According to meterologist Tim Ballisty “Ingredients include heavy snow, winds, falling temps and biting wind chills. Suffice to say, this is a dangerous and life-threatening storm for those stuck outside in the elements.”

Blizzard warnings had already begun heading out as the storm barrels twoards the region. In Colorado, eight to sixteen inches of snow were expected, and Interstate 25 could face closure.

In southwestern Kansas, Oklahoma, and parts of Texas were expecting heavy snowfall as well. The wet, heavy snow has already created problems near Santa Fe, NM. Winds of up to 45mph were expected to create whiteout conditions that could cause major accidents and strand motorists.

Meanwhile, on Tuesday, a mix of rain and snow will move into Illinois.

Currently, it is raining in Oklahoma and Texas, but that is changing over to snow as the temperatures drop at least twenty degrees.

In Guymon, Oklahoma, emergency management officials met to go over storm preperation on Sunday. Eddie Adamson, the police chief for Guymon, said that the wind and blowing snow could create major problems. Paul Braun, a spokesman for the Texas Department of Public Transportation stated “If you’re going to travel Monday night and Tuesday, I would really, really, seriously, strongly advise against it. Once you get home Monday night, stay home.”

Via MSNBC

Snowfall Accumulations 10-30-2011 courtesy The Weather Channel

What is a nor-easter? According to Wikipedia, it is “a type of macro-scale storm along the East Coast of the United States and Atlantic Canada, so named because the storm travels to the northeast from the south and the winds come from the northeast, … Nor’easters can cause coastal severe flooding, coastal erosion, hurricane force winds, and heavy snow or rain. Nor’easters can be devastating and damaging, especially in the winter months, when most damage and deaths are cold-related, as nor’easters are known for bringing extremely cold air down from the Arctic air mass.”

That’s what we just had. In October, mind you. Pennsylvania and New Jersey have been hurt much more than the New England states, along with western Massachusetts. Those areas are suffering widespread power outages, as the wet, heavy snow accumulated on trees that still had their leaves, bringing down branches and power lines. Those areas are looking at being without power possibly until Wednesday. There have been three storm-related deaths so far; one car accident in Colchester Conn. due to road conditions, one unfortunately curious young man who stepped in the wrong place while watching first responders checking a downed power line in Springfield Mass. and was electrocuted, and one elderly gentleman who died napping in his recliner when a snow-laden tree fell on his house in southeastern Pennsylvania.

Most of New England, however, got between 3 and 12 inches of snow. That wouldn’t be so bad if it weren’t for it coming so early in the season, before most folks had finished getting ready for winter… getting the snow shovels out of the cellar, stocking up on salt and sand, getting the snow tires put on the car. With any luck, this will melt off, at least in the lower valleys.

Sunday River via Wikipedia

However, ski resorts Killington and Mount Snow in Vermont and Sunday River in Maine all opened with a single trail each for the weekend. That means seasonal jobs will be starting earlier than expected for many people in the immediate areas of those resorts, and that’s never a bad thing.

Related articles

• ‘Snowtober’: Northeast Cleans Up After Deadly Storm (abcnews.go.com)
• October Blizzard Blamed for at Least 3 Deaths (abcnews.go.com)
• Fall to Look Like Winter in Northeast This Weekend (foxnews.com)

It looks like Texas will not be getting the much needed rain that they have hoped and prayed for. Instead, Tropical Storm Nate is expected to slowly turn and hit Central Mexico in the coming days. Texas has faced a near record drought with record breaking heat and wildfires. Nate is currently moving at 3mph towards the northwest and is expected to turn more westwardly in the coming days. Currently, Nate has a max sustained winds of 65mph, making it a strong Tropical Storm.

Tropical Storm Maria has lost some steam and is currently moving west-northwest at 17 mph with a max sustained winds of 45mph. Maria is expected to pass through the Lesser Antilles tonight and then swing towards the northwest and probably swing in towards the East Coast before following Katia out to sea.

Hurricane Katia is currently a Category 1 storm, and it is over the open Atlantic moving northeast at 29 mph with a max sustained winds of 85mph. Barring a sudden and violent turn to the west, Katia is likely to head off towards Europe and not hit the United States at all.

2 September 2011 by Bridgette P. LaVictoire

This is your early morning check of the tropics. Tropical Storm Katia regained hurricane strength last night reaching a minimum sustained wind of 75 mph. It is moving to the west northwest at 14 mph with a minimum pressure of 991 mb. It is still on track to hit the East Coast of the United States

Meanwhile Tropical Depression 13 continues to lash Louisiana as rain bands move across the southern extremes. It is expected that TD13 will strengthen into a Tropical Storm in the coming days and then slowly move across Louisiana and into the lower Appalachians as the week progresses. Tropical Depression 13 is practically stationary moving to the northwest at 2 mph.

Currently, TD13 is of more concern than Hurricane Katia as the former is likely to take a very slow path across Lousiana and into the South while Hurricane Katia may not make it to land at all in the United States.

We shall continue to update you as time goes along on both storms.

1 September 2011 by Bridgette P. LaVictoire

It is not expected that Tropical Depression 13 will reach far enough into Texas to help battle the wildfires that have been spreading throughout the northern part of that state. Dry conditions have lead to a new rash of fires according to officials. So far, the 101 Ranch Fire in Palo Pinto County has scorched 6,200 acres as of Thursday. The fire is burning on Possum Kingdom Lake near the town of Brad. As of today, firefighters have been able to gain some control over the fire. The blaze is about fifty percent contained according to John Nichols, spokesman for the forest service.

Fires destroyed some 40 homes and 9 Rvs according to the Forest Service. Palo Pinto Sheriff Ira Mercer stated taht authorities were working on a re-entry strategy for residents and that they hoped to get the lake open for the Labor Day holiday. Evacuations were ordered in several communities to the north of the lake after the fire went over the ridge and began to approach the dam on the lake.

Ranchers near the fires battled to save their herds from the encroaching blazes. According to Cindi McCoy, who talked to CNN affiliate WFAA, “I’m just moving them from pasture to pasture. As one pasture burns, I’m moving them back to that one and bring(ing) them back around.” The drought throughout the region has meant severe wildfires throughout the summer and the collapse of many ranches.

According to CNN:

The Forest Service responded on Wednesday to 17 new fires burning a total of 4,146 acres. The largest of those is the Hornets Tank Fire, which had burned 3,000 acres and was 40% contained Thursday. It was burning in Briscoe County near Palo Duro Canyon, the nation’s second-largest canyon behind the Grand Canyon.

In addition, the Legacy Fire had burned 3,400 acres in Howard County and was 10% contained Thursday, the Forest Service said. The blaze threatens numerous structures, but did not show much growth on Wednesday.

Weather forecasts predict that the dry weather will continue for the area for the foreseeable future with temperatures from the mid-90s into the low 100s. So far, a record 3.5 million acres have burned.

1 September 2011 by Bridgette P. LaVictoire

Tropical Depression 13 has formed over the Gulf of Mexico. Currently, it has max sustained winds of 35 miles per hour and is moving to the northwest at 6 miles per hour. The storm is expected to make landfall somewhere in Louisiana or extreme Eastern Texas. It is expected to strengthen into a Tropical Storm before it makes landfall. The storm is expected to dump between 12 and 15 inches of rain onto coastal and island areas over the next 48 hours.

Lafourche Parish president Charlotte Randolph has already declared a state of emergency. The parish may get up to 18 inches of rain through Monday. Governor Bobby Jindal has said that the already declared a state of emergency due to possible flash floods and stormy seas.

Out in the Atlantic, Hurricane Katia weakened back into a strong Tropical Storm with sustained winds of 70 miles per hours and is still moving to the west at 18 miles per hour. Katia is still expected to head towards the East Coast.

1 September 2011 by Bridgette P. LaVictoire

Overnight, Tropical Storm Katia reached a max sustained winds of 75 miles per hour, which makes it a minimal hurricane. The storm is continuing to move west at about 18 miles per hour, but it is still forecast to turn more west-northwest or northwest in the coming days. It is currently 1050 miles east of the Northern Leeward Islands. The current projected path takes Katia towards Savannah, Georgia. Storm tracks are notoriously unpredictable.

Meanwhile, a low pressure system located over the central Gulf of Mexico is producing gusty winds, cloudiness and thunderstorms. It has been given a 70% chance of forming into a tropical system within the next 48 hours. Conditions are expected to become more conducive to formation of a tropical depression later today. The storm is expected to move slowly northwestward.

A third disturbance well east of Pennsylvania has a one in two chance of forming into a tropical system before it heads off to the British Isles. It is unlikely to cause more than some issues for shipping before it becomes extra-tropical.

Meanwhile, rain is expected here in New England later today as the region continues to dig out and repair after the devastation of Hurricane Irene.

This is your early afternoon update on the tropics, another will follow later today with updates.

Related articles

• Tropical Storm Katia Just Shy Of Hurricane Strength (lezgetreal.com)
• Tropical Storm Katia Forms In The Atlantic (lezgetreal.com)

31 August 2011
by Bridgette P. LaVictoire

As of 5pm AST on 31 August Tropical Katia was located in the Atlantic heading towards the Carolinas at a speed of 20 miles per hour with sustained winds of 70 miles per hour. It is expected that Katia will hit hurricane strength by tomorrow morning according to the National Hurricane Center in Miami. It is still not clear if the storm will hit the United States as it may

NHC spokesman Dennis Feltgen stated about Katia “What, if any, impact it may have on the United States, or Bermuda for that matter, is way too early to tell.” Katia could become the second hurricane of the season after Irene. Currently, the forecasts have Katia becoming a Category 3 hurricane with maximum winds about 120mph by Monday morning. It is expected to miss Puerto Rico and Florida at the very least.

It is still not clear what the storm will do in the next several days, but as those effected by Irene continue to rebuild, especially in New England, the path of this storm is of vital concern to the American east coast.

Related articles

• Tropical Storm Katia Forms In The Atlantic (lezgetreal.com)

30 August 2011
by Bridgette P. LaVictoire

Tropical Storm Jose came and went while Hurricane and then Tropical Storm Irene caused flooding in Vermont not seen since the 1927 Tropical Storm drenched the state, but the East Coast needs to start worrying about the next storm- Tropical Storm Katia. As of 5pm ET, Katia had hit 60 miles per hour and was heading west at a rather brisk 20 miles per hour. While the storm is still out at sea, it is heading pretty directly towards the South.

According to the US National Hurricane Center, the storm is expected to become a hurricane by Wednesday. Currently, the USNHC is only able to predict that the storm will be major and will head north and east of the Caribbean’s Leeward Islands by Sunday. It is not clear if Katia will hit the Carolinas or anywhere else in the States.

NHC Senior Hurricane Specialist Richard Pasch told Rueters that “It’s still well out to sea. A lot of things can happen … We don’t show it affecting any land areas for five days. Beyond that is merely speculation.” Still, the East Coast and the Caribbean should be keeping an eye on the storm. Currently, it is about 750 miles west-southwest of the southernmost Cape Verde Islands, which means that it is still very far out in the Atlantic.

The name Katia replaces the name Katrina on the list of hurricanes.

While some people are citing long range predictions, Pasch makes it clear that those are highly unstable in terms of predictive value. “You can look at what the long range forecasts did with Irene, taking it across Miami, which of course didn’t happen,” he stated. The NHC’s forecast for just the next five days is in the form of a 250-mile wide cone. According to MSNBC “Pasch said Katia’s likely track in about a week’s time will depend on shifting weather patterns over the Atlantic and the U.S. coast — troughs and ridges that will steer the gyrating storm in one direction or another.”

