Newt Gingrich or Zodiac killer? You decide

AMERICAblog Elections explains.

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William Shatner - Cheesiest death scene ever (w/ Barbara Eden, Roddy McDowall)

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Egyptian general defends "virginity checks" on female protesters arrested in post-Mubarak pro-democracy rally

Wow. Democracy may take a while.

“We didn’t want them to say we had sexually assaulted or raped them, so we wanted to prove that they weren’t virgins in the first place,” the unidentified general told CNN. “None of them were.”

"We did not agree for a male doctor to perform the test," she said. But Hosseini said her captors forced her to comply by threatening her with more stun-gun shocks.

"I was going through a nervous breakdown at that moment," she recalled. "There was no one standing during the test, except for a woman and the male doctor. But several soldiers were standing behind us watching the backside of the bed. I think they had them standing there as witnesses."

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Cell phones to be listed as carcinogenic alongside DDT?

Let's see what the cell phone industry lobbyists have to say about this.

An international panel of experts says cellphones are possibly carcinogenic to humans after reviewing details from dozens of published studies.

The statement was issued in Lyon, France, on Tuesday by the International Agency for Research on Cancer after a weeklong meeting of experts. They reviewed possible links between cancer and the type of electromagnetic radiation found in cellphones, microwaves and radar.

The agency is the cancer arm of the World Health Organization and the assessment now goes to WHO and national health agencies for possible guidance on cellphone use.

The group classified cellphones in category 2B, meaning they are possibly carcinogenic to humans. Other substances in that category include the pesticide DDT and gasoline engine exhaust.

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GOP debt limit vote laden with ideological pork, of course

I call it ideological pork.

The Republicans just couldn't offer up the clean debt limit increase they said they were going to offer (to embarrass the Dems by forcing them to vote for "debt").  They had to put an ideological poison pill in the bill to guarantee that Democrats would vote no, just in case the thing actually had a chance of passing; e.g., they blamed the debt limit increase on Obama.

Oh, and just in case the bill might pass even with that little poison pill, the GOP House pulled one more trick - rather than needing a simple majority to pass, this bill need a 2/3 majority.  How much more transparent could the Republicans be? From Jed at DailyKos:

If it wasn't already obvious that today's so-called "clean" debt limit bill is a political ploy, then all you need to do is read the legislation itself, especially the first section:

H.R. 1954: A bill to implement the President’s request to increase the statutory limit on the public debt.
SECTION 1. FINDING.

The Congress finds that the President’s budget proposal, Budget of the United States Government, Fiscal Year 2012, necessitates an increase in the statutory debt limit of $2,406,000,000,000.

So if you vote for this bill, you're not just voting to raise the debt limit, you're also going on record in support of the absurd notion that President Obama's 2012 budget proposal is the reason why we need to increase the debt limit. In truth, we need to raise the debt limit because Congress—with Republicans in control of the House—has already passed a 2011 budget that requires an increase in the debt limit. And literally nobody has proposed a 2012 budget that wouldn't require an increase in the debt limit, not even folks like Rand Paul.

It would be one thing if this legislation had a chance of passing, but it doesn't—GOP leadership imposed a two-thirds vote requirement for passage, all but guaranteeing its defeat.

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Top conservative news site shows photo of Dem congressman’s crotch

I'm not linking to them.  You can google it for yourself.  It's a top conservative "news" site that thinks it's the GOP's version of the Huffington Post.  And it's trying to milk a non-scandal involving Democratic Congressman Anthony Wiener, and is doing it in quite a sick way - by taking a public photo of the congressman in a suit, and then enlarging his crotch.  You can read more on why the "scandal" is a hoax from DailyKos.  Even the Washington Post doesn't seem to buy the "scandal."  (Though, now that the Post has conservative nutjobs blogging for it, it's not entirely clear what a link to the Post means anymore, as I have no idea who this person is, if she's an honest journalist, another right-wing nut, or what.  Quick way to ruin a paper's reputation.) Read the rest of this post...

