1. The Washington Post is doing its best to spin positive: U.S. economic growth improves over first quarter. “The U.S. economy grew at a healthy pace in the second quarter, the government said today… Gross domestic product rose at a 1.9 percent inflation-adjusted annual rate in the April through June period, far above what forecasters would have expected just a few months ago. It was boosted by strong exports resulting from the lower value of the dollar and rising consumer spending by Americans, who benefited from government stimulus checks.”

   Rah-rah-rah! The problem is that this assessment is more Bush administration “cook the books” ala Enron. The NY Times does a little better with G.D.P. grows at tepid 1.9% pace despite stimulus.

   The economy grew less than expected from April to June despite a huge booster shot of tax rebates, the government reported on Thursday, dimming the outlook for a quick recovery. And more bad news may lie ahead: new claims for unemployment benefits jumped to a five-year high last week…

   A little more realistic assessment from the NY Times. The article went on to point out that “the government’s tax stimulus package, which put billions of dollars into consumers’ pockets, led to only a modest rise in consumer spending, and many businesses were caught off-guard by the slowdown in sales.” No idea why businesses were surprised by this, unless they are all run by Republicans, because I suspect nearly everyone who got a stimulus bribe is using it to buy gasoline or pay bills.

   But the real news comes from The Guardian, which is a little more blunt with their headline: United States economy shrinks for first time since 2001. Bloomberg News also reports on this with U.S. Recession May Have Begun in Last Quarter of 2007.

   The U.S. economy may have slipped into a recession in the last three months of 2007 as consumer spending slowed more than previously estimated and the housing slump worsened, revised government figures indicated.

   The U.S. economy “contracted at a 0.2 percent annual pace in the fourth quarter of last year compared with a previously reported 0.6 percent gain, the Commerce Department said today in Washington… The government also said incomes grew less than previously thought” too. The Bush administration got the numbers wrong? Amazing!

   Of course the Federal Reserve is still claiming there is no inflation because they “prefer” not to include the skyrocketing cost of food and fuel.

Four at Four continues below the fold with Brazil’s booming economy, ‘oil’ from algae, and a lake on Titan.

1. Barack Obama has made this promise before, but I think it’s good that he’s repeating it. The Associated Press reports Obama pledges review of White House powers instigated by Bush. Obama promised his administration would review George W. Bush’s executive orders and excise any that “trample on liberty”.

   Obama “talked about how his attorney general is to review every executive order and immediately eliminate those that trample on liberty,” said Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y.

   “He indicated there would be a review in his administration,” said Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C., the House majority whip…

   Obama did not indicate who his attorney general would be, or any other member of his Cabinet. To lawmakers who asked about his Cabinet plans, Obama said: “Get me elected, and then I’ll worry about the Cabinet,” according to Nadler.

   Of course this begs the question, what if Obama finds Bush’s executive orders do not “trample on liberty” and, actually, he rather likes them? Will Congress do its job this time around?

2. McClatchy Newspapers ask Does John McCain have a Cuba embargo problem? “The pending merger of American beer giant Anheuser-Busch and a Belgian company that brews and sells beer in Cuba is thrusting John McCain into the middle of thorny Cuba-U.S. relations. McCain’s wife, Cindy, owns the third largest Anheuser-Busch distributor in the country – which means she would stand to profit by partnering with a company that is in business with the Cuban government.”

   Of course McCain insist there isn’t a problem, not because the ridiculous U.S. embargo of Cuba should end, but because there is a “rigid firewall” between McCain and Cindy Lou’s business. He’s a kept politican. And besides, it’s just business™.

   The real story is not Cindy Lou’s business connection to a multinational beverage company with holdings in Cuba, but Cindy Lou’s wealth and how her father made that money and the family’s ties to organized crime.

Four at Four continues with two stories about the environment from the Pacific Northwest.

1. Reuters reports that U.S. and Iraqi forces launch crackdown in restive Diyala province. “Thousands of Iraqi soldiers and police launched a major security operation in northeastern Diyala province on Tuesday in the latest move by the government to stamp its authority over militants… Iraqi forces backed by U.S. troops have also been carrying out extensive operations in the northern Nineveh province, where al Qaeda is blamed for numerous attacks.”

   BBC News adds, “this latest operation was generally expected but its timing was kept secret, and army and police units were brought up from Baghdad unannounced.”

