Obama Quietly Signs Abusive Spy Bill He Once Vowed to Eliminate

This move extends the life of the warrant-less spying for 5 years, meaning nobody knows who will be in charge after the Obama presidency ends in 4 years.  The ACLU sued to challenge the law’s constitutionality.  Ron Wyden commented “This is the last opportunity for the next five years for the Congress to exercise a modest measure of real oversight over this intelligence surveillance law.”, but his proposed amendment was shot down, along with one by Jeff Merkley.  Here is a record of how the Senate voted on the bill.  Be sure to let your Senator know what you think of their vote.

Sudoku made easy

A mathematicians puzzle, what is the minimum number of clues in a Sudoku puzzle is required to produce a unique result?  Someone spent years trying to solve it.  The number is 17.  See this article to discover how they figured it out.

There are exactly 6, 670, 903, 752, 021, 072, 936, 960 possible solutions to Sudoku (about 10^21) . That’s far more than can be checked in a reasonable period of time.

Best in Comedy

If I need a laugh, Dave Barry has never failed to provide one, his almost-true commentary on relationships is always spot-on.  Witness the dialog between Roger and Elaine.

FISA Secret Government

You Are Being Watched, FISA was about to expire, but in a bizarre bipartisan display of unity in the US Senate and House, it will continue.  I don't know what motivates the sickness that is FISA, but despite amendments offered by Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley to get a modicum of protection for civil rights, the House, Senate, and President Obama all want it to continue operating in total secrecy.  This act is opposed by the ACLU as being unconstitutional and a violation of the 4th Amendment (Illegal Search on innocent citizens).

Shame on Dianne Feinstein, Harry Reid, and President Obama, this is a dark day for US Citizens.  Thanks to Wyden and Merkley for standing up for us.

Those we lost in 2012

NBC News had a video compilation of deaths in 2012.  Ravi Shankar, Dick Clark, Andy Griffith, Jack Klugman, Whitney Houston, Dave Brubeck, Ernest Borgnine (60 YEARS ACTING!) and so many other icons.  We lost some of the greats.  May they Rest In Peace.

Went to see the Doctor

I wasn't feeling all that great so I went to see the doctor today.  "Doc, I've had the worst cold of my life for the last week, what can you do?".  He said "First, sign this assignment of liability in case you made one of my other patients sick while you were waiting the last three hours".  "OK, OK, but what can you do for my cold"?

He said "This week only I've got a special going on a drug from Pfizermerckglaxoamgen, only $49.99 for a 5 day supply.  You won't find a better deal anywhere in town on this blockbuster!". 

"OK, but what's it gonna do for my cold?". 

"It'll knock it out in no time, maybe, and if you happen to have malaria it'll take care of that too.". 

"OK doc but what if it doesn't help?". 

"I'll have a new drug on special next week, so hang on until then."

"Will do Doc, any side effect from this drug?". 

"If you have high blood pressure you'll probably have a stroke, but I have a promotion going on stroke medication, so no worries.  If you have liver or kidney disease you'll probably need a transplant.  I don't remember if your insurance covers that, check with my receptionist."

"Gee, thanks Doc."

Most Valuable Senator Merkley

Senator Jeff Merkley has surprised everyone by being both progressive and practical and as WW reports, that earned him an award for "Most Valuable Progressive Senator in 2012" by The Nation magazine, joining such notables as Bernie Sanders and Sherrod Brown.  I congratulate him for his hard work and wisdom.

Disable your Autocorrect

Little did I know. there is a site for the best phone auto-correct bloopers.  BuzzFeed collected some great ones, I laughed for 5 minutes or so..

Oregon Coast

Pictures from years past, in Yachats and Florence.

Genetically Engineered Salmon for dinner?

The FDA has just released a report (it had been held up by the Obama administration for months, but finally they relented) concluding that Genetically Engineered Salmon are good for you, an initial step in clearing the way for commercialization.  These fish have been "tweaked" with a hormone here, a hormone there and voila, they grow faster and bigger than wild salmon in a year, so if approval comes in 2013, you could be eating them in 2014, hormones and all.

