Congealed Electricity

(Cross-posted at EcoFabulous)

"Congealed electricity"?

It sounds very technical but it's actually the nickname they gave aluminum back in the '50s, since it's so incredibly energy-intensive to create. You'll actually find most aluminum smelters near hydroelectric dams (like those in Washington State).

The good news is that we have become such good recyclers that the volume of aluminum cans going into landfills is actually dropping! About half of the reclaimed metal goes straight back into cans; as for the rest, it goes into some very cool products, like this "Louis the Umpteenth side table" from Johnston-Ready, available at fab new online eco-shop greenwithglamour.com.

In place of the usual rococo gilding, the aluminum finish makes for a chic modern twist to Hollywood's most glam, without sacrificing the essential ornateness of the period.

You can also clean up with Eleek's sleek line of aluminum sinks, from the mod waterbox to the useful waterfalling with its built-in strainer (all available with artist patinas and powdercoats).

Holocaust Jokes at the Air Force Academy.

This is scary. But I'm glad somebody is trying to do something about it.

Because I love America: Reagan's Assistant General Counsel Speaks Out

Mikey Weinstein served as Assistant General Counsel for Ronald Reagan. He founded the Military Religious Freedom Foundation to ensure the continued separation of Church and State, as essential principle of America's Constitution.

When I began asking questions about what I saw going on at Colorado Springs in 2004 I never expected that the inquiry would lead me to the horrifying conclusion that our country had been taken over by people who have used our own freedoms to enslave us. But that is what happened. When I began I, like most people, was focused on the personal. I believed that what was happening at the United States Air Force Academy, the harassment of cadets and staff with unwanted evangelism, was limited in scope. As the months passed, however, I found myself forced to constantly reassess my basic assumptions

(More below the fold...)

"What you do when you have a 3 star general that's ordering his staff to put together a Powerpoint presentation showing the direct parallel between the Book Of Revelation and all of our movements in the AOR ? ( for you civilians - area of responsibility, Iraq and Afghanistan )

What do you do when have a four star general who favors the distribution of a pamphlet in his commander's bulding, his palace, advertising in all faiths and why "Jesus vs. Mohammed, An Examination of The Life of Both Prophets and Why Jesus is Superior To All" ?

Why was the most popular joke here at the Air Force Academy in 2004 "Why do Jews make the best magicians?" Anyone know ? Show of hands ? We make the best magicians, apparently because we have the magical ability to walk into a red brick building and come out the smokestacks in a puff of smoke."

...As a Republican and an Academy graduate I find myself in head-on conflict with my own oath to protect the Constitution. As a Jew I confronted a situation through ears that still hear the cries of my people walking silently into the brick buildings that would reduce them to ash. I cannot stand still and let that happen to my country.

There's an indepth analysis of this at DailyKos.

And you might want to support the Military Religious Freedom Foundation

Wolfowitz & World Bank: It's all about Iraq

It shouldn't come as a huge surprise, but the current scandal that might sink Paul Wolfowitz at the World Bank is actually a sideshow to the real issue. His sweetheart, big-bucks deal for his girlfriend is just the "Al Capone/Tax Evasion" gambit.

And people have questioned why all this is coming out now - after all, these personel decisions were made a couple of years ago, right?

The real story is, as always, Iraq.

(More...)

The New York Times is reporting this morning (based on a Vanity Fair report from last week), that this isn't the first time that Riza has been involved in controversy (despite an earlier puff piece that pictured her as a good career bureaucrat who specialized in women's issues).

