The Sky Isn't Falling, But the Gulf Stream is Slowing Down

Faced with a dire report of economic calamity if Global Warming goes on unabated, the British government has hired (who else?) Al Gore to preach the climate change gospel to his skeptical fellow Americans. Scientists have established that the Gulf Stream has slowed down 30% in the last 12 years which will affect the weather patterns of northern Europe. The flowing stream of warm water keeps Europe's winters mild. But increasing temperatures due to the greenhouse effect and consequent melting of fresh water ice in the arctic are interfering with the function of the North Atlantic Drift of which the Gulf Stream is a part. If the Greenland ice sheet melts completely, sea levels will rise by 20 feet. The good news is that the problem of New Orleans' inadequate levees will be permanently solved. View this interesting graphic at the Guardian.

Friendly Fire

In a report that encapsulates the bungling of the Iraq adventure, the Pentagon's Special Inspector for Iraq Reconstruction said it cannot account for 4% of the American weapons supplied to Iraq since the end of 2003. The missing inventory includes RPG launchers, machine guns, assault rifles and semiautomatic pistols. Less than 3% of the missing weapons have registered serial numbers. The report was made at the request of John Warner (R-VA) chairman of the powerful Senate Armed Services Committee. So I guess this means we are own worse enemy.

Be A Real Democrat, Not Just a Safe One

This post is addressed to those seventy or so Democratic politicians in "safe seats". If you got campaign cash to spare and you have not done so already, why not help out a Democratic candidate in a closely contested race? I think the majority of your constituents would approve of your team spirit. Besides, the favor may one day be returned when you need it the most.

Dead Man Walking

You got to hand it to the GOP they have an absolutely ruthless grasp of the smear, the distortion, and the manipulation. In time for your Monday headlines--and a bump in the polls just prior to the election--Saddam Hussein's death sentence will be announced. Another foregone conclusion to no one's surprise, least of all the Iraqis who consider the show trial an American puppet theatre. But the Bush regime has worked very hard for the desired result behind the electronic curtain. According to the Institute for Public Accuracy, a team of US lawyers working out of our Baghdad embassy have been driving the tribunal to a rapid conclusion from the beginning and overseeing the case against Saddam. A great way to instill democratic values in a populace with little democratic experience-- behave like the dictator just deposed and make a mockery of justice. But apparently this kind of moralistic charade plays well in the Bible belt.

Your Moment of Zen Cat

Q:How does a Zen cat meow? A: _________

The People's Referendum

Millions of Americans going to the polls will be voting on local ballot measures calling for the impeachment of George W. Bush for lying to Congress about the necessity of war against Iraq, his illegal domestic spying, and international war crimes. If Americans vote for these measures, nervous Democratic politicians cannot ignore the clear voice of the people demanding an investigation and a vote on articles. My own Representative, David Wu (D-OR) voted for investigation of the Decider's malfeasance in office, yet tells the local paper that impeachment is "not a sound use of the nation's time and energy..to look backward" What an absolute cop out.
The biggest single problem with our federal government is the lack of accountability for messing up. The Texas Frat Boy is without doubt the worst President in our history and he now has the power of a king in the form of The Military Commissions Act of 2006. Thank you Congress for sending us back to 1215 before Magna Carta. Perhaps David Wu thinks 2800 dead Americans and 600,000 dead Iraqis was also a waste of the 'nation's energy' too. Too bad he is not willing to hold the perpetrator accountable.

The Crew at Berkshire Hathaway

I do not expect much in the way of objective news from the nightly corporate propaganda fests on network TV, but when Brian Williams touted the rise of closed stock fund Berkshire Hathaway from $7 to $100,000 a share, it made my stomach turn. Since when does the health of financial capitalists have anything to do with the commonwealth? Granted, Warren Buffett took shares of a nearly defunct textile manufacturer and turned them into a rich man's money machine. But does Mr. Buffett's fund produce anything of value to society as a whole? It certainly does not produce textiles anymore. Those are all made overseas nowadays. Does he employ a large work force that earns a living wage? Perhaps his small staff in Omaha earns a decent living. Does he invest in infrastructure or new plant and equipment that can in turn create value for society? Again the answer is no.
Undoubtably his defenders would counter these criticisms by saying Mr. Buffett benefits society by creating wealth. But wealth for who? How many of you can afford to invest 100,000 bones in his fund? Marx said of financial capitalists like Buffett,

