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Going To Hell In A Very Stylish Handbasket.

we've had this many folks visit so far:

"El diablo sabes mas por viejo que por diablo" - old Mexican proverb

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Achtung! Das machine ist nicht fur gerfingerpoken und mittengraben. Ist easy schnappen der pringenwerk, blowenfusen, und poppencorken mit spitzensparken. Ist nicht fur gewerken by das dumkopfen, das rubbernecken sightseeren keepen hands in der pockets, relaxen und watchen der blinkenlights.

links:
Tom Paine
The Nation
Think Progress
Bush or Chimp?
Landover Baptist Church
The White House
The Onion
Ernie's House of Whoop Ass
Project for the New American Century
Project for the Old American Century
Project for the New American Empire
All Hat, No Cattle
Unfairly Balanced
Buck Fush

West must prepare for Chinese, Indian dominance: Wolfensohn

SYDNEY (AFP) - Western nations must prepare for a future dominated by China and India, whose rapid economic rise will soon fundamentally alter the balance of power, former World Bank chief James Wolfensohn has warned.

Wealthy countries were failing to understand the impact of the invevitable growth of the two Asian powerhouses, Wolfensohn said in the 2006 Wallace Wurth Memorial Lecture at the University of New South Wales at the weekend.

"It's a world that is going to be in the hands of these countries which we now call developing," said Australian-born Wolfensohn, who held the top job at the global development bank for a decade until last year.

Rich nations needed to try to capitalise on the inevitable emergence of what would become the engine of the world's economic activity before it was too late, he said.

"Most people in the rich countries don't really look at what's happening in these large developing countries," said Wolfensohn, who is now chairman of Citigroup International Advisory Board and his own investment and advisory firm.

Within 25 years, the combined gross domestic products of China and India would exceed those of the Group of Seven wealthy nations, he said.

"This is not a trivial advance, this is a monumental advance."

Wolfensohn said that somewhere between 2030 and 2040, China would become the largest economy in the world, leaving the United States behind.

By 2050, China's current two trillion US dollar GDP was set to balloon to 48.6 trillion, while that of India, whose economy weighs in at under a trillion dollars, would hit 27 trillion, he said, citing projections by investment bank Goldman Sachs.

In comparison, the US's 13 trillion dollar income would expand to only 37 trillion -- 10 trillion behind China.

"You will have in the growth of these countries a 22 times growth between now and the year 2050 and the current rich countries will grow maybe 2.5 times."

In light of these forecasts, it was clear that Western nations and Australia were not investing enough in educating the next generation to be able to take advantage of the coming realignment, he said.

"The fact that not enough of our young people are preparing themselves with knowledge, experience, residence and language to deal certainly with China, although India has the benefit of an English language, it does seem to me that it presents a formidable challenge."

Wolfensohn pointed to both China's and India's recent substantial investments in Africa as an example of how the two emerging giants were exercising their increasing clout on the global stage.

"Within the last two weeks the world has been put on notice that Africa is no longer the basket case that everybody had historically thought it was but is now front and centre in terms of development by India and China."

'Neocons' abandon Iraq war at White House front door

USA Today - President John F. Kennedy's famous remark that victory has a thousand fathers and that defeat is an orphan couldn't be more apt these days. The intellectual godfathers of the ruinous

Iraq war - "neoconservatives" who insisted it would be a breeze to invade Iraq and transform it into a beacon of democracy in the Middle East - are jumping ship and pointing fingers.

Their scurrying defection is a telling measure of how poorly the war is going and how bleak the outlook is. As of today, U.S. involvement in Iraq will have lasted longer than American participation in World War II. The price in American lives is approaching 3,000; the cost in dollars exceeds $300 billion. The Thanksgiving Day massacre in Baghdad, in which bombings killed and wounded hundreds in a Shiite neighborhood, only underscored Iraq's descent into chaos.

The neoconservative version of history is that the Iraq war was good idea undone by Bush administration incompetence after Saddam Hussein fell. Influential adviser Kenneth Adelman, who famously predicted Iraq would be a "cakewalk," now says, "This didn't have to be managed this bad; it's just awful." Another prime mover behind the war, former assistant Defense secretary Richard Perle, told Vanity Fair: "The decisions did not get made that should have been. ... At the end of the day, you have to hold the president responsible."

To blame administration bungling exclusively for the Iraq debacle, however, is to learn the wrong lesson. It's true that the occupation of Iraq was mismanaged from the outset. By failing to guard massive munitions stockpiles, the administration helped arm the insurgency. And by disbanding the Iraqi army, it gave the insurgency men to use those arms. But the mistakes began with the decision to go war itself, a naive and arrogant exercise in wishful thinking that the nation can't afford to repeat.

The pretext, of course, was that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction that represented an imminent threat to U.S. security. In large part, however, the motivation was the neocons' belief - adopted by the administration - that ousting Saddam would create a beachhead for democracy in the Middle East. The effects, the neocons argued, would ripple through the region. The Arab public, inspired by U.S. ideals, would marginalize extremists and dictators alike, bringing peace.

U.S. policymakers would have benefited from more time reading history and less concocting rosy scenarios. In the 1920s, the British similarly believed that democracy could be imposed on a tribal culture accustomed to rule by strongmen. After a few massacres, the British learned their lesson, installed a king and retreated.

Now a bipartisan Iraq Study Group, the Bush administration and Congress are all scrambling to find a way out of the Iraq quagmire. None of the options is appealing or offers the sort of outcome the war's architects envisioned.

It's important not to buy the new self-serving line from the neoconservatives, some of whom are already beating the drums for a pre-emptive attack on Iran's nuclear program. Recovering the international goodwill squandered in Iraq, and dealing wisely with the threats from Iran and North Korea, requires facing the mistakes squarely.

George: Condi! Nice to see you. What's happening?

Condi: Sir, I have the report here about the new leader of China.

George: Great. Lay it on me.

Condi: Hu is the new leader of China.

George: That's what I want to know.

Condi: That's what I'm telling you.

George: That's what I'm asking you. Who is the new leader of China?

Condi: Yes.

George: I mean the fellow's name.

Condi: Hu.

George: The guy in China.

Condi: Hu.

George: The new leader of China.

Condi: Hu.

George: The main man in China!

Condi: Hu is leading China.

George: Now whaddya' asking me for?

Condi: I'm telling you, Hu is leading China.

George: Well, I'm asking you. Who is leading China?

Condi: That's the man's name.

George: That's who's name?

Condi: Yes.

George: Will you, or will you not, tell me the name of the new leader of China?

Condi: Yes, sir.

George: Yassir? Yassir Arafat is in China? I thought he's dead in the Middle East.

Condi: That's correct.

George: Then who is in China?

Condi: Yes, sir.

George: Yassir is in China?

Condi: No, sir.

George: Then who is?

Condi: Yes, sir.

George: Yassir?

Condi: No, sir.

George: Look Condi. I need to know the name of the new leader of China. Get me the Secretary General of the U.N. on the phone.

Condi: Kofi?

George: No, thanks.

Condi: You want Kofi?

George: No.

Condi: You don't want Kofi.

George: No. But now that you mention it, I could use a glass of milk. And then get me the U.N.

Condi: Yes, sir.

George: Not Yassir! The guy at the U.N.

Condi: Kofi?

George: Milk! Will you please make the call?

Condi: And call who?

George: Who is the guy at the U.N?

Condi: Hu is the guy in China

George: Will you stay out of China?!

Condi: Yes, sir.

George: And stay out of the Middle East! Just get me the guy at the U.N.

Condi: Kofi.

Global warming said killing some species

WASHINGTON, Associated Press - Animal and plant species have begun dying off or changing sooner than predicted because of global warming, a review of hundreds of research studies contends.

