McCain uses a General Petraeus in a fundraising photo and fills his campaign team with lobbyists, while also pretending he's an independent maverick. Now it seems that McCain is putting up billboard advertisements with "West Point Grads for McCain" as the caption.

Hmmm...Paid for and approved by West Point Grads for McCain. Okay, so a few super gung-ho patriots think McCain is the man to lead the nation down the path towards World War Three. Wowwie-zowwie.

There is a problem with this ad however, as Cliff Schecter points out:

It seems just two years ago West Point sued another group also calling themselves "West Point Grads" who were in fact anti-war, claiming trademark violation over use of the name West Point.

The above "West Point Grads" were not partisan. The McCain Campaign is. So it's a trademark violation when a progressive group uses "West Point Grads," but when it is partisan Republicans, it's a-ok with West Point.

Here's the 2006 lawsuit the United States Government pursued against the anti-war group.

The United States Military Academy, a/k/a, the United States Government, a/k/a the citizens of the United States are suing a group of West Point graduates who have organized against the Iraq War to prevent their use of the “West Point” name.

The Army warned an anti-war group of former U.S. Military Academy cadets to stop using the words “West Point” in its name, saying they are trademarked. A co-founder of West Point Graduates Against the War countered Friday that his organization is simply following the cadets’ code. “At West Point, we were taught that cadets do not lie, cheat or steal — and to oppose those who do,” said William Cross, a 1962 West Point graduate. “We are a positive organization. We are not anti-West Point or anti- military. We are just trying to uphold what we were taught.”

West Point spokesman Lt. Col. Kent Cassella said the academy sent the April 12 warning letter because the group failed to go through a licensing process to get permission to use the term “West Point.” The group’s anti-war stance is irrelevant, he said. “This is not a political issue. They did not ask for permission. We are doing what any college or university would do to enforce its trademarks,” Cassella said.

The Army registered the words “West Point” — as well as “United States Military Academy,” “USMA,” and “U.S. Army” — as trademarks in 2000 to control their use on educational material and commercial goods.

An attorney hired by Cross and his colleagues said the warning raises questions of First Amendment speech protection and selective enforcement. Joseph Heath said he noted the concerns in a response sent to the Army on Monday; he has not yet received a reply, he said.

I was reading the Mad Biologist today, and he mentioned that he thought the news agencies should release their poll data. There was a comment to the blog that I found interesting, so I thought I'd share it.

  [SOURCE: Mad Biologist | ]

I work at a call centre where we conduct these sorts of polls. Most of our clients are businesses wanting to gather information on the success of their advertising, opinions on future advertising, or what people think of their competitors. Every so often, however, we do get work from news and government agencies looking to gather this sort of stuff.

I must say that most of the questions are very loaded and it usually becomes fairly obvious to me who is sponsoring the poll. Worse than that, most of these polls are just advertisements in disguise. The way that the questions are worded makes it almost impossible for the respondent to do anything but agree. The idea behind it is either that if you repeat something to someone enough times, they start to believe it, or that if you present poll results that show that 90% of people agree with X, people who don't agree with X start to feel as though they are missing something and become more open to the possibility of agreeing with X.

The people who write these polls can make the results say whatever they want them to, even on the level of the data. So my point in all of this is just to say that the interpretation of the data you are getting from the news agencies is probably about as accurate as the data itself. What you want is the data AS WELL as the scripts that were used to gather it.

And remember that the sample used to collect this data is a list of publically phone numbers. Not cell phones and unlisted telephone numbers. The time's when the phone calls are also placed are between 5pm and 8pm for most polls.

Now when you get samples from a large population you first have to analyze who might be excluded, because the sample will not be representative of the larger population UNLESS each member of the larger population is equally likely to be selected.

So who is being excluded? People with unlisted phone numbers. People who don't answer their phones. People who tend to go outside or don't go home after work People who use their cell phones as their primary source of phone calls.

