<![CDATA[The Political Asylum - Forums for Intelligent Discussion & Debate]]> http://forums.thepoliticalasylum.com/ Political forum for intelligent debate and discussion. Local, national and world news and events discussed. en Thu, 09 Sep 2010 03:13:59 GMT vBulletin 30 http://forums.thepoliticalasylum.com/images/redbar/misc/rss.jpg <![CDATA[The Political Asylum - Forums for Intelligent Discussion & Debate]]> http://forums.thepoliticalasylum.com/ <![CDATA[Boehner: We can't afford to bail out states]]> http://forums.thepoliticalasylum.com/showthread.php?t=41773&goto=newpost Thu, 09 Sep 2010 01:10:19 GMT House Minority Leader John Boehner said Tuesday before voting on a bill to aid cash-strapped states that the states need to figure out their budget... House Minority Leader John Boehner said Tuesday before voting on a bill to aid cash-strapped states that the states need to figure out their budget woes on their own.

“We are broke. We do not have the money to bail out the states. It’s time for them to get their arms around their own problems,” he told reporters.

House members were called back to vote on the measure, which would give states $26 billion to prevent layoffs of teachers, firefighters and police officers. President Barack Obama urged the House to pass the bill Tuesday morning, saying it would save hundreds of thousands of dollars and help parents and children.

"I suppose if America's children and the safety of our communities are your special interest, then it is a special-interest bill," Obama said. "But I think those interests are widely shared throughout this country."
Republican leaders who had to rush back to Washington lamented that they must spend time fighting what they label an extension of the stimulus funding approved last year when they could be helping people in their districts.

“Today, as we speak, hundreds of my constituents who are struggling in this economy are gathered at the 6th Congressional District job fair,” Republican Conference Chair Mike Pence (R-Ind.) said. “It grieves my heart that I have to be here on the floor of the Congress when I could be there encouraging Hoosier families that are out of work.”

Republicans have been calling the measure a boon for special interests at the expense of the taxpayer. Pence dodged a question about whether teachers should be considered special interests.

“Well, look, I’m married to a schoolteacher who spent a lot of years in a public school classroom. Look, the state bailout that’s being considered on the floor today benefitting teacher unions around the country, public employees around the country, it is what it is. But Republicans are absolutely determined to stand against more of the same stimulus spending.”

http://www.politico.com/blogs/glennt...ut_states.html ]]> Opinions are like assholes... Saguaro http://forums.thepoliticalasylum.com/showthread.php?t=41773 Official: 2nd killed in flooding swamping Texas http://forums.thepoliticalasylum.com/showthread.php?t=41772&goto=newpost Thu, 09 Sep 2010 00:16:15 GMT ARLINGTON, Texas – Authorities say flooding from the remnants of Tropical Storm Hermine has killed a second person who was swept away from his pickup... ARLINGTON, Texas – Authorities say flooding from the remnants of Tropical Storm Hermine has killed a second person who was swept away from his pickup truck.

Johnson County Sheriff's Department Capt. Mike Gilbert says a 49-year-old man drowned Wednesday afternoon after being swept away from his truck on a road near a flooded creek in an area between Alvarado and Lillian.

He says the man's body was found about 200 yards from his truck.

The National Weather Service says at least one person died in a vehicle submerged by water from a swollen creek in Killeen, north of Austin. And authorities in Austin say they're searching for a woman whose black Lexus SUV was swept off a road by a swollen creek.

Flooding has also swamped parts of northern Texas, including Arlington, west of Dallas.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100908/...opical_weather ]]> Group Therapy Saguaro http://forums.thepoliticalasylum.com/showthread.php?t=41772 Wall Street climbs in low-volume session http://forums.thepoliticalasylum.com/showthread.php?t=41771&goto=newpost Thu, 09 Sep 2010 00:05:47 GMT NEW YORK (Reuters) – Stocks rose on Wednesday as investors latched onto positive news out of Europe in the latest in a string of low-volume sessions... NEW YORK (Reuters) – Stocks rose on Wednesday as investors latched onto positive news out of Europe in the latest in a string of low-volume sessions suggesting little confidence in market direction.

Bank stocks recovered from Tuesday's losses, with JPMorgan Chase and Co (JPM.N) up 2.2 percent and the BKW bank index (.BKX) up 1.7 percent. A successful Portuguese debt offering as well as news that nationalized Irish lender Anglo Irish Bank would wind down assets pulled global equity markets higher.

After last week's sharp bounce in equity markets halted the August sell-off, the S&P is nearing the top of its recent trading range. Low volume suggests investors aren't entirely convinced the market can move substantially higher.

"Overall we're still locked in a fairly narrow trading range, and that's consistent with the jerky pattern of how the economy here and in developing worlds is unfolding," said Joseph Battipaglia, market strategist at Stifel Nicolaus in Yardley, Pennsylvania.

The Fed's Beige Book compilation of anecdotal reports confirmed the economy had begun to slow over the summer, a fact that had sent stocks sharply lower in August but that had little impact on Wednesday's session.

The Dow Jones industrial average (.DJI) rose 46.32 points, or 0.45 percent, at 10,387.01. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index (.SPX) added 7.03 points, or 0.64 percent, at 1,098.87. The Nasdaq Composite Index (.IXIC) climbed 19.98 points, or 0.90 percent, at 2,228.87.

On Tuesday, stocks fell in light volume as investors seized on renewed concerns about European banks' exposure to sovereign debt to sell shares after strong gains last week when the S&P 500 jumped more than 5 percent in three days.

