Seven Hundred Billion - My Ass!

"Yesterday, President Bush announced his $700 billion plan to buy out troubled financial institutions. Demanding enormous faith in his administration’s stewardship, the plan “would place no restrictions on the administration other than requiring semiannual reports to Congress, granting the Treasury secretary unprecedented power to buy and resell mortgage debt,” and to hire outside firms “to help manage its purchases.” Further, the proposal provides no oversight mechanism:

Sec. 8. Review: Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.

Bush is demanding unprecedented control over billions of dollars — with no oversight."

See what else Think Progress has to say about the shrub ‘Demanding’ 700 Billion.

See what Matt Stoler has to say about the 700 Billion.

Nearly 12,900 Chinese children sick from milk

China said Sunday the number of children sickened by baby formula tainted with the banned industrial chemical melamine has doubled to nearly 12,900 as the government confronts a scandal over widespread contamination of the milk supply.

More than 80 percent of the 12,892 children hospitalized in recent weeks were 2 years old or younger, the Health Ministry said in a statement posted on its Web site late Sunday. Four children have died.

The ministry said most of the children sickened consumed infant formula from one company, the Shijiazhuang Sanlu Group Co.

Update: The number of children in China sickened by dairy products tainted with the banned industrial chemical melamine has jumped to nearly 53,000, the government said.

Damn, one was too many. But 53,000!

The Army’s Totally Serious Mind-Control Project

Soldiers barking orders at each other is so 20th Century. That’s why the U.S. Army has just awarded a $4 million contract to begin developing “thought helmets” that would harness silent brain waves for secure communication among troops. Ultimately, the Army hopes the project will “lead to direct mental control of military systems by thought alone.”

If this sounds insane, it would have been as recently as a few years ago. But improvements in computing power and a better understanding of how the brain works have scientists busy hunting for the distinctive neural fingerprints that flash through a brain when a person is talking to himself. The Army’s initial goal is to capture those brain waves with incredibly sophisticated software that then translates the waves into audible radio messages for other troops in the field. “It’d be radio without a microphone, ” says Dr. Elmar Schmeisser, the Army neuroscientist overseeing the program. “Because soldiers are already trained to talk in clean, clear and formulaic ways, it would be a very small step to have them think that way.”

Full Story: Time Magazine

India becomes first country to use brain scanning in courts

The new technology is, to its critics, Orwellian. Others view it as a silver bullet against terrorism that could render waterboarding and other harsh interrogation methods obsolete. Some scientists predict the end of lying as we know it.

Now, well before any consensus on the technology’s readiness, India has become the first country to convict someone of a crime relying on evidence from this controversial machine: a brain scanner that produces images of the human mind in action and is said to reveal signs that a suspect remembers details of the crime in question.

Full Story: New York Times

Anxiety-detecting machines could spot terrorists

“A scene from the airport of the future: A man’s pulse races as he walks through a checkpoint. His quickened heart rate and heavier breathing set off an alarm. A machine senses his skin temperature jumping. Screeners move in to question him.Signs of a terrorist? Or simply a passenger nervous about a cross-country flight?

It may seem straight out of an Orwellian nightmare, but on Thursday, the Homeland Security Department showed off an early version of physiological screeners that could spot terrorists. The department’s research division is years from using the machines in an airport or an office building — if they even work at all. But officials believe the idea could transform security by doing a bio scan to spot dangerous people.

Critics doubt such a system can work. The idea, they say, subjects innocent travelers to the intrusion of a medical exam. The futuristic machinery works on the same theory as a polygraph, looking for sharp swings in body temperature, pulse and breathing that signal the kind of anxiety exuded by a would-be terrorist or criminal. Unlike a lie-detector test that wires subjects to sensors as they answer questions, the “Future Attribute Screening Technology” (FAST) scans people as they walk by a set of cameras.”

Read the story in USA Today

New way to spot breast cancer shows promise

A radioactive tracer that "lights up" cancer hiding inside dense breasts showed promise in its first big test against mammograms, revealing more tumors and giving fewer false alarms, doctors reported Wednesday.

The experimental method - molecular breast imaging, or MBI - would not replace mammograms for women at average risk of the disease.

