News Thread

[Shroom Man 777]

Now that's a true Ninja Turtle!

I should make a character based on him...

Pizza Hutt!

[Malchus]

Bush, you motherfucker!

Bush sneaks through host of laws to undermine Obama
The lame-duck Republican team is rushing through radical measures, from coal waste dumping to power stations in national parks, that will take months to overturn, reports Paul Harris in New York
Comments (…)
Paul Harris
The Observer, Sunday 14 December 2008
Article history

After spending eight years at the helm of one of the most ideologically driven administrations in American history, George W. Bush is ending his presidency in characteristically aggressive fashion, with a swath of controversial measures designed to reward supporters and enrage opponents.

By the time he vacates the White House, he will have issued a record number of so-called 'midnight regulations' - so called because of the stealthy way they appear on the rule books - to undermine the administration of Barack Obama, many of which could take years to undo.

Dozens of new rules have already been introduced which critics say will diminish worker safety, pollute the environment, promote gun use and curtail abortion rights. Many rules promote the interests of large industries, such as coal mining or energy, which have energetically supported Bush during his two terms as president. More are expected this week.

America's attention is focused on the fate of the beleaguered car industry, still seeking backing in Washington for a multi-billion-dollar bail-out. But behind the scenes, the 'midnight' rules are being rushed through with little fanfare and minimal media attention. None of them would be likely to appeal to the incoming Obama team.

The regulations cover a vast policy area, ranging from healthcare to car safety to civil liberties. Many are focused on the environment and seek to ease regulations that limit pollution or restrict harmful industrial practices, such as dumping strip-mining waste.

The Bush moves have outraged many watchdog groups. 'The regulations we have seen so far have been pretty bad,' said Matt Madia, a regulatory policy analyst at OMB Watch. 'The effects of all this are going to be severe.'

Bush can pass the rules because of a loophole in US law allowing him to put last-minute regulations into the Code of Federal Regulations, rules that have the same force as law. He can carry out many of his political aims without needing to force new laws through Congress. Outgoing presidents often use the loophole in their last weeks in office, but Bush has done this far more than Bill Clinton or his father, George Bush sr. He is on track to issue more 'midnight regulations' than any other previous president.

Many of these are radical and appear to pay off big business allies of the Republican party. One rule will make it easier for coal companies to dump debris from strip mining into valleys and streams. The process is part of an environmentally damaging technique known as 'mountain-top removal mining'. It involves literally removing the top of a mountain to excavate a coal seam and pouring the debris into a valley, which is then filled up with rock. The new rule will make that dumping easier.

Another midnight regulation will allow power companies to build coal-fired power stations nearer to national parks. Yet another regulation will allow coal-fired stations to increase their emissions without installing new anti-pollution equipment.

The Environmental Defence Fund has called the moves a 'fire sale of epic size for coal'. Other environmental groups agree. 'The only motivation for some of these rules is to benefit the business interests that the Bush administration has served,' said Ed Hopkins, a director of environmental quality at the Sierra Club. A case in point would seem to be a rule that opens up millions of acres of land to oil shale extraction, which environmental groups say is highly pollutant.

There is a long list of other new regulations that have gone onto the books. One lengthens the number of hours that truck drivers can drive without rest. Another surrenders government control of rerouting the rail transport of hazardous materials around densely populated areas and gives it to the rail companies.

One more chips away at the protection of endangered species. Gun control is also weakened by allowing loaded and concealed guns to be carried in national parks. Abortion rights are hit by allowing healthcare workers to cite religious or moral grounds for opting out of carrying out certain medical procedures.

A common theme is shifting regulation of industry from government to the industries themselves, essentially promoting self-regulation. One rule transfers assessment of the impact of ocean-fishing away from federal inspectors to advisory groups linked to the fishing industry. Another allows factory farms to self-regulate disposal of pollutant run-off.

The White House denies it is sabotaging the new administration. It says many of the moves have been openly flagged for months. The spate of rules is going to be hard for Obama to quickly overcome. By issuing them early in the 'lame duck' period of office, the Bush administration has mostly dodged 30- or 60-day time limits that would have made undoing them relatively straightforward.

Obama's team will have to go through a more lengthy process of reversing them, as it is forced to open them to a period of public consulting. That means that undoing the damage could take months or even years, especially if corporations go to the courts to prevent changes.

At the same time, the Obama team will have a huge agenda on its plate as it inherits the economic crisis. Nevertheless, anti-midnight regulation groups are lobbying Obama's transition team to make sure Bush's new rules are changed as soon as possible. 'They are aware of this. The transition team has a list of things they want to undo,' said Madia.
Final reckoning

Bush's midnight regulations will:

• Make it easier for coal companies to dump waste from strip-mining into valleys and streams.

