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  2. 2

    Harper’s Index (Feb 2011):

    Number of miles from borders and shorelines the US Border Patrol has authority to conduct warrantless searches: 100

    Percentage of the US population that lives within this area: 2/3

  3. 3

    I proudly raise my left hand high. When somebody calls me a socialist, I merely reply, “Thanks!”

  4. 4

    Not sure what to make of this:

    http://seattletimes.nwsource.c.....nke02.html
    By Neil Irwin
    The Washington Post

    WASHINGTON — The Federal Reserve will “respond as necessary” if rising prices for oil and other commodities seem to trigger more broad-based inflation, Chairman Ben Bernanke said Tuesday, for the first time raising the possibility that soaring fuel prices could provoke a response from the central bank.

    “My sense is that the increases we’ve seen so far … do not yet pose a significant risk,” Bernanke said.

    In his twice-a-year testimony on monetary policy before the Senate Banking Committee, Bernanke addressed the steep hike in oil — including a surge last week amid turmoil in Libya — and the costs of other globally traded items in recent months.

    He said he does not expect a major impact on consumer prices in the United States but also made clear that if oil prices continue to rise and cause fears of permanent high inflation, the Fed could act

    .

    Oil goes up by 20% and we’re not going to see, ” a major impact on consumer prices in the United States”? Should I believe that?

  6. 6

    @5
    I’m trying to figure out how oil can go up by 20% and we wont see a major impact on consumer prices. Yeah, the price will stay the same, but the container of stuff will be 20% smaller and your new jeans will be 20% thinner.

  7. 7

    Reagan Blew Soviet-Afghan War

    It has come to my attention that Saint Raygun bungled the diplomacy that could have ended the Soviet-Afghan War years earlier and saved countless Afghan lives — and perhaps prevented the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan that led to 9/11.

    A book called “Out of Afghanistan” by Diego Cordovez and Selig Harrison details the negotiations leading to the 1988 Geneva accords that resulted in the Soviet pullout.

    The authors know what they’re talking about; Cordovez was the U.N. negotiator and Harrison is a journalist who intervened the principal leaders in addition to getting access to Soviet and Afghan archives (including secret Politburo files).

    Amazon’s book review says, “The United States, holding all the cards, chose to oppose a Soviet offer of installing an interim regime headed by the deposed Afghan monarch, Zahir Shah, in favor of continuing to back their favored factions. In the game of superpower brinkmanship no attention was paid to the fact that those factions were Islamists fundamentally opposed to America.”

    Publishers Weekly says the Reagan administration, blinded by distrust of the U.N., ignored Soviet overtures: “Could the withdrawal have occurred earlier than it did? It would seem so: Yuri Andropov’s overtures toward negotiation during his 1982-84 tenure as Soviet leader were … serious; likewise, the Reagan administration was slow to recognize that military disengagement from Afghanistan was one of Mikhail Gorbachev’s main objectives when he assumed power in 1985.”

    And a customer reviewer states, “The authors clearly demonstrate that there existed a real chance to secure a peaceful settlement in 1983-84, under Yuri Andropov’s tenure as the Soviet Communist Party’s General Secretary. This chance they believe to have been undermined by hawks in the Reagan administration ….”

    http://www.amazon.com/Out-Afgh.....038;sr=8-1

    Roger Rabbit Commentary: It’s too hundreds of thousands of illiterate Afghans peasants, many of them women and children, had to pay with their lives for the Reaganauts’ idiocy.

    We can’t do anything now to bring them back or change this history. All we can do is not elect Republicans in the future, so it doesn’t happen again.

  9. 9

    @6 Business and financial pundits were predicting higher oil prices long before Libya’s turmoil began. The driving force was expanding economies in developing countries; the U.S., whose economy is still in the doldrums, so far hasn’t contributed to higher oil demand. The partial shutdown of Libyan production is causing a near-term spike that is almost certainly temporary, because either the Libyan situation will get resolved and Libyan production will resume, or Saudi Arabia will pick up the slack. (The Saudis have excess capacity but it takes a little time to get it on line.) I expect oil to settle into the $90-$100 range post-Libya going forward. I don’t think Gadhafi will be around much longer — I think his regime could fall within days. Crude prices tend to be very unpredictable but the long-term outlook probably is relative price stability at close to the current range.