This week has been shortened by the Labor Day holiday on Monday, while the Rosh Hashanah Jewish new year holiday could mean staffing and trading volume are reduced on Thursday and Friday, providing the potential for more volatility.

The S&P 500 is appearing to settle into the upper end of a recent trading range between 1,040 and 1,130.

An inverse head and shoulders formation has developed in the S&P 500 chart, a sign technical analysts believe could show the market has bottomed. The "neck line" is around the 1,130 mark, suggesting a possible breakout rally if stocks move above that.

"You're in the process of building a base here," said Marc Pado, U.S. market strategist at Cantor Fitzgerald & Co in San Francisco. "The June, August highs of 1,130 are the key points, if you break above that then the year-end projection (of 1,250) ... becomes a fairly obvious upside projection."

For a graphic on the S&P 500 head and shoulders formation, see: http://link.reuters.com/meq32p

U.S.-traded shares of BP Plc (BP.L)(BP.N) rose 3.2 percent at $38.37 after the company issued an internal report on the rig explosion that led to the worst U.S. oil spill ever and the death of 11 crew members.

BP deflected much of the blame, claiming drilling contractor Transocean Ltd (RIG.N) missed danger signs and criticized the cementing of the well conducted by Halliburton Co (HAL.N). Transocean gained 1.3 percent to $53.74, while Halliburton added 1.2 percent to $30.21.

Staples Inc (SPLS.O) was up 2 percent to $19.04, and Costco Wholesale Corp (COST.O) rose 1 percent to $59.21 after Goldman Sachs upgraded their stocks.

About 6.55 billion shares traded on the New York Stock Exchange, the American Stock Exchange and Nasdaq, far below last year's estimated daily average of 9.65 billion.

Advancing stocks outnumbered declining ones on the NYSE by a ratio of about 2 to 1.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100908/...xsbmJzcHN0b3I- ]]> The Bank Saguaro http://forums.thepoliticalasylum.com/showthread.php?t=41771 Gainesville Rejects Koran-Burning Pastor Terry Jones http://forums.thepoliticalasylum.com/showthread.php?t=41770&goto=newpost Wed, 08 Sep 2010 21:33:26 GMT There was a time when Terry Jones, the pastor at the center of the Koran-burning storm, might have felt right at home in Gainesville. A generation... There was a time when Terry Jones, the pastor at the center of the Koran-burning storm, might have felt right at home in Gainesville. A generation ago, the north Florida college town was comprised of a conservative Bible Belt community best known for the invention of Gatorade. The University of Florida (UF) football team didn't field its first black player until 1970. Ideas like interfaith dialogue and homosexual rights were as far away as the Sodom and Gomorrah of Miami.

But the Gainesville that Jones inhabits today is a lot different. In the past couple of decades, as UF has gained academic stature and become an increasingly popular choice for students from other parts of the country and the world, Gainesville (pop. 125,000) has morphed into a progressive metropolitan area known as much for recycling as for religion. This year, it elected its first openly gay mayor, and with a Muslim population that's grown to 1,500, its interfaith relations are widely considered among Florida's best. Says Ismail ibn Ali, 21, a UF senior and head of the Islam on Campus group: "People here are a lot more open and accepting than I expected for a town in the middle of the Bible Belt." (See pictures of a Muslim-American road trip.)

And that, say locals, helps explain why Jones, the pastor of the Evangelical Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, plans to burn the Koran on Saturday to mark the anniversary of 9/11 - and most likely set off a bonfire of protest across the Muslim world that U.S. officials fear could put American troops and citizens abroad at greater risk. In a city where there's really no longer a place for the kind of religious intolerance promoted by Jones' shrinking congregation, which has fewer than 50 members and whose website recently decried Gainesville's prevailing credo of "coexistence," Jones is simply lashing out for attention in the only way delusional bigots know how.

But what's most ironic is that a big impetus for Jones' publicity stunt is the anti-Islamic feelings emanating from New York City - whose residents, we heartland philistines are told, are the nation's most enlightened, but whose majority opposition to a mosque near Ground Zero has only encouraged Islamophobes like Jones and, in the process, tainted the image of a Florida town that seems to deserve it least. "What Mr. Jones' so-called church is doing is definitely not representative of Gainesville," says Mayor Craig Lowe, who has declared Saturday "Interfaith Solidarity Day" in his city, for clerics, students and residents to plan peaceful events while the Dove folks torch a couple hundred copies of Islam's holiest book. "This actually presents us with an opportunity to project who we really are."

Although Jones has every First Amendment right to burn books, Lowe says city officials hope to persuade him to call off the Koran conflagration, which Jones insists on carrying out even though the Gainesville Fire Department has refused him a permit. This week Jones said that he and his congregation were "praying" over the statement of General David Petraeus, the top U.S. military commander in Afghanistan, who warned that "images of the burning of a Koran would undoubtedly be used by extremists ... to inflame public opinion and incite violence." Christian leaders across the U.S., among them conservative Evangelicals, have condemned Jones' plan; his property insurer has canceled the Dove center's coverage and the North Carolina bank that holds the church's mortgage is demanding repayment of the $140,000 balance. (See portraits of America's Muslim community.)

But Jones, 58, who is packing a pistol because of death threats he claims he's received, told CBS's Early Show on Wednesday morning that he is "still determined to do it" and send a message to "radical Islam" that it can't "push their agenda upon us." Jones, a bushy-mustached Missouri native who until a couple of years ago also ran the Dove's sister church in Germany, has written a pamphlet titled "Islam Is of the Devil." It's the same message he and his congregants have painted on signs that they plant alongside Gainesville roads and on T-shirts that they love to parade around the UF campus. He's also endorsed the anti-gay crusade of Westboro Baptist Church in Kansas, whose members stage protests at the funerals of U.S. service members killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. (The WBC says the deaths of these soldiers is punishment from God for the U.S.'s condoning homosexuality.)

