This painful, gaping 33-year-old mystery has yet to be full solved, not until we know the motive:
A former convenience store worker confessed to luring 6-year-old Etan Patz from his school bus stop in 1979 and choking him to death in a basement, police said Thursday, ending a three-decades long investigation into one of the nation's most baffling missing-children cases.
Pedro Hernandez, 51, of Maple Shade, N.J., was arrested on a murder charge after he told police he promised the boy a soda, took him to his store – just blocks from Etan's lower Manhattan home – and killed him there, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said.
Hernandez told police he put Etan's body in some trash about a block from the store, Kelly said, where it's possible it was picked up by sanitation crews.
...
Hernandez was questioned by police for more than three hours after he was picked up in New Jersey Wednesday, and gave police a signed confession, Kelly said. His motive was not yet clear.
Just one child? Did he really only do this once? Makes it all the more incomprehensible.
Jay Rockefeller, chairman of the Senate committee on commerce, science and transportation, has written to Lord Justice Leveson, who leads the British judicial inquiry into media ethics, asking if he has uncovered any evidence relating questionable practices in the US.
"I would like to know whether any of the evidence you are reviewing suggests that these unethical and sometimes illegal business practices occurred in the United States or involved US citizens," Rockefeller writesin a letter released on Wednesday.
The development adds to the potential dangers facing News Corp, a publicly-traded company with its headquarters in New York. Rockefeller has taken a close interest in the unfolding phone-hacking saga, but it is the first time that a Senate committee member has acted in his official capacity.
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The commerce committee covers all means of communications in the US – including telecommunications, free-to-air broadcasting and cable TV. It also has oversight over the Federal Communications Commission, the regulatory body that has final say on the issuing of broadcast licences, including the 27 licences issued to the Fox TV network that is the jewel in Murdoch's crown.
Will the UK investigation start opening the floodgates here in the U.S.?
Texas Governor Rick Perry was clearly in his cups when he made this speech to Republicans in his quest for their Presidential nomination this past Friday in Manchester, NH:
Yet another disqualification for the Presidency -- at least W had the good sense to be a dry drunk by the time he hit the Oval Office. Although, I'd say his crazy 20% optional Flat Tax plan that he just released and touted -- i.e., a 14% tax drop for the 1% on top of our economy -- is disqualification enough.
And there's a brilliant expose by Matt Taibbi in the new Rolling Stone, "The Best Little Whore in Texas." It turns out Rick Perry is all about favors -- he'll giveaway any government funds you want if you contribute enough money to his campaigns:
But it's an act that should have ended after just a few steps down the rope, when he slipped up in the Orlando debate and told the truth.
Among other attacks that night, Perry was taking criticism for his decision back in 2007 to order all sixth-grade girls in Texas to be inoculated against HPV – specifically, with three shots of Gardasil vaccine, a Merck product that sells for a tidy $120 a shot. Michele Bachmann, who not only hates the move as an intrusive use of state power but probably also because it interferes with God's ability to administer punitive cancers to dabblers in extramarital sex, blasted Perry for delivering such a blatant favor to his corporate buddies at Merck. "We cannot forget that in the midst of this executive order, there is a big drug company that made millions of dollars because of this mandate," she said, pointing out that Perry's former chief of staff was the chief lobbyist for Merck.
Perry's response was telling. "It was a $5,000 contribution that I had received from them," he said. "I raised about $30 million. And if you're saying that I can be bought for $5,000, I'm offended."
The Orlando crowd applauded nervously, not quite grasping what Perry had just said. Had the debate taken place in Austin, however, the crowd would have erupted in knowing laughter. Rick Perry, as any Texan knows, does not roll over for 5,000 measly dollars. He charges a hell of a lot more than that. The price tag varies, of course, depending on the favor. Based on the donations Perry has collected, it costs an average of $39,354 to buy a seat on the board of a state university. Landing a state road project runs about half a million, while creating an entire government commission specifically designed to protect your business interests will run you more than $13 million.
I'm looking forward to the eventual investigation(s). Texas law may somehow allow it, but it's still called graft.
Gotta love #occupywallstreet as the anti-Tea Party protest with real truth behind it -- that an unbridled Wall Street serving the 1% at the top got us into the current financial mess and they have paid no real price for it, not one that counts. Not one that will keep them from doing this again.
