Friday, September 15, 2006

This was hottest summer since 1936


The evidence just keeps mounting.....

By Brad Heath
USA TODAY

The USA sweated this year through its hottest summer in 70 years, with temperatures not seen since the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, according to a government report.

From June 1 to Aug. 31, as summer is defined by the National Climatic Data Center, the continental USA had an average temperature of 74.5 degrees, based on readings from hundreds of weather stations nationwide. It was the second-hottest summer temperature the government has recorded since it started keeping track in 1895. The only one warmer — by about two-tenths of a degree — was in 1936.

Nevada had its hottest recorded summer, the report said. Nationwide, the first eight months of 2006 were the warmest January-to-August period on record.

That's likely the result of long-term warming trends and unusual weather patterns that trapped hot air over much of the country this summer, said Jay Lawrimore, chief of the data center's Climate Monitoring Branch. “It's not unprecedented, but the trend is definitely toward warmer weather,” he said Wednesday.

In July, a widespread heat wave caused more than 200 deaths nationwide, including more than 160 in California. The state is now reviewing those deaths to prevent fatalities in future heat waves, spokeswoman Norma Arceo said. The hot weather also intensified a drought in many parts of the Plains and drove record electricity usage.

Lawrimore said temperatures stayed warmer than usual at night in many parts of the country. “It's the 100-degree afternoons that people notice, but more of the country was affected by the high minimum temperatures,” he said.

Wednesday, September 13, 2006

U.S. Military Wanted to Provoke War With Cuba


Kinda makes ya wonder what we will learn a few decades from now about what this administration has been either doing or planning to keep people scared shitless....

N E W Y O R K, May 1, 2001 - In the early 1960s, America's top military leaders reportedly drafted plans to kill innocent people and commit acts of terrorism in U.S. cities to create public support for a war against Cuba.

Code named Operation Northwoods, the plans reportedly included the possible assassination of Cuban émigrés, sinking boats of Cuban refugees on the high seas, hijacking planes, blowing up a U.S. ship, and even orchestrating violent terrorism in U.S. cities.

The plans were developed as ways to trick the American public and the international community into supporting a war to oust Cuba's then new leader, communist Fidel Castro.


America's top military brass even contemplated causing U.S. military casualties, writing: "We could blow up a U.S. ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba," and, "casualty lists in U.S. newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national indignation."

Details of the plans are described in Body of Secrets (Doubleday), a new book by investigative reporter James Bamford about the history of America's largest spy agency, the National Security Agency. However, the plans were not connected to the agency, he notes.


The plans had the written approval of all of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and were presented to President Kennedy's defense secretary, Robert McNamara, in March 1962. But they apparently were rejected by the civilian leadership and have gone undisclosed for nearly 40 years.

"These were Joint Chiefs of Staff documents. The reason these were held secret for so long is the Joint Chiefs never wanted to give these up because they were so embarrassing," Bamford told ABCNEWS.com.

"The whole point of a democracy is to have leaders responding to the public will, and here this is the complete reverse, the military trying to trick the American people into a war that they want but that nobody else wants."

Tuesday, September 12, 2006

Like Jon Stewart says.....


Bush said this in his speech the other night:

"The safety of America depends on the outcome of the battle in the streets of Baghdad,"
If he really believes this then why in the hell don't we have enough troops over there to even fill the Ohio State and Fresno State stadiums on a Saturday afternon for football???????? I mean, come on!!!! If Bush really thinks our safety depends on "winning" in Baghdad, then why hasn't he and that clown Rumsfeld gotten it done after three plus years of death and destruction?
Or, could it be that he really does not believe it? Hmmmmmmm.........And if he doesn't, then the question has to be asked again, "What are we killing so many people for?"
Impeachment anybody?????

More Americans have now died In Iraq than died On 9/11


While President Bush and other Republican politicians spent the day exploiting the memory of those we lost five years ago, the nation overlooked a grim milestone: More Americans have now died in Iraq than died on 9/11. Iraq didn't attack us on that day, and our misguided policy there has now taken more American lives than Al Qaeda.
Here are the numbers: 3,015 Americans have died in Iraq as of September 9.
2,666 of these were military deaths and 349 were civilians.

Keith Olberman lays into Bush

Check this out:

Just as the terrorists have succeeded — are still succeeding — as long as there is no memorial and no construction here at Ground Zero…
So too have they succeeded, and are still succeeding — as long as this government uses 9/11 as a wedge to pit Americans against Americans.
This is an odd point to cite a television program, especially one from March of 1960. But as Disney’s continuing sell-out of the truth (and this country) suggests, even television programs can be powerful things.
And long ago, a series called "The Twilight Zone" broadcast a riveting episode entitled "The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street."
In brief: a meteor sparks rumors of an invasion by extra-terrestrials disguised as humans. The electricity goes out. A neighbor pleads for calm.
Suddenly his car — and only his car — starts. Someone suggests he must be the alien. Then another man’s lights go on.
As charges and suspicion and panic overtake the street, guns are inevitably produced.
An "alien" is shot — but he turns out to be just another neighbor, returning from going for help.
The camera pulls back to a near-by hill, where two extra-terrestrials areseen, manipulating a small device that can jam electricity. The veteran tells his novice that there’s no need to actually attack, that you just turn off a few of the human machines and then, "they pick the most dangerous enemy they can find, and it’s themselves."
And then, in perhaps his finest piece of writing, Rod Serling sums it up with words of remarkable prescience, given where we find ourselves tonight.
"The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices - to be found only in the minds of men. "For the record, prejudices can kill and suspicion can destroy, and a thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all its own — for the children, and the children yet unborn."

When those who dissent are told time and time again — as we will be, if not tonight by the President, then tomorrow by his portable public chorus — that he is preserving our freedom, but that if we use any of it, we are somehow un-American…
When we are scolded, that if we merely question, we have "forgotten the lessons of 9/11"… look into this empty space behind me and the bi-partisanship upon which this administration also did not build, and tell me:
Who has left this hole in the ground?
We have not forgotten, Mr. President.
You have.
May this country forgive you.

Monday, September 11, 2006

The Best War Ever


Check out the great clip to show how far BushCo has brought us....

Sunday, September 10, 2006

Life After the Oil Crash

Fascinating article that lays out in very simple terms the trainwreck we are facing with rising oil demand and decreasing production....


The issue is not one of "running out" so much as it is not having enough to keep our economy running. In this regard, the ramifications of Peak Oil for our civilization are similar to the ramifications of dehydration for the human body. The human body is 70 percent water. The body of a 200 pound man thus holds 140 pounds of water. Because water is so crucial to everything the human body does, the man doesn't need to lose all 140 pounds of water weight before collapsing due to dehydration. A loss of as little as 10-15 pounds of water may be enough to kill him.



In a similar sense, an oil-based economy such as ours doesn't need to deplete its entire reserve of oil before it begins to collapse. A shortfall between demand and supply as little as 10-15 percent is enough to wholly shatter an oil-dependent economy and reduce its citizenry to poverty.