Apr 13 2011

from firefly-dreaming 12.4.11

(midnight. – promoted by ek hornbeck)

Essays Featured Tuesday the 12th of April:

In Late Night Karaoke mishima has No Time

Six Brilliant Articles! from Six Different Places!! on Six Different Topics!!!

                Six Days a Week!!!    at Six in the Morning!!!!

The Anniversary of the beginning of theAmerican Civil War is on puzzled‘s mind in Tuesday Open Thoughts

in Gabriel D‘s Perfect Conversation discussion is centered on & around Framing redux

Gha!

In yet another fascinating edition of Book Nook, the bi-weekly series,  Xanthe reviews The Samurai’s Garden by Gail Tsukiyama

from Timbuk3: The 100 Greatest Rock Songs of All Time!

Tonight #84

join the conversation! come firefly-dreaming with me….

Apr 12 2011

Never Forget

The Truth About the Confederacy

Tony Wikrent, Corrente

Mon, 04/11/2011 – 10:03pm

The 150th anniversary of the Fort Sumter bombardment that formally began the Civil War is tomorrow, and wrong-wingers throughout the South and the rest of America are fixing a big celebration. There’s going to be a seemingly infinite issuance of blogs, articles, radio interviews, and television appearances that will proffer a prettified picture of a brave and stolid South, courageously defending the “true conservative Constitutional” principles of states rights, individual responsibility, and limited government. If you’re one of the many Americans who don’t really know that much about the Civil War, you have probably been perplexed by the number of wrong-wing Republican politicians who have made open statements of admiration the past year or two for the Confederate ideas of states rights and secession. This very lengthy diary is designed to fully inform you what the Confederacy was really like – a society suffering acutely from class differences; a society ruled by a slave holding oligarchy that was sickeningly arrogant and grasping, as well as racist. A number of myths about have been developed about the “Lost Cause” of the Confederacy for over a century, and those myths and lies are probably going to be repeated so often the coming days and weeks that you’re going to want to puke. My intent for this diary is to help shatter those myths and lies.

…

“Plant corn! Plant corn!” the editor of the Macon Telegraph wrote. “We must have large supplies, or poverty and suffering will come upon us like a strong man armed.” The True Democrat in Little Rock, Arkansas demanded that not a single seed of cotton be planted. The Florida Sentinel of Tallahassee bluntly warned that the planters’ addiction to cotton would lead to famine and the fall of the Confederacy.

But, Southern planters generally ignored these laws and pleas, and continued to grow as much cotton as possible. United States Senator from Georgia, First Secretary of State of the Confederacy, and Confederate General Robert Toombs, and a half dozen other planters in the area of his Georgia plantation, were upbraided by the local Citizens’ Committee of Public Safety for planting almost all their acreage in cotton. Toombs responded in the best fashion of today’s libertarians and conservatives: “My property, as long as I live, shall never be subject to the orders of those cowardly miscreants, the Committees of Public Safety . . . . you cannot intimidate me.”

By the fall of 1862, there was so much cotton being harvested that the South’s warehouses could not store it all. As a result of the South oligarchs’ arrogant greed, there was never enough food grown to meet the South’s needs. Thousands of letters from desperate women whose men were in the Confederate Army began to flood the offices of local and state officials. Most of them included pitiable pleas for assistance, or requests that their husbands be allowed to leave their military units and return home, even if only temporarily. One woman wrote directly to Jefferson Davis: “If I and my little children suffer and die while there Father is in Service I invoke God Almighty that our blood rest upon the South.” An open letter to the Savannah Morning News bluntly declared “The crime is with the planters . . . as a class, they have yielded their patriotism, if they ever had any, to covetousness . . . . for the sake of money, they are pursuing a course to destroy and demoralize our army-to starve out the other class dependent on them for provisions.”

These pleas also fell on deaf ears. Rather than responding to the desperation of the majority of the people, in the spring of 1863, the Confederate Congress passed a series of taxes, including a ten percent levy on all agricultural products including livestock, fodder, and food crops such as wheat, corn, potatoes, peas, beans, and peanuts. Soon, many “impressment officers” were taking far more than one tenth of a farm’s goods. Moreover, they were reluctant to “inconvenience” the richest and most powerful, so they stripped poorer farms almost bare, before even considering what the large plantations might offer. This, of course, is not that much different than what conservatives today have achieved with their four decades of tax cuts – the tax rates for the rich have been cut, but the poor actually pay an increased percentage because of local and state retail taxes, and increased FICA taxes. Williams notes that “On the Civil War’s eve, nearly half of the South’s personal income went to just over a thousand families. The region’s poorest half held only five percent of its agricultural wealth.”

…

The slave holder exemption, of course, was based on the slave holders’ fears of a slave revolt – all the prattle about paternalistic love for an inferior race, and that race’s child-like love in return, apparently forgotten. In a number of counties, government officials begged to be released from draft quotas because they feared sending more men off for military service would fatally weaken local slave patrols. C.F. Howell of Jackson County, Mississippi wrote his governor that “now we have to patrol every night to keep them down.” One planter in Alabama ignored the Confederacy’s need for military manpower and openly pleaded with the men of his area to stay at home and save their families “from the horrors of insurrection.”

The slave holder exemption turned out to be a huge mistake, because Confederate soldiers were forced to recognize that the South’s oligarchs had begun the war not so much to fend off supposed Yankee encroachments on their rights, but to preserve slavery and protect the oligarchs’ investment in slave property.

…

Confederate authorities noted over and over again that the Unionists they sought to repress and kill were comprised of the poorest men in their areas. One Confederate official tried to explain to his superiors that the locals “have little understanding and less sympathy for the difficulties of slave holders.” South Carolina planter and former governor James Henry Hammond, who had married expressly to acquire 7,500 acres and 147 slaves from his bride’s family, wrote candidly to a friend that “The poor hate the rich & make war on them everywhere & here especially with universal suffrage. . . The war is based on the principle and fact of the inequality of mankind-for policy we say races, in reality, as all history shows is as the truth is classes.” Hammond was a vocal proponent of the death penalty for advocating abolition.

Apr 12 2011

Punting the Pundits

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”

Dean Baker: Paul Ryan in Your Pockets: Government by People Who Hate You

House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan put out a budget proposal last week that will leave the vast majority of future retirees without decent health care by ending Medicare as we know it. According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) analysis, most middle-income retirees would have to pay almost half of their income to purchase a Medicare equivalent insurance package by 2030. They would be paying much more than half of their income in later years.

This sort of broadside against the living standards of the middle class might have been expected to draw an outraged response in a nation that exalts the lifestyle and values of the middle class. Instead the punditry rallied around Mr. Ryan’s plan to deal with the problem of run-away entitlement spending, crediting it for being “serious” even if they did not embrace all the details.

Eugene Robinson: In budget wars, the GOP demands the impossible

Far-right Republicans are winning the budget wars because they understand something that nobody else in Washington seems to grasp: The old truism about politics being the art of the possible is no longer true.

There’s no question who won last week’s showdown. The outcome – nearly $40 billion in painful cuts – goes well beyond the GOP’s initial demands. That Democrats were able to save a few pet programs is something but not much. You really don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing.

