Author: glitterscale

Obama is teaching me to be a glass half (or even three quarters) full kind of gal.  So I would like to share with you some reasons for my celebrating.

Positive thinking:

The war:

Micheal Ware reported that the agreement mandated by the UN for the US and other parties of the “willing” expires this year.  And an agreement talks with the Iraqis sought by Bushco have, at the present borken down!!!!  We may be FORCED to withdraw from Iraq!  

The election:

(over the hump)
Since Bush has been so bad, so inept, so inompetent, so corrupt, so venal, it is possible that we will only need to make sure we have better dems and not worry about how the repubs will do.  The cons and neocons have had their day and their trillions of tax payer dollars and their lobbies and their media shills but now they better fold their tents and still silently away to that less public toilet in their hometown!  The pendulum usually does swing back and forth and 2008 the pendulum is swinging our way!
And, hooray amd halleluyah McCain is proving to be even more inept than Bush. McCain’s fans in the media raised hell about the comments coming about how confused McCain was about Sunnis and Shias and the economy etc.  They said it was code for his age.

repeated from a comment somewhere:

I just had to laugh because it wasn’t Obama and co. that brought the age issue up, it was the McCain bunch.  And really, why couldn’t they refute the confusion issue?

Now the bearings comment is, true enough, a comment that truly could relate to McCain’s strategy, integrity, stand on issues, etc.  God knows he HAS no bearings in any of those.  But they can’t refute that so they leap on the age issue.

The ironic thing is, McCain’s supporters might be that older age group but those are the ones being hit hardest by the repub stiffle the vote machine with their voter id laws.  (giggle giggle, they just can’t help shooting themselves in the foot!)

Even things like the floods, the fires, the desertification and the mortgage crisis, even though they are bad and will get worse, they are strong evidence for those who are even somewhat thinking that a third Bush term spells disasters on many many many fronts.
War for cheap oil:  

$200 a barrel for oil will do what we could not get Bush to do, find ways to be independent of oil.  So how is your life changing?  I am forswearing too many trips from one side of the city to the other.  I haven’t taken to using the bus yet, but I need to start using my feet again!  What is your strategy?

Buying locally:

The expensive oil and rising prices for food will cause other changes.  We will be looking for locally grown produce and that will dent the mega corps agribusiness.

Jobs:

China is no longer cheap.  And you add transpo charges that were ignored previously, I think we will se more and more jobs moved back into the states.  If the dollar stays low, perhaps imports will pick up even!

Crossposted at the orangatan place:
What a WONDERFUL DAY!!!

I was fascinated by the thought that whether Sen. Clinton realizes it or not the race is over and Obama now needs to look toward the ge.  Now, I realize that his cabinet will not need to be set up right now, but I was curious about who might fit into the various slots.  Looking at Bush’s cabinet is pretty icky.  He and Reagan picked people that really really didn’t want to do their jobs.  Some of Reagan’s really wanted to dismantle their jobs and the same is true for Bush – i.e. justice no longer exists in Bush land.

But as I was doing this exercise it dawned on me that I have no way of seeing who might fit into various spots.  But I give you the list anyway and maybe you all have some ideas.

over
Robert Reich was very good at finance and might be willing to take up the cudgel again as Sec Treas.  

I think we need a very good person, a thinking person as Sec Def.  Somebody that doesn’t eschew diplomacy.  Somebody that doesn’t get sucked into the military mindset either, no offense to the military folks.  By that I mean – yes we need a good standing army and nave and air force et al and yes we need good hardware and software, but there should be constraints about what we ask of our military.  And there should be some training for peacetime things like disaster planning and relief.  So we need somebody with a little rebelliousness and a lot of foresightedness there. And I cannot think of anybody at the moment that would be such a paragon.  Colin Powell comes to mind, but he blew it long ago with his speech to the UN and besides he hasn’t enough rebelliousness.

Sec of State:  Governor Richardson might be a possibility.  He has done some interesting things in negotiations with other countries.  Have any of the Jimmy Carter offspring followed in their dad’s footsteps?  They might be worth checking out as well.

