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Have a great weekend everyone! See you back here Sunday evening.
International Developments
❖ Headquarters of the Muslim Brotherhood party in Ismailiya, Egypt was torched today. A similar attempt was made in a Cairo district. Update: 5 people killed in the city of Suez; clashes with police “across the country”.
❖ “Mali crisis: “[Malian and French] Troops ‘take northern town of Hombori”. The Malian government has said the “war will be over in days”, as government troops move toward Gao.
❖ The UN will enter the fray over those islands China and Japan are all up in arms about. But later this year.
International Finance
❖ UK Chancellor Osborne is under attack from several sides over “Austerity” following gloomy fiscal reports–the Labour Party, organized labor, and Goldman Sachs (!). (Keep scrolling to hit all the stories.)
Money Matters USA
❖ Robert Reich on “Americans aren’t living beyond their means: It’s just a myth propagated by groups like ‘Fix the Debt’ to keep the country’s wealth in the hands of the few”.
❖ Jeb Bush has become a voice of moderation, proposing “comprehensive immigration reform” to achieve “a fair and workable system of legal immigration” (because business needs it). Coincidence? “President Barack Obama will launch a campaign next week aimed at overhauling the nation’s flawed immigration system”.
❖ “More than $114 billion was withdrawn from the nation’s biggest banks in the first full week of January, and industry analysts are struggling to understand why.” Is TAG the culprit or “wacky” records at the Federal Reserve? Wait . . . wacky?
❖ Of the 100 top corporate donors to political campaigns in 2012, ten had criminal convictions between 1989-2000, and nine “gave far more to Republican political campaigns than to Democratic ones.”
❖ 3D printing can have major impact on the economy. For example, stores could print missing or broken parts for home appliances, equipment, etc., thus eliminating large-scale manufacture, shipping, warehousing, and retail display of those same parts. Additive manufacturing, printing out much more complicated items, would have even greater impact.
Politics USA
❖ Bill Moyers traces the revolving door conveyance and corporate-congressional hijinks that resulted in giant pharmaceutical company Amgen getting a specially made-to-fit $500m loophole in the “fiscal cliff” legislation. Senators McConnell (R-KY), Hatch (R-UT) and Baucus (D-MT) were involved. Video. More here.
❖ ”Obama likely to name Wal-Mart Foundation head as budget director”. Sylvia Mathews Burwell, who served in the Clinton administration in the Office of Management and Budget, and has many interesting connections.
❖ Now he tells us: “I’m not personally, at this stage, ready to get rid of the 60-vote threshold,” said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV). How the whole thing fell apart.
❖ Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) won’t be running for re-election in 2014.
❖ Both US House member Ed Markey (D-MA) and MA state house member Stephen Lynch (D) will be running for John Kerry’s senate seat.
❖ A US Court of Appeals has ruled President Obama’s recess appointments of two people to the National Labor Relations Board are unconstitutional since “the Senate was . . . in ‘pro-forma’ session” at the time.
❖ And they’re off: “The GOP Plan to Take the Electoral-Vote-Rigging Scheme National”.
❖ One VA senate Republican, Ralph Smith, is opposed to efforts to “apportion electoral votes in the state by Congressional district”, though he’d agree if all the other states decide to do the same. BTW, the proposed legislation in VA may be subject to provisions of the US Voting Rights Act, which could make it illegal anyway.
❖ Two Republican members of the MS state house are pushing a Mississippi Balance of Powers Act with the ultimate goal of “neutralizing . . . any and all existing federal statutes, mandates and executive orders” determined by a committee to be outside Article 1 of the US Constitution.
❖ IA state senate Republicans are going to “introduce legislation requiring that Iowans present photo identification in order to vote.”
❖ An estimated 201,000 FL voters “likely gave up in frustration on Nov. 6″ and went home. A few counties in Central FL were most affected.
Gun Corner
❖ VA again, with a “Gangbanger Bill of Rights” which would “prevent any state or local government entity from providing information about gun crimes based on any federal law enacted after 2012.” The bill has cleared one committee.
❖ ‘Winger in Jefferson County, CO was raided by the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). He had built improvised explosive devices which he intended to trade for cocaine, and he had a cache of “military-style assault weapons”, etc.
Health, Homelessness & Hunger
❖ It’s high time somebody re-visited the Cuban health care system, and so they have as reported in the staid New England Journal of Medicine: “A Different Model–Medical Care in Cuba”.
