Agent Orange continues to cause problems

During the runup to the invasion of Iraq I could never understand how people could fall for the war-mongering talk about chemical weapons. At the time I was in Vietnam, seeing first hand what American chemical weapons had done. Seeing young children of 10 or 11 suffering from dioxin and then hearing the chicken hawks scream about Iraq's chemical weapons (that the US sold to Iraq) was hard to swallow. If only those demanding war had a clue about the lasting impact of their actions.

A few months after leaving Vietnam I was taking my father to the VA in the US where I met vets who were on permanent disability due to exposure to the same chemicals. What a horrible, lasting impact those chemicals have had on the world. Decades after the US left Vietnam, it's still a problem.

New environmental tests confirm extremely high levels of dioxin, the toxic ingredient of Agent Orange, in people, fish and soil near a former U.S. air base where American troops stored the herbicide during the Vietnam War.

"Time is of the essence" to finish cleaning up the site, now home to the Danang airport, where dioxin levels in the soil, sediment and fish were 300 to 400 times higher than internationally accepted levels, the survey by the Canadian environmental firm Hatfield Consultants said.

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Norman Borlaug passed away

My friend Chris wrote in to explain why it's sad that someone many of us never heard of passed away.

Norman Borlaug passed away.

At 95. Farm kid from Iowa gets a boost from public education (his first eight years in a one-room schoolhouse, then on to the University of Minnesota).

Develops new plants to boost crop yields.

Teaches the world how to feed itself.

Saves the lives of roughly 1 billion people which, at the time, was about one-third of the human race.

Wins the Nobel Peace Prize.

Leaves the world a better place than he found it.

Screw Sarah Palin.

THAT’S Real America.

Chris

P.S. Nerds and geeks rule!

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Frank Rich: Obama’s Squandered Summer

Rich argues that Obama's "wait until the last minute and then pounce when all is on the verge of being lost" style of management may have worked, barely, during the campaign, but it's not an appropriate way to lead a government. And as a result, the Wall Street mess has yet to be fixed, and Afghanistan burns. Read the rest of this post...

Olympia Snowe is playing Obama like a fiddle

Check out this quote from GOP Senator Olympia Snowe today. Snowe likes to portrary herself as a "moderate" Republican, even though she rarely sticks up for anything other than what her party tells her to. Note Snowe's language. Telling Obama to give up on the public option, but not offering anything in return other than the possibility of "building consensus."

Snowe, who has proved a reliable collaborator with the White House, said Obama should just give up on the public option in favor of building consensus and that he should have done so during his Wednesday speech to Congress to bring Republicans on board.

"I think it's unfortunate, because it leaves open a legislative possibility that creates uncertainty in this process," Snowe said. "And I think it could give real momentum to building a consensus on other issues."

Snowe knows her audience. She knows Obama is genetically incapable of turning away from the shiny penny of bipartisanship. The problem? Snowe can't deliver one vote in the Senate. Sure, perhaps Susan Collins will vote with her, but that's it. They're the only two "moderates" left in the GOP caucus. Unless Obama plans on giving away the shop to get Snowe and Collins on board, it's not terribly clear what Snowe is offering in exchange for Obama caving on a campaign promise that he said was a requirement for the bill.

And as we saw during the stimulus debate, giving away the shop, and then getting 3 GOP votes, convinces no one that the bill is bipartisan. So why cave to Snowe? Other than the fact that she's now playing to Obama's weakness? Read the rest of this post...

MoDo thinks Wilson's "You Lie!" outburst was racially motivated

She thinks a lot of the craziness of the past several months was. I'm not sure it was the sole motivation, but it is difficult to just assume that it didn't play a role in a party still domination by people who hate, generally, and have a disdain for minorities, particularly. Clearly, it helps the cause of craziness to have a black man at the helm. As Joe noted yesterday, it sure is an interesting coincidence that the anti-Obama teabaggers are all white, and as Dowd noted, that Congressman "You Lie!" is from the South.