Katia is expected to become a Category 3 hurricane by Sunday.

wcax.com/ Rutland, VT

28 August 2011
by Bridgette P. LaVictoire

Much of Vermont is underwater tonight as Hurricane Irene heads towards Canada. The now Tropical Storm has brought a lot of damage and as many as fifteen confirmed fatalities across the country. Currently, in Rutland, Vermont, which is where LezGetReal is headquartered, evacuations are on going to get as many people out of the areas near the Otter Creek as possible. The ironically named Water Street is currently under water. The Otter Creek broke its banks at about 4pm after nearly twenty-four hours worth of rainfall in the city. It began raining in Rutland at about 10pm Saturday night.

Route 7, which goes through Rutland, had both lanes inundated by water at one point, and according to Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin, there is not a single road that has not been damaged or completely destroyed by the flooding.

The Vermont National Guard is currently on the scene to try and get people in low laying areas of Rutland to safety. This is a scene repeated in numerous places across Vermont.

Vermont saw one probable fatality as a young woman was swept down the Deerfield River in Wilmington.

At 2pm, Governor Shumlin held a press conference in which he stated:

“It’s really important that Vermonters take this storm seriously and stay inside. Don’t stand next to rushing water, which is what she and her friend were doing at the time of her disappearance. Understand that we’re dealing with the forces of Mother Nature that don’t usually bless us in Vermont, thankfully. This is a hurricane, and we need to take it– we need to proceed with extraordinary caution and good judgment.”

Reports are that some 35,000 Vermonters are without power. According to WCAX:

Central Vermont Power Service: over 27,000 out
Green Mountain Power: about 3,000 out
Vermont Electrical Co-op: more than 4,700
Washington Electric: just under 1,000

The rain is still coming down. Various schools and businesses are expected to be closed tomorrow. Some, like Goddard College in Plainfield, were lucky in that their most recent residency, the Individualized Bachelor’s of Arts, came to a conclusion on 26 August. It is likely that many people were already on their way home by that point.

Parts of Vermont are still recovering from the floods this spring, and it is being estimated that this could be the worst flooding to hit Vermont since 1927.

With regards to Rutland, City Fire Lieutenant Jim Miles stated that it was “flooding like I’ve never seen; high, fast, way over the banks.” Even during this spring’s flooding, Rutland saw little in the way of impact.

On a personal note, LezGetReal’s headquarters- that is my house- is far enough from the Otter Creek so as to not need to be evacuated, nor have there been any power outages here. However, there has been some flooding in the lower areas of the property and there is about four feet of water in the area that makes up the back yard.

Related articles

• As Vermont Is Swamped By Flooding, GOP Reps And Staffers Enjoy Laughs (lezgetreal.com)
• The Morning After Hurricane Irene In Vermont, Flooding Of Epic Proportions (lezgetreal.com)

Meagan Toothman (Center) via http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/meagantoothman1/photos/entry/num/2

22 August 2011
by Bridgette P. LaVictoire

The decision is never an easy one for the family. The family for Meagan Toothman, 24, of Cincinnati have made the decision to take her off life support and to let her die. Her organs will be harvested and donated to those who need them. She is the seventh fatality in the collapse of the stage at the Indiana State Fair just before the Sugarland concert.

She was in stable but very critical condition having suffered severe head trauma. Her family issued a statement via a website that was set up to provide information about her condition “Late last night it became apparent that our Meagan was no longer with us. The decision was made to allow to her to be at peace. This afternoon she is scheduled for a surgery that will provide gifts of sight, health, and life to dozens who are in need. . .The outpouring of love and hope was more than we could possibly expected and was an inspiration to all of us to keep her fighting. We hope that she will continue to touch more lives in the same way through her passing.”

According to USAToday “Toothman earned her bachelor’s degree from Wittenberg University in Ohio and returned to Cincinnati’s Turpin High School two years ago as cheerleading coach while working on her master’s in school psychology.”

A press conference about the decision can be seen on YouTube.

Meanwhile, word on Alisha Marie Brennon, the partner of Christina Santiago, is a lot more positive. According to a website set up to provide updates on her condition, Brennon is recovering well, and it undergoing physical therapy right now.

Santiago was one of the four who died at the scene of the collapse.

The Real Tea Party, Boston Harbor

A New York Times op-ed is getting a lot of replay in the media today. It was written by David E. Campbell, Associate Professor of Political Science at Notre Dame, and Robert D. Putnam, Professor of Public Policy at Harvard, the co-authors of American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us. As Ezra Klein, Washington Post editor and MSNBC contributor, noted, the op-ed exposes the lie of the origins of the Tea Party movement.

The “official” story of the Tea Party is a completely grass roots movement, inspired and named after the Boston Tea Party of Revolutionary War fame, which blossomed unbidden out of the frustrations and fears over the recession. Campbell and Putnam say, that version is bunk. They know how the Tea Party got started because they have the survey results that predicted Tea Party involvement before there was a Tea Party.

The first study was conducted in 2006 as part of the research for their book on religion in America and the impact of religion on politics. They talked to 3,000 people on a variety of specific issues that all relate in major or minor ways to the relationship between religion and politics. This year, following the explosion of the Tea Party movement, they re-interviewed many of the same people.

The first Tea Party myth they expose is the idea that the driving forces behind the Tea Party are economic and outside the mainstream parties. The “origin myth” says that Tea Partiers were political babes-in-the-woods who were never involved in the scuzzy world of politics before. What they found was that the people in their original study who were hardcore conservative Republicans are the hardcore of the Tea Party, who were more likely to have engaged personally with some government official at some point. That ties remarkably with Ohio Governor John Kasich’s admission that he went after the public sector unions because of a bad encounter with a police officer.

The second unifying attribute was a desire to see more God in our government. This goes beyond the anti-abortion, anti-gay rights crowd. These are people who will insist that our nation was founded as a Christian state, no matter what Jefferson, Adams, Washington or any other founding father may have said on the subject. And that ties in to another definer of Tea Partiers. They really are bigots. They have a much higher rate of being anti-immigrant and anti-minority than even mainstream Republicans. (For those not old enough, the “Moral Majority” and the “Religious Right” were 1970′s and 1980/90′s movements for the creation of a theocracy in America.)

In a backhanded way, this goes back at least to 9-11 and its aftermath, and possibly to the millennium hysteria. No matter how hard the Bush administration tried, and they did try, to distance the war on terror from ordinary Muslims, there were plenty of voices out there insisting that Islam is a violent religion with a Qur’anic edict to eradicate Christians and Jews. There were plenty of preachers and speakers in churches calling the Prophet Mohammed a child molester and calling Allah a “monkey God.” (Wrong religion, the Monkey God is Chinese and he was only a demigod.) 9-11 gave these people a legitimate reason to scream for ending immigration and shutting the borders, reinforcing their anti-minority views. And, though I hate to sound like a regionalist, the Tea Party gained its greatest following in the areas of the country with the least diversified history of immigration – the South which was almost exclusively settled by people from the British Isles and the importation of slaves, and the Midwest with an overwhelming preponderance of Northern Europeans. Without a history of diversified immigration and a history of the cycle of anti-immigrant violence and laws, these people did not understand the true immigrant experience or the reality of bigotry in America.

So, what did Campbell and Putnam find were the characteristics of the people who evolved into Tea Partiers over the past five years? Highly partisan Republican, social conservative, deeply religious, white, solidly upper middle class, anti-immigrant, and anti-minority (pretty much anti-anyone-not-us).

It has been easy for the people who tapped this group to direct their anger. Being anti-Muslim is patriotic because of 9-11. If one tries to defend the rights of Muslims, one hears the “how can you forget 9-11?” accusation. Being anti-minority morphs into being opposed to those people most likely to be receiving some form of social safety net in their view. Though there are far more whites than any other group receiving welfare, they will tell you that whites are not on welfare. The portrayal of recipients of welfare and unemployment and Social Security disability as “lazy” actually weaves well with the belief that minorities are more prone to use those programs and the stereotype of the lazy black and lazy Mexican.

They also, being hardcore partisan Republicans, tend toward the whole imperial vision of America, the vision that took us into Iraq and Afghanistan, the vision that says it is not enough to be “first among equals” as President Clinton, but America must be first, period. So, it becomes very easy to twist that imperial view into a pretzel with lingering anti-communism. The way the Tea Partiers talk, one would think Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush had not overseen the death of global communism. In the right hands, Limbaugh, Beck, Hannity, the lines between “socialist,” “communist,” and “fascist” were blurred. The Tea Party is a natural evolution out of the Bush era – the hyper patriotism, the “God and Country” mentality – that typifies fascism. Just don’t call the Bush government fascist or point out the parallels to Peron and Franco, or even insist on a correct definition of fascism.

What Campbell and Putnam do not explore is the way the Tea Party types were infiltrated and taken over by the money people who wanted to increase mainstream Republican power and increase the support of deregulation of business and elimination of taxes on the rich. The Koch brothers funded the Tea Party Express. That’s a proven fact. Old-time Republican operatives were recruited by Dick Armey to direct the Tea Party. When the money was brought into play, the public face of the Tea Party as a small government, anti-deficit, anti-regulation movement began.

Where did it all coalesce? In the person of Barack Obama. One could almost believe that Barack Obama was chosen by the Tea Party types to become president so as to energize the Tea Party types and grow the power of the Republican Party. Not only is our President half-African American, he chose an unacceptable number of Jews and minorities for his administration. His personal history, a Muslim African father, a childhood in a country most people can’t find on a map, these were gifts to the Tea Party, they made it easy to create the whole birther-secret Muslim nonsense.

But the more power the Tea Party has asserted, in states like Florida and Wisconsin and in Congress, the fewer people approve of their ideology. This is turning into a case of winning for losing – they gained national prominence, gained blackmail power in Congress, gained control of several states and so over-reached themselves that they exposed the worst of what they are to the majority of Americans who don’t believe in their far right ideology.

Campbell’s and Putnam’s conclusion is simple….the Tea Party has been so extreme that they have destroyed themselves, just as the extremists of the anti-Vietnam War era created the presidency of Ronald Reagan. A very basic, deeply ingrained belief in the true values of America and the moderate path is being brought out in the majority of Americans. And, as Martha Stewart would say, that’s a good thing.

Related articles

• The Tea Party Is a Religious Movement (usnews.com)
• Who Is Really Behind The Tea Party Movement? (businessinsider.com)
• Tea Party people less popular than many other hated minority groups (salon.com)
• Op-Ed Contributors: Crashing the Tea Party (nytimes.com)
• The Tea Party As A Christianist Force (andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com)
• Tea Party has become less popular than “atheists” and “Muslims” (politics.ie)

Via Twitter, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi announced the final three members of the “super committee” charged with coming up with an additional $1.2 trillion in budget cuts by Thanksgiving. The committee consists of three each from the two parties and the two chambers of Congress.

Rep. James E. Clyburn

Pelosi has chosen South Carolina Representative James E. Clyburn, whose district includes the cities of Florence and Sumter and portions of Columbia and Charleston. Clyburn has served in the House since 1993 and was House Majority Whip under Pelosi when she was Speaker. He is currently the third-ranking Democrat in the House, and one of the top ranking African Americans in Congress. He is considered a liberal, and ranks 77^th most liberal member with a National Journal score of 81, based on his votes. That means his voting record shows that 81% of the Congress is to is right. He has strong positions on health care, education, organized labor and environmental issues. Clyburn, like the other two men named by Pelosi, is a frequent guest on television programs discussing Congressional activities.

Rep. Chris VanHollen

Chris VanHollen has been representing Maryland’s 8^th district since 2003. His district borders the District of Columbia on it north and is one of the most educated and affluent districts in America. The primary employers of his constituents are the government and government contractors. He is the ranking Democrat on the Budget Committee and is also involved in environmental issues.

Rep. Xavier Becerra

Xavier Becerra has also been serving since 2003, representing California’s 31^st district, which anchors in Los Angeles, then spreads west to Hollywood and south to Alameda. If you have ever seen the movie Volcano with Tommy Lee Jones, well Becerra’s district wraps around the primary location of the eruption. It is a socio-economically and racially diverse district. Becerra’s appearances on television have shown a man a bit more to the progressive end of the spectrum, but not ravingly ideological. Becerra’s parents were working-class immigrants.

