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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
RGE Monitor
The Economist
Landover Baptist Church
The Onion
Ernie's House of Whoop Ass

The calamity curve

Christian Science Monitor - Big natural disasters don't need to be big human disasters. California proved that in its preparation and response to recent catastrophic wildfires – putting New Orleans to shame. But not all the lessons from such calamities have yet to be learned. Just look at Florida.

Rather than allow market signals of higher insurance rates to force changes in where and how people live in hurricane-prone areas, the state recently put taxpayers on the hook by promising to be the insurer of last resort. Government is now the largest insurer in Florida. Another major storm could overwhelm its revenues.

Now, having recognized that Floridians face an unbearable financial hit, state officials are desperately pressuring Congress to set up a subsidized, national "catastrophe fund" that would bail out homeowners who choose to live in disaster-prone areas. A bill is moving quickly on Capitol Hill.

Florida needs to take a cue from California.

Not only has California allowed higher insurance rates to send signals to homeowners who live recklessly in risky danger zones, it is also imposing tougher property standards. In San Diego County especially, officials have learned many lessons from the 2003 wildfires – the largest in California's recent history – that killed 16 people and destroyed 2,458 homes.

In a new defensive policy known as "shelter in place," the county set construction and landscape codes in 2004 for new homes in fire-prone areas. These included the use of noncombustible roof materials, indoor sprinklers, fire-resistant vegetation, and a 100-foot-wide protection perimeter.

The result? In five new subdivisions that met those codes, this month's wildfires raced by them and not a single house was lost.

They can't afford to keep it, they can't sell it, and they can't afford to rent it because rents are not enough to cover the exorbitant mortgage payments, so they just plain walk away...

Homeowner vacancy rate climbs

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The share of homes owned but empty edged back up in the third quarter toward a record set earlier this year, the Census Bureau said on Friday, another sign of weakness in the housing sector.

The homeowner vacancy rate rose to 2.7 percent from 2.6 percent in the second quarter, indicating a large share of the nation's homes are on the market but not selling, said Dean Baker, a director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington.

"There are a lot of vacant homes out there and a lot of pressure on many homeowners to sell," he said.

The vacancy rate had been steadily climbing since the fourth quarter of 2004 when it was 1.8 percent and hit a record 2.8 percent at the end of the March. The figure took a dip to 2.6 percent in the second quarter.

"The market will really begin to recover only after sellers capitulate on prices."

When Will Housing Hit Bottom?

MarketWatch - The housing market is just getting worse. Home resales tumbled 8% in September to the lowest levels in this decade, prompting the obvious question: When will it all end?

The honest answer is no one knows. Optimists have been saying for more than a year that the worst is behind us, while the pessimists have been saying recovery is still a year, or years, away.

So far, the pessimists have been right about the weakness in the housing market, but their forecast that the collapse in housing would lead to a general economic malaise has, at least so far, failed to pan out. The economy has slowed, but has not fallen into recession, as consumers and investors adjust to a world in which home prices don't automatically rise 5% or 10% a year.

The only thing that's clear now is that the housing market has gotten worse since the spring. The market was in a free fall in September. Sales of existing home fell 8%, while inventories of unsold homes rose to a 10.5-month supply. It could take 320 days for a home to sell.

Sales of existing single-family homes are down 20% in the past year, the fastest decline in 16 years.

Median prices have dropped 4% in the past year, in part because fewer expensive homes are being sold, but also because the typical home is worth less than it was a year ago.

Homes are only worth what someone is willing to pay for them, and right now, most homes on the market have no buyer in sight. Prices may have to fall much more to bring supply and demand back into balance, economists say.

For years, I've been warning my friends about this. It's one of the many reasons I'm relocating to the Pacific northwest, close to solid water sources - I don't want to be 'downstream' from anyone. My friends also said I was nuts when I warned them about increasing ferocity of hurricanes, the likelihood of a really serious firestorm in overbuilt southern California, and the bottom dropping out of the real estate market. I enjoyed having the last laugh there, too.

Much of U.S. could see a water shortage

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla, Associated Press . - An epic drought in Georgia threatens the water supply for millions. Florida doesn't have nearly enough water for its expected population boom. The Great Lakes are shrinking. Upstate New York's reservoirs have dropped to record lows. And in the West, the Sierra Nevada snowpack is melting faster each year.

Across America, the picture is critically clear — the nation's freshwater supplies can no longer quench its thirst.

The government projects that at least 36 states will face water shortages within five years because of a combination of rising temperatures, drought, population growth, urban sprawl, waste and excess.

"Is it a crisis? If we don't do some decent water planning, it could be," said Jack Hoffbuhr, executive director of the Denver-based American Water Works Association.

Water managers will need to take bold steps to keep taps flowing, including conservation, recycling, desalination and stricter controls on development.

"We've hit a remarkable moment," said Barry Nelson, a senior policy analyst with the Natural Resources Defense Council. "The last century was the century of water engineering. The next century is going to have to be the century of water efficiency."

The price tag for ensuring a reliable water supply could be staggering. Experts estimate that just upgrading pipes to handle new supplies could cost the nation $300 billion over 30 years.

"Unfortunately, there's just not going to be any more cheap water," said Randy Brown, Pompano Beach's utilities director.

It's not just America's problem — it's global.