Such is the sad ignorance that Gainesville and the rest of the country are having to deal with this week. Jones admits he's never even opened a Koran - and doesn't know, therefore, that if he did, he'd find out he's about to burn a text that mentions Jesus Christ in reverential tones almost 100 times. Although Muslims don't believe that Jesus was God incarnate, as Christians do, they venerate him as a prophet and "believe in his miracles," says ibn Ali. But Jones is no theological heavyweight. In fact, Dove's standing as a tax-exempt religious institution is under investigation by Alachua County officials because of accusations by former church members that Jones and his wife require congregants to work for free at his for-profit company, which sells furniture on eBay. (The Joneses deny the charge.)

An equally pathetic facet of this exhibition is that if extremist Muslims do respond with violent or even terrorist acts - which will of course only prove them no worthier of being called true Muslims than Jones is worthy of being called a true Christian - the pastor will no doubt claim that as evidence that he was right all along. But as soon as the first match is struck on Saturday, communities like Gainesville will confirm that they were right all along to move beyond the likes of Jones. And they might also conclude that the residents of enlightened cities like New York aren't always such tolerant examples themselves.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/2010090...FpbmVzdmlsbGVy ]]> Opinions are like assholes... Saguaro http://forums.thepoliticalasylum.com/showthread.php?t=41770 <![CDATA['Restoring Truthiness' Rally by Stephen Colbert an Answer to the Tea Party?]]> http://forums.thepoliticalasylum.com/showthread.php?t=41769&goto=newpost Wed, 08 Sep 2010 19:58:48 GMT It seems that the "Internets" have generated a movement of sorts, calling upon the host of Comedy Central's "The Colbert Report," Stephen Colbert, to hold a "Restoring Truthiness" Rally in Washington D. C. sometime in the near future. The grass roots movement seems to have been born of an idea presented on Reddit to "see Stephen Colbert flip a mirror to the Tea Party and show them just how ridiculous they are."

According to TheNewsofToday.com, it has grown to include a website, mainstream media articles, a Facebook page, and a Twitter account, all pushing for Colbert to take to the steps of the Lincoln Memorial -- a la Glenn Beck -- and begin "restoring truthiness" to America.

For those unfamiliar with the term, comedian Stephen Colbert, faux-conservative news anchor, coined it during the pilot episode of "The Colbert Report" (2005) in the first of his popular "The Word" segments. It is a word with the general meaning of "gut feeling" without substantiated proof, a feeling one gets without evidence or intellectual investigation. In 2005, "truthiness" was the American Dialect Society's "Word of the Year." Merriam-Webster made it their "Word of the Year" in 2006. It is a word rich in satire and used to describe any number of decisions, situations, and pronouncements, especially those of a political bent that happen to fly in the face of facts and evidence (such as the justification for the invasion of Iraq due to the presence of WMDs, which were found later to not have existed as the Bush administration reported).

The Facebook page "100,000 Strong to Restore Truthiness to the US Capital" has pulled in nearly 20,000 followers thus far. The goal is to get Stephen Colbert to conduct a rally such as "Restoring Honor," staged by the entertaining rodeo clown (his own descriptive words) Glenn Beck. Beck and his crowd of uber-right-wingers and fringe conservatives (some of whom are Tea Party advocates and members) held their rally on the anniversary of Martin Luther King's "I Have A Dream" speech, attempting to assure themselves with the "truthiness" that the United States was either going in a Stalinist direction or a Nazi direction (they continually confuse and conflate the two when speaking about Democrats and the Obama administration).

Part of Beck's truthiness, according to Newsopi, included the outright falsehood during his speech of holding the original copy of George Washington's inaugural address from the National Archives in his hand. MSNBC's Keith Olbermann called him out on it, since such historic documents are kept under lock and key. Beck's response? It was easier to say that he held it himself than go through the details of what actually occurred.

He must have went with his "gut feeling." So much for "restoring honor." Apparently, truthiness won out.

ColbertRally.com is attempting to get the word out through "Operation Strike of Truthiness," and the word to Stephen Colbert that it is imperative that he conduct a "Restoring Truthiness" rally in Washington. They are conducting an e-mail and Twitter campaign to make the rally an actuality. The website is also pushing the Facebook page "100,000 Strong." On Sept. 7, the website called for members, fans, and those surfers to Google the term "Restoring Truthiness" until they developed carpal tunnel syndrome. It wasn't long before "Restoring Truthiness" made it to the #1 position on Google Trends.

It is as yet unclear if Colbert will heed the call and climb the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and address the Colbert Nation (and the rest of the world) in a moment of extreme truthiness. But given the extremely negative and misleading political message that seems to have enveloped the political Right in the United States, a bit of neo-conservative humorous satire might show that most shouldn't take Glenn Beck and his band of extremists seriously -- just seriously enough to ensure that they do not gain too much political power.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ac/20100907/...RvcmluZ3RydQ-- ]]> Opinions are like assholes... Saguaro http://forums.thepoliticalasylum.com/showthread.php?t=41769 Obamanomics!! http://forums.thepoliticalasylum.com/showthread.php?t=41768&goto=newpost Wed, 08 Sep 2010 18:26:46 GMT Y'All might want to read this!!:yep

Text By ROBERT B. REICH
Twenty-eight years ago, Ronald Reagan used the severe economic downturn of 1980-82 to implement an economic philosophy that not only gave force and meaning to a wide range of initiatives but also offered a way back to sustained economic growth. Is there a similarly powerful animating idea behind Obamanomics?


