RNC Web site promoting anti-Semitic, anti-Latino, and pornographic literature

by John Aravosis

(UPDATE: I understand the Latino book is not anti-Latino, but in fact debunks anti-Latino prejudice. Fair enough. But I'm still looking forward to the RNC's explanation for including "bondage," "anal," and "clitoris." )

It's not very often the boys at AMERICAblog get to type the word "clitoris" in a political blog post, but thanks to Michael Steele and the headquarters of the Republican party, today is that special day.

Forget that copy of Playboy, kids, you don't need to go any further than your local RNC.com Web site. Of course, in all seriousness, it's far worse than that - the Web site of the Republican National Committee is also promoting literature that is overtly anti-Semitic and anti-Latino.

It all started when earlier this week the GOP started promoting it's new Web site, http://www.gop.com/obamacard/. The site is supposed to showcase how much money President Obama is supposedly spending by letting you, the visitor, spend money too on your new "Obama credit card."



Just what products does the RNC propose you buy with your new Obama credit card? Anti-semitic, anti-Latino, and overtly pornographic literature - with pictures to boot.

Basically, the RNC site is set up as a faux online business, like Amazon.com, where you can buy goods by doing word searches. Search for the word "car," for instance, and you get pictures of various cars and how much you can pay for them with your ObamaCard.



But don't stop there. Do a search for products dealing with the word "Jew" and the RNC suggests you buy the book "The Jews and Their Lies" (bottom left).



Type in "Latino" and get "The Latino Threat."



But the real fun starts when you type in the word "gay."

Gay, you see, is banned by the RNC (at least they haven't lost their sense of irony). "Homosexual," however, is a product you can buy at the RNC site, and oh what they showcase with that word (note the two men in the upper left corner - perhaps they're just very close friends, like Lindsey Graham and Aaron Schock).



A few other fun words you can search for on the RNC Web site...

Bondage:



Escorts:

http://www.americablog.com/2009/07/rnc-web-site-promoting-anti-semitic.html

Iraq's New Death Squad

By Shane Bauer

The light is fading from the dusty Baghdad sky as Hassan Mahsan re-enacts what happened to his family last summer. We're standing in the courtyard of his concrete-block house, his children are watching us quietly and his wife is twirling large circles of dough and slapping them against the inside walls of a roaring oven. He walks over to his three-foot-tall daughter and grabs her head like a melon. As she stands there, he gestures wildly behind her, pretending to tie up her hands, then pretending to point a rifle at her head. "They took the blindfold off me, pointed the gun at her head and cocked it, saying, 'Either you tell us where al-Zaydawi is, or we kill your daughter.'"

"They just marched into our house and took whatever they wanted," Hassan's mother says, peeking out the kitchen door. "I've never seen anyone act like this."

As Hassan tells it, it was a quiet night on June 10, 2008, in Sadr City, Baghdad's poor Shiite district of more than 2 million people, when the helicopter appeared over his house and the front door exploded, nearly burning his sleeping youngest son. Before Hassan knew it, he was on the ground, hands bound and a bag over his head, with eight men pointing rifles at him, locked and loaded.

At first he couldn't tell whether the men were Iraqis or Americans. He says he identified himself as a police sergeant, offering his ID before they took his pistol and knocked him to the ground. The men didn't move like any Iraqi forces he'd ever seen. They looked and spoke like his countrymen, but they were wearing American-style uniforms and carrying American weapons with night-vision scopes. They accused him of being a commander in the local militia, the Mahdi Army, before they dragged him off, telling his wife he was "finished." But before they left, they identified themselves. "We are the Special Forces. The dirty brigade," Hassan recalls them saying.

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090622/bauer

Ace o’Science

by Tintin

"Now which way is north?"

---

Watching some of the high-traffic wingnuts "do" science is a guilty pleasure, particularly when "done" by folks like Ace o'Play-doh and Don Bob Surber, both of whose scientific backgrounds appear to have been mostly garnered from careful study of NCIS reruns. Usually, their pseudo-scientific expertise on climate change is applied to a news report that it snowed in Las Vegas, or a rare southern sighting of the abominable snowman in a shopping mall in Mobile, or melting polar icecaps on Mars where there are no SUVs. ("Explain that, libs!")

The latest bauble to catch the eye of Ace and Don Bob has the tantalizing title "Global Warming: Scientists' Best Predictions May Be Wrong." With undisguised glee, Ace quotes the opening paragraph of the Science Daily article he links:

No one knows exactly how much Earth's climate will warm due to carbon emissions, but a new study suggests scientists' best predictions about global warming might be incorrect.

This is, of course, an occassion for Ye Olde Ace to stop playing World of Warcraft long enough to watusi around his garden-level efficiency and decide to order in a Papa John's "The Meats" Pie for a celebratory mid-day snack. Hell, this would be reason for Ace o'Play-Doh to go buy a big honking H3 and live in it with the engine running 24/7, right?

Sadly, no!™

Here's an abstract of the study in question, and it pretty much confirms what the Science Daily article and this article said it said. The Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum was a period around 55 million years ago when global temperatures increased 5–9 °C within a few thousand years. What the scientists did was study sediment cores in seabeds around the world to estimate the amount of carbon released prior to the PETM, and they found that carbon dioxide levels increased 70% prior to the PETM.

Now, here's the money quote from the abstract:

At accepted values for the climate sensitivity to a doubling of the atmospheric CO2 concentration, this rise in CO2 can explain only between 1 and 3.5 °C of the warming inferred from proxy records. We conclude that in addition to direct CO2 forcing, other processes and/or feedbacks that are hitherto unknown must have caused a substantial portion of the warming during the Palaeocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum.

Translated into simple English (in the event that Ace or Don Bob Surber are moving their lips and scratching their foreheads while reading this post), the study doesn't say that carbon dioxide doesn't cause global warming. In fact, the study relied on "accepted" values for the correlation between atmospheric carbon dioxide levels and global warming. The entire point of the study was that smaller increases might result in more global warming than predicted, particularly if there is a "feedback" process involved. In other words, it's not a question of whether the planet is fucked, it's a question of whether it may be fucked worse than we thought.

http://www.sadlyno.com/archives/23247.html

Oh, thank goodness

AP pulls number out of ass

 

AP IGNORES CRITICISM.... Yesterday, the Associated Press reported that the House Democratic health care plan cost "$1.5 trillion." By the afternoon, the AP reporting didn't attribute the price tag to anyone; it just stated the figure as fact.

House Dems threw a fit, which was understandable -- the day before the AP blasted the $1.5 trillion figure to the world, the Congressional Budget Office pointed to a roughly $1 trillion cost over 10 years. The AP not only went with the much higher figure, it made no reference to the CBO score.