These fast-moving adaptations come as a surprise even to biologists and ecologists because they are occurring so rapidly.

At least 70 species of frogs, mostly mountain-dwellers that had nowhere to go to escape the creeping heat, have gone extinct because of climate change, the analysis says. It also reports that between 100 and 200 other cold-dependent animal species, such as penguins and polar bears are in deep trouble.

"We are finally seeing species going extinct," said University of Texas biologist Camille Parmesan, author of the study. "Now we've got the evidence. It's here. It's real. This is not just biologists' intuition. It's what's happening."

Her review of 866 scientific studies is summed up in the journal Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution and Systematics.

Parmesan reports seeing trends of animal populations moving northward if they can, of species adapting slightly because of climate change, of plants blooming earlier, and of an increase in pests and parasites.

Parmesan and others have been predicting such changes for years, but even she was surprised to find evidence that it's already happening; she figured it would be another decade away.

Just five years ago biologists, though not complacent, figured the harmful biological effects of global warming were much farther down the road, said Douglas Futuyma, professor of ecology and evolution at the State University of New York in Stony Brook.

"I feel as though we are staring crisis in the face," Futuyma said. "It's not just down the road somewhere. It is just hurtling toward us. Anyone who is 10 years old right now is going to be facing a very different and frightening world by the time that they are 50 or 60."

While over the past several years studies have shown problems with certain species, animal populations or geographic areas, Parmesan's is the first comprehensive analysis showing the big picture of global-warming induced changes, said Chris Thomas, a professor of conservation biology at the University of York in England.

While it's impossible to prove conclusively that the changes are the result of global warming, the evidence is so strong and other supportable explanations are lacking, Thomas said, so it is "statistically virtually impossible that these are just chance observations."

The most noticeable changes in plants and animals have to do with earlier springs, Parmesan said. The best example can be seen in earlier cherry blossoms and grape harvests and in 65 British bird species that in general are laying their first eggs nearly nine days earlier than 35 years ago.

Parmesan said she worries most about the cold-adapted species, such as emperor penguins that have dropped from 300 breeding pairs to just nine in the western Antarctic Peninsula, or polar bears, which are dropping in numbers and weight in the Arctic.

The cold-dependent species on mountaintops have nowhere to go, which is why two-thirds of a certain grouping of frog species have already gone extinct, Parmesan said.

Populations of animals that adapt better to warmth or can move and live farther north are adapting better than other populations in the same species, Parmesan said.

"We are seeing a lot of evolution now," Parmesan said. However, no new gene mutations have shown themselves, not surprising because that could take millions of years, she said.

___

On the Net:

The Parmesan study on biological changes from global warming:

When religion loses its credibility

By Oliver "Buzz" Thomas, USA Today

What if Christian leaders are wrong about homosexuality? I suppose, much as a newspaper maintains its credibility by setting the record straight, church leaders would need to do the same:

Correction: Despite what you might have read, heard or been taught throughout your churchgoing life, homosexuality is, in fact, determined at birth and is not to be condemned by God's followers.

Based on a few recent headlines, we won't be seeing that admission anytime soon. Last week, U.S. Roman Catholic bishops took the position that homosexual attractions are "disordered" and that gays should live closeted lives of chastity. At the same time, North Carolina's Baptist State Convention was preparing to investigate churches that are too gay-friendly. Even the more liberal Presbyterian Church (USA) had been planning to put a minister on trial for conducting a marriage ceremony for two women before the charges were dismissed on a technicality. All this brings me back to the question: What if we're wrong?

Religion's only real commodity, after all, is its moral authority. Lose that, and we lose our credibility. Lose credibility, and we might as well close up shop.

It's happened to Christianity before, most famously when we dug in our heels over Galileo's challenge to the biblical view that the Earth, rather than the sun, was at the center of our solar system. You know the story. Galileo was persecuted for what turned out to be incontrovertibly true. For many, especially in the scientific community, Christianity never recovered.

This time, Christianity is in danger of squandering its moral authority by continuing its pattern of discrimination against gays and lesbians in the face of mounting scientific evidence that sexual orientation has little or nothing to do with choice. To the contrary, whether sexual orientation arises as a result of the mother's hormones or the child's brain structure or DNA, it is almost certainly an accident of birth. The point is this: Without choice, there can be no moral culpability.

Answer in Scriptures

So, why are so many church leaders (not to mention Orthodox Jewish and Muslim leaders) persisting in their view that homosexuality is wrong despite a growing stream of scientific evidence that is likely to become a torrent in the coming years? The answer is found in Leviticus 18. "You shall not lie with a man as with a woman; it is an abomination."

As a former "the Bible says it, I believe it, that settles it" kind of guy, I am sympathetic with any Christian who accepts the Bible at face value. But here's the catch. Leviticus is filled with laws imposing the death penalty for everything from eating catfish to sassing your parents. If you accept one as the absolute, unequivocal word of God, you must accept them all.

For many of gay America's loudest critics, the results are unthinkable. First, no more football. At least not without gloves. Handling a pig skin is an abomination. Second, no more Saturday games even if you can get a new ball. Violating the Sabbath is a capital offense according to Leviticus. For the over-40 crowd, approaching the altar of God with a defect in your sight is taboo, but you'll have plenty of company because those menstruating or with disabilities are also barred.

The truth is that mainstream religion has moved beyond animal sacrifice, slavery and the host of primitive rituals described in Leviticus centuries ago. Selectively hanging onto these ancient proscriptions for gays and lesbians exclusively is unfair according to anybody's standard of ethics. We lawyers call it "selective enforcement," and in civil affairs it's illegal.

A better reading of Scripture starts with the book of Genesis and the grand pronouncement about the world God created and all those who dwelled in it. "And, the Lord saw that it was good." If God created us and if everything he created is good, how can a gay person be guilty of being anything more than what God created him or her to be?

Turning to the New Testament, the writings of the Apostle Paul at first lend credence to the notion that homosexuality is a sin, until you consider that Paul most likely is referring to the Roman practice of pederasty, a form of pedophilia common in the ancient world. Successful older men often took boys into their homes as concubines, lovers or sexual slaves. Today, such sexual exploitation of minors is no longer tolerated. The point is that the sort of long-term, committed, same-sex relationships that are being debated today are not addressed in the New Testament. It distorts the biblical witness to apply verses written in one historical context (i.e. sexual exploitation of children) to contemporary situations between two monogamous partners of the same sex. Sexual promiscuity is condemned by the Bible whether it's between gays or straights. Sexual fidelity is not.

What would Jesus do?

For those who have lingering doubts, dust off your Bibles and take a few hours to reacquaint yourself with the teachings of Jesus. You won't find a single reference to homosexuality. There are teachings on money, lust, revenge, divorce, fasting and a thousand other subjects, but there is nothing on homosexuality. Strange, don't you think, if being gay were such a moral threat?

On the other hand, Jesus spent a lot of time talking about how we should treat others. First, he made clear it is not our role to judge. It is God's. ("Judge not lest you be judged." Matthew 7:1) And, second, he commanded us to love other people as we love ourselves.

So, I ask you. Would you want to be discriminated against? Would you want to lose your job, housing or benefits because of something over which you had no control? Better yet, would you like it if society told you that you couldn't visit your lifelong partner in the hospital or file a claim on his behalf if he were murdered?

The suffering that gay and lesbian people have endured at the hands of religion is incalculable, but they can look expectantly to the future for vindication. Scientific facts, after all, are a stubborn thing. Even our religious beliefs must finally yield to them as the church in its battle with Galileo ultimately realized. But for religion, the future might be ominous. Watching the growing conflict between medical science and religion over homosexuality is like watching a train wreck from a distance. You can see it coming for miles and sense the inevitable conclusion, but you're powerless to stop it. The more church leaders dig in their heels, the worse it's likely to be.