National Security Counsel:  We know well what happens when this is not properly staffed.  Maybe Richard Clark?   Wesley Clark?  This might be an easier one to fill if you look at old spooks and generals.

Homeland Security – God knows this one cabinet has all the earmarks of a hodgepodge in search of an explosion to start it up all over again.  There has to be an element of understanding about effects this thing has on real people, so somebody with some people skills is definitely needed even though it has some of the elements of intelligence (Goddess knows we TRULY need some people understanding here – like real person to person intell!)  So a real progressive here, perhaps?  Or maybe somebody who is a real thinker like Sen. Whitehouse?

I think for AG we need somebody like Pat Fitzgerald or perhaps one of the JAGs who stood up and said that GITMO was a violation of our rule of laws.  Pat is a repub and would give that sense of crossing over to the other party at the same time as punching GW  and Rove in the mouth!

Commerce Secretary – this job is gonna be hard after the Bush years.  We have allowed our system to become completely drained.  Maybe if we combine green – complete with agressive R&D – health – complete with revamped FDA, CDC and a great Surgeon General – information technology with privacy safeguards etc. – a new revitalized agriculture industry – complete with organic and urban farming.  

EPA Secretary – I think we need new blood here, big time.  I think we need somebody who doesn’t compromise easily.    Not a Governor again, not a politician, but a real green mean machine.  

Dept. of Veteran’s affairs – we really really need somebody with both  guts and compassion  in this position.  Somebody like Bono?  

Dept of Ag, Energy, Transportation and also Interior – we need some green thinkers here.  We need to get away from subsidizing Con-Agra and instead look at agriculture in the sense of being our vation the salvation and the world’s salvation once again and not just for energy.  We need true indepence from oil and solar and wind on every block.

Dept of Education – we need very innovative thinking here.  Something that might cause us to really get excited about education once again. I think a new emphasis on saving the world from global warming might cause us to gear up a bunch of real possibilities in this arena.  Maybe a combination of Carl Sagan and Sesame street?

Dept of Housing – now here is a great fit for somebody who can understand some of the problems we are now experiencing because of the mortgage crisis.  Although they may not have had much to do in this area previously, there surely should be some new legislation to help folks out if the mortgage company did not really let them know what was going to happen.
Governor Sebelius from Kansas would be good for perhaps commerce or education.

There are some commissions that need starting up:

1.  closing GITMO
2.  restoring scientific integrity
3.  leaving Iraq
4.  energy independence
5.  restoration of bill of rights, habeas and the constitution.
6.  making trade fair, not just for corporations but for workers and environment.
7.  restoring EPA
8.  reregulation – where has the lack of regulation done us harm?  Energy and financial markets come to mind.

The news is stunning.  Rice, Cheney and even Colin Powell (who of all people should have known better) choreographed the torture of “high value” detainees.  And we will no doubt get push back of “well it worked dammit!”  But we do not really have the smoking gun of that statement while we do have the smoking gun of having our nations leaders detailing torture techniques.

Regardless of how “successful” they were, torture is a war crime.  When are these folks going to stand trial?  When is Cheney going to be impeached and then the chimp after him?

(xposted at dKos)
From Crooks and Liars:

ABC News aired a segment on their daily news show that after a five month investigation, they could say that Bush’s most senior officials not only knew about the torture they were inflicting on suspected terrorists, but decided down to the last detail exactly how much torture to inflict.

    The discussions in the White House were top secret and sources say, involve some of the President’s most senior and influential advisors, principals of the National Security Council. In dozens of private talks and meetings, sources said that a handful of top advisors discussed specific high-value al Qaeda prisoners and exactly how those prisoners would be interrogated. Whether, for example, they would be slapped, pushed, deprived of sleep or subjected to simulated drowning, called waterboarding. The discussion about the “enhanced interrogation techniques” were so detailed, sources said, the interrogations were almost choreographed, down to the number of times the CIA could use a specific tactic. Former CIA director George Tenet, in an interview last year with ABC News told Charles Gibson,

        “It was authorized. It was legal, according to the Attorney General of the United States.”

    It also was discussed and approved in meetings by the National Security Council’s Principals Committee, a group that included Vice President Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld, George Tenet, John Ashcroft.

