Saturday Morning Reads: A little this and a little that

Posted: August 6, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: morning reads | Tags: , , , , , , , | 28 Comments

Good Morning!

Today’s a good day to let sleeping dogs lie!  Man, is it hot down here in the South. I can’t replace Wonk’s Saturday morning pithiness, but here’s my shot at it.

I read this in my hard copy of The Economist and thought I’d share it. It appears we are hardwired to be generous and cooperate.  Maybe somebody ought to break that news to the Homo Idioticus species now residing in the District Beltway.

At the moment co-operation is the most fashionable subject of investigation. In particular, why are humans so willing to collaborate with unrelated strangers, even to the point of risking being cheated by people whose characters they cannot possibly know?

Evidence from economic games played in the laboratory for real money suggests humans are both trusting of those they have no reason to expect they will ever see again, and surprisingly unwilling to cheat them—and that these phenomena are deeply ingrained in the species’s psychology. Existing theories of the evolution of trust depend either on the participants being relatives (and thus sharing genes) or on their relationship being long-term, with each keeping count to make sure the overall benefits of collaboration exceed the costs. Neither applies in the case of passing strangers, and that has led to speculation that something extraordinary, such as a need for extreme collaboration prompted by the emergence of warfare that uses weapons, has happened in recent human evolution to promote the emergence of an instinct for unconditional generosity.

We’ve also seen how the elderly are going to be treated by the current group of knuckle draggers occupying the District Beltway. Did Bronze Age elderly fare any better? Cambridge researcher Jo Appleby compared the graves of children to old people to get some clues. She found distinct difference in grave goods in many categories of people including sex, age, and presumed social status.

When Appleby compared the items in the graves of older people with the items in the graves of younger people, she turned up some intriguing patterns. In the earlier period, older women tended not to be buried with certain objects that appeared more frequently in younger people’s graves. But the elderly weren’t left with nothing, Appleby said.

“They had really good numbers of objects, and they had some of the richer objects, it was just that particular things weren’t found with them,” she said. For example, unlike their younger counterparts, older women didn’t get buried wearing necklaces made of dog teeth.

Later, in the newer cemetery, this age differentiation vanished. Women wore different items than female children, but the age at which a woman died made no difference in her grave goods.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is meeting with her Canadian counterpart  John Baird to discuss a possible US pipeline for oil from Canadian oil sands.  The process of removing oil from sands is expensive and damaging to the environment so in many quarters this is controversial.  It also should be noted that pipelines are known to leak and this is going to head down through some pristine ranch, farming, and recreation territory. However, Canada has been up to its knees in the process for some time–destroying a lot of wilderness in places like Alberta–and would like to see the cash from a pipe that extends from down to Texas and the Gulf of Mexico.  It would pass through six states.

The US government will decide by year’s end whether to issue a permit for a proposed $13 billion oil pipeline stretching from Canada to Texas, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Thursday.

The 1,700-mile (2,700-kilometer) Keystone XL pipeline proposed by TransCanada would begin in Alberta in western Canada and pass through the US states of Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma before ending up in Texas at the Gulf of Mexico.

An extensive review has been performed, featuring analysis and assessments, as well as looking over public comments.

“We are leaving no stone unturned in this process and we expect to make a decision on the permit before the end of this year,” Clinton said during a press conference with Canadian Foreign Minister John Baird.

Baird described a “good discussion” with the chief US diplomat on the matter, adding that Clinton “listened respectfully.”

“It is a very important project not just for our government, but I think for Canadians and the future of the Canadian economy,” he said.

The US State Department says it expects to release a final environmental impact statement on the proposed pipeline by mid-August.

A Republican-led congressional committee voted at the time for a resolution urging Clinton to “immediately approve” the project, which would guarantee oil access for the US.

But a number of environmental and citizen groups have launched a fight against the pipeline because of the oil’s origin. The unconventional oil sands of Alberta require energy that produces a large volume of greenhouse gasses.

Okay, it’s still hot down here. That hasn’t changed since you read the first bit.  Frankly, I think it’s hotter.  Slate has an article with a good heading up and it’s called  Can a Heat Wave Make You Insane? If you ask me, the answer is yes. Let me introduce you to some folks I know that seemed pretty normal when they moved down here to the tropics from way up north.

