Apr 07 2011

from firefly-dreaming 07.4.11

(Midnight – promoted by TheMomCat)

This is an Open Thread

Essays Featured Thursday the 7th of April:

Late Night Karaoke takes us Higher & Higher, mishima DJs

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

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

mplo ponders Fiction and/or real life in books and movies in Thursday Open Thoughts

Cornucopia Thursday, a weekly feature from Ed Tracey brings a delightful collection of items and ….well, just plain whimsy…..

fake consultant has a fascinating hypothesis On Reincarnation, Or, Was Glenn Beck Just Promoted?

Cactus Syrup & Sheriff Sam from Wendys Wink, republished by RiaD

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

Tonight #87  

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

Apr 07 2011

Another Elite Failure

I can’t emphasize enough how fundamentally stupid, greedy, and vain our Versailles Aristocrats are.

Blame Mayor Bloomberg for Cathie Black Fiasco

Dan Collins, Huffington Post

Posted: 04/ 7/11 12:18 PM ET

Cathie Black was Mayor Bloomberg’s disaster – one of a long line he’s perpetrated since being elected to a third term. The fact that the mayor picked someone to run the schools who had no experience in education or, perhaps more critically, New York politics, was astonishing. The mayor is genuinely devoted to the public schools. He built his political career around improving them.

And then, out of some whim we may never really understand, he plopped them in the lap of a publishing executive who was looking for a way to re-start a shaky career, whose only real qualification was that she hung around in the same crowd as the mayor.

I think ‘ordinary people’ understand this kind of narcissistic nepotism quite well.  What qualifications does Luke Russert have?  How about Brian Deschane?

Gov. Walker’s Free Market Approach to Governing

Gen. JC Christian, patriot

Tuesday, April 05, 2011

Unfortunately, many working people (or, as we like to call them, “limited cost resources”) are jealous of your $81.5K salary. They’re complaining that you’re not up to the job. Citing your youth, your lack of a college education and any real-world work experience, as well as your aptitude for drunk driving, they’re suggesting that you don’t have the needed experience to serve as one of the state’s chief regulators.

Of course, they ignore your most important qualification: your father’s ability to donate to Gov. Walker’s campaigns. Given your other qualifications, that’s the best $121.7K your dad ever spent. But more important than that, its an example of how free market principles can be applied to government to make your life better–you’re living the new American dream, my friend.

That’s not to say that your other major qualification won’t serve you well. The ability to pass out, face down, on various lawns and bushes should give you an edge as an environmental regulator.

I doubt EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson has ever regained consciousness with a hunk of grass stuck to her eye, a centipede crawling up her nose, and the words “pig fucker” emblazoned across her forehead in indelible ink, nor has she exterminated an invasive beetle species using a 60% alcohol solution suspended in vomit. You certainly have the edge there.

Apr 07 2011

Herr Doktor Professor

It’s not like Paul Krugman has been silent about Paul Ryan’s glitter and unicorns magical thinking budget, but it’s been spread across several blog posts and kind of hard to integrate.

Fortunately Scarecrow over at Firedog Lake has done the heavy lifting for me-

Krugman Exposes GOP Ryan’s Unicorn Budget, Catches Heritage Burying Number

By: Scarecrow, Wednesday April 6, 2011 8:26 pm

Paul Krugman spent Wednesday combing through the details of Tea-GOP genius Paul Ryan’s budget and in a series of blog posts utterly destroyed the Ryan budget’s phony math, implausible assumptions and unicorn forecasts. Kudos to MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow for picking this up.

Krugman once called Ryan a “flim flam” man, a virtual con artist, and yesterday, he proved it. Let us count the ways.

Here’s the Maddow clip-

Scarecrow summarizes 8 recent posts by Krugman who is back at it again today-

Pointing out that this is a return to Coolidge era spending.

It’s hard to escape the conclusion that the racist secessionist traitors of the Republican Party are unhappy with the results of The War of Rebellion and wish to revisit it.

Apr 07 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”

E. J. Dionee, Jr.: For moderates, no more fence-straddling on the budget

Political moderates and on-the-fencers have had it easy up to now on budget issues. They could condemn “both sides” and insist on the need for “courage” in tackling the deficit.

Thanks to Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget and the Republicans’ maximalist stance in negotiations to avert a government shutdown, the days of straddling are over.

Ryan’s truly outrageous proposal, built on heaping sacrifice onto the poor, slashing scholarship aid to college students and bestowing benefits on the rich, ought to force middle-of-the-roaders to take sides. No one who is even remotely moderate can possibly support what Ryan has in mind.

Greg Mitchell: Dan Ellsberg and ‘Saving Private Manning’

After many months in the shadows, Pvt. Bradley Manning, who sits in the brig at the Quantico base in Virginia in near-solitary confinement, has recently drawn some high-level defenders, from Hillary Clinton’s former chief spokesman at the State Department to editors at The New York Times and The Guardian.   But none of them stand by Manning for his alleged crimes – he’s accused of leaking a massive number of classified documents to WikiLeaks — but instead  protest the conditions of his harsh confinement.

One person, however, has spoken up for Manning for his actual (alleged) actions as a whistleblower ever since his arrest last May. That would be Daniel Ellsberg, the man who leaked The Pentagon Papers four decades ago. He was even arrested twice in two days last month as part of his pro-Manning activism.

Ari Berman: Government Shutdown? Blame GOP Heartlessness and Democratic Cowardice

InTrade says there’s a 52 percent chance there will be a government shutdown before July. The brinksmanship and theatrics aside, I’ve long believed a shutdown would be averted and a budget deal reached for 2011-12. Now I’m not so sure. Some in the GOP are eagerly cheering on the prospect of a shutdown (literally), with the conservative Republican Study Committee even unveiling a countdown clock on its website (as of this post, there’s two days, ten hours, three minutes and five seconds left).

Glenn Greenwald: The Impotence of the Loyal Partisan Voter

Rachel Maddow last night issued a very harsh and eloquent denunciation of Obama’s decision to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed before a military commission at Guantanamo rather than a real court. At the end of her monologue, Maddow focused on the contrast between how the Republicans treat their base and how Democrats treat theirs, specifically emphasizing that the White House announced this decision on the same day it kicked off Obama’s re-election bid. About that point, Rachel said this:

   A Democratic President kicks his base in the teeth on something as fundamental as civil liberties — he puts the nail in the coffin of a civil liberties promise he made on his first full day in office — and he does it on the first day of his re-election effort. And Beltway reaction to that is. . . huh, good move. That’s the difference between Republican politics and Democratic politics. The Republicans may not love their base, but they fear them and play to them. The Democratic Party institutional structures of D.C., and the Beltway press in particular, not only hate the Democratic base — they think it’s good politics for Democratic politicians to kick that base publicly whenever possible.

   Only the base itself will ever change that.

How will that happen? How can the base itself

possibly change this dynamic, whereby politicians of the Democratic Party are not only willing, but eager, to “kick them whenever possible,” on the ground (among others) that doing so is good politics? I’d submit that this is not only one of the most important domestic political questions (if not the most important), but also the one that people are most eager to avoid engaging. And the reason is that there are no comforting answers.

Amanda Marcotte: How The “U-Word” Exposes the Anti-Choice Movement

Periodically in politics, there are events that create a dual reaction in all thinking people: 1) peals of laughter at the absurdity of it all and 2) the dreaded realization that many of our leaders are completely out of touch.  Such was the dual reaction to the news that the Republican leadership of the Florida state legislature wishes to censor the word “uterus” from being said aloud in their chambers, in response to a Democrat making a joke about how his wife should incorporate her uterus if she wants to maintain her right to bodily autonomy.  Obviously, the Republicans really just didn’t like the joke, which hit too close to home, and were looking for an excuse to condemn it.  But the excuse was real life concern trolling, in the guise of claiming “uterus” was a dirty word, with a side  helping of “think about the children!”

The internet responded with the requisite contempt to this censorship.  The hashtag #uterus exploded, and the general sentiment was that people who can’t tolerate hearing the syllables you-ter-us spoken aloud should not be filing 18 separate bills aimed at snatching control of the organs away from the rightful owners.  If you want to control something that badly, you should be able to say it out loud.

Ray McGovern: Military Tribunal May Keep 9/11 Motives Hidden

The Obama administration’s decision to use a military tribunal rather than a federal criminal court to try alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four others means the real motives behind the 9/11 attacks may remain obscure.

The Likud Lobby and their allied U.S. legislators can chalk up a significant victory for substantially shrinking any opportunity for the accused planners of 9/11 to tell their side of the story.

What? I sense some bristling. “Their side of the story?” Indeed! We’ve been told there is no “their side of the story.”