We’ve wanted to know how to derail Bushco, we’ve wanted to know how to slap Reid and Pelosi aside the head when they kowtow to Bush and we’ve wanted to know how to break the corporate ownership of OUR representatives.

The Dodd filibuster has given us a clue, by gummit!

It makes a difference when we watch, when they know we are watching.

Crossposted at Dkos:Finally a Fulcrum

More:
Yesterday we had a slight victory.  A FISA bill with telecom immunity was put onto the senate agenda by Sen. Harry Reid.  He had other choices.  He could have put the house bill up for a vote.  He could have put the Judiciary bill up for a vote.  Both of those did NOT offer telecom immunity.  This is a big deal, because essentially the telecoms broke the law and allowed the Bushco to break the law.  It was not something they had to do.  And they KNOW THE LAW INTIMATELY!  But it looked as if they were going to get immunity and it looked as if Reid had once again caved in to the Repubs point of view.  Sen. Dodd got up to filibuster.  And he didn’t have much help.  Maybe about 10 democrats stepped up.  The initial filibuster was  voted against, but apparently that still leaves 30 hours of debate on the measure that is allowed.  The vote for cloture was 76 to 10.  Clinton, Biden and Obama were all out on the hustings looking for that presidential seal.  Dodd is too.  But we on the blogs were paying attention.  Dodd said there were something like 1/2 million emails that supported his viewpoint.  Reid withdrew the bill.

What is observed can be changed is a motto in counseling.  If you observe a habit long enough, you can see the underlying motives for that habit and that observation will help you change or modify that habit.  But more than that.  If we suspect we are being observed, we might put on better behavior (company manners) or we might object (act out).  But something will change in how we respond to regular events in that case.  If we are sociopaths, we might then go underground and do the bullying or sado/masochistic behavior our dynamic might call for.  So we can change the senate’s behavior just by letting them know we are watching and paying attention.  

But it has to be massive.  1/2 million seems to be the key.  And not just the emails either.  People called and faxed as well.

We would have to have a great deal of help to develop this strategy.  Move-on did a great deal, FiredogLake and others as well pushed for contacting the senate.  We would have to know what bills were up and what they contained and which committees were working them, etc.  We would need people on the hill giving us info.  And those folks are busy and may not want a deluge of emails as a result of letting us know what was up.

But what else could we do with this?  Impeachment comes to mind.  1/2 million emails to the house Judiciary committee and to Pelosi in support of impeachment might funnel a focus right through that business as usual bunch.  But there might also have to be an ad or some kind of news story that would highlight that effort.  

Could we affect the bush bubble?  I bet we could.  I bet we could get all sorts of folks to resign if we pushed hard enough.  Maybe Addington?  Maybe Cheney?  

What we would do to stave off a coup?  I have worried about this more than ever, especially after seeing the repub pres. contenders.  All of them are lightweights.  All of them would stand aside for a Cheney or a Bush.

Firedoglake has an essay A “Presidential Coup,” The Continuity Of Government, And Blackwater Watching Midtown Manhattan from which they take a number of sources that are beginning to understand a coup is possible.  Would you be willing to get out of your comfort zone to do something about this?

More on flip:

I’ve tried writing and calling Senators and Congresscritters but nothing has changed.  Repubs still stonewall and have their talking points and dems cave seemingly needlessly.  I’ve marched but there never seems to be that magic number in the marchers that tips the body politic.  What can make the difference?

I postulate that we only have the time between now and next November to make a difference.  I figure that Bush will call into place his artificial crisis and put off elections “for our national security”.  A coup may come less dramatically with Blackwater recruits checkpointing any meaningful election.  But I figure Cheney will not want Ghouliani to take over for HIM.

But even if we do not worry about that, what about the environment closing down around us.  That timeline is shortened as well.

My questions:

1. What are your guesses about the timeline of a possible coup? Environmental catastrope?
2. What are you willing to sacrifice in order to stave off a possible coup?  Environmental catastrope?
3. How many people will it take to break through the DC indifference?
4. We don’t have time, so what do you see is quality in the “money/time/quality” meme?

