Release date: 12/07/2009
Contact Information: Cathy Milbourn, Milbourn.cathy@epa.gov, 202-564-7849, 202-564-4355; En español: Lina Younes, younes.lina@epa.gov, 202-564-9924, 202-564-4355
#317 Dec. 7, 2009 - 10:44 PM EST When Penn State University gets done investigating Michael Mann, he won't be able to get a job as an elementary science teacher! It could not have happened to a more arrogant arse!! ;) We have just as much unemployment as when we started and an enormous debt to boot.— FDR Treasury Secretary Morgenthau | |
Bankers had cashed in before the music stopped
By Lucian Bebchuk, Alma Cohen and Holger Spamann
Published: December 6 2009 19:45 | Last updated: December 6 2009 19:45
FINANCIAL TIMES
In 2000-07, the top five executives at Bear and Lehman pocketed cash bonuses exceeding $300m and $150m respectively (adjusted to 2009 dollars). Although the financial results on which bonus payments were based were sharply reversed in 2008, pay arrangements allowed executives to keep past bonuses.
Furthermore, executives regularly took large amounts of money off the table by unloading shares and options. Overall, in 2000-08 the top-five teams at Bear and Lehman cashed out close to $2bn in this way: about $1.1bn at Bear and $850m at Lehman. Indeed, the teams sold more shares during the years preceding the firms’ collapse than they held when the music stopped in 2008.
Altogether, equity sales and bonuses over that period provided the top five at the two banks with cash of about $1.4bn and $1bn respectively (an average of almost $250m each). These cash proceeds considerably exceed the value of the executives’ holdings at the beginning of 2000 (which we estimate to be in the order of a respective $800m and $600m).
She noted, for example, that White House officials "try to claim that the stimulus bill worked and I just look at all the polling data and no one believes it." In other words, it doesn't matter what's true -- it matters whether people can be misled into believing things that aren't true. (That is, of course, why Fox News exists.)
- We've been there for 8 years and there's still no sign that their will is about to break
- Between the fall of the Moscow-backed regime and the the rise of the Taliban, there was no indication that the Afghanis were beginning to get tired of fighting.
- For ten years, the Soviets tried to subdue the Afghan insurgency and failed.
The C.R.U. is only one of several groups who are analyzing the long term global average surface temperature trends drawing from mostly the same raw observed data. Even if their data analysis is excluded, it does not alter the findings that were reported in the 2007 I.P.C.C. report with respect to the surface temperature trends, since these other analyses provide a redundant check of their analyses over the last century. Over the last 100 years or so this surface data clearly documents a long-term warming.
There is no question, for course, that the human addition of carbon dioxide is a major climate forcing, both with respect to its warming influence but also its biogeochemical effect.
Since the stolen e-mails were published, the chief executive of the Met Office has written to national meteorological offices in 188 countries asking their permission to release the raw data that they collected from their weather stations.
Tiger's troubles widen his distance from blacks
Dec 5 11:05 PM US/Eastern
By JESSE WASHINGTON
AP National Writer
On the nationally syndicated Tom Joyner radio show, Woods was the butt of jokes all week.
"Thankfully, Tiger, you didn't marry a black woman. Because if a sister caught you running around with a bunch of white hoochie-mamas," one parody suggests in song, she would have castrated him.
The darts reflect blacks' resistance to interracial romance.
On the one hand, Ebonie Johnson Cooper doesn't care that Tiger Woods' wife and alleged mistresses are white because Woods is "quote-unquote not really black."
"But at the same time we still see him as a black man with a white woman, and it makes a difference," said Johnson Cooper, a 26-year-old African-American from New York City. "There's just this preservation thing we have among one another. We like to see each other with each other."
Black women have long felt slighted by the tendency of famous black men to pair with white women, and many have a list of current transgressors at the ready.
"Had Barack had a white wife, I would have thought twice about voting for him," Johnson Cooper said.
