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Good Morning!
July, 2012 by joanneleon
I don't think there is one president that's come down the line that hasn't done something good somewhere.
~Neil Young
News
Handcuffed Marijuana Offender Shot, Killed in Police Car
A Southhaven, Mississippi, man arrested for marijuana by police in nearby Jonesboro, Arkansas, was shot and killed as he sat handcuffed in the back of a squad car Saturday. Chavis Carter, 21, becomes the 37th person to die in US domestic drug law enforcement operations so far this year.
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They opened the rear passenger door and found him in a "sitting position slumped forward with his head in his lap." According to Officer Marsh, Carter's hands were still cuffed behind his back and small-caliber handgun was found beside him.
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Officers Baggett and Marsh are on administrative leave pending an investigation, but the police are leaning toward the theory that Carter shot himself with a gun they had missed while his hands were cuffed behind his back.
Feel free to pollute your neighbors.
Supreme Court: Pesticide Drift Isn't Trespassing
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — The Minnesota Supreme Court says pesticide chemicals that drift from one farm to another do not constitute trespassing under the law, reversing an appeals court decision that found otherwise.
Skeptic, Koch-Funded Scientist Richard Muller Admits Global Warming Real & Humans The Cause
After years of denying global warming, physicist Richard Muller now says "global warming is real and humans are almost entirely the cause." The admission by Muller, a professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley and founder of the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project, has gained additional attention because some of his research has been funded by Charles Koch of the Koch Brothers, the right-wing billionaire known for funding climate skeptic groups like the Heartland Institute. "We can make the scientific case more solidly than had been made in the past," Muller claims. "I think this does say we do need to take action, we do need to do something about it."
Bill McKibben of 350.org: Even Industry-Funded Climate Change Deniers Can’t Ignore Planet’s Warming
Responding to climate skeptic Richard Muller’s reversal on global warming, McKibben says: "It’s scientifically not very interesting because most scientists figured it out 20 years ago, and all [Muller] has done is confirm their work. Politically, it’s interesting because we’re reaching the point where even industry-funded deniers can’t with a straight face say that [the earth] is not warming."
Palm trees and forests? A new future for the Antarctic
Palm trees could grow in the Antarctic if climate change continues unabated, new research has shown – just as they did 55 million years ago.
A study has found that similar trees grew in the region during the early Eocene epoch, when the area had a near-tropical climate with frost-free winters, even in the polar darkness. Global levels of the principal greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, were nearly three times as high then as today.
Remember Kalamazoo -- and fight for a tar sands-free future
Last Tuesday marked the two-year anniversary of the start of the Kalamazoo River disaster where Canadian oil corporation Enbridge spilled over a million gallons of tar sands oil into waters near Marshall, Michigan.
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Susan Connolly had a feeling something just wasn't right. On the morning of July 26, 2010, she was preparing to take her two young children to daycare when she noticed a strange odor thick in the air. At that point in the day, Susan didn't know that a tar sands oil pipeline had ruptured in the middle of the night approximately two miles north of her home in Marshall, Michigan or that this would result in the largest and most expensive onshore oil disaster in U.S. history.
That night, her four-and-a-half-year-old son was vomiting and within a few days, her two-year-old daughter developed a strange rash. Soon enough, others in her community were experiencing migraines, nausea, diarrhea and burning in the eyes and throat -- all while county and federal health officials denied the connection between the sudden widespread illnesses and the spill.
What a surprise. Shady organizations who claim not to be working for political campaigns... do political work for campaigns and then deny it and then disappear!
IRS: Toothless. FEC: "Thoroughly Broken."
Later, on its 2010 and 2011 tax returns, CHGO claimed it hadn't spent money on politics. Watchdogs filed complaints against CHGO alleging it had flouted tax and election laws. But sometime in 2011, after the Republicans' 2010 "shellacking," CHGO quietly disappeared. The group, and the anonymous individuals behind it, has yet to face any punishment.
The tale is a familiar one in the campaign finance world, illustrating the slow-moving, scattershot nature of justice when it comes to political money. The Federal Election Commission, the nation's top election cop, is gridlocked by ideological differences. The IRS, whose role includes policing nonprofits, moves at a glacial pace, and traditionally investigates a small sliver of groups under its watch. This lawlessness is even more relevant, say watchdog groups, in the aftermath of Citizens United and other key court decisions, which led to a surge in spending by super-PACs and dark-money nonprofits.
Ludicrous Times Op-Ed Forgets Entire Year of Wall Street History
It was riotous, side-splitting comedy last week when Sanford Weill, the onetime head of Citibank, went on CNBC to announce that he thought it was time to break up the big banks.