• Ease the building of coal-fired power stations nearer to national parks.

• Allow people to carry loaded and concealed weapons in national parks.

• Open up millions of acres to mining for oil shale.

• Allow healthcare workers to opt out of giving treatment for religious or moral reasons, thus weakening abortion rights.

• Hurt road safety by allowing truck drivers to stay at the wheel for 11 consecutive hours.

Dammit, as much as I expected this from a fucker like him it's still shocking. A big fuck you to Obama just before he leaves by pulling something that'd make a fucking Captain Planet villain proud. If it weren't sadly real it would be like something from a cartoon. The fuck, Bush?! You just couldn't leave with some semblance of dignity could you, you shithead.

[Shroom Man 777]

Looting and polluting is not the way, you and President-Elect Obama have to say, The Power is Yours!

Bush: You'll pay for this, President-Elect Obama!

These guys are TRUE patriots! Not like the democrats who are WEAK! WEAK WEAK WHAK WHAK WHOK WHOK WHOK WHOR WHOR WHOR WHOR WHORE WHORE WHORE WHORE WHORES WHORES WHORES WHORES WHORES WHORES WHORES!

SPARTAFREEDOMERICA!

am i rite?

*ducks from shoes*

[Invictus]

Cheney Beckons Obama to the Dark Side

Vice President Cheney revels in his "Darth Vader" nickname, frequently joking that his wife says it humanizes him.

Yesterday, in two interviews, Cheney encouraged President-Elect Obama to come to the dark side.

After acknowledging his role in approving the waterboarding of detainees, Cheney urged Obama in an ABC News interview to reconsider his "campaign rhetoric" and instead "retain the tools that have been so essential in defending the nation for the last seven and a half years."

He also said the prison at Guantanamo Bay should stay open as long as there is a war on terror -- which, since there will always be terror, could mean forever.

In a second interview, with right-wing radio host Rush Limbaugh, Cheney boasted of having strengthened executive branch powers and made a prediction: "I think the Obama administration is not likely to cede that authority back to the Congress. I think they'll find that given a challenge they face, they'll need all the authority they can muster. . . .

"[M]y guess is that once they get here and they're faced with the same problems we deal with every day," Cheney said, "they will appreciate some of the things we've put in place."

Maybe you expected some regrets? Dream on.

"Regrets?" asked ABC's Jonathan Karl.

"Oh, not a lot, at this stage," Cheney replied. "I think I'll have a chance to reflect on that after I get out of here and see whether or not anything immediately comes to mind. I think given the circumstances we've had to deal with, I think we've done pretty well."

Cheney didn't even share his boss's arguably insincere regret that the pre-war intelligence about Saddam Hussein's possession of weapons of mass destruction was flawed.

Unlike his boss, Cheney bluntly acknowledged that the president would have taken the country to war anyway.

[Ford Prefect]

It's like Dick Cheney revels in being evil. I'm surprised he didn't grow a moustache to stroke.

[Magister Militum]

Oh, blatantly unconstitutional, immoral, fear mongering Dick Cheney, you rascal you. He's like the Nixon of our generation.

[Malchus]

SHRUEM!!! This has your madness written all over it! Explain yourself!

'Viagra lure' for Afghan warlords

[Shroom Man 777]

FROD would tell the CIA it is a stupid idea and they would cut it out.

(to be frair the cia has had many shit ideas iraqi wmd reports lulz am i rite )

But, fuck me, the notion of a Afghan warlord testing the Viagra and, upon obtaining engorged penises, nodding approvingly and proceeding to divulge information to American agents... mang! Oh, mang!

Comix! CIA will do that.

With OrGazmo!

[Invictus]

Vladmir Putin's legend continues to grow.

But in this way?

MOSCOW (AFP) — Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's office moved on Friday to quash claims he attended a mystery concert featuring ABBA lookalikes singing to him from behind a veil at a military-style compound.

Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov reacted after the London-based Bjorn Again, a long-established act that imitates 1970s pop super-group ABBA, said it had put on a show, cloaked in secrecy, for Putin, seven male guests and a woman who may have been the premier's wife.

"I can tell you officially and for sure Vladimir Putin never took part in any concert of the kind. He wasn't there," Peskov said.

However the musicians' manager, Rod Stephen, said he was in little doubt about whom the concert was for, and one of the band's singers said she saw Putin himself at the performance.

