The Fires of 2012 March On

Published July 6, 2012 | By Iowadawg

Gaylon Wampler/Associated Press The Waldo Canyon wildfire in Colorado Springs, Colo., on June 26, 2012.

CASCADE, Colo. — Nature makes a mockery of our vanity. We live in flood and fire zones, nurture stately oaks and take shade under pines holding the best air of the Rocky Mountains. We plant villas next to sandstone spires called the Garden of the Gods, and McMansions in Virginia stocked with people who have the world at their fingertips.

Then, with a clap, a boom and a roar, fire marches through a subdivision on a conveyance of 60 mile an hour winds. A platoon of thunderstorms so loaded with energy it has its own category name — derecho — cuts a swath from east of Chicago to the Atlantic.

The pines flame and hiss, shooting sparks on the house next door, a fortress no more. The oaks tumble and crush roofs. Almost 350 homes burn to the ground, and nearly 5 million people lose all electricity in sweltering heat. Lobbyists and congressmen curse at mute cellphones and sweat through their seersucker. The powerful are powerless.

So it went the first 10 days of summer, another extraordinary chapter in a weather year of living dangerously. At one point, 113 million Americans were under an extreme heat advisory. It was 109 degrees in Nashville, 104 in Washington, D.C., and much of the West was aflame.

If recent history is a guide, it will all be soon forgotten and dismissed. Amnesia, in regard to unpleasant science, is the guiding principle for a political party that has an even chance of winning everything that matters this year.

Unemployment Rate Holds at 8.2%

Romney Reacts to Jobs Report

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Clueless woman.

(The Hill) — Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano this week linked climate change with the wildfires hitting Colorado.

Napolitano said “there’s a pattern here” as she noted the summer wildfires as well as the East Coast heat wave and the high-velocity winds that whipped through the mid-Atlantic late last week. Thousands of people remain without electricity because of the wind storm.

Asked point blank if the wildfires were caused by climate change, Napolitano responded, “It could be a lot of different things.”

But then she explained her view, which seemed to make a connection between climate change and the weather events.

“You have to look at climate change over a period of years, not just one summer,” Napolitano said. “You could always have one abnormal summer. But when you see one after another after another then you can see, yeah, there’s a pattern here.”

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Instead of asking if the mandate penalty is a tax or not, the media should start asking whether we are in a recovery or not. Because with these dismal numbers, its pretty clear we aren’t:

MARKTET WATCH – The U.S. created just 80,000 jobs in June as hiring slowed dramatically in the second quarter, confirming that the economy has hit another rough patch.

The unemployment rate was unchanged at 8.2%, the Labor Department said Friday.

The disappointing employment report adds to fresh worries about the U.S. economy at a time when growth is slowing around the world and Washington is gridlocked about how to address the malaise. Economists surveyed by MarketWatch were expecting a net increase of 100,000 jobs in June. …

The poor employment report is also a blow to President Barack Obama as he tries to fend off Republican candidate Mitt Romney and win reelection in November. Romney, a former businessman, has blamed the high unemployment rate on White House policies and made the economy the centerpiece of his campaign against the president.

Hiring tailed off sharply in the second quarter, with job growth averaging 75,000 a month, compared to a 226,000 average in the first quarter.

Job growth in May was revised up to 77,000 from an original estimate of 69,000, but April’s figure was revised down to 68,000 from 77,000.

“All the strength we saw in the first quarter has tailed off. Now we are heading into the second half of the year on softer footing,” said Jennifer Lee, senior economist at BMO Capital Markets. “Employment growth is slowing, and companies are not hiring as fast as they were.”

The lower pace of job creation over the past three months falls well short of what’s required to reduce the unemployment rate to precession levels. The economy would have to add 250,000-plus jobs each month for several years to trim unemployment to around 6%.

The current pace of hiring isn’t even enough to absorb the natural increase in the labor force, which grows by more than 100,000 workers each month.

READ MORE >>>

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Sipsey Street Exclusive: Mike Vanderboegh and David Codrea file ethics complaint on Eric Holder with the D.C. Bar!

Read HERE.

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Created for OMG! for America. Join the grassroots movement here or get in on the fun at the Facebook page here.

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Commemorations are being held across the country this year to mark the 100th anniversary of the birth of one of the country’s greatest songwriters, Woody Guthrie. Born on July 14, 1912, in Okemah, Oklahoma, Guthrie wrote hundreds of folk songs, including “This Land Is Your Land,” “Pastures of Plenty,” “Pretty Boy Floyd,” “Do Re Mi” and “The Ranger’s Command.” While Guthrie is best remembered as a musician, he also had a deeply political side. At the height of McCarthyism, Guthrie spoke out for labor and civil rights and against fascism. In this one-hour special, you will hear interviews and music from folk singer Pete Seeger, the British musician Billy Bragg, and the historian Will Kaufman, author of the new book, “Woody Guthrie, American Radical.”

“Woody’s original songs, the songs that he wrote back in the 1930s … with these images of people losing their houses to the banks, of gamblers on the stock markets making millions, when ordinary working people can’t afford to make ends meet, and of people dying for want of proper free healthcare, you know, this song could have been written anytime in the last five years, really, in the United States of America,” says Bragg, who has long been inspired by Guthrie.

MORE.

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Reason police should have loaded weapons and the backing to fire at assholes like this. Kill a few occupiers like these and bam! No more riots and destruction, etc.

OAKLAND — More than 60 Occupy Oakland protesters marched through downtown Wednesday night, spray-painting anti-police slogans on police headquarters and other buildings, vandalizing a police car and setting at least one garbage bin on fire, authorities said.

No one was arrested in the vandalism or fire-setting, but a protester was arrested on suspicion of not having a sound permit for a speaker system and obstructing an officer, police said.