HANNITY: Here's what I don't understand. This is one of the coldest years on record, ladies and gentlemen. There is no -- I don't believe climate change is real. I think this is global warming hysteria and alarmism. But, yet, we're going to lose millions of jobs. We're going to outsource to foreign countries manufacturing jobs. China and India will never abide by this.
HANNITY: It's not how science works. But isn't this interesting? You know what is this, the ninth coldest year on record since we've been recording it since the last time I checked? Liberals will say if it's cold, it's global warming, if it's snowing, it's global warming, if it's hot, it's global warming, if there's a volcano or an earthquake it's global warming. There's nothing that doesn't prove that there is global warming.
Peter Epstein, president of Merit Financial Services, which advertises on Beck’s show, says gold retailers expect favorable coverage from commentators on whose shows they pay to advertise. “You pay anybody on any network and they say what you pay them to say,” said Epstein. “They’re bought and sold.”
“I could care less what people think of him,” Merit’s Epstein said of Beck. “We advertise on Fox because it makes the phone ring.”
Though Epstein’s firm has advertised on CNN, he said gold resonates more with Fox’s viewers “because it’s the angry white man audience - it’s the conservative audience. … They are distrustful of the government, of the regime.”
Obama science advisers grilled over hacked e-mails
Wednesday December 2, 2009
SETH BORENSTEIN AP Science Writer
Sensenbrenner attacked the work of Penn State's Mann, who is frequently brought up in the communications. Mann is the author of what is called the "hockey stick" theory, first described in the late 1990s. It suggested that the past 50 years had been the hottest in several centuries, if not 1,000 years, and that man-made global warming was to blame. That research was so controversial that the National Academy of Sciences studied the work in depth; it was used in former Vice President Al Gore's documentary on global warming.
Sensenbrenner said the 2006 National Academy study showed Mann's hockey stick was incorrect and that Mann's theory was discredited. But Holdren said the NAS study had quibbles with Mann's methods but agreed with his results.
The chairman of the Academy of Science panel, Texas A&M University atmospheric scientist Gerald North, confirmed in an interview Wednesday that Holdren was right, not Sensenbrenner.
"The conclusions that we came to were essentially the same as the hockey stick" theory that Mann proposed, North told The Associated Press. North said even if Jones, Mann and others had done no research at all, the world would still be warming and scientists would still be able to show it.
Yesterday, we sat slack-jawed as Morning Joe’s pundit panel complained that the Salahis will do anything to get on TV. Such people will say “outrageous” things, Mad Money’s Jim Cramer averred.
"There's not a history of clashes that are violent between Sunnis and Shias. So I think they can probably get along." [MSNBC Hardball, 4/23/03]
Finally, take a look at conservative reaction to President Obama's Afghanistan speech this week. Here's Charles Krauthammer: "It's not exactly the kind of speech that you would have heard from Henry V or Churchill."
Ooooh ... burn.
But the right-wingers apparently thought this really was a deeply damaging assessment, for they quickly piled on:
- Bill O'Reilly: "I did not see a Winston Churchill-type performance. ... [it was] OK, but not exactly the Gettysburg Address."
- Sean Hannity: "I didn't hear Winston Churchill."
- Victor Davis Hanson: "[N]ot Winston Churchill."
- Nile Gardiner: "Barack Obama badly needed to display some Churchillian grit, but there was none on offer."
Gov. Sarah Palin speaks out.
Publication: Alaska Business Monthly
Publication Date: 01-MAR-07 Format: Online
Full Article Title: Gov. Sarah Palin speaks out.(Interview)(Cover story)
ABM: We've lost a lot of Alaska's military members to the war in Iraq. How do you feel about sending more troops into battle, as President Bush is suggesting?
Palin: I've been so focused on state government, I haven't really focused much on the war in Iraq. I heard on the news about the new deployments, and while I support our president, Condoleezza Rice and the administration, I want to know that we have an exit plan in place; I want assurances that we are doing all we can to keep our troops safe. Every life lost is such a tragedy. I am very, very proud of the troops we have in Alaska, those fighting overseas for our freedoms, and the families here who are making so many sacrifices.