$373 million, just to make the investigation go away?! How much damage have they actually done??

BP to pay $373 million in federal probe

WASHINGTON, Associated Press - Oil and gas giant BP PLC agreed Thursday to pay $373 million in fines and restitution to end investigations into whether it manipulated energy markets and violated environmental laws, the Justice Department said.

Additionally, four former BP employees were indicted by a federal grand jury in Chicago on 20 counts of mail and wire fraud charges connected to the price-fixing scheme.

BP, Europe's second-largest energy company, will pay an estimated $50 million as part of an agreement to plead guilty for violating the Clean Air Act as a result of a 2005 explosion at its Texas City refinery that killed 15 employees and injured more than 170 others.

Additionally, it will pay $20 million in criminal fines and restitution to the state of Alaska and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation for pipeline leaks of crude oil that polluted tundra and a frozen lake in Alaska.

The rest of the fines aim to punish BP for conspiring to manipulate propane prices.

[British Petroleum's cuddly 'environmentally sensitive' logo, a triumph of branding disconnected from business practice reality.]

This is affecting our health, the health of everyone in the world, I'm outraged. BushCo has decided for you that certain information that could kill you is not anything you need to know about. Whew! Thank god they're looking out for me!

"The public health effects of climate change remain largely unaddressed. CDC considers climate change a serious public health concern," the draft says. The phrase was not in the testimony given the committee or in her other remarks at the hearing.

Gerberding referred briefly to a chart, displayed at the hearing, that listed the potential health effect, but provided little elaboration. Examples included excessive heat, respiratory problems, more air pollution and possible spread of animal-transmitted and waterborne diseases.

The original text devoted six (of 12) pages — all deleted — to these items."

White House chided for editing testimony

WASHINGTON, Associated Press - Two chairmen of key committees in the House and Senate on Wednesday criticized the White House for editing testimony from a government expert about the health impacts of global warming and demanded documents involving the testimony he provided to Congress.

"I am deeply concerned that important scientific and health information was removed from the ... testimony at the last minute," Sen. Barbara Boxer, chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, wrote President Bush.

Rep. Bart Gordon, D-Tenn., chairman of the House Science and Technology Committee, demanded an explanation from the White House's chief science adviser, John Marburger, about the handing of the testimony earlier this week by Dr. Julie Gerberding, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. She appeared Tuesday before Boxer's committee, which is crafting global warming legislation.

"We expect our government researchers and scientists to provide both Congress and the public the full results of their taxpayer-supported work without the filter that those of opposing views might like to impose," Gordon wrote Marburger.

White House cut warming impact testimony

WASHINGTON, Associated Press - The White House severely edited congressional testimony given Tuesday by the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on the impact of climate change on health, removing specific scientific references to potential health risks, according to two sources familiar with the documents.

Dr. Julie Gerberding, director of the Atlanta-based CDC, the government's premier disease monitoring agency, told a Senate hearing that climate change "is anticipated to have a broad range of impacts on the health of Americans."

But her prepared testimony was devoted entirely to the CDC's preparation, with few details on what effects climate change could have on the spread of disease. Only during questioning did she describe some specific diseases that likely would be affected, again without elaboration.

Her testimony before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee had much less information on health risks than a much longer draft version Gerberding submitted to the White House Office of Management and Budget for review in advance of her appearance.

"It was eviscerated," said a CDC official, familiar with both versions, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the review process.

The official said that while it is customary for testimony to be changed in a White House review, these changes were particularly "heavy-handed," with the document cut from its original 14 pages to four. It was six pages as presented to the Senate committee.

The OMB had no comment on Gerberding's testimony.

"We generally don't speculate and comment on anything until it is the final product," said OMB spokesman Sean Kevelighan. He added that OMB reviews take into consideration "whether they ... line up well with the national priorities of the administration."

The CDC is part of the Department of Health and Human Services and its congressional testimony, as is normal with all agencies, is routinely reviewed by OMB.

But Gerberding, who could not be reached late Tuesday for comment, was said to have been surprised by the extensive changes. Copies of the original testimony already had been sent to a number of associated health groups representing states, county and city health agencies that the CDC routinely coordinates with, a CDC official said.

CDC spokesman Tom Skinner sought to play down the White House changes. He called Gerberding's appearance before the Senate panel "very productive" and said she addressed the issues she wanted during her remarks and when questioned by the senators.

"What needed to be said as far we're concerned was said," said Skinner in a telephone interview from Atlanta. "She certainly communicated with the committee everything she felt was critical to help them appreciate and understand all the issues surrounding climate change and its potential impact on public health."

The deletions directed by the White House included details on how many people might be adversely affected because of increased warming and the scientific basis for some of the CDC's analysis on what kinds of diseases might be spread in a warmer climate and rising sea levels, according to one official who has seen the original version.

Gerberding seems to have tried to address some of those issues during questioning from senators.

Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., the committee's chairman, produced a CDC chart listing the broad range of health problems that could emerge from a significant temperature increase and sea level rise

They include fatalities from heat stress and heart failure, increased injuries and deaths from severe weather such as hurricanes; more respiratory problems from drought-driven air pollution; an increase in waterborne diseases including cholera, and increases vector-borne diseases including malaria and hantavirus; and mental health problems such as depression and post-traumatic stress.

