Tom Morello on Paul Ryan • Romney/Ryan • Lying Republicans • Climate Change • Fascist Ronald Reagan • Going Vegan • more

- GOP's Concern for Disaster Preparedness Doesn't Extend Beyond Tampa

Since assuming control of the House, Republicans have consistently played dangerous politics with disaster relief funds and slashed the budgets of storm monitoring agencies, thereby executing the same small-government-at-all-costs mentality that led to widespread destruction in New Orleans. They may go to great lengths to assure the safety of party delegates in Tampa Bay, but they have not shown the same compassion for storm victims in the rest of the country.

- Four Ways the Ohio GOP is Already Stealing the 2012 Election

The Ohio Republican Party has moved four ways to steal America's 2012 election. The Buckeye State is almost certain to emerge as a decider in this year's presidential election, and the GOP is moving fast to ensure victory, no matter what it takes.

- Tom Morello: 'Paul Ryan Is the Embodiment of the Machine Our Music Rages Against'

Rage Against the Machine's guitarist blasts Romney's VP pick and unlikely Rage fan

- If You Aren't Young/Old, Middle Class/Poor, Gay, A Student, A Vet, Or A Woman, You'll Love Paul Ryan

Meet Mitt Romney's vice presidential nominee, Paul Ryan. He wants to basically cut everything. And then basically give Mitt Romney the biggest tax cut ever.

- Paul Ryan Cracks Joke As 71 Year-Old Citizen Is Forced To The Ground (VIDEOS)

This took place last fall at one of Congressman Rep. Ryan’s “Pay to Play” town hall meetings where he was discussing cutting Senior’s Social Security, and Medicare as a means of debt reduction. As you might imagine, one senior was not pleased.

- 3 Essential Things To Read About Paul Ryan Today

Mitt Romney chose super-conservative superstar Rep. Paul Ryan as his vice-presidential nominee this morning. Read these articles if you want to know who he is and what this might mean for America.

- Millionaire Mitt Romney Would Pay ONLY 0.82 Percent in Taxes Under Paul Ryan's Plan

Under Paul Ryan's plan, Mitt Romney wouldn't pay any taxes for the next ten years -- or any of the years after that.

- The Five Reasons Why the Ryan-Romney Economic Plan Would Be A Disaster for America

The Romney-Ryan Economic Plan - The Five Reasons Why the Ryan-Romney Economic Plan Would Be A Disaster for America

- Paul Ryan: Randian poseur

Mitt Romney couldn't have chosen a better example of the fakery at the heart of today's GOP

- Mitt Romney: “I was too important to go to Vietnam”

Monday, at a press event in California before the GOP primary in that state, former Gov. Mitt Romney was asked about his support of United States military involvement overseas. He was pleased to answer the question, however after his response, his answer to a follow-up question regarding his four deferments from the Vietnam War did not please onlookers, especially veterans.

- Republican Official: N.M. Governor ‘Dishonored’ Gen. Custer By Meeting With American Indians

A progressive group called on Republican National Committee leader Pat Rogers to step down on Friday after emails showed him telling New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez’s staff that meeting with a group of American Indians “dishonored” Gen. George Armstrong Custer, the 19th century commander who killed scores of American Indians.

- Romney's Campaign Strategy: Lie, Lie, and Lie Some More -- Can Democracy Survive with 0% Media Accountability?

The Romney campaign has turned to a strategy of swamping the public with flat-out, blatant lies, one after another, again and again, endlessly and lavishly repeated. They do this because they are making a calculation that it will work! So what is going on? And can democracy survive this assault?

- Why reproductive rights have the Republican Party on the defensive

I put together this chart based on the latest CNN poll (pdf), which asked respondents, "Now I am going to read some specific situations under which an abortion might be considered. For each one, please say whether you think abortion should be legal in that situation, or illegal."88% believe abortion should be legal when a woman's life is endangered, 83% believe abortion should be legal when a woman's physical health is endangered, and 83% believe abortion should be legal when a pregnancy is caused by rape or incest.
In other words, the Akin/Paul-Ryan/GOP-platform position on abortion is really unpopular.

- Book Reveals Extensive Effort by Reagan, FBI to Undermine California’s Student Movement in 1960s

FBI director J. Edgar Hoover ordered his agents to investigate and then disrupt the Free Speech Movement that began in 1964 on the Berkeley campus of the University of California. In part two of our interview, Rosenfeld discusses how Ronald Reagan collaborated with the FBI to target California’s student movement and strengthen Reagan’s own rise to power.

- Study Shows Bill Nye Was Right About CNN's Climate Coverage

CNN anchor Carol Costello recently asked Bill Nye "The Science Guy" if he is "disappointed" that climate change is largely ignored in American political discourse. Nye responded: "Well if I'm disappointed, everybody, it's in you guys." And with good reason: CNN rarely mentions climate change, even while reporting on its consequences -- as a new Media Matters study shows.

