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Argh! New Parenting Advice? Follow the Dog Whisperer

11-27-09 3:56 A GMT-08
Because you want to have to support and control your kids all their lives like you do your dog. So don't explain things, just control. So much missing in this article. I'm wondering where that rolled up newspaper is hidden. You can't just get kids to obey without question without something to back your up. That back up is usually the threat of punishment or previous bouts of explanation lacking in dog handling because they don't understand us.

Rightwing uproar over Best Buy’s ‘Happy Eid al-Adha’ wish to Muslims

11-27-09 3:49 A GMT-08
RWNJs furious that store celebrates November Muslim holiday instead of December Christian one, RIGHT NOW! Oh dudes? What about Chanukah? Christians don't care as long as they can impose their will.

Sandra Tsing Loh:

11-27-09 3:36 A GMT-08

Thanksgiving Held After Massacre of Pequot Indiians

11-27-09 3:33 A GMT-08
@blogdiva linked to her blog post about a thanksgiving feast held after a massacre of Indians in 1637, after which a day of Thanksgiving was proclaimed. I'm pretty sure that there was an earlier one, but the 1637 incident shows how negligent in feeling white Christian societies have been towards others.

The Nation: Why Not Tax Wall Street?

11-26-09 9:06 P GMT-08
Proposals to reign in Wall Street start to emerge says William Grieder. I certainly hope something in that direction is accomplished before the fever fades.

9 Insider Secrets to Getting Hired

11-24-09 7:07 P GMT-08
I don't know if these tips work, but this US News report at yahoo.com sounds like the extra effort will pay off. Good luck if you're out there searching for a new job. I'm going to put a copy in a personal spot, in case I even need these hints.

WP: Hasan Had More Contacts with American-Yemeni Iman al-Aulaqi (al-Awlaki)

11-21-09 8:04 P GMT-08
Report says the Major and the cleric discussed money transfers and other actions (that has Sen Levin calling the Ft. Hood shooting spree a terrorist action.) Still, there were two terrorists in Massachusetts who never acted because MA has strict gun laws. Texas has very lax codes. Another factor is the lack of full and complete checks of anyone who buys the most dangerous types of guns, like the cop killer that Hasan used.

Lies about ACORN set off Twitter Mob with #acornfacts

11-20-09 5:36 P GMT-08
Twitter is the most fun when the Tweeps start a big mob action themselves. And this one was glorious. Actually better than the Swine Flue mob that erupted last spring.

Washington Post- ABC News Poll President's Numbers Mostly Positive

11-20-09 5:05 A GMT-08
Seeing all the lies told about him, just staying in the plus column is a major victory.
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Goldmans Sachs to Give "A Good Trading Day's Haul" Back to American Public

11-19-09 9:33 A GMT-08
$100m for each of 5 years, or 2.3 percent of 2009 bonuses will be "tithed" out to small businesses over the period.

Poll: Americans Want a Surcharge on the HIghest Earners in US To Help Fund Health Care Reform

11-19-09 9:02 A GMT-08
Oh that's a poll that has to be redone so that Mainstream news can use the second, doctored one as proof that this one was wrong.

Too Many Breast Cancers Diagnosed by Mammograms?

11-18-09 8:08 P GMT-08
LA Lady: I've seen this in my own family. My sister found a series of "lumps" by self examination as promoted in the 80s. Each one caused extreme stress and expensive medical bills as it was removed and examined though we haven't had breast cancer in our immediate family whether post or pre-menopausal type. Luckily, she had good employer based insurance for it. So I'm for the new guidelines. Why get women into unnecessary "pre-existing condition" problems for lumps, even cancerous ones that disappear rapidly. Eat lots of fruit, veggies, whole grains, and other whole foods you can find at a local farmer's market.

The Nation: Newsweek Taps Bush Aide For Obama Reporting

11-18-09 6:53 A GMT-08
If it seems like Republicans are pushing the news, that's because they are.
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Alert Net at Reuters: Why boosting food output is not enough to beat hunger

11-18-09 6:36 A GMT-08
Inequality, not lack of supply creates hunger as food is priced out of the reach of the poor according to report. Thanks to @Liam_Fox at Twitter.com

Huffington Post: 18 Biggest Falsehoods in Sarah Palin's book

11-18-09 5:55 A GMT-08
You can also vote to tell them which whoppers you think are the worst.

Palingate: So how many abortions do these people claim Sarah had?

