Month: July 2010

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Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) said on the House floor Monday that Republicans are blocking a reauthorization of unemployment benefits in order to resurrect the America of the 1930s.

“There was no unemployment insurance back then,” Grayson said, in one of the more colorful speeches on the issue. “There was no State benefits back then. There was no help for the people who had no jobs. All they could do, like my grandfather, in desperate straits, supporting a family of seven, was to go to the dump and desperately try to find something he could sell.

[From Alan Grayson To Republicans Blocking Unemployment: ‘May God Have Mercy On Your Souls’ (VIDEO)]

BP is a blatant repeat offender — a serial criminal. In 2005, BP’s criminal conduct resulted in an explosion at its Texas City Oil Refinery that killed 15 people; this was followed by the Prudhoe Bay, Alaska pipeline oil spill in 2006. In both cases multi-million dollar criminal fines were imposed. BP also paid hundreds of millions of dollars in civil and administrative fines for Occupational Health and Safety Administration and environmental violations. And now, BP is responsible for yet even more deaths and an environmental disaster of devastating proportions.

The multi-million dollar criminal fines paid by BP did nothing to deter its risky ongoing conduct. The fines were simply a cost of doing business for BP. The only way to change this dynamic is to not only charge the corporation but also those individuals responsible for the corporate crime.

If only a portion of the facts that led up to the explosion that have been reported in the media are true, there will be ample evidence to support a criminal prosecution. But the prosecution should not be limited to corporate entities. Reports of employees being pressured not to report problems and failures to follow the company’s own internal safety and compliance policies, indicate — at best — a cavalier disregard for the risks inherent in the oil and gas business.

[From BP execs should go to jail – Baltimore Sun]

Scientists have begun speculating that the root cause of disease conditions such as migraines and irritable bowel syndrome may be endocannabinoid deficiency.

[From Not Feeling Well? Perhaps You’re ‘Marijuana Deficient’ | Brainwaving]

As much as you’ll hear us brag that we never fall ill (largely due to copious amounts of garlic, onions and vitamin C) we do — once in a blue moon — get sick. And yes, we have chased the green dragon. NyQuil, DayQuil, other sorts of new fangled drugstore opiates in their generic versions. We will fess up. The stuff works!

But not this year. When one of us woke up last week with a throat tickle that blossomed into a gnarly case of the flu, we took it on with fresh produce, organic sweeteners and thimbles of liquor.

In place of Acetaminophen (pain and fever reliever), Dextromethorphan HBr (cough suppressant), and Doxylamine succinate (sleep aid) we used green chile, ginger, citric acid and booze — all herbal, if subtler, forms of the chemical stuff. A couple shots, errr, doses, of the stuff is perfect for sitting on the couch in a sweatshirt and sweating out your germs. Take that Big Pharma!

[From All Natural NyQuil – Hot Knives]

Minutemen groups, a surge in Border Patrol agents, and a tough new immigration law aren’t enough for a reputed neo-Nazi who’s now leading a militia in the Arizona desert.

Jason “J.T.” Ready is taking matters into his own hands, declaring war on “narco-terrorists” and keeping an eye out for illegal immigrants. So far, he says his patrols have only found a few border crossers who were given water and handed over to the Border Patrol. Once, they also found a decaying body in a wash, and alerted authorities.

[From Man With Neo-Nazi Ties Leading Patrols In Arizona]

Legally, California has also been a pioneer, at least within America. In 1996 it was the first state to allow marijuana to be grown and consumed for medicinal purposes. Since then, 13 states and the District of Columbia have followed, and others are considering it. But this year California may set a more fundamental, and global, precedent. It may become the first jurisdiction in the world to legalise, regulate and tax the consumption, production and distribution of marijuana.

[From Legalising marijuana: The law of the weed | The Economist]

That’s a tall order, especially in an election year. But Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) today is publicly proposing a moratorium on any new regulations by the federal government for one year. Yeah, that’s right. The promulgation of any new government regulation would be stopped for a year, except emergencies like the BP spill.

Presumably this would halt all the new regs being written to implement health care reform, the ones that will soon be written to implement financial reform, and of course the gazillions or more obscure regulations that are written every day as part of the essential functioning of government.

With everything going on right now, the second highest ranking Republican in Washington wants to basically shut government down for a year. Brilliant.

[From Dumbest Idea Of The Year? | Talking Points Memo]

The government calls it “sealed management.” China’s capital has started gating and locking some of its lower-income neighborhoods overnight, with police or security checking identification papers around the clock, in a throwback to an older style of control.

[From Beijing starts gating, locking poor villages – World news – Asia-Pacific – China – msnbc.com]