Fifty years ago there would have been an eager market for the music of Courtney Marie Andrews. I hope there is still a market for a song like "Not The End"
Sunday, February 15, 2015
This country has plenty of money. We are just not willing to use it for the proper things a civilized society needs. With a Congress that refuses to make corporations and the wealthy among us pay their fair share, we still seem to have plenty of money for unnecessary shit like this.
he Pentagon is poised to spend billions to build a new stealth bomber, a top secret project that could bring hundreds of jobs to the wind-swept desert communities in Los Angeles County's northern reaches.The $550M number is a pure joke. By the time the Air Farce & Congress get through with it, it will do a thousand things very poorly and cost at least the $2B suggested by Thomas Christie. Smart money says he one will require another $1B just to get off the ground. But there will never be a lack of money to pay for a plane that will serve no need in the current world. Just slash some more social safety net ot better yet, loot the Social Security Funds. Can't let little things like people get in the way of massive M-I-C profits.
Two teams of defense contractors are now battling to win what would be one of the most expensive contracts in Pentagon history. As the lobbying intensifies, the coming decision to pick a winner as soon as this spring has set off a debate over whether the new warplane is crucial to national security or a colossal budget-busting waste.
"You're talking about a $2-billion airplane by the time they build it," said Thomas Christie, who worked as a top analyst inside the Pentagon for more than three decades before retiring. "It's a disaster waiting to happen."
But Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said last month, "I think the Long-Range Strike Bomber is absolutely essential to keep our deterrent edge."...
The decision is in the hands of the Air Force, which says it needs a heavy-payload-carrying bomber that is so stealthy it can evade the most sophisticated enemy radar.
Air Force officials have said the warplane would eventually be outfitted to carry nuclear weapons. They also want it to one day be capable of flying as a drone.
Other details are a closely guarded secret.
To stem criticism of the program's cost, military officials have vowed to limit the bomber's price to $550 million each. The Pentagon included $1.2 billion for the bomber in the public portion of this year's budget. The Air Force plans to award the contract for as many as 100 of the new planes as soon as late spring.
An Air Force spokesman and executives from the companies said they could say little because the bomber is part of the Pentagon's classified "black budget."
According to current law, any e-mails still hanging around after 180 days can be considered as "abandoned property" and may be taken and read by your friendly government without warrant. And just in case you do clean up after your self, this applies to any copy that may remain on another server o cloud that you don't control.
If you’ve been remiss in cleaning out your email in-box, here’s some incentive: The federal government can read any emails that are more than six months old without a warrant.Nice to see that the remedy has bi-partisan support, but it remains to be seen if it can get past the lawnorder caucus that sees no value in your rights when Uncle Fed is concerned.
Little known to most Americans, ambiguous language in a communications law passed in 1986 extends Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure only to electronic communications sent or received fewer than 180 days ago.
The language, known as the “180-day rule,” allows government officials to treat any emails, text messages or documents stored on remote servers – popularly known as the cloud – as “abandoned” and therefore accessible using administrative subpoena power, a tactic that critics say circumvents due process.
As you rush to purge your Gmail and Dropbox accounts, however, be forewarned that even deleted files still could be fair game as long as copies exist on a third-party server somewhere.
The Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 was written at a time when most people did not have email accounts, said Republican Rep. Kevin Yoder of Kansas, who is leading efforts in the House of Representatives to update the law.
“The government is essentially using an arcane loophole to breach the privacy rights of Americans,” Yoder said. “They couldn’t kick down your door and seize the documents on your desk, but they could send a request to Google and ask for all the documents that are in your Gmail account. And I don’t think Americans believe that the Constitution ends with the invention of the Internet.”
Bipartisan legislation introduced earlier this month by Yoder and Rep. Jared Polis, a Colorado Democrat, would require government agencies and law enforcement officials to obtain a search warrant based on probable cause.
Agencies also would have to notify users within three business days of accessing their email or other digital communications, though law enforcement would have 10 days to provide notice. Courts could grant delays on the notification requirement to prevent the destruction of evidence or intimidation of witnesses, or in cases in which people’s safety was deemed to be at risk.
A similar bill was filed last week in the Senate by Republican Mike Lee of Utah and co-sponsored by Democrat Patrick Leahy of Vermont.
Saturday, February 14, 2015
The Voice of Intros & Outros and so much more has been silenced. Morgo is heartbroken and will no longer play the Friendly Drelb.
With winter snows covering the fields and your neighbors covering the necessary chores, increasing numbers of Amish are flying south to Florida for a winter break in the sun.
In other Florida resort towns, the Amish family might seem out of place. But not in Pinecraft, a small enclave on the eastern, inland edge of bustling, tourist-friendly Sarasota. The little town is an Amish tourism resort attracting thousands from the cold North and Midwest desperate for a bit of warm winter sunshine.Everybody goes to Florida for the winter.
No one knows exactly how many Amish arrive each year. But 3,000 is a number people in Pinecraft bandy about, though that does not count those staying on nearby Siesta Key. The Pinecraft Neighborhood Association says there are perhaps 500 habitable dwellings in and around the village. Most Pinecraft Amish visitors go for just a few weeks at a time before heading back, and most stagger their trips between Christmas and Easter. There are a few — perhaps several dozen Amish — who spend the whole year in Pinecraft.