- Arctic sea ice extent breaks 2007 record low

Arctic sea ice appears to have broken the 2007 record daily extent and is now the lowest in the satellite era. With two to three more weeks left in the melt season, sea ice continues to track below 2007 daily extents.

- Arctic sea ice levels to reach record low within days

The dramatic melt expected over the next week signals that global warming is having a major impact on the polar region

- MIT Study Shows Geothermal Could Produce 100,000 Megawatts of Energy in the US Within 50 Years

So far, Humans have harnessed the strength of the sun, water, and wind to generate clean electricity. Now, it may be time to take advantage of the earth’s capacity to provide renewable power. An interdisciplinary panel from MIT estimated that the United States could potentially produce 100,000 megawatts of geothermal energy within the next 50 years.  The report estimates that 200,000 exajoules of energy could be captured from EGS (enhanced geothermal systems) by 2050 in the US alone – that’s roughly 2,000 times the total consumption of the country in 2005.

- Central Valley Meat Co. Shut Down After Undercover Video Surfaces From Within Slaughterhouse

Federal regulators who shut down a Central California slaughterhouse after receiving an animal welfare video were investigating Tuesday whether beef from sick cows reached the human food supply.The video appears to show workers bungling the slaughter of cows struggling to walk and even stand. Under federal regulations, sick animals cannot be slaughtered for human consumption.

- Veganism: Making The Transition

It seems that every few weeks, a news story breaks about an undercover investigation inside a factory farm. Just this past week, the DC-based group Compassion Over Killing, revealed footage taken by one of their investigators that caused the USDA to shut down a slaughterhouse near Fresno, CA. This time it was dairy cows being slaughtered for hamburger. COK's undercover video documented horrific abuse: a cow being suffocated by a worker who is stepping on her muzzle, cows too weak to walk or even stand being jabbed with electric prods, cows still fully conscious having their throats slit.

When confronted with these images, most people turn away, disgusted and sad. Yet time and time again we hear of the abuse, torture and neglect farm animals endure. Many of my friends not involved in animal rights ask me: How can this be?
The answer to that question is many-fold: desensitized farm workers, "standard" farm practices that are exempted from animal cruelty laws, the phenomena of seeing animals as commodities rather than sentient beings. My question back to them is always the same: What are you going to do about it?

- Answers to the plant based diet protein deficiency myth

Anyone who is vegan, or even vegetarian, is likely quite familiar with the infamous question, "But where do you get your PROTEIN?" Some veggie lovers may already know how to answer this question without missing a beat. But if you're not quite sure, read on to arm yourself with knowledge; not just for a quick response, but more importantly for your own health!

- Wondering About a Vegan Diet? (Infographic)

Want to know how to be healthy and cruelty-free? No worries—eating vegan is easy! Get all your answers and more with PETA's "Wondering About a Vegan Diet?" infographic, and don't forget to share this infographic on Facebook.

Sean

Ralph Nader Book Picks and Interview • Top Republican Donor Investigated for Criminal Activity • Fox News Denies Facts and Shows Racism • Meat Will Destroy Earth • Climate Change • Fox News Says Pollution is Good For You • more

- Jolting the Mind for Action: A Summer Reading List

These are suggested summer readings from Ralph Nader to activate the citizen’s mind:

- Q&A: Ralph Nader on The Green Party, Obama and Romney

...we asked Nader about his problems with the two-party system, discourse between the two major candidates and the media’s coverage of the race.

- Comically Awful Survey Says 83 Percent Of Doctors Might Quit Over Obamacare

The survey question is entirely worthless as a barometer of professional medical opinion regarding the Affordable Care Act. Which is likely the reason no one paid it any mind when DPMA released it last month. But then the dim bulbs at the Breitbart empire picked it up, followed by the Daily Caller and Drudge, leading to its inevitable appearance on Fox News this morning. It's a uniquely awful survey, but it served up a shocking, headline-friendly number, which is why it's driving the right-wing media's coverage of health care policy.

- Fox & Friends Fails To Discredit Obama's Manufacturing Job Record

Fox & Friends rarely misses an opportunity to deny the successes of Obama, even when empiricism would suggest otherwise. This is only the most recent example.

- Fox & Friends Echoes GOP Spin On Welfare Rule, Leaves Out The Facts

Fox & Friends criticized changes to the federal welfare program with deceptive talking points that were identical to a Republican senator's press.

- Wells Fargo Accused of Discriminatory Lending

Protesters say that Wells Fargo and some other major banks offer higher mortgage rates to minorities.The US Department of Justice says they have reached a settlement with one of the lenders, Wells Fargo - which has agreed to a $175m payout. However, that sum is tiny in comparison to the $4.2bn profit the bank made in just the first quarter of this year.

- Solyndra and the Republican Outrage Machine

The attacks on Solyndra are more than just attacks on Obama—they’re attacks on the notion of government as a place where we can come together to take on big challenges, drive economic innovation and advance our common interests while securing a sustainable future. The Solyndra scolds don’t just want to take down Obama—they want to hold back our politics. Let’s not let them.