11-18-09 2:47 A GMT-08
I get lost in the long winding narrative. But they seem to imply that Trig is a rent a baby. But if a woman has an abortion why rent a baby about the time hers was to be born?

Exxon Gets their Iraqi Oil Field Deal

11-16-09 12:45 A GMT-08
Exxon gets 80% of "one of the largest" oil fields "in the oil rich south" according to the UK Telegraph. I know this is old news to some, but I just wanted a record here of the fact, and to inform anyone who hadn't heard yet. It did happen as we said it would. bTW, Telegraph, isn't the name of the largest partner usually first in news about a partnership? WTF?

Jenny Sanford Endorses Opponent to Husband For Next Year's Governor's Race

11-12-09 6:12 P GMT-08
Mrs. Sanford is no political lightweight either. This could send ol' Mark off to Argent... Oh wait. The pretty journalist isn't going to need a washed up old pol. Well maybe he can pitch a tent on the Appalachian trail, or join the soup lines with the rest of the unemployed homeless, the folks that Republicans usually ignore.

Massachusetts Man Says He Was Fired for Telling Colleague Her Gay Marriage Is Wrong

11-11-09 8:08 P GMT-08
Link goes to Fox News. Just wanted to make a comment. I've been there. You're taught by the fundie church that by standing up to "the infidel" you're going to win brownie points with God and get ya closer to the big man on that sea of glass when you die. And in the meantimes you're earning creds with your Christian buddies, a war story to tell and make yourself look good. Or maybe you know you're a tool for the Christian dominionists. Don't play martyr, now. I'ts just makes you look like a fool.

Examiner.com -- Robert Taylor: The Fort Hood massacre: more blowback from America's interventionist foreign policy

11-10-09 9:17 A GMT-08
Good piece. Agrees with the Bible that They who live by the sword will die by the sword.

Health Care Around the World: Why American Health Care for Uninsured is Like that Of 3rd World Nations

11-07-09 7:39 P GMT-08
Interview with TR Reid on the 4 methods of health care in the world and the types of insurance and other bundled medical programs in the developed world found in the nations of the world.

Neda's Mother: She Was Like an Angel

11-07-09 7:16 P GMT-08
Her mom, talks about Neda's life. New: Neda found it impossible to get work because she was divorced.

Why negative thinking makes the world a better place

11-07-09 5:32 P GMT-08
Writer's brush with positive thinking program illustrates how focusing on a positive outlook can hurt in the long run. 'come to think of it, positive thinking started out as a busineess ploy, didn't it? A ploy by already powerful and rich white men to ingnore the harm their business practices have on the world. Maybe they should go back to the EST scam. Oh yeah.that was for underlings. h/t @R_A_W at Twitter.com

Jake Tapper Interviews Roland Hedley Jr. On Twitter

11-07-09 7:03 A GMT-08
Over his new book based on his Twitter posts. (Has to be a first.) The Insufferably sufferable journalist opens up to the ABc's Political Punch columnist, or not. Now I know what I want for Christmas.

Focusing on Ft. Hood Killer's Beliefs Are an Easy Out to Avoid the Deeper Reasons for the Massacre

11-06-09 9:19 P GMT-08
Fort Hood and it's vicinity have have a lot of problems with killings and low morale. The fact that Hasan did not act until the day before he was to be deployed shows his actions were more about being denied his right to avoid war than because of his religious beliefs. Hat tip @ontd_political at Twitter.com for link

New book tells how Right Wing and business push mainstream news media into a right wing bias.

11-05-09 4:18 A GMT-08
Calls liberal bias of news media "and urban legend" and shows how the right forces news media to back up their own propaganda. Hat tip Twitter colleagues, probably either @maafa or @mparent77772

Meg Whitman's radio whoppers

11-02-09 5:04 P GMT-08
Right Now Ms. Whitman is a California concern, but such things go on in your state as well, and it's good to see some reporting on them which we do this far from the election. Beside should she win the governor's seat she's likely to be running for president by 2016 at the latest.

ROFLMAO Slate Imagines Barack Obama's Facebook Wall

11-02-09 4:26 A GMT-08
Must read. No registration required.

The Above Linkblogs Might Contain "Borrowed" links.

Linkblogs do not substantially contribute traffic to my blog that I can discover. They all go offsite, and are often accessed from my blog. It's possible to access them from the RSS according to my settings. Still, even if I were to get ads clicking on a linkblog from the RSS won't drive more people to my blog than otherwise because they leave my resources. (Note to self, do more posts, less LBs with sources I find). I explain because I sometimes borrow links from people at Twitter, and often forget who put them up. (To fellow Twitterers: If you have a link to your blog, I will point it there, but Twitter, being impermanent, cannot hold your link for people to discover from there. I only 'borrow' them to get news out to as many people as I can who might not have seen the reports and videos found by the smart people I follow at Twitter or find in search rooms.