"It was quite obvious where Mr Putin was sitting," Aileen McLaughlin, who doubles for blonde ABBA vocalist Agnetha Faltskog, told AFP by phone from London.

"I got a glimpse of his face in the lights."

Stephen, also speaking by phone from London, said the band had been told beforehand that the show was for Putin.

"It was categorically stated and had been alluded to in the week leading up to the event," Stephen said.

The description offered by performers put a colourful twist on the mythology around the former KGB agent and ex-president, who has sternly rebuffed media incursions into his private life and denied claims of marital strife.

McLaughlin described a nine-hour drive through icy countryside to a military-style compound where the ABBA foursome were put up in barrack-like accommodation and shared a canteen with Russian soldiers.

The group was taken to a small theatre where they performed before Putin -- dressed in dinner jacket and bow tie -- together with fellow guests obscured by a gauze curtain arrangement, she said.

"Although there were so few people, from the beginning they made us feel very welcome, applauding 'Bravo!' and enjoying the performance, swinging their arms and clapping and joining in," she said.

She described as "a bit bizarre" the arrangements to obscure the audience from the performers as well as the intense security in which the band were under the permanent gaze of a minder and armed guards patrolling nearby.

But referring to the gauze curtain, McLaughlin added: "It was obviously for their discretion."

The band were warned in advance not to try to speak to the audience or leave the stage and Putin made no attempt to speak to them afterwards, instead going off to watch fireworks, she said.

EDIT: On the other hand, Barack Obama is tired of your motherfucking shit.

[Shroom Man 777]

I think Vladimir Putin is one of the greatest people on Earth, and that only a few other living people - like Joseph Stalin - exceed him in awesomeness.

[Magister Militum]

I didn't think Putin was into ABBA, let alone ABBA lookalikes who performs in military compounds while litterally at gunpoint. I guess that's the enigma that is Putin.

Oh, and Obama has one hell of a potty mouth.

[Shroom Man 777]

Coral reefs control the weather! GAIA THEORY!

This is old, but man this is totally cool stuff!

When the temperature soars, coral reefs might cool off by creating their own clouds.

Research from the Great Barrier Reef off the Australian coast shows that corals are packed full of the chemical dimethyl sulphide, or DMS. When released into the atmosphere, DMS helps clouds to form, which could have a large impact on the local climate.

In the air, DMS is transformed into an aerosol of tiny particles on which water vapour can condense to form clouds. This sulphur compound is also produced in large amounts by marine algae and gives the ocean its distinctive smell. Algae play a vital part in regulating Earth's climate, but no one had looked at whether coral reefs might have a similar role.

Graham Jones of the Southern Cross University in Lismore, Australia, and colleagues measured DMS concentrations in corals in the Great Barrier Reef and its surrounding water. They found that the mucus exuded by the coral contained the highest concentrations of DMS so far recorded from any organism. A layer rich in DMS formed at the sea surface above the reef, where it was picked up by the wind.

"Although globally the emission of DMS from the Great Barrier Reef is not huge, on a regional basis it is very significant," says Jones.
Missing link

The big question now is what effect this will have on the climate. "The coral is a concentrated source of DMS, which could affect the formation of clouds in that region," says Peter Liss, an environmental chemist and DMS expert at the University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK.

The Australian team plans to study the impact of the reef and other corals on local climate over the next few years. "We don't know how the DMS emitted by the coral relates to cloudiness and the radiative climate over the reef," says Jones. "That's the missing link."

But their findings help to solve a 30-year puzzle. Surveys in the 1970s found very high concentrations of aerosol particles in the air above the Great Barrier Reef. The coral was thought to be the source, but the mechanism by which the reef might have caused the aerosol count to soar was not known. "They didn't know about DMS in the 1970s," says Jones.
Gaia-like feedback

The research also raises another intriguing possibility: that coral can use a Gaia-like feedback mechanism to regulate the amount of sunlight they are exposed to. The "Gaia theory" is that life on Earth regulates its environment to keep itself healthy.

In lab experiments, Jones and his team showed that corals produce more DMS when the symbiotic algae inside their tissues become stressed by high temperatures or UV radiation. If this DMS seeds more clouds, the coral could have evolved a way to reduce the water temperature or UV exposure. "We've got a long way to go to conclusively demonstrate this, but we've got a lot of ammunition," says Jones.

For 20 years, scientists have been hunting for evidence that free-floating marine algae can operate a DMS-dependent feedback mechanism to dampen global warming's effects. Because reefs are a static source of DMS, it might be easier to show an effect, says Jones. "Coral reefs would be a great place to show Gaia in action," he says. "This is the first time that processes going on in coral reefs are being connected to climatic processes."

