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ALI AKBAR DAREINI | 11/ 9/09 08:57 AM | AP
TEHRAN, Iran — A senior Iranian prosecutor says three Americans detained on the border with Iraq have been accused of espionage.
Tehran chief prosecutor Abbas Jafari Dowlatabadi says the three "have been accused" and that investigations were continuing, according to the state news agency IRNA. He said an "opinion (on their case) will be given in the not distant future."
It is not clear from his comments Monday whether formal charges had been filed. In Iran's opaque judicial system, the process of charging and trial can often take place behind closed doors.
The three Americans were arrested July 31 after straying over the Iranian border from northern Iraq. The U.S. government and their families say there were on a hiking vacation and crossed accidentally.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/09/iran-a...
---------------
am i the only one going - what the hell are you doing on VACATION in IRAQ?
you mean, there aren't ANY other countries that you spend your money on for VACATION?
AND, you just ' HAPPEN' to wander into Iran?
it's a big world out there. you wanna go hiking, I can find you a whole lotta territory that isn't in countries
a) at war
b) that don't play.
now, you've got Clinton wasting her time on trying to get these three released. they are more important issues, and she has to waste airtime and effort on these folks.
http://gay.americablog.com/2009/11/dont-ask-don...
He despises the President and like others of his ilk will never give the President any credit for anything that falls short of what they demand. It seems that they believe when they say jump the President should ask how high.
They can kiss my big black ass.
-Fuck 'em both.
What is wrong with these people? I want to boycott them. Black people need to stop going to Daily Kos. Don't give him any more hits.
Everyone knows that Dan Savage hates Black people.
WTF!!!!!
Its funny though and sad all at the same time. Who was it again that put the DADT policy let me see Clinton whom all of these folks supported religiously.
They can boycott and boycott their way to a republican administration.
http://politics.theatlantic.com/2009/11/dnc_get...
Rep. Joseph Cao Rep. Joseph Cao (R-LA) was solely responsible for dashing the Republican leadership’s hopes of having all 177 of its members vote against historic health care legislation on Saturday. Cao broke with his party and voted with Democrats after speaking personally to President Obama and pressing for more federal funds for his district, which is still struggling after Hurricane Katrina. In a statement, Cao explained that the needs of his constituents trumped partisan politicking:
I read the versions of the House [health reform] bill. I listened to the countless stories of Orleans and Jefferson Parish citizens whose health care costs are exploding — if they are able to obtain health care at all. Louisianans needs real options for primary care, for mental health care, and for expanded health care for seniors and children. [...]
I have always said that I would put aside partisan wrangling to do the business of the people. My vote tonight was based on my priority of doing what is best for my constituents.
The reaction to Cao from the right wing has been swift and fierce, with some comparing the only non-Hispanic minority in the GOP caucus to Mao Tse Tung and calling him racial epithets. Rep. Don Young (R-AK) — who has defended Cao’s vote — had to stand beside him during Saturday’s roll call, “fending off his GOP colleagues who might have twisted Cao’s arms.” Last week, RNC Chairman Michael Steele made clear that moderates who don’t walk the Party line have no place in the GOP:
So candidates who live in moderate to slightly liberal districts have got to walk a little bit carefully here, because you do not want to put yourself in a position where you’re crossing that line on conservative principles, fiscal principles, because we’ll come after you.
Cao “chuckled” in response to Steele’s comments, pointing out that his vision would essentially lead the party toward a path of political suicide. “He has the right to come after those members who do not conform to party lines,” said Cao, “but I would hope that he would work with us in order to adjust to the needs of the district and to hold a seat that the Republican party would need.”
http://thinkprogress.org/2009/11/09/boehner-cao...
---------------------------
I keep on asking this question...
DO THEY NOT KNOW WHERE CAO'S DISTRICT IS?
