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Going To Hell In A Very Stylish Handbasket.

"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

Guys get uptight, girls have lunch.

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STUDY ON FRIENDSHIP AMONG WOMEN

By Gale Berkowitz

University of California, Los Angeles

A landmark UCLA study suggests friendships between women are special. They shape who we are and who we are yet to be. They soothe our tumultuous inner world, fill the emotional gaps in our marriages, and help us remember who we really are. By the way, they may do even more.

Scientists now suspect that hanging out with our friends can actually counteract the kind of stomach-quivering stress most of us experience on a daily basis. A landmark UCLA study suggests that women respond to stress with a cascade of brain chemicals that cause us to make and maintain friendships with other women. It's a stunning find that has turned five decades of stress research---most of it on men---upside down.

"Until this study was published, scientists generally believed that when people experienced stress, the condition triggered a hormonal cascade that prepared the body to either stand and fight or flee as fast as possible," explains Laura Cousino Klein, Ph.D., now an Assistant Professor of Biobehavioral Health at Penn State University and one of the study's authors. "It's an ancient survival mechanism left over from the time we were chased across the planet by saber-toothed tigers."

Now the researchers suspect that women have a larger behavioral repertoire than just "fight or flight." "In fact," says Dr. Klein, "it seems that when the hormone oxytocin is released as part of the stress responses in a woman, it buffers the 'fight or flight' response and encourages her to tend children and gather with other women instead. When she actually engages in this tending or befriending, studies suggest that more oxytocin is released, which further counters stress and produces a calming effect. This calming response does not occur in men", says Dr. Klein, "because testosterone ---which men produce in high levels when they're under stress---seems to reduce the effects of oxytocin. Estrogen", she adds, "seems to enhance it."

The discovery that women respond to stress differently than men was made in a classic "aha!" moment shared by two women scientists who were talking one day in a lab at UCLA. "There was this joke that when the women who worked in the lab were stressed, they came in, cleaned the lab, had coffee, and bonded," says Dr. Klein. "When the men were stressed, they holed up somewhere on their own. I commented one day to fellow rese archer Shelley Taylor that nearly 90% of the stress research is on males. I showed her the data from my lab, and the two of us knew instantly that we were onto something."

The women cleared their schedules and started meeting with one scientist after another from various research specialties. Very quickly, Drs. Klein and Taylor discovered that by not including women in stress research, scientists had made a huge mistake: The fact that women respond to stress differently than men has significant implications for our health.

It may take some time for new studies to reveal all the ways that oxytocin encourages us to care for children and hang out with other women, but the "tend and befriend" notion developed by Drs. Klein and Taylor may explain why women consistently outlive men. Stud y after study has found that social ties reduce our risk of disease by lowering blood pressure, heart rate, and cholesterol. "There's no doubt," says Dr. Klein, "that friends are helping us live." In one study, for example, researchers found that people who had no friends increased their risk of death over a 6-month period. In another study, those who had the most friends over a 9-year period cut their risk of death by more than 60%.

Friends are also helping us live better. The famed Nurses' Health Study from Harvard Medical School found that the more friends women had, the less likely they were to develop physical impairments as they aged, and the more likely they were to be leading a joyful life.

In fact, the results were so significant, the researchers concluded, that not having close friends or confidantes was as detrimental to your health as smoking or carrying extra weight!

And that's not all! When the researchers looked at how well the women functioned after the death of their spouse, they found that even in the face of this biggest stressor of all, those women who had a close friend and confidante were more likely to survive the experience without any new physical impairments or permanent loss of vitality. Those without friends were not always so fortunate.

Yet if friends counter the stress that seems to swallow up so much of our life these days, if they keep us healthy and even add years to our life, why is it so hard to find time to be wit h them? That's a question that also troubles researcher Ruthellen Josselson, Ph.D., co-author of Best Friends: The Pleasures and Perils of Girls' and Women's Friendships/ (Three Rivers Press, 1998).

"Every time we get overly busy with work and family, the first thing we do is let go of friendships with other women," explains Dr. Josselson. "We push them right to the back burner. That's really a mistake because women are such a source of strength to each other. We nurture one another. And we need to have unpressured space in which we can do the special kind of talk that women do when they're with other women. It's a very healing experience."

Perfect! A recession will further depress the housing market, which will make buying affordable for me. I may yet get my acreage in the ludicrously overpriced area I want to live in :)

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Greenspan warns of likely U.S. recession

HONG KONG - Former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan warned Monday that the American economy might slip into recession by year's end.

He said the U.S. economy has been expanding since 2001 and that there are signs the current economic cycle is coming to an end.

"When you get this far away from a recession invariably forces build up for the next recession, and indeed we are beginning to see that sign," Greenspan said via satellite link to a business conference in Hong Kong. "For example in the U.S., profit margins ... have begun to stabilize, which is an early sign we are in the later stages of a cycle."

"While, yes, it is possible we can get a recession in the latter months of 2007, most forecasters are not making that judgment and indeed are projecting forward into 2008 ... with some slowdown," he said.

Greenspan said that while it would be "very precarious" to try to forecast that far into the future, he could not rule out the possibility of a recession late this year.

The U.S. economy grew at a surprisingly strong 3.5 percent rate in the fourth quarter of 2006, up from a 2 percent rate in the third quarter. A survey released Monday by the National Association for Business Economics showed that experts predict economic growth of 2.7 percent this year, the slowest rate since a 1.6 percent rise in 2002.

Greenspan also warned that the U.S. budget deficit, which for 2006 fell to $247.7 billion, the lowest in four years, remains a concern.

"The American budget deficit is clearly a very significant concern for all of us that are trying to evaluate both the American economy's immediate future and that of the rest of the world," he said via satellite at the VeryGC Global Business Insights 2007 Conference.

Greenspan also said he has seen no economic spillover effects from the slowdown in the U.S. housing market.

Why talk about something that doesn't impact him personally? After all, Jenna and Babs are all grown up and their teeth came out perfect....