And as anyone who’s paying attention can plainly see, The Great Shutdown Standoff was just a skirmish in a much bigger conflict. At issue is a fundamental question – what is the nature and purpose of government – that was first answered more than two centuries ago, when Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson duked it out as warring members of George Washington’s first Cabinet. Hamilton’s centralized government was victorious. There are those who have never forgiven him.

Cenk Uygur: Progressives Must Stand Up to the President

These budget negotiations were a giant win for the Republican Party. President Obama initially cut $40 billion from his own budget proposal — and he got absolutely no credit for that. It was a very typical preemptive concession by the president. It was so typical, you wonder if he recognizes what an indisputably terrible strategy it is or if he has a different agenda.

So, after getting no credit for his original $40 billion concession, then the negotiations began at square one. The Republicans claimed in February that they wanted $32 billion in cuts from that point on. About a week ago, the president came out and announced that they had given the Republicans another $33 billion in cuts — a billion more than they originally asked for. And still the Republicans wanted more.

Ari Berman: Why President Obama Is Losing the Budget Fight

Friday night’s dramatic budget agreement represented a major defeat for President Obama and Congressional Democrats. On substance, John Boehner and Congressional Republicans received $7 billion more in spending cuts than they originally asked for. From a messaging standpoint, the entire debate unfolded on the GOP’s terms (excerpt for a brief interlude concerning Planned Parenthood)-the discussion was about how much to cut, not whether to cut or who would be impacted by such cuts or if such cuts would depress economic growth. The word “jobs” was practically absent from the debate.

snip

The president is following the example of Bill Clinton after the 1994 election, who brought in Dick Morris to “fast-forward the Gingrich agenda.” Often lost in this story is how Clinton, en route to a balanced budget, fought Gingrich over steep spending cuts and vowed to protect “Medicare, Medicaid, education and the environment,” as part of the budget deal. Clinton confronted, then compromised. Obama has fast-forwarded the Boehner agenda with no pushback, even bragging about enacting “the largest annual spending cut in our history.” The president is practically doing Boehner’s job for him!

Chris Hedges: Why the United States Is Destroying Its Education System

A nation that destroys its systems of education, degrades its public information, guts its public libraries and turns its airwaves into vehicles for cheap, mindless amusement becomes deaf, dumb and blind. It prizes test scores above critical thinking and literacy. It celebrates rote vocational training and the singular, amoral skill of making money. It churns out stunted human products, lacking the capacity and vocabulary to challenge the assumptions and structures of the corporate state. It funnels them into a caste system of drones and systems managers. It transforms a democratic state into a feudal system of corporate masters and serfs.

Teachers, their unions under attack, are becoming as replaceable as minimum-wage employees at Burger King. We spurn real teachers-those with the capacity to inspire children to think, those who help the young discover their gifts and potential-and replace them with instructors who teach to narrow, standardized tests. These instructors obey. They teach children to obey. And that is the point. The No Child Left Behind program, modeled on the “Texas Miracle,” is a fraud. It worked no better than our deregulated financial system. But when you shut out debate these dead ideas are self-perpetuating.

Richard Dreyfuss: Libya and Humanitarian War

Two elder American statesman, at least one of which might better be put on trial for war crimes, have come up with an attempt to square the circle by reconciling “realism” and “idealism”-that is, neoconservative interventionism-in regard to “humanitarian” wars. They fail.

Writing in the Washington Post, Henry Kissinger and James Baker make an effort to describe the principles that ought to be applied when invading, bombing or otherwise attacking a country over cases in which direct national security interests aren’t at stake but human life is. Leaving aside whether or not readers ought to take Kissinger seriously on a matter of public policy, the two men declare: “Having served four US presidents during a variety of international crises, we view the choice between ‘idealism’ and ‘realism’ as a false one. Just as ideals must be applied in concrete circumstances, realism requires context for our nation’s values to be meaningful. To separate them risks building policy on sand.”

Amanda Marcotte: What Is and Isn’t Abortion: A Primer

Repeat after me: The recent standoff over the budget came down to funding for contraception, STD testing and treatment, and cancer screening. Make special note of what word was not in that list: abortion. That’s because abortion wasn’t on the table in the fights—there was pre-existing consensus that the government will not subsidize abortion care.

Of course, if you read the mainstream news, you would not know this. For instance, this front page article from the New York Times falsely characterized the fight over “abortion funding,” even though the funding in question was over health care that is not abortion.  The actual funding fight over contraception, cancer screening, and STD testing and treatment was not mentioned, though it was alluded to parenthetically. This article is failed journalism.  Yes, I realize the anti-choicers say “abortion” a lot, but our job as journalists is not to report lies as if they were truths, but to report the truth, no matter how much kicking and screaming the liars are doing.  We certainly do not write something as searingly unprofessional as this:

   Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic majority leader, stressed repeatedly on Friday that his party was committed to defending abortion rights, and he characterized the fight as one over women’s health.

Unless you believe a woman with untreated cancer or chlamydia is “healthy”, his statement is just a matter of fact, not a “he said/she said” sort of thing.

Mike Farrell: Believe It or Not

In Washington, Tea Party types and their Republican acolytes kept threatening to shut down the government, their mantra, a paraphrase of the old Reagan canard, “Government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem.”

In Florida, their spiritual doppelgangers, Pastor Terry Jones and his Islamophobic Christian zealots, tried, convicted and destroyed by fire a copy of the Quran, mindlessly heaping insult on Afghan injury and igniting a riotous defense of their faith against Western invaders that cost many lives.

Elsewhere in our country, Birthers, Tenthers and others, angry but not sure why, decry socialistic, fascistic, communistic, Hitlerian Obamaesque schemes and warn lawmakers to “keep your government hands off my Medicare.”

What’s happening here?

Apr 12 2011

On This Day In History April 12

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

April 12 is the 102nd day of the year (103rd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 263 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1961, aboard the spacecraft Vostok 1, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin becomes the first human being to travel into space. During the flight, the 27-year-old test pilot and industrial technician also became the first man to orbit the planet, a feat accomplished by his space capsule in 89 minutes. Vostok 1 orbited Earth at a maximum altitude of 187 miles and was guided entirely by an automatic control system. The only statement attributed to Gagarin during his one hour and 48 minutes in space was, “Flight is proceeding normally; I am well.”

After his historic feat was announced, the attractive and unassuming Gagarin became an instant worldwide celebrity. He was awarded the Order of Lenin and given the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. Monuments were raised to him across the Soviet Union and streets renamed in his honor.

The triumph of the Soviet space program in putting the first man into space was a great blow to the United States, which had scheduled its first space flight for May 1961. Moreover, Gagarin had orbited Earth, a feat that eluded the U.S. space program until February 1962, when astronaut John Glenn made three orbits in Friendship 7. By that time, the Soviet Union had already made another leap ahead in the “space race” with the August 1961 flight of cosmonaut Gherman Titov in Vostok 2. Titov made 17 orbits and spent more than 25 hours in space.

Today is the 50th Anniversary of Yuri Gagarin’s Flight into space.

Fifty years later, relive the world’s first space odyssey

‘Moon Shot’ recounts cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin’s history-making orbital trip in 1961.