Robert Sheer: The Peasants Need Pitchforks

A “working class hero,” John Lennon told us in his song of that title, “is something to be/ Keep you doped with religion and sex and TV/ And you think you’re so clever and classless and free/ But you’re still fucking peasants as far as I can see.”

The delusion of a classless America in which opportunity is equally distributed is the most effective deception perpetrated by the moneyed elite that controls all the key levers of power in what passes for our democracy. It is a myth blown away by Nobel Prize winner Joseph E. Stiglitz in the current issue of Vanity Fair. In an article titled “Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%” Stiglitz states that the top thin layer of the superwealthy controls 40 percent of all wealth in what is now the most sharply class-divided of all developed nations: “Americans have been watching protests against repressive regimes that concentrate massive wealth in the hands of an elite few. Yet, in our own democracy, 1 percent of the people take nearly a quarter of the nation’s income-an inequality even the wealthy will come to regret.”

Gail Collins: Medicine on the Move

Sometimes, you really do want to tell the medical profession to just make up its mind.

We got word this week that estrogen therapy, which was bad, is good again. Possibly. In some cases.

This was not quite as confusing as the news last year that calcium supplements, which used to be very good, are now possibly bad. Although maybe not. And the jury’s still out.

Or the recent federal study that suggested women be told to stop checking their breasts for lumps. Or the recommendations on when to get a mammogram, which seem to fluctuate between every five years and every five minutes.

We certainly want everyone to keep doing studies. But it’s very difficult to be a civilian in the world of science.

Amy Goodman: One Guantanamo Trial That Will Be Held in New York

On the same day President Barack Obama formally launched his re-election campaign, his attorney general, Eric Holder, announced that key suspects in the 9/11 attacks would be tried not in federal court, but through controversial military commissions at Guantanamo. Holder blamed members of Congress, who he said “have intervened and imposed restrictions blocking the administration from bringing any Guantanamo detainees to trial in the United States.” Nevertheless, one Guantanamo case will be tried in New York. No, not the trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed or any of his alleged co-conspirators. This week, the New York state Supreme Court will hear the case against John Leso, a psychologist who is accused of participating in torture at the Gitmo prison camp that Obama pledged, and failed, to close.

The case was brought by the New York Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Justice and Accountability (CJA) on behalf of Steven Reisner. Reisner, a New York psychologist and adviser to Physicians for Human Rights, is at the center of a growing group of psychologists campaigning against the participation of psychologists in the U.S. government’s interrogation programs, which they say amounts to torture. Unlike the American Medical Association and the American Psychiatric Association, the American Psychological Association, the largest association of psychologists in the world, has refused to implement a resolution passed by its membership barring APA members from participating in interrogations at sites where international law or the Geneva Conventions are being violated. Reisner, a child of Holocaust survivors, is running for president of the APA, in part to force it to comply with the resolution.

Apr 07 2011

On This Day In History April 7

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 7 is the 97th day of the year (98th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 268 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1948, The World Health Organization is founded. WHO is a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) that acts as a coordinating authority on international public health. Established on April 7, 1948, with headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, the agency inherited the mandate and resources of its predecessor, the Health Organization, which was an agency of the League of Nations.

The World Health Organization (WHO) is one of the original agencies of the United Nations, its constitution formally coming into force on the first World Health Day, (April 7, 1948), when it was ratified by the 26th member state. Jawaharlal Nehru, a major freedom fighter of India had given an opinion to start WHO. Prior to this its operations, as well as the remaining activities of the League of Nations Health Organization, were under the control of an Interim Commission following an International Health Conference in the summer of 1946. The transfer was authorized by a Resolution of the General Assembly. The epidemiological service of the French Office International d’Hygiène Publique was incorporated into the Interim Commission of the World Health Organization on January 1, 1947.

Activities

Apart from coordinating international efforts to control outbreaks of infectious disease, such as SARS, malaria, tuberculosis, influenza, and HIV/AIDS, the WHO also sponsors programmes to prevent and treat such diseases. The WHO supports the development and distribution of safe and effective vaccines, pharmaceutical diagnostics, and drugs. After over two decades of fighting smallpox, the WHO declared in 1980, that the disease had been eradicated – the first disease in history to be eliminated by human effort. The WHO aims to eradicate polio within the next few years.

The organization develops and promotes the use of evidence-based tools, norms and standards to support Member States to inform health policy options. It regularly publishes a World Health Report including an expert assessment of a specific global health topic. The organization has published tools for monitoring the capacity of national health systems and health workforces to meet population health needs, and endorsed the world’s first official HIV/AIDS Toolkit for Zimbabwe (from 3 October 2006), making it an international standard.

In addition, the WHO carries out various health-related campaigns – for example, to boost the consumption of fruits and vegetables worldwide and to discourage tobacco use. The organization relies on the expertise and experience of many world-renowned scientists and professionals to inform its work. Experts met at the WHO headquarters in Geneva in February, 2007, and reported that their work on pandemic influenza vaccine development had achieved encouraging progress. More than 40 clinical trials have been completed or are ongoing. Most have focused on healthy adults. Some companies, after completing safety analysis in adults, have initiated clinical trials in the elderly and in children. All vacciness so far appear to be safe and well-tolerated in all age groups tested.

The WHO also promotes the development of capacities in Member States to use and produce research that addresses national needs, by bolstering national health research systems and promoting knowledge translation platforms such as the Evidence Informed Policy Network (EVIPNet). WHO and its regional offices are working to develop regional policies on research for health – the first one being the Pan American Health Organization/Regional Office for the Americas (PAHO/AMRO) that had its Policy on Research for Health approved in September 2009 by its 49th Directing Council Document CD 49.10.

WHO also conducts health research in communicable diseases, non-communicable conditions and injuries; for example, longitudinal studies on ageing to determine if the additional years we live are in good or poor health, and, whether the electromagnetic field surrounding cell phones has an impact on health. Some of this work can be controversial, as illustrated by the April, 2003, joint WHO/FAO report, which recommended that sugar should form no more than 10% of a healthy diet. This report led to lobbying by the sugar industry against the recommendation, to which the WHO/FAO responded by including in the report the statement “The Consultation recognized that a population goal for free sugars of less than 10% of total energy is controversial”, but also stood by its recommendation based upon its own analysis of scientific studies.

The World Health Organization’s suite of health studies is working to provide the needed health and well-being evidence through a variety of data collection platforms, including the World Health Survey covering 308,000 respondents aged 18+ years and 81,000 aged 50+ years from 70 countries and the Study on Global Aging and Adult Health (SAGE) covering over 50,000 persons aged 50+ across almost 23 countries. The World Mental Health Surveys, WHO Quality of Life Instrument, WHO Disability Assessment Scales provide guidance for data collection in other health and health-related areas. Collaborative efforts between WHO and other agencies, such as the Health Metrics Network and the International Household Surveys Network, serve the normative functions of setting high research standards.

WHO has also worked on global initiatives in surgery such as the Global Initiative for Emergency and Essential Surgical Care and the Guidelines for Essential Trauma Care focussed on access and quality. Safe Surgery Saves Lives addresses the safety of surgical care. The WHO Surgical Safety Checklist is in current use worldwide in the effort to improve safety in surgical patients.

 529 – First draft of the Corpus Juris Civilis (a fundamental work in jurisprudence) is issued by Eastern Roman Emperor Justinian I.

1521 – Ferdinand Magellan arrives at Cebu.

1541 – Francis Xavier leaves Lisbon on a mission to the Portuguese East Indies.

1724 – Premiere performance of Johann Sebastian Bach’s St. John Passion BWV 245 at St. Nicholas Church, Leipzig.

1776 – Captain John Barry and the USS Lexington captures the Edward.

1788 – American Pioneers to the Northwest Territory arrive at the confluence of the Ohio and Muskingum rivers, establishing Marietta, Ohio as the first permanent American settlement of the new United States in the Northwest Territory, and opening the westward expansion of the new country.

1798 – The Mississippi Territory is organized from disputed territory claimed by both the United States and Spain. It is expanded in 1804 and again in 1812.

1805 – Lewis and Clark Expedition: The Corps of Discovery breaks camp among the Mandan tribe and resumes its journey West along the Missouri River.

1827 – John Walker, an English chemist, sells the first friction match that he had invented the previous year.

1829 – Joseph Smith, Jr., founder of the Latter Day Saint movement, commences translation of the Book of Mormon, with Oliver Cowdery as his scribe.

1862 – American Civil War: Battle of Shiloh ends – the Union Army under General Ulysses S. Grant defeats the Confederates near Shiloh, Tennessee.

1868 – Thomas D’Arcy McGee, one of the Canadian Fathers of Confederation is assassinated by the Irish, in one of the few Canadian political assassinations, and the only one of a federal politician.

1890 – Completion of the first Lake Biwa Canal.

1906 – Mount Vesuvius erupts and devastates Naples.