The inclusion of Clyburn and Becerra help the committee avoid the appearance of being a ‘white man’s club” with a token woman. Now, of the twelve, we have one woman, one African-American and one Hispanic to go along with those 9 white guys. To be representative of our nation, the committee would have to have been 6 women and 6 men, with two African-Americans, two Hispanics and one Asian among them.

All the nominees are veteran lawmakers, and though Pat Toomey had Tea Party support, none are known as ideological hardliners. The hard line is between the two parties. The Republicans insist that all budget negotiations can only include cuts, while the Democrats insist that we need tax reform and an increase in revenues. The Tea Partiers who have made the media rounds have said that they favor elimination of tax breaks with a lower of rates, which happens to be President Obama’s position.

Senator Dick Durbin, who was a member of the Gang of Six, said the if the super committee would begin with what his group negotiated, then all they would need to do is tweak. If they try to start from scratch, they will never make the deadline.

What do most Americans want? The polls that have been conducted over the course of the seven months since the Republicans took control of the House have all pretty much said the same thing….we want jobs, not spending cuts. We want a fair tax system. We understand that some reform is needed in the entitlement programs, but we don’t want privatization. With a committee made up of so many moderate and veteran lawmakers, maybe we have a chance at a rational resolution to this nonsense.

Related articles

• Here Are Nancy Pelosi’s Picks For The “Super-Committee” (businessinsider.com)
• Pelosi Chooses Clyburn, Van Hollen, Becerra For Deficits Super Panel (npr.org)

Speaker John Boehner

Nine down, three to go for the “super committee” to create a budget policy for the next ten year and whose constitutionality is being challenged. Let’s see, the House and Senate are supposed to reconcile bills after they are written and passed, and anything that they pass is only valid for the two years this particular Congress is in session and can be repealed, overturned, or has no force of law after the next biennial election. I think that covers the constitutional issues.

So, ignoring the constitutionality of this “super committee,” Speaker John Boehner has named Representatives Jeb

Hensarling of Texas, Dave Camp and Fred Upton both of Michigan to represent the Republican majority in the House. House Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has named Senators John Kyl of Arizona, Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania and Robert Portman of Ohio to represent the Republican minority in the Senate. They are joining Senators Patty Murray of Washington, Max Baucus of Montana and John Kerry of Massachusetts who were named by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Still to go are House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s three picks, the House’s Democratic minority members.

What? No Paul Ryan? No Eric Cantor? No Jason Chaffetz? I’m positively gobsmacked.

Sen. Pat Toomey

Okay, Toomey won his seat with Tea Party support, but he’s the only person named so far who voted against the recent debt ceiling bill, and for the damnedest reason – he was “concerned that the long-term cuts over the next decade will not materialize. All Congress has to do to override this bill’s spending restraints in the future is pass another law that overrides them. If Congress is truly serious about cutting spending, it would mandate serious spending cuts in next year’s budget — the only year in which cuts are actually guaranteed.” OMG! A Congressman who understands the law. What a concept! Or, a Congressman who understands that the whole shebang was just political theater to damage President Obama and the Democrats and wasn’t worth buttkiss, except that it caused our credit rating to be downgraded. Toomey, by the way, was a three-term congressman who lost his first Senate bid against Arlen Specter in 2004 and then beat Joe Sestak in 2010 by a mere 2.02%.

Sen. Jon Kyl

Jon Kyl, Senate Minority Whip, has already announced that he is retiring next year, so he really can’t be bullied into any ideological position other than his own. It’s pointless to threaten him with a Tea Party primary, but he’s a staunch conservative, most recently noticed for his “mis-statement” that 90% of Planned Parenthood’s business was abortions. Kyl tends to shoot his mouth first and then find out the facts.

Sen. Robert Portman

Robert Portman is a strange choice. He held two cabinet positions under George W. Bush, U. S. Trade Representative and Director of the Office of Management and Budget, but as a Congressman, his record was almost Democratic – he authored or co-authored bills to trade Costa Rica’s debt for preservation of the rain forests, reform the Internal Revenue Service, curb unfunded mandates (like Bush’s Medicare drug program), expand pensions and IRAs for small businesses and create Cincinnati’s National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, eliminate capital gains taxes on most homes, promoted drug prevention and education programs and a bill to help prisoners reenter society.

The House appointments are just as far off the Tea Party.

Rep. Dave Camp

Dave Camp represents Michigan’s 4^th district, which is a sprawling piece of northern Michigan with only four cities of any appreciable size. Michigan right now is one of those states in the claws of a Republican majority in both houses and the governorship where holy hell is breaking loose over the Republican agenda, particularly the governor’s power to dissolve local governments and appoint emergency managers. Camp is Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee – the guys who decide where the money goes.

Rep. Fred Upton

Fred Upton has been representing the Michigan 6^th district since 1987, and his district includes Kalamazoo, Portage and the town of Benton Harbor, the one that made history with the appointment of a financial manager who was in cahoots with the people who want to take over their public beach for an exclusive, expensive development. He is Chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee.

Rep. Jeb Hensarling

Jeb Hensarling is a five-termer from Texas and the chairman of the House Republican Conference. He is expected to counter-weight the Democratic co-chair, Senator Patty Murray, who is the chairman of the Senate Democratic Campaign committee. They are the two expected to protect the political positions of their parties.  Hensarling and Murray will be co-chairing the committee.

Former Senator Alan Simpson had only one thing to say about the people appointed to this “super committee” – where are the Gang of Six? As he pointed out, they have been working on this for the past six months and know what is needed and possible. Leaving them out is ridiculous in his view because the members of this super-committee will have to be educated before they can do anything intelligent (he also had nothing complimentary to say about Max Baucus who was a member of the Simpson-Bowles commission.)

The super committee has until Thanksgiving weekend to come up with $1.2 trillion in cuts over the next ten years, none of which will really have any impact because they can be undone in 2013 when the new Congress is sworn in. If they don’t come up with a plan, the back-up kicks in and automatic cuts will be imposed.

The chances that the “Super Committee” will come up with something viable, intelligent, effective, job creating, fair, balanced, and lacking in ideology? Nil, none, nada, never happen, at least that’s the assessment of all the pundits and most Americans. The Republicans have done too good a job convincing people that government in any form is bad for them to be able to participate in the fine art of governance. Their goal, first, last and every since 2000 has been the creation of a single-party state, the “permanent majority,” you know, like Syria.

　          

 

Related articles

• Six Republicans named to ‘super committee’ (marketwatch.com)
• Murray: All is on table in debt “super committee” (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• McConnell, Boehner Make ‘Super Congress’ Appointments (huffingtonpost.com)
• Debt ‘super-committee’ takes form (bbc.co.uk)
• Baucus added to debt super committee – msnbc.com (news.google.com)

We had a spring filled with floods and killer tornados. We are still having floods. Heat records by the hundreds are being set this summer. The hurricane season is already active and it’s just barely August. And now, the weather on the sun is about to create more problems for us.

Can’t we just leave it with earthly weather problems for a while?

The Space Weather Prediction Center, a division of the U. S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has issued a report that solar storms are about to cause havoc with earth’s electrical grids and telecommunications systems. It may also give the northern latitudes some spectacular auroras.

In 1989, a solar storm took down the power grid in Quebec for several hours. The worst one on record was in 1859, when all that we had to disrupt was telegraph systems. They kept transmitting even after operators removed the batteries and cause several operators electrical shocks. A really bad disruption could cost trillions of dollars in damage.

NOAA measures solar storms on a one-to-five scale. These three storms have been rated as twos and threes. The first one’s effects have already passed Earth without any problems, but the last one isn’t expected to pass for a few days. The three storms have the potential to build on each other’s impact, making the last one the most dangerous.

Solar storms peak about every 12 years, and the next peak is expected in 2013. National and international power grids have been warned of the potential problems and the media is being relied on to spread the warnings to customers. Satellite users are the most vulnerable, though most cable systems also rely on satellite dishes to receive the signals they then transmit over physical cables. Cell phone towers, obviously, are also vulnerable. If its up in the air or pointed towards the stratosphere, you can assume there’s a probability of trouble.

The Mayan calendar says that next year the earth will change gender, and it’s something of a running gag right now in pagan circles that the male earth is throwing a temper tantrum over being usurped by the female earth. The Mayan calendar, however, says nothing about extraterrestrial weather problems, so we’re on our own with this one.

Related articles

• Power companies prepare as solar storms set to hit Earth (scientificamerican.com)
• Solar Flares May Impact GPS and Communications This Weekend (benzinga.com)
• Subsiding solar storm and new sun spot- 1267 (theextinctionprotocol.wordpress.com)
• Effects of solar flares arriving on Earth (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Solar storm heading our way (physorg.com)

Rep. Gabrielle Giffords

At 7:04 p.m. Eastern Time, the House of Representatives passed the debt ceiling bill. The final vote two minutes later was 269 in favor, 161 opposed and 3 not voting. The ayes were 174 Republicans and 95 Democrats.  When the vote passed the 216 mark, applause broke out.  Speaker Boehner was wielding the gavel himself for this vote.

Rep. Gabrielle Giffords flew in from Houston, where she is still receiving treatment for the bullet that passed through her head last January, to cast her vote.  Rep. Giffords’ presence was the primary reason for all the applause.

The bill will now go to the Senate for a vote tomorrow.

It turns out that last night we only had half the information on the debt ceiling/deficit deal. Here is the full picture…..

Immediately, we have a $900 billion increase in the debt ceiling and an equal amount in cuts. The $900 billion increase in the debt ceiling will actually come in two stages, $400 billion today and $500 billion after a vote of “no opposition.” There will be a bi-partisan, bi-cameral 12-member committee established to determine where more cuts will be made, but there is no restriction on revenues or where the cuts would be made. The committee will consist of three member-groups nominated by Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, House Speaker John Boehner and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. By November, that committiee must present a comprehensive plan with either an additional $1.5 trillion in cuts or a balanced budget amendment. The debt ceiling will be raise $1.2 trillion in November, no matter what happens with the commission, but failure to agree to cuts will result in an automatic $1.2 trillion across the board cut in Federal Executive Branch spending. The bi-partisan, bi-cameral “super committee” will be the third or fourth such committee to try to find the best ways to bring our government spending under control.

There is a possibility, if John Boehner and Mitch McConnell have enough balls, that the committee will not include the most extreme members of their caucuses. Reid will definitely choose moderates from the Senate and Pelosi might throw in one Progressive, but she is also more likely to go for the middle of her caucus rather than the extremists. Both parties have learned, we hope, in the past few weeks that the majority of Americans are not members of either extreme and we want balanced, fair, moderate governance instead of extreme ideology.

The first $900 billion in cuts will come from “security” funds – defense, Homeland Security, veterans’ benefits, the State Department. Before anyone goes ballistic about reducing Homeland Security spending, far too much of it has been a huge waste. For the first eight years, there was a major flaw in Homeland Security plans. Dick Cheney, in an excess of paranoia, refused to allow inter-connectedness between jurisdictions. Homeland Security was just behind the two wars and the unfunded Medicare drug program as a giant sucking sound at the Treasury.

Of the $900 billion in immediate cuts, $350 billion will come directly from the Defense Department. If the “trigger” that cuts $1.2 trillion ends up happening in November, most of those cuts will come from the Defense Department. Defense is 20% of our budget, equal to Social Security and Medicare and as much money as is spent by the rest of the world combined. We could lose 87% of the Defense budget and still spend more than China.

It’s a lot of “what ifs” and speculation and targets. Now comes the hard part. Working out the “balanced approach” to bringing our government’s spending under control.