WikiLeaks: Saudis think speculators helped cause oil bubble

Matt Taibbi writing in Rolling Stone (my emphasis):

When oil prices surged to a ridiculous $147 a barrel in the summer of 2008, conventional wisdom held that normal supply and demand issues were the cause. ... [T]hanks to Wikileaks, we now know that when the Bush administration reached out to the Saudis in the summer of '08 to ask them to increase oil production to lower prices, the Saudis responded by saying they were having a hard time finding buyers for their oil as it was, and instead asked the Bush administration to rein in Wall Street speculators.

"Speculators" means the so-called "Global Pool of Money", the monster pile that global investor were trying to find a home for after the crash of the derivatives market, the Global Pool's previous home. (Click that link and listen; you won't be sorry.)

Where do Goldman and DeutscheBank and Paribas put billion- and trillion-dollar investors after the housing crash? Treasuries (which are safe but pay nothing) and commodities.

The issue here, which I covered somewhat in Griftopia and in "The Great American Bubble Machine," revolves around the influx of speculative money into the commodities markets. Because of various changes to the way commodities were traded -- including a series of semi-secret exemptions handed out to commodities speculators, allowing companies like Goldman Sachs to popularize commodities speculation -- there was, by the summer of 2008, a cascade of investor money pouring into commodities, mostly all betting on a rise of commodity prices. ... The Wiki documents show that the Saudis had long ago concluded that this increased investor flow was a threat to disrupt the markets. An embassy cable from 2007 recounted a meeting U.S. officials had with Yasser Mufti, an Aramco planner. "The Saudi analysts indicated a link between higher oil prices and the influx of investor funds into the oil markets," it read.

The cables also show that the Saudis urged the Americans to enact reforms to rein in Wall Street, calling for speculative limits and other changes. It also showed that some Saudi officials believed that speculation added as much as $40 to the oil price during the height of the bubble.

Some economists have argued that commodities like oil aren't subject to price shocks due to speculation. Clearly the Saudis, whose business it (literally) is to know, disagree. Looks like the problem is back.

GP Read the rest of this post...

Sarah Palin, or HAL 9000?

I watch Sarah Palin's new "maybe I'm running, maybe I'm not" video and I can't help thinking the voice over was done with a fake Sarah Palin computer simulation, where the computer strings together sentences out of whichever Palin words you pick in its database, like this one done for Bush back in 2006.

Palin's video reminds me of the last words of the HAL 9000:

I know everything hasn't been quite right with me, but I can assure you now, very confidently, that it's going to be all right again.  I feel much better now, I really do.

Stop Sarah, we're afraid. Read the rest of this post...

NYT editorial: Grim news on the economy

The Republicans are clearly pleased by this, as it potentially helps them unseat Obama in 2012, and I suspect for many of them this was their plan right along - force a smaller stimulus, force a smaller recovery, leave the economy in worse shape for the next election. Of course, a still anemic economy may also unseat the GOP's House majority. From the NYT:

[The White House's] economic team is mainly focused on negotiations to raise the debt limit, presumably parrying Republican demands for deep spending cuts that could weaken the economy further while still reaching an agreement on the necessary increase.

The grim numbers tell an unavoidable truth: The economy is not growing nearly fast enough to dent unemployment. Unfortunately, no one in Washington is pushing policies to promote stronger growth now.

The sinkholes in the economy should be obvious. Most prominently, the housing market is still awful, and state and local government budgets are still a mess. Conditions apparently have to get worse before deficit-obsessed policy makers will be ready to address them, including with bolstered foreclosure relief and more fiscal aid to states. More delay would only imperil the recovery, such as it is. And without a strong recovery, it will be even harder to repair the budget. Continued hard times means low tax revenues and high safety-net spending.

We needed a larger stimulus. A lot of us knew it at the time, and the WH, while they claim it's all they could get, they have no idea because they didn't try/fight for more. The President was at 70% in the polls, the country was panicked about the economy. Obama could have gone to the nation and sold the package he should have known was needed. I raise this again because these errors are not being made in a vacuum - they're the kind of policy/political decisions that are being made time and again by the White House. And unless they learn from their past mistakes - unless they recognize them AS mistakes - they're going to continue erring in the future. Read the rest of this post...

