I didn't catch the show last night, so I dug up a couple of gems on You Tube.  These girls can SING! 

Crystal Bowersox sings, "As Long as I See the Light" by Creedance Clearwater Revival

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0PqbF9qoKQ 

Siobhan Magnus sings, "Think" by Aretha Franklin

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VV0tDKjdyRA

".........the crisis is still growing because we are continuing to dump 90 million tons of global-warming pollution every 24 hours into the atmosphere — as if it were an open sewer."   (Think of it this way, the world is launching 40 million two and one half ton SUV's or 45,000 space shuttles into the atmosphere every 24 hours. Can you hear him now? I personally think we are way beyond the "oh, shit" moment. mc) 

NY Times

February 28, 2010

Op-Ed Contributor

We Can’t Wish Away Climate Change

By AL GORE

It would be an enormous relief if the recent attacks on the science of global warming actually indicated that we do not face an unimaginable calamity requiring large-scale, preventive measures to protect human civilization as we know it.

Of course, we would still need to deal with the national security risks of our growing dependence on a global oil market dominated by dwindling reserves in the most unstable region of the world, and the economic risks of sending hundreds of billions of dollars a year overseas in return for that oil. And we would still trail China in the race to develop smart grids, fast trains, solar power, wind, geothermal and other renewable sources of energy — the most important sources of new jobs in the 21st century.

Continued:

NY Times

Best defense is an offense?  How's that working out for us?  You want offensive?  How about a non-union TSA? Or 22 government agencies "supervised" by the Department of Homeland Security.  Stripping 180,000 federal employees of their union rights while creating the best example of bloated, ineffective and incompetent government ever conceived, Democrat or Republican.  As for incompetence, can you say, Katrina?  The senate voted 90 to 9 to approve the creation of the DHS.  MC

"All this activity is already straining the Coast Guard budget. Most of the 19 cutters that were sent to Haiti eventually needed help themselves — thanks in large part to their age, 12 of them suffered severe problems at sea, and three required emergency dry-dock repairs. That’s not surprising, since the average “high endurance” cutter is 41 years old, compared to 14 years for the average Navy ship."

NY Times 

February 27, 2010

Op-Ed

ContributorsPutting the Coast Guard Out to Sea

By LAWRENCE J. KORB and SEAN E. DUGGAN

Washington

DESPITE the pressing need to cut government spending, under President Obama’s spending proposal all the nation’s military services are set to see their budgets increase — all, that is, except the Coast Guard, the nation’s chronically overburdened maritime force, responsible for everything from global search and rescue to port security.

Under the president’s proposal, the Coast Guard’s budget will decline by 3 percent, to $10.1 billion, smaller than many medium-sized agencies under the other services. It’s a puzzling decision, considering the increasingly critical role the Coast Guard plays in protecting the national security interests of the United States — and considering that many much less vital military programs have been spared.

Beyond combating drug smuggling and international piracy, the 41,000-member Coast Guard is our nation’s first line of defense against nuclear terrorism. If someone wanted to detonate a nuclear bomb in this country, would hebe more likely to launch it on a missile with a return address, or would he try to smuggle it in a container through one of our ports? The latter, obviously — and the Coast Guard’s Port Security Units would play a pivotal role in stopping him.

Continued at the NY Times:

NY Times

Remember, fear is a Republican's Forte. "Our Politics May Be All in Our Head" NY Times and that column as much as said Republicans are "girly men" Not sure what to call their women other than rude, crude and unattractive.  MC

"But the more senior official, David Margolis, decided that Mr. Yoo and Mr. Bybee only had shown “poor judgment” and should not be disciplined. Mr. Margolis did not dispute that Mr. Yoo and Mr. Bybee mangled legal reasoning and produced work that ultimately was repudiated by the Bush administration itself. He criticized the professional responsibility office’s investigation on procedural grounds and excused Mr. Yoo and Mr. Bybee by noting that everyone was frightened after Sept. 11, 2001, and that they were in a hurry."

"Americans were indeed frightened after Sept. 11, and the Bush administration was in a great rush to torture prisoners. Responsible lawyers would have responded with extra vigilance, especially if, like Mr. Yoo and Mr. Bybee, they worked in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel. When that office renders an opinion, it has the force of law within the executive branch. Poor judgment is an absurdly dismissive way to describe giving the green light to policies that have badly soiled America’s reputation and made it less safe."

