December 2009
27 posts
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Bechtel Gets $128 Million "Small Business"... →
There are a bunch of things that happen pretty regularly in Washington that would probably outrage the average citizen but which both political parties don’t really care much about. One example is the constant awarding of federal “small business” contracts to megacorporations. Defenders of the practice point out that the government has a small business contracting...
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WatchSeparation of church and state, or not? Seven U.S. states seem to ban atheists from public office.
Rachel Maddow Show via http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/12/atheists-are-banned-from-public-office.html.
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“When 18 percent of young adult men (ages 18-29) believe that having sex standing...”
– Michelle Cottle via Andrew Sullivan.
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As If It Weren't Obvious Already... →
An interesting thought about border security vs. “The War On Drugs.”
Mexican traffickers — facing beefed-up security on the border that now includes miles of new fencing, floodlights, drones, motion sensors and cameras — have stepped up their efforts to corrupt the border police.
They research potential targets, anticorruption investigators said, exploiting the cross-border clans and...
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Not Just Drones: Militants Can Snoop on Most U.S.... →
Tapping into drones’ video feeds was just the start. The U.S. military’s primary system for bringing overhead surveillance down to soldiers and Marines on the ground is also vulnerable to electronic interception, multiple military sources tell Danger Room. That means militants have the ability to see through the eyes of all kinds of combat aircraft — from traditional fighters and bombers to...
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US drones hacked by Iraqi insurgents →
One of America’s most sophisticated weapons in the conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, the unmanned drone, has been successfully penetrated by insurgents using software available on the internet for $26 (£16).
Insurgents in Iraq intercepted live video feeds from the drones being relayed back to a US controller and revealing potential targets. A US official said the flaw was...
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U.S. gave up billions in tax money in deal for... →
U.S. government gets $20 billion TARP repayment from Citigroup, but gives them a tax break on their next $38 billion profits as part of the deal. With deal-making like that, it should be a whole year or so before the banks come back for another bailout. See, we’ve apparently proven that we don’t need to collect any more taxes from the big banks since there is plenty of tax money to...
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WatchInteresting visualization of bank failures 2008-2009
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Obama’s populist rhetoric about ‘Fat Cat’ bankers →
An essay by Ed Harrison which seems to me to pretty accurately capture the overall political situation.
Don’t be fooled. Those who decry Obama’s policies as ‘socialist’ are doing so for purely political benefit. Are you telling me that Obama is governing in a vastly different way than George W. Bush at the end of his tenure? How exactly would John McCain have been any less socialist? Are you...
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Volcker’s anti-Geithner, anti-Summers World Tour →
“Two years after the start of the deepest recession since the 1930s, no U.S. or European authority has put in force a single measure that would transform the financial system, based on data compiled by Bloomberg. No rule- or law-making body is actively considering the automatic dismantling of banks that Volcker told Congress are sheltered by access to an implicit safety net.
There’s little...
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Ancient Amazon civilisation laid bare by felled... →
Signs of what could be a previously unknown ancient civilisation are emerging from beneath the felled trees of the Amazon. Some 260 giant avenues, ditches and enclosures have been spotted from the air in a region straddling Brazil’s border with Bolivia.
The traditional view is that before the arrival of the Spanish and Portuguese in the 15th century there were no complex societies in the...
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Blackwater Guards Tied to Secret Raids by the... →
Private security guards from Blackwater Worldwide participated in some of the C.I.A.’s most sensitive activities — clandestine raids with agency officers against people suspected of being insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan and the transporting of detainees, according to former company employees and intelligence officials.
P.W. Singer, an expert in contracting at the Brookings Institution, said...
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Kuwaiti released from Guantánamo prison →
A Kuwaiti royal jet touched down Wednesday at Guantánamo Bay to evacuate a Kuwait Airways engineer who was freed from eight years’ detention after a U.S. judge ruled interrogators wrung a false confession out of him at the U.S. Navy base in Cuba.
Fouad al-Rabia, 50, a father of four, first sued for his freedom in early 2002, but his case wasn’t heard until this year.
