Tag: 4@4

1. The NY Times reports Higher costs spur the rise in U.S. consumer spending. “While consumers spent more in June, they did so because prices of food and energy were rising, and not because they were ready to spend freely again. Personal incomes sagged as employers continued to cut wages and reduce working hours. And the personal saving rate, which had been rising, dropped sharply from a month earlier”.

   Meanwhile, Team Obama continues to wage the class war against the middle class. The CS Monitor reports Mixed signals from Obama team on middle class taxes. Obama’s economic advisors are considering breaking the president’s campaign pledge of no tax increases for those making $250,000 and under.

   In a televised interview on ABC on Sunday, Secretary Geithner talked about the need to make “hard choices” to rein in federal budget deficits. And the president’s top economic policy adviser, Larry Summers, said on CBS that healthcare reform will cost money, and “it is never a good idea to absolutely rule things out.”

   The Hill adds Labor unions and liberal activists criticize breaking Obama’s campaign promise.

   Obama pledged during his White House campaign not to raise “one dime” of taxes on Americans earning below $250,000 a year.

   “If you make under $250,000, you will not see your taxes increased by a single dime. Not your income tax. Not your payroll tax. Not your capital gains tax. No tax,” Obama vowed.

   “It’s a pretty important campaign promise,” said Thea Lee, policy director at the AFL-CIO. But, still Team Obama and Congressional Democrats led by Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) are floating a plan to tax employer-provided health benefits as opposed to increasing taxes on the wealthiest Americans. Geithner and Summers are in the White House advocating for their rich friends, while the rest of America still continues to hurt.

   The Washington Post reports For many Americans, there’s nowhere to go but down and the NY Times adds a person’s Income loss persists long after layoffs.

   Economists, in fact, say income losses for workers who are let go in a recession can persist for as long as two decades, a depressing prognosis for the several-million people who have lost their jobs in the current recession.

2. Meanwhile, Bloomberg News reports Antidepressant use in U.S. doubled over decade to 10% in 2005. “The number of Americans taking antidepressants doubled to 10.1 percent of the U.S. population in 2005 compared with 1996, increasing across income and age groups… An estimated 27 million U.S. people ages 6 and older were taking the drugs by 2005… according to Columbia University research.”

   Coincidently surely, the LA Times reports Obama gives powerful drug lobby a seat at healthcare table. “As a candidate for president, Barack Obama lambasted drug companies and the influence they wielded in Washington. He even ran a television ad targeting the industry’s chief lobbyist, former Louisiana congressman Billy Tauzin, and the role Tauzin played in preventing Medicare from negotiating for lower drug prices.”

   Now, Tauzin is Obama’s partner having been to the White House at least 6 times and where he says he’s “secured an agreement that the administration wouldn’t try to overturn the very Medicare drug policy that Obama had criticized on the campaign trail.”

   “Drug companies — Washington’s leading source of lobbyist money — now have ‘a seat at the table’ at the White House and on Capitol Hill as healthcare legislation works its way through Congress.” Six months ago, Obama “criticized drug companies for greed now praises their work on behalf of the public good.”

   Meanwhile, The Hill reports Liberals protest Speaker Pelosi’s comments on health deal. Pelosi (D-CA) said to reporters on Friday: “Are you asking me, ‘Are progressives going to vote against universal, quality, affordable healthcare for all Americans?’? No way.” Her response triggered laughter.

   The Congressional Progressive Caucus have formally protested her remarks. “Progressive Caucus Co-Chairwoman Lynn Woolsey (D-CA) said Monday she was unhappy at the idea that liberals were being ‘laughed at’ and not taken seriously.” The Progressive Caucus has vowed to oppose legislation that weakens or excludes a public option for health care.

Four at Four continues with Guantanamo inmate trial proposal and Obama’s Appalachian apocalypse.

1. Spiegel reports Banks reopen the global casino. “Investment banks… are making serious money again, thanks in part to government aid… They are benefiting from the crisis they helped to create. As profits go up, so do salaries — only this time, it’s the taxpayers who are shouldering the risks.”