The credit system...is one enormous centralization [that] gives this
class of parasites a fabulous power not only to decimate industrial capitalists
periodically but also to interfere in actual production...and this
crew...have nothing at all to do with it. Das Capital

So if your job is being outsourced to a low wage nation or your pension fund is going broke or you are working 80 hours to pay your ARM, comfort yourself with thoughts of how rich you would be now if you had bought Berkshire at $7. Really, you only have yourself to blame. For myself, I am with Jack Burden who told Willey Stark in All the King's Men to 'soak the fat boys'. Because they can afford it.

Obama Latte

Ok, I confess I am not an Obama fan. There are at least five other Democratic candidates running for President. They all have more legislative and executive experience than Obama, if not his symbolic racial heritage. The current Obama frenzy is not a testament to his caliber, but to the corrosive influence of corporate media obsessed with superficialities.

The Computer Ate My Democracy

Republican democracy is an Enlightenment child birthed beneath candlelight and quill pens. Its death may come at the hands of touch screen computers and ruthlessly partisan CEOs. Ever since the hanging chads of 2000, computer companies have been taking over the mechanics of counting votes. But the accuracy and speed the vendors promise comes with an appalling lack of transparency, reliability and security. The problem is so serious, that Democratic members of Congress attempted to rush a bill through before the mid-term recess mandating paper ballots be made available to voters. Of course, the bill got nowhere thanks to Republican gate keepers. The CEO of Diebold, you may remember, promised to "deliver" Ohio to the GOP. He was good on his word.
Touch screen voting machines, know as DREs to the trade, are the most problematic. They are literally designed with failure in mind. No electronic voting machine currently sold in the US meets audit standards currently in use in the private and public sectors. In other words, an ATM machine is more reliable and transparent than a voting machine. There have been demonstrations of altering vote counts using wireless electronic devices or by opening the machine housing and flipping a switch. That should strike you at the very least as odd since hacked voting machines can literally determine who sits in the Oval Office. And that person could send you to Guatanamo Bay or Iraq.
We have had election fraud since the foundation of our republic, but the means for stealing elections, as probably occurred in Ohio in 2004, has never been so powerful or insidious. This blog is written to bring your attention to significant issues and facts affecting your life. Nothing represents a greater threat to the survival of our democracy than computerized vote fraud. This is true despite what propaganda The Decider is spewing forth about his failed war. So watch the HBO documentary titled "Hacking Democracy". And then demand your Congress member do something about it. When writing, you don't have to use a quill pen.

The Center Cannot Hold

Its becoming obvious to a lot of voters that Iraq is a lost cause. Even that bastion of denial, the White House, is admitting that the four year occupation has failed to give birth to a strong central government that will be able to control the Sunni gangs turning Baghdad into Bombdag. In the south, Al Sadr's Shiite militia took Amarah briefly from security forces composed of another Shiite militia controlled by Abdul al Hakim in the absence of British troops now on the Iran boarder. One British journalist on the scene described the Amarah takeover as part of Shiite on Shiite violence throughout the southern region of the country. This fighting presages the struggle over oil revenues that will start when foreign troops leave. In the north, it is a forgone conclusion that the Kurds will separate from the Sunni center to establish their own long sought independence. An estimated 1.5 million Iraqis have fled the country. Thus, the national fault lines have appeared in Iraq and are getting wider each day. American troops are keeping a precarious lid on out right civil war, but its costing us men. Seventy died this week.
Former Secretary of State and Bush family consiglieri, Jim Baker is conducting a review of the situation for THE DECIDER, a telling sign that 'staying the course' is now judged by senior Republican leaders to be political suicide for the GOP. Its no surprise that in Washington, DC continuing political careers mean more than saving soldiers' lives.