Chad Crowe.I believe there is -- and it's not a return to big government.

The expansive and expensive forays of the Treasury and the Federal Reserve Board into Wall Street notwithstanding, President Barack Obama's 10-year budget (whose projections may prove wildly optimistic if the economy fails to rebound by early next year) presents a remarkably conservative picture. In 10 years, taxes are expected to fall to around 19% of GDP, a lower level than the late 1990s. Spending is expected to drop to around 22.5% of GDP, about where it was under Ronald Reagan -- including nondefense discretionary spending at about 3.6% of GDP, its lowest since data on this were first collected in 1962.

The real distinction between Obamanomics and Reaganomics involves government's role in achieving growth and broad-based prosperity. The animating idea of Reaganomics was that the economy grows best from the top down. Lower taxes on the wealthy prompts them to work harder and invest more. When they do so, everyone benefits. Neither Reagan nor the apostles of supply-side economics explicitly promised that such benefits would "trickle down" to everyone else but this was broadly understood to be the justification.

Reaganomics surely marked the beginning of one of the longest bull markets in American history and generated enormous gains at the top. But its benefits were not widely shared. After the Reagan tax cuts, growth in the median wage slowed, adjusted for inflation. After George W. Bush's tax cuts in 2001 and 2003, the median wage dropped. Meanwhile, an increasing share of total income went to the top 1% of income earners. In 1980, before Reagan took office, the highest-paid 1% took home 9% of total national income. By 2007, before the economy melted down, the richest 1% was taking home 22%.

Obamanomics, by contrast, holds that an economy grows best from the bottom up. The president proposes to increase taxes on the highest 2% of income earners starting in 2011. Those tax increases will fund more Pell grants allowing lower-income children to attend college, better pay for teachers that show they're worth it, broader access to health care, improved infrastructure, and more basic research. These and related expenditures are designed to help Americans become more productive. You might think of it as "trickle up" economics.

The key is public investment. Reaganomics did not view any public spending as an investment in the future except when it came to spending on the military. Hence, since 1980, federal spending on education, job training, infrastructure and basic research and development (apart from defense-related R&D) have all shrunk as a proportion of GDP. And apart from a modest expansion of health insurance available to poor children, there has been no significant attempt to make health insurance broadly affordable to Americans.

Obamanomics is premised on the central importance of public investments in the productivity of Americans. The logic is straightforward. Capital no longer remains within the borders of a nation where it is saved. It moves to wherever around the globe it can get the best return. Some of it flows as highly liquid investments that slosh across borders at the slightest provocation, as we're witnessing in the current financial crisis. But much takes the form of direct investments in new plants and equipment, telecommunications systems, laboratories, offices and -- most important of all -- jobs. Such capital goes to nations that can deliver high returns either because labor is cheap and taxes and regulations low or because labor is highly productive: well educated, healthy and supported by modern infrastructure.

In this way, every nation faces an implicit choice of whether its strategic advantage will lie in low costs or high productivity. For the better part of the last three decades America's job strategy has tended toward the former. But this inevitably exerts downward pressure on the real wages of a larger and larger portion of our population.

Only those Americans whose parents can afford to give them a high-quality private education and health care, and who can situate themselves in locations with excellent infrastructures of telecommunication, transportation, public health and safety, have been able to link up with global capital on more positive terms. But not even they are entirely secure economically, because they face growing shortages of talented people they can rely on within easy reach, and can't entirely avoid the disadvantages of a deteriorating public infrastructure, such as ever more congested roads and airports.

Obamanomics recognizes that the only resource uniquely rooted in a national economy is its people -- their skills, insights, capacities to collaborate, and the transportation and communication systems that link them together. Public investment is the key to attracting long-term private investment so that a nation's people can prosper.

Bill Clinton understood this but failed to do much about America's deteriorating public investments because he came to office during an economic expansion, when the major worry was excessive government spending leading to inflation. Mr. Obama comes to office during the biggest downturn since the Great Depression, and his plan represents the largest commitment to public investment in 30 years.

Regulation, done correctly, is also a form of public investment because it enables consumers and investors to be confident about what they're receiving, and ensures that the side-effects of trades don't harm the public. Reaganomics assumed that deregulated markets always function better. They do in many respects. But when they don't, all hell can break loose, retarding economic growth.

Energy markets were deregulated and we wound up with Enron. Food and drug safety has been neglected, resulting in contaminated products that have endangered consumers and threatened whole industries. Financial markets were deregulated and we now have a global meltdown. Obamanomics, by contrast, views appropriate regulation as an essential precondition for sustainable growth.

Under Reaganomics, government was the problem. It can still be a problem. But a central tenet of Obamanomics is that there are even bigger problems out there which cannot be solved without government. By building the economy from the bottom up, enhancing public investment, and instituting reasonable regulation, Obamanomics marks a reversal of the economic philosophy that has dominated America since 1981.

Mr. Reich is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and a former U.S. Secretary of Labor under President Bill Clinton.

************************************************** *************


Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page A11Copyright ]]> Opinions are like assholes... jim http://forums.thepoliticalasylum.com/showthread.php?t=41768 Koran-burning plan draws worldwide condemnation http://forums.thepoliticalasylum.com/showthread.php?t=41767&goto=newpost Wed, 08 Sep 2010 16:18:53 GMT KABUL (Reuters) – Afghan police went on alert on Wednesday to guard against demonstrations triggered by a U.S. church's plan to burn a copy of the Koran on the anniversary of the September 11 attacks which has drawn global condemnation.

