just by posting this. I cried. You're right. So many people simply do not care about anyone but themselves, or perhaps themselves and their immediate families. It is the official philosophy of the Republicans and of those people who are Republican in their hearts but call themselves Democrats. The DLC, the Blue Dogs, and Obama.

Around 2005 and 2006 we ran a peace blog. We wrote a lot of antiwar articles, doing our best to personalize the costs being paid by Americans, its allies, and the Iraqis. I remember some of the articles we wrote.

We wrote one about the insufficient liners for helmets, which caused contrecoup injuries to the brains of soldiers who were caught in the shock wave of a nearby explosion. There was a man in Georgia who made proper liners which cost him about $75 each who was looking for donations to fund his continued work. He gave them free to the Army. One celebrity, I forget who, donated $1million to this work.

We wrote about the incomplete body armor supplied to the troops. It had no sides and offered poor protection to the pelvic area. The insurgents knew this and were taught to aim for these areas. The army would threaten any soldier who bought his own armor, or had his family buy it for him. The manufacturer of the approved armor was also a big time donor to Republican candidates.

We wrote about families had to run bake sales and the like to buy pillows and blankets for the wounded men and women hospitalized at Landstuhl because the Army didn't have enough to go around.

We wrote about a young soldier killed returning to his base with a paper he needed for Naturalization. He had already provided a copy but it was printed on the wrong color of paper.

We also wrote about the illegal American use of white phosphorus against population centers and the horrors, including hideous birth defects ln Iraqi (and some American) children and cancer in adults, caused by American use of artillery shells made out of depleted uranium.

The last thing we did was to list, each and every day, the names of Americans, our allies, and Iraqis who had died that day. This was very difficult to obtain. The Pentagon released as little information as it could, and the dead Iraqis were almost entirely anonymous. We spent several hours a day checking home town news sources and various middle eastern news sources.

Eventually due to our mutual poor health we had to stop and closed down the website.

Now the point of all this. We had a counter on the site that kept track of the number of visitors we got. This counter provided a fair amount of information for most visitor, such as who they were or their IPA, their location, their local time, and their equipment. There were a few which were completely anonymous. It showed that we had quite a few visitors from the government. The CIA checked in about once a month. Halliburton checked in twice, I think. We were also visited by the NSA, the Justice Department, and the Army. Someone from the State Department would check on us from time to time from some unidentified place in the same timezone as Baghdad. These agencies knew we could see their information. Their purpose was intimidation.

Each time we got such a contact my wife would post a blog entry about it and illustrate the entry with a bitmap of the printout from the counter so that everyone who visited us could see for themselves that we were regularly checked on. She would also post entries on a few other peace blogs describing the latest visit. One of the places she did this was here, in DU. Some longtime members may recall this.

As I mentioned, we also got some contacts which were completely anonymous. I suspect these were from the keepers of the databases of dissidents. The blog spoke for itself. We vigorously opposed the war. But we weren't anonymous. Anyone can search on an URL and find out the name and address of the owner.
We still have the same names and address, and it chills me a little bit the government did not destroy this information, but still keeps it accessible.

We are and were then Quakers. Bush hated the Quakers because they had the temerity to oppose his war of conquest in Iraq. We oppose all war, but that didn't matter to Bush. He spied on Quaker meetings and tapped their phones. Our phone acted a little strangely for awhile. We would get clicks during conversations and sometime a noticeably increased delay between picking up the handset to make a call and getting a dial tone.

Thanks, Obama. Yet again you follow in the exact footprints of the criminal who ran things before you. Nice change.

Better utilization of OP's large solid head. For walnuts, I'd use one of my cats, whose head is also quite solid. He doesn't learn, either.

The oil from this oil volcano (I refuse to use leak - my faucet leaks - or spill - I spill from clumsiness now and then) and the highly toxic dispersant that, last I heard, BP was still using in defiance of administration orders to switch to a nominally less toxic one, are in the gulf's loop current. No one is talking about that too much. The loop current is the starting point for the gulf stream which as I'm quite sure OP knows acts like a gigantic conveyor belt. It first goes north up the US Eastern Seaboard (goodbye Outer Banks, Chesapeake Bay, Delmarva Peninsula, and Martha's Vineyard), then past the Canadian Maritime Provinces, Iceland, and the British Isles. At that point the current diffuses into a generalized southerly flow. When this water reaches about 10 degrees north of the equator it turns to the west and ultimately returns to the gulf, where the cycle repeats.

