ignored in the name of making us safer. Money gets wasted that could be put to better use. And the law can be subverted when it is not enforced. Be very careful what you wish for.

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I long for peace

2011-11-01T09:14:00.002-05:00

National security has long been a subject of my blogging. One of my best resources has been a Homeland Security newsletter I receive, published by Congressional Quarterly. It is called Behind the Lines. It's wonderful author is David C. Morrison. I quote from his most recent piece:

The decade-long splurge on intelligence spending in the United States appears to have hit its high-water mark, with $54.6 billion expended on non-Pentagon spy agencies and programs in fiscal 2011, The Washington Post’s Greg Miller blogs.

From this information one would surmise that we are less and less secure, necessitating bigger spending. That is not the case any more. We are more secure, less threatened. And we should be able to move out of this "all war on terror/all over the world" mentality.

I long for peace.

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Globalizing Occupy Wall Street: From Chile to Israel, Protests Erupt

2011-10-31T16:30:00.000-05:00

by Lois Beckett, ProPublica
Oct. 25, 2011, 12:27 p.m.

At first glance, the synchronized protests that took place in more than 900 cities around the globe on Oct. 15 seemed to indicate that Occupy Wall Street had achieved a kind of worldwide resonance.
But the truth is more complex. Many of the protests elsewhere grew out of movements that pre-date Occupy Wall Street and out of frustrations that, though similar in some ways, are also specific to their countries.

Here’s a look at the origins, demands and affects of five of these global protests, as well as the criticism they’ve faced.

In Chile, Students Protesting for Free Education Occupy Schools

The Santiago protest in solidarity with Occupy Wall Street took place during a week of ongoing national demonstrations. Since May, Chilean students have been staging protests demanding that the government make education free to all.
Secondary school students have occupied their schools, sleeping on the floor and holding their own classes. Last week, protesting students occupied Chile’s senate building in Santiago. Hundreds of thousands of people have participated in marches over the past six months. At times, the protests have become violent, with police using tear gas and water cannons on the protesters, and “masked assailants” setting fire to a city bus.
Opinion polls show more than 80 percent of Chile’s citizens support the protesting students, who also have the backing of labor unions and teachers. Government officials, including the president, have resisted the demands, saying the government cannot afford to pay for education for all students.

In Israel, a Summer Protest Against Rent Prices, Cost of Living

Protesters in Tel Aviv returned Oct. 15 to Rothschild Boulevard, the site of a summer occupation that prefigured the Occupy Wall Street movement.
During those demonstrations, which began July 14, hundreds of people set up tents along the most prestigious street in Tel Aviv’s financial district to protest the high cost of rent. Government ministers mocked the protesters, calling them “sushi-eaters” and “nargila [hookah] smokers with guitars.”
But over two months, demonstrations against Israel’s high cost of living brought out a record-breaking numbers of participants. A march on Sept. 3 drew 450,000 people, or roughly six percent of Israel’s population. In response, Israel’s prime minister proposed reforms, and, when they were rejected as insufficient, assembled a task force to consider ways to improve the standard of living for Israel’s middle class.
Tel Aviv’s tent city was dismantled earlier this month.

In Spain, High Youth Unemployment Rate Sparks Tent Occupations

The idea for a global day of protest on Oct. 15 was originally proposed by participants in Spain’s 15-M or “Los Indignados” movement.
The “indignados” movement began in May, when hundreds of protesters set up tents in Madrid’s historic Puerta del Sol, and others gathered elsewhere to protest Spain’s extremely high unemployment. Overall, unemployment was at more than 20 percent, and youth unemployment was at nearly 50 percent. On Oct. 15, tens of thousands of protesters gathered in Madrid, Barcelona and Seville.
Like the Wall Street protesters, protesters in Spain faced criticism for having no clear demands and using the protest as an excuse for a big party. Madrid’s tent city, which largely disbanded in June, was leaderless and had a legal advice tent, a library, a kitchen set up to prepare donated food. It also had a general assembly where participants made decisions through consensus on issues such as how to deal with police or complaints from neighbors. Some neighboring merchants were not enthused about the occupation, but, as in New York, the 24-hour pizzeria didn’t seem to mind.

In the UK, Occupation Follows Protests on Education Cuts, Riots Over Police Brutality

Over the past year, the UK has seen major student protests over rising school fees, as well as violent riots and looting this August after a young black man from a low-income neighborhood was killed by the police.
In comparison with the roughly 50,000 protesters who turned out last November to demonstrate against tuition increases, the Occupy London Stock Exchange movement is small: an estimated 600 people are camped out by St. Paul’s Cathedral, and a smaller cluster have gathered near London’s Royal Bank of Scotland and JP Morgan buildings. (At times, an estimated 2,000 protesters have gathered at the encampment. There also have been smaller protests in other cities across the UK.)
The encampment has prompted the closure of St. Paul’s Cathedral, which is reported to be considering legal action to dislodge the protesters.
Like those in New York, the Occupy London protesters have been criticized—by the Mayor of London, among others—for not having a clear set of demands. A Guardian reporter who spent a few days at the encampment reported that “a few of the key facilitators in last winter’s student protests haven’t come down” because “they’re not sure it’s radical enough.”
But the reporter, Patrick Kingsley, concluded that the lack of demands may be part of the point: “If anything, the camp itself is their demand, and their solution: the stab at an alternative society that at least aims to operate without hierarchy, and with full, participatory democracy. And to be fair, in its small way, it kind of works,” he wrote.

In Germany, a Country Less Burdened by the Financial Crisis, Protest May Reflect Fears for the Future

In Frankfurt, Europe’s financial center, roughly a hundred protesters are currently camped out in front of the European Central Bank, and at least 4,000 more took to the streets again last weekend to protest the banking system. (Smaller numbers protested in Berlin.)
The protests, inspired by the Occupy Wall Street movement, have been greeted with some bewilderment by commentators. While the American protests have focused on the nation’s increasing inequality and wealth disparity, Germany “has one of the most equitable distributions of family income in the world,” according to Foreign Policy magazine. German youth are not saddled with student loan debt, the Wall Street Journal points out, and have a very low unemployment rate of 9.7 percent.
Trying to explain the reason for protests in a country “largely unscathed by the global financial crisis,” German newspapers suggested that there was “bitter disappointment” that state bailouts of banks did not result in reforms to the financial system, or that the protests were forward-looking, sparked by “young people who are afraid that the debt crisis is robbing them of their future."

My Other Blogs: Check out my Amplify blog for synopses of current news stories. My creative website is Making Good Mondays. Follow me at Twitter. And Carol Gee - Online Universe is the home page for all my websites.

Things may be OK again at the ISS.

2011-10-30T07:52:00.001-05:00

When there was a failure to successfully launch a Russian Progress vehicle recently, there was a very real possibility that the International Space Station could go to unmanned status. The reason for the failure had to be nailed down and fixed before we could send any more astronauts or cosmonauts into orbit in a Soyus capsule. There would have to be another Progress sent to the ISS, a successful rocket launch. And the current three member crew would have to eventually come home after reaching the limits of how long they could stay in space.

The reason for the 3rd state failure was rather quickly determined, however, and November 14, 2011 set as the next target date for a Soyuz launch. It is only a couple more weeks when we think things on the ISS will begin to get back to normal.

We will all breathe a sigh of relief when that happens. And we will feel even more relieved when we again have a U.S. capability to send crew members into low earth orbit. It cannot happen soon enough for me.

Posted via email from Behind These Links

The high cost of U.S. spying

2011-10-30T07:02:00.001-05:00

Even though the in-your-face terrorist attacks have significantly diminished, we are spending more than ever on National Intelligence gathering. The pro-spook world would say that the high expenditures are what has kept us safe. But that is not something anyone can prove.

Note that these figures do not include military intelligence gathering.

Amplify’d from www.washingtonpost.com

U.S. intel spending nears a high-water mark

By Greg Miller

The nation spent $54.6 billion on national spy agencies and programs in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, excluding spending on military intelligence programs, according to figures released by the nation’s intelligence director.

“If today’s number isn’t the absolute apex, it’s definitely within spitting distance from it,” said a congressional aide involved in intelligence budget deliberations.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper has said imposing cuts on agencies that have grown accustomed to generous increases every year will be a “litmus test” of his job.

The trajectory on spy spending has been breathtaking since the Sept. 11 attacks. Budgets more than doubled during a 10-year span in which the CIA and other spy agencies were charged with tracking al-Qaeda and staying abreast of the intense intelligence demands associated with two distant wars.
Read more at www.washingtonpost.com

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Otherwise occupied.

2011-10-18T14:38:00.001-05:00

Today's newsletter roundup is about the Occupy fill-in-the-blanks movements. It gleans interesting little items from my Emailed Congressional Quarterly newsletters of recent weeks.

"There’s really no rush" to pass the teacher/first responders jobs bill, "because the measure isn’t going to do much better, if it does any better at all, than the entire Obama jobs package," said David Hawkings in today's CQ newsletter (Oct. 18, 2011), CQ Roll Call Daily Briefing. To quote further:

SLICING AND DICING: There is no timetable today for the Senate test vote on that $35 billion in grants for teachers and first responders. . . Reid has no incentive to call the vote while the president is out on the road promoting his new piecemeal approach.

. . . As in the past, Obama and the Democrats would rather have the money and the new jobs more than anything else. But it’s also true they’re not unhappy with the consolation prize from another defeat (and at least three more after that). They will get to campaign for the next year on just the sort of declaration that they hope will get the Occupy Wall Street types to the polls: That the GOP had a choice between creating jobs and protecting millionaires — and chose the metaphorical 1 percent.

Another favorite CQ regular newsletter focuses on national security and intelligence. It is written by David C. Morrison and titled CQ Behind the Lines. This (Oct. 13, 2011) clip focused on the Occupy Boston protest.

Over Here: “The Tarek Mehanna Support Committee came to Occupy Boston’s ever-evolving tent city to say [that the] Muslim American pharmacist, is a victim of anti-Muslim sentiment, ”Townhall.com condemns.

Washington D.C. has also been occupied by protesters. From the Oct. 11, 2011 CQ Roll Call Daily Briefing by David Hawkings, we learn that each group sort of forms on its own, and may or may not be connected. To quote from another newsletter:

ONE IS NOT THE OTHER: The hundred or so “Stop the Machine” anti-war protesters who spent the weekend camped out in Freedom Plaza are threatening to swarm through the House and Senate office buildings this afternoon in an effort to cause some TV-worthy disruptions. These people do not want to be confused with the Occupy D.C. crowd that’s been in McPherson Square for several days in a relatively low-impact version of the Occupy Wall Street movement. That ragtag group, which is getting less ragtag now that the AFL-CIO is helping it — and now that the Democrats are urging them on from just offstage — is planning its own protest on the Capitol Hill grounds for this afternoon.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has the job of passing the President's latest jobs bill, piece by piece. This summarizes the issue. The quote is from the Oct. 6 CQ Roll Call Daily Briefing, by David Hawkings:

GOING NOWHERE: Obama is embracing the “millionaire’s surtax” as the best way to pay for his jobs package —

. . . So the president’s $447 billion package is sure to stall as a stand-alone bill — meaning that, for a while longer at least, the 330,000 or so families with income of more than $1 million can remain more worried about running into an Occupy Wall Street protester than about finding creative new shelters for their wealth.

Democrats May Find ‘Occupy’ Movement Is Not That Into Them. By Ambreen Ali and Neda Semnani, Roll Call Staff Oct. 6, 2011, 2:29 p.m. A quote:

Liberals have been racing to embrace the Occupy Wall Street protests as a left-leaning response to the tea party, but the protesters aren’t exactly returning the favor.

Early this month, David C. Morrison wrote about how the Occupy Wall Street folks and law enforcement might or might not get along. It is dated Oct. 3, 2011 and comes from CQ Behind the Lines. To quote,

NYPD Blue: . . . A violent clash with members of the Occupy Wall Street movement may underscore “the flip side of a police force trained to fight terrorism,” the Times analyzes. “Anything connected to a potential terrorist attack on New York is a target for surveillance anywhere,” The New American disapprovingly leads.

The Occupy Wall Street movement has morphed into a world-wide set of protests against the perceived greed of big-monied interests. I predict that it will be a long time before it ends.

Related articles

[Post date: October 18, 2011]

My Other Blogs: Check out my Amplify blog for synopses of current news stories. My creative website is Making Good Mondays. Follow me at Twitter. And Carol Gee - Online Universe is the home page for all my websites..

Throwing the windows open to jarring reality -

2011-10-10T17:12:00.001-05:00

Between the fall of 2008-2009 too many of us were mostly unaware of what was actually been happening to the world's economy. We got the mainstream media's headlines, their reports but almost no analysis. That is usually as it is with big events; the history has to wait until later. Currently it seems that enough time has passed to find out the main facts and to gain some perspective. Maybe that is why the "Occupy Wall Street" movement has been this long in coming. This morning I watched the best report I have ever seen of the worldwide financial crisis that occurred during the last years of the Bush administration and the beginning of President Obama's term of office. Unfortunately, it had to come from an outside source, a news service not much trusted by our own government over the years, Al Jazeera/English. Here is the link.

Al Jazeera has been broadcasting a great 4-part series the past few days titled, "Meltdown." The piece highlights the main players and events of the period. Skillfully and objectively the segments provided me with an awareness and understanding of what happened - and why - that I never before have had. Rebroadcasts of each memorable episode are available on the "Meltdown" page. The series includes these four episodes:

1) "The men who crashed the world" - who brought down the economy, the sequence of what happened, who intervened to try to stave off the disaster.
2) "A global financial tsunami" - how it happened that the financial crisis was truly and quickly world wide, the present inter-connectedness of current economies.
3) "Paying the price" - The people and groups who lost out, as well as those who won without any negative consequences.
4) "After the fall" [Part 4 will be broadcast tomorrow afternoon, October 11].

