Fiscal Disaster

Nancy Pelosi released this statement yesterday in response to the CRS report on the costs of the Iraq misadventure:

"Think about what $10 billion a month would mean to protecting Americans from terrorism, improving security at our ports and airports, and increasing border security. Think about what $10 billion a month would mean for the 47 million Americans who don’t have health insurance, for the survivors of Hurricane Katrina, and for the education of our children. Think about what $10 billion a month would mean to lowering the deficit so that future generations are not burdened with debt.

"The American people are outraged at the Bush Administration’s misplaced priorities -- that is why Congress will hold the Administration accountable with votes this month to end the war and redeploy the troops. This will include a vote on legislation to begin redeployment of our troops within 120 days and to conclude by April 1, 2008, with the exception of those remaining in Iraq to fight terrorists and protect our diplomats.

"The date-certain legislation gives our Republican colleagues another opportunity to join Democrats in heeding the wishes of the American people, who want to wind down this war and bring our troops home."

That pretty much sums up the "fiscal disaster" part of the argument. I wonder what Bush's defenders will respond with.

Is It Toast Yet?

Think Progess has a few facts for the Senate to think about as they discuss Iraq over the next couple of weeks:

Bloomberg notes, "Four thousand U.S. service members have died in U.S. President George W. Bush’s ‘war on terror’ in Iraq and Afghanistan 5 1/2 years after American forces ousted the Taliban in December 2001." AP adds, "All told, Congress has appropriated $610 billion in war-related money since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror assaults, roughly the same as the war in Vietnam. Iraq alone has cost $450 billion." The wars cost approximately $12 billion a month, according to a new Congressional Research Service report.

Over 34,000 American troops have been injured with thousands permanently disabled and even though they don't register on the Republican adding machine, you can add in the hundreds of thousands dead in Iraq and Afghanistan as a result of this ghastly disaster and if that doesn't make a perfect argument for ending this debacle then I don't know what does. Get the hell out!

Yes Organic is Better!

I followed a link from somewhere and wound up on the ABC news site on an article titled:

Is Going Organic Really Better for You? More Natural, More Expensive Produce May Offer Little Additional Health Incentive

It is a very misleading title to say the least. For instance in just the first few paragraphs it points out a new study...

Now comes a study in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry that finds otherwise.

Organic tomatoes were found to have nearly twice the level of two compounds, quercetin and kaempferol, as traditionally grown tomatoes. These compounds, part of a group called flavonoids, which are just a subclass of antioxidants, have been linked to a reduction in heart disease risk, so higher levels in food would seem to be a good thing.

Might not something about new research showing the benefits of organic food been a better title? The rest of the article is just the same old stuff about how expensive organic food is and so forth. It does mention that the important thing is to first eat your proper quantity of fruits and vegetables everyday and then worry about the organic. Overall the tone of the article is kind of dismissive of trying to eat organic and in at least one instance states that expecting everyone to to do is impossible since we don't have enough farmland to grow that much food. Wrong. Currently only a fraction of a percent of the arable land in this country is producing organic food and it has been shown repeatedly that an integrated organic farm can be more productive than a non organic one and produce higher quality food with less cost and a far less impact on the environment. In several recent studies it has shown that pasture raised or grass fed beef is higher in Omega 3 fatty acid and has less cholesterol than the factory farm beef.

These articles always leave out some of the important things about organic and natural foods. They are other reasons aside from good nutrition and healthy food to eat natural and organic.

Foods grown in harmony with the natural way of things do not have a negative impact on the environment. No nitrogen fertilizers are needed that consume huge quantities of oil to produce. No pesticides are broadcast over thousands of acres at a time killing everything that gets in its way. Beef, pork and poultry that are raised in pastures and in the open eating their natural foods like grass, etc. have no downside impact on the environment plus the animals are healthier, happier and better sources of food for humans than the factory farmed animals that are stuffed by the thousands together and fed grains which are not their natural food and which in turn makes them sick. Because they become sick from stress and unnatural food they have to be pumped up with antibiotics and other drugs so that they can live long enough to be slaughtered. We won't even talk about the tons of waste these factory farms create.

The last page says "If you really want to try eating organic then here are some tips..." Implying that if you are crazy enough then...

These subtle "hit pieces" will also never point out how much better organic and especially locally grown produce tastes than the stuff trucked or flown in from who knows where at a tremendous cost in energy.

Yes, currently organic is usually more expensive that conventionally grown fruits and vegetables but the more we support it now by paying a few cents more the faster the industry will grow and as it does it will become more competitive with conventionally farmed food.

We all need to try and buy locally grown food and organic where possible and remember to eat in season. If it is blackberry season in your area by all means go hog wild but if it's not and your only source of blackberries is from Chile then consider another option or better yet buy a bunch when they are in season and can or freeze some for when they are not.

Live Earth and Rats

I hope everyone had a great weekend and that everyone got a chance to spend some quality time on Saturday watch the Live Earth event. Being the huge techno freak that I am I have a plasma HD TV and HD cable as well so I managed to spend quite a bit of time in front of said TV and basically being a couch potato for the environment for a day. (with Al Gore's permission, of course). It was really an amazing piece of organization. I would think the the Department of Homeland Insecurity would look into hiring the same outfit for the next hurricane relief effort.

Needless to say Saturday was a wasted day for the most part. I did manage to get to the farmer's market in the early morning and get a few yard chores done but otherwise I just "boob-tubed" it.

Sunday was the rush to get up with the chickens and use my one legal watering window to try and save the garden. I felt kind of foolish standing out in the light rain with a garden hose but we weren't getting any serious rain and the plants wouldn't get another chance until the next Sunday. We did probably get a half an inch or so in a couple of brief showers but we are still way behind.

Sunday afternoon was a rare "out for the movies" to see Ratatouille. Cute enough and worth the price but I must admit that the hordes of rats streaming out of the drain into the kitchen and over the counters was a bit much and unsettling though. I can recommend it for some light hearted fun but I wouldn't say it was really a kid's movie. If you are a "foodie" you might get a kick out of it.

As it is plain to see I am not traveling again this week and I might have some thing more substantial to say later in the day but right now I am going out for a walk while it is still only 74 degrees. Later.

It's Live Earth Day

It's Live Earth Day. Lets hang with a couple of billion others and enjoy the show. Watch it, and you get the added benefit of pissing off Senator Inhofe and the other Global Warming deniers.

Hummers

My daughter sent these to me knowing how much I love hummingbirds. The lady pictured is Abagail Alfano of Pine, Louisiana which is in one of the hummingbird flyways. She regularly feeds them but on a lark just sat down with a dish of sugar water in her hand. How cool is that?

Lube Up Right or Don't Bother

Every doctor and health professional you talk to will tell you use sunscreen daily. I don't but Madam does. My skin is very dark and oily and seems to resist sunlight pretty well on its own. Madam is of good German stock and has virtually no natural protection from the sun. I do put on sun screen if I am going to be in the sun for an extended period such as a round of golf. It has been rumored that not all sunscreens are equal and Madam swears by Neutrogena for Sensitive Skin but it only ranks 67th in the list of recommended sunscreens. Now you don't have to wonder because the Environmental Working Group has taken the guesswork out it. This article was released last month but I just stumbled onto it. Thought I would share.

Washington, D.C. – Today, the Environmental Working Group (EWG) released the first-ever, in-depth analysis of the safety and effectiveness of more than 700 name-brand sunscreens. The new database lists products that offer the best combination of safety and effectiveness: they are formulated with the safest chemicals, are most effective at protecting against sunburn, and help prevent long-term damage caused by the sun’s UVA rays, which are linked to skin aging, wrinkling and, potentially, cancer.

The analysis found that 84 percent of 785 sunscreen products with an SPF rating of 15 or higher offer inadequate protection from the sun’s harmful rays, or contain ingredients with safety concerns. Ironically, some popular sunscreen chemicals break down when exposed to sunlight and must be formulated with stabilizing chemicals. Others penetrate the skin and present significant health concerns.

The database can be found at: http://www.ewg.org/sunscreen/

Water, Water, Bottled Badness

I am as guilty as the next person when it comes to bottled water. There is almost a case of it in the basement fridge right now as well as 5 or 6 bottles of San Pellegrino. It is a horrible habit and I am kicking myself when I think about how much energy and money I have wasted over the years on bottled water. I know better. It would be different if the tap water here was nasty but we really do have good water right out of the tap. I could justify it if I lived on the coast where some of the water comes from desalinization plants and the water tastes and smell of rotten eggs. Even in parts of England and Europe there are so many minerals in the waters that it is barely drinkable. Even with the awful water north of London in Hertfordshire my friends actually make the really strongly flavored and mineral laden water drinkable with a Brita filter pitcher. They have an excuse and they don't buy bottled water.