I do not think that all the worlds oceans are in danger from this disaster, and I haven't run across anyone else who thinks so, either. OP has accused those he refers to as "hysterics" of saying that this one event will kill all the world's oceans, but that seems to be his idea alone. I think he is setting up a straw man, and a flimsy one at that; easier to knock down. I'll be honest, OP way of expressing himself leaves me somewhat unsure what his position is, other than that the rest of us need to "sit down and keep still" as Coolidge so condescendingly put it. What I do think is that the Gulf of Mexico will certainly be dead for many years, and that the Caribbean and the North Atlantic are in considerable danger.

Some scientists do believe that we are in the beginning stages of the sixth major extinction event, but they attribute that to global climate change. I am no scientist, but I don't think that is the case. The past great extinctions ranged from about 40% of life on earth to about 90%. We will lose many species as the planet warms, but the species that is in the greatest danger is us. People. Possessors of great brains. but who refuse to use them to do anything meaningful to try and slow down the gradual warming of the earth's biosphere. By meaningful, I mean things that cost money or reduce profits.

How many more billions of profit do BP and Exxon, and all the rest of them, need? And I am using the oil companies just as an example. All corporations exist for the same reason, to maximize immediate gain for the shareholders and satisfy Wall Street expectations, and to avoid costs. That includes paying taxes to the human society which makes their profitable existence possible. It also includes voluntary public spending to try and take some financial initiative to improve human society, and its home. We are all on the same planet together, and it is getting sicker and sicker, and very few seem committed to beginning to restore its health.

The OP took us all to task for being hysterical about some relatively minor catastrophe. It is just one of many. Is OP familiar with the expression "death by a thousand cuts?" I am afraid for our future and our children's and grandchildren's. But I am not hysterical. I am angry at the corporations, and the governments, particularly this one, but others too, which have been captured by the corporations. I am angry at President Obama, for his continuous refusal to defy his corporate masters, and ours. And I am angry at the people who defend what is happening all around us by minimizing its importance.

Let's all watch "American Idol" and NASCAR together, shall we?

The "Drill, Baby, Drill!" crowd are liars. Oil that's pumped out of the Gulf of Mexico or the California coast or Alaska's North Slope is not meant for or reserved for US ccnsumption. It is sold to the highest bidder on the world markets. China gets a lot of it. This would also be true of all the offshore drilling that Obama wants to do from Florida (east and west coasts) all the way up the Atlantic seaboard to New Jersey. We'd take the environmental risk but it would do absolutely nothing to reduce the amount of oil we have to buy.

This was clearly explained during Keith Olbermann's interview with Chris Hayes of the Nation Magazine a couple of weeks ago.



http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/5/4/863...

The Democrats need to say this every time anyone says we need more oil wells off our coasts. That includes when Obama says it. It's also a lie coming from him.

Methane gas is being released with the oil. You've seen the latest video, the one that BP sat on for three weeks, presumably with Obama's consent. At the beginning, the pipe is blowing what looks like steam into the water. That's methane. After a few seconds, mostly oil is coming out, but some methane is visible just below it. The "ice crystals" which clogged the first containment structure were methane hydrate, which forms when methane dissolves in cold water. But a lot of methane is making it to the surface. I have looked and haven't found any estimates. They are having enough trouble figuring out how much oil is coming out of that tube.

Methane is a potent greenhouse gas. According to the EPA it is about 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide.

http://www.epa.gov/methane /

The Cambridge University Press Blog "This Side Of The Pond" has an alarming post about methane as a greenhouse gas.



http://www.cambridgeblog.org/2010/05/oil-c...

Utah is no more representative of the Unites States as a whole than is Mississippi. One couldn't make a determination about any other country in the world if one just looked at North Korea, either. They are the reddest of the red states. The Repugs there just fired Senator Bennett because he wasn't conservative enough, and he was one of the most conservative of all the Senators. The Mormon Church there calls the shots.

I find it unbelievable that the Deseret News found a McClatchy poll which came up with the same results. I suspect that the Deseret News is misrepresenting the McClatchy poll. By the way, the Deseret News is owned by the Church.

http://deseretmediacompanies.com/content/v...

That is the Republican opinion in a nutshell. They don't like that they lost the last Presidential election. So they have resurrected what they did with the last Democratic administration which was do to whatever they could to stop the President from accomplishing any of his goals. A bunch of two year olds whose vocabulary starts and ends with "NO!" The Democrats ought to use that clip of Boehner roaring like a madman, "Hell NO you can't!" in every ad they run this fall.