“It’s like a ghost town during the summer here, but around the end of August, beginning of September, people start coming down and checking on their houses. Then they go home for Thanksgiving and Christmas and then come down to stay for the winter. They leave right before Easter,” said Kathryn Graber, owner of the the Village Cupboard, a “bent and dent” used-goods store on the edge of the village. Graber counted 11 buses, each hauling about 50 people, arriving the Saturday after Christmas. The largest company into Pinecraft is Pioneer Trails.
The buses are usually greeted by family members, friends or just curious tourists watching the squinting, plainly dressed Amish disembark, some of them stepping into the Florida sun for the first time. Bus arrivals brings a buzz to the village. Many of the passengers are tired from the journey — almost 24 hours from Ohio’s Amish country — but the mood is still ebullient. One Pinecraft resident recalls an Amish woman getting off the bus with enough ground cherries, corn and cheese (all Northern specialties) to last the winter. The arriving Amish step into a world very different from the one they left.
Gone are the hills and horse-drawn buggies back home. Instead there are trees drooping with colorful grapefruit, towering palms, tropical flowers and that Florida sun.
In the hills of Boone County West Virginia nowadays there isn't much more than hope. The last ray came from the indictment of Don Blankenship for his responsibility in the mine explosion that took the lives of 29 miners in 2010.
Only minutes after turning off Interstate 64, cell service disappears and a world that seems untouched by time appears in the fog-covered valleys that unfold along sinuous Coal River Road.There is hope he will pay for his crimes but not a lot of faith that the courts will deliver justice.
There are none of the chain businesses that make towns across America look disconcertingly similar. The houses that dot the roadside were last updated long ago, and many of the arteries that branch off the main thoroughfare and into the hills above remain unpaved.
Though so much wealth has been extracted from these once coal-rich mountains, there are no visible traces of any windfall to the people or the land that made it possible. There is no sign that any thought was ever given in preparation for a day that could have been foreseen, a day when coal wouldn’t be king in the country’s choice of energy sources and when the people here wouldn’t be needed.
Instead, now that coal can be blown out of the mountains rather than mined from within, and natural gas is cleaner and cheaper to use, what’s easiest to see is the bust that hit in the wake of the boom times.
Yet despite its national decline, coal still rules here.
Time of course hasn’t stood still, but limbo does mark the lives of the 24,000 and dwindling inhabitants of these Appalachian hollows in Boone County, southern West Virginia.
Some people are waiting for coal to roar back and return with jobs and hope. Others are waiting for it to leave them — their water, their mountains, their air and their lungs — completely alone.
If there is a shared heart here, it was broken five years ago this April, when the explosion at Massey Energy’s Upper Big Branch mine in Whitesville took the lives of 29 miners and forever scarred those of the family, friends and neighbors left behind.
While everyone might not agree about who is to blame for the explosion, the consensus has always been that something was bound to happen at that mine. Even if the disaster shocked the collective pulse of these hollows, locals weren’t surprised it blew. Not since Don Blankenship became head of Massey. The combative and now former CEO famously broke the unions here and drove a furious production pace that demanded shortcuts at the cost of miners’ health and safety.
What no one saw coming, though, was Blankenship’s federal indictment in November 2014, blaming his leadership for the tragedy. The corporate head had long been seen as untouchable.
Friday, February 13, 2015
And now it has happened. DAESH fighters have attacked an Iraqi base with n American troop presence. Large base and a small force of mostly suicide bombers meant the twain have not met, yet.
A small group of Islamic State militants attacked a base in western Iraq where hundreds of U.S. troops are stationed, the U.S. military confirmed Friday, raising concerns about whether the Americans will be drawn into direct combat with the extremists.Nothing to worry about. The time is not yet to re-launch combat operations.
Iraqi security forces supported by “surveillance assets” from the U.S.-led coalition against the Islamic State killed eight militants outside the Ayn al-Asad airbase in Iraq's Anbar province at 7:20 a.m., the Combined Joint Task Force said in a statement. The men were would-be suicide bombers who tried to enter the base disguised as Iraqi army soldiers, said Sulaiman al-Kubbaisi, a spokesman for Anbar’s provincial council.
The attack came a day after militants took control of most Baghdadi, a town less than five miles from the base, where 320 U.S. service members have been training Iraqi troops and tribal fighters.
U.S. forces were “several kilometers” from the attack and were at no stage under direct threat, the statement said. Still, the targeting of a base hosting U.S. troops underscored the risk that Americans could be drawn into real engagement with the militants on the battlefield. President Obama has made a formal request for congressional authority to use military force against the Islamic State, a move that critics argue could increase that risk.
“We readily admit that al-Anbar is a contested region,” Rear Adm. John Kirby, a Pentagon spokesman, said Friday in an interview on CNN. “But . . . this is a huge, sprawling base, roughly the size of Boulder, Colo.,” and it has “mini-bases inside the big base,” he added. “This incident . . . happened nowhere near where U.S. or coalition forces were operating.”
