By the Authority vested in me…

EXECUTIVE ORDER — ENSURING LAWFUL INTERROGATIONS

By the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, in order to improve the effectiveness of human intelligence gathering, to promote the safe, lawful, and humane treatment of individuals in United States custody and of United States personnel who are detained in armed conflicts, to ensure compliance with the treaty obligations of the United States, including the Geneva Conventions, and to take care that the laws of the United States are faithfully executed, I hereby order as follows:

Section 1.  Revocation.  Executive Order 13440 of July 20, 2007, is revoked.  All executive directives, orders, and regulations inconsistent with this order, including but not limited to those issued to or by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) from September 11, 2001, to January 20, 2009, concerning detention or the interrogation of detained individuals, are revoked to the extent of their inconsistency with this order.  Heads of departments and agencies shall take all necessary steps to ensure that all directives, orders, and regulations of their respective departments or agencies are consistent with this order.  Upon request, the Attorney General shall provide guidance about which directives, orders, and regulations are inconsistent with this order.

via

Pretty awesome, not even there a week and already on the ball!!!  Frankly I am amazed he is acting so quickly.  I guess the last 8 years have given me a bad case of cynicism.  I may recover if this keeps up.

 

Chilling? You Betcha!

By Dana Milbank CLEARWATER, Fla. — “Okay, so Florida, you know that you’re going to have to hang onto your hats,” Sarah Palin told a rally of a few thousand here this morning, “because from now until Election Day it may get kind of rough.”

You betcha. And the person dishing out the roughest stuff at the moment is Sarah Palin.

“I was reading my copy of the New York Times the other day,” she said.

“Booooo!” replied the crowd.

“I knew you guys would react that way, okay,” she continued. “So I was reading the New York Times and I was really interested to read about Barack’s friends from Chicago.”

It was time to revive the allegation, made over the weekend, that Obama “pals around” with terrorists, in this case Bill Ayers, late of the Weather Underground. Many independent observers say Palin’s allegations are a stretch; Obama served on a Chicago charitable board with Ayers, now an education professor, and has condemned his past activities.

“Now it turns out, one of his earliest supporters is a man named Bill Ayers,” Palin said.

“Boooo!” said the crowd.

“And, according to the New York Times, he was a domestic terrorist and part of a group that, quote, ‘launched a campaign of bombings that would target the Pentagon and our U.S. Capitol,'” she continued.

“Boooo!” the crowd repeated.

“Kill him!” proposed one man in the audience.

Palin went on to say that “Obama held one of the first meetings of his political career in Bill Ayers’s living room, and they’ve worked together on various projects in Chicago.” Here, Palin began to connect the dots. “These are the same guys who think that patriotism is paying higher taxes — remember that’s what Joe Biden had said. “And” — she paused and sighed — “I am just so fearful that this is not a man who sees America the way you and I see America, as the greatest force for good in the world. I’m afraid this is someone who sees America as ‘imperfect enough’ to work with a former domestic terrorist who had targeted his own country.”

What’s chilling is this republican campaign stirs up hate and racism and incites violence, nay, murder: and then does not condemn the behavior of their constituents.

I am embarrassed and frightened for Florida, for the republicans and for America.  I can see why the world thinks badly of us at this point.

Go to the polls and vote for America, Vote Obama.

 

“Yes, I think I will see Jesus come back to earth in my lifetime.” – Palin

The pastor who clashed with Palin Baptist minister Howard Bess, who wrote a book Palin wanted banned and who fought her on abortion and gay rights, says the country should fear her election.

Bess is unnerved by the prospect of Palin — a woman whose mind is given to dogmatic certitude — standing one step away from the Oval Office. “It’s truly frightening that someone like Sarah has risen to the national level,” Bess said. “Like all religious fundamentalists — Christian, Jewish, Muslim — she is a dualist. They view life as an ongoing struggle to the finish between good and evil. Their mind-set is that you do not do business with evil — you destroy it. Talking with the enemy is not part of their plan. That puts someone like Obama on the side of evil.