MSNBC Science Editor Alan Boyle recaps Yuri Gagarin’s historic space mission, as shown in a Soviet documentary video.

 238 – Gordian II lost the Battle of Carthage against the Numidian forces loyal to Maximinus Thrax and is killed. Gordian I, his father, commits suicide.

467 – Anthemius is elevated to Emperor of the Western Roman Empire.

1204 – The Crusaders of the Fourth Crusade breach the walls of Constantinople and enter the city, which they completely occupy the following day.

1557 – Cuenca is founded in Ecuador.

1606 – The Union Flag is adopted as the flag of Great Britain.

1633 – The formal inquest of Galileo Galilei by the Inquisition begins.

1776 – American Revolution: With the Halifax Resolves, the North Carolina Provincial Congress authorizes its Congressional delegation to vote for independence from Britain.

1820 – Alexander Ypsilantis is declared leader of Filiki Eteria, a secret organization to overthrow Ottoman rule over Greece.

1831 – Soldiers marching on the Broughton Suspension Bridge in Manchester, England cause it to collapse.

1861 – American Civil War: The war begins with Confederate forces firing on Fort Sumter, in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina.

1862 – American Civil War: The Andrews Raid (the Great Locomotive Chase) occurred, starting from Big Shanty (now Kennesaw), Georgia.

1864 – American Civil War: The Fort Pillow massacre: Confederate forces kill most of the African American soldiers that surrendered at Fort Pillow, Tennessee.

1865 – American Civil War: Mobile, Alabama, falls to the Union Army.

1877 – The United Kingdom annexes the Transvaal.

1910 – The SMS Zrinyi, one of the last pre-dreadnoughts built by the Austro-Hungarian Navy, is launched.

1917 – World War I: Canadian forces successfully complete the taking of Vimy Ridge from the Germans.

1927 – April 12 Incident: Chiang Kai-shek orders the Communist Party of China members executed in Shanghai, ending the First United Front.

1934 – The strongest surface wind gust in the world at 231 mph, is measured on the summit of Mount Washington, New Hampshire.

1934 – The U.S. Auto-Lite Strike begins, culminating in a five-day melee between Ohio National Guard troops and 6,000 strikers and picketers.

1935 – First flight of the Bristol Blenheim.

1937 – Sir Frank Whittle ground-tests the first jet engine designed to power an aircraft, at Rugby, England.

1945 – U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt dies while in office; vice-president Harry Truman is sworn in as the 33rd President.

1954 – Bill Haley & His Comets record “Rock Around the Clock” in New York City.

1955 – The polio vaccine, developed by Dr. Jonas Salk, is declared safe and effective.

1961 – The Russian (Soviet) cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin becomes the first human to travel into outer space and perform the first manned orbital fly, in Vostok 3KA-2 (Vostok 1).

1963 – The Soviet nuclear powered submarine K-33 collides with the Finnish merchant vessel M/S Finnclipper in the Danish straits.

1968 – Nerve gas accident at Skull Valley, Utah.

1970 – Soviet submarine K-8, carrying four nuclear torpedoes, sinks in the Bay of Biscay four days after a fire on board.

1980 – Samuel Doe takes control of Liberia in a coup d’état, ending over 130 years of national democratic presidential succession.

1980 – Terry Fox begins his “Marathon of Hope” at St. John’s, Newfoundland.

1981 – The first launch of a Space Shuttle: Columbia launches on the STS-1 mission.

1990 – Jim Gary’s “Twentieth Century Dinosaurs” exhibition opens at the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C.

1992 – The Euro Disney Resort officially opens with its theme park Euro Disneyland. The resort and its park’s name were subsequently changed to Disneyland Paris.

1994 – Canter & Siegel post the first commercial mass Usenet spam.

1998 – An earthquake in Slovenia, measuring 5.6 on the Richter scale occurs near the town of Bovec.

1999 – US President Bill Clinton is cited for contempt of court for giving “intentionally false statements” in a sexual harassment civil lawsuit.

2009 – Zimbabwe officially abandons the Zimbabwe Dollar as their official currency.

Holidays and observances

  * Christian Feast Day:

       Alferius

       Blessed Angelo Carletti di Chivasso

       Erkembode

       Pope Julius I

       Zeno of Verona

       April 12 (Eastern Orthodox liturgics)

  * Commemoration of first human in space by Yuri Gagarin:

       Cosmonautics Day (Russia)

       Yuri’s Night (International)

  * Halifax Day (North Carolina)

  * The first day of Cerealia (Roman Empire)

  * Global Day of Action on Military Spending

Apr 12 2011

Six In The Morning

Japan: Nuclear crisis raised to Chernobyl level

Japanese authorities have raised the severity rating of their nuclear crisis to the highest level, seven.

The BBC 12 April 2011 Last updated at 08:15 GMT

The decision reflects the total release of radiation at the damaged Fukushima Daiichi power plant, which is ongoing, rather than a sudden deterioration.

Level seven previously only applied to the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, where 10 times as much radiation was emitted.

There have been no fatalities resulting from the leaks at Fukushima, and risks to human health are thought to be low.

Meanwhile a 6.0-magnitude earthquake on Tuesday prompted the plant’s operator to evacuate its staff.

The operator of the Fukushima plant, Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco), said it was checking the status of the plant after the quake, the second to hit in as many days, but said there had been no reports of problems with external power.

Gbagbo: Stripped of dignity, stripped of power

Dictator’s capture gives hope to Ivory Coast

By Daniel Howden in Abidjan Tuesday, 12 April 2011

A bewildered old man in a hotel room, stripped to his vest and surrounded by strangers. These were the first pictures that emerged of Laurent Gbagbo after he was forced blinking into the light yesterday by a thunderous French assault on his Abidjan bunker that ended with him being handed over to his nemesis, Alassane Ouattara.

News of his capture crackled across this lagoon city, which has been transformed into a looted wasteland by the 65-year-old’s refusal to cede power.

As people who have been living with the boom of heavy weapons dared to hope that the worst was over, a shout rang out: “Gbagbo fini!”

Australia leases out mineral-rich land as China’s hunger for resources grows

No longer content with buying iron ore and coal from Australian firms, China is building its own mining operations in the country

Stephen Sackur in Cue, western Australia

The Guardian, Tuesday 12 April 2011

China is leasing huge areas of land in Australia to secure a vital source of mineral resources, the latest sign of its acquisitive approach to the commodities trade.

No longer satisfied with buying iron ore and coal from Australian mining companies, Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton, China is developing its own mining operations, funding a port with a mile-long breakwater jutting into the Indian Ocean.

Citic Pacific’s Sino Iron project, in the Pilbara region in the north-west of Australia, illustrates the scale of Beijing’s ambitions. China expects to mine at least 2bn tonnes of ore from Sino Iron over the next 25 years.

A Visit to Japan’s Nuclear Ghost Towns

Life after the Meltdown

By Cordula Meyer in Odaka, Japan

The house has been in Tsuneyasu Satoh’s family for generations. It is dusk, and he has come to see it, secretly, one last time. He loves the interior walls made of rice paper and the wooden floor on which his ancestors once walked. But today he will be the last member of his family to set foot in the house.