   The casino is open again, worldwide. Many investment banks are raking in massive profits once again, driving up risks and attracting talent with high salaries. It’s as if nothing had happened, and as if it hadn’t been precisely this type of behavior that brought the financial system to the brink of collapse last fall and then plunged the world economy into its worst crisis since World War II.

   The collapse of the financial system was averted, but only through colossal public spending, as governments bolstered ailing banks with loan guarantees and equity injections and central banks pumped billions in liquidity into the markets.

   But now that the worst seems to be over, banks are back to behaving the same way they did before the crisis. Even worse, thanks to government guarantees for the financial sector and cheap money from central banks, it has never been easier for banks to make money…

   “The taxpayer is paying for the chips in the casino,” the head of the German operations of an international investment bank says quite openly, but anonymously nevertheless. “It doesn’t get any better.” … Investment banks, for their part, have bought the securities with money they borrowed from central banks at ridiculously low rates.

   Meanwhile, the CS Monitor reports Fed chairman Ben Bernanke defends bailouts – and himself. “Bernanke’s term as chairman of the Federal Reserve expires at the end of January”. “He’s running to keep his office and defend the Fed,” says Robert Brusca of Fact & Opinion Economics in New York.

   Bernanke DOES NOT merit reappointment, but I doubt Obama sees it that way. Instead of Bernanke doesn’t get the nod, speculation is that Larry Summers, Obama’s economic policy head, will get the job, which, of course, will be even worse.

   For his part, Bernanke wants MORE power for the Federal Reserve. Last week, the AP reported Bernanke told the Senate a new consumer protection agency isn’t needed, because the Fed is doing such a good job protecting the consumer already.

   “Bernanke also said he did not think conflicts existed between the Fed’s consumer protection and bank oversight roles.” And the Independent reported that Bernanke warned against meddling with Fed. Bernanke doesn’t want legislation passed by Congress that “would subject the Fed’s actions in these areas to audits by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress.”

   “Financial markets, in particular, likely would see a grant of review authority in these areas to the GAO as a serious weakening of monetary policy independence,” Bernanke said.

Four at Four continues with more banks behaving badly, Eric Holder, and calls for a Congressional inquiry into the CIA.

1. The World will warm faster than predicted in next five years reports The Guardian. “The world faces a new period of record-breaking temperatures as the sun’s activity increases, leading the planet to heat up significantly faster than scientists had predicted over the next five years, according to a new study… The new research suggests, temperatures will shoot up at 150% of the rate predicted by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.”

   The research, to be published in a forthcoming edition of Geophysical Research Letters, was carried out by Judith Lean of the US Naval Research Laboratory and David Rind of Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Lean said: “Our paper shows that the absence of warming observed in the last decade is no evidence that the climate isn’t responding to man-made greenhouse gases. On the contrary, the study again confirms that we’re seeing a long-term warming trend driven by human activity, with natural factors affecting the precise shape of that temperature rise.”

   Yesterday Edger noted that the The Observer had published Secret evidence of global warming Bush tried to hide.

   

   Graphic images that reveal the devastating impact of global warming in the Arctic have been released by the US military. The photographs, taken by spy satellites over the past decade, confirm that in recent years vast areas in high latitudes have lost their ice cover in summer months. The pictures, kept secret by Washington during the presidency of George W Bush, were declassified by the White House last week.”

Four at Four continues the Army farming in Afghanistan, an update from Pakistan, China shaping the 21st century, and dams versus fish.

1. The LA Times reports the U.S. stops giving militant death tolls in Afghanistan. “U.S. military officials in Afghanistan have halted the practice of releasing the number of militants killed in fighting with American-led forces as part of an overall strategy shift that emphasizes concern for the local civilian population’s well-being rather than hunting insurgent groups.”

   Meanwhile, the Sydney Morning Herald reports Australian troops are given lighter armour after fatal Afghan battle. “Lighter armour has been issued to front-line Australian troops in Afghanistan after soldiers caught in a fatal Taliban ambush said their protective gear limited movement.”