It depends on how hot it is, and whether you’re mentally stable to begin with. Intense heat increases the risk of dehydration, and even mild dehydration can affect the brain. A study published this summer tested two dozen college-age men and found that a loss of 1 percent body mass via exercise-induced sweating (replaceable with three glasses of water) decreased their cognitive performance and increased levels of anxiety.

Dramatic overheating can also lead to heatstroke, symptoms of which progress from confusion and irritability to hallucinations, violent behavior, and delirium. In animal models, overheating causes some neurons to become more excitable, which might underlie the psychiatric effects. Most of these are transient—cool off and they go away—but heatstroke may lead to long-term brain damage. (It can also kill you.) You won’t keep hallucinating for years to come, but you might end up a little clumsy or slur your speech. Case reports that have been pointed out to us by the folks at the office of Wolf & Pravato personal injury attorneys show that through heatstroke, long-lasting personality changes (similar to those caused by traumatic brain injury) also exist, but this complication appears to be rare.

Those of you with tinfoil hats may want to consider changing to something a little less metallic because a major geomagnetic storm is hitting Earth right now. Those of you up north should check for the infamous Northern Lights.  Evidently Seattle is set to get some so if you’ve got the rare clear sky up there, check them out. I already called the sister and she’s checking them out from her weekend retreat on the Puget Sound.

A massive solar storm hit Earth on August 5, raising the possibility of auroras being visible even at relatively low latitudes, as well as potential disruptions to communications satellites and GPS devices.

“My estimate is we will probably get aurorae in the northern tier of the U.S.,” physicist Brian J. Anderson told the Baltimore Sun’s meteorology blogger. “We might be able to see it in the Baltimore-Washington area if it [the magnetic field in the solar storm] turns due south.”

According to spaceweather.com, the burst of radio static which reached the earth on the evening of August 4th — prior to the main electromagnetic blast — was “so powerful that receivers on Earth picked it up after sunset.” Events of that kind are extremely rare, and radio astronomers have never been able to offer a conclusive explanation for how they happen.

So, you want to see a picture of the real Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds?

Lucy Vodden was the subject of a painting brought home from nursery school by a young Julian Lennon, who showed it to his dad, John, and told him it was “Lucy — in the sky with diamonds”.

Julian got back in touch with Lucy a few years agi when he heard that she was battling Lupus, an auto-immune disease.

Now, a plaque commemorating the woman who inspired the Beatles’ hit, will be placed in Liverpool in memory of Vodden who died in 2009 at age 46. (See the original painting below)

Following her death, Lennon became heavily involved with St Thomas’ Lupus Trust, which commissioned the plaque, and he become the Lupus Foundation of America’s Global Ambassador.

Okay, I need another glass of ice tea.  The big question is if I can face a drive in a hot car to the grocery store.  So, now it’s up to you. What’s on you reading and blogging list today?

Late Night: Is There Life on Mars?

Posted: August 5, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: just because | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , | 11 Comments

As Dakinikat wrote this morning, NASA scientists have found evidence of liquid water on Mars.

New images of the craters of Mars may be the best evidence yet of flowing, liquid water, an essential ingredient for life on the planet.

The findings, published in Friday’s issue of the journal Science, came from extremely high-resolution images taken by a powerful camera called HiRISE aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which has been orbiting the planet since 2006.

A sequence of images from MRO shows long, brown streaks in the Martian spring and summer. In the colder seasons, these streaks disappeared, suggesting that they could be the flow of briny water.

“We haven’t found any good way to explain what we’re seeing without water,” lead author Alfred McEwan of the University of Arizona said during a press briefing Thursday.

There are some amazing photos of the surface of Mars at the above Wapo link above–be sure to check them out.

The notion that there could be life on Mars is part of our culture. I’m sure most of us have seen scifi movies or read scifi novels involving Mars at one time or another. I vividly recall watching the 1953 movie War of the Worlds as a kid and being terrified. But I had no idea that human fascination with Mars went back to 3,000 BCE, when Egyptian astronomers first discovered the red planet.

You can read more highlights of the history of our fascination with the planet Mars in this article at The Independent UK, by Steve Conor: Why we can’t get enough of The Red Planet.