- Right-Wing Blogger Hoft Criticizes Summer Heat Relief For The Elderly And Chronically Ill

Right-wing blogger Jim Hoft expressed outrage Friday that an Ohio county is distributing air conditioners for needy families to bring relief from record-high summer temperatures.

- AMA Addresses Light Pollution

Researchers are raising several possible health concerns related to nighttime light exposure, among them a higher risk of cancer.

- Inside The Investigation Of Leading Republican Money Man Sheldon Adelson

Billionaire psychopath who is funding all Republican/Tea Party candidates under criminal investigation

- Fox "News" Bill O'Reilly says Black Americans Vote For Dems Because Dems "Gave Them All Kinds Of Entitlements, Making Them Dependent"

Fox "News" and Bill O'Reilly again show their racism.

- Beyond Nuclear Denial

Now, on a planet still overstocked with city-busting, world-ending weaponry, in which almost 67 years have passed since a nuclear weapon was last used, the only nuke that Americans regularly hear about is one that doesn’t exist: Iran’s. The nearly 20,000 nuclear weapons on missiles, planes, and submarines possessed by Russia, the United States, France, the United Kingdom, China, Israel, Pakistan, India, and North Korea are barely mentioned in what passes for press coverage of the nuclear issue.

- Investigation: As Black Lung Cases Doubled In The Last Decade, The Coal Industry [and Republicans] Fought New Health Protections

In the last ten years, as cases of black lung among American coal miners doubled — hitting “epidemic” scale — the coal industry and anti-regulatory politicians have fought to prevent federal agencies from creating new standards that would improve miner safety.

- Record U.S. heat unlikely to be random fluke

The National Climatic Data Center has just released its “State of the Climate” report for June 2012. The last 12-month period on the mainland United States, it notes, were the warmest on record. What’s notable, however, is that every single one of the last 13 months were in the top third for their historical distribution–i.e., April 2012 was in the top third for warmest Aprils, etc."The odds of this occurring randomly," notes NCDC, "is 1 in 1,594,323."

- Ice island twice as big as Manhattan breaks off Greenland glacier

chunk of ice 46 square miles in area has parted from the Petermann glacier, which feeds into Nares straight along the northwest coast of Greenland. It split off July 16 according to researchers at the University of Delaware and Canadian Ice Service.This is the second major calving event for the Petermann glacier in the last three years. In August 2010, an ice island four times the size of Manhattan (an area of roughly 97 square miles) separated from the glacier.

- Why Conservative Columnist George Will Is Wrong About Weather And Climate

Scientific observation and analysis have established that human-induced climate change makes extreme heat events more common. But when heat waves hit, many reporters hesitate to mention climate change without appending disclaimers of the sort that you don't see on other beats.

- Fox News thinks pollution is good for the planet

Not that it’s a HUGE surprise that Fox News has beliefs about the environment that are the opposite of true, but just FYI, they are now apparently telling viewers that pollution is good for forests.

- Havoc as monsoon displaces millions

Six million people have been forced to flee their homes in India's north-east as heavy monsoon rains caused massive flooding that has claimed the lives of more than 120 people.

- Fight Global Warming by Going Vegetarian

Global warming has been called humankind's "greatest challenge" and the world's most grave environmental threat. Many conscientious people are trying to help reduce global warming by driving more fuel-efficient cars and using energy-saving light bulbs. Although this helps, science shows that going vegan is one of the most effective ways to fight global warming.

- Could Veganism End World Hunger?

This video from the Evolve! Campaign summarizes some startling facts from 2010 about how a plant-based diet and vegan choices could END world hunger. While this may sound too good to be true, you may be surprised to find out that the amount of grain produced globally today is enough to feed the world TWICE over, but instead the majority of it is being fed to farmed animals!

- Is Meat The World’s Most Inefficient Food?

As the infographic below explains, the manner and scale at which our society currently raises animal for human consumption contributes to climate change in major way. It also wastes water, pollutes our soil, and contaminates fresh water supplies.

- Meat Production Wastes Natural Resources

Raising animals for food requires massive amounts of land, food, energy, and water and contributes to animal suffering.According to the United Nations, raising animals for food (including land used for grazing and land used to grow feed crops) now uses a staggering 30 percent of the Earth's land mass. More than 260 million acres of U.S. forest have been cleared to create cropland to grow grain to feed farmed animals, and according to scientists at the Smithsonian Institution, the equivalent of seven football fields of land is bulldozed worldwide every minute to create more room for farmed animals.

- Canadian Scientists 'Mourn Death of Evidence' under Harper Government

A funeral procession of scientists wearing white lab coats and mourners dressed in black will take to the streets of Ottawa today to "mourn the death of Evidence" and protest what they see as an attack on environmental science by the Harper government.The scientists say a rash of recent cuts exposes the government's hostility to evidence-based research and is putting the public at risk. Despite claims by government officials that the cuts are a necessary part of a cost-cutting and efficiency plan, the scientists claim they are directed at research programs critical of the government's energy development plans, specifically the tar sands mining taking place in Alberta.