This weekend it spread to other cities and also intensified in NYC, with 700 arrests at the Brooklyn Bridge. People of all ages are represented and one has to wonder if the cops really want to be doing this where there's real crime going on all the time in NYC, and not just in the those towers being protested. Not to mention that those cops are the ones who get hurt when those big money-backed Republicans like those in Wisconsin start taking away public union rights. And how come 700 people have been arrested for protesting, yet not one indictment has been handed down to the high finance crooks themselves.
In the age of online social media, there is a huge amount to look at, to learn from, to help connect with the organizing. The Facebook page, the Twitter handle, the Tumblr. Here's some great pics at The Atlanticshowing the sweep of the protest. Help pay the movement's media costs here.
Most importantly, the grievances. Peaceful and damning. We have yet to see if it lasts or fizzles, if it leads to change or fractures, if the authorities start sending in undercover thugs to turn things violent as they did regularly in the 1960's and the repressive Middle East regimes have done during Arab Spring, to discredit the movement.
If nothing else, it does the heart good to see there are protesters in America who aren't carrying posters of President Obama with a black toothbrush mustache.
A set of confidential federal audits accuse the nation’s five largest mortgage companies of defrauding taxpayers in their handling of foreclosures on homes purchased with government-backed loans, four officials briefed on the findings told The Huffington Post.
The five separate investigations were conducted by the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s inspector general and examined Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citigroup and Ally Financial, the sources said.
The audits accuse the five major lenders of violating the False Claims Act, a Civil War-era law crafted as a weapon against firms that swindle the government. The audits were completed between February and March, the sources said. The internal watchdog office at HUD referred its findings to the Department of Justice, which must now decide whether to file charges.
Officials in Eric T. Schneiderman’s, office have also requested meetings with representatives from Bank of America, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, according to people briefed on the matter who were not authorized to speak publicly. The inquiry appears to be quite broad, with the attorney general’s requests for information covering many aspects of the banks’ loan pooling operations. They bundled thousands of home loans into securities that were then sold to investors such as pension funds, mutual funds and insurance companies.
It is unclear which parts of the byzantine securitization process Mr. Schneiderman is focusing on. His spokesman said the attorney general would not comment on the investigation, which is in its early stages.
I'm not betting on justice, but I'm hoping some pain, maybe, to act as a future deterrent? Or, more likely, more gutting of protective laws thanks to the all-powerful Wall Street lobby...
The GOP are shutting down the government because the Tea Party told them to. Supposed "leaders" like House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) have given them veto power over budget legislation.
That's a bunch of crotchety citizens fueled, knowingly or not, by the Koch Family fortune and Dick Armey's astroturfing. And what's most telling is the sticking point -- because the Dems are compromising like America wants those legislating in DC to do -- is not an economic issue at all, it's a values issue.
The GOP have attached a rider to the budget effectively limiting abortion rights by defunding Planned Parenthood, and all the good it does for women in reproductive services nationwide, and turning the money over to the states to use as they like -- i.e., tough luck in states that restrict right to choose for women over their own bodies.
This shows what's really going on with the Party. Same old same old constituency. And they are also defunding the green jobs revolution (so Germany and China can keep eating our lunch in that area) and eliminating Clean Air Act enforcement. Why not just build giant dinosaurs that eat whatever resources everywhere at the service of the very rich?
After all, the much touted "Path to Prosperity" (for the top 1%) by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) contains the same old giveaways to private insurance companies, essentially setting us back before the Affordable Care Act is fully rockin'.
The following video contains cold-blooded murder by the faceless soldiers of a guy in a polo shirt. You've been WARNED.
There's even worse video out there. These fascists in Libya and Bahrain seem to be winning now. Bad news, so sorry for their people, but at least this time, thanks so mobile and social, evidence of the rulers' crimes are documented and disseminated immediately, globally.
It's going to be a huge moral issue -- by all rights should become a traffic jam at The Hague.
Michael Moore makes sense of the situation once again:
America is not broke.
Contrary to what those in power would like you to believe so that you'll give up your pension, cut your wages, and settle for the life your great-grandparents had, America is not broke. Not by a long shot. The country is awash in wealth and cash. It's just that it's not in your hands. It has been transferred, in the greatest heist in history, from the workers and consumers to the banks and the portfolios of the uber-rich.
Today just 400 Americans have more wealth than half of all Americans combined.
Cheers, Attorney General Eric Holder. I love when our U.S. Justice Department does some of the nuts and bolts work like this:
The criminal accusations spanned several states and several decades, encompassing figures from seven mob families, and led to the arrest of nearly 125 people on federal charges on Thursday.
