Catholic Bishops say human-animal chimera should be raised as human children

They're insane.

Human-animal hybrid embryos conceived in the laboratory - so-called “chimeras” - should be regarded as human and their mothers should be allowed to give birth to them, the Roman Catholic Church said yesterday.

Under draft Government legislation to be debated by Parliament later this year, scientists will be given permission for the first time to create such embryos for research as long as they destroy them within two weeks.

But the Catholic bishops of England and Wales, in a submission to the Parliamentary joint committee scrutinising the draft legislation, said that the genetic mothers of “chimeras” should be able to raise them as their own children if they wished.

The bishops said that they did not see why these “interspecies” embryos should be treated any differently than others.

Uh, because they have hooves? Read the rest of this post...

GOP tax cuts equal the amount of the current deficit

The House Budget Committee held a hearing with Dr. Peter R. Orszag, Director of the Congressional Budget Office. Orszag says that the amount of money lost to Bush's tax cuts equals the amount of the current deficit.

Rep. Edwards: Let me ask you a question: based on your analysis for fiscal year 2007, what percent of this year’s deficits is the result of the tax cuts passed since 2001?”

Dr. Orszag: “I’m going to have to give you the exact number later, and it depends how you do the accounting, but the revenue effect of the 2001 and 2003 tax legislation is roughly one and a half percent of GDP, which is about the size of the federal deficit today.”

Rep. Edwards: “So put that in lay terms, had we not had the tax cuts passed since 2001, according to CBO analysis, the deficit would be how much smaller?”

Dr. Orszag: “If you just do a simple accounting exercise that takes that estimated revenue effect from the Joint Committee on Taxation and compare it to today’s deficit, it would roughly eliminate the deficit.”

Read the rest of this post...

Ann Coulter wishes John Edwards were assassinated

If you or I said this, we'd be arrested. And we certainly wouldn't be given TV time on ABC, NBC or any other show than FOX. Why did NBC let her on the show after this? Why would anyone? This woman is the biggest book seller, biggest TV personality, and biggest public speaker of the Republican party. She represents everything that has gone wrong with that party, and the reason why so many of us have left it.

Read the rest of this post...

Elizabeth Edwards challenges Ann Coulter on Hardball

Mrs. Edwards is really starting to make me happy. She just phoned in to Hardball and asked Ann Coulter to stop the "language of hate." I missed the first part of Edwards' call, and will tape it all later, but here is Coulter and Edwards replying to her. And Chris Matthews did his usual "ask a hard question, then when she doesn't answer, move on to the next hard question."

Click To Play

And don't miss the nipple on the woman to the right of Coulter - it's simply bizarre that any human being would dress in public like that. You really have to see it live on TV, it's inappropriate as hell, and actually quite apropos of the entire broadcast (and typical of a Republican Coulter fan - no marriage for me, but feel free to flaunt your nipples in public).



UPDATE: ThinkProgress has the entire video now. Read the rest of this post...

Another GOP Senator calls for Iraq withdrawal

The coalition of the willing Republicans is shrinking. From AP:

Sen. George Voinovich said Tuesday the U.S. should begin pulling troops out of Iraq, joining Richard Lugar as the second Republican lawmaker in as many days to suggest President Bush's war strategy is failing.

He said the Iraqi people must become more involved and "I don't think they'll get it until they know we're leaving."

The Ohio senator's remarks followed similar comments by Lugar, R-Ind., the previous night. The two GOP senators previously had expressed concerns about Bush's decision to send 30,000 extra troops to Iraq in a massive U.S.-led security push in Baghdad and Anbar province.

That's nice, but...

Lugar and Voinovich said they were still not ready to insist on a timetable for withdrawal. But they both made it clear their patience was gone.

Once Iraq's neighbors "know we are genuinely leaving, I think all of a sudden the fear of God will descend upon them and say, 'We've got to get involved in this thing,'" Voinovich told reporters.

So, they want us to withdraw, but not yet, and they're not willing to say when. So how exactly does this help? Lugar and Voinovich are trying to split the proverbial baby in half. They call for us to withdraw from Iraq... some day... just not right now. Kind of like you'll quit drinking, or stop smoking cigarettes, some day - just not right now. Read the rest of this post...