Needless to say, Consumer Groups are spreading the alarm, as well as demanding that the product be clearly labeled, otherwise it could end up on your table and you might not know it.  The Alaska congressional delegation is particularly alarmed, joined by many others.  The company AquaBounty is being acquired by a privately held company Intrexon, and if you want to see what they're up to, see their web site, it scares me to death.

The FDA has not done any independent tests nor studied the long term effects of eating this, nor done any research on what would happen if the farm-raised fish escaped into the wild.  They are relying almost entirely on the story they're being fed by the company hoping to cash in.  The company plans to grow the fish in Panama (I'm not kidding), a sure-fire way to escape regulatory oversight.  If this makes it to market, we're on a slippery one-way slope with no way back.

US Defense 2013 Budget

Congress passed the House and Senate committee reconciliation of the 2013 Defense Budget.  It goes to President Obama who had threatened to Veto it, but  nobody thinks he really will.  Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden voted against it in the Senate, as did Peter DeFazio in the House, along with Earl Blumenauer and Kurt Schrader, but Suzanne Bonamici and Greg Walden voted for it.

The major controversies in the bill relate to Guantanamo closing and indefinite detention without trial of US Citizens.It looks like Obama will resort to a signing statement and go ahead and sign it, given the host of other issues floating around right now, and that's a sad thing.  That's how politics "works" though.  Ugh.

HSBC saga Part 2 Too Big to Jail

I received a reply from Jeff Merkley about my email on HSBC. I had sent him an Email on the subject on Dec 13, 2012 about HSBC getting a pass from the DOJ.  He was already working on the DOJ since he sent a letter to Eric Holder at the DOJ that same day wanting to know why they were not prosecuting the banksters.

He said, "I am deeply concerned that four years after the financial crisis, the Department appears to have firmly set the precedent that no bank, bank employee, or bank executive can be prosecuted even for serious criminal actions if that bank is a large, systemically important financial institution,” wrote Merkley.  “This ‘too big to jail’ approach to law enforcement, which deeply offends the public’s sense of justice, effectively vitiates the law as written by Congress.  Had Congress wished to declare that violations of money laundering, terrorist financing, fraud, and a number of other illicit financial actions would only constitute civil violations, it could have done so.  It did not.”

I am gratified that he was on top of the issue, I wish that Earl Blumenauer and Ron Wyden were joining in the chorus.

Mayan End of the World

I'll put off paying the bills one day.  You never know what might happen.

More Banksters walk, pay fine

The Swiss Bank UBS has agreed to pay a $1.5 Billion fine (chump change for those guys) and even thrown a couple of traders to the wolves, while negotiating immunity for the guys in charge during 10 years of criminal behavior.    According to the press, "The investigation revealed extensive misconduct stretching from 2001 to 2010 involving at least 45 UBS staff, including senior managers, who sought to influence rates to benefit the bank's trading positions and make it look stronger during the financial crisis.".  So how come there aren't 45 people in jail and the bank closed down?  If you or I committed crimes involving puny sums like $5,000, it would be a major felony worth years in prison, but the biggest mobsters on the planet walk.  At least in the UK, 90% of people think the bankers ought to be in jail.  Go Figure why the US doesn't get it.

Murder and the deranged internet

The Newtown Shootings were reported in the press within minutes after they happened, and many of the initial facts reported were inaccurate.  This led to a few innocent people being victims of Information Highway Drive-by Threats, an Oregon free-lance cartoonist being one of them.  Unfortunately the immediacy of the Internet allows us to propagate misinformation in seconds.

Oregon jumps through Nike hoop

Nike casually let Governor Kitzhaber know that it would really like to expand in Oregon, all the State had to do was write a law that guaranteed they'd keep all the tax breaks they've "negotiated" (some would say extorted) in Oregon.  They wanted an answer pronto or they might shop elsewhere, so the Governor called a one-day special session of the legislature to pass whatever Nike wanted.  The Legislature had less that one weeks notice that they were summoned and expected to do the dance.  Nike thinks a 30 year commitment to the status quo would be fair. 

I received two Emails, one from my State Representative Carolyn Tomei, who described the objective of HB 4200 as "a measure that would give Nike certainty about the way its taxes are calculated for possibly the next thirty years". 