What these polls are sampling are the people who are home that answer their publically listed telephone number. These people are probably home because they watch a lot of television. So what these polls actually measure is the effectiveness of the media spin machine. Pump out the propaganda and then follow up with polls until the desired results appear.

The Northern Hemisphere is covered with millions of acres of Permafrost. Until the last 100 years, Northern Canada and Siberian Russia stayed frozen almost all year long, and the ground 4 feet below the surface stayed frozen. That has changed. And this is going to release the microbes that feed on the dead mammoth carcasses at a rate which will increase the release of methane gases faster than can be controlled, because the microbes will all become alive and start expelling methane.

Here is Russian scientist Sergei Zimov.

Russian scientist, Sergei Zimov, has been studying climate change in Russia's Arctic for 30 years now. He is worried that as this organic matter becomes exposed to the air it will drastically accelerate global warming predictions even beyond some of the most pessimistic forecasts.

"This will lead to a type of global warming which will be impossible to stop," he said.

According to Zimov, when the organic matter left behind by mammoths and other wildlife is exposed to the air by the thawing permafrost, microbes that have been dormant for thousands of years will spring back into action. They’ll begin once again to emit carbon dioxide and methane gas as a by-product. Zimov says thought the microbes are tiny, they will start emitting these gases in enormous quantities simply because there will be a lot of them.

Yakutia is a region in the north-eastern corner of Siberia, where a belt of permafrost contains the mammoth-era soil. It covers an area roughly the size of France and Germany combined. There is even more of it elsewhere in Siberia.

"The deposits of organic matter in these soils are so gigantic that they dwarf global oil reserves," Zimov said. U.S. government statistics show mankind emits about 7 billion tons of carbon a year."Permafrost areas hold 500 billion tons of carbon, which can fast turn into greenhouse gases," Zimov added. "If you don't stop emissions of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere ... the Kyoto Protocol (an international pact aimed at reducing greenhouse emissions) will seem like childish prattle."

So Bush stands in front of the Israeli legislature and accuses Obama of being an appeaser when he wants to have talks with Iran. Meanwhile, Bush's own Defense Secretary Robert Gates has a speech that says

that the United States needs to "sit down and talk with" Iran. Not only that, Gates added, "We can't go to a discussion and be completely the demander."

Here is Jamison Foster at Media Matters

Instead, much of the news media got busy pretending the Post article didn't exist and that Gates had not undermined Bush's political attack on Obama. Instead, many news outlets simply rushed to repeat Bush's assault over and over again, as though it had merit.

A quick look at ABC's The Note -- which claims for itself the responsibility for providing "editorial guidance on the leading political stories of the day" -- demonstrates how thoroughly Gates' comments were ignored in coverage of Bush's attack. Yesterday's edition of The Note didn't mention either Bush's comments (which came after The Note was finished) or Gates'. But a later posting did devote 341 words to Bush's criticism of Obama without bothering to mention Gates' comments about meeting with Iran. Today, The Note included 560 words about Bush's remarks -- but still no mention of Gates....

But the most striking disappearance of Gates' comments came on CNN. On yesterday's American Morning, host John Roberts interviewed Obama communications director Robert Gibbs. Gibbs twice brought up Gates' comments -- though when CNN aired clips of the interview later in the day, the cable network edited Gibbs' comments to include the sentence before he mentioned Gates, and the sentence after he mentioned Gates -- but to omit any reference to the defense secretary.

Here's what Gibbs actually said, which CNN did air in its entirety the first time:

GIBBS: Obviously this is an unprecedented political attack on foreign soil. It's quite frankly sad and astonishing that the president of the United States would politicize the 60th anniversary of Israel with a false political attack. I assume he also is going to come home and fire his secretary of defense who was quoted in The Washington Post just yesterday saying we need to figure -- quote, "We need to figure out a way to develop some leverage and then sit down and talk with them." Them being Iran. Look, we have come to expect, and we've seen from this administration over the last eight years this type of cowboy diplomacy. Again, we've come to expect it. But over the past eight years it's made this country far less safe than we were.

