Programs Let Homes Produce Green Power

This is a program that should be available in every state and should be heavily subsidized for home and property-owners, like landlords, making less than $100,000/year and not through tax right-offs, but directly, through grants and rock-bottom interest rate loans.

Tax incentives are fine for people making more than $100,000/ year.

Programs like this are essential for the welfare of the nation and its citizens.

This is an emergency and we should behave accordingly.

Programs Let Homes Produce Green Power:

January 22, 2007 by the Associated Press
by Michael Hill

When the sun shines bright on their home in New York's Hudson Valley, John and Anna Bagnall live out a homeowner's fantasy. Their electricity meter runs backward.

Solar panels on their barn roof can often provide enough for all their electricity needs. Sometimes — and this is the best part — their solar setup actually pushes power back into the system. The Bagnalls 'net meter,' a state-sanctioned setup that allows homeowners to adopt renewable energy without taking the more radical step of disconnecting from their local electric utility, Central Hudson Gas & Electric.

On the Electronic Campaign Trail

The Net is making lying and flip-flopping much harder for Pols

On the Electronic Campaign Trail - washingtonpost.com:

By noon on Jan. 10, Matt Rhoades and Kevin Madden knew they had a problem.

The two men handle communications for former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney's presidential exploratory committee and had been told about a video flying around the Internet that spliced clips from Romney's 1994 debate with Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.). In it, Romney (R), then running for the Senate in a losing campaign against Kennedy, voiced support for abortion rights and gay rights -- positions he has since renounced.

Storms will worsen, climate scientists admit | UK News | The Observer

Just when you think things can't get any worse........

Storms will worsen, climate scientists admit UK News The Observer:

Global warming is destined to have a far more destructive and earlier impact than previously estimated, the most authoritative report yet produced on climate change will warn next week.

A draft copy of the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, obtained by The Observer, shows the frequency of devastating storms - like the ones that battered Britain last week - will increase dramatically. Sea levels will rise over the century by around half a metre; snow will disappear from all but the highest mountains; deserts will spread; oceans become acidic, leading to the destruction of coral reefs and atolls; and deadly heatwaves will become more prevalent.

FRANK RICH: Lying Like It's 2003

No doubt, the same asshats are lying through their collective fangs again, but is anyone buying it?

Welcome to Pottersville: FRANK RICH: Lying Like It's 2003:

Those who forget history may be doomed to repeat it, but who could imagine we’d already be in danger of replaying that rotten year 2003?

Scooter Libby, the mastermind behind the White House’s bogus scenarios for ginning up the war in Iraq, is back at Washington’s center stage, proudly defending the indefensible in a perjury trial. Ahmad Chalabi, the peddler of flawed prewar intelligence hyped by Mr. Libby, is back in clover in Baghdad, where he purports to lead the government’s Shiite-Baathist reconciliation efforts in between visits to his pal Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Iran.

Rep. believes Democratic media reform bill may prevent possible 'fascist' takeover of US media

This is one of the top three issues facing Americans today!

Something must be done, quickly, to stop the right-wing echo-chamber and fascism in America.

The Raw Story Rep. believes Democratic media reform bill may prevent possible 'fascist' takeover of US media:

Rep. Hinchey: New bill would break up media monopolies and restore fairness doctrine
Warns media reform critical to prevent 'end of democratic republic'

Concerns about monopolies and fears of a possible 'fascist' takeover of the US media have prompted a Democratic congressman to push to restore the Fairness Doctrine, RAW STORY has learned.
'
Media reform is the most important issue confronting our democratic republic and the people of our country,' Representative Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) said at the Free Press National Media Reform Conference held in Memphis, Tennessee last weekend. 'This is a critical moment in history that may determine the future of our country…maybe forever.'

Republican opposition to Iraq plan grows

If Bush is allowed to escalate Iraq, WWIII has begun.

Republican opposition to Iraq plan grows - Yahoo! News:

WASHINGTON - Congressional Republicans pushed back Monday against President Bush's decision to increase troop strength in Iraq, some voicing opposition while others urged holding the administration and Iraqi government more accountable for the war effort.

