Chinese drywall causing problems in Florida

So besides the tainted toys, the tainted milk, the tainted pet food, the tainted food products, the tainted pharmaceuticals, the tainted furniture, the generally low quality products and now the tainted drywall, what's not to love about Made in China products being sold to the west? On the positive side, they've been kind enough to buy US debt in exchange for the US purchasing their junk. (h/t RON)

Martin and St. Lucie counties are two of nearly a dozen counties where complaints of possible exposure to the contaminated drywall in new homes have arisen.

The problem may have been sparked by drywall imported during the local construction boom of 2004 and 2005.

Some common symptoms are irritated eyes, coughing, sneezing, difficulty breathing, and symptoms similar to bronchitis and asthma.

The contaminated Chinese drywall may be emitting one of several sulfur compounds including sulfur dioxide or hydrogen sulfide. While exposure to fumes from sulfur dioxide can create irritation and breathing disorders, exposure to hydrogen sulfide can be deadly.

Exposure to 50 parts per million of hydrogen sulfide for more than ten minutes can cause extreme irritation. Inhalation of 500 to 1,000 parts per million can cause unconsciousness and death through respiratory paralysis and asphyxiation, according to environmental experts.

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Axelrod: Warren invite a "good thing"

Great. Still waiting to hear if Team Obama feels that they should reach out to, and elevate, racists and anti-Semites too - you know, to help on global warming or the economic stimulus package. Or are some pigs are more equal than others? Read More......

During this season of giving, sponsor an executive

If only the incoming economic team didn't look so similar to the old economic team, but somehow, enough people still believe in the system that lay in ruin all around us. Read More......

States prepare for fire sales

Best. Economy. Ever. The world is so jealous of the American way which is why they hate us.

Massachusetts lawmakers are considering putting the Massachusetts Turnpike in private hands. That could bring in upfront money to help with a $1.4 billion deficit, while also saving on highway operating costs.

In New York, Democratic Gov. David Paterson appointed a commission to look into leasing state assets, including the Tappan Zee Bridge north of New York City, the lottery, golf courses, toll roads, parks and beaches. Recommendations are expected next month.

Such projects could be attractive to private investors and public pension funds looking for safe places to put their money in this scary economy, said Leonard Gilroy, a privatization expert with the market-oriented Reason Foundation in Los Angeles.

"Infrastructure is more attractive today than ever," Gilroy said. "It's tangible. It's a road. It's water. It's an airport. It's something that is — you know, you hear the term recession-proof."

Unions don't like privatization deals out of fear that worker wages and benefits will be squeezed as private operators try to boost their profit by streamlining services.

Taxpayers, too, can lose out if the arrangements don't work — and sometimes even if they do, said Mark Price, a labor economist with the Keystone Research Center in Harrisburg, Pa. Higher tolls on privatized roads can push drivers onto state-operated roads, wearing them down faster and raising public costs over time.

"You're privatizing some profits in this process and socializing some losses," Price said.

Selling or leasing public assets can produce an immediate infusion of cash for the state, while foisting the tough decisions, such as raising tolls, onto private operators instead of the politicians.

Gee, privatizing profits and socializing losses. Now where have we witnessed that before? Let's just give out bonuses to the executives while we're at it and call it a day. Read More......

Kennedy Struggling To Win Over Key Demographic: Women

From Nate:

Here's something interesting from the recent Quinnipiac poll on the New York Senate vacancy. There is essentially no difference among women and men when it comes to picking New York's next Senator. Among New York men, 32 percent want Governor Paterson to appoint Caroline Kennedy to take Hillary Clinton's seat, versus 27 percent for Andrew Cuomo. Among women, 33 percent want Kennedy, and 31 percent Cuomo, a statistically insignificant difference.

Women seem to be able to separate out any personal affections they might have for Kennedy (or her kinfolk) from their perception of her qualifications to serve in the Senate. Exactly 50 percent of women have a favorable view of Kennedy, as opposed to 14 percent unfavorable -- a significantly wider favorability gap than Kennedy gets from men, among whom 42 percent have favorable opinion and 21 percent an unfavorable one. But, women are no more likely than men to say that Kennedy is qualified for the position. Among women, 40 percent think she is qualified to serve in the Senate and 39 percent think she isn't -- not a statistically significant difference from the response among men, of whom 39 percent call her qualified and 43 percent do not.

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Frank Rich on Obama: "You’re Likable Enough, Gay People"

Frank Rich in today's NYT:

As we saw during primary season, our president-elect is not free of his own brand of hubris and arrogance, and sometimes it comes before a fall: “You’re likable enough, Hillary” was the prelude to his defeat in New Hampshire. He has hit this same note again by assigning the invocation at his inauguration to the Rev. Rick Warren, the Orange County, Calif., megachurch preacher who has likened committed gay relationships to incest, polygamy and “an older guy marrying a child.” Bestowing this honor on Warren was a conscious — and glib — decision by Obama to spend political capital. It was made with the certitude that a leader with a mandate can do no wrong....

There’s no reason why Obama shouldn’t return the favor by inviting him to Washington. But there’s a difference between including Warren among the cacophony of voices weighing in on policy and anointing him as the inaugural’s de facto pope. You can’t blame V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire, the first openly gay Episcopal bishop and an early Obama booster, for feeling as if he’d been slapped in the face. “I’m all for Rick Warren being at the table,” he told The Times, but “we’re talking about putting someone up front and center at what will be the most-watched inauguration in history, and asking his blessing on the nation. And the God that he’s praying to is not the God that I know.”
...

But we’re not there yet. Warren’s defamation of gay people illustrates why, as does our president-elect’s rationalization of it. When Obama defends Warren’s words by calling them an example of the “wide range of viewpoints” in a “diverse and noisy and opinionated” America, he is being too cute by half. He knows full well that a “viewpoint” defaming any minority group by linking it to sexual crimes like pedophilia is unacceptable.