Then again, they did a bang up job of demonizing Bill Clinton and Hillary too over the years, and Bill is a southerner. And they destroyed John Kerry, who was a decorated vet, no less. So their hatred and bile can be color-blind, but I suspect if the victim is black, or gay, or a woman Speaker of the House, that's still icing on the cake. Read the rest of this post...

White House and Hill launch coordinated campaign to diminish public option

The White House is, I suspect, coordinating this campaign to undercut the public option and make it go away. It's a controversial campaign promise, and as we've written before, President Obama generally doesn't like to keep controversial promises. In this case, it seems the White House is finally doing something on health care reform, unfortunately what it's doing is undercutting its own promises and its own constituencies. Remember, it was only two months ago that President Obama himself said that the public option was so necessary that he wouldn't sign a bill that didn't include it. Today, the White House, and its Hill allies, are telling us that the public option was just an insignificant component of the bill that can easily be replaced with something else. From everything I've read, that's simply untrue. It's no wonder the public option is having a difficult time getting votes in the Senate, the White House doesn't seem to be lobbying for it at all, and never did - which again, is odd, since the president devoted so much time to it in his address to Congress just a few days ago. Read the rest of this post...

How Islamist gangs use the Internet to track, torture and kill Iraqi gays - can any hackers out there help?

Can any hacker types out there help us find out who these gang members are, and expose them? They're working online - there must be a way to entrap them and expose them. Read the rest of this post...

Obama to go beyond House bill to ban public funding for abortions in health care reform

Abortion is controversial. And Obama won't touch controversial public policy. He prefers to make such issues go away by giving Republicans and conservatives what they want.

The problem is that these issues won't go away. Women (and men) care about choice. Tens of millions of gay Americans and their families and friends care about civil rights. Tens of millions of Latinos care about immigration. These hot-button issues aren't going to go away simply because the president caves to the opposition. The one inherent problem with this strategy is that it's only a short-term fix that tends to enrage the core Democratic constituencies who find that they've been fixed. And just as bad, it emboldens Republicans and conservatives to come back times harder and ask for ten times more.

HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told me on ‘This Week’ the President will go beyond language in a House bill to make sure no public money goes to pay for abortions under health care reform.

Abortion foes argue language in the House bill has too many holes and that taxpayers could potentially subsidize abortions. Sebelius told me there will be no uncertainty with the President's plan.

“In fact recently the Catholic bishops came out, after the President’s statement saying that his statement about what he intends in the plan that no public fund would go to fund abortion and the fact that he has come out firmly for insuring all Americans and saying that it’s a moral issue as well as an economic issue and they endorsed moving forward. I think the legislative language will reflect what the President has just said.”

GEORGE: “So you are saying that he will go beyond what we have seen in the House and explicitly rule out any public funding for abortion?”

SEBELIUS: “Well that’s exactly what the President said and that’s what he intends that the bill he signs will do.”

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Teabaggers claiming, erroneously, that they had 1.5m protesters yesterday - ABC says it's a lie, it was tens of thousands

It's the natural extension of the death panel, and every other political statement that comes out of conservatives' mouths nowadays. Lies, lies, lies, and then you hope they catch on so that no one can debunk them. Except ABC just has. ABC never said there were 1.5 million people at the march, which is what the protesters are now claiming ABC said. In fact, ABC only said that the DC fire dept. claimed there were 60k to 70k protesters. It's funny, protest organizers always inflate the numbers by a factor of two or three. But a factor of 25 is definitely a new record.

Nate Silver has more:

But yesterday, someone told a real whopper. ABC News, citing the DC fire department, reported that between 60,000 and 70,000 people had attended the tea party rally at the Capitol. By the time this figure reached Michelle Malkin, however, it had been blown up to 2,000,000. There is a big difference, obviously, between 70,000 and 2,000,000. That's not a twofold or threefold exaggeration -- it's roughly a thirtyfold exaggeration.

The way this false estimate came into being is relatively simple: Matt Kibbe, the president of FreedomWorks, lied, claiming that ABC News had reported numbers of between 1.0 and 1.5 million when they never did anything of the sort. A few tweets later, the numbers had been exaggerated still further to 2 million. Kibbe wasn't "in error", as Malkin gently puts it. He lied. He did the equivalent of telling people that his penis is 53 inches long.