That, however, was yesterday. I'd hoped the AP would at least notice the criticism, and clarify the issue in the future. No such luck -- this AP report ran about a half-hour ago.

Votes were planned Thursday in the Education and Labor and Ways and Means committees on a $1.5 trillion plan that majority House Democrats presented this week.

No source, no reference to the CBO figure released Tuesday, and no mention of the fact that House Democrats reject the "$1.5 trillion" figure.

Naturally, others are picking up on the AP's reporting, and relaying the disputed figure. Time's Mark Halperin noted this morning that House committees are expected to vote today "on the Democrats' $1.5 trillion plan."

I don't mean to sound picky, but reporting like this not only misinforms news consumers, it also has the potential to adversely affect the larger policy debate. If the AP is intent on using the $1.5 trillion figure, it could at least add some language to reflect the concerns, such as "a number Democratic leaders dispute," or, "though the CBO puts the figure closer to $1 trillion." Something.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2009_07/019092.php

Humor In The Workplace

Humor In The Workplace

Solicitation Number: RFI-BPD-09-0028

Agency: Department of the Treasury
Office: Bureau of the Public Debt (BPD)
Location: Division of Procurement

Synopsis:

 

Added: Jul 09, 2009 11:28 am

This is a sources sought notice and not a request for quotations. The purpose of this announcement is to seek qualified contractors with the capability to provide presentations for The Department of Treasury, Bureau of the Public Debt (BPD), Management Meeting with experience in meeting the objectives as described herein.

The Contractor shall conduct two, 3-hour, Humor in the Workplace programs that will discuss the power of humor in the workplace, the close relationship between humor and stress, and why humor is one of the most important ways that we communicate in business and office life. Participants shall experience demonstrations of cartoons being created on the spot. The contractor shall have the ability to create cartoons on the spot about BPD jobs. The presenter shall refrain from using any foul language during the presentation. This is a business environment and we need the presenter to address a business audience.

Upon completion of the course, participants shall be able to:

• Understand the importance and power of humor in the workplace in a responsible manner
• How to use talents in a creative way that adds humor to everyday experiences
• Alleviate stress in home and the office
• Know how and why humor is important to communication
• Improve work-place relationships
• Prevent burn-out

Please provide the following information if you have performed similar presentation services:

1. The name and location of your company, contact information, and identify your business size (Large Business, Small Business, Disadvantaged Business, 8(a), Service disabled Veteran Owned Small Business, HubZone, etc.) based on NAICS Code 611430, size standard $7.0m.. Contact information shall include the name of the point of contact, email address, and telephone number should the Government have questions regarding individual responses.

2. A brief capabilities statement (not to exceed 5 pages) that includes a description of your company's standard line of business, as well as a list of customers your company has recently (within the last 3 years) provided these, or similar, services for. Include a point of contact information for the companies listed.

3. Contractors should provide their DUNS, if applicable.

Responses to this request must be submitted no later than 2:00 p.m. ET on July 6, 2009 and may be submitted electronically to PSB2@bpd.treas.gov to the attention of Angala Zoller.

What's funny about this? Responses must be submitted by July 6, but the solicitation was posted on July 9.

Your government at work.

https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=3014e950a92dbb0f7e066f9e088a301f&tab=core&tabmode=list&cck=1&au=&ck=

 

Mandela Day 2009: Two Hands

Looking ahead to the first-ever Mandela Day in NYC on July 18th.

Know your place, shut your face!

The Man Who Knew Cheney's Secret

Seymour Hersh was mocked in March when he referred to Dick Cheney's secret squad of CIA assassins. Now, he talks to The Daily Beast about the next shoe to drop.

by Benjamin Sarlin

Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh raised eyebrows back in March when he told an audience at the University of Minnesota that Dick Cheney ran a secret hit squad that he kept hidden from congressional oversight.

"Congress has no oversight of it. It's an executive assassination ring essentially, and it's been going on and on and on," Hersh said at the time. He added: "Under President Bush's authority, they've been going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving. That's been going on, in the name of all of us."

Some observers accused him of rumor-mongering and a top former military official threw cold water on the story, but with the recent news that the CIA allegedly kept Congress in the dark on a covert program, Hersh's words suddenly look more and more prescient. Yesterday, The New York Times reported the hidden program in question was a death squad authorized by Dick Cheney without congressional approval.

Now, there are key differences between Hersh's reporting and the Times' latest piece. Hersh suggested that the assassination ring was conducted out of the Joint Special Operations Command rather than the CIA. Moreover, according to Hersh's sources, the program was operational, leaving a trail of bodies, while the Times cited officials saying that the CIA hit squad never actually carried out a mission. The Times and Hersh could conceivably be reporting two distinct squads.

The Daily Beast tracked down Hersh in South Asia, where he says he has not been able to read the New York Times piece but has received calls buzzing about the report. Asked about the officials quoted in the Times' report who claimed that Cheney's assassination ring never became operational, Hersh offered a skeptical response.

"I said what I said, they can always say what they say," Hersh told The Daily Beast. "The last time they said the government doesn't torture; this time it's the government doesn't assassinate."

Hersh said that his words in Minnesota were exaggerated in the press, because he had previously reported on covert operations that he alleged were out of Congress' view. In February 2005, he published a report that the president had authorized Donald Rumsfeld to organize special operations in South Asia and the Middle East without going through the CIA, and thus not having to report them to Congress. In July 2005, he wrote that the White House circumvented Nancy Pelosi to organize covert operations led by retired CIA officers and non-government personnel to influence the Iraqi elections.

"In my reporting for this story, one theme that emerged was the Bush administration's increasing tendency to turn to off-the-books covert actions to accomplish its goals," he wrote in the July 2005 piece. "This allowed the administration to avoid the kind of stumbling blocks it encountered in the debate about how to handle the elections: bureaucratic infighting, congressional second-guessing, complaints from outsiders."

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-07-14/the-man-who-knew-cheneys-secret/

Chart attack

 

THEY DO LOVE THEIR CHARTS.... Republican opponents of health care reform have a new, colorful talking point. It turns out, if you put reform plans into a chart, fiddle with box sizes, arrow colors, and creative fonts, you discover that health care reform is ... complicated.

After a brightly colored chart failed to kill the Waxman-Markey bill, House Republicans are scrapping doubling down on the idea. They've created a new one to demonstrate just how complicated the Democrats' health care reform bill is.

Just as in the case of the Waxman-Markey chart, though, this doesn't actually explain anything. And it ironically begs the question of whether Republicans secretly want a simpler, single payer system to replace more complex reform proposals.