Ezra Klein is one of my very favorite pundits. He recently offered his own very thorough and insightful analysis of the Obama administration's decisions regarding the financial crisis in the fall of 2008 and the spring and summer of 2009. It is entitled: "Financial Crisis and Stimulus: Could This Time Be Different?" by Ezra Klein, columnist at The Washington Post (10/04/11). It is headed by a great photo essay by Bill O'Leary called, "Obama’s economic inner circle and other key voices in the debate." I highly recommend taking the time to read this, and the following piece, in order to flesh out the basics so brilliantly laid out by Al Jazeera.

Jared Bernstein, who was Vice-President Biden's economic adviser, is out of government. And happily, he is now another of my favorite pundits. He wrote a very fine piece in response to Ezra Klein's analysis called: "The Self-Imposed Limits of Reaction to a Crisis," by Jared Bernstein at his blog On the Economy (10/11/11). He and Klein had a conversation about these matters when Klein recently filled in at the Rachel Maddow show. There is also a link on Bernstein's blog.

Today has been immersion day for me. I had to do something. I was feeling anxiety disappointment as things things got worse politically; I was becoming more discouraged for the future. Throwing the windows open to the reality of our economic meltdown means I now know a lot more than I did yesterday. Consequently my perspective changed. I am now much more clear about who is responsible and why. And I have a very positive reaction to the Occupy Wall Street events that began a few weeks ago. I am so proud of all those folks! They may not all know exactly why they are in such trouble, but they surely know who caused it. And they know that they are not the people who should be bearing all the burdens of years of Wall Street, greed, irresponsibility and profligacy. And they know that our government's leaders have not done well enough to make things right again.

Assessing the threat of terrorism via overhead spycraft -

2011-10-07T13:50:00.000-05:00

Image by Defence Images via Flickr

Spying on adversaries from above is one way the U.S. assesses the level of danger from terrorists. There are many times when those assigned the role of providing protection from the sky go about it in a very big way. Here's an interesting story about a craft destined for eventual surveillance use in Afghanistan. It is from today's Wired Danger Room and describes a giant spy blimp that dwarfs an 18-wheeler.

In stark contrast, drones are also getting smaller. Portability, cost containment, and minimum use of personnel also seem to be attractive to the military. The DIY-Drone of the Future Is … a Flying Pogo Stick comes again from Wired Danger Room (10/6/11). To quote:

Darpa is holding a contest to design the military’s next spy mini-drone. So far, the entrants include a flying pogo stick, a sail that lands on mosques, and an unmanned laser shooter.

Those are some of concept videos submitted to UAV Forge, a Pentagon experiment to crowdsource the development of unmanned aerial vehicles. DIY-drone hobbyists are encouraged to work together to create the flying spy-bot of the future. It has to fit in a rucksack and be operated by just one person without any help, guidelines say.

Remotely operated combat drones are not problem free, as it turns out. Recently it was revealed that a Computer Virus Hits U.S. Drone Fleet. To quote from another Wired Danger Room article:

[10/7/11] A computer virus has infected the cockpits of America’s Predator and Reaper drones, logging pilots’ every keystroke as they remotely fly missions over Afghanistan and other warzones.

The virus, first detected nearly two weeks ago by the military’s Host-Based Security System, has not prevented pilots at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada from flying their missions overseas. Nor have there been any confirmed incidents of classified information being lost or sent to an outside source. But the virus has resisted multiple efforts to remove it from Creech’s computers, network security specialists say. And the infection underscores the ongoing security risks in what has become the U.S. military’s most important weapons system.

* * * * * * * * * *

For my readers who follow the subject of national security, I am recommending "Behind the Lines" listed under Free Alerts / CQ Roll Call free newsletters. To quote briefly from today's newsletter (always so well-done by David C. Morrison):

Holy Wars: Following last week’s CIA hit on U.S. citizens Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan, “the last terrorist left chatting in an American accent is a chubby former metalhead named Adam Gadahn,” Danger Room follows up. “It is possible that Awlaki was assassinated because he was an effective critic of the U.S. government,” Paul Craig Roberts wildly reaches in HoweStreet.com. A new e-book, “The Just Scale — On the Permissibility of Killing the Infidels’ Children and Women,” published by a jihadi forum, attempts to refute mainstream arguments against killing certain types of civilians, IPT News notes. If proven to have been carried out by right-wing extremists, Sunday’s attack against a mosque in the Galilee “will be just the latest sign that Jewish terrorism is gaining steam,” The Jerusalem Post reports. A new online journalism course on Islam appears to downplay the threat posed by global jihadism, suggesting reporters keep the death toll from Islamic terrorism in “context,” FOX News relates.

Given the recent killing of the terrorist al-Awlaki and others in Yemen, predator drone warfare will continue to be the subject of debate among concerned Americans. Stay tuned.

[Post date: 10/7/11]

My Other Blogs: Check out my Amplify blog for synopses of current news stories. My creative website is Making Good Mondays. Follow me at Twitter. And Carol Gee - Online Universe is the home page for all my websites.

Are you active or are you passive?

2011-10-06T10:01:00.000-05:00

Image via Wikipedia

Surfing around the World Wide Web - Today I discovered a number of interesting sites that are part of the activist movements now getting coverage in the national news. Here are a few links to the online efforts, movements and organizations about which you may have heard:

Occupy Wall Street - Since the middle of September demonstrators, growing into the thousands, have been staging a protest on Wall Street in New York City.

Occupy Together - Includes a list of all the other "Occupy" movements beyond Wall Street.
The NYC General Assembly at #Occupy Wall Street: Needs of the Occupiers are spelled out in this interesting post.
AnonOps Communications - Includes a good Michael Moore video from the Wall Street protest.

Get Money Out - learn about an idea for cleaning up corporate influence in Washington and sign the petition. Almost 125,000 have so far signed.

Dylan Ratigan organized a petition drive that could free America from the influence of unlimited campaign contributions via a Constitutional amendment.
Ratigan explains at Huffington Post.

Rebuild the Dream - A large number of Progressive organizations joined together this summer to fight to restore the American dream for the 99% of us who are not rich.

Founder Van Jones organized this week's Take back the American Dream Conference.
About the Partners in the American Dream Movement - participating organizations listed at the bottom.

[Post date: 10/6/11]

Technorati tags: [Occupy Wall Street], [Rebuild the Dream], [Take Back America]

My Other Blogs: Check out my Amplify blog for synopses of current news stories. My creative website is Making Good Mondays. Follow me at Twitter. And Carol Gee - Online Universe is the home page for all my websites.

Occupy Together | Home

2011-10-02T16:37:00.001-05:00

The website that gathers all the "Occupy" action sites into one location:

Occupy Together | Home

Why civil liberties should still matter -

2011-10-01T09:14:00.001-05:00

President Obama's Inauguration. Image via Wikipedia

South by Southwest is an old political blog I began in 2005. For whatever reason, I focused on the subject of constitutional civil liberties almost from the beginning.* Perhaps it was my belief that the Republican Bush administration began riding roughshod over the Bill of Rights' First and Fourth Amendments almost immediately after the 9/11/01 attacks on the United States.

Fast forward to January 2009 when the current Democratic Barack Obama administration began.
It became apparent to me over time that not that much changed under our Constitutional Law professor president.

The U.S. recently confirmed that Anwar al-Awlaki was killed in a military drone strike. And almost from when this news became known, there was a debate between civil libertarians and the rest of the country over the justification of the U.S. military action in northern Yemen. In its news article today's New York Times points to the President's dilemma. To quote,

The strike was the culmination of a desperate manhunt marked not only by near misses and dead ends, but also by a wrenching legal debate in Washington about the legality — and morality — of putting an American citizen on a list of top militants marked for death. It also represented the latest killing of a senior terrorist figure in an escalated campaign by the Obama administration.

. . . There had been an intense debate among lawyers in the months before the Obama administration decided to put Mr. Awlaki on a target list in early 2010, and officials said that Mr. Khan was never on the list. The decision to make Mr. Awlaki a priority to be sought and killed was controversial, given his American citizenship. The American Civil Liberties Union, which fought unsuccessfully in the American court system to challenge the decision to target Mr. Awlaki, condemned the killing.

Commentators on television, the blogosphere and social media soon raised questions about the legality and morality of the "assassainations" or war combatant targeting of two United States citizens. So I am not alone with my discomfort. That view is not widely held beyond the members of the left. But it does give many of us pause. Michael J.W. Stickings, my longtime blog friend at The Reaction, wonders whether President Obama is "a disaster for civil liberties." He mirrors my own ambivalence, saying:

Though I remain, for the most part, a supporter of the president, I cannot disagree

[with legal scholar Jonathan Turley, whom Stickings quotes extensively].

While I would argue that he has done a lot of good thus far in office, this remains the major blot on his record.

*Just a few of my previous posts related to civil liberties over the years:

9/7/11: A look at freedom and liberty in the US ten years after 9/11/01
9/2/09: Intelligence Bytes
12/18/05: NSA Surveillance of Americans: NYT
12/09/05: Patriot Act May Be Extended
10/20/05: Spy World

Civil liberties should still matter. Even if I can understand or even argue for the killing-of-a-terrorist view, the next questions are the real ones. What happens when another president (not so competent and trustworthy) is in charge? Where is the line for him/her? Does it make a difference where the killing happens? Could it be legally done in the United States as well as Yemen? How strong was the evidence? Was there due process? What does the law of war demand? What qualifies as the "imminent threat" posed by the citizen/combatant? What if innocent people are also killed?

Posted on 10/1/11 - from Texas:

My Other Blogs: Check out my Amplify blog for synopses of current news stories. My creative website is Making Good Mondays. Follow me at Twitter. And Carol Gee - Online Universe is the home page for all my websites.

Entitlement programs are no longer off limits for cuts.

2011-09-09T07:16:00.001-05:00

President Obama called for Medicare and Medicaid reform in his jobs speech to Congress. And Texas Gov. Rick Perry called Social Security a "Ponzi scheme" in the previous night's Republican debate.

It looks like everything could be up for grabs in the bipartisan race to dismantle our Federal government's social safety net.

Original: www.nytimes.com/2011/09/09/us/politics/09social.html

A Bipartisan Move to Tackle Benefits Programs

by JACKIE CALMES, nytimes.com
September 8th 2011

At the same time, Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill expressed a willingness to wring savings from the long-untouchable programs during the first meeting of the special committee that is charged with recommending $1.5 trillion in deficit reductions over the decade. Then President Obama, in his address to a joint session of Congress on spurring job creation, reiterated his call for a plan reducing long-term debt with both changes in entitlement programs and taxes from the wealthy.

To the chagrin of many in his party, this summer Mr. Obama proposed changes in Medicare and Social Security that once would have been unthinkable for a Democratic president during his unsuccessful talks with the House speaker, John A. Boehner, for a “grand bargain” on cutting deficits. In return for the Republicans’ agreement to raise taxes after 2012 for the wealthy, Mr. Obama indicated that his party would support slowly increasing the eligibility age for Medicare to 67 from 65 and changing the formula for cost-of-living increases in Social Security to a less generous one that some economists consider more accurate.

Until Mr. Perry’s recent entry into the Republican contest, the debate over reining in the projected growth of the entitlement programs focused on the health programs, Medicare and Medicaid. Their projected costs, given the aging of the population and fast-rising medical expenses, are greater and growing faster than those for Social Security.

The turn in both parties toward tackling the cost of the entitlement programs has been building. In 2010, Congressional Democrats approved about $500 billion in future savings from Medicare to help pay for the new health care law, though Republicans attacked them for it in last year’s midterm elections. But the onset of the new deficit committee’s work and Mr. Perry’s scathing critique of social spending has added a new dimension.

At the first meeting of the House-Senate committee on deficit reduction, which is to make recommendations by Nov. 23 for a quick up-or-down vote in Congress, several Republicans said that entitlements were the main cause of annual deficits and should be the panel’s focus.

James E. Clyburn of South Carolina, a House Democratic leader on the panel, said that he was for “smart and compassionate budget cuts” and “ending military adventurism,” but that Congress must not shred Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits.

Separately, the senior Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee, Sander M. Levin of Michigan, circulated a memo listing two dozen options that could squeeze more than $500 billion out of Medicare in the next 10 years. Aides to Mr. Levin said that he was not endorsing the ideas but helping other Democrats understand the sorts of actions that could be taken.
Read more at

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A look at freedom and liberty in the US ten years after 9-11-01

2011-09-07T16:57:00.001-05:00

A recent poll revealed some surprises about how Americans feel about their constitutional rights after ten years of changes in how the Fourth Amendment has been applied in their lives. They still care a great deal about civil liberties protections, even in the face of the need to deal with increased government surveillance. They have differing levels of tolerance for intrusions however, depending on the circumstances.

Readers are encouraged to read the full WaPo article for the details of this truly fascinating poll.

Amplify’d from www.washingtonpost.com

Poll: Americans open to trading off some liberties _ within limits _ to fight terrorism

By Associated Press, Published: September 6

WASHINGTON — Surveillance cameras in public places? Sure. Body scans at airports? Maybe. Snooping in personal email? Not so fast.

Ten years after the 9/11 attacks led to amped-up government surveillance efforts, two-thirds of Americans say it’s fitting to sacrifice some privacy and freedoms in the fight against terrorism, according to a poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

A slim majority — 54 percent — say that if they had to choose between preserving their rights and freedoms and protecting people from terrorists, they’d come down on the side of civil liberties. The public is particularly protective of the privacy of U.S. citizens, voicing sharp opposition to government surveillance of Americans’ emails and phone calls.

The poll asked people to grapple with some of same quandaries that the government and the courts have been wrestling with over the past decade, and even before the 2001 terrorist attacks.

Two-thirds of those surveyed believe the resulting policies are a mish-mash created in reaction to events as they occur rather than clearly planned.

The AP-NORC poll found that about half of those surveyed felt that they have indeed lost some of their own personal freedoms to fight terrorism. Was it worth it? Close to half of those who thought they’d lost freedoms doubted it was necessary.

