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Topsail Island. Photo by joanneleon. December, 2012
Led Zeppelin - Fool In The Rain
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News and Opinion
The 'War on Terror' - by Design - Can Never End
As the Pentagon's former top lawyer urges that the war be viewed as finite, the US moves in the opposite direction
It is precisely the intrinsic endlessness of this so-called "war" that is its most corrupting and menacing attribute, for the reasons Maddow explained. But despite the happy talk from Johnson, it is not ending soon. By its very terms, it cannot. And all one has to do is look at the words and actions of the Obama administration to know this.
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There's no question that this "war" will continue indefinitely. There is no question that US actions are the cause of that, the gasoline that fuels the fire. The only question - and it's becoming less of a question for me all the time - is whether this endless war is the intended result of US actions or just an unwanted miscalculation.
N. J. and N.Y. lawmakers lukewarm over just-passed Sandy relief bill
What passed Friday was, politically, the simplest piece of the Sandy-relief request. The money will replenish the National Flood Insurance Program, allowing the government to meet contractual obligations to homeowners who have paid for coverage.
"This was the easier portion," said U.S. Rep. Frank LoBiondo (R., N.J.), whose district includes Atlantic City and a swath of the Shore. "The fact that 67 people still voted against it kind of shows you where, philosophically, some folks are coming from."
It also portends the level of opposition to the bigger block of aid.
That funding is expected to face much more contentious House votes Jan. 15 and then has to slog through the Senate again.
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Two additional House votes are needed to OK the remaining $51 billion - along with another vote in the Senate, where procedural rules can stop any bill.
Industry Breaks Survive in Deal
The package that Congress approved this week to avert the fiscal cliff has drawn new attention to a set of tax breaks approved for individual industries such as racetrack owners and makers of electric motorcycles.
The eleventh-hour deal included the renewal of more than 50 expiring tax breaks for businesses and individuals that will cost the U.S. Treasury roughly $71 billion over the next decade.
NOAA Declines to Probe Vast Underestimate of BP Spill
Washington, DC - The federal agency responsible for presenting dramatic underestimates for the 2010 BP Gulf oil spill, the biggest environmental disaster in the nation’s history, will not investigate the errors, according to documents posted today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) documenting the official response to its scientific integrity complaint on the subject. Spill rate numbers presented to the public and decision-makers at the height of the crisis were less than half the true flow. The President’s National Commission found that the inaccurate low-ball numbers hampered numerous attempts to cap the run-away well and slowed clean-up efforts.
Shortly after the BP Deepwater Horizon blowout, it became evident that the company was presenting absurdly low numbers for the size of the gushing spill. In May 2010, the federal government created a team of experts, the Plume Team of the Flow Rate Technical Group, to develop the first accurate estimates of the oil leak rate. On July 30, 2010, key decision makers convened to hear the Plume Team’s estimates but the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) presentation omitted the two highest (and ultimately accurate) estimates of the oil leak rate from the Plume Team, namely, 61,000 and 62,500 bpd (barrels per day) and misled decision makers to believe that much lower estimates were endorsed by all members of the Plume Team.
Surprise: Shell’s rig ran aground in Alaska because the company was trying to avoid taxes
On New Year’s Eve, in the middle of a storm, Shell was trying to tow its Kulluk drilling rig from Alaska to Seattle. Why then? Why risk the bad weather, which, as it turned out, caused the rig to break free from its tugboats and run aground on Kodiak Island?
To avoid paying state taxes, of course. From Alaska Dispatch:
A Shell spokesman last week confirmed an Unalaska elected official’s claim that the Dec. 21 departure of the Kulluk from Unalaska/Dutch Harbor involved taxation.
City councilor David Gregory said Shell would pay between $6 million and $7 million in state taxes if the Kulluk was still in Alaska on Jan. 1.
Even Dancing With the Stars Couldn't Keep Tom DeLay From Prison
Former U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, once considered among the nation's most powerful and feared lawmakers, was sentenced to three years in prison Monday for a scheme to influence elections that already cost him his job, leadership post and millions of dollars in legal fees.
The sentence comes after a jury in November convicted DeLay, a Houston-area Republican, on charges of money laundering and conspiracy to commit money laundering for using a political action committee to illegally send corporate donations to Texas House candidates in 2002.
DeLay will remain a free man, pending appeal. But he was already been seen exchanging likely prison survival tips with the infamous Jack Abramoff on December 12 in DC, as reported by The Washington Post:
At what had to be one of the most intriguing lunch tables in Washington yesterday, sushi was on the menu, and we can only imagine that second acts were a topic of conversation.
Former House majority leader Tom DeLay was seen lunching with disgraced super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff at Sushi Taro off Dupont Circle, a sharp-eyed source tells us. The confab sure looked like an effort to get the old band back together: The two men have a long and scandalous history together, including as travelling buddies on now-infamous trips to the Northern Marianas Islands and to Scotland.
Blog Posts and Tweets of Interest
The Beatles - The Fool On The Hill
Remember when progressive debate was about our values and not about a "progressive" candidate? Remember when progressive websites championed progressive values and didn't tell progressives to shut up about values so that "progressive" candidates can get elected?
Come to where the debate is not constrained by oaths of fealty to persons or parties.
Come to where the pie is served in a variety of flavors.
"The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum." ~ Noam Chomsky
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