GAIA THE SPIRIT OF THE EARTH!

[Malchus]

I was just looking through the BBC's news site when I saw this article about British and French ballistic missile subs colliding.

I mean, holy crap! I can see how they didn't detect each other since missile subs are supposed to sneak around quietly, and because British and French submarine patrol areas would likely overlap. But, damn, you don't expect stuff like this to happen except in films or novels. Subs and civilian ships, sure. But two subs carrying nuclear missiles? Damn.

[Shroom Man 777]

Life imitates SDN World - OH SHIT!

At least the French GSG9 or something, or the British MI6, didn't detain the other nation's submarine crew and engage them in homoerotic interrogations.

[Shroom Man 777]

We are the Reagan Youth, Sieg Heil!

Thanks to Vic.

IMPERIAL, Calif. — Ten minutes into arrant mayhem in this town near the Mexican border, and the gunman, a disgruntled Iraq war veteran, has already taken out two people, one slumped in his desk, the other covered in blood on the floor.

The responding officers — eight teenage boys and girls, the youngest 14 — face tripwire, a thin cloud of poisonous gas and loud shots — BAM! BAM! — fired from behind a flimsy wall. They move quickly, pellet guns drawn and masks affixed.

“United States Border Patrol! Put your hands up!” screams one in a voice cracking with adolescent determination as the suspect is subdued.

It is all quite a step up from the square knot.

The Explorers program, a coeducational affiliate of the Boy Scouts of America that began 60 years ago, is training thousands of young people in skills used to confront terrorism, illegal immigration and escalating border violence — an intense ratcheting up of one of the group’s longtime missions to prepare youths for more traditional jobs as police officers and firefighters.

“This is about being a true-blooded American guy and girl,” said A. J. Lowenthal, a sheriff’s deputy here in Imperial County, whose life clock, he says, is set around the Explorers events he helps run. “It fits right in with the honor and bravery of the Boy Scouts.”

The training, which leaders say is not intended to be applied outside the simulated Explorer setting, can involve chasing down illegal border crossers as well as more dangerous situations that include facing down terrorists and taking out “active shooters,” like those who bring gunfire and death to college campuses. In a simulation here of a raid on a marijuana field, several Explorers were instructed on how to quiet an obstreperous lookout.

“Put him on his face and put a knee in his back,” a Border Patrol agent explained. “I guarantee that he’ll shut up.”

One participant, Felix Arce, 16, said he liked “the discipline of the program,” which was something he said his life was lacking. “I want to be a lawyer, and this teaches you about how crimes are committed,” he said.

Cathy Noriega, also 16, said she was attracted by the guns. The group uses compressed-air guns — known as airsoft guns, which fire tiny plastic pellets — in the training exercises, and sometimes they shoot real guns on a closed range.

“I like shooting them,” Cathy said. “I like the sound they make. It gets me excited.”

If there are critics of the content or purpose of the law enforcement training, they have not made themselves known to the Explorers’ national organization in Irving, Tex., or to the volunteers here on the ground, national officials and local leaders said. That said, the Explorers have faced problems over the years. There have been numerous cases over the last three decades in which police officers supervising Explorers have been charged, in civil and criminal cases, with sexually abusing them.

Several years ago, two University of Nebraska criminal justice professors published a study that found at least a dozen cases of sexual abuse involving police officers over the last decade. Adult Explorer leaders are now required to take an online training program on sexual misconduct.

Many law enforcement officials, particularly those who work for the rapidly growing Border Patrol, part of the Homeland Security Department, have helped shape the program’s focus and see it as preparing the Explorers as potential employees. The Explorer posts are attached to various agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation and local police and fire departments, that sponsor them much the way churches sponsor Boy Scout troops.

“Our end goal is to create more agents,” said April McKee, a senior Border Patrol agent and mentor at the session here.

Membership in the Explorers has been overseen since 1998 by an affiliate of the Boy Scouts called Learning for Life, which offers 12 career-related programs, including those focused on aviation, medicine and the sciences.

But the more than 2,000 law enforcement posts across the country are the Explorers’ most popular, accounting for 35,000 of the group’s 145,000 members, said John Anthony, national director of Learning for Life. Since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, many posts have taken on an emphasis of fighting terrorism and other less conventional threats.

“Before it was more about the basics,” said Johnny Longoria, a Border Patrol agent here. “But now our emphasis is on terrorism, illegal entry, drugs and human smuggling.”

