March 26, 2013

Cost of the Iraq War - Three Trillion Dollar War - C Span last week

http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/311648-2



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Cost of the Iraq War
Mar 21, 2013

Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Harvard scholar Linda Blimes spoke about the costs of the war in Iraq, which she projected to reach $5 trillion.?Those projections exceed the original figures in her book The Three Trillion Dollar War, which she co-authored with .. Read More

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Once at the site, you can click to watch the three separate segments. Very decent discussion of the exorbitant cost of this war.

March 26, 2013

Forbes Mag lets us know that some tin foil hat wearers are sometimes right!

While we seniors are being told that we need tow atch our Social Security payments get cut, while schools across the country pink slip teachers, janitors and otehr personnel, Dept of Homeland Security is spending money like a house afire. (Which is rather dangerous, as fire departments are cutting back ont heir personnel also.)

Now this past month, Forbes contributor Ralph Benko has written about some massive purchases of ammunition - over one billion rounds - that DHS is purchasing. Here is the link:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ralphbenko/2013/03/11/1-6-billion-rounds-of-ammo-for-homeland-security-its-time-for-a-national-conversation/

About "this perplexing outré purchase of ammo, DHS now is showing off its acquisition of heavily armored personnel carriers, repatriated from the Iraqi and Afghani theaters of operation. As observed by “paramilblogger” Ken Jorgustin last September:


"The Department of Homeland Security is apparently taking delivery (apparently through the Marine Corps Systems Command, Quantico VA, via the manufacturer – Navistar Defense LLC) of an undetermined number of the recently retrofitted 2,717 ‘Mine Resistant Protected’ MaxxPro MRAP vehicles for service on the streets of the United States.”

"These MRAP’s ARE BEING SEEN ON U.S. STREETS all across America by verified observers with photos, videos, and descriptions.”

"Regardless of the exact number of MRAP’s being delivered to DHS (and evidently some to POLICE via DHS, as has been observed), why would they need such over-the-top vehicles on U.S. streets to withstand IEDs, mine blasts, and 50 caliber hits to bullet-proof glass? In a war zone… yes, definitely. Let’s protect our men and women. On the streets of America… ?” "
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So here's the thing - a lot of work needs to be done to limit the spending of DHS. DHS was designed during that 'patriotic burst of fervor" seen immediately after Nine Eleven. Remember that fervor? It was the same fervor that tied us into a Six Trillion Dollar war (A new book recently released has the exact figures) and I imagine that at some point over the next five years we will find that DHS has spent a similar amount.

The wars that the Nine Eleven brand of patriotism have tied us to have destroyed the economy. And now there is a tremendous parade of evidence as to how pointless these wars were. But DHS is after the "real terrorists" - you and me. Don't think you could be classified as a terrorist? Well, Rumsfeld and Ashcroft wanted environmental groups and their members put on government watch lists.




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March 26, 2013

Does anyone know what this chemical is?

Disodium iminodiacetate

Can it take the place of an aldehyde in a formula for weed killers?

A researcher I knew told me back circa 1999 or 2000 that RoundUpm Nonsanto's number One Best Selling week Killer, had utilized formaldehyde as the aldehyde needed to break the glyphosate down into a spray-able mixture. (Left to its own devices, glyphosate would remain in cake formula and you'd have to sprinkle it over whatever weeds you wanted to kill, which would not make it popular.)

Monsanto is no longer using the formaldehyde, so I am trying to figure out what it is using now as the aldehyde.

March 16, 2013

Tran Pacific Plan about to end almost all American Dreams

Back in the quaint Eighteenth Century, when Business Leaders wanted to have some idea of theirs go forward, legislatively speaking, it was required for Congress to pass the "Act" by a two thirds majority vote.

Since then, the One Percent has become much more savvy. Currently, a game-changing proposal is afloat, off in secret, and sometime later this year, it will not go to Congress as an "Act" but as a "Plan." This means the legislation will only require a simple majority in Congress to become law. And once it becomes law, it will set forth the most onerous set of rules that any American has ever faced.