Thirty years ago, bottled water barely existed as a business in the United States. Last year, we spent more on Poland Spring, Fiji Water, Evian, Aquafina, and Dasani than we spent on iPods or movie tickets--$15 billion. It will be $16 billion this year.

The reality is, however, that bottled water is often simply an indulgence, and despite the stories we tell ourselves, it is not a benign indulgence. We're moving 1 billion bottles of water around a week in ships, trains, and trucks in the United States alone. That's a weekly convoy equivalent to 37,800 18-wheelers delivering water. (Water weighs 81/3 pounds a gallon. It's so heavy you can't fill an 18-wheeler with bottled water--you have to leave empty space.)

Now the big thing is water from Fiji and in Fiji, a state-of-the-art factory spins out more than a million bottles a day of the hippest bottled water on the U.S. market today, while more than half the people in Fiji do not even have safe, reliable drinking water. Which means it is easier for the typical American in Beverly Hills or Baltimore to get a drink of safe, pure, refreshing Fiji water than it is for most people in Fiji.

There is one other mark against bottled water... the bottles themselves. The big springwater companies tend to make their own bottles in their plants, just moments before they are filled with water--12, 19, 30 grams of molded plastic each. Americans went through about 50 billion plastic water bottles last year, 167 for each person. Durable, lightweight containers manufactured just to be discarded. Water bottles are made of totally recyclable polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic, so we share responsibility for their impact: Our recycling rate for PET is only 23%, which means we pitch into landfills 38 billion water bottles a year--more than $1 billion worth of plastic.

It is my one of my resolutions for 07.07.07 that I will not buy any more bottled water. It is stupid and wasteful and not environmentally sound. Bottled water adds an unnecessary energy burden and we don't need it. I do recycle the empties but that is not good enough.

You can read more about the "water business" here.

Blueberries For Sure

In case you haven't noticed blueberries are in season. We lost most of our local crop due to the late frost but there are nice supplies coming in from other places. I got two pounds yesterday for only $5.99 at Whole Foods. They were New Jersey grown. What did I do with two pounds of blueberries? I made a cobbler, of course, and was it ever good. Now I'll share the recipe.

This is a two phase recipe. First you need to get the blueberries cooking. You'll need a 9 inch deep glass or ceramic pie dish or an 8 inch square casserole. Put the rack in the lower third of your oven and preheat it to 375 degrees.

For the berries
6 cups (or 30 oz.) of fresh blueberries that you have washed and picked through. You'll find little stems on some of the berries so get all those off that you see.
In a mixing bowl add to the blueberries
1/2 cup of sugar
1 & 1/2 Tablespoons of corn starch
1 & 1/2 Teaspoons of grated lemon zest
1 Tablespoon fresh lemon juice
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
a pinch of cinnamon

Mix all of this together gently and pour it into your pie dish and put the dish on a lipped pan (pizza pan) and put this in the oven for a half hour or so until the berries start to bubble around the edges. you might want to stir the berries after about 20 minutes. The dish is going to pretty full to start but the berries will cook down a little.

For the topping I use a sweetened biscuit mixture. You have to do the wet and dry in two separate bowls and bring them together only when you are ready to put it on the berries.
Wet bowl- beat together
1/3 cup buttermilk
4 Tablespoons of melted unsalted butter
1/2 teaspoon of vanilla extract

Dry bowl - mix together
1 cup all purpose flour
2 tablespoons of stone ground corn meal
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 Tsp kosher salt
1/4 Tsp baking soda
2 Tsp baking powder

When the berries are bubbling remove them from the oven and turn the oven up to 425 degrees. Mix the wet and dry ingredients together and stir until they are mixed and there are no dry spots. Don't over mix or it will toughen the dough. When all mixed you should be able to divide the dough into 8 equal bits and gently shape each into a little cake about 1/2 inch thick (a little biscuit) the dough will be a little greasy with all the butter and it shouldn't stick to your hands. Put your little pieces of dough on top of the hot berries trying to leave at least a half inch between the pieces. I sometimes sprinkle the dough with a little sugar or cinnamon sugar. Put the dish back in the oven and 15 - 20 minutes later the biscuit topping should have browned nicely. Remove to a rack and let cool for 20 minutes before serving. Great with cream, lightly sweetened whipped cream or vanilla ice cream.

PS. This will work for blackberries too and if you weren't so lazy you'd go out and pick you a quart and a half and have a cobbler for dinner.

It's Worse Than That

I am still cranked about the commuting of Scooter's sentence but in the grand scheme of things it is really not as bad as the other things Bush has done. It is just the freshest and we have become somewhat numbed by 6 years of bad news and worse news. In it's proper perspective the disaster is Iraq is much more appalling and has been daily for four years. The brutal deaths of 3,568 brave men and women and the disabling and injury of another 34,650. The hundreds of thousands Iraqi deaths and mortally wounded. The wiretapping and domestic spying. The shredding of habeas corpus. The torture and political prisoners. The scrapping of arms treaties and the Kyoto protocols. The rape of our forests and skies. Don't forget turning a surplus economy into one of crushing debt.

All these things are worse than Scooter getting out of serving jail time and they will haunt our lives and the world for decades and in many cases forever. Sure it was another slap in the face to the rule of law and the Constitution but just one of many. With tomorrow being the 4th of July we need to think about how the freedom and country we celebrate tomorrow can be returned to us.

Free Ride

Well, I was going to see if the world stopped in its tracks if I didn't post here for a day but that has been ruined by a shameful, self-serving event which will have long-term political ramifications for the Bush Administration. Bush has commuted Libby's sentence.

This is a commutation and not a pardon so Libby still has this on his record and he still has the quarter million dollar fine to pay but what they hay. This entire case — from the betrayal of Valerie Plame by her own government to the beginning of the investigation into the betrayal from a referral from the CIA…all the way through to the conviction Scooter Libby of multiple felony counts by a federal jury is a monument to the lies on which the invasion of Iraq rested. This is just another example of how far Bush and Cheney will go to cover those lies.

There is nothing that the Bush Cabal will not do to protect their own, whatever the cost may be in the long term to the public confidence in the rule of law. This is really an insult to those who worked so hard to see that the rule of law was paramount. The jury, the judge, Pat Fitzgerald all of them should be incensed that their hard work was wasted this way.

Live Earth Pledge

Al Gore has an op ed in today's New York Times. Read it.

It is estimated that over 2 billion people will watch Live Earth on 7.7.07. That's a quarter of the earth's population. You need to get involved as well.

Now if you haven't done so already then let me help you

Sign the 7.7.07 Live Earth Pledge:

http://liveearthpledge.org/algore.php

The 7.7.07 Live Earth Pledge:

I PLEDGE:

1. To demand that my country join an international treaty within the next 2 years that cuts global warming pollution by 90% in developed countries and by more than half worldwide in time for the next generation to inherit a healthy earth;

2. To take personal action to help solve the climate crisis by reducing my own CO2 pollution as much as I can and offsetting the rest to become "carbon neutral;"

3. To fight for a moratorium on the construction of any new generating facility that burns coal without the capacity to safely trap and store the CO2;

4. To work for a dramatic increase in the energy efficiency of my home, workplace, school, place of worship, and means of transportation;

5. To fight for laws and policies that expand the use of renewable energy sources and reduce dependence on oil and coal;

6. To plant new trees and to join with others in preserving and protecting forests; and,

7. To buy from businesses and support leaders who share my commitment to solving the climate crisis and building a sustainable, just, and prosperous world for the 21st century.

Sign the Live Earth Pledge by visiting:

http://liveearthpledge.org/algore.php

Summertime Showoff

As you can see the lilies are in full bloom and really showing off. Hot and sticky here in Atlanta today but we did get some much needed moisture last night in some pretty good thunderstorms. Still way behind the curve but some is better than none. I picked my first two non cherry tomatoes today...two Brandywines, not real big but nice. Going to be real good for dinner tonight.

Good morning at the farmer's market. Heirloom tomatoes(Mr. Stripey and Lemon yellow) and some more of those sun gold cherry tomatoes. Fresh butter beans too! So it's going to be hot cornbread and butter beans with some tomato, cucumber and feta salad for dinner. Yes, some very basic southern summer fare. (Except for the feta cheese I guess.)

I hope everyone is enjoying their weekend.

Money for Nothing (and No Free Chicks!)