Kirby said of the U.S. trainers and advisers, “there’s no question that they’re close to danger.” Even though they do not have a ground combat mission, “they have the right to defend themselves,” he said. “And should they ever feel under threat, they certainly have the right, the responsibility, the obligation to shoot back.”
Three things that really do not belong together, but in the reality of the modern West they are all too familiar with each other. The Parks System takes steps to control the number of buffalo that exist on parklands to maintain a healthy herd. The ag-gag laws are there to make sure you get a properly sanitized view of the cull so nobody has their feelings hurt, except the buffalo.
The spat over press freedom is the latest twist in the fight over one of the most contentious mass wildlife slaughters in America. Yellowstone is the only place in the country where by 1900 a few wild bison (commonly known as buffalo) survived a government sanctioned mass extermination that annihilated an estimated 30 million of the animals and brought the species to the brink of extinction. That some wild buffalo were saved here was such a point of pride to the National Park Service that its emblem features a white buffalo, considered by many Native Americans the most sacred animal.So the Parks System is culling the herd to deal with a problem that doesn't exist and doesn't want you to see it so you won't know about the problems with the system that do exist. Nothing to see here, just keep moving.
Legal experts say that the battle today for a clear view of how Yellowstone employees chase buffalo into the corral, prod them onto semi-trailers and butcher them at slaughterhouses is similar to the fight against anti-whistleblower “ag-gag” laws passed in many states. Opponents say “ag-gag” laws laws deter free speech and criminalize whistleblowers, activists and journalists who are looking to expose illegal practices and working conditions.
“We are hoping the park will recognize they are part of the government and they have the duty to allow the press and public to observe their activities,” said Jennifer Horvath, a staff attorney for the ACLU of Wyoming, adding that such scrutiny of public officials was a powerful way to hold them accountable.
Al Nash, a spokesman for Yellowstone, said that the park has made a video available of a biologist talking about the social struggle to conserve buffalo and that officials will take members of the press and public on a tour of the buffalo corral in a valley called Stephens Creek at a date yet to be set.
Ketcham worries such a tour will be sanitized. “I want free and unfettered access to the facility,” he said, “so I can watch what’s going on, smell the blood and the feces and see the fear in [the bison’s] eyes and the way stockmen interact with them. I want to be able to document that as a reporter.”
Yellowstone officials and cattle industry representatives compromised on a plan this year to cull 900 buffalo, about 1 in 5, through hunts outside the park and a capture-and-slaughter program inside the park. State and federal agencies aim to limit the bison population to 3,000 to 3,500.
The Montana Stockgrowers Association, which for years lambasted the park for not killing more buffalo, said that it does not advocate mistreatment of animals and that this situation is outside its control. “Our main concern is representing the concerns of our ranchers,” said Ryan Goodman, the group’s communications manager.
A big issue, he said, is fear that buffalo outside Yellowstone will eat grass out from under the mouths of domestic cattle, though some studies have argued that is not a problem.
Last month Dustin Ranglack, a research associate at Utah State University, released data based on years of study in Utah’s Henry Mountains on the way domestic cattle interact with the nation’s only other herd of genetically pure, free-range buffalo — transplanted from Yellowstone in the 1940s at the behest of sportsmen. He found hardly any overlap. Buffalo, he learned, graze higher, steeper terrain than cows do and then move on.
“This whole competition between bison and cattle,” he said, “has been overblown.”
Thursday, February 12, 2015
But one stretch of forest they want to put their pipeline through has been carefully husbanded by one family for generations. The result is a forest environment that exists in few places anymore in New York.
In 1947, Mr. Kernan’s father, Henry Kernan, a Yale-trained forestry expert, and his wife, Jody, bought nearly 1,000 acres of forest and wetland property straddling Delaware and Otsego Counties. Since then, the land has remained under the close stewardship of the Kernan family, the parents passing it down to their five children as the proud centerpiece of a family of naturalists.But what have they done about the most invasive species of all, the pipeline company?
The forest has been intensively studied and documented by environmentalists and ecologists, including Henry Kernan himself, who wrote about it in two books and in numerous conservation articles.
But now, the family says, the forest is threatened by the construction of the Constitution Pipeline, a $700 million, 124-mile conduit designed to transport natural gas from the Marcellus Shale fields of northeast Pennsylvania to Wright, N.Y., 80 miles southwest of Albany, where it will connect with two other pipelines to serve markets in New York and New England.
The project calls for workers to clear a mile-long, 75-foot-wide swath through the forest, and for the path to be kept clear for perpetuity, at 50 feet.
Dev Kernan, 68, described this as a gaping wound that would fragment the forest. His family has refused to grant an easement to the pipeline’s developers, who say they may soon pursue eminent domain proceedings so that work on the project can begin this summer.
The Kernans say they have practiced careful forest management over the years to keep the property intact and the ecosystem undisturbed.
With no public access, and no public roads running through it, the forest has become one of the biggest pristine parcels remaining in the area, according to the Kernans and the many environmental experts and consultants they have hired to make a case against the pipeline. The pipeline, the forest’s protectors say, would cause irreversible ecological damage by leaving the property vulnerable to invasive species of plants and insects, and alter the hydrology of the wetlands.
