Identity fraud increased last year

There are few easy answers but the numbers are heading in the wrong direction and that needs to change. CNBC:

Javelin's annual survey shows that the number of identity fraud victims rose 12 percent to 11.1 million adults last year, and the value of the fraud has increased by 12.5 percent to $54 billion. That's the highest level since the survey was started in 2003.

"This is not a crime of individuals or petty thieves," said Michael Stanfield, CEO of Intersections, one of the survey's sponsors.

According to Stanfield, there is a increase in the number of crime rings — many often working out of Eastern European countries — who are using very organized methods of stealing personal information and using it to conduct identity fraud.

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American Airlines may receive highest ever FAA fine for poor maintenance

As I was saying yesterday, the last time I flew on that airline, they had problems everywhere. If passengers could see those problems, it was easy to imagine many more problems that were out of view. That last flight (in the late 1990s) was so horrible I never wanted to take the risk of using that airline. It's about time that the FAA started getting tough with shoddy maintenance. Consumers deserve better.

The Federal Aviation Administration is close to wrapping up a two-year investigation of safety violations at American Airlines that could result in one of the largest fines in the agency's history, according to government and industry officials familiar with the investigation.

Separately, the Transportation Department's inspector general is due to release an audit in the next several days that criticizes FAA for lax oversight of aircraft maintenance at American, the officials said Tuesday.

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A Web site entirely devoted to photoshopping monsters in to real places

Monsters in Real Places
(H/t @pourmecoffee and @drawn on Twitter) Read More......

Ben Nelson turns on Obama again, this time over civilian trials for terror suspects

Hope the half million the DNC paid him was worth it. More from The Hill.

Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson joined a bipartisan effort on Wednesday to block the administration from trying the Sept. 11th suspects in civilian courts.

Nelson (Neb.) signed onto legislation offered by Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Jim Webb (D-Va.) to require military commission trials for those suspects. Nelson made the announcement in a conference call with reporters, primarily citing the costs of security for the trials.

Right, because the Senator from Nebraska really cares what the cost of the trial is going to be to the New York. Read More......

Baltic the dog heads back to sea

Glad to see the little guy is getting plenty of good attention from the team who rescued him at sea. Sounds like he's still nervous about the water (understandably) but how many people would provide a life jacket, seasickness pills and constant attention like this?

Buczynski and other crew members spotted the dog Jan. 25 floating 15 miles (25 kilometers) from land. The rescue was difficult because the frightened, shivering dog kept falling into the icy water.

Baltic was first seen two days earlier on the Vistula River, 60 miles (100 kilometers) inland, drifting on ice past the city of Grudziadz, where firefighters tried but failed to save him. It remains unclear where or when the dog's odyssey started.

Bardziej-Krzyzankowska said since his rescue, Baltic has shown a fear of water. Several days ago he resisted getting a bath that he badly needed to remove crusted salt from his thick fur.

So Buczynski took him in his arms and carried him into the shower.

''They showered together,'' she said. ''This lifted the dog's confidence.''

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White House: Kit Bond’s call for Brennan’s resignation is “pathetic”

GOP Senator Kit Bond (R-MO) is calling on a senior anti-terror official in the Obama administration to resign because the anti-terror official actually stood up to the GOP and called them on their bullying. And if there's one thing the Republicans simply can't abide, it's someone who calls them on their bullshit. Especially when their bs involves playing politics with the war on terror. The GOP has gotten kind of used to Democrats rolling over and playing dead while the Republicans use 9/11 and the war on terror as their own political football. Guess times have changed.

From Greg Sargent:

As you may have heard, Senator Kit Bond is calling for Obama counter-terror chief John Brennan to step down, largely because Brennan has taken the lead in pushing back against GOP efforts to paint Obama as weak on terror.

The White House is now dismissing Bond’s efforts as “pathetic,” and pointing to Brennan’s lifetime of professional intelligence experience as proof that Bond is putting politics over our national security.

Then Greg lets Bond have it:

Bond’s position, quite literally, is that Brennan should step down because he’s fought back aggressively against GOP efforts to paint Obama’s policies as weak on terror. As Bond put it: “We have to wonder whether we can trust [Brennan] after he has been a mouthpiece for the political arm that I thought only came out of the White House press office.”

Yet Brennan boasts a 25-year career in intelligence and counter-terrorism. He joined the CIA as an intelligence director in 1980, subsequently holding a series of positions at the agency in America and abroad. He led counter-terrorism efforts for various agency programs in the 1990s.

Brennan was appointed CIA deputy executive director in March 2001 and served in that post until 2003 — under notorious terror sympathizer George W. Bush. He moved to the National Counter-Terrorism Center in 2004, revamping the system for monitoring terrorist activity. Etc., etc.