1906 – The Algeciras Conference gives France and Spain control over Morocco.

1908 – H. H. Asquith of the Liberal Party takes office as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, succeeding Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman

1922 – Teapot Dome scandal: United States Secretary of the Interior leases Teapot Dome petroleum reserves in Wyoming.

1927 – First distance public television broadcast (from Washington, D.C. to New York City, displaying the image of Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover).

1933 – Prohibition is repealed for beer of no more than 3.2% alcohol by weight, eight months before the ratification of the XXI amendment.

1939 – World War II: Italy invades Albania.

1940 – Booker T. Washington becomes the first African American to be depicted on a United States postage stamp.

1943 – Holocaust: In Terebovlia, Ukraine, Germans order 1,100 Jews to undress to their underwear and march through the city of Terebovlia to the nearby village of Plebanivka where they are shot dead and buried in ditches.

1943 – Ioannis Rallis becomes collaborationist Prime Minister of Greece during the WWII Axis Occupation.

1945 – World War II: The Japanese battleship Yamato, the largest battleship ever constructed, is sunk by American planes 200 miles north of Okinawa while en-route to a suicide mission in Operation Ten-Go.

1945 – World War II: Visoko is liberated by the 7th, 9th and 17th Krajina brigades from the Tenth division of Yugoslav Partisan forces.

1946 – Syria’s independence from France is officially recognised.

1948 – The World Health Organization is established by the United Nations.

1948 – A Buddhist monastery burns in Shanghai, China, leaving twenty monks dead.

1954 – President Dwight D. Eisenhower gives his “domino theory” speech during a news conference.

1956 – Spain relinquishes its protectorate in Morocco.

1964 – IBM announces the System/360.

1969 – The Internet’s symbolic birth date: publication of RFC 1.

1971 – President Richard Nixon announces his decision to increase the rate of American troop withdrawals from Vietnam.

1976 – Former British Cabinet Minister John Stonehouse resigns from the Labour Party.

1977 – German Federal prosecutor Siegfried Buback and his driver are shot by two Red Army Faction members while waiting at a red light.

1978 – Development of the neutron bomb is canceled by President Jimmy Carter.

1983 – During STS-6, astronauts Story Musgrave and Don Peterson perform the first space shuttle spacewalk.

1985 – Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev declares a moratorium on the deployment of middle-range missiles in Europe.

1989 – Soviet submarine Komsomolets sinks in the Barents Sea off the coast of Norway killing 42 sailors.

1990 – Iran Contra Affair: John Poindexter is found guilty of five charges for his part in the scandal (the conviction is later reversed on appeal).

1992 – Republika Srpska announces its independence.

1994 – Rwandan Genocide: Massacres of Tutsis begin in Kigali, Rwanda.

1994 – Auburn Calloway attempts to hijack FedEx Flight 705 and crash it to insure his family with his life insurance policy. The crew subdues him and lands the aircraft safely.

1995 – First Chechen War: Russian paramilitary troops begin a massacre of civilians in Samashki, Chechnya.

1999 – The World Trade Organization rules in favor of the United States in its long-running trade dispute with the European Union over bananas.

2001 – Mars Odyssey is launched.

2003 – U.S. troops capture Baghdad; Saddam Hussein’s regime falls two days later.

2009 – Former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori is sentenced to 25 years in prison for ordering killings and kidnappings by security forces.

2009 – Mass protests begin across Moldova under the belief that results from the parliamentary election are fraudulent.

Holidays and observances

  * Christian Feast Day

      Aibert of Crespin

      Blessed Notker

       John Baptist de La Salle

       April 7 (Eastern Orthodox liturgics)

  * World Health Day

(International)

Apr 07 2011

Six In The Morning

As Mexicans protest, a new mass grave is found

‘It seems that we are like animals that can be murdered with impunity,’ says poet whose son was killed

By ADRIANA GOMEZ LICON

MEXICO CITY – Fifty-nine bodies were found buried Wednesday in a series of pits in the northern Mexico state of Tamaulipas, as people marched in protest against on going drug cartel violence.

The bodies were discovered near the site where suspected drug gang members massacred 72 migrants last summer, officials said.

Security forces stumbled on the site as they were investigating reports that passengers had been pulled off several buses by gunmen

in the area in what may have been an attempt at forced recruitment by a drug gang.

Divided and disorganised, Libyan rebel military turn on Nato allies

Feuding leadership of revolutionary forces fails to capitalise on coalition air strikes

By Kim Sengupta in Ajdabiya Thursday, 7 April 2011

General Abdel Fattah Younes was scathing in his condemnation of Nato. “They have disappointed us. Nato has become our problem. Either Nato does its work properly or we will ask the Security Council to suspend its work.”

That was on Tuesday night at a packed press conference in Benghazi. Yesterday General Younes was on one of his rare visits to the frontline, with an escort of Western security guards as the row over his remarks rumbled on. The head of the rebel forces apparently does not like travelling through risky areas without his recently acquired foreign protection team.

A Jewish renaissance in Poland

There are signs that Poles are discovering their lost Jewish heritage and that antisemitism is in decline

Jeevan Vasagar and Julian Borger

The Guardian, Thursday 7 April 2011

I n Kazimierz, once the Jewish heart of Krakow, signs of a revival are everywhere. There are restaurants with Hebrew lettering, a new community centre where students drop in for a Sabbath meal, and even a Jewish kindergarten. And once a year, this quarter is dominated by a celebration of Jewish music, theatre and film that attracts up to 13,000 visitors.

Krakow’s Jewish Culture festival is the most prominent symbol of an apparent rejuvenation in the shadow of the Holocaust. This is the nearest Polish city to Auschwitz, but it has also become a place where Poles are discovering their lost Jewish heritage

Missing Chinese artist to ‘pay price’

The Irish Times – Thursday, April 7, 20

CLIFFORD COONAN in Beijing

THE Global Times newspaper in China criticised western governments for demanding the release of disappeared artist Ai Weiwei yesterday.

In an editorial, the newspaper said Ai had been testing the bounds of China’s laws and would pay a price. The newspaper, published by the People’s Daily , marks the first occasion that state-controlled media have taken up the controversy over Ai, who was stopped on Sunday from boarding a flight from Beijing to Hong Kong and taken away by police.

An outspoken critic of the Communist Party, Ai (53) has not been in contact with his family since Sunday.

Arrested Journalist’s Book Claims Turkish Police Infiltrated by Islamic Movement

‘The Imam’s Army’  

By Jürgen Gottschlich in Istanbul  

Fikret Ilkiz makes an elegant impression, with his graying hair, slender facial features and his expensive suit jacket. The lawyer speaks succinctly, but with a precision that has an incisive quality.

Ilkiz represents Turkey’s most prominent detainee, the veteran journalist and writer Ahmet Sik. Sik was arrested on March 3, as was his colleague Nedim Sener. Both work at newspapers belonging to the Dogan group. Sik works for the left-liberal Radikal, while Sener writes for Milliyet, traditionally the newspaper of Turkey’s intellectuals. Both journalists became famous through their books.

Their revelations have made the two writers icons of investigative journalism in Turkey and won them many awards at home and abroad.

Government sets iodine standards for seafood



2011/04/07

Four days after fish caught were found to be contaminated with high levels of radioactive iodine, the government on Tuesday set the legal standard for iodine levels in seafood at the same level as vegetables of 2,000 becquerels per kilogram.

Japanese sand lance caught on Friday by members of the Hirakata fishing cooperative in Kita-Ibaraki had levels of iodine of 4,080 becquerels per kilogram.

Officials of the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries plan to ask Ibaraki Prefecture to stop shipments of sand lance under the Law on Special Measures Concerning Nuclear Emergency Preparedness. It would be the first time such a ban has been placed on seafood.

Apr 07 2011

Time To Stand Up To The Radical Right, Barack

(10 am. – promoted by ek hornbeck)

The Federal Government is being held hostage by a few radical right corporate puppets that want to destroy this country’s social safety net and further shift the wealth from majority to the wealthy with more tax cuts for corporations, millionaires and estates and destroy Medicare and Mediciad for the elderly and neediest Americans. The assault is now be led by the pretty boy, Paul Ryan (R-WI), who defeated Russ Feingold in November (a lot of buyer’s remorse in that state). Last night President Obama had a late night meeting with Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid and Speaker of the House John Boehner with no success at a compromise to avoid a shut down of the federal government this weekend. For what’s at stake here, Mike Lux hits it on the head, “All the hue and cry about this year’s budget fight – whether or not we’ll have a government shutdown; whether we’ll cut $33 billion or $40 billion out of the remainder of this year’s budget – is a minor sideshow compared to the implications of the Ryan budget.”