2. The Washington Post reports Sen. Ted Stevens has been indicted on seven criminal counts. The Alaskan Republican entered the Senate in 1968. “The indictment accuses Stevens, former chairman of the powerful Appropriations Committee, of concealing payments of more than $250,000 in goods and services from an oil company. The items include home improvements, autos and household items.”

3. The Hill reports Rep. Henry Waxman believes Blackwater ‘misled’ officials to get contracts. “The Small Business Administration’s (SBA) Inspector General on Monday released a report saying that “Blackwater or its affiliates obtained … a total of 39 contracts that were set aside for small businesses even though the bidder may not have met SBA’s criteria to be considered a small business.””

   According to Waxman, Bush administration officials “ignored blatant warning signs” to award Blackwater “dozens of lucrative federal contracts” for which it was ineligible.

4. From Boom… as the NY Times reports that the Gas rush is on, and Louisianians cash in.

   A no-holds-barred, all-American gold rush for natural gas is under way in this forgotten corner of the South, and De Soto Parish, with its fat check from a large energy company this month, is only the latest and largest beneficiary. The county leaders and everyone around them, for mile after mile, over to Texas and up to Arkansas, in the down-at-the-heels city of Shreveport and in its struggling neighbors, suddenly find themselves sitting on what could prove to be the largest natural gas deposit in the continental United States.

   Already, several dozen people who own parcels of land over the field are becoming instant millionaires as energy companies pay big money for the mineral rights to the gas, which like other energy sources is worth far more than it was last year.

   Jalopies are being traded in for Cadillacs, plans for swimming pools are being hatched in rusty trailers, and the old courthouse here is packed to the rafters day after day with oil company “landmen” (and women), whose job it is to frantically search the record books for the owners of the mineral rights to land that has become like gold.

   To Bust… as the Washington Post reports that a California oil field goes from rush to a reflection of global oil limits.

   In May 1899, a pair of oil prospectors wielding picks and shovels dug into a bank of the Kern River where some gooey liquid had seeped to the surface. About 45 feet down, they hit oil…

   After the discovery of oil, it took 85 years to produce the first billion barrels from the field. It took 24 more years for the next billion. And… Chevron [engineers] hope to milk out 650 million barrels or so more over the next couple of decades.

   If they succeed in retrieving those final drops, it would be an achievement of modern technology. But then all the oil that can be recovered here — the inheritance of a natural confluence of events lasting millions of years — will be gone.

   One of the really sad aspects of the Louisiana story is the “instant millionaires” rushing off to buy Cadillacs, big American gas guzzlers. With the rising cost of energy, these Louisianians are being bought off cheaply. Once the fossil fuels are gone, they’re gone.

1. Two weeks without news and, yet, the news doesn’t change. The LA Times reports Bombings in Baghdad and Kirkuk kill 57. “Violence killed 57 people and left another 280 wounded as a militant blew himself up at a Kurdish demonstration in the ethnically-mixed city of Kirkuk and three female suicide bombers targeted Shiite pilgrims marching in Baghdad.”

   The NY Times described the attacks as “one of the bloodiest sequences of attacks in Iraq this year”. In Baghdad, the three female bombers were “apparently using their flowing black robes, known as abayas, to carry explosives past checkpoints and the Iraqi policemen”.

   While the Washington Post adds that “in Kirkuk, the tensions have arisen over a power-sharing arrangement in a draft provincial elections law that would allocate Kurds, Arabs and Turkmens equal number of seats in the governing council of Tamim province, of which Kirkuk is the capital. But the Kurds were opposed to such a distribution, as well as an item in the legislation that called for a secret ballot to decide the power-sharing arrangement. After the Kurdish lawmakers walked out Tuesday, the parliament passed the bill.”

2. Bloomberg reports the U.S. deficit to reach record $490 billion in 2009. That’s only $83 billion more than Bush said in February when he forecasted the deficit to be $407 billion.

   The shortfall reflects a deterioration of the budget over the past seven years. Bush inherited a budget surplus of $128 billion when he took office in 2001. The budget worsened almost immediately, because of recession, the Sept. 11 attacks, the beginning of the war in Afghanistan and, later, the war in Iraq that began in March 2003.

   Bush recorded his first deficit a year after being sworn in, and it widened to the current record of $413 billion in 2004.

