Friday, July 06, 2007

Al Gore's Live Earth- Tickets and Info - Concert In New Jersey And Worldwide

Live Earth's coming to New York Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey. Before we wax on abou the event, you can get tickets with a click on LIVE WORLD .



Now, about Live Earth:

According to Wikipedia, ..Live Earth is the name for a series of concerts of pop and rock music featuring various artists planned to take place on Saturday July 7, 2007 to give cause to global warming.[1] The concerts have the intent of bringing together more than 150 of the world's most popular music acts and drawing a worldwide audience of 2 billion people, making it one of the largest global events in history. The umbrella organization for the event is a new global movement under the name Save Our Selves (SOS).

The plans for the Live Earth concerts were announced at a media event in Los Angeles on February 15[2], 2007 by the former Vice President of the United States Al Gore and other activist celebrities. The inspiration for promoting the cause using the vehicle of benefit concerts comes from many similar events over the past 25 years including the 1985 Live Aid concerts and the 2005 Live 8 concerts and it will be the longest show ever to be recorded in the world records.

Projected temperature increase for a range of greenhouse gas stabilization scenarios (the coloured bands). The black line indicates 'best estimates'; the red and the blue lines the likely limits. From the work of the IPCC, 2007.

In addition to raising awareness of global warming, on June 28, 2007, it was revealed that Live Earth is to be the launch event for the Live Earth Call to Action.[3] During the concerts people will be asked to support the following 7-point pledge:[3]
To demand that my country join an international treaty within the next 2 years that cuts global warming pollution by 90% in developed countries and by more than half worldwide in time for the next generation to inherit a healthy earth;

To take personal action to help solve the climate crisis by reducing my own CO2 pollution as much as I can and offsetting the rest to become 'carbon neutral;'

To fight for a moratorium on the construction of any new generating facility that burns coal without the capacity to safely trap and store the CO2;

To work for a dramatic increase in the energy efficiency of my home, workplace, school, place of worship, and means of transportation;

To fight for laws and policies that expand the use of renewable energy sources and reduce dependence on oil and coal;
To plant new trees and to join with others in preserving and protecting forests; and,

To buy from businesses and support leaders who share my commitment to solving the climate crisis and building a sustainable, just, and prosperous world for the 21st century.

In subsequent interviews Al Gore indicated that the concerts would mark 'the beginning of a three year campaign worldwide to deliver information about how we solve the climate crisis'[4][5] and that 'the prospects for every future generation depend on us understanding, hearing and acting upon this information.'[4]

Further information on the issues raised by the concerts are published in The Live Earth Global Warming Survival Handbook, written by environmentalist David Mayer de Rothschild the handbook is the companion book to the Live Earth concert listing 77 tips or skills that people can use to help stop climate change [6] [7].

Profits from the book will be donated to the Alliance for Climate Protection, as will some of the profits from the concerts.[8]

Thursday, July 05, 2007

China Nuclear Sub Type 094 Jin-Class SSBN Spotted On Google Earth -



From WorldTribune.com

A satellite image of China's new nuclear ballistic missile submarine is available on the Google Earth Internet site.

A satellite image of China's new ballistic missile submarine. FAS.org
Hans M. Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists (FAS), spotted the images, photographed by the commercial Quickbird satellite in late 2006.

One photo is of what is apparently the new Type 094 Jin-class SSBN at the Xiaopingdao base near Dalian, FAS reported.

John Edwards and Hilary Clinton's Thousand Dollar Hairdos

Wow. I don't know what a $1,000 haircut or a $3,000 hairdo looks like, but I guess John Edwards and Hillary Clinton have them according to the Washington Post .

Scooter Libby's $250,000 Fine Paid - Here's The Receipt



According to Wonkette , Scooter Libby's $250,000 fine has been paid from a $6 millon legal defense fund. Thus, one more prong in his trfecta of punishment -- jail, fine, and disbarment -- has been removed.

Whereas he was originally looking at jail, a fine, and disbarment, now he's just looking at disbarment, and who says that's a guarantee, given the political nature of such decisions?