The reason, of course, for this obsession with liquid water on Mars is that it raises the prospect of life on a planet that has captivated generations of schoolboys and science fiction writers. Planetary scientists are agreed that extraterrestial life almost certainly requires liquid water to exist, just as it does on Earth.

[….]

Life may not automatically follow from the discovery of flowing water on Mars, but it certainly brings the prospect closer. And the discovery of life on another planet, no matter how primitive and microbial, would certainly amount to one of the greatest scientific finds of all time.

It would mean, for example, that life has originated at least twice in a single solar system – provided we can eliminate the possibility that any Martian life forms were somehow carried there from Earth. Two planets with life in a single solar system would indicate that the origin of life is a fairly common event, and that our galaxy, composed of billions of solar systems, must therefore be teeming with extraterrestial life forms.

A universe where life is so common would presumably be governed by the same rules of Darwinian evolution that produced intelligent, conscious human beings here on Earth. Discovering even the simplest life form on Mars, therefore, would almost certainly mean the existence of advanced, intelligent aliens in other solar systems with civilisations comparable to our own on Earth.

Isn’t it amazing? To celebrate I dug up a few movie clips and some music to put you in the “life on Mars” mood.

First, here’s the trailer from the 1953 movie that scared me as a kid, War of the Worlds (based on the H.G. Wells novel). The star of the movie was Gene Barry. Remember him? And it was produced by George Pal, one of the greatest schlock meisters of all time.

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Here’s a scene that shows the Martians.

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Cool huh? I couldn’t bring myself to watch the remake. I didn’t want to ruin my memory of the original.

Of course there was the famous 1938 radio broadcast of War of the Worlds by Orson Welles. The one that caused panic in the streets.

…the radio play, narrated by Orson Welles, had been written and performed to sound like a real news broadcast about an invasion from Mars.

Thousands of people, believing they were under attack by Martians, flooded newspaper offices and radio and police stations with calls, asking how to flee their city or how they should protect themselves from “gas raids.” Scores of adults reportedly required medical treatment for shock and hysteria….

“Audiences heard their regularly scheduled broadcast interrupted by breaking news,” said Michele Hilmes, a communications professor at University of Wisconsin in Madison and author of Radio Voices: American Broadcasting, 1922-1952.

Stations then cut to a live reporter on the scene of the invasion in New Jersey. “By the end of the first half of the program, the radio studios themselves were under attack,” Hilmes said.

Here’s a scene from a more recent and very funny movie about Martians, Mars Attacks.

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Now for some Mars music.

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What’s your favorite book, movie, or song about Mars?

Downgrade

Posted: August 5, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Economy, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics | Tags: | 28 Comments

Rating agency Standard & Poor’s downgraded US debt from  AAA  to  AA+.  Additionally, the company  warned of more possible downgrades in the future because of political and economic uncertainty. This basically means that I have to tell students to draw big red lines through all of their asset pricing formulas that tell them to use US treasuries as the world’s base risk free rate.  I can only imagine that when the FMA meets in Denver in October that the big discussion will be should Australia, Canada or France now be considered the rate upon which all else is based?

The downgrade and negative outlook came late on Friday night, after news surfaced of a furious rearguard attempt by the White House to convince S&P that its calculations were flawed.

The move shifts long-term US government debt into the same level as Britain, Japan and other countries, but below that of Canada, Australia and France. As a rule, a lower credit rating means higher borrowing costs for debtor nations. But because of the size of the US and its deep capital markets, it remians to be seen what impact the move will have when financial markets reopen on Monday.

Republicans were quick to highlight the downgrade – the first in modern US history – as a humiliation for President Obama. But S&P’s statement explaining the move blamed both parties for the US fiscal mess – and had harsh words for the Republican party for ruling out any taxes increases.

“We have changed our assumption … because the majority of Republicans in Congress continue to resist any measure that would raise revenues,” S&P said.

S&P also said the budget savings agreed by Congress at the start of the week were too feeble, and blamed political weakness and instability for triggering the downgrade:

More broadly, the downgrade reflects our view that the effectiveness, stability, and predictability of American policymaking and political institutions have weakened at a time of ongoing fiscal and economic challenges to a degree more than we envisioned when we assigned a negative outlook to the rating on April 18, 2011.