 Interestingly, my State Senator Diane Rosenbaum described it somewhat more vaguely "Nike asked for a commitment that the State's single-sales factor method of calculating business taxes will remain unchanged for a period of time."   She didn't mention what period of time we were talking about.

Carolyn voted against the bill and Diane voted in favor.  The press is divided, some think it's probably a bad idea, while others think it is a no-brainer.   I think it is brazen corporate  blackmail, and we make a mistake if we give in to it.  The people of Oregon don't have any protection from tax increases, neither should Nike.

Citizens United and Oregon

I got an Email from our State Representative Carolyn Tomei, and she had traveled to Washington DC to meet with activists at Public Citizen about a resolution in the State Legislature.  I am glad she is taking this initiative, feel free to give her words of encouragement.

Here is what she had to say.

"Many of you have written to me about the Supreme Court’s Citizen’s United decision regarding the ability of corporations to unduly influence the outcomes of elections by making exorbitant campaign contributions.  While in Washington D.C., I visited with advocates at the non-profit organization Public Citizen.  Working with them and others here in Oregon, I will be introducing a measure that proclaims Oregon’s support for a constitutional amendment that could reverse the Citizen's United decision.  We need to make sure that our government is in the hands of the people, not in the pockets of large corporations."

You can Email her at (rep.carolyntomei@state.or.us) or  her office address.

Rep. Carolyn Tomei
900 Court Street NE, H-279
Salem, OR  97301 

Snowing in Portland

It isn't supposed to last long, but then again it wasn't supposed to be snowing at all on the valley floor, so we'll see.  It started sticking at 9:00 AM near my house, and still coming down and now is coating all the trees and shrubs.  I'll update in a couple of hours and we'll see if it lasts.

11:30 AM,  The snow is completely gone, just rain for now.

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

I think a lot of people are frustrated about getting telemarketing cold-calls constantly despite being on the Do Not Call list.  The social parasites that constitute the telemarketing industry have been very effective in gutting any legislation that would allow consumers to ban them from calling, you really can't do it short of investing in call-blocking, or throwing away your telephone.  I tried calling the offending number and got a recorded message inviting me to leave my home phone number (they said to say it twice!) to be removed from their list, so I did it.  I saw complaints from lots of people that they don't honor them, and I'll report back if the calls stop or not.

One of the clients sponsoring Telefund is HRC (Human Rights Campaign), a bunch of lawyers lobbying for a good cause, but to me seem ethically challenged when it comes to bugging their donors to death.  Note to HRC, you ain't getting another cent from me until you dump the Telemarketers, all of them, but Telefund in particular.

The same goes for the Democratic Party (probably Republicans too but I never gave them a cent).  I feel particularly punished for giving to a variety of non-profits.

Injustice and no justice

The US system of justice is relentlessly imprisoning anyone who doesn't happen to be an executive of a multinational corporation, according to the Guardian, which calls the US the "world's largest prison state".  We imprison "more of our citizens than any nation on earth, both in absolute numbers and proportionally. We imprison people for longer periods of time, more mercilessly, and for more trivial transgressions than any nation in the west."  That's pretty strong stuff. 

The article continues, "On Tuesday, not only did the US Justice Department announce that HSBC would not be criminally prosecuted, but outright claimed that the reason is that they are too important, too instrumental to subject them to such disruptions. In other words, shielding them from the system of criminal sanction to which the rest of us are subject is not for their good, but for our common good. We should not be angry, but grateful, for the extraordinary gift bestowed on the global banking giant:"

Write your Congress Representatives and Senators and President Obama if you think that's not justice.

Silliness and Secession

We hear a clamor from deep in the heart of Texas, "We want to Secede from the US!". It takes me back to the early 70's when I lived in Houston.  I had a night job and for some strange reason one of the night watchmen took a liking to me, pulled out his ornate revolver with its ivory grip and handed it to me to admire.  He confessed that he didn't care what color Charley Pride was, he was a genuine Country Western singer from Mississippi and that's all that mattered.  To me, that was an explanation of all that is the basis of Texas politics.  It's the fascination with guns and Country Western and JR Ewing.  While all this is true, I still have a bunch of progressive friends in Texas whom I love dearly, it is impossible to characterize a large number of people in a blanket statement, but this is my blog and I'll write as I please.