But twice during the day, CNN again aired that clip of Gibbs -- except that it edited out the portion in bold, in which Gibbs pointed out the Bush administration's hypocrisy. Several other times, CNN aired a portion of Gibbs' comments, without the references to Gates.

Your media professionals at work again.

"Companies did not cut as many positions as expected, they cut the hours instead. The average work week plunged 0.3% (and, aggregate hours worked were down at an annual rate of 1% in the past three months), which, by the way, would be the equivalent of 400,000 job cuts.

This is a sign that labor market conditions and domestic demand are far softer than the headline suggests. What drives consumer spending inevitably is income growth. Average weekly earnings fell 0.2% sequentially in April in what was the largest decline in two years. This dragged the year-on-year rate down to 3.1% from 3.3% in March, 3.7% in February and the nearby peak of 3.8% posted last November in what is clear disinflationary trend in wages.

The rebound in the Household survey was all in part-time employment. While there was a nice rebound in the Household Survey, it was all in part-time employment – that is not the driver of confidence and spending. Growth in full-time jobs is what drives those things. And, full-time employment actually fell 375,000 in April and is down 572,000 year-to-date; of the folks who were working part-time in April, the number doing so because of “economic reasons” (mostly slack business conditions) surged 306,000 or 6.3% – again the steepest runup in two years. The diffusion indices fell through the floor to 45.4 in April from 48 in March – this measures the share of industries adding to payrolls and shows that even though the headline job loss was lower than expected, the decline was very broadly based across sectors.

hat-tip to Barry Ritholtz at thebigpicture blog

You should click the source link and read further. Rosenberg "debunks" 5 myths:

1. The first quarter GDP report says no recession
2. The April employment report was benign
3. The Fed is done and the next move is to hike
4. The credit crunch is over
5. Housing looks set to stabilize

You see, when you manage the portfolios of billions of dollars, you have to be honest. The television talking heads are for the useful idiots. The elites don't listen to the hired hacks who promote Walt Disney World economics for the lower classes.

(WASHINGTON) — The Bush administration on Friday urged a federal appeals court to stop meatpackers from testing all their animals for mad cow disease, but a skeptical judge questioned whether the government has that authority.

The government seeks to reverse a lower court ruling that allowed Arkansas City, Kan.-based Creekstone Farms Premium Beef to conduct more comprehensive testing to satisfy demand from overseas customers in Japan and elsewhere. Less than 1 percent of slaughtered cows are currently tested for the disease under Agriculture Department guidelines. The agency argues that more widespread testing does not guarantee food safety and could result in a false positive that scares consumers.

"They want to create false assurances," Justice Department attorney Eric Flesig-Greene told a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

Did you catch that quote from Justice D attorney Flesig? "THEY WANT TO CREATE FALSE ASSURANCES."

Oh so testing cows to help get a contract from Japanese customers is creating false assurances? Why is the Justice Department even involved in this case? You would think the federal government would want to be helping to develop the trade of meat with foreign nations rather that represent the short-sided, narrow-minded interests of large corporate bean counters who refuse to spend any money at all, even if it benefits their long-term interests.

This is where the need for federal subsidization comes in. If businesses won't (or can't because their profit margins are too thin) invest money to aide their long term business trends, the government should provide the funds.

Around noon today, the powers-that-be at NEWSWEEK posted "A Convention Quandary" on our website. In the story, investigative ace Michael Isikoff reported that the man chosen by John McCain's presidential campaign to run this summer's GOP convention-- Arizonan Doug Goodyear--was causing some headaches within the ranks. The problem? Goodyear is CEO of DCI Group, a consulting firm that earned $3 million last year lobbying for ExxonMobil, General Motors and other clients--not the most convenient association for a candidate who's already struggling to reconcile his reputation as an anti-special interests crusader with the sizable number of lobbyists on his senior staff. Further complicating matters: Isikoff's revelation that DCI was paid $348,000 in 2002 to represent Burma's military junta, leading "a PR campaign to burnish the junta's image, drafting releases praising Burma's efforts to curb the drug trade and denouncing 'falsehoods' by the Bush administration that the regime engaged in rape and other abuses."