Dr. Bernd Blossey, an invasive plant species expert at Cornell University’s Department of Natural Resources, said that unfragmented forests and wetlands were a rare occurrence in New York State. Pipeline construction, he said, would “compromise the immune system” of this forest’s ecology.
“We have to protect these places,” Dr. Blossey said.
Constitution Pipeline officials said they had gone to great expense to minimize any negative environmental impact the project might have.
More than a dozen different routes for crossing the Kernan property were explored before the least intrusive one was chosen, said Christopher Stockton, a spokesman for Constitution Pipeline, a partnership of four companies. And instead of cutting a much wider path for construction — other stretches along the pipeline route required up to 120 feet — the passage through the Kernans’ property had been reduced to 75 feet across, he said.
Mr. Stockton said that Constitution had also established “a robust management plan approved by state and federal agencies specifically designed to address concerns related to invasive species.”
The burn pit was a longtime military way of disposing of the mounds of trash generated by any sizable unit or base. As the health hazards to locals and troops began to be recognized the military began to switch to incinerators for this purpose. Their installation in Afghanistan has turned out to be just another chance for monumental waste, this time involving waste.
By 2011, the Department of Defense (DOD) began using other methods, including installing incinerators at some of the military bases. In its latest report on U.S. government spending in Afghanistan, a government watchdog has found that the U.S. military spent over $80 million on incinerators, but at least $20 million of that money was wasted because four bases never used the machines.It's nice to know the contractors were paid in full. Wouldn't want them avoiding fat government contracts in the future. Just bad luck about the ones we didn't use but, well, it's time to go.
The Special Inspector General of Afghanistan Reconstruction [SIGAR] reported Thursday that 23 incinerators were built at nine U.S. military bases across Afghanistan since 2011 at a cost of $81.9 million.
The incinerators, along with landfill operations, were meant to replace the open-air burn pits, but because of inadequate planning, design and construction, four installations costing $20.1 million were never operational.
The DOD paid the contractors for all the incinerators in full.
One forward-operating base installed two incinerators that were meant to work 24 hours a day, SIGAR noted. But the base was in a “blackout” area, meaning it couldn't operate anything at night so as not to attract rocket fire. The designation limited the base’s ability to incinerate waste to 60 percent of its daily production.
"Further, given the estimated cost to operate and maintain the incinerators — $1 million annually — the base commander decided to continue using the open-air burn pits to dispose of the base's solid waste," SIGAR found.
In a December 2013 inspection of another installation, SIGAR found that two incinerators were so close together it was too narrow for forklifts to load waste, meaning it had to be done manually. Ramps leading to the ash were inaccessible for transportation equipment. The repairs would have cost about $1 million, so officials chose not to do so, and went back to using open-air burn pits.
In its response to SIGAR's report, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) disputed that some of the incinerators weren't working properly. "The incinerators were constructed in accordance with contract technical specifications with the exception of some open punch list items," which the USACE described as "minor deficiencies that should not have delayed transfer of the incinerators."
There is also the coming prospect of the U.S. military winding down its presence in Afghanistan, the U.S. military noted, another reason not to repair the faults.
Wednesday, February 11, 2015
And as Boston natives have never been accused of being the sweetest of creatures, things are getting snippy in Beantown. Lots of snow and an ancient transit system have exposed the flaws.
Her ordeal was typical of many residents, who soldiered through the more than six feet of snow that has piled up in the last 17 days. With no chance to melt, the snows have paralyzed this city, brought commerce to a near halt and sent roofs crashing down on numerous buildings, including a music store in Rockland, 30 miles southeast. Among the damaged goods was a $500,000 rhinestone-studded piano once owned by Liberace.And the transit system will get nothing from the state which just elected a Republican governor more noted for his ability to skim big fees from pension funds than run a state. The good thing is this may now become the common winter environment so they may actually learn to live with it.
Most glaringly, the storms have exposed the vulnerabilities of the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, which operates the region’s decrepit, fitful subways, buses and commuter rail lines. The underfunded system, which carries 1.3 million people a day and is $5.5 billion in debt, has been plagued in the last 17 days by breakdowns, fires, power losses, delays of two and three hours, and scenes of commuters having to disembark and pick their way along snow-covered tracks.
As the latest snowstorm bore down on Monday, the transit agency took commuters to work in the morning, but Gov. Charlie Baker declared a state of emergency in the afternoon, and officials shut down the system at 7 p.m., stranding — and infuriating — many who had no way to get home.
C. J. Louis, 26, who works for a car rental company near Logan International Airport, said he was sent home early because of the shutdown, which cost him three hours of pay.
By Tuesday morning, with a record 77.3 inches of snow having accumulated here in a little more than two weeks, the subway remained idle as crews tried to clear tracks, unfreeze switches and repair damaged cars. The system is to resume limited service Wednesday.
“It’s incredibly frustrating,” said Ms. Adelstone, 29, a speech pathologist, who was waiting for her second bus. Still, she doubted residents would be willing to pay higher fares to fix the system.