Here Kitty, Kitty....Couric

www.cybersalt.org/cleanlaugh/images/06/catcongeniality.htm

Here are some more funny cat pictures for your Friday: www.cybersalt.org/cleanlaugh/cats

Captain Ahab Sails Again

Iceland, in an apparent burst of nationalist fever, has decided to resume commercial hunting of whales. There is only one company in Iceland that kills whales and it . Some observers believe that the real issue behind the resumption is the protection of Iceland's right to manage its fishing grounds. Its also a popular position, as large majority of Icelanders support whaling. Icelandic whalers have been taking a limited number of whales for "scientific purposes" up to now. But the country along with Japan and Norway, never accepted the international ban on whaling.
The only real market for whale meat is Japan which slaughters thousands of Sei whales every year in the Southern Ocean. This year Japan captured The International Whaling Commission by soliciting support from small countries with no whaling interest. The IWC is being driven by the whaling countries to abandon its conservation and protection role. There is scientific evidence available that whales are sentient beings with emotions and complex social structures. They certainly feel pain. Having touched Grey Whales in Baja, I can attest that their intelligence is obvious and they appear to enjoy interactions with humans that are not trying to kill them.
My salute to those activists like Greenpeace that risk their lives on the high seas to protect our fellow creatures from man's cruelty.

Net Neutrality--A Good Thing

Big business with its handmaiden in power, is grabbing for yet more of the pie. Users like myself have pretty much taken the content neutral Internet for granted once we got up to speed on blocking porn sites and spam. I bet a lot of you on line made your fingers stiff downloading and uploading sexy pics with the early file transfer programs. It was a learning experience.
Now the telecoms want to change all that. They want to start charging content providers with what amount to toll fees for using their "pipes"--optical fiber, digital cable and telephone lines. A decision in 2005 by the FCC abolished the long standing rule against discrimination based on content. If legislation passes, content providers who cannot afford or will not pay new fees will see their sites slow down or perhaps not load at all. Their applications and devices may not work as well. In essence a two tier Internet will be created. The haves, like BigRiver.com, will willingly pay telecoms more so their online business gets preferential treatment. While the have nots, like the local bookstore, will be stuck in the slow lane and driven into oblivion. These new priority access fees would be on top of the current Internet access fees and bandwidth charges users alreadyy pay.
Thanks to consumer friendly senators like Ron Wyden (D) of Oregon who blocked the telecom's legislation, the demise of net neutrality has not yet happened. But knowing the big bucks to be made on priority access, the telecoms are slopping the trough in Washington. For every dollar spent by the grassroots to defend net neutrality they have spent $200 to kill it. AT&T's CEO has made their intent to establish "pay to play" clear in the Wall Street Journal. A Verizon executive called content neutrality a "free lunch". But what the executives ignore is that unrestricted net access has spawned an unprecedented amount of economic innovation, social interaction, and democratic participation. The Internet owes its existence to a public sector effort--ARPAnet--to increase the free flow of ideas between researchers. Its not right to allow profit companies to make even more money by becoming gate keepers to a virtual world created by the public for the public.

Blowback

People who read my running commentary on the "Italian Job"--the falsification of the Niger yellowcake documents--will want to read Larisa Alexandrovna's current piece at Raw Story . House Republican Intelligence Committee chair has been meeting with an agent of that international man of mystery, Manucher Ghorbanifar. Ghorbanifar attended a Rome meeting authorized by National Security Advisor Stephan Hadley in 2001 between AEI's resident cryptofascist Michael Ledeen, and Ghorbanifar. Ghorbanifar described the meeting as a discussion about regime change in Iran. But he went on to other meetings in Rome and Paris with defense analyst David Rhode. According to Alexandrovna, unnamed experts believe that at these meetings the plot to insert falsified reports into the intelligence stream was hatched. It is known that SISMI director Nicolo Pollari met with Hadley in 2002 one month before the fake documents surfaced. Despite two burn notices from CIA, Manny is back on the US payroll under the auspices of Darth Cheney. Good stuff!