Tension has risen with the approach of the ninth anniversary on Saturday of the September 11 hijacked airliner attacks on the United States and the end of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan. Eid al-Fitr is expected to be celebrated on Thursday or Friday.

Plans by Terry Jones, the pastor of a small church in Gainesville, Florida, to burn a copy of the holy Muslim book have added to what U.S. religious leaders have described as an "anti-Muslim frenzy."

The United Nations said such an act would be "abhorrent."

"On behalf of the United Nations and the whole international community present in Afghanistan, I would like to express in the strongest possible terms our concern and indeed outrage at the announcement by a small religious group abroad of their intention to burn copies of the holy book of the Koran," United Nations envoy Staffan de Mastura said in a statement issued in Kabul.

The planned Koran-burning by the Dove World Outreach Center sparked protests by several hundred Afghans in Kabul this week, mostly students from religious schools. Gathered outside a mosque in the Afghan capital, they chanted "Death to America."

A senior police official in Kabul, who asked not to be identified, said an Interior Ministry anti-demonstration unit had been put on high alert on Wednesday in case protests broke out.

DEADLY PROTESTS

There have been frequent protests in the past over similar incidents. In 2006, about a dozen people were killed in violent protests in Kabul after a Danish newspaper published cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammad and a similar number died in another protest a year earlier.

Last January, Afghan troops shot and killed eight protesters and wounded 13 in southern Helmand province during a riot triggered by the reported desecration of a Koran.

Two of the top U.S. commanders in Afghanistan have said the Florida church's plan risked undermining U.S. President Barack Obama's efforts to reach out to the world's 1.5 billion Muslims.

The White House and the State Department have also issued stern warnings, making it clear Obama's administration deplored the plan.

General David Petraeus, the commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, said the plan could trigger retaliation against U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

"It could endanger troops and it could endanger the overall effort," Petraeus said in a statement this week.

Petraeus commands almost 150,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan, where violence is at its worst since U.S.-backed Afghan forces toppled the Taliban in late 2001.

The Taliban government was ousted soon after the September 11 attacks for harboring al Qaeda leaders including Osama bin Laden.

On Wednesday, the Vatican added to world condemnation of the planned Koran burning.

"These deplorable acts of violence, in fact, cannot be counteracted by an outrageous and grave gesture against a book considered sacred by a religious community," the Vatican said in a statement.

"Each religion, with its respective sacred books, places of worship and symbols, has the right to respect and protection."

Germany's leading Jewish group joined the chorus of condemnation, saying it evoked the mass killing of Jews in the Holocaust that followed Nazi book burnings.

"The idea is terrible and repulsive," said Charlotte Knobloch, president of Germany's Central Council of Jews.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100908/...us_usa_muslims ]]> Mad, Mad World Saguaro http://forums.thepoliticalasylum.com/showthread.php?t=41767 A Pessimist Manifesto http://forums.thepoliticalasylum.com/showthread.php?t=41766&goto=newpost Wed, 08 Sep 2010 14:42:18 GMT I don't usually start threads around here, but I loved this piece on worldview differences between the Left and Right:

Quote:


A Pessimist Manifesto

Friday ~ September 3rd, 2010 in Babble | by Karl Smith

One odd empirical regularity is that hard-nosed, pessimistic, realist, free-market guys like myself seem to spend more time agreeing with soggy Liberals than with the Conservatives who supposedly share our worldview.

Part of that has to do with the success of the general Libertarian project, as Scott Sumner outlines here. Many free market ideas have now simply become conventional wisdom among wonks of all stripes.

Partially , however, I think it is that many modern Conservatives intuitively base their analysis of the world on a philosophy is that anathema to my worldview. Their view is that if you take a responsible, measured, well-reasoned approach to the world things will work out. Failure is thus a sign that you have not done that.

My sense is that this is fundamentally crap.

First of all things are not going to work out. You are going to die. Your friends and family are going to die. Everything you care about and everything you ever worked for will be destroyed. This story, our story, only has one ending and it is death and destruction.

If you don’t recognize that, you are living in a fantasy world.

Second, even in the short term your plans almost certainly won’t work out. Most ideas are bad ideas and there are infinitely more ways to fuck something up than to get it right.

To wit, clean living is not some form of salvation. Nor, is prudence assurance that that you and your loved ones will be okay. Suffering is inevitable and the best one can say is that it hasn’t happened to me – yet.

Bad things happen because badness is the natural state of the world. If something good ever happens count yourself lucky and be aware that this too shall pass.

Thus, I see our proper mission as easing pain, where we can, to the extent we can, the best we can. This is best done up close and personal where you are mostly likely to quickly notice if your efforts to help are actually doing harm.

It is best done with a respect and reverence for the power of self-organizing systems, spontaneous order and the resilience of natural equilibria.

Its best done slowly, and in baby steps, building upon the wisdom of the past.

And, most importantly it is best done with humility, knowing that in all cases that, “but for the grace of God pure heartless luck, there would go I”

Its this last part that I think many modern Conservatives miss in their conviction that everything would be okay if it were for those meddling Liberals. Everything would not be okay. It never will be. If we do our best it might, and I mean might, be a little bit better.
]]> Opinions are like assholes... AmanGeorge http://forums.thepoliticalasylum.com/showthread.php?t=41766 Imam: NYC Islamic center to include other faiths http://forums.thepoliticalasylum.com/showthread.php?t=41764&goto=newpost Wed, 08 Sep 2010 13:15:24 GMT NEW YORK – A proposed Islamic community center near ground zero will include separate prayer spaces for Muslims, Christians, Jews and people of other... NEW YORK – A proposed Islamic community center near ground zero will include separate prayer spaces for Muslims, Christians, Jews and people of other faiths, the imam behind plans for the facility wrote in an op-ed piece published online Tuesday.