Yet Bond wants this man to step down, and take his counter-terrorism experience with him, because he won’t roll over before Bond’s efforts to paint him and his boss as … weak on terror. Interesting priorities.

Typical priorities. As Newsweek's Jonathan Alter said the other day, the GOP is quite literally aiding and abetting Al Qaeda at this point. They've gotten so used to treating national security as simply a means towards winning elections, they've forgotten that it's actually about people's lives. Read More......

How did 'the explosion of heavy snow' happen today?

I'll admit to being a bit of a weather geek. Although, it seems like everyone in DC is one now. We knew we were getting snow today, but the force of the storm seemed to take people by surprise. The Capitol Weather Gang at the Washington Post answer the question: How did this happen?:

The explosion of heavy snow today resulted from the interaction of a monstrous piece of upper-level energy pictured to the right (which came through fairly similar to the way the models were showing earlier in the week) with an intensifying area of low pressure moving up the Atlantic coast.

Had the coastal low pressure formed too far north or moved too quickly toward and north of our latitude, the upper-level energy may not have caught up to it in time to squeeze out the intense rates of snow we've seen. But this is the winter of 2009-2010, in which everything seems to work out just right for heavy snow almost every time.

Love it when weather people use words like "explosion" and "monstrous."

The photo accompanying this article is intense:


NOTE FROM JOHN: In better news, the Japanese have invented a snow-eating snow-pooping robot.

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America's Taliban in action

From Crooks and Liars:

Southern Baptist Pastor Wiley Drake of Buena Park sent out an email Monday night, saying that perhaps his prayers had been answered with the death of Rep. John Murtha yesterday.

“Maybe God took him out,” Drake wrote. “Maybe God Answered our IMPRECATORY prayer that we prayed every 30 days.”

The Pennsylvania congressman, a decorated former Marine who fiercely opposed the Iraq war, died at the age of 77 after complications from gallbladder surgery.

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Heathrow staff printing out and sharing naked body image scans of airline passengers

Well that didn't take long. Chris mentioned this the other day, but I just saw another article on it, and it's really pretty horrifying. (And for background, I posted photos a while back of just what these body scans show. And Chris posted a video showing how ineffective these scanners really are.)

Claims on behalf of authorities that naked body scanner images are immediately destroyed after passengers pass through new x-ray backscatter devices have been proven fraudulent after it was revealed that naked images of Indian film star Shahrukh Khan were printed out and circulated by airport staff at Heathrow in London.

UK Transport Secretary Lord Adonis said last week that the images produced by the scanners were deleted “immediately” and airport staff carrying out the procedure are fully trained and supervised.

Lord Adonis?

“I was in London recently going through the airport and these new machines have come up, the body scans. You’ve got to see them. It makes you embarrassed – if you’re not well endowed,” said Khan, referring to how the scans produce clear images of a person’s genitals.

“You walk into the machine and everything – the whole outline of your body – comes out,” he said.

“I was a little scared. Something happens [inside the scans], and I came out. Then I saw these girls – they had these printouts. I looked at them. I thought they were some forms you had to fill. I said ‘give them to me’ – and you could see everything inside. So I autographed them for them,” stated Khan.

The story was carried by Yahoo News under the headline “Shah Rukh signs off sexy body-scan printouts at Heathrow”.
Khan’s reference to “girls” with printouts of his naked body scan can only refer to female airport security staff responsible for processing the images produced by the scanners, “professionals” who are supposed to instantly delete the images, according to Lord Adonis.

Are the staff who check the body image scanners permitted to have cell phones? Because if they do, they're still going to take pictures. Not to mention, I thought we were told that not only would these body image scanners not being able to retain a picture, but we were also told that the staff would be in a back room somewhere, totally oblivious to who the individual passengers really were. Then how did they know it was famous Bollywood guy? Read More......

Conservative activists ticked that Saudis are part-owner of FOX, have influence on FOX's coverage

From ThinkProgress:

Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal owns a 7 percent stake in News Corp — the parent company of Fox News — making him the largest shareholder outside the family of News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch. Alwaleed has grown close with the Murdoch enterprise, recently endorsing James Murdoch to succeed his father and creating a content-sharing agreement with Fox News for his own media conglomerate, Rotana.

Last weekend, at the right-wing Constitutional Coalition’s annual conference in St. Louis, Joseph Farah, publisher of the far right WorldNetDaily, blasted Fox News for its relationship with Alwaleed. Farah noted correctly that Alwaleed had boasted in the past about forcing Fox News to change its content relating to its coverage of riots in Paris, and warned that such foreign ownership of American media is “really dangerous.” ThinkProgress was at the speech and observed attendees of the conference murmuring and shaking their heads in disapproval.