There were murders, including a double homicide over a spilled drink in a Queens bar. There were the more run-of-the-mill activities associated with organized crime: racketeering, extortion, loan-sharking, money laundering, gambling and the like.
...
The sweep began before dawn, with 800 federal agents and state and local investigators fanning out across the region. The targets, officials said, ran the gamut from what they called small-time bookmakers and shakedown artists to mob middle managers and the entire current leadership of the Colombo crime family, as well as two senior Gambino family figures. Prosecutors said 34 made members of New York’s five crime families — Bonanno, Colombo, Gambino, Genovese and Luchese — and crime families in New Jersey and New England were among those arrested.
She's so little now. She will be shunned by more than before her response.
Obama did the right thing - he raised our national spirits. He tied this tragedy into the American democratic tradition. The timeless practice of constituents meeting with their democratically elected representatives. To the democratic dreams of a young girl who will not live to put her ideas into practice.
This was big narrative. He told an epic tale of the tapestry of decent, admirable, everyday heroic people killed, and noted their political divisions to emphasize how much more alike we are -- humanity is more important than politics. And he smiled in a surprisingly reassuring way when he did it, warm but strong daddy stuff. All that we're grateful for, spreading credit, not blame.
His goal: to inspire out of the darkness. "Gabby opened her eyes for the first time. Gabby opened her eyes for the first time. Gabby opened her eyes."
He led big time tonight. He's leading again. We'll see how it goes with the legislating, but his bipartisan schtick seems to be sincere. He hasn't wavered from his One America theme but he's not shying away from acknowledging the hard stuff in doing it. And he ended up inspiring hope.
This photo caught my eye:
Obama with the young hero who was so valiant and just happens to be a gay American. And there's Sen John McCain (R-AZ) looking on so irrelevant from somewhere in back.
You know, the man who gave America Sarah Palin.
For the record, I agree with Matt Osborne, "I Blame Jared Lee Loughner." I can't even bring myself to reprint his already iconographic mug shot in this blog. I took one look at that picture when they first released it and got it immediately. This guy is just going out of his way to look like the most major asshole he is. The type of asshole who would assassinate a politician and not care who he took down along the way, the most selfish type of organism alive, doing it for some psychotic pleasure, that itch that can never be scratched enough.
Maybe someone out there has the heart to pity his soul, but the way I see it, that's a long way off. He hasn't done the work.
So I don't blame Sarah or Rush or his poor parents or anyone else for this tragedy but the really awful malformation of humanity who planned it all himself and ruined countless lives just to satisfy his sick urges. All the hate mongers out there who feed off of the most atavistic American forms of resentment and fear, who make their living off of stoking it, they are just a more modest form of asshole.
Now that the midterm election is finally over, and as we wait for the inevitable GOP overreach, it's time to return to the arts, specifically the television arts, and a new show that, eight episodes in, has become an addiction for the past several weeks.
I speak, of course, of HBO's Boardwalk Empire, which takes place in Prohibition Era Atlantic City and follows the web of crime surrounding and often led by Enouch "Nucky" Thompson, County Treasurer and king of the town.
There's the noted pedigree, of course, of Creator and Executive Producer Terence Winter of The Sopranos fame, and no less than Martin Scorsese, Executive Producer and Director of the tone/look-setting first episode. Like many HBO shows (including The Wire and Six Feet Under) it took sticking to it through a number of episodes before the hooks caught. I trace my first perking up to episode four, when Michael Kenneth Williams (all hail Omar from The Wire) finally received a great monologue to deliver in his role of Chalky White:
The final hook was the end of the following episode, when Kelly MacDonald as Margaret Schroeder brings the FBI to raid lead character Nucky Thompson's (Steve Buscemi) big private event and he responds by showing up at her door and initiating their romance. Since then the intrigue has heightened, the violence and sex ramped up, and whether it's entirely accurate or not, they makers are doing a notable job of creating a 1920's atmosphere, if in a way we've never quite experienced before. I expect they looked at films like Scarface and The Roaring Twenties for inspiration, 1930's pictures that basically depicted the crime scene of that era. It's particularly strong in the grotesques, most notably a disfigured World War I veteran sharpshooter wearing the type of mask that had to do in that pre-plastic surgery era, just introduced (with a bang) this past week:
It doesn't hurt that the character, Richard Harrow, is played by Jack Huston, grandson of legendary Director-Writer-Actor John Huston, known for him crime films himself. The show may also be a turning point in respect for Gretchen Mol, who goes the distance and then some as a showgirl with loose morals. In movie-actor-studded cast, Michael Shannon is another standout, playing sexually repressed (or perhaps heavily sublimated into his work) FBI agent Nelson Van Alden. Michael Stuhlbarg, coming off his genius lead in the Coen Bros A Serious Man, plays legendary Jewish mobster and World Series fixer Arnold Rothstein. And English actor Stephen Graham (Public Enemies, Snatch, This is England, Band of Brothers) plays a convincingly insecure, unpredictable and violent young Al Capone.