Do you think our prison system is run poorly now? What will that same system be like when the Chinese are running it? Are you happy that here in California, cars must be built to have maximum fuel efficiency? Well, it's possible that under the TPP, those laws won't apply to any foreign auto maker whose cars aren't built to meet those standards.

Meanwhile, is some local law allowing your chosen neck of the woods to have a cleaner environment than other areas of the world? Well, wait till those laws are seen as being subservient to the TPP legisaltion, and you will watch your protections quickly fade away.


From way back in Lat Fall, 2010, Truth Out has this to say about the Trans Pacific Plan:
http://truth-out.org/news/item/12934-why-so-secretive?-the-trans-pacific-partnership-as-global-coup

For example, public interest groups have been warning that the TPP could result in millions of lost jobs. As a letter from Congress to United States Trade Representative Ron Kirk stated, the TPP “will create binding policies on future Congresses in numerous areas,” including “those related to labor, patent and copyright, land use, food, agriculture and product standards, natural resources, the environment, professional licensing, state-owned enterprises and government procurement policies, as well as financial, healthcare, energy, telecommunications and other service sector regulations.” In other words, as promised, the TPP goes far beyond “trade.”

Dubbed by many as “NAFTA on steroids” and a “corporate coup,” only two of the TPP’s 26 chapters actually have anything to do with trade. Most of it grants far-reaching new rights and privileges to corporations, specifically related to intellectual property rights (copyright and patent laws), as well as constraints on government regulations.

The leaked documents revealed that the Obama administration “intends to bestow radical new political powers upon multinational corporations,” as Obama and Kirk have emerged as strong advocates “for policies that environmental activists, financial reform advocates and labor unions have long rejected for eroding key protections currently in domestic laws.”

In other words, the already ineffective and mostly toothless environmental, financial, and labor regulations that exist are unacceptable to the Obama administration and the 600 corporations aligned with the TPP who are giving him his orders. Also, the agreement stipulates that foreign corporations operating in the United States would no longer be subject to domestic U.S. laws regarding protections for the environment, finance or labor rights, and could appeal to an “international tribunal” which would be given the power to overrule American law and impose sanctions on the U.S. for violating the new “rights” of corporations.

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What else will the TPP do? Here's statement from Doctors without Borders March 2013:

“The negotiations are being conducted in secret, but leaked drafts of the agreement include aggressive intellectual property (IP) rules that would restrict access to affordable, lifesaving medicines for millions of people.

Proposed by U.S. negotiators, the IP rules enhance patent and data protections for pharmaceutical companies, dismantle public health safeguards enshrined in international law, and obstruct price-lowering generic competition for medicines.”

A bit of text from Common Dreams Also, March 2013:

Meanwhile, provisions in the proposed investment chapter would give pharmaceutical companies the right to sue governments for instituting any regulation that reduces their expected profits, using private tribunals that circumvent a country’s judicial process

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So this is an indication that all the "wonderful" Eleventh dimensional chess that guaranteed that Big Insurers and Big Pharma could continue to raise their prices Sky High, will now be a policy for the people of the entire TPP region to rejoice in! No more generic medicines! Ability to claim that decent drugs, that happen to be inexpensive as they are now outside the patenting provisions (items like Benadryl, and other over the counter drugs) can be eliminated simply by some foreign company stating that they are not safe. This all certainly brings the ACA process regarding generic drugs and drug re-importation into a much sharper focus.

And if you think that our laws that help keep our environment are extremely lacking in power of enforcement, just wait! Do you ever think BP Cleanup, or think Fracking and oil refinery pollution is out of control? Wait till the TPP is in effect. These past few years will seem like a Golden age, when contrasted with this new piece of legislative "Planning."

On edit: Here are two separate reports on the Trans Pacific Plan. The first report is favorable; the report from the Citizens' Trade Org is far from favorable.