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Bush avoids talk about child health care

WASHINGTON - President Bush encouraged governors Monday to support his call for changing the tax code to help more people buy private health care insurance, but did not address their pleas to increase funding for a health care program that insures millions of children of the working poor.

Still, governors said they heard words of at least partial compromise from the administration on a budget dispute that dominated private discussions among governors Sunday.

At stake is coverage for 6 million people, overwhelmingly children, as well as the hopes of many governors in tackling the larger challenge of the uninsured. All governors rely on the State Children's Health Insurance Program, intended to aid uninsured working families.

Bush, welcoming the governors after they met privately with several administration officials, did not offer any comments about the children's health program, talking rather about his larger proposals.

"I'm looking forward to working with Congress on health care. I firmly believe ... that states are often times the best place to reform systems and work on programs that meet needs," he said.

But Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt "made it clear that the administration will work with Congress as far as" short-term shortfalls, said North Dakota Gov. John Hoeven, a Republican. Governors say 14 states could run out of cash before October. In Georgia, it could happen as soon as March.

The governors want two things:

_Enough money to keep the program afloat through October. That is estimated at $745 million.

_Changes to Bush's budget. Analysts say his spending plan would shortchange the health program even if the number of people served did not grow. The long-term shortfall is put at $10 billion to $15 billion over the next five years.

Gov. Jon Corzine, a New Jersey Democrat, warned that the administration's budget promised illusory savings. "You end up paying for this in other ways — uncompensated care, emergency rooms," Corzine said. "This is pay me now or pay me later."

Corzine said he still wanted more clarity from administration officials on support for the short-term funding, but said Leavitt had offered words of compromise.

But the long-term issues over the program remained in dispute, governors said.

The program, approved in 1997, covers uninsured children whose families earn too much to fall under Medicaid, the joint state-federal health care service for the poor.

More than a dozen states have expanded SCHIP, with consent of the federal government, to cover adults in those families. The program now insures an estimated 639,000 adults among its 6 million.

Many governors said the administration's efforts to scale back the program would undermine state efforts to craft universal health care plans. Many of these have started with a target of insuring all children.

California, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania have developed some of the most ambitious proposals to try to get to universal health care coverage. Most states have just tried to strengthen their health care system to cover more people.

At their private session Sunday, governors said there was bipartisan support for help on the immediate needs and a long-term commitment to the current program.

Leavitt said Sunday that there is enough money among states to cover short-term shortfalls, if states with surpluses would share with those with deficits, an idea that has little support among governors. Bush wants SCHIP to remain focused on poor children, not all children and not adults, Leavitt said.

Gov. Ed Rendell, D-Pa., said he was confident that a compromise on the money can be found. He said the administration has been helpful to his efforts to expand coverage and approved a waiver that would let the state cover 180,000 more children. "I want to give the administration high praise," he said.

But most were worried. In Rhode Island, GOP Gov. Don Carcieri said aggressive enrollment efforts had boosted their combined Medicaid and SCHIP program so that 94 percent of children were covered, at its height, before administrative hurdles and other problems caused some backsliding.

"We built all that up," Carcieri said. "We don't want to pull the rug out."

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On the Net:

State Children's Health Insurance Program: http://www.cms.hhs.gov/home/schip.asp

Lack the size and strength to tear catch, kill and tear your prey apart bare-handed? Invent the spear!

Hunting chimps may change view of human evolution

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Chimpanzees have been seen using spears to hunt bush babies, U.S. researchers said on Thursday in a study that demonstrates a whole new level of tool use and planning by our closest living relatives.

Perhaps even more intriguing, it was only the females who fashioned and used the wooden spears, Jill Pruetz and Paco Bertolani of Iowa State University reported.

Bertolani saw an adolescent female chimp use a spear to stab a bush baby as it slept in a tree hollow, pull it out and eat it.

Pruetz and Bertolani, now at Cambridge University in Britain, had been watching the Fongoli community of savanna-dwelling chimpanzees in southeastern Senegal.

The chimps apparently had to invent new ways to gather food because they live in an unusual area for their species, the researchers report in the journal Current Biology.

"This is just an innovative way of having to make up for a pretty harsh environment," Pruetz said in a telephone interview. The chimps must come down from trees to gather food and rest in dry caves during the hot season.

"It is similar to what we say about early hominids that lived maybe 6 million years ago and were basically the precursors to humans."

Chimpanzees are genetically the closest living relatives to human beings, sharing more than 98 percent of our DNA. Scientists believe the precursors to chimps and humans split off from a common ancestor about 7 million years ago.

Chimps are known to use tools to crack open nuts and fish for termites. Some birds use tools, as do other animals such as gorillas, orangutans and even naked mole rats.

But the sophisticated use of a tool to hunt with had never been seen.

Pruetz thought it was a fluke when Bertolani saw the adolescent female hunt and kill the bush baby, a tiny nocturnal primate.

But then she saw almost the same thing. "I saw the behavior over the course of 19 days almost daily," she said.

PLANNING AND FORESIGHT

The chimps choose a branch, strip it of leaves and twigs, trim it down to a stable size and then chew the ends to a point. Then they use it to stab into holes where bush babies might be sleeping.

It is not a highly successful method of hunting. They only ever saw one chimpanzee succeed in getting a bush baby once. The apes mostly eat fruit, bark and legumes.

Part of the problem is this group of chimps is shy of humans, and the females, who seem to do most of this type of hunting, are especially wary. "I am willing to bet the females do it even more than we have seen," she said.

Pruetz noted that male chimps never used the spears. She believes the males use their greater strength and size to grab food and kill prey more easily, so the females must come up with other methods.

"That to me was just as intriguing if not even more so," Pruetz said.

The spear-hunting occurred when the group was foraging together, again unchimplike behavior that might produce more competition between males and females, she said.

Maybe females invented weapons for hunting, Pruetz said.

"The observation that individuals hunting with tools include females and immature chimpanzees suggests that we should rethink traditional explanations for the evolution of such behavior in our own lineage," she concluded in her paper.