They got 119,476 signatures the last time I looked, but try as they might they're not getting any respect from the press.  One group has even created a PAC to promote secession-friendly candidates.  One comes to mind right away, perennial candidate Larry Kilgore, who recently changed his middle name to "SECEDE" (yes, allcaps), received 250,000 votes in the 2008 GOP Senate primary and is planning on running for governor in two years. (Among his other issues: instituting the death penalty as a punishment for adultery).

Ahh well, good luck with that guys.  My good friends down there just gotta put up with the crazies, we have them here too, armed with assault weapons.

Lunatics and guns don't mix well

It's Portland and we usually think we're mostly peaceful and safe, but the US can be a violent place with shootings every day, and they can happen anywhere.  We've had some close calls like the 2010 would-be bomber who tried to blow up a van full of explosives at the Portland downtown tree-lighting celebration (intercepted by the FBI and still pending trial).  We had a disturbed young man with a pistol who shot and killed 2 young women (and wounded another 7) at an under-21 night club in 2009, and 14 years ago the really tragic shooting at a Eugene-area high school, where a very disturbed 15 year old Kip Kinkel killed his parents and 2 other students in a shooting spree at Thurston high.

Tuesday December 11, 2012 at about 3:30 PM a shooter armed with a rifle went into a large mall in Portland and started shooting at random, killing two, shooting another, and apparently then killing himself.  This happened less than 12 hours ago so a lot of details aren't known, but I imagine his story will be similar to the other disturbed shooters.  I was at a grocery store a mile away from the mall a half-hour before the shooting and was probably putting away groceries at home when it happened.  You never know when you might be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and Christmas shopping at the mall on a Tuesday afternoon is not where you'd expect to see a shooting.  It was a very sad day for Portland.

HSBC, Too Big to Jail

Stories like this make me wonder if the rule of law in our country means anything to the very rich, they just roll over anything in their path.  They laundered billions for criminals, drug cartels and terrorists for years, and the US agencies overseeing them ignored it!  Maybe we should be putting the heads of the regulatory agencies in prison because of their acceptance of criminals running the world financial system, maybe the Secretary of the Treasury and the Head of the DOJ ought to accept responsibility and be tried for willful incompetence.  According to CBS, "The bank's CEO at the time that these infractions occurred, Stephen Green, still sits in Britain's House of Lords as minister of state for trade and industry."  Absolutely disgusting.

I'm going to send more money to Public Citizen, which seems to be the only effective opposition to Corporate Crime.

Office of Congressional Ethics

Congressional Ethics may sound like an oxymoron and it probably is, however there is an agency made up of citizens appointed by the speakers of both parties to investigate ethics complaints.  Their mandate will expire at the end of the congressional session unless Pelosi and Boehner re-appoint new members.  Public Citizen has a petition to them urging them to re-authorize the board.  If the OCE isn’t re-authorized and a new board isn’t appointed in the next Congress, it dies. Current investigations into member misconduct will grind to a halt, and 2013 will begin with an even more corruption-prone Congress.

Tell Boehner and Pelosi: Re-authorize and appoint new members to the OCE.

Pearl Harbor History

My father was a WW II veteran and I thought I had read nearly all the history on the subject of the Pearl Harbor attack, but I happened to notice a news article this year on the role of German spies in Hawaii that fed intelligence to the Japanese.  I hadn't heard of this story until today, 71 years later.  Amazing.

Caught, but still free: above the law

Goldman Sachs, the most wildly successful criminal enterprise on earth, and still not in jail.  I can't summon the words to express the rage I have at our government, past and present, in allowing the mad dogs to freely roam our streets.

The Fiscal Cliff

Well, it was created when the Rs made it a condition of extending the debt ceiling (which they falsely portrayed as a curb on future spending, but was actually just approving payment on spending already approved), but here we are trying to figure out what to do next.  If we do nothing, come Jan 1 the carriage turns into a pumpkin and we get hit with both tax increases and spending cuts.  Everybody thinks that's bad, but we're on our way there.  I defer to my favorite rational thinkers, the Fact-Check people.  Think what you will.  I don't know the way out either.

Please insert one $$$billion to play

The results are in, Obama the winner spent a billion dollars to win the election, and Romney spent a billion to lose.  I think this includes the money spent by the campaigns and the super PACs, with the campaigns "only" spending a hundred million or so and the super PACs going gonzo.  The total cost of all federal elections is estimated at $6 billion.  See the article here.  The effect of Citizens United has created a new financial "bubble", with the parties racing to see who can spend the most.  Hang on to your wallets in 2016, unless you got billions to spare.

TPP, What you don't know can be bad for your health

The Trans-Pacific Partnership - TPP for short, is a new proposed trade agreement that is moving forward rapidly.  Why be concerned?  The TPP negotiations are secret, so secret that not a single member of congress has access to any of the proposed draft agreements, yet over 600 multi-national corporations have full access, and they are encouraged to suggest "improvements".  In theory this supports "free trade" but in reality it produces the opposite.  There have been leaked documents that should raise the hairs on your neck.  They are analyzed here. 

The news black-out on it in the US is massively effective, for instance this speech by Oregon Rep Peter DeFazio on Sept 9 in the US House of Representatives was not covered by any US news outlet.  TPP is off-limits for US news organizations that are critical of it.  Just try a Google News search and see what you find in the US press asking critical questions.

The same goes for this letter to President Obama on Aug 2, 2012 from Defazio and 23 bipartisan members of congress.  I found the letter on DeFazio's web site, but no where else. 

TPP will allow the corporations to bypass "impediments" to trade (i.e. profitability) like generic drugs, food safety, workers rights laws, consumer rights laws, environmental laws, you name it.  And not one member of Congress is allowed to see it.  Some documents have leaked to the outside world, but are any made public in the US media?  Nope.  The opposition to it is small in size compared to the might of the multi-nationals, Public Citizen seems to be the major US entity asking questions..

Crater Lake

My niece once said it is one of the places you should visit once in your lifetime.  We went there last summer on our camping trip.  The history of Mount Mazama is a fascinating one too, and the Lake is now a US National Park.

Some Facts.

Crater Lake is located in Southern Oregon on the crest of the Cascade Mountain range, 100 miles (160 kilometers) east of the Pacific Ocean. It lies inside a caldera, or volcanic basin, created when the 12,000 foot (3,660 meter) high Mount Mazama collapsed 7,700 years ago following a large eruption.

Generous amounts of winter snow, averaging 533 inches (1,354 centimeters) per year, supply the lake with water. There are no inlets or outlets to the lake. Crater Lake, at 1,958 feet (597 meters) deep, is the seventh deepest lake in the world and the deepest in the United States. Evaporation and seepage prevent the lake from becoming any deeper.

The lake averages more than five miles (8 kilometers) in diameter, and is surrounded by steep rock walls that rise up to 2,000 feet (600 meters) above the lake's surface.

Height: 2,487 meters (8,156 feet - Hillman Peak)

Links:
USGS
National Park Service

Romney Super PACs

The list of losers contributing to a Super-PAC run by Sheldon Adelson called Restore Our Future is immense, with really big bucks getting thrown around.  Those folks spent $21.5 Million, with Adelson and his wife contributing almost half the money.  See the article here.  Glad to see they're not broke even after losing $10 million.  Adelson owns the Las Vegas Sands, so he knows you win some and you lose some.

GOP shoots down Bob Dole

The Senate was asked to ratify a resolution that would have no effect on US law, but would have lent support to a UN treaty that sought to promote rights to people with disabilities.  The treaty merely seeks to require countries to recognize the rights of the disabled, as the United States already does. It wouldn't change U.S. law. It would, as Senate Foreign Relations Chairman John Kerry explained, encourage other nations to develop laws like the Americans With Disabilities Act, which passed 22 years ago, in large part thanks to Mr. Dole's efforts.

The ultra conservative paranoids in the GOP led by Rick Santorum led an incoherent opposition, based mostly on their own paranoid dogma that supposes the UN is on a mission to invade the US, and Obama is nursing the effort along.  Never mind that Bob Dole, the most patriotic of GOP icons argued for passage from his wheel chair, the defenders of nutso politics weren't having it.  See the news story here.

US rated only slightly corrupt

The Transparency International organization publishes an annual Corruption index, rating all countries corruption based on surveys.  The US came out at #19 out of 180, not too bad, but well behind our friends in Canada, UK, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Singapore and most of the Scandinavian countries.  I don't know how Chicago would rank on its own, not well I suspect.  Here is the list by country.

In the US, the  Center for Public Integrity produced rankings by State, with surprising (to me) results.  It ranked New Jersey, Connecticut, Washington, California and Nebraska as the most ethical.  They used the ABCDF grading system, and no state got an A, with the 5 above earning B's and 9 States getting F's.

I live in Oregon, which got a C-.  I hope our government is paying attention, but based on the grade I guess they aren't.

Strange news

Gosh, they just ran out of room for this 6 million pounds of military gun powder, so they stacked it outside.  Why's everybody making such a fuss?

SEC maintaining tradition of corruption

The SEC is supposed to protect the general public from corrupt billionaires, not the other way around.

Golf fashion and Michael Jordan

I guess if you're a die-hard golf purist you take this nonsense seriously.  Well OK, but that knife cuts both ways, some might think the course administrators should be replaced.

A few Steven Wright funnies

I love these.

Memorable quotes from Steven Wright
1. I planted some bird seed. A bird came up. Now I don't know what to feed it.
2. I had amnesia once – or maybe twice.
3. I went to San Francisco . I found someone's heart. Now what?
4. Protons have mass? I didn't even know they were Catholic.

5. All I ask is a chance to prove that money can't make me happy.
6. If the world were a logical place, men would be the ones who ride side saddle.
7. What is a "free" gift? Aren't all gifts free?
8. Someone told me I was gullible and, guess what ... I believed them.
9. Teach a child to be polite and courteous and, when he grows up, he'll never be able to merge his car onto the freeway.
10. Experience is the thing you have left when everything else is gone.
11. One nice thing about egotists: They don't talk about other people.
12. My weight is perfect for my height -- which varies a lot.
13. The high cost of living hasn't affected its popularity.
14. If swimming is so good for your figure, how do you explain whales?
15. How can there be self-help "groups"?
16. Show me a man with both feet firmly on the ground and I'll show you a man who can't get his pants off.
17. Is it just me or do buffalo wings really taste like chicken?
18. What did a cured ham have?

Taxes, Taxes and jumping off cliffs

The NY Times has published a flurry of articles on the evolution of US tax policy, and just as importantly, tax rates actually paid over the 30 year stretch between 1980 to 2010.  It is a fascinating piece of work which concludes that the actual taxes paid by nearly most Americans are lower in 2010 than they were in 1980, so I guess we're not overtaxed today.  As expected, the more you make, the more benefit you got from falling rates.  Today the deficit (how much more we spend than take in) is growing which pushes the US national debt to scary levels. 

Their analysis suggests the top tax rate could be extended on incomes above $250,000 without harming economic growth, while admitting nobody knows exactly how much it could be raised before the 1% would start moving to Switzerland or stashing more cash in the Cayman Islands.

 The tax debate today is more about ideological dogma than practicality.  Maybe we need a better democracy, how about if the alternatives were put to a popular vote?  Or maybe the whimsical Warren Buffett solution, It was July 2011 when Warren Buffett joked on cable TV that he could end the federal government's spending “in five minutes. You just pass a law that says that any time there's a deficit of more than 3 percent of GDP, all sitting members of Congress are ineligible for re-election.”  Well, I guess it was just a joke.

Oregon Student Debt

It would seem that the first practical use of a college degree is figuring out how to pay for it.  According to an Oregonian article, the debt load of a graduating student is 30% higher than it was 5 years ago.  This year, for the first time, outstanding student loans topped credit card debt, and the balance is quickly closing in on $1 trillion nationally.  Oregon's bachelor-degreed students graduate, on average, more than $25,000 in debt. At the University of Oregon in Eugene, tuition and fees have jumped more than 40 percent since 2007.  That's a really hefty price to pay for that piece of paper.

While our captains of industry bemoan our declining education system, I don't see a lot of them paying much of anything to support it.  The effect of all that debt is causing a consumer spending contraction, which spells trouble down the road as they struggle to pay it back.  Graduates aren't buying houses and cars, they're just hoping to join the middle class 5 or 10 years down the road instead of right away.