Do you remember back before the dark clouded settled over the world and Mr. Bush and company were touting how it was about time the government was run like a business. How many times have you heard your tighty-righty friends (asumming you have any) have mouthed how the GOP is the party of fiscal conservatives? How many times since 2000 have you seen this demonstrated? They've failed miserably at everything and have proven themselves to be frauds wwhen it comes to running government like a good business. Management of just about every significant project (Iraq, Afghanistan, Katrina, DHS) has been "ricochet rabbit" and has produced predictably disastrous results. It was quite obvious before he was elected that Mr. Bush was an incompetent businessman who could not point to one past business success. The current results of his misadministration should really come as no surprise. We now have another boondoggle to add to the growing list of fuck ups.

In addition to the insane no-bid contracts for Halliburton that continue to be so lucrative for the company(think Cheney) and a wildly raw deal for US taxpayers we now have DHS expanding the idiots club. Scope creep (the bane of any project) has ballooned a project with Booz Allen, the pricey Washington consulting firm, from $2m up to an incredible $124m in just a couple of years. This is what I do for a living. I manage projects and I am a consultant. Reading this article just absolutely floored me. You can't even describe this as mismanagement which it might be if we overran by a half million or so. This is gross incompetence on the part of the government and almost criminal on the part of Booz Allen.

This is a common thread with this administration. They farm out work that should be done by a Federal worker to some consulting company with minimum controls on the contract. The average citizen doesn't realize what this means for his or her tax money. Even a moderately paid consultant paid to take the place of a government worker is going to cost you at least twice and probably more like three times as much as it would if you had paid a government worker. Even low end consults are going to cost the government $250,000 a year and Goddess only knows what if they have to travel to the gig. Read the article and get pissed.

Airport TIme

Headed for the airport in Indy in a few minutes for a 5pm flight back to Atlanta. The radar is showing some pretty heavy weather coming this way so it will be touch and go it seems. Might be one of those travel nights from hell. See you later.

Update: Home on time. Just had to keep the seat belt fastened for the trip. Mucho turbulence.

Close Call

It was nearly the end for the old Fallenmonk tonight. I came back to the hotel from dinner and unthinking picked up the TV remote and clicked on the beast. Robot like I coded for CNN and up came a commercial. Suddenly some ancient protective instinct took over and I punched the up channel arrow... I don't know why. I glanced down at the USA Today on the desk and there it was. Paris Hilton on Larry King Tonight. I almost got it full frontal with no warning. The old ticker is still racing. Fortunately I came to rest on PBS and there is a program with Paul Simon winning the Gershwin prize. So far its been Stevie Wonder and Lyle Lovett doing Simon,

The Goddess looks out for those who respect her power.

Wonder Bread...Figures

The discovery that George W Bush requires the Waldorf-Astoria in New York to special order Wonder Bread so that he can have bologna sandwiches on Wonder Bread with mayo is just one those things that make you say to yourself, Well... it figures. I have absolutely nothing against either bologna or Wonder Bread and still on rare occasions fix a fried bologna sandwich for myself but somehow expecting some place like the Waldorf to special order Wonder Bread just says it all.

I'll post something meaningful later I hope but I stumbled on this while waiting for a query to run.

Not Bucharest!

And you thought it would be nice to spend the early summer in lovely and moderate Romania.

Fuhgedaboutit!

Bucharest was Europe’s hottest capital on Tuesday with temperatures at 45 Celsius (113 Fahrenheit) but a heat alert was sounded for much of the south of the country. Ambulance services were beseiged with calls to help people fainting in the street, officials said. Fourteen people have died from the heat in the city over the past week, according to authorities who have set up more than 30 first aid tents in Bucharest alone to cope with the casualties.

Police have been handing out water in the street and the health ministry has warned the elderly and those with debilitating illnesses not to go out during the day. After a winter with much lower than average snowfall and a dry spring, the heatwave has worsened fears that Romania could lose more than half of its normal cereal crop this year because of the weather.

h/t to Susie

They've Gone Too Far

I mentioned the other day the negative impact on milk prices driven by the increasing production of ethanol and the resulting demand for corn. The USDA just yesterday raised the wholesale price of milk again. The fact that milk prices are going up maybe didn’t hit close enough to home for some you.

How would you feel if you knew that not only is milk for the morning cereal going up as a result of the increased demand for corn but the price of beer and tequila as well. That’s right party animals according to the Financial Times the strong demand for biofuel feed stocks such as corn, soybeans, and oilseed rape (canola) is encouraging farmers to plant these crops instead of barley, driving up its price. What’s the number one ingredient in beer? You got it…Barley.

Futures prices for European malting barley have risen 85 percent to more than €230 ($320) a ton since last May. Barley and hops account for about 7 percent to 8 percent of the cost of brewing beer. Meanwhile, barley production here in the U.S. fell to 180 million bushels in 2006, the lowest level since 1936. Less land is being used for growing barley only about 2.95 million acres in 2006 where dedicated to barley which is the lowest since records began in 1866.

The rise in barley prices has also been driven by the drought in Australian which reduced the crop by two-thirds. Couple that with the heavy rains in Europe last summer which also reduced the quality and yield of the harvest there. Overall, global production of barley was down 10 percent from 2005. In the U.S., land that was cultivated for growing barley has been given over to corn because of the ethanol demand, said Levin Flake, a grains trade analyst at the U.S. department of agriculture.

The U.S., which in the 1980s was a leading exporter of barley, is now a net importer as barley acreage has shrunk from more than 13m acres in 1985 to 4m this year.

That’s only the barley and beer side of the party equation. About a quarter of Mexican farmers who now grow agave, which is used in the production of tequila, are expected to burn their fields to make way for corn, as prices have nearly doubled from what they were a year ago, due to US ethanol demand. Mexico expects to grow and additional 2.5 million tons of corn this year to take advantage of the 80 percent increase in the price of corn. It is not good news for everyone in Mexico though. Earlier this year corn tortilla prices doubled in some parts of the country, fueling protests and concerns for the 50 million poor Mexicans who depend on tortillas for the majority of their daily caloric intake.

So there you have it. Our leaders have decided that it makes more sense to give Archer-Daniels Midland windfall profits using your taxes while burdening you with higher prices for the necessities of life. The next time you have to dig deeper for your Doritos, beer and tequila supply you’ll know who to thank.

Good Old Car

I am sitting here waiting for someone with database access so I can actually do some work and reading around the blogroll. Scarecrow has a good post over at Firedoglake and it pointed out some of the environmental damage that is being directly caused by the Bush administration and the losses we are sustaining to our National Forests and National Parks. He quotes several passages from an article behind the New York Times firewall that really pissed me off.

If Roosevelt roamed the West today, he’d find some of the same thing in the land he entrusted to future presidents. The national wildlife system, started by T.R., has been emasculated. President Bush has systematically pared the budget to the point where, this year, more than 200 refuges could be without any staff at all.

The Bureau of Land Management, which oversees some of the finest open range, desert canyons and high-alpine valleys in the world, was told early on in the Bush years to make drilling for oil and gas their top priority. A demoralized staff has followed through, but many describe their jobs the way a cowboy talks about having to shoot his horse.

In Colorado, the bureau just gave the green light to industrial development on the aspen-forested high mountain paradise called the Roan Plateau. In typical fashion, the administration made a charade of listening to the public about what to do with the land. More than 75,000 people wrote them — 98 percent opposed to drilling.

For most of the Bush years, the Interior Department was nominally run by a Stepford secretary, Gale Norton, while industry insiders like J. Steven Griles — the former coal lobbyist who pled guilty this year to obstruction of justice — ran the department.

Same in the Forest Service, where an ex-timber industry insider, Mark Rey, guides administration policy.

They don’t take care of these lands because they see them as one thing: a cash-out. Thus, in Bush’s budget proposal this year, he guts the Forest Service budget yet again, while floating the idea of selling thousands of acres to the highest bidder. The administration says it wants more money for national parks. But the parks are $10 billion behind on needed repairs; the proposal is a pittance.

What the Bush folks have done to the country is a lot like loaning your car to someone who has no appreciation for the hard work and effort it took to earn enough to afford to buy it. Someone just like Bush.

When he brings it back you can see the dents and dings, scraped paint, stains on the seats and cracked front windshield. This is like the obvious stuff we see with Bush. Daily death in Iraq of Americas young and scores of Iraqis, the weekly bad news from other places in the middle east, the latest corruption, the latest lie and the latest affront to the Constitution.

What is not immediately visible is the internal damage from poor maintenance, bad driving and carelessness. Engine’s been overheated, brakes worn from riding, tires worn from misalignment because he couldn’t be bothered avoiding pot holes and not running into the curbs. Not to mention thousands of miles taken from the life of the engine due to dirty oil and no tune ups.