This week, the Catholic church unveiled its feeble "don't ask, don't tell" policy of 'inclusion' for gays...

Study: Blame minority woes on government

WASHINGTON, Associated Press - Flawed government policies and negative stereotyping of minority men have limited their economic opportunities, a new study says. It urges improved health care and education for minorities and less media consolidation.

The study by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a research and policy group that focuses on issues that affect minorities, examined the impact of U.S. policies on men of black, Hispanic, Asian and Native American descent.

It said the media and entertainment industries overrepresent minorities as criminals and whites as victims and law enforcers. Blacks are twice as likely as white defendants to be subject to negative pretrial publicity, it said. For Hispanics, three times as likely.

Meanwhile, federal laws such as the No Child Left Behind Act have hurt minorities by driving good teachers away from high-poverty schools to better-funded ones where whites are more highly represented, the report contends.

"We have a duty to stop now and reverse course," says the report, which was commissioned by a group led by Oakland Mayor-elect Ron Dellums.

It comes as Democrats seek to plot a legislative agenda after regaining control of Congress in last week's elections for the first time since 1994.

Democratic congressional leaders have pledged to raise the minimum wage and step up oversight of government agencies.

On another subject the report addresses, the Federal Communications Commission is reviewing the hotly disputed issue of whether to ease government rules to allow for more media consolidation.

Two FCC members, both Democrats, have criticized the idea of consolidation under fewer owners as a threat to minority and niche programming.

The Dellums commission is opposing FCC proposals that would allow media conglomerates to own more broadcasting stations.

Dellums, a Democratic former congressman, said government leaders should be mindful of the plight of lower-income people after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina exposed racial and class divides.

"If you look at this election, not only Iraq but Katrina was on the minds of many voters," said Dellums in a telephone interview. "Katrina exposed the stark reality of the vulnerability of urban life."

"We will have to address the question of the plight of young men of color as the crime rate rises, as the school dropout rate continues to rise, as the poverty rate continues to rise," he added.

According to the report:

_Minorities generally receive inferior health care because they can't afford medical insurance and health facilities are either subpar or nonexistent in their communities.

_White families are more than twice as likely as black families to be upwardly mobile; black families are more than twice as likely to be downwardly mobile. The report attributes higher unemployment rates for minorities in part to poor schooling, discrimination and a mismatch between where they live and where jobs are.

_Minority youth, who make up 23 percent of all Americans aged 10-17, comprise 52 percent of the prison youth population.

The commission recommends that Congress make it a top priority to establish universal health coverage — and that all states extend health coverage to all uninsured children through the age of 18 who are not covered by state Medicaid or other insurance programs.

The report calls on the government to increase the minimum wage and the availability of student loans, and to re-examine sentencing requirements that imprison nonviolent offenders for long periods.

Labor groups such as the AFL-CIO also are committing to help, with plans to offer job training, create distance learning centers and provide mentoring by role models including former NFL players. The program will begin in New Orleans — which bore the brunt of devastation from Katrina — and then be expanded to other major cities.

"The AFL-CIO recognizes the bleak employment prospects for the young men documented by the Dellums Commission," said Richard L. Trumka, secretary-treasurer of the AFL-CIO. "The labor movement embraces the report's recommendations and is committed to taking decisive action to improve the environment for them."

___

On the Net:

A Liberal's Pledge to Disheartened Conservatives

To My Conservative Brothers and Sisters,

I know you are dismayed and disheartened at the results of last week's election. You're worried that the country is heading toward a very bad place you don't want it to go. Your 12-year Republican Revolution has ended with so much yet to do, so many promises left unfulfilled. You are in a funk, and I understand.

Well, cheer up, my friends! Do not despair. I have good news for you. I, and the millions of others who are now in charge with our Democratic Congress, have a pledge we would like to make to you, a list of promises that we offer you because we value you as our fellow Americans. You deserve to know what we plan to do with our newfound power -- and, to be specific, what we will do to you and for you.

Thus, here is our Liberal's Pledge to Disheartened Conservatives:

Dear Conservatives and Republicans,

I, and my fellow signatories, hereby make these promises to you:

1. We will always respect you for your conservative beliefs. We will never, ever, call you "unpatriotic" simply because you disagree with us. In fact, we encourage you to dissent and disagree with us.

2. We will let you marry whomever you want, even when some of us consider your behavior to be "different" or "immoral." Who you marry is none of our business. Love and be in love -- it's a wonderful gift.

3. We will not spend your grandchildren's money on our personal whims or to enrich our friends. It's your checkbook, too, and we will balance it for you.

4. When we soon bring our sons and daughters home from Iraq, we will bring your sons and daughters home, too. They deserve to live. We promise never to send your kids off to war based on either a mistake or a lie.

5. When we make America the last Western democracy to have universal health coverage, and all Americans are able to get help when they fall ill, we promise that you, too, will be able to see a doctor, regardless of your ability to pay. And when stem cell research delivers treatments and cures for diseases that affect you and your loved ones, we'll make sure those advances are available to you and your family, too.

6. Even though you have opposed environmental regulation, when we clean up our air and water, we, the Democratic majority, will let you, too, breathe the cleaner air and drink the purer water.

7. Should a mass murderer ever kill 3,000 people on our soil, we will devote every single resource to tracking him down and bringing him to justice. Immediately. We will protect you.

8. We will never stick our nose in your bedroom or your womb. What you do there as consenting adults is your business. We will continue to count your age from the moment you were born, not the moment you were conceived.

9. We will not take away your hunting guns. If you need an automatic weapon or a handgun to kill a bird or a deer, then you really aren't much of a hunter and you should, perhaps, pick up another sport. We will make our streets and schools as free as we can from these weapons and we will protect your children just as we would protect ours.

10. When we raise the minimum wage, we will pay you -- and your employees -- that new wage, too. When women are finally paid what men make, we will pay conservative women that wage, too.

11. We will respect your religious beliefs, even when you don't put those beliefs into practice. In fact, we will actively seek to promote your most radical religious beliefs ("Blessed are the poor," "Blessed are the peacemakers," "Love your enemies," "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God," and "Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me."). We will let people in other countries know that God doesn't just bless America, he blesses everyone. We will discourage religious intolerance and fanaticism -- starting with the fanaticism here at home, thus setting a good example for the rest of the world.

12. We will not tolerate politicians who are corrupt and who are bought and paid for by the rich. We will go after any elected leader who puts him or herself ahead of the people. And we promise you we will go after the corrupt politicians on our side FIRST. If we fail to do this, we need you to call us on it. Simply because we are in power does not give us the right to turn our heads the other way when our party goes astray. Please perform this important duty as the loyal opposition.

I promise all of the above to you because this is your country, too. You are every bit as American as we are. We are all in this together. We sink or swim as one. Thank you for your years of service to this country and for giving us the opportunity to see if we can make things a bit better for our 300 million fellow Americans -- and for the rest of the world.

Signed,

Michael Moore

mmflint@aol.com

www.michaelmoore.com

Oh, just wait until some other country does this to a US citizen - then watch the fucking neocons howl about godless foreigners!

US: Immigrants may be held indefinitely

WASHINGTON, Associated Press - Immigrants arrested in the United States may be held indefinitely on suspicion of terrorism and may not challenge their imprisonment in civilian courts, the Bush administration said Monday, opening a new legal front in the fight over the rights of detainees.

In court documents filed with the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., the Justice Department said a new anti-terrorism law being used to hold detainees in Guantanamo Bay also applies to foreigners captured and held in the United States.