'We've had four other surges since we first went into Iraq,' said Sen. Susan Collins (news, bio, voting record), referring to the administration's plan for an additional 21,500 troops. 'None of them produced a long-lasting change in the situation on the ground.

'So I am very skeptical that this surge would produce the desired outcome,' said the Maine Republican.

In the Senate, Collins joined two Republicans and one Democrat to unveil nonbinding legislation expressing disagreement with Bush's plan. The president should consider 'all options and alternatives' involving a smaller force, the measure said.

Rush of Entries Gives ’08 Race Early Intensity

The electorate will probably be sick to death of all of them by November 2008.

Rush of Entries Gives ’08 Race Early Intensity - New York Times:

WASHINGTON, Jan. 21 — Two years before the next president is inaugurated and a full year before the first vote is cast, the contest for the White House is off to a breathtakingly fast start, exposing an ever-growing field of candidates to longer, more intensive scrutiny and increasing the amount of money they need to remain viable.

Pentagon's Gates mild-mannered but no soft touch

Not mentioned here, is the fact that Gates lied like a rug during Iran/Contra.

Plus, how the hell can he claim ignorance when he was a part of the Baker-Hamilton Group, AKA, the ISG?

We want to know why Bush chose him to head up the Pentagon and ignored the findings of the ISG, of which he was a member.

Pentagon's Gates mild-mannered but no soft touch Politics News Reuters.com:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Defense Secretary Robert Gates' mild-mannered public persona could hardly be more different from his outspoken predecessor Donald Rumsfeld but his early decisions indicate he is no soft touch.

'One of my favorite quotes is from Frederick the Great,' he said on a seven-nation trip including stops in Afghanistan and Iraq that wrapped up on the weekend. 'Negotiations without arms are like notes without instruments.'

In his first month in the job, he has approved an increase in the size of the U.S. Army and Marine Corps, backed a new Iraq plan that involves more than 21,000 extra troops and indicated he favors more forces for Afghanistan too.

U.S. Tries to Interpret Silence Over China Test - New York Times

This makes no sense...

U.S. Tries to Interpret Silence Over China Test - New York Times:

"WASHINGTON, Jan. 21 — Bush administration officials said that they had been unable to get even the most basic diplomatic response from China after their detection of a successful test to destroy a satellite 10 days ago, and that they were uncertain whether China’s top leaders, including President Hu Jintao, were fully aware of the test or the reaction it would engender.

As Bush's War Strategy Shifts to Iran, Christian Zionists Gear Up for the Apocalypse

These people are bat-shit crazy; a danger to themselves and others.

It's commitment time!

AlterNet: War on Iraq: As Bush's War Strategy Shifts to Iran, Christian Zionists Gear Up for the Apocalypse:

Christian Zionists are dancing the hora in San Antonio. Armageddon appears to be at hand.

As George W. Bush sets his sights on Iran, even Republicans are wondering how to constitutionally contain the trigger-happy king. But for an influential group of Christian fundamentalists -- White House allies that garner not only feel-good meetings with the President's liaisons to the 'faith-based' community but also serious discussions with Bush's national security staff -- an attack on Iran is just what God ordered.

Biblical literalists, convened together through San Antonio megapastor John Hagee's Christians United for Israel (CUFI), are now seeing the fruits of their yearlong campaign to convince the Bush administration to attack Iran.

War on Iraq: Escalation Forces Bush to Resort to Recruiting Convicts

Too bad Reagan closed all the asylums....

Guess Junior plans on emptying the prisons, now.

This is a nightmare!

AlterNet: War on Iraq: Escalation Forces Bush to Resort to Recruiting Convicts:

Escalating the war in Iraq means the military will grant more 'moral waivers' -- permitting recruits with criminal records and emotional problems who would otherwise be unfit to serve.

The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11

Who would know where to start? People, like this jackass, just leave me sputtering!

This man is either a blathering idiot or he is an agitator for civil war in this country. Who publishes crap like this?