The key part of this deal is the fact that nothing is off the table in the committee, and that includes making changes to our revenue process. Now, we get to drag out all those video clips of all those Tea Partiers saying that they support gutting the special interest tax breaks, loopholes and credits in exchange for a lower set of tax rates. Now, we get to force them to put our money where their mouths were. The Bush tax cuts are due to expire in January, and if there is as much disarray over those as there was over this deal, we could see them automatically end with an increase in $3.9 trillion in revenue as a consequence. At the very least, the companies that are showing record profits have until December to start producing jobs or their sob-story excuse of “don’t tax job creators” goes right out the window, along with their tax cuts.

This may still not be enough to keep us from being downgraded. Standards and Poors was demanding a $4 trillion spending cut in 10 years. That was actually what the President offered in the negotiations – the “plan” he allegedly never offered according to the Republican talking points.

On the positive side, the cuts do not impact the things we most desperately need to restore the economy, the funds for investment and education.

The first vote on the plan is tentatively set for this afternoon in the Senate.

This deal still does not represent anything that remotely resembles rational governance. Everyone agrees on the end point – lower government spending, stimulus to create jobs. What is not agreed upon is the how. History says that not taxing the rich does not create jobs. History says the government must spend money to build our way out of a recession or depression. But as long as a small part of the Republican Party has as its goal the dismantling of the Federal government, this deadlock will continue. The Tea Party goal is not to solve the problems, but to return us to the failed Articles of Confederation and 50 independent governments with only joint defense as glue. We rejected that idea in Iraq when all they wanted were three independent states. Why should be accept the idea of 17 times as much division?

Related articles

• Debt deal: Obama, Hill leaders break through (politico.com)
• Congress Must Trim Deficit to Avoid Broader Cuts (nytimes.com)
• Debt ceiling: What they’ll be voting on (money.cnn.com)
• Sen. Lee inclined not to support debt-limit deal (thehill.com)
• A Few Thoughts on the Debt Limit Deal (news.firedoglake.com)
• A Tea Party Triumph (online.wsj.com)

There are very few reasons for a people to revolt against their government. Many times, the causes overlap, but there are some identifiable categories.

The most obvious one is a people revolting against a foreign occupier. As long as there have been men with imperial ambitions, there have been local populations willing to fight and die to evict the foreigners. In modern times, this includes Vietnam, Algeria, Zimbabwe, India, and because of our stupidity, Iraq and Afghanistan. Reality is, the so-called “insurgents” are fighting a foreign occupying army.

Majority populations revolt against minority rulers. These usually overlap into other causes. The majority/minority line can be drawn by race, ethnicity or religion.

The rarest of all revolutions is political. The American colonies didn’t revolt because they were occupied. We were the occupiers. We revolted because we were denied representation in our own republic. The one most important thing we are not taught about Great Britain before 1776 is that there had been two political revolutions there before ours and they had established, for all time, that the rights of a free people are greater than the divine rights of kings. Our battle cry was not “dump the king!” It was “no taxation without representation!”

But the greatest underlying reason for revolution is and always has been economics. The French kept returning to monarchies after their revolutions because they were never about monarchy but about the intolerable income gap between the aristocracy and the poor. The Arab Spring is about economics, with the occasional majority/minority overlap like Syrian and Bahrain. The electoral revolution that put Juan Peron in power was economic, as was the one that removed him. The revolutions that ended communism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe were partly political, partly foreign-occupation but mostly economic. It wasn’t the calls to freedom of Radio Free Europe that inspired them. It was, according to friends we had in Russia, the unstoppable influence of West German television and its images of consumerism and wealth that took down the communist governments.

What does this have to do with us, here, now and in the future? Real unemployment and underemployment are sitting at over 20% of working age, able-bodied Americans. The income loss in minorities has topped 50%, while for whites it’s a 16% loss of real income. Millions of us have lost our homes while the people who bought our packaged mortgages made billions. Millions more are on track to be foreclosed. Seventy-three percent of us say that the economy is getting worse. That’s up 11% in the Gallup Daily tracking poll just since July 6. At the same time, the Economic Confidence Index fell to minus 46, down 16 points. Americans are learning a new word “oligarch” – and it is gaining in the rankings of bad things, alongside fascist, communist and socialist. The right wing did such a great job of blurring what “fascist” means, that the left had to find a new way to explain what this economic situation is all about. An oligarchy is government of, by and for the rich without the hereditary element of aristocracy.

Even if we don’t know who contributes to 501(c) accounts to create attacks ads, we do know who contributes directly to sitting Congressmen. In an oligarchy, the contributors are the very rich, and that is who is contributing to John Boehner’s campaign chest. It’s stupid to claim you are fighting for working class Americans when you are accepting campaign contributions from hedge fund manager John Paulson, #20 on the Forbes 400 list, a man worth over $136 billion, a man who pays only 15% capital gains rate on his commissions instead of the 36% top income tax rate.

We are not stupid out here. We have seen the direct line between the oligarchs and the governors who are cutting our services to give tax breaks to the rich. We were just informed by one of those oligarchs, Steve Wynn, that he prefers making his billions in communist countries. We have finally had something happen, England’s phone hacking scandal, that has made us question the principle source of right wing propaganda. We can see the real history of taxation, job creation and the triple failure of trickle-down economics. The battle cry of the left is not “kill the oligarchs!” it’s “look it up.” That’s what we tell those who try to repeat to us the talking points of Fox News and the Republican Party. Look it up…learn the truth. For the truth shall set you free.

John Boehner likes to say that “The American People Have Spoken,” referring to the 25% of eligible voters who handed him the Speaker’s gavel. No, Mr. Boehner, we really haven’t, and you don’t want us to. The hacking attacks of Anonymous against massive corporations are only the smallest part of what can and will happen if you and your party continue to lie to yourselves and not hear what we are still trying to say peacefully.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt looked at the rise of the Communist Party in the early days of the Great Depression and realized that the only way to save this nation was to save our economy before the message of “kill the oligarchs” took hold. He understood that a limited amount of socialism not only did not limit the possibilities of capitalism, but saved a whole lot of capitalist ass. That is what the Republican Party does not comprehend today. This is class warfare, and they are on the wrong side of it.

Right now, we want fairness and balance. We want the thousands of special tax breaks for the wealthiest eliminated and the tax rates lowered. We want real small businesses to get the breaks, not “tax code small businesses” like Cargill and Koch Industries. We want jobs, not sweatshops and part-time work that leaves us begging for food stamps and Medicaid for our children. We want our houses back – the ones that were taken from us because greedy mortgage holders used the adjustable rates to drive us out of them. We could afford our homes at the rates we originally had. We could not afford them when those rates were jacked up month after month for no reason but greed. We don’t want handouts – we want a chance to share in the wealth of this nation, to restore the wealth of this nation, to stop shipping the wealth of this nation overseas.

Most of all, we want the Republican Party to stop lying to itself and to us. And if they had their heads out of their donors’ butts, they would understand the dangers.

Revolutions are usually about economics.

Related articles

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• Oligarchy and the Debt Ceiling (drumsnwhistles.com)
• How Washington’s favorite pundits explain why we’re doomed (salon.com)

This morning, a few more Republican lawmakers got in front the of the cameras and whined that they support eliminating tax loopholes as long as there is a lowering of tax rates. It’s the latest grand Republican spin.

This is what most Americans want to see. And it is what President Obama asked for in January in his State of the Union Speech. It is the best way to raise revenues, share the sacrifice and make us more competitive in the global marketplace. It is the best way to lower our deficits, avoid more debt and put people to work. But what the Republicans are doing is beyond disingenuous. It is lying.

They have had six months to bring this idea to fruition. They have had six months to correct the nightmare of our burdensome tax code. They have refused to even mention the idea until it became the one Americans want and they need to cover their asses. They could not under any circumstances agree to anything that President Obama suggested, no matter how good it was for the country. They relied on their propaganda machine to make sure that almost half the people in this country didn’t remember any part of the State of the Union and are now being convinced that it the Republicans who brought forth this wonderful idea.

THEY ARE LYING. Tell them so. Tell them loudly and often. Tell them they can get their rich donors to pay their salaries because we don’t have the money to. Tell them they can get their freeloading butts out of our office buildings. Tell them we want PRESIDENT OBAMA’s plan for fair taxes and they should stop taking credit for something they did not propose.  Tell them to grow up and admit they are trying to steal the credit like some school bully taking credit for a good homework paper they stole.

Find your voice. Please.

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• VIDEO: President Obama US debt speech (bbc.co.uk)

President Obama went on national television tonight to repeat the terms of a proposal that would meet all the requirements of keeping our national credit rating, both by avoiding default and by demonstrating a serious approach to curtailing our nation’s financial problems. He put forth the two plans currently at loggerheads – a balanced approach of cutting expenses and raising revenues versus a plan just to cut expenses, and none of them from the Pentagon.

He ended the address with a simple request – contact your representatives, particularly if you have a Republican Congressman and/or Senator. Just don’t try to e-mail Speaker Boehner’s office. His server is “too busy.” Again.

It all comes down to the question the President asked – do you want to preserve the system that lets hedge fund managers pay lower taxes than their secretaries or do you believe that the only people who are benefitting from the current economic crisis should share the sacrifices?

If you don’t know how to e-mail your representative, simply google him or her. Once on the home page, click on “contact” It only takes a few minutes. And, don’t try to e-mail anyone else’s except the Speaker. Their systems favor communication from their own state.

Make your voices heard. After all, Speaker Boehner keeps insisting the you have spoken because his party was elected to the majority in the House, therefore, he doesn’t have to actually listen to what any of you have to say. Twenty-five percent of the eligible voters in this country gave him a mandate to do whatever he wants. It’s time for the other 75% of us to be heard.

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• Deal or no deal, Republican disarray means the debt ceiling deadline is ticking away | Richard Adams (guardian.co.uk)
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• Suddenly John Paulson’s Hedge Fund Is One Of John Boehner’s Biggest Donors (businessinsider.com)

22 July 2011
by Bridgette P. LaVictoire

The heat has been brutal, even here in Vermont, and while Vermont is going to have a break in the heat shortly, it is unlikely that the heat is going to go away in the rest of the nation any time soon. The heat has hit above 100F for thirty days so far in Oklahoma City, and numerous people across the nation have died. In Oklahoma, “The sustained heat has taxed local water systems and claimed at least five lives, with another eight deaths being cause by the heat, authorities said.”

So, what does Oklahoma Senator Jim Inhofe decide to say? “Perhaps we need to hear a little more from Al Gore to cool things off!”

Oklahoma is the center of the US led wing of the global warming deniers, but that is ok, because Inhofe loves to make fun of people’s misery all the while enjoying the fruits of his oil and gas masters.

Think Progress did write:

The tweet links to the Wikipedia page on “The Gore Effect,” which is the climate-denier claim that weather and appearances by Al Gore are linked. The claim, of course, lacks any sense whatsoever, but that’s never been a burden for Inhofe.

Rep. Michele Bachmann (by DonkeyHotey, Creative Commons)

Most people have seen the clip of Michele Bachmann addressing the question of her relationship with Sarah Palin. After asserting that she and the half-gov have a good relationship, Bachmann said “They want to see two girls come together and have a mud-wrestling fight…”

“Girls”? “Girls”? Did she actually refer to herself and Palin as “GIRLS”????

Sarah Palin is 47 years old, the mother of five and grandmother of one. Michele Bachmann is 55 years old and also the mother of five. “Girls” is how certain types of men refer to women. “Girls” is a put-down, reducing women to 1950′s giggling teenagers hanging out in their pink-frilled bedrooms painting their nails. “Girls” is what one calls women when one wants to dismiss their intelligence, work ethic, professionalism and accomplishments. “Girls” is patronizing.

Okay, our society is in high gear over women looking younger than their chronological years. It’s a multi-billion dollar a year business from plastic surgery to face creams and hair dye. Does that mean we have to give up acknowledgment of our years and experience and accept being referred to as “girls” or be judged in the political arena on our looks? Hang out on a few news comment streams for awhile and read the comparisons between Democratic women and Republican. Too often, it comes down to looks. Democratic women are ugly, Republican women are beautiful. Elena Kagan is ugly, Bachmann is beautiful.