Since then, we have changed our view of the difficulties in bridging the gulf between the political parties over fiscal policy, which makes us pessimistic about the capacity of Congress and the Administration to be able to leverage their agreement this week into a broader fiscal consolidation plan that stabilizes the government’s debt dynamics any time soon.

The credit rating agency also said the outlook on its long-term rating was negative, warning that it could lower the long-term further rating to AA within the next two years “if we see that less reduction in spending than agreed to, higher interest rates, or new fiscal pressures during the period result in a higher general government debt trajectory than we currently assume”.

Standard & Poor’s has suffered a good deal of confidence downgrade since its ratings of Credit Default Swaps in the mortgage meltdown proved less than stellar. Other raters are still considering a similar move.

U.S. Treasury bonds, once undisputedly seen as the safest security in the world, are now rated lower than bonds issued by countries such as Britain, Germany, France or Canada.

The outlook on the new U.S. credit rating is “negative”, S&P said in a statement, a sign that another downgrade is possible in the next 12 to 18 months.

The impact of S&P’s move was tempered by a decision from Moody’s Investors Service earlier this week that confirmed, for now, the U.S. Aaa rating. Fitch Ratings said it is still reviewing the rating and will issue its opinion by the end of the month.

“It’s not entirely unexpected. I believe it has already been partly priced into the dollar. We expect some further pressure on the U.S. dollar, but a sharp sell-off is in our view unlikely,” said Vassili Serebriakov, currency strategist at Wells Fargo in New York.

“One of the reasons we don’t really think foreign investors will start selling U.S. Treasuries aggressively is because there are still few alternatives to the U.S. Treasury market in terms of depth and liquidity,” Serebriakov added.

S&P’s move is also likely to concern foreign creditors especially China, which holds more than $1 trillion of U.S. debt. Beijing has repeatedly urged Washington to protect its U.S. dollar investments by addressing its budget problem.

The downgrade could add up to 0.7 of a percentage point to U.S. Treasuries’ yields over time, increasing funding costs for public debt by some $100 billion, according to SIFMA, a U.S. securities industry trade group.

This move could send a signal to the market to increase interest rates that may trigger the Fed to act in some way.  Given that monetary policy is already at the zero bound and serious attention needs to be paid to fiscal policy based in reality, I’m not sure at this point if a QE3 from Helicopter Ben would even help at this point.  Most corporations are profitable and liquid now.  If anything, higher interest rates will further stymy consumer spending and borrowing.

Some folks believe that the S&P move was meant to pressure the Obama administration into reconsidering new regulations that will impact rating agencies.  Again, rating agencies were part of the collapse of the financial system in and around 2007-2008 when they inappropriately rated many exotic instruments to be highly safe.

Welcome to the new reality in the age of the decline of the American Empire. Hold on to your seats. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.

Dysfunctional Justice System Delivers some Justice

Posted: August 5, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: New Orleans | Tags: , , , | 16 Comments

Hurricane Gustav rolls in

On August 30, 2008 I was sitting in a bar in the ninth ward of New Orleans waiting for Hurricane Gustav.  It was unbelievably hot in my house. For some reason, Entergy couldn’t keep my electricity on but across the street at BJ’s bar, there was cool air and sweet relief.  I was working on a paper and drinking beer off and on all day.  I was back and forth depending on how much I could charge the laptop battery and cool myself down.

Later in the evening, a group of policemen entered the bar including one local guy that had a reputation for a mean temper when drunk and using the n word profusely. He had a group of rookies tagging along with him.  We felt fairly safe back then because the National Guard was almost always first on crime scenes at that point in time and it kept the NOPD in check when they were watched by something other than citizens.  Middle aged, white but with that ruddy red hue in the face indicating too much alcohol in the system, this guy has a substantial beer gut and one hell of a chip on his shoulder.  He’s a case study in anger.  He was always looking to prove something.