Ali Saleh Kahlah Al-Marri, a citizen of Qatar, was arrested in 2001 while studying in the United States. He has been labeled an "enemy combatant," a designation that, under a law signed last month, strips foreigners of the right to challenge their detention in federal courts.

That law is being used to argue the Guantanamo Bay cases, but Al-Marri represents the first detainee inside the United States to come under the new law. Aliens normally have the right to contest their imprisonment, such as when they are arrested on immigration violations or for other crimes.

"It's pretty stunning that any alien living in the United States can be denied this right," said Jonathan Hafetz, an attorney for Al-Marri. "It means any non-citizen, and there are millions of them, can be whisked off at night and be put in detention."

The new law says that enemy combatants will be tried before military commissions, not a civilian judge or jury, and establishes different rules of evidence in the cases. It also prohibits detainees from challenging their detention in civilian court.

In a separate court filing in Washington on Monday, the Justice Department defended that law as constitutional and necessary.

Government attorneys said foreign fighters arrested as part of an overseas military action have no constitutional rights and are being afforded more legal rights than ever.

In its short filing in the Al-Marri case, however, the Justice Department doesn't mention that Al-Marri is being held at a military prison in South Carolina — a fact that his attorneys say affords him the same rights as anyone else being held in the United States.

The Justice Department noted only that the new law applies to all enemy combatants "regardless of the location of the detention."

New Recipe: How to Make a Mass Extinction

LiveScience.com - Apocalypses may not be all fire and brimstone. A growing number of paleontologists say that Earth-smashing meteors cannot take all the blame for the many mass extinctions that dot our planet's fossil record. The true causes seem to be more complex.

"The [meteor] impact model has been so successful because it's easy to explain and easy to understand," said Nan Arens of Hobart and William Smith College in Geneva, NY. "However, the simple answer isn't always the best one."

At the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America this week in Philadelphia, Arens and others argued that the combined punch of volcanoes, climate change and impacts leaves many species teetering on the brink of extinction. One final blow brings collapse.

The same scenario could be happening now.

Dino disappearance

The most famous of all giant space rocks is the one that presumably killed off the non-avian dinosaurs 65 million years ago, in the so-called K-T extinction event. But this may not be the whole story.

For several years, Gerta Keller of Princeton University and her colleagues have been arguing that the widely-accepted dino-killer—a space rock that left a 100-mile-wide crater around Chicxulub, Mexico—happened 300,000 years too soon. Keller therefore believes that this impact was just one of several smoking guns.

"Impacts by themselves simply don't cause major mass extinctions," she told LiveScience.

Keller advocates a scenario in which the Chicxulub meteor combined with volcanoes in India and global warming to unsettle the ecologic balance. She has compiled data prior to K-T event that show many species shrinking in size—a sign of an unhealthy environment.

Keller speculates that a second, currently unidentified meteor crashed after Chicxulub. This impact, in conjunction with a surge in volcanism, "dealt the final blow to a Cretaceous biota already on the brink of extinction," Keller said.

Great Dying

A similar environmental deterioration may have preceded the biggest retreat in life's history.

The P-T extinction event, or Great Dying, occurred 251 million years ago when up to 90 percent of all species were snuffed out. David Bottjer's group from the University of Southern California has studied the fossil record and found clear signs that species were in peril long before they disappeared.

The reason: "The Earth got sick," Bottjer said.

The illness began when Siberian volcanoes triggered global warming, he explained. This reduced ocean circulation and the oxygen supply. These hazardous conditions were a boon for sulfur-eating microbes, which released toxic hydrogen sulfide into the atmosphere, finishing off most of the life that remained.

Common diagnosis

A sick Earth succumbing to a final shock is apparently a common extinction formula. Arens and her colleagues analyzed geologic data from the last 488 million years and found more species died out when the environment was first stressed and then stung.

Specifically, the researchers compared stress-inducing volcanic activity and catastrophic meteor impacts. Only when the Earth experienced both did extinction rates significantly increase.

"Periods of stress are going to reduce population sizes," Arens said. With reduced numbers, "species are vulnerable to pulse catastrophes."

On the flip side, an unstressed environment is resilient to geologic and climatic disasters because life is diverse and geographically spread out.

And now?

Applying their model to the present, Arens and her collaborators speculate that human activity has both stressed the environment with agriculture and shocked it with fossil fuel burning.

Whether or not this is an accurate description, both Bottjer and Keller agree that we are in a precarious situation.

WHY THEY DESERVED DEFEAT

What exactly is wrong with the Republicans?

Joe Conason - Today, that question applies not to their rigidly right-wing ideology, nor to their routine betrayal of their rigidly right-wing ideology, nor even to their weird sexual hypocrisy, much as those things undoubtedly contributed to their defeat.

At issue, too, is the bad nature of the Republican political class -- meaning the party officials, the consultants and the elected officials who oversee both -- and the poisoning of America's democratic process by their habitual misconduct.

Republicans tend to talk about honor, integrity, morality and character in almost mystical terms, often attributing those qualities to themselves and their leaders. But the 2006 midterm elections concluded in a barrage of slanderous advertising, deceptive automated telephone calls and attempted voter intimidation designed to discourage participation.

Reporting on these ugly incidents, mainstream journalists feel compelled to pretend that both parties are guilty in equal measure. An honest autopsy would demonstrate that the Grand Old Party, as it once deserved to be known, was responsible for the worst excesses, with very few exceptions.

Howard Kurtz, the excruciatingly even-handed media reporter for CNN and The Washington Post, recently complained that "this year is the worst I've seen in terms of smarmy and sleazy [TV] spots" that distort facts in order to smear an opponent, while insulting the intelligence of voters and drowning out decent discourse. Who did he hold responsible for this disgraceful dumbing-down of the electoral debate? "Over the years, both parties have dished out their share of the negative stuff," wrote Mr. Kurtz, "but this year, most of the truly awful and factually challenged commercials have been on the Republican side."

Such desperately negative advertising may just be a seasonal liability that has grown worse over the years, like storms and heat waves intensified by global climate change. Ads are subject to discounting by viewers and disputing by opponents, and even to checking by the media. This year's sleaziest tricks, however, were played on the telephone, not the television, using the device of "robo-calling." The technology of automated dialing and recorded messages can be used for a variety of scummy tactics, from jamming Democratic phone banks and smearing Democratic candidates to harassing or intimidating potential Democratic voters.

The latest version, which was reported around the country in the days leading up to Nov. 7, involved a Republican deception designed to make voters think they were receiving repeated, annoying calls from a Democratic campaign. Near Chicago, the automated message heard by those who picked up the receiver began: "Hi, I'm calling with information about Tammy Duckworth," the brave Democratic congressional candidate and double-amputee Iraq veteran who lost her race Tuesday.

People who listened to the rest of that recording heard various slurs against her; those who hung up would think that her campaign had called -- and then called and called, over and over, unless they listened to the entire message. The same dubious tactic was used in an untold number of congressional districts. Only at the very end of the call was the real sponsor identified: the National Republican Congressional Committee.

Another robo-call scam was exposed in Virginia, with legally registered voters receiving automated calls that warned they had violated election laws -- and might be arrested if they showed up to vote. And on Election Day 2006, right-wing radio yakker Laura Ingraham gleefully encouraged her listeners to jam a Democratic Party voter helpline.

This wave of vandalism can be traced back to a case in New Hampshire that resulted in criminal prosecution. Last year, federal authorities convicted Republican operatives of running a phone-jamming scheme on Election Day 2002, in a bid to disable Democratic get-out-the-vote efforts and rig the last midterm election.

Among those who executed the scheme was one James Tobin, then regional director of the

Republican National Committee and the National Republican Senatorial Committee, who later chaired Bush-Cheney 2004 in New England until he was forced to step down. The RNC reportedly paid $3 million to finance his defense -- and he kept his mouth shut about the party bosses in the White House, with whom he'd had many, many conversations as he carried out his conspiracy.