   Elsewhere, the NY Times reports a Rival to Karzai gains strength in Afghan presidential election. Dr. Abdullah Abdullah “has started his campaign late, but in its first two weeks he has canvassed six provinces and drawn growing support and larger crowds than expected. Rapturous welcomes like this one have suddenly elevated him to the status of potential future president.”

   “I have no doubt that people want change,” Dr. Abdullah said in an interview after a tumultuous day campaigning in Herat, in western Afghanistan, adding that his momentum was just building. “Today they are hopeful that change can come.”

2. McClatchy reports the Pakistan offensive failed to dislodge Taliban, residents say. “Taliban Islamists, whose announced goal is to topple the nuclear-armed Pakistani government, continue to maintain a menacing presence in Buner, a district northwest of Islamabad, the capital, that the army says it’s cleared of militants, according to recently returned residents.”

   The CS Monitor adds the Delayed offensive in South Waziristan wears at Pakistan’s antiterror credibility. “Doubts are mounting that the Pakistani military will launch a promised ground offensive into the Taliban heartland of South Waziristan. The prolonged delay is threatening Pakistan’s already shaky credibility on battling Islamic militants in its territory.” Pakistan has been ‘softening up’ the Taliban for more than a month now.

   U.S. special envoy Richard Holbrooke is giving Pakistan the benefit of any doubt. “I think they’ve got their hands full in Swat and Buner,” said Holbrooke. “They’ve got to make sure when the refugees come back that they have security, so maybe they’re delaying the offensive.”

   Meanwhile, Spiegel Online reports Pakistan consumed by violence as Taliban power grows. “The Taliban’s power in Pakistan continues to grow and it now has entire towns under its control. Under US pressure, the Pakistani army is fighting the Islamists — with limited success. Pakistani intelligence says the Americans are doing more harm than good.”

Four at Four continues Goldman Sachs rigs Wall Street, Goldman Sachs guts climate bill, Florida fish die from heat stroke, and AIDS-like disease discovered in chimpanzees.

1. The Washington Independent reports Iraqi prime minister is open to renegotiating withdrawal timeline. “Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki opened the door for the first time Thursday to the prospect of a U.S. military presence in Iraq after the December 2011 deadline for troop withdrawal set by last year’s bilateral accord – something President Obama appeared to rule out during a joint appearance on Tuesday.”

   “Maliki said the accord, known as the Status of Forces Agreement, would ‘end’ the American military presence in his country in 2011, but ‘nevertheless, if Iraqi forces required further training and further support, we shall examine this at that time based on the needs of Iraq'”.

   “‘The nature of that relationship – the functions and the amount of [U.S.] forces – will then be discussed and reexamined based on the needs'” of Iraq”, he added.

2. Bloomberg reports the Obama administration is accused by lawyers of stonewalling on terror questioning. Lawyers for Guantanamo Bay prisoners say the Obama administration is not keeping the president’s campaign pledge of transparency. “The attorneys said government officials have been no more helpful than the Bush administration in sharing transcripts of interrogations of their clients. The detainees may have been subject to harsh methods and possibly torture, the lawyers said.”

   If details of the interrogations become public, they could weaken support for the U.S. fight against Islamic militants, said Philip Heymann, a professor at Harvard Law School in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

   Any revelations about prisoner mistreatment “would make the public more suspicious about the war on terrorism,” said Heymann, deputy attorney general under President Bill Clinton.

   Meanwhile, the NY Times reports a U.S. judge challenges evidence on a detainee.

   The Obama administration has until Friday to decide whether to continue to defend the six-year imprisonment of an Afghan at the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, who was a teenager when he came into American hands.

   The decision was prompted by Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle of Federal District Court, who last week criticized the government’s case against the detainee as “an outrage” that was “riddled with holes.” Judge Huvelle’s comments, made at a hearing in district court in Washington, were not reported at the time.

