Change your thoughts and you change your world.
– Norman Vincent Peale
– Norman Vincent Peale
Recent Posts
- Day 14: Louisiana Senator Approvingly Compares Trump to Stalin
- Day 13: Elon Musk Flexes His Muscles
- Day 12: While Elon Musk Takes Over, We Podcast With Driftglass and Blue Gal
- Day 11: Harm of Fascist Regime’s Foreign Aid Freeze Comes Into View
- Day 10: The Fascist Regime Blames a Plane Crash on Nonwhite People
All they ever wanted: USA Today
Following in Dear Leader’s footsteps quite nicely, aren’t they? Good to see my tax dollars at work…erm, vacation.
Why should they stay in Washington? All of their legislation is written for them by lobbyists and corporations so they have nothing to do but apply the rubber stamp and “vacation” with the lobbyists.
I just want to fire them and send them on a permanent vacation.
Look on the bright side–the more days they’re gone, the fewer devastatingly destructive bills they can pass.
Monday’s undercovered News Stories, courtesy of storiesinamerica.
Job approval rating drops from 72% to 58% after signing that nasty abortion bill: SurveyUSA.
May it plummet even further.
that is GREAT news. That is exactly the thing that will stop their train in its tracks and destroy the whole ‘life’ movement as an integral part of the two-party dynamic. F’ing poll numbers.
Rebels kill 16 in attack on Iraqi town
Protesters defy Belarus’s Lukashenko over poll
Related:
Belarusian election severely flawed
Will the Byelorussians follow the example of their Ukrainan brothers with an orange revolution?
Unfortunately, mostly scary headlines today:
Billed as the next generation of the Internet, IPv6 (internet protocol version 6) is a new technical standard enthusiastically embraced by China which will allow greater traceability of Internet users, potentially endangering those expressing views counter to the government’s. The standard, known as IPv6, solves technical problems faced by the Internet around the world, but Internet freedom advocates outside China warn that the internationally developed norm would also allow Beijing authorities – or any government or company for that matter – to have a better idea of what individuals are doing on the Internet.
The Global Biodiversity Outlook (GBO) is published as national delegates gather in Brazil under the UN Convention on Biological Diversity. The Convention commits governments to slow the decline in the richness of living systems by 2010. The GBO says “unprecedented efforts” will be needed to achieve this aim. It sets out 15 indicators of progress towards the 2010 target, ranging from trends in the extent of wildlife habitats to the build-up of nutrients such as nitrogen, which can harm aquatic life. Only one of the 15 – the area of the world’s surface officially protected for wildlife – is moving in the right direction for biodiversity.
A small temperature rise averaging half a degree Celsius may have doubled numbers of malaria-carrying mosquitoes in African highlands in the last 50 years, spreading the disease to an area formerly mainly free of malaria.
For now, things are good: Libya is installing a “national grid” for distribution of groundwater, bringing much needed water to its coastal cities and prompting a boom in agriculture for crops to export to Europe – but no one knows how long the aquifers will supply water before they are depleted.
University of Liverpool scientists say they’ve found environmental chemicals such as pesticides are more influential than thought in causing cancer. Previous studies in cancer causation have often concluded exposure to carcinogenic or endocrine-disrupting chemicals occur at concentrations too low to be considered a major factor. But new research finds exposure even to small amounts of such chemicals may result in an increased risk of developing cancer, especially in babies and young children. Scientists also found genetic variations, which can predispose some people to cancer, may interact with environmental contaminants and produce an enhanced effect.
Virtue is its own reward: When air pollution in a city declines, the city benefits with a directly proportional drop in death rates, a new study has found. For each decrease of 1 microgram of soot per cubic meter of air, death rates from cardiovascular disease, respiratory illness and lung cancer decrease by 3 percent — extending the lives of 75,000 people a year in the United States. The association held even after controlling for smoking and body mass index.
Homeland Security Secretary Chertoff said Monday his department will crack down on chemical manufacturers and storage facilities that he described as “free riders” – those that haven’t beefed up their security measures. Legislation is pending in the Senate to authorize Homeland Security to shut down facilities that do not comply with minimum safety standards. The bill by Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., would largely let the chemical industry draw up its own security plans for the federal government to approve or reject. Chertoff has not endorsed the Senate plan, but he is expected to outline elements that he said would need to be in acceptable legislation. Congressional staffers said it likely would not encourage facilities to substitute safe substances for hazardous chemicals, as environmentalists have demanded. Without that provision, “there isn’t any security that would be good enough,” said Rick Hind of Greenpeace. “A small plane or a high powered weapon would bypass any gate or fence.”
Double Trouble:U.S. researchers announced Monday that the much-feared H5N1 strain of avian influenza has in fact split into two strains. “Back in 2003 we only had one genetically distinct population of H5N1 with the potential to cause a human pandemic,” Rebecca Garten, of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told an infectious-diseases conference in Atlanta. “Now we have two.” Either strain could mutate to a form transmissible between humans, opening the door to a pandemic. And wild birds infected with the virus are expected to be in the US by this summer, officials announced.
Desalinization of seawater now costs one-tenth what it did a decade ago and further price drops are expected, but it still is too expensive for many places, and there are environmental issues with the removed salt, as well. Update here.
I’ll try to have something more upbeat tomorrow…
They are scary…I can’t even decide which one is the worst.
I just love the idea of Homeland Security “cracking down” on chemical companies by allowing them to decide what they feel like complying with in terms of safety standards…and how cool is it that we now have 2 H5N1 strains to worry about? </snark>
I’m looking out at the wild birds at the feeders on my deck and feeling, not scared of them, but scared for them. I wonder if people will stop feeding them because of a fear of attracting them?
We’re not the only country with weirdo religious fundamentalists:
JERUSALEM (Reuters) – An outbreak of deadly bird flu in Israel is God’s punishment for calls in election ads to legalize gay marriages, according to Rabbi David Basri, a prominent sage preaching Kabbalah or Jewish mysticism.
“The Bible says that God punishes depravity first through plagues against animals and then in people,” Basri said in a religious edict quoted by his son.
Basri said he hoped the deaths of hundreds of thousands of turkeys and chickens would help atone for what he called the sins of left-wing Israeli political parties, the son, Rabbi Yitzhak Basri, told Reuters, a week before a national election.
The bird flu outbreak stemmed from far-left political parties “strengthening and encouraging homosexuality,” Rabbi Basri’s son quoted him as saying.
One of the parties aired an election commercial depicting two brides kissing. Some campaign advertisements also called for homosexual marriages to be legalized in Israel.
Basri is a prominent Kabbalist and author of commentaries on the Zohar, the main Kabbalah mystical text.
As the circling of vultures continue in Iraq this am, 100 insurgents stormed Iraqi jail to free 33 prisoners leaving 27 dead, the Guardian UK reports
Here at home Laura Rozen points us to the FBI witness in the Moussaoui case. He appears to have shot holes in the prosecutor’s case for the death penalty, accusing his FBI bosses of ass covering.
I wrote about that last night.