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Satellite Imagery Shows Baghdad Calmed More From Sectarian Cleanout Than From US Military Troop Surge

posted 09-21-08

Though one presidential candidate claims that his idea of a troops surge is the most important reason that Iraq had become more peaceful now (try real hard not to think of John McCain -- can't do it can you?) a study of light in Baghdad shows that most of the relative calm in Baghdad had developed before the troop surge started.

A Reuters report says that analyses of light at night in Baghdad shows that Sunni areas emptied out after violence against them spurted after the bombing of the Mosque of the Gold Dome, thereby removing the population the Shiites that were the targets of the ethnic cleansing by violence and intimidation.

Excerpt:

"Essentially, our interpretation is that violence has declined in Baghdad because of intercommunal violence that reached a climax as the surge was beginning," said Agnew, who studies ethnic conflict.

Some 2 million Iraqis are displaced within Iraq, while 2 million more have sought refuge in neighboring Syria and Jordan. Previously religiously mixed neighborhoods of Baghdad became homogenized Sunni or Shi'ite Muslim enclaves.

"Our findings suggest that the surge has had no observable effect, except insofar as it has helped to provide a seal of approval for a process of ethno-sectarian neighborhood homogenization that is now largely achieved," Agnew's team wrote in their report.

Agnew's team used publicly available infrared night imagery from a weather satellite operated by the U.S. Air Force.

"The overall night light signature of Baghdad since the U.S. invasion appears to have increased between 2003 and 2006 and then declined dramatically from 20 March 2006 through 16 December 2007," their report said.

They said the night lights of Shi'ite-dominated Sadr City remained constant, as did lights in the Green Zone government and diplomatic compound in central Baghdad. Lights increased in the eastern New Baghdad district, another Shi'ite enclave.

Satellite studies have also been used to help document forced relocations in Myanmar and ethnic cleansing in Uganda.
A blog at the LA Times, "Countdown to Crawford", in "" says:

The report notes:

The decrease in the night light signatures was not uniformly distributed across the city. The neighborhoods of East and West Rashid have experienced the greatest decline in night lights during the period of the surge. This pattern of declines appears associated with ethno-sectarian violence and neighborhood ethnic cleansing...

The professors found no similar decline in night light in four other large cities, Kirkuk, Mosul, Tikrit and Karbala.

In addition to the completion of sectarian cleansing, situations that have been reported as having helped calm Iraq by US military and analysis sources are:

  • The Sunni Awakening which had been developed into an effective tool and had reduced violence , even before Bush publicly espoused the "surge" doctrine was a program by which the US paid Sunnis to oppose al Qaeda and police their own people.  Unfortunately the Shi'ites of Iraq are now dismantling the Awakening militia and sending some of the Sunnis to jail.We'll see how that goes I guess.
  •  Aerial War Surge:  Many military sources count this as entirely different from the troops surge, using "surge" in the name just to get to the common denominator of the American mind. The targeting of insurgents via aerial attack they felt was particularly good for convincing first the Sunnis and finally the Sadr militia to lay down their arms.  Here is one of many reports on the subject.  For three months there was a report about the Aerial war surge and how it was more important than the troop surge somewhere everyday.
  • As reported by Bob Woodward in his new book "The War Within" (without many details because of secrecy concerns but leaked ad infinitum for book publicity) a new kind of weapon that let the military pinpoint insurgent leaders with highly increased precision which has allowed attacks against the leaders to be very effective.  this has also been reported by other military analysts to possibly be some kind of device on drones or just enhanced intelligence

It which makes me wonder if the devil's deal that the Bush administration made with John McCain included Bush adopting McCain's "surge" plan (remember that came apparently from nowhere and conflicted with all the mainstream military advice) and then adding to the success of the Sunni awakening with the aerial surge to make McCain look good.  McCain sure has used the ''surge success"like a typical Republican BS campaign, and even tried to take credit for the success of the Sunni Awakening though he had nothing to do with that at all.  The "deal" mentioned above appears to have been struck in 2004 over whether McCain would accept the Kerry camp's offer of the Vice Presidential slot on the Democratic ticket which could have cost Bush his reelection.

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