   Five months ago, the administration projected a shortfall of more than $400 billion this year and next, reflecting a struggling economy, and forecast a recovery to a $160 billion deficit in 2010, declining to $96 billion in 2011 and finally a $48 billion surplus in 2012…

   The current projections may understate the deficit next year because the administration hasn’t requested money to prosecute the wars for the full year, leaving that to the next president. Military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan now are costing about $10 billion to $12 billion a month.

   And where did our money go? Not one, but two Wars of Choice™, and according to the Washington Post, U.S. says contractor made little progress on Iraq projects. The Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction said Parsons, a California contractor, received “$142 million to build prisons, fire stations and police facilities in Iraq that it never built or finished”. Oh and last week, after raking in millions of dollars in Bush administration contracts, Blackwater decided to get out of the “security” business.

3. So the Washington Post reports Justice officials repeatedly broke law on hiring.

   Former Justice Department counselor Monica M. Goodling and former chief of staff D. Kyle Sampson routinely broke the law by conducting political litmus tests on candidates for jobs as immigration judges and line prosecutors, according to an inspector general’s report released today.

   Goodling passed over hundreds of qualified applicants and squashed the promotions of others after deeming candidates insufficiently loyal to the Republican party, said investigators… Sampson developed a system to screen immigration judge candidates based on improper political considerations and routinely took recommendations from the White House Office of Political Affairs and Presidential Personnel, the report said.

   Goodling regularly asked candidates for career jobs: “What is it about George W. Bush that makes you want to serve him?” the report said.

   So what are the Democrats going to do about this law breaking? The Hill reports Leahy rips Bush administration over DoJ politicization.

   “The policies and attitudes of this administration encouraged politicization of the department and permitted these excesses,” Leahy stated. “It is now clear that these politically rooted actions were widespread, and could not have been done without at least the tacit approval of senior Department officials.”

   Yup, you guessed it. Not a damned thing.

4. And finally, the Earth says ‘do better’ to China. The Guardian reports an Emergency anti-smog plan announced for ‘Greyjing’. “Beijing’s Olympic organisers are planning a new set of emergency measures to reduce pollution after the draconian steps introduced a week ago failed to halt a grimy haze from smothering the host city.” A clean environment cannot simply be toggled off and on.

1. The NY Times reports the OPEC leader issues a warning about Iran and the oil supply. “Iran, the second-largest producing country in OPEC after Saudi Arabia, produces about four million barrels of oil a day out of the daily worldwide production of close to 87 million barrels.”

   Abdalla Salem el-Badri, the OPEC secretary general, warned that “oil prices would experience an ‘unlimited’ increase in the event of a military conflict involving Iran”.

   “We really cannot replace Iran’s production – it’s not feasible to replace it… The prices would go unlimited,” Mr. Badri said during the interview, referring to the effect of a military conflict. “I can’t give you a number.”

2. The Guardian reports an Afghan government inquiry has concluded that a US air strike wiped out an Afghan wedding party. “A US air strike killed 47 civilians, including 39 women and children, as they were travelling to a wedding in Afghanistan, an official inquiry found today. The bride was among the dead. Another nine people were wounded in Sunday’s attack, the head of the Afghan government investigation, Burhanullah Shinwari, said.”

   “Fighter aircraft attacked a group of militants near the village of Kacu in the eastern Nuristan province, but one missile went off course and hit the wedding party, said the provincial police chief spokesman, Ghafor Khan. The US military initially denied any civilians had been killed.“

3. The LA Times reports that About 33% of coral species threatened with extinction. A worldwide assessment by international group of scientists have found that 32.8%, nearly one-third, of the more than 700 coral species “face an elevated risk of extinction from global warming” and destructive fishing practices and pollution. According to the study’s co-author, marine biologist David Obura, the “loss of coral reefs could have a profound effect on more than 500 million impoverished fishermen in the tropics who rely on them to feed themselves and their families”.

4. Finally, this from BBC News — Urban farming takes root in Detroit.

   The idea is very simple: turn wasteland into free vegetable gardens and feed the poor people who live nearby.

   Motown has lost more than a million residents since its heyday in the 1950s and it is common to see downtown residential streets with just a few houses left standing.

   Taja Sevelle saw the hundreds of hectares of vacant land in the city and came up with the idea of creating an organic self-help movement that would be “affordable (and) practical”…

   Visiting one of the largest allotments, on a site that had been derelict since Detroit’s infamous 1967 riots, locals spoke about an astonishing transformation…

   “That’s one cucumber you didn’t have to pay 69 cents for,” she adds, with a smile.