“This...
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Women Who Want to Want →
givemesomethingtoread:
More than by any other sexual problem — the elusiveness of orgasm, say, or pain during sex — women feel plagued by low desire. The problems often overlap, but above all the others that can thwart an erotic life, the remoteness of lust is what impels women to seek treatment.
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Google CEO says privacy doesn't matter. Google... →
Heard about this yesterday, but BoingBoing has it best:
Google CEO Eric Schmidt says privacy isn’t important, and if you want to keep something private, “maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place” (in other words, “innocent people have nothing to hide.”)
Bruce Schneier calls bullshit with eloquence: “For if we are observed in all matters, we are...
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If You Voted for the Medicare Drug Benefit, Shut... →
Great little article from Political Irony:
In Forbes Magazine, Bruce Bartlett (an advisor to Ronald Reagan and a treasury official under Bush I) points out the staggering hypocrisy of any politician who is criticizing the Democratic health care reform bill as socialist or deficit-busting, but who voted for the Republican Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit in 2003 (which the US Comptroller called...
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ArmorGroup Loses Kabul Embassy Contract →
The Animal House antics of ArmorGroup North America’s guards have cost the company its 5-year, $189 million State Department contract to protect the US embassy in Kabul.
Wow, it’s like justice!
[…] the real question is why it took an international incident for the State Department to remove AGNA from the embassy job in the first place. Serious complaints about AGNA’s...
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Giant Organic Livestock Operation Decertified By... →
Milk sold as “organic” was not and, partly because the (former) head of the USDA’s organic program was in a relationship with a lobbyist and lawyer for the agribusinesses involved, hardly a slap on the wrist was handed out for years while, presumably, the milk continued to be sold.
Long-ish article at The Sietch — most relevant part quoted below:
Promiseland, a...
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Leaving the Right →
For these reasons, I found it intolerable after 2003 to support the movement that goes by the name “conservative” in America. I still do, even though I am much more of a limited government type than almost any Democrat and cannot bring myself to call myself a liberal (because I’m not). My reasons were not dissimilar to Charles Johnson, who, like me, was horrified by 9/11, loathes...
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Bitter And Afraid →
The former vice president, the man who imported torture into the American constitutional system, failed to capture bin Laden, invaded a country under false pretenses, allowed the Afghanistan campaign to disintegrate, and added $5 trillion to the next generation’s debt burden, is attacking a sitting president on a day he announces a critical military strategy in front of his troops.
It is,...
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Child-tasering officer fired →
The mayor of Ozark, Arkansas, has fired the policeman who tased a 10-year-old girl. He apparently had to exploit the same technicality previously used to suspend him: failure to use the built-in camera [built into the taser].
I wrote about the tasering earlier.
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Former beauty queen dies from plastic surgery →
Former beauty queen Solange Magnano died from plastic surgery complications on Sunday. She was Miss Argentina in 1994, and is the mother of 7-year old twins. 1 in 30 Argentines have had plastic surgery, according to CNN.
As commenter “oxymoron69” said:
Died from complications of having her ass enlarged. […] Could you imagine being those children, growing up knowing your mom died...
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Report: Sarah Palin "bus tour" a hoax, more like... →
Sarah Palin’s “bus tour” to promote her new book simply isn’t. Joe McGinniss reports she’s in fact flying around America on a private jet, specifically a luxurious “Gulfstream II 12-passenger jet rented from Universal Jet Aviation of Boca Raton, Florida, at a cost of more than $4,000 per hour.”
Just a down-home Alaskan girl, riding around on her bus. Or,...
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Sugru: polymer clay that fixes and sticks to... →
Sugru is a soft modelling clay that dries in 30 minutes at room-temp to a waterproof, heat/cold-resistant, dishwasher safe, flexible semi-solid. It’s self-adhesive and bonds with many metals, glass, ceramic, plastics, etc. It can be used to make or fix or remake things from shoes to spectacles to plumbing-pipe. I’ve just ordered some for home and office — it comes in four colors...