The Lieberman card

Why did the Democrats cave in to an administration with a 30 percent approval rating? Why didn't they just point out that anytime Bush wanted to fund the troops all he had to do was rescind his veto? So Bush is the one refusing to fund the troops, not Congress.

The Democrats, as usual, are running scared. But this time there might actually be a reason: Joe Lieberman. This man--who already proved he doesn't support the Democratic party when he ran essentially as a Republican, against the Democrats' chosen candidate--now has the power to destroy the Democrats' control of the Senate, simply by changing parties.

In essence, Joe Lieberman is the most powerful man in the Senate, and you can bet he gets his way. You can bet that he spends a lot of time talking with the administration. You can bet that after his stinging primary defeat, he relishes his new power to punish the Democrats and will use it, if necessary, to quash Democratic plans to thwart Mr. Bush.

What kind of deal has Lieberman made with Senate Democrats? What kind of deal have Senate Democrats made with the House? The whole thing reeks of blackmail.

Those wicked Palestinians. Those saintly Israelis

Democracy Now! | Headlines for May 24, 2007: "For Israel and the Occupied Territories, Amnesty says Israel killed more than 650 Palestinians last year, three times the number of Palestinians killed in 2005. Half of the Palestinians killed last year were unarmed civilians. The Palestinian death toll included 120 children. During the same period, Palestinian militants killed 27 Israelis – including 20 civilians and one child."

Change a bulb, change everything

Since January 1, people like you and me have kept nearly 9 trillion pounds of CO2 from entering the atmosphere. We’ve saved the energy of 137,000 cars on the road and 2 trillion pounds of coal.

How did we do it?

By changing a light bulb.

By switching to compact fluorescent bulbs (CFLs), we accomplished more than all the government studies, research projects, and hand-wringing by the energy industry.

But we could do a lot more. Only about a hundredth of all households have switched any light bulbs to CFLs. Why?

Many people think of fluorescent lights as those cold white office and warehouse lights that flicker, buzz, take forever to come on and make you look like a ghost. They cause headaches. They’re expensive and don’t fit in a living room lamp. And who wants their living room to look like a workplace?

None of that’s true anymore.

If you tried CFLs 5 years ago and didn’t like them, you’ll be pleasantly surprised at how much they’ve improved.

Today’s Energy Star spiral CFLs are designed to mimic the shape of an incandescent bulb and can be used in any ordinary lamp. The magnetic ballast that caused the flickering and buzzing in the old bulbs has been replaced in all but the cheapest bulbs by an electronic ballast with an undetectable flicker and, in most cases, no sound at all. These new bulbs light up instantly.

You can now buy CFLs that mimic the soft yellow-white light you’re accustomed to in an incandescent bulb, in addition to the ones that mimic the bluer white of natural daylight. Lampshades further disguise any difference in appearance.

Fluorescent bulbs are coming down in price rapidly, but they are still a little more expensive to buy than incandescent bulbs. But they last 5 times as long, so when you’re buying one CFL, you’re buying the equivalent of five incandescent bulbs. And since CFLs use about a fifth of the electricity of incandescents, incandescent bulbs cost an average of $40 more per fixture to operate than CFLs. Now that’s expensive! It takes an average of six months to recoup the cost of a CFL in lower electricity bills. Your CFL will last a lot longer than six months.

Some people have pointed out that CFLs contain mercury. Won’t using CFLs put even more mercury in the environment?

Paradoxically, no. When you use an incandescent bulb, you’re using more electricity, and half of our electricity comes from coal-fired plants that discharge mercury into the atmosphere. Thus, each 100-watt incandescent bulb indirectly causes 10 milligrams of mercury pollution, while a 23-watt CFL (the equivalent of a 100-watt incandescent) causes only 2.4 milligrams of mercury pollution.

Of course, there are tiny amounts of mercury in CFLs—far less than in mercury thermometers—and used bulbs need to be disposed of responsibly. Just recycle them the same way you recycle your other hazardous waste (paint, solvents, used motor oil and so forth). Because CFLs last so long, you probably don’t need to recycle more often than every couple of years.

WARNING: A story has been circulating about a woman in Maine who broke a CFL in her child’s bedroom and had to seal off the room and hire an expert to do $2,000 worth of cleanup. Read the whole article. The Department of Environmental Protection says that you can clean up broken CFLs safely using household materials. The official who inspected the child's room was probably following guidelines for cleaning up broken thermometers, which contain 100 or more times as much mercury as CFLs.

Read more on mercury and CFLS. The link also contains disposal and cleanup guidelines.