Although Tobin was sentenced to 10 months in prison, his former supervisor, Terry Nelson, is still at large and is currently in charge of RNC opposition research.

Actually, the pedigree of thuggery is embodied in Karl Rove, who learned the dark art of dirty tricks from the Nixon gang. The responsible Republicans never purged that spirit, which promised permanent power and corrupted their party.

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The dems now control Congress, the Senate, the Governor's college, and the president is a lame duck.

Time to clean house.

There's stupid, and then there is amazingly retarded:

Man injured after launching firework from bottom

LONDON (AFP) - A man was rushed to hospital in Britain with severe internal injuries after trying to launch a powerful firework from his bottom, an ambulance service spokesman said.

It is thought that the 22-year-old could have been trying to imitate a scene from "Jackass: The Movie", a controversial film featuring a series of edgy pranks.

Footage of the incident in Sunderland, north-east England, was captured on a mobile phone by a gang of youths and shows a white flash followed by hysterical laughter and a youth shouting: "Ha ha ha ha," followed by an expletive.

A spokesman for the North East ambulance service said: "We received a call stating there was a male who had a firework in his bottom and it was bleeding."

He is now recovering in a Sunderland hospital after sustaining internal injuries including a scorched colon.

WHY THE FUCK DIDN'T WE HEAR ABOUT THIS????

OUR LONG NATIONAL NIGHTMARE HAS JUST BEGUN

Like Cornered Rats, GOP Losers More Dangerous Than Ever

Ted Rall, NEW YORK--"My fellow Americans," assured incoming president Gerald Ford hours after the Watergate scandals forced Richard Nixon to resign, "our long national nightmare is over."

I'm tempted, in the aftermath of the widest and most stunning electoral repudiation of Republicanism since Watergate, to mark the Democratic recapture of governorships, the House of Representatives (and probably the Senate) as the beginning of the end of Bush's fascism lite, and thus a long overdue vindication of what I've been saying about him since his December 2000 coup d'état.

Back in 2001 and 2002, state-controlled media called me radical. Now, with most Americans seeing things my way, I'm mainstream. Yet I'm more scared now.

"Iraq," I wrote a week before the 2003 invasion, "will probably be Bush's Waterloo." And so it has been: Exit polls found voters more motivated by opposition to the war than any other issue. "There was general revulsion in the country, particularly among Democrats and independents, against the conduct of the war in

Iraq," said pollster John Zogby. "This was, at the grass roots, a referendum against the war and the president. For Republicans, there was significant disappointment about opportunities lost through enormous budget deficits, threats to civil liberties, a failed social agenda, and the war." Although Democrats failed to nationalize the election, Iraq succeeded: a pitiful seven percent of respondents to the latest Gallup survey still want to "stay the course."

A White House controlled by an unpopular, highly partisan lame duck, a rival party majority without enough votes in Congress to override his veto, and the early start of a highly anticipated 2008 presidential campaign add up to one likely result: gridlock. Bush's legislative and military agendas are dead. But our long national nightmare has just begun.

A Frightening New Security State

We'll be cleaning up Bush's mess long after his scheduled abdication on January 20, 2009. But the trillions of dollars in national debt he has run up and his two losing wars will drain our economy for decades to come. We've provoked a new generation of terrorists. Yet even more damaging and nearly impossible to unravel will be the threats to Americans posed by the neofascist national security apparatus the Bushists will leave behind--unless they use it to remain in power.

Shortly after 9/11 Bush began the first of a long series of power grabs that have transformed him from the leader of a country beholden to its people to an authoritarian despot. He signed a secret executive order granting himself the right to declare anyone in the world, including a U.S. citizen, an "enemy combatant"--without proof--and order him assassinated. Violating federal law and privacy rights, Bush authorized the NSA to listen to our phone calls and read our e-mail.

FBI,

CIA and HomeSec goons "disappeared" thousands of people into a horrible new matrix of concentration camps and secret prisons.

On October 17, 2006 Bush signed the Military Commissions Act. The new law, scarcely mentioned in the media, is breathtaking for the breadth of its attack on basic rights. Under the MCA either the president or the secretary of defense may declare you an "enemy combatant"--as usual, without proof. Under that designation you may be jailed, without the right to an attorney, for the rest of your life. You can even be tortured. Your U.S. citizenship can't protect you. And it's all "legal."

Concentration Camps

In January 2006 HomeSec awarded a $385 million contract to Kellogg, Brown and Root, the subsidiary of Halliburton Co., to build "temporary detention and processing capabilities"--internment camps--"in the event of an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs."

The question, asks Progressive magazine editor Ruth Conniff, "is what is the government planning to do with mass roundups of people?" After all, Bush and other Republican leaders have spent five years calling Democrats and others who disagree with them traitors and terrorists. Following so much hateful rhetoric, you can't blame liberals for wondering whether they too are about to be declared "enemy combatants." They're not paranoid; they're just paying attention.

And Now, Martial Law

About a week ago some left-wing bloggers began circulating rumors that Bush had secretly signed something called the "John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007" that "allows the president to declare a 'public emergency' and station troops anywhere in America and take control of state-based National Guard units without the consent of the governor or local authorities, in order to 'suppress public disorder.'" I couldn't find the text of the law at the time, formerly H.R. 5122, or a reliable media account, so I decided not to report on it.

I can now confirm the bloggers' account. Bush signed the JWDAA hours after the MCA, in a furtive closed-door White House ceremony. There is, buried deep down in Title V, Subtitle B, Part II, Section 525(a) of the JWDAA, a coup. The Bush Administration has quietly stolen the National Guard away from the states.

Here's the relevant section of Public Law 109-364:

"The [military] Secretary [of the Army, Navy or Air Force] concerned may order a member of a reserve component under the Secretary's jurisdiction to active duty...The training or duty ordered to be performed...may include...support of operations or missions undertaken by the member's unit at the request of the President or Secretary of Defense."

The National Guard, used to maintain order during natural disasters and civil disturbances and the sole vehicle available under U.S. law to enforce a declaration of martial law, has previously been controlled by state governors. They have now been stripped of that control. Thanks to the JWDAA, Bush or Rumsfeld can now deploy National Guardsmen in American cities without obtaining permission from state governors.

Section 526 of the Warner Act goes further still. It states that the "Governor of a State...with the consent of the [military] Secretary concerned, may order a member of the National Guard to perform Active Guard and Reserve duty..." The key word is "may." A governor can no longer deploy the Guard in his or her state without first getting Rumsfeld's permission.

Patrick Leahy (D-VT) sounded the alarm during senatorial debate, but U.S. state-controlled media ignored him. The Warner Act, he said, "includes language that subverts solid, longstanding posse comitatus statutes that limit the military's involvement in law enforcement, thereby making it easier for the President to declare martial law...We fail our Constitution, neglecting the rights of the states, when we make it easier for the president to declare martial law and trample on local and state sovereignty."

Only one governor, Kathleen Blanco of Louisiana, made a fuss over the Warner Act. A spokesman for the National Governors Association requested a wimpy "clarification" concerning what circumstances might prompt Bush to impose martial law. As far as I can determine this column marks the first time the JWDAA has been mentioned in the mainstream media.

Now the dark men who engineered America's post-9/11 police state have watched the public reject their policies. The incoming Democratic majority Congress will be able to hold hearings and launch investigations that could lead to their indictments and removal from office. John Dingell, the liberal incoming chairman of the Commerce Committee did nothing to dissuade GOP fears of "a blizzard of subpoenas": "As the Lord High Executioner said in 'The Mikado,'" Dingell recently joked, "I have a little list."

A year of crisis commences.

