Many thanks to aumf25 for putting this together.
Archive for February, 2008
By Dan Eggen, Washington Post Staff Writer
After promising last year to search its computers for tens of thousands of e-mails sent by White House officials, the Republican National Committee has informed a House committee that it no longer plans to retrieve the communications by restoring computer backup tapes, the panel’s chairman said yesterday.
The move increases the likelihood that an untold number of RNC e-mails dealing with official White House business during the first term of the Bush administration — including many sent or received by former presidential adviser Karl Rove — will never be recovered, said House Democrats and public records advocates.
The RNC had previously told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee that it was attempting to restore e-mails from 2001 to 2003, when the RNC had a policy of purging all e-mails, including those to and from White House officials, after 30 days. But Chairman Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) disclosed during a hearing yesterday that the RNC has now said it “has no intention of trying to restore the missing White House e-mails.”
Administration officials have acknowledged that Rove and many other White House officials routinely used RNC accounts for government business, despite rules requiring that they conduct such business through official communications channels. The RNC deleted all e-mails until 2004, when it exempted White House officials from its e-mail purging policy.
About 80 White House aides used RNC accounts for official government business, committee staff members said. Rove, for example, sent or received 140,000 e-mails on RNC servers from 2002 to 2007, and more than half involved official “.gov” accounts, the panel has said.
The committee is investigating allegations that vast stores of official Bush administration e-mails have also gone missing from the White House, which scrapped a Clinton-era archiving system and has struggled with data retention problems.
A former White House technology manager told the committee in statements released yesterday that the Bush administration’s e-mail system “was primitive and the risk that data would be lost was high.”
Steven McDevitt, who left the White House in 2006, said he supervised an internal study that found hundreds of days in which no electronic messages were stored for one or more White House offices from January 2003 to August 2005. The study stated a range when tallying the total number of days in which an office had no recorded e-mails, from 473 — which had been previously reported — to more than 1,000, McDevitt said. More…
From Save the Internet:
There was huge turnout at today’s public hearing in Boston on the future of the Internet. Hundreds of concerned citizens arrived to speak out on the importance of an open Internet. Many took the day off from work — standing outside in the Boston cold — to see the FCC Commissioners. But when they reach the door, they’re told they couldn’t come in.
The size of the crowd is evidence that many Americans don’t want giant corporations like Comcast and Verzion to decide what we can do and where we can go on the Internet.
But will the FCC hear these voices? For many people who showed up on time for the hearing, apparently not.
Comcast — or someone who really, really likes Comcast — evidently bused in its own crowd. These seat-warmers, were paid to fill the room, a move that kept others from taking part.
[Update: Comcast admits to paying people to stack the room in their favor. Read the report.]
They arrived en masse some 90 minutes before the hearing began and occupied almost every available seat, upon which many promptly fell asleep (picture above).
One told us that he was “just getting paid to hold someone’s seat.”
Story Continues @ Sourced Site.
From Celsias:
This is the first of a regular digest of global warming news published in the main academic journals.
The journal Climatic Change recently published a devastating review by Marc D Davison of the University of Amsterdam. Parallels in reactionary argumentation in the US congressional debates on the abolition of slavery and the Kyoto Protocol (PDF) aims to show that there were very similar arguments used in the historic US Congress debates on Slavery as have been used in regards to the Kyoto Protocol.
