SUPREME COURT - Next on "Don't Ask, Don't Tell"

"After Judge's Injunction, What's Next for 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell'?" PBS Newshour Transcript (includes video) 10/13/2010

Excerpt

DAVID CHALIAN (NewsHour's political editor): DOJ, the Department of Justice, has not yet said, but all indications are that they will look to at least get the injunction put off, get a stay on the ruling that we got from California.

If, indeed, they don't get that, they will go to the court of appeals to try to get a full appeal. But, right now, Department of Justice has not weighed in officially. That's just the tea leaf reading, Jim.

But Robert Gibbs at the White House this morning with reporters was very clear.

JIM LEHRER (Newshour Editor): White House press secretary.

DAVID CHALIAN: The White House press secretary. He -- he said the key indication that the White House takes from this court ruling is that the policy is near its end.

He reasserted, though, the White House and the president would prefer that this policy, don't ask, don't tell end legislatively, not through the courts. He's just looking at the courts and the president is just looking at the courts as an indication. Basically, I think they were trying to goose Congress in saying, hey, guys, look over here in the Senate. And all you senators that didn't vote on this last time around, look at what the courts are telling us. This is the direction that we're moving in. Time to get on board.

Congress, you listening?

Republicans: Note the President is AGREEING with you on legislative action vs court action.

Now we'll see if Republicans oppose ANYTHING Obama or not.

WORLD - Chilean Miners Rescue

This chain of events is AMAZING!

I am likely not the only one who has been tracking this event. The entire world seemed riveted, one way or another. This, after all, is a very human event.

From the willingness of a company (with some fleeting reluctance according to rumors) and a country (its government and people) to go all out in rescuing these men, AND to have it go so unexpectedly well.

This is a testament to what can be done when human beings REALLY put our minds to a task. Especially the disregard to the money-cost, "whatever it takes."

My personal congratulations to the miners and Chile. Good job.

SEE: "Developing: Rescue Operation for Chilean Miners" PBS Newshour Timeline Page

WORLD - Chilean Miners Recovery

"Rescue only the first step in Chilean miners' recovery process" CNN 10/13/2010

The process of extracting 33 miners from a Chilean mine, where they have been trapped for more than two months, is going better than expected, the nation's health minister told reporters Wednesday.

"Things are going extraordinarily well so far," said Health Minister Jaime Manalich.

However, the miners' rescue is only the first step in a longer recovery process, workers with NASA have said. Health concerns linger regarding their lack of sunlight, nutrition, effects of their confinement, lack of sleep and sanitation.

Mental health is also a concern. They must be reintroduced to their families and society and deal with their sudden celebrity status.

Dr. Michael Duncan, deputy chief medical officer at Johnson Space Center, said, "The work is just beginning when the miners get out of the mine."

The first group of miners brought up were the younger men, who could best relay information back to the surface and in case of emergency would have been able to activate levers to liberate the rescue capsule, Manalich said. Those miners with health conditions were being brought up afterward, he said.

The rescue capsule has behaved well, Manalich said, and was not rotating as much as officials had feared, reducing the likelihood that the men would become dizzy while being brought up to the surface.

The speed with which the rescue capsule ascends is getting shorter, he said. It required some scheduled maintenance, which delayed the rescues for a while, but all was proceeding according to plan, he said.

The miners' health situation is "pretty good," the minister said. "We have had very, very minor problems."

The first two miners rescued were taken to Copiapo Hospital, he said, where they were evaluated by specialists including ophthalmologists and dermatologists and given chest X-rays. "Their recuperation process is going quite well and according to the schedule," he said.

Other rescued miners were at different stages in that process, he said, with some spending time in a meeting room with relatives before being flown to the hospital.

Manalich said the miners could have opted out of going to the hospital, but it was strongly recommended to them that they do and they were all in agreement.

Extensive precautions were taken to minimize the miners' health risks before they were rescued.

Chilean army nurses were in the mine, evaluating the miners and helping them prepare for their trip to the surface, Manalich said.

"They have an anemic condition, and right now they have been sleeping less these last few days," he said. "They're tired and they still have long hours of waiting in order to be able to come up to the surface and to meet with their families."

The miners were switched to a liquid diet six hours before their rescue in case they vomit on the way up. Because Chilean Mining Minister Laurence Golborne was concerned about the miners being reintroduced to sunlight abruptly, special sunglasses were sent down for the men to wear to make sure they don't suffer damage to their retinas.

While underground, they were given special clothing that pulls sweat away from the body because of concern about skin infections as well as special socks to help prevent infections such as athlete's foot. They also had a series of vaccinations, including a tetanus booster and flu shot. They have been exercising daily, and one miner, Yonni Barrios, is a paramedic and has been weighing his colleagues daily and taking blood tests and daily urine analysis.

American astronaut Jerry Linenger knows something about isolation and confinement. He said his five months in space aboard the Russian space station Mir left him weak and with bone loss. "Down in the mines you have gravity pulling you down. There will be disorientation -- turning your head will feel like doing 100 back flips in a row," he said.

The reunions with those brought to the surface with their families have been "very emotional," Manalich said after eight miners had been rescued, and "they are very happy, very grateful for all they've been able to experience together during this rescue process."

The miners are showing slight increases in blood pressure and cardiac activity during the trip, but have recovered satisfactorily after a few minutes of rest and have not required medication, he said. "I think things are going better than we thought."

However, psychological adjustments will be a hurdle for the miners. "These men spent 20 days totally cut off in the dark until the first bore hole was made," Linenger said. "So they were in survival mode, which is tough psychologically because you are in a life and death situation."

Once out, the miners will be examined on site and hospitalized for a mandatory two days. During that time they'll be monitored and receive physical and mental health care. Doctors will keep an eye out for things such as nightmares, panic attacks, anxiety and claustrophobia, among other potential issues.

AMERICA - Understanding Others' Beliefs

"Despite Religious Roots, Americans Struggle to Understand Others' Beliefs"
PBS Newshour 10/12/2010

ECONOMY - China Competition Threatens U.S. Solar Industry

"Silicon Valley’s Solar Innovators Retool to Catch Up to China" by TODD WOODY, New York Times 10/12/2010

Excerpt

A few years ago, Silicon Valley start-ups like Solyndra, Nanosolar and MiaSolé dreamed of transforming the economics of solar power by reinventing the technology used to make solar panels and deeply cutting the cost of production.

Founded by veterans of the Valley’s chip and hard-drive industries, these companies attracted billions of dollars in venture capital investment on the hope that their advanced “thin film” technology would make them the Intels and Apples of the global solar industry.

But as the companies finally begin mass production — Solyndra just flipped the switch on a $733 million factory here last month — they are finding that the economics of the industry have already been transformed, by the Chinese. Chinese manufacturers, heavily subsidized by their own government and relying on vast economies of scale, have helped send the price of conventional solar panels plunging and grabbed market share far more quickly than anyone anticipated.

As a result, the California companies, once so confident that they could outmaneuver the competition, are scrambling to retool their strategies and find niches in which they can thrive.

“The solar market has changed so much it’s almost enough to make you want to cry,” said Joseph Laia, chief executive of MiaSolé. “We have spent a lot more time and energy focusing on costs a year or two before we thought we had to.”

The challenges come despite extensive public and private support for the Silicon Valley companies. Solyndra, one of the biggest firms, has raised more than $1 billion from investors. The federal government provided a $535 million loan guarantee for the company’s new robot-run, 300,000-square-foot solar panel factory, known as Fab 2.

“The true engine of economic growth will always be companies like Solyndra,” President Obama said in May during an appearance at the then-unfinished factory. But during the year that Solyndra’s plant was under construction, competition from the Chinese helped drive the price of solar modules down 40 percent. Solyndra rushed to start cranking out panels on Sept. 13, two months ahead of schedule, and it has increased marketing efforts to make the case to customers that Solyndra’s more expensive panels are cost-effective when installation charges are factored in.

“It definitely puts more pressure on us to bring our costs down as quickly as possible by ramping up volume,” said Ben Bierman, Solyndra’s executive vice president for operations and engineering.

Silicon Valley companies like Solyndra, Nanosolar and MiaSolé continue to receive hundreds of millions of dollars in customer orders and some plan to expand local manufacturing. But the rapid rise of low-cost Chinese manufacturers has made investors — who once envisioned the region’s future as Solar Valley — skittish about backing new capital-intensive start-ups.