There are a wide variety of arguments against reform, but this may be the most ridiculous. The chart apparently proves that the health care system will be complex. Well, yes, it is. It will involve a lot of people, money, government agencies, and private entities. Of course, I hate to break it to the House Republican caucus, but the health system is already complex, and features a lot of people, money, government agencies, and private entities.

Indeed, if I were to do a chart detailing the way John Boehner's car works, it would also show a complicated system, but I suspect he'd take it to work every morning. More to the point, if I were to show Boehner a chart about the various international elements that went into invading Iraq in 2003, I suspect he wouldn't be persuaded if I said, "See? It's just too darn complex to bother."

And that's the underlying point of the GOP pitch: we can't reform the system because the solution doesn't fit nicely on a chart. But that's not an argument. It's barely even a chart.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2009_07/019087.php

Healthcare: Change the Debate, Support a Real Public Option

By Dennis Kucinich

Take Action: Tell Congress "We Need Your Leadership for Healthcare Reform"

In mid-May, in an effort to reach consensus, President Obama secured a deal with the health insurance companies to trim 1.5% of their costs each year for ten years saving a total of $2 trillion dollars, which  would be reprogrammed into healthcare. Just two days after the announcement at the White House the insurance companies reneged on the deal which was designed to protect and increase their revenue at least 35%.  

The insurance companies reneged on the deal because they refuse any restraint on increasing premiums, copays and deductibles--core to their profits. No wonder a recent USA Today poll found that only four percent of Americans trust insurance companies. This is within the margin of error, which means it is possible that NO ONE TRUSTS insurance companies.

Then why does Congress trust the insurance companies? Yesterday HR 3200 "America's Affordable Health Choices Act," a 1000 page bill was delivered to members. The title of the bill raises a question: "Affordable" for whom?.

Of $2.4 trillion spent annually for health care in America, fully $800 billion goes for the activities of the for-profit insurer-based system. This means one of every three health care dollars is siphoned off for corporate profits, stock options, executive salaries, advertising, marketing and the cost of paper work, (which can be anywhere between 15 - 35% in the private sector as compared to Medicare, the single payer plan which has only 3% administrative costs).

50 million Americans are uninsured and another 50 million are under insured while for-profit insurance companies divert precious health care dollars to non-health care purposes. Eliminate the for-profit health care system and its extraordinary overhead, put the money into healthcare and everyone will be covered, everyone will be able to afford health care.

Today three committees will begin marking up and amending HR3200. In this, one of the most momentous public policy debates in the past 70 years, single payer, the only viable "public option," the one that makes sound business sense, controls costs and covers everyone was taken off the table.

In contrast to HR3200 ... HR676 calls for a universal single-payer health care system in the United States, Medicare for All. It has over 85 co-sponsors in Congress with the support of millions of Americans and countless physicians and nurses. How does HR-676 control costs and cover everyone? It cuts out the for-profit middle men and delivers care directly to consumers and Medicare acts as the single payer of bills. It also recognizes that under the current system for-profit insurance companies make money NOT providing health care.

This week is the time to break the hold which the insurance companies have on our political process. Tell Congress to stand up to the insurance companies. Ask members to sign on to the only real public option, HR 676, a single-payer healthcare system.

Hundreds of local labor unions, thousands of physicians and millions of Americans are standing behind us. With a draft of HR3200 now circulating, It is up to each and every one of us to organize and rally for the cause of single-payer healthcare. Change the debate. Now is the time.

The time to act is now!

http://pdamerica.org/articles/news/2009-07-15-11-20-26-news.php

Financial Times editor says most news websites will charge within a year

Building payment platforms is one of key challenges facing news organisations, says Financial Times editor Lionel Barber

by John Plunkett

 

The Financial Times editor, Lionel Barber, has predicted that "almost all" news organisations will be charging for online content within a year.

Barber said building online platforms that could charge readers on an article-by-article or subscription basis was one of the key challenges facing news organisations.

"How these online payment models work and how much revenue they can generate is still up in the air," Barber said in a speech at at a Media Standards Trust event at the British Academy last night.

"But I confidently predict that within the next 12 months, almost all news organisations will be charging for content."

Barber is the latest leading executive to suggest the newspaper industry has to radically overhaul its existing business model.

Rupert Murdoch said in May that he expected his News Corporation newspaper websites to start charging for access within a year. The News Corp chairman and chief executive said free newspaper websites were a "flawed" business model.

Murdoch's rival, the New York Times, could begin charging for online news within the next three to four weeks.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/jul/16/financial-times-lionel-barber

The amazing plant photographs which were ten years in the making and are filled with electricity

By Daily Mail Reporter

These extraordinary images reveal what happens when electrical surges pass through a metal board with a simple plant on top.

Photographer Robert Buelteman sends 80,000 volts through his flowery subjects and then literally paints photographs of the outcome.

In three awe-inspiring series, the 55-year-old uses roses, petunias, and even cannabis in mind-blowing detail to give an extraordinary view of ordinary plant-life.

Artist Robert Buelteman sends 80,000 volts through flowery subjects and then literally paints photographs of the outcome to create these amazing pictures

The process to capture these unique images is so complex it has taken him 10 years - and a gruelling average of 60 hours-per-week - to produce just 80 photos.

Working in complete darkness, he begins by placing his chosen plant onto a metal board which he then passes the electrical surge through.

He can even pinpoint areas where he wants to focus the charge using a wand and a simple car battery.

The artist uses roses, petunias, and even cannabis in his amazing works

As his subject lights up with the current, and emits radiation invisible to the naked eye, Mr Buelteman captures the moments by passing a fibre optic cable back-and-forth over the plant.

The cable emits a beam of white light which is just the size of a human hair and whatever the miniscule torch-beam touches, transfers the image onto film.

The captivating blue haze that surrounds every leaf, petal and stalk is actually gases ionising around them as the plant is electronically shocked.

To explain the baffling process, Buelteman, from Montara, California, USA, uses a trusted analogy.

This picture of Eucalyptus provides an amazing inside into plantlife

Buelteman spends an average of 60 hours-per-week - to produce just 80 photos

'You just have to imagine it like a painter creating a picture on canvass,' he said. 'The plant is the subject just like the painter's bowl of fruit or the person they are capturing.

'The electrified board I place the plants on is the canvass. The fibre optic cable emitting the light-beam is my paintbrush.

'Another way to try and understand it is like a normal photograph on a normal camera, except I am manually controlling the exposure by hand. In the same way the image I capture is simply burned onto film.' 

To give the pictures an added dazzling effect, Mr Buelteman's aluminium canvass actually floats in liquid silicone.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1199836/The-amazing-plant-photographs-years-making-filled-electricity.html#ixzz0LRBUqIQ4

Goldman's Back, and Why We Should Be Worried

by Robert Reich

Should we breath a sigh of relief that Goldman Sachs has posted record earnings as revenue from trading and stock underwriting reached all-time highs (second quarter net income was $3.44 billion) -- less than a year after the firm took $10 billion directly from taxpayers and $13 billion indirectly through AIG?