Satoh is wearing a baseball cap and glasses with black frames, as if he were trying to hide the stony expression on his face. He and his wife Sayoko don’t have much time, and they know that they will have to leave many belongings behind in their old house. Things like the framed calligraphy by Satoh’s father and the awards earned by his daughter, who plays table tennis on the Japanese national team. Satoh stacks blankets and wraps up the TV set. Sayoko gathers the most important items she can find in the cabinets: documents, bed linens, the good rice cooker.

Libyan fighting goes on after peace bid fails

 

MARIA GOLOVNINA TRIPOLI, LIBYA – Apr 12 2011  

The Red Cross said it was opening a Tripoli office and would send a team to Misrata to help civilians trapped by fighting, but one of Gaddafi’s ministers warned any aid operation involving foreign troops would be seen as a declaration of war.

Rebel leader Mustafa Abdel Jalil said after talks with the AU delegation in Benghazi in the rebel-held east on Monday: “The African Union initiative does not include the departure of Gaddafi and his sons from the Libyan political scene, therefore it is outdated.”

Fifty years later, relive the world’s first space odyssey

‘Moon Shot’ recounts cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin’s history-making orbital trip in 1961

By Jay Barbree Correspondent

If you flew 9,000 miles east from Florida’s sand spit Cape Canaveral, you would arrive at the land of the sky: the vast steppes of Kazakhstan, a flat plain where the yellowed grasslands turn green only in the spring – where at day’s end one can see nothing, not even a leaf or twig, between self and setting sun.

It was this bare, unpopulated land that was chosen in the 1950s by a small army of Russian space pioneers, scientists, rocket engineers and technicians, laborers and cooks and carpenters and masons to build the great Soviet Baikonur Cosmodrome – a sprawling space center located perfectly to launch rockets and land spacecraft where mishaps would do little damage to the sparse flora and fauna.  Even more importantly, the desolation would keep secrets hidden.

Apr 12 2011

Letting Atlas Shrug

(2 pm. – promoted by ek hornbeck)

John Aravosis at AMERICAblog, after considering  his own wage losses and others who can’t find jobs, thinks that it may be time to just let the Republicans do their worst and let them destroy the economy:

If the Republicans want to make a political/electoral issue out of the debt ceiling, then let’s not raise it. Hand the keys to the legislation, to to speak, to Boehner and McConnell, and tell them it’s their choice whether the legislation passes. And when it doesn’t pass, and the world economy melts down, no one will elect a Republican for decades to come.

I’m simply tired of dealing with Democrats who don’t have half a brain or half a backbone, and Republicans who would rather demagogue, and lie, than fix the country.

I’m getting there.

Apr 12 2011

Obama’s Lack of Moral Center

(10 am. – promoted by ek hornbeck)

Recently in a series of articles here, Michael Kwiatkowski discussed Pres. Obama’s morality and the the immorality of supporting him, as well as, the immorality of not challenging his presidency and other Democrats in 2012. In a post at Echidne‘s blog, Anthony McCarthy picks up this theme of “A Moral Vacuum At The Top”:

Does Barack Obama have a moral center? Is there something that he, ultimately would be unable to compromise away because it is not a negotiable point? Is every value, every moral declaration fungible? An item of spiritual commerce to be bartered so he can, in the end, announce that he’s not lost due to him agreeing to something with the Republicans?

The idea of morality has been made unfashionable in what we, by default, must consider the modern Western intelligentsia. That is the only success that what got called “liberalism” in elite circles has entirely succeeded in over the last century. In the quest for personal liberty morality has been progressively de-emphisized, then redefined, then ignored. Morality has come to mean, not only self-righteous nagging, but an attribute of the unacceptably old fashioned and uncool. The elevation of cynical “realism” as a replacement for the genuinely liberal virtues might be the most obvious evidence of a genuine moral vacuum, an absence of real morality. After more than two years of watching the presidency of Barack Obama, I can’t believe he really believes in anything but his image as a savvy broker, a cool macho deal maker. Watching him trade away the enormous reserve of political power he was given by the voters in 2008, I have to conclude that the things he has bartered for the ability to say he won it seems as if the people who depend on those things aren’t that big a concern to him.

(emphasis mine)

This president’s policies which have expanded the worst of George W. Bush’s regime or torture, indefinite detention, the disregard of US Law, international treaties and law on human rights and war crimes lack any moral grounding, along with the stepped up attacks in Pakistan using unmanned drones that have killed hundreds of innocent women and children and targeting American citizens for assassination without due process. Consider his latest statement on Bradley Manning were he accepted the Defense Department’s assurances that Manning’s confinement as appropriate and meeting “basic standards” without question. These are all acts call in to question a moral center.

What really gives pause is China calling for the US to resign as a Human Rights judge after calling out China on its detention policies:

The United States is beset by violence, racism and torture and has no authority to condemn other governments’ human rights problems, China said on Sunday, countering U.S. criticism of Beijing’s crackdown. . . . “The United States ignores its own severe human rights problems, ardently promoting its so-called ‘human rights diplomacy’, treating human rights as a political tool to vilify other countries and to advance its own strategic interests,” said a passage from the Chinese report.

Ouch. But there’s more as

China “accused the U.S. . . . of pushing for Internet freedom around the world as a way to undermine other nations, while noting that Washington’s campaign against secret-spilling website WikiLeaks showed its own sensitivity to the free flow of information,” and further “lambasted the U.S. over issues ranging from homelessness and violent crime to the influence of money on politics and the negative effects of its foreign policy on civilians.”

h/t to Glenn Greenwald

And this is two years into Obama’s administration. His supporters can’t keep laying this at the feet of the Bush/Cheney regime.

No one seems to know what exactly is in the deal that was struck late Friday evening that ended the latest standoff with the hostage taking Tea Party. What is known id that it will target those who can least afford it. Despite all the claims that have been made that Social Security is “off the table”, that and other safety nets like Medicare and Medicaid are back on the chopping block. Considering Obama’s statement Friday night that touted the latest round of cuts to the 2011 budget as a victory, it leaves one to wonder what else he has bartered away to save his image and how much more the majority of American’s are going to pay for his capitulation to the extremists who have hijacked our government for their corporate masters. It is immoral to force those who can least afford it, to pay for more gluttony of the top 2%.

Apr 12 2011

DocuDharma Digest

Regular Features-

Featured Essays for April 11, 2011-

DocuDharma

Apr 12 2011

from firefly-dreaming 11.4.11

(Midnight – promoted by TheMomCat)

This is an Open Thread

Essays Featured Monday the 11th of April:

Bullet the Blue Sky cranks up the day in Late Night Karaoke, mishima DJs

Six Brilliant Articles! from Six Different Places!! on Six Different Topics!!!

                Six Days a Week!!!    at Six in the Morning!!!!

from Gabriel D A Perfect Conversation – a collection of links to GOS essays that challenge the DK conventional wisdom, provide information which may lead to new ideas and push for action that is innovative or not just playing defense.

in crap! i forgot again! RiaD discusses facing reality, in Monday Open Thoughts

Gha!

from fake consultant a DADT Update: The Service Chiefs Report, The Republicans Fret

from Timbuk3: The 100 Greatest Rock Songs of All Time!