- Extreme Weather Linked to Man-Made Global Warming: Now What?

Crippling droughts, suffocating heat waves, and devastating floods—welcome to the rest of our lives ---- In 2011, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which The New York Times has called a “judicious group” (read: cautious), concluded that global warming will make heat waves, droughts, floods, and other extreme weather events a common occurrence.  These trends cannot be explained by natural variation. “Only with the inclusion of human influences can computer models of the climate reproduce the observed changes,” according to the website Climate Communication, which indexes leading scientific research on climate change.
If these statistics aren’t doing it, see for yourself. Mouse over to NASA’s Climate Time Machine, where you can watch the planet’s polar ice caps melting, track increases in carbon dioxide, witness sea levels rise, and see global temperatures increase in shades of orange and red.

- Welcome to the rest of our lives?

Watch this powerful video and share with friends and family. Then help fight climate change denial by joining Forecast the Facts.

- On Global Warming, Republicans Burying Their Heads in the Dried-Up Soil

They rightly chided the Republicans for being know-nothings: “Willful ignorance of the science,” they said, “is irresponsible and it is dangerous.” And they quoted several leading scientists, including Michael Oppenheimer of Princeton, who said: “What we’re seeing really is a window into what global warming really looks like.”

- We Can't Put a Price on Nature

A group of international scientists says that the earth is dangerously close to its tipping point of irreversible damage. Clearly, we need a way out of the mess we've made of the planet.

- Hot Enough for You? Time to Teach Against Fossil Fuels

director of meteorology at the Weather Underground website, said recently on Democracy Now!, “What we’re seeing now is the future. We’re going to be seeing a lot more weather like this, a lot more impacts like we’re seeing from this series of heat waves, fires, and storms. . . . This is just the beginning.”

And yet, the fossil fuel industry continues to lead the climate change denial parade. On June 27, a day when almost 200 high temperature records were broken, Rex W. Tillerson, CEO of Exxon Mobil, gave a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations, pooh-poohing climate change, saying that the problem was activist organizations that “manufacture fear.” Tillerson said that the problem was an “illiterate public,” which needed to be taught that all environmental risks were “entirely manageable.”
And conservative pundits proudly wave the same flat-earth flag. Arguing with E. J. Dionne on ABC’s This Week, George Will said, “You asked us—how do we explain the heat? One word: summer. . . . We’re having some hot weather. Get over it.”

In our editorial, “Our Climate Crisis Is an Education Crisis,” in the spring 2011 issue of Rethinking Schools, we wrote that the climate crisis is “arguably the most significant threat to life on earth,” and urged educators to respond with the urgency that the crisis deserves. The events of this summer have added an exclamation point to our editorial.

Sean

Lying Republicans Shape All US Media; Racist Roots of Modern Republican and Tea Party (great video); Middle of the Road ISN'T a Place Worth Being; Most American's Want to be Swedish!

- The Republican/Tea Party history of Racism:
 

- Republican/Tea Party candidate, who claims to LOVE LOVE LOVE the Constitution, doesn't even know what the Constitution says:



- Major FAIR Exposé of PBS: Taking the 'Public' Out of Public TV A multi-part FAIR exposé of PBS's most prominent news and public affairs programs demonstrates that public television is failing to live up to its mission to provide an alternative to commercial television, to give voice to those "who would otherwise go unheard" and help viewers to "see America whole, in all its diversity," in the words of public TV's founding document.

- Psychiatrists: Glenn Beck Conspiracy Show Raises Concerns About Viewer Reaction Three veteran psychiatrists who viewed a portion of a Glenn Beck program repeatedly cited by alleged gunman Byron Williams are raising concerns about the effect that the conspiracy theory-filled clip might have on viewers.

- What PBS Thinks You Need to Know FAIR (3/9/10) issued a statement expressing concern that Meacham's hire "sends a clear and troubling message about PBS's priorities," given that the then-editor of Newsweek was a fixture on commercial TV pundit shows and a consummate purveyor of middle-of-the-road conventional wisdom with a conservative slant--not exactly a face or a perspective that needed yet another media platform, particularly not on public television

- Will Sanity Be Restored and Fear Be Kept Alive? Jon Stewart's Call of Whitewashing Reality If you don't think the country or the world is in such dire straights that urgent and passionate advocacy is called for, if you reject the international scientific consensus on the dangers of environmental collapse, if you find nuclear energy and weaponry unconcerning, and if you believe the bankrupting of the nation to pay for illegal wars that slaughter human beings by the hundreds of thousands need not come to an immediate end, then you are "sane." You're not sane because you have the facts right. You're sane because you avoid facts that are too unpleasant.