----------------------
Blindsided By Politicized Religion. Again. And 2010 Looms.
by Troutfishing [Subscribe]
Mon Nov 09, 2009 at 05:43:19 AM PST
I neglected this point when I wrote this post, but I should add: Here's how Chris Smith (R-NJ) saw fellow House Pro-Life Caucus co-chair Bart Stupak's role in the health care reform push. As I wrote in an October 29th story,
Pro-Life Democrats in Congress played a "magnificent" role in blocking health care reform during the Clinton administration. And, under the "courageous" and "smart" leadership of House Pro-Life Caucus leader, Michigan Democrat Bart Stupak, with the support and prayers of Republicans categorically opposed to the Democratic Party's health care reform effort, the Blue Dogs may be able to do it again.
That's what Stupak's caucus co-chair Chris Smith (R-NJ) told the audience at a "townhall" panel event on Friday September 18th at the Family Research Council Action's Washington DC 2009 Values Voter Summit.
Rep. Smith's statements are on video that can be seen at the end of my October 29th story.
* Troutfishing's diary :: ::
*
As some have forecast, Democratic women may revolt if the Stupak-Pitts amendment isn't removed, in conference, from the health care bill. But, how did the amendment get into the bill ?
For many on the left, it seems as if the successful bid, by Michigan House Representative Bart Stupak (D-Mich) to attach an anti-choice amendment to the health care reform bill that the House voted to pass on Saturday night, was a surprise.
To me that's bizarre, and it's symptomatic of how little, to this day, Democratic Party activists, strategists, and political progressives seem to understand or care about the impact of religion in politics. Stupak had liabilities which, publicized, might have derailed his amendment push. Almost no one tried, because few knew the territory.
That bodes ill for 2010.
Stupak's amendment would likely further reduce the access of American women to abortion services - which are currently unavailable in 87% of US counties according to the Guttmacher Institute. The absence of informed efforts to stop it suggests to me that the American left hasn't come all that far since the Democratic Party was blindsided in 1994 by the Republican Party's historic takeover of the House and Senate, powered to considerable degree by Christian right organizations such as Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition.
Over the course of many weeks prior to his amendment gambit, Bart Stupak had been making appearances on Christian media and declaring his intent to block the House health care bill from getting to the House floor. Stupak's message, invariably, was that he had the votes to block the bill from getting to the House floor if Democratic House leadership didn't allow a vote on his anti-choice amendment.
As it turns out, Stupak may not have had enough votes to do that but that would have been almost impossible to know prior to Saturday, and House leadership didn't want to test the actual head count of Stupak's block of potentially renegade Democrats and so risk failure to pass the health care bill. So Stupak got his way. Reproductive rights advocacy groups, and American women, lost.
A Missed Opportunity ?
Since 1992, Bart Stupak has lived at the "C Street House" which became notorious over the course of the last summer as no less than three separate sex scandals broke involving current of former national Republican politicians who had lived at or attended Bible study classes at the C Street House.
The C Street House is registered officially as a "church" but provides under-market rate rent to members of the influence-peddling Christian fundamentalist Washington association known as "The Family" that was the subject of a 2008 book, The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, by journalist Jeff Sharlet who argues that The Family, which actually maintains several group homes for politicians in and around Washington DC, functions as an unregistered lobby.
As I described in detail in an October 22, 2009 story (one of three I've written on Stupak and The Family), among Bart Stupak's fellow Family members and C Street Housemates are Republicans who have been most noisily working to block health care reform - including Jim DeMint who, in a July 17th conference call, told conservative activists that "...if we're able to stop Obama on this [health care] it will be his Waterloo. It will break him."
In the weeks leading up to the House vote on the health care bill, indications were that Bart Stupak was very, very concerned with avoiding publicity over his long residence at the C Street House. Rightly so.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/11/9/6730/16...
by Turkana [Subscribe]
Mon Nov 09, 2009 at 12:32:26 PM PST
In the past couple weeks, a couple of very powerful bankers literally invoked the name of Jesus, to defend their obscenely exorbitant profits; and today, there is a buzz about Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein claiming he's doing God's work. Well, Senator Bernie Sanders apparently is without fear, because he is ready to take on these self-styled saints.