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf wrote in The New York Times that the attention surrounding the plans for the $100 million community center just blocks from the site of the Sept. 11 attacks "reflects the degree to which people care about the very American values under debate: recognition of the rights of others, tolerance and freedom of worship."

He said it was critical that Americans "not back away" from completing the project.

"The wonderful outpouring of support for our right to build this community center from across the social, religious and political spectrum seriously undermines the ability of anti-American radicals to recruit young, impressionable Muslims by falsely claiming that America persecutes Muslims for their faith," he wrote. "These efforts by radicals at distortion endanger our national security and the personal security of Americans worldwide."

The comments published in the Times were among Rauf's most extensive on the Islamic center since national leaders began weighing in on the debate earlier this year.

For months, the debate has focused on whether the plans for the center would include a mosque just blocks north of where Islamic extremists destroyed the World Trade Center and killed nearly 2,800 people on Sept. 11, 2001.

Opponents say the mosque should be moved farther away out of sensitivity for the families of 9/11 victims; supporters say religious freedom should be protected.

For the past two months, Rauf has been traveling abroad, including taking a 15-day trip paid for by the U.S. Department of State to promote religious tolerance in the Middle East. While on the trip, he occasionally spoke about the center, mostly to local Arab media. He returned to the United States on Sunday.

In the op-ed piece, he explained his reasons for not speaking out more and sooner, saying he felt it would "not be right to comment from abroad."

"It would be better if I addressed these issues once I returned home to America, and after I could confer with leaders of other faiths who have been deliberating with us over this project," he wrote. "My life's work has been focused on building bridges between religious groups and never has that been as important as it is now."

In the nearly 1,000-word op-ed, he outlined his vision for the center, referring to it as a "shared space" for the community that will include "a multifaith memorial dedicated to victims of the Sept. 11 attacks."

"I am very sensitive to the feelings of the families of victims of 9/11, as are my fellow leaders of many faiths," he wrote.

Rauf is one of the directors of the nonprofit organization that was recently formed to raise money for the divisive lower Manhattan project, sometimes known as Park51. The imam referred to the project as the "Cordoba House" in his op-ed piece.

"I know there will be interest in our financing, and so we will clearly identify all of our financial backers," he wrote.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100908/.../us_nyc_mosque ]]> Group Therapy Saguaro http://forums.thepoliticalasylum.com/showthread.php?t=41764 Muslims Often Burn Od Qurans as a Respectful Way of Disposing of Them http://forums.thepoliticalasylum.com/showthread.php?t=41763&goto=newpost Wed, 08 Sep 2010 13:12:08 GMT So what's the big to do about burning of the Quaran? This Baptist minister is just being respectful by getting rid of a bunch of old Quarans than nobody wants to read.

Here it is on the Huffington Post as well.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/zareen..._b_690747.html ]]> Opinions are like assholes... Bicycleman http://forums.thepoliticalasylum.com/showthread.php?t=41763 Stock futures track Europe stocks up http://forums.thepoliticalasylum.com/showthread.php?t=41762&goto=newpost Wed, 08 Sep 2010 13:03:40 GMT NEW YORK (Reuters) – Stock index futures rose on Wednesday tracking a turnaround in European stocks and ahead of comments from the Federal Reserve on... NEW YORK (Reuters) – Stock index futures rose on Wednesday tracking a turnaround in European stocks and ahead of comments from the Federal Reserve on the state of the economy.

Investors will eye the U.S. central bank's release of its Beige Book at 2 p.m. EDT, the economic data gathered from its 12 regional banks that will provide insight into U.S. economic conditions.

"I believe we're beginning to see some indicators show the economy leveling off at a slow growth rate," said Peter Cardillo, chief market economist at Avalon Partners in New York. "With interest rates this low, that is a positive for the stock market."

U.S. futures got their cue from a reversal in European stocks. The FTSEurofirst 300 index of leading European shares (.FTEU3) was up 0.6 percent after falling more than 0.4 percent earlier in the session.

"Fears of sovereign debt have crept back into the market, but they're somewhat overblown," Cardillo said.

The STOXX Europe 600 banking index (.SX7P) was unchanged after earlier sliding 1 percent.

S&P 500 futures rose 3.4 points and were above fair value, a formula that evaluates pricing by taking into account interest rates, dividends and time to expiration on the contract. Dow Jones industrial average futures gained 33 points and Nasdaq 100 futures added 9.5 points.

BP Plc (BP.L)(BP.N) deflected much of the blame for a rig blast that led to the worst-ever U.S. oil spill and the death of 11 crew members in an internal report. BP claimed drilling contractor Transocean Ltd (RIGN.VX)(RIG.N) missed danger signs.

U.S. traded shares of BP rose 3 percent to $38.32 in premarket trading, while Transocean ticked up 0.4 percent to $53.25 in low volume.

U.S. chain store sales rose 3 percent for the week ended August 28 versus a year ago, Redbook Research said. The index measures sales for large U.S. general merchandise retailers, representing about 9,000 stores.