It helps to have powerful friends. I know Paris Hilton's chomping at the bit about this.

Wednesday, July 04, 2007

Cold-Blooded Crowd Fails To Help Stabbed Woman At Mall

You wonder just how many sick people are out there, here's a view into a social subset of them.

Kansas Shoppers Step Over Dying Woman
By ROXANA HEGEMAN,

AP
Posted: 2007-07-04 09:37:01
Filed Under: Crime News, Nation
WICHITA, Kan. (July 4) - As stabbing victim LaShanda Calloway lay dying on the floor of a convenience store, five shoppers, including one who stopped to take a picture of her with a cell phone, stepped over the woman, police said.

The June 23 situation, captured on the store's surveillance video, got scant news coverage until a columnist for The Wichita Eagle disclosed the existence of the video and its contents Tuesday.

Police have refused to release the video, saying it is part of their investigation.

"It was tragic to watch," police spokesman Gordon Bassham said Tuesday. "The fact that people were more interested in taking a picture with a cell phone and shopping for snacks rather than helping this innocent young woman is, frankly, revolting."

The woman was stabbed during an altercation that was not part of a robbery, Bassham said. It took about two minutes for someone to call 911, he said.

Calloway, 27, died later at a hospital.

Two suspects have been arrested. A 19-year-old woman was charged with first-degree murder. Another suspect who turned himself in had not been charged as of Tuesday, the Sedgwick County prosecutor's office said.

The district attorney's office will have to decide whether any of the shoppers could be charged, Bassham said.

It was uncertain what law, if any, would be applicable. A state statute for failure to render aid refers only to victims of a car accident.

Eagle columnist Mark McCormick told The Associated Press he learned about the video when he called Wichita Police Chief Norman Williams to inquire about a phone call he had received from a reader complaining about a Police Department policy that requires emergency medical personnel to wait until police secure a crime scene before rendering aid. McCormick said Williams then unloaded on him about the shoppers in the stabbing case.

"This is just appalling," Williams told the newspaper. "I could continue shopping and not render aid and then take time out to take a picture? That's crazy. What happened to our respect for life?"

Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press. All active hyperlinks have been inserted by AOL.
2007-07-04 05:29:17

CNN Polling Linked To Clinton Donor Vinod Gupta



Now, I have the smoking gun reason behind CNN's apparent Anti-Obama bias in coverage and polling. I also have yet another window into how the Clinton campaign raises money, in addition to the campaign fraud lawsuit by Peter Paul . The photo shows Senator Clinton with the family of Vinod Gupta. Mr. Gupta's on the far right and the woman he's standing with is is wife Laurel. In the back are his sons Jess, Ben, and Alex. The man next to Senator Clinton is Mr. Gupta's dad.

I don't know if Vinod Gupta is related to CNN Analyst and Medical Expert Sanjah Gupta, but I can say that Vinod Gupta's polling firm is. According to various sources, like FreeRepublic.com , CNN Polls are tied to Vinod Gupta's firm Opinion Research Corporation. This calls into question the honesty of CNN's poll reporting.

Mr. Gupta is not just a donor to the Clinton's but a huge contributor. According to the Washington Post , he's given huge donations to the Democratic Party and allowed the Clintons to jet around to Switzerland, Hawaii, Jamaica, Mexico on his corporate plane -- $900,000 worth of travel. And President Clinton has secured a 3.3 million consulting deal with Gupta's technology firm, InfoUSA

According to the New York Sun , In 2000, Mr. Gupta gave $100,000 to support Mrs. Clinton's Senate bid and hosted a fund-raiser in his home that raised $100,000 more. "She was so good," he said of Mrs. Clinton's talk there, according to the Omaha World-Herald. "I think she is smarter than the president."

The matter of CNN polls being produced by a Clinton donor is an issues of extreme concern, especially in the wake of Senator Barack Obama's massive $32 million second quarter fundraising total, a record in campaign history and a take that includes no money from lobbyists or political action committees, and who've average donation was just $127.

