Tuesday, June 14, 2011

The Supreme Court was sharply divided on the decision regarding "The Open Meeting Law" which prohibits unions from collective bargaining.

It all sounds corrupt to me, either the legislature abides by their own rules or they don't.  This decision is turning legislative process in Wisconsin into a free for all.  I can't imagine this won't be appealed and I am sure the NLRB will review the oppression of public worker's rights in Wisconsin.  The recalls of the Wisconsin State Senate has to go forward.  The Democratic Committee should use the model for Lisa Murkowski who sent post cards to voters to tell them how to vote for the candidates that actually uphold their rights rather than a 'faux' Republican in Democrat clothing.

...essentially a 4-3 decision, the high court overturned a lower court, (click title to entry - thank you) which had ruled Republican lawmakers violated the state's open meetings law when they passed the measure in March.
"Access was not denied," the Supreme Court declared in Tuesday's decision. "There is no constitutional requirement that the legislature provide access to as many members of the public as wish to attend meetings of the legislature or meetings of legislative committees."
But Tuesday' 68-page decision was a thicket of concurrences and dissents, reflecting the sharp divide the measure has created in the state itself....


But, there is a larger picture if one can believe that and I would like to paint it here. 

Many people believe all this extremism is an anomoly in the USA because of the "Great Recession."  That is a factor, but, the events of 2010 were far more pre-meditated than that. 

I am going back to 1990 thorugh 1992 in a meeting at Johnson & Johnson in Raritan, New Jersey of employees and a Vice President by the name of Mr. Cincotta (that spelling may not be exactly correct, but, more phonetically - SIN-COAT-TA). 

The option of enrolling in the new 401K was being introduced to the employees in several meetings whereby departments were assembled in an auditorium on site.

The Vice President in his presentation stated, "I strongly encourage all our employees to join J&J in this opportunity to build a retirement fund.  In twenty years, the Medicare Program we all know today will no longer exist and will be replaced with a 'voucher program' that will only contribute to your retirement health insurance.  Additional monies by employees will be needed to assist in carrying that burden.

This is a true story.  What has that got to with Wisconsin?  This is Medicare and not union rights.

That true story illustrates clearly how Wall Street has an agenda for the activities within the USA's populous that provides for their profit margins.  I guarantee you, somewhere in someone's files there exists information regarding the wide spread activities of Representative Governors and legislatures in the year 2010.  This radicalism only seems radical because somewhere along the way it was derailed and those conversations with the American people never took place.  What occurred was enlightenment to the agenda of Wall Street in dominating the American reality and how easily 'the peasants' could be controlled and kep in abeyance.

I don't lie about these things.  There is far too much as stake and it involves the country, its citizens, our children's futures and the well being of our democracy.  This stuff is real.  It is not going away unless we all make it go away.  Wall Street is not the government and the government is not Wall Street.  Wall Street is a private entity and needs to be monitored and regulated to control 'the fallout' to the citizens of the USA.  For over a decade the Republicans have deregulated and deregulated and pushed the economic structure into failure, this is just the next step in an agenda that began a long time ago. 

Why would a J&J Vice President tell an entire community of employees signing up for the first time to their 401Ks that Medicare would become a voucher program in twenty years unless it was being excecuted as he spoke.  Think about it.  Why would Wall Street reach out to average citizens to enroll in building a retirement fund through risky investments unless they had plans.  The monies people were saving or investing in their homes are all 'money reserves' and they can be expoited if 'people buy in to them.' 

The attack on public sector unions is 'just the next step' for the Right Wing Republicans.  They have an agenda.  It is real. 

We are the ones that have to stop this and there is no looking back.  I promise you that.

Rick Perry is boasting about Texas job growth as if there is something to boast about and elect him President. Please !

If one looks at the graph at the link to this entry, it is easily noted that the Texas unemployment rates bounces around from decade to decade like a rubber ball.  That is endemic to Texas, Perry has nothing to do with it.

June of 1992 the Texas Unemployment rate was 8.4%.  while the national rate was 8%.  YES, that right, in June of 1992 the USA unemployment rate was 8% under President George H. W. Bush.