What’s happened to America with Bush at the wheel is no different. What our parents and grandparents handed to us so proudly…maybe a little scratch here or a dent there and maybe some miles, but a fine American made dream machine that had provided for the family and returned good service for the investment in care. Our parents fully expected us to carry on the tradition of care and maintenance that such a fine piece of American workmanship deserved and required. We have faltered and let some bum drive our dream.

It is not too late however to do what is necessary to put our dream back on the road in a manner which becomes her history. If each of us works on a scratch or dent and we team up to do the bigger tasks our dream and the dreams of our parents and grandparents can be handed to our children in roadworthy shape and once again turn the heads of all who see her cruise through the world. It really is the least we can do.

Monday Morning Rush

Running fast this morning to pick up my colleague at the airport and get to the client. Not much time to play on the tubes this morning. I should find some time this afternoon. Everyone have a good time on the last Monday of June. While I am busy today would someone please arrest Dick Cheney for impersonating a human or any number of other valid charges.

Indy Bound

Hope everyone is having or had a nice weekend. Mine is just about over. Heading for the airport and on to Indianapolis for the week. Seems the client there feels all the issues with SAP conversion are complete and we can move forward. We shall see.

Got my few hours of minimal watering done this morning. Gosh it is no fun to roll out of bed on a Sunday morning before it is even light out and start tromping around the yard with the sprinkler. Everything important got a drink at least.

Thanks everyone for the Blogiversary wishes. Christy even noted it on Firedoglake. Wow!

I may get some time this evening in the hotel to spend a little time here. We shall see. I haven't had time to see what all of you are doing today and can't get too far behind.

BTW, if you think it will help you might look up your particular God, Gods or Goddesses and chat them up about a little peace. If you don't know any of the above just go out and talk to a tree or something...it can't hurt.

First Weekend of Summer

Here we are on the first weekend of summer. Gorgeous but dry, dry, dry here in North Georgia. It was 68 this morning at sunrise but it is already 10 degrees warmer at 10 o'clock and we'll probably see 90 today.

Already been to the farmer's market this morning and there were more farmers this morning that there have been. Still some nice cabbage and beets to be had. The yellow squash, cukes and zucchini are coming on strong and are really nice. Raspberries and blackberries were too good looking to pass up. Could be a blackberry cobbler in the offing today. Local tomatoes are showing up...especially cherry tomatoes and the early girls. The lady from Hanson farms was there with more of the little sun gold cherry tomatoes...they should be illegal. Best thing you ever tasted.

Madam Monk is out with the Hysterical Society surveying another old cemetery this morning and I am about to step out for my walk before it gets much hotter. Then I have to tie up my tomatoes. They seem to be enjoying the composted cow manure they got side dressed with last weekend. I have also noted that the sun flower seeds the chipmunks like to bury in the soft garden soil have sprouted nicely so a little work is due there as well. We'll check back in here later when it is too hot to be outside and all the chores are done.

Blogiversary

Today marks the 3rd birthday of the Fallenmonk blog. Thanks to all you folks that stop by and share your thoughts and for reading some of the stuff I put here. I hope some of it is meaningful or otherwise brightens your day. Thanks also to all those who link here. I try and reciprocate if know.

Its been great meeting you all even if it is only over the tubes. I'll try and keep the candle burning here for another year.

Have a great weekend.
Fallenmonk

Marginal News on Energy

Well the Senate has at least done something this week in passing the revised CAFE standard. It boost the mileage requirement for cars and light trucks(including SUV's) to 35MPG by 2020. I guess we are going to have to live with this for a while but it is the first increase in nearly 20 years. Seems a little then though when we know that there are vehicles on the road right now that get over 50 and as much as 100 mpg. I guess you take what you can get and wait for the next election.

The bad news is, because of a GOP filibuster threat the 30 billion dollar tax increase on Big Oil didn't pass. This increase in taxes would have paid for research into renewable sources of energy. Leave it to the Rethugs to bow down before their masters and refuse to tax these highly profitable companies.

The really bad news is that the new energy bill includes incentives for Big Agriculture and the ethanol producers to increase production of ethanol to 36 billion gallons a year by 2022. This is a sevenfold increase. This is a huge mistake and a big giveaway to companies like ADM who make a boatload of money from ethanol and then turn around and take the tax breaks. All this is going to come out of our pockets in continued high taxes in increasing prices for foods such as chicken, beef and milk which are heavily dependent on corn for their production. Don't even think about the increasing cost and availability of corn on the third world. Estimates are that an additional 25 million people globally have been pushed over the starvation line by the increased cost of corn already. Multiply by seven.

The tragedy in this is that producing ethanol from corn is a net energy loser. Corn requires more nitrogen fertilizer that any other crop and nitrogen fertilizer is produced from oil. Add together all the costs of production and the oil used in producing the fertilizer for the corn and you end up in the red. The only winners in this are the big industrial corn growers and the processors like ADM.

The house is fudging with their version and of course we still have to get numbnuts to sign the compromise bill. To early to chill the champagne.

Summer

It is the first day of summer. Not too sure this is going to be a good one to remember. NASA is predicting that Atlanta will have more than a few days of 110 degrees and we are already in a drought. The head meteorologist at Georgia Tech is saying this drought is nothing compare to what we will see within the next couple of years when we are due for the cyclic droughts to occur. Bummer!

Even though this is an ancient holiday there is nothing much to celebrate when you think about all our boys and girls in Iraq and Afghanistan. Another 15 of which paid with their lives in the last two days for George Bush's ego and stupidity. We really need to bring them home now.

Thanks for Being There

As some of you may remember my daughter is a firefighter and paramedic. This kind of thing really hits close to home.

CHARLESTON, S.C. - One coached football when he wasn't fighting fires. Another cut hair at a barbershop. Yet another was known for quoting the Bible. They called each other nicknames like "Squirrel" and "Lightning."

On Tuesday, this city on the South Carolina coast mourned them all: nine firefighters killed inside a burning furniture store in the nation's worst loss of firefighters since the 2001 World Trade Center attack.

"They did exactly what they were trained to do," fire Chief Rusty Thomas said.

They went into the burning building on Monday in search of two employees who had been reported to be trapped inside.

Stop an minute and be thankful that these firefighters are there in your town too, waiting to risk their lives to do what they can to save your life and property.

AP Photo: This combination of photos provided Tuesday, June 19, 2007 by the City of Charleston, S.C....

Some Good News on Liquid Coal

Via the Gristmill here is a press release concerning the Senate fighting off the coal lobby and rejecting mandating liquid coal production. This is a good win for the environment on several levels.

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Senate today voted against two attempts to encourage the use of liquid coal, rejecting a pair of amendments to the energy bill that would have alternately mandated 6 billion gallons of liquid coal use annually by 2022 or provided $10 billion in loan subsidies to produce liquid coal.

"This is a victory for anyone who takes global warming seriously or cares about environmentally destructive mining," said Friends of the Earth President Brent Blackwelder. "Coal mining is a dirty process, and with current technology, liquid coal results in twice the greenhouse gas emissions of petroleum-based gasoline. We need an energy policy that helps fight global warming, and today's votes were a step in that direction. Unfortunately, the energy bill as a whole is not where it needs to be. We will continue to work for the inclusion of stronger efficiency standards and cleaner sources of energy."

The first of the two liquid coal amendments, sponsored by Senator Jim Bunning (R-KY) and Senator Pete Domenici (R-NM), was defeated by a vote of 39 to 55. Considered the more egregious of the two by environmentalists, it would have mandated increasing amounts of liquid coal use in the U.S. beginning in 2016 and concluding with a 6 billion annual requirement in 2022.

The second of the two, sponsored by Senator John Tester (D-MT), would have subsidized liquid coal production with a $10 billion loan program to fund carbon capture devices for liquid coal processing facilities. Such devices are intended to reduce global warming emissions, but they are an unproven technology that may not work, and they do nothing to address the pollution created when coal is mined. The amendment was defeated on a 33-61 vote.

Environmental groups and major newspaper editorial boards have come out strongly against liquid coal, and argued that the Senate should focus on other sources of energy, as coal mining is a pollution-intensive process, converting the coal into liquid emits large amounts of greenhouse gasses, and additional global warming emissions occur when the liquid coal is used as fuel. Experts estimate that replacing 10 percent of U.S. petroleum consumption with liquid coal would require a 43 percent increase in mountaintop mining.

