Monday, September 08, 2014

The realization Utah was overpaid by $2 million might be the reason.

Prison ends wild horse program... (click here)

September 5, 2014
By Marissa Lang
...But BLM insisted Friday that not only had it done its part to support the program at the Gunnison prison in central Utah, but an audit last year revealed the federal government had overpaid Utah by about $2 million since the program’s introduction in April 2007.
Hanging in the balance of this disagreement are 1,126 horses and 11 to 17 inmates who care for the wild mustangs kept on a 40-acre parcel of prison land.
BLM has until Oct. 6 to remove the horses. The agency hasn’t yet determined where they’ll go — areas in Arizona, California and Nevada are being considered to house a majority of the mustangs.
About 50 will stay behind in Axtell, Utah, though the state has nearly 4,000 wild horses — more than double the number the BLM has designated as Utah’s upper limit....

Greenpeace takes on Citizen's United.

In only a matter of days (click here) — September 8 — the United States Senate will vote on a landmark constitutional amendment that would be the first step to overturn Citizens United and ensure that OUR DEMOCRACY IS NOT FOR SALE.

The amendment is simple. It would give We the People the ability to regulate and limit campaign spending by Big Business and the super-rich. It would mean a government that would represent our interests, not the interests of fossil fuel companies or the Koch brothers.

Momentum is building: As of right now, 50 out of 100 senators are on board.

We still have time to demonstrate our support for this bold effort to reclaim our democracy. The vote on this resolution is a vital first step for a constitutional amendment to end the influence of money in politics. 

Send a message to your Senator now to support of Senate Joint Resolution 19, to ensure that our lawmakers protect our voices from getting drowned out by big money.

The right wing so called Think Tanks like Cato are liars.

The shipping traffic on the West Coast has been disrupted to some extent by a Longshoreman's strike. They have since returned to work and there is of course ships to unload that may have been in line for awhile.

While the Longshoremen were on strike ship traffic was rerouted to Canada.

August 28, 2014
By Angelo Young
For months, (click here) representatives of about 20,000 members of the International Longshoremen’s Association and their employers have been negotiating a six-year labor contract. The lack of success in the talks, now more than three months old, is raising concerns about a possible strike or slowdown ahead of the economically important U.S. holiday shopping season. Those concerns, in turn, are driving an increasing number of shippers to seek alternatives to U.S. West Coast ports.

The best strike venue is to make the point of how important one is when the need for services is at a peak of business demand. This contract could have been settled a long time ago, but, that isn't the immediate point.

...But regardless of the alternative routes available in Canada, Mexico or through the Panama or Suez canals to the Eastern seaboard, the West Coast is the best current option for a great deal of U.S.-bound goods....

CATO is being opportunistic in stating every other country is better off than the USA for a variety of reasons. CATO is using the increased traffic into Canada as an excuse to make the argument the USA is a poor environment for business.

...Container ships sailing across (click here) the northern Pacific are carrying more cargo and are setting course for British Columbia to avoid delays from a possible strike by U.S. West Coast longshoremen. Traffic in Prince Rupert soared 49 percent in July from a year earlier, according to data compiled by Bloomberg Intelligence, while volume dropped 19 percent in Seattle, its nearest major U.S. rival.

Canadian ports are gaining an advantage over their U.S. rivals amid an economic recovery that’s increasing container volumes from East Asia. While U.S. West Coast ports are mired in a labor dispute and congestion hobbles local railways, Prince Rupert is winning customers with its shorter sailing times from China and efficient infrastructure that can whisk freight to the U.S. Midwest and beyond....

If CATO wants to make an argument make it with THE FACTS and not the culture of fear. The FACTS are obvious, American ports provide exceptional service and while Mexico and Canada provides service, the transportation costs across borders and added fuel from the added distance causes the cost of imports to increase. The USA ports have nothing to fear and I wish the right wing would get their act straightened out so they don't make false political points for the sake of invoking fear of the people of the USA.

The USA's market place is a wealth to any company importing goods. The cost of doing business including taxes to domestic companies is returned to them a hundred times over. No USA company pays 35% corporate tax.

Now while the USA Tax Code needs to be STRENGTHENED so companies like Burger King can't circumvent the US Treasury there is no reason for tax giveaways to anyone. There are also loopholes to close. But, to imply the USA has a tax code hostile to business and that is what is causing all this traffic to Canada is a pure unadulterated lie. If the USA tax code was so very bad for business than why are there loopholes?

Americans weren't born yesterday, they were just deceived from knowing the facts and act with concern, in that, is political pressure for them to vote against their best interests. CATO should be ashamed of themselves and quite frankly according to this article, they are an inferior source of research. 

City vs Wall Street

The City of Missoula's (click here) legal expenses are running ahead of projections in its quest to take over Mountain Water Co.
    