Mike explains just what those some of those implications are for senior citizens:

With his proposal, Ryan will radically cut and privatize Medicare, ending the guarantee of health care to our senior citizens; radically cut Medicaid and throw it into a block-grant program that will end any guarantee of coverage for the poor, people with disabilities, and many, many children; deliver breathtakingly large tax cuts to the wealthy while raising taxes for the middle class. As far as I can tell, more than 90 percent of his cuts impact either low-income people or senior citizens who are currently middle class but might no longer be if these Social Security and Medicare cuts go through. As to who benefits, while some things remain vague (like which middle-class taxes will have to go up to cut down the revenue losses because of lower taxes in the high-end brackets), it is likely that more than 90 percent of the benefits go to the very wealthy, who not only get to keep their Bush tax cuts but get some big and lucrative new tax cuts besides. As Citizens for Tax Justice (pdf) notes, under Ryan’s proposal, the federal government would collect $2 trillion less over the next decade, yet require the bottom 90 percent to actually pay higher taxes. Ryan leaves a lot details out, but if you read in between the lines, it is clear that the reason certain details are missing is because of how awful they are.

snip

Without Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, retirees would live in poverty, and family incomes would be wiped out trying to take care of parents, grandparents, and disabled family members. Without unions, wages and benefits would be ever more stagnant, or would decline in many sectors. Without student loans, fewer young and poor people would make it onto the first rungs of the ladder into the middle class. Without rebuilding our infrastructure and investing in our schools, fewer American businesses would be able to compete in the world economy. Without research and other government investments, the technological breakthroughs that have helped fuel our economic growth over the last 70 years would stop happening. And without some restraint on the power of multinational companies, our economy would be rocked by more financial collapses, and our pluralistic democracy will get more and more dysfunctional.

And this is what the callously, heartless, self centered, Tea Partier, Republican Eric Cantor said the other day:

So 50 percent of beneficiaries under the Social Security program use those moneys as their sole source of income. So we’ve got to protect today’s seniors. But for the rest of us? Listen, we’re going to grips with the fact that these programs cannot exist if we want America to be what we want America to be.”

According to the Congressional Budget Office‘s (CBO) analysis of Ryan’s plan:

1. SENIORS WOULD PAY MORE FOR HEALTH CARE

2. ELDERLY AND DISABLED WOULD LOSE MEDICAID COVERAGE

3. THIRTY-TWO MILLION AMERICANS WOULD LOSE HEALTH COVERAGE (pdf)

4. SHORT TERM DEBT INCREASES RELATIVE TO CURRENT LAW

5. NO CONFIRMATION ON TAX REVENUES (pdf)

The rest of it is even worse and pure fantasy that included “wildly optimistic revenue assumptions that dramatically changed the effect the plan would have on the federal debt.”

OK, Barack, it’s time for you to not cross that line you drew and stand up for the people.

Apr 07 2011

DocuDharma Digest

Regular Features-

Featured Essays for April 6, 2011-

DocuDharma

Apr 07 2011

recently in the rAw

(midnight. – promoted by ek hornbeck)

Some weeks are rAwer than usual.

For the moment, a barebones look a recent writing in the rAw posts.

Please bear with us as we deal with new management, members missing for a variety of reasons, and vexing computer problems at casa melvin.

WWL Radio #103 The Road to Sedition – Diane Gee

Chrono-synclastic Infundibulum Discovered – cometman

Sci Fri ~ The 2% Solution – melvin

Caught Between Syphilis and Chlamydia – Enabling the Corporate State – Diane Gee

It’s a Bizarro World – palantir

First Fire  – Lasthorseman

Video: SWAT Team Evicts Grandmother (reposted from Reader Supported News – TheGrandWazoo

Make no Mistake: Gingrich is a Threat – TheGrandWazoo

Census Reaction: What to Expect – TheGrandWazoo

More on the movie “The Town –Claire is her own worst enemy: – mplo

the Northern Gateway to Hell – melvin

It will get better. It would just about have to.

Apr 06 2011

Evening Edition

Evening Edition is an Open Thread

Now with 57 Top Stories.

From Yahoo News Top Stories

1 Berlusconi sex trial adjourned until May

by Mathieu Gorse, AFP

Wed Apr 6, 12:45 pm ET

MILAN (AFP) – Silvio Berlusconi’s trial on charges of sex with an underage prostitute and abuse of power opened Wednesday as the storm over the 74-year-old Italian premier’s private life finally landed in court.

Berlusconi himself did not attend the hearing and the judges immediately adjourned the trial until May 31. The woman at the centre of the case, Karima El Mahroug — nicknamed “Ruby the Heart Stealer” — was not present either.

The hearing at Milan’s main court building lasted just under 10 minutes and a handful of protesters rallied outside both for and against Berlusconi.

AFP

2 Portugal asks EU for financial aid

AFP

42 mins ago

LISBON (AFP) – Portugal on Wednesday said it had decided to request financial assistance from the European Union to resolve its debt problems amid growing speculation that it needs a bailout.

Having resisted for months pressure from the markets as well as European partners, outgoing Prime Minister Jose Socrates in a televised address justified the request as needed after parliament rejected his new austerity programme which, he said, “aggravated in a dramatic way the country’s financial situation.”

“I am firmly convinced that that is going to be further aggravated if nothing is done,” added Socrates, who resigned on March 23 after parliament’s rejection, opening the way for new elections set for June 5.

3 Portugal will have to use EU mechanisms on debt: minister

AFP

2 hrs 39 mins ago

LISBON (AFP) – Portuguese Finance Minister Fernando Teixeira dos Santos recognised Wednesday that his country will have to use EU mechanisms to resolve its debt problems amid growing speculation it needs a bailout.

“I believe it is necessary to have recourse to the financing mechanisms which are available within the European context,” Teixeira dos Santos said in written replies to questions submitted by business daily Jornal de Negocios.

“The country has been pushed, in an irresponsible manner, into a difficult situation on the financial markets,” the minister said, referring to the fall of the government last month when parliament rejected its austerity programme.

4 Spain cuts growth forecast, keeps deficit targets

AFP

Wed Apr 6, 1:14 pm ET

MADRID (AFP) – Spain cut its growth forecast on Wednesday and revised upwards its estimates for unemployment but said it was still on track to bring its public deficit to within EU limits by 2013.

Finance Minister Elena Salgado said the economy would grow 2.3 percent in 2012 rather than 2.5 percent, and by 2.4 percent in 2013 instead of 2.7 percent due to higher prices for commodities like oil and an expected increase in eurozone interest rates.

For this year, the government kept its forecast for growth at 1.3 percent.

5 Greece rules out debt makeover amid budget review

AFP

Wed Apr 6, 12:30 pm ET

ATHENS (AFP) – Greece on Wednesday again ruled out any restructuring of its soaring debt as EU, IMF and European Central Bank experts picked through a new three-year austerity budget coming this month.

The Socialist government, which has received mixed results from unpopular economic policies agreed with its international creditors, is now pledging to cut its runaway deficit by some nine percentage points by 2015.

“Under no condition are we going to restructure (the debt),” government spokesman George Petalotis told reporters.

6 Ouattara forces stop short of final assault on Gbagbo bunker

by Christophe Parayre, AFP

21 mins ago

ABIDJAN (AFP) – Forces loyal to Ivory Coast’s internationally recognised president Alassane Ouattara on Wednesday pulled back from a final assault on strongman Laurent Gbagbo’s bunker after fierce resistance from his army.

The draw back followed a day of heavy fighting at Gbagbo’s residence in Abidjan where he is holed, refusing to surrender and cede power to his rival.

“There has been a pause in the fighting,” between Gbagbo’s troops and Ouattara’s Republican Forces Army, a resident told AFP after “several hours of sustained heavy weapons fire.

7 Cornered Gbagbo refuses to accept defeat in exit deal

by Fran Blandy, AFP

Tue Apr 5, 4:43 pm ET

ABIDJAN (AFP) – Ivory Coast strongman Laurent Gbagbo, cornered by rival forces, hunkered down at his home Tuesday trying to negotiate an exit deal as France denied he had already surrendered.

As negotiations continued to end a four month post-election stand-off that has plunged the country into war, Gbagbo rejected the former colonial power’s demand that he recognise his rival Alassane Ouattara as president

“I do not recognise the victory of Ouattara….” Gbagbo said in an interview with France’s LCI news channel.

8 I.Coast’s Gbagbo under seige as exit talks fail

by Fran Blandy, AFP

Wed Apr 6, 7:20 am ET

ABIDJAN (AFP) – Weapons fire erupted Wednesday at Laurent Gbagbo’s residence as forces for Ivory Coast’s internationally recognised leader Alassane Ouattara said they were going to “fetch” him from his bunker.

Witnesses said gunfire rang out both near the presidential palace and Gbagbo’s residence in an apparent bid to bounce him into ending to his decade-long rule of the world’s number one cocoa producer.