“It’s a vicious cycle,” she said. “Because not much has been done thus far, people are bitter and angry, and it makes them not want to pay for it.”
Because that is the cheapest way to get what you need to fix your Lada or Moskvich. And the source is a Russian born, Cuban trained engineer who lives in Miami.
Zakharov, 40, is Miami’s go-to man for visiting Cubans or those with family on the island who need parts for the thousands of Russian-made Ladas and Moskvichs that dominate the country’s cracked streets, alongside Fords and Chevys dating back to the 1950s.Life has a way of making its own plans for us.
The former Soviet Union began exporting its cheaply built models to Cuba in the 1970s until production began to peter out a decade ago. Very little evidence of Soviet influence remains in Cuba, except the spunky little Russian cars, famous for rattling chassis but sturdy engines.
With state salaries pegged at barely $20 a month, few Cubans can afford to buy new cars, so the parts business plays a crucial role in keeping the aging models on the road.
The U.S. trade embargo prevents parts from being shipped to Cuba. But Cubans visiting Miami can buy them take them back to the island, or have U.S.-based relatives find someone traveling to Havana to take them.
Zakharov supports President Barack Obama’s recent step to normalize relations between the U.S. and Cuba, even if it threatens to cut into his Lada business. Improved U.S. ties and greater prosperity in Cuba could mean a move to more modern imports like France's Peugeot and South Korea's Kia which have begun to make inroads in the island.
Getting parts from the United States is cheaper than in Cuba, where state-run stores sell them at four times the cost, said David Peña, a mechanic and president of the Russian Car Club in Havana who drives a souped-up, sporty red 1972 Lada 2101 that he fixed himself.
“You can find most things here,” Pena said referring to the constant need for spare parts. “There are so many Ladas, but we have to be inventive,” he added, noting that many Ladas end up being repaired with cannibalized parts, often from other makes.
His own Lada has a Fiat engine and an extra Alfa Romeo carburetor. Havana chef Alberto Perez recently put a Peugeot diesel engine into his 1982 Lada.
Zakharov became a conduit for the parts after arriving in the U.S. in 2006. He was born in Moscow but raised in Cuba’s central city of Camaguey where his father was an economics professor.
Once in the United States, Zakharov, an electrical engineer, learned his experience on the island meant nothing, forcing him to start anew.
"When I came here I never thought my business would be spare parts," he said. "Then friends from Cuba started calling me."
A Spanish and Russian speaker with Cuban and Russian passports, Zakharov seemed ideally suited for the job and started ordering parts via mail from Russia.
And because a federal judge has ruled on these two key points, the NSA has won another round in its never ending battle to listen in on every living creature on the face of the earth.
A U.S. judge on Tuesday ruled in favor of the National Security Agency in a lawsuit challenging the interception of Internet communications without a warrant, according to a court filing.The ruling is a perfect Catch-22. You can not sue if you don't have standing. You can not prove you have standing because that information is a state secret, therefore you do not have standing. Beautiful.
U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White in Oakland said the plaintiffs in the case -- AT&T customers -- had not shown that all AT&T customers' Internet communications were currently the subject of a "dragnet seizure and search program, controlled by or at the direction of the Government," and they therefore did not have standing to file a lawsuit under the Fourth Amendment, which protects against warrantless searches and seizures.
White said the plaintiffs' understanding of the key parts of the data collection process was "substantially inaccurate."
Additionally, even if the plaintiffs had standing, White said a Fourth Amendment claim would have to be dismissed to protect secret information that would damage national security if released. He granted partial summary judgment for the government.
"The Court is frustrated by the prospect of deciding the current motions without full public disclosure of the Court's analysis and reasoning ... ," White wrote in his ruling. "The Court is persuaded that its decision is correct both legally and factually and furthermore is required by the interests of national security."
The ruling is the latest in litigation over the government's ability to monitor Internet traffic, and how it balances national security priorities against privacy. NSA surveillance programs have provoked worldwide controversy since they were disclosed by former NSA systems administrator Edward Snowden.
An attorney for the plaintiffs said that the judge's ruling did not end part of the case concerning telephone record collection and other mass surveillance.
And makes it clear that he wants to keep the others on a leash at this time. His request for a state of war against DAESH has been sent to Congress but unlike other requests by past Presidents, this one has a time limit and troop limitations.
President Barack Obama has officially asked Congress for war authority to fight Islamic State militants, opening a debate on Capitol Hill over the extent of U.S. military involvement in fighting the group Obama says poses a “grave threat” to U.S. national security.So he has pissed off the warmongers for not calling for war without end and he has pissed off the peace crowd by calling for war at all. Since we can't be happy anymore, we should all embrace the opportunity for everyone to be pissed off at the same time.
Obama’s request doesn’t rule out ground troops, calling for their use against the Islamic State in “limited circumstances” including the use of special ops forces to take military action against the group’s leadership. His authorization includes no geographic limits and would expire in three years, unless reauthorized.
Lawmakers, who have been calling for Obama to seek congressional authorization since soon after the U.S. military began dropping airstrikes against the group last summer, welcomed the request, but some warned that it does not go far enough.
