:: NEWS COCKTAIL aka BlahBlahBlog ::

:: 9.30.2008 ::

:: Defiant House Rejects Huge Bailout ::

Next Step Is Uncertain
New York Times

WASHINGTON — Defying President Bush and the leaders of both parties, rank-and-file lawmakers in the House on Monday rejected a $700 billion economic rescue plan in a revolt that rocked the Capitol, sent markets plunging and left top lawmakers groping for a resolution.

The stunning defeat of the proposal on a 228-205 vote after marathon talks by senior Congressional and Bush administration officials lowered a fog of uncertainty over economies around the globe. Its authors had described the measure as essential to preventing widespread economic calamity.

The markets began to plummet even before the 15-minute voting period expired on the House floor. For 25 more minutes, uncertainty gripped the nation as television showed party leaders trying, and failing, to muster more support. Finally, Representative Ellen Tauscher, Democrat of California, pounded the gavel and it was done.

In the end, only 65 Republicans — just one-third of those voting — backed the plan despite personal pleas from President Bush and encouragement from their presidential nominee, Senator John McCain. By contrast, 140 Democrats, or 60 percent, voted in favor, many after voicing grave misgivings. Their nominee, Senator Barack Obama, also backed the bill.

By the end of day, the Dow had fallen almost 778 points, or nearly 7 percent, to 10,365. Credit markets also remained distressed, with bank lending rates rising and investors fleeing to the safety of Treasury bills.

Among opponents of the rescue plan, some Republicans cited ideological objections to government intervention, and liberal Democrats said they were of no mind to race to aid Wall Street tycoons. Other critics complained about haste and secrecy in assembling the plan.

But lawmakers on both sides pointed to an outpouring of opposition from deeply hostile constituents just five weeks before every seat in the House was up for election as a fundamental reason that the measure was defeated. House members in potentially tough races and those seeking Senate seats fled from the plan in droves.

“People’s re-elections played into this to a much greater degree than I would have imagined,” said Representative Deborah Pryce of Ohio, a former member of the Republican leadership who is retiring this year and voted for the plan. Congressional leaders in both parties said they did not know how they would proceed but were examining options, including having the Senate, where there was more support for the bailout, advance a bill after the Jewish New Year on Tuesday.

Read more here.

posted by me

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:: NASA extends Phoenix mission as snow falls on Mars ::

A Reuters report
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor

WASHINGTON - NASA extended the mission of the busy Phoenix lander Monday, saying it will operate the lander until it dies in the cold and dark of the Martian winter.

It is already snowing there, above the equivalent of the Arctic circle on Mars, the researchers said.

The explorer found evidence that the dust on the surface of Mars resembles seawater in its chemical makeup, adding to evidence that liquid water that once may have supported life flowed on the planet's surface.

The Phoenix lander already has operated far longer than expected when it was dropped onto the Martian surface in May, and its controllers said they would squeeze every drop of life they could out of the solar-powered lander.

Read more here.

A L S O

Looking for water on Mars
Reuters

NASA Sets Date for Phoenix's Return to the Ashes
Wired News

posted by me

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:: "The end of Wall Street as we have known it" ::

Goldman, Morgan Stanley Bring Down Curtain on an Era
(Update5) Bloomberg.com
By Christine Harper and Craig Torres

Sept. 22 -- The Wall Street that shaped the financial world for two decades ended last night, when Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley concluded there is no future in remaining investment banks now that investors have determined the model is broken.

The Federal Reserve's approval of their bid to become banks ends the ascendancy of the securities firms, 75 years after Congress separated them from deposit-taking lenders, and caps weeks of chaos that sent Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. into bankruptcy and led to the rushed sale of Merrill Lynch & Co. to Bank of America Corp.