Overall, six in 10 say the government is doing enough to protect Americans’ rights and freedoms as it fights terrorism. But people may not even be aware of what they’ve given up. The extent of government eavesdropping and surveillance is something of a mystery.
Read more at www.washingtonpost.com

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Why President Obama was smart to reschedule his jobs speech - The Fix - The Washington Post

2011-09-01T07:17:00.002-05:00

Image via Wikipedia

Why President Obama was smart to reschedule his jobs speech - The Fix - The Washington Post:

To summarize an excellent analysis by Chris Cillizza, here are three good reasons to move the speech from Wednesday to Thursday of next week:

1) - No one wins a process fight. .
2) - Get the last word. . .
3) - Pick your audience. . .

Readers will gain good insight from Cillizza's thinking here. It is also interesting to see how an excellent opening photo illustration can make a political point.

'via Blog this'

About Google Trends – Google Trends

2011-08-27T16:32:00.001-05:00

About Google Trends

With Google Trends, you can compare the world’s interest in your favorite topics. Enter up to five topics and see how often they’ve been searched on Google over time. Google Trends also shows how frequently your topics have appeared in Google News stories, and in which geographic regions people have searched for them most.

How does Google Trends work?
How accurate and up-to-date is the information provided by Google Trends?
When will Google Trends be available for my country or language?

About Hot Searches

With Hot Searches, you can see a snapshot of what’s on the public’s collective mind by viewing the fastest-rising searches for different points of time. You can see a list of today’s top 40 fastest-rising search queries in the U.S. You can also select a recent date in history to see what the top rising searches were and what the search activity looked like over the course of that day. Hot Searches are updated hourly.

How does Hot Searches work?
Is the list of Hot Searches comprehensive?

Working with Google Trends

How many terms can I compare? And what other functionality is available?
How is the data scaled?
Is the News reference volume graph scaled?
Is the data normalized?
Do the numbers on the graph reflect actual search traffic numbers?
I see a number next to my search term at the top of the graph. What does it mean?
When comparing two or more search terms, I sometimes see results with all zeros. Why?
Is there a way to adjust how the terms are ranked and scaled?
How does counting and ranking of the top regions, cities, and languages work, and are they scaled differently?
How is information gathered to determine the regions, cities, and languages?
How do I change the time frame, region, or sub-region of the results?
Is there a way to export the data?
How does the geographical assignment change from 1/1/2011 affect the data I see?

Privacy and Terms of Use

When is it okay to use the information I find on Google Trends?
This tool makes search information public. What about my personal search data?

1. How does Google Trends work?

Google Trends analyzes a portion of Google web searches to compute how many searches have been done for the terms you enter, relative to the total number of searches done on Google over time. We then show you a graph with the results – our Search Volume Index graph.
Located beneath the Search Volume Index graph is our News reference volume graph. This graph shows you the number of times your topic appeared in Google News stories. When Google Trends detects a spike in the volume of news stories for a particular search term, it labels the graph and displays the headline of an automatically selected Google News story written near the time of that spike. Currently, only English-language headlines are displayed, but we hope to support non-English headlines in the future.
Below the search and news volume graphs, Trends displays the top regions, cities, and languages in which people searched for the first search term you entered.
2. How accurate and up-to-date is the information provided by Google Trends?

The data Trends produces may contain inaccuracies for a number of reasons, including data-sampling issues and a variety of approximations that are used to compute results. We hope you find this service interesting and entertaining, but you probably wouldn’t want to write your Ph.D. dissertation based on the information provided by Trends.
The information provided by Trends is updated daily, and Hot Searches is updated hourly.
3. When will Google Trends be available for my country or language?

Currently, Google Trends is only available in English and in Chinese. Hot Searches is only available in English, but both Singapore and India show information specific to their regions. We hope to roll out Google Trends in other regions and languages in the future.
4. How does Hot Searches work?

Hot Searches reflects what people are searching for on Google today. Rather than showing the most popular searches overall, which would always be generic terms like “weather,” Hot Searches highlights searches that experience sudden surges in popularity, and updates that information hourly. Our algorithm analyzes millions of web searches performed on Google and displays those searches that deviate the most from their historic traffic pattern. The algorithm also filters out spam and removes inappropriate material. For each search, Hot Searches shows related searches and a Search Volume Index graph. The page also displays news, blog posts, and web results to give context about why a search may be appearing on the Hot Searches list. You can also choose a date in the past to see what the top Hot Searches were for that date by clicking change date.
5. Is the list of Hot Searches comprehensive?

No. We know there may be numerous queries that experience sudden surges in popularity, but Hot Searches only highlights the top 40 such queries. You can view all 40 searches by clicking More Hot Searches; this list is updated throughout the day. You can also get this list through a feed. To do so, click Site Feed after you’ve clicked More Hot Searches, and follow the instructions.
6. How many terms can I compare? And what other functionality is available?

You can compare up to five terms by separating each one with a comma. For example, to compare “boots” and “sneakers”, simply enter boots, sneakers and click Search Trends.
To see how many searches contained either term, list them and separate with a vertical bar ( | ):
boots | sneakers
To see how many searches were done for either “snow boots” or “sneakers”, use parentheses around the multi-word term: (snow boots) | sneakers.
You can also exclude terms from your search by using the minus sign. For instance, to see how many searches contained the term “boots” but not “hiking”, enter boots-hiking.
To restrict your results to only those searches that contain your terms in the specific order you’ve entered them, you can put your terms in quotation marks: "snow boots". (By default, Google Trends will show you all searches that contain the terms you entered in any order.)
Note that when you use any of these advanced features – quotation marks, minus signs, or vertical bars – Trends will only display the Search Volume Index graph. The news portion doesn’t support advanced functionality at this time.
7. How is the data scaled?

The data is scaled based on the average search traffic of the term you’ve entered.
There are two modes of scaling – relative and fixed – and the only difference between them is the time frame that’s used to calculate the average. However, fixed scaling is only available as a .csv export. Please note that the ability to see numbers on the graph and to export this data with either mode of scaling are available only after you’ve signed into your Google Account for Trends.
In relative mode, the data is scaled to the average search traffic for your term (represented as 1.0) during the time period you’ve selected. For example, if you entered the term dogs, the graph you’d see would be scaled to the average of all search traffic for dogs from January 2004 to present. But if you chose a specific time frame – say 2006 – the data would then appear relative to the average of all search traffic for dogs in 2006. Then, let’s suppose that you notice a spike in the graph to 3.5; this spike means that traffic is 3.5 times the average for 2006.
In fixed mode, the data is scaled to the average traffic for your term during a fixed point in time (usually January 2004). In our example, 1.0 would be the average traffic of dogs in January 2004. If you chose 2006 as your time frame, you would be comparing data for dogs in 2006 to its data in January 2004. Since the scale basis (1.0) doesn’t change with time, you can look at different time periods, and relate them to each other. (Note: For keywords without a historical record, it may not be possible to establish a fixed scale).
8. Is the News reference volume graph scaled?

No. The graph is for illustrative purposes, and simply shows you the number of times your topic appeared in Google News stories.
9. Is the data normalized?

All results from Google Trends are normalized, which means that we’ve divided the sets of data by a common variable to cancel out the variable’s effect on the data and allow the underlying characteristics of the data sets to be compared. If we didn’t normalize the results, and instead displayed the absolute rankings of cities, they wouldn’t be all that interesting – a densely populated area like New York City would be the top city for many results simply because there are lots of searches from that area.
Remember, Google Trends shows users’ propensity to search for a certain topic on Google on a relative basis. For example, just because a particular region isn’t on the Top Regions list for the term “haircut” doesn’t necessarily mean that people there have decided to stage a mass rebellion against society’s conventions. It could be that people in that region might not use Google to find a barber, use a different term when doing their searches, or simply search for so many other topics unrelated to haircuts, that searches for “haircut” comprise a small portion of the search volume from that region as compared to other regions.
10. Do the numbers on the graph reflect actual search traffic numbers?

No. The numbers you see on the y-axis of the Search Volume Index (which you can see after you’ve signed in to your Google Account) aren’t absolute search traffic numbers. Instead, Trends scales the first term you’ve entered so that its average search traffic in the chosen time period is 1.0; subsequent terms are then scaled relative to the first term. Note that all numbers are relative to total traffic.
Read more about how we scale and normalize the data.
11. I see a number next to my search term at the top of the graph. What does this mean?

The number you see next to your search term corresponds to its total average traffic in the time frame you’ve chosen.
When comparing multiple search terms on a relative scale, the first term you enter will always be 1.0, as subsequent terms are ranked and scaled against this term. For example, you may see: blogs (1.0) and newspapers (0.51). In this case, newspapers has approximately half the searches of blogs.
If you export the data to a .csv file and you’ve selected fixed scaling, 1.0 corresponds to the average traffic for the search term in fixed point of time (usually January 2004), and all numbers are relative to this point. If you chose a time frame of 2007, the number you see for blogs (for example, 5.82) would mean that blogs has had approximately 5.8 times more relative traffic in 2007 than it had in January 2004. Similarly, the the number you see for newspapers (2.05) means that newspapers has about 2 times more traffic in 2007 than blogs had in 2004.
Note that the ratio between these numbers always remains constant and corresponds to how the keywords compare to each other; only the scaling basis (or the meaning of 1.0) changes.
Learn more about scaling.
12. When comparing two or more search terms, I sometimes see results with all zeros. Why?

If you see all zeros for one of your search terms, it could be that the term doesn’t have enough search volume to be reflected on a graph. It’s also possible that the term’s search volume is insignificant compared to the other terms you’ve entered. In those cases, the system will automatically rank your results by whichever term has greater search volume.
13. Is there a way to adjust how the terms are ranked and scaled?

Yes. Use the drop-down menu underneath the graph to change the search term by which all the data will be ranked and scaled (to 1.0). If you have more than one search term, the other terms will be ranked to the first one you’ve entered.
14. How does counting and ranking of the top regions, cities, and languages work, and are they scaled differently?

To rank the top regions, cities, or languages, Google Trends first looks at a sample of all Google searches to determine the areas or languages from which we received the most searches for your first term. Then, for those top cities, Google Trends calculates the ratio of searches for your term coming from each city divided by total Google searches coming from the same city. The city ranking you see on the page and the bar charts alongside each city name both represent this ratio. When cities’ ratios are fairly close together, the corresponding bar graphs will be roughly the same length, and the exact ranking between these cities is less meaningful.
If you export the data to a .csv file, you’ll see numbers for the top regions and cities. These numbers are based on a scale where the top region or city for the search term which you’ve ranked the data by will be 1.0.
15. How is information gathered to determine the regions, cities, and languages?

Google Trends uses IP address information from our server logs to make a best guess about where queries originated. Language information is determined by the language version of the Google site where the search originated.
16. How can I change the time frame, region, or sub-region of the results?

Once you’ve entered your search terms, you can use the drop-down boxes at the top of the results page to restrict your results to a particular time frame or region. The restrictions will affect both the Search Volume Index graph and the News reference volume graph. Please note that News reference volume may not be available for every region.
When you restrict your results to a specific year or multi-year period, each point on the graph will represent a week’s worth of searches. When you restrict the results to a specific month, each point on the graph will represent one day of searches.
17. Is there a way to export the data?

Yes. You can export the data to a .csv file, which can be opened in most spreadsheet applications. Click Export this page to a CSV file at the bottom of the page. You can choose to export the file with relative or fixed scaling. You’ll also see numbers corresponding to the bars under the Regions, Cities, and Languages columns.
The .csv file will also contain data for the top regions, cities, and languages for your search term. Read how this data is counted and ranked.
Along with the search index volume data, the file will include the upper bound of relative standard error for each data point. In your spreadsheet application, every column with search index data will be followed by a column of corresponding relative standard error. This information can be used to calculate the confidence interval for a data point.
Please note that since the news data isn’t scaled, it won’t be included in the file.
18. How does the geographical assignment change from 1/1/2011 affect the data I see?

On July 12, 2011 we rolled out a significant improvement to our geographical assignment. The improvement allows us to provide even better geo-location data for search queries. This update was applied retroactively from January 1, 2011 and may manifest itself in certain queries as a discontinuity in the trend line.
19. When is it okay to use the information I find on Google Trends?

You’re free to use any of the information you find on Google Trends, subject to the Terms of Use. If you choose to use the information, please make sure to appropriately attribute it to Google.
20. This tool makes search information public. What about my personal search data?

You can rest assured your personal search data remains safe and private. Our graphs are based on aggregated data from millions of searches done on Google over time. Moreover, the results Google Trends displays are produced entirely by an automated formula. As an additional measure, Trends only returns results for terms that receive a significant amount of search traffic.

via google.com

This is a handy tool you might want to bookmark.

Posted via email from Southwest Postings

My post today is the latest from Propublica's investigation into "fracking."

2011-08-27T07:43:00.001-05:00

ProPublica, a nonprofit journalism organization has a number of ongoing investigations. One I have followed is titled "Fracking - Gas Drilling's Environmental Threat." It is about "the promise of abundant natural gas is colliding with fears about water contamination.

Where I live in Texas is one of the most active gas drilling areas around. It adds revenue to our city and county coffers, but takes away from my feelings of environmental safety and protection of citizen interests. The series makes my point. This article is by Nicholas Kusnetz, written August 12, 2011.

Amplify’d from www.propublica.org

Report for Obama Questions Effectiveness of Gas Drilling Regulations

In sharp contrast with gas industry portrayals, the draft report released yesterday by a federal panel on shale gas drilling [1] explicitly acknowledges that current regulations may be insufficient to protect the environment and public health.

For years, the gas industry has said that drilling with hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, into deep shale formations is safe. The federal government has been caught in an awkward position, limited from regulating the industry by exemptions written into federal environmental laws, while also working to promote domestic energy production.