As ugly secrets surface, Bushists will turn desperate. Democracy has failed their grand schemes; token resignations like Rumsfeld's come too little, too late. Only tyranny can save their skins. Will the beleaguered neocons led by Cheney and Bush, cornered like rats, unleash their brand-new police state on their political opponents? Or will they tough it out and suck up the fines and prison sentences to come? The next year or two could go either way.

The nightmare is not over.

Despite GWB vehemently and defiantly declaring last week that Rumsfeld would stay on as Defense Secretary for the rest of his presidency, today's powershift has forced BushCo to throw him out the window. About fucking time.

However, replacing him with a career spook is not the world's smartest idea.

Bush says Rumsfeld is stepping down

WASHINGTON, Associated Press - Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld stepped down as defense secretary on Wednesday, one day after midterm elections in which opposition to the war in Iraq contributed to heavy Republican losses.

President Bush said he would nominate Robert Gates, a former CIA director, to replace Rumsfeld at the

Pentagon.

Asked whether his announcement signaled a new direction in the war that has claimed the lives of more than 2,800 U.S. troops, Bush said, "Well, there's certainly going to be new leadership at the Pentagon."

Bush lavished praise on Rumsfeld, who has spent six stormy years at his post. The president disclosed he met with Gates last Sunday, two days before the elections in which Democrats swept to control of the House and possibly the Senate.

Last week, as he campaigned to save the Republican majority, Bush declared that Rumsfeld would remain at the Pentagon through the end of his term.

Rumsfeld, 74, was in his second tour of duty as defense chief. He first held the job a generation ago, when he was appointed by President Ford.

Whatever confidence Bush retained in Rumsfeld, the Cabinet officer's support in Congress had eroded significantly. Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., the House speaker-in-waiting, said at her first postelection news conference that Bush should replace the top civilian leadership at the Pentagon.

And Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, who had intervened in the past to shore up Rumsfeld, issued a statement saying, "Washington must now work together in a bipartisan way — Republicans and Democrats — to outline the path to success in Iraq."

The Pentagon offered no date for Rumsfeld's departure.

Gates, 63, has served as the president of Texas A&M University since August 2002, and as the university's interim dean of the George Bush School of Government and Public Service from 1999 to 2001.

The school is home to the presidential library of Bush's father. Gates is a close friend of the Bush family, and particularly the first President Bush.

He served as deputy national security adviser from 1989 to 1991 and then as CIA director during the first Iraq war, from 1991 until 1993.

Gates joined the CIA in 1966 and is the only agency employee to rise from an entry level job to the 7th floor director's office. He served in the intelligence community for more than a quarter century, under six presidents.

Bush has considered Gates for jobs before, including in 2005 when he was searching for a candidate to be the nation's first national intelligence director.

His nomination must be confirmed by the Senate.

Rep. Ike Skelton, D-Mo., who is expected to chair the House Armed Services Committee next year, said Rumsfeld's resignation "presents an important opportunity for our country to begin a new policy direction in Iraq and in the war on terrorism."

Trouble is, the dumbocrats didn't 'win' - the repuglicans lost. Folks did not go to the polls to vote in the wonderful winds of democratic-party-led change (there aren't any), but rather to vote out the putrid stench of republican-party-led corruption and incompetence (of which there is plenty). Big difference.

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Democrats Win House, Move Closer to Control of Senate

Nov. 8 (Bloomberg) -- Democrats captured the U.S. House of Representatives for the first time in 12 years and moved close to taking control of the Senate after a midterm campaign shaped by the war in Iraq and corruption scandals.

Capitalizing on President George W. Bush's declining popularity, Democrats picked up at least 27 House seats, ensuring control of the 435-seat chamber in January. They wrested four Senate seats from Republicans, two shy of the six needed for a majority, as races in Virginia and Montana remained in doubt.

The results set the stage for two years of divided government as Bush attempts to get his policy initiatives through a Democratic House. Bush will also face the possibility of investigations into his administration and a series of new initiatives from Democratic committee chairmen.

``The American people voted for change and they voted for Democrats to take our country in a new direction, and that is exactly what we intend to do,'' said California Representative Nancy Pelosi, who is set to become the first female speaker of the House in January. ``Democrats are ready to lead.''

The fate of the Senate may now hinge on a recount in Virginia, where Democrat Jim Webb leads Senator George Allen by less than 1 percentage point. In Montana, Democrat Jon Tester is ahead of Senator Conrad Burns by less than 1 percentage point with 96 percent of precincts reporting. Earlier, Democrats picked up Senate seats in Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island.

Conceding Control

The White House conceded control of the House shortly before midnight yesterday. ``We're obviously disappointed,'' White House Counselor Dan Bartlett said in an interview.

The president made congratulatory phone calls today to Pelosi and other Democratic leaders, Bush spokeswoman Dana Perino said. ``They had a very friendly conversation and they pledged to work together,'' Perino said. The president also plans a news conference at 1 p.m. Washington time.

Pelosi is ``making history and she ought to feel incredible pride when she does,'' Ken Mehlman, chairman of the Republican National Committee, said on NBC's ``Today'' show. ``I think there's no reason we can't work together in a bipartisan way'' on Iraq, security and terrorism. ``I know the president wants to.''

Democrats needed a net gain of 15 seats to win the majority in the House and they exceeded that number.

Republican Representatives J.D. Hayworth of Arizona, Richard Pombo of California, Nancy Johnson of Connecticut, Clay Shaw of Florida, Jim Ryun of Kansas, Anne Northup of Kentucky, Gil Gutknecht of Minnesota and Charles Taylor of North Carolina all lost, along with Jeb Bradley and Charles Bass in New Hampshire and John Sweeney and Sue Kelly in New York. John Hostettler, Chris Chocola and Mike Sodrel lost in Indiana and Curt Weldon, Don Sherwood and Melissa Hart were defeated in Pennsylvania. And in a race that wasn't considered competitive by most analysts, 15-term Republican Representative Jim Leach lost in Iowa.

Scandals

At least five open seats previously held by Republicans flipped parties with victories by Democrats Gabrielle Giffords in Arizona, Ed Perlmutter in Colorado, Bruce Braley in Iowa, Michael Arcuri in New York and Steve Kagen in Wisconsin.

Congressional scandals also had an effect. Democrat Tim Mahoney picked up the seat vacated by Republican Mark Foley, who resigned from Congress after lewd messages he sent to former congressional pages became public. Democrat Zack Space claimed the seat previously held by Representative Bob Ney, who pleaded guilty to accepting gifts in exchange for legislative favors from lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Democrat Nick Lampson won the seat left by former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, who had also been linked to Abramoff.

Reynolds, Shays

Amid the losses, there were bright spots for some Republican incumbents. New York Representative Tom Reynolds, the leader of his party's House campaign efforts, won re-election, as did Connecticut Representative Christopher Shays. Both of their races were considered among the most competitive in the nation.

As of early morning Washington time, Democrats had won 227 seats and Republicans had 194. Fourteen races were undecided. On the Senate side, Republicans had 49 of the chamber's 100 seats. Democrats won 47 seats and two independent candidates who pledged to vote with the Democrats had also won.

The four Democratic pickups came as Claire McCaskill defeated Republican Senator James Talent in Missouri, Bob Casey Jr. beat Republican Rick Santorum in Pennsylvania, Sherrod Brown overcame Senator Mike DeWine in Ohio and Sheldon Whitehouse knocked off Senator Lincoln Chafee in Rhode Island.

Meanwhile, Democratic Senator Bob Menendez staved off a challenge in New Jersey, and Democrat Ben Cardin retained the open Maryland Senate seat for his party, beating Republican Michael Steele. Connecticut Senator Joseph Lieberman, who ran as an independent after losing in the Democratic primary, also won. Lieberman has said he will vote with the Democrats.