When a Republican actually does express an opinion other than "NO!", it's usually one of two things. It is a complete lie, such as "Obama death panels will kill Granny" or the current Wall Street reform legislation will guarantee endless future taxpayer funded bailouts of giant Wall Street banks, while the bill does no such thing and actually makes these payments illegal. And, of course, President Obama (try saying that; it's not hard) is a Nazi and a Communist and a Socialist who resembles either Hitler, Mao Zedong, or the Joker, and was born in Mombasa, Kenya back when Mombasa wasn't even in Kenya, who was and still is a Muslim.

The other set of Republican opinions are on topics opposed by the majority of Americans. The majority of Americans want the Public Option or even Single Payer, once they are sure what the terms mean. The Republicans went apoplectic muddying the issues surrounding health care reform until most Americans really didn't understand it and didn't want the mess that finally got passed. Many Republicans (the ones that will talk about it) oppose equal rights for gays (despite the 5th and 14th amendments guaranteeing equal treatment under the law for all Americans.) Many Republicans want everyone to believe in the exact same God they do in the exact same manner they do. Many Republicans want people to be able to buy any kind of gun they want, including military assault rifles, not to mention machine guns, RPGs, and bazookas, with no check to see if the potential gun owner is either insane or a felon, and to be able to carry these guns openly or concealed, and of course loaded. Some Republicans support secession. Most Republicans favor war over peace, even wars which weren't paid for, and decry social spending of any kind except that which helps their own state or district.

But worst of all, nearly all Republicans favor business and its interests over average Americans and theirs. In any conflict between Wall Street and Main Street, as far as Republicans are concerned, Wall Street is vastly more important and will always get their support. Why do you Republican hate ordinary Americans so much?

By the way, it's Democratic Party, not Democrat Party, a concept which seems too complex for most Republicans to grasp. Notice I didn't call your party Repukes or Repugnicans, as I sometimes do here

Besides, whenever my wife hears a Republican "idea" she gets very peevish. I and our cats all have to duck for cover and hide out for awhile. Just kidding, dear.

It brought tears to my eyes as I read it aloud to my wife.

Around the time you were shot, we had a peace blog. One of the things I did every day was to look up the names of Americans and Iraqis (and occasionally others) who had been killed. I would list these names, and, if American, the units they were assigned to. I would try to find out how they had died, Americans and Iraqis alike I spent hours going behind the terse and often inaccurate information provided by the Defense Department. For Americans, home town newspapers were often a good source. For Iraqis, it was much harder. I used Al Jazeera and other middle east sources. There were no Iraqi news sources in English. I could get only an occasional name, usually if the person who had been killed had been some sort of VIP, but mostly I was forced to refer to numbers of Iraqis killed in a bomb attack or shot on the street or the number of bodies found in a river or a field.

We kept the blog going for a little over a year, but eventually our health problems forced us to give it up. There were, by the time we quit, several sites dedicated to listing Americans who had been killed and a couple that also showed Americans who had been wounded as well. But no one that I was aware of tried to do the same for Iraqis.

I agree with you entirely that the Iraqis who fought against us viewed us as invaders and occupiers. They were defending their land just like we would defend ours against a foreign invader. When we finally leave there, which I understand is supposed to begin later this year, we will leave owing them so much. We wrecked their country. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis died because of us, either directly or indirectly. Millions are refugees. Reparations will help repair the damage to the country, but nothing can repair the vast human cost they incurred because Bush and his gang of neo-cons thought it was America's new manifest destiny to conquer and occupy Iraq forever because of its oil reserves and its geographical location in the center of the middle east.

When I was eighteen, in 1971, I enlisted in the Air Force. I did this because I had no real idea what the military was doing in Vietnam and because my father, an ex-marine, more or less insisted on it. The war in Vietnam was winding down at that point, so I was not sent there. I was a personnel specialist, and my job was processing reassignments of personnel. My base, which had B-52s, participated in the massive strategic bombings of North Vietnam during the summer and fall of 1972, which was called Operation Linebacker. I was one of several personnel specialists who processed the orders and other paperwork for the aircrews for the planes we sent. Not all of them returned.

As time went by, I began to feel very guilty about my admittedly small role in this operation. A year later, I left active service and became a reservist. I did a lot of reading about the war, to try and understand how it began and how the United States took it over. From that time to now I have opposed all wars. If you dig deep enough into the supposed justification for any war, you will find a foundation of lies, or that someone in the military industrial complex has big moneymaking opportunity in another country.

Thank you so much for your letter. I feel, in my soul, that somehow the person to whom you wrote it will become aware of it. The Iraqi press does publish letter like yours when they become aware of them.