U.S. stocks fell in very light volume on Tuesday on renewed concerns about European banks after strong gains last week.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100908/...9ja2Z1dHVyZXM- ]]> The Bank Saguaro http://forums.thepoliticalasylum.com/showthread.php?t=41762 BP report blames itself, others for oil spill http://forums.thepoliticalasylum.com/showthread.php?t=41761&goto=newpost Wed, 08 Sep 2010 13:01:15 GMT NEW ORLEANS – Oil giant BP PLC laid much of the blame for the rig explosion and the massive Gulf of Mexico spill on itself, other companies' workers and a complex series of failures in an internal report released Wednesday before a key piece of evidence has been analyzed.

In its 193-page report posted on its website, the British company described the incident as an accident that arose from a complex and interlinked series of mechanical failures, human judgments, engineering design, operational implementation and team interfaces.

BP spread the blame around, and even was critical of its own workers' conduct, but it defended some parts of the well's design and it was careful in its assessments. It already faces hundreds of lawsuits and billions of dollars of liabilities. In public hearings, it had already tried to shift some of the blame to rig owner Transocean Ltd. and cement contractor Halliburton. BP was leasing the rig from Transocean and owned the well that blew out.

While BP didn't completely absolve its engineers, the company shot down some of the things they've been criticized for by members of Congress and others.

"Well control actions taken prior to the explosion suggest the rig crew was not sufficiently prepared to manage an escalating well control situation," the report said.

A Transocean lawyer said the company had no immediate comment on the report.

Shares in BP extended gains after the release of the report. The stock was up 2 percent at 414.95 pence ($6.41) shortly after the report was made public Wednesday.

The report was generated by a BP team led by Mark Bly, BP's head of safety and operations.

BP's report is far from the final word on possible causes of the explosion, as several divisions of the U.S. government, including the Justice Department, Coast Guard and Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement, are also investigating.

Also, a key piece of the puzzle — the blowout preventer that failed to stop the oil from leaking from the well off the Louisiana coast — was raised from the water Saturday. As of Tuesday afternoon, it had not reached a NASA facility in New Orleans where government investigators planned to analyze it, so those conclusions were not be part of BP's report.

The April 20 rig explosion killed 11 workers and led to 206 million gallons of oil spewing from BP's undersea well.

Investigators know the explosion was triggered by a bubble of methane gas that escaped from the well and shot up the drill column, expanding quickly as it burst through several seals and barriers before igniting.

But they don't know exactly how or why the gas escaped. And they don't know why the blowout preventer didn't seal the well pipe at the sea bottom after the eruption, as it was supposed to.

The details of BP's internal report were closely guarded — and only a short list of people saw it ahead of its release.

There were signs of problems prior to the explosion, including an unexpected loss of fluid from a pipe known as a riser five hours before the explosion that could have indicated a leak in the blowout preventer.

Witness statements show that rig workers talked just minutes before the blowout about pressure problems in the well.

At first, nobody seemed too worried, workers have said. Then panic set in.

Workers called their bosses to report that the well was "coming in" and that they were "getting mud back." The drilling supervisor, Jason Anderson, tried to shut down the well.

It didn't work. At least two explosions turned the rig into an inferno.

Members of Congress, industry experts and workers who survived the rig explosion have accused BP's engineers of cutting corners to save time and money on a project that was 43 days and more than $20 million behind schedule at the time of the blast.

In its report, BP defended the well's design, which has been criticized by industry experts.

"The investigation team reviewed the decision to install a 9 7/8 in. x 7 in. long string production casing rather than a 7 in. production liner, which would have been tied back to the wellhead later, and concluded that both options provided a sound basis of design."

Other findings in the BP report include:

_Flammable fluids rising up the pipe toward the Deepwater Horizon rig were directed to a system that allowed gas to vent onto the rig, and that gas was then circulated by the air conditioning, heating and ventilation systems. BP says that if the crew had directed the fluids overboard, there might have been more time to respond to the pending disaster and the consequences of the accident may have been reduced.

_The company said the cement components for the well were stocked on Deepwater Horizon. Halliburton shipped samples of those components to its laboratory in advance of the date on which the components were used for the Macondo well. Halliburton retained surplus samples from the testing program. However, the investigation team was unable to acquire and test these actual cement samples from the rig due to a court-ordered injunction on Halliburton to preserve this material. BP said Halliburton declined the investigation team's requests for equivalent samples of the cement components used on the rig. The investigation team said it was, therefore, unable to conduct any lab testing using Halliburton products.

_BP counters the concerns that were raised prior to the explosion by Halliburton over the potential for a severe gas flow problem if a BP plan was used. Halliburton and BP were at odds over a key device, known as a centralizer, that is used as part of the process to plug a deepwater well like the oil giant was doing at the time of the disaster. Halliburton's well design expert testified previously he told BP officials April 15 — five days before the well blew — that fewer centralizers would cause a bigger gas flow problem. Centralizers are meant to ensure casing runs down the center of the well bore. If casing strings are cemented off-center, there is a risk that a channel of drilling fluid or contaminated cement will be left where the casing contacts the oil formation, creating an imperfect seal. BP rejected Halliburton's recommendation to use 21 centralizers. Instead, BP used six. In its report Wednesday, BP said the decision likely did not contribute to the cement's failure to isolate the main hydrocarbon zones or to the failure of the shoe track cement.

In June, the House Committee on Energy and Commerce's chairmen said it was BP that made five crucial decisions before the Deepwater Horizon well blowout that "posed a trade-off between cost and well safety." One of those decisions: BP opted against conducting a "cement bond log" to test the integrity of a cement job at the well. A cement bond log would have cost more than $128,000 and taken 9 to 12 hours to perform, the committee's letter notes.