Another valley activist, Philip Munger, says that Palin also helped push the evangelical drive to take over the Mat-Su Borough school board. “She wanted to get people who believed in creationism on the board,” said Munger, a music composer and teacher. “I bumped into her once after my band played at a graduation ceremony at the Assembly of God. I said, ‘Sarah, how can you believe in creationism — your father’s a science teacher.’ And she said, ‘We don’t have to agree on everything.’

“I pushed her on the earth’s creation, whether it was really less than 7,000 years old and whether dinosaurs and humans walked the earth at the same time. And she said yes, she’d seen images somewhere of dinosaur fossils with human footprints in them.”

Munger also asked Palin if she truly believed in the End of Days, the doomsday scenario when the Messiah will return. “She looked in my eyes and said, ‘Yes, I think I will see Jesus come back to earth in my lifetime.'”

The concept that a heart-beat away from the presidency could be this person who believes that man walked with the dinosaurs is appalling.  Will she hurry the Rapture of the Christians with an Apocalypse?  Can you see the hand poised…..to strike nuclear Armageddon?

 

Are the American people smart..or not so smart?

From the Huffington Post I read the following excerpt from a story with the title “We’re Gonna Lose this Frickin’ Thing”:

So what is this house advantage the Republicans have? It’s the press. There is no more fourth estate. Wait, hold on…I’m not going down some esoteric path with theories on the deregulation of the media and corporate bias and CNN versus Fox…I mean it: there is no more functioning press in this country. And without a real press the corporate and religious Republicans can lie all they want and get away with it. And that’s the 51% advantage.

Think this is some opinion being wryly posited to titillate other bloggers and inspire dialogue with Tucker Carlson or Gore Vidal? Fuck that. Four corporations own all the TV channels. All of them. If they don’t get ratings they get canceled or fired. All news is about sex, blame and anger, and fear. Exposing lies about amounts of money taken from lobbyists and votes cast for the agenda of the last eight years does not rate. The end.

Adam, get a grip! Even if democrats “frickin” lose there is always next 4 years. How many times can a republican government beat and bloody the country before the country has had enough. My guess is two/three terms. Just hang on to your sanity and the republicans will eventually shoot themselves in the foot. (they always do, then dems take over and bring the country back into the real world again)

You are right however, about the 4th estate. We the people fight back on blogs, on online opinions. We know that the news is nothing more than fluff anymore. Take refuge in the fact that there is a large percentage of people that now do not even watch that non-existent 4th estate. The garner their news from the Internet from many many places, researching for themselves! Why? Because they KNOW that the news is skewed and they are tired. They want facts and they can now go and get those facts for themselves, they do not have to depend on the media that was for so many years something all Americans tuned into at 6:00 to see, say, Huntly and Brinkly. They trusted them to give Americans the facts. I will say it again, we no longer trust the media.

But, the democrats are not going to lose, so that scenario is a moot one. Eighty percent of this country is very tired of the republican antics, tired of the republican lies, tired of the republican thieves. That leaves just twenty percent that likes LIARS AND THIEVES AND CROOKS. Go figure. This year, this time, it WILL NOT WASH. Too many Americans have seen the liars for what they are.

 

No state power is more fearsome than the power to imprison: Habeas corpus – McCain wants it gone!

The purpose of a writ of habeas corpus is to cause a government to release a prisoner or show through due process why the prisoner should be held.

…The day after the Supreme Court ruled that detainees imprisoned at Guantanamo are entitled to seek habeas corpus hearings, John McCain called it “one of the worst decisions in the history of this country.” Well.

…the Supreme Court’s ruling only begins marking a boundary against government’s otherwise boundless power to detain people indefinitely, treating Guantanamo as (in Barack Obama’s characterization) “a legal black hole.” And public habeas hearings might benefit the Bush administration by reminding Americans how bad its worst enemies are.