The draft report continues to promote drilling, but it comes down squarely on the side of stronger oversight. It notes serious environmental impacts from shale gas drilling and says it is "far from clear" whether federal and state regulations are protecting the public.

"If effective environmental action is not taken today," the report says, "the potential environmental consequences will grow to a point that the country will be faced (with) a more serious problem."

Many of the panel's recommendations already have been adopted by some states and members of the drilling industry over the last couple of years, including disclosure of chemicals used in fracking and better well construction.

Some go further. The report recommends that companies monitor air quality on drilling sites and publish those results. It also calls for limits on emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas and the primary component of natural gas.

"I think we're lifting the bar a bit," said John Deutch, chairman of the panel. Deutch is a former CIA director, has worked for the Energy Department and also sits on the board of two energy companies.

Across the board, the panel recommended making more information available to the public in order to create transparency and give a sense that progress is being made, Deutch said.

President Obama commissioned the report in March from Energy Secretary Steven Chu, who later appointed the seven-member panel. The panel was given 90 days

—ending Thursday—to come up with immediate steps that can be taken by regulators and drillers.

The report released yesterday doesn't recommend any specific regulations, leaving that to state and federal agencies. Many recommendations rely on industry cooperation.

"Whether and how these recommendations will be implemented is absolutely the critical question," said Matt Watson, senior energy policy manager at the Environmental Defense Fund. That organization's president, Fred Krupp, was the panel's only member from an environmental group.

The report is notable in part because of the makeup of the panel. Some environmentalists, academics and state lawmakers have criticized the group, saying that six of the seven members have financial ties to oil and gas companies [2]. Watson, who was not among that group of environmentalists, said the members' biographies could make the recommendations carry more weight.

"Some of them are quite bold," he said of the findings, "and it's noteworthy that a group like this panel, which is made up of members with very diverse backgrounds, would come to consensus."

Some aspects of the report are in clear conflict with industry characterizations. For example, the report says that the oft-repeated industry line—that fracking has been performed safely for decades—is insufficient to quell concerns. Instead, it says, the industry must monitor its own activities and make those results public.

The Independent Petroleum Association of America, an industry group, issued a statement calling the report a "useful starting point" for achieving improved safety. The group did not respond to a request for comment.

On the central question in the debate over fracking—whether millions of gallons of fluids injected deep in the earth can migrate through cracks and contaminate aquifers—the panel took a nuanced view. The report says there is a slight chance of that happening, but it does not rule out the possibility, saying "few if any" cases have been confirmed. Deutch said they chose the wording out of caution, not because they are aware of any cases.

"This all depends upon how prudent a person you are," he said. "If you say 'no cases,' one is going to turn up."

Some advocates said the panel's recommendations fell short of what is needed to protect the public. Dusty Horwitt, senior counsel for the Environmental Working Group, said he was disappointed that the report made no mention of the many exemptions for oil and gas companies from major environmental laws like the Safe Drinking Water Act and the Clean Air Act. While he supports many of the recommendations, he said it is unclear how they will translate into better practices.

"The question is, who is going to enforce some of these reforms that the panel is calling for?" he said. "We have laws on the books that could prevent some of the problems that the panel and others are interested in solving, but the panel was silent about those laws."

The report comes amid a robust public relations effort from the industry arguing that drilling and fracking are safe. As concerns have grown, companies have been running full-page spreads in newspapers [3] and putting ads on TV.

ProPublica has been reporting on the safety and environmental risks of gas drilling for three years. Previous investigations have detailed many of the problems addressed in these recommendations, including doubts over the climate benefits of natural gas [4], gaps in the disclosure of fracking chemicals [5] and problems with wastewater disposal [6].

Although many of the panel's recommendations have already been adopted or considered by state governments and the EPA, the report is significant in its acknowledgement of the threats, said Amy Mall, a senior policy analyst with the Natural Resources Defense Council.

"What's important here are the underlying findings: that there are problems that need to be fixed, and that they can be fixed."

Two of the most significant recommendations involve water use and air quality. The EPA proposed rules last month that would reduce emissions [7] of smog-forming and toxic air pollutants from many stages of the drilling process. The report calls for a broader approach that would encompass more operations and that would also limit methane emissions.

The panelists also called for a systemic approach to water use that would track every step from withdrawal to disposal. Most states do not track exactly how much of the fluids pumped underground in fracking returns to the surface as waste—as much as 90 percent can remain.

Other recommendations call for the creation of a public database linking to disparate sources of information on fracking and shale gas drilling, and for more research and development from the government (the Energy Department recently announced $10.3 million in grants for shale gas research [8]). Deutch said the proposals call for about $75 million in new federal spending on these initiatives.

The draft will be reviewed by an Energy Department committee next week before being finalized. Over the next 90 days, the panelists will use the recommendations to come up with specific advice for the Department of Interior, which regulates drilling on federal land, and the EPA. It will be up to those agencies to pursue any rulemaking they decide is necessary.

ProPublica

Journalism in the public interest.

Read more at www.propublica.org

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What's in a name?

2011-08-08T17:16:00.004-05:00

Today President called for Congress to "use common sense and compromise." Neither legislative body yet seems broadly in the mood to do the dreaded deed, "compromise." Why is that? According to Dictionary.com, here are the four meanings of the word compromise:
1. noun - a settlement of differences by mutual concessions; an agreement reached by adjustment of conflicting or opposing claims, principles, etc., by reciprocal modification of demands.
2. noun - the result of such settlement
noun - something intermediate between different things: The split-level is a compromise between a ranch house and a multi-storied house.
4. noun - an endangering, especially of reputation, exposure to danger, suspicion, etc.: a compromise of one's integrity.

Compromise." Look at the different ways the word can be defined between numbers 1 and 4, from agreement to endangerment. No wonder it is something to be sought after by some and avoided by others. Here is an illustration. In his 8/4/11 - CQ Roll Call Daily Briefing, David Hawkings said,

. . . The first poll since the completion of the debt deal, conducted by Gallup for USA Today, shows 46 percent disapproval for the package and 39 percent approval. Among the all-important independents, 50 percent disapproved and 33 percent backed the compromise. The opinions on the left and right were predictable, but signaled that Obama and Biden had succeeded — at least initially — at framing the deal more to their base’s liking than Boehner and McConnell. While 58 percent of Democrats and 51 percent of liberals express support for the legislation, fully 64 percent of Republicans and 64 percent of conservatives say they opposed it. (The poll of 1,012 adults was taken Tuesday and has a 4 point margin of error.)

Notice that the term "debt deal" is more often preferred than the term "compromise," the result of a settlement between the parties. On the previous day Hawkings did use the term "compromise" in a quote he included. Perhaps it is because there was precious little middle ground to be found between such different views. To quote,

QUOTE OF NOTE: “I don’t see any momentum for more compromise after this deal than there was before. Maybe less,” Mark Halperin said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” this morning — reinstated a month after being dropped indefinitely for calling the president “kind of a dick” on the air.

The two extremes along the political spectrum are afraid of compromise. In an August 2 Roll Call article, steamed activists are planning to disrupt forums. To quote:

As leaders attempted to sell the rank and file on the parameters of the compromise, Congress struck with President Barack Obama, tea party groups and liberal organizations alike bristled and promised that they will not be forgiving come the next election.

Members of the rank and file are angry that their leaders struck any kind of compromise, despite the very real danger of debt default. It seems they fear their reputations will be endangered by giving another inch of ground. This is the rigidity of unbending ideology. The results of such politics today were marked by a 500+ point drop on the NYSE.

Posted via email from Southwest Postings - 8/8/11

How hot is it?

2011-08-08T08:22:00.000-05:00

Image via Wikipedia

[7/8/11] Where I live - in Fort Worth, Texas it feels "hotter than Hades." On any recent afternoon the thermometer - in the shade - on our back porch has been reading 105, 108, or 110 degrees.

What this means is that our ten year-old Corgi, Scooter, cannot spend any quiet time away from us on the patio. It means a high water bill merely keeping our mature shrubs alive. It means wearing a straw hat if the time outside is longer than just a few moments. If there is any wind it feels like standing near a blast furnace in a steel mill, though I've never personally seen such a furnace.

City folk and country folk alike are in trouble. If you do not have air conditioning, your life can be at risk. People who work outside mast take care to avoid heat strokes. And our dangerously high temperatures are combined with a severe drought. Gardens, parks crops, and livestock are suffering.

There seems to be no end in sight.

Technorati tags: heatwave

My Other Blogs: Check out my Amplify blog for synopses of current news stories. My creative website is Making Good Mondays. Follow me at Twitter. And Carol Gee - Online Universe is the home page for all my websites.

Soon there will be another rover headed to Mars

2011-07-26T09:22:00.001-05:00

Though we still have one active Mars rover sending us information, NASA is excited by the next phase of Mars exploration via robotics. The new rover, named Curiosity, will be far ahead of its predecessors in size, capacity and complexity. It has 17 cameras, for example.

I cannot wait to see the outcomes!

Amplify’d from www.nasa.gov

NASA'S Next Mars Rover To Land At Gale Crater

WASHINGTON -- NASA's next Mars rover will land at the foot of a layered mountain inside the planet's Gale crater.

The car-sized Mars Science Laboratory, or Curiosity, is scheduled to launch late this year and land in August 2012. The target crater spans 96 miles (154 kilometers) in diameter and holds a mountain rising higher from the crater floor than Mount Rainier rises above Seattle. Gale is about the combined area of Connecticut and Rhode Island. Layering in the mound suggests it is the surviving remnant of an extensive sequence of deposits. The crater is named for Australian astronomer Walter F. Gale.

During a prime mission lasting one Martian year -- nearly two Earth years -- researchers will use the rover's tools to study whether the landing region had favorable environmental conditions for supporting microbial life and for preserving clues about whether life ever existed.

In 2006, more than 100 scientists began to consider about 30 potential landing sites during worldwide workshops. Four candidates were selected in 2008.

Curiosity is about twice as long and more than five times as heavy as any previous Mars rover. Its 10 science instruments include two for ingesting and analyzing samples of powdered rock that the rover's robotic arm collects. A radioisotope power source will provide heat and electric power to the rover. A rocket-powered sky crane suspending Curiosity on tethers will lower the rover directly to the Martian surface.

The portion of the crater where Curiosity will land has an alluvial fan likely formed by water-carried sediments. The layers at the base of the mountain contain clays and sulfates, both known to form in water.

Curiosity will go beyond the "follow-the-water" strategy of recent Mars exploration. The rover's science payload can identify other ingredients of life, such as the carbon-based building blocks of biology called organic compounds. Long-term preservation of organic compounds requires special conditions. Certain minerals, including some Curiosity may find in the clay and sulfate-rich layers near the bottom of Gale's mountain, are good at latching onto organic compounds and protecting them from oxidation.

"Gale gives us attractive possibilities for finding organics, but that is still a long shot," said Michael Meyer, lead scientist for NASA's Mars Exploration Program at agency headquarters. "What adds to Gale's appeal is that, organics or not, the site holds a diversity of features and layers for investigating changing environmental conditions, some of which could inform a broader understanding of habitability on ancient Mars."

The rover and other spacecraft components are being assembled and undergoing final testing. The mission is targeted to launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida between Nov. 25 and Dec. 18. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena manages the mission for the agency's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

To view the landing site and for more information about the mission, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/msl
Read more at www.nasa.gov

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About time

2011-07-26T05:16:00.001-05:00

The time is running out for raising the debt ceiling limit. There is no real question about that from people who know the actual facts. But for people who choose to remain willfully ignorant, the passage of time seems not to be a problem. We have no really coherent energy policy in the face of persistent climate change, for example.

For those who hold our futures in their legislative hands, those who govern us, ignorance is no excuse for bad behavior - "full-tilt Tea Party crazy" - as Salon's Joan Walsh described it. Unfortunately, purposeful ignorance of the stark economic facts is an existential reality with which far too many of the new members of Congress seem quite comfortable.

Too many of our U.S. Senators and Representatives have been operating within a political time frame, not a governing time frame. It would seem that they were working towards being reelected from the day they took the oath of office. And their announced agenda has been to see to the defeat of President Obama in 2012. Where does handling the nation's business come in to play? Cynical right wing extremists refuse to play their part in governance; it would seem they would choose to destroy the government, and the rest of us in the process.

It is about time that citizens make their voices heard about raising the debt ceiling. The rest of the world is watching and waiting. Democratic strategist, Donna Brazile said it well on Twitter,

"President Obama wants you to make your voice heard. If you want a balanced approach to reducing the deficit, let Congress know ASAP. Thanks."

It will not take much of your time to do your part. To stop this Congressional dance at the edge of the world's economic cliff, the American people need only to make a little fuss.
Contact your U.S. Senators and U.S. Representatives. You can even Tweet a message to your representatives. Let your senators and representatives know that you will watch and hold them accountable for their votes.

It is time for members of Congress to understand that the legislative actions they take, in the days between now and August 2, will have predictable consequences for them in the very next elections.

Posted via email from Southwest Postings

Does financial consumer protection have a chance?

2011-07-21T01:50:00.001-05:00

Since the Dodd-Frank Financial Regulatory reform bill was signed into law, vested interests have been trying to weaken it, kill it or emasculate it. Set to go into force today, we are waiting to see what happens. I am not optimistic.

The story is by Lois Beckett of the nonprofit news organization operating in the public interest:

ProPublica, July 20, 2011, 4:26 p.m

Amplify’d from www.propublica.org

Will Innovative New Financial Regulator Be Hobbled Before It Even Starts?

These heat maps show two model mortgage forms that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau posted on its website to illustrate the number of comments generated by each part. (Photo courtesy of Consumer Financial Protection Bureau)

Want to know what people find most confusing about mortgage disclosure documents? Then check out these heat maps created by a new government regulatory agency.

e than 13,000 comments on the documents, and the maps show which parts of the fo

The heat maps show two model mortgage forms that the agency posted on its website [1]. Users left more than 13,000 comments on the documents, and the maps show which parts of the form generated the most comments—which may indicate, among other things, which parts are the most difficult to understand.