It’s a Republican formula that goes back to the early days of the feminist movement. Republican women were combinations of high heels and pearls, standing hair-dresser appointments, perfectly tailored sheaths, stock in Max Factor, totally dedication to being wives, mothers and homemakers, and somehow, in their alter-egos, were high-powered politicians. They always managed to dodge the inherent contradiction, especially those who made full-time careers of denouncing the feminist movement.

Not surprisingly, in polling, both Palin and Bachmann score higher with men than with women. It’s that combination of flippable hair, high heels and pencil skirts – gets men in their second brains every time Real women look at them and wonder how any woman can have that flat a belly after five pregnancies.

Bachmann has added an additional layer of “apple pie and motherhood.” She not only gave birth to five children, she fostered 23. Just don’t look too closely at that fostering.

Beginning in 1992, Bachmann and her husband, the faith-based clinical psychologist, were licensed as a both a foster home and a treatment center for up to three teenage girls with eating disorders at one time. They took in their last “foster child” in 1998. That’s 23 girls in roughly six years, in packs of three. The maximum time any girl spent with the Bachmann family was under a year. These weren’t the kinds of kids we think of when we hear the words “foster child” or the kind of environment we hope foster children are placed in. This was a business. We all know that for every loving, caring, committed foster parent who creates a real home for up to a half-dozen abused, neglected and abandoned children at a time, there are at least two foster placements that are nothing more than means to collect the state check with as little effort as possible. What the Bachmanns ran was a third type – fostering for the purpose of psychological treatment. They retained the fostering license for two years after they stopped taking patients for short-term care of patients in a program at the University of Minnesota.

Comparing herself to the all-encircling-hug image of a foster mother is disingenuous. Calling herself a “girl” is a questionable tactic in a nation where so many women are already feeling under threat by the Republican Party. We don’t need a woman in the Party who patronizes as much as the men do. This is already a woman we know will not fight for our reproductive rights or for our access to affordable health care. Now we should be questioning if she is also someone who will refuse to fight for access to power for women who don’t fit the very narrow vision of women in the Republican Party.

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• ‘Not A Flake’ Michele Bachmann Supports New York Marriage Equality On The Tenth Amendment (lezgetreal.com)
• Michele Bachmann Rejects Apology From Chris Wallace (lezgetreal.com)
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In his opening statement, the President noted that the economic conditions we are experiencing weren’t created overnight and won’t be solved overnight. There are steps the administration can take to create jobs, such as reviewing regulations and removing those that create an unnecessary burden on business, helping businesses find financing to expand and upgrade, retraining workers through partnerships with businesses and education facilities.

[Moving the start point of our economic problems has been identified as something the President needs to do to make this clear to Americans.]

There are also things that only Congress can do. They need to send the President a bill overhauling the patent process so that innovators can act quickly, send a bill allowing loans for businesses and states to increase infrastructure projects, pass the trade agreements that will open foreign markets for our exports, extend the middle and lower class tax cuts for an additional year. These are all things that have bi-partisan support and have been kicking around congress for some time now. They need to be acted upon.

We have made some progress in reducing the deficit in our negotiations. We have identified $1 trillion in spending cuts. But we cannot do it just by cutting the 12% of our budget that is discretionary spending. We can’t do this just by cutting Medicare. We need to look at the whole budget. We need to trim the defense budget and tackle entitlements. But we must tackle “spending in the tax code.” That’s the new-speak for tax breaks, tax credits and loopholes that benefit small groups or specific industries and not all people or businesses. We have got to make the tough choices – do we retain tax breaks for the owners of corporate jets and oil companies making hundreds of billions of dollars at the cost of cutting food safety, college scholarships, medical research or medical care for our most vulnerable?

The two parties agree on the scale and urgency of the situation. No one wants to see us go into default. We must seize this moment and seize it soon to get our economy moving. We can bridge our differences. We have the “conceptual framework” for reaching compromise.

Question (Associated Press): The Republicans have said no to any tax increases. Will you insist any deal must include tax increases? Is that the red line for you? How will you get that through congress?

President: “People say a lot of things to satisfy their bases, but they rise to the occasion. Call me naive. I believe leaders will lead.” Everyone who is not in politics say we must have a balanced response to this situation. “Democrats must accept some spending cuts and we will do that for the greater good.” We need to recognize that we cannot afford these programs as they exist right now, need to accept cuts in the Department of Defense, need to reduce health care costs without shifting those costs to seniors. “Everyone must be willing to take on their sacred cows.”

“I think it would be hard for Republicans to say tax cuts for corporate jets are so important they must be protected. I don’t think the Republican postition is sustainable.” Republicans out of office do not think their position is sustainable. It is impossible to reduce the deficit without some revenue in the mix, as long as that revenue is not coming out of the pockets of the middle class and those who are struggling. “Our tax rates are lower than they have been since before I was born….If we do not have revenues, there are a bunch of kids who do not have scholarships….” we might compromise our national weather service, food safety might be compromised. “I told Republicans to ask their constituents, are you willing to sacrifice….” vital services for corporate jet tax breaks?

“My expectation is that they will do the right thing.”

        [Okay, Mr. President, you are naive if you really don’t believe that they would tank the economy to drive you out of office.]

Question (Chuck Todd, NBC): Do you believe the war powers act is constitutional? Is the debt limit constitutional? Do you believe marriage is a civil right?

President: “That’s a hodge-podge.” I’m not a Supreme Court justice….” The President considers the criticism over Libya to be “the cause celebre” for some in the opposition “a lot of this fuss is politics”. They accuse him of not consulting Congress, when they have done so all along, including ten hearings. He suggested people look at the history of the War Powers Act. It was in response to the Vietnam War, which had involved thousands of lives and millions of dollars and was a ground war. The President said that if he were facing that kind of engagement, he would go to Congress first, but this action in Libya does not meet that threshold. It is a United Nations action being conducted by NATO. “We did exactly what we said we would do under the U.N. mandate.”

“We cannot discriminate against people on the basis of sexual orientation.” This administration has done more than any other. “We have made sure that is a central principle of this administratoin because it is a central principle of America.” DOMA is unconstitutional, so we will not defend it. What the people of New York did is a good thing. “There is a profound recognition on the part of the American people that [LGBT] people have to be treated like every other people. It won’t be smooth. The Presdident cannot dictate how this process moves. We are moving in the right direction.”

Question: Are you concerned the debate is preventing you from taking the right course, is regulatory environment chilling job growth?

President: “It is important to understand that deficit reduction and debt reduction is part of the program of job creation over time.” We need a simplified tax code, no capital gains tax when a company is in start-up mode, infrastructure improvement. We used to have the best bridges and roads in the world. We don’t anymore. These needs are not contradictory. Congress “must be willing to do what I do, walk and chew gum at the same time.”

“Is there in fact a bunch of tangled regulations that prevent businesses from growing?” Businesses always say they are over-regulated. But we must not void regulations that protect our citizens. We are not just looking at new regulations, but examining old ones and “if they don’t make sense, get rid of them. We’re already identified ones that could save companies…” big money. “What does not make sense is shutting down a plant and laying off workers because labor and management can’t come to an agreement. We can’t have labor and management fighting all the time when we are competing with Germany…” and other countries.

Question: It has been alleged that there is no clear procedure for what to do if a terrorist is captured alive. Does this lack of clear procedures make it more attractive to kill the terrorist rather than bring him in alive?

President: Our obligation is to capture and prosecute according to the rule of law. There will be time when that means military tribunals or Article Three courts. These cases need to be determined on a case by case basis. The guidelines for our military are clear – bring them in alive if possible and then “let the lawyers sort it out.”

Question (Fox News): In last week’s Afghanistan speech, you did not use the word “victory.” Can you define “victory” for the 100,000 troops on the ground and their families?

President: I don’t ever use the word “victory.” I use the word “successful” as in have we succeeded in our missin and our goals. We can draw down because our men and women in uniform have been successful in achieving our goals.

         [This was a pure Fox question. It is intended to give their pundits the power to say the President doesn’t believe in victory, that he’s a wuss on defense.]

Question: Senators Kerry and McCain support continuing operations in Libya. Are you prepared to continue for a year? Is there any definition of success other than removing Qaddafi?

President: I said the our initial involvement would take days or weeks. “Promise made, promise kept.” When you have two former presidential candidates coming together to say something, that should tell people this is important. The definition of success is fulfilling the U.N. mandate to protect civilians. This mission has done that. But as long as Qaddafi controls large numbers of troops, civilians will continue to be in danger. “From the international perspective, Qaddafi stepping down will be the only way to protect the civilians.” The international court has declared him a criminal. “Qaddafi needs to step down. He needs to go.”

Question: “On the debt talks, would you accept any tax cuts? Do you personally support same sex marriage?”

President: “I’m not making news on that today. Nice try though. I’ll keep giving you the same answer until I give you a different one, but that’s not going to happen today.” On the debt talks, the important thing to remember is that job creation and growth will improve the debt situation. If we need to reduce money going into the Treasury for a long term benefit, we would do it. “We need to restore confidence. We’re not going to get there right away, butr we’re still moving forward.”

Question (Mexican reporter): Are you going to replace the Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms leadership over the gun running scandal? (There was also a question about immigration and the e-verify system)

President: This is an on-going investigation. When the investigation is complete, we will take the appropriate actions. As for E-verify. “We need comprehensive immigration reform. We need a system that makes sure we uphold our traditions as a nation of laws and a nation of immigrants.” We need a combination of enforcement and a “path to citizenship for those living in the shadows.” There are problems with the E-verify system that need to be addressed and fixed. We need to have a more balanced approach, rather than just a verification program. We need to pass the Dream Act.

President: “Jessica Young. Welcome. Your first question.”

Question (Jessica Young): Four different dates have been given for the deadline for the debt ceiling. Three have gone by already with no crisis. Critics are saying these are scare tactics. Why should people believe August 2 is an absolute date?

President: We didn’t give four different dates when the debt ceiling crisis would be hit. We gave dates where we could get into trouble. Sec. Geithner has been doing a whole lot of business to pay our bills. “By August 2, we have run out of things we can manipulate.”

“This is a jobs issue, not an abstraction. The consequences will be signifcant and unpredictable. We do not know how capital markets will react. If they decide we don’t pay our bills, and start pulling out their money….” If we have to raise interest rates to attract investors, all interest rates will rise and things will get worse for Americans. People say that maybe the debt limit thing is not important, we just pay interest on the debt. Well, this is equivalent of saying I will pay my mortgage, but not my car loan. For the U.S. government to start picking and choosing what it will pay doesn’t inspire confidence. Are we really going to start paying a bond holder like China and not paying Social Security or a veteran’s medical bills?

“These are bills Congress ran up. The obligations have been made. This isn’t a case of saying we won’t buy the car or take the vacation. They already bought the car and took the vacation.” This isn’t how responsible families behave.

“We need to settle this. I’m the President and I want to make sure I’m not engaging in scare tactics. I don’t want people spooked. August 2 is an important date. This is not a technicality.” Congress “needs to bite the bullet and make a decision. We’ve identified what cuts are possible and what loopholes we can plug. The question now is are we going to get this done.” My daughters have their homework done a day in advance. They don’t pull all nighters. Congress should not let this go to the last minute. The say the President needs to show leadership. We have called together every caucus, met with every leader mulitiple times. At some point they need to do their jobs. Congress needs to understand that if they don’t get this done in the next week, we will have to cancel things (alternating recesses for the House and Senate). They can’t be in and out of Washington every other week.

         [About bloody time the President said this out loud.]

Last Question (Bowen): You have suggested extending the middle class tax cut. Will that complicate the discussion?