In May, senior BP drilling engineer Mark Hafle told the Coast Guard and BOEM investigators that BP didn't order the test even though more than 3,000 barrels of mud had been lost while drilling, a possible warning sign.

The committee also criticized BP's well design, questioning its decision to run a single string of steel casing from the seafloor to the bottom of the well. Instead, the committee said, BP could have hung a steel tube called a "liner" from the lower end of the well casing and installed a "tieback" on top of the liner. The latter option would have created a better barrier against the flow of gas, but it would have cost BP up to $10 million more and taken longer, the committee said.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_gulf_o...VsbG5ic3BzdG9y ]]> Saguaro http://forums.thepoliticalasylum.com/showthread.php?t=41761 Climate: New study slashes estimate of icecap loss -- by half! http://forums.thepoliticalasylum.com/showthread.php?t=41760&goto=newpost Wed, 08 Sep 2010 07:15:54 GMT *Climate: New study slashes estimate of icecap loss* PARIS (AFP) - – *Estimates of the rate of ice loss from Greenland and West Antarctica, one of... Climate: New study slashes estimate of icecap loss

PARIS (AFP) - – Estimates of the rate of ice loss from Greenland and West Antarctica, one of the most worrying questions in the global warming debate, should be halved, according to Dutch and US scientists.

In the last two years, several teams have estimated Greenland is shedding roughly 230 gigatonnes of ice, or 230 billion tonnes, per year and West Antarctica around 132 gigatonnes annually.

Together, that would account for more than half of the annual three-millimetre (0.2 inch) yearly rise in sea levels, a pace that compares dramatically with 1.8mm (0.07 inches) annually in the early 1960s.

But, according to the new study, published in the September issue of the journal Nature Geoscience, the ice estimates fail to correct for a phenomenon known as glacial isostatic adjustment.

This is the term for the rebounding of Earth's crust following the last Ice Age.

Glaciers that were kilometers (miles) thick smothered Antarctica and most of the northern hemisphere for tens of thousands of years, compressing the elastic crust beneath it with their titanic weight.

When the glaciers started to retreat around 20,000 years ago, the crust started to rebound, and is still doing so.

This movement, though, is not just a single vertical motion, lead researcher Bert Vermeersen of Delft Technical University, in the Netherlands, said in phone interview with AFP.

"A good analogy is that it's like a mattress after someone has been sleeping on it all night," he said.

The weight of the sleeper creates a hollow as the material compress downwards and outwards. When the person gets up, the mattress starts to recover. This movement, seen in close-up, is both upwards and downwards and also sideways, too, as the decompressed material expands outwards and pulls on adjacent stuffing.

Often ignored or considered a minor factor in previous research, post-glacial rebound turns out to be important, says the paper.

It looks at tiny changes in Earth's gravitational field provided by two satellites since 2002, from GPS measurements on land, and from figures for sea floor pressure.

These revealed, among other things, that southern Greenland is in fact subsiding, as the crust beneath it is pulled by the post-glacial rebound from northern America.

With glacial isostatic adjustment modelled in, the loss from Greenland is put at 104 gigatonnes, plus or minus 23 gigatonnes, and 64 gigatonnes from West Antarctica, plus or minus 32 gigatonnes.

These variations show a large degree of uncertainty, but Vermeersen believes that even so a clearer picture is emerging on icesheet loss.

"The corrections for deformations of the Earth's crust have a considerable effect on the amount of ice that is estimated to be melting each year," said Vermeersen, whose team worked with NASA's Jet Propulsation Laboratory and the Netherlands Institute for Space Research.

"We have concluded that the Greenland and West Antarctica ice caps are melting at approximately half the speed originally predicted."

If the figures for overall sea level rise are accurate, icesheet loss would be contribute about 30 percent, rather than roughly half, to the total, said Vermeersen. The rest would come mainly from thermal expansion, meaning that as the sea warms it rises.

The debate is important because of fears that Earth's biggest reservoirs of ice, capable of driving up ocean levels by many metres (feet) if lost, are melting much faster than global-warming scenarios had predicted.

In 2007, the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicted oceans would rise by 18-59 centimeters (7.2 and 23.6 inches) by 2100, a figure that at its upper range means vulnerable coastal cities would become swamped within a few generations.

The increase would depend on warming estimated at between 1.1 and 6.4 degrees Celsius (1.98-11.52 degrees Fahrenheit) this century, the IPCC said. It stressed, though, the uncertainties about icesheet loss.
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/afp/2010090...e-c1b2fc3.html ]]> The Laboratory Wabash http://forums.thepoliticalasylum.com/showthread.php?t=41760 Republicans Call for Repeal of the 20th Century http://forums.thepoliticalasylum.com/showthread.php?t=41759&goto=newpost Wed, 08 Sep 2010 02:54:09 GMT http://mediamatters.org/research/201009070031

Quote:
Since President Obama's election, Fox personalities have expressed opposition to or called for the repeal of virtually every progressive achievement of the 20th century, including Social Security, Medicare, the Americans with Disabilities Act, portions of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the 16th and 17th Amendments to the Constitution.
Documentation at the link. :howdy

What a great bunch of guys! ]]> Opinions are like assholes... Trueblue http://forums.thepoliticalasylum.com/showthread.php?t=41759 Screw it! http://forums.thepoliticalasylum.com/showthread.php?t=41756&goto=newpost Wed, 08 Sep 2010 00:27:05 GMT Straight jackets my ass.......the libs here can't Handle a Straight Jacket!:cuss

Time to get out of here and go where the mods don't play games!! ]]> Opinions are like assholes... Wabash http://forums.thepoliticalasylum.com/showthread.php?t=41756