The city is suing the Carlyle Group, a global equity firm that owns the company, to take it over under eminent domain. Trial is set for March 2015.
    
The Missoulian reports (http://bit.ly/1qsTBfk ) that Mayor John Engen had estimated this spring that the city would pay $400,000 in legal fees for both the city and the company. Missoula had planned to spend a total of $4.24 million on the condemnation....


The people of Missoula want to own their own water supply. They want to direct it's quality and availability. They believe it is there right to own an entire city's water supply. I believe they are correct. One of the basic needs of any person is water and to that end there should never be a profit motivated Wall Street company directing a town's water use. So now, Carlyle the company that brought you insecurity in your own use of mobile devices, wants to run up expenses for Missoula as an incentive to end the legal action by the people of the city. That isn't going to happen and Missoula has the right of eminent domain to secure a water supply for it's citizens.

Carlyle should graciously take the offer of $50 million as a good offering before Missoula takes Mountain Water for far less.

USA Citizens have to stop being fools.

For years now Homeland Security (click here) daily reports look like a newspaper. On any given day some sectors state "Nothing to report."

There ought to be a law or at least a convention.

I don't recall any United Nations' Convention declaring crimes against humanity when any media service inflames war for political purposes. I know genocide and media that directs such activity is called into question, but, the issue the USA faces is different. The USA media promotes problems to the public that demands military action whether or not it is a legitimate threat to the USA.

In the case if IS/IS/L there is no legitimate reason for a USA war, but, the USA media services have engaged in a culture of fear campaign to drive the political system to engage in killing people. I sincerely believe the USA law which provides for preemptive actions is a crime against humanity. In this case it is driven by the USA's media.

Insurgents, armed gang members, pirates, terrorists (click here) - they can all multiply their force through the use of unlawfully acquired firepower. The illicit circulation of small arms, light weapons and their ammunition destabilizes communities, and impacts security and development in all regions of the world.

While the Syrian civil war is tragic, when the USA engaged in arming so called rebels it caused a greater problem of which leads the USA to a war of it's own creation. It is this incideous game the USA conducts in attempting to destabilize a governance which is of no threat to the USA that requires scrutiny to it's outcome. 

It is well known the USA media was selling the idea that the people of Syria needed to take down the Assad regime. That in and of itself has caused problems for Americans, including journalists, that had gone there captured in the USA's press moralizing of war with Assad. It is also well know the leaders of IS/IS/L (some of which are former Iraq Baathists) took Syrian oil and sold it to purchase American weapons from recognized opposition leaders. The entire USA media focus on 'selling' war is more than problematic, it is an attack on USA sovereignty when it grows a threat against the people of the USA. The media encourages political dogma to cause certain outcomes in American elections. That dogma is never about peace, it is always about war. War for the USA garners wealth and the media services are owned by stockholders demanding returns on their investments.

The CDC is concerned the new entrovirus now limited to the Midwest is just the tip of the iceberg.

I think this means no play dates for awhile.

September 7, 2014

...In Kansas City, (click here) about 450 children were recently treated at Children's Mercy Hospital, and at least 60 of them received intensive hospitalization, spokesman Jake Jacobson said.

"It's worse in terms of scope of critically ill children who require intensive care. I would call it unprecedented. I've practiced for 30 years in pediatrics, and I've never seen anything quite like this," said Dr. Mary Anne Jackson, the hospital's division director for infectious diseases.

More than 900 children have gone to Children's Hospital Colorado emergency and urgent care locations since August 18 for treatment of severe respiratory illnesses, including enterovirus and viral infections, hospital spokeswoman Melissa Vizcarra told CNN. Of those, 86 have been sick enough to be admitted to the Aurora facility.
"This is the worst I've seen in my time here at Rocky Mountain Hospital for Children," Dr. Raju Meyeppan told the outlet. "We're going to have a pretty busy winter at this institution and throughought the hospitals of Denver."...

There is no place for the USA in this.

The Saudi regime’s top Wahhabi cleric (click here) has newly called on “Muslims” to confront the "oppressive" ISIL Takfiri terrorist group, amid growing suspicions that major funding and support for the Wahhabi-inspired terror group originates from Saudi Arabia and its Persian Gulf Arab allies.
"This group is aggressive and oppressive. It sheds blood," declared Saudi Arabia’s Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdul Aziz al-Sheikh as cited in local Arabic language media outlets.
"If they fight Muslims, then Muslims must fight them to rid people and religion of their evil and harm," he reportedly said in a response to a request from an Iraqi for a fatwa or edict on fighting the Takfiri terrorists.
"They have been killing ever since they began their fight. Their killing is filled with mutilations and hideousness that distort (the image of) Muslims," Sheikh asserted many months after the terror group engaged in massive atrocities and terror acts in Syria as well as Iraq, further threatening to infiltrate into Lebanon.
The official Saudi cleric also described the ISIL as “enemy number-one” of Islam on August 19, noting that extremism, radicalism, and terrorism have nothing to do with the holy religion.
In late August, meanwhile, reports said the ISIL terrorists were planning to launch an attack against the Saudis during Eid al-Adha (the Feast of Sacrifice), which marks the culmination of the annual Hajj pilgrimage....