The Texas Unemployment Rate zig-zagged like the carbon dioxide hockey stick of Mauna Loa Laboratories until December 2000 when the rate was 3.7% under President William Clinton while the national average was 3.7%, too.

Then under the illustrious leadership of George W. Bush the unemployment rate rose in Texas in June of 2003 to 7.5% while the national average was 6.5%.

In April of 2007 the Texas unemployment rate fell once more to 4.0% while the national average was 4.4%.  I suppose all those ill gotten gains from Halliburton's Iraq venue meant something.  The federal treasury during the first term of Bush/Cheney subsidized the Texas economy.  It was not time that the Texas unemployment rate was skyrocketing again as the global economic collapse became real. 

In April 2008 it was maintaining at 4%, by December of 2008 it was 5.7% and by July 2009 it was 8.2%.  The all time high came in January 2010 at 8.6% and it has jumped up and down since then for a Texas Unemployment rate of 7.7% as of April 2011. 

Texas is the largest state geographically in the lower 48 with extensive natural resources that Repbulicans rely on in order to be wealthy.  It has the second largest population of all the states, California being the first, so the 'TEND' in unemployment will naturally show up there first.  It is the first state to actually realize the changes taking place in the nation because it is the highest number of people with changing employment.

The USA National unemployment rate is 8.4% currently.  If Rick Perry were boasting the unemployment rate of Texas had fallen dramatically to something like 5% or even 6% I'd say he'd have something there.  But for Texas unemployment rate to be only .7% less than the national average, it ain't anything to brag about. 

Besides falsely claiming he has made the most strides in employment in the nation, he is attempting to conduct oppression of the Texas vote. 

By Richard Connelly, Thu., Jan. 20 2011 at 12:16 PM

Categories: Political Animals
Remember that vast tsunami of voter fraud that swept across Texas, coming close to throwing into chaos the very concept of democracy?
Neither do we.
Even Karl Rove, using every bit of the federal government he could get his hands on, couldn't find the widespread fraud right-wingers insist takes place among what coincidentally happen to be minority voters.
But rampant voter fraud exists, dammit, because GOPers keep saying so. And not only does it exist, it exists to such a massive extent that Rick Perry has introduced emergency legislation dealing with it….

In all honesty.  The Republican Party is in such disrepair that it can hardly call itself a party anymore.

This is the Missouri River Basin according to the Army Corp. of Engineers

Iowa town to 'make our stand' against flooding (click title to entry for video - thank you)

...Army Corps of Engineers contractors are racing to add earth to a secondary levee system ringing Hamburg after the main levee, partially breached last week, punched open a 300-foot hole by Monday evening.

"We're just making preparations to make our stand. We're still dry and hoping it'll stay that way," Hamburg Fire Chief Dan Sturm said...

From NASA, American assets as work.  It is a shame the legislature of the USA doesn't believe what it sees.  Amazing.

Lewis and Clark Lake in the upper right corner.  The Missouri River empties into that lake.  This NASA photograph was May of 2005.

This is all very vital farmland.  No one seems get their mind around it, ya know?

This is Lewis and Clark Lake in the upper right corner.  The Missouri River empties into it.  This satellite image was taken on June 11, 2011.

By early June 2011, the Missouri River (click here) had risen enough to submerge normally dry land, including some agricultural land, west of Lewis and Clark Lake. Acquired the by Thematic Mapper on the Landsat 5 satellite, these images show part of the Missouri River along the South Dakota-Nebraska border. The top image, from June 5, 2011, shows flooded conditions. The bottom image, from May 19, 2005, shows more typical conditions....

There photos are important.  They record the nation when it is normal and when it receiving extreme climate conditions.  But, the photos are also important to the farmers.  When their production falls because of these severe climate conditions they can apply FOR LOANS.  Not subsidies, but, low interest loans so they can survive until next growing season.

