Sneigwh blogs's End of the Year food issue: The Hamburger Helpers

Or : What’s your beef?

Beef Products Inc.uses contaminant susceptible beef fat trimmings, which in the past had been used for pet food or cooking, oil to manufacture hamburger sold to the majority of burger-doodles and many schools.
The stuff that was formerly only safe for pet food is run through a process with ammonia and magically its food. The process so thorough it isn’t even subject to routine inspection!
Well...wash it with ammonia and call it inspected

Officials at the United States Department of Agriculture endorsed the company’s ammonia treatment, and have said it destroys E. coli “to an undetectable level.” They decided it was so effective that in 2007, when the department began routine testing of meat used in hamburger sold to the general public, they exempted Beef Products.
But government and industry records obtained by
The New York Times show that in testing for the school lunch program, E. coli and salmonella pathogens have been found dozens of times in Beef Products meat, challenging claims by the company and the U.S.D.A. about the effectiveness of the treatment. Since 2005, E. coli has been found 3 times and salmonella 48 times, including back-to-back incidents in August in which two 27,000-pound batches were found to be contaminated

The company says its processed beef, a mashlike substance frozen into blocks or chips, is used in a majority of the hamburger sold nationwide. But it has remained little known outside industry and government circles. Federal officials agreed to the company’s request that the ammonia be classified as a “processing agent” and not an ingredient that would be listed on labels.

Climate change legislation cools in the Senate

It is shaping up like another stall, delay and lobby free for all in the U.S. Senate.Looks like the Worlds Greatest Deliberative Body [TM] may courageously kick vital legislation down the road. Who could have predicted?

Center for Public Integrity reports…the 60 or so venture and investment firm lobbyists together with the 170 alternative energy lobbyists and 160 environmental lobbyists, and they are still outnumbered 5-to-1 by the approximately 2,000 representatives of major sectors that are looking for a slow-down or hand-out - traditional manufacturers, power companies, oil and gas, transportation, and agriculture.
The total number of climate lobbyists working for all those interest groups, new and old, stands at about 2,780 - five for every member of Congress. That's 400 percent more than when lawmakers first considered a nationwide greenhouse gas emissions reduction program six years ago.

Three Senatorial profiles in courage------

Senator Kent Conrad (D-North Dakota) said that winning passage of climate change legislation in an election year had “very poor prospects”

Senator Ben Nelson (D- Nebraska) said that he would “just as soon see [climate change] set aside until we work through the economy”.

Senator Joe Lieberman (I-Ct.)"I don't think the Senate has an appetite for another such epic, polarized legislative war this session,"

"Santa Claus has the right idea. Visit people once a year."

"Santa Claus has the right idea.
Visit people once a year"

Børge Rosenbaum,January 3, 1909 – December 23, 2000 Danish comedian, conductor and pianist

The Washington Post:“Death Panel”assertion,a controversy

Zombie Death Panel lie lives The Death Panels were and are simply lies and the Washington Post today fails to mention that fact and instead refers to them only as controversial. The Pulitzer Prize winning non-partisan Politifact.com Truth-O-Meter run by the St. Petersburg Times awarded Sarah Palin’s death panel assertion

It’s online biggest political lie of the year. Of all the falsehoods and distortions in the political discourse this year, one stood out from the rest.

But some prominent Republicans didn't reject the death panel claim. The Post’s Shailagh Murray reports today on the Senate passage of the Health care bill. The bill passed 60-39 early this morning and not one Republican voted in favor. In her summary of why no Republican supported the bill Murray says

One of the toughest critics, as the debate drew to a close, was Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), who last summer had spent months trying to craft a bipartisan reform package with Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus (Mont.).
Grassley abandoned the quest after the "death panel" controversy erupted in August and the debate took a sharply ideological turn. The Iowa Republican said Wednesday that he concluded that Democrats were ceding too much authority over health care to the federal government, while failing to aggressively contain costs.

Friday Cat Blogging with a rocking chair

Hell, I'm an old man. I'm 70 years old. I'm supposed to be sitting on a rocking chair watching the sunset.

M.Emmet Walsh

The actor M. Emmet Walsh appeared in Blade Runner, Little Big Man,and Slap shot (Also TeeVee's Starsky and Hutch !)

