Apr 30 2009
Hai humanz, I’m Dr. Casey. I helpz answer yer questions about Swinez Flu. So doan panick! I haz the answers u needz.
My first recommendation is that you hidez in a cat food box for the next 3 months:
(Be sure box haz lots of food inside.)
Doan worry, k?
Apr 30 2009
Journalist Pepe Escobar gives his unique (or maybe not so unique) perspective and evaluation of Obama’s first 100 days and his views of the “real” Barack Obama separated from Obama’s rhetoric, with particular emphasis on US foreign policy and relations.
It may be impossible to judge the 1461 days of a US Presidency based only on the first 100. Pepe Escobar argues at least a pattern may be discerned. President Obama remains hugely popular – but the man, cool, calm and collected, may be more exciting than his policies. Ever the consensus builder, the pragmatist President will need to take more risks if he wants to accomplish real change, as well as being regarded by the majority of the population as The Fixer. So far, on the financial crisis and on the torture controversy – two key themes of his first 100 days – he was not as daring as he was expected to be.
Real News Network – April 29, 2009
What makes Barack run?
100 days in power, from the Obama shuffle to the Obama doctrine
Apr 30 2009
Docudharma is running dangerously low on pixels, electrons and the color blue.
Our quills are worn down to nubs and the parchment maker has been sending his goons around to collect.
Zero point energy isn’t free ya know.
The world has threatened to stop making news for us to write about and Eric Holder is threatening to jail Bush and Cheney just to shut us down.
In other words…..I’m broke. I know times are tough for everyone, but an old wise man once told me that the best way to generate money was to move it out of your life as quickly as it came in. Keep the river flowing. And I promise to spend whatever you can spare as quickly as is humanly possible!
But I forbid you to give more than you can spare!
In other words….
Apr 30 2009
A selection of critters for you to caption: can’t wait to see what the dharmaniacs can come up with!
moar funny pictures
As always, please feel free to leave your own pics, lols, or whatever in the comments. And remember: Pony Party is an open thread. Please do not rec the party.
Apr 30 2009
Foreclosure Crisis: The Gov’t Response, Decoded
from Alexandra Andrews, ProPublica, April 29, 2009 2:02 pm EDT
By now, you’ve probably heard about the Obama administration’s Making Home Affordable plan – the government’s most aggressive and wide-ranging attempt yet to stem the nationwide scourge of foreclosures. We’ll be tracking some homeowners as they make their way through the program, so we thought we’d lay out the plan in detail first.
We also wondered what was happening to the government’s other foreclosure-prevention efforts. Are borrowers still using them? FHA’s $300 billion Hope for Homeowners program isn’t seeing much action (so far, only a single homeowner has refinanced through the program), but some homeowners are finding relief through programs run by various government agencies, like the Department of Veterans Affairs.
[snip]The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development admits its ‘Hope for Homeowners’ program has fallen short.
Apr 30 2009
crosspublished at the orange! 10am, ET
And the beat goes on.
After an extremely intense Torture News, (link to emptywheel’s Document Dump Timeline) week prior to this, these past few days have quieted down a bit. However, the noise makers continue to try to justify torture and we find ourselves sometimes in debates. I hope to take this week’s Action Diary to stress how important it is that we continue having conversations and yelling louder about the realities of the crimes that have been carried out in our names. And, if we must argue, can we please try to keep it civil, amongst ourselves, in the “progressive” sphere…? Please?
Like most of the others, I was a seeker, a mover, a malcontent, and at times a stupid hell-raiser. I was never idle long enough to do much thinking, but I felt somehow that my instincts were right. I shared a vagrant optimism that some of us were making real progress, that we had taken an honest road, and that the best of us would inevitably make it over the top. At the same time, I shared a dark suspicion that the life we were leading was a lost cause, that we were all actors, kidding ourselves along on a senseless odyssey. It was the tension between these two poles – a restless idealism on one hand and a sense of impending doom on the other – that kept me going.
~HST, The Rum Diary
Apr 30 2009
Is it just me or has the swine flu pandemic panic been a very fortuitous occurrence for one Richard B. Cheney and his fellow war criminal scum. It was only last week that the horrors of the torture memos were the order of the day and a pitched battle was being fought by activists and patriots over the waffling Obama administration’s ongoing failure to enforce the law. But then the word went out that we were all going to die and the media mongrels quickly snapped up the bullshit biscuits and stood on their hind legs begging for more. The torture memos are now a part of history, cast down the memory hole. It’s time to just move along as the Pope of Hope says, nothing to see here. We have work to do on our national rejuvenation you see and any sort of restoration of the law would be seen as a partisan witch hunt and reek of vengeance. Besides, our very own Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, your illustrious and feckless Democratic leaders were privy to it all anyway.
Apr 29 2009
I travel a lot. I see preparations being made to deal with a pandemic at airports and in different ways by different governments. I asked colleagues who work in epidemiology what we were dealing with and how much I should worry. Here’s what they said:
What you can do to protect yourself below the fold…
Apr 29 2009
The Guardian reports Only half a trillion tonnes of carbon left to burn before dangerous climate change. “The world has already burned half the fossil fuels necessary to bring about a catastrophic 3.6º F (2º C) rise in average global temperature”. Scientists at Oxford University “say about half a trillion tonnes of carbon have been consumed since the industrial revolution.” At the current rate of carbon burn, the world will a trillion tonnes in 40 years.
Meanwhile, the MercoPress reports a Massive Antarctic ice shelf is breaking up into icebergs. “Scientists estimate the Wilkins Ice Shelf… had been in place for several hundred years. But satellite images taken over the past week show it has begun collapsing into the ocean”.
Science Daily adds this is the largest ice shelf retreat to date.
The LA Times reports Justice Department official slams ‘lawless’ Bush terror policies. Todd Hinnen, deputy assistant attorney general for law and policy in the department’s National Security Division, said the Bush administration’s “lawless response to terrorism” helped strengthen al-Qaeda and undermined U.S. moral credibility and international standing. Hinnen was a Bush administration’s counter-terrorism official until 2007.
The Obama administration is “struggling to deal with the fallout left by its predecessors, both in the U.S. and overseas on issues such as coercive interrogations, ‘extraordinary renditions,’ and the indefinite detention of suspected terrorists”, he noted.
Four at Four continues with shrinking U.S. GDP, America’s most polluted cities, and an update from Pakistan.
Apr 29 2009
… while we’re lobbying politicians to punch the treaty full of loopholes”.
script(pdf) (script below the fold)
AVAAZ.org‘s “Stop Climate Spin” campaign.
AVAAZ has the hat out to raise the money to get the ad on heavy rotation at CNN. Also, if you can donate views, ratings, favorites and comments at Youtube, that’s another way to raise the profile.
(h/t A Siegel at Agent Orange)
Apr 29 2009
I don’t know the procedure, and of course the procedures certainly haven’t been followed in this era that is…we hope… beginning to end.
But the head of the House Judiciary Committee and the Chair of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties have now asked the Head of the Department of Justice to appoint a Special Prosecutor to investigate.
And that should be good enough, now that…well, if, indeed… the Rule of Law has now been restored.
If the Rule of Law is once again operating, the Chairman of House Judiciary Committee asking the Attorney General to appoint a Special Prosecutor should be good enough.