Stopping the greedy f*ck$

S.D. agents help bust massive ID-theft ring

The thieves hacked into wireless networks of retailers, including BJ's Wholesale Club, OfficeMax, Boston Market, Barnes & Noble, Sports Authority, Forever 21 and DSW, as well as TJX Cos., owners of Marshalls and T.J. Maxx, authorities said.

I remember watching some news magazine show and they rode around in a van with a laptop computer that had some program downloaded from the internet on it that literally got your credit or debit card number out of the air outside the stores.

40 million of them in this bust.

The stores who lost the numbers in the newgazine that I watched had already lost millions of numbers and knew that they needed to upgrade to a more secure network and it was more expensive so they didn't.

So are these scumbag assholes who got busted (who look like they are from what used to be communist countries, where generally people survive by bribery, corruption and ruthlessness) to blame or are the stores who refuse to protect their own revenues, profits and your card numbers?

Ok, on to more soutions to greedy fucks that are making our lives harder.

Obama Nails It: Calls For Release of 70 Million Barrels From The Strategic Petroleum Reserve
Raymond J. Learsy
Posted August 4, 2008 05:35 PM (EST)

...Nothing would be more immediately effective than a willingness to release oil from the SPR to rein in oil prices. It would immediately impact the psychology of the traders, having them begin a run for the exits. It would be a signal to oil producers, most especially OPEC that our days of being patsies to their cartel corruption are at an end. And it would have an immediate and salutary impact on the price of oil. Witness today simply mentioning the possibility broke the price of oil almost immediately by over $5 per barrel to under $120/bbl ending the day a shade under $4 barrel lower...

Military spying

Controversial military counterspy office closed
By PAMELA HESS – 1 day ago
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Pentagon on Monday officially dissolved an intelligence office that once created a controversial database about potential threats to military bases, shifting it to the Defense Intelligence Agency.

Oh, so they won't be spying on Quakers anymore?


DIA's new mission adds to intel arsenal
By PAMELA HESS – 3 hours ago
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Defense Intelligence Agency, long a home for intelligence analysis, is joining the spy vs. spy game.

Mmmmmmm, OK.

Russian Judge Rules Sexual Harrassment is Ok as it Ensures Survival of the Human Race

Does this surprise me?

Nope, I'm still reading Anne Applebaums's Gulag. And chapter 11 in Naomi Klein's the Shock Doctrine is all about the Pinochet style economic shock treatment applied in Russia.





Not surprising to me either is that Amazon Warrior Priestess graves have been excavated on the Russian Steppes.

Some answers, but not all, likely in anthrax case

What? This tiny little article is just baffling. What's the point?


Yeesh, the whole case, and the reporting on it is giving me a headache. Anthrax Vaccine -- posts by Meryl Nass, M.D. is covering the updates and other articles.

Moving on, sort of, I can't help but be cynical about the anthrax case because I read TomDispatch on a pretty regular basis.
Today's post is no exception to a long line of must reads.

PS this made me laugh:
San Diego Company Helped with Anthrax Case

Why would it make me laugh?

I got an e-mail recently asking me how life was in "the black heart of the military-industrial-complex?"

A perfectly valid question.

The Navy needs PR help

The Navy hopes to award the contract in September.

Oh OH OH, My hand's up, Pick me. Pick Me . Piiiiiiiicccckkk Meeeeeeeeeee.
BWWAAAA HAA Ha ha ha ha, just kidding.

Democracy Now covers the anthrax case

Amy Goodman talks to Glenn Greenwald and Dr. Meryl Nass. Links to more from them on the Democracy Now page (click on title link).


Bradblog

Olbermann



TPM Muckraker

Am I the only one who automatically looks for the defense contractor, Homeland Security contractor, and who in the administration sits on the board? All those guys sit on a million different boards. They all make money off of this shit.

Better to convict (in the mainstream media) the dead guy who had a patent on some of his anthrax vaccine work than to look at what might be hinky connections right?

Bullshit.

Cui Bono?

Rummy made money at Gilead, Cheney made money at Halliburton; they got their war, and that's all war is to those sick fucks, it's cha ching time, and Oh, who's this?
From Brownieland, it's Joe and this little board that he's director of got two federal grants totaling $4.5 million for development of its botulism and next-generation anthrax vaccine candidates, reported here July 29, 2008

Local stuff

Regulators say San Onofre nuclear plant is safe
Not all neighbors of the facility are reassured as another inquiry begins.
By Elizabeth Douglass, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
August 1, 2008

Despite the launch of its third special inspection in a year at Southern California Edison Co.'s San Onofre nuclear plant, federal regulators Thursday night assured the public that the coastal power plant is safe.

oh, Ok, sure, if the Regulators in the United States of De-Regulation say that it's safe it must be safe, right?