President: We have got to have a deal that focuses on more than the 10 year window, but also focuses on the long term. We will get it done. Tough votes in Congress are often avoided. People need to know we are focused on both jobs and debt reduction. The two things are tied together. They should not be separated. Just a one percent growth in the economy would change the math on deficit reduction.

The questions ended here, and the President repeated much of what he said at the beginning. There has been a study released in the last few days from a political strategist who suggested the message needed to be changed, based on his discussions with voters. These answers indicate that someone in the President’s team actually got the memo.　

[Note: I type the President’s speeches and press conferences as they happen. When his mouth gets ahead of my fingers, I shorthand his answers. Those responses in quotation marks are direct quotes. The stuff in between is based on the shorthand. The questions are not direct quotes, but compressions of some convoluted stuff which had a question in there somewhere.]

Related articles

• President Obama holds news conference (dailykos.com)
• Obama’s Libya Policy Is Okay, Says The Congress (duanegraham.wordpress.com)
• Senate gives blessing to Obama for military intervention in Libya (rt.com)
• Obama wins one on Libya (capitolhillblue.com)
• Critics assault Obama’s Libya policy (politico.com)
• GOP and JOBS – Stiff Arming the American Worker (woodgatesview.wordpress.com)

via http://www.telegram.com/article/20110601/NEWS/110609970/-1/NEWS04

Four people have been confirmed dead, and numerous people have been injured in the tornadoes that swept through Massachusetts yesterday. Despite recklessly driving through the storms with the tornadoes, Sarah Palin made it to Boston safely. The tornadoes struck western and central Mass, which is heavily populated. Residents of some 19 small communities are dealing with horrific damage to their infrastructure. Power and roads are out in Sturbridge, which has caused the closure of the living museum Old Sturbridge Villiage. The museum itself was not harmed.

In Springfield, forty people were injured and 250 have been displaced by the storm. Mass Governor Deval Patrick has declared a state of emergency, and is thankful that there were not more fatalities. He stated “When I spoke with the mayor of Springfield yesterday, he told me they had 10 minutes’ warning. When you consider how quickly the tornadoes developed and then touched down, the fact that there wasn’t greater damage and loss of life is a remarkable thing.”

Massachusetts gets about two tornadoes a year, and two in the same day is a rarity. The last time there was a fatal tornado in Massachusetts was 1995. The first tornado hit Springfield around 4:30 pm and the second hit the north end of the city around 6:20pm. Experts are still working to determine how many tornadoes actually hit.

According to MSNBC:

Patrick said there was extensive damage in Hampden County, especially to homes and other structures. He asked superintendents in the 19 affected communities to cancel school Thursday and told nonessential state employees in counties impacted by the storms to stay home.

Patrick said the damage has hit home for him and Lt. Gov. Timothy Murray. Murray is the former mayor of Worcester and Patrick owns a home in western Massachusetts.

“These are my neighbors and my friends, too; the lieutenant governor’s as well,” Patrick said. “We’re worried about our friends and neighbors, our fellow citizens in western Massachusetts who have been affected by this terrible tragedy.”

The U.S. has been battered by tornadoes this year and more than 500 people have been killed, most of them in the Southeast, especially Alabama, and in Joplin, Missouri. The Joplin tornado killed 134 people , making it the deadliest single twister since 1947.

The damage has included the destruction of a steeple of a 137-year-old church as well as several collapsed buildings. Experts are still trying to determine just how much damage was done to the state, and how many tornadoes actually hit the state.

Here is some footage from the tornado:

The tornado’s debris field had gotten enough into the air that it was possible to see it with Doppler radar right around 5:06 pm.

Several buildings collapsed or partially collapsed, and it did go over Sturbridge Village.

The tornado comes in the wake of the tornado that bisected Joplin, Missouri.

Footage of the tornado:

Another tornado hit Westfield, Mass.

“Everywhere” does not just mean Maine to California. Food price increases are an international crisis. The increases in the prices of staples are mentioned as one of the causes for the uprisings in the Middle East.

Oxfam is not something Americans are overly familiar with. It is an international confederation working in 98 countries fighting poverty and injustice. It was founded in 1942 at Oxford University in Great Britain by Quakers, social activists and academics to address the problems of famine during World War II. It is recognized as the leading extra-governmental organization for assessing conditions in third-world countries. Their current assessment of the impact of rising food prices is dire.

They are warning that, if the current trend continues, by 2030 food prices will have risen 120% to 180% in countries that already have significant populations living at the subsistence level. They are calling for international co-operation in regulating food markets and improving food distribution, as well as a global investment in climate change response, which is viewed as being partly responsible for the dramatic shifts in viable crops in the past twenty years. In the United States, we have seen some minor evidence of this crop pattern shift, with northern states able to grow crops that were unthinkable thirty years ago, and crop failures due to weather across our breadbasket. This is minor compared to creeping deserts and temperature increases in countries that only had marginal farm lands to begin with.

Barbara Stocking, Oxfam’s chief executive said “The food system must be overhauled if we are to overcome the incresingly pressing challenges of climate change, spiraling food prices and the scarcity of land, water and energy.” World food prices have doubled since 1990, according to Food and Agricultural Orbanization (FAO) figures. Oxfam predicts this will only accelerate. With a prediction of the world’s population reaching nine billion by 2050, but limited increase in crop yields, the world is headed for a massive hunger crisis. Ms. Stocking also said “We are sleepwalking towards an avoidable age of crisis. One in seven people on the planet go hungry every day despite the fact that the world is capable of feeding everyone.”

The world’s poorest people spend up to 80% of their income on very basic food staples, compared to less than 20% in industrialized nations. The report highlights four places where food prices and shortages are already stressing the population: Guatemala, where failure to support local agriculture has left the population dependent on too much imported food; India, where people are paying $16 for a quart of milk and $9.87 for 2 pounds of rice; Azerbaijan, where wheat production fell 33% last year; and East Africa, where drought and famine have been a crisis situation for decades.

Oxfam believes that climate change is the greatest factor in the rise in food prices, and is calling on world leaders scheduled to meet in South Africa in December for the United Nations climate summit to create a global climate fund “so that people can protect themselves from the impacts of climate change and are better equipped to grow the food they need.” The World Bank has also warned that increases in food prices are increasing the level of extreme poverty in the world.

Oxfam also cites the political and economic issues involved in food roduction where a broken system causes “hunger, along with obesity, obscene waste and appalling environmental degradation” It is a system where “power above all determines who eats and who does not,” and the system is “constructed by and on behalf of a tiny minority – its primary purpose to deliver profit for them.” It attacks big agricultural producers, investore “playing commodities markets like casinos” and agribusinesses that do whatever they want as destructive forces.

Oxfam is calling for world leaders to institute global regulations of food markets, including increasing transparency in commodities markets and futures markets, increase food reserves, end policies that encourage the use of biofuels which divert needed food supplies (using soy oil to power cars, for example), and investment in small farms, especially those that can be run by women.

Ms. Stocking appeared on the BBC’s Today show to debate the issue with a leading British investment fund manager, Nicola Horlick, whose company has invested in farmland in Brazil – where massive amounts of the rain forest are routinely bulldozed to create “farm land” that has marginal nutrient value for corps and needs to be chemically enriched. Horlick insisted that large mechanized farms provide “some job opportunities” for local workers and create spin-off industries. “You cannot rely on a whole lot of smallholders to feed the world – it’s not going to work.” said Ms. Horlick, “It’s really important in my view that we have more investment going into farmland. There are huge tracts of farmland….that aren’t being farmed.” In her view, shortages create increased demand which increases profits which would eventually bring supply and demand back into balance. Of course, she doesn’t explain how people are going to pay for food when the same investors are doing their level best to repress incomes among their workers.

Somewhere along the line, all those people who make their livings by investing missed a few basic lessons in human psychology, particularly the part about Maslow’s pyramid of human needs. At the bottom are the basics of survival: food, clothing and shelter. Next is safety, as in being safe from natural disaster and human agression; and at the top are all those esoteric things we don’t need to survive like love and self-esteem. Even though we are seeing revolutions in the Middle East about young educated people having an opportunity to pursue their career fields, most revolutions start at that bottom layer, and even those Middle Eastern revolutions have within them an element of rising food prices and shortages. When people are starving, they blame their governments and those people in their nation who are getting rich. When they get hungry enough, they rise up in revolutions that devastate nations, like the French Revolution and the Russian Revolution.

Related articles

• “OXFAM says food prices will double by 2030″ and related posts (povertynewsblog.blogspot.com)
• Oil prices, inflation worsen hunger crisis: Oxfam (business.financialpost.com)
• Food prices will double in coming decades: Oxfam (ctv.ca)
• Hunger Crisis Worsens, Food System Broken: Oxfam (scientificamerican.com)
• Food prices ‘will double by 2030′ (bbc.co.uk)

While it is understandable that the Minnesota House might need to go into special session to deal with the natural disaster that killed one, injured 18, and caused untold damage, Minnesotans might want to know why their lawmakers were so busy ramming through a ballot initiative to try and enshrine bigotry into the state’s constitution.

The tornado took the roof off of St. John’s hospital and destroyed some 2000 homes and other buildings. There were 180 patients in the hospital who had to ride out the storm. The hospital’s helicopter was obliterated in the tornado.

According to Newton County Coroner Mark Bridges, a number of bodies were found along the city’s “restaurant row” and a local nursing home was hit head on by the storm. Missouri Governor Jay Nixon stated “It is a significant tragedy. We’re working on all cylinders. We’ve got to get an active and complete search…to make sure if there is anyone still alive in the rubble that we get them out.”

Twenty-five warning sirens went off giving residents twenty minutes to get to shelter, but it is not known how many could actually hear them. Governor Nixon stated “The bottom line was the storm was so loud you probably couldn’t hear the sirens going off.” He has declared a state of emergency and called out the Missouri National Guard for help.

Joplin Mayor Mike Woolston stated “The loss of life is incredible. We’re still trying to find people. The outlook is pretty bleak.” The city had to bring in two refrigerated trucks in order to create a make-shift morgue at a local university. According to Joplin City Councilor and Vice-Mayor Melodee Colbert-Kean, the town was in chaos. She said “It is just utter devastation anywhere you look to the south and the east — businesses, apartment complexes, houses, cars, trees, schools, you name it, it is leveled, leveled.”

President Barack Obama called Governor Nixon Sunday evening to extend his condolences to the families of Joplin, and according to Nicholas Shapiro, White House spokesman, Federal Emergency Management Agency head Craig Fugate is already on his way to Joplin to try and help with recovery and coordinate relief efforts from the federal government.

So far, tornados have killed some 300 people throughout the South, and flooding along the Mississippi has caused one fatality as well as flooding along the river as well as in Vermont and New York has caused untold amounts of property damage.

The tornado that his Joplin was estimated to be six miles long, and ½ to 3/4 of a mile wide.

TPM reports:

Sharon Hurtt 60, and Bill Dearing, 59, had no basement to flee to when the tornado descended on their single-story home, so they huddled in a closet between two bedrooms. Within minutes, the roof was gone and powerful winds ripped the door off the closet.

“We were holding on to keep from blowing away,” said Hurtt.

A mattress blown off the bed somehow became wedged in the doorway.

“It probably saved us,” said Hurtt.

When the couple emerged, the daycare center next door was gone and mangled cars and other debris littered their yard.

Carla Tabares said she, her husband and several families with children squeezed into the kitchen cooler of an Outback Steakhouse restaurant when the twister neared, huddling in the chilly darkness until the howling of the storm passed.

“It was really awful, really scary,” she said. The restaurant was largely unscathed, but other buildings were badly damaged. “I’m just thankful we got out alive, and I really feel sorry for the people who didn’t.”

Video has emerged of the tornado as someone with a video camera caught it hitting a restaurant head on. The video lacks clear footage due to the lack of lighting. It was uploaded to YouTube by izelsg. He wrote:

The video i took while at Fastrip on east 20th street. We huddled in the back of the store until the glass got sucked out , then ran into the walk in storage fridge. Sorry for the lack of visuals but the audio is pretty telling of how intense the storm was. The tornado hits at around 1:20 seconds.