Tonight #85  

The latest Pique the Geek from Translator Carbon, the Basis of Life

join the conversation! come firefly-dreaming with me….

Apr 12 2011

Evening Edition

Evening Edition is an Open Thread

From Yahoo News Top Stories

1 Captured Gbagbo calls for end to I.Coast fighting

by Evelyne Aka, AFP

1 hr 38 mins ago

ABIDJAN (AFP) – Laurent Gbagbo called Monday for an end to fighting in Ivory Coast hours after the strongman was captured by forces loyal to his rival for the presidency at the climax of a deadly months-long crisis.

“I want us to lay down arms and to enter the civilian part of the crisis, which should be completed rapidly for life in the country to resume,” Gbagbo said on his rival Alassane Ouattara’s TCI channel shortly after his capture.

Gbagbo, who has held power since 2000 and stubbornly refused to admit defeat in November’s presidential election, was detained and taken to his rival’s temporary hotel headquarters with his wife Simone and son Michel.

AFP

2 Libya rebels reject truce plan, say Kadhafi must go

by Joseph Krauss, AFP

31 mins ago

BENGHAZI, Libya (AFP) – Libyan rebels on Monday rejected an African Union initiative for a truce accepted by Moamer Kadhafi, and said the only solution was the strongman’s ouster, an idea his son called “ridiculous.”

The rebel rejection came after NATO chiefs warned that any deal must be “credible and verifiable,” and as alliance warplanes were again in action against Kadhafi armour pounding Ajdabiya and Misrata.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also stuck to US demands for Kadhafi to step down and leave Libya as part of a peaceful transition, but declined to comment on the proposed African Union deal before being fully briefed.

3 Aftershock hits Japan as nuclear evacuation zone grows

by Kimiko de Freytas-Tamura, AFP

14 mins ago

KESENNUMA, Japan (AFP) – Japan added to the evacuation zone around a stricken nuclear plant on Monday, as a powerful aftershock rattled the nation a month after its biggest recorded earthquake wrought devastation.

Workers at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi plant ran for safety after the latest of hundreds of powerful tremors to hit Japan since the 9.0 magnitude quake on March 11 and the towering tsunami that followed.

Japan’s meteorological agency warned that a wave up to one metre (three feet) high could hit the coast near the power station after Monday’s shock, before cancelling the alert less than an hour later.

4 Japan marks a month since tsunami

by Hiroshi Hiyama, AFP

Sun Apr 10, 6:05 pm ET

TOKYO (AFP) – Japan on Monday was marking a month since a 9.0 magnitude undersea quake sent a powerful tsunami crashing into its coast, devastating entire towns and sparking the worst nuclear emergency in 25 years.

People across the country were expected to pause at 2:46pm (0546 GMT), the moment Japan’s biggest ever recorded earthquake struck, setting off a chain of events that has left workers scrambling to tame runaway atomic reactors.

With around 13,000 people known to have died and 15,000 still officially listed as missing, it is the worst tragedy to envelop the country since World War II.

5 France arrests Muslim women as full-face veil ban begins

by Cecile Azzaro, AFP

1 hr 2 mins ago

PARIS (AFP) – Police in France, home to Europe’s biggest Muslim population, arrested two protesters wearing niqab veils on Monday as a ban on full-face coverings went into effect.

The women, part of a demonstration that erupted in front of Notre Dame cathedral in Paris, were detained for taking part in an unauthorised protest rather than for wearing their veils.

But, in theory at least, French officials can now slap fines on Muslim women who refuse orders to expose their faces when in public.

6 Eleven killed in Belarus ‘terror’ metro blast

by Viktor Drachev, AFP

52 mins ago

MINSK (AFP) – A blast tore through a packed metro station near Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko’s headquarters Monday killing at least 11 people and wounding 100 others, in a suspected act of terror.

The explosion left clouds of suffocating smoke inside the city’s busiest metro station, as bloodied passengers ran for the exits, which lead to both the strongman president’s main office and his residence.

Confirming the death toll of eleven, Lukashenko immediately called an emergency security session in which he placed the blame on unnamed political opponents claiming they were seeking to destabilise his regime.

7 Venice’s hottest gallery launches startling show

by Pascale MOLLARD-CHENEBENOIT, AFP

Mon Apr 11, 12:13 pm ET

VENICE, Italy (AFP) – Grotesque heads, an American brothel and a life-sized headless horse star in a new Venice exhibition drawn from French billionaire fashion tycoon Francois Pinault’s personal collection.

“In Praise of Doubt” is the latest contemporary art exhibition at the Punta della Dogana gallery, a former Venetian Republic Customs House located at the centre of the lagoon on the Grand Canal, just across from Piazza San Marco.

The eclectic collection, inspired by “uncertainty and convictions about identity,” features 19 established and up-and-coming artists, from minimalist Donald Judd to playful Jeff Koons and self-declared clown Paul McCarthy.

8 IMF says world growth not enough to create jobs

by Veronica Smith, AFP

Mon Apr 11, 10:27 am ET

WASHINGTON (AFP) – The global economy is firmly on the mend in 2011 but downside risks are on the rise, particularly from surging oil prices, the International Monetary Fund said Monday.

The IMF said its latest world economic forecasts were “little changed” from a January update: 4.4 percent global growth in 2011, ticking down from 5.0 percent in 2010.

A two-speed recovery from the 2009 global recession was expected to continue apace, with the emerging-market and developing economies expanding at a 6.5 percent clip, and the advanced economies mustering only 2.4 percent growth.

Reuters

9 Ivory Coast’s Gbagbo held after French troops move in

By Ange Aboa and Loucoumane Coulibaly, Reuters

32 mins ago

ABIDJAN (Reuters) – Ivory Coast’s Laurent Gbagbo was captured and placed under the control of his presidential rival on Monday after French troops closed in on the besieged compound where he had been holed up for the past week.

A column of more than 30 French armored vehicles moved in on Gbagbo’s residence in Abidjan after French and U.N. helicopter gunships began attacking the compound overnight to end a drawn-out standoff that had reignited a civil war.

Witnesses said Ouattara’s forces, who had failed to dislodge Gbagbo despite mounting a fierce attack on his bunker last week, had joined French ground troops advancing on the compound.

10 African plan fails to halt Libya fighting

By Michael Georgy, Reuters

49 mins ago

BENGHAZI, Libya (Reuters) – An African bid to halt Libya’s civil war collapsed within hours on Monday, after Muammar Gaddafi’s forces shelled a besieged city and rebels said there could be no deal unless he was toppled.

The rebel rejection came less than 24 hours after South African President Jacob Zuma, head of an African Union mission, said Gaddafi had accepted the plan, including a ceasefire proposal for the conflict in the North African desert state.

As African presidents negotiated with the rebel leadership in their stronghold of Benghazi, insurgents said Gaddafi’s forces had bombarded the besieged western city of Misrata.

11 NATO to continue air strikes on Gaddafi forces

By David Brunnstrom, Reuters

Mon Apr 11, 12:31 pm ET

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – NATO reacted coolly on Monday to a ceasefire proposal for Libya, saying Muammar Gaddafi had broken his word repeatedly and the alliance would continue to target his forces as long as they threatened civilians.