Americans Vastly Underestimate Wealth Inequality, Support 'More Equal Distribution Of Wealth': Study
When Americans were asked how much the top 20% should have, 92% said they'd rather live in a country with Sweden's wealth distribution.
By William Alden
Published 09-23-10 on Huffington Post

Americans vastly underestimate the degree of wealth inequality in America, and we believe that the distribution should be far more equitable than it actually is, according to a new study.

Or, as the study's authors put it: "All demographic groups -- even those not usually associated with wealth redistribution such as Republicans and the wealthy -- desired a more equal distribution of wealth than the status quo."

The report (pdf) "Building a Better America -- One Wealth Quintile At A Time" by Dan Ariely of Duke University and Michael I. Norton of Harvard Business School (hat tip to Paul Kedrosky), shows that across ideological, economic and gender groups, Americans thought the richest 20 percent of our society controlled about 59 percent of the wealth, while the real number is closer to 84 percent.

More interesting than that, the report says, is that the respondents (a randomly selected 5,522-person sample, reflecting the country's ideological, economic and gender demographics, surveyed in December 2005) believed the top 20 percent should own only 32 percent of the wealth. Respondents with incomes over $100,000 per year had similar answers to those making less than $50,000. (The report has helpful, multi-colored charts.)
The respondents were presented with unlabeled pie charts representing the wealth distributions of the U.S., where the richest 20 percent controlled about 84 percent of wealth, and Sweden, where the top 20 percent only controlled 36 percent of wealth.

Without knowing which country they were picking, 92 percent of respondents said they'd rather live in a country with Sweden's wealth distribution.

As the new Forbes billionaires list, released Wednesday, testifies, the richest Americans are getting richer, even as the country as a whole gets poorer. After 2005 income inequality continued to balloon.

Sean

Environmental Minefield in Gulf; BP/Republicans Still Lying; Corporations Decide What's Safe in USA; Racism, Alive and Well in USA; more

- The Big Lie: BP, Governments Downplay Public Health Risk From Oil and Dispersants BP is still in the dark ages on oil toxicity. BP officials stress that, by the time oil gets to shore, it is "weathered" and missing the highly volatile compounds like the carcinogenic benzene, among others. BP fails to mention the threat from dispersed oil, ultrafine particles (PAHs), and chemical dispersants, which include industrial solvents and proprietary compounds, many hazardous to humans.

- Republican Mississippi Gov. Barbour Fronts for BP Louie Miller, state director of the Sierra Club in Mississippi, is burning up. And its not the sweltering heat typical of Mississippi summers that's getting to him: It's Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour and his kid-glove treatment of BP over its oil blow-out disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.

- Afghan Corruption Doubled Since 2006: Survey Corruption in Afghanistan has doubled in three years since 2006, despite pledges by the government to clean up graft in one of the world's poorest countries, according to a survey released Thursday.

- "We tired of u n-----s movin in are neighborhood!" Nearly 20 black families in a Detroit neighborhood got racist - not to mention seriously badly spelled - letters Tuesday telling them to move out or get killed, the latest in a string of racially ugly events that included a cross burning and Aryan Nation flyers found in Easter eggs. Welcome to Obama's post-racial America.

- Wal-Mart: Life, Liberty, The Pursuit of Freedom to Allow Mobs to Trample Your Employees to Death Wal-Mart employee Jdimytai Damour was trampled to death by a 2,000-strong post-Thanksgiving, bargain-hunting mob in 2008. Wal-Mart says it shouldn't be held accountable for safety standards - like not having workers stampeded to death - that would cut into sales promotions of the latest plastic gimcracks made in sweatshops in China. These guys are truly princes of industry.

- Oh Dear, It Seems Mission WAS Accomplished So what if hundreds of scholars and every vaguely sentient biped on the planet have judged George Bush the worst president, ever. The stalwart founders of Honor Freedom  want to set the historical record straight - that W was "the right leader at the right time." Under headings like Compassion, Liberation and Truth, it seeks to correct nefarious myths like, "The war in Iraq was an invasion, not a liberation by the U.S." Are these people dangerous, or just sad?

- Weighing Safety of Weed Killer in Drinking Water, EPA Relies Heavily on Industry-Backed Studies Companies with a financial interest in a weed-killer sometimes found in drinking water paid for thousands of studies federal regulators are using to assess the herbicide’s health risks, records of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency show. Many of these industry-funded studies, which largely support atrazine’s safety, have never been published or subjected to an independent scientific peer review.


Abandoned Oil Wells Make Gulf of Mexico 'Environmental Minefield'
AP investigation finds BP was responsible for 600 of more than 27,000 abandoned wells in the Gulf of Mexico
by Richard Wray
Published on Wednesday, July 7, 2010 by The Guardian/UK

The Gulf of Mexico is packed with abandoned oil wells from a host of companies including BP, according to an investigation by Associated Press which describes the area as "an environmental minefield that has been ignored for decades".
While the explosion and subsequent sinking of the Deepwater Horizon rig has thrown the spotlight sharply on BP's activities in the Gulf of Mexico, environmental safety in the area has been neglected for decades.