The Defense Department directed a private contractor in 2003 to hire Shaha Ali Riza, a World Bank employee and the companion of Paul D. Wolfowitz, then the deputy secretary of defense, to spend a month studying issues related to setting up a new government in Iraq, the contractor said Monday.
The contractor, Science Applications International Corporation, or SAIC, said that it had been directed to hire Ms. Riza by the office of the under secretary for policy. The head of that office at the time was Douglas J. Feith, who reported to Mr. Wolfowitz.
...Ms. Riza’s trip raised concerns among some bank officials, who said they did not know under whose auspices she had traveled to Iraq at a time when it was against bank policy for its officials to go there.
Bank officials said, however, that after the ouster of Mr. Hussein, the Bush administration tried to get the bank to help assist in the redevelopment of Iraq and that it was trying to involve the United Nations in the occupation to provide a rationale for the bank’s assistance.

That first attempt to involve the WB in Iraqi reconstruction came to an end in the bombing that killed the UN envoy, along with a WB employee.

But then Wolfowitz arrived at the WB as President - with no development experience, no banking experience, but plenty of (theoretical, at least) Iraq experience.

Let's let Bea Edwards at Whistleblower.org take up the story:

Only three months after Wolfowitz’ arrival, the Bank’s Board tried to restrain his management of World Bank operations in Iraq explicitly, issuing an unprecedented directive to his office to “[K]eep the Board regularly updated on developments in the country (Iraq) and implementation of the ISN” (Interim Strategy Note, September 2005, see GAP Web site). One year later, 30-year veteran Christiaan Poortman, vice-president for the Middle East, resigned from the World Bank rather than comply with Wolfowitz’s directives to prepare to increase lending and add staff in Iraq.

“In fact, the Bank is prohibited from operating in a conflict like this... In the simplest financial terms, there is no functioning banking system, the government does not control its territory and it cannot guarantee loan repayment. Any emergency or social funding in Iraq should come from donors’ grants, not loans.”

To engage in Iraq, the World Bank must justify reconstruction spending on economic grounds. If the conflict is ongoing, and the government is unstable, this cannot be done. Even assuming that the conflict ends soon, which no one is predicting, Bank Procedure 2.30 (“Development Cooperation and Conflict”) stipulates that, to operate in a country emerging from a conflict, the Bank must prepare a “watching brief,” develop a transitional support strategy, begin transitional reconstruction, then begin post-conflict reconstruction, and finally return to normal lending.

World Bank management under Wolfowitz has not taken these steps.

Although the Board did approve a limited loan program for Iraq of U.S. $500 million in September 2005, funds were not approved for disbursal, as of December 31, 2006. Disbursement was contingent on “critical progress in several areas important to IBRD (International Bank for Reconstruction and Development) creditworthiness, including security and external debt-relief,” according to an internal memo from December 2006 (See GAP’s Web site). The required progress has not occurred. Currently, regular staff travel to Iraq is prohibited, meaning that lending operations cannot be properly monitored.

So that means the World Bank isn't moving into Iraq, right?
Wrong.

WASHINGTON, Feb 22 (IPS) - World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz may appoint a new resident director for Iraq soon, a move that sources inside the Bank say could contradict the institution's policies on engagement in conflict-stricken areas and put his role in the 2003 U.S. invasion back into the limelight.
The move by Wolfowitz, the former number two official at the Pentagon and a main architect of the U.S.-led war, likely means the Bank would release new loans to the occupied Arab nation, despite the deteriorating security situation and recent disclosures of massive corruption in reconstruction efforts.

That's the story. The Busheviks are trying to extend hundreds of millions of additional dollars to their good buddies, courtesy of the World Bank. And the honest folks at the bank are appalled, and fighting back the only way they can.

Expect to see more reports like this in the next few days, from Bloomberg:

Wolfowitz, 62, ``has placed considerably more trust in a small group of outsiders from the Republican Party than in the seasoned experts in the bank,'' said Alison Cave, head of the World Bank staff association, which represents more than 13,000 employees.

Wolfowitz, in a written statement from his press office, said plans for a ``modest, incremental upgrading'' of Iraq operations came in response to donor nations and were approved by the Mideast department.