Why this was funny: Through his ambitious (and at the time not yet legal) decision to merge Citibank, Travelers, and Salomon Brothers into one giant wrecking ball of greed, self-dealing and global irresponsibility called Citigroup, Weill more or less single-handedly created the Too-Big-To-Fail problem. You know, the one currently casting that thick, black doomlike shadow over all humanity which, if you look out your window, you can see floating over all our heads this very minute.
U.S. has never held accountable those who authorized torture
Today is the anniversary of two tragedies. Five years ago the 35W bridge collapsed, 13 people died, and dozens of others were injured. We cut corners and people died. The other anniversary, equally tragic, won't get as much attention in this state. This tragedy is ongoing, and the lessons have not yet been learned.
Ten years ago today, the so-called "torture memos" were written for President George W. Bush. Those were the memos, authored by the Justice Department's John Yoo and Jay Bybee, that defined torture so narrowly that it was virtually defined out of existence. After those memos became public, they were repudiated by the Bush Justice Department and deemed "inoperative."
Obama Admin Helps Undermine U.N. Arms Treaty Talks While Touting Record-High Weapons Sales Abroad
Arms control advocates are blaming the Obama administration and Russia for last week’s failed U.N. negotiations over the first-ever global agreement regulating the $60 billion arms trade. The United States — the world’s largest manufacturer — had demanded a number of exemptions and ultimately said it needed more time to review the proposals. As the talks collapsed, a top State Department official openly bragged that U.S. government efforts have helped boost foreign military sales to record levels this year. We’re joined by William Hartung, director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy and author of "Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex."
Officer advises against court-martial in Afghanistan shooting death
The case of Army Sgt. 1st Class Walter Taylor, who faces a charge of negligent homicide in the killing of a doctor during a firefight, has raised questions about U.S. rules of engagement and civilian casualties.
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Amid the gunfire, an unknown black car sped through the scene, coming to a halt near the command wire for the roadside bomb. After the white cars had escaped and the gunfire had stopped, an unidentified figure emerged from the car and moved toward its rear. Taylor and another soldier opened fire, later saying they believed the person to be an insurgent who might set off a second bomb or a suicide vest.
But it was a civilian woman: Dr. Aqilah Hikmat, head of the obstetrics and gynecology department at the local provincial hospital. Hikmat's husband, who was injured in the firefight, said his family had unwittingly driven into the scene and was attempting to escape when their car came under fire.
Putin’s Clever Plan to Keep NATO in Afghanistan
Putin isn't suddenly warming to the West or its military alliance. He still loathes NATO with a Cold War passion. Some of the language he used in his remarks on Wednesday suggests a grim satisfaction in having U.S. troops stay and suffer in the same way that the U.S. helped make the Soviet military suffer in Afghanistan in the 1980s.
"Let them stay there and fight," Putin said of NATO. "They have taken up that heavy burden and must carry it until the end."
The core point, though, is that Putin is right about NATO's presence in Afghanistan being in Russia's national interest. Instability in Afghanistan is a more immediate threat to Russia than it is to the U.S. or to any NATO member, Sept. 11 attacks notwithstanding. Russia cannot go back to Afghanistan to impose order -- the legacy of its own 10-year war there makes that inconceivable; and if other regional players such as Iran, Pakistan, India or, God forbid, China should get involved, that would present Russia with an even greater strategic threat.
NATO, therefore, is the only available solution. Being distant, it's relatively neutral in terms of the everlasting regional tug-of-war over Afghanistan. Putin told Russia's parliament, the State Duma, earlier this year in a debate on the NATO offer that he wanted to avoid Russian troops having to fight on the Tajik-Afghan border. If you look at a map of Afghanistan and put yourself in Putin's mindset -- which considers the borders of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan as virtual Russian borders -- then his concern becomes natural.
Blog Posts of Interest
The Evening Blues - 8-2-12 by joe shikspack on DailyKos
A 2012 Victory Won't Bring Back the Economy: Only a Private Debt Jubilee by priceman on DailyKos
NYT Blog Must-Read For This Morning: “Beware the Jobs Report of July” by bobswern on DailyKos
Chick-fil-A: Franchise Operators Must "Espouse Christian Values" and "Participate in Group Prayers" by Ian Reifowitz on DailyKos
Does a Corporation Have Buddha Nature? by One Pissed Off Liberal on DailyKos
We are ready for some serious change. We are ready to take up the tools of a free and analytic press to peacefully undermine the stranglehold of the kleptocrats on our battered democracy. We are ready to expose and publicize their greed, lies and illegal machinations and hold their enablers in government and the media to account. Are you in?
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."
~ Margaret Mead
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