Arizona, Tennessee

Republican Senator Jon Kyl fought off a challenge in Arizona and Republican Bob Corker held onto the Tennessee seat being vacated by retiring Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist.

Of the 33 Senate seats up for grabs in this election, only 10 races were really competitive. The last two left to be decided are Montana and Virginia, where Webb led Allen by 7,847 votes with more than 99 percent of the precincts reporting.

``The election continues,'' Allen told a rally of his supporters. ``We are still counting votes.''

With that margin, a recount is practically guaranteed because the affected counties and cities will pay for it if the trailing candidate requests it. Even so, Webb claimed victory. ``The votes are in and we won,'' Webb told supporters.

In Montana, Tester was leading Burns by 1,556 votes. ``I like the position we're in,'' Tester said on CNN. ``I think we're going to win this thing.''

At polling places yesterday, about six in 10 voters said they disapproved of the way Bush is handling his job, the Associated Press reported, citing surveys taken by the newswire and television networks. That is roughly the same percentage that opposed the war in Iraq.

`Overhanging Cloud'

``The overhanging cloud in this election is the war in Iraq,'' Bill Archer, a former Republican representative from Texas, said on Bloomberg Television. ``It really has brought down many, many Republicans who would otherwise win.''

Experts had predicted only modest Democratic gains until around midyear when Democratic momentum began to build. Going into yesterday, 35 House seats, 33 held by Republicans, were regarded as competitive. Another 30 seats were at least in play, and 27 of those were held by Republicans.

Bush watched the returns in his private study in the White House residence and was informed after 11 p.m. Washington time that the Republicans had lost the House, Bartlett said.

``We readily accept the fact that the House will change to a Democratic majority, and the president looks forward to speaking tomorrow with the new leadership,'' Bartlett said.

Governor's Races

Democrats also had a good night in statehouses across the country, winning a majority of U.S. governorships for the first time since 1994. Democratic candidates won Ohio and Massachusetts for the first time in 16 years, while New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer ended 12 years of Republican rule in that state.

There were some reports of problems in voting yesterday, including reports of long lines, voting machine malfunctions and court disputes over ballot procedures. In South Carolina, Republican Governor Mark Sanford was turned away at his polling place by election officials who told him he had insufficient identification, CNN reported.

FROM HUMILITY IN 2000 TO HUMILIATION IN 2006

Richard Reeves, NEW YORK -- On Tuesday we vote, and the issue, according to most polls, is the performance of President George W. Bush. The president who promised us humility has instead given us humiliation.

It was on Oct. 12, 2000, during his final campaign debate with then-Vice President Al Gore, that Bush attacked nation-building and insistence on doing all things the American way, saying: "I think the United States must be humble in how we treat nations that are figuring out how to chart their own courses."

He also said that night: "I think one way for us being viewed as the Ugly American is for us to go around saying, 'We do it this way and so should you.'"

And: "I am worried about overcommitting our military around the world. I want to be judicious in its use."

That was then. In a little over two months he was president, promising "civility" in our relations around the world. Now, listening to a radio report Friday on the president's campaigning for candidates for the 110th Congress, I heard a correspondent casually begin his story by saying, "George Bush is campaigning for any Republican willing to be seen with him."

The same day's edition of The New York Times reported in two stories the combination of arrogant denial of demonstrated truth and incompetence that will be one of the historical trademarks of the second Bush years.

One headline read: "Congress Tells Auditor in Iraq to Close Office." It seems that the White House has found a new way to try to hide the obvious corruption in the financing of our occupation of Iraq. The administration persuaded Republicans in Congress to deal with the loss of billions of American taxpayer dollars in Iraq by slipping a provision deep into the current military authorization bill that would close down the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction. That is the office that was investigating the many fiascos of our adventures, from financial cheating and poor work by American construction companies to the disappearance of millions of dollars worth of weapons sent to Iraqi police. Bush signed that bill two weeks ago.

The second headline read: "U.S. Web Archive Is Said to Reveal a Nuclear Guide." That one revealed that the administration unaccountably released and posted, on government Web sites, documents from the 1991 Iraq war that would be helpful to anyone trying to build atomic bombs -- that from a secrecy-obsessed White House that has been busily classifying more innocuous documents that have been open to the public for decades.

We have long been disliked around the world, which is to be expected in some quarters -- and also has something to do with envy. Now we are feared as a superpower asserting the right, or at least the power, to attack anywhere that strikes our fancy. Worse, we are being laughed at for continuing to insist that we are on our way to victory in Iraq. Not!

If you talk to members of Congress who have taken the time and trouble to go to Iraq, they tell you stories of endless "victory" briefings. But when they go from one briefing to another, which means from one secure area to another, including the airport and the Green Zone, members are trussed up in bulletproof armor and helmets. Then officers point to a helicopter or armored car a few dozen yards away and yell, "Run! Run for it!"

A small humiliation. Perhaps the officers do it because they think members of Congress need the exercise. The bodyguarding is so tight that when a recent "Codel" -- that's the jargon for "congressional delegation" -- complained during a visit to the Iraqi Parliament, they were told it was a favorite spot for kidnappings.

This was completely squashed by the US mainstream media. Joe Public doesn't have a clue that the BushCo plan for making us safe from terrorists includes posting a nuke cookbook online for any deranged freak in the entire world to download. Oh yeah, and the site has been completely open to the global public since last March....:

US closes 'bomb secrets' website

BBC, UK - The US government has closed one of its websites that contained documents found during the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Weapons experts had complained that the site contained details on making nuclear bombs, the New York Times said.

The US had set up the site to post documents that it hoped might reveal information about Saddam Hussein's weapons programmes.

A US national intelligence spokesman said there would be a careful review before the site went online again.

The website, Iraqi Freedom Document Portal, was set up in March after pressure from Republican legislators that intelligence experts were taking too long to comb through thousands of documents from Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

They wanted public help in sifting through the mass of material.

'Nuclear cookbook'

In the last few weeks, the website had posted accounts of Iraq's secret research into nuclear bomb-making before the 1991 Persian Gulf War, the New York Times said.

The documents reportedly contained detailed information on the radioactive cores of atom bombs and how to build nuclear firing circuits and trigger explosives.

One diplomat told the New York Times that the documents were "a cookbook".

Weapons expert Peter Zimmerman told the newspaper that the website material was "very sensitive, much of it undoubtedly secret restricted data".

Warning

US Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte had cautioned against posting the documents before the website went public, a former official said.

''John Negroponte warned us that we don't know what's in these documents, so these are being put out at some risk, and that was a warning that he put out right when they first released the documents,'' former White House chief of staff Andrew Card told NBC television.

The website contained a warning that "the US government has made no determination regarding the authenticity of the documents... or factual accuracy of the information contained therein".

Mr Negroponte's spokesman, Chad Kolton, said in a statement there were "strict criteria" governing what was posted on the website.

"The material currently on the website, as well as the procedures used to post new documents, will be carefully reviewed before the site becomes available again," he said.

Scientists protested Web site nuclear data: report

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Scientists at a U.S. weapons lab complained more than two weeks ago that captured Iraqi documents containing sensitive nuclear information were available on the Web site that the government shut down on Thursday, The New York Times reported on Saturday.

A senior federal official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the Times that scientists at California's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory protested some of the weapons papers on the site to the National Nuclear Security Administration, an arm of the Department of Energy, in October. But the objections "never perked up to senior management," the Times quoted the official as saying. "They stayed at the mid-levels."

Managers at the security administration passed the warning to their counterparts at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which oversaw the Web site, the Times said, citing the official. And as a result, according to a nuclear weapons expert, the government pulled two nuclear papers from the Web site last month. The dangers of the documents, which were captured during the war, had been recognized at Livermore and in the wider community of government arms experts, he said.

