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America Back on Track... for Tuesday, July 15th.Our Quote of the Day is from H.P. Lovecraft who said, "Someday the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age."
Some observations on the news...
The New York Times headline this morning about the Fed head testifying on Capitol Hill read "Economy Will Stay Sluggish, Bernanke Tells Congress." "Sluggish"? Bernanke is wildly optimistic. Retail sales are down after most Americans have spent their tax refunds, and producer prices are climbing quickly. People were lined up in Los Angeles to pull their money out of the new FDIC-IndyMac. The Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac bail-out plan didn’t persuade anyone that we’re anywhere near the bottom of the housing collapse. The dollar is at a new low against the euro. GM is cutting 20% of salaried workers, selling assets, suspending its dividend as it struggles to stave off bankruptcy.
The ever resourceful psychopaths trying to kill Americans in Iraq have come up with a new method of attack. They are launching 107 mm rockets from trucks, four to nine rockets at a time, dispatched by cellphones or washing machine timers. They are like roadside bombs except they can be launched instead of having to wait for a target to drive by. Called IRAM for "improvised rocket-assisted mortar," the military says it seems to be a Shiite group that is playing with this dynamite. Today, suicide bombers killed 37 people in several attacks, among them more than 28 army recruits.
The death of Pat Tillman in Afghanistan was clearly a grotesque mistake. He was killed by American soldiers. But because of his pro-football fame, the Pentagon decided to make him a hero and victim of combat with the enemy. Who knew of the deceit and when they learned of it has been investigated for four years, and on Thursday the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee will issue a report that says the cover-up has succeeded. "The Committee's investigation adds many new details to the Tillman story. But on the key issue of what senior officials knew, the investigation was frustrated by a near universal lack of recall." And that's likely where it will be left.
It's the vision thing, or more accurately the lack of vision. It’s a grand idea to cut down trees for fuel and to clear the way for growing food, except that the forests are the lungs of the planet and without trees, carbon dioxide builds up, global warming increases and the overall results are disaster. The Rights and Resources Initiative worries that those who are supposed to protect our forests will be thwarted by greed. "Arguably, we are on the verge of a last great global land grab. It will mean more deforestation, more conflict, more carbon emissions, more climate change and less prosperity for everyone."
The damage we have already done to our forests is seen in the dramatic decline of hundreds of species of birds. The problems are more and widespread, causing population drops of 90% since the 1960s in a number of once-common species. Besides wiping out their habitats, birds face other dangers, including "invasive plant species that take over native seed and nesting sources, wind turbines located near critical flyways, lighted and glass-encased buildings, lighted cell-phone towers, domestic cats, disease, pesticides and climate change, which also is shrinking habitat ranges."The publishers of the Los Angeles times and the Chicago Tribune have resigned after they were ordered to make hundreds of cuts in their newsroom staffs. Both publications are now owned by real estate magnate Sam Zell who acquired them with his purchase of the Tribune Company last year. The newspaper industry has been suffering for a number of years as it tries to figure out how to reduce costs in the face of a steepening decline in circulation, and how to increase revenues using the Internet...so far with very limited success. Some papers also are troubled with remarkably poor editorial policies. To wit, the Washington Post is running a two-week series on the ten-year-old unsolved Chandra Levy murder case. One short reprise story would have been more than enough.
The New Yorker cover is upsetting a bunch of folks at the Obama campaign. It depicts Obama in Muslim garb and his wife as a terrorist, standing in the Oval Office doing their fist thing under a portrait of Osama bin Laden with an American flag burning in the fireplace. All that was missing was a crack pipe and Reverend Wrong. Obviously the point was to illuminate the SwiftBoating that’s sure to come and in the compilation to suggest how embarrassed the perps should be. The response from the Obama people was ""The New Yorker may think, as one of their staff explained to us, that their cover is a satirical lampoon of the caricature Senator Obama's right-wing critics have tried to create. But most readers will see it as tasteless and offensive. And we agree." Pish-tosh.
Jesse Ventura says he’s not going to jump into the race for the Minnesota Senate seat currently held by Norm Coleman, whom Ventura beat for governor in 1998. Republican Coleman is in a tight race with Democrat political comedian Al Franken. Ventura has until late this afternoon to change his mind. If he did and decided to run, he would virtually guarantee a return to Washington for Coleman. If the former wrestler wants to make a difference, he could support Franken and his popularity would be enough to all but assure Coleman’s replacement.
From the black cloud-silver lining department, the soaring cost of gasoline is cutting down on traffic fatalities, particularly among teenagers. Some officials project the highway death toll could be cut by a third if prices stay high.
You're likely familiar in some fashion with the serenity prayer: "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference." It's a staple of Alcoholics Anonymous and many others who are trying to parse their lives. It has long been attributed to the theologian and philosopher, Reinhold Niebuhr, but now a law librarian using computers at Yale University says he's found bits and pieces of the prayer dating back a few years earlier from the Niebuhr attribution in the early 1940's and therein finds that the original words might not have been Niebuhr's. Niebuhr's daughter, a book editor and publisher, is not happy with the suggestion and has fought back against the implication. Of course Niebuhr wouldn't think much of the dispute, and while asserting his claim of authorship would no doubt insist that it was the thought that counts.
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