hue
hue's JournalWikileaks Documents Reveal Just How Toxic Rush Limbaugh Is
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/01/07/1267762/-Wikileaks-Documents-Reveal-How-Just-Toxic-Rush-Limbaugh-Is?detail=facebookYesterday Kossack Mike Stark posted this diary about Stratfor emails posted by Wikileaks.
Stratfor is a Texas-based global intelligence firm whose list of clients includes Dow Chemical Co., Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, the US Department of Homeland Security, the US Marines and the US Defense Intelligence Agency.
5 million emails from the firm were hacked by Anonymous and handed over to Wikileaks in late 2011. The leak led to a 10 years in prison for Lulzsec hacker Jeremy Hammond, who said of the heavy-handed sentence
"They have made it clear they are trying to send a message to others who come after me. A lot of it is because they got slapped around, they were embarrassed by Anonymous and they feel that they need to save face."
Mike Stark has spent hours poring over the emails and turned up discussion of Rush Limbaugh and his negative effect on the firm's image at the highest levels.
In August, 2008, Stratfor provided Limbaugh with information about Russian military action in South Ossetia. Stratfor emails about their new BFF border on starstruck:
From: Meredith Friedman [mailto:XXXXX@stratfor.com]
Sent: Friday, August 08, 2008 11:26 AM
To: 'Exec'
Subject: FW: ***Rush Limbaugh**
Importance: High
I was on email with Rush for a half hour or more before his show sending
him our analysis on South Ossetia and chatting with him. I gave him
talking points and emailed him our latest piece at about 5 minutes before
he went on air. I was so busy doing this I didn't have time to let y'all
know.....
Great - I've also given him his own account to use and he offered to pay
for it
Told him stratfor can afford to give him a free account!!!
Meredith
Limbaugh used the info in a segment and even referred to the company as "my good friends at Stratfor.com."
A New Method to Measure Consciousness Discovered
Source: SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN
Leonardo Da Vinci, in his Treatise on Painting (Trattato della Pittura), advises painters to pay particular attention to the motions of the mind, moti mentali. “The movement which is depicted must be appropriate to the mental state of the figure,” he advises; otherwise the figure will be considered twice dead: “dead because it is a depiction, and dead yet again in not exhibiting motion either of the mind or of the body.” Francesco Melzi, student and friend to Da Vinci, compiled the Treatise posthumously from fragmented notes left to him. The vivid portrayal of emotions in the paintings from Leonardo’s school shows that his students learned to read the moti mentali of their subjects in exquisite detail.
Associating an emotional expression of the face with a “motion of the mind” was an astonishing insight by Da Vinci and a surprisingly modern metaphor. Today we correlate specific patterns of electrochemical dynamics (i.e. “motions”) of the central nervous system, with emotional feelings. Consciousness, the substrate for any emotional feeling, is itself a “motion of the mind,” an ephemeral state characterized by certain dynamical patterns of electrical activity. Even if all the neurons, their constituent parts and neuronal circuitry remained structurally the same, a change in the dynamics can mean the difference between consciousness and unconsciousness...
...Recently, Casali et al have presented a quantitative metric. It provides, according to the authors, a numerical measure of consciousness, separating vegetative states from minimally conscious states. The study provides hints of being able to identify the enigmatic locked-in state, in which the subject is conscious but is unable to communicate with the external world due to motor deficits. What is most interesting is the claim that the measures provide scientific insight into consciousness, by providing an objective measure.
Read more: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=a-new-method-to-measure-consciousness-discovered
3 Amtrak Trains With Hundreds of Passengers Stranded Since Monday
Source: abc NEWS
About 500 passengers aboard three Amtrak trains were stranded overnight in a remote part of northern Illinois because of blowing and drifting snow, Amtrak officials said today.
The trains were halted late Monday near Mendota, about 80 miles west of Chicago. The passengers were aboard the Southwest Chief from Los Angeles, the Illinois Zephyr from Quincy, Ill., and the California Zephyr from the San Francisco Bay area, Amtrak spokesman Marc Magliari told The Associated Press.
The trains became stuck around 4:15 p.m. ET Monday after they hit a 12-foot snow drift that paralyzed the engines, passenger Bryan Plummer told ABC News today by cellphone.
Frigid 'Polar Vortex' Cripples US for Second Straight Day
Amtrak officials say they are working to get the passengers off the trains safely.