The IS name is not trademarked to be so. Now this is really going to confuse western media. It's another Obamacare issues.

(CNSNews.com) – Stand by for a new acronym (click here) for the ISIS/ISIL terrorist group causing havoc across Syria and Iraq.
One of the Arab world’s top Sunni authorities launched a campaign Sunday urging media to drop all names for the group that incorporate the word “Islamic,” in favor of “al-Qaeda separatists in Iraq and Syria” (QSIS).
Dar al-Iftaa (“the House of Fatwas”) in Cairo, headed by Egyptian grand mufti Shawki Ibrahim Allam, has launched an Internet-based campaign aimed at distancing Islam from the group known variously as Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham, or simply Islamic State.
The campaign includes the launching of a Facebook page entitled “Call it Qa’ida Separatists not Islamic State,” and calling for people to post messages or video clips opposing ISIS terrorism....

Hm? Is ISIL's flag a religious symbol?


Justice Minister Ashraf Rifi (click here) vowed to legally pursue a number of protesters who set ablaze a flag for the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).
The minister said in a statement issued by his press office that the ISIL flag has the first pillar of Islam (Ashahada) written on it, which is the testimony that there is no God except for Allah and Mohammed is the messenger of Allah.
Several people were seen in Beirut's Ashrafiyeh Sassine Square burning the flag of ISIL earlier in the day.
Rifi slammed the burning of the flag, which “is not related to ISIL and its terrorist course.”
He filed a request to General Prosecutor Samir Hammoud to pursue the assailants and detain them in order to prosecute them.
“This demeanor insults religions and could incite sedition,” Rifi considered.
Meanwhile, Mufti of Tripoli and the North Sheikh Malek al-Shaar revealed that he made contacts and concluded that the Sassine Square incident was “an individual act that has no political backgrounds.”
But “we strongly deplore attacks against religious symbols, regardless of which sect they represented,” he stressed....

Oh, Iraq actually has it's own air force, it simply couldn't or wouldn't use it.

1. On Sunday evening, (click here) BBC reports that Iraqi fighter jets bombed the villages of al-Riyadh and al-Nirab in the vicinity of Hawija, north Iraq, leaving 14 dead and 10 wounded. Hawija is a largely Sunni Arab town near the city of Kirkuk (Kirkuk is controlled now by the Kurdistan Peshmerga paramilitary). The Baghdad government, which is dominated by Shiite Arabs, has a substantial advantage over extremist ISIL fighters in having fighter jets and helicopter gunships, but has not successfully deployed them against the violent gang since it took over northern and western Iraq in June. Presumably the ability of Baghdad to scramble jets and hit these villages, putting pressure on ISIL to withdraw further from the Kurdish front, has to do with the hundreds of US special forces troops that President Obama has sent to Baghdad, since some must be trainers trying to get Iraqi pilots up to speed. Assuming that the jets actually bombed ISIL positions and did not just manage to kill civilians, this bombing raid represents an upping of the Baghdad military’s game.

The USA has no right to declare war with Syria or otherwise. Since when does NATO have authority to declare war with any other country than on behalf of its members?

The President and NATO can't make up the rules as they go along. The sixty some participants in the recent meetings from the Middle East are organizing to defeat IS/IS/L. 

There is no basis for any country to invade Syria other than Iraq. This is a Syrian civil war that spilled over the Syrian border. Iraq has no significant military and/or government so what does anyone expect. Every other country in the area is secure. There has been no problem with other countries.

Americans traveling abroad is their right. If there is concern about Americans traveling to Syria and fighting a war that is treason by constitutional definition and they can be jailed and tried.

...According to the U.S. code, (click here) any citizen who "enlists or enters himself, or hires or retains another to enlist or enter himself, or to go beyond the jurisdiction of the United States with intent to be enlisted or entered in the service of any foreign prince, state, colony, district, or people as a soldier or as a marine or seaman ... shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both." But a court ruling from 1896 involving U.S. citizens who fought with Cuban revolutionaries against Spanish colonial rule interpreted this to mean that it was only illegal for citizens to be recruited for a foreign army in the United States, not to simply fight in one. (Note to Libya's National Transitional Council: It probably wouldn't be wise to set up a recruiting station on the UCLA campus in hopes of attracting more fighters.)...

The difference with Syria is the USA took actions to remove chemical weapons from Syria. At this point a jihadist from the USA who claims to be fighting in Syria on behalf of the people but at the same time killing in the methodology of genocide is not only acting against USA policy but international law.