It is even more toxic in a year when that group has been marginalized and stripped of its rights by ballot initiatives fomenting precisely such fears. “You’ve got to give them hope” was the refrain of the pioneering 1970s gay politician Harvey Milk, so stunningly brought back to life by Sean Penn on screen this winter. Milk reminds us that hope has to mean action, not just words....

When Obama defends Warren’s words by calling them an example of the “wide range of viewpoints” in a “diverse and noisy and opinionated” America, he is being too cute by half. He knows full well that a “viewpoint” defaming any minority group by linking it to sexual crimes like pedophilia is unacceptable....

McCarthy added that it’s also time “for President-elect Obama to start acting on the promises he made to the LGBT community during his campaign so that he doesn’t go down in history as another Bill Clinton, a sweet-talking swindler who would throw us under the bus for the sake of political expediency.”

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Black Republican leader says it's not offensive to disparage a black man as "a negro"

I'd have joked and called Ken Blackwell, the black Republican leader in question, a "negro" in order to prove the point that the word is still offensive, but I won't because the word is, well, just that - incredibly offensive, even in satire. When we appease bigotry, we do incredible damage to the civil rights of African-Americans and every other American. And there's even more damage when the appeaser is a member of the group being disparaged. But somehow I suspect that Ken Blackwell, and his gay Republican and Jewish Republican brothers, aren't so worried about that. Read More......

Sunday Morning Open Thread

Well, I'm still in Chicago. It's pretty much a guarantee that if you see me on your plane within 3 days of Christmas, run away fast. Like clockwork, my flight after Christmas gets canceled every freaking year. Yes, it's out of O'Hare. Anyway, so I get another night with the-dog-formerly-known-as-Angel. Mom and dad finally relented. The dog's new name is Koukla. Thank god. Koukla, in Greek, means "doll" - as in a child's doll. But it also is a term of endearment that means something akin to "sweetey" or "honey." My grandmother called me koukla. My mom still does. So, mom decided that the little white ball of fur was a koukla, so that's going to be her name. And she is a koukla, except when she begins each day by spontaneously barking at 5am for no apparent reason.

In other news, Newsweek is talking War Crimes. Okay, they got my attention. I'm having an awful hard time believing that Bush won't pardon everyone with a vowel in their name, but Newsweek suggests that even with a pardon, civil suits could be had. In the end, do I think Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and the rest should be investigated? Yes, I do. I think crimes may have been committed, including violations of international law, and - silly me - I actually believe all the propaganda about America being better (as more than one foreigner has said to me over the years, "we don't hate America, we're mad at America because we expect this kind of behavior from our own corrupt governments, but we thought you were better.") Perhaps it's time we proved we are. Having said that, good luck. Obama and the congressional Democrats will have zero stomach for anything dealing with investigating the excesses of the Bush administration. All we can count on is the courts. And even they give far too much deference to the commander in chief during wartime, even when the war is one that could theoretically never end. Read More......

1,000,000,000 hungry?

The unfortunate milestone is in sight for 2009. The culprits are always the same including lies by the rich countries and poor policies as well as mismanagement or corruption at the receiving end. If we could not have made headway during the (false) prosperous recent times, surely the problem will only get worse as the world stumbles through the credit crisis.

Decades of progress in reducing hunger are being abruptly reversed, dealing a devastating blow to a pledge by world leaders eight years ago to cut it in half by 2015.

Rich countries have failed to provide promised money to boost agriculture in the Third World; the financial crisis is starving developing countries of credit and driving their people into greater poverty, and food aid to the starving is expected to begin drying up next month.

Development charities recently called on US president-elect Barack Obama to put the escalating food crisis "front and centre" of his priorities.

Some 963 million people are now undernourished worldwide, according to the most recent survey of the crisis by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), and the UN body expects the situation to worsen with the recession. "The number will rise steadily next year," an FAO spokesman told the IoS last week. "We are looking at a billion people. That is clear." The FAO fears the tally will go on increasing for years to come.

This directly contradicts an undertaking by the world's leaders at a special summit in September 2000 to "reduce by half the proportion of people who suffer from hunger" from 1990 levels by 2015, as part of an ambitious set of Millennium Development Goals.

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Cholera and starvation continue in Zimbabwe

Another day in the life of Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe. The neighboring government in South Africa can continue to ignore the problem, but now the problem is spilling even more into South Africa. The Observer:

In a separate report, the World Health Organization said that 1,518 people had died of cholera, with 26,497 cases recorded, since the start of the outbreak in August. The percentage of cholera patients dying from the disease rose to 5.7% last week, from 4% at the beginning of the month. Normally, only 1% of patients die in large outbreaks.

Paul Garwood, a WHO spokesman, said the outbreak was not under control and that neighbouring countries such as South Africa and Botswana, where the disease has also been reported, should increase their disease monitoring surveys and preparedness.

It's bad enough when adults are starving but the problem, as always, is even worse for the children.

The number of acute child malnutrition cases has risen by almost two-thirds in the past year, the report from the UK-based agency said in its appeal to world donors for help.

"There is no excuse for failing to provide this food," program director Lynn Walker said. "The innocent people of Zimbabwe should not be made to suffer for a political situation that is out of their control."

Five million Zimbabweans -- out of a population of about 12 million -- are in need of food aid now, the report said. The group is appealing for 18,000 tons of food for next month.

"We have already been forced to reduce the rations of emergency food we are delivering because there isn't enough to go around," the report said. "If, as we fear, the food aid pipeline into Zimbabwe begins to fail in the new year the millions of people who rely on emergency food aid will suffer."

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