While the explosion and subsequent sinking of the Deepwater Horizon rig has thrown the spotlight sharply on BP's activities in the Gulf of Mexico, environmental safety in the area has been neglected for decades. (Photograph: Gerald Herbert/AP)

There are more than 27,000 abandoned wells in the Gulf of Mexico, according to AP, of which 600 belonged to BP. The oldest of the abandoned wells dates back to the late 1940s and the AP investigation highlights concerns about the way in which some of the wells have been plugged, especially the 3,500 neglected wells which are catalogued by the government as "temporarily abandoned". The rules for shutting off temporarily closed wells is not as strict as for completely abandoned wells.

Regulations for temporarily abandoned wells require oil companies to present plans to reuse or permanently plug such wells within a year, but the AP found that the rule is routinely circumvented, and that more than 1,000 wells have lingered in that unfinished condition for more than a decade. About three-quarters of temporarily abandoned wells have been left in that status for more than a year, and many since the 1950s and 1960s.
AP quoted state officials as estimating that tens of thousands are badly sealed, either because they predate strict regulation or because the operating companies violated rules. Texas alone has plugged more than 21,000 abandoned wells to control pollution, according to the state comptroller's office. In state-controlled waters off the coast of California, many abandoned wells have had to be resealed. But in deeper federal waters, AP points out, there is very little investigation into the state of abandoned wells.

The US Minerals Management Service, now called the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement and charged with keeping an eye on offshore drilling, has little power to deal with abandoned wells. It merely requests paperwork to prove that a well has been capped and unlike regulators in states such as California, it does not typically inspect the job.

The Deepwater Horizon disaster has so far cost BP more than $3bn (£1.98bn) in actual clean-up expenses, but many times more in terms of the company's financial value. Its share price has more than halved since the explosion on 20 April and the clean-up is likely to take months if not years. The AP investigation raises the question of whether there are more such environmental disasters waiting to happen.

White knight wanted

BP boss Tony Hayward, meanwhile, continues to try to deal with the fall out from the Deepwater Horizon disaster. The BP chief executive is understood to have met with the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA) as he continues his world tour in search of a so-called white knight investor to ward off a takeover by a foreign rival.

Having already held talks with current investor, the Kuwait Investment Office, Hayward has switched his interest to other cash-rich oil states as he tries to bolster support for BP, which has become increasingly vulnerable as a result of the share price collapse caused by the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. ADIA is one of the world's largest sovereign wealth funds.

The news comes after it emerged on Tuesday that the US government has demanded that the oil group give it advanced notice of any potential disposals. Earlier this month BP said it would raise $10bn by selling some of its non-core assets in order to help shore up its balance sheet in the face of the mounting cost of dealing with the spill.

On 23 June, the US attorney general Tony West wrote to BP to request that the department of justice be alerted to any sales or even joint ventures entered into by the company. BP has yet to respond.

Speculation has centred on the disposal of some of BP's assets in South America, while 'mature' assets in the North Sea have been seen by other oil watchers as obvious candidates for sale. Hayward was in Azerbaijan on Tuesday to reassure local politicians that it is not about to jettison its assets on the Caspian and met with Azerbaijan president Ilham Aliyev.
BP has ruled out issuing any new shares, instead hoping that it will be able to persuade investors to pick up their stakes in the market. But many in the City believe it will need to raise more cash to bolster its balance sheet, with a bond issue seen as the most likely route.

Sean

Republican Racism; Right Wing Media Lies; Republican Health Care Lies; End American Empire NOW; Most Want Action on Climate Change; More (posted 07/31/09)

- Three Good Reasons To Liquidate Our Empire However ambitious President Barack Obama's domestic plans, one unacknowledged issue has the potential to destroy any reform efforts he might launch. Think of it as the 800-pound gorilla in the American living room: our longstanding reliance on imperialism and militarism in our relations with other countries and the vast, potentially ruinous global empire of bases that goes with it. The failure to begin to deal with our bloated military establishment and the profligate use of it in missions for which it is hopelessly inappropriate will, sooner rather than later, condemn the United States to a devastating trio of consequences: imperial overstretch, perpetual war, and insolvency, leading to a likely collapse similar to that of the former Soviet Union.
 
- Racism Is the Prime Cause for Debunked Obama Birth Certificate Conspiracy Theory Like all conspiracy theories, it springs from the fertile soil of collective denial. Unlike all conspiracy theories, it thrives on a deep-rooted, racist belief: that a black man with a foreign name could never have won the presidency in the United States through anything other than trickery, deception or fraud.

- Real Journalism: A Prerequisite for Real Debate on Healthcare If the public has managed to get any TV news at all about single-payer [health insurance], or to hear the perspectives of the large numbers of physicians and citizens who support this proposal, it is thanks to outlets like DN! and shows like the Bill Moyers Journal on PBS [the mainstream media only pushes right-wing propaganda].