For example:
“the Central African race…had never existed in so comfortable, so respectable, or so civilized a condition as that which it now enjoyed in the Southern States”…Slavery was not “an evil. Not at all. It was a good – a great good.” – John Caldwell Calhoun arguing on the senate floor in 1837
“Thus far, no one has seriously demonstrated any scientific proof that increased global temperatures would lead to the catastrophic predictions by alarmists. In fact, it appears just the opposite is true, that increases in global temperature have beneficial effect on how we live our lives. What gets obscured in the global warming debate is the fact that carbon dioxide is not a pollutant. It is necessary for life. Numerous studies have shown that global warming can actually be beneficial to mankind…it would be beneficial to our environment and the economy.” — Senator Inhofe, chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee 2003. Both quotes page 72 (PDF)
Whilst at first this sounds like an unlikely theory, it starts to fall into place. Slaves were a massive resource with powerful men standing to lose a lot if slavery was abolished. Senators argued first that there was no problem, then that the costs of change would be too great, that the cause was not proven and that doing the right thing before others would be counter-productive. Later the same things were argued about climate change. Which just goes to show - the obstructive arguments have a long history.
Story Continuess @ Sourced Site.
From GulfNews:
By Ahmed A. Elewa, Senior Reporter
Published: February 25, 2008, 23:40
Abu Dhabi Floating the Gulf currencies is the best means to relieving the region’s rising inflationary pressures, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said in Abu Dhabi on Monday.
The dollar peg forces the Gulf states to follow US monetary policy at a time when the Fed is cutting rates to ward off recession and Gulf economies are experiencing an unprecedented boom from oil revenues.
“It [de-pegging] is probably the most useful thing that can be done to stop the increasing influence of foreign assets on the monetary system and therefore the monetary base which is basically the major force in inflationary pressures,” Greenspan told the Abu Dhabi Corporate Leadership Forum.
Arab economies have been reeling under rising inflationary pressure. In Saudi Arabia, where inflation was virtually zero for a decade, it recently reached an official level of 6.5 per cent. According to the New York Times, the oil price boom is fuelling an extraordinary rise in the cost of food and other basic goods that is squeezing this region’s middle class.
“Inflation has many causes, from rising global demand for commodities to the monetary constraints of currencies pegged to the weakening American dollar. But one cause is the skyrocketing price of oil itself. It is helping push many ordinary people towards poverty even as it stimulates a new surge of economic growth in the Glf,” the report said.
Story Continues @ Sourced Site.
Posted on February 26th, 2008 by Eugene Finerman
Within the next week or two, Faux News will broadcast a story suggesting that Senator Obama has raised money for his campaign by robbing liquor stores. A video recording will show a suspect who vaguely resembles the Democrat. As Bret Hume will conclude, “If it is not Barack Obama, it most certainly is a relative and political contributor.”
In the meantime, Senator Obama finds himself facing these three accusations.
First, he is a Muslim and we now have the photo to prove it. By now, you likely have that photo of the Senator dressed in a Somali costume when visiting that country. The garb allegedly reveals his true theological loyalties. In fact, I think that it makes him look like Butterfly McQueen. (Clarence Thomas will be so jealous.) That should lull the Right Wing’s fears of Black Men; although he would be even more acceptable if he dressed like Hattie McDaniel.
And, to allay those rumors of him being Muslim, he should start wearing a three-foot crucifix.
Second, he has proved himself unpatriotic by not singing with the national anthem. Of course, no one can sing our national anthem. The Chord Strangled Banner is a voice-straining series of contortions. We really should have an anthem within the human vocal range. After the last seven years, I’d recommend “Anything Goes.” However, if we demand that Obama attempt all forty-eight octaves of the song, he may have to undergo a surgical procedure that was a prerequisite for the Byzantine civil service. The Presidency may be worth the pain of sounding like Chris Matthews. MORE
Bob Kincaid sent along this link from Crooks and Liars, and I’m including the link to Lucianne Goldberg’s site where it appears.
The photo appears with the caption “2009 Inaugural, as imagined by unnamed Clinton staffers“. You might recall Goldberg, and the roll she played in the Lewinsky scandal. If not, you can catch up on old times by reading it here. Is this really how Clinton staffers imagine the pending inaugural? Or is it more the imagination of the posters at Goldberg’s site, and a sick attempt at humor?