This more inclusive approach to regulation is one of the hallmarks of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau [2], a politically contentious agency that will open for business this Thursday.

The agency is trying to draw in consumers, since one of its jobs is to make sure that consumers understand the financial deals they're making. It has a candy-colored website [2] that looks more like a social media start-up than a cluttered .gov page. It turned to Twitter [3] for a pre-launch "Open for Suggestions" campaign and then posted response videos [2] on its YouTube page [4].

"Its openness thus far suggests the tantalizing possibility that it could be the nation's first open-source regulator," New York Times personal finance columnist Ron Lieber wrote last week [5].

Created as a result of last year's financial reform law, the agency is supposed to be a "cop on the beat" overseeing consumer financial products such as mortgages, credit cards and payday loans.

But just how effective the bureau will be is still in question, in large part because of a partisan battle on Capitol Hill over how much power the agency should have to police banks and other financial institutions.

As part of a wider attack on last year's Dodd-Frank legislation [6], a group of Republican legislators have promised to block the bureau from operating fully unless its ability to police businesses is put under bipartisan control.

Republicans want to replace [7] the bureau's director—nominated by the president—with a five-member bipartisan board. They also want to make it easier for the bureau's rules to be overturned, while some are also demanding that Congress be given control over the bureau's budget.

Republicans have promised to filibuster the appointment of the bureau's director (the nominee is former Ohio attorney general, and Jeopardy star, Richard Cordray [8]) until their demands are met.

Like many other news outlets, the financial news service Bloomberg lambasted the changes in an editorial [9] on Tuesday, saying it would politicize the agency and make it slower.

The bureau "was designed to move quickly (like the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.) and not ploddingly (like the SEC, where three commissioners must pre-approve nearly everything the agency does)," Bloomberg opined.

At the moment, the bureau gets its funding from the Federal Reserve. This is a good thing, Bloomberg concluded, because it means the bureau is "insulated from the partisan funding fights that have hamstrung the SEC, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and other regulators."

It's worth noting that the SEC, whose job to investigate and prosecute companies for financial fraud was expanded under Dodd-Frank, recently had its budget cut by $222.5 million [10] by the Republican-controlled House appropriations committee.

The bureau's opponents aren't backing down. Forty-four Republican senators have signed a letter vowing to oppose [11] the confirmation of any agency chief until the new regulator is restructured. On Tuesday, a key Republican senator described Cordrary, the current nominee, as "dead on arrival [8]." President Obama could bypass this issue by pushing the director through in a recess appointment [12]. (The Senate's current recess is on hold due to debt ceiling negotiations [13].)

Until the bureau has a confirmed director, its regulatory powers are limited in significant ways [14]. As the Los Angeles Times has noted [15]:

The agency won't have power, for instance, to crack down on mortgage brokers, some of which helped lead the nation into the housing debacle four years ago. It also won't have authority over other largely unregulated sectors of the financial services industry, such as payday lenders and remittance companies such as Western Union, that it was created to police.

But as the political battle rages on and media scrutiny focuses on Elizabeth Warren's political future [16], little attention has been given to what the bureau has actually done. And its initial efforts are interesting, especially because they show a commitment to open government [17] and real public engagement. (Ron Lieber noted [18] that its blog actually accepts comments—"unlike, say, the White House's.")

The bureau's mission is to create transparency in an industry dominated by confusing claims and mouse print [19]. Good design isn't just a perk here—it's fundamental to the bureau's regulatory efforts.

Case in point: One of the CFPB's top priorities has been streamlining [1] the federally required mortgage disclosure documents. If that sounds like a mouthful, it's worse on paper: two separate, complicated forms that are confusing for customers and, the bureau contends [20], also burdensome for many mortgage servicers to fill out.

The goal is to replace them with a single, two-page document that clearly answers the questions: "Can I afford this mortgage?" and "Can I get a better deal somewhere else?"

Two of the potential designs [21] for the new form [22] each have a note at the top, in bold print: "You have no obligation to choose this loan. Shop around to find the best loan for you."

The bureau's other projects [20] include improving transparency about credit card prices and fees, the exchange rates used for remittance transfers of money to other countries and the credit scores sold to consumers and creditors.

It's worth noting that, while the financial industry has lobbied heavily against the bureau [23], its efforts may actually help businesses in the long run.

In a recent letter [24] to shareholders JP Morgan Chase's chief executive, Jamie Dimon [25], noted that the company does not oppose the bureau. "If the CFPB does its job well, the agency will benefit American consumers and the system," Dimon told shareholders. "Strong regulatory standards, adequate review of new products and transparency to consumers all are good things."

New Yorker financial columnist James Surowiecki [26] has argued that the financial industry should see the creation of a bureau as a boon, not a threat [27]. "Meatpackers hated the Meat Inspection Act of 1906, but it rescued the industry from the aftereffects of the publication of ‘The Jungle,' " Surowiecki wrote. "At a time when Americans profoundly distrust the financial industry ... [the CFPB] could turn out to be the friend banks never knew they needed."
Read more at www.propublica.org

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This and that from the recent past:

2011-07-21T01:02:00.001-05:00

From my regular contributor, Jon:

Just Amazing!
NY-born twin friars die on same day at age 92 - Yahoo! News (6/5/11).
Study: Man's Best Friend Is Also a Mind Reader - Yahoo! News (6/13/11).

Speaking of Excess . . .
What Does a $500 Million Golf Course Look Like? - Yahoo! Travel (6/19/11).
The American Police State is the 'New Normal' - Yahoo! News (6/26/11).

Texas tidbits:
The Cracks in Rick Perry’s Job-Growth Record - Swampland at Time (6/27/11).
Texas debt growing at faster rate than Federal government's - Ft. Worth Star-Telegram (7/13/11)

Jon adds, "I would like to hear little Ricky explain this."

And from Diane of Nevada:
Growing vegetables in your yard against the law? - Natural News Alert (6/17/11).

Thanks, as always.

Posted via email from Behind These Links

This month's little gems from my regular contributor, Jon.

2011-05-30T08:25:00.001-05:00

Texas' Headlines -

Texas Governor Rick Perry says he will consider running for president (5/27/11), is from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

A Texas Log Cabin for $4 Million is from Yahoo! Real Estate (4/25/11).

Guest column from the Texas Tribune: Don't mess with my district, (4/25/11).

Pier 1 and Radio Shack: Which is on better footing for the future? (4/23/11) is from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

Headlines from elsewhere -

Blackbeard's anchor is recovered off the North Carolina coast (5/27/11), is from Yahoo! News.

Activist Post: 10 Indications the United States Is a Dictatorship, (5/10/11).

War Dog - A Photo Essay by Rebecca Frankel, from Foreign Policy Magazine (5/4/11).

Officials: A popular cop in Alaska is an illegal immigrant (4/23/11) is from Yahoo! News.

Poll: Americans strongly oppose some deficit proposals (4/20/11) is from the Washington Post.

The super rich see their federal taxes drop dramatically (4/18/11), from Yahoo! News.

via ScribeFire

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VA must address widespread mental health issues

2011-05-12T08:31:00.000-05:00

As has most often been the case, mental health is not as well treated as physical health when it comes to health care benefits. The Veterans Administration has responsibility to treat veterans and to treat them well. This important article by the public interest journalism organization, Propublica, explains.

Remember that these programs are also vulnerable to the budget cutting fever now spreading across the country.

Amplify’d from www.propublica.org

Brain Wars

How the Military Is Failing Its Wounded

More than Half of Recent War Vets Treated by VA Are Struggling With Mental Health Problems

by Joaquin Sapien

ProPublica, May 11, 2011, 11:31 a.m.

More than half of all Iraq and Afghanistan veterans treated in Department of Veterans Affairs hospitals since 2002 have been diagnosed, at least preliminarily, with mental health problems, according to statistics [1] obtained by the advocacy group Veterans for Common Sense.

The data, which is released quarterly, also shows that the raw number of returning soldiers with psychological problems is rising. Nearly 18,000 new patients were treated for mental health issues at VA facilities in the last three months of last year—the most recent time period for which data is available— upping the total to more than 330,000 [1].

The latest numbers confirm a trend that has intensified over the last several years. Paul Sullivan, the executive director of Veterans for Common Sense, said that when the organization first began to collect the data in late 2004, only 20 percent of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans in VA hospitals had been diagnosed with mental problems.

The increase should come as no surprise given that a recent military survey, obtained by ProPublica and other media outlets, shows that U.S. troops in Afghanistan are currently reporting lower morale and greater emotional strain than at any other time in the last five years.

That report [2] notes that mental health staffing has doubled in warzones in order to ensure treatment is available immediately for soldiers who suffer psychological trauma.

Sullivan applauded the increase in staff abroad, but questioned what’s being done to make sure that troubled troops are properly cared for once they come home.

“We truly support having more doctors in warzones, that’s great,” Sullivan said. “But we also need to make sure we have enough doctors here.”

Laurie Tranter, a spokeswoman for the VA, told ProPublica that the agency has increased the number of mental health staff in the U.S. by more than 40 percent since 2002 to more than 20,000. Tranter suggested that the increase in veterans diagnosed with and treated for mental health problems may, in part, reflect more proactive screening and better access to services.

Pressure is mounting on the military and the VA to fix long-standing shortfalls in mental health care.

A federal appeals court issued a scathing opinion of the VA’s system yesterday, noting that it takes an average of four years for veterans to receive mental health benefits, a beleaguered process that demands immediate reform.

Writing for a three-judge panel, Judge Stephen Reinhart said, “Although the VA is obligated to provide veterans mental health services, many veterans with severe depression or post-traumatic stress disorder (“PTSD”) are forced to wait weeks for mental health referrals… For those who commit suicide in the interim, care does not come soon enough.”

As reported [3] by the Associated Press, the ruling by the 9^th Circuit Court of Appeals overturns a 2008 verdict [4] and sends the case, which was filed against the VA by veterans’ advocates, back to U.S. District Court for resolution.
Read more at www.propublica.org

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Are you among those being watched?

2011-05-11T05:57:00.001-05:00

Because of a long standing interest in the erosion of civil liberties since 9/11/01, this little blurb caught my eye. Sadly, there has been little change for the better from the Bush administration to the current Obama administration.

Amplify’d from www.democracynow.org

FBI Surveillance Dramatically Increases

Newly released government data shows that FBI surveillance is on the rise. In 2010, the FBI more than doubled the number of U.S. persons it targeted with National Security Letters. Meanwhile, the number of electronic and physical searches under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act increased by 13 percent. The secretive FISA court was asked to approve 1,506 requests last year for secret electronic surveillance—the court approved every one.

Read more at www.democracynow.org

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More dibs and dabs to digest

2011-04-18T08:01:00.001-05:00

An article that should disgust you -- A California Orange County (tea party activist) Republican allegedly sent an offensive Obama email (depicting the President as an ape) - from Yahoo! News. The County Republican Chairman, Scott Baugh was quoted as saying,

. . . that he wants an ethics investigation into the incident.
"It's just highly inappropriate, it's a despicable message, it drips with racism and I think she should step down from the committee," said Baugh.

If you live in an area where there is a lot of drilling for natural gas, this recent study found that fracking for natural gas is more hazardous than burning coal - according to Yahoo! News.

And finally, you will be amazed by the following three items:

Safes, cash washed up on Japan shores after the tsunami -according to an April 10 story from Yahoo! News.
We learn of a World War Two era German Dornier 17 bomber that was found intact underwater - from Yahoo! News Photos.
"The Little Things In Life" is the title of a set of 20 amazing photos from Live Science. Immense magnification is the secret technique.

via ScribeFire

Posted via email from Behind These Links

Mentally ill becoming more at risk.

2011-03-09T07:50:00.001-06:00

As a retired mental health care professional, I am worried about all the folks that have become more vulnerable due to a lack of services. Slashing clinic, outpatient and services to homeless people does not mean the problems go away. People in the midst of a mental health crisis land in jail, in shelters or on the street if they cannot stay at home. They will not go away because we ignore or neglect them. The costs in other forms will remain.

I believe that the mark of a nation is how it takes care of its most vulnerable citizens. Wall Street is doing just fine, thank you very much. Not so for far too many others.

Amplify’d from news.yahoo.com

State budget cuts decimate mental health services

By KRISTEN WYATT, Associated Press Kristen Wyatt, Associated Press

DENVER – State budget writers looking for cash to balance the books have stripped a cumulative $1.8 billion from mental health services over the last 2 1/2 years, putting the public at risk as the mentally ill crowd emergency rooms and prisons, according to the nation's largest mental health advocacy group.

The Washington-based National Alliance on Mental Illness tallied state budget cuts to mental health services between 2008 and today and found that 32 states and Washington, D.C., cut funding just as economic stressors such as layoffs and home foreclosures boosted demand for services.

In many states, the picture is likely to get uglier for those relying on state mental services. Starting this summer, some $87 billion in federal stimulus money for Medicaid assistance to the states starts drying up. Because virtually all Medicaid-funded mental health services are optional, states projecting another couple years of budget deficits are likely to chop mental health services further.

Arizona cut mental health services more than $57 million between 2009 and 2010, reducing or cutting services for about 14,000 people. Less well known have been dramatic cuts in dozens more states, which have removed hospital beds and shuttered outpatient services. States have cut staff, reduced clinic hours and trimmed add-on services such as transportation and housing assistance credited for keeping the mentally ill in treatment and off the streets.

Eleven states simply treat fewer people. States with a net reduction in both inpatients and community settings between 2007 and 2009 were Alabama, Alaska, California, Idaho, Illinois, Nebraska, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Virginia and Wyoming. Those numbers come from a federal accounting and are the most recent available; NAMI's report notes that those reductions were made "before the worst of the state budget cuts."

