NYC bans trans fats in restaurants

Interesting. Trans fats really do pop up everywhere, and unnecessarily so. Just do a look at your food labels, and look for "partially hydrogenated vegetable oil." Just see how many foods it's really in. I'm all for banning the bugger, it's everywhere and it is extremely difficult to avoid. Read More......

Putin's government says it will call the shots in probe over whether Putin's government murdered a former KGB agent in London

Ah, George Bush's legacy. A world in which everyone investigates themselves, or not at all. It's a small world after all. Read More......

At least the Republicans still have a sense of humor

(At left, Mr. Takaji being photographed like a convict simply because he had the wrong blood.)

From the Associated Press:

Notorious internment camps where Japanese-Americans were kept behind barbed wire during World War II will be preserved as stark reminders of how the United States turned on some of its citizens in a time of fear.

As one of its last acts, the Republican-led Congress on Tuesday sent President Bush legislation establishing a $38 million program of National Park Service grants to restore and pay for research at 10 camps where the government sent people of Japanese descent after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

"Stark reminders of how the United States turned on some of its citizens in a time of fear"? Are they joking? I mean, I'm glad they're preserving the camps, America could use a stark reminder or two. But seriously, do our elected leaders think this lets them off the hook for recreating the exact kind of America that led to the internment of Japanese-Americans in the first place?

And for anyone who isn't up on their history - honestly, I don't even recall learning about this in high school - here is what we did to an entire class of innocent Americans during World War II. But seriously, this could never happen again because America would never do anything like this - I mean, again. I mean, to Japanese-Americans.

Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, the United States was gripped by war hysteria. This was especially strong along the Pacific coast of the U.S., where residents feared more Japanese attacks on their cities, homes, and businesses. Leaders in California, Oregon, and Washington, demanded that the residents of Japanese ancestry be removed from their homes along the coast and relocated in isolated inland areas. As a result of this pressure, on February 19, 1942, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which resulted in the forcible internment of 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry. More than two-thirds of those interned under the Executive Order were citizens of the United States, and none had ever shown any disloyalty. The War Relocation Authority was created to administer the assembly centers, relocation centers, and internment camps, and relocation of Japanese-Americans began in April 1942. Internment camps were scattered all over the interior West, in isolated desert areas of Arizona, California, Utah, Idaho, Colorado, and Wyoming, where Japanese-Americans were forced to carry on their lives under harsh conditions. Executive Order 9066 was rescinded by President Roosevelt in 1944, and the last of the camps was closed in March, 1946.

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Gates approved by Senate committee for Defense post

No surprises there. The guy has a creepy past, but there's really no way the Senate can block him. Rumsfeld is gone, that's the important thing, as is Bolton. You can't fight every battle, and we've already won two just out of the gate. And with Gates saying that we're not winning in Iraq, in this administration that practically makes him a prophet (or a heretic). Read More......

Paris 2007 Calendar for sale in our shop

I'm working on a series of Paris calendars from my favorite photos over the past two summers. This is the first, of the Musee d'Orsay. I'll have others coming out soon. They're selling for $19.99 in the AMERICAblog shop. Orders over $50 have free shipping.



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Please contribute to a very cool pro "marriage equality" ad campaign launched by bloggers

Following the NJ Supreme Court decision in October, opening up the way for the recognition of unions between gay couples in that state, the Garden State is the next battleground in the gay marriage debate. The legislature will soon be deciding whether to pass gay marriage or civil unions - per the court decision they have to choose one.

This week, a NJ blog launched an online ad campaign, called "Think Equal," supporting the gay marriage option over civil unions. It's a take-off of the Mac vs. PC ads. We love the campaign, it's brilliant - and we're impressed as hell that two straight guys are sprearheading it. The bloggers put up their own money to produce the spots. So far, they've spent $4,200 on production costs alone. We'd like you to help them get the ad out there by giving them a health donation.

See the ad here.

Donate to this campaign here.

This is important for a number of reasons. This is one of the first video ad campaigns launched by bloggers, and certainly in the gay rights arena. And it was launched by straight allies, which is just pretty darn cool.

So please give to this BlueJersey's ad campaign this holiday season. Read More......

A major reason why our intelligence community struggles

There is a lengthy but fascinating article in this week's New York Times Magazine that examines the inherent tension in a system that requires both secrecy and efficiency. An efficient system tends to be open, transparent, and collaborative, whereas a secret one is, well, none of those.

Imagine for a moment that you work for a massive company whose intranet denies you access to Google (and all other major search engines), has no system for instant messaging (or other real-time conversation programs), frowns upon work-related blogs, and bans any kind of wiki knowledge-management. You'd be selling short your own company's stock while frantically sending out resumes, right? Unfortunately, the intelligence community is basically that company, with all of those issues largely due to a combination of secrecy concerns and a slow-moving bureaucracy.