   The detainee, Mohammed Jawad, … was tortured by Afghan officials before he was turned over to American forces in 2002 and was later abused at the detention camp at Guantánamo Bay…

   Military records show that Mr. Jawad was subjected to a sleep deprivation program in which he was moved from cell to cell 112 times in a 13-day period and that he was isolated, beaten and kicked by guards at Guantánamo. He attempted suicide in Guantánamo in 2003.

Four at Four continues with an update from Afghanistan, toucans and their amazing radiator bills, caribou collapse, and baseball.

1. The Hill reports Pentagon propaganda blitz didn’t break rules, says Government Accountability Office.

   The Department of Defense (DOD) did not violate ethics rules by encouraging retired military officers to appear on news programs as media analysts in the buildup to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a new government report…

   “Clearly, DOD attempted to favorably influence public opinion with respect to the [George W. Bush] administration’s war policies in Iraq and Afghanistan through the” retired military officers, wrote Daniel Gordon, GAO’s acting general counsel, in the report…

   None of those activities violated statutes, however, because products given to the retired officers were clearly marked as Defense Department materials, GAO found. Further, the Pentagon did not pay for favorable coverage it received.

2. The Washington Post reports U.S. deaths hit a record high in Afghanistan. “So far this month, 31 U.S. troops have died in Afghanistan, surpassing the record of 28 deaths in June 2008. Losses for the entire NATO-led coalition, including British, Canadian, Dutch and other forces, have also spiked this month, feeding growing unease over the war in those countries.”

   “Although U.S. Marines are in the midst of a major offensive in the south, American troops have suffered the heaviest losses in the east, where 16 U.S. soldiers have been killed this month. The vast majority of those fatalities have been caused by roadside bombs, which have grown increasingly sophisticated.”

   The LA Times adds the Taliban claims responsibility for new wave of attacks in Afghanistan. The Taliban said it was responsible for coordinated, “commando-style assaults in the provincial capitals of Jalalabad and Gardez, targeting a U.S. military base and several Afghan government compounds” that “demonstrated the insurgents’ ability to mount sophisticated, multi-pronged attacks over a wide geographical area.”

   Meanwhile, the NY Times reports Pakistan objects to the U.S. plan for its Afghan war. “Pakistan is objecting to expanded American combat operations in neighboring Afghanistan”. Pakistan fears “the Marines fighting the Taliban in southern Afghanistan will force militants across the border into Pakistan, with the potential to further inflame the troubled province of Baluchistan”.

   Pakistan doesn’t have enough troops to guard the Baluchistan-border and its border with India. So, once again, Pakistanis say “dialogue with the Taliban, not more fighting, is in Pakistan’s national interest”.

   The LA Times notes that Waziristan a tough nut for Pakistani forces. Two Pakistani military offenses in recent years failed to eliminate the Taliban from South Waziristan. “And now, as Pakistani generals brace again for war in South Waziristan, the Taliban militants there are tougher and greater in number than their brethren on the run from the military in the country’s volatile Swat Valley”.

   “Waziristan’s desolate plateaus, caves and roadless basins provide an ideal battlefield for guerrilla fighters like the Taliban — and a no man’s land for a conventional force like Pakistan’s military, which relies on helicopter gunships, fighter jets and heavy artillery. Military convoys moving along the few roads in Waziristan are likely to be easy targets for ambushes from surrounding hillsides.”

Four at Four continues with pot tax in Oakland, ore shipments in Duluth/Superior, and Congress pushing to combine church with state.

1. McClatchy reports a Judge accuses CIA officials of fraud, unseals secret files.

   A federal district judge ruled Monday that the CIA repeatedly misled him in asserting that state secrets were involved in a 15-year-old lawsuit involving allegedly illegal wiretapping.

   U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth also ordered former CIA director George Tenet and five other CIA officials to explain their actions or face potential sanctions.