* Turkana's diary :: ::
*
As explained by Barry Ritholtz:
Everyone this weekend was so busy watching the Health care bill, that they might have overlooked the most important financial reform legislation since the Commodities Future Modernization Act: A bill is gaining ground in Congress that would "break-up" big banks.
Independent U.S. senator Bernie Sanders has introduced the Volcker Plan. It gives the government the power to identify and break up financial firms that are "too big to fail."
Kwak explains the beauty of the bill's simplicity:
The bill says that Treasury can break up the institutions any way they want to, so long as the resulting entities do not individually threaten the financial system (and thereby our economic well-being). So opponents can throw out all those arguments about why separating commercial and investment banking is bad, or why banks have to be global (a bit of an embarrassment to Wells Fargo) — now they need to argue that a well-functioning financial system must include institutions that could take down the financial system.
Ritholtz says that even though larger banks will fight the bill, the oligopoly created by the banking bailout might inspire smaller and mid-size banks to support it. We should, too. As Nemo, of Self-Evident, says:
This is not about Democrats or Republicans. It is not about Barack Obama or George Bush or Glenn Beck or Keith Olbermann or Sarah Palin or even Nancy Pelosi.
This is about the financiers versus everybody else. And we are losing, badly.
Now I am going to say something I never dreamed I would say: God bless Bernie Sanders.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/11/9/802588/...
I know that it's mine.
I've faced far more vicious scorn throughout my life as a gay male than as a Black male.
Quiet as it's kept, lots and lots and lots and lots a Black gay people don't ascribe to the rhetoric or the agenda of those white GLBT leaders you speak of.
I think we need to stop making assumptions about our brothers and sisters simply because something they express might fit into a particular and/or familiar narrative one wishes to promote.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/09/debbie...
No comment!
Bitch, please.
me - hell no.
oh, my mother didn't want me to room with a BLACK girl and moved me...and no, it wasn't before 1960.
“There are families not eating at the end of the month,” said Stephen Quinn, executive vice president and chief marketing officer at Wal-Mart Stores, and “literally lining up at midnight” at Wal-Mart stores waiting to buy food when paychecks or government checks land in their accounts."
We are now on lay away for food.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/09/business/medi...
How do we create Jobs?
One and two have inherent flaws. The goods and services we purchase can be created, maufactored and delievered for less money because of technology and less expensive wages. All we need to do to understand this especially as technology affects us, is look at our cell phones. There is an "app" for everything. These apps have eliminated many jobs once held by people even w/ our disatisfaction of talking to machines. Or these jobs can be held by people overseas whom speak English because their lifestyle is based on a less expensive base and/or cultural norms(look at all the Australian women on the NBC cable network), i.e. less expensive wages.
Almost of all the problems above are a creation of the knowledge explosion through the use of computing power. A computer is capable of running simulations to create drugs, design new metal alloys, modify genes in plants to the point you have a high degree of accuracy. Then you can design a manufactoring process et al. This means many basic goods and services never need people to create or manufactor them.
So in this day and age the way to create jobs is to be on the cutting edge of manufactoring, creativity and design for new products services and goods out of the private sector. In the public sector we have to borrow and spend the money to rebuild the existing infrastructure.
The conclusion in this is we may be at a point where only the crappiest and dangerous jobs are available to an individual regardless of how much education they have. Think of all the MBA finance majors whom were on merger and acquistion desks, all the doctors whom receive their income from medicare patients.
But here’s the paragraph that really epitomizes how screwed up our health care system is now:
When the financial incentives are so badly aligned with the preferred outcome – better health – is it any wonder that no one can agree how to
a) improve health care and
b) ensure that everyone has access to it?
The perverse incentives of health care
Without knowing the details of the new Intermountain NICU protocols, i am going to speculate that they are just now getting around to implementing standards of care that have been implemented in more advanced hospitals for at least 10 years.