Sexed-up images in media hurt young girls: study

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Inescapable media images of sexed-up girls and women posing as adolescents can cause psychological and even physical harm to adolescents and young women, a study in the US has warned.

The pressure of what experts call "sexualization" can lead to depression, eating disorders, and poor academic performance, said the report, released Sunday by the American Psychological Association.

"Sexualization of girls is a broad and increasing problem and is harmful to girls," it concluded.

Adult women dressed as school girls in music videos, bikini-clad dolls in hot tubs, and sexually-charged advertisements featuring teenagers were among the many examples cited.

Such omnipresent images -- on television and the Internet, in movies and magazines -- can also have a negative effect on a young girl's sexual development, the study cautioned.

Based on a comprehensive review of academic literature, the 66-page report noted that young adolescents and girls were particularly at risk "because their sense of self is still being formed."

School performance can also suffer. In one experiment cited, college-aged women were asked to try on and evaluate either a swim suit or a sweater. While they waited for 10 minutes while wearing the garment, they completed a math test.

"The results revealed that young women in swimsuits performed significantly worse ... than those wearing sweaters. No difference were found for young men."

The study, which includes numerous recommendations for concerned parents, coincides with a growing wave of public concern about the impact of highly sexed imagery.

The fashion world has been in turmoil since public authorities in Madrid banned under-weight and under-age models from catwalks last year.

The Italian government and two top fashion associations followed suit, signing a code of ethics in December after top Brazilian model Ana Carolina Reston died of heart failure weighing only 40 kilos (88 pounds).

In France, Health Minister Xavier Bertrand, concerned about the rise of eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia, recently asked a panel of experts to create a similar voluntary code for advertisers and clothing designers on how the female body should be portrayed.

Sunday's study said sexualization occurs when "a person's value comes only from his or her sexual appeal or behavior," when sexuality is inappropriately imposed, or when a person is sexually "objectified."

Looking at popular music videos, the authors quoted songs by the Pussycat Dolls, Kid Rock, and 50 Cent, emphasizing lyrics that they suggested sexually objectified women.

The report said that "sexualization of women is particularly prominent in advertising," and singled out beer commercials as a major offender.

Also cited was a Skechers shoe ad that features pop singer Christina Aguilera dressed as a school girl in pigtails, with her shirt unbuttoned while licking a lollipop.

The popular Bratz dolls, the study noted, depict "girls marketed in bikinis, sitting in a hot tub, mixing drinks, and standing around, while the 'Boyz' play guitar and stand with their surf boards," it said. The dolls come dressed in miniskirts, fishnet stockings, and feather boas.

The report called on parents to take a more active roll in helping to shape the sexual self-image of their children, and to exert consumer pressure on manufacturers and advertisers.

GOP Activists: Bush Won't Listen on Iraq

U.S.News & World Report - Here's another measure of how much trouble President Bush is in politically: Even once-loyal Republican activists are complaining that Bush's senior advisers, including political architect Karl Rove, don't want to listen to their ideas about changing policy in Iraq.

"They just get mad when we bring it up, so we leave it alone," says a prominent conservative who talks regularly to White House officials. The result is that even GOP insiders are losing faith in Bush's Iraq policies, including the "surge" of 21,500 troops now being debated in the House and vigorously defended by the president at his news conference this morning.

One concern is that the next phase of the war will be mismanaged just as past phases have been and that the administration won't recognize how bad things in Iraq have become or how much support Bush has lost at home. On domestic issues, the insiders say Bush's team is more willing to talk about ideas with outsiders. The complaint is that West Wing officials will listen but rarely accept outsiders' ideas.

The Bush team's main goal is to get everyone in GOP circles to repeat the White House talking points to the media, according to several GOP activists.

Housing construction plunges in January

WASHINGTON, Associated Press - Construction of new homes and apartments plunged by 14.3 percent in January, the Commerce Department reported Friday.

The bigger-than-expected drop left construction at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.408 million units, the lowest level in nearly 10 years.

On Thursday, a real estate trade group reported that the slump in housing deepened in the final three months of last year. The National Association of Realtors said that sales of existing homes fell in 40 states and home prices dropped in 49 percent of the metropolitan areas surveyed, the widest price decline in the history of the Realtors' survey.

The head cheerleader for the Realtor's group, David Lereah (aka Captain Obvious), never says anything he thinks will come back to bite him in his fat ass. So when he says things like "When we get the figures for this spring, I expect to see a discernible improvement in both sales and prices.", it's because he knows that sales and prices always fall in winter and pick up in spring. No duh, Dave.

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Housing sales fall in 40 states in 4Q

WASHINGTON, Associated Press - The slump in housing deepened in the final three months of last year with sales falling in 40 states and median home prices declining in nearly half of the metropolitan areas surveyed, a real estate trade group reported Thursday.

The National Association of Realtors report showed that the biggest declines were in former boom areas.

The biggest percentage decline occurred in Nevada, a drop of 36.1 percent in the sales pace in the final three months of 2006 compared to the same period in 2005.

In other former boom areas, Florida saw sales drop by 30.8 percent, in Arizona sales were down 26.9 percent and they fell 21.3 percent in California.

The Realtors said that while sales declined in the fourth quarter in 40 states, six states showed increases and one state, Utah, had an unchanged sales pace. Three states did not report enough data to make comparisons.

Nationally, sales declined by 10.1 percent in the fourth quarter of 2006 compared to the same period a year ago.

The median price of a new home, the midpoint where half the homes sold for more and half for less, was $219,300 in the fourth quarter of last year, a drop of 2.7 percent from the same period a year ago.

Median home prices fell in 49 percent of the 149 metropolitan areas surveyed in the fourth quarter, compared to the same period a year ago. That was the largest percent of metro areas reporting price declines since the Realtors began tracking price data in 1979.

David Lereah, chief economist for the Realtors, said he believed the data shows that housing, which had enjoyed a five-year boom, was bottoming out in the final three months of last year.