This officer later waved his badge from a lawn chair planted in the street to a patrolling National Guard Unit. Move on, move on! Nothing to see here!  Believe me, the guy has a reputation around the neighborhood and I found out why shortly after as he rolled a local prostitutes for freebie blow jobs on the back of a black and white for all the rookies.  She was a middle-aged, nice looking dirty blonde with a drug habit. I’d talked to her on many occasions. She mostly services the lonely old losers in the neighborhood.  I had heard she was forced to service the officer, but had never seen evidence of it until that night.   I left in disgust before the show really got on the road.  This is the guy that later let a drug felon beat me up because I had the audacity to tell the felon that his girlfriend had been sleeping with the cop both before and after he was in the federal penitentiary. You remember, that’s the cop that had me arrested for fighting. Little old me with a broken rib in my back from being kicked while under a table. Yup, ask me.  I believe that a good portion of the NOPD only exists to protect and serve its own.

It’s no secret that I don’t believe a word that any NOPD officer says given my experience with them two years ago. I said as much to a judge, two prosecutors and a public defender when I was called to jury duty 18 months ago.  The Danziger Bridge shootings have nationally exposed the underbelly of the NOPD with its blue line fraternity boys culture often caught up in corruption.  Will this actually lead to any change?  I don’t know.  I’m just glad a few people got a sense of justice, even though it’s hard bought with the deaths of two innocent people including one man that was mentally disabled.

A federal jury on Friday convicted five current or former police officers in the deadly shootings on a New Orleans bridge after Hurricane Katrina.

All five officers were convicted of charges stemming from the cover-up of the shootings. The four who had been charged with civil rights violations in the shootings were convicted on all counts.

However, the jury didn’t find that Brisette or Faulcon’s shootings amounted to murder.

Prosecutors contended during the five-week federal trial that officers shot unarmed people without justification and without warning, killing two and wounding four others on Sept. 4, 2005, then embarked on a cover-up involving made-up witnesses, falsified reports and a planted gun.

Defense attorneys countered that the officers were returning fire and reasonably believed their lives were in danger as they rushed to respond to another officer’s distress call less than a week after Katrina struck.

Again, the family of the shooting victims may never find peace despite the overwhelming verdict of guilty on most counts for the five officers. Ronald Madison was the 40 year old victim with diminished mental capacity that was shot in the back and unarmed.

The family of victim Ronald Madison greeted the verdict with solemn appreciation, thanking law enforcement and the media for keeping the story in the limelight.

“We will never be completely healed, because we will never have Ronald Madison back,” said Madison’s brother Lance, who was with him on the bridge and who was initially arrested after the shooting.

“They took the twinkle out of my eye and the song out of my heart,” said a visibly shaken Sherell Johnson, the mother of James Brissette, the young man shot and killed in a hail of gunfire on the bridge.

The verdicts begin to close one of the darkest sagas that came to light in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The five current and former New Orleans police officers were accused of wrongfully shooting six unarmed civilians, two fatally, on the Danziger Bridge several days after the storm blew through New Orleans and then staging an elaborate cover-up to justify the shootings.

In a 25-count indictment, the men in question – Bowen, Gisevius, Faulcon, Villavaso and Kaufman – were accused of turning on those citizens they had sworn to protect, especially in their most vulnerable hour when the city’s levees ruptured, flooding and crippling a majority of New Orleans as it descended into chaos. They faced a slew of charges, ranging from civil rights violations to murder charges to using a firearm in the commission of a crime to misleading investigators.

Bowen, Gisevius, Faulcon, Villavaso were accused of shooting the unarmed men and women, while Kaufman was accused of masterminding the cover-up, including the planting of a gun on the bridge and writing a bogus police report that would include phony witnesses.

The NOPD has never had a stellar record as an efficient police department.  I’ve spent my 16 years here reading about bad cop after bad cop.  It’s obviously a systemic problem.  I’ll never forget the look on those rookies faces on their initiation night. I’ll never forget the way that a badge can wave off people that may actually be there to help.  I’ve seen that happen twice now.  I’ll never forget the carnival scene that also happened when a friend of mine was killed when a woman driving her boyfriend’s wife’s truck slammed him into a cast iron gate. He’s never gotten his justice to this date. The cops spent most of the time standing around with ice cream cones in their hands. They had blocked off all traffic but let the ice cream truck through to park and do business.  Children on bikes were allowed to buzz my friend’s lifeless body.  That’s another story too and there’s more.  I’ve only been here 16 years and I’ve got plenty of them.  Just imagine what a NOLA lifer can come up with. There’s a lot to love about this city.  Best food, music, and people in the world. The NOPD is not one of the reasons.