   There are no fences but one local said greed had not been a problem.

   “People are only taking what they need, because they know it’s for everybody,” he said.

   NPR also has a story about this: Farms Take Root in Detroit’s Foreclosures. Transforming Motown into Growtown!

Beginning on Monday and for the following two weeks, Four at Four will hopefully be brought to you by an amazing guest editor!

1. I don’t have to write that the G8 ‘leaders’ are out of touch, they shout it themselves from behind their gilded security bubble.

   G8 leaders give middle finger to the world… again

   The NY Times reports G8 global warming talks leave few concrete goals. “The statement issued by the industrialized Group of 8 pledged to ‘move toward a carbon-free society’ by seeking to cut worldwide emissions of heat-trapping gases in half by 2050. But the statement did not say whether that baseline would be emissions at 1990 levels, or the less ambitious baseline of current levels, already 25 percent higher.”

   Even with this fuzzy goal, the G8 ‘leaders’ say the world has 40 years. While many scientists, such as NASA climate scientist, James Hansen, say we have only one year left to act.

   While the LA Times reports the G8 summit largely ignores economic woes. “President Bush and leaders of seven of the other wealthiest nations face a triple whammy of economic woes: a global credit crunch, soaring food prices and spiraling oil costs. But in three days… there was little in the way of fresh initiatives on how to get the world’s economy back on track.” As usual, they wined and dined, while saying ‘Let them eat cake’ to most everyone else.

2. U.S. Troops in Iraq Face A Powerful New Weapon

   The Washington Post reports that suspected Shiite fighters in Iraq opposed to the U.S. occupation are now “using powerful rocket-propelled bombs to attack U.S. military outposts in recent months, broadening the array of weapons used against American troops.”

   U.S. military officials call the devices Improvised Rocket Assisted Munitions, or IRAMs. They are propane tanks packed with hundreds of pounds of explosives and powered by 107mm rockets. They are often fired by remote control from the backs of trucks, sometimes in close succession. Rocket-propelled bombs have killed at least 21 people, including at least three U.S. soldiers, this year…

   U.S. military officials say IRAM attacks, unlike roadside bombings and conventional mortar or rocket attacks, have the potential to kill scores of soldiers at once. IRAMs are fired at close range, unlike most rockets, and create much larger explosions. Most such attacks have occurred in the capital, Baghdad.

   The use of the rocket-propelled bombs reflects militiamen’s ability to use commonly available materials and relatively low-tech weaponry to circumvent security measures that have cost the U.S. military billions of dollars.

   The longer this occupation goes, the more bankrupt the United States will become. For all our technology, the U.S. military is still being defeated by low tech attacks. A July 2008 report, “Actions Needed to Reduce Carryover at Army Depots” (pdf) from the GAO found that the U.S. military cannot repair equipment fast enough in Iraq and Afghanistan to meet the demands of battle. Each day we remain in Iraq and Afghanistan is a day we continue to dig our nation’s grave deeper.

Four at Four continues with America’s failures in Pakistan and a scientist that is harnessing rising oceans to grow a desert crop.

If there was any doubt that George W. Bush was an asshole who couldn’t give a shit about the world, here’s further proof. From The Telegraph, At the G8 Summit, Bush: ‘Goodbye from the world’s biggest polluter’

The American leader, who has been condemned throughout his presidency for failing to tackle climate change, ended a private meeting with the words: “Goodbye from the world’s biggest polluter.”

He then punched the air while grinning widely, as the rest of those present including Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy looked on in shock.

Hat tip MsLibrarian.

1. The LA Times reports Six people are dead in attack on U.S. consulate in Istanbul. “Gunmen today attacked the U.S. consulate here, sparking a gun battle that left three Turkish police officers and the three assailants dead… It was the most serious attack in several years on a foreign diplomatic mission in Turkey.”

   According to the Washington Post, the American ambassador to Turkey, Ross Wilson, call the attack “‘an obvious act of terrorism’ … ‘This was an attack on the American diplomatic establishment here,’ Wilson said in an appearance before reporters in Ankara, the Turkish capital. ‘… Our countries will stand together and confront this, as we have in the past.'” Abdullah Gul, the president of Turkey, also describe it as a terrorist attack.”