Finally, A Decision for Afghanistan: We're In It to Win It
Tue at 7:29pm
We should be clear, however, that fewer troops mean assuming more risk. Talk of an exit date also risks sending the wrong message. We should be in Afghanistan to win, not to set a timetable for withdrawal that signals a lack of resolve to our friends, and lets our enemies believe they can wait us out.
As that order was kicked down to staff for the difficult political problem of implementation, the Oval Office's malign attentions turned to the broader media problem. The president asked Chuck Colson if he'd read the new book The News Twisters by Edith Efron, an employee of one of his biggest backers, publisher Walter Annenberg. Colson replied that he had and found it a waste of time.
Wrong answer.
The News Twisters purported to be an objective study proving the networks followed "the elitist-liberal-left line in all controversies," "actively slanting" against the "white middle-class majority" — 80 percent to 20, Efron concluded. To make the case, she videotaped hundreds of hours of broadcasts about the 1968 presidential election, marking each utterance for the side she took it to favor. Her judgments proved rather idiosyncratic. In heads-Iwin-tails-you-lose fashion, footage of Humphrey being heckled by antiwar protesters was scored as "supports demonstrators"; footage depicting Humphrey excoriating H. Rap Brown and Stokely Carmichael and "extremists of the left and the right" was scored as "anti-conservative." A CBS report that Nixon was "warning his staff against overconfidence, but he himself hardly looks worried," was scored as suggesting Nixon "is a liar."
This, the president concluded, was literature. Nixon ordered Colson to get it on the bestseller list. Availing himself of $8,000 from the same funds that bought their gear for the Fielding break-in, Colson bought out bookstores' stock. Cartons of The News Twisters piled up in Howard Hunt's office—as it appeared on the bestseller lists beside LBJ's memoirs, B. E Skinner's Beyond Freedom & Dignity, The Last Whole Earth Catalog, and the sex manual Any Woman Can!
Most in U.S. want public health option: poll
Thu Dec 3, 2009 6:43am EST
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Most Americans would like to see a "public option" in health insurance reform but doubt anything Congress does will lower costs or improve care in the short term, according to a poll released on Thursday.
The survey of 2,999 households by Thomson Reuters Corp shows a public skeptical about the cost, quality and accessibility of medical care.
Just under 60 percent of those surveyed said they would like a public option as part of any final healthcare reform legislation, which Republicans and a few Democrats oppose.
Here are some of the results of the telephone survey of 2,999 households called from November 9-17 as part of the Thomson Reuters PULSE Healthcare Survey:
* Believe in public option: 59.9 percent yes, 40.1 percent no.
* 86 percent of Democrats support the public option versus 57 percent of Independents and 33 percent of Republicans.
CBO estimates that in the third quarter of calendar year 2009, an additional 600,000 to 1.6 million people were employed in the United States, and real (inflation-adjusted) gross domestic product (GDP) was 1.2 percent to 3.2 percent higher, than would have been the case in the absence of ARRA (see Table1).
But Professor Plimer, of Adelaide and Melbourne Universities, said that to stop climate change Governments should find ways to prevent changes to the Earth’s orbit and ocean currents and avoid explosions of supernovae in space.
They were ready now to fight back - for instance, by wielding not-for-attribution quotes like daggers in Evans and Novak columns.
One "liberal senator, whose voting record differs little from McGovern's," they wrote, "feels McGovern's surging popularity depends on public ignorance of his acknowledged public positions. 'The people don't know McGovern is for amnesty, abortion, and legalization of pot,' he told us. 'Once Middle America— Catholic Middle America, in particular— finds this out, he's dead.'"
The phraseology was repeated almost identically by Scotty Reston three days later: "George McGovern has run an intelligent and determined campaign and has now got to the top of the greasy pole, but with a heavy load of promises: to slash the defense budget steeply, legalize pot and abortion, and grant amnesty to the Vietnam expatriates. Selling this to George Meany and the labor organization, which is about the only effective political organization the Democrats have, will not be easy, and it will not be very popular with many other Democratic candidates who think pot, abortion, and amnesty are explosively dangerous issues."