…McCain, co-author of the McCain-Feingold law that abridges the right of free political speech, has referred disparagingly to, as he puts it, “quote ‘First Amendment rights.’ ” Now he dismissively speaks of “so-called, quote ‘habeas corpus suits.’ ” He who wants to reassure constitutionalist conservatives that he understands the importance of limited government should be reminded why the habeas right has long been known as “the great writ of liberty.”

The above are excerpts from George Will’s column on the Washington Post.

BUT….

What does Obama say? Read this from the Senate Floor in 2006:

That is the true genius of America–a faith in simple dreams, an insistence on small miracles; that we can tuck in our children at night and know that they are fed and clothed and safe from harm; that we can say what we think, write what we think, without hearing a sudden knock on the door. …..

Without hearing a sudden knock on the door. I bring this up because what is at stake in this bill, and in the amendment that is currently being debated, is the right, in some sense, for people who hear that knock on the door and are placed in detention because the Government suspects them of terrorist activity to effectively challenge their detention by our Government…

…I would like somebody in this Chamber, somebody in this Government, to tell me why this is necessary. I do not want to hear that this is a new world and we face a new kind of enemy. I know that. I know that every time I think about my two little girls and worry for their safety–when I wonder if I really can tuck them in at night and know that they are safe from harm. I have as big of a stake as anybody on the other side of the aisle and anybody in this administration in capturing terrorists and incapacitating them. I would gladly take up arms myself against any terrorist threat to make sure my family is protected.

But as a parent, I can also imagine the terror I would feel if one of my family members were rounded up in the middle of the night and sent to Guantanamo without even getting one chance to ask why they were being held and being able to prove their innocence.

This is not just an entirely fictional scenario, by the way. We have already had reports by the CIA and various generals over the last few years saying that many of the detainees at Guantanamo should not have been there. As one U.S. commander of Guantanamo told the Wall Street Journal:

Sometimes, we just didn’t get the right folks….

To deny habeas corpus to our detainees can be seen as a prescription for how the captured members of our own military, diplomatic, and NGO personnel stationed abroad may be treated. …..

…The Congress has every duty to insure their protection, and to avoid anything which will be taken as a justification, even by the most disturbed minds, that arbitrary arrest is the acceptable norm of the day in the relations between nations, and that judicial inquiry is an antique, trivial and dispensable luxury.

The world is watching what we do today in America. They will know what we do here today, and they will treat all of us accordingly in the future–our soldiers, our diplomats, our journalists, anybody who travels beyond these borders. I hope we remember this as we go forward. I sincerely hope we can protect what has been called the “great writ”–a writ that has been in place in the Anglo-American legal system for over 700 years…

The observations of the judicious Blackstone . . . are well worthy of recital: ‘To bereave a man of life. . . or by violence to confiscate his estate, without accusation or trial, would be so gross and notorious an act of despotism as must at once convey the alarm of tyranny throughout the whole nation; but confinement of the person, by secretly hurrying him to jail, where his sufferings are unknown or forgotten, is a less public, a less striking, and therefore a more dangerous engine of arbitrary government.'”

 

Gasoline prices: despite rising prices and growing demand, refineries are again cutting back their capacity-building plans.

Gasoline prices

What impacts U.S. consumers and voters most directly is the price of gasoline and diesel fuel, not only because of what they pay at the pump but also because higher fuel costs raise the price of many consumer goods. Fuel price hikes can be a major drag on the whole economy.

Gas prices are most politically relevant because they are a sharp pain that voters will be feeling this summer and fall, before they vote. All three candidates (and even President Bush) seem to “get” this. But the summer holiday for the 18.4-cent federal excise tax on gasoline proposed by Clinton and McCain will not, in the view of the experts and the media, do much more than slightly numb the voters before their wallets are amputated. [For stories, here’s one from NPR; one from the New York Times, and one from Newsweek.]

