From Gianni Ortiz:
Can you help get the word out? They are definitely going to use the egg recall to push S510 (Food Safety Bill) through – this is very serious. People need to call their senator’s office and get them to endorse the Tester Amendments and insist they are included in the bill, improving it by making it scale appropriate and science based. Voting against a “Food Safety’ bill would be about as popular with an uninformed public as voting against something called The Patriot Act (and we all know how that turned out). The title of the bill is extremely misleading: in its current form, it actually endangers the very existence of the safest part of the food system, small farms and producers which have the shortest chain of custody and therefore the highest level of tracability and accountability.
Whether or not they use the egg recall to rush its passage, we must demand amendment of
S510, the so-called Food Safety Modernization Act–which should be known as the
Monsanto Protection Act, as, unless it is amended, it “would give Monsanto unlimited
power over all US seed, food supplements, food and farming,” to quote Steve Green (below).
Since Pres. Obama is a big (if quiet) Monsanto booster, do not for a moment think that he
would veto this appalling legislation.
So please do everything you can to get this bill amended; or else this law will force Monsanto’s product–literally–down every throat in the United States.
MCM
Public Interest Groups Get it Wrong on Egg Recall
Local Foods are the Answer – Not Government Agencies
by Alyce Ortuzar
It is obvious from this egg recall that neither the FDA nor the USDA
has any understanding of nutrition or food safety. So they should not
be telling Americans what to eat, what is nutritious, or what is safe.
***
S 510 is hissing in the grass
S 510, the Food Safety Modernization Act, may be the most dangerous bill in the history of the US.
By Steve Green
http://impactglassman.blogspot.com/2010/08/s-510-food-safety-modernization-act-may.html
BREAKING NEWS: Billionaire enters Arizona congressional races, via New York
NEWS RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
PHOENIX — Arizona has a brand new congressional candidate, and he’s a Republican strategist’s dream: aggressive, rich, and eager to go negative and spend whatever it takes to win in Arizona.
A fire claims all the voting machines in Houston, on the eve of an election that the GOP wants desperately to win–but one that they’re afraid they’ll lose.
Suspicious? Hey, you decide…
MCM
BREAKING: Fire Destroys All 10,000 E-Vote Machines in Houston, Harris County, TX
By Brad Friedman on 8/27/2010 10:09AM
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=8017
Possible Arson and the Right’s Texas Voter Suppression Effort
Glenn W. Smith
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/glenn-w-smith/possible-arson-tied-to-ri_b_698315.html
Divine intervention: Could the voting machine fire give Rick Perry an edge in the governor’s race?
By Sarah Rufca
http://culturemap.com/newsdetail/08-27-10-does-the-voting-machine-fire-make-perry-a-shoo-in/
Monday, August 30, 2010
Observations about the fire: an e-mail from a Harris County election official
posted by paulburka at 4:30 PM
http://www.texasmonthly.com/blogs/burkablog/?p=7697
Wikileaks Red Cell CIA Release – Say What?
Michael Collins
Wikileaks offered its first release since the controversial distribution of documents related to the United States effort in Afghanistan.
Lab Report Confirms Highly Toxic Levels of Corexit In Sickened Family’s Swimming Pool
“Our heads are still swimming,” stated Barbara Schebler of Homosassa, Florida, who received word last Friday that test results on the water from her family’s swimming pool showed 50.3 ppm of 2-butoxyethanol, a marker for the dispersant Corexit 9527A used to break up and sink BP’s oil in the Gulf of Mexico.
The problems began for the Scheblers a few weeks after the April 20 blow-out. “Our first clue were rashes we both got early in May. Both my husband and I couldn’t get rid of the rashes and had to get cream from our doctor,” Schebler noted, “I never had a rash in my life.”
Thom’s blog
Is Newt Gingrich Giving Aid and Comfort to the Enemy?