   Lamberth also questioned the credibility of current CIA Director Leon Panetta, saying that Panetta’s testimony in the case contained significant discrepancies, and rejected an Obama administration request that the case continue to be kept secret. He released hundreds of previously secret filings.

   “The court does not give the government a high degree of deference because of its prior misrepresentations regarding the stated secrets privilege in this case,” Lamberth wrote. “Although this case has been sealed since its inception to protect sensitive information, it is clear . . . that many of the issues are unclassified.”

Four at Four continues with an update from Afghanistan, Wall Street and the NY Fed, and India says no to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

1. The LA Times reports the U.S. is increasing counter-narcotics efforts in Afghanistan. The Drug Enforcement Administration is sending dozens of DEA agents to Afghanistan. “The increased DEA effort is aimed at more than a dozen drug kingpins whose networks are producing vast amounts of hashish, opium, morphine and heroin”.

   “The number of DEA agents and analysts in Afghanistan will rise from 13 to 68 by September, and to 81 in 2010. More agents will also be deployed in Pakistan.”

   Meanwhile, the NY Times reports the Pentagon Seeks to overhaul prisons in Afghanistan. “Under the new approach, the United States would help build and finance a new Afghan-run prison for the hard-core extremists who are now using the poorly run Afghan corrections system as a camp to train petty thieves and other common criminals to be deadly militants”. Along with “vocational skills”, inmates “would be taught about moderate Islam”.

   Elsewhere, the LA Times reports a Helicopter crash in Afghanistan kills 16 civilian contractors. Russian news “identified the owner and operator of the helicopter as the Russian company Vertikal-T”.

   This was the second crash in less than a week. “Six Ukrainian contractors were killed when their helicopter went down Tuesday in Helmand… Sunday’s crash came a day after an American F-16 fighter jet went down in eastern Afghanistan, killing the two-member crew.”

   The LA Times adds Captors release video of U.S. soldier held in Afghanistan. The military identified the captured soldier as Pvt. Bowe R. Bergdahl, 23, of Ketchum, Idaho. The CS Monitor speculates Bergdahl may be Held by Haqqani network.

Four at Four looks at the evolution of CIA torture, CDC reports Bush administration policies sharply increased teenage pregnancies and syphilis, engineers got the U.S. to the moon, and the blob is identified.

1. CBS News reports the U.S. threatens Afghans over captured GI. “At least two Afghan villages have been blanketed with leaflets warning that if an American soldier kidnapped by the Taliban two weeks ago isn’t freed, “you will be targeted.'”

   “Military spokeswoman Capt. Elizabeth Mathias confirmed that the leaflets were produced at Bagram Air Base, the primary U.S. installation in Afghanistan, and distributed in the region.”

   U.S. aircraft blanketed at least two Afghan villages with leaflets stating, “If you do not free the American soldier, then… you will be targeted.”

   “The new leaflet represents a broader, direct warning to local people in the region where the U.S. soldier was seized. Villagers from near the Paktika-Ghazni border told CBS News the papers were found stuck in trees and littering roofs in the area. The question is, will its stern message help win the missing soldier’s freedom, or just antagonize the local people who could help, or hurt, that effort.”

   At VetVoice, Brandon Friedman writes that Threatening Afghan Civilians Probably a Bad Idea.

   Now, whether the U.S. intends to actually target civilians is another question. It won’t happen. But it’s the threat that counts. And vocally threatening to do something without a willingness to back it up leads to problems in conflict situations…

   I think whoever came up with the idea to print these things didn’t really think it through. While the likelihood of success using a technique like this is slim, the chance of inflaming the locals even further is much higher. This whole thing seems clumsy and ham-handed, and will almost certainly do more harm than good. I’d love to be proved wrong.

   Our thoughts are with the captured soldier.

   Makes a person really question President Obama’s choice of having Gen. Stanley McChrystal lead his war in Afghanistan. Less than a month ago, the Washington Independent reported McChrystal’s tactical priority was to avoid civilian casualties because the U.S. was (and still is) losing Afghan support.