- Harvey Milk to Receive Presidential Medal of Freedom President Barack Obama plans to award America's highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, to Harvey Milk. Milk was killed in 1978 after becoming one of the nation's first openly gay elected officials

- Global Poll Finds 73% Want Higher Priority for Climate Change A majority of peoples around the world want their governments to put action on climate change at the top of the political agenda, a new global public opinion poll suggests.

- Afghan War Spreads to Residential Areas: UN Report The Afghan battlefield is spreading into residential areas where more [innocent] people are being killed by air strikes, car bombs and suicide attacks, according to a U.N. report published on Friday.

- Fox "News" Once Again Proves They are Idiots [Fox News has] truly liberated Iraq - by turning it into Egypt.

- India Orders Arrest of American in Bhopal Gas Leak An Indian court issued a warrant Friday for the arrest of the former head of the American chemical company responsible for a gas leak that killed at least 10,000 people in Bhopal 25 years ago

- Pfizer, Nigeria Sign $75 Mln Settlement in Drug Suit The northern state of Kano filed civil and criminal suits against Pfizer demanding 2.75 billion dollars in compensation and the prosecution of staff for what it said was an illegal test of the meningitis drug Trovan on 200 children.

- Former Prime Minister Tony Blair to Be Star Witness as Iraq Inquiry Launched Tony Blair was today confirmed as one of the witnesses who will appear before Britain's long awaited inquiry into the Iraq war as it was launched with a promise to level criticism where necessary.




Right Wing Media, Strategists Seize Upon Gates Arrest and Controversy
by Mark Weisbrot
Published on Thursday, July 30, 2009 by CommonDreams.org
 
The controversy over the arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. and President Obama's remark that the police "acted stupidly" has taken up a lot of newspaper and broadcast space in the past week, and brought some attention to the problem of racial profiling and indeed the problems of even having a public discussion of race issues in the United States.

But the fact that President Obama had to backtrack from his remarks says more about certain institutional aspects of racism in the United States than it does about individual attitudes among the electorate or among police officers. That is what is generally missing from the discussion that takes place in the major media.

It is well known that no Democratic presidential candidate has won a majority of the white vote since 1964. Indeed, that is the main reason why President Obama's race was not so much of a handicap in the last election: most people who would not vote for an African-American would not vote for a Democrat in any case. This partisan divide over race issues goes back to Richard Nixon and the Republican party's "Southern Strategy," which - using coded racial appeals and other methods -- helped keep the White House in Republican hands for 32 of the ensuing 44 years.

All this is significant because, although individual attitudes obviously matter and are influenced by deep historical factors such as slavery and segregation, the persistence of such prejudices over time can be substantially strengthened by certain political institutions and strategies. As the Gates case illustrates, in today's context this means the Republican party and the right-wing media - which overlap considerably.

Gates, a well-known author, scholar, and professor at Harvard University, was arrested by Cambridge police officer James Crowley for "disorderly conduct" on July 16. Crowley had responded to a 911 call from a neighbor who reported that two men were possibly breaking in to a house. It turned out that Gates was pushing open a jammed door to his own house, assisted by a driver who had dropped him off. After Obama criticized the police actions, the right went into attack mode.

Glenn Beck, a popular Fox News commentator, said that Obama "had exposed himself . . . as a guy who has a deep seated hatred for white people . . ."

Talk show host Rush Limbaugh, who reaches a reported 20 million people, said, "let's face it, President Obama's black, and I think he's got a chip on his shoulder."

Talk radio has an enormous audience in the United States, with a reported audience of 50 million people each week; at least three-quarters of the programming is conservative.
U.S. Congressman Thaddeus McCotter, (R-Mich.) is preparing to introduce a bill calling on President Obama to formally apologize to the Cambridge Police.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee distributed an online petition asking whether "it's appropriate for our nation's Commander in Chief to stand before a national audience and criticize the men and women in law enforcement who put their lives on the line every day . . ."

The Republican party is obviously in disarray as it faces the threat of becoming a permanent minority party. Its hold on power prior to 2008 was based on a fake "populist" appeal to white working class voters - the biggest block of swing voters in most presidential elections during the last four decades. But issues such as gay marriage, guns, abortion, and whether "liberal elites" shared "our values," have lost resonance since the economy collapsed.
 
Hence the right's rapid and persistent response to Obama's remarks, and its efforts to consolidate their base around a race issue. They don't have much else to run with right now.
Obama came under fire for saying that the Cambridge police "acted stupidly" by arresting Gates. For his part, President Obama has undoubtedly had experiences similar to those of Gates and has talked about his past difficulties, for example, in hailing a cab. As Stanley Fish pointed out, he has now also had the experience of being "President While Black."
But Obama was being generous to Crowley; a better description would have been "acted maliciously." Even if we accept Crowley's own police report as a completely accurate version of events, there was no excuse for putting Professor Gates in handcuffs and dragging him down to the police station. (Gates gave a more credible account of what happened that contradicts Crowley on several key points; Crowley's account is accepted here only for the sake of argument).