Friday Reads

Posted: August 5, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Democratic Politics, Foreign Affairs, income inequality, morning reads, Somalia, Syria | Tags: , , , , , , , , | 29 Comments

Good Morning!

At least there’s some good news this morning.  Senator Harry Reid has found a deal to end FAA furloughs so that lots of people can return to work and those monies go to the government and not into the pockets of the airline industry.

Under a deal Reid made with House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), the Senate will pass the House bill that includes cuts to rural flight service to airports in Nevada, West Virginia and Montana. But Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood will use his authority to waive the airports from the cuts, ending a 13-day impasse that left 4,000 FAA employees and about 70,000 construction employees out of work.

Reid said the deal did not solve the issues that led to the partial shutdown of the FAA, but he said those can be dealt with another day.

“I am pleased to announce that we have been able to broker a bipartisan compromise between the House and the Senate to put 74,000 transportation and construction workers back to work,” Reid said in a statement released by his office. “This agreement does not resolve the important differences that still remain. But I believe we should keep Americans working while Congress settles its differences, and this agreement will do exactly that.”

NASA’s funding may be on the chopping block, but the agency continues to do first class science.  It has announced that it has found evidence of liquid water on Mars.

Pictures taken by the powerful HiRISE camera aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) showed fingers of dark material running down rocky slopes facing the equator during spring and summer months. Scientists believe that this represents a significant sign that briny water is flowing on the surface of the red plant.

The dark stripes, approximately 0.5 yards wide and hundreds of yards long, appear during the warm months and then disappear again in cold months. The salty surface of Mars means that liquid water would be salty as well, making it less likely to freeze at the observed tempratures.

“These dark lineations are different from other types of features on Martian slopes,” MRO project scientist Richard Zurek said in a press advisory. “Repeated observations show they extend even farther downhill with time during the warm season.”

In my Monday Reads I mentioned the horrible famine taking place in Somalia.  SOS Hillary Clinton has made an appeal to al-Shabaab to focus on feeding hungry people and letting world aid groups do their jobs.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Thursday appealed to al-Shabaab militants in Somalia to give unfettered access to relief workers trying to aid thousands of people threatened by famine.  Clinton said a high-level U.S. team will lead a fact-finding mission to neighboring Kenya to review relief efforts.

The United States lists al-Shabaab, which has ties to al-Qaida, as a terrorist organization and has actively helped Somalia’s U.N.-supported transitional government try to resist a takeover by the Islamic militants.

But in an unusual direct appeal to al-Shabaab, Clinton urged the group to drop what she said was its deliberate effort to block food deliveries in south-central Somalia and in parts of the capital, Mogadishu, under its direct or indirect control.

“It is particularly tragic that during the holy month of Ramadan, al-Shabaab are preventing assistance to the most vulnerable populations in Somalia – namely children, including infants, and girls and women who are attempting to bring themselves and those children to safety and  the potential of being fed before more deaths occur,” said Clinton. “I call on al-Shabaab to allow assistance to be delivered in an absolutely unfettered way throughout the area that they currently control.”

Al-Shabaab, which dominates the southern part of Somalia, maintains there is no famine and has barred the entry of aid groups other than the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Creepy old polygamist leader–Warren Jeffs– has been convicted of child sex abuse despite his self representation in criminal court.  He mostly hid under the mantle of The Book of Mormon and his right to practice his religion as he saw fit.

Warren Jeffs, leader of the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints, has been convicted on child sexual assault charges.

His case stems from his relationship with two young followers he took as brides in what the FLDS church calls “spiritual marriages.”

Jeffs has acted as his own attorney during the trial after firing his attorneys on July 28.

In 2008, authorities raided the YFZ ranch near Eldorado, and seized about 400 children.

Jeffs faces up to life in prison.

A forensic analyst testified that Jeffs was an almost certain DNA match to the child of a 15-year-old mother.

Jeffs also was accused of assaulting a 12-year-old girl.

At least 2000 Syrians that oppose the dictator there have been killed.  The latest slaughter–which is taking place during the Islamic holiday of Ramadan–includes tanks in Hama.  SOS Hillary Clinton has said the current government of Syria has lost all legitimacy.