Desalination plan going back to coastal panel
By Michael Burge
STAFF WRITER
August 4, 2008

CARLSBAD – The long-running tug of war between a developer and the California Coastal Commission staff over the state's first large-scale ocean-water desalination plant continues this week as the two sides wrangle over environmental issues...

...MacLaggan said even if that is so, it's beyond the control of Poseidon (Yeah, what an appealing name, eh?) and its customers. Moreover, Poseidon officials say the greenhouse gas law doesn't apply to their operation.
“Under the Coastal Act, (coastal commissioners) don't have the authority to require greenhouse gas mitigation,” said Scott Maloni, a Poseidon vice president.

map

Gulag by Anne Applebaum

So far this book is telling a story of horrors unimaginable to me, or most Americans, I would hope. I'm curious now as to what young Stalin had to do with the Czarist secret police?


Update 5:42 PM 8/3/2008
Last struggle is over for Nobel laureate Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
From The Times
Tony Halpin in Moscow
August 4, 2008

more on Solzhenitsyn

OK, then I guess I picked a weird time to read this book eh?

Dead whales and oil companies' seismic testing

Mmm, missed this last month.
Whales stranded off Madagascar
BBC News - news.bbc.co.uk
09 Jun 2008

Same old shit, different company.

Whatever.

Missed this one,

and this one

Shit. All of these articles go on and on about algae blooms and chasing fish, and eating sand and blah blah blah. Most of these mass beaching have one of two things in common:

Seismic testing (generally for oil or gas), or Navy Sonar testing in the area recently, both of which are so fucking loud that the bones in ceteceans' ears break.

I'm not a scientist, but I'm not a freaking idiot either. I became a liberal after taking business classes, how's that for defiant?

The militaries which depend upon oil probably don't want me connecting the dots, eh?

Fuck 'em. This planet is so fucked because of human activity.

Friday Squirrel Blogging

Meet the McFakes, oops I mean McFates -- DC whores

There's Something About Mary: Unmasking a Gun Lobby Mole
July 30, 2008
Mary McFate was a prominent gun control activist. Mary Lou Sapone was a freelance spy with an NRA connection. They are the same person. A Mother Jones investigation

War and recruiting standards?

I was reading this from Nick Turse's book last night:

The report from the Criminal Investigation Command, or CID, tracks an increase from 23 reported gang incidents in fiscal 2005 to 60 in fiscal 2006, saying in part the new servicewide definition of gangs added more cases to the total.

And heard about this this morning:

Navy cites smoking as likely cause of carrier fire
By CHELSEA J. CARTER – 13 hours ago

SAN DIEGO (AP) — Smoking appears to have sparked a fire that caused $70 million in damage to the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS George Washington, Naval officials said Wednesday

US Navy calls MySpace kids an "Alien Life Force"
Posted by Xeni Jardin, September 28, 2007 10:00 AM permalink

You know, I read a lot of depressing shit, and I grew up in San Diego, so a lot of what's in this book comes as no surprise to me, but I gotta say the most depressing part of this book is the connection (that if you're ME, anyway, you could find) between the Defense Department's astronomical need for oil (fuel) and this fucked up war in Iraq. That and some recruiting has been privatized also, and not just for mercenaries.

Moving on, I read the newz today Oh boy...

When the newz steals, they steal BIG.

Asia-Pacific
A Base for Another World War
By Tanveer Jafri
Contributing Writer
"The whole world is passing through a phase of inflation and starvation that has never been imagined so far."

Wow, this Tanveer Jafri person must be a fucking genius.

Hey genius, has the world ever passed through the phase of this kind of human population numbers? How about this phase of ecological destruction caused by human population pressures?

Fuck me.

Here's more of the genius at work:

Despite America is trying to prepare fuel from food grains and that is causing the food problem of the world..

American president Bush has asked Israel army not to hesitate to attack with missiles on the nuclear establishment of Iran...

Even president Bush has called Iran the 'Axis of Satan...

Last year I was astonished to hear that the name of a man of aggressive nature, George Bush was proposed for Noble peace prize...

I don't know what language this piece of shit was originally written in, but the English translation is sad, as is the author's knowledge of International politics, and truly sad is the author's knowledge of American politics.