More photos of the devastation can be seen here:

Huffington Post

Related articles

• 89 dead in Joplin, Missouri tornado (telegraph.co.uk)
• Dozens feared dead in Joplin, Missouri tornado (telegraph.co.uk)
• Severe Weather Leaves One Dead In Minnesota, 22 Injured (lezgetreal.com)
• Powerful tornado decimates Joplin, Missouri (cnn.com)
• Deadly tornado tears through the US Midwest (independent.co.uk)
• Storms in US Midwest: massive tornado damage in Joplin, Missouri and Minneapolis (telegraph.co.uk)

Director of emergency management for the city of Joplin and Jasper County Keith Stammer stated that a possible tornado hit Joplin, Missouri. So far, the number of injuries from Joplin has not been reported, but there appear to be no deaths. Tractor trailers were strewn along I-44 west of Joplin according to Michael Ratliff, a storm chaser.

LeDale Davis, a resident of the north side of Minneapolis, stated that at least one tornado touched down about three blocks from his house and tore through restaurants, gas stations and homes in the commercial district around Broadway and Penn Avenue. He told CNN “This is the first time we can remember a tornado touched down in this area. They aren’t usually in the heart of the city.” Sheriff’s dispatcher Linda Hamilton of Anoka County stated that they are receiving reports of roofs blown off, trees down and gas leaks. She stated that the worst damage appears to have been in Fridley, on the northern outskirts of the metro area.

According to CNN:

Curby Rogers said warning sirens sounded near her northwest Minneapolis home Sunday afternoon. Shortly afterward, the light rain that had been falling was whipped into sheets by heavy wind, and power went out.

“We could hear doors busting open through the house,” Rogers said. “There was a lot of commotion, and then it was silent.”

When she and a visiting friend emerged from their house, the streets were blocked by debris and a tree had fallen on her car. Around the corner, the damage was “a million times worse,” with some houses split in half.

Masks and goggles are required for travel outside at this point in Iceland, and the local airport has been shut down until further notice. So far, no indications as to whether or not this eruption will disrupt travel across Europe. Here is some video of the eruption.

Related articles

• Iceland’s Grimsvotn Volcano Erupts, Is Ragnarök About To Happen? (lezgetreal.com)

The last time Grimsvotn erupted was back in 2004.

Scientists are hoping that this will not cause the same kind of air travel chaos that it did when the Eyjafjallajokul volcano erupted in April of last year.

So far, this day has been rather devoid of extensive natural disasters that were predicted by Harold Camping.

The sparsely populated Iceland is one of the most volcanically active countries in the world, and eruptions are frequent. Often they cause flooding as glacier ice melts, but it is very rare for there to be any deaths. According to MSNBC:

Last year’s Eyjafjallajokul eruption left millions of air travelers stranded after winds pushed the ash cloud toward some of the world’s busiest airspace and led most northern European countries to ground all planes for five days.

In November, melted glacial ice began pouring from Grimsvotn, signaling a possible eruption. That was a false alarm but scientists have been monitoring the volcano closely ever since.

So, grab your sword, grab your axe, and let us begin preparations for the battle to end all battles!

And just in time for the movie Thor!

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43121772/ns/world_news-europe/

Related articles

• Subglacial eruption starting at Iceland’s Grímsvötn (bigthink.com)
• Scientists: Iceland’s Grimsvotn volcano erupting (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Scientists: Iceland’s Grimsvotn volcano erupting (thenewstribune.com)

The quakes struck too far inland to cause a tsunami.

More will be added as it becomes available.

NASA Mars probe

03-22-2011 by L. S. Carbonell

There are days when one really needs a story like this one…..

In a speech marking World Water Day, Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez said “I have always said, heard, that it would not be strange that there had been civilization on Mars, but maybe capitalism arrived there, imperialism arrived and finished off the planet.” Capitalism? Imperialism? Really? Arrived from where? One hundred sixty three years after the publication of The Communist Manifesto, Chavez managed to come up with something no other communist or socialist has ever proposed. He might want to ask someone in Eastern Europe if communism and imperialism are mutually exclusive.

He went on to warn “Careful! Here on planet Earth where hundred of years ago or less there were great forests, now there are deserts. Where there were rivers, there are deserts.” He added that the attack on Libya was all about water and oil. Water? Libya has water?????

The United States National Research Council has suggested that NASA’s next mission objective should be robotic exploration of Mars to look for traces of civilization. Earthlings can’t get past that first impression that the “canals” were proof of sentient life, even after we’ve landed there and shown they aren’t really canals. Let’s just hope that before we send up the next Mars probe, we solve that little problem we have with being the only nation on earth still using English measurements instead of metric. That’s what caused one of our probes to fail – America’s refusal to do anything European.

Related articles

• Hugo Chavez: Capitalism May Have Destroyed Life On Mars (outsidethebeltway.com)
• Hugo Chavez condemns Libya airstrikes as ‘madness’ (sfgate.com)
• Chavez blasts West’s assault on Libya (redantliberationarmy.wordpress.com)
• Imperialism or Barbarism! (Bahrain Doesn’t Count) (redantliberationarmy.wordpress.com)
• Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez: US, allies want Libyan oil [Zahir shamsery] (ecademy.com)
• World water day & American diabetes alert day. (perry55sblog.wordpress.com)
• Maude Barlow: On World Water Day We Should Be Finding Ways to Make Water a Means of Peace, Not Conflict (alternet.org)

Graham recently stated that Jesus told his followers that earthquakes was a sign of the second coming. He said “Maybe this is, I don’t know. But regardless, all of us need to be prepared to stand before almighty God.”

TPM stated:

As he explained, an increase in natural disasters was just like how “as a woman gives birth to a child, those labor pains as they begin they start intensifying with more frequency.”

As the popular novel Good Omens pointed out, the Second Coming should have happened in 1995 given all the astronomical data that has been gathered. Of course, there have been doomsday cults surrounding Christianity since it began with Apocalyptic literature being common in the century or so after the founding of the faith. Indeed, it continues to be popular with people inside Christianity all but worshiping the end of the world and doing what they can to ensure that the world does end. The joys of self-fulfilling prophecies.

Meanwhile, the increase in large seismic events is rather typical. Earthquakes along the Ring of Fire tend to be cyclical and large ones tend to cluster a lot.

WELL, either that, or the Goddess is royally pissed off with how humans have abused and polluted Her surface that She’s acting out.

Video below.

Related articles

• Rev. Franklin Graham: Japanese Disaster Could Signal Second Coming, But Media Hype Is Unwarranted (mediaite.com)

Media Reports a Major 7.9 magnitude Earthquake off Japan’s northeastern coast Friday afternoon, shaking buildings in Tokyo for several minutes and sending people out into the streets. A tsunami warning is in effect for Japan, Russia, Marcus Island and the Northern Marianas, and a watch  issued for Guam, Taiwan, the Philippines, Indonesia and Hawaii. Japan’s NHK says a small tsunami hit the shore near the epicenter around 3 p.m local time.

What may assist in minimizing damage is the fact that it struck at a depth of 6 miles (10 kilometers), about 80 miles (125 kilometers) off the eastern coast, about 240 miles northeast of Tokyo.

Still building rocked in Tokyo,and even those large buildings geared for quakes shook violently as workers poured into the street.

Police and coast guard officials said they were assessing possible damage from the quake. Although billows of smoke can be seen in the distance from this citizen photo, there are no reports yet on injuries or fatalities. The extent of damage is unknown.   A reader reports that the Quake seemed to last for as many as 3 or 4 minutes.

Okay, excuse me while I laugh my butt off. Not over the dead chickens. They didn’t deserve to die that way. But for the rest of it – what rock has everyone been living under?

For the last few years, we have seen shifts in the winter weather patterns. Two years ago, a snowfall record that had stood since the night I was conceived (no joke) in New York City was broken. This is the third winter that I’ve received photos from my daughter in suburban Atlanta showing measurable snow in her backyard. What made people think this wasn’t a climatic shift but a one or two winter anomaly? Oh, yeah, Fox News.

For 15 years or so, right wing commentators like Ann Coulter have used every cold snap to denounce “global warming.” Every story that Fox News carries about climate change is “balanced” with some “global warming” denier. On Yahoo comment streams, Al Gore is the butt of vicious jokes.

We don’t need state and local governments who aren’t paying attention to the realities around us. Global warming causes climate shifts. The world is measurably warmer than it was twenty years ago. Last year was the warmest, globally, since measurements became possible. Weather is not climate. Weather is local, climate is global. Climate is impacted by such things as global warming. Global warming, the rise of ocean levels, the melting of the Arctic and Antarctic snow packs has shifted climate patterns all over the world. Those are the facts. Period.

We can expect future winters to be this severe, and we should prepare for it. People need to be taught to pay attention to the snow on their roofs. Chain stores need to expand the weather-related products they carry. It should not be impossible to buy anti-freeze windshield washer fluid in Georgia. Real snow tires should be available in Dallas. States that have spent more time worrying about how many houses have air conditioning need to look at how many houses don’t have adequate central heating systems. I’m not kidding about this. Too many of the poor neighborhoods in the south are block after block of houses that only have space heaters of some kind, and insulation has never been a major issue in the older homes there.

And we seriously need to teach people all over the country how to drive in these winter conditions.

I thought it was funny years ago when my daughter called me and complained that “these damned southerners don’t know how to drive in snow” because she’d gotten her license in Atlanta. Children apparently pay far more attention to how you drive than you think they do. That was her explanation for knowing how to drive in winter conditions, in spite of the fact that we’d moved to Florida when she was five. I don’t think her remark is funny any more, not after watching the tapes of stupidity on the roads.

These weather changes are not an anomaly. They are a pattern that will continue for the foreseeable future. The deaths, the property damage, the shutdowns of whole cities cannot continue to happen. We need to change the language of the debate from “global warming” to the accurate “climate change.” We need to take this issue out of the partisan politics of cap-and-trade and environmental laws. It is an issue of public safety, human and animal life, and the functionality of our communities.

The various celebrations surrounding this day and this time of year were often woven into the celebration of Christmas. The Christmas tree, the holly, the running of the deer, the red and white of Saint Nicholas’ garb, and so forth all have some meaning to this time of year among Pagans. Christ, himself, was born in either Spring or Fall depending on whose research one believes.

This Solstice is a major one because, across the Northern Hemisphere, it will coincide with a full lunar eclipse. This conjunction last occurred 456 years ago, making this a momentous event.

According to Nicole Cooper, a high priestess of Toronto’s Wiccan Church of Canada, “It’s a ritual of transformation from darkness into light. It’s the idea that when things seem really bleak, (it) is often our biggest opportunity for personal transformation.

“The idea that the sun and the moon are almost at their darkest at this point in time really only further goes to hammer that home.”

Cooper, as quoted in the Montreal Gazette article notes that Wiccans see this union as having great significance given the joining of masculine sun energies and feminine lunar energies. It should be noted that in Shinto, the sun is seen as feminine and is named Ameratsu. Cooper does intend to weave the transformative energies of this event into her church’s winter-solstice rituals.

There are no real mythologies or traditions associated with the coupling of the Winter Solstice and the Lunar Eclipse, or at least none that have survived the Burning Times, which reached their zenith around 1580 and could have wiped out any knowledge regarding the significance of this event which last occurred in 1554.

Unfortunately, the significance of such events tended to be obliterated by later patriarchal cultures seeking to break the shamanistic and more gynocentric cultures that they were conquering or cleansing themselves of.

The eclipse will hit the Northeastern United States around 2am and last until 4am.

The significance of the day and the eclipse depended greatly on the culture.