Some hospitals do not want to deliver babies or take care of babies because they are usually a big time money losers. NICUs need state support because they are very, very expensive to operate. The overhead to operate a NICU is fairly constant, fewer long term patients = losing money.
I guess all i have learned is that an effective government requires the masses to pay attention.
And that is something Obama says. Frequently. I think you answered your question. The reason for me that we didn't pay as much close attention to other presidents is that they didn't demand citizen participation and they didn't the powerful vision of organized citizens that Obama has.
DEMAND citizen participation??? WTF!
The CITIZENS can do what the F*CK they want to in this country. The CITIZENS tell the govt. what to do. The CITIZENS make demands not the politicians.
If we were truly paying attention to the policies of government, we would be more interested in our local representation and learning to fulfill the responsibilities of citizenship.
It's a lesson i have learned for myself. I can't say the whole nation has learned yet if we still have stupidity such as birthers etc. I want there to be opposition of ideas, its great. I am convinced that if there was this much involvement and push things will be different today. The last 30 years was a display of a nation content with mediocrity and still fighting the battles of the 60's.
Democratic consultant says he got a warning from White House after appearing on Fox News
'We better not see you on again,' the strategist says he was told by a White House official. The White House communications director denies that officials urge such a boycott.
By Peter Nicholas
November 8, 2009
Reporting from Washington - At least one Democratic political strategist has gotten a blunt warning from the White House to never appear on Fox News Channel, an outlet that presidential aides have depicted as not so much a news-gathering operation as a political opponent bent on damaging the Obama administration.
The Democratic strategist said that shortly after an appearance on Fox, he got a phone call from a White House official telling him not to be a guest on the show again. The call had an intimidating tone, he said.
The message was, "We better not see you on again," said the strategist, who spoke on condition of anonymity so as not to run afoul of the White House. An implicit suggestion, he said, was that "clients might stop using you if you continue."
White House Communications Director Anita Dunn said that she had checked with colleagues who "deal with TV issues" and that they had not told people to avoid Fox. On the contrary, they had urged people to appear on the network, Dunn wrote in an e-mail.
But Patrick Caddell, a Fox News contributor and former pollster for President Carter, said he had spoken to Democratic consultants who said they were told by the White House to avoid appearances on Fox. He declined to give their names.
Caddell said he had not gotten that message himself from the White House.
He added: "I have heard that they've done that to others in not too subtle ways. I find it appalling. When the White House gets in the business of suppressing dissent and comment, particularly from its own party, it hurts itself."
Some observers say White House officials might be urging consultants to spurn Fox to isolate the network and make it appear more partisan. A boycott by Democratic strategists could help drive the White House narrative that Fox is a fundamentally different creature than the other TV news networks.
White House officials appear on Fox News, but sporadically and with their "eyes wide open," as one aide put it.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/...
George Soros
NEW YORK – Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of communism, the world is facing another stark choice between two fundamentally different forms of organization: international capitalism and state capitalism. The former, represented by the United States, has broken down, and the latter, represented by China, is on the rise. Following the path of least resistance will lead to the gradual disintegration of the international financial system. A new multilateral system based on sounder principles must be invented.
While international cooperation on regulatory reform is difficult to achieve on a piecemeal basis, it may be attainable in a grand bargain that rearranges the entire financial order. A new Bretton Woods conference, like the one that established the post-WWII international financial architecture, is needed to establish new international rules, including treatment of financial institutions that are too big to fail and the role of capital controls. It would also have to reconstitute the International Monetary Fund to reflect better the prevailing pecking order among states and to revise its methods of operation.
In addition, a new Bretton Woods would have to reform the currency system. The post-war order, which made the US more equal than others, produced dangerous imbalances. The dollar no longer enjoys the trust and confidence that it once did, yet no other currency can take its place.