"This information confirms 2006 was the year of contraction and hopefully the fourth quarter was the bottom," Lereah said. "When we get the figures for this spring, I expect to see a discernible improvement in both sales and prices."

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On the Net:

Today, Bush says Iran is arming Iraq, trying to get support for his increasingly aggressive posture towards that country. Yesterday, the top US military guy said there is no proof of this.

Is Dubya so amazingly arrogant that he actually believes he can fool the American people twice with the same kind of lie? Oh, why the fuck not, after all, Americans have proved themselves to be the most retarded of sheeple.

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Top US general doubts Iran proof

BBC - General Peter Pace, the most senior US military officer, has said there is no proof the Iranian government has directly armed Shia groups fighting in Iraq.

Gen Peter Pace, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, appeared to contradict claims made by US officers in Iraq.

The US presented evidence this week it said proved the "highest levels" of Iran's government were supplying arms used by Shia militants in Iraq.

Gen Pace said all it proved was "things made in Iran" are being used in Iraq.

"We know that the explosively formed projectiles are manufactured in Iran," Gen Pace said while visiting Australia.

"But I would not say by what I know that the Iranian government clearly knows or is complicit."

In the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, Gen Pace repeated his assertions.

"What [the evidence] does say is that things made in Iran are being used in Iraq to kill coalition soldiers."

In Washington, White House spokesman Tony Snow said the US stood by the evidence presented, insisting the weapons were being moved into Iraq by Iran's revolutionary guards, or al-Quds force.

"The Quds Force is, in fact, an official arm of the Iranian government and, as such, the government bears responsibility and accountability for its actions, as you would expect of any sovereign government," he said.

'Meddling'

Speaking anonymously on Sunday, US defence officials in Baghdad told reporters that the Iranian were supplying sophisticated bombs capable of penetrating the armour of a US-made Abrams tank.

The bombs were being used to deadly effect, killing more than 170 US troops since June 2004, the sources said.

The US has increased the pressure on Iran in recent weeks, repeatedly accusing Tehran of meddling in Iraqi affairs.

Last month, five Iranians were detained by the US in the northern Iraqi city of Irbil. The US later accused them of working for the al-Quds Force.

Suggestions by some analysts that the US allegations against Iran were intended to prepare public opinion in the US for an attack on Iranian nuclear facilities have prompted public statements by the leaders of both nations.

US President George W Bush dismissed suggestions of a plan to attack Iran as "noise" by critics of his administration.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in an interview with US TV, said he was ready for talks with the US, but would defend Iran in the event of any attack.

Bush: Iran supplying weapons in Iraq

WASHINGTON, Associated Press - President Bush said Wednesday he's convinced that the Iranian government is supplying deadly weapons to fighters in Iraq, even if he can't prove the orders came from the highest levels in Tehran.

More important, Bush said in his first news conference of the year, is protecting U.S. troops against the lethal new threat. "I'm going to do something about it," Bush said.

U.S. officials have said that Iran helped on attacks on troops in Iraq, an assertion denied by Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Meanwhile, Bush shrugged off congressional debate on a resolution opposing his Iraq policy, noting that the measure was nonbinding and mostly symbolic. But he said U.S. troops are counting on lawmakers to provide them the funds they need to win.

Bush spoke as the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives debated a measure opposing his decision to send some 21,500 additional troops to Iraq.

"They have every right to express their opposition and it is a nonbinding resolution," he said of the House members, who were continuing a marathon Iraq policy debate on Capitol Hill even as he spoke.

In his first news conference since Dec. 20, Bush said he received a briefing earlier in the day from Iraq from newly-confirmed Gen. David Petraeus, the new chief commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, who is now in Baghdad.

"We talked about the coordination between Iraqi and coalition forces," Bush said. For now, he said, that coordination appeared to be good, although Bush said much work remains.

Meanwhile, Bush responded carefully when asked about Russian President Vladimir Putin's recent sharp criticism of U.S. foreign and military policy. Bush said he had a "complicated relationship" with the Russian leader.

Bush also said that he and Putin have a lot they agree on, and that's what people in the United States need to understand. Chief among those common priorities, Bush said, is making sure that Iran does not develop nuclear weapons.

Putin slammed U.S. domination of world affairs at an international conference of security officials in Germany over the weekend, saying it was making the world more dangerous by overusing its military power.

The depth of Putin's criticism surprised U.S. officials. Moscow and Washington drew closer together immediately after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, but more recently relations have been more strained.

Also, Bush:

• Welcomed North Korea's tentative agreement, announced Tuesday, to shut down its nuclear program in exchange for oil. But, said Bush, "those who say the North Koreans have got to prove themselves by following through on the deal are right, and I'm one. This is a good first step."

• Refused to answer questions about the perjury trial of former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, drawing laughs when the told the questioner, "Would you like to think of another question? Being the kind man that I am, I will recycle you."

_Also refused to answer questions on the 2008 presidential race — a pledge he said he planned to stick to throughout. "I will resist all temptation to become the pundit-in-chief," Bush said.

On the subject of alleged Iranian involvement in Iraq, Bush appeared to back away from a weekend briefing in Baghdad by three senior U.S. military officials. They said shipments into Iraq of deadly new weapons had been approved at the highest levels in Tehran.

Bush said he could say "with certainty" that the weapons were provided by an elite part of Iran's Revolutionary Guards that is part of the government.

But, the president added, he does not know whether the weapons were "ordered from the top echelons of government. But, my point is, what's worse, them ordering it and it happening, or them not ordering it and it happening?"

...but Congress can't get its shit together to fix America...

Efforts to set up benefits talks sputter

WASHINGTON, Associated Press - Back-channel efforts by the White House and Capitol Hill Democrats to begin trying to negotiate a solution to the fiscal problems of Social Security and other federal benefit programs appeared to collapse Wednesday.

At issue is a little-publicized attempt by the White House and lawmakers to set up a working group of lawmakers and top administration officials to construct a Social Security solution. Three-fourths of the group, evenly split between Democrats and Republicans, would have had to agree on any solution.

But Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, D-N.D., accused the White House of acting in bad faith at a panel hearing that turned acrimonious over White House Budget Director Rob Portman's unwillingness to acknowledge that tax increases should be part of any fix for Social Security's long-term problems.

"We have an opportunity here to work together, but the only way I know in human relations for there to be resolution between parties who have different views is for both sides to compromise," Conrad said. "Unfortunately I see virtually none on your side. And I regret that more than I can say."

Conrad then gaveled the hearing to an end and immediately left.

Portman says the administration is willing to come to the negotiating table with no preconditions — a change from the stance President Bush took two years, when he ruled out hikes in Social Security payroll taxes — but told reporters "the first step shouldn't prejudge where we end up."

The idea of establishing the negotiating group had come close to fruition, Conrad said in an interview Saturday, but Vice President Dick Cheney set talks back last month after saying in a Fox News Sunday interview that the administration continues to oppose payroll tax hikes as part of a broader Social Security solution.

Top Senate Budget Committee Republican Judd Gregg of New Hampshire said House Democrats opposed the idea.

Parents need to step up and do their jobs, not just let their kids run around like wild indians and expect the world and the school system to do their jobs as parents for them...

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Sex of any kind can harm teens emotionally

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Teenagers often suffer emotional consequences from having sex, even when it's "only" oral sex, a study published Monday suggests.

Researchers at the University of California San Francisco found that up to one-half of the sexually active teenagers in their study said they'd ever felt "used," guilty or regretful after having sex.

Though such feelings were less common among teens who'd only had oral sex, about one-third reported some type of negative consequence.

Dr. Sonya S. Brady and Bonnie L. Halpern-Felsher report the findings in the journal Pediatrics.

The study, according to the researchers, suggests that parents should be sure to talk with their kids about the potential negative effects of having oral sex, not only intercourse.

"When parents and teens talk about the consequences of having 'sex,' they may not take the time to define what sex is," Brady and Halpern-Felsher noted in comments to Reuters Health.

"It is important for parents to help teens understand that having oral sex may result in social, emotional and physical health consequences -- just as having vaginal sex may result in these consequences."

In particular, the study found, girls were twice as likely as boys to say they'd ever "felt bad about themselves" after having sex, and three times more likely to say they'd felt used.

Though the study could not look at the reasons for this difference, other studies have noted that there's pressure on girls to at once be sexually attractive yet resist having sex.

"In contrast, boys' sexuality and sexual behavior is generally accepted," Brady and Halpern-Felsher pointed out. "Parents can play an important role in helping to eliminate this double standard by encouraging respect for women and discouraging the use of derogatory sexual terms."

The findings are based on a series of surveys given to 618 students at two public high schools, beginning in ninth grade when they were 14 years old. Of these, 275 reported having oral sex, vaginal sex or both by the spring of tenth grade.

Among the sexually active teens, those who said they'd had only oral sex were generally less likely to report negative consequences, whether physical -- pregnancy or sexually transmitted infections -- or emotional.

However, they were also less likely to report positive effects, like feeling closer to their partner or feeling good about themselves. Such positive feelings about sex were common, the study found. In fact, the teens more often reported positive effects than negative ones.

This suggests that when parents talk with their kids about sex, it might be a good idea to acknowledge the potential positive outcomes, like emotional intimacy, Brady and Halpern-Felsher note in their report. Parents could then talk about other ways to find those same feelings.

Bush budget trims health care funds

WASHINGTON, Associated Press - Health care providers would get smaller pay increases when caring for the elderly, poor and disabled under President Bush's budget plan submitted to Congress on Monday.

The recommendations, if adopted, would trim Medicare spending by $66 billion over five years. That means the health care program for seniors would grow at a 6.7 percent clip rather than a 7.6 percent rate, budget officials said.

Bush also calls for reducing Medicaid spending by about $25 billion over five years, which would just slightly dent the more than $1.2 trillion the federal government will spend on health care for the poor over the next five years. Congress would have to sign off on about half of the proposed Medicaid savings, while the remainder are regulatory changes that administration will pursue.

The president, who said he seeks a balanced budget by 2012, took aim at the two programs, which account for $1 out of every $4 spent by the federal government. However, the president called for smaller reductions last year, and those proposals went nowhere.

Democratic lawmakers were cool to the recommendations. Rep. Pete Stark, D-Calif., described the Medicare and Medicaid proposals as "declaring war" on the poor and on Democrats. Stark, who oversees the House Ways and Means Committee's health subcommittee, said that savings can be achieved by targeting payments to health care providers, but not in the ways that President Bush sought.

For example, Stark said that he believes Congress can lower payments to insurance companies that provide managed care for seniors, a concept the administration opposes.

Sen. Max Baucus (news, bio, voting record), D-Mont., chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, noted that the proposed Medicare reductions are more than the president asked from any previous Congress.

Baucus said payments to insurance companies that provide managed care should be "on the table" of potential spending cuts. He took issue with the changes that Bush seeks for the State Children's Health Insurance Program, which provides health coverage to about 6 million people.

The program cost about $5 billion annually. The president called for an additional $4.2 billion in funding over five years, but Baucus said it may take as much as $15 billion simply to maintain current coverage.

"Simply put, Congress must do more to fund the Children's Health Insurance Program than the president suggests here," Baucus said.

Hospitals, nursing homes and other providers say that they can't afford lower payments from the government.

"Today's budget is devastating news for children, seniors and the disabled who depend on the Medicare and Medicaid programs," said Rich Umbdenstock, president of the American Hospital Association. "They are being unfairly singled out to carry the burden of achieving a balanced budget."

Even with the attempt to slow entitlement spending, the budget for the Department of Health and Human Services will rise about 8.7 percent next year.

The other parts of the HHS budget didn't fare nearly so well.

The budget recommends a $50 million reduction for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which is the principal agency for protecting the health and safety of all Americans. Funding for the agency would total $5.76 billion. Grants to states for bioterrorism preparation would be reduced, and funding remains at current levels for preventing the nation's leading health problems — heart disease and cancer.