Big Brother is Reading your Blog

Close readers of the Doonesbury comic strip saw last week what CENTCOM is doing to police milbloggers in Iraq. If a blogger dares to post negatively about the GWOT in their blog they just might get a comment from CENTCOM's "Electronic Media Engagement Team" directing the errant member to its own web site where the public can "read positive stories" because "the public wants to hear these good stories". I think the public wants to read the truth, but you decide.

300 Million and Counting

Maybe that wild and crazy guy, Mel Gibson, is on to something with his new production Apocalyptica. The plot deals with the demise of a meso-American civilization due to religious mythology, overpopulation and ecological collapse. Many scholars agree that these conditions probably lead to the end of the Mayan civilization. By the time of the Conquistadors, the classic Mayan cities were crumbling ghost towns.
Now, we find that a new American is added to our population every 11 seconds. Today we have reached 300 million. That's a fifty percent increase from 200 million in 1967. But there is still plenty of open space in America. There is about 84 square miles per person compared to Europe's 300 and Japan's 900. What is alarming from a sustainable viewpoint is that the amount of consumption is going up--fast. Since 1967 car mileage has tripled, the number of vehicles doubled and households have fewer people inside. Its not the heat its the humidity, Virginia.

Iraq = $$$$$ for Milcons

You should view Iraq For Sale if you have not kept track of the obscene wasting of taxpayer money in the Sandbox. The documentary is a compendium of enraging statistics. The film focuses on five companies: Halliburton, Blackwater, CACI, Titan and KBR, but there are over 100,000 contractors over there. All are drawn to Iraq like kids to a candy store by the huge profits to be made providing the military with supplies and services. Forty cents of each dollar spent by Congress on the war goes to contractors.
I admit I was unmoved by the story of the mercs working for Blackwater who met their ignominious end hanging burnt from a bridge in Fallujah. These men are highly paid to take risks, unlike our soldiers. But there are some disgusting facts revealed by the film. Halliburton has received no bid contracts worth $18.5 billion. One such contract was to provide potable water for troops in the desert. Of the 67 Haliburton supply sources tested, 63 were contaminated with dangerous microorganisms. This pathetic story drove the film's informant to tears. Civilians drive empty supply trucks in harm's way because the awarded contracts are on a cost plus basis. The more costs incurred, the larger the profit for the contractor. So expensive vehicles that were damaged but could be repaired are shoved into a "burn pit" or to the side of the road and destroyed. The litany of waste and greed goes on. Some accountings post the overcharges at $1 billion or more.
The documentary makes clear that politicians are complicit in the extreme rip-off of American taxpayers. All the companies exposed make large political contributions and their executives are Washington insiders with numerous influential connections. The most notorious example is Halliburton. The Vice President's former company has made $4.4 billion in political contributions while its stock price has inflated from around $10 to $44 a share. The take away line from the film comes at the very end when a soldier off camera says, "survival of our country depends on us taking it back." Amen. Remember to vote on November 7th because democracy is not a spectator sport.

Another Failure of Leadership

Nanci Pelosi, House Minority Leader, is looking to the day when she takes over the Speaker's gavel. But she is already signaling that she does not intend to seek impeachment of the President for his unprecedented usurpation of power and his war crimes. According to Ms. Pelosi the Democrats "do not have time" to begin impeachment proceedings because she wants to push an agenda of overdue social reforms. Granted, these progressive reforms are needed, but there are two years remaining in George Bush's tenure. Apparently Ms. Pelosi does not think her Democratic colleagues can walk and chew gum at the same time.
Unfortunately what Ms. Pelosi doesn't seem to appreciate is that the way forward is to first reestablished fundamental principles of democratic government that Bush's regime has worked so hard to undermine. Congress must reaffirm it status as a co-equal branch of government if it is to regain its credibility with the people. The selling of the Iraq War to Congress was successful in large part because of the undue deference Congress paid to the Executive's lies about threats to our security. Secondly, Bush has acted as if he were a despot, claiming he has the right to selectively ignore laws with which he disagrees, abrogate civil liberties, torture captives, and illegally spy on citizens. No person is above the rule of law in this country. A historic lesson must be meted out to a President that sees fit to disobey his oath to defend the Constitution and faithfully execute the laws of this nation.
Failure to take the time to reestablish our fundamental principles will only increase the illegitimacy of our nation's government. Americans no longer trust their government because they know it lies to them and their politicians only cover up. In the past fifty years Americans have had to live with shameful deceptions: the Warren Commission, Vietnam, Watergate, Iran/Contra and now Iraq. Sweeping more lies under history's rug is not the way to "move forward" as Ms. Pelosi so flippantly put it.
The stock market is up and Haliburton's stock has quadrupled in value. But 2750 American soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians have died. All are dead as the result of an American president's choice to invade another country without justification. America is in a moral crisis. There is no time for "business as usual" in Washington. The American people want their democracy to survive. I respectfully suggest that if Ms. Pelosi ascends to the role of Speaker, she make time to fulfill her constitutional duty to the nation by bringing Articles of Impeachment to the floor of the House.