   “Neither U.S. or Turkish officials would speculate on who was responsible for the attack… Turkish Interior Minister Besir Atalay told reporters late this afternoon there still was no claim of responsibility. He said all of the attackers were Turkish nationals.”

2. The NY Times reports the Federal Reserve sees economic turmoil persisting deep into next year. “Ben S. Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, publicly indicated on Tuesday that he believes the problems will persist into next year when he outlined a series of steps the Fed is considering in the coming months… Bernanke also recommended that Congress grant the Fed broader authority to monitor and supervise the financial markets to assure greater stability in the future.”

   The economy will continue to do badly for all the known reasons: cratering housing market, skyrocketing oil prices, and titanic federal debt brought about by the worst president ever and his wars.

   The Washington Post reports that “Some outside experts argue that changes such as the ones Bernanke advocated yesterday could create more problems than they solve.” No doubt. The Fed wants more authority to clean up the mess they made and fed. This economic misery was done on purpose to shock the system in order to increase liquidity for easier looting. Do not trust Bernanke or Bush Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. The bailouts are and will continue to be for the wealthy.

Four at Four continues with the unmitigated missile threat to airplanes and Guantanamo appeals.

1. The Washington Post reports a Narrow reading of the Clean Water Act thwarts enforcement. “An official administration guidance document on wetlands policy is undermining enforcement of the Clean Water Act” according to a memo written by Granta Y. Nakayama, the Environmental Protection Agency’s chief enforcement officer.

   As relayed in his memo, “Nakayama and his staff concluded that between July 2006 and December 2007, EPA’s regional offices had decided not to pursue potential Clean Water Act violations in 304 cases ‘because of jurisdictional uncertainty.’ … The administration’s guidance instructs federal officials to focus on the ‘relevant reach’ of a tributary, which translates into a single segment of a stream. In the memo, Nakayama argued that this definition ‘isolates the small tributary’ and ‘ignores longstanding scientific ecosystem and watershed protection principles critical to meeting the goals’ of the Clean Water Act.”

2. TPM Muckraker reports Waxman threatens Attorney General with contempt. “House Oversight Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) is wielding more than his gavel against Attorney General Michael Mukasey. In a letter to the AG today, Waxman brought out the big guns, stating that the Committee would vote to hold him in contempt on July 16, if he failed to produce a report on an interview with Vice President Cheney regarding the Valerie Plame leak scandal.”

   Of course these threats would be a lot less hollow sounding, if Congress starting finding these officials in “inherent contempt“.

3. The NY Times reports Two former secretaries of state offer plan to revamp the War Powers Act. Former Secretaries of State Warren Christopher and James Baker “have declared the War Powers Resolution of 1973 obsolete and proposed a new system of closer consultation between the White House and Congress before American forces go into battle.”

   Their proposal would require the president to consult lawmakers before initiating combat lasting longer than a week except in rare cases requiring emergency action. Congress, for its part, would have 30 days to approve or disapprove of the military action.

   The plan would create a new committee of Congressional leaders and relevant committee chairmen, with a full-time staff with access to military and intelligence material. The president would be required to consult with the group in advance of any extended strike.

   Of course, this would be moot if Congress actually used the powers it has under the Constitution, specifically to declare and fund wars and hold the president accountable.

4. The LA Times reports a U.S. soldier was killed by roadside bomb near Baghdad. “An American soldier was killed this morning when a roadside bomb struck his vehicle west of Baghdad, the U.S. military said. The military also announced the deaths of four private contractors in a similar attack the previous day in northern Iraq. Eight contractors were injured in that bombing, which occurred about 15 miles south of the city of Mosul.” The contractors’ nationalities was not disclosed by the military. 4,115 American troops have now been killed in Iraq.

   The Ventura County Star reports that a Blogger is kicked out of Iraq province for war photos. After posting a picture of a dead Marine lying on his back with “his face damaged beyond recognition because of the blast” from a suicide bombin on his website zoriah.net, the U.S. Marines “immediately ‘disembedded'” photojournalist and blogger Zoriah Miller from the unit he was with and “barred from working with the military in Anbar”. Marine commanders felt he violated a “trust”.

   “I just feel this war has become so sanitized that it was important to show,” said Zoriah, who prefers to go by his first name. “My only discomfort is the idea that the family could accidentally stumble on it.” …

   “You’re a war photographer, but once you take a picture of what war is like then you get into trouble,” said Zoriah, a Denver native who has been in Iraq for much of the past year.