Here is an excerpt from Goldberg’s Wikipedia entry:
Though the forum does not allow “Articles from hate group sites such as KKK, Aryan Nation, American Nazi Party, etc.”, it has been criticized for racist comments posted on its forums. Mark Lane, founder of the now defunct website LucianneWatch.com, complained about the website’s content to the US Marines, prompting them to pull their advertising from the site.
Remember the caption? Now, have a look at the picture. -Sue
Many thanks to Nanette in our chatroom for bringing this to my attention! I cannot stand Bob Murray. Let’s see him lie his way out of this! -Sue
By Thomas Burr, The Salt Lake Tribune
WASHINGTON - The co-owner of the Crandall Canyon mine, where nine workers died last year in separate cave-ins, faces a second congressional subpoena over the tragedy.
The House Education and Labor Committee, which is investigating the August disaster in central Utah, sent subpoenas Friday to Murray Energy Corp. chief executive Robert Murray and Bruce Hill, president of Murray subsidiary UtahAmerican Energy, the mine’s operator.
The Senate Appropriations Committee had previously subpoenaed Murray, though he has yet to testify on Capitol Hill because of delays. Three congressional committees are probing the disaster.
Rep. George Miller, a California Democrat who is chairman of the House committee, says Murray and Hill must appear for depositions with committee investigators in mid-March.
Committee spokesman Thomas Kiley says investigators had asked Murray to testify voluntarily, but to no avail.
Six miners were trapped - and ultimately entombed - in the Crandall Canyon mine on Aug. 6 when a pressure-born “bump” caused the walls, floor and ceiling to implode, authorities believe. Three would-be rescuers were killed 10 days later in another collapse. More…
I’ll just add that Murray has repeatedly claimed that the collapse was caused by an earthquake, even though there is no evidence to support his claim. -Sue
By Les Christie, CNNMoney.com staff writer
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Foreclosure filings nationwide soared 57% in January over the same month last year - another indication that the nation’s housing woes are deepening.
A study released Tuesday by RealtyTrac, an online marketer of foreclosure properties, showed that 233,001 homes were affected, 8% more than in December. Of that total, 45,327 homes were lost to bank repossessions.
Nevada, California and Florida had the highest foreclosure rates in the nation. During the housing boom, all three states recorded big price run-ups, and saw a large proportion of homes sold to investors. In Nevada, one of every 167 homes was in some foreclosure stage last month.
California had the largest total number of foreclosures among the states. There were more than 57,000 foreclosure filings there in January, one for every 227 homes. Florida trailed well back in total foreclosures with 30,000, but its rate of one for every 273 households was only slightly behind its West Coast rival.
Several states recorded massive jumps in foreclosure activity in the last twelve months. In Rhode Island filings rose 279%; in Maryland they spiked 430%; and in Virginia they leapt 634%. More…
By PETER SVENSSON, Associated Press
NEW YORK (AP) — Most of the world’s Internet users lost access to YouTube for several hours Sunday after an attempt by Pakistan’s government to block access domestically affected other countries.
The outage highlighted yet another of the Internet’s vulnerabilities, coming less than a month after broken fiber-optic cables in the Mediterranean took Egypt off line and caused communications problems from the Middle East to India.
An Internet expert said Sunday’s problems came after a Pakistani telecommunications company complied with the block by directing requests for YouTube videos to a “black hole.” So instead of serving up videos of skateboarding dogs, it sent the traffic into oblivion.
The problem was that the company also accidentally identified itself to Internet computers as the world’s fastest route to YouTube, leading requests from across the Internet to the black hole.
The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority had ordered 70 Internet service providers on Friday to block access to YouTube.com because of anti-Islamic movies on the video-sharing site, which is owned by Google Inc.
The authority did not specify what the offensive material was, but a PTA official said the ban concerned a trailer for an upcoming film by Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders, who has said he plans to release a movie portraying Islam as fascist and prone to inciting violence against women and homosexuals.
YouTube confirmed the outage Monday, saying it was caused by a network in Pakistan. More…
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