Crossposted at the Orange Place: What to do to abort a coup? w/Poll

Wa Po has an article about what stress and a high fat diet can do to mice and probably what it does for us.  I find it very interesting that rather than try to figure out how to deal with the stress a lot of us are feeling they instead, look to blocking the signals to the brain that causes mice (and us) to want to eat badly.  This does indicate that stress is endemic to our specific society (along with high fat food access) but does not address the stress.  Why do that when you can create another pill, eh?

more on flip
Way to Shrink, Grow Fat Is Found

What their proposed pill would do:

“By treating the mice the way humans are treated, which is introducing a chronic stress from which they cannot escape and introducing this abundance of food, we mimicked what happens in American society,” Zukowska said.

When the researchers examined the animals’ fat tissue, they discovered sharply elevated concentrations of a substance called neuropeptide Y (NPY), a chemical messenger produced by nerves in the body, including those in fat. They also had far higher levels of a molecular partner NPY needs to work, known as the neuropeptide Y2R receptor.

“This tells us that NPY and this receptor trigger the whole process of stress-induced obesity,” Zukowska said. She noted that other recent studies found that humans with defective NPY receptors are resistant to obesity, whereas those with excessive NPY are prone to it.

After confirming the role of NPY in fat formation in additional studies in genetically engineered mice, the researchers showed in laboratory experiments that NPY induces the growth of immature fat cells, coaxes mature fat cells to get bigger and promotes blood vessels necessary to sustain fat tissue.

The researchers also demonstrated that injecting a substance that blocks NPY prevented mice from accumulating fat — even if they were stressed and ate a high-fat diet — and could shrink fat deposits by 40 percent to 50 percent within two weeks.

“It just melts the fat. It’s incredible,” said Zukowska, noting that the technique could offer an alternative or supplement to liposuction.

On the flip side, when researchers inserted pellets containing NPY under the skin of mice and three monkeys, they were able to stimulate fat growth, suggesting that the approach could replace skin fillers and other cosmetic and reconstructive surgical techniques.

“This has tremendous potential applications for both cosmetic and reconstructive surgery,” said Stephen B. Baker, a Georgetown University professor of plastic surgery who helped conduct the research.

Don’t you feel better now?  Nothing has really changed in our lives, just block those pesky peptides from parking fat on us in the wrong places.  I guess if we follow the model closely we could wind up with ubangi lips and Dolly Parton boobs one and all.

One advantage to running for office (at least if yo belong to one of the two major parties) is that you get a  forum for your ideas.

I was watching the dem debate on PBS
Black Community at Howard University listening to dems

The ideas I saw coming out of the debate were interesting

more:
1) Tax investment just as earnings are taxed.  Why should the investor have to pay less tax than a worker bee?

my take on this is – stock purchase, except at the initial IPO or later release is not adding to the economy.  One might tax expansive stock at a different rate if one wanted to increase investment in companies.  But in truth taxing investment is damn difficult since it is based on self reporting.  You and I worker bees are not trusted so everything we do via work is documented with 1099 and W2 forms.  We might get a little more serious and look to documentation.

2) No fly zone over Darfur.  This seems as if it would be a piece of cake.  We have very great flyers but the will is needed to do just this one thing.

There were others, but those were what I thought were good.  I think of more later.

(Have to go play Grandma!)

do we get hung out to dry?

So far the media has attacked Edwards at his populist base arguing that his $400 haircut and philanthropy really isn’t what the people should want in a presnit.  (Far better we should have Cheney’s sock puppet?)

Even though Wa Po’s series is fascinating and gives us new glimpses into that subterranean world of Cheney it leaves us even more puzzled at Bush and how much of a non-entity is he and has he been.  Talks of getting Cheney to quit are “quaint” but given this crowd’s tenacity doesn’t look like a great possibility.  I was and still am, surprised that Rummy left.  That must have been a fluke!
(more:)
So is Cheney part of the administration or really just an insurgent force taking over the government?

The only two bright spots I see are the story about Lugar finally having enough:

Lugar urges Bush to change course soon in Iraq

and stories about Bloomberg giving us a Perot factor in the election.  (Russ Limbaugh claims Bloomberg is Perot on Steroids!  And Russ should know his drugs!)  I believe that Perot actually allowed Clinton to win and the same could happen if Bloomberg runs because, lets face it, the repubs candidates all have a eeewww factor.  Much has been made of the fact that Fred Thompson’s wives still LIKE him!  But really!