For months, far right-wing conservatives have led a hateful campaign against the proposed Park 51 Islamic community center near Ground Zero in New York City. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is even claiming it will be a launching pad for “Sharia law” in America. In an interview with Newsweek magazine, Zabihullah, a Taliban spokesman said, by “preventing this mosque from being built, America is doing us a big favor.” The, “…more mosques you stop, the more jihadis we will get.” Meanwhile, a new Newsweek poll is showing that most Republicans believe President Obama “sympathizes with the goals of Islamic fundamentalists who want to impose Islamic law around the world.” Only 33 percent of Republicans said the “allegation” was “probably not true,” while 38 percent said it was “probably true” and 14 percent said it was “definitely true.” Gingrich’s hysterical campaign about the Park 51 community center is hurting Americans in two ways. First, he succeeded in turning a majority of Republican Americans against their own President based on a lie. Second, he’s giving aid and comfort to recruiters for the very extremist in Islam whose credibility would be most diminished by the building of this community center.
-Thom
ACLU: ‘Pain ray’ in California prison amounts to ‘torture’ of US prisoners
By Stephen C. Webster
Thursday, August 26th, 2010 — 8:31 pm
The American Civil Liberties Union is outraged over the application of a “pain ray” recently installed in a Los Angeles County Jail — a technology first seen used by American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, which relies upon beams of microwave energy to inflict an intense burning sensation upon anyone in its path.
Inmates at the Pitchess Detention Center’s North County Correctional Facility will likely soon know what it is to face the “Assault Intervention System,” according to reports by local media.
26
More on the Brothers Koch
TP’s Lee Fang Discusses The ‘Kochtopus’ Network On Countdown
For the past two years, ThinkProgress researcher Lee Fang has been digging into the nefarious activities of the Koch family, reporting on their funding of the tea parties, the depth of their astroturfing, and their family’s record of right-wing radicalism.
***
Janet Ritz
Publisher, editor, the-environmentalist.org
Posted: August 23, 2010 05:06 PM
Koch Brothers Called Out for Waging War Against Obama
Jane Mayer, reporting on The New Yorker magazine, has written a comprehensive article entitled: “Covert Operations, The billionaire brothers who are waging a war against Obama”. In it, Mayer gives an exhaustive report on the Koch brothers’ funding of extreme right-win opposition to the current administration.
The Kochs are longtime libertarians who believe in drastically lower personal and corporate taxes, minimal social services for the needy, and much less oversight of industry–especially environmental regulation. These views dovetail with the brothers’ corporate interests. In a study released this spring, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst’s Political Economy Research Institute named Koch Industries one of the top ten air polluters in the United States. And Greenpeace issued a report identifying the company as a “kingpin of climate science denial.” The report showed that, from 2005 to 2008, the Kochs vastly outdid ExxonMobil in giving money to organizations fighting legislation related to climate change, underwriting a huge network of foundations, think tanks, and political front groups. Indeed, the brothers have funded opposition campaigns against so many Obama Administration policies–from health-care reform to the economic-stimulus program–that, in political circles, their ideological network is known as the Kochtopus.
Senator Simpson: He’s Not Just Offensive, He’s Ignorant
Dean Baker
Former Wyoming Senator Alan Simpson, the co-chairman of President Obama’s deficit commission, has sparked calls for his resignation after sending an offensive and sexist note to Ashley Carson, the executive director of the Older Women’s League. While such calls are reasonable — Simpson’s comments were certainly more offensive than remarks that led to the resignation of other people from the Obama administration — the Senator’s determined ignorance about the basic facts on Social Security is an even more important reason for him to leave his position.
Read more.
I was also a recipient of one of Simpson’s tirades. As was the case with the note he sent to Carson, Simpson attached a presentation prepared for the commission by Social Security’s chief actuary. Simpson implied that this presentation had some especially eye-opening information that would lead Carson and myself to give up our wrong-headed views on Social Security.
While I opened the presentation with great expectations, I quickly discovered there was nothing in the presentation that would not already be known to anyone familiar with the annual Social Security trustees’ report. The presentation showed a program that is currently in solid financial shape, but somewhere in the next three decades will face a shortfall due to an upward redistribution of wage income, increasing life expectancy, and slow growth in the size of the workforce. The projected shortfall is not larger than what the program has faced at prior points in its history, most notably in 1982 when the Greenspan Commission was established to restore the program’s solvency.
It was disturbing to see that Simpson seemed surprised by what should have been old hat to anyone familiar with the policy debate on Social Security. After all, he had been a leading participant in these debates in his years in the Senate.
