April 9, 2009 archive

Cross posted from DailyKos.

This is a very disturbing “canary in the coal mine” environmental diary. I’m sure the twenty-seven year old PBS series Nature needs no introduction but this week’s episode The Thin Green Line was by far the most devastating to watch. We are wiping out the frogs and amphibians.

The thirty second preview offers a quick look and some amazing photography;

But the entire program points out that we have created the perfect storm against our amphibians.  

see more Funny Graphs

Pony Party is an Open Thread.  Please speak up about whatever interests you: and please do not rec the party.

US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said before presenting his FY2010 budget that the event was special due to the “scope and significance of the changes”.

Change was expected, given the arrival of a new administration and the fiscal pressures applied by the economic crisis, but what specifically has changed?

Military analyst Miriam Pemberton tells the Real News that while some major steps have been taken to cut back expensive Cold War era weapons systems, the department’s overall budget is $20 B higher than it ever was under President Bush.

Real News – April 08, 2009

Obama’s military budget

While media plays up program cuts, total defense budget surpasses Bush by $20 Billion



Miriam Pemberton is a Research Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies. She heads a group that produces the annual “Unified Security Budget for the United States” and she is a former Director of the National Commission for Economic Conversion and Disarmament. She is co-editor, with William Hartung, of “Lessons from Iraq: Avoiding the Next War”.