The law enforcement posts are restricted to those ages 14 to 21 who have a C average, but there seems to be some wiggle room. “I will take them at 13 and a half,” Deputy Lowenthal said. “I would rather take a kid than possibly lose a kid.”

The law enforcement programs are highly decentralized, and each post is run in a way that reflects the culture of its sponsoring agency and region. Most have weekly meetings in which the children work on their law-enforcement techniques in preparing for competitions. Weekends are often spent on service projects.

Just as there are soccer moms, there are Explorers dads, who attend the competitions, man the hamburger grill and donate their land for the simulated marijuana field raids. In their training, the would-be law-enforcement officers do not mess around, as revealed at a recent competition on the state fairgrounds here, where a Ferris wheel sat next to the police cars set up for a felony investigation.

Their hearts pounding, Explorers moved down alleys where there were hidden paper targets of people pointing guns, and made split-second decisions about when to shoot. In rescuing hostages from a bus taken over by terrorists, a baby-faced young girl screamed, “Separate your feet!” as she moved to handcuff her suspect.

In a competition in Arizona that he did not oversee, Deputy Lowenthal said, one role-player wore traditional Arab dress. “If we’re looking at 9/11 and what a Middle Eastern terrorist would be like,” he said, “then maybe your role-player would look like that. I don’t know, would you call that politically incorrect?”

Authenticity seems to be the goal. Imperial County, in Southern California, is the poorest in the state, and the local economy revolves largely around the criminal justice system. In addition to the sheriff and local police departments, there are two state prisons and a large Border Patrol and immigration enforcement presence.

“My uncle was a sheriff’s deputy,” said Alexandra Sanchez, 17, who joined the Explorers when she was 13. Alexandra’s police uniform was baggy on her lithe frame, her airsoft gun slung carefully to the side. She wants to be a coroner.

“I like the idea of having law enforcement work with medicine,” she said. “This is a great program for me.”

And then she was off to another bus hijacking.

Goddamn this is great stuff! No matter how I satirize America in Comix, reality never fails to fuck me in the ass without any lube - ALL THE TIME!

I love the USSA!

[Magister Militum]

“I like shooting them,” Cathy said. “I like the sound they make. It gets me excited.”

If that isn't the calling card of a sociopath then I don't know what is.

Honestly, all this bullshit about private citizens guarding the borders is fucking pissing me off. It's one thing to be genuinely concerned about border security, especially in light of the fact that Mexico can't keep their shit together when it comes to the drug wars, but its an entirely different thing to take it such levels of absurdity like this. You know, if these guys are that concened with things such as illegal immigration, then why not, I don't know, reform the immigration process so that people wouldn't even need to immigrate illegally (if that isn't too much of a novelty)? Of course, I'm pretty sure these guys are also the same nativist assholes who would oject to said reform anyways.

[Siege]

If that isn't the calling card of a sociopath then I don't know what is.

That's exaggerating quite a bit--I know plenty of easily excitable people who like firing guns at practice targets primarily for the big boom they make, and apart from their fixation with gunpowder they're all perfectly adjusted reasonable people.

I do agree that this Explorer schtick is crazy and bizarre though. Seriously, fourteen year olds hunting gunmen through tripwire and 'poison gas'? That sounds like it came out of the training manual of the Iranian Republican Guard, not like something I'd associate with the Boy Scouts or similar organizations.

[Heretic]

As much as people made fun of him, I liked some of his songs...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/8119993.stm

RIP Michael Jackson.

[Siege]

The king is dead. Long live the king.

[Czernobog]

RIP.

[Shroom Man 777]

I feel guilty for referencing him in one of Kamin's Comix character threads. I'm sure that didn't help any bit at all.

[Mobius 1]

I was flipping through the radio last night, and every single station was playing his music. Pretty sad.

[Magister Militum]

A damn shame he went so early too, especially since he was apparently preparing for a major comeback.

[Peregrin]

I'm a bit surprised that there hasn't been any talk here about the riots following the rigged election in Iran... what's everybody's opinion on this?

Me, I'm pleasantly surprised by the stuff about the protests having been coordinated mostly from internet social networking sites, I feel like saying that those 1990s promises of the 'net radically changing society for the better finally bear fruit beyond making it easier to discover weird crap. On the other hand, I still have no idea how all this is going to end and even if this ends with a victory for Moussavi I don't know how much he's going to change. Isn't the Iranian political system extremely convoluted with a lot of different power factors?

[TUFFGUY]

Walter Cronkite is dead... a great loss but at least he leaves a long lifetime of achievements

R.I.P

http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2 ... rman-dies/