“We are going to take Laurent Gbagbo out of his hole and hand him over to the president of the republic,” said Sidiki Konate, spokesman for Ouattara’s forces.

9 NATO ‘careful’ over air strikes, ‘rebel’ oil leaves Tobruk

by Joseph Krauss, AFP

1 hr 40 mins ago

AJDABIYA, Libya (AFP) – NATO, accused of mission failure by Libyan rebels, admitted Wednesday it has to be “particularly careful” with its air strikes as government troops are using civilians as human shields, but vowed to do everything to protect civilians in Misrata.

France pledged to open a sea corridor to the besieged Mediterranean port and a tanker left the port of Tobruk on Wednesday carrying the first consignment of oil since the rebel government won recognition from some countries.

The White House rebuffed a letter from Kadhafi.

10 Libya rebels slam NATO over besieged city’s plight

by Joseph Krauss, AFP

Tue Apr 5, 5:29 pm ET

BENGHAZI, Libya (AFP) – Libyan rebels hit out at the NATO-led air mission on Tuesday saying that it was failing in its UN mandate to protect civilians in the besieged third city of Misrata.

The accusation came as the rebels sustained their first significant loss of territory to Moamer Kadhafi’s forces in almost a week after they were sent fleeing from the edge of the oil refinery town of Brega in a major assault.

One boost was the docking in the port of Tobruk of a one-million-barrel supertanker in readiness to load the rebels’ first oil export shipment, potentially worth more than 100 million dollars (70.5 million euros).

11 Libya rebels set for oil exports as tanker docks

AFP

Tue Apr 5, 1:27 pm ET

BENGHAZI, Libya (AFP) – Libyan rebels were set Tuesday to begin exporting oil for the first time since mid-March after a tanker capable of holding $100 million worth of crude docked at an eastern port.

The Liberian-flagged tanker “has docked in Tobruk,” Michelle Bockmann, markets editor of shipping news and data provider Lloyd’s List, told AFP in London. “The boat is expected to be loaded on April 6.”

Earlier, Bockman said the ship was “a Suezmax tanker and it’s able to load one million barrels, or about 130,000 tonnes of oil. So it’s over 100 million dollars’ (70.5 million euros) worth of crude.”

12 Italy rescues refugees from Libya, scores missing at sea

by Ljubomir Milasin, AFP

Wed Apr 6, 6:55 am ET

ROME (AFP) – Italian coast guards plucked 48 refugees from the Mediterranean on Wednesday and spotted 15 bodies at sea after a boat laden with some 200 migrants from Libya capsized during the night.

“We have rescued 48 people alive from the sea while 15 bodies have been spotted by the crew of the helicopter,” coast guard spokesman Vittorio Alessandro, based on the southern Italian island of Lampedusa, told AFP.

Around 130 people who were on the boat are believed to be missing.

13 Japan plugs leak from nuclear plant

by Harumi Ozawa, AFP

1 hr 1 min ago

TOKYO (AFP) – Workers at Japan’s crippled atomic power plant on Wednesday plugged a hole spewing highly radioactive water into the ocean, boosting efforts to contain the world’s worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl.

But in an illustration of how fragile progress is at the Fukushima plant, operator Tokyo Electric Power said it was concerned a build-up of hydrogen gas at a different reactor could cause another explosion at the site.

The water leak was thought to be a source of spiking radiation levels in the sea, which prompted Japan to announce its first seafood radiation safety standards following the discovery of fish with high levels of contamination.

14 US atom smasher may have found new force of nature

by Kerry Sheridan, AFP

1 hr 12 mins ago

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Data from a major US atom smasher lab may have revealed a new elementary particle, or potentially a new force of nature, one of the physicists involved in the discovery told AFP on Wednesday.

The physics world was abuzz with excitement over the findings, which could offer clues to the persistent riddle of mass and how objects obtain it — one of the most sought-after answers in all of physics.

But experts cautioned that more analysis was needed over the next several months to uncover the true nature of the discovery, which comes as part of an ongoing experiment with proton and antiproton collisions to understand the workings of the universe.

15 Troubles on the horizon for Haiti victor Martelly

by Clarens Renois, AFP

Tue Apr 5, 5:18 pm ET

PORT-AU-PRINCE (AFP) – Haiti’s next president Michel Martelly promised a “new era” for Haiti on Tuesday, but many troubles lie ahead and his landslide election win is looking like the easy part.

The 50-year-old former carnival entertainer and pop singer, known as “Sweet Micky” or Tet Kale (Bald Head), lit up the campaign, seizing the mantle of change and capturing the imagination of Haiti’s frustrated urban youth.

“Haitian people, a new era has begun,” Martelly told a victory press conference in the capital Port-au-Prince, urging the young to “raise their eyes to the rainbow of promised change.”

16 Six new events approved for 2014 Sochi Games

AFP

Wed Apr 6, 12:23 pm ET

LONDON (AFP) – Six new events, including women’s ski jumping, will make their debuts at the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, the International Olympic Committee announced on Wednesday.

The other events are the ski halfpipe for men and women, team figure skating, team luge and biathlon mixed relay, meaning an extra 150 athletes will participate in the Russian Black Sea resort city.

IOC president Jacques Rogge said the “inclusion of these events on the Olympic Winter Games programme is sure to be appreciated by athletes and sports fans alike.”

Reuters

17 Top M&A law firms at center of new insider case

By Jonathan Stempel and Andrew Longstreth, Reuters

2 mins ago

NEW YORK/NEWARK, New Jersey (Reuters) – A lawyer and a trader were accused by federal prosecutors of running a 17-year conspiracy to trade on corporate merger secrets stolen from three of the nation’s most powerful law firms, in one of the largest U.S. insider trading cases on record.

Prosecutors accused Matthew H. Kluger and Garrett D. Bauer of reaping more than $32.2 million from trades on tips about upcoming mergers and acquisitions that Kluger learned as a lawyer at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati PC, the pre-eminent firm representing Silicon Valley technology companies.

The complaint details a conspiracy that had its origins in Atlantic City, New Jersey, and ended with attempts by the defendants to cover their tracks, including a discussion about cleaning money in a washing machine to rid it of fingerprints.

18 In U-turn, Portugal requests EU financial aid

By Axel Bugge and Andrei Khalip, Reuters

1 hr 1 min ago

LISBON (Reuters) – Portugal’s caretaker government said on Wednesday it had decided to seek financing from the European Union in an abrupt turnaround after resisting a bailout for months despite sharply deteriorating financial conditions.

The nation of 10.5 million became the third member of the euro zone to seek a rescue after Greece and Ireland after months of fending off market pressure to request assistance, as borrowing costs soared amid deepening political instability.

Prime Minister Jose Socrates said in a televised statement that parliament’s rejection of additional austerity measures last month had aggravated the financial situation, ultimately making the request for aid “inevitable.”

19 Attack on Gbagbo bunker in Ivory Coast repelled

By Tim Cocks and Ange Aboa, Reuters

1 hr 57 mins ago

ABIDJAN (Reuters) – Forces loyal to Ivory Coast presidential claimant Alassane Ouattara launched a heavy attack on Wednesday on the bunker where Laurent Gbagbo is holed up but appeared to have been repelled, a Western military source said.

Fighting raged for a third consecutive day in the economic capital Abidjan as Ouattara’s forces tried to unseat Gbagbo, who has refused to cede power after losing a November election to Ouattara, according to U.N.-certified results.

The source, who lives near Gbagbo’s heavily guarded residence in Abidjan, said fighting had died down in the afternoon and Ouattara’s forces had regrouped.

20 Gaddafi attacks Misrata, NATO tactics questioned

By Alexander Dziadosz, Reuters

18 mins ago

AL-ARBAEEN, Libya (Reuters) – Muammar Gaddafi’s forces unleashed mortar rounds, tank fire and artillery shells on the western city of Misrata on Wednesday as a French minister said NATO air strikes in Libya risked getting “bogged down.”

Misrata, Libya’s third city, rose up with other towns against Muammar Gaddafi’s rule in mid-February, and it is now under attack by government troops after a violent crackdown put an end to most protests elsewhere in the west of the country.

Rebels are angry at what they perceive to be a scaling back of operations since NATO took over an air campaign, following an early onslaught led by the United States, France and Britain that at one stage tilted the war in the rebels’ favor.

21 Challenger wins in Wisconsin proxy union fight

By Jeff Mayers, Reuters

49 mins ago

MADISON, Wis (Reuters) – The Democratic-backed candidate for Wisconsin Supreme Court judge claimed victory on Wednesday in an election seen as a referendum on a law curbing union power with implications for cash-strapped U.S. states.