Write it off to racism if you want, but it is creepy as hell that a Saudi prince is dictating how FOX covers the news. I had no idea he got them to change their coverage before.

But putting that aside, this is why the Teabaggers and the 9/12ers and all the rest are dangerous. Mobs aren't controllable. And the Republicans are starting to learn that lesson the hard way. Read More......

Obama backs down on criticism of Wall Street CEOs

The comparison to baseball players really doesn't work. For starters, the taxpayers didn't have to bail out those players and fund their pay as they did with Wall Street. Also, the players are negotiating their salaries with owners whereas the Wall Street CEOs are negotiating their compensation with boards who are very friendly and often deeply linked. They may all be overpaid but when the government steps in to save the industry and then have that money fund lobbyist efforts to fight reform, there's a difference.

Obama is clearly worried about Wall Street bailing and throwing their weight behind the GOP. His gentle words may be comforting to those on Wall Street but it's hard to see how anyone else is going to have the stomach to listen to this drivel. Who will be next in line to have the pleasure of Obama folding? Rubbish.

The president, speaking in an interview, said in response to a question that while $17 million is “an extraordinary amount of money” for Main Street, “there are some baseball players who are making more than that and don’t get to the World Series either, so I’m shocked by that as well.”

“I know both those guys; they are very savvy businessmen,” Obama said in the interview yesterday in the Oval Office with Bloomberg BusinessWeek, which will appear on newsstands Friday. “I, like most of the American people, don’t begrudge people success or wealth. That is part of the free- market system.”

NOTE FROM JOHN: More from Krugman, who isn't pleased at all, and Greg Sargent, who thinks Obama's message was more nuanced. Perhaps it was nuance, but it comes off as trying to be something to everybody, and it's a bit of a garbled mess, message-wise. For a while now, from the beginning of the administration really, the White House has tried to play this odd game of issuing vague messages that everyone can read something good into, regardless of what side of the argument they're on. The mixed messaging doesn't appear to be working. Substantively (see health care reform). Or with the public at large. Read More......

Senate GOP hopeful Carly Fiorina says we can massively cut government spending by implementing simple steps that were already done in 1995

Dems, come down on her like a ton of bricks. She just went on Glenn Beck and proposed a series of "reforms" that happened years ago.

Senate Republican hopeful Carly Fiorina this week said technology can help reduce "out-of-control" government spending.

In an interview with Glenn Beck on Fox News, Fiorina said, "Technology can help. I'm from the technogy industry. Let us put every agency budget up on Internet for every citizen to see. People would be outraged."

As the Hill notes, that already happens. But hey, maybe her second big idea for cutting spending will work!

Fiorina also told Beck, "Let us put every piece of legislation up on the Internet for everyone to see before they vote on it."

What a great idea. Imagine a Web site where anyone could go and read legislation before it's voted on. What could we call such a Web site? How about naming it after one of the Founding Fathers, like, say, um, Thomas Jefferson.



Yes, Thomas has been putting legislation online since 1995. So, Carly Fiorina's two big ideas for cutting the budget are two things that we've already done. (It's not entirely clear why the Hill story doesn't bother mentioning Thomas' existence.) Read More......

GOP already claiming that the blizzard proves climate change doesn't exist

But of course, they're not talking about how there's no snow in Vancouver for the Winter Olympics.

And I guess winter proves summer doesn't exist. What's amazing is how the right-wing relies on anti-intellectual arguments to convince people of their misinformation, and it works. Unfortunately, people are gullible. Death panels. Socialists in the White House! Obama is the most radical president ever (compared to a turnip). Tax cuts cure everything. The stimulus didn't create one job. Banning (some) pre-existing conditions is a government takeover.

Every day is Waco is for these guys. And people fall for it. Democrats need to learn to fight back accordingly. That doesn't mean we lie. It does mean we stop treating every battle like an intellectual exercise where the best man naturally wins. The worst men and women keep winning on the Republican side, and we need to figure out as a party how to block them and stop them.

UPDATE: Guess what? Apparently the blizzard could be, if anything, evidence that global warming is real - watch this from MSNBC:



More from Treehugger.com. Read More......

Rachel names the GOP hypocrites

This is Rachel at her best. Most of the traditional media types just accept the GOP talking points and criticisms of Obama without question. But, it's quite stunning how many of them are hypocrites -- saying one thing one day, something else the next. These are the people with whom the White House wants to work in a bipartisan manner. Right.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

There's a lot of fodder for t.v. ads in this piece. If there's one thing the American people don't like, it's a hypocrite. Read More......