❖ They get it: “Majority of Americans Think Implementing Obamacare Should Be A ‘Top Priority‘ In Their State”
❖ OH Republican Gov. John Kasich is under pressure from a united front of “religious congregations, community groups and major health care providers” to sign-on for expanding Medicaid in his state through the Affordable Care Act.
❖ A MA bankruptcy court judge “has frozen the assets of the owners” of the New England Compounding Center whose products seemingly caused the meningitis outbreak last fall.
Women & Children
❖ In TN, ”it is possible for a minor [who is a] sex crime victim to also be an accomplice in the crime”, depending on whether the victim “voluntarily consented to the sexual activity.” A case involving the TN law is now before the Supreme Court: a 42 year-old man vs a 14 year-old girl. This also involves the old “evidence of force” issue.
❖ According to Gen. Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, eliminating the ban on women serving in combat will “more likely . . . lead people to treat each other equally” and reduce sexual assault of female soldiers.
❖ IL Gov. Pat Quinn signed a bill yesterday which “extends state-mandated sexual abuse and assault awareness and prevention efforts to elementary and middle schools.” Although unfunded, the action is a start, the result of the work of Erin Merryn who was a child victim of sexual abuse.
❖ Morocco is planning to change its penal code so that rape victims are not forced to marry the rapist.
Heads Up!
❖ John Kiriakou, former CIA officer and whistleblower, was sentenced to 2 years in prison today by US district Judge Leonie Brinkema who “said she would have given Kiriakou much more time if she could.”
Planet Earth News
❖ World Bank President Jim Yong Kim in a WaPo op-ed: “If There Is No Action Soon, The Future Will Become Bleak”. So far, the World Bank’s “inconsistency on climate change has been widely noted”.
❖ Nine Senate Democrats who signed the letter urging President Obama to approve the Keystone XL Pipeline: Baucus (D-MT), Begich (D-AK), Donnelly (D-IN), Heitkamp (D-ND), Landrieu (D-LA), Manchin (D-WV), Pryor (D-AR), Warner (D-VA), Hagan (D-NC). Letter here.
❖ The big funders of climate change critics? The Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund, both in Alexandria, VA, are ‘Indirectly supported by the American billionaire Charles Koch . . . through a third-party organisation, . . . the Knowledge and Progress Fund.” Slow burn: “The Donors Trust is a ‘donor advised fund,’ meaning . . . [the donors] receive generous tax relief”.
Break Time
❖ A big blast-off into the weekend!
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About FDL News Desk
January 25 —great day for jazz composers:
I can do it again —
article in forbes AFrica’s worst dictators such as
Swaziland
“Sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch presides over a country which has one of the world’s highest HIV prevalence rates: ver 35 percent of adults. Its average life expectancy is the lowest in the world at 33 years; nearly 70 percent of the country’s citizens live on less than $1 a day and 40 percent are unemployed.
But for all the suffering of the Swazi people, King Mswati has barely shown concern or interest. He lives lavishl”
“Equatorial Guinea is one of the continent’s largest producers of oil and has one of the highest per capita incomes in the world, but this doesn’t necessarily translate into prosperity for its people. The country ranks very poorly in the United Nations human development index; the vast majority of Equatorial Guineans hardly have access to clean drinking water”
helped by
“The Senate investigation proved to be much more revealing. Using their subpoena power, investigators obtained records showing that as much as $700 million had been deposited in Equatoguinean accounts at Riggs. The committee also discovered that U.S. energy companies, including ExxonMobil, Amerada Hess, Marathon Oil, and ChevronTexaco, made questionable payments directly to Riggs Bank accounts held by members of Obiang’s regime and his family.”
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2005/01/obiang-equatorial-guinea-oil-riggs
http://www.forbes.com/sites/mfonobongnsehe/2012/02/09/the-five-worst-leaders-in-africa/2/
have a nice day
Speaking of Africa, this will not end well:
U.S. Weighing How Much Help to Give France’s Military Operation in Mali
The New York Times has a terrible reputation for aiding & abetting U.S. Presidents addicted to war. The two reporters on this story (Sanger & Schmitt) are not known as cheerleaders for American global military domination, IIRC, but the Times’s editors cannot be trusted any further than we can spit. Predictably, the editors buried the lede on this story, literally pushing the most damning revelations down to the last four grafs:
If we don’t start phoning our elected representatives to raise hell against this, we can expect by Easter to see preznit join in a colonialist campaign for “the total reconquest of Mali.”