  10. 10

    In the interest of full disclosure, I started loading up on stocks in oil majors starting about a year ago and I’m making a killing. =:-D<

  13. 13

    Rabbit @ 7,
    The harm that Reagan caused this nation is hard to quantify. That motherfucker triggered virtually every domestic problem we are having, and either triggered or aggravated virtually every foreign policy problem we are having. Yet, the wingnuts consider him a saint. The historians will not treat him well.

  16. 16

    Bernanke is about as bright as the democrats, who seem to think that a 1.7 trillion dollar deficit and 14+ trillion dollar debt don’t matter.

    Watch soon what happens to an economy in your area!

  18. 18

    Yes that kind of Debt spending worked well in Greece and the rest of Europe didn’t it. And I suppose that Bernanke and all the other top economists who are publicly stating that this kind of debt is unsustainable, are also idiocy…

  19. 19

    Silly Id. Don’t you know that deficits and debt only matter when Democrats are in office, and don’t matter at all as long as Republicans are in office?

    Of course, when Democrats are in office they use deficits in bad times to revive the economy and help the working man keep his job and his home. When the economy improves, they pay down the deficit and balance the budget, as was done by 2000.

    When Republicans are in office during good times, they give away the tax money to their rich friends in the form of tax cuts for millinaires or no-bid contracts. Then they claim deficits are good.

  20. 20

    1.7 trillion in deficit spending is just kicking the bankruptcy can down the road. No debt load of this nature can possible be repaid, but it can definitely be avoided and will have to be. They cannot go on spending this way without dire consequences

  21. 21

    Notes from Madison: The capital police chief last weekend had said the protesters there were “very well behaved and peaceful”. When police were ordered to clear the capital building on Sunday, nothing happened, leading one to conclude that the capital police chief had refused to do so, or his officers had refused to do so. Even the Wisconsin State Police were filmed joining the protests.

    The rumor this morning is that with the last shift change, the Capital Police were being replaced by private armed security guards wearing jeans and windbreakers. All entry into the capital building by the public is prohibited.

    It looks like Gaddafi/Walker has hired his “Pinkertons”, and is getting ready to clear out the protesters. I’m wondering how he plans to cut the news feeds right before the “clearing” begins, at which point he will simply make up stories about the protesters being Al Quida terrorists trying to bomb the capital building.

  22. 22

    Priorities:

    Real Defense Budget: More than 1.2 Trillion

    $1,219.2 billion. (That’s more than $1.2 trillion.)

    A country with a gross domestic product of $1.2 trillion would have the 15th largest economy in the world, ranking between Canada and Indonesia, and ahead of Australia, Taiwan, the Netherlands, and Saudi Arabia. Still, don’t for a second think that $1.2 trillion is the actual grand total for what the U.S. government spends on national security.

  24. 24

    @23,

    If we got out of these crazy foreign adventures maybe we wouldn’t “need” tanker airplanes in the first place. Imagine an American “empire” where any airplane we owned could make it from takeoff to landing without hitting a refueling tanker along the way. It’s time to shrink the empire and stop trying to be the world’s cop/defender. Other countries can take care of themselves.

  27. 27

    I heard that Ohio’s collective bargaining agreement with its public sector unions hasn’t been changed in 30 years..

    30 YEARS.. Like that state is so commie red..

    What’s the hurry now??? Easy. It’s bell ringer opportunity time to enrich the rich further at the expense of public services that people take for granted.

    Never raise taxes EVER (always cut) and if people complain all they ever say is “can’t help you, we’re broke”…

    We’ve practically reached the nadir of right wing degenerate “governance” as exemplified by the Koch-head tool ld/LD(iot).