“Rather than expanding his legal authority to go after ISIL, the President seems determined to ask Congress to further restrict the authority of the U.S. military to confront this threat,” said House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif.
Obama says in a letter to Congress that his draft would authorize the continued use of military forces to “degrade and defeat” the terror group, but that it does not authorize “enduring” or “long-term, large-scale ground combat operations like those our nation conducted in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
He said the authorization, instead, would provide flexibility to conduct ground combat operations in more limited circumstances, such as rescue operations involving U.S. or coalition personnel or the use of special operations forces to take military action against ISIL leadership.
He said it would also authorize the use of U.S. forces in situations where ground combat operations are not expected, such as intelligence collection and sharing.
But Democrats may be leery of sending additional ground troops. Rep. Adam Schiff, D- Calif., the top Democrat on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said any new authorization “should place more specific limits on the use of ground troops to ensure we do not authorize another major ground war without the President coming to Congress to make the case for one.”
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, said the Senate would review Obama’s request “thoughtfully” and senators and committees would “listen closely to the advice of military commanders as they consider the best strategy for defeating ISIL.”
Tuesday, February 10, 2015
Joni Ernst says she is a "Combat Veteran" because she worked in a dangerous area (Iraq) and received imminent danger pay. She was never fired on or fired at any enemies.
Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, on Monday stood by her self-description as a “combat veteran” for her service in Iraq and criticized those who have questioned her use of the phrase.My father served in combat from the Battle of the Bulge to VE-Day and always said the only military badge he was proud of was his CIB. The rest he threw away. Joni wishes she had one.
Ernst’s comments to reporters came after a piece in the Huffington Post highlighted that she never came under fire as she led an Iowa Army National Guard transportation company in 2003 and 2004.
The piece raised the idea that Ernst is giving the public a misimpression about just how harrowing her time in Iraq and Kuwait really was.
Ernst said it’s entirely appropriate for her to use the phrase combat veteran. The Pentagon and the Department of Veterans Affairs classify Ernst as a combat veteran based on her service in a combat zone.
“I am very proud of my service and by law I am defined as a combat veteran,” Ernst said. “I have never once claimed that I have a Combat Action Badge. I have never claimed that I have a Purple Heart. What I have claimed is that I have served in a combat zone.”
She said there are many serving in uniform who haven’t been under fire or “actually been hand-to-hand fighting with the enemy.”
“It was only by luck and the blessings of God that my soldiers did not encounter an assault, that we did not run over an IED. And to dishonor our service by saying we’re not worthy of being called combat veterans is insulting to the majority of men and women who serve their country honorably,” Ernst said. “Just because I’m not an infantryman and I wasn’t kicking in doors, I don’t believe I’m less of a player.”
The Panama Canal has long been a boon to shippers despite the increasingly glaring problem of the size restrictions. With the current expansion program set to be completed this year, Panama hopes to be open to more and larger vessels than before. At the same time Nicaragua is reviving its dreams dreams of an interocean canal with the help of a Chinese billionaire.
In late December, Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega and Chinese telecom entrepreneur Wang Jing formally inaugurated work on what they said would be a 173-mile-long waterway capable of handling the world’s largest ships as they pass between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.If Mr. Wang is not just another Hong Kong hustler, the battle of the dueling canals should be a boon to shippers.
Mystery surrounds the Nicaraguan project, especially how Wang plans to finance a canal that’s expected to cost $50 billion, and perhaps more. Many Western experts suggest China’s government may eventually emerge as the project’s patron.
The Nicaragua project comes as Panama is doubling its canal’s capacity, adding a third set of locks to accommodate ships more than twice as big as in the past. The $5.25 billion expansion is 85 percent complete and expected to be operational early next year.
Outside maritime experts say Panama has reason to be concerned about an eventual rival canal in Nicaragua.
“If it actually gets built, and it is run in a reasonable manner, they are going to get business,” said Richard Wainio, the former director of the Port of Tampa, in Florida, and a shipping consultant. “People will use it, and Panama will lose business.”
But Miguez said Panama Canal experts suspected Nicaragua was mistaken in thinking it would draw supertankers and container ships that were larger than those that would fit through the expanded Panama Canal.
“Our preliminary assessment is that there is not (a market). You don’t see trends right away going to bigger than 14,000-container vessels. There’s no trend moving in that direction,” Miguez said.
Panama Canal Administrator Jorge L. Quijano said in mid-2014 that the expansion would allow the passage of 98 percent of the current world fleet of ships.
Basically, the two countries are wagering on whether cargo ships will grow ever larger and trade routes will adjust as ports invest in deeper channels and bigger gantry cranes to handle the super ships.
Since the 50-mile-long Panama Canal began operating in 1914, the largest ships that could fit through the locks were called Panamax vessels, equipped to carry about 5,000 20-foot containers. After the expansion, the largest ships that will fit, which are known as post-Panamax and are the length of aircraft carriers, can haul 13,000 to 14,000 such containers.
Miguez said the post-Panamax vessel’s size hit the current sweet spot.
“It’s a vessel that provides very good economies of scale. It’s an efficient vessel. And it’s also a flexible vessel. That means it can be loaded and unloaded within reasonable times in ports,” he said.