The march began about 8 p.m. near 14th Street and Broadway, continued down Broadway to police headquarters at Seventh Street and Broadway and then moved to other streets before coming back to Frank Ogawa Plaza. The one arrest occurred at the plaza.

Sgt. Roland Holmgren said protesters painted “kill cops” on a door at police headquarters and similar messages at City Hall, the police Internal Affairs Division near City Hall, a clothing store, hotel and a bank.

Protesters also spray-painted a patrol car parked near Seventh and Washington streets, punctured one of its tires and broke a window, Holmgren said. The garbage bin was set ablaze near 11th and Clay streets.

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Democrats being assholes as usual. Jewish asshole democrats at that!

WASHINGTON — Jewish Democrats called on Mitt Romney and Republicans not to accept money from Sheldon Adelson because of allegations that the casino magnate approved of prostitution at his China properties.

“This week, reports surfaced that in addition to his anti-union and allegedly corrupt business practices, Adelson ‘personally approved’ of prostitution in his Macau casinos,” David Harris, the president of the National Jewish Democratic Council, wrote in an appeal to NJDC supporters to sign on to a petition making the call. “Given these reports, Romney and the rest of the Republican Party must cease accepting Adelson’s tainted money immediately.”

Matt Brooks, the director of the Republican Jewish Coalition, said the call was “disgusting” because it was based on allegations in a lawsuit filed by Steven Jacobs, a casino executive who was fired by Adelson in 2010.

“Setting aside their partisan agenda, the NJDC should be ashamed of itself for attacking someone who has done more for the Jewish community and Jewish philanthropy than anyone in recent history,” Brooks said, citing Adelson’s major contributions to the Birthright Israel program, which brings Jewish youth to Israel, and to Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial museum.

“If this is proven to be nothing more than rantings of an employee in legal battle, NJDC is going to have a lot of egg on its face,” Brooks said. “If they were truly mensches about it, they would wait until it is adjudicated.”

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Useless Nations still wanting USA money!

(CNSNews.com) — Prompting warnings of a “global governance” push, the United Nations released a report Thursday proposing mechanisms including a global carbon tax, currency transaction tax and a “billionaire’s tax,” to finance development and global needs such as combating climate change.

The U.N. World Economic and Social Survey (WESS) says such taxes could raise more than $400 billion a year, at a time when donor countries are unwilling or unable — “in the midst of difficult financial times” — to maintain the levels of development aid necessary.

“Donor countries have fallen well short of their aid commitments and development assistance declined last year because of budget cuts, increasing the shortfall to $167 billion,” said survey author Rob Vos in a statement.

“Although donors must meet their commitments, it is time to look for other ways to find resources to finance development needs and address growing global challenges, such as combating climate change,” he said.

“We are suggesting various ways to tap resources through international mechanisms, such as coordinated taxes on carbon emissions, air traffic, and financial and currency transactions.”

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Higgs Boson Discovery: Why It`s Important to All of Us…

NEWS ANALYSIS: Even though there are no apparent practical applications for the discovery of the elusive Higgs Boson, a subatomic particle that gives mass to everything else in the universe, there is no telling what role it may play in the future. It will certainly expand our understanding of how the universe took shape.

It’s impossible to overstate the importance of the Higgs Boson, the discovery of which was announced at CERN (Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire). Without this particle, you wouldn’t exist. For that matter, the universe wouldn’t exist. That’s because the Higgs Boson creates a field that gives other particles mass, giving weight and shape to all the matter we see in the universe

Or, to describe the indescribable, what the Higgs Boson does is create a field of virtual particles that pop in and out of existence, and while they’re in existence those virtual particles provide mass to other particles that are able to interact with them. Photons, which are being created by the bazillion (to use the precise scientific term) by the monitor in front of you, are the particle manifestation of the electro-magnetic field we call “light.” Photons are very real and depending on how they’re observed can appear as either particles or waves.

Photons have little mass, so little in fact that it takes something as massive as a star (or a former star in the form of a black hole) to affect them. In the rest of the universe, the photon can be considered massless. Another particle with which you’re familiar is the electron, which does have mass, although not a lot.

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Still holder plays the race card on Texas. He will lose! And yes, this is our tax dollars paying for this shit!

(Politico) — Texas Rep. Ted Poe blasted the Justice Department on Friday for hiring what the congressman called a “partisan” and “liberal group” as a part of the DOJ’s effort to block the implementation of the state’s voter ID law, saying the firm in question has “no credibility.”

“The Department of Justice is, with all their battery of lawyers and investigators — they can’t find any evidence to support their lawsuit against Texas allegedly discriminating so they go to an outside group,” the Republican congressman said on “Fox and Friends.” “It is a partisan group, it is a liberal group, that promotes progressive ideas and they’re trying to get information, evidence if we can use that phrase, in this case to use against Texas in the lawsuit.”

He added, “They’re not objective and so they’ve already have their minds made up. We’re not sure if the facts or evidence they’re presenting have any credibility at all.”

Poe echoed the complaints of fellow Republican and chairman of the House Judiciary Committee Lamar Smith, who came out this week criticizing Attorney General Eric Holder and the DOJ for hiring the firm Catalist to conduct analysis on the Texas voter ID law. Smith argued that the DOJ’s decision to block the implementation of the law was partly based on research conducted by Catalist, which he slammed as being “an explicitly partisan Democratic data company.”

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Middle Class Tax Cut: Five major ObamaCare taxes that will hit your wallet in 2013

SICK: Obama’s shariah czar hands diversity award to Jew-hater Dawud Walid

Obama Grants More Than Half The States “No Child Left Behind” Waivers

War on Women: 780,000 More Women Unemployed Today Than When Obama Took Office

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