Meanwhile, funding for the National Institutes of Health, which oversees medical research, would rise nearly 2 percent to about $28.7 billion.

___

On the Net:

So what they are actually saying is they won't stop shitting where we sleep, because oil and coal fatcats might have to, I dunno, adjust their profit margins or something equally catastrophic (see 2nd article, about record-breaking oil profits).

Since when is everything about how much money we make? At some point, the health and welfare of the human race HAS to take priority over the profits of a handful of dysfunctional conglomerates!

White House rejects mandatory CO2 caps

WASHINGTON Associated Press - Despite a strongly worded global warming report from the world's top climate scientists, the Bush administration expressed continued opposition Friday to mandatory reductions in heat-trapping "greenhouse" gases.

Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman warned against "unintended consequences" — including job losses — that he said might result if the government requires economy-wide caps on carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels.

"There is a concern within this administration, which I support, that the imposition of a carbon cap in this country would — may — lead to the transfer of jobs and industry abroad (to nations) that do not have such a carbon cap," Bodman said. "You would then have the U.S. economy damaged, on the one hand, and the same emissions, potentially even worse emissions."

President Bush used the same economic reasoning when he rejected the Kyoto Protocol in 2001, an international treaty requiring 35 industrial nations to cut their global-warming gases by 5 percent on average below 1990 levels by 2012. The White House has said the treaty would have cost 5 million U.S. jobs.

"Even if we were successful in accomplishing some kind of debate and discussion about what caps might be here in the United States, we are a small contributor to the overall, when you look at the rest of the world. And so it's really got to be a global solution," Bodman said.

The United States each year contributes about a quarter of the world's greenhouse gases, though the share from China, India and other developing countries also is growing.

Bodman said he would make the same argument against carbon caps even if the U.S. share were larger. He and other administration officials at a news conference praised the report Friday by a

United Nations-sponsored panel of hundreds of climate scientists from 113 governments, who said there is little doubt the earth is warming as a result of man-made emissions.

But Bodman said technology advancements that will cut the amount of carbon emissions, promote energy conservation, and hasten development of non-fossil fuels can address the problem.

"This administration's aggressive, yet practical strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is delivering real results," added Stephen Johnson, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.

More than a half-dozen bills have been introduced, mostly by Democrats, calling for some form of mandatory carbon controls in the United States. Democrats newly in control of Congress and other critics of Bush's environmental policies pounced on the long-awaited U.N. report like fresh meat.

"This puts the final nail in denial's coffin," said Sen. Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., head of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

Rep. Edward Marke, D-Mass., a senior member of House panels on energy and natural resources, said he hoped it wouldn't take until Groundhog Day two years from now, when a new president is in the White House, to alter course in the United States.

"It sounds like the Bush administration, having seen the very real shadow of scientific evidence of global warming, has chosen to go back into its hole of denial by saying that it will not support measures to reduce global warming and its disastrous affects on our economy and environment," Markey said.

The White House issued a statement less than four hours after the report's release defending Bush's six-year record on global climate change, beginning with his acknowledgment in 2001 that the increase in greenhouse gases is due largely to human activity.

It said Bush and his budget proposals have devoted $29 billion to climate-related science, technology, international assistance and incentive programs — "more money than any other country."

Bush has called for slowing the growth rate of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, which averages 1 percent a year, but has rejected government-ordered reductions. Last week he also called for a 20 percent reduction in U.S. gasoline consumption over the next 10 years.

"This report really provides strong weight behind those saying we need much stronger action" from the United States and other nations, said Robert Watson, the World Bank's chief spokesman on global warming and former chairman of the U.N. scientific panel responsible for evaluating the threat of

Chevron profit jumps to 17.1 billion dollars for year

SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) - US oil giant Chevron said its full-year 2006 profit rose 22 percent to a company record 17.1 billion dollars even though fourth-quarter results were squeezed by falling energy prices.

Net income for the fourth quarter of 2006 fell nine percent from the same period a year ago to 3.77 billion dollars for the second-largest US petroleum group.

The profit translated to 1.74 dollars per share, a penny ahead of Wall Street forecasts.

Chevron said the results for the October-December period were hurt by a 42 percent drop in natural gas prices.

"Fourth-quarter earnings benefited from an improvement in the operating performance of our oil and gas fields and refineries, especially in the United States," said chairman and chief executive Dave O'Reilly.

"However, this benefit to earnings was more than offset by the effect of a sharp decline in US natural gas prices from a year earlier."

Total revenues fell 11 percent in the quarter to 47.7 billion dollars, but for the year increased six percent to 210 billion dollars.

The company got a lift for the year from a 43 percent rise in operating profits from the downstream operations of refining and marketing, and was helped by a favorable comparison to 2005 when much of its US production was hampered by Hurricane Katrina.

"We achieved success on many fronts in 2006," O'Reilly said.

"Earnings for the year were a record for our company, and we operated safely and reliably. Our refineries achieved their highest utilization rate in several years. We also completed the integration of the former Unocal operations and reached a number of milestones during the year on our major capital projects."

He added, "As we begin 2007, our queue of excellent projects, strong financial position and dedicated workforce provide a solid foundation for our company's future growth."

Global warming man-made, will continue

PARIS, Associated Press - A panel of international scientists predicted Friday that global warming will continue for centuries no matter how much people control pollution, in a bleak report that blamed humans for killer heat waves, devastating droughts and stronger storms.

The report said people were "very likely" the cause of global warming — the strongest conclusion to date — and placed the burden on governments to take action.

"It's later than we think," said Susan Solomon, co-chair of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Man-made emissions of greenhouse gases are to blame for fewer cold days, hotter nights, heat waves, floods and heavy rains, droughts and stronger storms, particularly in the Atlantic Ocean, the 21-page report said.

It highlighted "increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global mean sea level."

Authors of the report called it conservative: It used only peer-reviewed published science and was edited by representatives of 113 governments who had to agree to every word. It was a snapshot of where the world is with global warming and where it is heading, but does not tell governments what to do.