The US ought not to shy away from wider use of IMF Special Drawing Rights. Because SDRs are denominated in several national currencies, no single currency would enjoy an unfair advantage.
The range of currencies included in the SDRs would have to be widened, and some of the newly added currencies, including the renminbi, may not be fully convertible. This would, however, allow the international community to press China to abandon its exchange-rate peg to the dollar and would be the best way to reduce international imbalances. And the dollar could still remain the preferred reserve currency, provided it is prudently managed.
One great advantage of SDRs is that they permit the international creation of money, which is particularly useful at times like the present. The money could be directed to where it is most needed, unlike what is happening currently. A mechanism that allows rich countries that don’t need additional reserves to transfer their allocations to those that do is readily available, using the IMF’s gold reserves.
Reorganizing the world order will need to extend beyond the financial system and involve the United Nations, especially membership of the Security Council. That process needs to be initiated by the US, but China and other developing countries ought to participate as equals. They are reluctant members of the Bretton Woods institutions, which are dominated by countries that are no longer dominant. The rising powers must be present at the creation of this new system in order to ensure that they will be active supporters.
The system cannot survive in its present form, and the US has more to lose by not being in the forefront of reforming it. The US is still in a position to lead the world, but, without far-sighted leadership, its relative position is likely to continue to erode. It can no longer impose its will on others, as George W. Bush’s administration sought to do, but it could lead a cooperative effort to involve both the developed and the developing world, thereby reestablishing American leadership in an acceptable form.
The alternative is frightening, because a declining superpower losing both political and economic dominance but still preserving military supremacy is a dangerous mix. We used to be reassured by the generalization that democratic countries seek peace. After the Bush presidency, that rule no longer holds, if it ever did.
In fact, democracy is in deep trouble in America. The financial crisis has inflicted hardship on a population that does not like to face harsh reality. President Barack Obama has deployed the “confidence multiplier” and claims to have contained the recession. But if there is a “double dip” recession, Americans will become susceptible to all kinds of fear mongering and populist demagogy. If Obama fails, the next administration will be sorely tempted to create some diversion from troubles at home – at great peril to the world.
Obama has the right vision. He believes in international cooperation, rather than the might-is-right philosophy of the Bush-Cheney era. The emergence of the G-20 as the primary forum of international cooperation and the peer-review process agreed in Pittsburgh are steps in the right direction.
What is lacking, however, is a general recognition that the system is broken and needs to be reinvented. After all, the financial system did not collapse altogether, and the Obama administration made a conscious decision to revive banks with hidden subsidies rather than to recapitalize them on a compulsory basis. Those institutions that survived will hold a stronger market position than ever, and they will resist a systematic overhaul. Obama is preoccupied by many pressing problems, and reinventing the international financial system is unlikely to receive his full attention.
http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/sor...
First Posted: 11- 9-09 03:18 PM | Updated: 11- 9-09 03:31 PM
Since being elected the first African-American RNC chairman, Michael Steele has gotten into some brief internecine spats for a number of bordering-on-insurgent quips against his party, but his latest might be destined to haunt him forever. And perhaps it's another indication that his heart isn't in the right place and that deep down he might think that he's speaking for the wrong party, even.
During a weekend interview, Michael Steele told NewsOne's Roland Martin that he has experienced fear from other selected members of his party because of the color of his skin.
"I mean I've been in the room and they've been scared of me," the RNC chairman said about fellow Republicans.
Partial transcript:
MARTIN: How do you -- granted, a popular president got 95% of the black vote -- you got any shot at getting black voters and if so what are the two issues that speaks to black voters for Republican have a shot at them?
STEELE: Education and the economy. Education and jobs. Education and small business.
MARTIN: But your candidates got to talk to them. One of the criticisms I've always had is Republicans -- white Republicans -- have been scared of black folks.