Texas is debating an additional 20 percent cut next year, which would leave some 2,800 youth and adults in eight central Texas counties without services. Tennessee may close community health programs and drug abuse treatment facilities to save $15 million. Massachusetts may eliminate a quarter of the beds in state psychiatric hospitals. And in Kansas, nine of 27 Community Mental Health Centers may have to close their doors.

Mental health advocates insist that cuts don't save money in the long run.

Cuts can strike even harder in rural areas, where mental health services were spotty to begin with.

Mental health advocates hope that the federal health care overhaul taking effect after 2014 will help add services for the mentally ill — but their hopes are dim that things will get better before then.

"It's a bleak time across the board," said Sarah Steverman, director of state policy for Mental Health America, an advocacy group that did not work on the NAMI study.
Read more at news.yahoo.com

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Ties between India and the U.S. become stronger with internet interactions.

2011-03-02T05:43:00.001-06:00

At Carol Gee's Amplog I have acquired a number of followers from India and nearby countries. I feel honored that people so far away are interested in hearing what I have to say.

And, knowing I post in English, makes me admire people who speak my language a half world away. I've always enjoyed the beautiful accent that I hear when talking to a customer assistant from one of my services. I smiled when I talked to "Peter," not his real name, who was so helpful and courteous as I brought my computer back to life with his help.

I am learning more by following all of you and enjoy the opportunities to see what interests you. Thanks and Peace.

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Good news to begin your week from Ezra Klein - "Wonkbook" at the Washington Post: Government shutdown delayed.

2011-02-28T08:42:00.001-06:00

One of my TV pundit favorites is Ezra Klein, a wunderkind bright as a shiny new copper penny. His blog is a roundup of the latest news items that are of particular interest to me, as a Progressive. His site has a good blog-roll and lots of good hot links. Here is a sample of his current work. Enjoy.

Amplify’d from voices.washingtonpost.com

At least for a few weeks. Late on Friday, House GOP leadership unveiled a two-week extension of government funding that cuts $4 billion -- but only goes after programs President Obama targeted for elimination in his budget. For Democrats, that's good enough. Reid spokesman Jon Summers, in a statement that should be taught in political flack school as an example of how to attack your opponent while agreeing with the reasonable compromise measure they've offered, said, "We are encouraged to hear that Republicans are abandoning their demands for extreme measures like cuts to border security, cancer research and food safety inspectors and instead moving closer to Democrats' position that we should cut government spending in a smart, responsible way that targets waste and excess while keeping our economy growing."

And it doesn't bridge the two essential arguments between the Republicans and the Democrats, which are how much spending to cut, and where it should come from. So we can't yet say that disaster is averted. But it is, at the least, delayed.

Events in the Midwest and Middle East could affect the recovery, report Neil Irwin and Michael Fletcher: "Just when the economic recovery seemed to gain momentum, two new threats have emerged that could undermine it. One has flared in the Midwest, the other in the Middle East. The standoff over benefits for public employees in Wisconsin, pitting Gov. Scott Walker (R) against unions and their Democratic allies, presages battles in many state capitals that could lead to hundreds of thousands of public jobs being cut nationwide...Budget cutting is already taking a greater toll than analysts had expected, according to figures released Friday by the Commerce Department...Political turmoil in Libya and other Arab nations, meanwhile, has driven the price of oil up 14 percent this week and is already starting to mean higher prices for American consumers at the gasoline pump. The price spike could buffet global financial markets if the upheaval spreads further."

Still to come: The Senate is taking up patent reform -- and it's proving surprisingly contentious; regulators asre beginning to define what count as 'essential benefits' on the health-care law; governors disagree on how flexible to make health care reform; there is little evidence that public workers are overpaid; the EPA emerges from the short-term spending bill unscathed; and the gritty, live-action Archie movie.

Even Republicans like budget director Jack Lew, reports Lori Montgomery: "At 27, Jacob J. Lew helped save Social Security. At 41, he helped cut a deal to balance the federal budget. During the Clinton administration, he became the only White House budget director in a generation to banish deficit spending. In a city suddenly crawling with would-be deficit-busters, even some Republicans recognize Lew as the real deal. 'You guys did an absolutely magnificent job of managing the nation's fiscal affairs,' Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.) gushed when Lew, in his second stint as White House budget director, appeared last week before the House Budget Committee. 'It's true it was a Republican Congress, but give credit where credit is due. You guys did a great job.' Now President Obama has asked Lew to work that magic again."

Texas' education cuts show the cost of austerity, writes Paul Krugman: "In low-tax, low-spending Texas, the kids are not all right. The high school graduation rate, at just 61.3 percent, puts Texas 43rd out of 50 in state rankings. Nationally, the state ranks fifth in child poverty; it leads in the percentage of children without health insurance. And only 78 percent of Texas children are in excellent or very good health, significantly below the national average. But wait -- how can graduation rates be so low when Texas had that education miracle back when former President Bush was governor? Well, a couple of years into his presidency the truth about that miracle came out: Texas school administrators achieved low reported dropout rates the old-fashioned way -- they, ahem, got the numbers wrong."

Regulators are starting to debate what constitutes "essential care", reports Avery Johnson: "Maggie Haslam's five-year-old autistic son, Drew, has undergone intense behavioral, physical and speech therapy that helped him learn to dress himself and communicate such concepts as 'over' and 'under.' The therapy greatly helped Drew, said Ms. Haslam, a public-relations agent in Silver Spring, Md. But was it essential? The next big issue for the federal health law as it moves toward implementation is how regulators will define so-called essential benefits—the basic medical services that health plans must cover under the law. The legislation gives 10 categories of care that plans must provide for customers of the health-insurance exchanges that are launching in 2014. But the law leaves details up to regulators, who are now starting to develop the rules."

More than half of all states want permission to cuts hundreds of thousands from their Medicaid rolls:

Arne Duncan is urging states to avoid education cuts; http://politi.co/eoR5OW

A product safety database could be killed in House cuts, reports Lyndsey Layton: "The first-ever government database of product safety complaints, which is scheduled to go public in two weeks, could be scrapped as a result of a budget amendment offered by a freshman member of the House. As part of the spending bill that passed the House on Feb. 19, Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-Kan.) won support for a measure to withhold money to implement the system, which is set to launch March 11. The database, which was welcomed by consumer advocates, would make public thousands of complaints received by the Consumer Product Safety Commission each year about safety problems with products, from table lamps to baby strollers."

The GOP's short-term spending bill does not target the EPA, reports Andrew Restuccia: "The short-term spending bill released Friday by House Republicans does not include language to block funding for the Environmental Protection Agency’s climate rules or slash the agency’s budget. The continuing resolution (CR) would fund the government for two weeks while lawmakers work out a longer-term spending bill to keep the government running through the end of the fiscal year. The Republican proposal would cut current spending by $4 billion. Democrats said Friday they were 'encouraged' by the proposal. The House passed earlier this month a broad continuing resolution that would fund the government through the end of the fiscal year. The measure, which would cut current spending by $61 billion, includes a provision to block funding for EPA climate regulations."
Read more at voices.washingtonpost.com

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Texas budget shortfall falls heavily on education.

2011-02-16T08:00:00.001-06:00

Our daughter is a teacher and she needs adequate support to do her very crucial job. Surely there are other priorities that could be given the biggest cuts. Many other programs should fall lower on the list than education of our children and grandchildren, our future. This is a future Texas surely needs to win.

Thanks to my regular contributor, Jon for this link.

Amplify’d from news.yahoo.com

By APRIL CASTRO, Associated Press Writer April Castro, Associated Press Writer

Wed Jan 19, 9:52 am ET

AUSTIN, Texas – Public education in Texas is facing billions in proposed budget cuts that would include slashing arts education, pre-kindergarten programs and teacher incentive pay as lawmakers take on a massive deficit with the promise of no new taxes.

Lawmakers got their first glimpse of what the next state budget might look like late Tuesday, including the $5 billion cut to public schools, as Republican Gov. Rick Perry and his supporters were dancing at an inaugural celebration.

Texas is facing a $15 billion revenue shortfall, and few corners of state government were spared in the draft proposal for the next two years. The Texas Constitution requires a balanced budget, and Republican leaders have vowed not to raise taxes.

The budget draft, which is expected to be filed as legislation in the House later this week, would spend $73.2 billion in state money and $156.4 billion in all funds for the 2012-13 budget period.

`'It's a catastrophe. No financial aid for kids to go to college. No pre-kindergarten for kids to learn their numbers and their letters. Health and human services slashed," said Rep. Pete Gallego, D-Alpine. `'No Texan can be proud of this."

The Legislative Budget Board was required by law to release the budget to leaders Tuesday, the fifth business day after the session starts. The draft is just the beginning of a long process, which probably won't be finalized until next summer when the governor signs the Texas budget for 2012-13.

The proposal would make public school finance reform legislation almost inevitable. It also would mean about 100,000 children would no longer have access to pre-kindergarten, schools won't get help building new science labs and would end a program that helps students earn promotion to the next grade.

While almost every other state agency would see a reduction in employees, the average number of full-time employees in Perry's office over the next two fiscal years would go to 132 from an average of 120.
Read more at news.yahoo.com

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Congressional conservatives are, again, out of step with public opinion. Winning the House was not this mandate!

2011-02-13T09:49:00.001-06:00

Do you remember the story about leopards and spots? It is true. Republicans in the House are showing that they are still against the poor, against women, and against the environment.

The budget cuts they are demanding are pay-back for all the campaign contributions they received to win their seats. Throw in some culture war stuff and there is little left that qualifies as middle ground for cooperation with progressive Democrats.

Amplify’d from www.thedemocraticstrategist.org

TDS Co-Editor Ruy Teixeira: Public, Conservatives at Odds on Cuts

Conservatives are about to launch their full-court press on budget cuts. But their problem is, the cuts they want are the diametrical opposites of the cuts the public supports, --- and vice versa. As TDS Co-Editor Ruy Teixeira explains in his latest 'Public Opinion Snapshot':

...Their proposed cuts leave the military largely untouched while taking a meat axe to nonmilitary discretionary spending--that is, spending on areas such as education, energy, the environment, and poverty. As usual, conservative priorities are backward when compared to public opinion.

In a fascinating new survey the Program for Public Consultation conducted, respondents were asked to make their own cuts (or increases) to a projected discretionary budget for the year 2015 with a $625 billion deficit. The top three areas for cuts were defense ($109 billion average cut), intelligence agencies ($13 billion), and Iraq/Afghanistan ($13 billion)--the very areas conservatives are going light on.

It looks like Democrats who hold the line on social spending while cutting the military budget will be on solid ground with their constituents, while conservatives who stand for the reverse will have some explaining to do.
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The magic of the world wide web makes us all neighbors

2011-02-05T17:55:00.001-06:00

Our household was one of those millions affected by a big storm that swept across thousands of miles of the U.S. heartland. We were "snowed in," as we termed it in Wyoming when I was growing up. Except for half a day without heat, being marooned was uneventful. Neither of us fell on the ice and broke a hip, the fear of all Seniors. But a number of medical appointments had to be rearranged. We ate well and did not run out of milk.

And we watched a (?) revolt/revolution/uprising/mass protest by our neighbors in Egypt. The television watching was a bit dicey at times because our friends in the news media were occasionally not welcomed at the events. We never knew from day to day whether there would be violence or not, nor did we know how many of our neighbors across the sea would die as a result of their actions.

We were there in spirit with them, however, as they asked their elderly dictator to "just leave." Out Egyptian neighbors want the same things we do. Enough to eat, the freedom to join social networks, permission to speak their minds, the ability to put education to work for one's family. They want to join a political party, be represented in government and to choose their own leaders.

Simple things that we demand for our neighbors here are becoming possibilities for an amazing number of our neighbors in the Middle East, in a way through the magic of the world wide web.

by Carol Gee

Author of:
Southwest Postings, a political blog

Make Good Mondays, a personal blog

Member of Twitter, a social network

Posted via email from Southwest Postings

Congressional investigation of decision to deny coverage for brain injured troops - from ProPublica

2011-02-02T09:37:00.001-06:00

ProPublica is a non profit news organization that offers the opportunity for us to republish its stories in total. Thanks to them for this story, now amplified.

Amplify’d from www.propublica.org

ProPublica

Journalism in the public interest.

Congress to Investigate Pentagon Decision to Deny Coverage for Brain Injured Troops

WASHINGTON, D.C.--A key congressional oversight committee announced [1] today that it was opening an investigation into the basis of a decision by the Pentagon's health plan to deny a type of medical treatment to troops with brain injuries.

Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., the chairman of the subcommittee on contracting oversight, said she wanted to examine a contract issued by Tricare, an insurance-style program used by soldiers and many veterans, to a private company to study cognitive rehabilitation therapy for traumatic brain injury. Such injuries are considered among the signature wounds of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The study, by Pennsylvania-based ECRI Institute, found insufficient or weak evidence to support the therapy. Often lengthy and expensive, cognitive rehabilitation programs are designed to rewire soldiers' brains to conduct basic life tasks, such as reading books, remembering information and following instructions. ECRI's findings ran counter to several other studies, including ones sponsored by the Pentagon and the National Institutes of Health, which concluded that cognitive rehabilitation was beneficial.

In a letter to Defense Secretary Robert Gates, McCaskill cited an investigation [2] by ProPublica and NPR in December, which found that top scientific experts had questioned the Tricare-funded study in confidential reviews, calling it "deeply flawed" and "unacceptable."

"If true, these reports raise significant questions regarding the Department's award and management of the contract with ECRI Institute, and may have profound implications for hundreds of thousands of injured service members and their families," McCaskill wrote. "We owe it to our brave service members to find the truth."

The ProPublica and NPR investigation also found that senior Pentagon officials have worried about the high price of the care, which can cost more than $50,000 per patient. Some studies estimate that as many as 400,000 troops have suffered traumatic brain injuries in the war zones, though only a small percentage of them would need a full-scale program of cognitive rehabilitation therapy.