But it might become an additional tool for higher risk women with a lot of dense tissue that makes tumors hard to spot on mammograms, and it could be done at less cost than an MRI, or magnetic resonance imaging.

About one-fourth of women 40 and older have dense breasts.

"MBI is a promising technology" that is already in advanced testing, said Carrie Hruska, a biomedical engineer at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., which has been working on it for six years.

She gave results in a telephone news briefing Wednesday and will present them later this week at an American Society of Clinical Oncology conference in Washington, D.C.

Mammograms - a type of X-ray - are the chief way now to check for breast cancer.

MBI uses radiation, too, but in a different way.

Women are given an intravenous dose of a short-acting tracer that is absorbed more by abnormal cells than healthy ones.

Special cameras collect the "glow" these cells give off, and doctors look at the picture to spot tumors.

Researchers tried both methods, on 940 women who had dense breasts and a high risk of cancer because of family history, bad genes or other reasons.

Thirteen tumors were found in 12 women - eight by MBI alone, one by mammography alone, two by both methods and two by neither. (The two missed cancers were found on subsequent annual mammograms, physical exams or other imaging tests.)

Looked at another way, MBI found 10 out of 13 tumors, missing three; mammograms detected three out of 13 tumors and missed 10.

Using both methods, 11 out of 13 tumors would have been detected.

"These images are quite striking. You can see how the cancers would be hidden on the mammograms," Hruska said.

Mammograms gave false alarms - led doctors to conclude that cancer was present when it was not - in about 9 percent of patients, compared to only 7 percent for MBI.

The MBI tests led to more biopsies than mammograms did, but they more often revealed cancer.

The Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation and Bristol-Myers Squibb, which makes the imaging agent used in the study, paid for the work.

The next test will be to see how MBI stacks up against MRI.

The federal government is paying for a new study Mayo is leading that compares the two in 120 high-risk women with dense breasts.

MRI is often used now for women with dense breasts, but it gives many false alarms that lead to unnecessary biopsies.

Doctors hope MBI will prove more accurate and cost less - under $500 versus more than $1,000 for an MRI.

"We all know that mammography is, in and of itself, an imperfect tool, and we clearly need to do better in the future," said Dr. Eric Winer of the Dana-Farber Cancer Center in Boston, a spokesman for the oncology group. "It is fair to say that MRI will not solve all problems either."

One drawback of MBI: It uses about 8 to 10 times the radiation of mammograms, a dose that engineers like Hruska are trying to lower with newer technology.

Other medical centers also are testing MBI.

"We're just beginning to see what this technology can do," she said.

Life imitates ‘art'

All right so television isn’t art but it works for this …

Sopranos' actor's murder trial set for October

"Sopranos" actor Lillo Brancato Jr. is set to go to trial next month in the death of an off-duty New York police officer.

A judge ruled Friday that Brancato and co-defendant Steven Armento would be tried separately.

Prosecutors wanted them tried together.

Authorities say they broke into an apartment to look for prescription drugs in 2005.

Officer Daniel Enchautegui confronted them and was killed in a shootout.

Armento is accused of firing the fatal shot.

Brancato, who played an aspiring mobster on HBO's "The Sopranos," says he didn't know Armento had a gun.

Brancato's murder trial is set for Oct. 28.

Armento goes on trial Sept. 29.

Zor and Zam

As of Sunday, Sept. 21, 2008, 4,168 members of the U.S. military have died in the Iraq.

The British military has reported 176 deaths; Italy, 33; Ukraine, 18; Poland, 21; Bulgaria, 13; Spain, 11; Denmark, 7; El Salvador, 5; Slovakia, 4; Latvia and Georgia, 3 each; Estonia, Netherlands, Thailand and Romania, 2 each; and Australia, Hungary, Kazakhstan and South Korea, 1 death each.

"... Two little kings playing a game. They gave a war and nobody came ..."

Would that it be so ...

Cyber Attackers Beware

Just in case you were concerned ... the wing-nut cyber attacks on Carolina Naturally over the past few days have been throughly defeated and those that attempted the attacks are now dealing with the aftereffects of those foolish attempts.