Christine Todd Whitman's role in not informing 9/11 first-responders of the true danger from polluted air

Find even more videos from the hearing that took place yesterday, here. Read the rest of this post...

Wash Post buries "Lugar blasts Bush on war" story

The Washington Post, God bless its Iraq-war-loving red soul, buried one of the most important war stories of the day in a little blurb hidden at the bottom of page 3. Namely, that Republican foreign policy expert, Senator Dick Lugar (R-IN), blasted George Bush, the surge, and the overall chances for success in Iraq last night in a long, detailed speech on the floor of the US Senate.

The reason the Lugar speech mattered isn't because substantively Lugar is correct. It mattered because Lugar is the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He is also considered by many, me included, to be the top Republican foreign policy expert in the Senate. Add to that the fact that Lugar doesn't make speeches like this - public criticism of the president, or of anyone, isn't Lugar's thing. And he certainly doesn't make such criticism when the atmosphere surrounding the issue is already superheated - i.e., Lugar wouldn't risk fanning the flames unless the situation were dire. Lugar's speech could very well be a turning point for how Congress address' the war in the future. Republicans are already sounding the alarm that come this September, they want to see us announce a plan to draw down our troop levels (lest the GOP lose the next elections too). Lugar just gave the mushy middle the reason, and the cover, to stand up and say "enough." The importance of his speech cannot be understated. And it most certainly does not deserve being treated as a blurb buried on the bottom of the page. You can read the text of Lugar's speech here. Read the rest of this post...

Buy Glenn's book

Glenn Greenwald has a new book out about our favorite president, "A Tragic Legacy: How a Good vs. Evil Mentality Destroyed the Bush Presidency." Glenn is a good guy, blogger, lawyer, thinker. He's incredibly analytical. I've not seen this book yet, but suspect it's good, knowing Glenn. Read the rest of this post...

CNN to give sexist, homophobe, racist prime-time slot next week

CNN has finally decided to become FOX News. What other explanation for why, after everything far-right extremist Glenn Beck has said on the air, CNN would let him host Paula Zahn's prime-time show for a week? The man has suggested that Muslim-Americans, all of them, are working with the terrorists. He's riffed about "faggots" and fat chicks. He "hates" the families of the victims of September 11, and think Katrina victims are "scumbags." He compared Hillary Clinton to Adolf Hitler. He said, on the air, that Dennis Kucinich may have given his wife a date rape drug.

Even by FOX News standards, this guy is an idiot. But for CNN? This is truly embarrassing. If ratings are all that matter (and actually, Beck's ratings are terrible, and falling), and CNN's top brass doesn't care any more about being the most trusted name in news, then why not just air porn and snuff films and quit pretending that the network has any credibility left?

PS Joe had an idea. Since Paula Zahn has done all those shows about how horrible "Hate in America" is, maybe Glenn Beck could redo them, you know, presenting the other side's position? Read the rest of this post...

Poisoning 9/11 first-responders

We've written about this before. The Bush administration lied to first responders in NYC after September 11, telling them that the air was safe (it wasn't). There was a hearing about it yesterday. Christie Todd Whitman, the former head of the EPA under Bush, took a lot of heat. The thing the article doesn't note is that the White House had a major hand in lying to the firefighters, cops and others who descended on Ground Zero to help. And Mr. Giuliani had a role as well.

Let's look back at the what the very-conservative NY Post had to say about this:

An Environmental Protection Agency memo claims city and federal officials concealed data that showed lower Manhattan air was clouded with asbestos after the World Trade Center collapse.

And officials sat on the alarming information even as they told the public it was safe to return downtown, the internal memo says.

Testing by the city Department of Environmental Protection showed the air downtown had more than double the level of asbestos considered safe for humans, claimed federal EPA environmental scientist Cate Jenkins, who supplied the memo to The Post....

On Sept. 18, then-EPA administrator Christie Whitman said the public in lower Manhattan was not being exposed to "excessive levels of asbestos."

That same day, city testing data, some of which was later made public, showed asbestos levels 50 percent higher and more above what her agency considers safe, the memo states.