"These are the potential things you can expect," replied Gerberding when asked about the items listed. "... In some of these areas its not a question of if, it's a question of who, what, how and when."

Absolutely amazing, but not in the least bit surprising.

Continent-size toxic stew of plastic trash fouling swath of Pacific Ocean

San Francisco Chronicle - At the start of the Academy Award-winning movie "American Beauty," a character videotapes a plastic grocery bag as it drifts into the air, an event he casts as a symbol of life's unpredictable currents, and declares the romantic moment as a "most beautiful thing."

To the eyes of an oceanographer, the image is pure catastrophe.

In reality, the rogue bag would float into a sewer, follow the storm drain to the ocean, then make its way to the so-called Great Pacific Garbage Patch - a heap of debris floating in the Pacific that's twice the size of Texas, according to marine biologists.

The enormous stew of trash - which consists of 80 percent plastics and weighs some 3.5 million tons, say oceanographers - floats where few people ever travel, in a no-man's land between San Francisco and Hawaii.

Marcus Eriksen, director of research and education at the Algalita Marine Research Foundation in Long Beach, said his group has been monitoring the Garbage Patch for 10 years.

"With the winds blowing in and the currents in the gyre going circular, it's the perfect environment for trapping," Eriksen said. "There's nothing we can do about it now, except do no more harm."

The patch has been growing, along with ocean debris worldwide, tenfold every decade since the 1950s, said Chris Parry, public education program manager with the California Coastal Commission in San Francisco.

Ocean current patterns may keep the flotsam stashed in a part of the world few will ever see, but the majority of its content is generated onshore, according to a report from Greenpeace last year titled "Plastic Debris in the World's Oceans."

The report found that 80 percent of the oceans' litter originated on land. While ships drop the occasional load of shoes or hockey gloves into the waters (sometimes on purpose and illegally), the vast majority of sea garbage begins its journey as onshore trash.

That's what makes a potentially toxic swamp like the Garbage Patch entirely preventable, Parry said.

Bush asks for $46 billion more for wars

WASHINGTON, Associated Press - President Bush asked Congress on Monday for another $46 billion to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and finance other national security needs. "We must provide our troops with the help and support they need to get the job done," Bush said.

The figure brings to $196.4 billion the total requested by the administration for operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere for the budget year that started Oct. 1. It includes $189.3 billion for the Defense Department, $6.9 billion for the State Department and $200 million for other agencies.

To date, Congress has already provided more than $455 billion for the Iraq war, with stepped-up military operations running about $10 billion a month. The war has claimed the lives of more than 3,830 members of the U.S. military and more than 73,000 Iraqi civilians.

Living paycheck to paycheck gets harder

NEW YORK, Associated Press - The calculus of living paycheck to paycheck in America is getting harder. What used to last four days might last half that long now. Pay the gas bill, but skip breakfast. Eat less for lunch so the kids can have a healthy dinner.

Across the nation, Americans are increasingly unable to stretch their dollars to the next payday as they juggle higher rent, food and energy bills. It's starting to affect middle-income working families as well as the poor, and has reached the point of affecting day-to-day calculations of merchants like Wal-Mart Stores Inc., 7-Eleven Inc. and Family Dollar Stores Inc.

Food pantries, which distribute foodstuffs to the needy, are reporting severe shortages and reduced government funding at the very time that they are seeing a surge of new people seeking their help.

While economists debate whether the country is headed for a recession, some say the financial stress is already the worst since the last downturn at the start of this decade.

From Family Dollar to Wal-Mart, merchants have adjusted their product mix and pricing accordingly. Sales data show a marked and more prolonged drop in spending in the days before shoppers get their paychecks, when they buy only the barest essentials before splurging around payday.

"It's pretty pronounced," said Kiley Rawlins, a spokeswoman at Family Dollar. "It seems like to us, customers are running out of food products, paper towels sooner in the month."

Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, said the imbalance in spending before and after payday in July was the biggest it has ever seen, though the drop-off wasn't as steep in August.

And 7-Eleven says its grocery sales have jumped 12-13 percent over the past year, compared with only slight increases for non-necessities like gloves and toys. Shoppers can't afford to load up at the supermarket and are going to the most convenient places to buy emergency food items like milk and eggs.

Y'all heard about Dick Cheney and Barack Obama being actual distant cousins, right?

Rising seas threaten 21 mega-cities

BANGKOK, Thailand, Associated Press - Cities around the world are facing the danger of rising seas and other disasters related to climate change.

Of the 33 cities predicted to have at least 8 million people by 2015, at least 21 are highly vulnerable, says the Worldwatch Institute.

They include Dhaka in Bangladesh; Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro; Shanghai and Tianjin in China; Alexandria and Cairo in Egypt; Mumbai and Kolkata in India; Jakarta in Indonesia; Tokyo and Osaka-Kobe in Japan; Lagos in Nigeria; Karachi in Pakistan; Bangkok in Thailand, and New York and Los Angeles in the United States, according to studies by the United Nations and others.

US search engines 'hijacked' in China: analysts

WASHINGTON (AFP) - US Internet search engines in China were being hijacked and directed to Chinese-owned Baidu, analysts said Wednesday, speculating that the move was in retaliation for Washington's award to Tibet's exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama.