Wack Jobs with Guns

Guns don't kill people, but wack jobs with guns do. The insane or simply sociopathic will always be with us. Until we find the way to eliminate those problems within our society--a very difficult task especially for one that sees economic stratification as a good thing-- we could work on the other variable in this social equation by making it smaller. We are the only society on this planet that tolerates such a lax attitude toward a lethal product. Perhaps making guns more difficult to own, easier to trace, and less lethal we could reduce the mayhem in our midst. I am not suggesting that restricting gun ownership by type and registration could have saved the girls in Colorado and Pennsylvania. The killer in Pennsylvania had no criminal or mental health record and had apparently nursed a grudge for years before putting his revenge plan into action. But such restrictions could certainly reduce the number of deaths each year from guns. To understand just how out of wack this trade off between personal freedom and public safety has become, no one in their right mind can argue that a hunter or target shooter needs a .50 caliber semi automatic rifle equipped with armor piercing bullets to engage in their chosen sport. It is a weapon of war designed to kill people and therefore inappropriate for civilian use. The same could be said for large caliber semi automatic pistols.
Do we really have to bulldoze schools into meadows so that we can exercise a freedom to raise and equip state militias? I don't think so.

House Calls

When Henry Kissinger makes the news, as he has for the last thirty years, I am always reminded of Dr. Strangelove, the paranoid ex-Nazi and advisor to the President played brilliantly by Peter Sellers. Bobwood tells us the Doctor is again in the House advising The Decider on Iraq. His prescription is, of course, victory at any cost which is basically the same thing he told Dicky back in the day. But as we all know, it just got too hot for DIcky domestically and he had to start drawing down under the cover of a massive carpet bombing of the north. The big difference between then and now is the absence of the draft. Because only volunteers are getting bagged, there is a disconnect between stateside Americans satiated by booze and ballgames and our gallant lads in uniform. Sure there is plenty of oral service on the waves, but the war in Iraq does not touch as many American families as 'Nam did. Its time America moved on from the days of the Cold War and gave Henry a rest. His advice is too old school to be relevant.

The October Non-Surprise

Kim Il Jong's reactionary state set off a tactical sized nuclear device yesterday in a successful underground test. What the security moms need to know is that North Korea is not close to developing a nuke that is small enough and light enough to be carried intercontinental distance atop their current missiles. Not only that, we have Aegis equipped warships off the North Korean coast that would be able to destroy a missile leaving a launch pad. So unless they are planning to deliver one to Long Beach in a tramp freighter marked "From Kim with Love" relax. Their nuclear development is more of problem for neighbors South Korean and Japan.
But what the test does demonstrate, is the total failure of the Bush Regime's get tough policy with potential enemies. Exporting 'democracy' by force does not work, and simply alienates non-capitalist societies already suspicious of America's imperial tendencies. Its an incredible fact that the Korean War was never formally ended with a peace treaty. Only the shooting has stopped. The armistice is a fragile thing and armies on both sides of the parallel are hunkered down and ready to go on minutes notice. Fifty three years later, its time for a US administration to take the initiative and engage North Korea and China in peace and mutual non-aggression treaty negotiations. There is a window of opportunity now open that may close if North Koreans think they can bully themselves out of the economic pit they are in. Just one more reason to send THE DECIDER back to Crawford. He is a lot better at clearing brush than negotiating when the stakes are high.