Patrick Coburn gave a succinct description of the hidden forces and rivalries twelve days ago in the UK Independent.
More on why this would be a hellacious quagmire from the UK Guardian (opinion) and the Times and the Guardian (news) and the Independent and, again, the Guardian (more news).
The UK Independent has this essay illustrating some of the collateral damage from the widening war in Mali, threatening the existence of a tribe of pagans who have been practicing an Animist religion for thousands of years.
Good mid-day (right-coast time), fatster and everyone else.
Fractal, your comments and links are very much appreciated. I hope that their import might might be understood – and acted upon – by many at FDL.
As always, fatster, your Roundups and many links are effectively useful, very important … indispensable, so far as I am concerned, and the spice of your “Break Times” a joy and delightful respite from the weight of so very many things.
DW
whisper not is a very fine tune.
rock and roll doctor
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEOlTZGuLKM
Re: #4
Yikes! I’m afraid you’re on to something.
Which one of them is going to slip up first, and inadvertantly confess that old fashioned exploitation is the main rationale for intervention?
Chambliss won’t run but I hear tell there are two crazies poised to take his place. but first the cage fight.
Come on folks we all know that Ma senate seat is rightfully Brown’s.
Why does this feel so alarming to me?
How much is Mali worth.
Mali, France’s Afghanistan. Key sentence:
Then there’s also the theory that Mali invasion est 2-front war for NATO. Where have I seen that before.
Is this a real thing, or are you just trying to see if we’re paying attention? Could one of these things print out my college girlfriend? It would be nice to see her again.
P.S.: It’s Ed Markey, not Markley.
If you want a plastic girlfriend.
War in Mali is necessary — Clinton has just warned of the risk that Al Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) will attack the United States. They’re only 9,000 miles away, after all. I trust Hill to give us accurate military information. Marital advice, too. Whatever.
I suspect he wants to do more than see her, otherwise a photo would work.
Heard a cogent discussion on her testimony on Benghazi. Short version: Taking responsibility means you resign.
As you say, whatever.
Good riddance to her. Replacement with feckless Kerry raises the bar by 0.00001%. Lesser of evils. /s
I’ve scanned only a little on 3-D printing, but it seems the raw material is plastic. If someone knows better correct me.
I resisted inquiring whether she was “plastic” in the metaphoric sense. You provoke me.
Wow, Fractal, that’s the history in microcosm of all the little people caught between Powers down through the ages. It really makes you want to end all this nonsense. Thanks for the report.
I stand corrected. Here’s another link on 3D printing. Spoiler alert; podcast includes one of those highly annoying TED lectures. Near the beg of the podcast it mentions that plastics, metals and “even human tissue.” Maybe Stepford wives will be on your doorsteps in no time. Seems like it would be cheaper than cloning.
Where is this going? This guy married his plastic doll on — where else — Jerry Springer.
Was she 3D printed? Inquiring minds…
Weapons made from 3-D printing aren’t too reliable, yet.
No, I just like Jerry Springer.
TMI.
Don’t forget the universal application, eCAHN.
Multiple universes can now be printed up to order (or chaos) as wished.
If wishes were 3-D printed, then beggars would each have their own world …
Plastic, metal, flesh and blood … drones, conquest, the universe!
Why settle for old flames? “WE” can have it ALL!
We could even print printers …
“They” say the universe is like unto a brain … it’s merely a question of imprinting. Soon, we will be able to print time itself, then eternity is ours. We will be immortal! We will rule the eons, the quarks, the snarks, we will be “all” … without end …
There will never be a final frontier we can always print more …
Everything is ours and there is more than enough for everyone, each to their own universe! Ah, the bliss, the freedom, the possibilities …
Always good to “see” you, eCAHN.
;~DW
See, the reason for the current out-of-control sex assault epidemic in the military, including the academies, is that women are not trained and conditioned to kill, as men are. The planned hand-to-hand and bayonet training, possibly combined with testosterone treatments, should cure that little problem, according to Dempsey.
You can make plastic magazines that hold many rounds. As I said, I haven’t gone slumming in 3d printer world, but have picked up that machining for guns has to be precise otherwise they blow up in your face.