As you can imagine, this situation infuriates anyone -- whether young or old -- who understands the power of the internets. I would argue that it's virtually always worse for intelligence elements to remain unconnected, with the exception, perhaps, of operational information, and nearly every study and group indicated that the lack of interconnectivity in intelligence was one of the reasons for the failures surrounding 9/11. The article explains the root of some of these shortcomings, but it does make one significant error -- the issues are described in the past tense. To the best of my knowledge, nearly all these difficulties continue.

The piece describes a tech-savvy analyst who joined the Defense Intelligence Agency in 2003, saying:

When he was hired by the DIA, his mind boggled at the futuristic, secret spy technology he would get to play with . . . If the everyday internet was so awesome, just imagine how much better the spy tools would be. . . But when he got to his cubicle, his high-tech dreams collapsed. "The reality," he later wrote ruefully, "was a collosal letdown." The spy agencies were saddled with technology that might have seemed cutting edge in 1995.

Connecting the dots requires good technology along with good information. The article indicates that the agencies are beginning to embrace technology, but at least as of this past spring, progress was minimal. The FBI's problems with their tech systems are infamous, and most agencies don't have adequate internal applications, let alone ones that are inter-agency.

Hopefully the piece signals a huge effort towards improvement, and it's hard for me to imagine the government allowing the quoted individuals to go on the record unless there was an effort to fix these issues. Either way, technological advancement and innovation should be at the top of the priority list for intelligence agencies, and Congressional oversight and remedies are sorely needed. Read More......

Afghanistan churns out yet another record crop of opium

The most incompetent American administration ever strikes again.

In addition to a 26 percent production increase over past year -- for a total of 5,644 metric tons -- the amount of land under cultivation in opium poppies grew by 61 percent. Cultivation in the two main production provinces, Helmand in the southwest and Oruzgan in central Afghanistan, was up by 132 percent.

White House drug policy chief John Walters called the news "disappointing."

Disappointing? Smells like... victory. Read More......

Joe Biden is creepy

Democratic Senator Joe Biden (D-DE) wants to be president. So he's doing what all good Republicans do, he's touring the south and making pro-slavery comments to woo the crowds because, I guess, potential presidential candidates just assume that all southerners are still racists pigs. (Then again, the audience loved it, so there you go.)

From CorrenteWire:

Biden was on a roll.

Delaware, he noted, was a "slave state that fought beside the North. That's only because we couldn't figure out how to get to the South. There were a couple of states in the way."

The crowd loved it.

Oh, but it gets better. You see, Joe Biden thinks one of the most important issues facing America today is how to make the Republican party stronger.

Yes, you heard it right. The man who wants to be our next Democratic president is concerned that we need a strong Republican party.

The speaker was U.S. Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware, a likely candidate for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination.

This Yankee senator quickly disarmed his conservative audience, many of whom came expecting partisan attacks on President Bush and Republicans in general. ...

"America needs, and I need, for the Republican Party to get back up," [Biden] said.

Why is that, Senator? That would be the same Republican party that got us into a war based on a lie. A war over which they refused to provide their constitutionally-mandated oversight. This is the same Republican party that spent our nation into bankruptcy. That repealed our civil liberties and illegally spied on Americans. That demonized Democrats and civil libertarians, and most of our foreign allies, for political gain. That hates gays, and Mexicans, and blacks, and Jews, and Muslims, and women. That impeached Bill Clinton, that swift-boated John Kerry, that abandoned New Orleans, and threw itself into the hospital room of Terri Schiavo. This is the same Republican party that wants to overturn Roe v. Wade and dehumanize gays in the US Constitution. And it's the same Republican party that wants to make your party, Senator Biden, the Democratic party a permanent minority by using every dishonest, immoral and illegal trick in the book.

Tell us, Senator Biden, please, tell us. Why is it that America, and especially you, need the Republican party to get back up only weeks after we finally took it down?

Just whose party is Joe Biden running for?

And finally, Senator Biden gives us the following gem:

"The mid-term election may have been a rejection of the policies of this administration," Biden said. "But it was not an embrace of the Democratic program or the Democratic Party. We're in a state of flux right now and have a lot of problems that need to be resolved."

He may be right, but it's not the kind of thing a senior Democrat should be saying in public. He should be sending the message that the election was a repudiation of them and an endorsement of us. Have you ever heard George Bush fail to claim a mandate, even when he's at 30% in the polls?

PS In a future installment, Joe in DC will share his own personal Joe Biden story. It's a real Christmas heart-warmer. Read More......

The Alps are conspiring against Senator Inhofe

They probably just want him to look stupid, don't they?