In some ways, yes. That Goldman is back signals that the worst of Wall Street's recent meltdown is over. And at least New York City's economy will again benefit from the trickle-down effects of the multi-million dollar bonuses of Goldman's executives and traders.

But in another respect, Goldman's resurgence should send shivers down the backs of every hardworking American who has lost a large chunk of retirement savings in this economic debacle, as well as the millions who have lost their jobs. Why? Because Goldman's high-risk business model hasn't changed one bit from what it was before the implosion of Wall Street. Goldman is still wagering its capital and fueling giant bets with lots of borrowed money. While its rivals have pared back risks, Goldman has increased them. And its renewed success at this old game will only encourage other big banks to go back into it.

"Our model really never changed, we've said very consistently that our business model remained the same," Goldman's chief financial officer tells Bloomberg News. Value-at-risk -- a statistical measure of how much the firm's trading operations could lose in a day -- rose to an average of $245 million in the second quarter from $240 million in the first quarter. In the second quarter of 2008, VaR averaged $184 million.

Meanwhile, Goldman is still depending on $28 billion in outstanding debt issued cheaply with the backing of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Which means you and I are still indirectly funding Goldman's high-risk operations.

 

http://robertreich.blogspot.com/2009/07/goldmans-back-and-why-we-should-be.html

Goldman Sachs in Talks to Acquire Treasury Department

Sister Entities to Share Employees, Money

In what some on Wall Street are calling the biggest blockbuster deal in the history of the financial sector, Goldman Sachs confirmed today that it was in talks to acquire the U.S. Department of the Treasury.

According to Goldman spokesperson Jonathan Hestron, the merger between Goldman and the Treasury Department is "a good fit" because "they're in the business of printing money and so are we."

The Goldman spokesman said that the merger would create efficiencies for both entities: "We already have so many employees and so much money flowing back and forth, this would just streamline things."

Mr. Hestron said the only challenge facing Goldman in completing the merger "is trying to figure out which parts of the Treasury Dept. we don't already own."

Goldman recently celebrated record earnings by roasting a suckling pig over a bonfire of hundred-dollar bills.

http://www.borowitzreport.com/

Empathy with their own kind

It only hurts when you don't laugh

 

by Ed Naha

Have you ever noticed how difficult it is for today's conservatives to be intentionally funny? Oh, sure, they can make you fall down laughing when they're dead serious about things but when it comes to honest-to-God observational humor? Their sense of "righteousness" gets in the way, their paranoia, their blinders-impaired worldview. It's tough to be intentionally funny when your basic premise is: you're either with me or with the enemy.

Good observational humor comes from the concept that the world is crazy but we can all be in on the joke. It not only speaks truth to power, but also tosses a banana cream pie at it for good measure.

Here's comedian Bill Hicks commenting on the rationale behind the first Iraq War. "People say 'Iraq had the fourth largest army in the world.' Yeah, maybe, but you know what, after the first 3 largest armies, there's a REAL big fucking drop-off. The Hare Krishnas are the 5th largest army in the world, and they've already got all our airports."

And here's Dennis Miller commenting on the current one: "Liberals should not overplay this weapons of mass destruction card, because you want me to tell you the truth? Most of us are not going to care if they don't find these weapons of mass destruction. It's enough for a lot of us to see those kids smiling on that street again."

Bill Hicks on the first war: "You know we armed Iraq. I wondered about that too, you know. During the Persian Gulf War, those intelligence reports would come out: 'Iraq: incredible weapons -- incredible weapons.' 'How do you know that?' 'Uh, well... we looked at the receipts. But as soon as that check clears, we're goin' in.'"

Dennis Miller on the current: "And finally, and most importantly, the next time we go to war, don't give a specific reason for the war that the left can seize upon and later flog us with it ad nauseam, just do it. Remember, the first rule of Fight Club is that you don't talk about Fight Club."

See the difference? (I mean, aside from the fact that Bill Hicks has been dead for fifteen years and Dennis Miller's career has been dead for less than ten.)

There's a certain clash between the conservative view and humor, in that humor is the great equalizer. Modern-day conservatism depends on the concept that there's only one way to view the world that is correct and, therefore, superior.

And, so, conservative "humorists" usually resort to fairly pre-pubescent "nyah-nyah" stuff that relies on racial and social stereotypes to swat back any belief system other than their own. When the French, for instance, refused to back Bush's Iraq invasion, Dennis Miller quipped "and after we had the good taste to chisel the armpit hair off the Statue of Liberty..."

He also tossed off the humorous, "Listen, I would call the French scum bags, but that, of course, would be a disservice to bags filled with scum."

In this realm of comedy, Italians are all cowards, the French don't bathe, the Irish are drunks, Scotsmen are thrifty, Poles are idiots and blacks are shiftless. In other words, it's second grade recess intellectualism at its finest. This type of humor shouldn't be dismissed because of PC reasons, but it should be acknowledged as being PJ - Pretty Juvenile.

Of course, conservative humorists don't see it that way. When Jackie Mason, who's gone from dwelling in the Borsht Belt to the Bile Belt in record time, referred onstage to Barack Obama as a "schvartze," he insisted he wasn't being racist and was offended that people would be offended, explaining "If it's a racist society the white people are the ones being persecuted because they have to defend themselves."

He told TMZ "Chris Rock has told a lot more jokes about whites than I have against Blacks. What about the demeaning words Blacks say about Jews?"

Yeah, remember Chris Rock's classic routines on Yids? Me, neither.

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/22808

Small Australian Town Stands Up for the Tap

Huw Kingston, the owner of Ye Olde Bicycle Shoppe and a leader of the "Bundy on Tap" campaign, said the ban did not begin as an environmental crusade. It started when a Sydney-based bottling company sought permission to extract millions of liters from the local aquifer.

By MERAIAH FOLEY

 

BUNDANOON, AUSTRALIA — When the residents of Bundanoon voted last week to stop selling bottled water in town, they never expected to be thrust into the global spotlight.

Locals in this tourist town touched off a worldwide debate about the social and environmental effects of bottled water that has put the beverage industry on the defensive.

With a nearly unanimous show of hands at a community meeting on July 8, locals in this tourist town touched off a worldwide debate about the social and environmental effects of bottled water that has put the beverage industry on the defensive.

State and local officials across the United States have been phasing out the use of bottled water at government workplaces in recent years, citing a range of concerns including the energy used to make and transport the bottles and an erosion of public trust in municipal water supplies. But as far as campaigners are aware, Bundanoon is the first town in the world to stop all sales of bottled water.