Corn and Ethanol

Don't know if you noticed the news this morning that milk has reached a new high in price. These new high prices we are seeing for milk and meat are directly related to the higher prices for corn being driven by the ethanol production. What many people don't know about corn derived ethanol is that it is significantly more wasteful of energy that gasoline. The energy required to produce the corn, mostly in the form of nitrogen fertilizers, is much higher that the energy returned in the form of auto fuel.

Not only are you paying higher prices for food because of the use of corn for fuel but you are paying also for the subsidized production of the ethanol by way of your federal taxes. The only way corn based ethanol can be priced competitively at the pump with gasoline is by pumping massive amounts of federal dollars at the refiners. This is just a windfall for big agriculture and the refiners and really stupid environmental policy.

If you want to read more there is an excellent article over at the Gristmill in rebuttal to Dick Morris' article in support of corn base fuels. Well worth a read if you interested in environmental issues.

Digby Live

For any of you that care you can see Digby live over at Firedoglake. She is giving a great speech at the Take Back America conference. She is just as good in person as she is at Hullabaloo. Back to the regular programming.

Not Everything Needs to be Organic

Some of you who stop by here are trying, like me, to make the smartest choices when buying food to put on your family or yourself. Whether it is the "carbon footprint" of the food, whether or not is organic or even "all natural". Some of us are trying to buy local produce and some of us are even growing some of our own. There are a lot of things to weigh...cost, organic, local, natural, pesticides and on and on. I try and buy organic and local but that is not always an option.

It is not an easy job but it is getting easier. You are seeing more organic choices in the stores but they are on average 20 -30% more expensive that conventionally grown fruit and vegetables. If you are like me I hate wasting money but don't mind paying for what I get. If you are trying to limit your exposure to pesticides but can't find or afford to always get organic you can still have some control over what you eat. According to the non-profit Environmental Working Group , soft-skinned fruits and vegetables like peaches, apples and bell peppers retain the most amount of pesticides. Buying organic when buying these makes sense even if it is more expensive. Onions, avocados and corn are practically pesticide free whether the are grown organically or not so you you have some wiggle room with these types of things. Foodnews.org the Environmental Working Group's website has a handy guide you can download that lists conventionally grown fruits and vegetables by typical pesticide content. The list will help you make a little better decision when it comes to whether you just have to have organic.

FUBAR and Getting Worse Daily

The latest news from Afghanistan yesterday and today is horrifying. It's beginning to look like Iraq all over again. We've had warnings and most of us have known that Afghanistan was going south for a year or more. We haven't done the job there and the troops and other resources that should have been in Afghanistan have been wasted in Iraq. We have been ignoring it while playing whack-a-mole in the growing disaster in Iraq. Now we have two disasters and one guaranteed defeat while the other slips rapidly towards the defeat side. This is a perfect example of stupidity and synergy. The big unnecessary mess in Iraq, is feeding the other mess, Afghanistan. The Taliban and their friends are using techniques that they have seen perfected in Iraq, like car bombs and IEDs against the NATO forces in Afghanistan. We have have done a truly expert job of training an entirely new generation of terrorists in state-of-the-art murder and chaos. I guess that is one "accomplishment" Bush and Cheney can point to.

Out of Iraq in 2845 or So

The title is a little misleading but you could extrapolate it from the remarks that General Petraeus made to the Washington Post over the weekend. He obviously needs a little brush up on his military history. I hate to tell you General but the little conflict in Ireland has been going on for about 800 years or so.

Claiming steady, albeit slow, military and political progress, Petraeus said the "many, many challenges" would not be resolved "in a year or even two years." Similar counterinsurgency operations, he said, citing Britain's experience in Northern Ireland, "have gone at least nine or 10 years."

Anglo-Norman mercenaries invaded Ireland in 1169, and it has been nip and tuck since then. I'm surprised that he didn't compare the Iraq occupation with Korea's fifty-year military adventure. Maybe it wasn't close enough to home or something or else he didn't want to give us any false hope. Comparing the Iraq misadventure and disaster to Ireland is not very accurate in one or two other ways. For all of the 800 years or so the Irish have had food (except for the potato famine) and and water and the basic necessities of the time and they haven't been assaulted on a daily basis with shootings and car bombs. Details I know but for the Iraqis I can assure you they are important.

Where Are the Handcuffs

The fallout from the use of the RNC email system by the White House is starting, finally, to get some legs. The RNC has deleted the email for an estimated 51 out of 88 White House officials who have been using the outside RNC e-mail accounts. Has no one heard of the Presidential Records Act? This is an obvious attempt of the part of Rove and company to avoid oversight which is in blatant violation of the Records Act so why aren't people in jail? The Presidential Records Act requires the President to “take all such steps as may be necessary to assure that the activities, deliberations, decisions, and policies that reflect the performance of his constitutional, statutory, or other official or ceremonial duties are adequately documented … and maintained as Presidential records.”
This is just another example of the White House breaking the law with impunity. Let's hope Senator Waxman and his committee get some people behind bars on this. You can read more about the committee findings here
You can also check out the Speaker’s blog and the the Washington Post.

Pimento Cheese

There was a feature in the AJC a week or so ago on the continuing effort of some of our top chefs like Scott Peacock, Anne Quatrano, and Linton Hopkins to preserve Southern food ways. One of the foods mentioned was pimento cheese pronounced "Puminocheez" in the South. It has always been one of my favorites. My Mom used to make it with Miracle Whip and those little pimentos from the tiny little jars and of course cheese. If it was a relatively scarce time it would be from the cheese that came from the USDA free food bank that supplied among other things these huge loafs of Velveeta like cheese. In better times it would be made from what my Dad called "rat cheese" for some reason and this was just the bulk cheddar like sharp cheese that you bought from the grocery which they cut off big wax coated wheels. Pimento Cheese is still popular down south but you don't find it made fresh in the store anymore nor homemade. The stuff they sell now in the plastic containers is insipid and disgusting and mostly made from soybeans or something. You might find it interesting to note that at the Master's golf tournament in Augusta you can still get a pimento cheese sandwich for a buck at the refreshment stand. Anyhow, the following recipe makes a very nice spread that will keep for a few weeks in the fridge. There is some in my fridge right now.

As a kid we used make sandwiches out of the stuff that we called bread in those days. Good old plastic white bread and depending on where you were in the south it would be Sunbeam, Wonder or Merita. Nowadays I eat it on organic whole wheat or sour dough but it is still good. I like my sandwich with it spread about a quarter of an inch thick and sometimes I'll put a little mustard on one of the slices.

You can also try spreading it on a slice of good bread and running it under the broiler for a few minutes until it bubbles. It is also good spread into the groove of nice crunchy celery. Enjoy!

2 1/2 cups of (10 ounces o) of grated extra sharp cheddar cheese.
1/4 teaspoon of cayenne pepper or more if you like it hot (you can also use a dash or two of Tobasco)
5 0r 6 grinds of black pepper (about a 1/2 teaspoon)
3/4 cup of good mayonnaise such as Duke's or Hellmann's
3 -4 tablespoons of roasted sweet red bell pepper (see note below)
a pinch of Kosher salt if you need it but usually the cheese is salty enough

Stir all of this together in a mixing bowl until it is well blended. Store covered in the fridge for up to two weeks.

Roasting red peppers is not too difficult. Rub the peppers lightly with oil and in a baking dish roast in a 425 degree oven for about 20 minutes until they are nicely charred. Take the peppers out of the oven and put them in a bowl that can be tightly covered or I use a 1 gallon zip lock bag. let them cool for 15 minutes or so until you can handle them. Remove the stems, pith and seeds and lay the pepper flat on the cutting board skin side up. With a knife scrape away as much skin and char as you can. You won' t be able to get it all. Do not rinse them under water as it will remove too much flavor. I usually find one good sized pepper is just the perfect amount when chopped for this recipe.
The other option is to use roasted red peppers from the jar. These are pretty good and makes this recipe a 10 minute job. I usually have a jar in the fridge to use when I am too lazy to roast a fresh pepper or when I can't bring myself to pay $4.00 a pound for red peppers.

Nobody's Driving

Al Gore continues to call point out the lack of leadership we are suffering and is once again on target.

"The eight most powerful nations gathered and were unable to do anything except to say 'We had good conversations and we agreed that we will have more conversations, and we will even have conversations about the possibility of doing something in the future on a voluntary basis perhaps."'

Half a Million and Going Strong

Does it bother anyone else that there are 509,000 names or so on the FBI's terrorist watch list? ABC News is reporting that it is so. Evidently a portion of the FBI's unclassified 2008 budget request posted to the Department of Justice Web site refers to "the entire watch list of 509,000 names," which is utilized by its Foreign Terrorist Tracking Task Force. As someone who deals with large amounts of data in computer data bases on an almost daily basis I can tell you that this amount of data is very unwieldly. It is just not a simple matter of a half a million records like a phone book but all sorts of ancillary information that might be hooked to the names

"It grows seemingly without control or limitation," said ACLU senior legislative counsel Tim Sparapani of the terrorism watch list. Sparapani called the 509,000 figure "stunning."