   Meanwhile, the NY Times reports an Explosion Kills nine in Afghanistan. “Nine civilians, including five children, were killed Friday when a roadside bomb struck their vehicle on the way to a religious shrine in southern Afghanistan, officials said.”

Four at Four continues with a striking jump in mental illness found in Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, the link between combat stress and homicide, Uighurs say U.S. helped Chinese interrogators, Bush-era war crimes dogging Obama, and an all-female flight crew for Marine One.

1. The Hill reports Job worries for Obama at NAACP. “Some NAACP officials say the president’s general approach to the economy and unemployment has not gone far enough to address the specific concerns of the black community… One source said many in the black community have expressed frustration with the administration over the number of traditional Wall Street firms handling the funds’ disbursement.”

   With black unemployment rates nearly 5 percent higher than the national average, Obama’s standard line that growing the national economy as a whole “will lift all boats” won’t cut it with some NAACP members.

   “We heard that phrase from Ronald Reagan, and it isn’t necessarily so,” said NAACP board member Amos Brown.

   Brown said that he and others “would expect of [Obama] the same as we would any other president – to be involved in specifics and not generalities.”

   Mr. Brown, good luck with getting specifics from the president.

2. The LA Times reports Former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson testifies that Merrill Lynch sale helped stave off ‘great peril’. Paulson tried to justify the “actions he and other Bush administration officials took during the crisis in conjunction with the Federal Reserve and other financial regulators… Paulson said the actions
   ‘were not perfect’ but ‘they saved this nation from great peril.'”

   Paulson claimed he was told not acting would have caused another Great Depression with “people in the streets” and global political instability. “I knew it was going to be very bad, and I didn’t want to experience very bad,” Paulson said.

   The NY Times adds Members of Congress say Paulson misled them. ‘Several lawmakers accused Mr. Paulson of misleading Congress about how government money in the banking bailout would be used.”

   Representative Dennis J. Kucinich, an Ohio Democrat, said the real issue was whether taxpayers should have aided the merger of Bank of America and Merrill. He calls the government’s $20 billion capital injection into the bank a “potentially illegal act.”

   Mr. Paulson repeatedly defended himself during the course of the hearing, saying at one point, “No one was more protective of the American taxpayer than I was.” …

   Representative Michael Turner, [an] Ohio Republican, called TARP “a crock” and the “largest theft in American history.”

   Along with Rep. Turner, the LA Times adds Rep. Stephen Lynch, a Democrat from Massachusetts, “accused Paulson of misleading Congress during its consideration of the $700-billion Troubled Asset Relief Program.”

   “If you had come up here with Mr. Bernanke and said, ‘I want to take [$700 billion] of taxpayer money and I want to give it to my pals in the nine biggest banks in America,’ how many votes do you think you would have got here?” Lynch told Paulson, a former head of Goldman Sachs. “That’s why in my opinion you misled Congress.”

Four at Four continues with Obama seeking to increase the size of the Army and an update from Afghanistan.

1. The LA Times reports the U.S. and China try to reach accord on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. “Recognizing the growing environmental crisis, Beijing has launched its own set of domestic policies to reduce pollution while resisting international accords on emissions that they believe will interfere with determining their own destiny.”

   “Beijing has committed $462 billion to scaling up renewable energy by 2020. China has increased wind power by 100% each of the last three years… China considers its efforts to battle climate change superior to those of the U.S., which did not sign the 1997 Kyoto Protocol and awaits a vote by the U.S. Senate on the Waxman-Markey climate bill.”

   “The Chinese bristled at a stipulation in a recent U.S. climate bill that calls for tariffs on green exports from nations that fail to sign emission caps… China wants industrialized nations to reduce their emissions by 40% below 1990 levels by 2020.”

   The NY Times adds U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu warns China in a speech at Tsinghua University.

   If China’s emissions of global warming gases keep growing at the pace of the last 30 years, the country will emit more such gases in the next three decades than the United States has in its entire history, said Mr. Chu, a Nobel laureate in physics.