Remember: this is the same McCain who is heralded by the corporate media as an anti-lobbyist maverick.

I am sick of this Reverend Wright non-scandal the media is using to smear Obama. Taking what one man said over 30 years out of context and implying that it proves Obama is out of the main-stream public opinion is ridiculous. Furthermore, maligning what Obama himself said about his own Grandmother is appalling. Anyone manipulated by this crap is mindless and addicted to television pundits thinking for them.

The real Reverend scandal involves Reverend Sun Myung Moon, who has owned the Washington Times newspaper for the last 15 or so years, and has links with the GOP that are as long as Reverend Wright. The difference is that Wright actually provides a service to the community. What does the Korean Reverend Moon do? Click here for a short film on the insanity that is Reverend Sun Myung Moon.

I bring you Cliff Schecter.

Progressive author John Gorenfeld recently released a book exposing the unsavory ties between the GOP and billionaire, Washington Times Publisher (and convicted tax cheat) Reverend Sun Myung Moon. In his book, Bad Moon Rising, Gorenfeld shows the relationship between many in the Republican hierarchy, including the Bush clan, and a man who has often been charged with being a leader of a cult.

What is beyond question, however, is that a high-ranking McCain Campaign official, Charlie Black, has planned ceremonies for Moon to be crowned "King Of America," and Moon has had damning things to say about the Christian faith.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

First from an email chain between Gorenfeld and Black: From: John Gorenfeld

To:"CHARLIE BLACK" cc: Subject: Re: Moon event at Dirksen Senate Office Building, 3/23

05/06/2004 09:31 PM

Dear Mr. Black,

Thanks for your reply.

It's kind of an amazing event, with Moon being coronated as the king and declaring himself the Messiah at a federal building. Can you tell me how you got involved with inviting people? Is this an annual event, or just a one-time thing?

sincerely,

John

On Apr 28, 2004, at 10:34 AM, CHARLIE BLACK wrote:

John,

I lent my name and sent invitations to a few friends. Unfortunately, I had a conflict and couldn't go to the event.

Charlie

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

... what is clear from this email is that top Mccain advisor Charlie Black is admitting that he helped plan, and would have attended, an event where a convicted tax fraud would have been crowned King Of America and declared himself the Messiah--all on U.S. Government federal property (on March 23, 2004).

According to The New York Times: "Mr. Moon, an eccentric billionaire, convicted tax cheat, conservative publisher and power broker, grandly donned scarlet robes and a golden crown at the Dirksen Office Building. ''I am God's ambassador, sent to earth with his full authority..."

I guess I'm a little prolific this afternoon. Nothing like a cafe with free wi-fi, and a double latte to sip -- which helps the nausea. Its my way to deal with the rampant insanity of the modern world, and the zombies who live here.

The latest in a long, long line of scandals plaguing Iraq contracting company KBR, today the Times of London reports that British employees of KBR working in the British Embassy in Iraq have been accused of sexual harassment. One Iraqi woman, a cleaner at the embassy, says that the KBR employee offered to double her pay if she slept with him; when she refused, she was fired:

The Iraqis accuse the embassy of leaving the abuse unchallenged and failing adequately to respond to complaints against several British managers for KBR. The company was allowed to conduct its own inquiry, an arrangement criticised as a very serious conflict of interest.

The complainants — the cleaner and two male cooks who worked in the embassy canteen — say that some KBR managers groped Iraqi staff regularly, paid or otherwise rewarded them for sex and dismissed those who refused or spoke out.

All three Iraqis lost their jobs in the Green Zone. Two KRB employees who worked in the embassy spoke out in support of the women; a few days later, KBR sent them home on paid leave and later fired them. The women also say KBR never interviewed them when conducting their internal review.

[SOURCE: Deborah Haynes in Baghdad, and Sonia Verma in Dubai | London Times | 8 May 2008]