Criminal Enterprise

Yes, the conservative movement and their leader Bush. From the most esteemed Juan Cole.

The Bush administration consistently gives us Attorneys General who lie about what the law is. Ironically, the defense Mukasey suggests for telecom companies that illegally turned over consumer records to government officials who had no warrant to request them, is that they were "following orders." I think there were some trials where that excuse was disallowed.

Also McCain as Nixon.

Stimulus

The republicans do not like the American people to be well off. Here is Krugman.

Meanwhile, Congress and the Bush administration have reached agreement on a much-hyped stimulus package. But the package, while probably better than nothing, is unlikely to make a noticeable dent in the problem — in part because the insistence of the administration and Senate Republicans on blocking precisely the measures, such as expanded unemployment insurance and food stamps, that are most likely to be effective.

Still, by January the White House will have a new occupant. If the slump is still going on, which is likely, this will offer a chance to consider other, more effective measures.

In particular, now would be a good time to think about the possibility of going beyond tax cuts and rebate checks, and stimulating the economy with some much-needed public investment — say, in repairing the country’s crumbling infrastructure.[...]

But we won’t get any innovative action to help the economy unless the next president has a couple of key attributes.

First, he or she has to be free of the ideological blinders that make the current administration and its allies fiercely oppose the idea that the government can do anything positive aside from cutting taxes.

Second, he or she has to be knowledgeable about and interested in economic policy. Presidents don’t have to be their own chief economists, but they do need to know enough to take the right advice.

I guess that leaves McCain out as he has stated he does not know much about the economy.

Update: Susie's take on the stimulus.

IDK

Mukasey: No, I Will Not Enforce Citations for Contempt of Congress

Mukasey: The Law Is What The Justice Department Says It Is

Osama Been Forgotten
or has he

Morgan Spurlock the maker of Supersize Me is on his trail. Also, If Osama is only six degrees away, why can't we find him?

Poetic Justice

Warren Buffet describe the banking meltdown as "Poetic Justice."

"It's sort of a little poetic justice, in that the people that brewed this toxic Kool-Aid found themselves drinking a lot of it in the end," he said.

Conservatives like Alan Greenspan always talk about how the markets are self correcting. I say let them sink or swim. No Bailouts for the banks.

Illinois

Mike "Lion King" Daniel makes it to Illinois. On his American Discovery Trail adventure. You tube link here. Journal. Website.

The Cheeseburger In A Can

Ewww, Cheeseburger In A Can, originally uploaded by SA_Steve.

I would love to try one. No really, I do not imagine it would be good. Katadyn, The water filter company came up this great idea. Boil for ten minutes and open no can opener needed.

Here are some great pictures. Close ups. If you want to buy one it is only 3.95 euros.

Sad

I can not imagine what it would be like to be on a hiking trip and loose one of its members. But that is what happened to a group in the San Gabrial mountains in Southern California.

Nicole Flaten of Los Angeles was with members of her hiking club near Chantry Flat on Saturday when she apparently lost her footing. She fell into an ice chute at about 11:45 a.m., according to a statement from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, which investigated her death.

"Because she was in an ice chute, there was no way for her to stop the fall," said sheriff's Sgt. Bill Marsh.

Flaten fell about 1,000 feet from where her group had been hiking, "hitting trees and rocks" as she fell, Marsh said.

A member of her hiking club, risking great personal injury to himself, hiked down to Flaten to check on her condition, he said.

"He came back up and reported that she appeared to be dead," Marsh said.

My condolences to the family.

Bush League Justice

The question is how many more Sue Schmitz are there. This is what the US Attorney's are doing to keep their jobs. Scott Horton keeps up with her story.

I am still looking at the charges and the evidence relating to them. At this point I’ll just say I’m terrifically unimpressed. The charges are at a minimum filled with hyperventilation and distortion, and it may be much worse than that. But even if they were true, what would the solution be? Is it normal to bring a federal prosecution against a school teacher who fails to perform all of her teaching plan? Has anyone ever heard of such a thing? The normal course would be for her contractor (which is not the state of Alabama) to fire her. And in fact they did. That firing was contested, and the court ruled that her firing was wrongful. It’s on appeal now. Of course, these are “inconvenient facts,” so the Birmingham News doesn’t share any of them with you. The Birmingham News is not interested in fairly presenting the facts, it’s engaging in character assassination. . . of a 63-year-old retired social studies teacher. It’s mind-boggling.

