Thursday News Bucket

18 Comments

1. 

   CabinGirl on September 21, 2006 at 7:11 am

   about the lack of quality drugs these days: The Sun

   HELLRAISER Keith Richards says he has finally given up drugs — because they don’t give him Satisfaction any more.

   The Rolling Stones guitarist complained dealers and chemists have reduced the power of his favourite narcotics.

   And he doesn’t like modern drugs like ecstasy because they “mess with the brain”. Former heroin addict Keith, 62, moaned: “I really think the quality’s gone down.

   “All they do is try and take the high out of everything.

   “I don’t like the way they’re working on the brain area instead of just through the blood system.

   “That’s why I don’t take any of them any more.

   “And you’re talking to a person who knows his drugs.”

   Oh, the irony…

   • 

     Alice on September 21, 2006 at 7:30 am

     The news bucket never fails to break my heart somehow!

     I know how hard it can be to maintain a bad-boy image when the old body just can’t keep up.  
     (She said, wondering if the cookies were all gone)

     • 

       BooMan on September 21, 2006 at 2:32 pm

       that’s what happens when you fall out of a cocunut tree on your head.

2. 

   CabinGirl on September 21, 2006 at 7:18 am

   for the midterm elections: NYT

   Across the board, the poll found marked disenchantment with Congress, highlighting the opportunity that Democrats see to make the argument for a change in leadership and to make the election a national referendum on the performance of the Republican-controlled Congress and Mr. Bush’s tenure. In one striking finding, 77 percent of respondents — including 65 percent of Republicans — said that most members of Congress had not done a good enough job to deserve re-election and that it was time to give new people a chance. That is the highest number of voters who said it was “time for new people” since the fall of 1994.

   “You get some people in there, and they’re in there forever,” said Jan Weaver, an Aberdeen, S.D., resident who described herself as a Republican voter, in a follow-up interview. “They’re so out of touch with reality.”

   In the poll, 50 percent of voters said they would support a Democrat in the fall Congressional election, compared with 35 percent who said they would support a Republican.

   Sounds good, but apparently we still have one pesky little problem:

   But the poll found that Democrats continued to struggle to offer a case for control of government to be turned over to them; only 38 percent of all respondents said the Democrats have a clear plan for how they would run the country, compared with 45 percent who said the Republicans had offered a clear plan.

   Now, I know that the Republicans have a plan: to continue draining the treasury into Halliburton’s pockets and stripping us all of our civil rights and liberties.  DOes that mean I’ll vote for them?  

   Maybe it’s time to start asking a different question in these polls.

3. 

   CabinGirl on September 21, 2006 at 7:46 am

   NOW!  WashPo

   A week after the primary election was plagued by human error and technical glitches, Maryland Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R) called yesterday for the state to scrap its $106 million electronic voting apparatus and revert to a paper ballot system for the November election.

   “When in doubt, go paper, go low-tech,” he said.

   And here are some of the reasons why:

   Many of the problems that marred this month’s primary resulted from human error. Election judges in Baltimore failed to show up, meaning the polls opened late. In Montgomery, voting at nearly all 238 precincts was delayed because officials forgot to distribute plastic cards needed to operate voting machines.

   In Prince George’s, election officials struggled to transmit data electronically from polling places to a central office on election night, delaying the counting process for hours. In the days since, they have also discovered that dozens of memory cards were not counted after the election; some remained locked in voting machines for days.

   Yesterday, county election officials began opening selected machines to locate the missing cards and capture the voting information contained on them.

   Almost unbelievable.

4. 

   Alice on September 21, 2006 at 8:28 am

   I know you’re out there lurking Oui.  Has anybody else noticed how dull the news is getting without Oui?  

   Those Europeans do take long vacations but this is beginning to drag on too long.

   Come back Oui – I miss you.  Cabin and KP are struggling valiantly but those shoes you left behind are hard to fill.

   • 

     CabinGirl on September 21, 2006 at 8:32 am

     I miss Oui too.  (Oui, where are you?)

   • 

     cruz del sur on September 21, 2006 at 2:05 pm

     Yep. This place is not the same without him. Hopefully is on vacations. I have a link for a story that we were looking for a while, and hope he comes back soon so he can read it.

5. 

   Knoxville Progressive on September 21, 2006 at 9:17 am

   and ice sheet, the second largest single store of frozen freshwater in the world, is melting faster than previous estimates, according to a study a study published todayhe British weekly journal Nature.  Researchers found that the rate of Greenland ice loss increased by 250 percent between May 2004 and April 2006 compared with the two years between April 2002 and April 2004.  This result confirms ominous studies published last week and in August on the melting of the Greenland ice sheet.

   NASA’s Atlantis shuttle touched down safely in Florida, ending a twelve-day mission to the space station.

   On Wednesday California announced that it has filed a civil suit against six US and Japanese automakers for their alleged contribution to global warming, a first such legal fight in the United States.

   Discovery of a nearly intact 3.3 million year-old juvenile skeleton is filling an important gap in understanding the evolution of the earliest direct ancestors to humans.

   You’d think the science of something as commonplace as icicles would be well understood, but nature is full of surprises…  Researchers have found that the same mathematical equations can be used to describe the formation of icicles and stalactites in caves, even though the processes by which they form are very different.

   Researchers have found strong evidence that nicotinamide (vitamin B3) may protect against nerve damage in the chronic progressive phase of multiple sclerosis, when the most serious disabilities occur. Their findings appear in a cover article in the September 20 Journal of Neuroscience.