Whitman said at yesterday's hearing that we should blame the terrorists, not her (for a "moderate" Republican she sure does a great impression of Bush and Cheney). Last time I checked it was the Bush administration, Ms. Whitman, and Mr. Giuliani - and not Osama - who misled the American people about this issue.

And America's Mayor has some explaining to do too. More from the NY Post:

On the day after the attack, the memo claims, city test results from the corner of Centre and Chambers streets and from the corner of Spruce and Gold streets showed asbestos concentration at about twice the level considered safe by the EPA.

The city did not release this information to the public, Jenkins says.

The next day, Sept. 13, city tests were "overloaded" with asbestos in the air - so much that the lab could not conclude precise amounts - along Church Street.

Again, the information was withheld, the memo claims.

When the city published the test results for the weeks following 9/11 on its Web site in February 2002, there were 17 instances where the data was either understated or left blank, Jenkins asserts in her report.

And don't forget the White House role, from Newsday:

In the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center, the White House instructed the Environmental Protection Agency to give the public misleading information, telling New Yorkers it was safe to breathe when reliable information on air quality was not available.

That finding is included in a report released Friday by the Office of the Inspector General of the EPA. It noted that some of the agency's news releases in the weeks after the attack were softened before being released to the public: Reassuring information was added, while cautionary information was deleted.

"When the EPA made a September 18 announcement that the air was 'safe' to breathe, it did not have sufficient data and analyses to make such a blanket statement," the report says. "Furthermore, the White House Council on Environmental Quality influenced . . . the information that EPA communicated to the public through its early press releases when it convinced EPA to add reassuring statements and delete cautionary ones."

Read the rest of this post...

Tuesday Morning Open Thread

Big day in the Senate on the immigration bill. They'll be taking a vote to break the GOP filibuster. Republicans have been blocking and filibustering a lot of legislation. Now, this bill is something George Bush wants. But, those Republican Senators have become knee-jerk obstructionists.

Also, the traditional media has a new-found fascination with Dick Cheney. After almost seven years, it took a Washington Post series to open their eyes to the Vice President and his shenanigans. For the most part, they've ignored Cheney's antics as he ran roughshod over the constitution and laws.

Plus, Blogger.com is acting up. It's not even 8:00 a.m. and I'm already annoyed. Read the rest of this post...

UN: Afghan opium crop continues to increase

Who could forget those early days, when the Bush administration patted itself on the back, telling anyone who would listen that besides shutting down the Taliban and catching bin Laden, the Taliban business of growing and selling opium would be shut down and women would all be free? Those were the days when talk was cheap, ideas were big and the media preached every word of Dear Leader. Fast-forward a few years and the realities on the ground are every so slightly different. Afghanistan gets worse by the day.

In 2006, Afghanistan accounted for 92 percent of global illicit opium production, up from 70 percent in 2000 and 52 percent a decade earlier. The higher yields in Afghanistan brought global opium production to a record high of nearly 7,300 tons last year, a 43 percent increase over 2005.

The area under opium poppy cultivation in the country has also expanded, from nearly 257,000 acres in 2005 to more than 407,000 acres in 2006 — an increase of about 59 percent.

"This is the largest area under opium poppy cultivation ever recorded in Afghanistan," the report said, noting that two-thirds of cultivation was concentrated in the country's south.

Read the rest of this post...

US losing competitive edge in global business

In a market as large but as closed as the US, it's easy enough to manipulate politicians in Washington to see things your way and allow companies to become bloated and uncompetitive. Examples include the automobile industry and telcos who never seem to comprehend just out of touch with reality they are yet they continue to hold enough power to keep them on a not-so-competitive downward spiral, essentially helping global players move in and delivering lower quality to buyers in the US and around the world. Considering the overall competitiveness of the US during the Cold War - a key differentiator according to many - the US has lost its way in big business.

For the time being I still see few competitors to the US domination with new business creation/startups in various high tech fields though the trends in big business are significant enough that this too could change. Admittedly I have a small business bias after 17+ years with startups but it is no ones best interest to see these businesses decline. The jobs related to these companies are important so it's important that US companies are built for the future and not the past. Coddling and protecting the US behemoths from competition clearly helps the executive boardroom crowd shower themselves with money and a sense of self-importance but does nothing to prepare them for global competition, where they are becoming less relevant. Read the rest of this post...