(Reuters) - An elderly woman has drowned (click here) and two others were missing amid flooding in Montana that prompted the governor on Monday to declare a state of emergency.
Heavy rains and melting of record snowpacks in the mountains have caused rivers and streams across Montana to overflow, inundating a number of communities and closing sections of federal and state roadways.
"There is no area of the state that is really in a safe spot," said Monique Lay, spokeswoman for Montana's Disaster and Emergency Services Division....

Death Toll from China Floods Rises to 94

A panda sticks his tongue (click here) out while climbing a tree at an ecological park in Xiuning, Anhui province, June 13, 2011. Heavy rains battered Xiuning from June 9 to June 11, causing floods in the region. The three pandas at the ecological park were well protected from the rain. [Photo/Asianewsphoto]

...The Xinhua news agency reports (click title to entry - thank you)  that the meteorological administration issued a level-three emergency alert Sunday for areas in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River.  It quotes officials as saying these areas will be swamped by torrential rains Monday, raising the risk of flash floods and landslides in areas that were recently hit by droughts.  Under the alert, local authorities will monitor weather changes 24 hours a day and give warnings in case of possible natural disasters....









Asutralia has already finished with its hurricane season. It had eight named storms and three were a Cat 4.

This is Sydney this morning.  The temperature map at the title to this entry is in celsius.  If one looks at Sydney it is discernable that there is significan cloudiness as the land from the satellite view is dark.  Satelllites don't necessarily pick up 'cloud shadows.'  So, this IS a very high tropospheric system resulting from the Climate Crisis and anthropogenic carbon dioxide.

 

 

Storms break rainfall records on north coast  (click here)

Leesha Mckenny
June 15, 2011


SYDNEY'S wet weather woes will continue today but areas to the north will again face the brunt extreme conditions battering NSW.
The State Emergency Service evacuated about 400 people from Smithtown, Jerseyville and Kinchela, on the Macleay River south of Nambucca Heads, and in parts of Gladstone, which were at risk of being cut off by floods by midnight.
Another 400 people were moved from Kempsey's town centre after the Macleay River was predicted to reach 6.4 metres at the bridge by 3am.
The SES had received 815 requests for help between Monday and last night, with most of the damage caused by leaking roofs, fallen trees or the threat of flood....
...A Weatherzone meteorologist, Brett Dutschke, said Woolgoolga had received its biggest fall in 26 years, recording 400 millimetres of rain in three days. ''The Yamba total of 250 millimetres is a 12-year high,'' he said....

Four hundred millimeters is nearly 16 inches of rainfall in three days.  To put that into perspective, about a year ago Oklahoma received between 12 to 16 inches of rain depending on where you were in elevation.  Hurricane Flyod delivered anywhere from 12 to 20 inches of rain killing twenty people.  Anthropogenic carbon dioxide at high levels in the troposphere is a dangerous and toxic gas to human life.



This is the new fire map for the USA on June 14, 2011. A lot of acreage is burning today. (click title to entry - thank you)

...The Wallow Fire has burned more than 733 square miles since Memorial Day weekend. Fire spokesman John Helmich said Tuesday morning it's not yet certain whether the acreage that has burned in Arizona makes it larger than the 2002 Rodeo-Chediski fire, which burned 732 square miles, destroyed 491 buildings and cost about $400 million to fight....

I mentioned the other day that the air mass of the southern USA was dry even though it was tropical/sub-tropical in its orgins.

The fact that Florida has so many wildfires addressed the conditions of 'wetlands' in the USA. 

 

State of emergency due to fire danger (click here)

...In issuing the executive order the governor noted that there are approximately 310 active wildfires burning approximately 115,583 acres throughout the state....

Every government in the world and every state in the union was told by scientists for five decades what was going to happen if carbon dioxide emissions were to continue at the rate they were occuring in the 1960s.  Having a vicious Republican Party as a legitimate political party in the USA has done a great deal of damage.  They haven't and won't take credit for the damage and they insist today they are the answer to all the economic troubles in the country when they caused them in the first place.  The USA electorate should fear the Republican Party.  They nothing to offer. 