21-year-old university student from Los Angeles, has had quite the summer vacation. He informed family and friends that he was heading off to Cairo, but then crossed into Libya and spent the last few weeks fighting with the anti-Qaddafi rebels.

Any structured government has stamps when a traveler passes into their country. Entrance to the USA from overseas requires a walk through customs and otherwise. There is no reason why Homeland Security cannot stop travelers and check their passport for the entrance pass to countries where flight allows travelers to enter Syria, Libya or any other jihadist area.

In order for the Executive Branch and/or Congress can authorize American soldiers to war they have to have damn good reason not simply political dogma.
The media has been pushing war so intensely even Rand Paul states it may be a good idea to send USA military into Syria. That was amazing. 

This push for American war is due to the potentials of the 2016 elections. The political environment is better for Republicans, ie: November 2014, if there is war or the threat of war. This so called 'reason to war' is a media war against the President and his party. It is all political so long as the American people perceive danger to their lives. It is long well known the USA media prefers Republicans in office.

In a Friday post, (click here) American Prospect blogger Paul Waldman didn’t predict who will win the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, but he did predict that two potential candidates, Jeb Bush and Ted Cruz, won’t....
...Jeb's problem is that the party's threshold keeps moving right, and the very fact of his Bushness, plus the fact that he is indeed (at least in people's perception) the "establishment candidate," means that he'd probably have to campaign in a tricorner hat and get a picture of Sarah Palin tattooed on his neck to convince Tea Partiers they can trust him. I could be wrong, but I just don't think he has it in him. 

Rove has been running the same game against Democrats that he and Bush/Cheney did at the time of 911.


In February, (click here) Republican strategist Karl Rove chastised President Barack Obama for ignoring “his own Bowles-Simpson deficit commission” and making “no effort to reduce the long-term debt burden.”

Now Crossroads GPS, the political group for which Rove serves as senior adviser, is running advertisements attacking Democrats who did support Simpson-Bowles. It is an unsurprising but depressing episode of political opportunism — and an apt illustration of why hard things don’t get done in Washington.

One of the reasons the post 911 propaganda worked so well is because the people of the country were chronically bombarded by contradictory messages.
"The USA is under threat, but, go enjoy the country and vacation and spend money with abandon." Same exact thing and the Democrats fell for it. Basically, the Democrats are indulging in politics rather than policy. They are being hazed into political positions and then having the tables turned on them. 


...On Oct. 10, 2002, Hoeffel voted in favor of the invasion. (click here) Within a year, he wished he had voted the opposite way.

It turned out Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction. It turned out Bush and Cheney, along with their high-profile civilian and military advisers, had misled Hoeffel and the rest of the U.S. citizenry. Countless Americans and Iraqis and human beings from other nations would die over the next decade because Hoeffel and his fellow politicians had authorized an invasion based on specious grounds.

In the introduction to his book, Hoeffel admits: "I was both misled and wrong." Then, in unambiguous language, he explains why he has published a book, years after leaving the House, and with a Democrat in the White House.
"I don't want George W. Bush and his people to get away with it," he writes. Citing recent public statements by Cheney about a desire to invade Iraq again, Hoeffel wants truth to prevail circa 2014. In addition, Hoeffel wants to counteract, however minimally, the book-length memoirs by Bush administration decision-makers parading "their absolute refusal to admit that they distorted and manipulated the intelligence [from Iraq] to bolster their case for war."...

It is all about Republican politics and their culture of fear. 

Waldman’s peg was a Wall Street Journal report that Jeb’s “closest advisers” have asked GOP donors and operatives to “avoid committing to other possible presidential candidates until [Jeb] decides” after the midterms whether he’s going to run. 

Has Jeb decided?

George P. Bush, (click here) the son of former Florida governor Jeb Bush and grandson of former President George H.W. Bush, will speak at a Latino Memphis event Tuesday.

His son is already out stumping for him. P. Bush is a land supervisor or some darn thing in Texas, what is he doing addressing the Latin American group in Tennessee?

Just because Great Britain, as an ally, is deciding to war with Syria/Iraq doesn't mean war mongering doesn't fit into their politics either. 

LONDON: RAF Hercules aircraft (click here) dropped 14 tonnes of food and water on the besieged Iraqi town of Amerli on Saturday night, the defence secretary, Michael Fallon, has said as he confirmed that Britain is keeping open the option of joining US air strikes against Isil militants.
Fallon, who pointed out that the RAF has transported arms to Kurdish forces fighting jihadists from Isil, said Britain welcomed the US air strikes and said ministers would consider any request from the Iraqi government to join in further action.
The British government has decided to rule out definitively sending combat ground troops to Iraq, a position ministers are making clear in public. But they are leaving the door open to joining air strikes against Isis forces by saying they have no plans to do so at the moment and have not received a request to do so.