But the guy you really can't take your eyes off is Michael Pitt as James "Jimmy" Darmody, Nucky's protege and maybe (it seems hinted at) his son by way of Gretchen Mol's Gillian. Pitt first received notice in sexually provocative material, Hedwig and the Angry Inch and Bernardo Bertolucci's The Dreamers. He's also worked with Gus Van Sant playing a Kurt Cobain-modeled character and has his own band, the Brooklyn-based Pagoda, where he leads as vocalist and guitarist. Not a typical career for a major leading man in the making, but that's what he feels like on this show.
Pitt's Jimmy is a war vet himself, carrying hidden wounds, having thrown away half a Princeton education and an out-of-wedlock child. His trajectory thus far has taken him from a backwoods booze hijacking gone wrong to Chicago where he's gotten in with Capone and his mob bosses, but it looks like he's headed back to A.C. soon (per this trailer for Episode 8):
Pitt is so period in his looks, the tempo of his movements, his voice and demeanor that you can easily imagine yourself watching this character, this actor in a silent movie from that era. His profile, in particular, seems straight out of the type of drawings found on magazine covers of that era. The perfect R-rated movie star -- every moment, you're wondering what he's going to do next.
If there's more to say about the show's themes or that of individual episodes, that'll have to be for another post. I'll just leave it that we're watching a world pretending to be on the up-and-up on the outside but drenched in corruption just through the door, where Prohibition is a public fig leaf but merely enables the powerful to dilute their liquor ten-fold and makes exponentially more money than they would have under full disclosure.
Come to think of it, sounds a little like post-Citizens United America. A little like the election that just kicked it off.
How corrupt is the Republican side of our current U.S. Supreme Court? For starters, there's Justices Scalia and Thomas attending seminars put on by the hard-right wing energy corporation that's behind almost all of the the anti-climate change astroturf as well as organizing Republicans and their Tea Party subset while filling them with donations -- the very same donations allowed to flow unfettered and undisclosed per the "Citizens United" decision that Scalia and Thomas voted for.
And Thomas gets extra points for the decision opening up funding to his crazy wife's rightwing teabagging nut-causes. This is on top of the new revelation corroborating that Anita Hill was right, as an ex-girlfriend of Thomas' came forward regarding his obsession with pornography, large breasts and hunting for women at work. Depending on his denials in Senate testimony, would that be perjury?
But the most significant and potentially actionable accusation is that Chief Justice John Roberts is in the pocket of these corporate Republican interests, having called for review of the Citizens United case without having been asked by a lower court or plaintiffs -- taking it upon himself to open up our precious democratic election system to an endless flood of unchecked corporate special interest money:
"I mean, the Supreme Court has done a tremendous disservice to the United States of America," Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) told The Huffington Post on Tuesday. "They have done more to undermine our democracy with their Citizens United decision than all of the Republican operatives in the world in this campaign. They've opened the floodgates, and personally, I'm investigating articles of impeachment against Justice Roberts for perjuring during his Senate hearings, where he said he wouldn't be a judicial activist, and he wouldn't overturn precedents."
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According to DeFazio, Roberts hasn't stood by his own doctrine. He pointed to former Justice John Paul Stevens's dissent in the case, in which he said the Citizens United case was not properly brought before the Supreme Court. "This procedure is unusual and inadvisable for a court," Stevens said of the process. "Our colleagues' suggestion that 'we are asked to reconsider Austin and, in effect, McConnell," ante, at 1, would be more accurate if rephrased to state that 'we have asked ourselves' to reconsider those cases."
"Justice Stevens makes the point that Roberts decided a case that wasn't even before the Court, and invited the issue before the Court," said DeFazio. "It was the most extraordinary condemnation I've ever read of a perverted majority on the Supreme Court, at least in recent years."