NY Times

...............Before We Can Listen to the Dixie Chicks Again?  Civilian deaths from air strikes are considered cowardly by the Afghans, I do as well.  It is also the most effective recruiting tool in the Muslim world, every religion has a boogie man.  We are playing that part very well.  What are "just a few rag heads" to the yellow ribbon crowd is major to the 1.6 billion Muslims in the world.  MC

NY Times

February 23, 2010

NATO Airstrike Is Said to Have Killed Afghan Civilians

By ROD NORDLAND

KABUL, Afghanistan — A NATO airstrike on Sunday against what international troops believed to be a group of insurgents ended up killing 27 civilians in the worst episode involving noncombatant deaths in six months, Afghan officials said on Monday.

“The repeated killing of civilians by NATO forces is unjustifiable,” President Hamid Karzai’s cabinet said in a statement. “We strongly condemn it.”

The airstrike took place in an area under Dutch military control, and if Dutch forces were involved in the incident it could have serious political repercussions in the Netherlands, where the government collapsed Saturday over an effort to extend the mandate of 2,000 Dutch troops in Afghanistan.

But a Dutch defense ministry spokesman in The Hague said Dutch forces were not involved in calling the airstrike. The spokesman, who spoke in return for customary anonymity, did not say who had called for air support.

NATO officials did not immediately identify the nationality of the forces involved in the incident.

Continued at the NY Times:

NY Times

The head of US Central Command has said the current offensive around the southern Afghan town of Marjah is the initial operation of a long campaign.

Gen David Petraeus told NBC that the offensive was part of a revised strategy for combating insurgents that would probably last "12 to 18 months".

He said Taliban resistance to Operation Moshtarak, which is in its second week, had been "formidable" but "disjointed".

Nato commanders have said it may take another month to fully secure Marjah.

Afghan police have already been deployed in areas recaptured from the Taliban, as part of a plan to put the area under the control of the local authorities.

So far, 12 Nato personnel have been killed in the offensive, which involves 15,000 Nato and Afghan troops and is the biggest operation against insurgents in Afghanistan since the 2001 US-led invasion.

Another three personnel were reported dead on Sunday in unrelated incidents in eastern and southern Afghanistan. Their nationalities were not given.

'Initial salvo'

Gen Petraeus said the US public should expect further losses, much like there were following the so-called troop surge in Iraq.

By LEONARD PITTS
lpitts@MiamiHerald.com

I hear you're pondering a run for the White House in 2012. Last week, you told Fox news it would be ``absurd'' to rule it out.

I'm writing to ask that you rule it in. I very badly want you to run for -- and win -- the Republican nomination for the presidency.

I know you're waiting for the punch line. Maybe you figure I think you'd be a weak candidate who would pave the way for President Obama's easy re-election.

That's not it. No, I want you to run because I believe a Palin candidacy would force upon this country a desperately needed moment of truth. It would require us to finally decide what kind of America we want to be.

Continued:

Miami Herald

With back and 1.5 lbs. of C-4 removed exposing 700 ball bearings

When 7.5 pounds of C-4 goes off and propels 4900 ball bearing across a trail or road, every thing is dead within 50 meters. MC

                     Fading Photographs- By Michael D. McCombs

               The crackle of ancient paper rustles through my mind,

Like parchment over handled, frayed breaking of age.

Tired and worn from the passage of years.

They were fresh once, in another place, in another time.

They carried the images of loved ones, of I once knew, caught forever;

or so I dreamed.  The colors were bright and the focus just so.

Sharp for the things and soft for persons I had chosen to cast

Into the forever world in the cloister of my skull.

Little things mostly like a leaf in the spring or a flower in the snow.

They held the peal of the laughter and the thunder alike, safe for

tomorrow's thinking. There were some big things too, that counted for

more to me than all the springs that had passed behind me.  Soft eyed

children, a grandmother's smile, the final passing of a friend.

The ones that seem most faded are of yet a third kind.

The ones that tell the story of a younger man, in an alien land,

fighting a war without end and not knowing why he does.

The sharpness is gone from the friends by the wire or on the berm;

the mountains beyond and the stars that shone in that foreign land

beyond a graying ocean. Good friends, too.  Friends to die for and

with, or to die for you.  Nametags faded beyond recall.  The sound of

their voices covered by monsoon rains or incoming rounds.

 Even the places are going: Kontum, Nha Trang, Pleiku, are simple blurs

on the paper that used to hold so much more.  Even the tank has no

corners and the napalm burns only gray; tracers leaving lines without color.