Yet if nothing is done, the world is looking at billions of dollars in costs adapting to a warmer world over the next century, co-author Kevin Trenberth said in an interview. He also warned of at least 1 million deaths in droughts, floods and hurricanes.

The study said no matter how much civilization slows or reduces its greenhouse gas emissions, global warming and sea-level rise will continue for centuries.

"This is just not something you can stop. We're just going to have to live with it," said Trenberth, the director of climate analysis at the U.S National Center for Atmospheric Research. "We're creating a different planet. If you were to come back in 100 years' time, we'll have a different climate."

Scientists fear world leaders will take that message in the wrong way and throw up their hands, Trenberth said. Instead, the scientists urged leaders to reduce emissions and adapt to a warmer world with wilder weather.

"The point here is to highlight what will happen if we don't do something and what will happen if we do something," said another author, Jonathan Overpeck of the University of Arizona. "I can tell you if you decide not to do something the impacts will be much larger than if we do something."

The next step is up to public officials, scientists said.

"It is critical that we look at this report ... as a moment where the focus of attention will shift from whether climate change is linked to human activity, whether the science is sufficient, to what on earth are we going to do about it," U.N. Environment Program Executive Director Achim Steiner said.

The strongly worded report put pressure on the Bush administration to reduce the United States' growing share of gases that trap heat in the atmosphere.

The White House issued a statement less than four hours after the report's release defending

President Bush's six-year record on climate change.

It said Bush and his budget proposals have devoted $29 billion to climate-related science, technology, international assistance and incentive programs — "more money than any other country."

Bush has called for slowing the growth rate of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, which averages 1 percent a year, but has rejected government-ordered reductions.

Since 1990, U.S. greenhouse gas emissions have gone up 16 percent. The Bush administration has rejected the Kyoto Protocol, which calls for cuts in emissions of greenhouse gases.

Sharon Hays, White House associate science adviser, called the study "a significant report. It will be valuable to policy makers."

Another report by the panel later this year will address the most effective measures for slowing global warming.

If it looks bad now, the harmful effects during the 21st century "would very likely be larger than those observed during the 20th century," the report said.

The panel predicted temperature rises of 2-11.5 degrees Fahrenheit by the year 2100. It said its best estimate was for temperature rises of 3.2-7.1 degrees.

On sea levels, the report projects rises of 7-23 inches by the end of the century. An additional 3.9-7.8 inches are possible if recent, surprising melting of polar ice sheets continues.

The panel, created by the United Nations in 1988, releases its assessments every five or six years, though scientists have been observing aspects of climate change since as far back as the 1960s. The reports are released in phases — this is the first of four this year.

The projected effects of global warming would vary in different parts of the globe. The closer to the poles, the higher the temperature spikes, the study said.

Dramatic temperature spikes are likely to be seen within 22 years in most of the Northern Hemisphere, the report showed. Northern Africa and other places will see dramatically less rainfall.

The United States could see a 10-degree temperature rise by the end of the century and a more arid south and west, Overpeck said.

And that's just average temperature increases and rainfall amounts, something that doesn't affect people much. The harshest consequences of global warming are the heat waves, droughts, floods, and hurricanes, said study co-author Philip Jones of Britain's University of East Anglia. And those have increased dramatically in the past decade and will get worse in the future, he said.

Global warming could eventually lead to an "ice-free Arctic," warned Gerry Meehl, an official with the U.S National Center for Atmospheric Research.

And when that happened 125,000 years ago, seas rose between 13 and 20 feet. That is looking like a real possibility for the 22nd Century, the report said, though some scientists fear much of it could happen before the end of the century.

Trenberth said the world is paying more attention to scientists now than to previous warnings in 1990, 1995 and 2001. "The tension is more now," he said.

As the IPCC report was being released, environmental activists rappelled off a Paris bridge and draped a banner over a statue used often as a popular gauge of whether the Seine River is running high.

"Alarm bells are ringing. The world must wake up to the threat," said Catherine Pearce of Friends of the Earth.

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On the Net:

Report: http://www.ipcc.ch/SPM2feb2007.pdf

Mankind to blame for global warming say scientists

PARIS (Reuters) - Mankind is to blame for global warming, the world's top climate scientists said on Friday, sending governments a "crystal clear" warning they must take urgent action to avert damage that could last for centuries.

The United Nations panel, which groups 2,500 scientists from more than 130 nations, predicted more droughts, heatwaves and a slow gain in sea levels that could continue for more than 1,000 years even if greenhouse gas emissions were capped.

The panel's report predicts a "best estimate" that temperatures would rise by between 1.8 and 4.0 Celsius (3.2 and 7.8 Fahrenheit) in the 21st century.

"Faced with this emergency, now is not the time for half measures. It is the time for a revolution, in the true sense of the term," French President Jacques Chirac said. "We are in truth on the historical doorstep of the irreversible."

The scientists said it was "very likely" -- or more than 90 percent probable -- that human activities led by burning fossil fuels explained most of the warming in the past 50 years.

That is a toughening from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) last report in 2001, which judged a link as "likely," or 66 percent probable.

Extreme weather may be becoming more frequent. Fourteen people died in storms and at least one tornado in central Florida on Friday. Other possible signs include drought in Australia or record high winter temperatures in Europe.

Many governments, U.N. agencies and environmental groups urged a widening of the U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol, which binds 35 industrial nations to cut emissions by 2012 but excludes top emitters led by the United States, China and India.

"The signal we've received from the scientists today is crystal clear and it's important that the political response is also crystal clear," said Yvo de Boer, head of the U.N. Climate Secretariat.

GREEN SUMMIT

He wants an emergency environment summit of world leaders this year to push for wider action. Kyoto has been weakened since the United States pulled out in 2001 and emissions by many backers of Kyoto are far above target.

The Bush administration played down the U.S. contribution to climate change even though the country is the biggest single source of greenhouse gases, with a quarter of the world total.