Health care reform ?

Here is Robert Reich’s assessment of health care legislation as it stands .

The political reality right now is that Harry Reid will do anything to get sixty votes -- which means Lieberman, Nelson, and even Olympia Snowe are able to use extortion on behalf of Big Insurance, Big Pharma, the AMA, and abortion foes. The President, meanwhile, remains eerily above the fray. Having closed deals months ago with Big Insurance, Big Pharma, and the AMA -- in order to get their support in exchange for guaranteeing them big profits -- his only apparent interest is keeping the deals going while helping Reid corral sixty votes for just about anything.(The deals have caused some awkwardness for the White House. Drug importation would have cost Big Pharma far more than the $80 billion price tag it agreed to, forcing the White House to oppose importation even though the President had publicly supported it during his presidential campaign last year, and even though John McCain supported yesterday's amendment.)

I was only thinking about health care legislation, not really giving a thought to the fact that it also applies to the climate change talks, as I hauled out the following bit from Thomas Pynchon (second time this year!).

"There is no real direction here, neither lines of power nor cooperation. Decisions are never really made – at best they manage to emerge, from a chaos of peeves, whims, hallucinations and all around assholery. "

Gravity's Rainbow

Kerry, Graham, Lieberman and the Copenhagen “crime scene”

Senators John Kerry, Joe Lieberman and Lindsay Graham held a news conference last week and announced their bare bones Framework for Climate Action and Energy Independence.

Obviously the event was timed to have an impact in Copenhagen.Both Kerry and Lieberman said explicitly that their intent was to send a message to countries hashing out a climate treaty: the U.S. Senate is on the job.

The document, referred to as “a starting point, inviting our colleagues’ constructive input” is short on specifics. They do state a near term pollution reduction target in the range of 17 percent below 2005 emissions levels by 2020. On Friday, in Copenhagen, a draft text released by conference chairman asked wealthy countries to cut greenhouse gas emissions 25 to 45 percent below 1999 levels by 2020. The Senate framework cuts amounts to about a 4 percent cut below 1990 levels. However, it does call for nuclear power as an “essential component” of the climate strategy along with federal incentives to boost US production of land, offshore oil and natural gas drilling.
Independent Senator Lieberman (who recently torpedoed Senate health care legislation) said “there are well over 60 votes in play in the Senate, not that we have 60 votes yet.” by way of noting the changeable nature of this framework.
Perhaps last week’s announcement only had an effect on a domestic audience because about half way into the Copenhagen talks most of the World, is apparently unmoved by news that US Senators Kerry, Lieberman and Graham are on the job, if they noticed at all.

Marcelo Furtado, Executive Director, Greenpeace Brazil, said on Monday morning that negotiators had done so poorly last week that they left a “crime scene” for the arriving heads of states, and that developed countries had clearly “failed to do their homework.” Alden Meyer, director of strategy and policy for the Union of Concerned Scientists, said the current drafts from the developed world on the table would deliver an increase in emissions.

With President Obama scheduled to arrive later this week and after a brief protest walk out by “underdeveloped nations” the prospects are described in stark terms at Earth2tech blog

.....It remains to be seen what the heads of state can actually do upon their arrival this week. But to reach any kind of agreement there will have to be significant shifts in their statements and emissions reductions targets. A few are starting to inch forward —India has offered to adopt the guidelines under the UNFCCC, and report to Parliament on its domestic goals. But China and the U.S., as expected, will be the ones that will need to move closer.

ACORN video altered

What would you believe,video or your own recollection?
Without supporting video pumping up a media fury how far would the recent attack on ACORN have gone? Congress quickly caved and cut funding on the basis of a shock wave of pressure based on an altered video.
This past week a federal judge blocked U.S. officials from enforcing a funding ban on Acorn.
Questionable video evidence and a concerted right wing attack worked wonders. However after the dust settled and with some investigation; From a report commissioned by ACORN and conducted by former Massachusetts Attorney General Scott Harshbarger

The videos that have been released appear to have been edited, in some cases substantially, including the insertion of a substitute voiceover for significant portions of Mr. O'Keefe's and Ms. Giles's comments, which makes it difficult to determine the questions to which ACORN employees are responding. A comparison of the publicly available transcripts to the released videos confirms that large portions of the original video have been omitted from the released versions.