And what of Weet, and Sarge, and all those who gave this strange place

a reason, however cryptic, for being at all?  Pain and love and hate

and fear are all but gone.  Only the strongest have survived the years

intact, or I think they are.  The rawest hate and fear, unmitigated by

the lesser, the gentler things that made even these less horrible.

So I reach out, with my feeble hands and softly grab,

trying to save all of these that I want to keep so badly.

The fading photographs from my mind's own album.

Notice they don't mention the wounded, there are certainly situations worse than death. (Read, "Johnny Got His Gun") We know there were three million civilian deaths in SE Asia, assuming the same ratios for American military casualties, 5 to 1 (Wounded vs. KIA 304,000 vs. 58,000) and 75,000 amputees, one amputee for every four wounded.  Using that data for SE Asian civilians, results in 15 million wounded, 3.75 million amputees.  If 12 Afghans were killed today, there is a very good chance that 60 were wounded.  Tommy Franks (An artillery officer) "We don't do body counts" Actually general that is an obscene understatement.  Of course if all 6 rockets were fired and hit the same target, there is a good chance that some of the casualties vaporized. 

Lockheed has a $68 million cost plus contract to build the HIMARS.  Here is the low down on the rockets:"The Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System (GMLRS) consists of two variants of rockets fired from the M270A1 or High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) launchers. The GMLRS Dual-Purpose Improved Conventional Munition (DPICM) variant carries 404 bomblets, while the GMLRS Unitary rocket will have a single, 200-pound class, high-explosive, Unitary warhead. Both variants use an inertial measurement unit guidance system that is aided by the Global Positioning System."  200 pounds of High Explosives (HE) is a shit load.  A 1500 pound Exocet sank a British destroyer in the Falklands, a bit more stout than mud walls.  MC

NY Times

February 15, 2010

Afghan Civilians Killed in Offensive on Taliban

By C. J. CHIVERS and ROD NORDLAND

MARJA, Afghanistan — An errant American rocket strike on Sunday hit a compound crowded with Afghan civilians in the last Taliban stronghold in Helmand Province, killing at least 10, including 5 children, military officials said.

Avoiding such civilian deaths, which came on the second day of a major allied offensive around Marja, has been a cornerstone of the war strategy by the top American commander, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal. He apologized to President Hamid Karzai, saying, “We deeply regret this tragic loss of life.”

The strike came after American Marines and Afghan soldiers had been taking intense small-arms fire from a mud-walled compound in the area, American officers said. The answering artillery barrage instead hit a building a few hundred yards way, striking with a roar and sending a huge cloud of dust and smoke into the air. As the wind pushed the plume away, a group of children rushed outside.

 Continued at the NY Times:

NY Times

"That foreign threat might make conservatives sweat so much that maybe, just maybe, they’d consider revisiting the issue."  hahahahahaha

We all know that liberals and conservatives are far apart on health care. But in the way their brains work? Even in automatic reflexes, like blinking? Or the way their glands secrete moisture?

That’s the suggestion of some recent research. It hints that the roots of political judgments may lie partly in fundamental personality types and even in the hard-wiring of our brains.

Researchers have found, for example, that some humans are particularly alert to threats, particularly primed to feel vulnerable and perceive danger. Those people are more likely to be conservatives.

One experiment used electrodes to measure the startle blink reflex, the way we flinch and blink when startled by a possible danger. A flash of noise was unexpectedly broadcast into the research subjects’ earphones, and the response was measured.

Continued at the NY Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/opinion/14kristof.html 

“A generation from now,” said Mr. Carter, “this solar heater can either be a curiosity, a museum piece, an example of a road not taken, or it can be a small part of one of the greatest and most exciting adventures ever undertaken by the American people, harnessing the power of the sun to enrich our lives as we move away from our crippling dependence on foreign oil.”

Ronald Reagan had the panels taken down............"

Think the opposite of the Preamble of the Constitution and you have in a nut shell what modern day Republicans stand for.  Nanny state, indeed, someone has to watch these red state welfare queens.  Run, Sarah, Run.  MC

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence,  promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

Democrats     Republicans                    (Coal Mining Lobby last 20 years)

$4,659,133   $17,817,662     21%79%

Democrats      Republicans                   (Electric Utilities Last 20 Years)

$54,524,071  $83,199,434  39%60%

Democrats      Republicans                    (Gas and Oil Last 20 Years)

$60,303,284   $184,561,353     24%75%

Source, OpenSecrets.Org
New York Times

February 13, 2010O

p-Ed ColumnistWatching China Run

By BOB HERBERT

New York Times

As for Thune, Franken made the extremely rookie mistake of pointing out when one of his colleagues was making stuff up as he went along. ”We are entitled to our own opinions. We’re not entitled to our own facts,” said the irrational polemic.