With Democrats and Republicans both split on the gas tax holiday, the chances of it passing a narrowly-divided Congress in an election year seem close to nil. The biggest danger, from all three candidates’ perspective, is that the public may conclude that they have proposed nothing serious or substantial to address gas prices. During the time since McCain proposed the gas-tax holiday, the price of gasoline has actually risen more than the 18.4 cents worth of tax relief it would offer, according to the Energy Information Administration.

That it will do nothing to solve the problem is a given that even McCain admits. The danger to candidates is that it will do nothing to get them elected. If Congress passed a tax holiday and the price of gas stayed flat (because of a rise in the underlying commodity price) or went up, the tactic could boomerang.

The price of gasoline at the end of April 2008, averaged over the whole U.S., was about $3.60 — up about $0.63 from a year earlier. Even worse was the price of diesel, $4.17 — up $1.36 from a year earlier.

As for crude oil prices, experts estimate that the cost of crude oil accounts for anywhere from 46 percent of the retail price of refined gasoline to 72 percent. Obviously, the numbers are fuzzy. The looseness of the linkage between wholesale oil and retail gasoline prices raises questions. Journalists might well ask whether oil companies, refiners, distributors, and retailers are taking advantage of the situation. But they rarely do ask.

While crude prices are a factor, most experts would agree that tightly limited U.S. refinery capacity is also a big factor in pushing domestic gasoline prices higher.

Less easy to answer: why is refinery capacity limited and what can be done about it?

Environmentalists and consumer advocates tend to argue that companies are colluding and dragging their feet on purpose — since high gas and diesel prices help profits. Companies blame government regulations.

There are grounds for skepticism. Utility and gas transmission companies first blamed the California “energy crisis” of 2001 on clean air and market regulation, too. Few news media questioned this explanation. But it turned out to be totally untrue, and a cover for billions of dollars worth illegal market manipulation by companies like Enron.

The Nieman Watchdog has previously raised the question of whether there may be manipulation or collusion in the U.S. gasoline market. [Click here and here.]

Some numbers: In 1981, there were 324 refineries with a total capacity of 18.6 million barrels per day, according to the EIA. As of 2007, there were 149, with a capacity of 17.4 bpd.

It is no secret that the industry deliberately shut refineries to improve profits in recent decades. Industry says it is now building new capacity at existing plants – but despite rising prices and growing demand, refineries are again cutting back their capacity-building plans.

Joseph A. Davis has been writing about the environment, energy, and natural resources for 30 years. READ THE WHOLE DOWN AND DIRTY HERE.

 

Will our table food be any safer now?

Last week the (meat) industry agreed to a downer ban, pointing to
concerns over consumer confidence and strained international trade
relations. The American Meat Institute, The National Meat Association
and The National Milk Producers Federation, which together represent
most of the nation’s meat producers, filed a petition seeking an
absolute ban prohibiting any downers from entering the food supply.

Animal-rights groups, lawmakers and California meat producers all
hailed the move.

Wonder why it took the “rocket scientists” so long to figure out that people absolutely should NOT be eating sick and downed cows?

Oh Yeah! Their “concerns” over consumer confidence and their bottom line…may have fuddled the thinking on that issue in the past. Perhaps even they have seen now that this issue regarding downed cattle is one that can affect even themselves and their bottom line when it makes people sick!

“One in 4 Americans are sickened by food-borne illness each year;
that’s 76 million people,” Jeffrey Levi, executive director of Trust
for America’s Health, said during a morning teleconference Wednesday
[30 Apr 2008].

…the federal government has devoted very limited
resources to the problem, despite a presidential directive and recent
serious outbreaks of food-borne illnesses. Not enough money is spent
on fighting bacterial threats such as salmonella and _E. coli_. About
85 percent of food-borne illness outbreaks occur among foods
regulated by the FDA.