``The decision marks the end of Wall Street as we have known it,'' said William Isaac, a former chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. ``It's too bad.''

posted by me

:: 6:04:00 PM [+] ::
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:: Crashing The Election ::

An editorial
from The Nation

With the recent stunning collapse on Wall Street, we can now add AIG, Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch to the growing list of financial giants brought down by the burst housing bubble. They will almost certainly not be the last to fall. The rotten home loans at the center of the crisis have so metastasized throughout the worldwide financial system that no institution is likely to remain unscathed. The effects of the mortgage meltdown, however, were first felt not in the stock market but in the neighborhoods of Detroit, Las Vegas, Cleveland and everywhere else foreclosure notices popped up ahead of weeds on the front lawn. And it is there that the financial crisis--vast in scope but acutely personal in effect--has had its most wrenching impact. When rising and unstable food and gas prices are factored in, a trend driven by speculators in search of the next commodity bubble, it's clear that the very ability of many Americans to feed, warm and shelter their families is under threat. In the crucial swing state of Ohio, for example, Governor Ted Strickland has commissioned a task force to look into why a full third of Ohioans are unable to afford basic necessities.

But even as the presidential campaigns barnstorm across America, it seems from the press that they've barely set foot in that Ohio. For two weeks, the media reported the election as if it were The Sarah Palin Show, discussing at length baby bumps, Kawasaki eyeglasses and snowmobiles, oblivious of the unemployment rate's jump to a four-year high. If that grim statistic wasn't enough to concentrate their minds, perhaps the Fed's bailout, with billions of taxpayer dollars, of yet another near-death firm will do the trick. Only when the press decides to take its job--and the job of US president--seriously will this election see a debate about the crucial economic and foreign policy issues at stake (see "Ten National Security Myths Debunked").

Only in a personality-driven, contentless climate will John McCain be able to pass off his two-faced promises of reform as a populist crusade. Railing against "multimillion-dollar payouts to CEOs," McCain now promises to bring "regulatory oversight" to Washington and "transparency and accountability to Wall Street." But his rhetoric is just lipstick on a pig. In March McCain told the Wall Street Journal that he is "always for less regulation," and in April--perhaps inspired by his longtime economic guru Phil Gramm, who said in July that a nation of "whiners" was in a "mental recession"--McCain described the country's economic crisis as "psychological." Now faced with a global financial crisis, McCain proposes a psychological solution--belief in his image as a maverick reformer.

Puncturing McCain's newfound Teddy Roosevelt persona will require brutal honesty from Barack Obama and his campaign. In his initial response to this latest economic breakdown, Obama called it "the most serious financial crisis since the Great Depression" but then said, "I certainly don't fault Senator McCain for these problems...I do fault the economic philosophy he subscribes to." Obama's statement was gallant but missed the mark. In fact, Senator McCain--along with every Republican and Democrat who pushed financial deregulation--is responsible for today's economic woes. McCain voted for the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, signed by Bill Clinton in 1999, repealing the Glass-Steagall Act, which since 1933 had kept a wall between commercial and investment banks. When that wall came tumbling down, and when the Internet bubble burst, the housing frenzy took off, as financiers sought new ways to create paper profits.

As for the press, its chance for redemption is here, in the presidential and vice presidential debates, the first on September 26. It must put questions about the economy center stage: What has caused this crisis? Does it signal the failure of market fundamentalism, and if so, what is the alternative? What role did deregulation play in it, and what role should re-regulation play in forging a way out? Why does the government intervene when financial institutions fail but do so little to help jump-start the real economy when there is deepening economic pain for ordinary people? What do you plan to do about America's spiraling trade deficits? How will you transform the economy to ensure that all Americans enjoy the benefits of sustainable economic growth?

With only weeks left before the election, it is late to begin this conversation, but it is not too late.

A L S O
from The Nation

Paulson Bailout Plan A Historic Swindle
By William Greider

Financial-market wise guys, who had been seized with fear, are suddenly drunk with hope. They are rallying explosively because they think they have successfully stampeded Washington into accepting the Wall Street Journal solution to the crisis: dump it all on the taxpayers. That is the meaning of the massive bailout Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has shopped around Congress. It would relieve the major banks and investment firms of their mountainous rotten assets and make the public swallow their losses--many hundreds of billions, maybe much more. What's not to like if you are a financial titan threatened with extinction?

If Wall Street gets away with this, it will represent an historic swindle of the American public--all sugar for the villains, lasting pain and damage for the victims. My advice to Washington politicians: Stop, take a deep breath and examine what you are being told to do by so-called "responsible opinion." If this deal succeeds, I predict it will become a transforming event in American politics--exposing the deep deformities in our democracy and launching a tidal wave of righteous anger and popular rebellion. As I have been saying for several months, this crisis has the potential to bring down one or both political parties, take your choice.


