People of Walmart

Funny as hell. Read the rest of this post...

Study: Broccoli good for the heart

Another reason to eat the best green vegetable out there.

Researchers at Imperial College London have found evidence a chemical in broccoli and other green leafy vegetables could boost a natural defense mechanism that protects arteries from the clogging that can cause heart attacks.

In a study funded by the British Heart Foundation charity and conducted on mice, the researchers found that sulforaphane -- a compound occurring naturally in broccoli and other brassicas -- could "switch on" a protective protein which is inactive in parts of the arteries vulnerable to clogging.

"We know that vegetables are clearly good for you, but surprisingly the molecular mechanisms of why they are good for you have remained unknown for many years," said Paul Evans of the National Heart and Lung Institute at Imperial College.

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President Obama's popularity takes a hit with independents

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UK allowed Lybia to ignore IRA bombing responsibility

This goes from bad to worse.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown refused to press Libya to pay compensation to the victims of IRA bombings, rejecting the pleas of a top human rights lawyer, previously secret letters released Sunday by Brown's office show.

"Libya has made it clear to us that they consider this matter closed," Brown wrote in October 2008 to Jason McCue, who represents victims of bombings by the Irish Republican Army.

Libya is accused of supplying explosives to the IRA for terrorist attacks.

Pushing Libya on the issue "would entail substantial risks," Brown wrote.

But he denied that he was reluctant to anger Libya for fear Britain would lose out on oil deals with the north African country -- an allegation made by the Sunday Times newspaper and by McCue himself.

"You assert that the core reason for not entering into direct negotiations is that of trade," Brown wrote to McCue last year. "I assure you this is not the case."

It would be nice to believe such claims but at this point it's almost impossible to believe anything they have to say about discussions and deals with Libya. Read the rest of this post...

Arctic temperatures set record high

The trends are not looking good. CNN:

Arctic temperatures in the 1990s reached their warmest level of any decade in at least 2,000 years, new research indicates.

The study presents new evidence that the Arctic would be cooling if not for greenhouse gas emissions overpowering natural climate patterns.

The report published in Science magazine found that thousands of years of gradual Arctic cooling, related to natural changes in Earth's orbit, would continue today if not for emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

"This result is particularly important because the Arctic, perhaps more than any other region on Earth, is facing dramatic impacts from climate change," NCAR scientist David Schneider, one of the co-authors, said in a statement.

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Wash Post: Growing angst about Obama among Demcorats

I'm posting this Washington Post story because the White House still seems to believe that only "the left of the left" (a statement for which they have never apologized) has problems with the president's style of non-leadership. It seems much of the Democratic party, and independents, now have similar concerns:

The slide has only quickened. Emerging from an angry August recess, Obama is weakened politically and faces growing concerns, particularly from within his own party, over his strength as a leader. Dozens of interviews this summer in six states -- from Maine to California -- have revealed a growing angst and disappointment over the administration's present course.

Democratic officials and foot soldiers, who have experienced the volatile public mood firsthand, are asking Obama to take a more assertive approach this fall....

"Until last week, he was still trying to play ball with the Republicans who said, 'We're going to bring you down,' " said Karen Davis, 42, a musician from Jersey City who raised funds for Obama last year. "Now I'm thinking, 'This isn't what I voted for.' "

And here we go again with the ten dimensional chess game. Obama is really 20 steps ahead of us, and it's all part of his plan:

In addressing volunteers from Organizing for America last month, Obama warned those who had been central to the field operation of his grass-roots campaign that "everybody in Washington gets all wee-weed up" in August and September.

It was meant as a warning not to believe the Beltway analysis that Obama, a skilled communicator and player of the long game, was losing control of his message and his broader agenda.

Governing requires the ability to appeal to Congress and the electorate simultaneously, and Obama is attempting to do that with the patience and unflappability that were the hallmarks of his "no drama" campaign.

To Obama and his senior staff, that means ignoring the "cable chatter," the president's catch-all term for media punditry and Hill partisanship, and the Washington ethic of winning in real time.

Joe and I have already written extensively about Team Obama's ongoing efforts to rewrite the history of the campaign. Yes, they won, but not because the president sat back and refused to fight back until the end. In August of last year, the Netroots had had it, and people started openly questioning the president's ability and willingness to lead. Then the funders started weighing in with the campaign. All the while, Obama was dropping in the polls behind McCain. Finally, after all of that, Obama felt forced to engage, forced to fight back. This, happening at the same time as the financial crisis, is what won the race for Barack Obama. Sitting back and doing nothing only put him further and further back in the polls.

Best quote of the article:

"There is something that has grown into the Democratic DNA over the last 30 years that makes our first reaction fear," said Dan Pfeiffer, the White House deputy communications director. "And we can't keep our fear to ourselves."

Beyond the Beltway, many Democrats say they would be less afraid if Obama appeared less fearful himself...

Amen. Read the rest of this post...

AP discusses whether Obama is a "wuss"

The debate has now shifted to a point that Joe and I had predicted months ago. No longer are we talking policy, but rather, Obama's inability to fight for what he believes in has now turned the debate to a discussion of whether our president is a "wuss." People don't like having discussions about whether their leader is a wuss. The very fact of having the discussion is trouble in and of itself.