"If we have 509,000 names on that list, the watch list is virtually useless," he told ABC News. "You'll be capturing innocent individuals with no connection to crime or terror."

It would be very interesting to know exactly the size of the database and how it is structured and what the user interface is. How many Bill Smiths are on the list? How many people with your name are on the list? I can feel pretty sure that there is at least one. Just pick up a phone book and check for your name or your last names with the same initials. You might be surprised. What a mess.

Bad Tubes

Still having "tube" problems here in Asheville. I finally went down and got a wireless bridge from the front desk and that has helped a little but still brutally slow. My Sprint Wireless wants to charge me roaming charges and even then it is intermittent. Looks like things will be a little quiet in Monkdom this week.

The upside is I am going to bed early, getting some reading done and some solid practice on the guitar in. In every sunshine a little life must fall I guess.

There is plenty for you to read without my drivel anyway. Be sure to stop by Adgitadiaries where M is doing some good writing. While the guys don't post a lot what they do post is good stuff....be sure to enjoy the obit of the Pillsbury Dough Boy.

Anyhow, off to the client for another long day.Very suboptimal environment in a giant warehouse with much noise and dirt which I am sure precipitated my my early bed time last night.

RIP Mr. Wizard

Thanks to Bryan at Why Now? for the alert that one of the most important early influences on my life as passed away.

A month short of his 90^th birthday Donald Jeffrey Herbert, better known to Boomers as Mr. Wizard, died today. The Associated Press has a short obituary.

For a lot of us, this was our first taste of science, and you could do it in your kitchen without a lot of equipment or special ingredients. He was responsible for a lot people entering science, and was a hell of a teacher.

I was fascinated watching Mr. Wizard and much to my parents dismay tried to duplicate as many of his demonstrations and experiments as possible. I was not always successful but I sure had a lot of fun trying.

As I mentioned over at Bryan's place one experiment that stuck with me all these years and the one that always comes to mind when I Mr. Wizard is mentioned is the demonstration of atmospheric pressure. He put some water in a clean 1 gallon metal can like paint thinner came in and put it over hot plate to boil the water. Once the water was at a good boil and the can full of hot steam he removed the can from the heat and screwed the lid on tight. As soon as the steam in the can began to cool and condensate the vapor pressure in the can went down dramatically allowing the normal atmospheric pressure outside to begin to crush the can dramatically. Quite the impressive stunt.

Thanks Mr. Wizard for hours or even years of fascination and curiosity.

Sopranos Shmanos

Can someone explain to me why a TV show is taking up so much bandwidth on the cable news shows? Of course I have heard of the show but never seen it. Is it really so much more important that what is really going on in the world? If it is not Paris or Lindsay it is something equally as shallow it seems. Goddess forbid we should actually get some real news.

Tar Heeled

I am safe and sound in Asheville. The hotel internet is crap and my Sprint Wireless is not much better. After an extremely slow and painful look around the tubes I can see that the only good news is that the 4th Circuit has stumbled upon the Constitution. Repthuglicans in the Senate did their master's bidding and killed the Gonzales no confidence vote. What will it take to make these guys actually govern?
Anyhow, tired of wasting time trying to surf so I am going to do a little practice on the guitar and go to bed early and read some of Al Gore's latest. If I can get through a few pages maybe my faith in the possibilities for America will be restored.
See you on the morrow.

On the Road Again

Well it's has been rather relaxing to be able to work from home for the last month but it is over. I have to drive up to Asheville, NC today for the week. Even though I have access to this client's system from here I need face time with the users and management. At least we don't have to fly and the drive from Atlanta to Asheville is a nice little cruise through the mountains and very scenic.

I will see you guys later today when I am all settled in at the motel.

Saturday Doings

Nothing special on a nice brilliant Saturday. On the way back from the Farmer's Market this morning we stopped at a flea & antique shop along the way and I found an antique cast iron corn stick pan that was in excellent shape, well seasoned and under $10. I now own it as you can see and rushed right home to give it a whirl. My mother used to have one of these but I haven't seen it in years and you see them in antique shops now again but they are always rusty or ruined in some way or priced not to sell. As you can see in the picture above this one turned out a perfect and tasty batch of corn sticks on the first run. I think it might have been used a bit before. I do love these corn sticks as I think they have the perfect ratio of crust to middle and I like the crust best.

I am also soon to be the proud producer of my first tomato. If you look closely you can see the little "Tiny Tim" tomato just turning red. Shame is I will probably be out of town when it is ready next week and Madam will have the honors. That's OK though as there are more on the way.

Farm Bill Support

Just fill in the form and make your feelings and desires known. The Farm Bill is important and the more of us that let it be known that we insist on the availability of locally grown products the greater the chance that we will get them. If you want more information then go here.

This is Insane and Shameful

I just turned on the TV to check the Weather Channel and see what was the extent of this shower we are now getting. Yeah! some rain. Unfortunately, just a quick thunder shower and not a good rain but better than nothing.

It appears ,however, that the most important thing in the universe today (if you believe CNN) is that Paris is going back to jail. The cable news networks are camped out in front of her house and speculating on this and that. Live while we watch. It is absolutely insane. What have we come to as a nation when this is what our news organizations find the most compelling thing to put on TV. It brought to mind the introduction to Al Gore's new book.

It is simply no longer possible to ignore the strangeness of our public discourse. I know I'm not alone in feeling that something has gone fundamentally wrong. In 2001, I had hopes it was an aberration when polls showed that three-quarters of Americans believed that Saddam Hussein was responsible for attacking us on September 11. More than five years later, however, nearly half the American people still believes that Saddam was connected to the attack.

At first I thought the exhaustive, nonstop coverage of the O.J. Simpson trial was just unfortunate excess --- an unwelcome departure from the normal good sense and judgment of our news media. Now we know that it was merely an early example of a new pattern of serial obsession that periodically take over the airwaves for weeks at a time.

Late in the summer of 2006, American news coverage was saturated with the bizarre false confession of a man who claimed to have been present at the death of JonBenet Ramsey --- the six-year-old beauty queen whose unsolved murder eleven years before was responsible for another long-running obsession. A few months prior to John Mark Karr's arrest in Bangkok, the disappearance of a high school senior in Aruba and the intensive search for her body and her presumed murderer consumed thousands of hours of television coverage. Both cases remain unsolved as of this writing, and neither had any appreciable impact on the fate of the Republic.

Like JonBenet Ramsey, O.J. has recently been back at the center of another fit of obsessive-compulsive news, when his hypothetical confession wasn't published and his interviews on television wasn't aired. This particular explosion of "news" was truncated only when a former television sitcom star used racist insults in a night club. And before that we focus on the "Runaway Bride" in Georgia. And before that there was the Michael Jackson trial and the Robert Blake trial, the Laci Peterson tragedy and the Chandra Levy tragedy. And of course we can't forget Britney and KFed, and Lindsay and Paris and Nicole, Tom Cruise jumped on Oprah's couch and married Katie Holmes, who gave birth to Suri. And Russell Crowe apparently threw a phone at a hotel concierge.

In early 2007, the wall-to-wall coverage of Anna Nicole Smith's death, embalming, and funeral plans and the legal wrangling over the paternity and custody of her child and disposition of her estate, served as yet another particularly bizarre example of the new priorities in America's news coverage.

And while American television watchers were collectively devoting a hundred million hours of their lives each week to these and other similar stories, our nation was in the process of more quietly making what future historians will certainly describe as a series of catastrophically mistaken decisions on issues of war and peace, the global climate and human survival, freedom and barbarity, justice and fairness.

One Small Step Toward Freedom

Some good news for our much abused Constitution today. The Senate Judiciary Committee approved the Habeas Corpus Restoration Act (S. 185) this morning, with no amendments and no debate, 11-8. Specter was the sole Republican supporting the legislation. The bill should come before the entire Senate later this month.

From the ACLU's Find Habeas blog:

Though far from the comprehensive legislation needed to either close Gitmo and transfer the detainees into secure proceedings in civilian courts, or provide the detainees with a full and fair opportunity to challenge the grounds for their detentions, S. 185 is a crucial piece of lawmaking.

It signals to the White House and the Republican minority in Congress that this is a real issue, and that the quick and dirty passage of the MCA in the final days of the GOP-controlled 109th Congress was ill-advised and somewhat ham-handed.