"We've completed unloading the first train," spokesman Magliari told ABC News this morning. "We're now moving to unload the second. And all those passengers from those trains who spent the night overnight in Bureau County will be on chartered buses coming here to Chicago this morning."
Laurette Mosley of California says she has been stuck for more than 14 hours on one of the trains. Mosley was en route to Chicago to attend her mother's funeral.
Read more: http://abcnews.go.com/US/amtrak-trains-hundreds-passengers-stranded-monday/story?id=21445064
John Nichols: Darrell Issa's cynical attack puts veterans in cross hairs
http://host.madison.com/ct/news/opinion/column/john_nichols/john-nichols-darrell-issa-s-cynical-attack-puts-veterans-in/article_f5e8bfa5-bd23-5112-a256-977cbfec8b67.htmlHouse Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., has made no secret of his desire to diminish and dismantle the U.S. Postal Service.
Issa has for some time now peddled plans to end Saturday deliveries by the USPS — which continues to perform with more agility than private firms, as holiday delivery patterns illustrated — in ways that are all but certain to make the Postal Service vulnerable to privatization.
Issa has a right to his opinion. But the cynical determination with which he is now advancing it is jarring.
Issa has proposed legislation to address one of the many flaws in the budget agreement that was cobbled together in December by House Budget Committee Chair Paul Ryan, R-Janesville, and Senate Budget Committee Chair Patty Murray, D-Wash.: a cut to military retirement benefits for veterans under the age of 62.
Reversing the benefit cut is a good idea, as the cut is part of an austerity agreement that seeks to balance budgets by placing more of the burden on government workers and military personnel — rather than on multimillionaires like Issa.
But Issa is not proposing to offset the restoration of benefits by taxing the wealthy or closing loopholes. Rather, he wants to do so by ending Saturday mail delivery.
Antarctic ships escape from ice trap as weather changes
Source: BBC NEWS
The Russian research ship Akademik Shokalskiy and Chinese icebreaker Xue Long have broken free from Antarctic ice where they had been stranded for several days.
The Russian ship's captain said a crack had appeared in the ice after a change in wind direction.
The Akademik Shokalskiy got stuck on 25 December. It has a Russian crew of 22.
On Thursday, the Xue Long's helicopter ferried 52 passengers from the stranded Russian ship to an Australian vessel.
The Xue Long then became stuck itself on Friday.
"We're going slowly and zig-zagging, we've already moved more than 20 [nautical] miles," Captain Igor Kiselyov of the Russian ship told Itar-Tass news agency.
"It's tough going so far, a lot of mist, visibility is no more than 500 metres," he said.
He confirmed that the Chinese ship was also moving and that Akademik Shokalskiy was just north of it
Read more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-25635690
Money laundering, Koch style
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/01/06/1267656/-Money-laundering-Koch-style?detail=facebookA few layers of the big ol' stinky onion that is the Koch brothers' political attack industry are peeled back in this massive report in The Washington Post. It details the myriad "non-profit" organizations set up and shuffled around within the Koch network to fund what has become an almost exclusively anti-Obamacare campaign, and to conceal where all that money is actually coming from.
The resources and the breadth of the organization make it singular in American politics: an operation conducted outside the campaign finance system, employing an array of groups aimed at stopping what its financiers view as government overreach. Members of the coalition target different constituencies but together have mounted attacks on the new health-care law, federal spending and environmental regulations. [...]
Its funders remain largely unknown; the coalition was carefully constructed with extensive legal barriers to shield its donors.
But they have substantial firepower. Together, the 17 conservative groups that made up the network raised at least $407 million during the 2012 campaign, according to the analysis of tax returns by The Washington Post and the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan group that tracks money in politics.
A labyrinth of tax-exempt groups and limited-liability companies helps mask the sources of the money, much of which went to voter mobilization and television ads attacking President Obama and congressional Democrats, according to tax filings and campaign finance reports. [...]
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I'm X-posting this article here (and in Politics) because I think WI is crucial in the Kochs' money-laundering scheme d/t our weak out of state money financing regulations. In essence, WI is a port for RW/1% political money laundering. This is one of the principal issues that the federal John Doe investigation is working on.