The power of video on memory
Researchers in England have found that faked video can alter a person’s perception of events that they were witnessed to and took part in. An amazing 50% of people shown footage of an event they participated in believed the altered video version rather than their own recollection of events. Participant took part in a computerized gambling task. The exercise involved a shared pile of money and prizes.

After the session, the video footage was doctored to make it look as if the member of the research team sat next to the subject was cheating by not putting money back into the bank.
One third of the subjects were told that the person sat next to them was suspected of cheating. Another third were told the person had been caught on camera cheating, and the remaining group was actually shown the fake video footage. All subjects were then asked to sign a statement only if they had seen the cheating take place.
Nearly 40% of the participants who had seen the doctored video complied. Another 10% of the group signed when asked a second time by the researchers. Only 10% of those who were told the incident had been caught on film but were not shown the video agreed to sign, and about 5% of the control group who were just told about the cheating signed the statement.

IRS auctions 20% of Crow Creek Sioux tribal land

Land taken for disputed back taxes
The IRS is formidable but many people might have thought taking Native American’s lands was frowned upon. Apparently not.
The IRS just auctioned off 7,100acres of land (twenty percent of the tribes land) owned by the Crow Creek Sioux Tribe in South Dakota. The dispute is about employment taxes owed since 2003.The tribe council has filed suit to attempt to stop the sale claiming that the Bureau of Indian Affairs(BIA) had advised them that a tribal nation was not liable for these taxes.

The land, located within the tribe’s ancestral territory, included a swath being readied for a potential wind farm project that tribal leaders were negotiating. Although valued at $4.6 million, the 7,100 acres was sold for less than $2.6 million to an undisclosed buyer.

More about it here AllGov.com

Twittering DARPA's balloons for big bucks

UPDATE NEWS Flash ........Congratulations Massachusetts Institute of Technology WINS !

A team led by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology spread the wealth far and wide to locate 10 red balloons in undisclosed locations across the country on Saturday and win a $40,000 cash prize from the Pentagon's think tank.
DARPA said the balloons were raised in Atlanta; Charlottesville, Va.; Christiana, Del.; Katy, Texas; Memphis, Tenn.; Miami; Portland, Ore.; San Francisco and Santa Barbara, Calif.; and Scottsdale, Ariz.

Well they must be all right,as I understand it; they did invent the internet 40 years ago. "Zoom ahead 40 years,and you can hardly find anyone who hasn't been touched by, and whose life hasn't been improved by the Internet.” says Peter Lee, director of Darpa’s transformational convergence technology office
DARPA, the US Defense Department’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is sponsoring a $40,000 prize for the first person or team that can locate all 10 of the eight foot wide balloons that are located at ten fixed locations in the continental United States. Balloons will be in readily accessible locations and visible from nearby roadways...
DARPA says it is studying how social networks can be used by foreign enemies to gain information. And also how fast-breaking information can be organized on a battlefield.

Darpa’s transformational convergence technology office Red Balloon test focuses on tech and social trends that by give participants an incentive, like the prize money, the contest tests how people organize themselves and how they validate information. “Relatively little is known about how those networks respond when trust is a factor,”Lee said.

Its all about informational flow patterns and control. The one that controls the flow controls the battlefield.
In the meantime find those balloons.

Mountain high valley low,global warming

Mount Everest will be the sight of a meeting of Nepalese lawmakers on December 4th. Nepal officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal,is a landlocked country in Southeast Asia and the world's youngest republic.
It’s at the opposite extreme from the Maldives which held an underwater cabinet meeting to highlight the dangers of global warming.Now to boost awareness and not to be outdone Nepal lawmakers are headed to the 17,192ft. high base camp on Mount Everest. The summit is 29,035 ft.above sea level.
This meeting ,to be held before the Copenhagen climate conference, aims to highlight Himalayan glacier melt. With ice in the region melting at a rapid rate, lakes have been formed which could flood nearby villages. Melted ice and snow also makes mountaineering routes more hazardous.
Doctors will make a final health assessment before a helicopter takes the cabinet to base camp, at the foot of Everest. Once there they will hold a brief outdoor meeting.