2. The Washington Independent reports Insider trading bill looks to hold Congress to corporate standard. “Neither securities law nor ethics rules prevent congressional lawmakers and their staffs from benefiting financially from the non-public information they gather from their daily routines on the Hill. That loophole, studies reveal, has allowed lawmakers to reap significantly higher Wall Street returns than other investors.”

   The ‘Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act’ is a bill that has gotten nowhere in the past three years. On Monday, the legislation got its first public hearing on congressional insider-trading.

   “Members of Congress and their staffs should not be above the law when it comes to profiting from sensitive information,” Rep. Brian Baird (D-Wash.), a sponsor of the bill, said in a statement Monday. “The American people expect their public servants to represent their interests, not fatten their stock portfolios.”

3. The Guardian has what it is calling the First ever image of IED roadside explosion in Afghanistan. The photo by Manpreet Romana shows a U.S. Marine running for safety moments after an IED blast. The roadside bomb explosion was photographed in the Garmsir district of Helmand province.

   

   Meanwhile, the NY Times reports Afghan war’s buried bombs put risk in every step. The war in Afghanistan today is “where death is measured less by the accuracy of bullets than by the cleverness of bombs. And though the Afghan insurgency’s improvised explosive devices, or I.E.D.’s, are less powerful or complex than those used in Iraq, they are becoming more common and more sophisticated with each week, American military officers say.”

   “This year, bomb attacks on coalition troops in Afghanistan have spiked to an all-time high, with 465 in May alone, more than double the number in the same month two years before. At least 46 American troops have been killed by I.E.D.’s this year, putting 2009 on track to set a record in the eight-year war.”

4. As if something out of a horror movie, the Anchorage Daily News reports a Huge blob of Arctic goo floats past North Slope communities. “Something big and strange is floating through the Chukchi Sea between Wainwright and Barrow.”

   “It’s thick and dark and “gooey” and is drifting for miles in the cold Arctic waters”. The U.S. Coast Guard is investigating and collected “globs” of the mysterious stuff floating miles offshore for testing. Nobody knows for sure what the gunk is, but Petty Officer 1st Class Terry Hasenauer says the Coast Guard is sure what it is not.”

   “It’s certainly biological,” Hasenauer said. “It’s definitely not an oil product of any kind. It has no characteristics of an oil, or a hazardous substance, for that matter.

   “It’s definitely, by the smell and the makeup of it, it’s some sort of naturally occurring organic or otherwise marine organism.”

1. The NY Times reports Goldman Sachs records a huge profit. Goldman Sachs looted $3.44 billion from the U.S. and world economy, “or $4.93 a share, in the second quarter. The results continue a robust turnaround for Goldman since it rode out the final tumultuous months of last year with aid from the government’s banking rescue.”

   Goldman benefited from a multibillion-dollar taxpayer cushion last year and, “along with other banks, also benefited from a government program that allows banks to issue debt cheaply with the backing of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. In addition, it received money from the government’s bailout of the American International Group, being paid 100 cents on the dollar for its $13 billion counterparty exposure to the insurer.”

2. The LA Times reports Helicopter crash kills six military contractors in Afghanistan and two Marines die in separate incident. “A helicopter flying under private contract to Western forces in Afghanistan crashed in volatile Helmand province today, killing all six civilians aboard. Military officials also reported the deaths of two U.S. Marines in the same southern province”.

   The NY Times addds American pilots in Afghanistan alter tactics to avoid civilians.

   “It used to be, where do you want the bomb?” said Capt. Thomas P. Lalor, the commander of the air wing on this aircraft carrier, which provides about one-third of the combat support flights for American ground forces in Afghanistan. “Now, it’s much more collaborative.”

   …

   “It’s the right thing to do,” said Cmdr. Rich Brophy, the commander of one of the squadrons, VFA-115, based in Lemoore, Calif. “We certainly don’t want to cause civilian casualties.”

Four at Four continues with anger grows over the CIA, climate change and national borders, and the Euphrates drying up in Iraq.