Malkin, who to her credit later corrected the error, frets that it might be used to by liberals to "discredit the undeniably massive turnout". She's right to be worried -- it absolutely will be used that way. If you don't want to be discredited, then don't, as Kibbe did, tell a ridiculous (and easily disprovable) lie.

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Sunday Talk Shows Open Thread

Health insurance reform. That's the topic. Really the only topic.

The Obama administration is sending out David Axelrod, Robert Gibbs and the Secretary of HHS, Kathleen Sebelius. Then, there are a slew of Senators including a couple of Democrats who seem committed to undermining real reform: Kent Conrad (ND) and the ever painful Mary Landrieu (LA).

It would be very informative for the American people if the Senators were asked about their own health insurance, like when was the last time they ever had to worry about it. Mary Landrieu has had tax-payer financed insurance for most of her adult life. Same is true for Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, who are also guests today. But, none of the Sunday talk show hosts would ever ask that question, it would be too mean.

The full slate of guests is after the break.

Here's the full lineup:

ABC's "This Week" — Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius; Sens. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., and Mary Landrieu, D-La.; Gov. Tim Pawlenty, R-Minn.
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CBS' "Face the Nation" — David Axelrod, White House senior adviser; Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine.
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NBC's "Meet the Press" — Sens. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and John Cornyn, R-Texas; Howard Dean, former national Democratic Party chairman; former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga.
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CNN's "State of the Union" — White House press secretary Robert Gibbs; Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H.; Rep. Eric Cantor, R-Va.

"Fox News Sunday" _ Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C.; Sens. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.; Andy Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union.

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Billy Preston with Ray Charles

Quite a difference from Nothing from Nothing. The guy could perform. Read the rest of this post...

Staph germs found at beaches

They are saying that the risk of infection remains low but it's still not a good development. Maybe the problem is only limited to a few locations though more testing is not a bad idea.

Dangerous staph bacteria have been found in sand and water for the first time at five public beaches along the coast of Washington, and scientists think the state is not the only one with this problem.

The germ is MRSA, or methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus — a hard-to-treat bug once rarely seen outside of hospitals but that increasingly is spreading in ordinary community settings such as schools, locker rooms and gyms.

The germ causes nasty skin infections as well as pneumonia and other life-threatening problems. It spreads mostly through human contact. Little is known about environmental sources that also may harbor the germ.

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Mugabe slams "bloody whites" as EU delegation arrives

As someone who believes post-colonialism is still pilfering the African continent, this is counter production to moving the continent forward. How is it that "bloody whites" are the problem yet when Mugabe hands over the only functioning businesses (mines) to China, that has nothing to do with colonialism? Oh that's right, he receives military equipment to repress the black population of Zimbabwe. It's corrupt leaders like Mugabe who are destroying Africa and blocking progress. The "bloody whites" may be guilty of many things but in recent years it's Robert Mugabe who is the murderer of Zimbabwe as he regularly deploys thugs to beat up, torture and murder political opponents, most of whom are black.

Hungry people are more interested in farms producing food over handing out land to old friends. Instead of handing over those farms to incompetents, how about turning over lots to people who know how to farm? Bad rule is bad rule whether those in charge or black or white.

Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe has condemned "bloody whites" for meddling in his country's affairs and attacked the West for trying to impose its rule on the southern African nation.

Mugabe's comments on Friday came a day before he met a delegation of European Union representatives who are in the country to ease relations and push progress on Zimbabwe's political reforms.

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British special forces training Libyan anti-terror forces

Each day you wonder how this tangled mess could get worse and then it gets worse. How much more will the British public tolerate from Gordon Brown?

For the past six months Britain’s elite troops have been schooling soldiers working for Col Muammar Gaddafi’s regime, which for years provided Republican terrorists with the Semtex explosive, machine-guns and anti-aircraft missiles used against British troops during the Troubles in Northern Ireland.

Sources within the SAS have expressed distaste at the agreement, which they believe could be connected to the release of the Lockerbie bomber.

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