Bankrupt AIG Underwrote McCain's 'Reform Institute'
By Mark Ames

John McCain is making a big show of criticizing the government "bailout" of insurance giant AIG. But it turns out that AIG, which received $85 billion in US tax dollars earlier this week, is one of the largest donors to McCain's pet think tank, the comically named "Reform Institute," which he co-founded in 2001 "in direct response to the millions of Americans who, during the 2000 presidential campaign, expressed profound disillusionment with corrupt fundraising activities."

posted by me

:: 2:07:00 PM [+] ::
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:: "Lucky break allowed dinosaurs to rule Earth" ::

By Will Dunham

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Thanks to a big stroke of luck 200 million years ago, dinosaurs beat out a fearsome group of creatures competing for the right to rule the Earth, scientists said on Thursday.

Dinosaurs appeared about 230 million years ago, during the Triassic Period, and competed for 30 million years with a group of reptiles called crurotarsans, cousins of today's crocodiles that grew to huge sizes and looked a lot like dinosaurs.

Many scientists believed dinosaurs were simply superior to crurotarsans and fared better because the earliest dinosaurs walked on two legs, not four, and because they may have been warm-blooded.

But scientists led by Steve Brusatte of Columbia University and American Museum of Natural History in New York conducted an extensive review of fossils and found that the two groups were evolving at roughly the same pace and the crurotarsans actually had a larger range of body types, diets and lifestyles.

The dinosaurs won out, Brusatte concluded, because some type of planetary calamity 200 million years ago -- dramatic climate change or maybe a large meteorite impact -- nearly wiped out the crurotarsans while sparing the dinosaurs.

"The fundamental question is why were the dinosaurs able to become so dominant," Brusatte, whose study is in the journal Science, said in a telephone interview. "Evolution on a big scale oftentimes is a matter of luck."

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 2:32:00 PM [+] ::
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:: "Keith Olbermann Blasts McCain for Exploiting 9/11" ::

Video: A Special Comment from Countdown
linked via Alternet

posted by me

:: 8:08:00 PM [+] ::
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:: Can Any Candidate Clean Up Bush's Massive Post 9/11 Mess? ::

By Andrew J. Bacevich, Tomdispatch.com and AlterNet

Can anyone be surprised that, once again, the attacks of 9/11/01 were reflexively ground zero for embattled Republicans? George W. Bush led the way at the Republican National Convention, saying of John McCain, "We need a president who understands the lessons of September 11, 2001." In his convention keynote address, Rudy Giuliani followed suit, zapping Obama and his supporters this way: "The Democrats rarely mentioned the attacks of September 11. They are in a state of denial about the threat that faces us now and in the future." Post-convention, it's evidently time to assure the nation that Sarah Palin is just the pit bull to handle the next 9/11. Now comes the news that this Thursday, the endless presidential election campaign will finally make it -- quite literally -- to Ground Zero. Barack Obama and John McCain will "put aside politics" and appear together for the yearly ceremonies. By now, however, it's far too late to "put aside" 9/11, no less remove it from American politics. Our world has been profoundly reshaped, after all, by the decisions Bush and his top officials made in the wake of those attacks.

Still, taking up the President's implied question, what "lessons" exactly should be drawn, seven years later, other than that you stand a reasonable chance of winning elections by invoking 9/11 ad nauseum? As Andrew Bacevich, author of the New York Times bestselling book, The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism, indicates below, there are indeed lessons to be drawn. They are, in fact, devastating to the Bush administration, and unless they are grasped, further disaster is undoubtedly in the offing. (To watch a video of Bacevich discussing those post-9/11 lessons, click here.) -- Introduction by TomDispatch editor, Tom Engelhardt

9/11 Plus Seven

The events of the past seven years have yielded a definitive judgment on the strategy that the Bush administration conceived in the wake of 9/11 to wage its so-called Global War on Terror. That strategy has failed, massively and irrevocably. To acknowledge that failure is to confront an urgent national priority: to scrap the Bush approach in favor of a new national security strategy that is realistic and sustainable -- a task that, alas, neither of the presidential candidates seems able to recognize or willing to take up.