“The sound of tank shelling and their heavy machineguns echoed in Hama all day. We fear many more martyrs. Most people in my neighborhood have fled,” said one resident in Sabounia district, a small business owner who did not want to be named.

“The shabbiha (militiamen loyal to Assad) are cleaning the streets near the university campus to stage a pro-Assad march tomorrow as if nothing is happening in Hama,” he told Reuters by satellite phone.

Electricity and communications have been cut off and as many as 130 people have been killed in a five-day military assault since Assad, from Syria’s minority Alawite sect, sent troops into the city on Sunday, residents and activists said.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Washington believed Assad’s forces were responsible for the deaths of more than 2,000 Syrians in their attacks on peaceful protesters during the five-month uprising.

Clinton repeated that the United States believed Assad had lost legitimacy in Syria and said Washington and its allies were working on strategies to apply more pressure beyond new sanctions announced earlier on Thursday.

Meanwhile, happy times are here again if you’re stinking, filthy rich.

Nordstrom has a waiting list for a Chanel sequined tweed coat with a $9,010 price. Neiman Marcus has sold out in almost every size of Christian Louboutin “Bianca” platform pumps, at $775 a pair. Mercedes-Benz said it sold more cars last month in the United States than it had in any July in five years.

Even with the economy in a funk and many Americans pulling back on spending, the rich are again buying designer clothing, luxury cars and about anything that catches their fancy. Luxury goods stores, which fared much worse than other retailers in the recession, are more than recovering — they are zooming. Many high-end businesses are even able to mark up, rather than discount, items to attract customers who equate quality with price.

“If a designer shoe goes up from $800 to $860, who notices?” said Arnold Aronson, managing director of retail strategies at the consulting firm Kurt Salmon, and the former chairman and chief executive of Saks.

The rich do not spend quite as they did in the free-wheeling period before the recession, but they are closer to that level.

The luxury category has posted 10 consecutive months of sales increases compared with the year earlier, even as overall consumer spending on categories like furniture and electronics has been tepid, according to the research service MasterCard Advisors SpendingPulse. In July, the luxury segment had an 11.6 percent increase, the biggest monthly gain in more than a year.

I’d say that trend might end given that equities markets are crashing and crashing extraordinarily big time.  Yesterday was the worst day for the market since 2008.  That’s what happens when the confidence fairy runs off with the high priest of voodoo economics. Poof!  Don’t say I didn’t tell you to bail a few months ago!

Stocks plunged Thursday in their single worst day since the 2008 financial crisis.

The Dow tumbled 512 points — its ninth deepest point drop ever — as fear about the global economy spooked investors.

“The conventional wisdom on Wall Street was that the economy was growing — that the worst was behind us,” said Peter Schiff, president of Euro Pacific Capital. “Now what people are realizing is the stimulus didn’t work, and we may be headed back to recession.”

Also, don’t tell me I didn’t tell you that the stimulus wasn’t going to be enough to jump start the economy either.  I think we all saw it.  Too bad they never listen to us?  Hmmmm? So, I’ll continue to watch this.

The disaster at Fukushima nuclear power plant continues. Radiation levels inside the crippled was said to be at levels that went beyond measurement capabilities.  Folks, this is so scary. I can’t imagine the bravery of the workers trying to deal with this.  It sounds like going near the place is a death sentence.

Radiation dosages of 5 sieverts per hour were detected indoors on the second floor of the No. 1 reactor at the crisis-hit Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant on Tuesday, the highest figure yet indoors, plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. said.

The figure was detected in front of a pipe in an air-conditioning machine room, the utility said, adding the dosage may be larger than the measured amount as it exceeds the capacity of measuring equipment.

Radioactive substances are considered to be staying in the pipe after they entered there when pressure in the reactor’s containment vessel was lowered on March 12, according to Tokyo Electric known as TEPCO.

The company has made the area off-limits.

TEPCO also said radiation doses of more than 10 sieverts, or 10,000 millisieverts, per hour were detected outdoors again Tuesday at the plant.

If exposed to such a high-level dosage of radiation in a short period of time, almost all people exposed would die, radiation experts said.

On Monday, Tokyo Electric said radiation doses of as high as 10 sieverts per hour were detected outside the buildings for the No. 1 and No. 2 reactors.

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