This is exactly the kind of low boil scandal that can surprise a nation before they know it. If some intrepid reporter finds some direct evidence of collusion, written or testimony, that Roberts was a defacto plant, forged during the Reagan Administration by Federalist Club funders, we could have an Allen Drury novel on our hands.
Will Chief Justice Roberts have his Richard Nixon moment?
It turns out that a highly experience Republican operative, Sal Russo, is both funding of Tea Party Republican candidates and reaping the big bucks for himself:
Unlike many of the newly energized outsiders who have embraced Tea Party ideals, Mr. Russo, 63, is a longtime Republican operative who got his start as an aide to Ronald Reagan and later raised money and managed media strategy for a string of other politicians, including former Gov. George E. Pataki of New York. His history and spending practices have prompted some former employees and other Tea Party activists to question whether he is committed to, or merely exploiting, their cause.
Mr. Russo’s group, based in California, is now the single biggest independent supporter of Tea Party candidates, raising more than $5.2 million in donations since January 2009, according to federal records. But at least $3 million of that total has since been paid to Mr. Russo’s political consulting firm or to one controlled by his wife, according to federal records.
Yep, those 'baggers are so good with money. That's why Republican Senate nominee for Delaware, Christine "Li'l Sarah" O'Donnell seems to make all her income off of running for office and could be indicted for how she's has misused previous campaign funds for her personal expenses:
Now, the FEC, the Federal Election Commission, allows you to spend money after a campaign to retire debt, but not to add to the debt. And she has lots of debt from 2008, which troubles a lot of people. They think it's hypocritical, because -- because she wants America to spend what it has. But let us show you some of these checks. You can decide for yourself if she should have written these checks from her campaign money. For example, a check for 475 bucks, she labeled it as mileage reimbursement. Remember, this is three months after the campaign is over. This means she drove hundreds of miles and she submitted this with campaign funding.
Also, $157 on a phone bill from Verizon Wireless; by all indications, this is her personal phone. Also, $28 at a gas station -- the gas station in the town where she's originally from -- Moorestown, New Jersey. She still has family there. This is campaign money. There's no campaign going on.
Six hundred dollars for her utility bill paid to Delmarva Power. Also, there are little piddly expenses, but increasing her debt. And these are very telltale. You wouldn't need to spend this for any campaign, let alone a campaign that is not going on anymore.
$19 at a place called the Pike Lanes. The Pike Lanes is a bowling alley. That would pay for about eight games of bowling.
Also $26 for a meal at Ruby Tuesday's restaurant -- campaign money once again.
And then she even used campaign money for a $2.84 charge at Staples. In addition, she paid rent money with her campaign funding.
Maybe that's why O'Donnell cancelled Sunday morning appearances on both CBS' Face the Nation as well as Faux News, where Chris Wallace went to the unusual length of - gasp - criticizing her as well as Bob Schieffer. Or maybe it was her "dabbling" in witchcraft?
How about 'baggin' Republican Senate nominee in Alaska, Joe Miller? Miller has been on the Federal payroll as U.S. Magistrate for half a decade but is touting his Constitutional interpretation of enumerated rights to say that unemployment benefits are unconstitutional -- and refused to answer any questions from, again, Faux News anchor Chris Wallace on what in hell he'd actually do to help all those Americans suffering due to the economic crisis:
It all seems like a witches brew of bad tea to me.
Five of the soldiers are charged with murdering three Afghan men who were allegedly killed for sport in separate attacks this year. Seven others are accused of covering up the killings and assaulting a recruit who exposed the murders when he reported other abuses, including members of the unit smoking hashish stolen from civilians.
In one of the most serious accusations of war crimes to emerge from the Afghan conflict, the killings are alleged to have been carried out by members of a Stryker infantry brigade based in Kandahar province in southern Afghanistan.
According to investigators and legal documents, discussion of killing Afghan civilians began after the arrival of Staff Sergeant Calvin Gibbs at forward operating base Ramrod last November. Other soldiers told the army's criminal investigation command that Gibbs boasted of the things he got away with while serving in Iraq and said how easy it would be to "toss a grenade at someone and kill them".
One soldier said he believed Gibbs was "feeling out the platoon".
An amazing story, if proven to be true, brutal. Read the rest, and I'm sure there's more coverage of it to come.
"To have people say that I was such a racist was unbelievable," she said of the fallout from the video and Fox coverage. "My whole life, if you look into what I have done, my father was murdered in 1965. If you look at all of us, we all hurt with that and we got involved into the movement and channeled our effort into good, instead of hating.