Analysts at Search Engine Roundtable, a website focusing on Internet search, said Chinese users trying to search on Google, Yahoo and Microsoft websites were being directed to the Chinese search engine.

Google confirmed the blocking of its Chinese search engine and Microsoft said it was looking into the matter.

"It seems like China is fed up with the US, so as a way to fight back, they redirected virtually all search traffic from Google, Yahoo and Microsoft to Baidu, the Chinese based search engine," analysts Danny Sullivan and Barry Schwartz wrote at Search Engine Roundtable.

The authors said it was not clear exactly how or why the searches were being redirected, but China is known for tightly controlling the Internet and using a variety of filters to screen out search results for issues relating to dissidents or the 72-year-old Tibetan spiritual leader.

"Some have accused Baidu of hijacking the traffic, but we think it's likely that China is upset with the US over the award it granted to the Dalai Lama and is retaliating by hurting US-based search engines," Sullivan and Schwartz said.

Why not? Human waste is what got us into this mess in the first place:

Human waste can help save planet: Indian expert

NEW DELHI (AFP) - A cheap system to recycle human waste into biogas and fertiliser may allow 2.6 billion people in the world access to toilets and reduce global warming, an Indian environmental expert said Tuesday.

Bindeshwar Pathak, founder of the Sulabh International Social Service Organisation, said his group plans to push the system at the seventh annual World Toilet Summit, to be held in New Delhi at the end of October.

The organisation is dedicated to providing toilets to nearly 730 million people in India who lack them.

"The Millennium Development Goals set in South Africa in 2002 aim by 2015 to cut by half the 2.6 billion people worldwide who lack toilets and provide them to all by 2025," Pathak said at a briefing ahead of the summit.

He said India's contribution would be a toilet system that organically breaks down faeces into trapped biogas that can be burned to provide cooking fuel and electricity, and convert urine into fertiliser.

"Now we want others to know about this technology which was recently installed at Kabul, Afghanistan, because it can help meet the Millennium Development Goals and reduce global warming."

Look at this overfed hormone-poisoned no-neck 14 year old behemoth. His mommy bought him, among other deadly weapons, an assault rifle. She feeds the kid on Big Macs, buys him killing machines and teaches him that he's the center of the fucking universe and that he has the right to do whatever the fuck he wants.

I say string the dysfunctional bitch up right alongside the headcase kid.

Mom charged with buying Pa. teen weapons

NORRISTOWN, Pa., Associated Press - The mother of a 14-year-old who authorities say had a cache of guns, knives and explosive devices in his bedroom for a possible school attack was charged Friday with buying her son three weapons.

Michele Cossey, 46, bought her home-schooled son, Dillon, a .22-caliber handgun, a .22-caliber rifle and a 9 mm semiautomatic rifle, authorities said.

The teenager felt bullied and tried to recruit another boy for a possible attack at Plymouth Whitemarsh High School, authorities said. His mother was not accused of helping plot an attack, "but by virtue of her indulgence, she enabled him to get in this position," Montgomery County District Attorney Bruce L. Castor Jr. said.

"This is not the best parenting I've ever seen and she needs to be held accountable," Castor said.

Acting on a tip from a high school student and his father, police on Wednesday found the rifle, about 30 air-powered guns, swords, knives, a bomb-making book, videos of the 1999 Columbine attack in Colorado and violence-filled notebooks in the boy's bedroom, Castor said.

The mother bought the rifle, which had a laser scope, at a gun show on Sept. 23 and provided police with a receipt, investigators said in court papers. The teenager said the two .22-caliber weapons were stored at a friend's house.

[Maw & Paw Cossey, Frank & Michele. Maybe if Dillon's fucked-up mommy wasn't so fat and self-absorbed, she wouldn't have health and common sense problems]

I have a niece whom I love dearly. She just turned 7. Here it comes, indeed...

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder:

Mom is beautiful:

Every girl is beautiful:

Plants Communicate to Warn Against Danger

LiveScience.com - Plants chatter amongst themselves to spread information, a lot like humans and other animals, new research suggests.

A unique internal network apparently allows greens to warn each other against predators and potential enemies.

Many herbal plants such as strawberry, clover, reed and ground elder naturally form a set of connections to share information with each other through channels known as runners—horizontal stems that physically bond the plants like tubes or cables along the soil surface and underground. Though connected to vertical stems, runners eventually form new buds at the tips and ultimately form a network of plants.

“Network-like plants do not usually produce vertical stems but their stems lie flat on the ground and can hence be used as network infrastructure,” said researcher Josef Stuefer from the Radboud University in the Netherlands.

Stuefer and his team let loose caterpillars on white clover plants and watched them eat a single leaf on the network. Then a second set of caterpillars was allowed to choose between the damaged leaf—one that has been alerted to up its defense status—and leaves from an undamaged network.

Over the course of 20 trials, most or all of the approximately 15 caterpillars in each trial preferred the undamaged leaf to the leaf from a damaged network.

“The feeding caterpillars will be deterred and walk off to feed on other non-induced plants,” Stuefer told LiveScience. “[They] understand plant defense language very well as it is directed exactly to them.”

You must do this because we want it... you big mean liberal activist judge you...

Bush administration to appeal Patriot Act ruling in Oregon case

PORTLAND, Ore. (Associated Press) -- The Bush administration has appealed a ruling by a federal judge in Oregon striking down key portions of the USA Patriot Act as unconstitutional.