An example of unfair competition from countries with governments who are willing to heavily subsidize an industry, and China is not the only one.

POLITICS - No Enthusiasm Gap? (aka Do Pollsters Really Know What's Happening?)

"The Invisible Six Point Democratic Lead" by Stephen Herrington, Huffington Post 10/12/2010

The "enthusiasm gap" is driving the midterm election narrative. You hear, everywhere from every MSM and polling source, that the generic ballot shows a 5-10 point lead for the GOP. That lead is constructed entirely on the "likely voter" model. Among likely voters, you hear, the GOP has a 5-10 point lead. Have you ever heard the results of polls of registered voters not qualified by the "likely" modifier?

In the latest CNN public opinion poll released 10/08, someone slipped up and mentioned that, among registered voters, the generic Democrats have a 6 point lead. A 6 point lead is about what it took to sweep Congress and the White House for the Democrats in 2006-08. So the sentiment of the country favors Democrats by 6 percent and the press reports only the pollster construct of right leaning likely voters as representing the sentiment of the nation.

What is a likely voter? Different polls have different methods and most are proprietary. Gallup has shared their battery of questions used to determine a likely voter. From Mystery Pollster :

1. How much have you thought about the upcoming elections for president, quite a lot or only a little? (Quite a lot = 1 point)


2. Do you happen to know where people who live in your neighborhood go to vote? (Yes = 1 point)


3. Have you ever voted in your precinct or election district? (Yes = 1 point)


4. How often would you say you vote, always, nearly always, part of the time or seldom (Always or nearly always = 1 point)


5. Do you plan to vote in the presidential election this November? (Yes = 1 point) [presumably updated for 2012]


6. In the last presidential election, did you vote for Al Gore or George Bush, or did things come up to keep you from voting?" (Voted = 1 point) [presumably updated for 2010-12]


7. If "1" represents someone who will definitely not vote and "10" represents someone who definitely will vote, where on this scale would you place yourself? (Currently 7-10 = 1, according to this "quiz" on USA Today)

It's easy to see that the questions used to determine a likely voter skew in favor of older people and those with long term political involvement. Note that only one question, number 7, directly asks if you plan to vote and voting history is the most weighted measure by far. What is apparent in the battery is that complacency is judged an immutable pattern of the U.S. voter, 2006-08 notwithstanding for some reason.

Fair reporting on the subject of this current election would be that the press has decided that the same American public that voted out the GOP in 2006-08 is intent on putting them back in office in 2010. Despite the tribulations of the first two years of Obama, Americans seem still in favor of Democratic rule, but their "enthusiasm" is measured by only two of the Gallup battery questions, numbers 1 and 7. Question 1 can be interpreted as having not had to think about the election too hard in order to make a choice. Question 7 could turn on the notion that if things appear to be in hand, then I won't bother. Rather gaping holes in both questions for the polls and press to rely entirely on them as a litmus of political fact. Rather thin criterion for the claim that America is a center right nation, these two questions, but that is what the MSM has made of it in practical terms.

News organizations are depriving the public of a vital piece of information that is significant. That piece of information is that the public actually supports the Democrats more than it does the Republicans, just maybe not enough to bother with voting. Only reporting the horse race aspect of the election, which party's voters are most likely to show up by historical statistical standards, serves to skew the perception that America is leaning right when it's not. Issue polls bear this out, America is the most left on issues that it has been since the sixties. What comparing the likely voter and registered voter numbers show is a GOP willing to use big money enabled anger to impose its will on a public that, in majority, doesn't want it to.

Because of this distortion in reporting poll outcomes, some on the left will stay home or vote a third party because they think the Republicans will win anyway. The tragedy of this is that the "unenthused" left majority will suffer the all too predictable pains of a GOP Congress legislating against their interests and wishes. The public wishes government to be left of center and not right, according to the polls.

Democrat(s) are by avocation democratic, so if the majority is leaning politically right they are more likely to accept a right wing future than Republicans are to accept a politically left leaning future. The right is just always more enthused about forcing everyone to live according to their rules than is the left. But then, actual enthusiasm is not a central component of the likely voter calculation, history is.

Pollsters always push the "likely voter" qualification because it is intuitively the more exact predictor. It is an exact predictor until "enthusiasm" swings, right up to and including the day of the election. It is the old "if the vote were held today" codicil to predictions that allows them to predict in polling at all. But the pitfall of that is a misrepresentation of the political landscape that the press and polls undertake at the risk of being proved wrong, like the market crash of 2008 propelled Obama to a 6 point lead and win out of a virtual tie. Happily for the press and pollsters, the public has the long term memory of a mayfly (lifespan one day).

Conspiracy theorists might jump to the conclusion that the conservative owned press is willfully misrepresenting the public temperament. More likely is that the American press has just become too lazy and arrogant to care whether what they are fed by pollsters who should know what is happening in fact do not know what is happening, or even whether they are being fed propaganda crap by them. The drumbeat of the Democrats being beat like a drum is everywhere that Fox News can feed a tag line. The somnambulism of the left, having won something but not so much that it appears to have upset business as usual, is innervated further by dire predictions of losing even what has been accomplished. Time for the left to surrender, according to Fox.

Fox, CBS, ABC, NBC, CNN and Republicans, listen up and listen tight, surrender is not a word any American takes lightly.

Bold-blue emphasis mine

ECONOMY - So, Why the Job Market Slow Recovery?

"Economists Earn Nobel Prize for Asking How Job Market Works"
PBS Newshour 10/11/2010

From transcript

CATHERINE RAMPELL, The New York Times: Basically, that refers to research about markets where buyers and sellers don't automatically find each other.

And that really refers to almost all markets, except for things like commodities. So, in the job market, that means, why does it take so long for people who are unemployed to find jobs, even when there are job openings available?

JEFFREY BROWN (Newshour): All right, so that's a particularly relevant question right now. What -- tell us what the research suggests about the situation as these economists studied it, but also as it applies to what we're looking at now.

CATHERINE RAMPELL: Well, basically, they were interested in, again, why does it take so long for people to be matched to jobs?

And their conclusion had a lot to do with the fact that people are not interchangeable units. You know, different people have different skills. They have different weaknesses. They have different strengths. And jobs, for that matter, are also not identical, cookie-cutter things.

So, what happens is, it takes time for the right person to be matched to the right job. And, beyond that, there are government policies that at times can make the search process less efficient.

So, when we're talking about what's going on now, a lot of that has to do with the demand picture, but it can also have are to do with the fact that it takes time for people to be matched to the right job, because they're unwilling to move, if their house is underwater, for example.

POLITICS - The Buying of American Elections

"Outside Groups Spend Big on Campaign Ads"
PBS Newshour 10/11/2010


Excerpts from transcript

JUDY WOODRUFF (Newshour): The main targets of Democrats' criticism have been the conservative political entity American Crossroads, its nonprofit affiliate, Crossroads GPS, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

The Crossroads groups, co-founded by former Bush political advisers Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie, have pledged to spend upwards of $50 million on behalf of Republican candidates this fall. The Chamber, meanwhile, has vowed to dole out $75 million on the midterms.

The Democratic National Committee released an ad this weekend accusing the groups of using donations from foreigners on campaign ads.
----
JUDY WOODRUFF: I'm very well. And good to see you. But this is such a diversity -- a disparity, $46 million on the part of conservative and Republican outside groups vs. $7 million on the part of Democratic groups.

Is this consistent with what we have seen in the past?

EVAN TRACEY, chief operating officer, Campaign Media Analysis Group: Well, it's interesting, because when you sort of look at the recent history of campaign finance, it used to be that the parties were the big purveyors of this, what used to be called soft money, and it was fairly equal.

After McCain-Feingold, the Democrats really took a strong edge with the 527s and those groups that were basically backed by the Soroses and the labor unions. But now, post-Citizens United, you really see that Republicans have gotten kind of back in the game in a big way and are really outspending the Democrats in these key congressional and Senate races, not just in the amount of money they're spending, in the scope and the coverage of races right now that they're sitting.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Post-Citizens United. You're referring to that Supreme Court decision that said it was all right for a corporate interest and private interest...

(CROSSTALK)

EVAN TRACEY: Right. That's the one, that sort of the latest rule change, which has both changed how the money gets in and the timing of when these campaigns and these groups can spend it.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Now, what are these groups spending their money on? You track advertising. Is all of this money going into television?