But where does that leave us?  As of right now Cheney and the evangelicals are crucifying our constitution.  And there doesn’t seem to be any medic in sight!  The media seems to have more to do with the dems nomination than seems natural or proper.  Obviously Edwards is not the CORPORATE candidate!  Will we, as dems, be able to separate out the crap from the real deal?

Found this jewel on ABC news

$63 Million Plane 0 for 49 in Tests

The plane, designed to take off like a helicopter and then fly at high speed, failed to remain in the air for more than a few seconds in 49 separate tests last year, according to John Kinzer of the Office of Naval Research.

“The good news is that when it crashes, it only crashed from a foot or two off the ground,” said subcommittee Chairman Brad Miller, D-N.C..

The Navy doesn’t want this dog, but congress gave it another 6 million of our hard earned tax dollars.
Why:

Congressman Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., has led the effort on behalf of a hometown company, DuPont Aerospace.

In testimony today, Hunter said he considered the investment “prudent from a financial and risk perspective.”

“One would be hard pressed to argue that a technology that could deliver greater speed and greater stealth capabilities has no military utility and is not worth some investment,” Hunter said.

Hunter has received at least $36,000 in campaign contributions from the owner of the company, Anthony DuPont. Both men deny the contributions are connected to Hunter’s continued support for the aircraft project.

But that doesn’t explain why the rest of congress went along with this nuttiness.

I put this on the orange cheers and jeers place too.

I began having a great deal of spare time after being laid off at Sprint.  I was over 55, widowed and not really expecting to find gainful employment at  anywhere near my previous salary.  I had already encountered age discrimination much earlier – in my forties.  A head hunter told me point blank that companies didn’t want her to present people much over the age of 30!

more below the fold:

Now lets face it, all of you who think social security is a rip off, how do you expect to make it through those so-called golden years if the company makes sure that you only get half your pension and social security is viewed as “bad” by the yuppieville community?  

I was fortunate in that I could chose between the social security accounts of two dead husbands to help augment my income.  Also I had enough time in the company and I was old enough to get my half pension.

But in this case it was discovered that Sprint had done a number of things to cook the books in laying off its employees.  They took a horrible philosophy by Jack Welch and turned it into a nightmare.  They told us that they would rate our performance and those who scored in the 10% lowest in the bell curve would get laid off.  In my case, however, I had gotten very good performance numbers in previous reviews and I got a middle number in my last review.  Unknown to me, however, they had changed that number and made it lower so that they could justify laying me off.  They never told me what they did, the lawyers found the information in the discovery phase.

So I am celebrating today because Sprint has finally settled the suit.  Now we are vindicated!

Age case is settled by Sprint

For those of you who believe all the crap the rethugs put out about trial lawyers, Shirley Williams was the one who was the original complainant  in this suit and she had this to say:

Williams, who has since earned a real estate license, commended the plaintiffs’ attorneys, who she said worked for years “making absolutely nothing off the case.”

“It’s incomprehensible the volume of paperwork they went through,” she said. “I’m truly humbled when I see how much they’ve done and think how they’ve listened to every story. They earned every cent.”

The voluminous case included more than 4,600 separate court filings. More than 200 depositions of Sprint managers and employees were taken and millions of pages of documents were produced.

The case drew national attention when Sprint was ordered to produce “metadata,” information hidden or embedded in Microsoft Excel spreadsheets. The plaintiffs’ attorneys had asked the court to require Sprint to make available “scrubbed” or “locked” data that had been compiled in making its staff- reduction decisions.

They actually got to the point where they had two or three lawfirms handling all the depositions (there were close to 1700 of us and Sprint insisted in depo-ing all of us!)

This case was all about being shortsighted and obsessed with wall street’s opinion of the stock.  I would wish we could get to some point where we put balance back into the investment community where the bottom line and the illusion of doing well is not the sole obsession.

Crossposted at the Orange place:

Sprint Age Discrimination Suit Settled