Simpson’s public remarks also seem to show very little knowledge of the financial situation of the elderly or near elderly. He has repeatedly made references to retirees driving up to their gated communities in their Lexuses. While this description may apply to Simpson’s friends, it applies to very few other retirees, the vast majority of whom rely on Social Security for the bulk of their income. Cutting the benefits of the small group of genuinely affluent elderly would make almost no difference in the finances of the program.
Furthermore, the baby-boom generation that is nearing retirement has seen most of its savings destroyed by the collapse of the housing bubble that both wiped out their housing equity and took a big chunk of the limited money they were able to put aside in their 401(k)s. Simpson shows no understanding of this fact as he prepares to cut benefits for near retirees.
He also doesn’t seem to have a clue as to the type of work that most older people are doing. While it is possible for senators to continue in their jobs late in life, nearly half of older workers have jobs that are either physically demanding or require they work in difficult conditions. Simpson seems totally clueless on this point when he considers proposals to raise the retirement age.
The key facts on Social Security are not hard to understand. The shortfall is relatively minor and distant. Most retirees have little income other than their Social Security, and most workers would find it quite difficult to stay at their jobs in their late 60s or even 70. We might have hoped that Senator Simpson understood these facts at the time when he was appointed to the commission, but we should at least expect that he would learn them on the job.
His determined ignorance in the face of the facts is the most important reason why he is not qualified to serve on President Obama’s commission. Someone who is co-chairman of such an important group should be able to critically evaluate information, not just insult and demean his critics.
***
Ryan Grim
ryan@huffingtonpost.com | HuffPost Reporting
Alan Simpson: Social Security Is ‘A Milk Cow With 310 Million Tits’ [UPDATE]
First Posted: 08-24-10 07:32 PM | Updated: 08-25-10 09:19 PM
UPDATE: Wednesday 8:30 p.m. – Simpson isn’t going anywhere, the New York Times reports. “Alan Simpson has apologized and while we regret and do not condone his comments, we accept his apology and he will continue to serve,” White House spokesperson Jennifer Psaki told the Times.
UPDATE: Wednesday 3:59 p.m. – Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) called on President Obama to fire Alan Simpson from the deficit commission for referring to Social Security as “a milk cow with 310 million tits!” in an email this week to OWL executive director Ashley Carson.
The letter, provided to HuffPost, concludes:
The statement by Senator Simpson that Social Security is “like a milk cow with 310 million tits” is really quite beyond comprehension. Today, Social Security provides the majority of income for two-thirds of the nation’s elderly and for one-third it provides nearly all their income. Without it, millions of Americans would be living in abject poverty as was the case before the creation of Social Security. It is false and demeaning to say that these people, the vast majority of whom have worked their entire lives and contributed into the Social Security system, are somehow “milking” the system.
***
Richard (RJ) Eskow
Consultant, Writer, Senior Fellow with The Campaign for America’s Future
Posted: August 24, 2010 07:44 PM
“310 Million Tits” — If Simpson Doesn’t Resign, the President Must Fire Him
(UPDATED below to address Simpson’s statement of apology)
Alan Simpson is the co-chair of President Obama’s Deficit Commission, which is charged with creating a bipartisan consensus for balancing the budget. Lately Simpson’s foulmouthed tirades have drawn at least as much attention as the Commission’s actual work. His latest rant — which includes denigrating an activist for women’s issues with remarks about “a milk cow with 310 million tits” — crosses the line once and for all. It demonstrates conclusively that he possesses neither the judgment, the ability, nor the emotional stability to carry out his mission. He’s become an embarrassment to the President and an impediment to his Commission’s objectives. He must resign immediately. If he’s unwilling to do so, the President must fire him.
August 25, 2010
AUGUST CANDIDATES FORMALLY SUE DUE TO IMPROPRIETIES IN ELECTION
Ten countywide candidates in the August 5th election have formally filed an election contest in Shelby County Chancery Court requesting injunctive relief. The ten plaintiffs in the suit include certain non-partisan judicial candidates as well as certain Democratic nominees, all of whom competed in the County General Election earlier this month. Based on an inspection and investigation of the Shelby County Election Commission (SCEC) and of August 5th election records, the suit claims that the election process was incurably flawed to the extent that the citizens of Shelby County were denied a free and equal election as required by Article I of the Tennessee Constitution.
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