U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken ruled last month the act cannot be used to authorize secret searches and wiretapping to gather criminal evidence -- instead of intelligence gathering -- without violating the Fourth Amendment ban on unreasonable searches and seizures.

The ruling came in a challenge to the act by Brandon Mayfield, a Portland lawyer whose home and office were secretly searched and bugged after the FBI misidentified a fingerprint in the Madrid train bombings that killed 191 people in 2004.

[Citizen terrorist Brandon Mayfield (drawing by mack mcfarland)]

Background: Judge rules for Mayfield in Patriot Act challenge

The FBI apologized to Mayfield for the mistake and the federal government settled his lawsuit for $2 million.

But Mayfield challenged the Patriot Act over the searches and surveillance, winning a sharply worded ruling by Aiken that criticized the government for "asking this court to, in essence, amend the Bill of Rights ... "

Mayfield's attorney, Elden Rosenthal, was not immediately available for comment Wednesday.

The Justice Department, in a statement released after the ruling, said "we are concerned that if its reasoning were adopted and extended by other courts, it could have a significant impact on our ability to effectively share information in terrorism and other national security investigations."

The notice of appeal was filed Tuesday with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Ethanol crops could threaten water supply

WASHINGTON Associated Press - When it comes to solving the fossil fuel crisis, it seems like every silver lining comes accompanied by a dark cloud.

As attention turns more and more toward using corn and other products to produce ethanol for fuel, experts warn that increased production of these crops could pose a threat to the nation's water supplies.

Both water quality and the availability of water could be threatened by sharply increasing crops such as corn, said Jerald L. Schnoor, professor of environmental engineering and co-director of the Center for Global and Regional Environmental Research at the University of Iowa.

Schnoor is chairman of a National Research Council panel that studied the potential impact of increased use of biofuels on water supplies. The committee report was released Wednesday.

A stated goal is to increase biofuel production about six times, to 35 billion gallons by 2017, Schnoor said.

"That would mean a lot more fertilizers and pesticides" running into rivers and flowing into the oceans, he said in a telephone interview.

Water available depends on where the crops are grown, he added. If it is an area needing irrigation, it takes 2,000 gallons of water for every bushel of corn: "That's a high amount of water."

And that's in addition to the secondary issue of how much water is needed by the factories that produce the ethanol, he said.

What is needed is a breakthrough in technology so that ethanol can be produced from cellulose such as grass, wood and sawdust, Schnoor said. "If we could do that it would be much better environmentally."

While Brazil is having success producing fuels from sugarcane, "we don't have much tropical land in the United States," Schnoor observed.

Also, he noted, Brazil uses waste from the cane to fuel its ethanol factories, while the U.S. uses natural gas or other fuels.

The report notes that water "is an increasingly precious resource used for many purposes including drinking and other municipal uses, hydropower, cooling thermoelectric plants, manufacturing, recreation, habitat for fish and wildlife and agriculture."

Supplies are already stressed in some areas of the country, including a large region where water is drawn from the underground Ogallala aquifer, which extends from west Texas up into South Dakota and Wyoming.

Growing biofuel crops requiring additional irrigation in areas with limited water supplies is a major concern, the report says.

The report suggests the possibility of irrigating crops for biofuel with wastewater that would not be suitable for food crops.

Other suggestions include developing more water-efficient crops and adopting agriculture practices that reduce the amount of chemical runoff.

The study was sponsored by the McKnight Foundation, Energy Foundation, National Science Foundation, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and National Research Council Day Fund.

The National Research Council is an arm of the National Academy of Sciences, an independent organization chartered by Congress to provide science, technology and health policy advice.

___

On the Net:

... that, and the hurricanes were getting worse. In fact, Hurricane Wilma did a hard smack on the Fort Lauderdale house I sold, on the very morning after escrow on it closed (no, I didn't give the money back. Tuff shit.). FYI the bottom dropped out of that real estate bubble right after that winter. Tuff again.

Global warming may make humidity worse

WASHINGTON, Associated Press - The world isn't just getting hotter from man-made global warming, it's getting stickier. It really is the humidity. The amount of moisture in the air near the surface — the stuff that makes hot weather unbearable — increased 2.2 percent in just under three decades. And computer models show that the only explanation is man-made global warming, according to a study published in Thursday's journal Nature.

"This humidity change is an important contribution to heat stress in humans as a result of global warming," said Nathan Gillett of the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom, a co-author of the study.

Gillett studied changes in specific humidity, which is a measurement of total moisture in the air, between 1973-2002. Increases in humidity can be dangerous to people because it makes the body less efficient at cooling itself, said University of Miami health and climate researcher Laurence Kalkstein. He was not connected with the research.

Humidity increased over most of the globe, including the eastern United States, said study co-author Katharine Willett, a climate researcher at Yale University. However, a few regions, including the U.S. West, South Africa and parts of Australia were drier.

The finding isn't surprising to climate scientists. Physics dictates that warmer air can hold more moisture. But Gillett's study shows that the increase in humidity already is significant and can be attributed to gas emissions from the burning of fossil fuels.

To show that this is man-made, Gillett ran computer models to simulate past climate conditions and studied what would happen to humidity if there were no man-made greenhouse gases. It didn't match reality.