South African President Jacob Zuma urged NATO to stop air strikes on government targets to give a truce “a chance,” after Gaddafi said he accepted an African Union road map for ending the conflict in Libya including an immediate ceasefire.

NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen told a Brussels news briefing that Gaddafi’s government had announced ceasefires in the past, but “they did not keep their promises.”

12 Gulf states push for Yemen’s Saleh to leave

By Jason Benham, Reuters

Sun Apr 10, 6:50 pm ET

RIYADH (Reuters) – Gulf Arab countries have stepped up their push for Yemen’s President Ali Abdullah Saleh to hand over power, pressuring him and opposition representatives to meet to negotiate an orderly transition.

Tens of thousands have taken to the streets demanding an end to Saleh’s 32 years as leader of the poorest country in the Middle East, where he has struggled to quell a northern Shi’ite rebellion, a southern separatist movement and a resurgent wing of al Qaeda.

A proposal last week by Saudi Arabia, Saleh’s main financial backer until now, and other Gulf states for talks appeared to be in jeopardy Friday, when Saleh lashed out in fury at Qatar’s prime minister for suggesting that mediation would lead to Saleh standing down. Saleh called it “belligerent intervention.”

13 Japan nuclear crisis may be on par with Chernobyl

By Yoko Kubota and Kazunori Takada, Reuters

40 mins ago

TOKYO (Reuters) – Japan is considering raising the severity level of its nuclear crisis to put it on a par with the Chernobyl accident 25 years ago, the worst atomic power disaster in history, Kyodo news agency reported on Tuesday.

The report came as the government expanded an evacuation zone around the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant because of the high levels of accumulated radiation since a 15-meter tsunami ripped through the complex a month ago, causing massive damage to its reactors which engineers are still struggling to control.

The Kyodo report said that the high levels of radiation that have been released by the Fukushima Daiichi plant meant it could raise the severity level from 5 to the highest 7, the same as the 1986 Chernobyl accident.

14 Postcard from Chernobyl: vision of Apocalypse

By Richard Balmforth, Reuters

Mon Apr 11, 7:08 am ET

PRYPYAT, Ukraine (Reuters) – Only a Hollywood doomsday movie can prepare a visitor for Prypyat, the ghost town at the epicenter of the world’s worst nuclear disaster.

A poisoned corpse of a city, its crumbling, deserted buildings devoid of life stand as a symbol of human folly, lost dreams and broken childhood.

Just down the road from Prypyat, a short time after midnight on April 26, 1986, reactor No. 4 at the Chernobyl nuclear plant exploded, spewing radioactive debris into the air after a safety experiment went horribly wrong.

15 Tepco may face $23.6 bln compensation costs: JP Morgan

By Antoni Slodkowski, Reuters

Mon Apr 11, 8:11 am ET

TOKYO (Reuters) – Tokyo Electric Power could face 2 trillion yen ($23.6 bln) in special losses in the current business year to March 2012 to compensate communities near its crippled nuclear plant, JP Morgan said in a research report obtained by Reuters.

Shares of Tokyo Electric, commonly known as Tepco, have lost about three-fourths of their value since the March 11 earthquake and tsunami tore through the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex, causing it to leak radiation.

The government has evacuated people living in a 20 km (12 miles) radius of the plant and announced on Monday that it would encourage people to leave certain areas beyond that exclusion zone due to accumulated radiation.

16 Belarus metro blast kills 11, Lukashenko sees plot

By Andrei Makhovsky, Reuters

15 mins ago

MINSK (Reuters) – A blast tore through a crowded metro station in the Belarus capital Minsk in evening rush hour on Monday, killing 11 people in what President Alexander Lukashenko said was an attempt to destabilize the country.

The blast occurred on a platform at around 6 p.m. at the Oktyabrskaya metro station — one of the city’s busiest underground rail junctions — about 100 meters (yards) from the main presidential headquarters.

Witnesses said it tore through a crush of waiting passengers just as a train pulled in. “There was blood everywhere, in splashes and in pools. I saw pieces of flesh. It was terrible,” a 47-year-old man, who gave his name only as Viktor, said.

17 Broker admits role in insider trading scheme

By Andrew Longstreth and Jonathan Stempel, Reuters

2 hrs 15 mins ago

NEWARK, N.J./NEW YORK (Reuters) – A mortgage broker who secretly recorded two friends who prosecutors say tried to cover up one of the biggest U.S. insider trading cases on record pleaded guilty to involvement in the 17-year scheme.

Kenneth Robinson admitted to being a middleman who supplied information to accused trader Garrett D. Bauer about pending mergers. He said he got the tips from corporate lawyer Matthew H. Kluger, who is accused of stealing the details from law firms where he worked.

Kluger and Bauer were arrested last week for their roles in the estimated $32.2 million scheme. Bauer made most of the illegal profit, while Robinson made about $875,000 and Kluger made $500,000, investigators said. Kluger and Bauer have not yet entered pleas.

18 Rajaratnam’s Galleon was a tight ship: witness

By Grant McCool, Reuters

1 hr 43 mins ago

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Raj Rajaratnam demanded discipline at his Galleon hedge fund, challenged his analysts at standing-room only morning meetings, and never asked any company for inside information, one of his former top lieutenants testified.

One-time Galleon chief operating officer Rick Schutte took the witness stand at Rajaratnam’s insider trading trial on Monday as the defense presented its side of the case to New York jurors who have heard five weeks of prosecution evidence and witnesses.

Schutte repeatedly used the word “discipline” to describe life at Galleon and called Rajaratnam “very professional” and “educated” about the issues facing companies covered by Galleon funds for its investors.

19 Nasdaq unbowed, D.Boerse unmoved in NYSE battle

By Paritosh Bansal and Jonathan Spicer, Reuters

36 mins ago

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Nasdaq OMX Group was unbowed on Monday after NYSE Euronext’s board rejected its takeover offer in favor of a lower bid from Deutsche Boerse, while the German company looked set to stand pat as the battle for the Big Board intensified.

Shareholders at the center of the increasingly bitter fight were bracing for a bidding war and weighing a stark choice: The short-term gain from Nasdaq’s higher but probably riskier offer or leaving cash on the table for what could be a better long-term fit with Deutsche Boerse.

Nasdaq and partner IntercontinentalExchange Inc are not about to walk away from their $11.3 billion unsolicited offer, and they are working behind the scenes to persuade NYSE shareholders to pressure the exchange’s directors, according to people familiar with the matter.

20 Schwartzel triumphs with furious finish at Masters

By Mark Lamport-Stokes, Reuters

Sun Apr 10, 10:47 pm ET

AUGUSTA, Georgia (Reuters) – South African Charl Schwartzel birdied the last four holes in a grandstand finish to clinch his first major title by two strokes at the Masters on Sunday, ending a wild afternoon of brilliant shot-making.

Schwartzel, who began the final round at Augusta National four strokes off the pace, showed nerves of steel as he rolled in a 20-footer on the 18th green to complete a six-under-par 66, the lowest score of the day.

The 26-year-old threw both arms skywards in jubilation after his ball dropped into the cup to give him a 14-under total of 274 in the season’s opening major.