STEELE: You're absolutely right. I mean I've been in the room and they've been scared of me. I'm like, "I'm on your side" and so I can imagine going out there and talking to someone like you, you know, [you're like,] "I'll listen." And they're like "Well." Let me tell you. You saw in Christie and you saw in McDonnell a door open because they went in and engaged. McDonnell was very deliberate about spending --
MARTIN: Right.
STEELE: I mean, Sheila Johnson was on his team. I mean, that was a big deal. That's because he engaged her and she helped navigate him through that relationship.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/09/michae...
it's about that spa - has to be.
this picture is for you
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/09/clinto...
Goodbye to Reforms of 2002
By FLOYD NORRIS
Published: November 5, 2009
It took just five weeks after the WorldCom accounting scandal erupted in 2002 for Congress to pass, and President George W. Bush to sign, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. That law required public companies to make sure their internal controls against fraud were not full of holes.
It took three more years for Bernard Ebbers, the man who built WorldCom into a giant, to be sentenced to 25 years in prison for his role in the fraud.
Mr. Ebbers will be 85 years old before he is eligible for release from prison. He may be freed, however, before the law is ever enforced on the vast majority of American companies. A Congressional committee voted this week to repeal a crucial part of the law. Other parts are also under attack.
Sarbanes-Oxley was passed, almost unanimously, by a Republican-controlled House and a Democratic-controlled Senate. Now a Democratic Congress is gutting it with the apparent approval of the Obama administration.
The House Financial Services Committee this week approved an amendment to the Investor Protection Act of 2009 — a name George Orwell would appreciate — to allow most companies to never comply with the law, and mandating a study to see whether it would be a good idea to exempt additional ones as well.
Some veterans of past reform efforts were left sputtering with rage. “That the Democratic Party is the vehicle for overturning the most pro-investor legislation in the past 25 years is deeply disturbing,” said Arthur Levitt, a Democrat who was chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission under President Bill Clinton. “Anyone who votes for this will bear the investors’ mark of Cain.”
Those who favored the amendment saw it differently. They were simply out to help small businesses, which would be burdened by having to report on whether they maintained acceptable financial controls, and to have auditors check on whether those controls did work.
They also suggested that more foreign companies would list their securities in the United States if they were spared that onerous requirement. No one seems to have asked if investors really would benefit from making it easier to invest in companies that fear such an audit.
There are other threats to Sarbanes-Oxley as well.
The law set up a long-overdue system of regulating the accounting industry, which had proved time and again that it was incapable of effective self-regulation. The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board has done a credible job, but a month from now the Supreme Court will hear a case that could drive it out of existence.
The Sarbanes-Oxley law also took steps to reinforce the independence of the Financial Accounting Standards Board, which writes accounting rules in the United States. By giving the board a secure source of financing, legislators said they were protecting it from the threats of the companies that had previously made donations to keep the board functioning.
But this Congress has made clear that independence for the accounting rule writers can go too far — particularly if the rules force banks to reveal the horrid mistakes they previously made.
This year, a subcommittee of the House Financial Services Committee held a hearing at which legislators sought no facts but instead threatened dire action if the chairman of the financial accounting board did not promptly make it easier for banks to ignore market values of the toxic securities they owned. The board caved in, which may be one reason why banks are reporting fewer losses these days.
But the board’s retreat was not enough to satisfy the banks. The American Bankers Association is now pushing Congress to give a new systemic risk regulator — either the Federal Reserve or some panel of regulators — the power to override accounting standards. The view of the bankers is that the financial crisis did not stem from the fact that the banks made lots of bad loans and invested in dubious securities; it was caused by accounting rules that required disclosure when the losses began to mount.
The amendment approved this week dealt with Section 404 of Sarbanes-Oxley, which has become a rallying cry for opponents of regulation. Some Democrats seem to think that passing it will be seen as pro-business, and thus help to protect vulnerable Democrats who in 2008 won seats previously held by Republicans. The sponsor of the amendment, Representative John Adler of New Jersey, is one such legislator.
Section 404 was adopted with little controversy in 2002, and for good reason. It simply mandated that public companies report on the effectiveness of their internal financial controls, and that auditors render an opinion on them.