The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11 - By Dinesh D'Souza. - Books - Review - New York Times:

At first Dinesh D’Souza considered him “a dark-eyed fanatic, a gun-toting extremist, a monster who laughs at the deaths of 3,000 innocent civilians.” But once he learned how Osama bin Laden was viewed in the Muslim world, D’Souza changed his mind. Now he finds bin Laden to be “a quiet, well-mannered, thoughtful, eloquent and deeply religious person.” Despite being considered a friend of the Palestinians, he “has not launched a single attack against Israel.” We denounce him as a terrorist, but he uses “a different compass to assess America than Americans use to assess him.” Bin Laden killed only 3,000 of us, with “every victim counted, every death mourned, every victim’s family generously compensated.” But look what we did in return: many thousands of Muslims dead in Afghanistan and Iraq, “and few Americans seem distressed over these numbers.”

Isn't it interesting that the people who do care about the deaths of inncoent Muslims are the very liberals this man blames for 9/11, not the other right-wing nutjobs like him?

Senators seek support against Iraq surge

Best line of the day: Senator Biden said that the VP doesn't know what he's talking about and that everyone knows it!

Vice hasn't been right aboout one single thing regarding this war, or anything else we can think of, right off hand.

Vice thinks that any Resolution against the war will embolden "our enemies." Yeah right, like the ill-advised actions, of this administration, do not only emboldened "our enemies," but have made enemies out of people who weren't our enemies before this insanity began.

Who, in D.C., will have the guts to rid us of these fools?

Senators seek support against Iraq surge - Yahoo! News:

WASHINGTON - Two leading Senate Democrats sought to build support Sunday for a bipartisan resolution opposing President Bush's war strategy in Iraq, cautioning that division over whether it goes far enough could spell defeat.

'The worst thing we can do is to vote on something critical of the current policy and lose it,' said Sen. Carl Levin (news, bio, voting record), D-Mich., who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee. 'The public doesn't support his policy, a majority of Congress doesn't support his policy.'
'
If we lose it, the president will use the defeat of a resolution as support of his public policy,' Levin said.

The new Democratic-led Congress heads this week toward its first vote on the war, with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee beginning debate Wednesday on a resolution condemning Bush's proposal to send 21,500 more troops to Baghdad and Anbar province. A vote could come as early as that same day.

The proposed nonbinding resolution, which is largely symbolic and would have no affect on money for troops, states that 'it is not in the national interest of the United States to deepen its military involvement in Iraq, particularly by escalating the United States military force presence in Iraq.'

PAUL KRUGMAN: Gold-Plated Indifference

George Bush is a goddamned idiot of the first degree, and if Congress falls for this stunt, they should all be run out of town on a rail!

Welcome to Pottersville: PAUL KRUGMAN: Gold-Plated Indifference:

President Bush’s Saturday radio address was devoted to health care, and officials have put out the word that the subject will be a major theme in tomorrow’s State of the Union address. Mr. Bush’s proposal won’t go anywhere. But it’s still worth looking at his remarks, because of what they say about him and his advisers.

On the radio, Mr. Bush suggested that we should “treat health insurance more like home ownership.” He went on to say that “the current tax code encourages home ownership by allowing you to deduct the interest on your mortgage from your taxes. We can reform the tax code, so that it provides a similar incentive for you to buy health insurance.”

Wow. Those are the words of someone with no sense of what it’s like to be uninsured.

Iarq war: Stupidity or Treason

Ah, we see that someone else is thinking like us.

When people can get rich(er) and retain almost absolute power from "blunders,: why not just keep making them? No one ever got locked up on a charge of stupid.

Can we spell NO-BID CONTRACTS?

So, how so we prove treason?

This Can't Be Happening!:

Was Iraq War a `Blunder' or Was It Treason?

New Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), is calling President Bush's invasion of Iraq a 'stark blunder' and says that his new scheme to send 21,500 more troops into the mess he created is just digging the hole deeper.

I wonder though.