It is not over by a long shot however, the bill must pass the full Senate, the House, be reconciled and last but not least. Mr. Habeas himself must sign it. In light of that, the ACLU is sponsoring a Day of Action on June 26th with a rally and citizen lobbying. ACLU folks will also be at Firedoglake at 3:00 Eastern today to discuss this legislation and the plan for getting it passed.

Right now though there is some room to celebrate a small step back from the edge of insanity. We can revel in this move toward restoring the most fundamental right in our Constitution and the only one actually enshrined in it. Senators voting aye:

Leahy (D-Vt.), Specter (R-Pa.), Kennedy (D-Ma.), Biden (D-Del.), Kohl (D-Wis.), Feinstein (D-Cal.), Feingold (D-Wis.), Schumer (D-N.Y.), Durbin (D-Ill.), Cardin (D-Md.), Whitehouse (D-R.I.).

h/t to DailyKos

Drier and Drier

The lack of any rainfall for the last month or so coupled with the driest winter and spring since 1930 has caused another tightening of the outside water restrictions. Here in Roswell, which is on the Fulton County water system, we are now restricted to outdoor watering only on the weekend...Saturday if you are even and Sunday if you are odd. Plus you can only water between midnight and 10 AM. Fortunately, my little vegetable bed and containers are exempt since vegetable gardens can be watered any time with no restriction. Guess the lawn is a goner though. I will try and hit my foundation plants in the few hours available to me on Sunday morning and hope that will be enough to keep alive until we get some rain.

Let's just hope it doesn't get any worse. They are already threatening with food prices because of the drought.

Liquid Coal is A Really Bad Idea

Updated Below:

The coal industry is getting ready to cash in on the liquid coal boondoggle and you need to let your Congress critters know that having tax payer money pumped into this program is insanity. This is just another way that the carbon lobby wants all you to pay them to pollute.

Moveon.org is also getting a petition up and you can go here to sign it.

The facts are that liquid coal releases twice as much green house gases than does gasoline and it takes a ton of coal to produce two barrels of liquid coal and four gallons of water for every gallon of fuel. Mining coal is a dirty process and the environmental impact of the mining coupled with the additional green house gas burden is unthinkable.

From moveon.org

Congress is rushing through a package that could lock us into liquid coal as our country's new energy source for transportation. For every mile driven, coal-based fuels produce as much as twice as many greenhouse gases as petroleum.² That means even a Prius would drive like a Hummer.

The coal industry has been lobbying for this break for years, and many in Congress don't understand the facts.

"Liquid coal would be a disaster in our fight against the climate crisis. Congress should vote against tax breaks and subsidies for coal."

The legislation would take billions in taxpayer dollars to build up to 10 more dirty coal plants, provide taxpayer subsidies when the fuel can't compete on the open market, and guarantee that the government will buy this fuel no matter what.³

The industry promises to clean up after itself, but "clean coal" doesn't exist yet—it's pure fiction. While some technology is being tested to capture the greenhouse gas before it goes into the air, no one knows if it will work. But the plants will be built regardless.

To make matters worse, the financial outlook on this technology is shaky, which means taxpayers could be left holding the bag. According to an MIT study, we could spend $70 billion to replace just 10 percent of current gasoline use.⁴ And by the time we bring the technology to market, it is likely that cheaper, cleaner fuels will be available for less money.

These snake oil salesmen are in the Capitol in force—selling Congress a line that kicking our oil habit is easy if we just commit billions in taxpayer money to coal. And some in Congress are buying it—even folks who have been with us thus far on the climate crisis. But with this bill, they're gambling with the future of our planet.

The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) has this to say about the proposal:

The coal industry is touting a plan to transform millions of tons of coal into diesel and other liquid fuels—an expensive, inefficient process that releases large quantities of heat-trapping carbon dioxide into our air. Fortunately, better, cleaner options exist to reduce America's dependence on oil: efficiency, smart growth, and renewable fuels.⁵

An OpEd in the Lexington Herald-Leader, in the heart of coal country, put it this way:

Instead of propping up a liquid-coal industry that market forces have long rejected, the government should harness the market to advance the twin goals of energy independence and reversing global warming.⁶

We need less coal, not more. And we need government support to go toward developing the commercial scale technology for truly clean alternatives—solar and wind. These energy sources are clean and abundant, and these industries create jobs and can be a boon to the economy.

Updated 6/7/07 at 9:01 EDT to elucidate the Prius versus Hummer comparison that was challenged by a commenter.

Based on comparisons of greenhouse gas emissions of a Honda Accord Hybrid and a Hummer H3 (www.fueleconomy.gov), and where
liquid coal produces 47 lbs CO2 per gallon and regular gasoline 25 lbs CO2 per gallon.

To be completely accurate it was a Honda Hybrid and an Hummer H3.

Sources:

1. "Lawmakers look at coal to break oil dependence", Los Angeles Times, May 10, 2007
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-coal10may10,0,7769228,full.story?coll=la-home-center

2. "Coal-To-Liquid Fuel Plant Plan Advances", The Houston Chronicle, May 31, 2007
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/fn/4851715.html

2. "Lawmakers promote coal as an 'alternative fuel'", The Austin American-Statesman, May 29, 2007
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=2644&id=10484-2981164-xxppbg&t=6

3. " Billion-dollar boondoggle," The Roanoke Time, June 5, 2007
http://www.roanoke.com/editorials/wb/wb/xp-119477

4. "Why Liquid Coal Is Not a Viable Option to Move America Beyond Oil," Report by Natural Resources Defense Council, February, 2007
http://www.nrdc.org/globalWarming/coal/liquids.pdf

5. ""Liquid coal a new version of snake oil" The Lexington Herald-Leader, June 3, 2007
http://www.kentucky.com/591/story/87181.html

Farm Bill Time

I have been hinting at it for weeks but we are closing in on the reauthorization of the Farm Bill, that wickedly complicated cluster fuck of food, energy, conservation, environment, trade, and poverty policy that is getting closer and closer in Congress, with a target of September for its completion. I cannot tell you how important this piece of legislation is.

Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) makes the case for just how critical this piece of legislation is in a post at TPM Café, where he is writing on the issue all week. In this post, he lays out his Food and Farm Bill of Rights:

1. Americans have a right to a policy free of special interest giveaways: Current farm policy favors corporate special interests. Fully 70 percent of the payments go to the top 10 percent of farmers, and even more of that benefit is concentrated for the large processors. What’s more, aid is so concentrated in a few powerful states that the support received by most states is almost negligible. We deserve a food and farm policy that serves all Americans, not just the politically-connected.

2. American taxpayers have a right to a fiscally responsible policy: Today’s Farm Bill contains some of the federal government’s largest programs. We deserve a food and farm policy that ensures our tax dollars are invested in fiscally sound policies and programs that fit in with the priorities of the American farmer and taxpayer.

3. Americans have a right to a policy that serves all farmers: Our current farm policy ensures high profits for a few select commodities while neglecting the needs of many other valuable commodities and smaller producers. In fact, 60 percent of America ’s farmers and ranchers get no support whatsoever. We deserve a food and farm policy that supports producers and helps them access new local markets, thereby generating jobs by adding value to their products.

4. Americans have a right to a safe and healthful food supply: Recent crises in food supplies (Hurricanes Katrina and Rita) and food safety (fresh spinach and tainted pet foods) are painful reminders of the vulnerability of our food supplies and distribution systems. We deserve a food and farm policy that guarantees a safe and healthful food supply in this country, in good times and in bad.

5. American children have a right to good nutrition: Children who are hungry perform poorly in school and are at greater risk for long-term health problems. We deserve a food and farm policy that makes sure our children are well nourished by allowing more healthful choices and opening up access to fruits and vegetables.

6. Americans have a right to local supplies of fresh food: Too many Americans do not have the option of buying affordable, locally-grown fresh food. We deserve a food and farm policy that includes programs that deliver healthy food to all communities, regardless of location, class, or economic standing.

7. Americans have a right to a policy that promotes energy independence: The pursuit of heavily subsidized corn-based ethanol is a fool’s game fueled only by massive government subsidies and regulations not justified by the science or economics. We deserve a food and farm policy that enables our farmers and ranchers to produce vast quantities of renewable energy: wind, solar, in some cases small-scale hydro, geothermal and biomass.

8. Americans have a right to a policy that protects the environment: Virtually every urban area is surrounded by productive farmland that also provides important environmental services – wildlife habitat, carbon sinks, clean water – as well as landscapes and vistas that define our sense of place. We deserve a food and farm policy that promotes good stewardship of the environment and our natural resources.