According to the police report, at the time of the arrest Gates had been positively identified as the owner of the home. There is no allegation that he had threatened or was threatening Crowley or anyone else. The "disorderly conduct" charge was, according to the police report, based on Gates allegedly yelling at the police officer from in front of his house.
Police sometimes abuse their authority, and this is a prime example. There is probably not one chance in a thousand that a Cambridge jury would have convicted Gates on these or any other criminal charges. But Crowley knew that the case would never go to trial. He may have arrested Gates out of spite and to demonstrate his authority; or he may have done it to protect himself from any complaint that might have been lodged against his own behavior prior to the arrest. As anyone who is familiar with police practices in the United States knows, it is common for police to arrest the victim when they commit an abuse. For example, when police beat people they sometimes charge them with assault so that they can drop the charges in exchange for the victim agreeing not to file a complaint. This is the most generous interpretation that one can give to Crowley's decision to arrest Gates. But either way, the arrest itself was unethical, unprofessional, and an outrage.

Of course the issue of police abusing their authority is not the same as racial profiling. But there is enough overlap - people who don't think racial profiling is a problem are also more likely to back the police, especially against an African-American man who is claiming that the police acted in a racist manner. So the Republicans grabbed an opportunity to rally their base, and the right-wing media sprung into action.

The power of right wing media extends far beyond its base because it also influences the mainstream or "liberal" media. CNN and other cable networks compete for Fox viewers by moving rightwards. The network news and Sunday talk shows are much more willing to invite guests from the far right than from even the moderate left or left-of-center. This is also true for National Public Radio and Public TV, although they tend to be more liberal on cultural issues. All of this moves the guests, journalists, and commentators themselves, who want to make sure that they always remain acceptable to the mainstream. There is no comparable countervailing force from the left of center to match the influence of the right. Until that balance changes, the Republican right -- even the troglodyte part of its base that worships Rush Limbaugh -- will continue to have influence beyond their numbers on national political issues.

Mark Weisbrot is Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research(CEPR), in Washington, DC.

Sean

(Hitler) Youth for Western Civilization, Republican's wanted Police State (posted 03/04/09)

- Bush Memos Provide Blueprint for Police State Seven newly released memos from the Bush Justice Department reveal a concerted strategy to cloak the President with power to override the Constitution. The memos provide "legal" rationales for the President to suspend freedom of speech and press; order warrantless searches and seizures, including wiretaps of U.S. citizens; lock up U.S. citizens indefinitely in the United States without criminal charges; send suspected terrorists to other countries where they will likely be tortured; and unilaterally abrogate treaties. According to the reasoning in the memos, Congress has no role to check and balance the executive. That is the definition of a police state. 


- Release of Memos Fuels Push for Inquiry Into Bush's Terror-Fighting Policies A day after releasing a set of Bush administration opinions that claimed sweeping presidential powers in fighting terrorism, the Obama administration faced new pressure on Tuesday to support a broad inquiry into interrogation, detention, surveillance and other practices under President George W. Bush.

- Obama Must Pass Climate Laws Ahead of Copenhagen, Danish Minister Warns "We can postpone anything but we have been postponing things for many years. We must come from this era where we talk about what to do and instead come to the era where we actually do things. We must come to that now," Hedegaard told the Guardian.

- 10 Things We Didn't Know About Food Soberingly, it is the developed world's predilection for meat and dairy products which accounts for half the carbon emissions associated with food

Youth for Western Civilization and Don't Forget The Mariachi Dancers

by Abby Zimet
published 03.02.09 on CommonDreams.org
 
At the recent CPAC conference (an annual convention for conservatives started in 1973) the antics of people like Michael Steele (Republican National Committee chairman), Bobby Jindal (republican governor of Louisiana), Rush Limbaugh (republican radio show host and defacto leader of republican party) et al can be entertaining in a surreal, Saturday-Night-Live-ish sort of way, but there are decidedly scary aspects to the increasingly right-wing tilt of loyalists gathered at last weekend's Conservative Political Action Conference. The Southern Poverty Law Center notes that a conference co-sponsor was the new, well-funded "Youth for Western Civilization," one of whose founders, Marcus Epstein, writes for the white nationalist hate website VDARE.com.

"Diversity can be good in moderation, if what is being brought in is desirable,"Epstein wrote in one essay. "Most Americans don't mind a little ethnic food, some Asian math whizzes, or a few Mariachi dancers - as long as these trends do not overwhelm the dominant culture."

Another group founder, Kevin DeAnna, has written for the Spartan Spectator, the website for a group that last year organized a "Catch an Illegal Alien Day,"sponsored a "Koran desecration contest"jokingly threatened to distribute small-pox infected blankets to Native American students, and posted "Gays spread AIDS"fliers. All in good fun.

Sean