A PDF that details which nations are part of the plan, and various statistics regarding the nations and their populations. This study is a study favoring the USA doing this:
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/R42344.pdf

Disapproving report of the TPP
http://www.citizenstrade.org/ctc/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/TransPacificFactsheet.pdf

"Democracy Now" has also had some decent programs regarding the issue, with the following link reminding us of various pledges that Barack Obama made to us back in 2008, that are now just inconvenient campaign promises, there to be broken:
http://www.democracynow.org/2012/6/14/breaking_08_pledge_leaked_trade_doc

http://www.democracynow.org/2012/6/14/breaking_08_pledge_leaked_trade_doc

March 8, 2013

So where was Barbara Boxer on the Drone Issue?

I expected to see her name in the Nay column, along with Senator Merkeley of Oregon, and Bernie Sanders of Vermont... Is she okay?

According to what has been posted, she didn't vote on the issue.

Complete List of Senators and how they voted:

http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=113&session=1&vote=00032

March 6, 2013

Can Anyone Here Knowledgeably Critique this video?

I could follow the early section, about the magnetics, and how their repulsive forces generated energy.

But after that it started getting over my heads (All six of 'em.)

March 4, 2013

If You Are A Baby Boomer - the real reason YOU SHOULD BE FURIOUS over CPI cuts:

The fact of the matter remains that when so many of us entered t the workforce - some 40 to 45 years ago, the contract that the nation presented to us was this one - Pay into Social Security, and then WHEN YOU TURN SIXTY FIVE, you will receive your retirement earnings, until the day you die. But now that contract has been trampled, and we have to wait till we are SIXTY SEVEN!

While so much discussion has gone on and on over the CPI cuts, and great amounts of noise over what percentage should be used to cut retirement benefits further, the fact remains - two entire years of benefits - 100% of those benefits times Two! - has been removed from the receipt column of those of us about to retire. And this fact is barely being mentioned! The Baby Boomers have already taken their damn hit!

Thirteen percent of all Baby Boomers have already died - so I don't even know if the label of "The largest generation of Americans" applies. We have been decimated by the War in Vietnam, that ate up the young men of our generation, not only in Vietnam on the battlefield, but over the next decades through the effects of PTSD , Agent orange-related cancers, suicide etc, so that more than 150,000 of us were done in. Then came the decade of AIDS. And now cancer has taken its toll. My two best friends both died before they reached their sixtieth birthday.

And if the Government "Elected" Officials who claim that they are so powerful and awesome have to cut our benefits further, I give up.

March 3, 2013

SSH! What they won't say about sequester - 83 billions of dollars is

What happens to Federal Spending, (in terms of cuts) and it also is the amount of money allotted to banks!

Ain't it great! Ain't it grand! The nation is run by the Big Financial Brands.

https://twitter.com/StevenSinger3/status/308024761504636928/photo/1

March 2, 2013

So fracking gets approval from State Dept Study - Just released study Mar 1st

This will give all of our fine friends in the Political Class their ability to have a cover story while they help get Industry what it wants.

Study was released to be buried inside the 4Pm on Friday news cycle - the usual "PR trick" so that no one in America knows what is going on.

On edit: The study is showing "no apparent harm" will come to the nation from tar sands pipeline, known as the Keystone XL Pipeline. The opening sentence of the above article:
WASHINGTON — The State Department issued a revised environmental impact statement for the 1,700-mile Keystone XL pipeline on Friday that makes no recommendation about whether the project should be built but presents no conclusive environmental reason it should not be.


This gives our President the cover he needs to go merrily about his way. It also helps 53 Senators who on an average got over a half million dollars apiece from the Fracking Industry feel A-okay, conscience-wise, about their maneuvering to help Industry:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/02/us/us-report-sees-no-environmental-bar-to-keystone-pipeline.html?ref=earth&_r=0

February 27, 2013

This news item might make your day - ex-con sets up foundation to

Help others. Jeff Deskovic was wrongfully incarcerated for a crime he didn't commit. Years later, he is released and is given a settlement as reparation for the injury. Many of us, myself included, might well spend the rest of our lives angrily sitting it out, enmeshed in self pity. But Jeff wasn't like that. Instead, he has set up a foundation to help others who have been wrongfully accused.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/02/26/1189866/-Exonerating-the-Innocent-Jeff-s-Been-Down-There-Before-and-He-Knows-the-Way-Out