AP

21 Ivory Coast standoff ends with strongman’s capture

By MARCO CHOWN OVED, Associated Press

16 mins ago

ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast – A bloody, four-month political standoff ended Monday when troops loyal to Ivory Coast’s elected president – backed by French ground and air forces – captured the West African country’s longtime leader who had refused to give up power.

Video of former President Laurent Gbagbo being led into a room in a white undershirt was broadcast on television as proof of his detention. He would not sign a statement formally ceding power after losing a Nov. 28 election to economist Alassane Ouattara.

More than 1 million civilians fled their homes and untold numbers were killed in the power struggle between the two rivals that threatened to re-ignite a civil war in the world’s largest cocoa producer. Gbagbo’s security forces have been accused of using cannons, 60 mm mortars and 50-caliber machine guns to mow down opponents during the standoff.

22 Libyan rebels reject African cease-fire proposal

By BEN HUBBARD, Associated Press

1 hr 8 mins ago

BENGHAZI, Libya – Libyan rebels, backed forcefully by European leaders, rejected a cease-fire proposal by African mediators on Monday because it did not insist that Moammar Gadhafi relinquish power.

A day after an announcement that the Libyan leader had accepted the truce, a doctor in rebel-held Misrata said Gadhafi’s forces battered that western city and its Mediterranean port with artillery fire that killed six people.

“He is the biggest lie in the history of Libya,” said Jilal Tajouri, 42, who joined more than 1,000 flag-waving protesters in the eastern rebel stronghold of Benghazi as the African Union delegation arrived.

23 Libyan exiles worry about relatives left behind

By KARIN LAUB and DIAA HADID, Associated Press

Mon Apr 11, 6:33 am ET

CAIRO – Thousands of Libyans who have fled civil war in their homeland now live in limbo in neighboring Egypt and Tunisia, worried about relatives left behind, struggling as money runs out and wondering if they’ll ever be able to go home.

Some 100,000 Libyans have crossed into neighboring countries since fighting erupted between rebels and leader Moammar Gadhafi’s forces nearly two months ago. Migration officials say much of that border traffic is routine and goes both ways.

However, hundreds of women and children in the past week fled to Tunisia by taking back roads through the Libyan desert, trying to avoid Gadhafi’s men. East of Libya, instant communities of exiles have sprung up in the Egyptian port city of Alexandria and the coastal resort of Mersa Matrouh, where thousands have received aid and some 500 Libyan families found temporary refuge in vacant holiday apartments.

24 Outside pressure on Syria grows, 1 dies in protest

By ZEINA KARAM, Associated Press

2 hrs 51 mins ago

BEIRUT – International pressure mounted on Syria’s president Monday, with key European governments and the United Nations denouncing a deadly crackdown that has failed to dampen a popular uprising against the authoritarian regime.

In the latest violence, security forces killed a student Monday during a protest at Damascus University in the capital, bringing the death toll to well over 170 after more than three week of unrest, activists said. There were conflicting reports about whether the student was shot or beaten to death.

The United States, France, Germany and Britain demanded an immediate end to the bloodshed.

25 Chernobyl tours offered 25 years after blast

By JIM HEINTZ, Associated Press

Mon Apr 11, 2:14 pm ET

CHERNOBYL NUCLEAR POWER STATION, Ukraine – For the visitor, Chernobyl makes heavy demands on the imagination – much of what’s important can be seen only in the mind’s eye.

From the outside, the building where a reactor blew up April 26, 1986, in the world’s worst nuclear disaster mostly looks like an ordinary, dull industrial building. Only an odd addition supported by buttresses – the sarcophagus covering the reactor – hints that anything unusual happened here.

The imagination struggles, too, to repopulate nearby Pripyat with the 50,000 people who lived there. Once a busy town built especially for the plant’s workers, it’s now a silent husk of abandoned apartment towers and scrubby brush slowly overtaking the main square.

26 Debris, challenges pile up in Japan 1 month later

By JAY ALABASTER and TOMOKO A. HOSAKA, Associated Press

Mon Apr 11, 12:40 pm ET

NATORI, Japan – A month after Japan’s earthquake and tsunami, the challenges seem as daunting as ever: Thousands are missing and feared dead, tens of thousands have fled their homes, a leaking nuclear plant remains crippled and powerful aftershocks keep coming.

Vast tracts of the northeast are demolition sites: The stuff of entire cities is sorted into piles taller than three-story buildings around which dump trucks and earth-movers crawl. Ankle-deep water stagnates in streets, and massive fishing boats lie perched atop pancaked houses and cars. The occasional telephone poll or bulldozer is sometimes the only skyline.

“It’s a hellish sorrow,” said Numata Takahashi, 56, who escaped his home in Natori just before the waters came. “I don’t know where we’ll go, but I’m not coming back here. … We’ll go somewhere where there are no tsunamis.”

27 Drivers start to cut back on gas as prices rise

By CHRIS KAHN, AP Energy Writer

1 hr 56 mins ago

NEW YORK – Soaring gas prices are starting to take a toll on American drivers.

Across the country, people are pumping less into the tank, reversing what had been a steady increase in demand for fuel. For five weeks in a row, they have bought less gas than they did a year ago.

Drivers bought about 2.4 million fewer gallons for the week of April 1, a 3.6 percent drop from last year, according to MasterCard SpendingPulse, which tracks the volume of gas sold at 140,000 service stations nationwide.

28 Romney announces WH exploratory committee

By PHILIP ELLIOTT, Associated Press

38 mins ago

WASHINGTON – Republican Mitt Romney took the first official steps toward a second presidential bid Monday, telling supporters he had formed an exploratory committee to begin a White House run.

Romney, who has been planning a second run since losing the Republican nomination in 2008, focused in his announcement on the economy and what he described as President Barack Obama’s failed policies.

“It is time that we put America back on a course of greatness, with a growing economy, good jobs and fiscal discipline in Washington,” the former Massachusetts governor said in a video posted on his website, on Facebook and on Twitter.

29 AP IMPACT: BP buys Gulf Coast millions in gear

By MICHAEL KUNZELMAN, MIKE SCHNEIDER and MELINDA DESLATTE, Associated Press

1 hr 25 mins ago

NEW ORLEANS – Tasers. Brand-new SUVs. A top-of-the-line iPad. A fully loaded laptop. In the year since the Gulf oil spill, officials along the coast have gone on a spending spree with BP money, dropping tens of millions of dollars on gadgets and other gear – much of which had little to do with the cleanup, an Associated Press investigation shows.

The oil giant opened its checkbook while the crisis was still unfolding last spring and poured hundreds of millions of dollars into Gulf Coast communities with few strings attached.

In sleepy Ocean Springs, Miss., reserve police officers got Tasers. The sewer department in nearby Gulfport bought a $300,000 vacuum truck that never sucked up a drop of oil. Biloxi, Miss., bought 14 SUVs. A parish president in Louisiana got herself a deluxe iPad, her spokesman a $3,100 laptop. And a county in Florida spent $560,000 on rock concerts to promote its oil-free beaches.