Set in the cool highlands southwest of Sydney, Bundanoon is a sleepy village of tidy gardens and quaint cottages surrounded by the weekend estates of wealthy urbanites. It is the sort of place where strangers strike up conversations on park benches along the picturesque main street and townsfolk leave fresh flowers on the local war memorial.

According to Huw Kingston, the owner of Ye Olde Bicycle Shoppe and a leader of the "Bundy on Tap" campaign, the ban did not begin as an environmental crusade. It started when a Sydney-based bottling company sought permission to extract millions of liters from the local aquifer.

At first, residents were upset at the prospect of tanker trucks rumbling through their quiet streets. But as opposition grew, Mr. Kingston said many began to question the "bizarre" notion of trucking water some 160 kilometers, or 100 miles, north to a plant in Sydney, only to transport it somewhere else — possibly even back to Bundanoon — for sale.

"We became aware, as a community, of what the bottled water industry was all about," said Mr. Kingston. "So the idea was floated that if we don't want an extraction plant in our town, maybe we shouldn't be selling the end product at all."

A dozen or so activists got together and called a community meeting. Of the 356 locals who turned out to vote by a show of hands, only one objected.

The ban is entirely voluntary. But with the support of the public, the town's six food retailers have agreed to pull bottled water from their shelves starting in September. They plan to recoup their losses by selling inexpensive, reusable bottles that can be filled at drinking fountains and filtered water dispensers to be placed around town.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/16/world/asia/16iht-water.html?_r=2&ref=global-home

Hunger is a great motivator

Flesh-Eating Robots Developed for Pentagon

by Tana Ganeva

Thanks to the Pentagon and a Maryland Robotics Company, the robots who inherit the Earth when humanity is wiped out will be able to survive by feasting on the flesh of human corpses!

Robotic Technology Inc. has been contracted by the Pentagon to build robots that use biomass fuel; organic material such as "grass, broken wood, furniture, dead bodies", according to Popular Science.

The Energetically Autonomous Tactical Robot (EATR -- yes, EATR) is described thusly on the company's website:

The purpose of the Energetically Autonomous Tactical Robot (EATR)™ (patent pending) project is to develop and demonstrate an autonomous robotic platform able to perform long-range, long-endurance missions without the need for manual or conventional re-fueling, which would otherwise preclude the ability of the robot to perform such missions. The system obtains its energy by foraging – engaging in biologically-inspired, organism-like, energy-harvesting behavior which is the equivalent of eating. It can find, ingest, and extract energy from biomass in the environment (and other organically-based energy sources), as well as use conventional and alternative fuels (such as gasoline, heavy fuel, kerosene, diesel, propane, coal, cooking oil, and solar) when suitable.

Doesn't sound that sinister, since dead bodies are artfully skirted around in the description. Then again, a presentation on the technology is accompanied by the picture on the right, which appears to show a giant robot calmly shooting the last rebel human aircraft out of the sky with its eyes ...

http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/141329/flesh-eating_robots_developed_for_pentagon/

US gun debate fires up as states allow weapons in bars

Changes in gun legislation in Arizona and Tennessee comes despite bloody rampages in recent months

by Ed Pilkington in New York

Up to 375,000 registered gun owners in Arizona and Tennessee were today given the right to carry concealed guns into bars and restaurants that serve alcohol, in the latest example of loosening gun laws in a country already renowned for its lax approach to firearms.

The change of the two states' gun laws marks a trend across the US towards increased rights for gun owners despite a spate of bloody rampages in recent months that have seen scores of Americans die. Advocates of the second amendment's right to bear arms argue that in the wake such shooting sprees, citizens should be able to defend themselves by carrying guns in public places.

But opponents say this is the logic of the mad house. Groups calling for greater regulation of gun ownership are opposing a move at the federal level to extend the right to carry concealed weapons to all 50 states.

Today, Tennessee granted its 250,000 citizens with gun licences the right to carry handguns into bars and restaurants that serve alcohol. Restaurant owners made a last-minute attempt to block the change, saying it was bad for business, but their appeal was rejected by the courts.

Randy Rayburn, one of the restaurant owner plaintiffs, told a local TV network: "I'm not worried about the 99% of gun owners who are permit holders. I'm worried about the 1 or 2% of would-be Dirty Harrys who are going to carry out their attempts at vigilante justice."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jul/14/arizona-tennessee-gun-law-debate

Satan

Mysterious Dem Majority Tales

He's Not High: Inside Barney Frank's Plan to Legalize Marijuana

While Congress debates health care, handles the economic downturn, and the quagmire in Afghanistan, Congressman Barney Frank is eyeing America's draconian pot policies. Read our exclusive interview.

PLUS: Why Obama really might decriminalize weed, and what the Bush team knew about legalization

By John H. Richardson

To my shame, I started my interview with Congressman Barney Frank about the legalization of marijuana by apologizing to my subject. "I know you guys have a lot on your plate these days, so I'm sorry to be calling you about something kind of trivial..."

Then I did a rapid midcourse correction. "But it's not trivial, because people go to jail over it."

"That's exactly right," Frank said.

We were talking about the Personal Use of Marijuana by Responsible Adults Act of 2009, Frank's latest attempt to bring sanity to the federal marijuana laws. Currently, pot is classified as a Schedule I Controlled Dangerous Substance under federal law, which makes it worse than morphine, cocaine, amphetamine, and PCP. Possession of a single joint carries a penalty of $1,000 and a year in prison – a charge faced by about 800,000 American citizens every year. This is the government whose judgment on war and economics we are supposed to respect.

So I started the interview over.

ESQUIRE: Could you tell me why you're doing it at this time? Everybody says you guys have got so much to handle right now.

BARNEY FRANK: Announcing that the government should mind its own business on marijuana is really not that hard. There's not a lot of complexity here. We should stop treating people as criminals because they smoke marijuana. The problem is the political will.

ESQ: That's my second question. There's already been a lot of change in the country. Thirteen states have decriminalized pot. What's holding up Congress?

BF: This is a case where there's cultural lag on the part of my colleagues. If you ask them privately, they don't think it's a terrible thing. But they're afraid of being portrayed as soft on drugs. And by the way, the argument is, nobody ever gets arrested for it. But we have this outrageous case in New York where a cop jammed a baton up a guy's ass when he caught him smoking marijuana.

ESQ: You're kidding.

BF: Actually, I've just been corrected by my partner – it was a radio he jammed up the guy's ass, not his baton.

ESQ: Small radio, I hope.

BF: By the way, the bill is bi-partisan: I've got two Democrats and two Republicans.

ESQ: Who are the Republicans?

BF: Ron Paul. And Dana Rohrabacher from California.