Challenger JoAnne Kloppenburg beat Republican-backed incumbent Judge David Prosser by slightly more than 200 votes out of 1.4 million cast on Tuesday, according to local media.

“We owe Justice Prosser our gratitude for his more than 30 years of public service,” Kloppenburg said. “Wisconsin voters have spoken … . I will be independent and impartial and I will decide cases based on the facts and the law.”

22 Dish expands its scope with Blockbuster win

By Tom Hals and Liana B. Baker, Reuters

35 mins ago

WILMINGTON, Del./NEW YORK (Reuters) – Dish Network Corp won Blockbuster Inc in a bankruptcy auction for $320 million, further broadening its business beyond satellite TV and setting up a possible showdown with Netflix.

Dish, the second-largest U.S. satellite TV company after DirecTV, trumped at least three other bidders, including activist investor Carl Icahn, for the one-time leader in video rentals.

Dish said the deal, which includes more than 1,700 Blockbuster stores, gives it new ways to market its services.

23 Romney counts on massive warchest, circle of giving

By Ros Krasny, Reuters

Wed Apr 6, 2:30 pm ET

BOSTON (Reuters) – Mitt Romney, a presidential also-ran in 2008, is powering up a fund-raising machine he hopes will obliterate competition for the 2012 Republican nomination.

The former Massachusetts governor has yet to formally get into the race, but Romney is on a cross-country blitz to meet wealthy, well-networked donors.

Now a seasoned campaigner, Romney is regarded as the early front-runner in a jumbled field of more than a dozen Republicans, most of whom have not formally announced. A massive war chest — likely as much as $50 million — could create an air of inevitability about his run and even keep some poorly-funded rivals out of the race entirely.

24 Japan focuses on hydrogen buildup after nuclear leak

By Chizu Nomiyama and Shinichi Saoshiro, Reuters

Wed Apr 6, 12:33 pm ET

TOKYO (Reuters) – Japan began pumping nitrogen gas into a crippled nuclear reactor, refocusing the fight against the world’s worst nuclear disaster in 25 years on preventing an explosive buildup of hydrogen gas at Fukushima Daiichi power plant.

Workers started injecting nitrogen into the containment vessel of reactor No. 1 on Wednesday night, following a morning breakthrough in stopping highly radioactive water leaking into the sea at another reactor in the six-reactor complex.

“It is necessary to inject nitrogen gas into the containment vessel and eliminate the potential for a hydrogen explosion,” an official of plant operator Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO) told a news briefing.

25 Berlusconi sex trial opens, immediately adjourned

By Antonella Ciancio, Reuters

Wed Apr 6, 9:23 am ET

MILAN (Reuters) – Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s trial on charges he paid an underage teenager for sex opened on Wednesday and was adjourned until May 31 after a hearing that lasted just 10 minutes.

Berlusconi, who has suffered relatively limited political damage from the “Rubygate” case, did not attend the session, preferring to chair a ministerial meeting in Rome.

Crowds of critics and supporters sparred verbally outside the court over whether the 74-year-old should go to prison over his connection with Moroccan-born teenager Karima El Mahroug, a nightclub dancer with the stage name of Ruby.

26 NYSE unswayed by Nasdaq bid

By Paritosh Bansal and Jonathan Spicer, Reuters

Wed Apr 6, 1:57 pm ET

NEW YORK (Reuters) – NYSE Euronext believes that any kind of merger with Nasdaq OMX — whether the Big Board were the buyer or the seller — makes little strategic sense, and antitrust regulators would block it, according to a source close to the company.

Bringing the top two U.S. stock exchanges together would face “insurmountable antitrust problems,” the source said on Wednesday, suggesting NYSE’s board could look beyond the premium Nasdaq has offered and reject Nasdaq’s bid outright.

The focus on monopolies shows just how tricky it will be for the world’s top exchange operators to pull off a rash of planned tie-ups that would revamp capital markets in North America, Europe and Asia. Just this week, Australia moved to block a buyout of its bourse by Singapore Exchange.

27 Markets weigh two U.S. shutdowns: 1 bad, 1 awful

By Kevin Drawbaugh, Reuters

Wed Apr 6, 1:20 pm ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Investors are facing two possible U.S. government shutdown scenarios, one of limited impact on markets, and another so potentially devastating that analysts are struggling to fully assess it.

Neither is sure to occur, but the limited-impact version seemed distinctly possible on Wednesday as Democrats and Republicans argued over the federal budget. It would involve the expiration at midnight on Friday of a stop-gap spending measure known as a continuing resolution, or CR.

The nightmare shutdown scenario, still a few weeks away, would involve Congress failing to raise the national debt ceiling and possibly an unprecedented government debt default.

28 World Bank chief: citizens need voice in Arab world

By Lesley Wroughton, Reuters

Wed Apr 6, 12:41 pm ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Middle East governments moving away from dictatorship must deliver quick wins through job creation to meet immediate hopes of street protesters but longer-term reforms need to ensure a more inclusive society, the head of the World Bank said on Wednesday.

In a speech on the ongoing turbulence in the Middle East and North Africa, World Bank President Robert Zoellick warned that a break from a past where societies were driven by autocrats to one that includes citizens in decision-making will be vital for the region’s transition.

“Our message to our clients, whatever their political system, is that you cannot have successful development without good governance and without the participation of your citizens,” Zoellick told a gathering at the Peterson Institute.

29 Analysis: Obama shifts to play budget dealmaker, avoid blame

By Caren Bohan and Jeff Mason, Reuters

Wed Apr 6, 10:42 am ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama’s late entry into a budget battle that could shut the government marks an attempt both to play dealmaker and avoid blame if Republicans and Democrats fail to forge agreement in time.

During a rare meeting with party leaders on Tuesday, Obama aimed to break a logjam over how to cut spending by $33 billion in this year’s budget.

The meeting did not produce a breakthrough but in a surprise appearance before reporters afterwards Obama pledged to convene further meetings and negotiate “for as long as possible to get this resolved.”

30 Japan may order Tokyo-area industry to conserve power

By Chikako Mogi and Osamu Tsukimori, Reuters

Wed Apr 6, 5:59 am ET

TOKYO (Reuters) – Japan’s trade ministry may order big manufacturers in the country’s economic heartland around Tokyo to cut their peak summer power use by 25 percent, a ministry official said, as it considers dramatic steps to avert crippling blackouts.

The ministry is also likely to set power-saving targets for households and small businesses, the official said, in what would be the first government curbs on power use since the oil crisis of 1974.

Tokyo Electric Power is scrambling to secure enough power for the capital area’s factories and air-conditioners this summer after a devastating earthquake and tsunami took out 23 percent of its generating capacity, including the Fukushima nuclear complex.

31 Japan plans 3 trillion yen extra budget, no debt issue: media

By Leika Kihara, Reuters

Tue Apr 5, 9:13 pm ET

TOKYO (Reuters) – Japan will not issue new debt to fund an initial extra budget of more than $35 billion for disaster relief, the Asahi newspaper said, in a sign the government is wary of alarming bond investors by adding too much to Japan’s already huge debt pile.

But after the first extra budget, which will focus on funding immediate cleanup and repair work from last month’s devastating earthquake and tsunami, the government will likely spend far more in subsequent emergency budgets and may need to issue new bonds to cover the costs, analysts say.

The more than 3 trillion yen ($35 billion) in the supplemental budget will pay for repairing roads, ports and schools, as well as helping those in quake-hit regions in Japan’s northeast find new jobs, the Asahi reported on Wednesday.

AP

32 Shutdown meeting at White House as time dwindles

By DAVID ESPO, AP Special Correspondent

35 mins ago

WASHINGTON – Time growing short, Congress’ leaders reported progress Wednesday in talks to cut spending and avert a partial government shutdown that the White House warned would hit U.S. combat troops abroad and taxpayer refunds from the IRS at home.

President Barack Obama checked in separately by phone with House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., then asked the two men to join him at the White House for an evening meeting. He acted after deciding “not enough progress had been made,” said spokesman Jay Carney.

Determined to avoid political blame if a shutdown occurs, Boehner said the House would vote Thursday on a one-week stopgap bill to keep the government open while cutting $12 billion in spending and providing the Pentagon with enough money to stay open until the Sept. 30 end of the budget year.

33 White House says shutdown will delay pay to troops

By RICHARD LARDNER and JIM KUHNHENN, Associated Press

39 mins ago

WASHINGTON – The Obama administration warned Wednesday that a federal shutdown would undermine the economic recovery, delay pay to U.S. troops fighting in three wars, slow the processing of tax returns and limit small business loans and government-backed mortgages during peak home buying season.

The dire message, delivered two days before the federal government’s spending authority expires, appeared aimed at jolting congressional Republicans into a budget compromise. Billions of dollars apart, congressional negotiators were working to strike a deal by Friday to avert a shutdown by setting spending limits through the end of September. The last such shutdown took place 15 years ago and lasted 21 days.