To wit: Computers that won't boot up, automatic uploads and downloads of all kinds of 'interesting' stuff and ultimately their computers will simply implode and cease to function all together.

It's not nice to fool with us 'old school' computer people - we know the operating machine languages and the C++ crowd hasn't a clue!

Just have to tell their machines to perform a function that has no end ... Sorta like telling the kids you threw 100 pennies in the back yard and they aren't allowed to come in the house until they find all 100 pennies but you only threw out 99 pennies.

The poison your brew today

Has everyone else noticed the Haters are beating themselves up for being haters and telling us they want to throw themselves out of office?

It is really too funny - as many have said the repugicans are running against themselves as if they think they have fooled us by going out the back door, circling around front and yelling at the empty house for the neighbors to see and hear them calling for the bums to leave.

It is pretty pathetic actually - but we cannot help laughing.

I think the line goes something like this 'the poison you brew today, will kill you tomorrow' - or something like that - and by dang, tomorrow has come.

And I Quote

Life begins at rape...ask mayor Palin

~ Shannyn Moore

Shannyn Moore is a blogger in Alaska and knows all about Palin and her hatred of women
Check out her blog and the Mudflats for all things Alaska.

Manhunt on for suspect in slaying of NC deputy

Authorities in rural North Carolina are searching for an Iraq veteran they suspect in the fatal shooting of a sheriff's deputy. Another sheriff's officer was shot but suffered minor injuries.

Officials with the Caldwell County Sheriff's Department said Saturday night they were searching for 32-year-old Skip Brinkley, an Army veteran who served in Iraq from 2004 to 2006. They say he also has some law enforcement training.

Officials say Deputy Adam Klutz was responding to a 911 call at a home earlier Saturday when he was shot in a spot not protected by his bulletproof vest. The other officer was hit three times in his vest.

More than 200 officers were searching the surrounding area in Lenoir, about 75 northwest of Charlotte.

Up the Whazoo

I hope you have a lot of Vaseline to soothe the burn from the screwing our collective anal cavity has been getting for the past seven years because we are about to be rectally assaulted even harder ... and with a bigger dildo~!

700 Billion Dollars- That's correct 700 Billion!

That is what the shrub and the cabal are telling congress (which means us ... the Taxpayers) they want and that they want to give to their buddies to 'help' them out of the mess they made for themselves - with the help of the shrub and the cabal - while giving us the hard one up the whazoo.

You want to talk about gall, stupidity, arrogance, incompetence ... if this doesn't twist your beak then you are dead.

To paraphrase another ... get ready for inflation like we've never seen, gas shortages, runs on regional banks, and other such life experiences ...

Something Wicked this way comes ... indeed!

Obama hits McCain on lobbyists, Social Security

Campaigning in Florida, Democrat Barack Obama criticized Republican presidential rival John McCain on Saturday for his past advocacy of deregulation, ties to lobbyists and support for partial privatization of the Social Security system many of Florida's elderly residents depend on.

The Democratic presidential nominee used McCain's words to portray him as an opponent of federal regulation of the banking industry.

McCain, a 26-year veteran of Congress with a long history of opposition to such regulation, now says more controls are needed to prevent a repeat of the financial turmoil that sent the stock market plunging this past week.

"There's only one candidate who's called himself 'fundamentally a deregulator' when deregulation is part of the problem," Obama said during an appearance at Bethune-Cookman University, arranged to highlight his campaign's effort to reach out to women voters.

Obama noted that McCain said in a trade publication that opening the health insurance market to more vigorous competition nationwide, as was done with the banking industry, would provide more choices.

"So let me get this straight," Obama said. "He wants to run health care like they've been running Wall Street. Well, Senator, I know some folks on Main Street who aren't going to think that's a good idea."

"Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation," McCain said..

Obama said in Jacksonville: "John McCain said he wants to do for health care what Washington did for bankers."

McCain has criticized Obama this week, including in television ads, for ties to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two faltering mortgage giants that government took over earlier this month. But Obama said McCain is the one who's campaign is filled with current or former Fannie and Freddie lobbyists.