He looked at what would happen from just man-made greenhouse gases. That didn't match either. Then he looked at the combination of natural conditions and greenhouse gases. The results were nearly identical to the year-by-year increases in humidity.

Gillett's study followed another last month that used the same technique to show that moisture above the world's oceans increased and that it bore the "fingerprint" of being caused by man-made global warming.

What I really hate is how often Ted Rall is dead-on. It creeps me out.

Please. Our greed and shortsightedness knows no bounds. We will, quite simply, pollute ourselves into extinction in a mad rush to gobble up what little is left. We are the proverbial monkey with our paw in the monkeytrap, unwilling to let go of the sweetnut even though holding on to it means death and releasing it, life.

That reminds me, I need to buy a shotgun...

Scientist: Emissions levels accelerating

SYDNEY, Australia, Associated Press - Worldwide economic growth has accelerated the level of greenhouse gas emissions to a dangerous threshold scientists had not expected for another decade, according to a leading Australian climate change expert.

Tim Flannery told Australian Broadcasting Corp. that an upcoming report by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will contain new data showing that the level of climate-changing gases in the atmosphere has already reached critical levels.

Flannery is not a member of the IPCC, but said he based his comments on a thorough review of the technical data included in the panel's three working group reports published earlier this year.

Carola Traverso Saibante, spokeswoman for IPCC headquarters is in Geneva, said she was unable to disclose what would be in the final report synthesizing the data before it is released in November.

"What the report establishes is that the amount of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere is already above the threshold that can potentially cause dangerous climate change," Flannery told the broadcaster late Monday. "We are already at great risk of dangerous climate change, that's what these figures say. It's not next year or next decade, it's now."

Flannery, whose recent book "The Weather Makers: How Man Is Changing the Climate and What It Means for Life on Earth," made best-seller lists worldwide, said the data showed that the amount of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions had reached about 455 parts per million by mid-2005, well ahead of scientists' previous calculations.

"We thought we'd be at that threshold within about a decade, that we had that much time," Flannery said. "I mean, that's beyond the limits of projection, beyond the worst-case scenario as we thought of it in 2001," when the last major IPCC report was issued.

..and we still don't understand how they can defy the laws of physics and actually fly...

Threats to bumblebees fly under radar

GRANTS PASS, Ore., Associated Press - Looking high and low, Robbin Thorp can no longer find a species of bumblebee that just five years ago was plentiful in northwestern California and southwestern Oregon.

Thorp, an emeritus professor of entomology from the University of California at Davis, found one solitary worker last year along a remote mountain trail in the Siskiyou Mountains, but hasn't been able to locate any this year.

He fears that the species — Franklin's bumblebee — has gone extinct before anyone could even propose it for the endangered species list. To make matters worse, two other bumblebee species — one on the East coast, one on the West — have gone from common to rare.

Amid the uproar over global warming and mysterious disappearances of honeybee colonies, concern over the plight of the lowly bumblebee has been confined to scientists laboring in obscurity.

But if bumblebees were to disappear, farmers and entomologists warn, the consequences would be huge, especially coming on top of the problems with honeybees, which are active at different times and on different crop species.

Bumblebees are responsible for pollinating an estimated 15 percent of all the crops grown in the U.S., worth $3 billion, particularly those raised in greenhouses. Those include tomatoes, peppers and strawberries.

Demand is growing as honeybees decline. In the wild, birds and bears depend on bumblebees for berries and fruits.

There is no smoking gun yet, but a recent National Academy of Sciences report on the status of pollinators around the world blames a combination of habitat lost to housing developments and intensive agriculture, pesticides, pollution and diseases spilling out of greenhouses using commercial bumblebee hives.

"We have been naive," said Neal Williams, assistant professor of biology at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania. "We haven't been diligent the way we need to be."

The threat has bumblebee advocates lobbying Congress to allocate more money for research and to create incentives for farmers to leave uncultivated land for habitat. They also want farmers to grow more flowering plants that native bees feed on.

"We are smart enough to deal with this," said Laurie Adams, executive director of the Pollinator Partnership. "There is hope."

Winter seen warmer than normal

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States will have warmer-than-normal temperatures this winter in most of the country, except for the northern Plains and Northwest states, government weather experts predicted on Tuesday.

As for precipitation, it will be drier than average across the Southwest and the Southeast, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration projected in its winter forecast.

The Ohio and Tennessee Valleys, northern Rockies and Hawaii will be wetter than normal this winter, the agency predicted.

NOAA also forecast a weak to moderate La Nina weather phenomenon, which is marked by unusually cold temperatures in the eastern equatorial Pacific, during the 2006-2007 winter.

"La Nina is here, with a weak to moderate event likely to persist through the winter," said Michael Halpert, head of forecast operations and acting deputy director of NOAA's's Climate Prediction Center.

In the U.S., La Nina usually brings wetter weather to the Pacific Northwest and dryer warmer weather across the South.

"The big concern this winter may be the persistence of drought across large parts of the already parched South. And while December through February is likely to be another milder-than-average winter for much of the country, people should still expect some bouts of winter weather," Halpert added.

NOAA also predicted the following:

* above-average temperatures in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic in response to the long-term warming trend.