Still reading

I'm reading "The Complex" by Nick Turse and I'll be disappointed if the voting part of the matrix isn't covered in the book, or at the very least, the RepugnantThuglican IT guys. Watch this 6 minute clip .

The Complex and the Gulag

Since my friend is ok, ( 5.4 aint no big deal ) & I'm sick of bad news, I think I'll just read today. These two titles together make me think of Blackwater and Halliburton.


Predators of press freedom

Bilbray sighting in San Diego

Dang, where's my rotten tomatoes when I need them?

Can't decide what to blog today

So yer gettin' all of it.
Immigration.

Both sides 'o the same story.

John Dean on Impeachment

Chalmers Johnson on the military-industrial-complex, which basically makes the whole immigration flashpoint debate irrelevant.

Kidnapping

Top 10 Places to get Kidnapped From (According to an insurance agency that sells kidnapping insurance)

Mexico Update August 5, 2008Mexican police linked to rising kidnappings
Brazil
Colombia yeah hmmmmm
Venezuela
Philippines yeah hmmmm
Nigeria
Afghanistan
Iraq
Haiti
Runners Up
India
South Africa
Argentina (huh? 6 years ago maybe)
Nepal
They didn't mention Somalia and the Horn of Africa
Must not pay to insure aid workers, or something.
Pakistan is mentioned in the top five here
Pakistan Taliban legalized kidnapping in March

Why? I was curious after watching Manda Bala (Send a Bullet) (2007)

I browsed around looking for connections. I looked at the usual suspects:

Corruption

Percentage of people living in poverty

Inequality

Then, since the kidnapper in the slums of Sao Paulo had ten kids I wondered if it was

Little access to family planning

Even though it's wanted and needed

Abortions illegal

or

Humanitarian crisis

or drug trafficking whoops, better not pull that shit in Iran or Saudi Arabia or China

And while I was stumbling around I happened upon some other connections which may or may not be added factors.

Oil reserves
Gas reserves
Pipelines

So, after reading enough stuff online today to be bleary eyed and tired, and wonder why this list that was done in '99 pops right up, my opinion is that the reasons for kidnapping generally involve 3 or more factors listed.
5:02 PM 7/27/2008

Friday night was full of important messages from Carolinians

I watched this PBS NOW episode with N. Carolinian John Edwards but I was goofing off Friday night, I missed Bill Moyers.

Big mistake. This needs to be seen.

Ex Senator from S. Carolina, Ernest "Fritz" Hollings' book Making Government Work

My buddy's in town

Wooo hoo. She's lots of fun.

Oy. While I'm waiting, welcome to the Financializing Food: Deregulation, Commodity Markets and the Rising Cost of Food.

Integrating Islam

Crapola.

I can't open the link to what's on NPR right now. It's called Integrating Islam and has been covering Islam in Europe and the United States. It's fascinating to me. Yesterday I spent some time reading a blog called Islam in Europe.

Friday Squirrel Blogging

I got nuthin on the critters today. Just part of the scenery around here. I thought squirrel blogging was original, boy was I wrong.

Libya loves Switzerland

Libya 'halts Swiss oil shipments'

Hannibal Gaddafi has denied claims he assaulted two of his staff in Switzerland
Libya's state shipping company says it has halted oil shipments to Switzerland in protest at the brief arrest of leader Muammar Gaddafi's youngest son.

It threatened further action if the Swiss did not apologise for the arrest

Geneva police held Hannibal Gaddafi for two days after he and his pregnant wife allegedly hit two of their staff...

The couple were charged with assaulting two of their staff, a Moroccan man and a Tunisian woman, with a belt and coat hanger. The woman was hospitalised.

The 32-year-old Gaddafi had had previous run-ins with the law.
In 2005, he was convicted by a French court for striking his pregnant companion in a Paris hotel.

...The Swiss foreign ministry said on Wednesday that Libya had "taken a number of worrying retaliatory measures" for Mr Gaddafi's arrest since he was released on bail on 17 July.

It said Swiss companies ABB and Nestle had been ordered to close their Libya offices and that Swiss staff there had been arrested.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Never underestimate the power of some greasy, oil slicked thug's horrible brat to get away with criminal activity, and make you pay for their imagined slight. I wonder how many servants the little prick has already buried in that hell hole of a desert,Libya?