"There's only one candidate whose campaign is being run by seven of Washington's most powerful lobbyists, and folks, it isn't me," Obama said, adding that he doesn't "take a dime" from Washington lobbyists and special interests.

"So when John McCain says that lobbyists 'won't even get past the front gate' at his White House, my question is, 'Who's going to stop them?' Those seven lobbyists," Obama said.

In Jacksonville before 12,000 cheering backers, with another 8,000 outside the rally, he argued that McCain has no solutions for the nation's economic crisis.

"His solution was to blame me for it," Obama said. "I would say Sen. McCain is a little panicked."

He accused McCain of relentlessly pushing deregulation, the sort of loose controls many blame for the turmoil on Wall Street.

On Social Security, Obama said he'll protect and strengthen the program, while McCain wants to privatize it.

McCain favors partial privatization, giving younger workers the option of diverting money they pay in Social Security taxes to private accounts. President Bush pushed such a plan in 2005 but dropped it after Congress pushed back.

Obama said that given events of the past week, with several major investment firms either allowed to fail or be taken over by the government, "millions would've watched as the market tumbled and their nest egg disappeared before their eyes."

"I know Sen. McCain is talking about a 'casino culture' on Wall Street, but the fact is, he's the one who wants to gamble with your life savings," Obama said.

Cheney must keep records, judge orders

Oooh, that's gotta hurt ...

Dick Cheney must preserve a broad range of records from his time in office, a federal judge ordered Saturday, ruling in favor of a private watchdog group.

U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly found that the records are not excluded from preservation under Presidential Records Act, which gives the national archivist responsibility over the custody of and access to the records at the end of a president's final term.

Thecabal had sought a narrow interpretation of the act to allow for fewer materials to be preserved by the National Archives.

"Defendants were only willing to agree to a preservation order that tracked their narrowed interpretation of the PRA's statutory language," Kollar-Kotelly said in her order. This position "heightens the Court's concern" that some records will not be preserved without an injunction.

Cheney chief of staff David Addington has told Congress that the vice president belongs to neither the executive nor legislative branch of government, AP reported. Instead, he said, the office is attached by the Constitution to Congress. The vice president presides over the Senate.

The lawsuit -- naming among its defendants Cheney, the Executive Office of President and the National Archives and Records Administration -- was filed by the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, commonly known as CREW.

In response to the ruling, Cheney spokesman James R. Hennigan said that "we will not have any comment on pending litigation."

The judge's order is the most recent setback to the cabal's position on openness of executive branch records.

In December, a federal judge ruled in another CREW lawsuit that the White House cannot hide behind a shield of privilege over release of its visitor logs.

U.S. District Court Judge Royce Lamberth concluded that the information was a public records request, subject to Freedom of Information Act disclosure of "agency records."

The White House had claimed exclusive control of the documents, subject to the complete discretion of the president over their release.

CREW sought the visitor records of prominent conservatives James Dobson (Focus on the Family), Wendy Wright (Concerned Women of America) and seven others, including the late televangelist Jerry Falwell.

Public Smoking Bans Work Across the Board

After a ban on smoking in all enclosed public places was introduced in Scotland in March 2006, there was a 17 percent reduction in hospital admissions for acute coronary syndrome, says a new study that provides further proof that smoke-free laws provide health benefits.

Researchers found the number of admissions in the 10 months after the ban was 2,684, compared with 3,235 in the 10 months before the ban. Nonsmokers accounted for 67 percent of the decrease. There was a 14 percent reduction in admissions among smokers, a 19 percent reduction among former smokers, and a 21 percent reduction among people who'd never smoked.

The study also found that people who'd never smoked reported a decrease in their weekly amount of exposure to secondhand smoke.

While admissions for acute coronary syndrome decreased 17 percent in the 10 month's after the Scottish ban, there was a 4 percent reduction in England (which has no such legislation) during that same period. In the decade preceding the ban, Scotland had a mean annual decrease of 3 percent.

Previous studies have suggested that banning smoking in public places reduced hospital admissions for acute coronary syndrome, but it wasn't clear whether the reduction involved nonsmokers, smokers or both.