Trigger-happy security complicates convoys
By Sean D. Naylor - Staff writer
Posted : Wednesday Dec 2, 2009 14:45:11 EST
ARMY TIMES
HUTAL, Afghanistan — Ill-disciplined private security guards escorting supply convoys to coalition bases are wreaking havoc as they pass through western Kandahar province, undermining the coalition’s counterinsurgency strategy here and leading to at least one confrontation with U.S. forces, say U.S. Army officers and Afghan government officials.
The security guards are responsible for killing and wounding more than 30 innocent civilians during the past four years in Maywand district alone, said Mohammad Zareef, the senior representative in the district for Afghanistan’s intelligence service, the National Directorate of Security.
Among incidents this year involving the security guards in Maywand, according to Zareef, the NDS chief:
• On May 9, contractors shot dead an Afghan National Policeman manning a checkpoint on Highway 1, then drove away.
• Contractors left their broken-down car for a night at a gas station and found the next morning that insurgents had burned it. In their anger, the security guards turned their guns on the local population. “They started shooting and killed a kid,” Zareef said.
• On March 28, speeding contractors killed a local man and his wife, and injured their child, when the security guards’ SUV hit the motorcycle on which the family was riding.
• Afghans arrested a convoy security guard for the March 4 killing of a kuchi, or nomadic herder.
(pic from NPR blog The two-way)
Chris Matthews, a one-man Team Stupid, said this about Pres. Obama's visit to West Point:
MATTHEWS: I think it`s true of most wars. They start with a lot of excitement. I always remember the scene in "Gone With the Wind," where all the rebels are excited about going to war with the north, a country they can`t beat because of it`s industrial advantage and population advantage. They were going to lose that war eventually.
It seems like, in this case, there`s not a lot of excitement. I watched those cadets. They were young kids, men and women, who are committed to serving their country professionally, it must be said, as officers. I didn`t see much excitement. but among the older people there, I saw, if not resentment, skepticism. I didn`t see a lot of warmth in that crowd out there that the president chose to address tonight. I thought that was interesting. He went to maybe the enemy camp tonight to make his case. That`s where Paul Wolfowitz used to write speeches for, back in the old Bush days. That`s where he went to rabble-rouse the we`re going to democratize the world campaign back in `02. So, I thought it was a strange venue.
4. Decides that false statements or omissions in the declarations submittedby Iraq pursuant to this resolution and failure by Iraq at any time to comply with, and cooperate fully in the implementation of, this resolution shall constitute a further material breach of Iraq’s obligations and will be reported to the Council forassessment in accordance with paragraphs 11 and 12 below;
11. Directs the Executive Chairman of UNMOVIC and the Director-General of the IAEA to report immediately to the Council any interference by Iraq with inspection activities, as well as any failure by Iraq to comply with its disarmament obligations, including its obligations regarding inspections under this resolution;
12. Decides to convene immediately upon receipt of a report in accordance with paragraphs 4 or 11 above, in order to consider the situation and the need for full compliance with all of the relevant Council resolutions in order to secure international peace and security;
Obama's Afghanistan timeline adheres to McChrystal assessment
The Afghanistan timeline President Obama outlined Tuesday calls for the 'surge' of 30,000 new troops to abate after only 18 months. That time frame is consistent with what Gem. Stanley McChrystal has called the 'decisive' period of the war.
By Mark Sappenfield | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
from the December 2, 2009 edition
President Obama's decision to set a timeline on the "surge" of 30,000 new US troops into Afghanistan is consistent with a vehement assertion from Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top US commander in Afghanistan, in his battlefield assessment.
In urgent language, McChrystal stressed the importance of time in America's Afghan venture – suggesting that the next 12 months could well determine the success or failure of the mission.
The timeline Mr. Obama announced Tuesday night appears geared to providing McChrystal with as many boots on the ground in Afghanistan as soon as is logistically possible in an effort to turn the tide of the war.