Ben and Gerry's

Ben and Gerry's is going to fight Monsanto's new labeling battle. Monsanto wants to restrict Ben and Gerry's from saying there ice cream is made from hormone free milk. I think Avedon said it best.

Why? Because advertising that your product comes from hormone-free cows implies that Monsanto milk might not be the best possible kind of milk, and therefore is bad advertising for Monsanto. And you're not allowed to advertise that your product might be better than Monsanto's. Isn't capitalism wonderful?

Digital Pamphleteer

A short video of The Carpet Bagger Report's Steve Benen. The hardest working man in the blogoshere. If you read only one blog a day, this is the one. He is by far the most informative blogger out there.

2,182 or 3511

Number of miles or kilometers on the Appalachian Trail. Voice of America has a piece on the trail and all distances are in Kilometers.

One of the most popular activities enjoyed by Americans is spending time in forests and walking along paths through the country. This activity, called hiking, has led to the creation of paths throughout the United States. Some of these paths, or trails, are short. Some are only a few kilometers. Others are many hundreds of kilometers.

One of the longest is the Appalachian National Scenic Trail. The trail is the first

The Appalachian Trail

completed part of the National Trails System. The trails system was established by Congress and the President in nineteen sixty-eight.

VOICE TWO:

The Appalachian Trail is more than three thousand four hundred kilometers long. It starts in the northeastern state of Maine and ends in the southeastern state of Georgia. The trail goes through fourteen states.

They are Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia, Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Georgia.

It Is Scary Out There

Scientific American did a study on Americans and the outdoors. We just do not get out as much. I think part of the problem is the media portraying everything as scary. Although, backpacking is up.

Americans have been visiting national parks and other natural reserves less and less since 1987, new research confirms. Outdoor pursuits, ranging from camping to hunting, have entered a persistent and growing decline.

"Folks are going out into nature much less and decreasingly every year," says conservation ecologist Patricia Zaradic of the Environmental Leadership Program and co-author of the report published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA. "It would take 80 million more visits this year to get the per capita number back up to the level it was in 1987."

Zaradic and her colleague conservation biologist Oliver Pergams of the University of Illinois at Chicago analyzed trends in visits to national parks and forests, state parks, surveys on camping and the number of licenses for activities such as hunting or fishing. All peaked between 1981 and 1991 after 50 years of steady increase and have been declining at roughly 1 percent per year since for an overall drop of as much as 25 percent.

Tipping Point

Scientists are warning we may reach a tipping point for Greenland' ice sheet melting.

They urged governments to be more aware of "tipping points" in nature, tiny shifts that can bring big and almost always damaging changes such as a melt of Arctic summer sea ice or a collapse of the Indian monsoon.

"Society may be lulled into a false sense of security by smooth projections of global change," the scientists at British, German and U.S. institutes wrote in a report saying there were many little-understood thresholds in nature.

Personly I think we passed the tipping point and should be moving to high ground. But, what do I know?

Who Owns the Media?

Who owns the roads? It could be an Australian media conglomerate.

If you happen to live in Alice, TX, your news is now brought to you by an Australian firm, Macquarie, that builds toll-roads. The big story is about the mayor's dognapping, but tomorrow it may be why you want a toll road.

The same is true of several other small towns whose independent newspapers have been bought up by that firm, which is now vying for the growing toll-road building industry in the Trans Texas Corridor that the legislature in Austin is considering.

Hat tip Avedon

Uniter

Not a divider. Obama gets the Grateful Dead back together.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Saying Barack Obama embodies political hope absent since Robert Kennedy was killed 40 years ago, three surviving members of the Grateful Dead reunited on Monday to back the presidential candidate.

David Wilcox

Was looking for something else. But dig this.

Good Day

The skiers lost in the Sierras have been found alive and well.

Christopher Gerwig, 32, and Patrick Frost, 35, both of San Francisco were located around 11:30 by the Placer County Sheriff's Helicopter, Falcon 30, alive and well, officials said.

Update: Here is a good article about how these guys survived.

"We really couldn't see more than 10, 15 feet in front of us," Frost said of the blizzard as the two left the hospital Monday afternoon. "We never ever considered giving up. We were going to make it."

I think the positive attitude was very important.

Green Beer

Portland Oregon's Lucky Labrador Brewing is going green. They have installed a 70,000 dollar solar heating system to brew their beer. Of course they now have a few new beers to brew like "Sun Beer" and I am sure there will be others.

RA Energy did the installation. Pictures here. This will be the first green beer I drink willingly.

Alright!

The Desert Sun is reporting that Ellen Coleman has been found.