ESQ: Isn't Rohrabacher pretty hard-right?

BF: He's a very conservative guy, but with a libertarian streak.

ESQ: That libertarian streak will help you out once in a while. And who's against it?

BF: Well, Mark Souder from Indiana, who's very much a proponent of the drug war.

ESQ: When you talk to Souder about it, what does he say?

BF: You don't waste your time on people with whom you completely disagree.

Read more: http://www.esquire.com/the-side/richardson-report/new-marijuana-laws-071309

Iranian consumers boycott Nokia for 'collaboration'

by Saeed Kamali Dehghan

 

The mobile phone company Nokia is being hit by a growing economic boycott in Iran as consumers sympathetic to the post-election protest movement begin targeting a string of companies deemed to be collaborating with the regime.

Wholesale vendors in the capital report that demand for Nokia handsets has fallen by as much as half in the wake of calls to boycott Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) for selling communications monitoring systems to Iran.

There are signs that the boycott is spreading: consumers are shunning SMS messaging in protest at the perceived complicity with the regime by the state telecoms company, TCI. Iran's state-run broadcaster has been hit by a collapse in advertising as companies fear being blacklisted in a Facebook petition. There is also anecdotal evidence that people are moving money out of state banks and into private banks.

Nokia is the most prominent western company to suffer from its dealings with the Iranian authorities. Its NSN joint venture with Siemens provided Iran with a monitoring system as it expanded a mobile network last year. NSN says the technology is standard issue to dozens of countries, but protesters believe the company could have provided the network without the monitoring function.

Siemens is also accused of providing Iran with an internet filtering system called Webwasher.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jul/14/nokia-boycott-iran-election-protests

Crops, ponds destroyed in quest for food safety

by Carolyn Lochhead

Dick Peixoto planted hedges of fennel and flowering cilantro around his organic vegetable fields in the Pajaro Valley near Watsonville to harbor beneficial insects, an alternative to pesticides.

He has since ripped out such plants in the name of food safety, because his big customers demand sterile buffers around his crops. No vegetation. No water. No wildlife of any kind.

"I was driving by a field where a squirrel fed off the end of the field, and so 30 feet in we had to destroy the crop," he said. "On one field where a deer walked through, didn't eat anything, just walked through and you could see the tracks, we had to take out 30 feet on each side of the tracks and annihilate the crop."

In the verdant farmland surrounding Monterey Bay, a national marine sanctuary and one of the world's biological jewels, scorched-earth strategies are being imposed on hundreds of thousands of acres in the quest for an antiseptic field of greens. And the scheme is about to go national.

Invisible to a public that sees only the headlines of the latest food-safety scare - spinach, peppers and now cookie dough - ponds are being poisoned and bulldozed. Vegetation harboring pollinators and filtering storm runoff is being cleared. Fences and poison baits line wildlife corridors. Birds, frogs, mice and deer - and anything that shelters them - are caught in a raging battle in the Salinas Valley against E. coli O157:H7, a lethal, food-borne bacteria.

In pending legislation and in proposed federal regulations, the push for food safety butts up against the movement toward biologically diverse farming methods, while evidence suggests that industrial agriculture may be the bigger culprit.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/07/12/MN0218DVJ8.DTL#ixzz0LLks2YL1&C

Seidman on Sotomayor

The Volokh Conspiracy

by Jonathan Adler

Elaborating on his strong words about Judge Sotomayor's hearing performance, Georgetown law professor Louis Michael Seidman writes:

I want to elaborate on some of the (perhaps intemperate) comments I made last night. There's no denying that Republicans on the committee put Judge Sotomayor in a difficult moral position, and I need not elaborate on their own culpability for doing so. Either Judge Sotomayor had to misrepresent what she knows judges (all judges, conservative and liberal) do in hard cases, or she had to risk defeat. I'm willing to concede that this is not an easy choice, but I nonetheless think that she made a serious mistake. To his tremendous credit, President Obama has made an effort in his public statements to shift the official ideology of judging so that it has some contact with reality. Yesterday, Judge Sotomayor explicitly repudiated the President. Here are some of the consequences of this kind of unilateral disarmament:

1. It means that the only people who end up on the Supreme Court are either naïfs or cynics.

2. It means that every official act that a justice takes deepens the corrosive cognitive dissonance between what she pretends to do and what she actually does. This kind of deep hypocrisy imposes psychic costs that, at some point, are bound to have an effect on decision-making.

3. Anyone who knows anything about law knows that the official version is a lie, but many Americans don't know anything about law. To them, the official version sounds plausible. Reinforcing that version has a terrible effect on the possibility of serious public deliberation about constitutional law.

The pity is that all of this was probably unnecessary. The Democrats have sixty votes in the Senate. It would have taken some courage for Judge Sotomayor to have told the truth, but not much. She said yesterday that judges should never decide cases out of fear. Yesterday, she testified out of fear. We have a right to expect better of her.

http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2009_07_12-2009_07_18.shtml#1247670901

Palin Hints At Plans To Split Republican Party

 

By Nicole Belle

Ohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohplease....

From her own PAC:
Palin Hints At Independent Conservative Movement

Excerpts from TammyBruce.com

Enter now Sarah Palin with very encouraging comments that lead one to believe that she is indeed planning to do what she must: build an independent conservative movement and take this nation back from the liberals which now control both parties.Thanks liberals, for provoking Sarah into the national scene while vetting that family at the same time.

One thing I will say, the Washington Times with their headline for this exclusive interview reveal an anti-Palin stance. She is, don't doubt, a threat to every existing political status quo.

Oh holy FSM, there is so much funny to be had with this perfect example of Republican syllogism, I don't know where to begin.

Palin is planning to do what she must???? Apparently, she mustn't finish the job she was elected to do. Nor must she actually read up and learn about the issues as many mainstream Republicans have begged her to do.

And when did we become controlled by liberals in both parties? What in the hell is Bruce on about? Does she really suggest that Boehner, Cantor, Coburn, Kyl, Inhofe, etc are liberals???? When you start with that ridiculous a premise, then you're just asking to be laughed out of the room.

And then, after blaming liberals for vetting Palin's family (erm...huh?), she then launches into an attack against the Washington Times--hardly a bastion of liberal thought--for being anti-Palin and then holds it as a banner of pride of somehow being proof of her bona fides.

The mind reels.

http://crooksandliars.com/node/29566/

New Palin campaign slogan

Michael Klare, Peak Oil and the Remaking of Iraq

Anthony Shadid has, without a doubt, been the finest American mainstream journalist to cover Iraq in the period after the 2003 invasion. He's now back in Baghdad for the Washington Post, telling the saddest story of all ("In the City of Cement"). Here's part of what he wrote just after American troops largely withdrew to the outskirts of town:

"Augustus boasted that he found Rome a city of bricks and made it a city of marble. Baghdad was another city of bricks, and a coterie of American generals turned it into a city of cement. Their concrete is everywhere -- from the sprawling Green Zone to the barriers and blast walls that line almost every street -- reorienting the physical, spiritual and social geography that for more than a millennium was dictated by the lazy bends in the Tigris River.