President Barack Obama telephoned House Speaker John Boehner on Wednesday, and Boehner’s office said the speaker told Obama he was hopeful a deal could be reached.

34 Gadhafi, in letter, asks Obama to end air strikes

MATTHEW LEE, Associated Press

39 mins ago

WASHINGTON – Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi appealed directly to President Barack Obama on Wednesday to end what Gadhafi called “an unjust war.” He also wished Obama good luck in his bid for re-election next year.

“You are a man who has enough courage to annul a wrong and mistaken action,” Gadhafi wrote in a rambling, three-page letter to Obama obtained by The Associated Press on Wednesday. “I am sure that you are able to shoulder the responsibility for that.”

The White House confirmed the letter, but top officials shrugged it off.

35 Gbagbo’s home in Ivory Coast comes under attack

By RUKMINI CALLIMACHI and MARCO CHOWN OVED, Associated Press

34 mins ago

ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast – Even after airstrikes pounded holes in his garden, even after fighters encircled his home and stormed the gates, Laurent Gbagbo did not budge Wednesday from the bunker where he remains holed up.

The finale of Gbagbo’s 10-year claim on Ivory Coast is playing out much like the beginning. The 65-year-old strongman, who made an art of staying in power years past the end of his legal mandate, is now pushing the envelope, fighting for each day, even each hour.

“He will not surrender,” said Meite Sindou, a defense spokesman for Alassane Ouattara, the man recognized worldwide as the democratically elected president of Ivory Coast. “We will have to take him.”

36 Gates tries to soothe Saudis rattled by unrest

By ROBERT BURNS, Associated Press

43 mins ago

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia – Defense Secretary Robert Gates tried to smooth the worst rift in years with Arab ally and oil producer Saudi Arabia on Wednesday, reassuring the Saudi king that the U.S. remains a steady friend despite support for pro-democracy revolutions in the Middle East.

The Saudi king, looking thin after months of medical treatment in the United States and elsewhere, welcomed Gates for what the Pentagon chief later said was a cordial and warm visit.

The hospitality masked deep unease among Saudi Arabia’s aged leadership about what the political upheaval in the Middle East means for its hold on power, its role as the chief counterweight to a rising Iran, and its changed relationship with the United States.

37 Like GOP, Obama taking aim at Iowa, NH, Nevada

By CHARLES BABINGTON, Associated Press

44 mins ago

WASHINGTON – Even without a Democratic challenger, President Barack Obama is planning an aggressive role in early primary states. His operatives are already moving in, organizing volunteers and raising money to answer Republican attacks and do what they can to weaken the GOP’s strongest challengers.

With the election 19 months away, Obama’s campaign could keep a low profile while Republicans pummel each other. But he won’t be content to watch passively as his potential rivals duke it out.

Three of the earliest-voting states – Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada – will also be strongly contested in the fall of 2012. Likely Republican candidates already are assailing Obama there, and his aides say they can’t wait months to respond.

38 Glenn Beck’s Fox show ending

By DAVID BAUDER, AP Television Writer

35 mins ago

NEW YORK – Glenn Beck later this year will end his Fox News Channel talk show, which has sunk in the ratings and has suffered from an advertiser boycott.

Fox and Beck’s company, Mercury Radio Arts, said Wednesday they will stay in business creating other projects for Fox television and digital, starting with some documentaries Beck is preparing.

Beck was a quick burn on Fox News Channel. Almost immediately after joining the network in January 2009, he doubled the ratings at his afternoon time slot. Fans found his conservative populism entertaining, while Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert described Beck’s “crank up the crazy and rip off the knob” moments.

39 Foundation: Bristol Palin worth $332K compensation

By RACHEL D’ORO, Associated Press

55 mins ago

ANCHORAGE, Alaska – Bristol Palin was well worth the $332,500 she was paid to be an ambassador for a foundation aiming to prevent teen pregnancy, the organization’s founder said Wednesday.

In her 2009 debut with The Candies Foundation, the unwed mother and daughter of former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was paid $262,500 for 15 to 20 days of work, and another $70,000 for a less amount of work last year.

The money spent has been “an amazing investment,” according to foundation founder Neil Cole.

40 Barry Bonds rests with no defense witnesses

By RONALD BLUM, AP Sports Writer

Wed Apr 6, 3:25 pm ET

SAN FRANCISCO – Barry Bonds’ confident defense team rested its case Wednesday without calling a single witness, just minutes after a federal judge accepted the government’s request to dismiss one of the five counts against the home run king.

Prosecutors called 25 witnesses to the stand over 2 1/2 weeks, but the defense needed just one minute to present its side. The jury of eight women and four men barely had time to get settled in the courtroom before being told to return Thursday morning for closing arguments.

“We are expecting that you will get this case for decision tomorrow,” U.S. District Judge Susan Illston said to them. “Tomorrow will be the last day.”

41 Tsunami-hit towns forgot warnings from ancestors

By JAY ALABASTER, Associated Press

Wed Apr 6, 2:47 pm ET

MIYAKO, Japan – Modern sea walls failed to protect coastal towns from Japan’s destructive tsunami last month. But in the hamlet of Aneyoshi, a single centuries-old tablet saved the day.

“High dwellings are the peace and harmony of our descendants,” the stone slab reads. “Remember the calamity of the great tsunamis. Do not build any homes below this point.”

It was advice the dozen or so households of Aneyoshi heeded, and their homes emerged unscathed from a disaster that flattened low-lying communities elsewhere and killed thousands along Japan’s northeastern shore.

42 Parties split as House panel debates GOP budget

By RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR and ALAN FRAM, Associated Press

1 hr 46 mins ago

WASHINGTON – Partisan divisions hardened Wednesday as Republicans began pushing a $3.5 trillion federal budget for 2012 through a House committee, with backers calling it a sobering correction for the nation’s spending binge and critics labeling it an assault on health programs for retirees and the poor.

The sweeping fiscal plan by House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., lays the groundwork for a decade of cuts in spending, taxes and deficits. It would be tempered by a cost shift to future retirees and features a reshaping of the government’s two chief health care programs for the elderly and poor, Medicare and Medicaid.

Though the blueprint covers the entire reach of government, much of Wednesday’s House Budget Committee debate focused on health and other social programs, from which Republicans were proposing to wring hundreds of billions in savings over the next 10 years. Ryan said that with sky-high deficits, the government needs to limit its mission to programs that are truly needed.

43 To fix damage from old canals, corps plans new one

By CAIN BURDEAU, Associated Press

Wed Apr 6, 3:39 pm ET

MERAUX, La. – On a wedge of land where criss-crossing canals have killed off native plants and sped erosion, the Army Corps of Engineers has a controversial proposal for undoing environmental damage: They want to dig another canal.

The trench is a key part of a $3 billion plan to fix damage left by the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet, a 78-mile shipping channel dug in the 1960s. The corps says the work will help protect New Orleans from hurricanes by restoring wetlands, the natural buffer Louisiana is losing along this low-lying coast.

Locals, however, are worried.

44 IOC approves women’s ski jumping for 2014 Games

By STEPHEN WILSON, AP Sports Writer

Wed Apr 6, 2:56 pm ET

LONDON – After an unsuccessful legal battle for inclusion at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, women’s ski jumping won its place Wednesday on the program for the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi.

The International Olympic Committee executive board also approved the addition of men’s and women’s ski halfpipe, mixed relay in biathlon and team events in luge and figure skating.

“The inclusion of these events … is sure to be appreciated by athletes and sports fans alike,” IOC President Jacques Rogge said. “These are exciting, entertaining events that perfectly complement the existing events on the sports program, bring added appeal and increase the number of women participating at the games.”

45 AP Exclusive: Voices behind China’s protest calls

By GILLIAN WONG, Associated Press

Wed Apr 6, 1:41 pm ET

SEOUL, South Korea – Strolling past hip cafes, the young Chinese man in a white sports jacket and faded jeans looks like any other university student in the South Korean capital. But the laptop in his black backpack is a tool in a would-be revolution in China.

The 22-year-old computer science student is part of a group behind appeals that started popping up anonymously on the Internet seven weeks ago, calling on Chinese to stage peaceful protests to get the ruling Communist Party to move toward democracy.

Those calls have spooked the government into launching one of its broadest campaigns of repression in years to keep the protests from catching on, as they have in the Middle East and North Africa.

46 Preventing blasts a focus at Japan nuclear plant

By MARI YAMAGUCHI, Associated Press

Wed Apr 6, 3:42 pm ET

TOKYO – After notching a rare victory by stopping highly radioactive water from flowing into the Pacific on Wednesday, workers at Japan’s flooded nuclear power complex turned to their next task: injecting nitrogen to prevent more hydrogen explosions.