But my earlier link (21) presents information that sophisticated parts are already being made by big corps. Guessing those are not made by the $2000 3d home printers, but much more expensive ones. However, it’s a matter of time. Ya know, Moore’s law.
Metaphysics is above my pay grade.
Militarization of equality. U.S. has accomplished everything else by using military.
BTW db,
1. Do their talking points get sillier & more divorced from reality by the minute?
2. On a serious note, I ran into an article, on world winning female sports figures, around the time of the Olympics, that argued that no one has documented that testosterone levels have a relationship with anything physical or emotional that women accomplish. IIRC, the subject was related to a woman who was being excluded from some contest based on high level of testosterone. She was accused of doping wh she didn’t do. Subsequent analysis (don’t remember how big the sample was) showed that testosterone levels in women varies greatly and were correlated with nothing.
The “battle of the sexes” made equal, at last, donbacon!
Boyz will be boyz … unless they are gurlz … and vice versa!
A level playing field, finally.
See, guns DO allow everyone to successfully stand their ground.
When there is no “weaker” sex, then all sex will be stronger … or something. (Okay boyz, when gurlz say “NO!” you’d better believe it, they mean it, and the “game” has forever, and for the better, changed. Watch yer asses men, you might get them kicked.)
As eCAHN says, the US military may break things into pieces, but, all things being equal, it makes enterprise free … which is why eCAHN’s “pay grade” assertion is stuff and nonsense, for it is owing to her superb inspiration, this very evening, that the quantum possibilities may now be understood to be the US Enterprise and beamed-up Scotties are capped in quirks!
DW
I don’t know how the drug testosterone affects women, but apparently for men it is a powerful motivator for violence and sex, which combine in sex assaults. (I could speak of my own experience with this dangerous drug, but I’ll save it for Jerry. I never assaulted anybody.)
So my opinion is that on the subject of women in combat (1) women (naturally) don’t understand testosterone and (2) some men are in denial, or their memories are bad. My opinion. Male brains sometimes get over-ridden by the drug. That’s what I think.
Not gonna thumb wrestle you on this subject. I know too little about it.
I do prefer women when they aren’t trying to be men. Women already have so many advantages, including proven better managerial ability, and the ability to multi-task while men can only handle one thing at a time, why push it? Especially into war — a crime?
That never stops me, as has been demonstrated. Francis Bacon said Knowledge is Power, but we aren’t related.
I know, equality is in, but I’m a dinosaur and still open doors for the ladies, even though when I get into the restaurant and sit down the waitress says: “What can I get you guys?” If that’s equality, I don’t like it. But I’m a dinosaur.
I’m a dinosaur as well, db, to old to change me spots.
Humankind, for its very survival, needs the wisdom of women who aren’t trying to be men, truly, db.
Doesn’t seem to be the way “we”, Usians, are “headed”, at the moment.
The exceptions, and we males appreciate who they are, are very much appreciated … which I hope such women may realize.
We are fortunate that a number of such ladies may be found hereabout.
DW
My complaint was pay & promotion. I don’t care about the rest of gender discrimination wh is small potatoes. In my Wall St. career I was sexually harassed once, not in a situation where anything could have appended.
Going off to read. Be well.
I know, DW. Right now I’m trying to get back into fatster’s good graces. *sigh*
I’m with you there. Equal pay & promotion for equal work. Anything less is mindless discrimination and wrong.
There are many jobs in the military that women can do and excel at. Better managers. Multi-taskers. But not at combat. The brutality of closing with and destroying an enemy – uh, uh.
This is a really good post.
Firedoglake: Come for the politics, stay for the deep ontological musing.
New Biblical interpretation: the Tower of Babel story in Genesis may really be about 3D printing!
Thanks ever so much, prostratedragon, for that great music. You’ll find your influence in today’s Break Time, too!
Good links, mafr. Many thanks and . . . Good Morning!
and @ 3, too. Many thanks for bringing in more information on what’s going on behind the scenes in all this. So many agendas, so many motives and so many defenseless human beings placed at extreme risk!
:)
:)
:)
Oh, wow. I hadn’t died and gone to Little Feat heaven in a long time. Thoroughly enjoyed the great re-visit. Thnx, mafr.
x 2, yellowsnapdragon. Yep!
You keep bringing up testosterone as though it is the cause of rape. Do you have a source for that? Here’s a good synopsis you might want to check out.