- Martin Wolf Gets It – NYTimes.com – Paul Krugman
- “Mr Obama wishes to be president of a country that does not exist. In his fantasy US, politicians bury differences in bipartisan harmony. In fact, he faces an opposition that would prefer their country to fail than their president to succeed.”
- …this was what worried me about Obama from the beginning, way back in 2007-2008, when I got huge grief from progressives for criticizing him.
- Post-9/11 Commission assessment sees security gaps – latimes.com
- Despite the outlay of hundreds of billions of dollars and a vast reorganization of federal agencies since the Sept. 11 attacks, major gaps remain in the government’s ability to prevent and respond to a terrorist strike, according to an assessment by the former heads of the 9/11 Commission.
- Libyan Rebels Ask Police To Return To Tripoli : NPR
- When rebels moved into Libya’s capital, Tripoli, last week, police disappeared from the streets. Now, some are returning to work at the request of the rebels transitional national council. The rebels want the cops back even though they were linked to Moammar Gadhafi’s repressive regime. NPR’s Jason Beaubien reports from Tripoli.
- [video & transcript]
- Former Obama campaign staffer arrested at White House pipeline protest | The Washington Independent
- More than 100 Obama staffers from the 2008 campaign plan to join the protests and risk arrest on Thursday. In total, 595 people have so far been arrested in the protests, which are slated to continue through the weekend.
- Where Pay for Chief Executives Tops the Company Tax Burden – NYTimes.com
- At least 25 top United States companies paid more to their chief executives in 2010 than they did to the federal government in taxes…
- The authors of the study, which examined the regulatory filings of the 100 companies with the best-paid chief executives, said that their findings suggested that current United States policy was rewarding tax avoidance rather than innovation.
- Fatal torture ‘widespread’ in Syrian jails | AJE
- Rights group Amnesty International says it has documented the cases of 88 people who have died in custody since March.
- Us or the War Machine | Firedoglake • by David Swanson
- You may have heard something about a budget crisis in Washington this summer. Were you aware that in the midst of it the House of Representatives passed a military spending bill larger than ever before?
- U.S. military spending across numerous departments has increased dramatically during the past decade and now makes up about half of federal discretionary spending. Yet the Defense Department has not been fully audited in 20 years…
- The United States could reduce its military spending by at least 80 percent and still be the world’s top military spender. …
- “There has been a chill over the contracting and SES communities since my demotion,” [whistleblower] Greenhouse said, “and many contracting folks believe if one tries to curb contracting abuse, they will not be thanked, but fired.” Notice the present tense.
- Mobile Laser Lab Creates Water Droplets in Moist Air | Wired: Science
- Artificial rainmaking is an imprecise, environmentally hazardous process, but it could be made a little more eco-friendly with the addition of lasers.
- Nebraska Gov. Heineman Comes Out Against the Keystone XL Pipeline | Firedoglake • by David Dayen
- The Keystone XL tar sands pipeline looks like a done deal, but this development could throw a wrench into things if it starts a movement of governors in the pipeline’s path:…
- Nebraska is one of the states most powerfully affected by the Keystone XL pipeline. The proposed route cuts through the Sand Hills region and the Ogallala Aquifer, which carries the potential for serious environmental damage in the event of a spill. …
- President Obama alone has the authority to stop the pipeline, and while the State Department has given every indication that it will approve the 1,700-mile pipeline from Canada’s tar sands to Texas, ultimately the permit application is the President’s call.
- American English Dialect Recordings: The Center for Applied Linguistics Collection – (American Memory from the Library of Congress)
- …contains 118 hours of recordings documenting North American English dialects. The recordings include speech samples, linguistic interviews, oral histories, conversations, and excerpts from public speeches. They were drawn from various archives, and from the private collections of fifty collectors, including linguists, dialectologists, and folklorists.
- Budget Hawks, Enviro Doves Offer Budget Cuts – Miller-McCune
- The groups have identified $380 billion in savings over five years that could come from eliminating subsidies they say are both fiscally and environmentally irresponsible.
- Showing Where Community Colleges Pass, Fail – Miller-McCune
- “the average California community college student spends nearly 50 percent of his or her classroom time in courses with part-time instructors. According to estimates from our models, this level of exposure translates into the average student being at least 5 percent less likely to graduate with an associate’s degree, compared to his or her peers who only have full-time instructors.”
- Gender gap in spatial abilities depends on females’ role in society
- There may yet be places where innate differences in math and spatial reasoning exist between the sexes, but those places are becoming ever smaller.
[My bookmarks live at delicious.com/camryl. In case it needs to be said: I don't agree with every word of everything I link to. Also, signal boosts are awesome! --L.]
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