30 Future farm: a sunless, rainless room indoors

By ARTHUR MAX, Associated Press

Mon Apr 11, 9:05 am ET

DEN BOSCH, Netherlands – Farming is moving indoors, where the sun never shines, where rainfall is irrelevant and where the climate is always right.

The perfect crop field could be inside a windowless building with meticulously controlled light, temperature, humidity, air quality and nutrition. It could be in a New York high-rise, a Siberian bunker, or a sprawling complex in the Saudi desert.

Advocates say this, or something like it, may be an answer to the world’s food problems.

31 French ban on Islamic veils enters force

By ANGELA CHARLTON, Associated Press

1 hr 27 mins ago

PARIS – The world’s first ban on Islamic face veils took effect Monday in France, meaning that women may bare their breasts in Cannes but not cover their faces on the Champs-Elysees.

Two veiled women were hauled off from a Paris protest within hours of the new ban. Their unauthorized demonstration, on the cobblestone square facing Notre Dame Cathedral, was rich with both the symbolism of France’s medieval history and its modern spirit of defiance.

While some see encroaching Islamophobia in the new ban, President Nicolas Sarkozy’s government defended it as a rampart protecting France’s identity against inequality and extremism. Police grumbled that it will be hard to enforce.

32 Report sees lapses in bishops’ child safety policy

Associated Press

Mon Apr 11, 9:17 am ET

WASHINGTON – Auditors hired by the U.S. bishops to check child safety in America’s Roman Catholic dioceses each year warned in a new report Monday of a drift away from parts of the church’s nine-year-old abuse prevention plan.

The agency the bishops hired to conduct the review said 55 of the 188 participating dioceses needed to make improvements or risk being out of compliance with the national policy, more than double the number of dioceses who were found lacking in 2009.

“The church cannot afford to relax its standards,” the authors of the study warned.

33 Nasdaq, IntercontinentalExchange respond to NYSE

Associated Press

Mon Apr 11, 7:57 am ET

NEW YORK – Nasdaq and IntercontinentalExchange said their $11.3 billion bid for NYSE Euronext was rejected without any talks with the exchanges.

Nasdaq OMX Group Inc. CEO Robert Greifeld said in a statement late Sunday that feedback from NYSE Euronext shareholders was positive, and that the companies had expected NYSE Euronext would meet with them to discuss the merits of their proposal.

NYSE Euronext said earlier Sunday that its board decided to turn down the offer, which was submitted earlier this month, because it was “highly conditional” and would have caused unnecessary risk for shareholders.

34 Berlusconi: Tax fraud hearing a ‘waste of time’

By COLLEEN BARRY, Associated Press

Mon Apr 11, 12:01 pm ET

MILAN – Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi defended himself vigorously against prosecutors’ charges in a rare appearance in open court on Monday, but the premier was addressing reporters, not the judges.

He was not being called as a witness in his first appearance at his nearly six-year-old tax fraud trial, nor did he request to address the court. Rather, Berlusconi was making good on a pledge to show up in court as often as his duties allow to contest charges of corruption, tax fraud and paying an underage prostitute in four active cases. During his 2 1/2 hours in court, the premier sat silently in the front row next to his lawyer.

Before he left, he told journalists the appearance had been a waste of his time.

35 Schwartzel wins the Masters after a wild day

By PAUL NEWBERRY, AP National Writer

Mon Apr 11, 6:33 am ET

AUGUSTA, Ga. – Charl Schwartzel should’ve known it was going to be a very good day at the very first hole.

After spraying his second shot far right of the green, he pulled out a 6-iron, chipped the ball off a patch of trampled-down grass, and watched it roll and roll and roll – right in the cup for an improbable birdie.

Think that was unexpected? The South African was just getting warmed up. He drilled his tee shot at No. 3 into the middle of the fairway, then holed out with a wedge from 114 yards for eagle.

36 Analysis: GOP gets its turn on Medicare hot seat

By RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR, Associated Press

Mon Apr 11, 6:33 am ET

WASHINGTON – Now it’s their turn to try to fix the health care mess. Republicans, just like President Barack Obama, may discover that’s easier said than done.

The GOP budget expected to go to the full House this week would remake health care programs for the elderly and the poor that have been in place for nearly half a century. Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., says his approach would “save” Medicare by keeping the financially troubled program affordable for federal taxpayers.

But it turns out that people now 54 and younger would pay the price.

37 Obama prevents budget cuts to favorite programs

By ANDREW TAYLOR, Associated Press

17 mins ago

WASHINGTON – A close look at the government shutdown-dodging agreement to cut federal spending by $38 billion reveals that lawmakers significantly eased the fiscal pain by pruning money left over from previous years, using accounting sleight of hand and going after programs President Barack Obama had targeted anyway.

Such moves permitted Obama to save favorite programs – Pell grants for poor college students, health research and “Race to the Top” aid for public schools, among others – from Republican knives.

The full details of Friday’s agreement weren’t being released until late Monday when it was officially submitted to the House. But the picture already emerging is of legislation financed with a lot of one-time savings and cuts that officially “score” as savings to pay for spending elsewhere, but that often have little to no actual impact on the deficit.

38 After 46 years, papal jewelry up for auction in NC

By TOM BREEN, Associated Press

2 hrs 1 min ago

RALEIGH, N.C. – In the unlikely location of a North Carolina jewelry store near the beach, a lavishly jeweled cross and a ring once owned by Pope Paul VI sit under lock and key, awaiting transfer to an even less familiar venue for symbols of Roman Catholic authority: an eBay auction.

The items have turned up at a Wilmington store owned by a Southern Baptist with a flair for self-promotion. It’s the latest stop on a strange journey involving luminaries ranging from UN Secretary General U Thant to Evel Knievel, and which began with Paul VI’s novel decision to allow some of his jewelry to be sold to raise money for charity.

One of the items is a pectoral cross, given to clergy who attain the rank of bishop or higher to signify their office. The pope’s donation was a testament to his willingness to engage the contemporary world by de-emphasizing the importance of such regalia.

39 Town treasurer’s arrest shakes Vermont community

By JOHN CURRAN, Associated Press

Mon Apr 11, 12:53 pm ET

IRA, Vt. – Even in a state where small is the norm, Ira is small.

It has 447 people, no downtown, no post office, no school and miles of dirt roads. The town government’s annual budget is only $212,000.

So when people here found that mild-mannered town Treasurer Donald Hewitt was accused of cooking the books, it was big news. When they learned the extent of it – more than $400,000 allegedly embezzled over about 30 years – it was even bigger.

40 Cloth or disposables? Half-century debate still on

By LEANNE ITALIE, Associated Press

Mon Apr 11, 12:35 pm ET

NEW YORK – Disposables, cloth. Cloth, disposables. Fifty years after Procter & Gamble introduced affordable throwaway diapers, dubbing them Pampers, the battle over baby’s bottom rages on.

The brand brought on a revolution in baby care, obliterating safety pins, soaking pails and diaper delivery trucks. But reusables have been slowly inching back into the mainstream, with the predictable faceoff among parents choosing one or the other – though some families use both.

In 1958, with other disposables already out, P&G’s version was a “fortunate failure” during a summer test run in Dallas, according to a company history. Consisting of pads and plastic pants, it made babies uncomfortable in the heat.

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