GOP concerns about Obama 2012 in NC show how bad off the GOP really is

Wash Post:

By any number of indicators, President Obama shouldn’t have much of a chance in North Carolina next year. In no state was Obama’s 2008 win closer — he won by just 14,177 votes, or 0.3 percent of the electorate — and he’s less popular now. The economy, now Obama’s economy, is in worse shape. And voters here have turned against many Democrats, ousting a congressman and a slew of state lawmakers last fall.

But if Republican activists are feeling confident, you wouldn’t know it by what they’re doing and saying.

Republicans are poring over the details of how Obama became the first Democratic presidential candidate to win the state since Jimmy Carter. They are trying to pass laws in the legislature to restrict the early-voting system that Obama used to such remarkable effect.

Gotta love that last part. Yes, making it easier to vote helped too many Americans vote for Obama, so we'd better make it harder to vote next time. Classic GOP. Read the rest of this post...

Mubarak to face trial for death of protesters

Finishing his years in a miserable prison may be more appropriate but that's not likely to happen. He will be very lucky to avoid the death penalty for what happened during his rule.

Egypt's prosecutor general ordered Tuesday former President Hosni Mubarak put on trial on charges of corruption and conspiring in the deadly shootings of protesters during the uprising that ousted him, a stunning step against a leader whose power was nearly unquestioned for three decades.

The announcement that Mubarak would face a criminal court grants a major demand of Egyptians who have threatened a second revolution amid growing worries about the slow pace of change under the country's new military rulers. The charges could carry the death sentence, said the prosecutor-general spokesman Adel el-Said.

It would be the first time an Arab leader is sent to trial solely by his own people in modern history. Iraq's leader Saddam Hussein was toppled during the U.S. invasion in 2003 and sentenced three years later to death for killing 140 Shiites.

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British executive pay triples, Canada up as well

Ah, the age of austerity. See how everyone is impacted?

Chief executives of FTSE 100 companies saw their median earnings soar 32 percent to £3.5 million last year, prompting complaints that rewards are out of line with share prices and employees’ pay.

The median increase – the midpoint between the top and bottom earners – was more than treble the 9 percent rise in the FTSE 100 index over the period, according to a survey by MM&K;, the reward consultancy, and Manifest, the proxy voting agency.

The findings came as workers suffer the most prolonged squeeze in real wages since the 1920s. Average earnings grew less than 2 percent last year, barely half the rate of inflation. FTSE 100 chief executives’ average total pay last year was 120 times that of the average employee, a multiple that has risen from 45 times since 1998, according to the report.

The problem is not only limited to the UK, but Canada as well. Read the rest of this post...

Gaddafi talks peace as troops and officers defect

Gaddafi is hardly one to be trusted but at the same time, this war needs to end quickly. We simply can't afford it though with countless defections, neither can he. Al Jazeera:

Muammar Gaddafi is ready for a truce to stop the fighting in his country, the visiting South African president has said after meeting the Libyan leader, but he listed conditions set out by Gaddafi that have dashed previous ceasefire attempts.

South Africa's Jacob Zuma said on Tuesday that Gaddafi was ready to accept an African Union initiative for a ceasefire that would stop all hostilities, including NATO air strikes in support of rebel forces.

"He is ready to implement the road map," Zuma said.

Zuma said Gaddafi insists that "all Libyans be given a chance to talk among themselves" to determine the country's future, but rebels quickly rejected the offer.

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Fourteen in Germany die due to E. coli outbreak

There is now debate whether the problem is related to the farms or the transportation. Most of the problem has been connected with northern Germany so there may be something specific that happened there. The Guardian:

An E coli outbreak that has killed 14 people and made more than 300 seriously ill in Germany has spread to other north European countries and is expected to worsen in the coming week.

"We hope that the number of cases will go down but we fear that it will worsen," said Oliver Grieve, spokesman for the University Medical Centre Schleswig-Holstein in north Germany, where many of those afflicted are being treated.

The source of the virulent strain of the bacteria is unknown, German authorities said on Monday ahead of a meeting of federal and state officials in Berlin.

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