* milder-than-average weather in northern Alaska and above-average temperature and precipitation in Hawaii

People who would harm you are very likely to think twice if they believe you may be armed with a lethal weapon and are quite capable of using it thank you. I don't think it makes you a target, I think it makes you appear like one of those people with whom we are to "avoid eye contact, and do whatever they say,".

I happen to agree with her that she has a right to conceal carry that gun. And I wouldn't want to fuck with her. It wasn't cool of the court to force her to reveal her identity in the lawsuit, she should have been able to challenge that as a class-action litigation, at least.

So, does this make her NRA Chick of The Week?

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Ore. teacher wants to take gun to school

MEDFORD, Ore., Associated Press - High school English teacher Shirley Katz insists she needs to take her pistol with her to work because she fears her ex-husband could show up and try to harm her. She's also worried about a Columbine-style attack.

But Katz's district has barred teachers from bringing guns to school, so she is challenging the ban as unlawful, since Oregon is among states that allow people with a permit to carry concealed weapons into public buildings.

"This is primarily about my Second Amendment right and Oregon law and the simple fact that I know it is my right to carry that gun," said Katz, 44, sitting at the kitchen table of her home outside this city of 74,000.

"I have that (concealed weapons) permit. I refuse to let my ex-husband bully me. And I am not going to let the school board bully me, either."

In Oregon, a sheriff can grant a concealed-weapons permit to anyone whose criminal record is clean and who completes a gun-safety course.

Thirty-eight states, along with the District of Columbia, prohibit people from taking guns to school, according to the National Council of State Legislatures. But it's unclear how many offer an exemption for people holding concealed-weapons permits, since the council does not track such exceptions.

World moves into the ecological red

LONDON (Reuters) - The world moved into "ecological overdraft" on Saturday, the point at which human consumption exceeds the ability of the earth to sustain it in any year and goes into the red, the New Economics Foundation think-tank said.

Ecological Debt Day this year is three days earlier than in 2006 which itself was three days earlier than in 2005. NEF said the date had moved steadily backwards every year since humanity began living beyond its environmental means in the 1980s.

"As the world creeps closer to irreversible global warming and goes deeper into ecological debt, why on earth, say, would the UK export 20 tonnes of mineral water to Australia and then re-import 21 tonnes," said NEF director Andrew Simms.

"And why would that wasteful trade be more the rule than the exception," he added.

Not only was there a massive gulf between rich and poor but there were deep variations in environmental profligacy between the rich countries, NEF said.

If everyone in the world had the same consumption rates as in the United States it would take 5.3 planet earths to support them, NEF said, noting that the figure was 3.1 for France and Britain, 3.0 for Spain, 2.5 for Germany and 2.4 for Japan.

But if everyone emulated China, which is building a coal-fired power station every five days to feed its booming economy, it would take only 0.9 of a planet.

(note: and we would still be totally fucked, choking under tons of pollution and dropping like flies from cancer and lack of potable water. Not to mention deforesting the world.)

...so stop asking.

In this Karl Rove meets Harry Potter political parody, featuring Jason Alexander, we expose the all-too-real neoconservative plot to obstruct progress in the US Senate.

Back in the day, someone asked gazillionaire presidential hopeful Ross Perot since when did he think he could buy the presidency. Said Ross in a classic comeback, "son, since when has the presidency not been for sale?"

Sumbitch - I voted for Ross that year. Too bad he didn't win, we coulda used a decent CEO for a change.

Romney is his own biggest campaign donor

WASHINGTON, Associated Press - Mitt Romney once said financing his own campaign would be a "nightmare." Writing checks, he said this week, is "painful." It doesn't seem to be stopping him. Romney is his presidential campaign's most generous supporter, lending $17.5 million from his personal fortune so far. His Republican rivals are bracing themselves for him to do it again. And again.

Romney is hardly the first presidential candidate to cut himself a check — Steve Forbes and Ross Perot spent far more than he has. But the businessman-turned-politician, who can raise money AND open his wallet, may have the best chance to win the presidency.

The former Massachusetts governor has two more shots at testing what his money can do to supplement his campaign's finances and help him win the GOP nomination. The first is during the 90 days left before the early presidential contests of Iowa and New Hampshire. If he survives those, he can spend again in the last weeks of January before the make-or-break primaries in Florida, New York, California, New Jersey.

"The Romney strategy is very clear — win Iowa, get a bounce to New Hampshire, win New Hampshire and write yourself a check for the Feb. 5 states and start advertising," said Tony Fabrizio, a Republican strategist who has worked on presidential campaigns but is unaffiliated this election.

If Romney writes himself a sizable check in January, his spending might be evident, but the size of his contribution would not be a public record until mid-February, well after the nomination is likely to be sewn up. That could protect Romney from voters who would object to a candidate "buying" the nomination.

But Jennifer A. Steen, a political scientist at Boston College who has written extensively on self-financed candidates, believes the public doesn't care if a wealthy candidate writes his campaign checks.

"What I've noticed is that it has been terribly frustrating for opponents of self-financers that their own outrage at self-financing is not shared by the voters," Steen said

Low-life crooks. Call both of their lying asses home, lord.

Serves the flock right - you idiots willingly let yourselves be fleeced by these flim-flam artists and their phony direct line to Jeebus & Co. Doesn't matter how many times these self-righteous snakeoil salesmen get unmasked, you fools just keep bending over and handing them the vaseline jar...