On September 30, 2001, President Bush received from Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld a memorandum outlining U.S. objectives in the War on Terror. Drafted by Rumsfeld's chief strategist Douglas Feith, the memo declared expansively: "If the war does not significantly change the world's political map, the U.S. will not achieve its aim." That aim, as Feith explained in a subsequent missive to his boss, was to "transform the Middle East and the broader world of Islam generally."

Rumsfeld and Feith were co-religionists: Along with other senior Bush administration officials, they worshipped in the Church of the Indispensable Nation, a small but intensely devout Washington-based sect formed in the immediate wake of the Cold War. Members of this church shared an exalted appreciation for the efficacy of American power, especially hard power. The strategy of transformation emerged as a direct expression of their faith.

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 8:01:00 PM [+] ::
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:: Atom Smasher Reveals New Aspect of Memeverse ::

By Alexis Madrigal
From Wired News

With the Sarah Palimania fading, the users of Twitter have found a new meme to get clever with: the Large Hadron Collider, the world's biggest, baddest particle accelerator.

Not only has the new website hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroyedtheworldyet.com become everyone's favorite new barackobamaisyournewbicycle.com, but the LHC itself has also become the new Chuck Norris, capable of, and culpable for, everything from creating Milk Duds to causing celibacy.

The LHC might not have destroyed the world, but it does have a lot to answer for, apparently. Here is a selection of the funniest Tweets about the undisclosed features of the LHC:

* @lisardggY: LHC is the new Anthrax. LHC is the new 9/11. LHC is the new Red Scare. LHC is hiding in your closet. LHC is under your bed.
* @infogasm: @thegirlinblue0 The LHC killed JFK and Martin Luther KIng. It also invented Milk Duds and black licorice. That's just what I heard...
* @aquaphase: The LHC can only be to blame for my very weird dreams last night. In case they weren't dreams, watch out for the gibbon-people.
* @kerryb: iPhone restore failed (corrupt backup). Now up and running again, but with no music, photos, e-mail or app data yet. I blame the LHC.
* @roguepuppet: @chattyDM I blame the LHC for lots of things.. including late dinners and less sex.. The Ogre works on some of the computer programming 4 it
* @egculbertson: @knomat, @amyroo: Twitter disturbances definitely something to blame on LHC. What does that mean for the fail whale, tho?
* @Atomicow: I blame the LHC for my jaw problems. A rogue particle collided with my face.
* @wolfmank: is blaming the LHC for crashing his Mac and screwing up his Aperture Library... grrr Attempting repairs. Apple don't fail me now!!!
* @regularjen: Did the LHC 'splode the world? No, but I think it was a punk and poured sugar in my internet connection's gas tank. I blame science. :P
* @LenderFlexCEO: So I'm walking along and suddenly everything is made of puppies. Then it's not. I blame the LHC. Someone needs to clean this up...
* @BrotherMagneto: Guys, there's a black hole in my office. It's called Outlook. I blame the LHC.
* @TheDawkman: I don't know why everybody is so worried about the LHC. It's gonna help keep America safe. Remember 9-11 people!
* @darronschall: My monitor just randomly shut off.. was going to blame the LHC, then I realized my dog turned off my power strip.

So, be safe out there, and remember that if your computer shuts off randomly, it's more likely to be your dog than the end of the world.

A L S O

The Large Hadron Collider Goes To Work
Scientific American

Wired Science's complete Large Hadron Collider coverage

CERN's live webcast from Geneva

The Moment
TIME
If you're reading this, the world didn't end last Wednesday morning--but then, no serious person thought it would.

posted by me

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:: Apocalypse Not: Atom-smasher won't doom planet, says study ::

PARIS (AFP) — People who fear a powerful atom-smashing machine, due to start operations next Wednesday, will cause Earth to be gobbled up or reduced to grey goo can rest assured, according to a study released Friday.

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has been shadowed by Internet-fuelled concerns that it will release energies so powerful that it will create a runaway black hole that will engulf the planet, or a "strangelet" particle that would transform Earth into a lump of strange matter.

But the new report says these fears are unfounded.

It says the LHC will replicate collisions that already occur naturally when Earth runs into the path of high-energy cosmic rays.

"Nature has already conducted the equivalent of about a hundred thousand LHC experimental programmes on Earth -- and the planet still exists," it says.