Particularly troubling, the administration still thinks the president is playing some game of ten dimensional chess that only he can see:

In an interview this past week, the adviser didn't say, but he did insist the campaign helped Obama hone a style he now uses as president.

"His approach is to keep his eye on the ball and not get bogged down in the tempest of the moment," he said. "He is ultimately a principled pragmatist. He knows where he wants to go, and he's not dogmatic about how to get there."

As president, Obama has dug in against persistent critics or stiff opposition in order to press for a broad, long-term goal.

And for anyone who doesn't have children, or nieces and nephews, or who wasn't a child themselves, that strategy probably makes sense. It's called "waiting until the last minute and then pulling an all-nighter." I had the same discussion with my nephew Anthony in the past year. He explained to me how he always leaves his papers until the last minute, then writes them in one fell swoop where the first edit is the final draft. When I told Anthony that this was the way a kid wrote a paper, not an adult, he protested - no, uncle John, he told me, it's always worked for me in the past, it's my thing.

Waiting until the last minute to get engaged, and then spending all weekend coming up with the details of a one trillion dollar program that you should have been finished with two years ago, is not your "secret style" that you honed through years of experience. It's what kids do. And while it might work for a while, at some point in life you're no longer going to be competing against kids. And when the adults take you on, God help you, and all of us.

PS There's a rather disturbing trend in this article that the AP writer didn't even notice. On a lot of foreign policy, Obama seems to be quite aggressive and well-liked. But on domestic policy, he's increasingly seen as out of touch and a bit of a "wimp." That describes a previous president by the name of George H.W. Bush. He was a one-termer. Read the rest of this post...

Sunday Talk Shows Open Thread

Today, the primary topic is health insurance reform, focusing on Obama's big speech this week and the return of Congress. The White House is sending out Gibbs and Axelrod, which may or may not be instructive or constructive.

"Meet the Press" has scraped the bottom of the pundit barrel, giving us Rudy Giuliani and Harold Ford. Why? Seriously, why?

We'll also be getting a dose of H1N1 talk today via the CDC. The full slate of guests is after the break.

Here's the lineup of guests:

ABC's "This Week" — White House press secretary Robert Gibbs; former Sens. Tom Daschle, D-S.D., and Bob Dole, R-Kan.; Reps. Mike Pence, R-Ind., and Maxine Waters, D-Calif.
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CBS' "Face the Nation" — Education Secretary Arne Duncan.
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NBC's "Meet the Press" — David Axelrod, White House senior adviser; Rudy Giuliani, former New York City mayor; Harold Ford Jr., Democratic Leadership Council chairman.
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CNN's "State of the Union" — Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Gov. Tim Pawlenty, R-Minn.; Sens. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., and Ben Nelson, D-Neb.

"Fox News Sunday" _ Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn.; Howard Dean, former national Democratic Party chairman; John Podesta, head of the Center for American Progress; former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga.

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Yardbirds - For Your Love

I love the sound of the guitars on this. Anyone know why bongo drums were used more back in the '60s and into the '70s? Love the sound of them as well. Read the rest of this post...

G20 finance ministers talk but fail to agree

Capping pay is never going to float so the sooner they focus on the core problems - excessive rewards for gambling with too little cash on hand - there won't be any progress. Spreading out payments over time is a reasonably good start but it's just a start. Obama is moving slowly in this direction though there still seems to be a very limited sense of urgency. Americans have lost substantial chunks of their retirement savings and are looking for fairness. Bankers bouncing back as though the Great Recession never happened only sounds fair in the minds of Wall Street and the administration. Clawbacks are OK but a year after the collapse, shouldn't we see much more?

Bankers blamed for the global financial crisis will see their pay packages limited under a blueprint for steering the international economy towards recovery, it emerged yesterday.

But finance ministers from both rich and developing countries failed to agree a controversial French-German plan to impose a cap on the amount financial sector workers can receive in bonus payments in future.

Although the cap proposal was thrown out in the face of objections from the Americans and the British, the G20 agreed a "clawback" scheme to ensure that bonuses are linked to the long-term success of deals and could be forfeited if they fail to deliver over a period of years.

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Blair and US also involved in Libyian terrorist release?

This story gets uglier by the day though it won't come as a surprise if Tony Blair somehow had his hands on this. If the Bush administration was also involved, let's see how that gets spun by the Cheney crowd.

Tony Blair will be thrust into the controversy over the release of the Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi with questions in Parliament over a secret meeting the then Prime Minister orchestrated that brought Libya in from the cold.

MPs are set to demand the minutes of an extraordinary cloak-and-dagger summit in London between British, American and Libyan spies held three days before Mr Blair announced that Colonel Muammar Gaddafi was surrendering his weapons of mass destruction programme.

At the time of the secret meeting in December 2003 at the private Travellers Club in Pall Mall, London – for decades the favourite haunt of spies – Libyan officials were pressing for negotiations on the status of Megrahi, who was nearly three years into his life sentence at a Scottish jail.

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