"Gimme!" sez Richie Rich

Scandal brewing at Oral Roberts U.

TULSA, Okla., Associated Press - Twenty years ago, televangelist Oral Roberts said he was reading a spy novel when God appeared to him and told him to raise $8 million for Roberts' university, or else he would be "called home."

Now, his son, Oral Roberts University President Richard Roberts, says God is speaking again, telling him to deny lurid allegations in a lawsuit that threatens to engulf this 44-year-old Bible Belt college in scandal.

Richard Roberts is accused of illegal involvement in a local political campaign and lavish spending at donors' expense, including numerous home remodeling projects, use of the university jet for his daughter's senior trip to the Bahamas, and a red Mercedes convertible and a Lexus SUV for his wife, Lindsay.

She is accused of dropping tens of thousands of dollars on clothes, awarding nonacademic scholarships to friends of her children and sending scores of text messages on university-issued cell phones to people described in the lawsuit as "underage males."

How the fuck are you supposed to make a webpage, a VISUAL MEDIUM, accessible to the blind?

And since when does legislating compassion a) ever work, and b) make everyone equal? If anything, legislating this sort of nonsense makes folks LESS compassionate and the disabled more dependent.

Face it, assholes - if you can't SEE a printed page, you can't READ it. There are things you just can't do if you have a disability - blind people can't see, deaf people can't hear, and people with no legs can't run. That's just the way it is, you idiots - tough, true, real. No amount of laws will give you sight. Deal with it.

Judge allows class action against Target website

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A federal judge in California certified a class action lawsuit against Target Corp (TGT.N) brought by plaintiffs claiming the discount retailer's website is inaccessible to the blind, according to court documents.

Judge Marilyn Patel of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California also rejected Target's motion for summary judgment in the case, according to the ruling filed October 2.

According to the ruling, plaintiffs -- including the National Federation of the Blind -- claim Target.com violates federal and state laws prohibiting discrimination against the disabled.

"This is a tremendous step forward for blind people throughout the country who for too long have been denied equal access to the Internet economy," Marc Maurer, president of the National Federation for the Blind, said in a statement.

"All e-commerce businesses should take note of this decision and immediately take steps to open their doors to the blind," Maurer said.

"Target is committed to serving all of our guests and we believe that our Web site is fully accessible and complies with all applicable laws," Bloomberg quoted Target spokeswoman Carolyn Brookter as saying in an e-mailed statement.

"The housing bubble has burst," said Peter Schiff, president of Euro Pacific Capital in Darien, Conn. "Prices are going to collapse and sales are going to fall through the floor."

Pending home sales index hits record low

WASHINGTON, Associated Press - An index that forecasts near-term home sales fell in August to a record low as would-be homebuyers had difficulty getting mortgages. Economists said the housing market's woes show no sign of improving soon.

The National Association of Realtors said Tuesday its seasonally adjusted index of pending sales for existing homes fell 6.5 percent from July and 21.5 percent from a year ago.

The pending home sales index has done a farily good job of predicting sales levels over the following two months said Joshua Shapiro, chief U.S. economist with MFR Inc. in New York.

Shapiro and other analysts expect prices to fall further before home sales rebound. Developers are already making big price cuts to move unsold new homes, but existing homeowners are more reluctant to do so.

"We haven't reached bottom yet," Shapiro said.

Miss Moneypenny actor Lois Maxwell exits stage

SYDNEY (AFP) - On screen, Lois Maxwell played the woman James Bond never seduced, Miss Moneypenny. In real life, she was more than his match -- an adventurous traveller, an entertainer, and a flirt to the end.

Her death on Saturday at Fremantle Hospital, in Western Australia, from a combination of lung and vascular disease, followed several weeks of treatment there. She was 80.

The Canadian-born actress, a constant in 14 James Bond movies as the starring role changed hands, took on the Miss Moneypenny role in 1962 alongside Sean Connery in "Dr No."

And she continued to play the secretary to spy chief M, constantly flirting with her 007 agent, until 1985's "A View To A Kill" with Roger Moore.

In a 2005 interview, Maxwell said she insisted when she took on the role that she be allowed to give Moneypenny a "background" and that Bond director Terence Young not "put my hair in a bun and horn-rimmed glasses on me."

The "background" was an unexplained sexual tension between Moneypenny and Bond and the chemistry worked.

"She was my lucky token," Moore told the British broadcaster Sky News after her death.

"(People) who remember the Bond films with Moneypenny will remember her with great affection. She certainly will be missed by me and I'm sure by millions of fans around the world."

Vast US military base near border relies on Mexican labor

FORT BLISS, United States (AFP) - This sprawling US Army base located at the edge of El Paso and skirting the border with Mexico is undergoing a major expansion that heavily relies on Mexicans for its construction.

Amid growing controversy in the United States over immigration -- legal and illegal -- the military is using foreign labor to build the base.

The expansion will also mean a population boom and a big infusion of cash for the poor city of El Paso, separated by the Rio Grande from Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.

But who will build the new barracks and offices at Fort Bliss, and the shopping malls and restaurants outside the base?

"All those homes and shopping malls are built by us Mexicans," said bus driver Mario Encinas, a native of Mexico who works at Fort Bliss.

"With real documents or not, we are the ones that do that work here and across the United States," Encinas told AFP, noting that he works on base "with real documents."