Monday, February 9, 2015
But the way we say it is new, as Tom Tomorrow shows us in his presentation of contemporary Valentines Day cards/
In light of the latest revelations about HSBC bank, it is difficult to view that venerable institution as anything other than the Al Capone of Banking or perhaps because of its English roots, Professor Moriarty. An insider leak has provided reams of documents on the various activities, ranging from shady to illegal, the bank performed for its wealthiest customers.
The leaked files, which reveal how HSBC advised some clients on how to circumvent domestic tax authorities, were obtained through an international collaboration of news outlets, including the Guardian, the French daily Le Monde, CBS 60 Minutes and the Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.Oh yes, that was just the good old days, we have changed our spots since then. And we know the DoJ bought that argument because, despite everything including major money laundering, HSBC was allowed to keep their banking license. And no doubt when all is said and done, the IRS will gets its funding cut because it didn't have enough people or money to properly investigate it all.
The files reveal how HSBC’s Swiss private bank colluded with some clients to conceal undeclared “black” accounts from domestic tax authorities across the world and provided services to international criminals and other high-risk individuals.
The disclosure amounts to one of the biggest banking leaks in history shedding light on some 30,000 accounts holding almost $120bn (£78bn) of assets. Of those, around 2,900 clients were connected to the US, providing the IRS with a trail of evidence of potential American taxpayers who may have been hiding assets in Geneva.
A trail of evidence
The data was leaked by a computer expert turned whistleblower working in HSBC’s Geneva office. French authorities later obtained the files and shared them with the US Internal Revenue Service in 2010. That year, amid growing scrutiny from US tax authorities, HSBC’s private bank in Switzerland stopped doing business with US residents entirely.
HSBC files: why the public should know of Swiss bank’s pattern of misconduct
Scores of clients of lucrative operation are already under criminal investigation amid claims of their involvement in drug smuggling, frauds and terror financing
Read more
The US Department of Justice and IRS have been investigating HSBC’s Swiss banking operations ever since but the scale of those inquiries remain unclear.
Confronted by the Guardian’s evidence, HSBC admitted wrongdoing by its Geneva-based subsidiary. “We acknowledge and are accountable for past compliance and control failures,” the bank said in a statement. The Swiss arm, the statement said, had not been fully integrated into HSBC after its purchase in 1999, allowing “significantly lower” standards of compliance and due diligence to persist.
HSBC added: “Beginning in 2008 HSBC began to put a more rigorous control structure in place in the Swiss private bank by, for example, introducing a new policy on US persons and reducing the number of US taxpayer accounts. In 2010, the Swiss private bank decided to exit US resident client business entirely.”
However the Swiss files, made public for the first time by the Guardian and other media, are likely to raise questions in Washington over whether there is evidence to prosecute HSBC or its executives in the US. Lawmakers are also expected to question the rigour of IRS investigations into undeclared assets hidden by US taxpayers in Geneva.
The IRS said it “remains committed to our priority efforts to stop offshore tax evasion wherever it occurs”, and pointed out it has collected more than $7bn from a program, introduced in 2009, that allows US taxpayers to voluntarily disclose previously undeclared offshore accounts.
However the IRS declined to say how much it has retrieved in back taxes, interest and penalties as a result of investigations stemming from the leaked HSBC Swiss data. The IRS also declined to say how many US taxpayers have been investigated as a result of the leak, citing taxpayer privacy and the Tax Information Exchange Agreement (TIEA), a treaty that renders secret information shared between the US and France. The DoJ said it “does not confirm or deny the existence of an investigation”.
Senior Senate sources said government officials are likely to be questioned on Capitol Hill over what action was taken after the US received the leaked HSBC data almost five years ago..
Sunday, February 8, 2015
If anyone wants to view what will happen when the Republican/Teabaggers finally defund all elements of government that hold society together, they need only look to Greece, a victim of European Austerians for the last half dozen years.
Greece’s dire finances have gutted its health care system. Universal coverage effectively ended under the austerity measures imposed under the terms of the country’s bailout. Budget cuts have also thinned the ranks of hospital staff nurses, who are supposed to handle medical tasks like changing IVs.From having a functioning universal health care system, Greece has been hammered down to the level of a Libertarians wet dream in a country where everything can be bought and too many can't afford it.
Now, when patients come to a hospital in Greece, they increasingly have to hire their own nurses just to receive basic care. While private nurses have long been a feature of Greek health care, the country’s wrenching economic crisis has left many patients with neither the money nor the insurance coverage to hire licensed caregivers.
Instead, patients are turning to illegal nurses, often immigrants with little or no training. One top official said he believed that half of the nursing care came from 18,000 illegal providers.
The situation reflects the grip of the black-market economy on Greece, where even paying skilled workers like mechanics and plumbers under the table to avoid taxes is commonplace. Frustrations among Greeks over the deterioration of living standards helped feed the left-wing Syriza Party, which came to power last month vowing to reject austerity policies.