9. Americans have a right to preserve farmland from sprawl: In many areas of the country the pressures of sprawl are forcing farmers off of their land. We deserve a food and farm policy that gives farmers the tools they need to protect their land – and our heritage – from development pressures.

10. Americans have a right to a policy that fosters sustainable farming practices: The current farm policy offers conflicting messages about good farming practices, sometimes promoting sustainable practices while other times offering incentives that undermine the long-term health of our soil and water resources. We deserve a food and farm policy that enables farmers to be responsible with their land so that they can pass it on to the next generation.

This is big time ambitious for this gigantic bill, it is stuffed to the gills with legacy programs that have long benefitted corporate agriculture and the status quo. These corporate constitutents still have a powerful hold in Congress, and won't give up the goodies they've long felt they were entitled to easily. We'll be lucky if a quarter of his proposals could be enacted in this version of the bill, but it's an excellent set of goals for where we should be taking farm policy in the coming decades.

You can participate in the discussion about the bill over the next several days at TPM Café and at Blumenauer's Food & Farms Bill of Rights page. For a great overview of the bill and all its historic problems, see Whose Subsidy Is It Anyway at In These Times and the Farm Bill diary series at MyDD.

H/T to DKos

Might Get Hungry Out

If you have noticed that you seem to be getting less for your food dollar you are right.

Rising gasoline prices have been getting all the attention, but the cost of another, more-important staple is actually rising even more: food.

In the past year, food prices have increased 3.7 percent and are on track to jump by as much as 7 percent by year's end. The current increase is more than double the 1.8 percent jump seen the year before, according to the consumer price index.

Meanwhile, gas prices rose 2.9 percent. Only the cost of health care rose more, and then just slightly.

Some of this is due to higher prices for the corn that feed cattle and chickens because so much corn is being demanded for ethanol production, but some of it is also due to rising fuel costs. As the article says we haven't seen the end of it either.

It really kind of ticks me off about the ethanol thing since using corn to produce fuel is one of the least efficient ways to produce energy. It actually takes more energy to produce ethanol from corn than is derived from the resultant ethanol. It takes a tremendous about of oil to produce the fertilizers that growing corn demands. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Political Extinction for War Supporters

Fifteen American soldiers died in Iraq in just the first three days of June which should remind all of us that our job with respect to Iraq and getting us the hell out of there pronto is no done. We had a major blow to our morale with the supplemental vote but it was only a skirmish in the bigger fight. The Republicans are hoping that since September is the new artificial milestone that we on the anti war side will give them some slack over the next three months. It ain't happening boys... (via the LATimes):

Both efforts seek to ensure that anxious Republican lawmakers — many of whom have said they want to wait until September to assess President Bush's Iraq strategy — get no break from the war over the summer.

"The debate on Iraq will continue," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) said last week. Pelosi, who in March helped push Democrats to embrace a withdrawal of American combat forces, has pledged that the House will vote on numerous measures aimed at ending the war.

Tom Matzzie, campaign manager for Americans Against Escalation in Iraq, the leading coalition against the war, promised an equally unpleasant summer for Republicans whenever they return home.

"Our job is to go into the congressional districts of members and create a political environment that is toxic," he said. "The public is there already. It is really about focusing their anger."…

"But it is incredibly important that the debate continue in June and July. It keeps the pressure on the White House, and it keeps the pressure on Republicans to break with the president," he said. "At a minimum, we need to be building … for a showdown in September."

While antiwar lawmakers push ahead, so too will the antiwar groups that have played an influential role in the national debate over Iraq.

Americans Against Escalation in Iraq, a coalition of organizations including MoveOn.org, VoteVets.org and the Service Employees International Union, plans to hire 80 people this summer to organize rallies and other protest activities aimed primarily at Republican lawmakers, Matzzie said.

The coalition also plans an aggressive television advertising campaign, particularly against Republicans who are up for reelection next year and seen as vulnerable, such as Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, John E. Sununu of New Hampshire and Norm Coleman of Minnesota.

"Our goal," Matzzie said, "is political extinction for war supporters."

"Our goal is political extinction for war supporters." now there is a slogan and concept I can get behind. The next three months are going to tell the tale with respect to Iraq. The trend of violence against Americans is going very rapidly in the wrong direction. Over the next three months it will help if you call your elected representatives and express your disfavor with Bush's "not excellent adventure". Let's not give them any respite over the summer...we sure as hell know our men and women in Iraq aren't going to get any.

Picking Up Speed

In an article today in the Independent we get some not so very good news with respect to the environment and it comes from our own U.S. National Academy of Sciences.

Global warming is accelerating three times more quickly than feared, a series of startling, authoritative studies has revealed.

They have found that emissions of carbon dioxide have been rising at thrice the rate in the 1990s. The Arctic ice cap is melting three times as fast - and the seas are rising twice as rapidly - as had been predicted.

News of the studies - which are bound to lead to calls for even tougher anti-pollution measures than have yet been contemplated - comes as the leaders of the world's most powerful nations prepare for the most crucial meeting yet on tackling climate change.

The issue will be top of the agenda of the G8 summit which opens in the German Baltic resort of Heiligendamm on Wednesday, placing unprecedented pressure on President George Bush finally to agree to international measures.

[snip]

The study, published by the US National Academy of Sciences, shows that carbon dioxide emissions have been increasing by about 3 per cent a year during this decade, compared with 1.1 per cent a year in the 1990s.

It is time for the rest of the world leaders to tell Bush to quit trying to delay and obfuscate the issue of Global Warming and get the U.S. taking the hard actions that are going to be necessary to get us an even chance of surviving this.

Sadness

Steve Gilliard passed away today. He had a great voice that will really be missed. He has been struggling for sometime.
Thanks Steve for your attention and contribution to the progressive dialog on the web. We are sorry to lose your voice.

Update: Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake actually got a chance to spend some face to face time with Steve last year. Her remembrance is special.

Old Time Pickled Eggs

Here is something that I grew up with and I bet a lot of you from the South did as well. They always were a fixture in the little grocery store that us kids used to trek to with our wagons full of found bottles. There was always that big old jar of pickled eggs and almost always there were also jars of pickled pigs feet, pickled sausages and another of big jar of sour pickles. While the money we earned from collecting bottles along the road more often than not went to ice cream, candy and soda there were also many times it went for a pickled egg or a pickled sausage. It is not unusual to still see these jars of pickled goods in country stores around the south.

My mother and grandmother both made pickled eggs at home but both were partial to pickling them with beets to make them nice and red. I love those too but I am especially partial to just the plain old pickled egg. They are easy to make but the only bad thing it takes about four long weeks before they are ready to eat.

Anyhow, here you go. The picture above are the ones I made this morning...can't wait until July.

You'll need:
A dozen hard cooked large eggs peeled ( I am assuming here that everyone knows how to properly hard cook an egg. Take the eggs pierce the (round end where the air bubble is) with a pin. Put the eggs in a pan and cover with tap water. Put the pan on the stove and bring to a boil then turn the heat off and cover the eggs and let them sit in the hat water for 13 minutes. Rinse them for a bit in cool running water then tap them to just barely crack the shell and put them in a bowl of ice water for 15 minutes before you try and peel them.)

2 1/4 cups apple cider vinegar
3/4 cup white wine vinegar
1 tablespoon of kosher salt
2 teaspoons pickling spice
3/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes (optional but I like my eggs a little spicy)
6 cloves of garlic peeled and halved
1 quart glass jar with lid

Heat all of the ingredients in a sauce pan until it boils. Pour this mixture over the eggs in the jar making sure the eggs are covered and then refrigerate for 4 weeks before serving. These will last in the fridge for a couple of months thereafter but mine are usually gone in a couple of weeks. Technically the acidity would keep these eggs from spoiling at room temperature but I like the idea of keeping them cool.

New Bicycle

I bought a new bicycle yesterday and took my first bicycle ride in years. It was a bit wobbly but fun. Even though I try and get a brisk 3 mile walk in everyday the muscles used in bicycling are evidently quite different. Seems like I am going to have to work up to this. The walking everyday is good exercise but it is starting to wear on my knees a little so I thought I might mix in some cycling. I only cycled about 5 or 6 miles yesterday and with the hills involved I know it today.

After shopping around I settled on what is now called a hybrid bicycle (Giant Cypress DX) which is sort of a cross between a mountain and road bike. It has a front suspension and 24 speeds and has an aluminum frame so it is pretty light but sturdy. It has bigger tires than a road bike but not as big as a mountain bike. Looks like just the answer for getting a little exercise.

As for the skin tight riding pants...I will give you the same answer I gave Madam. Not on your life!