Thirty Days and Counting

If the Democratic Party needs a theme for the final thirty days before the mid-term election, it can be summed up in one word: "Accountability". There has been so little of it in the six years of the Bush regime that its hard to recognize our federal government anymore. If you would have told me after Watergate that the United States would be directly or indirectly torturing prisoners in a secret prison system and illegally spying on its citizenry again in twenty years, I would have told you to take a hike. And as Harry Truman succinctly told us, accountability for the lies, mismanagement, corruption, cronyism, and arrogance stops with the occupant of the Oval Office.
Thankfully the founders gave us a mechanism to rid ourselves of would-be dictators, impeachment. Lord knows there are ample and grievous grounds upon which to impeach George W. Bush and his hatchet man, Dick Cheney. Pick up one of the several books now in print on the subject. The Republicans trivialized this fundamental corrective process by attempting to remove Bill Clinton for lying about consensual sex with an adult female. The Democrats do not even want to mention the I word in public. When former NSA director General Odom mentioned the word at a conference as a way to control the illegal spying now underway, there was uncomfortable silence from the politicians in the room.
Its understandable that Democratic politicians do not want to face the inevitable accusations of revenge hurled at them by Republicans if the House takes up Articles. But the polls show that the public is dog tired of the Republican farce in Washington. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said, "drain the swamp". The little boy with his finger in the dike is George W. Bush. No better way to get the job done than to hold him accountable for the worst presidency in our history.

Friday Cats

Princess Lulu says, let them see Cats!: CATS ME IF YOU CAN

Frankenrice

As if you don't have enough to worry about, you also got to be careful about what you eat. Spinach is contaminated with e. coli (probably from organic fertilizers or tainted irrigation water) and long grain rice is contaminated with a genetically engineered rice that is untested for human consumption. The USDA announced in August that rice engineered to resist chemical weed killers had entered the nation's supply of long grain rice. It is not known how the Bayer CropScience Liberty Link601 rice got into the food supply, but it was never approved for commercial use. The announcement came many months after the contamination. Now, the USDA is trying to "correct" the situation by rushing the frankenrice through the approval for human consumption process. That's a little like Speaker Hastert taking responsibility for not blowing the whistle on Predator Foley.

Frankenrice

As if you don't have enough to worry about, you also got to be careful about what you eat. Spinach is contaminated with e. coli (probably from organic fertilizers or tainted irrigation water) and long grain rice is contaminated with a genetically engineered rice that is untested for human consumption. The USDA announced in August that rice engineered to resist chemical weed killers had entered the nation's supply of long grain rice. It is not known how the Bayer CropScience Liberty Link601 rice got into the food supply, but it was never approved for commercial use. The announcement came many months after the contamination. Now, the USDA is trying to "correct" the situation by rushing the frankenrice through the approval for human consumption process. That's a little like Speaker Hastert taking responsibility for not blowing the whistle on Predator Foley.

Wishfulfilment

The New York Times reports that the Republicans have set aside $20m for a party in the latest military spending bill to "commemorate success in Iraq". Only legislators in a state of schizophrenic denial could possible think that they have anything to celebrate. The Maliki puppet regime just fired 700 police for being implicated in death squad activity. Another indication that the 'Iraqization" of Iraq is nowhere to be seen. The puppet government is totally dependent upon the presence to US military forces for its existence. Another 17 US soldiers have been killed since Saturday. And oh yes, Kindasleezy is getting some more face time in the zone. OH VEY!

The New Criminal Defense: 'I'm in Rehab'

Former Florida Rep. Foley has checked into rehab, so everything is OK. It seems that checking into rehab is the new criminal defense for everything from drunk driving and prescription drug abuse to homosexual predation. This perv had a long standing fascination with page boys going back eleven years. His proclivities were so well known that the pages were giving newbies the low down on Foley. His queer eye for boys was "well known in the gay political community' according to former staffers. For Hastert to claim he knew nothing about Foley's predilections strains credibility. Foley may have committed a state felony offense. If Hastert knew about criminal behavior and did nothing about it, that makes him an abettor.