McCaskill joins a growing chorus demanding that Tricare reconsider its decision to deny coverage for cognitive rehabilitation. In recent weeks, the American Legion, the nation's largest veterans' organization, called [3] on Tricare to provide treatment. Sen. Bob Casey, D-Penn., chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee with oversight of the Middle East, sent a letter [4] to Gates asking for an explanation of Tricare's stance.

McCaskill was also one of the senators who signed a letter [5] in 2008 asking Gates to direct Tricare to begin providing cognitive rehabilitation to troops. This November, the Pentagon sent a response [6] to Congress informing them of the Tricare study's findings. George Peach Taylor Jr., then-acting assistant secretary of defense for health affairs, said the Pentagon would continue to study the treatment, with another report expected later this year.

In strongly worded response [7] on Jan. 19, McCaskill said that the senators who signed the original letter believed that enough evidence existed on the treatment's benefits to justify covering the cost for brain-damaged soldiers.

She asked for Gates to provide her committee with a series of documents on the contract and critical scientific reviews by Feb. 18.

"While we agreed that further research on cognitive rehabilitation therapy was appropriate, we also called on the Defense Department to err on the side of providing this proven treatment to service members," McCaskill wrote.

ProPublica and NPR have filed a similar request under the Freedom of Information Act, but Tricare has denied access to the documents, giving contradictory explanations [8] for why. ProPublica and NPR have appealed.

Tricare officials have said their decision to deny cognitive rehabilitation is based on regulations requiring scientific proof of the efficacy and quality of treatment. They have said that the study by ECRI highlighted a lack of rigorous evidence proving the therapy's benefits.

Tricare officials also noted that the agency does cover some types of treatment considered part of cognitive rehabilitative therapy. For instance, Tricare will pay for speech and occupational therapy, which plays a role in cognitive rehabilitation. Tricare officials deny that cost played any role in their decision. In a statement [9], Tricare said the care of troops was their "utmost" concern.

Tricare did not immediately return requests for comment on McCaskill's investigation.

ECRI defended its study. The non-profit institute, which has carried out numerous health reviews for Tricare, other agencies and hospital and medical groups, said they applied standard protocols in reviewing scientific literature about the efficacy of cognitive rehabilitation therapy. ECRI provided a document explaining its review here [10].

"The issue of how well cognitive rehabilitation therapy works for traumatic brain injury is important," said Jeffrey C. Lerner, the president and CEO of ECRI Institute. "ECRI Institute is fully committed to providing information to the U.S. Senate on our report and methodology."

Inform our investigations: Do you have information or expertise relevant to this story? Help us and journalists around the country by sharing your stories and experiences.

by T. Christian Miller, ProPublica, and Daniel Zwerdling, NPR Jan. 21, 2011, 5:21 p.m.
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Ag & HHS Secretaries roll out new food guidelines, five years in the making.

2011-02-01T06:41:00.001-06:00

On Monday, Secretary of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack and Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius, released new nutritional guidelines, the first in 5 years. The big push will be to lower the amount of salt we all eat.

As one who has struggled with high blood pressure (including fat feet and swollen ankles), I applaud the move. It is possible to control the amount of salt used in our own cooking and eating of raw fruits and vegetables, but not so with processed foods and restaurant meals. The food industry has believed that consumers prefer salty and fatty foods, but that is only because we have all been conditioned in that direction for most of our lives.

I applaud these new recommendations which, if followed, will go a long way to stop the conditioning of our kids at school and in fast food outlets.

Our nations future depends on all of us getting a lot more healthy through what we take into our bodies.

Amplify’d from news.yahoo.com

By MARY CLARE JALONICK, Associated Press Mary Clare Jalonick, Associated Press

Mon Jan 31, 5:34 pm ET

WASHINGTON – You should eat less salt, the government says. A lot less.

The new dietary guidelines, issued every five years by the Agriculture and Health and Human Services departments, are telling people who are 51 and older, African-American or suffering from high blood pressure, diabetes or chronic kidney disease to cut the amount of sodium they eat daily to little more than half a teaspoon.

A number of major food makers have announced plans during the past few years to cut sodium in their products as pressure from health advocates, consumers and regulators has built.

Kraft Foods Inc., ConAgra Foods Inc., General Mills Inc., Heinz Co., Campbell Soup Co. and Bumble Bee Foods Inc. are some of the companies that have committed to lowering sodium levels. But it's often a multiyear process to dial down the sodium, largely so consumers do not detect the changes in taste.

It's unclear if those incremental changes will be able to cut enough to satisfy the new guidelines. The Food and Drug Administration has said it will pressure companies to take voluntary action before it moves to regulate salt consumption.

Margo Wootan, director of nutrition policy at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, says the heightened interest in the dangers of too much sodium could help somewhat. But she believes the FDA will have to take action for the companies to reduce enough salt to matter.

"The companies are only going to do it if there's a really strong push," she said.

Consumers still have some control. To reduce the risk of disease from high sodium intake, the guidelines say people should:

• Read nutrition labels closely and buy items labeled low in sodium.

• Use little or no salt when cooking or eating.

• Eat more fresh or home-prepared foods and fewer processed foods, so they know exactly what they are eating.

• Ask that salt not be added to foods at restaurants.

• Gradually reduce sodium intake over time to get used to the taste.

Other recommendations in the guidelines are similar to previous years — limit trans fats, reduce calorie intake from solid fats and added sugars, eat fewer refined grains and more whole grains, consume less than 300 mg per day of cholesterol. The guidelines also recommend eating less than 10 percent of calories from saturated fats — full-fat cheese and fatty meats, for example.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said his department may come out with a new icon, but that won't be for a few more months. For now, the government wants consumers to focus on the guidelines themselves.

He says the recommendations — coupled with efforts from industry and other government campaigns for healthful eating, such as first lady Michelle Obama's "Let's Move" initiative — should bring about some change in the country's diet.

"I don't think it necessarily has to take a generation or two to see some progress," he said.
Read more at news.yahoo.com

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News to amuse and amaze:

2011-01-28T09:23:00.001-06:00

Today's "In" box revealed a number of items of general interest, as well as the following intriguing bits of news. The links were brought of obscurity by my regular contributor, Jon.

Heroics -- These stories have to do with heroism shown by people involved in hazardous travel in the air and on the sea.

A WWII pilot who forever repaid rescuers dies at 94. As it turned out, the rescued pilot spent much of the rest of his life raising money and giving service to the south Pacific's New Britain islanders who has saved his life.

Teenagers adrift in the Pacific for 50 days reached land. These three boys from Figi were very skillful and also somewhat lucky. To quote:

. . . the boys reported having just two coconuts with them when they set out. During their ordeal, they drank rainwater that collected in the boat and ate fish they had caught. Once, they managed to grab a bird that landed on the boat and they devoured that . . .

The rescue came not a moment too soon: . . . they had begun to drink sea water because it hadn't rained in the past few nights.

Human ingenuity saved the day for a plane in crisis back in November. When a whole bunch of things went wrong at once, an Airbus 380 Australian crew was able to override automation in order to save the plane and passengers. In conclusion,

All the experts were agreed on one point.

"It must have been an exciting time on that flight deck," Barr said dryly. "It's not something you'd ever want to try again."

Fortunate Finds: These stories are about amazing finds of old things -- some very, very old.

Buried Alive: 34,000-Year-Old Organisms Found. Living in a kind of suspended animation in salt crystals the organisms were eventually able to "wake up." A few even reproduced. The story begins,

Scientists bring back ancient salt crystals, dug up from deep below Death Valley for climate research. The sparkling crystals are carefully packed away until, years later, a young, unknown researcher takes a second look at the 34,000-year-old crystals and discovers, trapped inside, something strange. Something ... alive.

A View from the top of the de-watered Niagara Falls in 1969 in New York, was unearthed after 41 years by American Russ Glasson. The photos were taken by his mother and father in law and show when the famous waterfall was turned off for almost six months.

Houston museum unearths the next big creature feature: The bones lie everywhere, fragments of 300 million-year-old ribs and vertebrae - spread across the hillsides, amid cactus, mesquite and red earth. They sat on the surface, next to pieces of clay and caliche rock, when paleontologists and volunteers began chiseling, scratching and brushing their way, millimeter by millimeter, toward the discovery awaiting them below.

Finders, Keepers: As too often is the case, Egyptian antiquities may reside not in their country of origin. Jon related to me that he actually saw this bust as an Army family school kid living in Berlin.

Egypt asks Berlin to return a Nefertiti bust, to no avail. To quote:

Egypt's top archaeologist has formally requested the return of the 3,300-year-old bust of Queen Nefertiti that has been in a Berlin museum for decades, the latest move in his eight-year-old campaign to bring home ancient artifacts spirited out of the country during colonial times.

By Carol Gee

Author of:
Southwest Postings, a political blog

Make Good Mondays, a personal blog

Member of Twitter, a social network

Posted via email from Southwest Postings

From President Obama:

2011-01-26T08:25:00.001-06:00

This is the Email sent to me from Organizing for America/President Barack Obama. I am posting it today because it provides a good summary of the main points of his State of the Union address to Congress Tuesday night , the 25th. I have omitted any interactive elements.

Carol --

Tonight I addressed the American people on the future we face together.

Though at times it may seem uncertain, it is a future that is ours to decide, ours to define, and ours to win.

I know we will.

Because, after the worst recession in decades, we see an economy growing again.

Because, after two years of job losses, we've added private-sector jobs for 12 straight months -- more than 1 million in all.

Because, time after time, when our resolve has been tested, we, as a nation, have always prevailed.

Overcoming the challenges we face today requires a new vision for tomorrow. We will move forward together, or not at all -- for the challenges we face are bigger than party, and bigger than politics.

Yet the story of America is this: We do big things.

Just as the progress of the past two years would not have been possible without your hard work, we will not realize the agenda I described tonight without you.

So as we continue this great mission together, and we set out the plans for how far we can go, I need to know that you are ready to work side by side with me once more.

The last two years have been marked by unprecedented reforms and historic progress.

But there is much more work to do.

Moving forward, America's economic growth at home is inextricably connected to our competitiveness in the global community. The more products American companies can export, the more jobs we can create at home.

This vision for the future starts with innovation, tapping into the creativity and imagination of our people to create the jobs and industries of the future. Instead of subsidizing yesterday's energy, let's invest in tomorrow's. It's why I challenged Congress to join me in setting a new goal: By 2035, 80 percent of America's electricity will come from clean energy sources.

It means leading the world in educating our kids, giving each of our children the best opportunity to succeed and preparing them for the jobs of tomorrow.

We must build a 21st century infrastructure for our country, putting millions of Americans to work rebuilding roads and bridges and expanding high-speed Internet and high-speed rail.

We must reform government, making it leaner, smarter, and more transparent.

And we must take responsibility for our shared debt, reining in our long-term deficit so we can afford the investments we need to move our country forward.

That is the vision I laid out tonight. That is how we win the future.

It is going to take a lot of work -- but I have no doubt we are up to the task.

Half a century ago, when the Soviets beat us into space with the launch of a satellite called Sputnik, we had no idea how we'd beat them to the moon. The science wasn't there yet. NASA didn't even exist.

But after investing in better research and education, we didn't just surpass the Soviets. We unleashed a wave of innovation that created new industries and millions of new jobs.

This is our generation's Sputnik moment.

Please stand together with me.

It is because of each of you, who define the will of a people, that the state of our union is strong in the face of tough challenges. You are the reason our future is still bright in the face of deep uncertainty.

And you are the reason I believe that future is ours to win.

Thank you,

Barack

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If it looks a bit odd . . .

2011-01-24T09:17:00.003-06:00

Importation of my WordPress blog is the reason for the incomplete titles, Twitter tweets, etc. I took in the previous year's content and merged it into Southwest Postings. Hope you find some useful stuff that is not too dated. This Southwest Postings site, along with Twitter and Facebook, is where you can find me on the web these days. Have a good week!

Posted via email from Southwest Postings

In 2011, how much does the Bill of Rights 4th Amendment protect your internet privacy? You need to be concerned.

2011-01-19T04:35:00.001-06:00

For those of us who are members of Facebook, it has been an awakening every time we learn that the application is taking another stab at forcing us to be more open with the details of our lives. So we go back into our privacy settings, tighten everything up and go back to our online social routines.

Unfortunately, almost no one learns about it when our government investigates our online activities, without any legal probable cause for the search. Many of us rarely write a paper "snail mail" letter, which is subject to the government showing probable cause prior to opening it. But, Email in not real mail, according to the government's privacy-invading reasoning. I have nothing to hide in my Emails, but that is not the point. The point is that for many years the Constitution is failing me and everyone else who makes this devil's bargain in the name of national security.

Good for Twitter for standing up to the government on our behalf. Theirs is not a revolutionary position. It is a logical and defensible argument that takes on the government's Orweillian "what you don't know can't hurt you" policy.

Social media is what makes it possible for Tunisians to stand up to their government. Asking for our own reasonable online privacy here in the United States does not mean we have to take to the streets. We just have to notice and speak up.

Amplify’d from www.aclu.org

Earlier this month, news broke that the government got a court order to force Twitter to reveal the private account information of some people associated with WikiLeaks. What is unusual about the situation is not that the government obtained such an order, but that we found out about it at all. Our government routinely gains access to Americans’ private online information through secret court orders. Worse yet, these proceedings are one-sided, with only the government presenting arguments. In a legal system based on openness and adversarial process, this has led to troubling results that threaten our privacy.

The public has been largely unaware of this trend, due to the secrecy of courts and the failure of corporations to put up much of a fight. When the government wants someone’s private online information, it files an application under seal asking the court for permission. The government presents its arguments, but there is no one on the other side — because the person whose information is at stake does not know it is happening and because corporations have little incentive to spend time and money objecting. Even worse, the government’s applications are sealed until someone requests they be unsealed, and since the person under surveillance typically never learns about it, these applications usually stay sealed forever. The net result is a system in which individuals’ electronic privacy is regularly put in jeopardy, with no chance to fight it, in a context vastly favorable to the government.