See our previous articles on this issue here:

Clinton and 2007 Food Safety Plan

Warning, You WILL think about this next time you eat Beef!

How safe is our food supply? Things you need to know!

 

Do you McCain? Do you Believe in Hagee?

Reporting on a New Orleans campaign event at which Sen. John McCain was interrupted by a voter’s question about Pastor John Hagee,” CNN‘s Dana Bash aired a clip of Hagee — who has endorsed McCain — saying of Hurricane Katrina, “What happened in New Orleans looked like the curse of God.” But Bash did not air the portion of Hagee’s comments in which he reaffirmed his previous assertion that Hurricane Katrina was at least in part the result of “sin” that Hagee identified as “a massive homosexual rally.” CNN’s John Roberts and Kyra Phillips similarly noted that Hagee said that “Katrina was God’s punishment for sinful behavior in New Orleans” .

September 18, 2006, edition of National Public Radio’s Fresh Air

HAGEE: All hurricanes are acts of God, because God controls the heavens. I believe that New Orleans had a level of sin that was offensive to God, and they are — were recipients of the judgment of God for that. The newspaper carried the story in our local area that was not carried nationally that there was to be a homosexual parade there on the Monday that the Katrina came. And the promise of that parade was that it was going to reach a level of sexuality never demonstrated before in any of the other Gay Pride parades. So I believe that the judgment of God is a very real thing. I know that there are people who demur from that, but I believe that the Bible teaches that when you violate the law of God, that God brings punishment sometimes before the day of judgment. And I believe that the Hurricane Katrina was, in fact, the judgment of God against the city of New Orleans.

(If it’s God doing this, I think we should send a gay pride parade to those very dry area’s in Africa so some FOOD will grow there again!   Think of it, God and the Gay Pride Parade save the starving children in Africa!  What say you Hagee?  You can still say its God sending the flooding, but this time it will be a good thing!)

Okay, God was punishing New Orleans for planning to have a gay pride parade, what on earth did Illinois do last week to deserve that 5.2 earthquake? I read…According to Anagram Commodity Research Crude oil rebounded due to concern that a 5.2-magnitude earthquake in Illinois affected refinery operations. So, I guess God is in favor of oil and “BIG OIL” being sold “sky” high and all us little sinners getting the short end of a dry “dipstick”…har, funny man that God.

How about Virginia what did they do to have God sling down three tornadoes, punishing over 200 with injuries and leaving many more homeless? (not really a hurricane, but since God controls the heavens…)

The governor has declared Bremer, Blackhawk and Louisa Counties in eastern Iowa state disaster areas due to flooding this week. What horrible sins did Iowa commit? (flooding? doesn’t that come from rain from the heavens…)

(I think I know………..those areas are conservative strongholds, lol.  Keep your eyes on the skys Repubs!)

Well Mr Hagee…Mr. McCain, who welcomes the endorsement of Mr. Hagee, what say you both?

Natural disasters or God’s wrath? Don’t be coy, tell us what you really think!

Consider the following pronouncements by Hagee, the man who McCain has proudly introduced as an ally and who has endorsed McCain.

On Jews:

It was the disobedience and rebellion of the Jews, God’s chosen people, to their covenantal responsibility to serve only the one true God, Jehovah, that gave rise to the opposition and persecution that they experienced beginning in Canaan and continuing to this very day.

And:

How utterly repulsive, insulting, and heartbreaking to God for his chosen people to credit idols with bringing blessings he had showered upon the chosen people. Their own rebellion had birthed the seed of anti-Semitism that would arise and bring destruction to them for centuries to come.

On gays:

All hurricanes are acts of God, because God controls the heavens. I believe that New Orleans had a level of sin that was offensive to God, and they are — were recipients of the judgment of God for that. The newspaper carried the story in our local area that was not carried nationally that there was to be a homosexual parade there on the Monday that the Katrina came. And the promise of that parade was that it was going to reach a level of sexuality never demonstrated before in any of the other Gay Pride parades. So I believe that the judgment of God is a very real thing. I know that there are people who demur from that, but I believe that the Bible teaches that when you violate the law of God, that God brings punishment sometimes before the day of judgment. And I believe that the Hurricane Katrina was, in fact, the judgment of God against the city of New Orleans.