This kind of stuff is called a “double standard.” When a Republican displays this level of enthusiasm for their ideologies, it’s called moxie, or “being a maverick.” When John McCain screams “Fuck you!” at Sen. Cornyn (a breach of protocol far beyond anything Franken is being accused of,) the media laughs, shakes their heads, and says, “Well, that’s just McCain being McCain.” Republicans are manly men, and manly men sometimes get hot under the collar during moments of spirited debate.

Democrats, on the other hands, are not permitted that level of passion. Or perhaps, it’s so unusual to witness a fiery display from Democrats that the event truly shocks the media, and they reflexively label it “an unruly outburst.” Afterall, these are Democrats, for God’s sake. What else could it possibly be?

Grayson is another good example of this. Back in September, the Congressman landed in hot water for saying the Republican health care plan is “don’t get sick,” and if you do get sick, “die quickly.” When demands for an apology disseminated from the Village, Grayson teabagged (the old-fashion definition) his opponents and responded, “I would like to apologize. I would like to apologize to the dead.”  Fun facts: Grayson also called Cheney a “vampire” and Fox News the “enemy of America.”

Unsurprisingly, no one (the Republicans and the media included) seems to know what to do with Grayson. He doesn’t speak the poll-tested “looking forward, not backward” lingo of the president. He talks like a liberal. Franken talks like a liberal. What’s worse, they seem proud to be liberals – an alien concept to Democrats, who built their careers acting like Republicans, and mainstream media, which is largely owned by the corporations that enjoy Democrats acting like Republicans.

It behooves most Democrats, Republicans, and media to portray politicians like Franken and Grayson as hysterical, fringe lunatics lest this liberalism thing spread like the plague it is.

Continued

True Slant

Extremely helpful video from the Mayo Clinic, no more mouth to mouth

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5huVSebZpM 

The Southern California Public Power Authority — a coalition of several public power agencies — and a seven-year-old Colorado company called Ice Energy have signed a contract to deploy rooftop units that use electricity at night, when demand is low, to make ice.

The ice is then used to cool buildings during the day.............."

"............The total 24-hour efficiency improvement is 8 percent,” said Bill D. Carnahan, the executive director of the Southern California Public Power Authority......"

NY Times

Ice Energy, Inc.

Reports by the US Senate's committee on banking, housing and urban affairs -- which oversees American exports policy -- reveal that the US, under the successive administrations of Ronald Reagan and George Bush Sr, sold materials including anthrax, VX nerve gas, West Nile fever germs and botulism to Iraq right up until March 1992, as well as germs similar to tuberculosis and pneumonia. Other bacteria sold included brucella melitensis, which damages major organs, and clostridium perfringens, which causes gas gangrene."

The Senate report also makes clear that: 'The United States provided the government of Iraq with 'dual use' licensed materials which assisted in the development of Iraqi chemical, biological and missile-system programs.'

This assistance, according to the report, included 'chemical warfare-agent precursors, chemical warfare-agent production facility plans and technical drawings,...........................

.............The Senate report also makes clear that: 'The United States provided the government of Iraq with 'dual use' licensed materials which assisted in the development of Iraqi chemical, biological and missile-system programs.'

This assistance, according to the report, included 'chemical warfare-agent precursors, chemical warfare-agent production facility plans and technical drawings, *chemical warfare filling equipment, biological warfare-related materials, missile fabrication equipment and missile system guidance equipment'., biological warfare-related materials, missile fabrication equipment and missile system guidance equipment'.  (*You need filling equipment to load US 155 mm artillery projectiles)

TIANJIN, China — China vaulted past competitors in Denmark, Germany, Spain and the United States last year to become the world’s largest maker of wind turbines, and is poised to expand even further this year.

China has also leapfrogged the West in the last two years to emerge as the world’s largest manufacturer of solar panels. And the country is pushing equally hard to build nuclear reactors and the most efficient types of coal power plants.

These efforts to dominate renewable energy technologies raise the prospect that the West may someday trade its dependence on oil from the Mideast for a reliance on solar panels, wind turbines and other gear manufactured in China.

“Most of the energy equipment will carry a brass plate, ‘Made in China,’ ” said K. K. Chan, the chief executive of Nature Elements Capital, a private equity fund in Beijing that focuses on renewable energy.

 NY Times http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/31/business/energy-environment/31renew.html?hpw