One person has reported that “our office building shook for nearly 30 seconds. I heard it and felt it. I watched the drink on my desk shake and the liquid slosh around in my cup.” The majority of the reported damage has been minimal with some reports of walls cracking. The initial magnitude was listed as 4.5, but it was downgraded to 4.3. It was centered five miles to the east of Norman and twenty miles south-southwest of Oklahoma City. The quake was only 3.1 miles deep, which made the shaking more noticeable.

Oklahoma City Mayor Mick Cornett stated that 9-1-1 dispatchers were fielding calls from people who said that they felt the quake, but told people that “this is not ncessary. We are currently not doing anything. There are no reports of damage.” He did note that an earthquake is extremely unusual for the area and he has never felt one before. He did add that there was no reason for people to be alarmed.

According to Oklahoma Emergency Management, its State Operations Center has received calls from thirteen counties with people reporting that they felt the earthquake, but no reports of injuries or major damage. Patricia Nolen of the Norman police has stated that the police department has received several calls from people reporting things falling off of shelves or plaster coming down.

Jim Bailey, Norman deputy fire chief, stated “This is the largest one that I’ve certainly ever felt in Oklahoma and I’ve been here my whole life.” Randy Simmons of the Oklahoma electric Cooperative stated that there were no power outages reported, but that “the wall sure shook, though.”

Source

“I have hardly the words that somebody would do that to somebody’s religious book, she told reporters in Islamabad. She had just finished a visit to northwestern Pakistan, one of the regions hardest hit by the flooding.

Jones and his fifty-five followers believe that the Quran is evil because it is not the Bible, and that they are part of a spiritual war against Satan. He has received the support of Fred Phelps, apparently, of Westboro Baptist Church, another cultish church associated with Christianity.

The issue has not been percolating in Pakistan because of the devastation wrought by the floods that have killed over 1,700 people and displaced or affected eighteen million more.

In keeping with local Muslim custom, Jolie wore a long dress and covered her hair with a black scarf. She stated about the flooding “I was shocked especially by how high the floodwaters went. In some of the people’s houses, it was nine feet (three meters) high. . .There’s lots of speculation about why this one has not gotten the attention it deserves. Even all of the wonderful coverage … is not getting the response that usually it’s able to get.”

Jolie is a UN Goodwill Ambassador, and the UN hoped that her visit would help spark fundraising to help Pakistan. The UN has appealed for $460 million in emergency funds, but received only $294 million since 11 August.

Source

Damage appears to have been extensive, but then again, New Zealand has been the site of so many earthquakes that over a decade ago they began construction on buildings which could withstand intense earthquakes. New Zealand has over fourteen hundred earthquakes a year, and around twenty every year which exceed magnitude 5.0 and greater.

So far, there have been no casualties. The earthquake was felt across the South Island when it struck at 4:35am local time. Power outages are wide spread, including as far afield as Dunedin.

According to Susan Birkbeck, who lives in the center of Christchurch, “It was absolutely shocking, we’re all terrified and scared of what’s going to happen next. I was asleep and suddenly the house started shaking and there was this smashing sound, I thought a large truck had just driven through the front window. I’m now sitting on my bed surrounded by broken glass and I’ve no idea what to do. The walls and roof are just hanging, it’s terrifying.

Colleen Simpson, another resident of Christchurch, stated “there is a row of shops completely demolished right in front of me.”

Aftershocks are still happening long after the main earthquake has passed.

So far, there has been no word from the National Organization for Marriage, Focus on the Family, Westboro Baptist Church, or any of those right wing groups claiming that this was God’s retribution for New Zealand supporting homosexuality. Still, they don’t seem to be willing to do anything about blaming God for the other earthquakes. Those might be harder to explain.

Source

Search for an explanation is on going. Was the statue destroyed by lightning? Did God decide to smite it? One possible explanation is found in the Bible:

“You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.”

Of course, another explanation might be with regards to the church itself:

Then, in 1998 I founded Pro-Family Network, which is a Christian Family Advocacy organization…Also during this time I started, with the help of my pastor’s wife, a ministry at Solid Rock Church in Monroe, Ohio. Living Free Ministries helps those who want to leave the homosexual lifestyle deal with the issues that brought them to gender identity confusion. We have helped scores of people to follow the Manufacturer’s guidelines for successful living.

Perhaps God is not amused at people insulting His lesbian, gay and transsexual creations by claiming that “formerly” gay people- that is straight people- are being discriminated against, as Pastor Greg Quinlan of the church, has said numerous times.

Of course, questions abound. Why did God strike down this statue constructed in 2004? Was it God? Maybe God just did not like the statue. Maybe God does not like bigots who try to force others into the torture bed of rigid theocracy. Maybe God missed and was trying to hit the church instead. Well, for what ever reason it happened, God made the Worst Person’s list on Olbermann for setting Himself on fire.

The King of Kings statue was completely obliterated. At least the flaming Jesus is out.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

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As Hawaii experiences a near hit, low lying fishing areas are bracing for what is being termed a frightening and likely Tsunami.  Areas impacted could include Okinawa and Tokyo. Although Japan is used to such warnings, this one seems to be gaining special attention because of the perceived danger.   As they head into night, Japan may be hit an about one hour.

AP Reports from TOKYO – 28 February 2010 0917 hrs (Japan) Japan’s weather agency issued a major tsunami alert for its Pacific coastline Sunday after the massive earthquake in Chile that has killed more than 200 people.

The Japan Meteorological Agency warned that waves of up to three metres (10 feet) could hit the northern coastal areas of Aomori, Iwate and Miyagi.

The agency also issued tsunami warnings for waves of up to two metres along the entire Pacific coastline of the Japanese archipelago, from the northern main island of Hokkaido through the southern Okinawa island chain.

First waves could hit the Pacific coast of Hokkaido and the central Izu region of the main island at around 1 pm (0400 GMT), the agency said.

The Hawaii-based Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said earlier that the tsunami warning it had put in place after Saturday’s 8.8 magnitude earthquake has been canceled everywhere except Japan and Russia.

However several nations in the Pacific, including Australia, said their own local tsunami warnings remained in effect after the Chile quake, one of the largest on record.

Tsunami’s are not tidal waves. A Tsunami is a feature of a movement of plates as it impacts the ocean floor, whereas a tidal wave is a concomitant of currents of the Ocean.  (Thanks AP for keeping us Updated)

Note Larry King Speaks to Survivors on CNN tonight.
Reported dead in Chile Quake is 214

The magnitude was fa greater in Chile, yet clearly the result different when compared to Haiti- this is based on the Infrastructure – making poverty a great cause of the large numbers dead in Haiti

Posted by Melanie Nathan.

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2/25/10.  HILO, Hawaii — A tsunami triggered by an earthquake in Chile has swept ashore in Hawaii, Reports Associated Press.

The extent of the damage was not immediately clear. But the initial waves did not appear to be serious, looking more like an extreme fluctuation in the tide than a giant tsunami.

The wave began affecting Hilo Bay on the Big Island just before noon local time. Water began pulling away from shore, exposing reefs and sending dark streaks of muddy, sandy water offshore. Water later washed over Coconut Island, a small park off the coast of Hilo.

The tsunami raced across the Pacific Ocean in terrifying force after the magnitude-8.8 quake hit Chile. Hawaii officials had ample time to get people out of the potential disaster area, and thousands were evacuated.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check  AP for the rest of the article…

Posted by Melanie Nathan -  nCalifornia Coast Put on Alert – Advisory for Tsunami.   Driving home from Sabbath at the Temple to day I heard on the news that the beaches that surround me (between 4 miles as the crow flies) have been evacuated due to a Tsunami advisory, resulting from an eight plus Earthquake in Chile. (Note and advisory is an alert, whereas a warning results in evacuation.

While that feels close to home, I wonder about our own San Andreas fault – the one that runs alongside my house, not to mention the hundreds of other faults and those yet to be uncovered.

Of course I am not worried and my life continues as normal – I mean it is rainy and cold, after all and hence I am unlikely to visit the beach today.

However I am watching TV to see what is going on in Hawaii and it seems they are having surges in the Pacific, with Tsunami activity reflected by flashing bouys.  The ocean itself is rising and falling and tourists are standing on balconies watching and waiting.

The conditions are not necessarily conducive to a big tidal wave – the danger however lies in the fact that the currents change rapidly and one cannot predict the effects of an earthquake related Tsunami.   In Hawaii, Big Island, and others has been basically shut down, Business closed etc.

Right now on CNN TV has picked up one solitary being walking on the Beach and the announcer says its either the most idiotic thing he has seen or that maybe that one soul has no media to advise him otherwise.  Oh well enough chatter. For those of you who are only reading Lezgetreal – Get off the friggin Marin beach Go to high ground.  Okay Okay just kidding more likely to have an earthquake in this moment than a Tsunami, despite the advisory.

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The magnitude 4.1 earthquake jolted the area for a few seconds and seems to have originated from the Newport-Inglewood Fault, which is the same fault that caused the magnitude 4.7 earthquake on May 17th. The City of Los Angeles is reporting no infrastructure impact or other significant damage, and there are no reported fires or injuries.

UPDATE: Reports confirm that this quake was an aftershock to the May 17th earthquake, and more can be expected over the next days and weeks.

If you live in California and are looking for information on what you can do to prepare for an earthquake, you can visit www.earthquakecountry.info.

Julie Phineas is a work at home mom of 2 who lives in Southern California. You can find out more about her online by visiting her website at www.juliephineas.com.

The California Emergency Management Agency (Cal EMA) issued a warning to operational Red Cross areas throughout the state yesterday after a 4.8 magnitude earthquake that occurred three miles south of Bombay Beach, Imperial County at 4:55 am. Although there were no damages or injuries reported as a result of this event, The U.S. Geological Survey has been tracking an “unusual sequence” of over 50 aftershocks, that have been clustered about 1 to 3 kilometers southwest of a projected extension of the San Andreas Fault, in the Salton Sea area. The majority of the magnitudes have been less than 2.5, although ABC has reported magnitudes as high as 3.5. Cal EMA recommended to the Red Cross that operational areas reach out to raise awareness of the events, and “ensure the readiness of systems essential to emergency operations”.

Out lesbian Kate Hutton, aka The Earthquake Lady, is the CalTech Seismologist who is constantly sought by the media for her professional commentary regarding major Earthquakes, especially in Southern California.

“Swarms in the Imperial Valley are not a big deal,” she said in regards to the Salton Sea quakes. “We’re used to that. The reason that this one, and another one in 2001, got significant attention from us is that it’s very close to the San Andreas Fault.”

The San Andreas Fault is the notorious fault that falls on a tectonic plate which links the Pacific Plate and the North American Plate.

Cal EMA said in their issued warning:

Based on scientific data, and the fact that these most recent earthquakes have been in close proximity to the San Andreas Fault, there is increased concern that these earthquakes could trigger a large earthquake (M7.0 +) on the San Andreas itself. Historically, a major earthquake on this southern portion of the San Andreas Fault has not occurred in over 300 years, so the probability of a large earthquake is thought by seismologists to be higher than on portions of the fault that have ruptured more recently (e.g. in 1857 and 1906).

Just a few months ago The Great Southern California Shakeout simulated what would happen if that happened on the San Andreas Fault.

Kate Hutton said:

“The fictional 7.8 earthquake that was the scenario for the shakeout drill started right here, OK? And this whole section hasn’t broken since 1680, probably, so that’s the reason for the close eye that we keep on it. It’s another straw on a camel’s back, but we don’t know how many are there and we don’t know how many a ‘camel’ can hold.”

As each day passes the risk of a large San Andreas earthquake decreases.

Cal EMA says that they will continue to monitor the situation and keep in contact with CEPEC scientists over the next few days.

**If you live in California, you can find out what you need to do to be prepared for a major earthquake at earthquakeauthority.com.

Julie Phineas is a work at home mom of 2 who lives in Southern California. You can find out more about her online by visiting her website at www.juliephineas.com.

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