Hagee, of course, is also a virulent anti-Catholic, who has suggested that the pope is the anti-Christ, and that Adolf Hitler’s anti-Semitism was the result of being educated at a Catholic school.

But last week, once McCain assured reporters that, just because Hagee was endorsing him, it didn’t mean he agreed with everything Hagee said, the mainstream media essentially let the matter drop.

No? Really? Wonder why? They sure didn’t drop it in Obama’s case did they?

McCain has not rejected the support of Hagee, and has said nothing about Hagee’s claims that American foreign policy towards Palestine is causing God to attack the United States with terrorists.

Hagee called the Catholic religion ‘The Great Whore,’ the ‘apostate church,’ the ‘anti-Christ’ and a ‘false cult system’? McCain cannot ignore Hagee’s lies any more than he can tolerate his bigotry.

Of course, being a former Baptist, I understand where ole Hagee is coming from.  Hellfire and brimstone, and the Apocalypse are what people like Hagee long for and lust after.

I’m certain though, that people that believe as Hagee does…hell in fact if they believe even a little of what Hagee does….I don’t want them running our country.

Do you McCain?  Do you Believe in Hagee?

 

Virus kills Chile’s salmon and indicts its fish farming methods

Source: The New York Times [edited]
<http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/27/world/americas/27salmon.html>

Virus kills Chile’s salmon and indicts its fish farming methods

Looking out over the low green mountains jutting through miles of
placid waterways here [Puerto Montt] in southern Chile, it is hard to
imagine that anything could be amiss. But beneath the rows of neatly
laid netting around the fish farms just off the shore, the salmon are dying.A virus called infectious salmon anemia, or ISA, is killing millions
of salmon destined for export to Japan, Europe, and the United
States. The spreading plague has sent shivers through Chile’s
3rd-largest export industry, which has left local people embittered
by laying off more than 1000 workers.

It has also opened the companies to fresh charges from biologists and
environmentalists who say that the breeding of salmon in crowded
underwater pens is contaminating once-pristine waters and producing
potentially unhealthy fish.

Some say the industry is raising its fish in ways that court
disaster, and producers are coming under new pressure to change their
methods to preserve southern Chile’s cobalt blue waters for tourists
and other marine life.

“All these problems are related to an underlying lack of sanitary
controls,” said Dr Felipe C Cabello, a professor in the Department of
Microbiology and Immunology at New York Medical College in Valhalla
that has studied Chile’s fishing industry. “Parasitic infections,
viral infections, fungal infections are all disseminated when the
fish are stressed and the centers are too close together.”

Industry executives acknowledge some of the problems, but they reject
the notion that their practices are unsafe for consumers. American
officials also say the new virus is not harmful to humans.

But the latest outbreak has occurred after a rash of nonviral
illnesses in recent years that the companies acknowledge have led
them to use high levels of antibiotics. Researchers say the practice
is widespread in the Chilean industry, which is a mix of
international and Chilean producers. Some of those antibiotics, they
say, are prohibited for use on animals in the United States.

Many of those salmon still end up in American grocery stores, where
about 29 percent of Chilean exports are destined. While fish from
China have come under special scrutiny in recent months, in Chile
regulators have yet to form a registry that even tracks the use of
the drugs, researchers said.

The article highlights the growing disparity between the need for
food, the need for industries to grow and produce for their country’s
needs, as well as for export. It also highlights the growing
disparity between what is considered harmful. Perhaps there is not
enough information to know if ISA is harmful to humans. However, it
has been determined by the US FDA as well as by the European Union
that the antibiotics used to combat diseases in captive raised fish
has, in many cases, been banned.