Regardless how one feels about the Fourth Amendment’s applicability to email, we should all agree that it’s problematic when controversial issues of law are routinely decided in secret, one-sided proceedings. The current system of secrecy works perfectly fine for the government, so it is especially important that companies and courts take initiative to combat excessive secrecy. Twitter is to be commended for taking the rare step of asking that a government surveillance request be made public. Other companies should follow suit. Courts have a role to play, too. Even if investigative details are rightly kept secret, in general the law of surveillance should not be a secret law. Courts should require the government to file its legal arguments in public, and should make their own decisions to grant or deny applications public as well.
Read more at www.aclu.org

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Who had the most clout in 2010? Check out these lists.

2011-01-17T09:50:00.001-06:00

In case you were all taken up with the holidays, here is the app Klout's set of influencers for last year. There is a bit of sad irony in this story. One of today's headlines is that Steve Jobs, head of Apple is taking a leave of absence for health reasons. . . again. Not good news.

Amplify’d from klout.com

Most Influential Topics of 2010

December 29th, 2010 by Megan Berry

2010 was a landmark year for Twitter, as it moved away from being a novelty and became a mainstream tool for businesses and consumers alike. We analyzed the content produced over the past year to determine the most influential topics. At Klout, we believe that trends aren’t simply a factor of volume. These topics are not only shared widely, but shared by the top influencers on Twitter. These word clouds reflect the influence of these topics in shaping the year 2010 on Twitter.

These lists reflect the influential topics, but not sentiment. For some brands, such as BP and Toyota, becoming an influential topic reflects the controversy they encountered this year.

For a chance to dig in further, here are the topics ordered into top 10 lists:

Overall Topics: These topics reflect the pulse of 2010. While social media was a popular topic throughout 2010, others in the top 10 made it there from activity concentrated in one or two months. Discussion about Iran reached a peak in February, when it announced it would begin enriching uranium. Talk about Healthcare Reform peaked in March when the Health Care Reform Bill passed in the house and, of course, the World Cup peaked in June and July.

People: So who are the most influential people of 2010? Unsurprisingly, Barack Obama tops the list,

Companies: Coca Cola tops the list, peaking in July as they had a big campaign around the end of the World Cup.

Tech Companies: Twitter and Facebook beat out giants

TV Shows: The fact that Lost and American Idol top this list is no surprise

Music: Justin Bieber is a genuine Twitter phenomenon and dominates this list.

Products: The iPhone tops this list as the most influential product of 2010. The iPad comes in second, reflecting Apple’s dominance of this list.

Sports: The fervor around the World Cup made soccer the most influential sport of 2010.

Sports Teams: The Lakers won the championship this year so it’s no surprise they top this list. The Yankees fervent fan base makes them a consistently influential topic and, of course, the San Francisco Giants made it on the list when they won the World Series.

Cities: The most influential cities of 2010 reflect the top cities in the world – with London, New York City, and Los Angeles topping the list. Austin, Texas made it on the list due to a high volume of influential tweets surrounding SXSW in March.

Countries: The United States tops the list due to a consistent level of conversation.

Tags: The top tags of 2010 reflect the political nature of this year.

#tcot – Top Conservatives on Twitter

#p2 – Progressive 2.0

Read more at klout.com

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If only . . . some things could have been done differently: Deepwater Horizon’s Final Hours - NYTimes.com

2010-12-26T07:56:00.001-06:00

URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/26/us/26spill.html?_r=1&...

From watching hours of U.C. Coast Guard or the Presidential Investigative commission hearings following the Gulf's Deepwater Horizon oil rig blowout, we learned something about the companies involved, the people affected and the causes. But it was hard to get my arms around the story.

Not any more. I highly recommend this very fine investigative piece done by NYT's David Barstow, David Rhode and Stephanie Saul. It illuminates so much of what was never clear to me. Read the riveting piece for more of the real meaning of the tragic event.

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Regarding followers, I mean no disrespect.

2010-12-25T08:20:00.001-06:00

See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/jhz5

WaPo story of Top Dems predict Senate will OK the START treaty before year's end.

2010-12-20T08:15:00.001-06:00

This is another piece of good news for the Obama administration, following the November election's bad news. Despite much wrangling and some real cliff-hangers, Congress is doing much its intended work. Republicans have had to decide whether to take the voters' "yes" (to getting things done) answer. There is a new breeze blowing through Washington, even if it is a cold winter blast at times.

Amplify’d from www.washingtonpost.com

WASHINGTON -- A top Democrat predicted Monday that the Senate will approve a new arms control treaty with Russia, but conceded that it will take "house by house combat" to collect enough votes from recalcitrant Republicans to prevail.

The comments by Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., came a day after Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said he would oppose the accord, complicating President Barack Obama's prospects for achieving his top foreign policy priority.

Undeterred by McConnell's opposition, Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., announced Sunday night that the Senate would vote Tuesday to end debate on the treaty and move to a final vote.

s to get their hands on a nuclear weapon," Reid said, adding that the debate soon "will com

"It is time to move forward on a treaty that will help reverse nuclear proliferation and make it harder for terrorists to get their hands on a nuclear weapon," Reid said, adding that the debate soon "will come down to a simple choice: you either want to keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of terrorists, or you don't."

The White House and Democrats are determined to win approval of the treaty before January, when Republicans increase their numbers in the Senate, dimming its outlook. During a rare Sunday session of the Senate, Democrats turned back a GOP amendment to change the treaty, which would have effectively killed it.

Several Republicans said Obama's letter to congressional leaders Saturday vowing to move ahead on missile defense carried considerable sway.

Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev signed the accord - it is known as New START - in April. It would limit each country's strategic nuclear warheads to 1,550, down from the current ceiling of 2,200. It would also establish a system for monitoring and verification. U.S. weapons inspections ended a year ago with the expiration of a 1991 treaty.

Sens. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., the Democrats' No. 2 leader in the Senate, and John Kerry, D-Mass., the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, said in news show appearances that they believe they have the votes to ratify the treaty.

After several hours of debate Sunday, the Senate voted 60-32 to reject a measure to add language on tactical nuclear weapons to the treaty's preamble, which would have forced it back to negotiations, dooming the accord. Republicans Bennett, Lugar and Tennessee's Bob Corker and Lamar Alexander voted with the Democrats. It marked the second time in two days that Democrats had stopped GOP amendments.
Read more at www.washingtonpost.com

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Off one's chest. . .

2010-11-20T11:29:00.001-06:00

Sometimes nothing will do but saying it with a phrase that signifies "having a belly-full," "letting it all out," or "letting someone have it." For many of us it has been this way since the results of the November 2 elections became clear. In reading my latest accumulated feed items from Daily Kos, I realized there is much politically with which to feel frustration. For example, when it seems so obvious that the Bush tax cuts have run out, I have had a belly full with:

Republican leaders' disrespect for President Obama, shown by their transparent snub of his recent proposed tax cut meeting at the White House. I also want to get this maddening Republican stance off my chest:
Republican presumptuousness, when it comes to declarations about "what Americans want," posits that we want tax cuts for the wealthy extended despite polls that show they oppose such an extension. Even some millionaires oppose an extension for the wealthy. Predictably, Representative Eric Cantor has announced that Republicans will oppose any upcoming Democratic attempts to get an up-or-down vote on extending tax cuts for the middle class.
Democratic accommodation,"caving in" could be the only way middle class taxpayers will lose out in this debate. If that happens we will be justified in really "letting the Dems have it."

So I got this issue off my chest today, but there is something just as corrosive about the latest airport security moves by the TSA. I am glad I am not flying these days because I feel sure I would be tempted to let someone have it by speaking out in line as I try to get on my plane. And I would never be allowed to board. But this discusstio will have to wait for another blog post. Fair warning.

-- post date: 11/20/10

by Carol Gee

Author of:
Southwest Postings, a political blog

Make Good Mondays, a personal blog

Member of Twitter, a social network

Posted via email from Southwest Postings

2010-11-18T20:32:00.001-06:00

Newsweek: Elon Musk on the future of space flight http://ping.fm/P27hL

Upheaval within and among nations is common these days --

2010-11-15T07:49:00.001-06:00

An atmosphere of change within the past few weeks is pervading the family of nations, according to Reuters. Leaders are forced to change, often by forms of protest or transformation of legislative bodies. At times, however, change seems impossible.

Elections almost always mean change, though it can be very slow. Israeli-Palestinian peace talks have gone on -- and stopped -- for decades because of what happened in their elections.

The election of a hardliner in Israel made negotiations between them and the Palestinians more difficult. Now Israel's parliament is going to have to decide whether to halt settlement activity as a way of perhaps renewing stalled peace talks with the Palestinians. Iraq may finally be forming a working government, after almost a year of wrangling following its parliamentary elections. Recently the United States elected enough members of Congress to change its balance of power from Democratic to Republican, necessitating accommodation by President Obama. This election turned, in the opinion of many, on voter upset over the handling of the financial crisis by Congress and the Obama administration.

The 2008 worldwide financial crisis meant huge change that persists to this day. Member nations within the European Union are also in upheaval directly related to the financial crisis. To again quote Reuters News Service (headlines):

Italy - "Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, fighting for the survival of his government, said on Saturday he would seek a confidence vote in parliament after the 2011 budget has been approved." Should Berlusconi lose the vote in either chamber of Parliament he would be forced to resign, and a new government would have to be formed. He faces challenges from both the center right and the center left.
France - "France's government resigned on Saturday in a procedural move designed to allow President Nicolas Sarkozy to inject some fresh blood into his cabinet and boost his re-election chances in 2012. . . Sarkozy emerged victorious from a drawn out battle with unions over pension reform but remains deeply unpopular with approval ratings below 30 percent."
Germany - "Tens of thousands of people marched in cities across Germany on Saturday to protest against government policies and social inequality, a day before a key meeting of Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU). . . Merkel's center-right coalition with the Free Democrats (FDP) has been dogged by infighting and made little progress on its campaign promises in its first year in power, leading to a slide in its popularity." Big trade unions are protesting the "offloading the costs of the financial crisis."
Ireland - "Ireland can manage on its own, the head of the International Monetary Fund said on Saturday, a day after euro zone sources told Reuters the former "Celtic Tiger" was in talks about a possible EU rescue." However, "Ireland does not rule out rescue" from the European Union's Emergency fund, it later said.

Worldwide finances and democracy -- The United States has been far better off with Democrats in charge during the financial crisis , than we were under Republicans where it all began. Voters threw out incumbent members of Congress willy-nilly, however, in 2010. They voted in a number of fiscal/social conservatives as a form of protest against Democrats. Voters in the European Union are also in various levels of protest meaning that their parliamentary forms of government come and go easier than in the U.S. Finally, Iraqi voters' patience has been sorely tried as their infant democracy tries to find its way towards settlement of sectarian and oil money divisions. We must hope that the democratic process is resilient enough to overcome the horrendous mistakes responsible for all this upheaval, that were made both by government and the private sector.

Posted via email from Southwest Postings

South by Southwest

Remembering others as we celebrate Christmas:

Unexpectedly saddened

It may be as bad as we fear when it comes to our long recession.

Poverty Digest - for Thanksgiving Week, 2011

The Surveillance State(s)

Rick Perry Roundup

My senator, Kay Bailey Hutchison Stands by Criticism of Perry. The story is by Melanie Starkey [from Roll Call Politics, Nov. 7, 2011]

Reich knows my thoughts:

More about the direction of Occupy Wall Street

Occupy Wall Street is many things, but one thing it's not is partisan

By Gianna Palmer | McClatchy Newspapers

Drill versus Spill

Some Legal Thoughts For Today

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I long for peace

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Globalizing Occupy Wall Street: From Chile to Israel, Protests Erupt

In Chile, Students Protesting for Free Education Occupy Schools

In Israel, a Summer Protest Against Rent Prices, Cost of Living

In Spain, High Youth Unemployment Rate Sparks Tent Occupations

In the UK, Occupation Follows Protests on Education Cuts, Riots Over Police Brutality

In Germany, a Country Less Burdened by the Financial Crisis, Protest May Reflect Fears for the Future

Things may be OK again at the ISS.

The high cost of U.S. spying

U.S. intel spending nears a high-water mark

Otherwise occupied.

Democrats May Find ‘Occupy’ Movement Is Not That Into Them. By Ambreen Ali and Neda Semnani, Roll Call Staff Oct. 6, 2011, 2:29 p.m. A quote:

Throwing the windows open to jarring reality -

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About Google Trends – Google Trends

About Google Trends

About Hot Searches

Working with Google Trends

Privacy and Terms of Use

1. How does Google Trends work?

2. How accurate and up-to-date is the information provided by Google Trends?

3. When will Google Trends be available for my country or language?

4. How does Hot Searches work?

5. Is the list of Hot Searches comprehensive?

6. How many terms can I compare? And what other functionality is available?

7. How is the data scaled?

8. Is the News reference volume graph scaled?

9. Is the data normalized?

10. Do the numbers on the graph reflect actual search traffic numbers?

11. I see a number next to my search term at the top of the graph. What does this mean?

12. When comparing two or more search terms, I sometimes see results with all zeros. Why?

13. Is there a way to adjust how the terms are ranked and scaled?

14. How does counting and ranking of the top regions, cities, and languages work, and are they scaled differently?

15. How is information gathered to determine the regions, cities, and languages?

16. How can I change the time frame, region, or sub-region of the results?

17. Is there a way to export the data?

18. How does the geographical assignment change from 1/1/2011 affect the data I see?

19. When is it okay to use the information I find on Google Trends?

20. This tool makes search information public. What about my personal search data?

My post today is the latest from Propublica's investigation into "fracking."

Report for Obama Questions Effectiveness of Gas Drilling Regulations

What's in a name?

How hot is it?

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