Europe's Alpine region is going through its warmest period in 1,300 years, the head of an extensive climate study said Tuesday.

"We are currently experiencing the warmest period in the Alpine region in 1,300 years," Reinhard Boehm, a climatologist at Austria's Central Institute for Meteorology and Geodynamics said.

Why can't the Alps just understand that the great senator is correct, that global warming has no science to back up its bizarre claims? He's even holding hearings this week to show that global warming is just media hype. Everyone knows that Inhofe is a master of science and the Alps are just a bunch of lefties anyway. Read More......

Gates: "No, sir" we are not winning in Iraq

Watching the Gates confirmation hearing on CNN. The first question asked by Senator Carl Levin was whether Gates thought we were winning in Iraq. Gates responded "no sir."

Gates is right. Does Bush know we're not winning yet?

Think Progress now has the video. Read More......

Bush ignored advice to be "extra sensitive" when talking to Senator-elect Webb about his son

This says everything you need to know about George Bush. He was warned in advance to be sensitive when talking to Jim Webb about his son. Webb's son recently had a very close call in Iraq. Instead, the President was just a dick. No surprise. That is how he runs the country.

Via Think Progress:

But according to Rep. Jim Moran (D-VA), Bush was told that Webb’s son had a recent brush with death in Iraq and was warned to be “extra sensitive” when talking to the Sen.-elect. ThinkProgress yesterday spoke with Moran’s office and confirmed the congressman’s statement, first reported by hcc in VA:

Not only did Bush know about it, he was specifically briefed on the incident before meeting with Webb, and was cautioned to be extra sensitive in speaking with Webb about his son.

After such a briefing, Bush perhaps shouldn’t have been so surprised about Webb’s unwillingness to chit-chat about his son.

The right-wingers have been apoplectic about Webb's interchange with Bush. Of course, as usual, none of them hold Bush accountable.

Eleanor Clift from Newsweek offered what Webb might have said:

Webb could have asked how the Bush girls are doing, partying their way across Argentina. He could have told Bush he was worried about his son; the vehicle next to him was blown up recently, killing three Marines. Given the contrast between their respective offspring, Webb showed restraint.

Bush is leading us to defeat in Iraq. He's making our country weak in the eyes of the world. He hasn't caught the terrorists who attacked America. But, the right wing is offended that Webb was mean to Bush. They're a pathetic bunch -- and it's not their kids who are over there fighting in Bush's war. Read More......

It's not even breaking news that today is extremely violent in Iraq

Bush has stated that he wants Robert Gates to give him a "fresh perspective" on Iraq. Bush might want to start by understanding the reality:

A trio of car bombs ripped through a southwestern Baghdad neighborhood Tuesday morning, killing at least 14 people and wounding 25 more, Baghdad emergency police said.

The attack took place near a gasoline (petrol) station around 10 a.m. (2 a.m. ET)

About 90 minutes earlier, gunmen in northern Baghdad opened fire on a bus carrying employees of the Shiite Endowment, a group that oversees religious sites and Shiite mosques.

The attack killed 15 people and wounded nine others.

Meanwhile, a U.S. soldier was killed and five others wounded when insurgents attacked a Multi-National Division-Baghdad patrol in northeastern Baghdad Monday, a military statement released Tuesday said.

Another U.S. soldier was killed in southeastern Iraq on Monday when his armored security vehicle overturned, the military said.

The accident took place near the town of Talil, about 185 miles (300 km) southeast of Baghdad.

The deaths brought to 2,899 the number of U.S. troops who have died in the Iraq war. Seven civilian contractors of the Defense Department also have died.

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Tuesday Morning Open Thread

Iraq will be the issue when the Senate starts the confirmation hearings for Robert Gates today. So, we'll get some insight in to the Bush administration's strategy for Iraq...as if there is one. Meanwhile, the death toll mounts.

Start threading the news. Read More......

E. coli outbreak leads to Taco Bell

So is anyone in DC going to show any interest in the food safety issue? I have yet to hear what triggered the last e. coli outbreak from spinach but how many serious outbreaks are we going to have before someone thinks safe food for 300,000,000 people is actually worth while. I know that food producers worry about costs but I would think that Congress might worry about Americans being ill. The mass produced food industry has managed to string together too many of these stories going back to Jack in the Box in 1993 but the response to these outbreaks has been MIA. Read More......

Another coup in Fiji

Four in nineteen years? Why even bother with elections at this rate?

Fiji's military commander said Tuesday that he had seized control of the country, dismissed the elected prime minister and appointed an interim replacement.

Commodore Frank Bainimarama told a news conference that he was using special powers under the constitution to assume the powers of the president and replace Premier Laisenia Qarase.

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