Half of the bank's 29 highest-level executives have departed since Wolfowitz, the former U.S. deputy Defense secretary and an architect of President George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq, took office in June 2005. Among them is Christiaan Poortman, vice president for the Middle East and a 30-year World Bank veteran, who left in September after resisting pressure to speed up the pace of lending and adding staff in Iraq.

(Note Worlfie's cute parsing - moving from no Iraq office and personell at all to a full in-country operation is a "modest, incremental upgrading"; and the typical Abu Gonzales parsing in which he puts responsibility for the decision on the "donor nations" making the request, and approval by the Mideast department.)

And you can bet you'll be seeing
a lot more like this, from the Nelson Report (via Agonist):

Recall the early days of 2001, when “job lists” were the name of the game here in Washington, you would find Wolfowitz on everyone’s short list for the CIA, not for DOD. Something happened which knocked Wolfowitz off the intelligence side of the equation. What you might have forgotten (if you ever knew) is why:

A certain Ms. Riza was even then Wolfowitz’s true love. The problem for the CIA wasn’t just that she was a foreign national, although that was and is today an issue for anyone interested in CIA employment. The problem was that Wolfowitz was married to someone else, and that someone was really angry about it, and she found a way to bring her complaint directly to the President.

So when we, with our characteristic innocence, put Wolfowitz on our short-list for CIA, we were instantly told, by a very, very, very senior Republican foreign policy operative, “I don’t think so”. It was then gently explained why, purely on background, of course.

"Bright" as in "Smart"

(Cross-posted at EcoFabulous.)

Think about light bulbs.

Millions of light bulbs. In scoreboards and moving displays. Think of the trash as they burn out and are replaced.

Now, think of LEDs. Millions of tiny little near-immortal LEDs. All computer-controlled with a degree of precision and sharpness you could never get from light bulbs, and all using 95% less power.

Element Labs is doing it in spectacular fashion, from concerts to sports arenas to homes – check out the 45,000 square foot display that covered the length of the stadium for the Asian Games in Doha. They’ve become a staple of concert tours and music videos, and now they’re moving into high-end restaurants and very high-end homes.

The possibilities are endless: imagine a wall in your living room that’s a non-stop moving art installation… or a display that can give you sunshine on a cloudy day. But beware when you tell your friends and neighbors - they will certainly all want to come over and share the spot light(s)!!

Why can't Dems do this?

Wow. An actual piece of journalism, in which the WaPo's Dan Eggan draws in background info and compares Whitehouse cant with self-contradictory statements they have been making!

A half-dozen sitting U.S. attorneys also serve as aides to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales or are assigned other Washington postings, performing tasks that take them away from regular duties in their districts for months or even years at a time, according to officials and department records.

Acting Associate Attorney General William W. Mercer, for example, has been effectively absent from his job as U.S. attorney in Montana for nearly two years -- prompting the chief federal judge in Billings to demand his removal and call Mercer's office "a mess."

My first thought when I read the opener was, "But that's just what they accused Iglesias of doing...". Ignominiously, of course, since he was "absent for weeks at a time" because of his role in the NATIONAL GUARD.

(More...)

I was prepared for the admin's statements to go unchallenged as always, but Eggan lays it all out, Boom-boom-boom:

"Having U.S. attorneys serve at the department ensures that a local perspective is brought to policy-making decisions," Roehrkasse said in a statement. ". . . U.S. Attorneys assigned to the Department's headquarters also gain a national perspective and can bring this perspective and national focus to their districts."

But [Dennis Boyd, executive director of the National Association of Assistant United States Attorneys,] said the prolonged absence of a chief prosecutor can lead to a lack of direction and leadership in U.S. attorneys' offices. The Justice Department made a similar argument in defending the firing of Iglesias, alleging that he had entrusted too much responsibility to his first assistant.

"Quite frankly, U.S. attorneys are hired to run the office, not their first assistants," William E. Moschella, the principal associate deputy attorney general, told the House Judiciary Committee last month.