The new study was published in the July 31 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

Earlier this month, an International Agency for Cancer Research report said smoke-free policies are extremely effective at reducing smoking rates, exposure to secondhand smoke, and smoking-related heart disease.

Another study, published in the journal Circulation, found the number of acute coronary events dropped significantly among adults in Rome after Italy banned smoking in public places in 2005.

For more information:

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more about smoke-free policies.

Ten fire-safety tips for homeowners

1. Stack woodpiles at least 30 feet from any structure.

2. Locate LPG tanks at least 30 feet from any structure; maintain 10 feet of clear space around tanks.

3. Keep the following tools ready and handy: a round point shovel with a long handle, a rake with a long handle, a ladder tall enough to reach the roof, one or more 5-pound fire extinguishers, at least one bucket, a garbage can full of water with a bailing bucket.

4. Keep driveway clear and accessible to fire engines. Remember, they are twice as big as a car.

5. Make sure your number is clearly visible from the road. Use four- to six-inch reflective numbers to mark your address.

6. Locate all fire hydrants in your neighborhood.

7. Never prune near power lines. Call your local utility company first.

8. Landscape with fire resistant plants.

9. Maintain all plants by regular watering and by removing dead branches, leaves and needles.

10. Landscaping should be spaced so that fire has no clear path to burn up to the house or nearby plantings.

Pictures of the Scottish Highlands

Steve Carter has some wonderful shots of the Highlands.

Reminds me of the places I want to know, to paraphrase an old song.

See the photos here.

Palin as Misogynist

Palin as Misogynist

By Gerry Fern

What can we make of Sarah Palin? She is a woman, looks normal, acts normal on the stump, but is she normal? I would say she is not. She is a misogynist and perhaps that is the most disturbing thing about her.

I do not understand why so little is being written about this fact, or the mainstream media has not picked up on it, not to mention bloggers. Honestly, the silence is confusing.

We live in a very dysfunctional society. It is unfortunate that some people are abused by the system and others know how to game it. As an executive I was accused of sexual harassment by two female employees that knew how to play the game. Both accusations came to nothing, but they did leave me bitter and very weary of dealing with female employees.

In my personal life, I am the husband of a woman that was brutally assaulted, lived through 10 years of therapy with her and we still deal with the consequences of that day almost on a daily basis.

What do I make of Sarah Palin? A woman that forced abused woman to pay for rape kits. That the state of Alaska had to pass a bill exclusively to stop Wallisa , her town, from continuing this horrendous practice. Does this woman have a soul? A heart? It is not enough that these women were abused, they should also pay for the investigation that so often will never bring anybody to justice?

Now as result of the investigation into the firing of Walt Monegan, the public Safety Commissioner that was fired because he refused to fire her brother in law, Sarah has come up with a new plausible reason why he was fired. He was fired because, “he had gone over her head in seeking federal money for an initiative to combat sexual assault crimes, before she had approved the program.” A program that would have,” use(d) the federal money to hire retired troopers and law enforcement officials, and assign them to investigate the most egregious cases of sexual assault — including those against children.” Wow, let’s not investigate these things. And let’s fire the idiot that thinks this is the state’s responsibility. If people do not want to get raped or children abused maybe they should not be so damned attractive.

I am not an advocate of the invasion of privacy, but this is a special case. In a home where we have a child whose dad and mother is in question, yes I am referring to Trig, I do not ever remember such a high profile infant whose paternity is in question, do you? And now her daughter is pregnant. Great!!! A mother that apparently is indifferent to child abuse, rape and other crimes. The Governor of the state with the highest cases of rape, incest, child abuse and domestic violence. The ex-mayor of a small town with 42 meth labs. Let’s have an investigation of what is going on in that home. Something smells here.

*****

Gerry Fern posted this piece over on the blog at BartCop. Read more of what was said @ BartBlog

Obama still ahead in polls

Gallup poll daily tracking from Wednesday through Friday finds Barack Obama maintaining his lead over John McPain among registered voters, by a 50% to 44% margin…

And they still insist it is the other way around whenever a repugican opens its mouth?!
It must be nice to live in such a deluded state of being - I wonder what are the drugs they are on and can the rest of us get some.