Koch-backed political coalition, designed to shield donors, raised $400 million in 2012
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/koch-backed-political-network-built-to-shield-donors-raised-400-million-in-2012-elections/2014/01/05/9e7cfd9a-719b-11e3-9389-09ef9944065e_print.htmlBy Matea Gold, Published: January 5
The political network spearheaded by conservative billionaires Charles and David Koch has expanded into a far-reaching operation of unrivaled complexity, built around a maze of groups that cloaks its donors, according to an analysis of new tax returns and other documents.
The filings show that the network of politically active nonprofit groups backed by the Kochs and fellow donors in the 2012 elections financially outpaced other independent groups on the right and, on its own, matched the long-established national coalition of labor unions that serves as one of the biggest sources of support for Democrats.
The resources and the breadth of the organization make it singular in American politics: an operation conducted outside the campaign finance system, employing an array of groups aimed at stopping what its financiers view as government overreach. Members of the coalition target different constituencies but together have mounted attacks on the new health-care law, federal spending and environmental regulations.
Key players in the Koch-backed network have already begun engaging in the 2014 midterm elections, hiring new staff members to expand operations and strafing House and Senate Democrats with hard-hitting ads over their support for the Affordable Care Act.
Its funders remain largely unknown; the coalition was carefully constructed with extensive legal barriers to shield its donors.
Money laundering, Koch style
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/01/06/1267656/-Money-laundering-Koch-style?detail=facebook#A few layers of the big ol' stinky onion that is the Koch brothers' political attack industry are peeled back in this massive report in The Washington Post. It details the myriad "non-profit" organizations set up and shuffled around within the Koch network to fund what has become an almost exclusively anti-Obamacare campaign, and to conceal where all that money is actually coming from.
The resources and the breadth of the organization make it singular in American politics: an operation conducted outside the campaign finance system, employing an array of groups aimed at stopping what its financiers view as government overreach. Members of the coalition target different constituencies but together have mounted attacks on the new health-care law, federal spending and environmental regulations. [...]
Its funders remain largely unknown; the coalition was carefully constructed with extensive legal barriers to shield its donors.
But they have substantial firepower. Together, the 17 conservative groups that made up the network raised at least $407 million during the 2012 campaign, according to the analysis of tax returns by The Washington Post and the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan group that tracks money in politics.
A labyrinth of tax-exempt groups and limited-liability companies helps mask the sources of the money, much of which went to voter mobilization and television ads attacking President Obama and congressional Democrats, according to tax filings and campaign finance reports. [...]
Former ALEC tactician Robert King among finalists for UW System presidency
http://host.madison.com/ct/news/local/writers/pat_schneider/former-alec-tactician-robert-king-among-finalists-for-uw-system/article_aec52d38-76e8-11e3-9e3b-001a4bcf887a.htmlIs a former politician and American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) captain on education reform a good fit for president of the University of Wisconsin System?
The UW Board of Regents will decide this week as they vote whether to hire Robert L. King, president of the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education, one of three finalists to replace outgoing president Kevin Reilly.
King and the other finalists — Raymond Cross, chancellor, University of Wisconsin Colleges and University of Wisconsin-Extension; Peter H. Garland, executive vice chancellor/chief operating officer, Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education — are participating in forums Monday to be teleconferenced statewide to UW facilities.
Cross and Garland hold more traditional educational administrative backgrounds, but the selection of King would put a politician at the helm of the UW-System, as the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reports.
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Uh Oh!
ALEC infiltrating the UW system!!
Polar Vortex Causes Hundreds of Injuries as People Making Snide Remarks About Climate Change Are Pun
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/borowitzreport/2014/01/polar-vortex-causes-hundreds-of-injuries-as-people-making-snide-remarks-about-climate-change-are-pun.html(satire)
MINNEAPOLIS (The Borowitz Report)—The so-called polar vortex caused hundreds of injuries across the Midwest today, as people who said “so much for global warming” and similar comments were punched in the face.
Authorities in several states said that residents who had made ignorant comments erroneously citing the brutally cold temperatures as proof that climate change did not exist were reporting a sharp increase in injuries to the face and head regions.
In an emergency room in St. Paul, Harland Dorrinson, forty-one, was waiting to be treated for bruising to the facial area after he made a crack about how the below-freezing temperatures meant that climate-change activists were full of shit.
“I’d just finished saying it and boom, out of nowhere someone punched me in the face,” he said. “This polar vortex is really dangerous.”
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