Immigration reform needed

Who Killed Chandra Levy? - Chapter Ten: A Jailhouse Informant
By Sari Horwitz, Scott Higham and Sylvia Moreno
Washington Post Staff Writers June 23, 2008

He said who paid him?

Salvadorans, here?

Killings turn focus on San Francisco sanctuary law
By PAUL ELIAS, Associated Press Writer Thu Jul 24, 7:42 AM ET
...Shortly after that, police arrested Ramos, a native of El Salvador and reputed member of the Mara Salvatrucha gang, known as MS-13. Investigators believe he was the gunman, though two other men were seen in the car with him...

How did this happen?

And the whole La Raza thing here last weekend?

Nothing but a corporate love-fest. Look who was there. (pdf file downloadable, but not online)

E-verify is voluntary and free,

but no California government, local, state or federal is allowed to use it.

Yes, immigration reform is needed. Our choices?

Posted on Wednesday, July 23, 2008
On immigration, McCain and Obama very much alike
By David Lightman McClatchy Newspapers



His first joke in LA got a laugh for a reason.

early evening news

The Moscow Times East vs. West in Central Asia
23 July 2008 Updated at 23 July 2008 0:13 Moscow Time.
By Adrian Pabst

In a little-noticed news story last week, U.S. lawmakers strongly condemned what they called China's brutal pre-Olympic crackdown in the far northwest Xinjiang region, which is populated by the Uyghurs, a mostly Muslim Turkic ethnic group...

...It is still unclear whether Monday's two bomb blasts in the southwestern Chinese city of Kunming, in which two people were killed, were in any way related to Islamic terrorism or separatist movements, but the attacks will undoubtedly fuel fear and suspicion with the Olympics just three weeks away...

...China, Russia and their Central Asian partners accuse the West of double standards and illegitimate interference. They say they are simply defending their territorial integrity against secessionist threats. They suspect the United States and others of orchestrating the Muslim minorities and supporting secessionism to strengthen the Western presence in Central Asia.

Both are right about each other, but wrong about Asian Islam. In fact, both the East and West pursue questionable goals and policies. Under the cloak of the "global war on terror," both sides intervene against Islamic extremists in order to advance their rival interests. In a region rich in minerals, oil and gas, the United States established military bases in Manas, just north of the Kyrgyz capital Bishkek and in Karshi-Khanabad, in southern Uzbekistan, not far from the Tajik border. These are both key locations in the fight against the Taliban and al-Qaida-related networks in nearby Afghanistan. China has undoubtedly exaggerated the terrorist threat in order to suppress political opposition and extend its sphere of influence in Central Asia...

Completely unrelated to the above article on how the muslims are stuck in the middle of an East West tug rope thingy, but of interest to me, because I love water--

posted July 22, 2008 4:13 pm
Tomgram: Elizabeth de la Vega, Those Hard Rains Are Gonna Fall

...In the end, when it came to an assessment of the current state of our national water policy,...

...hodge-podge.

Stories that amuse me this morning

Short-sellers bet on stock market crash
Julia Kollewe
guardian.co.uk,
Monday July 21, 2008

Study: shrinking newsrooms hurting papers' quality
By JEREMY HERRON – 1 day ago
NEW YORK (AP) — The many and deepening cuts at newspapers across the country are starting to take a toll on their content, according to a study being released Monday.

Hat tip to Danny

And then there is this--

Tuesday, July 22, 2008
GM, utilities join to study electric car impact
By TOM KRISHER AP Auto Writer

Who Killed the Electric Car? is a 2006 documentary film that explores the birth, limited commercialization, and subsequent death of the battery electric vehicle in the United States, specifically the General Motors EV1 of the 1990s

Who Killed the Electric Car?

This gem seriously amuses me and whoa, that didn't take long, Taibbi predicted this bullshit, now didn't he?

Laughing and reading

Star Wars Dance (made me laugh)

This is what I'm reading.



Americans who get their newz from mainstream sources are stupid.

Oy vey. After all that shit

Court overturns CBS fine over Janet Jackson flash
Mon Jul 21, 2008 10:48pm BST By Peter Kaplan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. government's campaign against television indecency was dealt a blow on Monday when a court overturned a $550,000 (275,000 pound) fine against CBS Corp television stations for airing a glimpse of pop singer Janet Jackson's breast during the 2004 Super Bowl broadcast.

Federal minimum wage hike

Minimum Wage Hike And A Tight Economy
Minimum wage workers are set to get a pay bump later this week: Thursday, the federal minimum wage will go from $5.85 to $6.55.