It seems ever more likely to me that this whole mess was no blunder at all.

People are wont to attribute the whole thing to lack of intelligence on the president's part, and to hubris on the part of his key advisers. I won't argue that the president is a lightweight in the intellect department, nor will I dispute that Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and that whole neocon gang have demonstrably lacked the virtues of reflection and humility. But that said, I suspect that the real story of the Iraq War is that Bush and his gang never really cared whether they actually would 'win' in Iraq. In fact, arguably, they didn't really want to win.

What they wanted was a war.

She’s In: Hail Hillary, the Ralph Nader of 2008

We agree!

Given what good buddies Bill is with Poppy, perhaps a defeat for more traditional Democrats (read; those who are not closely allied with the DLC) is the goal.

Then it won't matter who wins; Clinton or McCain.

Pensito Review » She’s In: Hail Hillary, the Ralph Nader of 2008:

It seems to me that by grabbing all the true believers for whom being their idea of right is more important than being elected, Hillary Clinton will be the Ralph Nader of the 2008 elections. By syphoning off primary votes from candidates who stand a chance in the general election, she will lead us to ultimate loss in November.

She’s In: Hail Hillary, the Ralph Nader of 2008

We agree!

Given what good buddies Bill is with Poppy, perhaps a defeat for more traditional Democrats (read; those who are not closely allied with the DLC) is the goal.

Then it won't matter who wins; Clinton or McCain.

Pensito Review » She’s In: Hail Hillary, the Ralph Nader of 2008:

It seems to me that by grabbing all the true believers for whom being their idea of right is more important than being elected, Hillary Clinton will be the Ralph Nader of the 2008 elections. By syphoning off primary votes from candidates who stand a chance in the general election, she will lead us to ultimate loss in November.

Extremists in the Military

Knowing that these people are being given training in urban warfare should be highly disturbing to everyone.

What the hell are the Pentagion brass thinking?

SPLCenter.org: Extremists in the Military:

A Department of Defense investigator who went public with allegations of extremists and gang members being tolerated in the armed forces has left the military. Scott Barfield resigned Aug. 15 from his position at Fort Lewis, near Tacoma, Wash., after being reprimanded for violating regulations on interactions with the media.

Barfield went on the record with the Intelligence Report regarding his investigations of extremists in the U.S. armed forces out of frustration at what he perceived to be an insufficient response by military leaders to a growing problem. He had also spoken earlier to the Chicago Sun-Times about street gang members joining the military.

'I knew [talking to the media] would eventually cost me my [military] career, but I figured I could move somewhere else,' Barfield told the Tacoma News-Tribune. Barfield has since found employment as a patrol officer with the police department in the town of Renton, Wash., near Puget Sound.

The New Crusaders (including Mel Gibson)

An ironic topic for a Sunday, but an important one.

The "religiously insane" are playing a powerful role in the problems with which we are faced today, and they seem to come in many different colors and hues.

SPLCenter.org: The New Crusaders:

The radical traditionalist Catholics, who reject the teachings of the modern papacy, may form America's largest group of anti-Semites.

Jackases of the Christian Right (which is neither)

Crusading-crackpots show their true colors, again.

SPLCenter.org: One More Enemy:

A prominent member of the National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) is under fire for publishing an essay in which he argues that Africans were fortunate to have been sold into slavery, and that the civil rights movement was 'irrational.'

'There is another way, or other ways, to look at the race issue in America,' writes Gerald Schoenewolf, a member of NARTH's Science Advisory Committee. 'Africa at the time of slavery was still primarily a jungle… . Life there was savage … and those brought to America, and other countries, were in many ways better off.' A prominent member of the National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) is under fire for publishing an essay in which he argues that Africans were fortunate to have been sold into slavery, and that the civil rights movement was 'irrational.'

'There is another way, or other ways, to look at the race issue in America,' writes Gerald Schoenewolf, a member of NARTH's Science Advisory Committee. 'Africa at the time of slavery was still primarily a jungle… . Life there was savage … and those brought to America, and other countries, were in many ways better off.' "