Good luck to you.

What the fuck has gotten into the Obama administration, anyway? This requirement is worse than Republican, it is inhuman. Standardized tests only measure how well the teacher has taught the test. That is not teaching. Any idiot can teach a test. It takes a good teacher to get ideas and dreams into a child's mind. It takes an even better teacher to teach kids from severely disadvantaged backgrounds, where survival takes precedence over algebra or history.

Forcing sick and dying kids to take these tests is cruel. Nowhere else that I can think of is the pass/fail standard 100%.

There is another provision in NCLB that doesn't get much mention. High schools are required to furnish the names and addresses of all students to military recruiters, unless the parents specifically oppose this in writing for their child, which they have to do each semester. Children whose parents do oppose this are often punished in various different ways by their schools. I suppose there is a 100% mandate for this too.

Obama should be ashamed of himself. Oh, I forgot. He is a complete sellout to big business, and a liar. No shame, no embarrassment. To think I supported him last year. Years ago I vowed never to vote for any Republican ever again, under any circumstances. If Obama runs in 2012, I will have to sit that one out. After all, he's a Republican too.

Those have been there since the 1960's. California took this to court and the eventual decision was no new rigs off the coast. I can't remember if this was just for California or the entire pacific coast. There wouldn't be any undersea oil off Oregon or Washington anyway. The geology is wrong. That's a subduction zone where ocean sea floor is being driven under the continental land mass.

In 1967 a section of sea floor near or perhaps under a rig blew out and a lot of oil was spilled between Carpinteria and Sam ta Barbara. It took years to clean. To this day one cannot walk barefooted along the Carpinteria State Beach without having to clean oily blotches off his or her feet. Some of this is residual oil from the 1967 event, and some is naturally seepage into the beach sand.

These teabaggers and the Republicans who support them are truly enemies of this country. They try to intimidate the freely elected Democratic congress from doing its work. They threaten both Congress and the President with violence. Aren't they the very people whom DHS should be hunting down and prosecuting. I don't like the Patriot Act, and all the potential for abuse of our rights it encompasses, but there are tools there that need to be used to protect our government, whom we elected to clean up the mess left behind by eight years of Cheney and Bush, and six years of their congress.

I have said this before. They remind me of the SA, the Sturm Abteilung (Storm Troopers), the thugs who helped Hitler take and consolidate his power until 1935, at which time he decided he didn't need them any longer, had their leaders killed, and broke them up. Our storm troopers are lot less organized. They don't wear uniforms, and they have no leader like Ernst Roehm. Their messages are garbled, but they hate, and that hate shines through. And they are dangerous.

They have always been dangerous. The militias which were so prominent in the 1990's hated, in addition to African Americans, Jews, and those whom they called "mud people," Federal Agents, particularly employees of the IRS and various other enforcement agencies. They were equally desirable targets.

My wife worked for the IRS for awhile. During her tenure there, her own office was tear gassed on one occasion. Another time someone left a bag of human feces inside a door with a combination lock. There were multiple bomb threats made by phone. Incoming mail had to be carefully handled because tax protesters would often put used razor blades in envelopes and dead animals in boxes. In her district, which comprised Los Angeles, it was policy not to hire armed guards.

The former location of the office where she worked had been fire bombed and completely destroyed a couple of years before she was stationed there. Another IRS office was bombed and destroyed during the time she worked for them. The bomb was timed to go off when employees would have been present, but it went off early and killed a janitor.

Once when she was training downtown, a real bomb was found in the mail room and the entire building was evacuated. My wife, who has MS and was being trained on the fifth floor, found going down five flights of stairs particularly difficult. They were told to walk down the stairs quietly, no talking, because no one was sure how much vibration it would tale to set off the bomb.

These militia members were largely in the open and no one did much about them. Now they are in the open again, and history is repeating itself. The administration seems to have no problem with people carrying weapons, including assault weapons to places where the President is. The Capitol police are told by Congressmen who were abused by protesters, including one who was spat upon, which is battery, not to arrest them. Several congressional field offices and democratic party offices have been vandalized. Are the local police trying to find those who did this, or have they been told, quietly, to drop it? If these militants aren't found and severely dealt with then they all will feel free to speak and act with increasing violence until government employees are killed. This is unacceptable. The teabaggers aren't harmless kooks. They have been, in essence, given permission to hurt those whose job it is to run our government for us. It must be made clear to them, through vigorous enforcement action, that they have no such permission.

I assume the picture is a Photoshop job. Great work!