FDA gets tough on products from China - still dragging on US products

Throw it all away! Everyone is going to die if they touch it so act now. American products on the other hand such as spinach, beef and peanut butter are still under review despite sickness and death. If only the FDA and USDA acted with such speed and force every time there might be a problem.

China is going to have to do a much better job of monitoring food safety (including their use of industrial chemicals in consumer products) if they want to do business with the world though they have a valid point that US companies need to be looking beyond just a cheap price. There's plenty of blame to share with the food safety crisis and blaming China for everything only distracts from a much larger problem and fails to help fix an obviously broken down system. Read More......

Iraqi civilian deaths are surging. Bush says they're in for 50 more years of this.

George Bush says we'll be in Iraq for FIFTY MORE YEARS. Can the Iraqis take fifty more years of this?:

The number of civilians killed in Iraq jumped to nearly 2,000 in May, the highest monthly toll since the start of a U.S.-backed security crackdown in February, according to figures released on Saturday.

Militants blew up a strategic bridge that links Baghdad to the northern cities of Kirkuk and Arbil, and a mortar barrage on the Sunni enclave of Fadhil in mainly Shi'ite eastern Baghdad, killed 10 people and wounded 30, police said.

Read More......

A loss in the progressive blogging community

Steve Gilliard passed away today. He had a great voice that will really be missed. Read More......

Open thread - and travel advice sought

I'm curious about a few things from those of you who travel a lot, and figured why not share the question here so we can share the advice with everyone.

1. Best travel Web site for finding good deals, I'm particularly interested in international flights to Europe? A friend turned me on to Kayak.com, pretty cool site.
2. How in God's name do you use miles to upgrade a ticket, especially for international travel?
3. Best and worst air carriers? Now, personally I'm interested in international especially - flying from the US to Europe, but feel to share other carriers to other parts of the world. I used to fly US carriers to Europe, then the seats got so cramped and the food so bad (and the service so surly - Delta) that I stopped. Then I only flew Air France, which had great food and nice sized seats. Now their seats have shrunk, though the food is still good and the service is nice. Anybody fly enough internationally to recommend which airline has a decent sized seat in coach?

And any other advice about how to find good tickets for international travel?

Thanks, JOHN Read More......

eHarmony sued for anti-gay discrimination

The online dating service was founded by an evangelical and had close early ties to the lead religious right activist organization Focus on the Family. And now they're being sued for excluding gays. I suspect the suit is based on local public accommodations laws, which include sexual orientation in numerous places around the country (i.e., you aren't allowed to turn away customers just because they're black, women, etc.) I remember when we were taking on Sandals, the previously virulently anti-gay Caribbean resort. An ACLU laywer at the time told me that they could potentially be held liable under a public accommodations suit in any city in which they seek customers so long as the city (or state) includes sexual orientation in its public accommodations law. And I can't wait for the evangelicals to try to argue that their dating service is really a church.

Actually, I watched eHarmmony's spokesman on CNN. He's arguing that their dating service is useless to gays because they've only done research on heterosexual dating and matching, so when gays answer their extensive dating survey they won't be able to match them to an appropriate partner. Uh, that's kind of the point of the entire lawsuit. You decided to only do research on straight couples because you only wanted to offer the service to straight couples. That's like a store turning away blacks and saying, "but judge, you don't understand, when we built the store we built it for whites - get it?" Read More......

Pentagon launches more witch hunts of Iraq war critics

In this case, they're going after an Iraq war vet for wearing camouflage fatigues during a mock patrol protesting the war that took place in DC in March. Wearing camo? Funny that the Bush administration uses active and former military, in uniform, at practically every political event they hold, but the Pentagon has no problem when it's the Republicans using our troops for political purposes.

Remember when Colorado Republican House member Marilyn Musgrave had active-duty troops in uniform at a political event during her re-election? I didn't hear about those service members being in trouble. Remember when Bush did it in the White House a few months back (see photo at left), he had a whole crew of folks in uniform behind him at a terribly political event mean to bash Democrats over the war. The presence of uniformed American military at an event meant to declare Democrats unsupportive of our military implies that the military brass believes that Democrats are unsupportive of the military. That's a huge declaration for a country in which the military is supposed to be subservient to the political leadership, and not the other way around. Not a word about any of them facing charges either. The simple fact is that there are two standards of law in America (that's a violation of Equal Protection under the Constitution). One for Bush and company and one for the rest of us. And our military leaders have been just as corrupted by politics as the rest of the administration. Read More......