Al Gore = Chicken Little?

One of the long predicted consequences of global warming is increasing drought and subsequent spreading of deserts. This trend has already been observed in arid areas such as sub-Saharan Africa were some subsistence agriculture is still possible. But for the first time, the scenario of spreading deserts has been quantified using a supercomputer climate model developed by the British meteorological Office's Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction & Research. The results of the study are not good news. It shows the drought severity index for extreme drought rising from 3% to 30% of the Earth's land surface by 2100. Severe drought conditions rise from the current 8% to 40% of the Earth's surface. A third of the planet will be uninhabitable because agriculture will not be possible. Hundred of millions are living in these regions now.
The short rains did not arrive in East Africa last year. The continent is brown and littered with animal carcasses from the Horn to Zanzibar. But we know its just the devilish computers that are scaring us, right?

Al Gore = Chicken Little?

One of the long predicted consequences of global warming is increasing drought and subsequent spreading of deserts. This trend has already been observed in arid areas such as sub-Saharan Africa were some subsistance agriculture is still possible. But for the first time, the scenario of spreading deserts has been quantified using a supercomputer climate model developed by the British Meterological Office's Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction & Research. The results of the study are not good news. It shows the drought severity index for extreme drought rising from 3% to 30% of the Earth's land surface by 2100. Severe drought conditions rise from the current 8% to 40% of the Earth's surface. A third of the planet will be unihabitable because subsistance agriculture will not be possible. Hundred of millions are living in these regions now.
The short rains did not arrive in East Africa last year. The continent is brown and littered with animal carcasses from the Horn to Zanzibar. But we know its just the devilish computers that are scaring us, right?

Brits Say, "We don't want them"

The Guardian newspaper has learned of secret negotiations between the United States and Britain to return nine British citizens from Guantanamo. As a condition of their release, the US wants 24 hour surveillance of the men. The Brits say the men have no right to return to the UK. British officials also consider the US request for surveillance to be unwarranted and excessive. According to the Guardian the talks are taking place against a growing realization by the Bush regime that the gulag must be closed. Lawyers for the detainees say their clients are still being mistreated by being exposed to temperature extremes. The British Lord Chancellor, Lord Falconer, has called Guantanamo a 'shocking affront' to democracy, and a recruiting agent for jihadists.

The Sinking Ship of State

It seems clear that midst the destruction and death of Baghdad, Prime Minister Niouri al-Maliki is headed toward the same fate as Diem 40 years in ago in Saigon. Baghdad's dawn to dusk curfew was imposed because of persistent and probably accurate rumors that he was to be deposed in a coup. A plan for a suicide bomb attack in the heavily defended green zone was discovered and thwarted. But Maliki has earned the disgust of his American puppetmasters for his inability to achieve some semblance of unity in the country. US troop deaths continue to mount and are closing on the same number killed in the New York City kamikaze attack of five years ago.

Meanwhile back at the ranch, the finger pointing for the complete failure of the Iraq invasion has increased in, well, pointedness. Rummy has dug in for the duration and Kindasleezy is still in a state of denial. Tenant has decided he does not like the role of official scapegoat despite the shiny medal he was given by his indecisiveness, The Decider. Bob Woodward continues to make piles of cash from his access, which I understand is huge. Regardless of whether George Tenant actually warned the members of the circus troupe deemed a government by those aged sages, The Supremes, his book will be out early next year.

Ah, the smell of Sex on Capitol Hill

In an irony so huge only Washington, DC can fit it into it's boxer shorts, the pedophilia scandal and cover up by Republican House leaders might do what an immoral war in Iraq couldn't do: remove the twisted freaks from power.

The death of 100,000 civilians, the shredding of our Constitution, the irreparable harm to our nation's standing in the world, or the cruel sacrifice of our own sums to a limit approaching zero in the District's strange calculus. Clearly the deviate from Florida crossed the line when he used his standing as a legislator against child exploitation as cover to send IMs to his favorite bulge. Hastert and friends knew about the deviate's predation for a year and did nothing. So its clearly up to the people now. If you don't clean the stables, you live with the filth.