Who owns the Rain? Apparently Colorado believes only certain people own it.

Who owns the Rain?
Apparently Colorado believes only certain people own it.

Environmentalists and others like to gather it in containers for use in drier times. But state law says it belongs to those who bought the rights to waterways.

By Nicholas Riccardi

March 18, 2009

Reporting from Denver — Every time it rains here, Kris Holstrom knowingly breaks the law.

Holstrom’s violation is the fancifully painted 55-gallon buckets underneath the gutters of her farmhouse on a mesa 15 miles from the resort town of Telluride. The barrels catch rain and snowmelt, which Holstrom uses to irrigate the small vegetable garden she and her husband maintain.

But according to the state of Colorado, the rain that falls on Holstrom’s property is not hers to keep. It should be allowed to fall to the ground and flow unimpeded into surrounding creeks and streams, the law states, to become the property of farmers, ranchers, developers and water agencies that have bought the rights to those waterways.  read the rest here you will be totally amazed that someone can OWN rainwater.

 

Obama’s Changes in the first days

Obama’s first days:

Two years after launching the most technologically savvy presidential campaign in history, Obama officials ran smack into the constraints of the federal bureaucracy yesterday, encountering a jumble of disconnected phone lines, old computer software, and security regulations forbidding outside e-mail accounts.

What does that mean in 21st-century terms? No Facebook to communicate with supporters. No outside e-mail log-ins. No instant messaging. Hard adjustments for a staff that helped sweep Obama to power through, among other things, relentless online social networking.

“It is kind of like going from an Xbox to an Atari,” Obama spokesman Bill Burton said of his new digs.

…team members, accustomed to working on Macintoshes, found computers outfitted with six-year-old versions of Microsoft software.

But….All is not lost and the change begins Now!

WASHINGTON – In a first-day flurry of activity, President Barack Obama on Wednesday set up shop in the Oval Office, summoned advisers to begin dealing with war and recession and ordered new lobbying rules for “a clean break from business as usual.”

He also froze salaries for top White House staff members, placed phone calls to Mideast leaders and had aides circulate a draft executive order that would close the detention center at Guantanamo Bay within a year…

…Unveiling ethics rules that he portrayed as the fulfillment of a major campaign promise, Obama said that “the way to make government responsible is to hold it accountable.” The rules are needed, he added, “to help restore faith in government, without which we cannot deliver the changes that we were sent here to make.”

The pay freeze affects the roughly 100 White House employees who make more than $100,000 a year. “Families are tightening their belts, and so should Washington,” Obama said…

…In an attempt to deliver on pledges of a transparent government, Obama said he would change the way the federal government interprets the Freedom of Information Act. He said he was directing agencies that vet requests for information to err on the side of making information public — not to look for reasons to legally withhold it — an alteration to the traditional standard of evaluation.

Just because a government agency has the legal power to keep information private does not mean that it should, Obama said.

via

 

McCain/Palin call Obama’s Economic Plan “Socialism”

but is it?   What does the christian bible say about it?

Republican John McCain used the phrase “that’s not America” yesterday to describe Democrat Barack Obama’s plans for a middle-class tax cut, and Obama said McCain is “throwing everything he’s got at us, hoping something will stick”

McCain may not know it, being that a lot of christians simply do not know what their own bible says, but we think Jesus was “for” socialism.   Click now and find out why we think that.  Joe Redner explains socialism in the bible.

 

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.

 

Palin was against Darfur before she was for it.

During the Palin-Biden Debate  Palin said she helped Darfur while she was Governor, but Alaskans beg to differ with her.  Check out this story at the Huffington Post.

Sarah Palin was called on to divest State Funds from Sudan in 2006 by Congress. She did nothing.

Sarah Palin was aware of the press coverage and postcard campaign in 2007. She did nothing.

Sarah Palin knew when the Save Darfur Coalition met with her staff in 2007. She did nothing.

Sarah Palin found out when House Bill 287 was filed in 2008. She did nothing. She changed her position in 2008, a year and a half after first being asked.

So, Governor Sarah Palin, in fact, took no leadership role to fight for Darfur divestment. She dismissed pleas for help.  (Until it was convenient for her politically)

And Now, with that all important spin machine, and she is potential VP looks like she was for it all along………

Lordy, Liar Liar, pants on fire!!  Do they ever stop?

 

Bush Backs Unlimited Compensation For Disgraced CEOs

Bush Backs Unlimited Compensation For Disgraced CEOs: Now Is Not The Time For ‘Punitive Measures’

Today, the White House released a statement criticizing Congress’s potential plan to limit CEO compensation at the companies the federal government is bailing out, firmly standing against any “punitive measures”:

We certainly understand and are sympathetic to the sentiment regarding the pay of CEOs and senior management of these firms, but we have to focus on the problem, and the problem is that we need these firms to participate in the program and sell us this debt. Having punitive measures would provide a disincentive for firms to participate, and that would make the program much less likely to succeed.