Illegal nurses typically pose as family members or say they are longtime personal employees of a patient. In reality, temp agencies employing these women send men into the hospitals to distribute business cards advertising 12 hours of nursing care for less than $60. By contrast, a contract nurse at another hospital, Sotiria, costs nearly $70 for 6 hours and 40 minutes, though those who still have insurance can be reimbursed for about a third of the cost.
Thanos Maroukis, a professor at the University of Bath, England, who has studied the problem, said temporary agencies are taking “over control of the hospital’s workplace,” adding, “It’s incredible what’s happening, but it’s true.”
Nurses are just the beginning. Almost anything can be rented.
“We have the same thing with TVs, with ambulances, I would say with bedding,” said Anastasios Grigoropoulos, the chief executive of Evangelismos Hospital. “Or chairs.”
Continue reading the main story
Chairs are carried in by strangers who rent them to groups of visiting relatives. Or they bring televisions.
One that was originally imposed by the US conquerors during the 10 year occupation.
The curfew, which most recently was in effect from midnight to 5:00am, ends a longstanding policy aimed at curbing attacks in the capital by limiting movement at night.How strangem ending a policy that has no useful purpose. They certainly didn't learn that from us.
As midnight approached on Saturday, some Iraqis gathered at Tahrir Square where city officials were throwing a party.
And at the Mansour Mall, the biggest in the city, shops were staying open instead of closing at 11pm.
"It's a positive decision for our business and our work. The shops will stay open much later and of course we will benefit," Tariq al-Ameri, a dress shop owner, said.
Al Jazeera's Jane Arraf, reporting from Baghdad, said there was an upbeat mood in the city.
"For the first time in more than 10 years people will not have to rush home at midnight," she said.
"It isn't just the curfew that's been lifted. The prime minister has also ordered more roadblocks taken down. In some neighbourhoods there's a crackdown on arms carried by militias and a limit to the number of security vehicles officials can use."
The curfew, first imposed by the US military in 2003 and kept in place by the Iraqi government, has done little to curb the deadly bombings that plague the capital. Most are carried out during the day or early evening with the aim of causing maximum casualties.
Saturday, February 7, 2015
Just wait until you see the damage that the latest and possibly most overly trumped up political hack the Republicans have to offer, Lyin' Paul Ryan, can do. It is our misfortune that the so-called fiscal policy wonk, for whom budget numbers float around like gnats in a mid summer fuck fest, is the gatekeeper for any policies that President Obama may have a hope of passing.
Although he has served as a partisan warrior and foil to Mr. Obama throughout Mr. Obama’s presidency, his committee is at the junction where the White House and Republican agendas overlap — trade, taxes and possibly health care. And in an odd political twist, Mr. Ryan’s longstanding enmity for All Things Obama may be key to efforts to burnish the president’s legacy in the twilight of his second term.A man whose words mean even less than his numbers, if that is possible, finds himself at a key legislative junction. We will see if he can take direction well, he certainly doesn't have the stuff to lead on his own.
If Mr. Ryan can strike a deal with the administration and Democrats on “fast track” trade authority, an agreement with a dozen economic partners along the Pacific Rim, an expansion of the earned-income tax credit and an overhaul of the tax code, he may be the only one on Capitol Hill who could sell it to his skeptical conservative colleagues.
“I think he sees that, and I think I see that,” said Representative Sander M. Levin of Michigan, the committee’s ranking Democrat, as firmly in the party’s liberal wing as the chairman is in its conservative camp. “That’s why he and I have had so many discussions on how to proceed.”
Mr. Ryan, in recent days, has picked up something of a mantra: “Working to find common ground and moving forward where we can find it.”
“There are a lot of things we can do with this administration,” he said in a lengthy interview.
There is, of course, grave skepticism that Mr. Ryan will be able to deliver. As Budget Committee chairman from 2011 to 2014, Mr. Ryan could paint broad themes on balancing the budget, transforming entitlements like Medicare and Medicaid, shriveling government and simplifying the tax code. As Ways and Means chairman, he has taken a job that is far more transactional, and his record for legislative accomplishment is scant.
Indeed, for all of Mr. Ryan’s policy prescriptions that so enrapture his House Republican colleagues, he has never really put together a major piece of bipartisan legislation, has rarely bucked a party-line vote and remains one of the more polarizing figures on Capitol Hill.
From Al Jazeera:
Separate suicide bomb attacks have killed at least 36 people and injured at least 94 in Baghdad, hours before the city's longtime curfew was set to come to an end.Bombings are becoming the new normal.
In the first incident on Saturday, a suicide bomber detonated explosives inside a restaurant in the predominantly Shia neighbourhood of Jididah, killing at least 23 people and wounding 49 more, police said.
In the second incident, a suicide bomber detonated explosives in a busy commercial street in the Al-Shurjah market, killing 13 and injuring another 45, police said.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attacks, but suicide bombings are a tactic often used by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).
The attacks come ahead of Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi's decision to lift Baghdad's longtime curfew beginning at midnight Sunday.
Lifting the curfew is a major change to a longstanding policy aimed at curbing violence in the capital by limiting movement at night.
Abadi ordered the move earlier this week, to return "normal life as much as possible, despite the existence of a state of war," his spokesman said.
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