"The minimum wage in 1968, if you adjust it for inflation, was $9.88. "

A classical economics analysis of supply and demand implies that by mandating a price floor above the equilibrium wage, minimum wage laws should cause unemployment.

some key facts about these states show that a number of factors unrelated to minimum wage increases are actually responsible for high unemployment rates:...
Employment and the Minimum Wage

Salaries of Members of Congress: A List of
Payable Rates and Effective Dates, 1789-2008 (pdf)
...1978, 1980, 1981, 1982, 1983, 1986, 1988, and 1989).
The Ethics Reform Act of 1989 changed the method by which the annual adjustment is determined for Members and other senior officials, based on a formula using changes in private sector wages and salaries as measured by the Employment Cost Index. Under this revised method, annual adjustments were accepted 12 times (those scheduled forJanuary 1991, 1992, 1993, 1998, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, and 2008)and denied six times those scheduled for January 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1999, and 2007)
The annual adjustment automatically goes into effect unless:
(1) Congress statutorily prohibits the adjustment;
(2) Congress statutorily revises the adjustment; or
(3) the annual base pay3 adjustment of GS employees is established at a rate less than the scheduled increase for Members, in which case Members would be paid the lower rate

Projected January 2009 Member Pay Increase of 2.8%
Under the formula established in the Ethics Reform Act, Members may receive a pay adjustment in January 2009 of 2.8%.5 This adjustment — if not revised by Congress oradjustment procedure, Members originally were scheduled to receive a 2.7% increase in January 2008, based upon the formula set forth in the Ethics Reform Act of 1989.6 This increase would have raised their salaries to $169,700. The scheduled Member increase was revised to 2.5%, resulting in a salary in 2008 of $169,300, due to factors related to the increase in the base pay of General Schedule (GS) employees.

...Secretary of Defense Robert Gates launched a fierce verbal assault on… go ahead, take a guess: the "creeping militarization" of U.S. foreign policy. It seems that too many unappetizing "peacekeeping" tasks, once handled by other departments of the government, are now in the military's lap, which turns out not to be quite as capacious as once imagined. "The Foreign Service is not the Foreign Legion, and the U.S. military should never be mistaken for a Peace Corps with guns" were among his exact words. ...


The Three Trillion Dollar War

Have you Had Enough?

Africa

I don't know much about Africa except what I see here and there, I've never studied it. I haven't wanted to. For the most part, it disgusts me. Yes, yes, I know, it is where humanity started and spread out from. Part of the reason for my disgust. It is the origin of the most destructive creature on earth.

Africa is mired in poverty and misery.

Yeah, but isn't it the fault of white people that Africa is such a mess?

Is it all the results of European colonization that continues today in the form of unfair trade practices?

(update 10:58 AM 7/21/2008 EU offers to cut farm tariffs by 60 percent

Is it US food aid combined with US agricultural subsidies?

Is it the history of Arab slave traders?

Is it the history of the Atlantic slave trade?

Enslavement went both ways.

It still does, although I have not much sympathy for women who marry these schmucks. Why any woman shoud have to deal with what is legally allowed in the grey area of this map is beyond me. Don't tell me culture has nothing to do with fertility rates . How do you bring a culture into the 21st century? How do you encourage birth control in cultures that value children more than the abilty to take care of them? Part of the failures are
cultural, part are history, and part are simple ecology. Something that global warming will exacerbate.

We ignore the lessons of Africa, especially here in the dry, western part of the US, at our own peril.

Matt Taibbi nails it again

Economic Realities Are Killing Our Era of Fantasy Politics
By Matt Taibbi, RollingStone.com. Posted July 19, 2008.

Election season will be packed with horserace media distractions, but our economic situation is becoming a matter of life and death.

...If you're reading this and you had to drive to work today or pay a credit card bill in the last few weeks you know better than I do for sure how fucked up things have gotten. I hear talk from people out on the campaign trail about mortgages and bankruptcies and bill collectors that are enough to make your ass clench with 100 percent pure panic.

None of this is a secret. Here, however, is something that is a secret: that this is a class issue that is being intentionally downplayed by a political/media consensus bent on selling the public a version of reality where class resentments, or class distinctions even, do not exist...


...We're also going to be fed truckloads of onerous horseshit about the candidate wives...

Naomi Wolf's alarming message

Makes this crap make sense.

Netroots Summit Grapples with Bipartisan Attacks on Rule of Law

Hat Tip to Ornery Bastard