Iglesias filed a complaint with federal investigators last week, alleging that his dismissal amounted to discrimination based on his status as an officer in the Navy Reserve, which took him away from the job for 40 to 45 days a year. Alleged absenteeism has been the Justice Department's main public criticism of Iglesias, although officials have more recently added concerns about his handling of voter fraud and immigration cases to their arguments about him.

Read the whole piece... it's apparent that something different is starting to happen.

Why? I hate to say it, but... there isn't a Democrat quoted in the story. The good news is, we've got Republicans like Boyd making the hard-hitting points that the Dems just have not been getting in.

Let's face it - we've been playing nicey-nice. Look at the Pelosi issue - Holbrook made some hard-hitting comments, but as Greg Sargent noted, "I haven't seen any Democratic elected officials or direct Pelosi allies denouncing this story in such stark terms as Holbrooke did."

We still go out there acting as if it's not our job to hand the MSM the story on a plate. Well, guess what? The Repubs have been doing that for years, and it works, and we've been getting our asses handed to us.

Can we please put together a boot camp weekend for Democratic officeholders that teaches them how to do this? How to go into inverviews with background info, talking points, snappy one-liners - whatever it takes!

Until we master this, we're going to be doing nothing but playing defense.

Follow-up:

I cross-posted at Dailykos, and got a very interesting discussion going...

Someone - buy me dinner with Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame!

Oooh, I like this...

The Robert Kennedy Foundation is holding its celebrity auction, with bidding to close on April 6th.

Plamegate junkie that I am, my favorite would have to be dinner with Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame. Any generous souls out there feel like buying it for me - or Marcy Wheeler? As of this writing, the bid is at $2,650.

There's a bunch of fun stuff up, all to raise money for the Foundation's charitable activities....

You could have a walk-on role in the next Farrely Bros. movie; current bidding there is $4,250. That would be cool....

Or how about a set visit to Boston Legal and a cigar with Legal eagle William Shatner? Boldly puff for just $5,500...

The one I just don't get: breakfast or tea with Alan Greenspan and Andrea Mitchell. Even if the dude was head of the Fed all those years... chilling with him might be worth $45,000, but not if you have to put up with HER as well...

Hail, Sigg!

Plastic water bottles.

Before you know it they build up under the back seat of the car, they hide in the corners of the kitchen, they sneak under the couch.

But where do you stow 30 million plastic water bottles? That’s how many bottles Americans are adding to landfills every single day. It’s not just the landfilling – all of those bottles were manufactured (using lots of power and 63 million gallons of oil per year), packed into cardboard boxes (millions and millions of trees – often rainforest trees - cut down), then trucked around the country (more petroleum).

Plus, NRDC discovered that a “third of the tested [bottled water] brands were found to contain contaminants such as arsenic and carcinogenic compounds in at least some samples at levels exceeding state or industry standards.” So, kick the plastic habit - it's amazing how easy it is once you re-train your brain!

You can’t beat Swiss design – Sigg has just added some seriously stylish patterns to their classic line of vibrantly-colored brushed-aluminum water bottles. They’ve even got a tres cute kids line.

Sigg bottles are seamlessly extruded from a single piece of aluminum (no seams=no leaks); a proprietary interior coating is baked on to ensure the bottle won’t interact with anything you choose to swig from it, from apple juice to CO2 drinks to alcohol (think of it as a modern flask); a powder coating is baked on the exterior to attain those cool colors and designs; the tops are guaranteed leak free and are available in several styles. Using a plastic bottle will seem tasteless before you even know it!

And strong? Backpacker magazine fired a cannon at water bottles to test them – Sigg was the only one to emerge unscathed. Even Beckham can’t bend it! (He’s a Sigg fan, too.)

With health concerns about Lexan bottles, it’s nice to know there’s a product out there that looks chic, lasts for years, and won’t harm either you or the environment. (Sigg is also part of One Percent for the Planet) You can get them online from Sigg; they ship straight to you....