Since the law already required companies to maintain effective controls — and had done so since 1977 — it seemed unlikely that would increase costs much for any company that was already in compliance. And it was crystal clear that controls either did not exist, or were evaded, at WorldCom and Enron.
Unfortunately, when those Section 404 audits began to be conducted for the largest companies, they were costly. Partly, that was caused by badly designed and overly cautious audits conducted by inexperienced auditors. Experience reduces costs to some extent, and in 2007, the Securities and Exchange Committee and the accounting oversight board adopted reforms to make the audits much less expensive.
The section has never been enforced for most companies. The S.E.C. repeatedly delayed the effective date for companies with market capitalizations under $75 million, as lobbying grew bolder and legislators like Senator John Kerry, the Democratic presidential candidate in 2004, opposed enforcement of the law. Mr. Bush’s last S.E.C. chairman, Christopher Cox, avoided making a decision by ordering one more study that would arrive after he was gone.
That study showed that Section 404 costs had come down significantly, and last month the S.E.C. under its new chairwoman, Mary L. Schapiro, announced that in the middle of 2010 — eight years after the law was passed — all public companies would have to start complying.
It took just one month for the House committee to vote to gut Sarbanes-Oxley. It voted to exempt those companies worth less than $75 million, and asked for a study on whether companies worth less than $250 million should be allowed to stop complying with the law.
In doing so, it turned aside a plea from Ms. Schapiro, whose opinions carry far less importance in this Congress than those of lobbyists who claim to represent small business.
The Supreme Court case, to be heard Dec. 7, is on the somewhat arcane question of whether it was legal for Congress to require that the members of the oversight board be appointed by the S.E.C. rather than by the president or someone directly responsible to him, like the secretary of the Treasury.
If the Supreme Court rules that the board is illegally appointed, Congress could quickly act to save it by changing the appointment process. But who can be confident that this Congress would want to save the reforms of 2002?
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/06/business/06no...
There goes my black card again.
WTF: wTF: Steven Tyler Quites Aerosmith!!!!
Pleae Bono, don't leave U2!
I have a great story about running into a riot in Chile on my way to an Aerosmith concert .
they're just taking a break. when the funds get low, we'll hear the announcement about their ' reunion'.
don't worry..they don't have BEATLES money.
WTF: Katt Williams Arrested for BURG
I know this will send a message, but I don't think it's gonna work. Yes OFA was a political arm of the Obama campaign, but right now, it's mostly just the dedicated few who are engaged. Withholding funds, won't really affect Prez Obama, he's still gonna be President, and he's still gonna be in office for the next 3 years.
PBO, someone who states he wants to help gay people is being demonized by gays.
WTF!
Chemicals in Our Food, and Bodies
Article Tools Sponsored By
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: November 7, 2009
Your body is probably home to a chemical called bisphenol A, or BPA. It’s a synthetic estrogen that United States factories now use in everything from plastics to epoxies — to the tune of six pounds per American per year. That’s a lot of estrogen.
More than 92 percent of Americans have BPA in their urine, and scientists have linked it — though not conclusively — to everything from breast cancer to obesity, from attention deficit disorder to genital abnormalities in boys and girls alike.
Now it turns out it’s in our food.
Consumer Reports magazine tested an array of brand-name canned foods for a report in its December issue and found BPA in almost all of them. The magazine says that relatively high levels turned up, for example, in Progresso vegetable soup, Campbell’s condensed chicken noodle soup, and Del Monte Blue Lake cut green beans.
The magazine also says it found BPA in the canned liquid version of Similac Advance infant formula (but not in the powdered version) and in canned Nestlé Juicy Juice (but not in the juice boxes). The BPA in the food probably came from an interior coating used in many cans.
Should we be alarmed?
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/08/opinion/08kri...
-------------------------
and folks have the nerve to wonder why the First Lady planted a garden at the White House?