Justice Ginsburg speaks out

George Bush politicized the federal courts -- including the U.S. Supreme Court. He wants justices who will turn back women's rights. And, that's happening. It's actually just beginning. As the NY Times reported earlier this week, there is, however, one Justice who is calling her colleagues on their politics:

Both in the abortion case the court decided last month and the discrimination ruling it issued on Tuesday, Justice Ginsburg read forceful dissents from the bench. In each case, she spoke not only for herself but also for three other dissenting colleagues, Justices John Paul Stevens, David H. Souter and Stephen G. Breyer.

But the words were clearly her own, and they were both passionate and pointed. In the abortion case, in which the court upheld the federal Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act seven years after having struck down a similar state law, she noted that the court was now “differently composed than it was when we last considered a restrictive abortion regulation.” In the latest case, she summoned Congress to overturn what she called the majority’s “parsimonious reading” of the federal law against discrimination in the workplace.

To read a dissent aloud is an act of theater that justices use to convey their view that the majority is not only mistaken, but profoundly wrong. It happens just a handful of times a year. Justice Antonin Scalia has used the technique to powerful effect, as has Justice Stevens, in a decidedly more low-key manner.

The oral dissent has not been, until now, Justice Ginsburg’s style. She has gone years without delivering one, and never before in her 15 years on the court has she delivered two in one term. In her past dissents, both oral and written, she has been reluctant to breach the court’s collegial norms. “What she is saying is that this is not law, it’s politics,” Pamela S. Karlan, a Stanford law professor, said of Justice Ginsburg’s comment linking the outcome in the abortion case to the fact of the court’s changed membership. “She is accusing the other side of making political claims, not legal claims.”

Ginsburg is right, of course. For all Bush appointees, even judges, it's all about politics. On the Today Show this morning, Joan Biskupic, who is the Supreme Court reporter for USA Today, basically said that Ginsburg wants Americans to know the Court is moving backwards. That's a scary reality.

The right wing theocrats now have a majority on the Supreme Court. Your rights really are at stake. Read More......

Saturday Morning Open Thread

Good Morning.

Bob Geiger has his weekly compilation of some of the week's best editorial cartoons. A wide range of topics this week. The Supreme Court makes an appearance. And Mike Luckovich's "Tomb of the Unknown..." is an instant classic. You'll see what I mean.

The poem of the week is "Novel" by Arthur Rimbaud. Quite a sensational story about Monsieur Rimbaud who starts and finishes his poem with the prophetic line "No one's serious at seventeen."

With that, enjoy and comment away. I'm off for a long run. Marathon training has started again. Read More......

Jobs growth barely above even in May

How impressive, 2000 jobs above the average incoming. Yes, a clear improvement over the dismal showing in April which was over half of the incoming new job seekers, but still a sad performance compared to the Clinton years. The supposed booming economy of the Bush years, which is now sputtering, has benefited a select few leaving many to wonder when real growth for the entire country will show up.

Remember when we used to give a damn about everyone prospering and generations doing better than the last? What ever happened to the American dream? Read More......

So who is winning the war on terror?

If Defense Secretary Gates is unable to provide a clear answer to that question, the answer is pretty clear and speaks volumes.

A member of the audience later asked Gates whether he thought the United States is winning the terror war.

He cited areas of progress, including the elimination in late 2001 of Afghanistan as a haven for al-Qaida. But he also said the Islamic extremists have managed since then to expand their recruiting grounds.

"On the negative side of the ledger, I think we have not made enough progress in trying to address some of the root causes of terrorism in some of these societies, whether it is economic deprivation or despotism that leads to alienation," he said.

He called for more "creative thinking" to address the root causes of Islamic extremism, but he added that even those efforts will not be the complete answer to winning what he called a long war on terrorism.

"One of the disturbing things about many of the terrorists that have been caught is that these are not ignorant, poor people," he said. "These are educated people, often from professional families. So dealing with poverty and those issues is not going to eliminate the problem, but it certainly can reduce the pool of people prepared to give their lives for this cause."

This sounds like quite a divide from the Bush administration's plan to focus exclusively on the military while ignoring the political intricacies of Iraq and the region. He doesn't do nuance, remember? Read More......