EVAN TRACEY: The majority of the Republican money right now is going into television. And it's not just regular TV ads. It's negative ads.

About 90 percent of all these ads right now have been negative ads, so they're adding an awful lot of help, both on the message side for campaigns, but also on the tonnage side.
----
JUDY WOODRUFF: So, (Democratic add) to other ads you're seeing on the left?

EVAN TRACEY: Well, you know, what's interesting about theirs, there are not that many of these groups right now that are doing much work for these Democrat Senate candidates right now.

Here's one example. But, again, they're talking about the Chamber. In other words, it's very process-oriented, the message, right now. And I think you're seeing that a lot from Democrats this fall, is that they're really trying to focus on process, campaign finance, and having a hard time kind of linking this back into policy.

So, it certainly helps in a race like Kentucky, which is going to be very close, to have this outside money coming to their aid, but there's really not a lot of examples of this for Democrats right now in these Senate and House races.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And -- and, so, in other words, around the country, you're not seeing a consistent theme everywhere?

EVAN TRACEY: And no. That's the thing. With the Republican groups, it's very consistent. They're trying to find new ways to say Obama and Pelosi.

The Democrat groups are trying to find issues that they can exploit in individual races. But just on the Senate, Republican groups have run ads in 18 different Senate races this year, Democrats in nine. In the House, Republicans have been in over 60 races, Democrats in just over six right now.

So, you're really not seeing the groups do very much work for Democrats in these House and Senate races.

Bold-blue emphasis mine

As I've said before, the IS the buying of elections thanks to the unprecedented Supreme Court decision making corporations = individual people in the arena of political speech.

This is also one of the things that Democrats have a history of being short in execution, the long-term and consistent, message to American voters year around.

This is what Republicans have been doing since day-one after the election of Obama, in trying to brainwash Americans into believing (the lie) everything today is Obama's (and the Democrats) fault.

ECONOMY - Foreclosures, Loan Modifications the Real Issue

"Would a U.S. Foreclosure Ban Yield 'Catastrophic' Consequences?"
PBS Newshour 10/11/2010

From transcript

SHARI OLEFSON, real estate attorney: Well, it could be very serious, Jeffrey, because, obviously, consumer confidence has been one of the biggest problems in our real estate market. We saw what happened at the beginning of this crisis, with all the interconnectedness of -- in terms of the market and reaching to Wall Street and to Main Street.

And we can only guess what some of the impacts of a more permanent foreclosure freeze might be for the country. In terms of the volume here, I mean, it's a huge bucket. We're also including, though, a lot of foreclosures that are being properly done. And we're just sort of double-checking to see that the procedure has been done right.

My question to Shari would be, if we don't have a PAUSE in foreclosures how can anyone KNOW if they were, in fact, properly done?

Note I do think a "moratorium" is too strong a word. A nationwide pause for review is more in line with this problem.

Also, at the very beginning of this video the statement "nationwide moratorium on selling foreclosed homes" is wrong, is should have been "nationwide moratorium on PROCESSING foreclosed homes." The processing of loan documentation BEFORE sale and before the homeowner vacates.

As noted in my previous post, is the issue of loan modifications. If the people who review loans are also responsible for reviewing loan modification requests AND they do NOT read the loan documentation, then there MAY be may homeowners out there who SHOULD have had their loans modified and not foreclosed.

POLITICS - From Colorado, Don't Vote Republican

"Barbara Wells: What it means to vote Republican" by Barbara Wells, Summit Daily News 10/10/2010

Let's get real about what a vote for any Republican would mean in this election. The following are platforms of Republicans who are established as sitting representatives or senators or are currently running for office and supported by the Republican Party:

Personal life — A woman would no longer have any control over her body when she becomes pregnant. The government would tell her what she would do.

Professional life — A female, single teacher would be fired if she has an affair. What profession would be targeted next? Are males to be subjected to the same rule?

Regulations — Throw them out and let corporations run their businesses for profit. Forget the salmonella outbreak, forget the mines polluting our rivers, and forget the oil spills. Forget hiring anyone to enforce any regulation.

If you vote Republican in this election, like it or not, you vote in support of the above and for all the crazies who are running on the Republican ticket throughout this country. They will be affirmed for these outrageous platforms and many more not listed here.

The Republican Party needs to clearly define what it stands for and how they support the people of this great nation. Until then you need either to not vote or to vote for a Democrat.

While I agree with Barbra in general, there is ONE thing I disagree with. You NEED to vote. Voter apathy is not a good option if we want to keep Republicans from repeating their 8yr ruination of America.

POLITICS - What China Buys, the GOP

"What Would China Pay to Make John Boehner Speaker and to Give the GOP Power Again?" by Howie Klein, Huffington Post 10/6/2010

Communist China knows who its friends are -- and it goes beyond just Ron Johnson who loves the Chinese slave labor model so much that he seems likely to move there if Russ Feingold manages to beat him in November. When Tim Ryan (D-OH) introduced legislation to prevent China from continuing the systematic currency manipulation that has cost Americans hundreds of thousands of jobs, it was lobbyist owned-John Boehner and his entire leadership team -- Eric Cantor, Mike Pence, David Dreier, Paul Ryan, Pete Sessions -- who took the side of the Chinese against America. Even Boehner's own caucus was horrified and most Republicans deserted Boehner and his Communist Chinese allies and crossed the aisle to vote with the Democrats and, for a change, the interests of ordinary American working families. Yesterday, Think Progress broke the story on just how China and other foreign interests are going about taking over the U.S. government -- using the easily manipulated Republicans and their reactionary allies at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. [The FEC has been asked to investigate.]

The largest attack campaign against Democrats this fall is being waged by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a trade association organized as a 501(c)(6) that can raise and spend unlimited funds without ever disclosing any of its donors... The Chamber's spending has dwarfed every other issue group and most political party candidate committee spending. A ThinkProgress investigation has found that the Chamber funds its political attack campaign out of its general account, which solicits foreign funding. And while the Chamber will likely assert it has internal controls, foreign money is fungible, permitting the Chamber to run its unprecedented attack campaign. According to legal experts consulted by ThinkProgress, the Chamber is likely skirting longstanding campaign finance law that bans the involvement of foreign corporations in American elections.

In recent years, the Chamber has become very aggressive with its fundraising, opening offices abroad and helping to found foreign chapters (known as Business Councils or "AmChams"). While many of these foreign operations include American businesses with interests overseas, the Chamber has also spearheaded an effort to raise money from foreign corporations, including ones controlled by foreign governments. These foreign members of the Chamber send money either directly to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, or the foreign members fund their local Chamber, which in turn, transfers dues payments back to the Chamber's H Street office in Washington DC. These funds are commingled to the Chamber's 501(c)(6) account which is the vehicle for the attack ads...

There are many reasons foreign corporations are seeking to defeat Democratic candidates this November. The Chamber has repeatedly sent out issue alerts attacking Democratic efforts to encourage businesses to hire locally rather than outsource to foreign counties. The Chamber has also bitterly fought Democrats for opposing unfettered free trade deals. To galvanize foreign businesses, the Chamber has commissioned former Ambassador Frank Lavin -- who served as the McCain-Palin Asia campaign director and has appeared on television multiple times recently saying a Democratic Congress is bad for business -- to speak before various foreign Chamber affiliates to talk about the stakes for the 2010 midterm elections.

Meanwhile, wonderers are wondering if the lobbyist Boehner has been romantically linked to (although this has not been substantiated enough for the respectable press to report on) -- who lobbies for PRINTING companies, always looking for cheap coated paper (which China has been DUMPING into the U.S. market) -- has had anything to do with Boehner having sold out the paper companies in his own district, costing hundreds of local jobs. I think this story will be breaking by the end of the week. We've been talking with some of the paper industry locals who weren't aware of the foreign money flooding into the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to help the GOP capture Congress but are very aware of Boehner's disgraceful behavior when it came to saving American jobs. Remember, when senior Ohio Republicans Mike Turner and Steven LaTourette signed onto a July 28 letter to President Obama urging him to look into illegal Chinese subsidies of the coated paper dumping Boehner's girlfriend lobbyists was pumping for-- so to speak -- Boehner opposed it.