Want your CFL light to look like incandescent light? Recently, manufacturers started adding information about “color temperature” to the bulb’s packaging. The color of the light is represented by a number in K units. The higher the number, the bluer the light. “Soft” light CFLs range from 2700 to 3000 K, while bulbs with bluer light that mimics daylight are 5000 K or higher.

Some purchasing guidelines:

• 25-watt incandescent = 7-watt compact fluorescent
• 40-watt incandescent = 11-watt compact fluorescent
• 60-watt incandescent = 15-watt compact fluorescent
• 75+-watt incandescent = 18-watt compact fluorescent
• 100-watt incandescent = 23-watt compact fluorescent

Ordinary CFLs won't work with dimmer switches. Use a CFL specially designed for dimmers.
Three-way CFLs are also available.

Read an exhaustive Popular Mechanics evaluation of CFLs and brand comparisons. The evaluation's test participants actually rated today's CFLs as having BETTER light quality than incandescents.

Find out more:
18Seconds.org
EnergyStar (Take the Energy Star quiz)
Department of Energy
EnvironmentalDefense.org (Tips on choosing and using CFLs)
Wikipedia
Fast Company article
CFLBulbs.com
Where to recycle your bulbs

Bush Nominee to Get Payment From Old Job - New York Times

How outrageous is this?

Bush Nominee to Get Payment From Old Job - New York Times: "WASHINGTON, May 15 — A senior lobbyist at the National Association of Manufacturers nominated by President Bush to lead the Consumer Product Safety Commission will receive a $150,000 departing payment from the association when he takes his new government job, which involves enforcing consumer laws against members of the association."

Who is this latest fox-in-the-henhouse Bush nominee? This is not the guy's first such job. He started out "protecting" workers as assistant secretary of labor under Reagan, where he fought to delay and weaken worker safety regulations.

He went on to fight against ergonomic protections for workers, fight to allow a higher level of arsenic in drinking water, limit asbestos liability and support a lawsuit charging that the Environmental Protection Agency had acted unconstitutionally when it issued standards for limiting smog and soot!!

For a complete list of his escapades, see StopBaroody.com.

Or click on the picture above for the National Association of Manufacturers puff piece on him.

As CNN correspondent Bill Tucker said to Lou Dobbs, "You can't make this stuff up."

If you have an opinion about this nomination, give your Senator a call and tell her how you think she should vote in the confirmation process. Call 202-224-3121 and ask to be transferred to your Senator.

Greg Palast sums it up best, as usual

YouTube - Part 1- Greg Palast and RFK in NYC- MayDay 2007

This is part one of a four-part video. Be sure to watch the rest of it.

Did you see this article in the New York Times?

Of course not! Thank god for the alternative press.

AlterNet: War on Iraq: Majority of Iraqi Lawmakers Now Reject Occupation: "On Tuesday, without note in the U.S. media, more than half of the members of Iraq's parliament rejected the continuing occupation of their country. 144 lawmakers signed onto a legislative petition calling on the United States to set a timetable for withdrawal, according to Nassar Al-Rubaie, a spokesman for the Al Sadr movement, the nationalist Shia group that sponsored the petition."

Posts set free from draft bin!

Okay, my modus operandi seems to be to ship interesting articles in draft form to my blog, then forget about them. Following are seven of those drafts (and a couple of new items), representing the stuff that's still more or less relevant. Coming soon! The long promised CFL post.

How come the Senate can do this?

Editorial: Phantom still at large

Published 12:00 am PDT Tuesday, May 8, 2007

As noted on this page Friday, a single U.S. senator continues to hold up passage of a bill that would enable quicker disclosure of campaign dollars to Senate candidates. This unnamed senator -- whom we've dubbed The Phantom -- has placed what is known as an "anonymous hold" on the bill. By doing so, this senator hopes to keep voters in the dark by preventing Senate candidates from filing their disclosure reports electronically.

Who is this masked man or woman? On Friday, we suggested that Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee presumably knows The Phantom's identity. He, after all, was the first senator to "act on behalf" of a fellow Republican senator and place a hold on the bill. But the senator, according to press secretary Scot Montrey, doesn't know The Phantom, doesn't want a hold on the bill in question and only acted because of archaic Senate procedures that allow for anonymous holds. Yet there are reasons to believe the good senator from Tennessee has been entangled in The Phantom's web of deceit. Under the Senate's convoluted and closeted procedures, a single senator can place a hold on a bill simply by requesting it of the Senate floor staff.

Whenever the bill comes up for a vote, the floor staff then randomly picks a senator of the same party to issue the hold. Montrey claims that Alexander was this unlucky senator.

On Monday, Sen. Dianne Feinstein sent a letter to Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell and asked for his help in removing the hold from the campaign reform bill. Whether or not McConnell knows the identity of The Phantom, he should use his considerable influence to put an end to this obstruction immediately.