"Those two documents were on everybody's list," the newspaper quoted him as saying.

The Times said federal officials were conducting a review to better understand how and when the warnings had originated and how the bureaucracy had responded.

The Bush administration set up the Web site in March at the urging of Republicans in Congress who said that public access to such materials from Iraq could increase the understanding of the danger posed by Saddam Hussein. It was shut down after the Times inquired about the disclosure of nuclear information and the experts' complaints. Among documents posted were roughly a dozen that nuclear weapons experts said constituted a basic guide to building an atom bomb.

While Democrats have called for an investigation, the scientists' two-week-old complaints, as outlined by federal officials on Friday, indicated for the first time that warnings about the site had come from the government's own arms experts as well as from international weapons inspectors, the report said.

The sleazy negative campaign ads have simply become monotonous. How many different ways, really, are there to demonize an opponent and get the other side to stay home on election day? Don't waste millions trying to come up with something new when voters are numb to everything - just use the tried-and-true formula:

We lose sixty thousand manufacturing jobs, create ninety thousand service jobs, and refuse to increase the minimum wage. That means you've got skilled production engineers working at Mickey D's for poverty-level wages.

Can you say War On The Middle Class?

Unemployment rate lowest in nearly 5-1/2 years

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. unemployment rate fell to a 5-1/2 year low in October as 92,000 jobs were added and hiring in the two prior months was revised up, the government said on Friday, leading financial markets to slash bets on interest-rate cuts.

A rosier-than-expected job picture, days before next Tuesday's congressional vote in which ruling Republicans are considered at risk of losing control, caused rejoicing among

President George W. Bush's party but Democrats countered that most Americans still say household budgets are under pressure.

While the Labor Department said 92,000 jobs were added in October, fewer than the 125,000 Wall Street analysts had forecast, it also said hiring in September and August was far more vigorous than first thought.

It revised up September's job-creation total to 148,000, or nearly three times the 51,000 it reported a month ago, and said there were 230,000 new jobs in August instead of 188,000.

The unemployment rate fell in October to 4.4 percent from 4.6 percent in September. It was the lowest jobless rate since 4.3 percent in May 2001.

Bond prices sank on fears it erased any chances of interest-rate reductions in the near future. Stocks also were lower in late morning trading, though it was primarily because higher oil prices offset the news about a falling unemployment rate that signaled economic resilience. The dollar rose.

"It's an extremely troubling report for the Fed and I can't see how the Fed would even contemplate cutting its benchmark rate when the unemployment rate sinks to cyclical lows," said economist Richard Yamarone of Argus Research Corp. in New York.

SERVICES EXPANDING

At mid-morning, the Institute for Supply Management reported growth in the service sector, the nation's biggest source of employment, was strong in October. Service businesses like banks, restaurants and hotels account for 80 percent of total U.S. business activity.

The private-sector group said its monthly services index climbed to 57.1 last month from 52.9 in September. Any measure over 50 signals the sector is expanding.

On a campaign swing in Springfield, Missouri, Bush cited the jobs figures as a reason to vote Republican in elections for the U.S. House of Representatives and for one-third of the Senate on Tuesday.

"Tax cuts have led to a strong and growing economy, and this morning we got more proof of that," Bush said. But Democratic Sen. Jack Reed (news, bio, voting record) of Rhode Island, the ranking Democrat on the Joint Economic Committee, said "staying the course on the President's policies has failed" to relieve average Americans' strained finances.

Analysts said the employment report adds to confusion about the economy's direction down the road, since it comes just a week after the government reported the weakest overall pace of expansion in more than three years during the third quarter.

Gross domestic product or GDP slowed to a 1.6 percent rate of growth from 2.6 percent in the second quarter and was the weakest since 1.2 percent in the first quarter of 2003.

EARNINGS UP

Notwithstanding softer overall growth, the Labor Department said average hourly earnings in October rose 0.4 percent to $16.91 -- higher than the 0.3 percent that analysts had anticipated -- while the average work week edged up to 33.9 hours from 33.8. Over the year, average hourly earnings have risen by 3.9 percent, the department said.

The combination of slower growth and rising wages has to be unsettling for economic policy-makers, analysts said.

"The Fed would have liked the unemployment rate to jump 0.2 percentage point and payrolls to have been revised downward," said economist Joel Naroff of Naroff Economic Advisors in Holland, Pennsylvania. "They got the worst of all worlds and any thoughts of a near-term rate cut should be out the window."

Hugh Johnson, chief investment officer for Johnson Illington Advisors in Albany, N.Y., said the report underlined a tightening labor market that could mean future rate hikes instead of reductions.

"There's tightness showing up in the decline in the unemployment rate and in the upward pressure on wages, which were stronger than expected," Johnson said. "This will certainly give hawks on the

Federal Open Market Committee some ammunition."

The monthly payroll report is calculated from two separate surveys, one of households and one of businesses. The household survey showed that a whopping 437,000 more people were employed in October.

Most of the new hiring in October was in service industries, where 152,000 new jobs were created, while goods-producing industries shed 60,000 jobs, according to the business survey.

Ocean fish, seafood could collapse by 2048: study

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The world's fish and seafood populations will collapse by 2048 if current trends in habitat destruction and overfishing continue, resulting in less food for humans, researchers said on Thursday.

In an analysis of scientific data going back to the 1960s and historical records over a thousand years, the researchers found that marine biodiversity -- the variety of ocean fish, shellfish, birds, plants and micro-organisms -- has declined dramatically, with 29 percent of species already in collapse.

Extending this pattern into the future, the scientists calculated that by 2048 all species would be in collapse, which the researchers defined as having catches decline 90 percent from the maximum catch.

This applies to all species, from mussels and clams to tuna and swordfish, said Boris Worm, lead author of the study, which was published in the current edition of the journal Science.

Ocean mammals, including seals, killer whales and dolphins, are also affected.

"Whether we looked at tide pools or studies over the entire world's ocean, we saw the same picture emerging," Worm said in a statement. "In losing species we lose the productivity and stability of entire ecosystems. I was shocked and disturbed by how consistent these trends are -- beyond anything we suspected."

When ocean species collapse, it makes the ocean itself weaker and less able to recover from shocks like global climate change, Worm said.

The decline in marine biodiversity is largely due to over-fishing and destruction of habitat, Worm said in a telephone interview from Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

OVER-EXPLOITATION

The loss of biodiversity makes ocean ecosystems less able to recover from the effects of global climate change, pollution and over-exploitation, Worm said.

He likened a diverse ocean environment to a diversified investment portfolio.

With lots of different species in the oceans, just as with lots of different kinds of investments, "You spread the risk around," Worm said. "In the ocean ecosystem, we're losing a lot of the species in our stock portfolio, and by that we're losing productivity and stability. by losing stability, we're losing the ability of the system to self-repair."

"This research shows we'll have few viable fisheries by 2050," Andrew Sugden, international managing editor of Science, told reporters at a telephone news briefing. "This work also shows that it's not too late to act."

To help depleted areas rebuild, marine-life reserves and no-fishing zones need to be set up, Worm and other authors of the study said. This has proven effective in places including the Georges Bank off the U.S. Atlantic coast, he said.

With marine reserves in place, fishing near the reserves can improve as much as four-fold, Worm said.

Beyond the economic benefits to coastal communities where fishing is a critical industry, there are environmental benefits to rebuilding marine biodiversity, the scientists said.

Depleted coastal ecosystems are vulnerable to invasive species, disease outbreaks, coastal flooding and noxious algae blooms, they reported.

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He can do this, you see, because he's already declared himself supreme ruler and repealed our basic rights: