Monday, March 5, 2012

Breaking News Mon. March 5, 2012

Well, here it is Monday again! I really hope that everyone is ok after the awful storms. It's cold here and been spittin' snow since yesterday afternoon. Blustery and dark.
Using the sad iron stove and brooder heater, both antique working kerosene heaters, to keep the young seedlings warm out in the greenhouse. So far so go. Hope they do the trick tonight when it gets down to around 18 F here. Dang. 

I'm sure most everybody had heard about this by now but...
NakedCapitalism: 9/11 Commissioner and Co-Chair of Congressional Inquiry into 9/11 Say in Sworn Declarations that Saudi Government Linked to 9/11 Attacks

Incoming! got this this morning from spaceweather.com
STRONG SOLAR ACTIVITY: Big sunspot AR1429, which emerged over the weekend, is crackling with strong flares. This morning the active region produced an X1-class eruption and a bright coronal mass ejection (CME). The CME appears set to deliver a glancing blow to Earth's magnetic field in the days ahead, possibly sparking geomagnetic storms. Stay tuned to http://spaceweather.com for images and updates.
also this
Wired: Sunspot Shoots Powerful Solar Storm Toward Earth

and this at Tinfoil Palace just has me sick.
TSA forces new mom to pump milk out of her breasts in public

Oh, You don't want to miss out on RJ's post up at FDL
FDL: notes on housing prices and other econ news - week ended Mar 3rd 
 
Sincerest thanks to RJ at the Global Glass Onion and the Ozarker at Conflicted Doomer for their help today! And also David at ETF Daily News. Thanks David!
They've got an E-Book over at ETF Daily you might be interested in too, it's
E-Book: Why It’s Curtains For The Euro Don't forget to visit the forums linked at the bottom of the post too. Lots of good discussion going on there!

Japan
ScientificAmerican: Japan's Post-Fukushima Earthquake Health Woes Go Beyond Radiation Effects
DesdemonaDespair: Japan Ministry of Education on radioactive fallout simulation: ‘cannot make the results public’
ScientificAmerican: Finding the Flotsam: Where Is Japan's Floating Tsunami Wreckage Headed? [Video]



Global Conflict
Speigel: The Special Relationship: An Israeli Strike on Iran Could Weaken U.S. Ties - An attack could pull the U.S. into an unwelcome war, leading some Americans to question the relationship's value.LegitGov: Pentagon commander says US special forces in India
Reuters: Obama warns against "loose talk" of war on Iran
LegitGov: US government ultimately paid bail for Egypt NGOs
Zerohedge: Ron Paul: "I Think Sanctions Give Iran Motivation To Want A Nuclear Weapon"
FiscalTimes: China Boosts Defense Budget by 11 Percent
WSJ: Obama Says Force Is an Option Against Iran
JerusalemPost: Obama: There's still time for diplomacy on Iran
NYT: 'Loose Talk of War' Only Helps Iran, President Says 
NYT: Obama Says Iran Strike Is an Option, but Warns Israel
CRI.CN: U.S. Alleges Iran Stepping up Lethal Aid to Syria 

VOA: Gunmen Kill 27 Iraqi Policemen in Iraq
CNN: Rebels go on 'offensive' as attacks by Syrian regime spread
CBSNews: McCain: Sanctions not deterring Iran from nukes
NYT: Obama Tells Aipac He Won’t Tolerate a Nuclear Iran
CBSNews: Stuxnet virus opens new era of warfare
VOA: Fighting in Southern Yemen Claims at Least 98 Lives
BBC: Syria refugees tell of executions - People fleeing Homs tell a BBC correspondent outside the Syrian city that security forces are committing atrocities, including summary executions.
ThisCan'tBeHappening: Israel Lobby Beats the Drums For War
SeattlePI: Freed of Gadhafi, Libya's instability only deepens
IBTimes: India Plans to Cut Iran Oil Imports by 20%
StarTribune: Pressure builds to harden stance on IranBlacklistedNews: Fighting the “Rising Tide” of Arab Nationalism: The Eisenhower Doctrine and the Syrian Crisis
VOA: Suicide Bomber Attacks Bagram US Base in Afghanistan

Hacker News
BlacklistedNews: Hackers Elect Futurama’s Bender to the Washington DC School Board
LegitGov: Hackers had 'full functional control' of Nasa computers 
eSecurityPlanet: AntiSec Hackers Publish Data from Monsanto 
Grist: Put your hack into it: Anonymous targets Monsanto
JewishTelegraphicAgency: Obama and Netanyahu will meet under the shadow of Iran and their own histories
CNN: Could hackers seize control of your car?

Domestic Financial News
CNNMoney: American manufacturers importing workers (this one really...what the hell?)
Zerohedge: Excessive Channel Stuffing Forces GM To Halt Chevy Volt Production, Fire 1,300
CalculatedRisk: Unofficial Problem Bank list at 959 Institutions - This is an unofficial list of Problem Banks compiled only from public sources.
EconoSpeak: Wealth and Antisocial Behavior: Reverse Causality? - There is quite a bit of buzz about this just-prepublished article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Here is the abstract: In studies 1 and 2, upper-class individuals were more likely to break the law while driving, relative to lower-class individuals. In follow-up laboratory studies, upper-class individuals were more likely to exhibit unethical decision-making tendencies (study 3), take valued goods from others (study 4), lie in a negotiation (study 5), cheat to increase their chances of winning a prize (study 6), and endorse unethical behavior at work (study 7) than were lower-class individuals.The tone of the first wave of commentary, as far as I can tell, is that we knew it all along—rich people are nasty. I would like to put in a word, however, for the other direction of causality, that dishonesty and putting one’s own interests ahead of others are conducive to wealth.
Zerohedge: "An Inconvenient Tax" - Presenting The Labyrinth That Is The US Tax Code 
JaredBernsteinBlog: Full Employment: A Force Against Rising Inequality - One of the more compelling graphs in the inequality debate is the growth of real family incomes for low, middle, and high income families, going all the way back to the 1940s.  The reason for its popularity is that it’s one of the few pictures (though not the only one) that very clearly delineates a period of growing together and a period of growing apart.
Krugman: They're Baaack! - The one percent, that is. Emmanuel Saez has updated his distributional estimates (pdf), and as expected the top 1% share, which fell in the crisis, has resumed its upward march. How many people wrote stories about how rising inequality was a thing of the past, when anyone who had looked at the data at all knew about the cyclical issue?
MindHacks: Did Drug Money Keep The Banks High And Dry? 
ABCNews: Average sales tax rate lowest in 45 years - The average sales tax rate that Americans pay dropped last year to the lowest level since 1967 as a shift to tax-free Internet sales and untaxed services keeps eroding the No. 1 source of revenue for state and local governments, a USA TODAY analysis finds.
FDL: The Secret Austerity Society: Bipartisan Group Works on Grand Bargain - Here we go again. Intransigence from Republicans basically kept us out of a grand bargain last year. Plenty of Democrats were willing to do it, the White House was more than willing to do it, and even John Boehner was willing to do it, at least on a conceptual level. But House Republicans wouldn’t betray their tax pledge and so it didn’t happen.
BusinessInsider: Tech Is The Overwhelming Favorite Sector Of Large Investors
Atlantic: Reckless: The Inside Story of How the Banks Beat Washington (Again)
Zerohedge: Guest Post: The One Chart That Shows Where AAPL and the Market Are Heading
SeattleTimes: In Person: Former Reagan aide Stockman fears another collapse
David Stockman, former wunderkind of the Reagan revolution, is now an advocate for higher taxes, a critic of the work that made him rich and a scared investor who doesn't own a single stock for fear of another financial crisis.
USAToday: Shiller: Economist who foresaw bubbles still likes stocks
MSNBC: Lenders increasingly allow the foreclosed to stay  - No payment, no problem as time and money required to evict owners increases
MyBudget360: Hitting the credit card wall - Credit card debt contracts 17 percent as the grand American household deleveraging continues. Average household with credit card debt carries $16,000 at an average rate of 15% – Real broke housewives. Orange County California witnesses a 600 percent jump in bankruptcies.


Global Financial News
Spiegel: Shadow Economy and Media Control: Russians Fed Up With Putin's Manipulations
Zerohedge: My Big Fat Greek Restructuring - The Week Ahead 
Reuters: BOJ official keeps up warning on strong yen's damage to economy 
ETFDailyNews: Bailout 2.0: What Even More Austerity Means For The Euro Zone Reuters: China sets 2012 growth target of 7.5 percent, stability key
Zerohedge: Next Phase in Merkel’s Desperate and Risky Gamble
FT: The Bundesbank has no right at all to be baffled - One of the more intriguing recent developments of the eurozone crisis is the shock expressed by Germany’s economic establishment that the eurozone is, in fact, a monetary union. No one had apparently told them.
LAT: China hedging its bets on U.S. government debt, data show
The nation's slowing accumulation of U.S. Treasuries suggests it is trying to diversify its holdings and is looking for other places to stockpile its trove of foreign exchange.
Time: Why China Will Have an Economic Crisis
FT: Greek bond swap deal rests on knife-edge - Greece faces a decisive week in its struggle to avert a sovereign default, with a planned debt swap poised on a knife-edge amid doubts over the level of participation by private bondholders.
TheStar: As loonie climbed over past decade, 500,000 factories jobs vanished
Hosted: Spain warns it will miss 2012 deficit target   
ETFDailyNews: Global Economy: Will Emerging Markets Boost The Bailout Fund? 


Peak Oil and Energy News
OilDrum: Bill O'Reilly is Misinforming Americans About Oil Supplies
TheOilDrum: Tech Talk - Future Russian Fuel Production from the Arctic 
CNNMoney: Gas prices climb again, topping $3.76 
CNBC: Oil Is the New Greece: HSBC Chief Economist - Rising oil prices have displaced Greece as a source of investor anxiety, a new HSBC report says, warning that if the trend of rising oil prices persists, a fragile economic recovery in the developed world could quickly be derailed, and inflation could return to emerging markets.
WSJ: FuelFix: Natural Gas to Power Pickup Trucks - U.S. auto makers are introducing pickup trucks powered by natural gas as they look to catch the growing wave of interest in the fuel as an alternative to gasoline. 
Guardian: Oil prices: 10 reasons to be fearful - Already newspaper headlines are screaming out the news of record petrol prices in the UK and there are growing concerns about the latest headwind for a sluggish UK economy
Statesman: ERCOT: Expect another stressful summer for state's power grid
Telegraph: Oil price rise a bigger threat to global economy than Greece, says HSBC
Reuters: Enbridge U.S. oil line to be shut for four more days
FP: As pipelines stall, railways keep oil flowing
Reuters: COLUMN-Long/short ratio points to wilder oil market: John Kemp

Commodities/Metals
FiscalTimes: China Boosts Defense Budget by 11 Percent
Mineweb: Gold correction may not be over yet, but definitely no gold bubble: Faber
Mineweb: Silver fundamentals better than gold: Rakhimov
PsychopathicEconomics: David Rosenberg: “The Best Currency May Be Physical Gold
ETFDailyNews: Was Market Manipulation To Blame For The Abrupt Plunges In Gold & Silver Prices? 
ETFDailyNews: Expect Silver Prices To Reach Above $50/oz In 2012 
CommodityOnline: Non ferrous metals exploration surges 50% in 2011: MEG

Environmental
ExtinctionProtocol: Earth will likely be impacted by large asteroid February 15-16, 2013 - March 4, 2012 – SPACE – Scientists are predicting that the asteroid 2012 DA14 has a good chance of colliding with earth in eleven months.
ThinkProgress: Tornadoes, Extreme Weather And Climate Change, Revisited -"The most prolific 5-day period of tornado activity on record for so early in the year”? National Weather Service Warnings for Past Week (graphic) The unexpectedly fierce and fast tornado outbreak so early in the season has folks asking again about a possible link to climate change.
MSNBC: Monster tornado spawns mini-twisters

EconBrowser: Global Land Sea Anomaly, Global Climate Change, etc. - Since my last post on government spending increase (it's actually decreasing) was hijacked by those focused on denying the impact of human activity on global climate, I thought it useful to recap the global land sea anomaly [0]. It's also useful to recall that on one side is Texas Governor Perry [1], and the other side the National Academy of Sciences [2]. I think that dichotomy speaks volumes.
Grist: Climate change will shake the Earth — literally
Caixin: Bear Bile Extraction Stirs Online Protest
   DesdemonaDespair: Insurers confirm growing risks of climate change – ‘The trend of increasing damage to property and threat to lives is clear’
ExtinctionProtocol: Heavy snow falls in Jerusalem for the first time in four years
Yahoo: Devastating images of vast storm damage - Residents clean up wreckage after enduring what may be a record-setting number of tornadoes for one day
USAToday: Ind. toddler found in field dies from tornado injuries
DailyMail: 'Angel's been reunited with her family': Toddler orphaned by tornado dies after she is taken off life support following deadly twister that swept her ten miles from home 
ExtinctionProtocol: Portugal suffers through its worst drought in 80 years 
MSNBC: Tornado drops boy on highway, 350 ft. from home
MSNBC: Snow, cold add to tornado survivors' misery
WashingtonPost: New Climate-Change Law May Not Limit Coal-Fired Power Plants 
AlJazeera: BP settles while Macondo ‘seeps’ - As BP settles out of court for the first phase of thousands of lawsuits that could cost the company tens of billions of dollars, Al Jazeera has spotted a large oil sheen near the infamous Macondo 252 well.
Caixin: Report: Land under 50-plus Cities Is Sinking - Slated to be the China's tallest building upon completion, the 632-meter tall Shanghai Tower conveys stability, if not permanence. The ground under it, however, is another story.
MSNBC: Why so many tornadoes are striking the US
Warm air, rapid jet stream to keep fueling storms into the weekend: NOAA
 SanJoseMercuryNews: Bay Area rattled by 4.0 quake near El Cerrito
A magnitude 4.0 earthquake centered in West Contra Costa County rattled homes throughout the Bay Area early this morning, and officials are exploring reports of a 2.9 temblor that preceded it.
Wired: Etna has its Third Major Eruption of 2012

America in Decline
Kunstler: Reality Check
America is starting to remind me of Bette Davis in the horror movie classic What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? America is losing its grip on reality. America is acting like an elderly strumpet in too much pancake makeup performing a song-and-dance on the beach while its kinfolk lie dying in the sand.
     History is taking us in a certain direction and we don't want to hear about it. We've got our hands clapped over our ears and we're shouting "Kittens and puppies! Kittens and puppies!" Here are some of the things that we're confused about:
DeclineOfTheEmpire: The United States Is Living On Borrowed Time
IBTimes: Serial Killer Jeffrey Dahmer: Murders Turned Into a Tourist Attraction
CBSnews: Dahmer victim's sister calls walking tour "evil"
NYT: Plagued By Crime, Oakland Food Truck Vendors Unite For Protection
Foxnews: Report: US to offer legal backing for 'targeted killing' of Americans overseas
BlacklistedNews: Now THAT Is Cold - 19 Signs That America Is Becoming A Very Heartless Place
Businessweek: Living in Your Car: No Longer Just for Bums

DeclineOfTheEmpire: Psychopaths On Wall Street
FDL: About the Twisted USA Monetary System - The US monetary system is set up to perpetuate the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. This will never end until we remove most members of Congress who continue to support this system because it works for them .
TruthOut: Towards a Creditor State - One in Seven Americans Pursued by Debt Collectors
ColorLines: A Closer Look at Ray Kelly’s Multi-Billion Dollar Army of Spies

Star-Telegram: Texas funding cut leaves local agencies scrambling to continue services for homeless
BlacklistedNews: USA Number 1? 40 Embarrassing Things That America Is The Best In The World At


Food and Water
BigPictureAgriculture: Do Food Commodity Prices Follow Oil Prices?
Grist: Can we solve global water scarcity? - By Darci Palmquist Texas' rivers and aquifers are among the most heavily depleted in the world.  
Grist: School lunches still contain ‘pink slime’ 
Wired: High Levels of Resistant Bacteria On Meat (Again) 

Internet and Online Privacy News  
Cryptogon: The Little White Box That Can Hack Your Network
CBSnews: Stuxnet virus opens new era of warfare
Today: How you break digital law daily (and what to do about it) 
Why it's almost impossible to avoid breaking copyright law
Copyright law is extremely complex. It's so complex that lawyers, lawmakers, and experts heavily argue over how it's interpreted and applied. Nonetheless, if you commit a crime, you can't use ignorance as an excuse. The law doesn't (officially) offer leniency for misunderstanding or lack of knowledge. So how can you comply with convoluted copyright laws when you can't realistically understand them all? You can't, and so you may end up breaking these laws on a regular basis without ever knowing it.
 BlacklistedNews: U.S. court approves warrantless searches of cell phones

Science and Technology
PopSci: You Built What?!: A Compact Mechanical Crossbow With the Precision of a Laser
MIT: Liquid Batteries Could Level The Load
Science.com: Strange Lump of Dark Matter Shouldn't Exist, But DoesNewScientist: Forget fittest, it's survival of the most cultured 
CNN: Survey says most U.S. cell phone owners have smartphones; so what?
PopSci: Japanese Researcher Crafts Violin Strings From the Silk of Three Hundred Spiders
RawStory: App gives runners a boost with flesh-eating zombies 
NewScientist: Planet-sized video game gets its first release 

Medical and Health
RedditScience: Fewer people have real peanut allergy than previously thought - Telegraph
BusinessInsider: This 'Neurological Phenomenon' Is Quietly Taking Over America's Workforce
If you're a slave to your iPhone or BlackBerry, you may have ADT, or Attention Deficit Trait.
It's a lot like ADHD, but the difference is that ADT is purely environmental. Psychiatrist Edward Hallowell wrote about the "new neurological phenomenon" in Overloaded Circuits: Why Smart People Underperform for Harvard Business Review:MSNBC: 'Spice' drug tied to kidney failure cases in Wyoming 
Vitals: Suck it up, kid: Many docs ignore infant pain
ScientificAmerican: The Risks and Benefits of Mutant Flu Studies - Research describing two mutant strains of H5N1 avian influenza that spread between mammals is likely to be published in its entirety. Nature examines the controversial decision.Wired: Are Emotions Prophetic?
For thousands of years, human beings have looked down on their emotions. We’ve seen them as primitive passions, the unfortunate legacy of our animal past. When we do stupid things – say, eating too much cake, or sleeping with the wrong person, or taking out a subprime mortgage – we usually blame our short-sighted feelings. People commit crimes of passion. There are no crimes of rationality.
This bias against feeling has led people to assume that reason is always best. When faced with a difficult dilemma, most of us believe that it’s best to carefully assess our options and spend a few moments consciously deliberating the information. Then, we should choose the alternative that best fits our preferences. This is how we maximize utility; rationality is our Promethean gift.
But what if this is all backwards? What if our emotions know more than we know? What if our feelings are smarter than us?


Doomsteading, Gardening, Urban Farming

io9: Survival books to keep on your bookshelf in case of the apocalypse

ModernSurvival: A Weather Radio To Save Your Life
WaldenEffect: Adventures in barn roof repair
ModernSurvival: Freeze Dried Food Makes Great Soup
PreppingToSurvive: Wheat, part 3 (Alternatives for Those with Wheat Allergies)
McClatchy: Some say Obama re-election fears may be driving gun sales (I think we know what's driving gun sales...and that ain't it.)
CanadianDoomer: March Pantry Challenge Day 4
NoTechMag: Pottery Refrigerators
 zeer pot

Other News
McClatchy: Number of companies that have halted advertising with Limbaugh grows to 7
RawStory: Obama had transgender nanny in Jakarta: report
USAToday: Officials: 206 killed in Republic of Congo blasts
"The explosions that you have heard don't mean there is a war or a coup d'etat," he said. "Nor does it mean there was a mutiny. It is an incident caused by a fire at the munitions depot." 
Correntewire: How cabbies get ripped off on K Street  - So what is the Washington, DC version of this? I asked a cab driver:
The most common problem here is the lawyer/banker/whatever asks for 2 receipts, one is accurate and one blank. The accurate one will have the driver's name and cab number on it. The creep fills in the blank one with a greatly inflated fee. He gets the cab number and name from the other receipt. If and when the expense account office questions the amount on the receipt, it comes back to the driver as a violation.
USAToday: Small blasts shake Republic of Congo for 2nd day 
eXiled: The Breitbart Conspiracy: Yasha Levine Goes To Westwood To Investigate Breitbaggers’ Claims Of White House Assassination Plot
Cryptogon: Wealthy British Banker and His Wife Killed by Carbon Monoxide Poisoning 
Reuters: Tearful Putin wins back Russian presidency 
CNN: Observers slam Russian vote as Putin declares victory 
CNN: Mortician resigns in misconduct probe at Dover military mortuary 
MSNBC: Crews try to retrieve child's body from 30 feet down backyard hole 
SeattlePI: Hearing set for man charged in brain-eating case
 

Politics
CreditWritedowns: Right-wing political extremism in the Great Depression 
Grist: The trouble with right-wing bitching about gas prices, in one handy cartoon 
NakedCapitalism: Animal Crackers
NewsDay: Wealthy LIers actively funding super PACs

Forums
TinfoilPalace: Ocean acidification may be worst in 300 million years: study
TinfoilPalace: Can fasting for two days each week stop dementia? It sounds far-fetched, but scientists think slashing calories may combat a host of illnesses

TheOilAge: Mushroom
TheOilAge: The truth behind US fiscal/jobs picture
HubbertsArms: The Gray Box: An investigative look at solitary confinement 
HubbertsArms: One Town's Desperate Casino Gamble To Fix Unemployment 
SilentCountry: Blast it or paint it: Deadly asteroid bounds towards Earth out of the blue
SilentCountry: Why I Don't Play Golf

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