CEO compensation and corporate governance in public companies are very important issues — especially when receiving taxpayer support — but we need to be focused on fixing this problem in our markets right now. We can and should return to those issues once we get this legislation passed.

President Bush also released another statement earlier today warning Congress against inserting any “unrelated provisions” — such as help for struggling homeowners — in the $700 billion Wall Street bailout.

The Bush administration’s position is unjustifiable. As ABC News reported:

In 2007, Wall Street’s five biggest firms — Bear Stearns, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, and Morgan Stanley — paid a record $39 billion in bonuses to themselves.

That’s $10 billion more than the $29 billion loan taxpayers are making to J.P. Morgan to save Bear Stearns.

Those 2007 bonuses were paid even though the shareholders in those firms last year collectively lost about $74 billion in stock declines — their worst year since 2002.

In short, the Bush administration wants zero punishment for these wreckless CEOs who lost shareholder money and are now costing each person in the United States $2,000. In return for $700 billion, the White House has yet to name any ways that it will hold these corporations accountable or institute safeguards to ensure that this irresponsible lending and borrowing won’t happen again.

Furthermore, the White House is demanding that Congress give up its oversight powers for this deal and “place no restrictions on the administration other than requiring semiannual reports to Congress, granting the Treasury secretary unprecedented power to buy and resell mortgage debt.”

———

If not now, tell us when!  When will be the time to punish crooks that happen to be in the right wing base?  When?  When?  Or shall the rest of the nation eat cake?

I love this comment over at think progress:

---

Sez the WH –

“Having punitive measures would provide a disincentive for firms to participate, and that would make the program much less likely to succeed.”
___________

Excuse me, you mouth-breathing morons from Hell… billionaire Wall Street execs FU to the degree they’re about to take the world economy down for years to come, and “punitive measures would provide a disincentive”???

WTF are we worried about these executives leeches’ feelings for?

 

“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?

 

Proof Positive, Media Mouthpieces for Republicans

Can anyone with a straight face now say that the media is “liberal”. Can anyone say media is not driven by the republicans?

Scarborough just made the most outrageous statement ever made on national TV, in effect, saying they will only talk about what republicans wish to talk about. Scarborough…republican who once ran on that ticket in Florida.

There never was any doubt in my mind, but now its been said by….wait for it…….the republicans.

What a tragedy for the American people.

The people we entrust with telling us the “facts” really no longer care and will tell us what they want to tell us.

September 10 edition of MSNBC’s Morning Joe Scarborough: Media will talk about “[w]hatever the McCain campaign wants us to talk about, because the McCain campaign is assertive”

Summary: After likening cable TV to “a 500-pound guy looking for a 100-pound burro to get on” and then “rides it until it dies,” Chris Matthews said to Joe Scarborough, “I want to ask you, what will we talk about two days from now?” Scarborough replied: “Whatever the McCain campaign wants us to talk about, because the McCain campaign is assertive.”

 

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.

 

Anthrax Attack: Revelations of 2001

Source: The New York Times [edited]

8-12-08 On Wednesday [6 Aug 2008], the United States Justice Department revealed its evidence that Dr. Bruce E. Ivins, on his own, committed the worst act of bio-terrorism in the country’s history. This 18-year veteran scientist of the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick in Frederick, Md., is accused of killing 5 people and sickening 17 others in the fall of 2001. Dr. Ivins died on 29 Jul 2008 of an apparent suicide without a chance to give his side of the story.

After reading the affidavits and listening to the Justice Department briefing, I was both disheartened and perplexed by the lack of physical evidence supporting a conviction Dr. Ivins was a friend and colleague of mine for nearly 16 years. We worked together at Fort Detrick. He was a senior scientist, and I was, first, a bench scientist and, from 1999 to 2003, the chief of the bacteriology division.

The Justice Department has presented different types of evidence to support its argument that Dr. Ivins was the person who mailed anthrax to Tom Brokaw, Tom Daschle and others in September and October of 2001. Much of this evidence is outside the realm of science: Dr. Ivins’s alleged fixation with a sorority; strange comments in excerpts from his e-mail messages; a connection to a Greendale school that might or might not explain the fictitious return address on anthrax mailings. I will not address these points beyond noting that they are highly circumstantial. As a scientist, however, I feel compelled to comment on what should have been the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s strongest link between Dr. Ivins and the terrible crime: deadly anthrax spores. In the summary of its findings, the FBI states that investigators used 4 different genetic techniques to match the anthrax-laced attack letters to a unique DNA footprint of a single anthrax spore preparation in one flask that had been in Dr. Ivins’s custody….read more of this revealing story and why questions remain