  28. 28

    the Capital Police were being replaced by private armed security guards wearing jeans and windbreakers. All entry into the capital building by the public is prohibited.

    Wise expenditure by a degenerate right wing governor..

  29. 29

    @24 So you would abandon the Libyan people to the tender mercies of their bloodthirsty dictator? Yeah, you’re a real credit to humanity. This is one time military force should be used.

    Kosovo was another. There, a rightwing strongman was rounding up and slaughtering unarmed boys and men. Clinton put a stop to it immediately with airstrikes that didn’t cost a single U.S. casualty. And how did America’s rightwingers respond? By criticizing him for intervening.

    Rightwingers must like Nazis, tinpot dictators, and genocide.

  30. 30

    It’s a familiar story. A young 20-year-old aspiring ballerina is driving her Hyundai through an intersection with the light. A rich and powerful plastic surgeon, who would later blow .24 on the Breathalyzer (three times the legal limit for DUI), flies through the intersection in his Mercedes at 80 mph and t-bones the Hyundai, killing the girl. Some of the jurors wanted to convict him of second degree murder, but the jury could only agree on involuntary manslaughter, and the killer is likely to do only 3 years. One juror said later he should have gotten life.

    In this country, we don’t have equality. Big shots get a different kind of justice. The little people, no matter how innocent and beautiful, get no justice at all.

    http://www.aolnews.com/2011/03.....na-baller/

  32. 32

    In other news, SCOTUS by a 8-1 vote (Alioto dissenting) threw out a lawsuit by parents of a dead soldier against the Westboro Church and its founder, Fred Phelps, saying the First Amendment protects the group’s protests at military funerals.

  35. 35

    I can’t provide much of a source for that. It was a caller on the radio, saying he had a friend inside the capital which observed the private security guards taking over at the shift change. I’m always a bit suspicious of such “friend of a friend” stories, but given Walker’s obvious frustration at getting anyone to follow his orders, it seems likely. Take it for whatever it’s worth.

  36. 36

    RR @ # 7: Don’t forget that early in Reagan’s presidency he decided to send Marines to Lebanon as a “Peace-Keeping” force to secure the Beirut airport and keep it open for flights. Marine officers warned that the airport was indefensible against any significant assault, especially by the small force of Marines assigned to the mission. Moreover, the “mission” was vague, as was the enemy – the Marines prefer to eliminate threats and seize objectives, not wait around for someone to shoot at them. These warnings were disregarded by the Reagan administration.

    So the Marines dug foxholes around the airport perimeter, and established a barracks not far away.

    Then came word that the Christian militias on the hills of eastern Lebanon were having a tough time in their battles with the Muslim militias. So somebody decided that it would be a good idea to lob a few shells form our battleship cruising offshore into the Lebanon hills to assist the Christian Militia.

    I guess the White House at the time thought that the militias would make a distinction between the Navy ships offshore, and the Marines on the ground in Beirut, and still consider the U.S. forces on the ground as “peace-keepers”?

    Of course, most of us who were adults at the time remember the suicide bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut, costing quite a few lives.

    Only afterwards, as the public and media demanded an explanation of the Marine’s mission in Beirut, did the Reagan administration withdraw the Marines from their exposed position.

    But that’s just a footnote of Reagan’s complete incompetence in foreign affairs. To delve into it in more detail, we have to look at his policies toward Iran and Iraq, the arms-for-hostages program, the considerable damage to a U.S. naval vessel from a missle fired by an Iraqi warplane,and ultimately to Saddam’s decision to invade Kuwait and Gulf War I, as well as Iran’s decision to build nuclear weapons.

  37. 37

    We need to build more big roads and dig a big fucking tunnel under Seattle ’cause vehicle miles traveled is going to be going up forever and ever, just like home values!

    http://daily.sightline.org/dai.....traffic-go
    Across the Northwest, traffic volumes are falling short of projections.
    I think you can officially call this a pattern: traffic volumes all around the Pacific Northwest are falling short of the projections made just a few years ago. Take a look at just a sampling of the evidence:

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