Nuclear officials said there was no immediate threat of explosions like the three that rocked the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant not long after a massive tsunami hit on March 11, but their plans are a reminder of how much work remains to stabilize the complex.

Workers are racing to cool down the plant’s reactors, which have been overheating since power was knocked out by the 9.0-magnitude earthquake and tsunami that killed as many as 25,000 people and destroyed hundreds of miles of coastline.

47 Mo. senators offer to allow vote on jobless bill

By DAVID A. LIEB, Associated Press

49 mins ago

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. – Several Missouri state senators who have been blocking a vote on extending federally-funded jobless benefits said Wednesday that they will only relent if Gov. Jay Nixon agrees to the elimination of $300 million in federal stimulus spending.

The conditional deal highlighted the political stakes involved in a showdown over federal spending that already has caused the loss of benefits for about 10,000 Missouri residents who have been without work for a year and a half.

Earlier Wednesday, one of the Republican senators leading the filibuster said he would allow a vote on the unemployment bill and instead try to block up to $400 million of stimulus spending. But the senators later said at a news conference that they want the Democratic governor to share responsibility for rejecting federal money – even though they could do so on their own by cutting the stimulus money out of a state budget bill.

48 Protesters in Yemen defy govt, return to streets

By AHMED AL-HAJ, Associated Press

Wed Apr 6, 12:43 pm ET

SANAA, Yemen – Defying a deadly government crackdown, tens of thousands of protesters on Wednesday poured into the streets of Yemen’s second largest city in the latest demonstrations against the long serving president.

Two groups of protesters met up in the city center where a general strike had closed shops and banks in what activists were calling the “Tsunami of Taiz” and the largest demonstration in this troubled southern city to date.

More than 120 people have been killed since Yemen’s protests calling for the removal of President Ali Abdullah Saleh began on Feb. 11, inspired by popular uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt.

49 Wis. voters send governor strong, angry message

By TODD RICHMOND, Associated Press

27 mins ago

MADISON, Wis. – Wisconsin voters sent Republican Gov. Scott Walker a clear message about their unhappiness with his muscling through a law restricting union rights by sending a once runaway state Supreme Court race toward a near-certain recount and filling the governor’s former post with a Democrat.

While Walker downplayed the significance of Tuesday’s elections on Wednesday, saying they were skewed by exceptional turnout in the liberal cities of Madison and Milwaukee, Democrats warned they were only a sign of what’s to come. Recall efforts have been launched against 16 state senators from both parties for their support or opposition to the bill eliminating most public employees’ collective bargaining rights.

“This continues to add fuel to the tremendous fire of enthusiasm and passion to recall the Republican senators that support Scott Walker’s backwards priorities for the state,” Wisconsin Democratic Party chairman Mike Tate said of the election results.

50 Planned wireless Internet network threatens GPS

By JOELLE TESSLER, AP Technology Writer

Wed Apr 6, 3:02 pm ET

WASHINGTON – A new, ultra-fast wireless Internet network is threatening to overpower GPS signals across the U.S. and interfere with everything from airplanes to police cars to consumer navigation devices.

The problem stems from a recent government decision to let a Virginia company called LightSquared build a nationwide broadband network using airwaves next to those used for GPS. Manufacturers of GPS equipment warn that strong signals from the planned network could jam existing navigation systems.

A technical fix could be expensive – billions of dollars by one estimate – and there’s no agreement on who should pay. Government officials pledge to block LightSquared from turning on its network as scheduled this year unless they receive assurances that GPS systems will still work.

51 Judge: Lockout ruling to take ‘couple of weeks’

By DAVE CAMPBELL, AP Sports Writer

3 mins ago

ST. PAUL, Minn. – As she wrapped up the five-hour hearing on the legality of the NFL lockout, the federal judge overseeing the case said she’d take “a couple of weeks” to rule on the players’ request to return to work.

U.S. District Judge Susan Richard Nelson, however, urged the two sides not to wait that long.

“It seems to me both sides are at risk, and now is a good time to come back to the table,” Nelson said, noting her willingness to facilitate the resumption of talks toward a new collective bargaining agreement that would put pro football back on track.

52 Texas A&M beats Notre Dame 76-70 for NCAA title

By DOUG FEINBERG, AP Basketball Writer

Wed Apr 6, 9:42 am ET

INDIANAPOLIS – This NCAA tournament had plenty of twists, turns and upsets even before the championship game. Coach Gary Blair and Texas A&M delivered a thrilling ending.

This was the supposed to be the year Maya Moore’s Connecticut juggernaut won its third straight title or Stanford broke through or Tennessee got back to the top.

Instead, the Aggies rewrote the script in their first Final Four appearance. They made the 65-year-old Blair the oldest coach to win a national championship just one night after UConn’s 68-year-old Jim Calhoun did the same thing on the men’s side.

53 Gov’t shutdown poses big risks to both parties

By TOM RAUM, Associated Press

Wed Apr 6, 2:03 pm ET

WASHINGTON – Democrats and Republicans say the last thing they want to do is to shut down the government. But with budget talks showing little signs of a breakthrough, there are growing worries that a stalemate could hurt the economy’s fragile recovery.

Many economists and budget analysts suggest that a government shutdown, if it’s lengthy, or even a deal that calls for deep short-term spending cuts could stifle economic growth and lead the country back into recession. Private forecasters already have lowered their growth projections for this year based on surging fuel, food and raw material costs, and tensions in the Middle East and North Africa.

“I think the economic damage from a government shutdown would mount very quickly,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Analytics, who has been an economic adviser to both GOP and Democratic lawmakers. “And the longer it dragged on, the bigger the hit to business, consumer and investor confidence, the greater the odds of a renewed recession.” He puts the danger zone at two weeks or longer.

54 New DC Mayor Gray off to rough start

By BEN NUCKOLS, Associated Press

47 mins ago

WASHINGTON – Washington’s new mayor hasn’t had much of a honeymoon.

Three months after he succeeded Adrian Fenty, Vincent Gray has been besieged by controversies and minor scandals.

The most serious allegations involve whether the Gray campaign funneled cash and promised a six-figure job to a minor candidate who was attacking Fenty during last year’s mayoral contest. The Justice Department has said it is reviewing the allegations to determine if a criminal investigation is warranted.

This is the kind of corruption Beltway Bozos consider normal.  No wonder they hate their jobs and themselves as well as all of us who are stupid enough to vote for them.

55 Haiti’s leader criticizes UN military focus

By EDITH M. LEDERER, Associated Press

59 mins ago

UNITED NATIONS – Haiti’s outgoing president criticized the U.N. Security Council on Wednesday for being too slow to switch its peacekeeping mission in the Western hemisphere’s poorest country from military operations to development and peacebuilding.

In his last address to the council, Rene Preval urged the U.N.’s most powerful body to consider the effectiveness of its interventions “that have practically led to 11 years of military presence in a country that has no war.”

Speaking at the council meeting attended by Colombia’s president, former U.S. president Bill Clinton and nine foreign ministers from Latin America and Spain, Preval said it was “sad to note” that in a quarter of a century he is the only president to finish two constitutional terms and “unfortunately, I am the only one … who was never jailed or exiled.”

56 NY judge queries sides in Gitmo psychologist case

By JENNIFER PELTZ, Associated Press

2 hrs 21 mins ago

NEW YORK – A push to shed light on psychologists’ role in terror suspect interrogations got a rare court airing Wednesday, as a judge told human rights advocates she shared their “sensibility” but wasn’t sure they had legal grounds to force a state investigation.

Rights groups and some psychologists have pressed regulators in several states to explore whether psychologists violated professional rules by designing or observing abusive interrogations, but Wednesday’s court hearing was the first on the issue, advocates said.

The hearing swept questions about national security and overseas detention sites into a New York City court, where the New York Civil Liberties Union and the San Francisco-based Center for Justice and Accountability are seeking to force state regulators to decide whether Army psychologist John F. Leso should be stripped of his New York license. They say he developed “psychologically and physically abusive” interrogation techniques for use on detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

57 Tax caps creating new hurdles for towns, schools

By DAVID A. LIEB and HASAN DUDAR, Associated Press

2 hrs 44 mins ago

MUNCIE, Ind. – First, the state of Indiana put a limit on how much money Mark Burkhart and his colleagues in the state’s school districts could raise with local taxes. Then the state informed them all they’d be getting a smaller check from the state.

Now the chief financial officer for the Muncie schools, with more than a dozen buildings and 8,000 students, has less money to spend and a limited ability to raise more. The consequence?

“We’re not going to fix parts of our buildings that need repair unless it’s a life-safety issue,” Burkhart said. “Probably there’ll be some drippy faucets, there’ll be some leaking roofs, there’ll be some broken window panes we may put tape over.”

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