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Venezuela accuses DEA

Venezuela accuses U.S. of aiding drug traffickers

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) -- Venezuela on Monday said it will not allow U.S. agents to carry out counter-drug operations in the country, accusing the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration of being a "new cartel" that aids traffickers.

Justice Minister Pedro Carreno said the South American nation suspended cooperation with the agency in 2005 after determining that "they were moving a large amount of drugs." President Hugo Chavez at the time also accused the DEA of spying.

"The United States with its DEA monopolizes the shipping of drugs like a cartel," Carreno told reporters. "We determined that we were evidently in the presence of a new cartel." He did not elaborate.

U.S. Embassy officials could not immediately be reached for comment, but Washington repeatedly has accused Venezuela of not cooperating in counter-drug efforts and says cocaine shipments are increasingly passing through the country from neighboring Colombia.

U.S. officials say about 10 DEA agents have remained in Venezuela working with law enforcement contacts even after the Chavez government suspended formal cooperation.

Carreno was responding to comments by John Walters, the U.S. director of National Drug Control Policy, who told the Colombian magazine Semana in an interview published last week: "Chavez has refused to cooperate. It's a shame. Venezuela is gaining in importance for the drug traffickers."

Carreno said Venezuela is making important strides in fighting drug trafficking, while Washington is using the issue for political ends.

"The Venezuelan government doesn't accept blackmail," Carreno said. Security agencies are willing to follow up on any information provided to track down traffickers, he added, but "what we will not permit them to do is carry out operations in our territory."

Carreno alleged that Washington hopes to use cooperation agreements as an excuse eventually to establish "military bases" in the country. He did not elaborate.

Copyright 2007 The Associated Press.

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New evidence that war brutalizes soldiers

U.S. Marines unlikely to report civilian abuse: study

Fri May 4, 2007

By David Morgan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Only 40 percent of Marines and 55 percent of U.S. Army soldiers deployed in Iraq say they would report a fellow serviceman for killing or injuring an innocent Iraqi, a Pentagon report released on Friday shows.

The Army survey, which showed increasing rates of mental health problems for troops on extended or multiple deployments, also said well over one-third of soldiers and Marines believe torture should be allowed to elicit information that could save the lives of American troops or gain knowledge about Iraqi insurgents.

Overall, about 10 percent of the 1,320 soldiers and 447 Marines covered in the survey said they had mistreated civilians, either through physical violence or damage to their personal property. The survey was conducted by U.S. Army medical experts between August 28 and October 3, 2006.

"Soldiers with high levels of anger, who had experienced high levels of combat or who screened positive for mental health symptoms were nearly twice as likely to mistreat noncombatants," acting Army Surgeon General Gale Pollock told reporters.

The findings, which included the first survey of ethics among U.S. troops in combat, were released Friday in an 89-page report posted on the Web site www.armymedicine.army.mil. It was delivered to senior military officials in November.

Claims of U.S. mistreatment of Iraqi detainees and civilians have shadowed American forces in Iraq from revelations of abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in 2004 to reports of the November 19, 2005, killing of 24 Iraqi civilians by Marines in Haditha.

EXTENDED TOURS

The survey data came out a month after Defense Secretary Robert Gates extended tours for U.S. soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan to up to 15 months instead of one year as U.S. forces increase their numbers in Iraq under a plan ordered by President George W. Bush.

The extended tours were widely seen as the latest sign of strain placed on the U.S. military by the two wars.

There are currently some 145,000 U.S. troops in Iraq and 25,000 in Afghanistan. Bush's plan calls for boosting the U.S. deployment in Iraq by 28,000 combat and support troops.

The report, the fourth prepared by the Army's Mental Health Advisory Team since the war in Iraq began in 2003, showed that mental health problems such as acute stress, anxiety and depression rose among troops facing longer deployments or their second or third tour in Iraq.

Overall, about 20 percent of Army soldiers and 15 percent of Marines showed mental health symptoms of either anxiety, depression or acute stress. The rate was at 30 percent among troops with high combat experience.

Among Army soldiers, 27 percent of those with more than one tour of duty tested positive for a mental health problem, versus 17 percent for soldiers on their first deployment.

The rate of anxiety, depression and acute stress stood at 22 percent among soldiers deployed for more than six months and at 15 percent for troops in Iraq for less than six months.

Army experts recommended that the Pentagon extend the interval between deployments to 18 to 36 months so that troops could recover mentally.

Gates said last month that troops in the region covered by the U.S. Central Command -- from East Africa to Central Asia -- could expect to spend 12 months at home between deployments.

For the full report, see Mental Health Advisory Team IV Information on the Army Medicine Web site.