"In time, though, those walls may matter less than the deeper forces that six years of an American presence hastened. Baghdad is now a city divided from itself. Shiite neighborhoods rarely have Sunnis. Sunni ones, far less numerous today, no longer have Shiites. Christians have all but left. Potentates seek refuge in fortresses, and the poor fend for themselves... The Americans created none of it, but facilitated all of it, giving space to the region's worst impulses."

In what follows, Michael Klare, energy expert and author of Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet, offers another, quite different version of this same sad tale: what if, after all the sound and fury, what happened really did signify next to nothing, despite the devastation of Iraq and the loss of so many lives? What if the new Iraq is now fated to be, as Klare suggests, just another service station at a rest stop on the global road to... well, where? Tom

Will Iraq Be a Global Gas Pump?

The (Re)Making of a Petro-State
By Michael T. Klare

Has it all come to this? The wars and invasions, the death and destruction, the exile and torture, the resistance and collapse? In a world of shrinking energy reserves, is Iraq finally fated to become what it was going to be anyway, even before the chaos and catastrophe set in: a giant gas pump for an energy-starved planet? Will it all end not with a bang, but with a gusher? The latest oil news out of that country offers at least a hint of Iraq's fate.

For modern Iraq, oil has always been at the heart of everything. Its very existence as a unified state is largely the product of oil.

In 1920, under the aegis of the League of Nations, Britain cobbled together the Kingdom of Iraq from the Ottoman provinces of Basra, Baghdad, and Mosul in order to better exploit the holdings of the Turkish Petroleum Company, forerunner of the Iraq Petroleum Company (IPC). Later, Iraqi nationalists and the Baath Party of Saddam Hussein nationalized the IPC, provoking unrelenting British and American hostility. Hussein rewarded his Sunni allies in the Baath Party by giving them lucrative positions in the state company, part of a process that produced a dangerous rift with the country's Shiite majority. And these are but a few of the ways in which modern Iraqi history has been governed by oil.

Iraq is, of course, one of the world's great hydrocarbon preserves. According to oil giant BP, it harbors proven oil reserves of 115 billion barrels -- more than any country except Saudi Arabia (with 264 billion barrels) and Iran (with 138 billion). Many analysts, however, believe that Iraq has been inadequately explored, and that the utilization of modern search technologies will yield additional reserves in the range of 45 to 100 billion barrels. If all its reserves, known and suspected, were developed to their full potential, Iraq could add as much as six to eight million barrels per day to international output, postponing the inevitable arrival of peak oil and a contraction in global energy supplies.

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175095

Big blobs of mystery goo floating off Alaska coast

By Don Hunter

Something big and strange is floating through the Chukchi Sea between Wainwright and Barrow.

Hunters from Wainwright first started noticing the stuff sometime probably early last week. It's thick and dark and "gooey" and is drifting for miles in the cold Arctic waters, according to Gordon Brower with the North Slope Borough's Planning and Community Services Department.

Brower and other borough officials, joined by the U.S. Coast Guard, flew out to Wainwright to investigate. The agencies found "globs" of the stuff floating miles offshore Friday and collected samples for testing.

Later, Brower said, the North Slope team in a borough helicopter spotted a long strand of the stuff and followed it for about 15 miles, shooting video from the air.

The next day the floating substance arrived offshore from Barrow, about 90 miles east of Wainwright, and borough officials went out in boats, collected more samples and sent them off for testing too.

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.

http://www.adn.com/2835/story/864687.html

Israeli soldiers in Gaza describe a 'moral Twilight Zone'

By Dion Nissenbaum

JERUSALEM — Israeli combat soldiers have acknowledged that they forced Palestinian civilians to serve as human shields, needlessly killed unarmed Gazans and improperly used white phosphorus shells to burn down buildings as part of Israel's three-week military offensive in the Gaza Strip last winter.

In filmed testimony and written statements released Wednesday, more than two dozen soldiers told an Israeli army veterans' group that military commanders led the fighters into what one described as a "moral Twilight Zone" where almost every Palestinian was seen as a threat.

Soldiers described incidents in which Israeli forces killed an unarmed Palestinian carrying a white cloth, an elderly woman carrying a sack, a Gazan riding a motorcycle, and an elderly man with a flashlight, said Breaking the Silence, a group formed by army reservists in 2004.

Any Palestinian spotted near Israeli troops was considered suspect. A man talking on a cell phone on the roof of his building was viewed as a legitimate target because he could've been telling militants where to find Israeli forces, the group quoted soldiers as saying.

"In urban warfare, everyone is your enemy," said one soldier. "No innocents."

The 110-pages of testimony — along with 16 video clips — of interviews with 26 unnamed Israeli soldiers offers the most comprehensive look inside a military campaign that's become the subject of an unfolding United Nations war crimes investigation.

The Israel Defense Forces dismissed the report.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/71837.html

My daughter's tragedy: U.S. health care in a nutshell.

 

by Ralphdog

I've been posting on Kos for a year or two now, and folks may note that I talk a lot about health care issues and the primary care crisis in particular. As a family physician I see the brutal reality of health care in America for the uninsured, underinsured and 'temporarily insured' every working day. I strongly support single payer as the only sane long-term solution. I reluctantly support Obama's half-hearted effort to get some kind of viable 'public option' on the table, as a necessary but utterly insufficient first step toward breaking the stranglehold the for-profit insurers have on our health and our lives.

Now it's a bit more personal. My daughter's partner has suffered a health care catastrophe that threatens to leave them in poverty for the rest of their lives. And it's not necessarily his illness that will do the damage; it's our greed-driven, heartless, for-profit shell-game of a health care 'system'.

Like millions of Americans, my daughter's boyfriend lost his job this year. His unemployment was a direct result of the banksters' rape of the economy, which is a whole 'nuther story. And of course, with his job went his health insurance. He was offered temporary COBRA coverage, for a thousand dollars a month. For a healthy 30 year old with zero income and a mortgage to pay, that's a sick joke. So, like millions of Americans—but unlike anyone in Canada, England, France, Germany, Japan...—he was forced to go without health insurance. Affluent wingnuts and corporate conservatives like to claim that people like my prospective son in law are making a "choice", that they're refusing to carry health insurance so they can buy a big screen TV. That's bullshit. The working poor fail to carry health insurance because they simply cannot afford it. Period.