"I am getting hate calls and e-mails at this point. I got one call last night at my house at 12:30 a.m. that said 'you lost your job, good for you' and 'bitch' There are people out there who will believe that I am a racist person, even though the story is getting out there."
She said her husband, Charles, and her two children, who also live nearby in Athens, Ga., were surprised, but have been toughened by years of seeing her work in the civil rights movement: "They had to grow up in the movement so they have had to deal with stuff like this through the years. We did not always take the easy road. They have some thick skin as a result."
Yep, British Petroleum has been behaving badly -- perhaps criminally -- for years:
The confidential inquiries, which have not previously been made public, focused on a rash of problems at BP's Alaska oil-drilling unit that undermined the company’s publicly proclaimed commitment to safe operations. They described instances in which management flouted safety by neglecting aging equipment, pressured or harassed employees not to report problems, and cut short or delayed inspections in order to reduce production costs. Executives were not held accountable for the failures, and some were promoted despite them.
Similar themes about BP operations elsewhere were sounded in interviews with former employees, in lawsuits and little-noticed state inquiries, and in e-mails obtained by ProPublica. Taken together, these documents portray a company that systemically ignored its own safety policies across its North American operations - from Alaska to the Gulf of Mexico to California and Texas.
Here's some latest news on the British Petroleum crime against our oceans: the Feds are looking at a criminal probe:
A team of top federal prosecutors and investigators has taken the first steps toward a formal criminal investigation into oil giant BP's actions before and after the drilling rig disaster off Louisiana.
The investigators, who have been quietly gathering evidence in Louisiana over the last three weeks, are focusing on whether BP skirted federal safety regulations and misled the U.S. government by saying it could quickly clean up an environmental accident.
The team has met with U.S. attorneys and state officials in the Gulf Coast region and has sent letters to executives of BP and Transocean Ltd., the drilling rig owner, warning them against destroying documents or other internal records.
Ideally Halliburton gets indicted as well, and maybe we finally learn what the hell kind of deal President Cheney cut the oil industry in the early days of that disastrous administration.
Finally, some protesting of BP and a call for a boycott:
The President visited the Gulf today and reiterated some of what he said yesterday. This guy is clearly smarter and more engaged than his predecessor but it still staggers me what he's got to know or learn very quickly in order to be the expert we've come to expect, as well as the father/fixer figure we expect all of our Presidents to be. I trust he has a better chance than most to gain some level of competence talking about the issue at hand, but holy cow, how in control can you ever feel in a situation like this? Nightmare disaster in extremely deep water, with monstrous machines being used for giant-sized remote surgery...it makes assassinating a Taliban leader seem easy.
The result of this whole situation, besides the permanent damage to the Gulf and surrounding ecosystem, must be some sort of raised consciousness, both about the value of big government (regulation, enforcement, solutions in reserve) and, most importantly, alternative energy. Per Eugene Robinson:
Obama has rethought his enthusiasm for offshore drilling. Now he, and the rest of us, should rethink the larger issue -- the trade-off between economic development and environmental protection. In the long run, our natural resources are all we've got. Defending them must be a higher priority than our recent presidents, including Obama, have made it.
Energy policy is one of Obama's priorities. He talks about "clean coal," which I believe to be an oxymoron, and favors technologies -- such as carbon capture and sequestration -- that are new and untested. The environmental risks must be a central and paramount concern, not a mere afterthought. Let's preclude the next Deepwater Horizon right now.
It's a moral imperative -- borne of the threat to the survival of the species.
Thanks to enough blame to go around and go way back and, what's not hard to predict will be proven in court before this all ends, criminal negligence we're in the worst man-made ecological crisis since Chernobyl. The making of portions of the earth uninhabitable, more like our long ago poisoned and dried up neighbors in this solar system. More like entropy.
Nature organizes. Man attempts to impose will on nature, nature all too often disorganizes. It's ultimately all about our appetites for creature comforts and layers of security in an often hostile world.
I'm willing to give President Obama a chance to prove he's got a handle on this nightmare, or putting one into place. He's earned my trust thus far making strategic decision of value when being handed huge fountains of dute. He spoke today and is taking the type of responsibility Bush and his cronies couldn't muster. The responsibility we all have to start taking as well if we want to have a planetary future:
And he's got to be busy with this huge pile of dute suddenly flowing from succession-wracked North Korea, while relaunching out strategy for managing threats with Secretary of State Clinton.
