March 12, 2009 archive

Spring is nearly here!

Dare I say my transformation started only with clothes

I cashed in young and bought full catalogues, I was seasonally robed

You fear I’m swallowed, know that I’m the one who sips at their cup

Drink down this business spirit, now I found I’m the first to have grown up

Dare I say my education was less than I hoped it would be

Is it unfair to say my mind is more weathered from one less degree

Anonymously writing all your work while perfecting my form

I’m charged to master all these demons, dear, so it shall be done

Providence clearly smiled on me

My name is Andrew I tower with the trees

Left rock for God and I won’t turn back

My name is Lazer all my friends call me Max

My presence went unnoted till I spoke up when I was 16

The plastered walls, like clarion calls, the parochial brats followed me

My private school uprising fooled my way to faux martyrdom

This windy city blows my hopes and dreams in the hopes that they’ll come

My head still grew though I was full grown

My name is Andre I was raised on the Rhone

I’ve learned just about everything

My name is Leonard all my friends call me King

Let’s not forget about our two beloved foreigners

The Russian and the Persian who spend all their time in stoned corners

Daniel’s well prepared to settle down and wed at his lady’s whim

And Edmond is believed lost because his mother’s searching for him

When I was young I did the Ricky Vaughn twice in one summer

We raised in soft surroundings needed to be harder somehow

I found the sweetest angel, years went by before I broke down her front

Before she left, that angel beat me so bad, I swore it was Altamont

And now your stories will not fill what I led slip through my hands

I will not drink a drop, but raise a glass to all of my friends

I found a way to remain 19

My name is Jonathan I’ve just kissed a dream

Bred since birth to be chief Primate

My name is Levi I’m leading the apes

These doctors put me in such a rut

My name is Michael all the chicks hate my guts

I’ve learned just about everything

I am Ignatius, all your friends call me king

1. The Guardian reports Severe global warming will render half of world’s inhabited areas unliveable, Steven Sherwood, a climate expert at Yale University, told a global warming conference in Copenhagen today.

   “Parts of China, India and the eastern US could all become too warm in summer for people to lose heat by sweating – rendering such areas effectively uninhabitable… People will not be able to adapt to a much warmer climate as well as previously thought.”

   “There will be some places on Earth where it would simply be impossible to lose heat,” Sherwood said. “This is quite imaginable if we continue burning fossil fuels. I don’t see any reason why we wouldn’t end up there.”

2. The NY Times reports President Obama issues his first signing statement, “reserving a right to bypass dozens of provisions in a $410 billion government spending bill even as he signed it into law.”

   “One of the budget bill’s provisions that Mr. Obama said he could circumvent concerns United Nations peacekeeping missions… He also raised concerns about a section that establishes whistle-blower protections for federal employees who give information to Congress.” The “majority of the challenged provisions are those allowing money to be reallocated to a different program only with the approval of a Congressional committee.”

3. McClatchy reports the Iraqi who threw shoes at Bush sentenced to 3 years. “An Iraqi court Thursday sentenced television journalist Muntathar al Zaidi to three years in prison for throwing his shoes at former U.S. President George W. Bush… Zaidi’s immediate family wept on hearing the sentence. His brother Udai accused the court of being Americanized. ‘This was expected from an Americanized court,’ he said. ‘We don’t feel sorry for Muntathar, we only feel sorry for Americanized Iraq.'”

4. The Houston Chronicle reports Space debris threat forces temporary evacuation of the space station. “The three American and Russian astronauts aboard the international space station took shelter in their Soyuz escape capsule briefly today to wait out the close approach of debris from an old U.S. commercial rocket stage, NASA said today… The debris, about 4 inches long, whizzed within three miles of the orbital outpost… causing no damage.”

   Back on the ground, the lauch of the space shuttle Discovery is postponed because of a leak in a hydrogen fuel line and NASA’s future is unclear. The LA Times reports President Obama says a ‘Sense of drift’ ails NASA.

   President Obama said Wednesday that NASA was an agency afflicted by “a sense of drift” and that it needed a “mission that is appropriate for the 21st century.”

   During an interview, Obama said the first priority of a new agency administrator — whom he promised to appoint soon — would be “to think through what NASA’s core mission is and what the next great adventures and discoveries are under the NASA banner.” …

   “Shaping a mission for NASA that is appropriate for the 21st century is going to be one of the biggest tasks of my new NASA director,” he said. “What I don’t what NASA to do is just limp along. And I don’t think that’s good for the economy in the region either.”

This is another short reaction to Joseph Romm’s piece in Alternet: “Why the Global Economy Is a Ponzi Scheme and We Are All Bernie Madoffs”.  Much as I’d like to agree with Romm (as he is one of the most authoritative voices out there on the topic of abrupt climate change), no, we are not all Bernie Madoffs.  The global capitalist economy marginalizes most of the world’s population while granting the status of “Bernie Madoff” to, well, Bernie Madoff — really, even granting Romm’s metaphor, the few who are privileged to take real advantage of the economy.  And, perhaps, even for them, “playing the Ponzi scheme” means “just getting by.”  Still, Romm’s use of metaphor is creative and interesting.

(crossposted at Big Orange)

Obama Gets Blamed

For Not Fulling A

McCain Campaign Promise

Even Though Republicans Added

More Than 300 Items Of Pork

Financial Fraud Is Focus of Attack by Prosecutors



By DAVID SEGAL

Published: March 11, 2009

Spurred by rising public anger, federal and state investigators are preparing for a surge of prosecutions of financial fraud.

Across the country, attorneys general have already begun indicting dozens of loan processors, mortgage brokers and bank officers. Last week alone, there were guilty pleas in Minnesota, Delaware, North Carolina and Connecticut and sentences in Florida and Vermont – all stemming from home loan scams.

With the Obama administration focused on stabilizing the banks and restoring confidence in the stock market, it has said little about federal civil or criminal charges. But its proposed budget contains hints that it will add to this weight of litigation, including money for more F.B.I. agents to investigate mortgage fraud and white-collar crime, and a 13 percent raise for the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Native American death rates soar as most people are living longer

Babies die at a rate 44% higher than decade ago

By VANESSA HO

P-I REPORTER

On the Okanogan plains in northeast Washington, the Colville tribes recently buried a man who died after facing a bleak decision: spend his money on trips into town for dialysis, or buy food for his family.It was a variant of a fate that has doomed many people on the stark, remote reservation, causing the timber-dependent tribes to increasingly spend their money on burials.

“It’s a choice between feeding your family and living,” said Andy Joseph Jr., a Colville Confederated Tribes council member. “Our people can’t afford to pay for their funeral services.”

From isolated reservations across the state to urban pockets around Seattle, Native Americans are dying at higher rates than a decade ago, at a time when most people in Washington are living longer, healthier lives.

A recent state Department of Health report showed that the march against cancer, heart disease and infant mortality has largely bypassed Native Americans.

USA

Intelligence Pick Blames ‘Israel Lobby’ For Withdrawal



By Walter Pincus

Washington Post Staff Writer

Thursday, March 12, 2009; Page A01

The withdrawal of a senior intelligence adviser after an online campaign to prevent him from taking office has ignited a debate over whether powerful pro-Israel lobbying interests are exercising outsize influence over who serves in the Obama administration.

When Charles W. Freeman Jr. stepped away Tuesday from an appointment to chair the National Intelligence Council — which oversees the production of reports that represent the view of the nation’s 16 intelligence agencies — he decried in an e-mail “the barrage of libelous distortions of my record [that] would not cease upon my entry into office,” and he was blunt about whom he considers responsible.