The consistency between McChrystal's assertions and Obama's words Tuesday appears to provide a military rationale for the timeline, which has been criticized as a purely political ploy made with the 2012 elections in mind.
Then he [Nixon] left for a campaign motorcade through the Westchester County suburbs in New York State. He was already guaranteed a victory there. But this was Nelson Rockefeller's home county. Winning Westchester in November would be quite a fuck-you to his rival for the presidency since 1960.
Republicans announced a ludicrous crowd estimate of 425,000 (they had claimed 700,000 at his only other real campaign motorcade, in Atlanta, within a space that could physically contain only 75,000).
Ronald Kessler:...In addition, the Secret Service has been bowing to pressure by some protectees such as Mary Cheney, Dick Cheney's daughter, who insisted that agents take her friends to restaurants.
Taliban Surpasses Al Qaeda in Afghanistan
Washington Post: Shifting Power Dynamic Could Influence Where U.S. Focuses Firepower
KABUL, Nov. 11, 2009
This story was written by Joshua Partlow.
Although the war in Afghanistan began as a response to al-Qaeda terrorism, there are perhaps fewer than 100 members of the group left in the country, according to a senior U.S. military intelligence official in Kabul who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
The official estimated that there are 300 al-Qaeda members in the tribal areas of Pakistan, where the group is based, compared with tens of thousands of Taliban insurgents on either side of the border.
Claim: Goldman bankers arming selves for fear of ‘populist uprising’
By Daniel Tencer
Tuesday, December 1st, 2009 -- 1:12 pm
The Raw Story
Senior executives at Goldman Sachs are so afraid that they could be the targets of a "populist uprising" against banks that they have taken to arming themselves, says an unconfirmed report at Bloomberg News.
Citing only an unnamed "friend" at the New York-based investment bank, columnist Alice Schroeder alleged that "senior Goldman people have loaded up on firearms and are now equipped to defend themselves if there is a populist uprising against the bank."
"They're concerned about social unrest, they're concerned about the fact that we've got a country where a quarter of the kids are on food stamps and they've become a symbol of greed," Schroeder said in an interview at Bloomberg TV.
Blair 'knew Saddam did not have WMD before war started'
...Gordon Brown of trying to “suffocate” the inquiry by giving Whitehall a veto on what could be in Sir John Chilcot’s report. Mr Clegg said a protocol to Sir John governing publication included nine reasons why information could...
David Brown; Francis Elliott
26 November 2009 The Times
President Obama Commits to Finishing the job in Afghanistan; State Dinner: Affair to Remember in the White House; Behind the Scenes at the World's Busiest Airport
CNN, November 25, 2009 Wednesday, NEWS; Domestic, 7690 words, John Roberts, Christine Romans, Elaine Quijano, Jill Dougherty, Rob Marciano, Stephanie Elam, Jim Acosta, Paula Newton, Gary Tuchman, Jeanne MeserveNewsHour For November 25, 2009
The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, November 25, 2009 Wednesday, NEWS; International, 9199 words, Paul Davies, Kwame Holman, Paul Solman, Margaret Warner, Judy Woodruff, Ray Suarez, Jeffrey Brown, Jim LehrerPaying For Afghanistan; Britain Begins Iraq War Probe
CNN, November 24, 2009 Tuesday, NEWS; International, 6743 words, Atika Shubert, Rick Sanchez, Rafael Romo, Brooke AndersonPublic Hearings In Britain Begin Today, And Set Out To Answer Why Britain Entered The Iraq War, And How Could Intelligence On WMD Have Been So Wrong?
CNN International, November 24, 2009 Tuesday, NEWS; International, 4033 words, Stan Grant, Paula NewtonNewsHour For November 24, 2009
The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, November 24, 2009 Tuesday, NEWS; International, 8784 words, Paul Davies, Jeffrey Brown, Lowell Bergman, Margaret Warner, Judy Woodruff, Ray Suarez, Jim Lehrer
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