   Chilly congressional reception for Bush global warming plan:  The Bush administration laid out a “strategic plan” for using technology to curb the impact of global warming, reiterating its position that basic scientific research and voluntary actions can curb greenhouse gases.  The 244-page plan, with a 100-year planning horizon, came under attack from both environmentalists and congressional Republicans; even the latter demanded more concrete steps that can be taken today.

   The problem is poop:  The bacterium that has sickened people across the nation and forced growers to destroy spinach crops is so pervasive in the Salinas Valley that virtually every waterway there violates national standards.

   In a setback for the Bush administration, a federal judge rejected a policy to allow logging roads in national forests and reinstated environmental protections put in place by former President Clinton.

   Pumping CO2 underground is one of the most promising solutions for limiting the greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, but doubts have lingered over the permanence of this storage method. A new technique for tracking sequestered CO2 by measuring isotope ratios indicates the CO2 appears to stay put, at least in the locations studied.

   • 

     Knoxville Progressive on September 21, 2006 at 9:18 am

     The first word in the post above is supposed to be “Greenland;” somehow I lost the “Greenl.”

6. 

   idredit on September 21, 2006 at 9:49 am

   That explains it..Bush’s tortured rationale on ‘alternate interrogations’ and that hurried rush to empty secret prisons:

   He had a revolt on his hands. (FT), Financial Times,Uk reports:
   CIA `refused to operate’ secret jails

   The Bush administration had to empty its secret prisons and transfer terror suspects to the military-run detention centre at Guantánamo this month in part because CIA interrogators had refused to carry out further interrogations and run the secret facilities, according to former CIA officials and people close to the programme.
   (snip)

   A steadfast true believer and certifiable delusional, AG Gonzales denies Maher Arar was deported under ‘extaordinary rendition’ policy to Syria where the Canadian government inquiry confirms Arar’s torture.

   Says Gonzales, the U.S. government would never knowingly ship a suspect terrorist to another country if it believed that person would be tortured.

   Never?

   • 

     cruz del sur on September 21, 2006 at 2:09 pm

     Is this the same Gonzales who said something about organ failure? And where did Guantanamo new guests come from? Conect the dotsssssss….

     • 

       idredit on September 21, 2006 at 5:46 pm

       Yep, the same Gonzo.

7. 

   idredit on September 21, 2006 at 11:49 am

   Just in:

   Wal-mart cuts generic drug price to $4. Florida first roll out. Program will be available to the uninsured.

   Wal-Mart Stores Inc. said on Thursday it would slash prices on nearly 300 generic prescription drugs to $4 in the Tampa, Florida, area and expand the plan across Florida and other states next year.

   The world’s largest retailer, which has been hit with accusations that it provides inadequate health care for more than a million U.S. employees, said the program would be available to customers and associates of 65 Wal-Mart pharmacies in the Tampa Bay, Florida, area starting on Friday.

   The plan will then be rolled out to the rest of Florida, home to many..[..]

   Simon, speaking at a press conference held at a Wal-Mart store in Tampa, declined to say how much the program would cost, but said the company could make the changes due to its pricing and distribution strength.

   “We’re in business to make money,” Simon said.

8. 

   dada on September 21, 2006 at 3:01 pm

   Global warming

   From a paper presented at the Drought Conference hosted by Geological Society of America:

   Drought may eclipse Dust Bowl

   Local scientist’s work first to show regional forecasts
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   Those predictions are dire. Between now and 2050, half of the interior West — including Colorado, Arizona, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming — could experience droughts more severe than the 1933-1936 Dust Bowl at any given time, Hoerling said. For comparison, from 1950 to 2005, droughts on average covered 13 percent of the region.

   In addition, Hoerling said the length of a given drought could stretch to 12 years in the coming decades, more than four times the region’s average drought from 1950 to 2005.
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   “In 25 years, there won’t be enough water to meet 2005 demands,” Hoerling said.

   Hoerling said the work has yet to be published and stressed that it is part of an ongoing effort. The study also has found droughts increasing in length and geographic extent in the upper Midwest and along the Eastern Seaboard, but to a lesser extent than the West.
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   The study is based on averaging the results of 42 supercomputer modeling runs from 18 independently developed climate models from around the world. The modeling runs were done in preparation for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s upcoming 2007 report.

   Heat, and not rain or snow, will drive Western drought, scientists say. The climate models disagree as to the region’s future precipitation, averaging almost no change. But the models find common ground with temperature, which they predict will average more than 5 degrees warmer than today in Colorado and neighboring states by 2050.

   More heat means more evaporation, such that it would take 30 percent more rain and snow to compensate. That much rain and snow probably won’t fall, Hoerling said.
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   Complete article HERE

   Hello….Washington?…anybody home?

   Guess not

9. 

   olivia on September 21, 2006 at 7:17 pm

   Reuters Thu Sep 21, 2006

   NEW YORK (Reuters) – President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan said that after the September 11 attacks the United States threatened to bomb his country if it did not cooperate with America’s campaign against the Taliban in Afghanistan.

   Musharraf, in an interview with CBS news magazine show “60 Minutes” that will air on Sunday, said the threat came from Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and was given to Musharraf’s intelligence director.

   “The intelligence director told me that (Armitage) said, ‘Be prepared to be bombed. Be prepared to go back to the Stone Age,'” Musharraf said. “I think it was a very rude remark.”

   (cont’d)

   • 

     CabinGirl on September 21, 2006 at 7:31 pm

     OMG, the Deputy Secretary of State is traditionally supposed to engage in diplomacy, right?

     Sounds like 60 Minutes might be interesting this week.

     • 

       olivia on September 21, 2006 at 7:48 pm

       to coalition of the willing …