"We are a small contributor when you look at the rest of the world," U.S. Energy Secretary Sam Bodman said of greenhouse gas emissions after the IPCC report. "It's really got to be a global discussion."

A 21-page summary of IPCC findings for policy makers outlines wrenching change such as a possible melting of Arctic sea ice in summers by 2100 and says it is "more likely than not" that greenhouse gases have made tropical cyclones more intense.

The report projects a rise in sea levels of between 18 and 59 centimeters (7 and 23 inches) in the 21st century -- and said bigger gains cannot be ruled out if ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland thaw.

Rising seas threaten low-lying islands, coasts of countries such as Bangladesh and cities from Shanghai to Buenos Aires.

Temperatures rose 0.7 degrees in the 20th century and the 10 hottest years since records began in the 1850s have been since 1994. Greenhouse gases are released mainly by burning fossil fuels in power plants, factories and cars.

President Bush says Kyoto-style caps would harm the economy and that Kyoto should include developing nations. His policies will brake the growth of emissions but stop short of caps favored by most of his industrial allies.

Democrats who control both houses of Congress want tougher action.

The president of Kiribati, a group of 33 Pacific coral atolls threatened by rising seas, said time was running out.

"The question is, what can we do now? There's very little we can do about arresting the process," President Anote Tong said.

"There is no single solution," the International Energy Agency said. It wants more energy savings, more renewable energy, nuclear power and efforts to make fossil fuels cleaner.

Dire global warming report won't change U.S. policy

Washington, Associated Press - Despite a strongly worded global warming report from the world's top climate scientists, the Bush administration expressed continued opposition today to mandatory reductions in heat-trapping "greenhouse" gases.

Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman warned against "unintended consequences" - including job losses - that he said might result if the government requires economy-wide caps on carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels.

He and other administration officials at a news conference praised the report today by a United Nations-sponsored panel of top climate scientist who said there is little doubt the earth is warming as a result of man-made emissions.

But Bodman said technology advancements that will cut the amount of carbon emissions, promote energy conservation, and hasten development of non-fossil fuels can address the problem.

"We have aggressive but practical solutions," added Stephen Johnson, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.

More than a half-dozen bills have been introduced, mostly by Democrats, calling for some form of mandatory carbon controls in the United States, which emits a quarter of the earth's carbon dioxide releases into the atmosphere.

Democrats newly in control of Congress and other critics of President Bush's environmental policies pounced on the long-awaited United Nations report like fresh meat.

"Although President Bush just noticed that the earth is heating up, the American public, every reputable scientist and other world leaders have long recognized that global warming is real and it's serious. The time to act is now," said Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., who with GOP Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine crafted one of a half-dozen competing bills to address global warming.

Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., a senior member of House panels on energy and natural resources, said that "for those who are still trying to determine responsibility for global warming, this new U.N. report on climate change is a scientific smoking gun." The White House issued a statement less than four hours after the report's release defending Bush's six-year record on global climate change, beginning with his acknowledgment in 2001 that the increase in greenhouse gases is due largely to human activity.

It said Bush and his budget proposals have devoted $29 billion to climate-related science, technology, international assistance and incentive programs - "more money than any other country." Bush has called for slowing the growth rate of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, which averages 1 percent a year, but has rejected government-ordered reductions. Last week he also called for a 20 percent reduction in U.S. gasoline consumption over the next 10 years.

Markey said it will be Congress who will have "to meet this challenge by moving aggressively to transition away from forms of energy which have the capacity to destroy the planet as we know it." Larry Schweiger, president of the National Wildlife Federation, called it already "past time to act and solve global warming with the urgency and determination with which Americans have successfully confronted other threats to our security and to wildlife." "This report really provides strong weight behind those saying we need much stronger action" from the United States and other nations, said Robert Watson, the World Bank's chief spokesman on global warming and former chairman of the U.N. scientific panel responsible for evaluating the threat of climate change.

Some evangelical Christians who helped Bush win re-election in 2004 demanded he provide more world leadership on the issue in light of the new U.N. report.

"I am absolutely certain that as Christians we need to act today to curb global warming pollution," said Jim Ball, national coordinator of the Evangelical Climate Initiative and president of the Evangelical Environmental Network.

The entire state of Montana is suing the state of Wyoming... how fucked is that...

Montana sues Wyoming over water rights

BILLINGS, Mont., Associated Press - Montana sued Wyoming in the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday over water rights in two shared rivers, which Montana claims are running dry due to Wyoming's overuse.

The lawsuit over the Tongue and Powder rivers, which flow from northeastern Wyoming into southeastern Montana, marks a sharp escalation in the water fight between the states.

The lawsuit alleges Wyoming is ignoring Montana's "senior" water rights by taking more water from the rivers than allowed under the 1950 Yellowstone River Compact. That includes water diverted and stored for irrigation and ground water pumped from beneath the surface during coal-bed methane production.

"We're running out of water," said Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer. "It's getting worse every year as Wyoming is using more and more water. ... Our farmers and ranchers who depend on this water for irrigation are having difficulty raising their crops."

Wyoming Gov. Dave Freudenthal said he was disappointed with the lawsuit, but not surprised since Montana had been "agitating for a fight" over the rivers for several years.

"We will vigorously defend our water rights and our sovereign interests to control our own destiny," he said.

The 1950 compact calls for disagreements to go straight to the Supreme Court for resolution.

Both states have suffered from a prolonged drought dating to 1999. Wyoming State Engineer Patrick Tyrell said that in recent years due to the drought, only a "small fraction" of Wyoming's water users in the Powder and Tongue river basins received the water they needed.

But Montana officials say their state is bearing the greater burden. Montana Natural Resources and Conservation Director Mary Sexton said anyone flying over the border region last summer would have seen a sharp contrast: green on the Wyoming side, brown in Montana.

Montana officials could not quantify how much water they believe the state is owed.

The lawsuit also names North Dakota as a defendant, but only because that state also is part of the water compact. Montana officials said the lawsuit seeks no relief from North Dakota.