Arab money, Communist Chinese money, Russian money... every shady government on earth would like to see John Boehner and the GOP in control of Congress... and thanks to a corrupt, corporate Supreme Court ruling they are flooding cash into the political system to make sure they get what they want. Inserting implausible laughing stocks inside the U.S. government -- clowns like Rand Paul, Christine O'Donnell, Daniel "Taliban Dan" Webster, Sharron Angle, Joe Miller, Linda McMahon, Ken Buck, Carly Fiorina, Mike Lee, Marco Rubio, and, of course, their very own Ron Johnson -- would be a dream come true for this country's enemies.

NYTimes Notices All Those Yuan And Rubles Showing Up At Ad Agencies

Probably too late to stop now, but the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is clearly a criminal enterprise that should be shut down.

For at least 44 years, it has been illegal for foreign corporations, countries and individuals to make political contributions in the United States for any election, either directly or indirectly. It is even against the law to solicit such contributions. But in this Wild West year of political money, that longstanding ban is being set aside. The United States Chamber of Commerce -- one of the biggest advertisers in midterm races around the country -- is actively soliciting foreign money, and government enforcers seem to be doing nothing to stop it.

The government needs to make sure that the tax code -- and American control of American elections -- is not being violated.

What can we do as citizens? If you see an ad by the Chamber of Commerce, understand that it's being funded by another country with interests antithetical to our own. If the ad is anti-Candidate A, vote for that candidate. Keep China from taking over America through John Boehner.

ECONOMY - Shift in World Financial Influence

"Currency Rift With China Exposes Shifting Clout" by SEWELL CHAN, New York Times 10/10/2010

Excerpt

At a private dinner on Friday at the Canadian Embassy, finance officials from seven world economic powers focused on the most vexing international economic problem facing the Obama administration.

Over seared scallops and beef tenderloin, Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner urged his counterparts from Europe, Canada and Japan to help persuade China to let its currency, the renminbi, rise in value — a crucial element in redressing the trade imbalances that are threatening recovery around the world.

But the next afternoon, the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund ended with a tepid statement that made only fleeting and indirect references to the simmering currency tensions.

The divergence between the mounting anxieties over Chinese policy and the cautious official response was a striking display of the difficulty of securing international economic cooperation, two years after the financial crisis began.

Above all, officials say, the crisis has shifted influence from the richest powers toward Asia and Latin America, whose economies have weathered the recession much better than those of the United States, Europe and Japan.

“We have come to the end of a model where seven advanced economies can make decisions for the world without the emerging countries,” said one European official involved in the weekend talks. “Like it or not, we simply have to accept it.”

The debate over currency valuation is pivotal. World leaders broadly agree that for the global economy to be more stable, imbalances between creditor countries like China and Germany and debtor countries like the United States and Britain have to be fixed. Correcting those imbalances, some economists say, will help create jobs in the United States and reduce the threat of inflation and asset bubbles in China.

Bold emphasis mine

WORLD - Nobel Committee Speaks-up For Free Speech

"Nobel Peace Prize Given to Jailed Chinese Dissident" by ANDREW JACOBS and JONATHAN ANSFIELD, New York Times 10/8/2010

Excerpt

Liu Xiaobo, an impassioned literary critic, political essayist and democracy advocate repeatedly jailed by the Chinese government for his activism, has won the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of “his long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China.”

Mr. Liu, 54, perhaps China’s best known dissident, is serving an 11-year term on subversion charges, in a cell 300 miles from Beijing, and remains unknown to most Chinese.

He is one of three people to have received the prize while incarcerated by their own governments, after the Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi in 1991, and the German pacifist Carl von Ossietzky in 1935.

By awarding the prize to Mr. Liu, the Norwegian Nobel Committee has provided an unmistakable rebuke to Beijing’s authoritarian leaders at a time of growing intolerance for domestic dissent and a spreading unease internationally over the muscular diplomacy that has accompanied China’s economic rise.

ECONOMY - Putting Wall Street Risk Where It Belongs

"Make Wall Street Risk It All" by WILLIAM D. COHAN, New York Times 10/7/2010

Excerpts

Two years after the near collapse of capitalism, we certainly have our fill of financial reforms. The 2,200-page Dodd-Frank Act, which President Obama signed this summer, creates an Orwellian alphabet soup of new agencies, oversight boards and offices intended to protect us from ourselves.

The problem is that since the incentives on Wall Street have not been changed one iota by the new laws — nor are they likely to be changed by any of the soon-to-be-written regulations of federal agencies — we’re no better protected from bankers’ potentially reckless behavior than we were before the latest round of reforms.

It’s not that Dodd-Frank ignored Wall Street’s past excesses. The law will ensure that some, but not all, derivatives will have to be traded on exchanges and that some, but not all, of the banks’ proprietary trading will be curbed and that some, but not all, of their private-equity and hedge funds will be shuttered or spun off. Dodd-Frank is also supposed to curtail Wall Street’s penchant for creating conflicts of interest, although how the law is going to do that is far from clear.

“In the end, our financial system only works — our market is only free — when there are clear rules and basic safeguards that prevent abuse, that check excess, that ensure that it is more profitable to play by the rules than to game the system,” President Obama said when he signed the bill into law. That rhetoric is fine, but unfortunately Dodd-Frank will do nothing to change the rules on Wall Street.
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Bankers and traders still have the same irresponsible, accountability-free incentives they have had for the past 40 years to generate as much revenue as they possibly can each year, regardless of the consequences. The change occurred when Wall Street firms stopped being partnerships, in which every partner put his full wealth on the line every day, and became corporations, which put the risks on their shareholders and creditors.

Dodd-Frank and Basel III both missed plum opportunities to change Wall Street’s incentive structure. Which is a shame, since it would not have been difficult. Human behavior is pretty simple actually. We do what we are rewarded to do. On Wall Street, people are hugely overcompensated for generating revenue, which they do by selling products (stocks, bonds, advice on mergers or investing) and by using their vast balance sheets to facilitate trades for clients and to take the risks others don’t want to take.

Over the past generation, this business model has worked well for one group in particular: the bankers, traders and honchos who work on Wall Street. These days on Wall Street, around 50 percent of every dollar of revenue generated is paid out to its employees in the form of compensation. What other business on earth does this? None.

And how would Dodd-Frank change this dynamic? It would give shareholders a nonbinding “say on pay” regarding the compensation of executives of public corporations. And even if a majority of shareholders expressed their displeasure, the companies would be free to ignore them. Yawn.
----
To my mind, its central feature should be that each of the top 100 executives at Wall Street’s remaining “systemically important” firms be personally liable for the risks they take. Not just their unexercised stock options or restricted stock, but every asset they have in their possession: from their cars to their fancy homes to their bulging bank accounts.

The days of privatizing the profits for Wall Street and socializing the risks must end. As radical as this sounds, in truth it would be no different from when — before 1970 — Wall Street was a series of private partnerships.

We can’t turn back the clock: Wall Street’s big firms will never again be private partnerships. Instead, I propose that each large Wall Street firm create a new security that represents — and is secured by — the entire net worth of its 100 top executives. This security would be subordinated to all other creditors as well as to all preferred and common shareholders; in other words, if a firm goes bankrupt, this security is the first to be wiped out.
----
If, however, the firms balk, the S.E.C. should require this sort of accountability from the senior managements as part of its new regulations governing Wall Street compensation. Or Congress should take advantage of the still-brewing outrage against Wall Street to force the creation of such a security.

Pretty harsh, right? Maybe, but Wall Street deserves no sympathy. Had this security, or something like it, been in place at every Wall Street firm five years ago, there would have been no mortgage bubble, no financial crisis, no deep and unsettling economic recession with nearly 10 percent unemployment, no need for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, and no need for Dodd-Frank or Basel III.

Why? Because human beings do what they are rewarded to do — especially on Wall Street — and if they are rewarded for taking prudent and sensible risks, that’s exactly what they will do.

POLITICS - Republican-speak (aka Lies)

"The Chamber, the GOP, the 'Pledge' and outsourcing" by Joan McCarter, Daily Kos 10/7/2010

Let's just take a walk down memory lane. Back in July, the Republicans announced their big "America Speaking Out" effort, with the Web site designed to let America craft the new Republican agenda. Then we found out who they considered America when they promptly convened a meeting with key lobbyists.

Invitees included Dan Danner, head of the National Federation of Independent Business; Bruce Josten, top lobbyist at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce; Jay Timmons of the National Association of Manufacturers; and Joe Stanton of the National Association of Home Builders.

Fast forward a few months, and we actually see the results of that American agenda, in the release of the GOP "Pledge".

Turns out they don't really care what America wants. Here's Think Progress's Lee Fang:

As the Wonk Room’s Pat Garofalo reported last week, the second most popular item on the “job creation” section of America Speaking out was the user-submitted idea to “Stop the outsourcing of jobs from America to other countries that do not pay taxes into the U.S. and stop the tax breaks that are given to these companies that are outsourcing."

Guess what's not in the Pledge? Yep, there's nothing about "Stopping the outsourcing of jobs from America to other countries that do not pay taxes into the U.S. and stop the tax breaks that are given to these companies that are outsourcing."

And on the very morning they released the plan:

This morning, just as Republicans finished their press conference officially releasing the "Pledge to America," the idea to remove tax breaks for corporations shipping jobs overseas was the most popular idea on the GOP's America Speaking Out website.

Stopping outsourcing not only didn't make it into the Republican agenda, Republicans in the Senate repeatedly voted against legislation that would have ended tax breaks for companies outsourcing jobs AND given new tax incentives to businesses bringing jobs home.

And what do we hear from the Chamber, planning on spending millions more between now and November 2 to defeat Dems:

It’s become sort of a mantra in business circles: Democrats’ vast array of new regulations is strangling innovation and job growth.

And the mantra gets a much bigger megaphone on Thursday, when the U.S. Chamber of Commerce launches a national grass-roots and media campaign aimed at driving home the message to voters ahead of the Nov. 2 midterm elections.

No, it's not about regulation. It's about outsourcing, one of the Chamber's favorite business practices. No wonder the second most popular idea from America to Republicans didn't make the cut. The GOP had to keep a more important, to them, pledge to make sure they reap the benefits of the Chamber's election spending. Handy how that all works out.

Bold emphasis mine

POLITICS - "Nutty's" Latest Misstep

"Former GOP lawmakers blast Newt Gingrich" by SEUNG MIN KIM, Politico 10/7/2010

Two former House Republicans who served with ex-Speaker Newt Gingrich scolded their old colleague Thursday for his comments that the Democrats are the “party of food stamps.”

“At some point, people will learn to stop taking Newt Gingrich seriously,” said former Rep. Mickey Edwards (R-Okla.) in POLITICO’s Arena. “Newt is utterly unconcerned with the welfare of the country ... he cares about (a) Newt and (b) power for Newt.”

Gingrich, who is widely considered to be eyeing a potential presidential bid for 2012, unveiled the “food stamps” strategy earlier this week in a memo. He urged Republican candidates nationwide to draw a sharp contrast “between the Democrat Party of food stamps and the Republican Party of paychecks.”

“This year, the House Republicans’ Pledge to America has set the stage for a powerful, symbolic closing argument for candidates seeking to unseat the left-wing, big-spending, job-killing Democrats: paychecks versus food stamps,” Gingrich wrote in the memo.

But Edwards, who served in the House from 1977 to 1993, warned Republicans that those who back Gingrich’s strategy will turn off independent voters and “intelligent conservatives.”

Former Rep. John Hostettler (R-Ind.) blasted Gingrich from the right. Hostettler pointed out in Arena that the 1994 Contract with America — the blueprint drafted by Republicans outlining legislative promises if they won the House — included a provision that transformed federal food stamp entitlements into a state block grant. Once Republicans held a House majority, they failed to make good on that promise despite then-freshman lawmaker Hostettler’s efforts to do so in committee.

“The GOP is the party of food stamps also. The former speaker’s recollection of history may be a bit foggy,” Hostettler said. “My recommendation is that the memo needs revising.”

HEALTHCARE - Healthcare Reform Wins One

"Foes Of Health Care Law Lose Key Court Ruling" WWJ Newsroom 10/7/2010

It’s a setback for those who oppose health care reform. A federal judge in Detroit has rejected an attempt to stop some provisions of the new national health care law.

Judge George Caram Steeh ruled that Congress did not exceed its authority by requiring people to have insurance by 2014. He also turned down a challenge Thursday to the financial penalty that comes with having no insurance.

A Michigan-based Christian legal group and four people filed a lawsuit in March, claiming the law is unconstitutional.

This may be the first federal court decision to address claims that Congress over-stepped its constitutional authority by requiring most individuals to obtain health care insurance coverage or pay a penalty, beginning in 2014.

Similar challenges to the new law are pending in several other courts across the country.

The lawsuit was filed by the Thomas More Law Center, a national public interest law firm based in Ann Arbor. The individual plaintiffs don’t have health insurance and said they object to the federal government demanding that they buy it.

The plaintiffs say if they don’t purchase health insurance and are forced to pay a penalty tax, their tax money could be used to pay for abortions, which they also find objectionable.

The judge says lawmakers intended to lower the overall cost of health insurance by requiring people to participate. Steeh said Congress didn’t exceed powers allowed under the Constitution’s commerce clause, which authorizes Congress to regulate activities which substantially affect interstate commerce.

(snip broken link)

A message seeking comment was left with the Thomas More Law Center in Ann Arbor. The plaintiffs are expected to appeal the court’s decision to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati, Ohio.

HEALTH - Artificial Pancreatic Tissue

"Surgeons Create Functional Artificial Pancreatic Tissue" Medical News Today 10/7/2010

Excerpt

Surgeons from Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, are reporting on a whole new strategy for controlling insulin dependent diabetes without daily injections of insulin. The surgeons have bio-engineered a novel matrix that serves as a scaffold for seeding supportive stem cells as well as pancreatic islets (the cells that produce insulin in the pancreas).

In a proof-of-concept study presented at the 2010 Annual Clinical Congress of the American College of Surgeons, the researchers note that the matrix not only helps to understand the micro-architecture of the pancreas, but also prolongs the survival and preserves the function of the islets. Islets survived longer in the bio-artificial matrix than in conventional transplantation sites, and they produced significantly more insulin when challenged with glucose. "Islet cell transplantation is the only treatment of insulin dependent diabetes that can consistently establish insulin independence. However, islets only feel at home in the pancreatic niche, and therefore their survival and ability to produce insulin declines rapidly if transplanted, for example, in the liver" according to Claudius Conrad, MD, PhD, primary investigator and chief resident in surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital. "The pancreas provides a very special environment for islets," he explained. "By default, the survival and function of the islet cells will always be worse in any organ other than the pancreas. To engineer an endocrine pancreas, islet- and stem cells require an extracellular matrix (ECM) that provides specific architecture, microstructure, and most importantly microvasculature to form the islet cell specific niche," he said.

Bold emphasis mine

One step closer to a cure for diabetes (which I have).

LATIN AMERICA - Spanish Language Nobel Winner

"Vargas Llosa Takes Nobel in Literature" by JULIE BOSMAN and SIMON ROMERO, New York Times 10/7/2010

Excerpt

The Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa, whose deeply political work vividly examines the perils of power and corruption in Latin America, won the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature on Thursday.

Announcing the award in Stockholm, the Swedish Academy praised Mr. Vargas Llosa “for his cartography of the structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual’s resistance, revolt and defeat.”

Mr. Vargas Llosa, 74, is one of the most celebrated writers of the Spanish-speaking world, an anti-totalitarian intellectual whose work covers the range of human experience, whether it is ideology or eros. He is frequently mentioned with his contemporary Gabriel García Márquez, who won the literature Nobel in 1982, the last South American to do so. Mr. Vargas Llosa has written more than 30 works of nonfiction, plays and novels, including “The Feast of the Goat” and “The War of the End of the World.”

The prize is the first for a writer in the Spanish language in two decades, after Octavio Paz of Mexico won in 1990. It renews attention on the Latin American writers who gained renown in the 1960s, like Julio Cortázar of Argentina and Carlos Fuentes of Mexico, who formed the region’s “boom generation.”

During a news conference at the Instituto Cervantes in Manhattan on Thursday, Mr. Vargas Llosa, an elegant, dashing figure with silvery hair, appeared in front of a crowd of giddy journalists, mostly Spanish-speaking, and Alejandro Toledo, the former president of Peru, who sat in the front row. Mr. Vargas Llosa is currently spending the semester in the United States, teaching Latin American studies at Princeton.

AFGHANISTAN - Foxes Guarding Our Bases

"Afghans Linked to the Taliban Guard U.S. Bases" by JAMES RISEN, New York Times 10/7/2010

Excerpt

Afghan private security forces with ties to the Taliban, criminal networks and Iranian intelligence have been hired to guard American military bases in Afghanistan, exposing United States soldiers to surprise attack and confounding the fight against insurgents, according to a Senate investigation.

The Pentagon’s oversight of the Afghan guards is virtually nonexistent, allowing local security deals among American military commanders, Western contracting companies and Afghan warlords who are closely connected to the violent insurgency, according to the report by investigators on the staff of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

The United States military has almost no independent information on the Afghans guarding the bases, who are employees of Afghan groups hired as subcontractors by Western firms awarded security contracts by the Pentagon. At one large American airbase in western Afghanistan, military personnel did not even know the names of the leaders of the Afghan groups providing base security, the investigators found. So they used the nicknames that the contractor was using — Mr. White and Mr. Pink from “Reservoir Dogs,” the 1992 gangster movie by Quentin Tarantino. Mr. Pink was later determined to be a “known Taliban” figure, they reported.

UNBELIEVABLE!

SUPREME COURT - Insider View, Justice Breyer

"Justice Breyer: 'Now, I'm Probably More in Dissent'"
PBS Newshour 10/7/2010


ALSO

"Making Congress All It Can Be" by LINDA GREENHOUSE, New York Times 10/7/2010

Excerpts

The attraction of reading what a sitting Supreme Court justice has to say about interpreting the Constitution is undoubtedly what has turned Justice Stephen G. Breyer’s new book, “Making Our Democracy Work,” into a surprise best seller. Commentators and reviewers have also emphasized the Constitution-related passages in the book, particularly Justice Breyer’s cogent analysis of why “originalism” falls short and why the interpretive goal should be to engage with the framers’ deepest values rather replicate their 18th-century frame of reference. His point, as the book’s title suggests, is for judges to make their way through the mists of history to a Constitution that works today.
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My attention was riveted by another chapter that actually may be the book’s most important contribution to public understanding of the court’s work. This is Justice Breyer’s chapter on statutory interpretation, or to put it more broadly, on what the court’s stance should be toward Congress. The court’s diet of statutory cases may make up the less glamorous half (and it is roughly half) of its docket, but these cases are no less revealing of the soul of the court than the constitutional ones. They are also likely to have a greater impact on people’s daily lives than many of the most highly visible constitutional cases. Chances are that more of us will encounter problems in workplaces governed by anti-discrimination laws and pension regulations than will ever have to deal with the police breaking down the door to conduct a warrantless search.

In Justice Breyer’s view, democracy is best served when the court maintains “a strong workable relationship with Congress,” a partnership in which the court interprets statutes so as to help Congress achieve its legislative goals, unarticulated or even as coyly concealed as those goals may be. Why should that be? Here is Justice Breyer’s explanation:

“The more the court seeks realistically to ascertain the purposes of a statute and interprets its provisions in ways that further those purposes, the harder it will be for the legislator to escape responsibility for the statute’s objectives, and the easier it will be for voters to hold their legislators responsible for their legislative decisions.” By contrast, when the court, deliberately oblivious to context and purpose, simply goes by the statute’s text, however inartful, “the easier it will be for legislators to avoid responsibility for a badly written statute simply by saying that the court reached results they did not favor.”

This is a prescription for tough love from a Supreme Court justice who really does love Congress.

ENVIRONMENT - Another Industry Caused Disaster

"How toxic is Hungary's red sludge?" by Olivia Lang, BBC News 10/7/2010

A toxic spill of red sludge has cascaded through dozens of villages in Hungary, killing four and injuring dozens.

The sludge, which contains a mix of metal oxides, is now making its way towards the Danube, Europe's second-longest river.

But what exactly is the sludge, and how hazardous is it to humans?

The sludge is a by-product from the early stage of aluminum production, which leaked from storage reservoirs.

As part of the process to produce pure alumina from bauxite, the raw material is taken out of the ground and washed with sodium hydroxide.

This produces alumina, which is processed further, and waste, which is composed of solid impurities, heavy metals, and the chemicals used as processing agents.

'Burns and irritation'

About 40%-45% of the waste is iron-oxide, which gives it the red color.

Another 10%-15% is aluminum oxide, a further 10%-15% silicon oxide and there are smaller quantities of calcium oxide, titanium dioxide and sodium oxide, according to MAL Hungarian Aluminum, the company that owns the Ajkai plant.

Professor Paul Younger from the Newcastle Institute for Research on Sustainability at Newcastle University says the "fundamental problem is that it has a tendency to be strongly alkaline".

In the most concentrated areas, he says, it could be compared to products you would clean your kitchen with, causing dry or cracked skin, or - in cases of prolonged contact - it can "lift off the top layer of your skin".

Scores of people have already suffered burns in affected areas, with at least 120 receiving treatment.

"If you get it in your eyes it is also not good news," he adds.

Experts say the effects are only more serious if the substance is ingested, when it can cause damage to lungs and the digestive system, and could prove fatal in some cases.

Cancer link?

But what about the presence of heavy metals: are they dangerous?

Some studies have linked the inhalation of titanium dioxide and silicon dioxide dust to cancer in animals, but it has not been proven in humans.

But Prof Younger says the quantity of these substances is far too small to cause any harm.

"Typically the concentrations are small in red mud and what is present is tightly bound to the particles of iron oxide," he says.

"It's not a 'we're all going to die' scenario. It's not like a big cyanide spill," he says.

Dr John Hoskins, a consultant toxicologist, says that while the initial spill was quite dangerous, there should not be any long-term impact on human health as long as the waste is cleaned up.

"It will be neutralized by nature, because of rain which will dilute it and because of the chances that it will come into contact with slightly acidic substances in soil... but that will take a little time," he says.

For humans, he says, "the danger would essentially be in ingestion, which is unlikely".

"You are not going to pick it up and eat it."

Fishing ban

The problem at the moment is the "heavy metal residue", as it is a danger for plantlife and can get into rivers, he says.

He says that while it is unlikely that residents will be using the river directly for drinking water, it may pose a problem for water companies.

There are "real concerns" about the impact on the Danube, he says, as "it will increase the heavy metal content of the water and it might have adverse effects on fish".

Timea Petroczi, a spokesperson from disaster relief services in Hungary, told AFP that people had been told not to use the wells, as a "precautionary measure".

Those in affected areas have also been banned from eating home-grown foods and from hunting or fishing.

Countries bordering the Danube have reinforced water quality controls and monitoring the concentration of heavy metals.

Meanwhile, officials are treating affected areas with chemicals - such as calcium and magnesium nitrates - to try to counter the alkaline effects, amid hopes that what is being described as Hungary's worst chemical accident will soon come to an end.

"Accident" like hell! This is what happens when you use dirt-filled damns. Especially such a large one. This would likely NOT have happened if the containment had been broken up into smaller sections to lessen the pressure on the walls.

SCIENCE - Overheated Universe Discovery

"Hubble astronomers discover early universe was overheated" Physorg 10/7/2010

If you think global warming is bad, 11 billion years ago the entire universe underwent, well, universal warming.

The consequence was that fierce blasts of radiation from voracious black holes stunted the growth of some small galaxies for a stretch of 500 million years.

This is the conclusion of a team of astronomers who used the new capabilities of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope to probe the invisible, remote universe.

Using the newly installed Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS) they have identified an era, from 11.7 to 11.3 billion years ago, when the universe stripped electrons off from primeval helium atoms — a process called ionization. This process heated intergalactic gas and inhibited it from gravitationally collapsing to form new generations of stars in some small galaxies. The lowest-mass galaxies were not even able to hold onto their gas, and it escaped back into intergalactic space.

Michael Shull of the University of Colorado and his team were able to find the telltale helium spectral absorption lines in the ultraviolet light from a quasar — the brilliant core of an active galaxy. The quasar beacon shines light through intervening clouds of otherwise invisible gas, like a headlight shining through a fog. The beam allows for a core-sample probe of the clouds of gas interspersed between galaxies in the early universe.

The universe went through an initial heat wave over 13 billion years ago when energy from early massive stars ionized cold interstellar hydrogen from the big bang. This epoch is actually called reionization because the hydrogen nuclei were originally in an ionized state shortly after the big bang.

But Hubble found that it would take another 2 billion years before the universe produced sources of ultraviolet radiation with enough energy to do the heavy lifting and reionize the primordial helium that was also cooked up in the big bang.

This radiation didn't come from stars, but rather from quasars. In fact the epoch when the helium was being reionized corresponds to a transitory time in the universe's history when quasars were most abundant.

The universe was a rambunctious place back then. Galaxies frequently collided, and this engorged supermassive black holes in the cores of galaxies with infalling gas. The black holes furiously converted some of the gravitational energy of this mass to powerful far-ultraviolet radiation that would blaze out of galaxies. This heated the intergalactic helium from 18,000 degrees Fahrenheit to nearly 40,000 degrees. After the helium was reionized in the universe, intergalactic gas again cooled down and dwarf galaxies could resume normal assembly. "I imagine quite a few more dwarf galaxies may have formed if helium reionization had not taken place," said Shull.

So far Shull and his team only have one sightline to measure the helium transition, but the COS science team plans to use Hubble to look in other directions to see if the helium reionization uniformly took place across the universe.

More information: The science team's results will be published in the October 20 issue of The Astrophysical Journal.

ENVIRONMENT - Montana's Glacier National Park

"Montana's melting glaciers: The poster-child for climate change" by Jessica Ellis, CNN 10/7/2010

Excerpt

As recently as 100 years ago, Montana's Glacier National Park had more than 150 glaciers throughout its more than one million acres.

In 2005 only 27 remained. Today the total is down to a just 25 and those that are left are mere remnants of their former frozen selves.

With warmer temperatures and changes to the water cycle, scientists predict Glacier National Park will be glacier-free by 2030.

Daniel Fagre, a U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) ecologist who works at the national park believes that even those estimates are too conservative and says the park's namesakes will be gone about ten years ahead of their predicted demise.

"The glaciers have been around for the last seven thousand years," he told CNN, "and if we are going to lose them in the next 10 or 20 years that is a pretty radical shift."

The rapid melting of glaciers has led scientists to believe that mountains are more susceptible to global warming than the lowlands beneath them.

"Mountain ecosystems have been changing about twice as fast as the rest of the globe. We have had temperature increases that are two times greater than the average," said Fagre.

Many scientists are now concerned about the cascading effects on the landscape and the consequences for all species -- including humans.

"Many people are directly dependent on the water coming out of mountains and in the arid western United States that figure is much larger, it is about 85 percent," said Fagre.

"So even if you live a long ways a way you are tied to the water in mountains and so we have a lot of concerns of future climate change scenarios."

Fagre says mountains are the "water towers of the world" with 70 percent of the world's fresh water frozen in glaciers.

ECONOMY - Lending Sleaze, Foreclosures

"'Robo-Signing' Paperwork Breakdown Leaves Many Houses in Foreclosure Limbo"
PBS Newshour 10/6/2010


SLEAZEBAGS! As if Americans don't already have enough trouble.

Excerpts from transcript

MICHAEL CALHOUN, president, Center for Responsible Lending: Well, this is a critical breakdown in one of the most important safeguards in the foreclosure process.

Before a bank or lender goes to court to take somebody's home, they're required by law to have someone individually review the paperwork and the payment history to make sure that the person is, in fact, behind on the mortgage, has not been charged improper fees.

And then they certify, under oath, under personality of perjury, that they have done this individual review. We have now found that, on an industry-wide basis, that was totally ignored.

And that means there are a lot of people out there who had foreclosure proceedings brought against them when they shouldn't have. And we're talking a lot of people. There are about 2.5 million households in foreclosure right now. Another 2.5 million people are at risk of foreclosure because they're behind on their mortgages.
----
JEFFREY BROWN (Newshour): So, it's just that we don't know?

MICHAEL CALHOUN: It's sort of throwing darts against the wall determining who has got a foreclosure and who has a defense and shouldn't be foreclosed.

And Professor Mayer makes a real important point. It used to be that you would get a home loan from your local bank. They would keep the loan, and you would deal with them throughout the process. Now the model has been, you take out a home loan, and then that loan is sold off to investors and to other institutions.

And another company, who doesn't own the loan, is the one collecting, processing your payments, and also bringing these foreclosure proceedings. So, there's a real disconnect there. These companies are not the ones typically that own the loan. They're just foreclosing for someone else.

And so they don't have the same incentives, the same need and incentive for care if -- they would have if they actually held the loan and had a lifetime relationship with you.
----
JEFFREY BROWN: What kind of impact do you see on these people in their homes and on the larger housing market, of course?

MICHAEL CALHOUN: You make an important point about the modifications, because the people who were supposed to fill out these foreclosure papers correctly are also the same companies that are supposed to determine if homeowners are eligible for modifications of their loan to keep them in their house.

JEFFREY BROWN: Which has been a big issue over the last few years, of course, right.

MICHAEL CALHOUN: And it's been a big issue.

And it's just further evidence. These stories echo the ones that have been aired, that people trying to get loan modifications, would send their paperwork in over and over again. It would get lost, and then they would end up being foreclosed on, without ever getting an answer to their modification.

Make special note of the last paragraph above. This MAY mean that many foreclosures ARE improper.

Also note the paragraph highlighted blue. Could this be a breakdown in regulation of institutions that collect and process loans that do NOT own the loan?

Should we allow "selling off" of loans, especially home loans?

LATEST

"Largest U.S. Bank Halts Foreclosures in All States" by DAVID STREITFELD and NELSON D. SCHWARTZ, New York Times 10/8/2010

Excerpt

Bank of America, the nation’s largest bank, said Friday that it was extending its suspension of foreclosures to all 50 states.

The plan swept states with some of the highest foreclosure levels, including California, Nevada and Arizona, into a swelling crisis over lenders’ flawed paperwork that had been mostly confined to 23 other states that require judicial review of foreclosures.

POLITICS - Election 2010 From Minnesota

Local Minnesota news, opinion on 2010 election (200 comments and counting)

"Biden mocks GOP over federal debt" by Bob von Sternberg, Star Tribune 10/5/2010

Vice President Joe Biden mocked Republican calls for fiscal restraint and criticism of the current level of federal debt, pointing out the last federal surplus occurred during the Clinton administration.

"Mark [Dayton] knows how to balance a budget, the way he did as [state] auditor. Mark's opponents are drinking the same KoolAid as the Republican national leadership ... This election is a choice. The choice is very stark, between telling the truth or continuing with a Ponzi scheme."

He repeated his broadest critique of the GOP: "Give me a break -- I've had it up to here."

"Look folks, we' ve seen this movie before and we know how it ends. Minnesota can't afford it. America can't afford it....If we lose, we'll see a rerun of that movie."

Wrapping up, he quietly implored them, "do for us what you did two years ago."

After leaving the rally, Biden was heading to a Minneapolis hotel to lead a fundraising luncheon for Dayton, with the price of admission ranging from $150 to $2,000.

Bold emphasis mine

POLITICS - More Money to Buy an Election

"Health insurers pour money into GOP campaigns, hoping to limit new regulations" by Noam N. Levey, Los Angeles Times 10/5/2010

Excerpt

The insurance industry is pouring money into Republican campaign coffers in hopes of scaling back wide-ranging regulations in the new healthcare law but preserving the mandate that Americans buy coverage.

Since January, the nation's five largest insurers and the industry's Washington-based lobbying arm have given three times more money to Republican lawmakers and political action committees than to Democratic politicians and organizations.

That is a marked change from 2009, when the industry largely split its political donations between the parties, according to federal election filings.

Get breaking news alerts delivered to your mobile phone. Text BREAKING to 52669.

The largest insurers are also paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to lobbyists with close ties to Republican lawmakers who could shape health policy in January, records show.

"The industry would love to have a Republican Congress," said Wendell Potter, a former executive at Cigna Corp., one of the country's biggest insurers. "They were very, very successful during the years of Republican domination in Washington."

Many Republican leaders have enthusiastically embraced the call to revise the healthcare legislation, vowing to "repeal and replace" the law in the next congressional session. But that call to repeal poses a delicate issue for the budding GOP/insurance industry partnership. The Republican Party thinks it has a winning position in denouncing the unpopular mandate that will require Americans to get health insurance starting in 2014, while insurers and independent healthcare experts see the requirement as crucial to controlling costs for everyone by spreading the risk.

The healthcare law will penalize Americans $95 in 2014 if they fail to get insurance. The penalty rises to $695 in 2016.

"The one thing that insurance companies would love to see are penalties that are actually stronger," said Jeff Fusile, a partner at consulting giant PricewaterhouseCoopers.

The insurance industry, attracted by the prospect of millions of new customers as a result of the coverage mandate, initially backed President Obama's campaign to overhaul the healthcare system. And insurers scored a key victory when Democrats abandoned plans to create a government insurance plan, or "public option."

Bold emphasis mine

Aha YES! Health Insurers see the BIG, blinding $$$ in the future. GOP only sees regulation and a program that does not fit their dogma.

AMERICA - A Sad Comment on Our Society and Governance

"New York Missed or Ignored Signs on Girl Who Died" by RAY RIVERA, New York Times 10/5/2010

Excerpt

A 4-year-old Brooklyn girl who weighed 18 pounds when she died in September appears to have gone months without a visit from child welfare workers assigned to monitor her well-being, despite indications that she could be at risk, New York’s child welfare agency revealed on Tuesday.

The agency offered a wrenching glimpse into the final months of the girl, Marchella Pierce, whose home care, it said, was “grossly inadequate.” It also found that her mother beat her with a videocassette case for punishment and tied her to a bed “for substantial periods of time.”

In a preliminary report released at a City Council hearing, the agency, the Administration for Children’s Services, provided its most detailed look yet at the events that preceded the death of Marchella, whose bruised and emaciated body was found in her family’s Bedford-Stuyvesant apartment on Sept. 2.

The report outlines a series of failures by the agency and a private provider that missed or ignored signals that the girl’s mother — who had a known history of substance abuse and who continued to fail drug tests even after the agency became involved with the family — seemed incapable of tending to her daughter’s serious medical needs.

SCIENCE - The Mighty Graphene

"Graphene: Nobel Winners' Thin, Mighty Material Holds Much Promise"
PBS Newshour 10/5/2010

EDUCATION - Emphasis on Community Colleges

"Melinda Gates Urges Better Job Training as Community Colleges Innovate, Adapt"
PBS Newshour 10/5/2010

ECONOMY - R.I.P. Mr. TARP, (a Rotten Ghoul)

"Hegel on Wall Street" By J.M. BERNSTEIN, New York Times 10/3/2010

Excerpt

As of today, the Troubled Asset Relief Program, known as TARP, the emergency bailouts born in the financial panic of 2008, is no more. Done. Finished. Kaput.

Last month the Congressional Oversight Panel issued a report assessing the program. It makes for grim reading. Once it is conceded that government intervention was necessary and generally successful in heading off an economic disaster, the narrative heads downhill quickly: TARP was badly mismanaged, the report says, it created significant moral hazard and failed miserably in providing mortgage foreclosure relief.

That may not seem like a shocking revelation. Everyone left, right, center, red state, blue state, even Martians — hated the bailout of Wall Street, apart of course from the bankers and dealers themselves, who could not even manage a grace moment of red-faced shame before they eagerly restocked their far from empty vaults. A perhaps bare majority, or more likely just a significant minority, nonetheless thought the bailouts were necessary. But even those who thought them necessary were grieved and repulsed. There was, I am suggesting, no moral disagreement about TARP and the bailouts — they stank. The only significant disagreement was practical and causal: would the impact of not bailing out the banks be catastrophic for the economy as a whole or not? No one truly knew the answer to this question, but that being so the government decided that it could not and should not play roulette with the future of the nation and did the dirty deed.

Bold emphasis mine

Reminder; TARP came FROM G.W. BUSH.

ECONOMY - Corporation Hording

"Cheap Debt for Corporations Fails to Spur Economy" by GRAHAM BOWLEY, New York Times 10/3/2010

Excerpt

As many households and small businesses are being turned away by bank loan officers, large corporations are borrowing vast sums of money for next to nothing — simply because they can.

Companies like Microsoft are raising billions of dollars by issuing bonds at ultra-low interest rates, but few of them are actually spending the money on new factories, equipment or jobs. Instead, they are stockpiling the cash until the economy improves.

The development presents something of a chicken-and-egg situation: Corporations keep saving, waiting for the economy to perk up — but the economy is unlikely to perk up if corporations keep saving.

This situation underscores the limits of Washington policy makers’ power to stimulate the economy. The Federal Reserve has held official interest rates near zero for almost two years, which allows corporations to sell bonds with only slightly higher returns — even below 1 percent. But most companies are not doing what the easy monetary policy was intended to get them to do: invest and create jobs.

The Fed’s low rates have in fact hurt many Americans, especially retirees whose incomes from savings have fallen substantially. Big companies like Johnson & Johnson, PepsiCo and I.B.M. seem to have been among the major beneficiaries.

ANOTHER reminder that Wall-Street Big Business does NOT care about America. They are interested ONLY in THEIR short-term (myopic) profits and executive bonuses.

ECONOMY - AIG, Bailed Out for the Sins of Wall Street?

"AIG Looks to Repay Government, But Will Taxpayers Break Even?" PBS Newshour Transcript (includes video) 9/30/2010

Excerpts

RAY SUAREZ (Newshour): The federal government and the bailed-out insurance giant AIG announced a deal today for the company to pay back the bulk of its massive debt to the Treasury.

At the height of the financial crisis, the Treasury and the Federal Reserve agreed to spend more than $180 billion if needed to rescue the company. AIG ultimately received more than $130 billion. It still owes over $100 billion. Under the plan, the U.S. Treasury will gradually sell off its majority stake of the company. AIG will also sell more of its insurance units to repay the Treasury.

In an audio recoding on AIG's Web site, the company's chief executive, Robert Benmosche, predicted, taxpayers would ultimately come out ahead.
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ROBEN FARZAD, senior writer, "Bloomberg BusinessWeek": The idea is not for the government to sit out there and be a mutual-fund-like holder of these common shares. I mean, they're not portfolio managers out there.

They did this holding their nose and dragging their feet. They're looking to sell the shares in an orderly manner, but then in an expeditious manner. I mean, look, they want to off-load this stuff and get hard cash back. It's a huge black eye, I mean, the September 2008 kind of gun-to-the-head negotiations, with the entire economy at the brink.

And I think it's critical for Treasury to have this type of a symbolic victory, but I disagree with what Robert Benmosche said in the recording there. I think it's incredibly deceptive to think that the taxpayer and the system is going to be made whole with even $100 billion or $150 billion paid back.

Truth be told, I mean, this exposed the entire systemic rot that was happening. And the government, and the Federal Reserve, and the Treasury, and the New York Fed have stepped in and taken unprecedented measures at multiples the $180 billion bailout sticker price.

You still have the Federal Reserve pursuing quantitative easing, which is going out there and actually conjuring money out of thin air to buy toxic assets, the very likes of these assets that were backed and insured by AIG.

So, while it might make sense from a headline perspective -- yes, the taxpayer is going to make potentially a profit on the $130 billion or $140 billion going out three or four years -- it's certainly cold comfort for an economy that's lost trillions.
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RAY SUAREZ: Well, Louise, let's reel back a little bit and remind people how the federal government ended up owning those 92 homes in the first place. What happened?

LOUISE STORY, The New York Times: Well, if you remember, back in September 2008, it was right after Lehman Brothers failed. The economy was on the brink. There was major panic.

And AIG, one of the things they did that really, really is the reason they failed is, they wrote all these insurance contracts to banks. So banks like Goldman Sachs, and Deutsche Bank, and Merrill Lynch, they had gotten AIG to insure them against losses on their mortgage bonds.

And, sure enough, when the mortgage market went south, AIG was paying out all these insurance claims to the banks. They couldn't afford it. And so the government stepped in and bailed out AIG. This was very controversial, because a lot of the money the government put into AIG went right out the back door to the banks who had contracts with AIG. And that's part of the reason this has been one of the most controversial bailouts.

RAY SUAREZ: So, Roben, an indirect bank bailout to even more institutions than we were aware of when it was happening?

ROBEN FARZAD: Yes. They got -- they got bailed out for the sins of Wall Street. I mean, you talk to old-school AIG executives, and they say that they were a patsy, or that they were crucified for everybody else's sins, that it was a transitive backdoor bailout. And, in reality, that's what it was.

And the thing that held the entire system hostage wasn't just that AIG being allowed to fail would subsume the entire system, but AIG was managing pensioner funds, 401(k)s, insurance plans. Municipalities were backing bonds with AIG. I mean, it was just unthinkable, in the haze of those terrifying days of September 2008 and October, to let this thing just fall and see how the dust cleared afterwards.

SECURITY - World Industrial Security Threat?

"Hunting an 'Industrial-Strength' Computer Virus Around the Globe"
PBS Newshour 10/1/2010