In Wash Post/ABC News poll, 'GOP's overall gains are striking,' but majority holds unfavorable view of GOP

The latest Washington Post/ABC News poll brings some not great news for the President and Democrats. Over the past year, Obama's leadership (or lack thereof) has taken a toll:

When compared with the early months of Obama's presidency, the GOP's overall gains are striking. A year ago, Democrats held a 26-point advantage on dealing with the big issues; that lead is now six points. At the one-month mark, Obama's lead over the Republicans on dealing with the economy was 35 points; it's now five points.

These findings illustrate why the political landscape looks increasingly favorable for Republicans to pick up House and Senate seats in November, with some handicappers predicting major gains of 25 to 30 seats and Republican House leaders expressing confidence that they can win the 40 seats they need to take back the majority. The president's political advisers say privately that some losses are likely but that they are looking to keep them to a minimum.

What makes this worse is that a majority of Americans have an unfavorable view of the GOP:

The poll offers some cautionary notes for both parties. The GOP's image has improved since last year, but a majority of poll respondents still see the party in an unfavorable light (52 percent unfavorable, 44 percent favorable). Fifty percent view the Democratic Party favorably, and 46 percent unfavorably. That marks a new low point for the party in Post-ABC polling.

Another low point is that the GOP could make significant electoral gains when most people don't even like them. That says a lot about the public mood.

Obama is working to show that he's bipartisan with a Republican party that is viewed unfavorably. Hopefully, that further exposes the GOP's weaknesses instead of further diminishing the President. But, it still feels like a process ploy when people want results, especially on the economy. Read More......

Wednesday Morning Open Thread

Good morning.

Most of official D.C. is closed today. The Federal government is closed. The House of Representatives is out for the rest of the week -- and next week is recess. They'll be back in town on February 22nd. The Senate is scheduled to convene at 2:30 P.M. tomorrow. However, the Armed Services Committee website informs us that that tomorrow's hearing on Don't Ask, Don't Tell "IS CANCELLED AND WILL BE RESCHEDULED LATER."

The President, like many of us, works from home. He's holding one public meeting with African-American leaders on jobs and the economy. Expected attendees are: Dr. Dorothy I. Height, Chairwoman, National Council of Negro Women, Benjamin T. Jealous, President, NAACP, Marc H. Morial, President and CEO, National Urban League and Rev. Al Sharpton, President and Founder, National Action Network.

I'm going to take Petey out before the blizzard conditions really kick in, as we now have a "Blizzard Warning."

So, what's going on in the world today? Read More......

Scientists now looking at third hand smoke

If you are a smoker, what do you do? It's not that you don't already know the health risks, and if you haven't quit it's highly likely that it's because quitting is too difficult. Smokers probably already know that smoking around kids is bad, but now there may be one more concern to think about. Heading outside to smoke and away from kids sounds like the best option, but this new study suggests even that is not as good as previously thought. BBC:

Lingering residue from tobacco smoke which clings to upholstery, clothing and the skin releases cancer-causing agents, work in PNAS journal shows.

Berkeley scientists in the US ran lab tests and found "substantial levels" of toxins on smoke-exposed material.

They say while banishing smokers to outdoors cuts second-hand smoke, residues will follow them back inside and this "third-hand smoke" may harm.

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Farms in China even worse than factories

It shouldn't be much of a surprise after all of the scary problems related to food products that were exported abroad. Even in the US, farm runoff is a terrible problem. Anyone who lives near the Chesapeake is familiar with the chemical runoff problems including fewer fish and higher levels of cancer in the area. Claims that the Chinese pollution is near its peak is about as believable as the claims that the government is not triggering an economic bubble. The Guardian:

Farmers' fields are a bigger source of water contamination in China than factory effluent, the Chinese government revealed today in its first census on pollution.

Senior officials said the disclosure, after a two-year study involving 570,000 people, would require a partial realignment of environmental policy from smoke stacks to chicken coops, cow sheds and fruit orchards.

Despite the sharp upward revision of figures on rural contamination, the government suggested the country's pollution problem may be close to - or even past - a peak. That claim is likely to prompt scepticism among environmental groups.

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Just a beautiful video

My Argentine friend Patricia, who was a ballet dancer in another life, sent me this video of an 18 year old Argenine boy, Cristian Emanuel Amuchastegui, who recently won a ballet competition in Switzerland. It's kind of amazing to think that he's only 18. I get a kick out of the fact that the announcer gives his age in years AND months LOL

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