The assessment is written by five physicists at LHC's operator, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva.

They had been asked by CERN to take a fresh look at a safety assessment written by CERN scientists in 2003 that also gave the project the green light.

The LHC, installed in a 27-kilometre (16.9-mile) tunnel on the French-Swiss border, is to start unleashing a beam of protons next Wednesday in the first stage of its commissioning process.

Two parallel beams of particles, one going clockwise and the other anti-clockwise, will blast around the underground ring.

At four locations on the ring, superconducting magnets will bend the beams so that groups of protons smash into each other in a giant chamber which is swathed with detectors to record the resulting sub-atomic debris.

This invisible rubble could help resolve some of the biggest questions in physics, such as the nature of mass, the weakness of gravity and whether, as some theoreticians suggest, there exist dimensions beyond our own.

The new Safety Assessment Report says that any black holes produced by the collider would be "microscopic" and decay almost immediately, as they would lack the energy to grow or even be sustained.

"Each collision of a pair of protons in the LHC will release an amount of energy comparable to that of two colliding mosquitoes, so any black hole produced would be much smaller than those known to astrophysicists," it says.

A L S O

Collider Triggers End-of-World Fears
TIME

Review of the Safety of LHC Collisions

Physicists Discover "Doubly Strange" Particle
Slashdot

posted by me

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:: Download Moore For Free ::

Slacker Uprising!
MichaelMoore.com

As thanks to his fans, Michael Moore is releasing his new film free online

By Jake Coyle / Associated Press

Inspired by Neil Young and Radiohead, Michael Moore will release his new film free online.

The film, "Slacker Uprising," follows Moore's 62-city tour during the 2004 election to rally young voters. It will be available for three weeks as a free download to North American residents, beginning Sept. 23. An official announcement is planned for Friday.

Moore said he considered releasing "Slacker Uprising" theatrically as "Michael Moore's big election year movie" as he did with 2004's "Fahrenheit 9/11," which was highly critical of President Bush.

Instead, Moore opted for a symbol of gratitude to his fans as he approaches the 20th anniversary of his first film, 1989's "Roger & Me."

"I thought it'd be a nice way to celebrate my 20th year of doing this," Moore said. "And also help get out the vote for November. I've been thinking about what I want to do to help with the election this year."

The 97-minute long "Slacker Uprising" will be the first major film to be released in such a way. Last December, "Jackass 2.5" was streamed online and free, but that was only a collection of leftover material from "Jackass 2." Companies like ClickStar, which Morgan Freeman co-founded, have made films still in theaters -- such as 2006's "10 Items or Less" -- digitally available for purchase or rental.

Experimentation in distribution has been more common in the music industry, where the Internet has significantly damaged traditional business models. Moore took notice when Radiohead last year released its seventh album, "In Rainbows," online with optional pricing. In 2006, Neil Young streamed his anti-war album "Living With War" free before its standard release -- now a more common practice.

If history is any measure, "Slacker Uprising" could have made a decent sum in theaters. Moore's last two films, "Sicko" ($24 million) and "Fahrenheit 9/11" ($119 million) are two of the three highest-grossing documentaries ever.

Moore said "Slacker Uprising" cost about $2 million to make and that he will end up paying about $1 million out of his pocket. Neither he nor the distributor, Brave New Films, plans to profit from the release.

The director's last film, "Sicko," leaked online and was downloaded illegally in large numbers. He says the download of "Slacker Uprising," offered by BlipTV, will be high-resolution and far better than "YouTube quality."

To receive the download, people can sign up at SlackerUprising.com. A "Night of a Thousand House Parties" is planned for Oct. 4, when local neighborhood screenings are intended to be scheduled. A DVD will be released Oct. 7.

Moore last week released a paperback book, "Mike's Election Guide 2008," and is working on a movie for theatrical release next year. That film is expected to examine America as an empire, but the director declined to discuss any details.

For now, Moore hopes "Slacker Uprising" will help spur young people to vote this November. After more than 20 million 18- to 29-year-olds cast ballots in 2004 (an 11 percent increase from 2000), he's hoping even greater numbers of "slackers" vote this year.

Moore readily acknowledges this is a film for Democrats: "This film, really isn't for anybody other than the choir," he said. "But that's because I believe the choir needs a song to sing every now and then."

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