...Eighty-four percent of Florida's gross state product (click here)  is derived from the service industry and over 40 million people come to relish those services annually. The largest segment of society to visit Florida is the senior population.
Sandy soils, rich swamplands, huge limestone beds and thick cypress forests are home to some of America's most spectacular birdlife, plant life, and wildlife. Floridian's have capitalized on this extraordinary feature creating scenic drives, observation platforms, and boardwalks easily accessible to all ages and abilities....

There are wetlands in Alaska as well as the Permafrost which have been deterioriating due to higher than normal temperatures.  Dust.  Alaskan dust.  Well.  That's a new one.

 
June 13, 2011
By Rebecca Palsha
Channel 2 News
·                                                          ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Rain this past weekend helped fire crews as gain ground on the
·                                                         Hastings fire, northwest of Fairbanks, but officials aren't in control of the blaze just yet....
..."With the dust that we have, that covers all the ground out there, that is that organic mat," Kurth said, "it can be 12 to 18 inches thick out there and that harbors a fire very well. It can smolder out there even when you get rain."

Wildfire crews in Alaska are getting a break, thanks to cloudy, cool weather. The favorable weather helped crews clamp down on two Interior wildfires over the weekend.
The Associated Press
Published: 06/14/1110:08 am | Updated: 06/14/1110:08 am

FAIRBANKS -- Wildfire crews in Alaska are getting a break, thanks to cloudy, cool weather.
The favorable weather helped crews clamp down on two Interior wildfires over the weekend.
Both the Hastings fire in the Chatanika area and the East Volkmar fire outside Delta Junction have stopped their quick growth, which is letting firefighters focus on the most vulnerable areas.
"This has been a productive weekend for the crews on the fire," Hastings fire spokesman Jim Schwarber said. "We're able to make progress on our containment effort and not have it run away from us."...

Rep. Peter King Denounces Gingrich's "Nazi" Comparison



Jun 14, 2011

GOP debate served up Muslim fears and pizza picks  (click here)

Asked to account for his past claim that he wouldn't appoint any Muslims to his White House cabinet out of fears they would impose Sharia law, Herman Cain said he only was worried about some Muslims. And much like Kurt Russell in The Thing, Cain said he was merely searching for the right test to discover which ones are infiltrators trying to kill us....

Kurt Russell in "The Thing?"  Are these folks operating in reality at all?  You know, I don't know why there aren't tribunals in other countries for the atrocities the Neocons have committed.  Iraq was a completely illegal and unnecessary war and an instrument of Wall Street, and yet there is no accounting for it in any court anywhere.  I find that strange.

...continued below...

John Carpenter's The Thing (1982) - Part 1



There are no wolves in Antarctica.  No Polar Bears.  Nothing to hunt.  The original film was far more interesting.  I think there is a trailer for it, too.

The Thing Trailer



Kain was trying to be 'trendy' and very, very Palin by shooting at anything that moved.

I didn't have to watch the Repuglican Debates to know they were a joke.  I couldn't be more sincere.

By FRANK ELTMAN , 06.14.11, 12:41 PM EDT
…"This is a real concern; this is a real issue," the lawmaker from New York's Long Island said in a telephone interview following a news conference by a group called Long island Neighbors for American Values. The group is a coalition of religious leaders and civic groups who contend King's hearings are fostering negative stereotypes….
There isn't anything that can be done or should be done by committee in the US House.  I can't believe a New York House of Representative member is actually spending taxpayer dollars on hearing to benefit hate mongering and fear. 

This entire Sharia Law mess is so ridiculous.  The laws of the USA are based in 'principle' by upholding values transcended from our Founders.  Those principles were according to many aspects of living.  One can look at the laws of the USA and easily pick and chose to find all kinds of religious dogma within them, including "Thou shalt not kill."  Moses didn't have a sheriff. 

The 'idea' that a state or any other level of government can outlaw a religious 'idea' and/or 'practice' and vicitimize people that enjoy "Freedom of Religion" is more than strange.  The states that have placed outlawing Sharia Law on their ballots are attempting to modify the First Amendment.  I never in my wildest imagination thought the USA would ever be so blantantly ignorant.