One night last week my daughter watched in horror as her partner started having a seizure in their living room. The seizures didn't stop until he was intubated, paralyzed and anesthetized at the hospital. The prolonged seizures caused his muscles to break down, leaking so much protein into his blood stream that his kidneys failed the next day. A CT scan revealed a brain tumor, which was the cause of his seizures. He's awake, walking and talking now. He's getting dialysis every day. If he's lucky, his kidneys will recover, and he'll undergo an MRI scan followed by a biopsy in a few weeks. If he's very, very lucky, the tumor will be benign and he'll have surgery to remove it next month. If he's unlucky and it's malignant...as a physician I know all too well what's in store for him down the road.

The quality of the care my daughter's partner has received has been excellent. But no matter how 'lucky' he is, his life has been ruined by the health care 'system'. Upon discharge he will be presented with a bill for somewhere north of $150,000. Every pill, every dialysis treatment, just adds to the mountain of debt. (By the time his treatment is complete, it's likely to total somewhere close to a half a million dollars.) The hospital is talking about 'financial assistance', meaning a discount on the bill. That should knock it down from $150,000 to a mere $120,000.

Will that be cash, check or charge?

My daughter's partner will be utterly, completely, permanently uninsurable due to his medical history.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/7/13/752911/-My-daughters-tragedy:-U.S.-health-care-in-a-nutshell.

 

United Breaks Guitars

 

In the spring of 2008, Sons of Maxwell were traveling to Nebraska for a one-week tour and my Taylor guitar was witnessed being thrown by United Airlines baggage handlers in Chicago. I discovered later that the $3500 guitar was severely damaged. They didn't deny the experience occurred but for nine months the various people I communicated with put the responsibility for dealing with the damage on everyone other than themselves and finally said they would do nothing to compensate me for my loss. So I promised the last person to finally say no to compensation (Ms. Irlweg) that I would write and produce three songs about my experience with United Airlines and make videos for each to be viewed online by anyone in the world. United: Song 1 is the first of those songs. United: Song 2 has been written and video production is underway. United: Song 3 is coming. I promise. Follow me at http://twitter.com/DaveCarroll . Video Produced by Curve Productions of Halifax, http://www.curveproductionsinc.com.

18 Essential Skills for a Maker

by UptownMaker

@AntonOlsen recently posted an article on GeekDad enumerating 100 Essential Skills for Geeks. As he was inspired to do so by a list of "Essential Skills for Men", so I am inspired to make this list of essential skills for Makers.

His list was a little long (100 items), terse (essentially one line per item, but with links), and slightly biased (heavier on computers than I might have liked, but to be fair, that is the most common geek fetish). I'm going to go for a shorter list, with slightly more verbose entries, and try to cast a wider net. If I get interest from this list, I'll follow up with an article on each point going into more detail.

1. Calculate power consumption and estimate battery life- Most electrical projects will involve batteries of some sort. Having an idea of how long your project will run on a battery can save you a lot of trouble later- that wireless garden soil moisture monitor is probably not going to run very long on a 9V battery. Maybe solar is a better idea?
2. Spot valuable salvage- Not only knowing where to get it, but knowing it when you see it. Finding it isn't too hard- curbs, alleys, and the classic dumpster dive. Deciding whether to keep it is the real trick: can it be broken down? Are there useful things inside (gears, motors, electronics, hardware, salvageable wood, springs, etc.)? Is trying to salvage parts of it a wise thing to do (upholstered items left outside are a great way to get bedbugs into your home)?
3. Spot eminently hackable, cheap Chinese crap- The glut of crap from China occasionally brings some real gems with it. Woot.com recently sold some rotating LED-based "police lights" for $3, which connect to USB and can be turned on and off by pressing a key on the keyboard.
4. Find "prior art"- In the patent world, "prior art" is anything which suggests that the idea you are trying to patent (or have patented) was developed or described by someone else first. The existence of prior art can break a patent. In the Maker world, prior art is a springboard. Someone, somewhere on the internet did (or tried to do) what you are trying to do. They may even be selling bits of the project which may make showstopping technical challenges mere speedbumps.
5. Stitch a simple and serviceable seam- We're not talking about making your daughter's prom dress, here- just being able to neatly and durably reclose the seam on the Furby you just hacked into reciting the Vincent Price speech from "Thriller".
6. Understand the voltage/current ratings on a power supply- If a battery won't cut it, you should understand at least the rudiments of power supplies: how to get a cheap wall-wart AC adapter, what voltage you can use, and why it's okay to use a 500mA supply to replace a 250mA supply.
7. Know which glue to use, when- Elmer's white, spray mount, Uhu glue sticks, JB Weld, cyanoacrylate, and two-part epoxy all have their uses.
8. Know which tape to use, when- Duct, masking, Scotch, foam-two-sided, and (occasionally) electrical tape all have their uses.
9. Deal with recalcitrant fasteners- Sooner or later, you'll want to remove a screw or bolt that is stripped, broken, or uses a security bit. Owning a wide variety of driver bits is a start, but knowing how to drill out a fastener or cut a notch for a flat-edge screwdriver should be somewhere in your bag of tricks.
10. Use a Dremel- 'nuff said.

 

http://uptownmaker.blogspot.com/2009/07/18-essential-skills-for-maker.html

Chutzpah on Steroids

By BOB HERBERT

 

What is up with the banks and the rest of the financial industry? The people running this system remind me of gangsters who manage to walk out of the courthouse with a suspended sentence and can't wait to get back to their nefarious activities.

These malefactors of great wealth (thank you, Teddy) developed hideously destructive credit policies and took insane risks that hurt millions of American families and nearly wrecked the economy. Then they were bailed out with hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars, money that came from the very people victimized by the industry's outlandish practices.

Now the industry is fighting against creation of an agency that would protect taxpayers and ordinary consumers from a similarly devastating onslaught in the future. And at the same time they are scrambling to raise credit card interest rates and all manner of exploitive fees to build a brand new superstructure of questionable profits on the backs of the taxpayers who came to their rescue.

We're reaching a whole new level of chutzpah here.

The Obama administration wants to create a Consumer Financial Protection Agency that would shield individuals and families from deceptive practices and outright fraud by banks and other businesses offering credit cards, mortgages, home loans and other forms of consumer finance.

Everything we've learned in this recession tells us we need such an agency. As Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner described it, "This agency will have only one mission: to protect consumers."

Protecting the consumer is, of course, anathema to the industry. So it's preparing for war. The Times's Edmund Andrews neatly summed up the matter when he wrote that "banks and mortgage lenders are placing top priority on killing" the president's proposal.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/14/opinion/14herbert.html?_r=1&th&emc=th

California money

Wasilla Hillbilly Comics