The problem is that while Senator Obama's outraised Senator Clinton, the polls conducted by CNN and USA Today / Gallup, have not reflected this, except for a USA Today / Gallup Poll that reported Obama and Clinton as tied , but which they re-did to favor Clinton (I'm not kidding, read the link) and re-ran just seven days later -- a weird development which I assert results in polling that's fixed to favor Senator Clinton. This news backs my assertion.

According to the LibertyPost.com , "Opinion Research began conducting polls for CNN in April 2006, according to TheDeal.com. A month after InfoUSA closed on its purchase of the polling company in December, CNN and Opinion Research announced a 2-year partnership, with Opinion Research conducting political polling for CNN through next year’s election. In an e-mail statement, Opinion Research President Jeff Resnick defended the company’s work for CNN: "Each week, great care is taken to ensure the poll results are accurate and free from any bias. An examination of the poll results will support this statement.”

But Bruce Weinstein, who writes an ethics column for BusinessWeek.com, said just the perception of a potential conflict of interest could hurt a media organization’s credibility."


What to do? First, share this with as many people as you can, and second, call and email CNN and tell them to expose their bias.

CNN's ties with the Clintons are too many. There's Mr. Gupta, and then Paul Begala and James Carville, both of whom worked for the Clintons and are Clinton supporters. A YouTuber, "DougFromUpland" has made a great video which outlines another connection between CNN and the Clinton's and polling, Rick Kaplan in addition to Vinod Gupta. The video's here:

Hillary Clinton -Arianna Huffington Points To Senator's Problem With Hiding The Truth



This article is a must read as it distills the Carl Berstein book in a way that's not been done on CNN or any other news program. It also forms the perfect foundation to explain what I'm starting to call "The Peter Paul Affair."

Arianna Huffington: Hillary's disturbing secrecy problem
By Arianna Huffington
Tribune Media Services
Article Last Updated: 06/28/2007 06:01:56 PM MDT

I spent the weekend reading A Woman in Charge, Carl Bernstein's biography of Hillary Clinton (OK, I know I'm late) while being simultaneously bombarded with fresh evidence of the Bush/Cheney administration's pathological obsession with secrecy.
Historians will be debating for decades what the worst element of the Bush White House was - but at the root of the entire cancerous structure is George Bush and Dick Cheney's shared fixation on secrecy. Their mutual contempt for the public's right to know knows no bounds. Witness the VP's absurd attempt to escape oversight by claiming he's not part of the executive branch, or the endless legal maneuvering to keep the administration's abuse of detainees hidden from scrutiny.
As a result, it's pretty safe to say the central question facing Democratic voters in the presidential primaries is: Which candidate will be most effective at rolling back the Bush years? On issue after issue, the Democratic contenders are doing everything they can to highlight their differences with Bush.
But when it comes to the issue of secrecy and an administration operating in the shadows, there's an argument to be made that the candidate least likely to turn on the lights is Hillary Clinton. Her lifelong commitment to secrecy is one of the main themes of Bernstein's book.
"Hillary Rodham Clinton has always had a difficult relationship with the truth," writes
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Bernstein. "She has often chosen to obfuscate, omit and avoid. It is an understatement by now that she has been known to apprehend truths about herself and the events of her life that others do not exactly share."
Or, as Bernstein summed it up on the "Today Show," "This is a woman who led a camouflaged life and continues to."
It's not just that she's a private person. There are plenty of public servants who are zealous about guarding their personal lives and equally zealous about keeping their public lives - and public policies - transparent. But, like Bush and Cheney, Clinton seems devoted to secrecy for its own sake.
As Bernstein shows, what was most shocking about her handling of the health care fiasco during her husband's administration wasn't that she kept the plan secret from its critics, but that she kept it secret even from those who would have been champions of the plan had they known anything about it.
This passion for concealment is a pattern that, as Bernstein demonstrates, has been repeated throughout Clinton's life. It was there in the head-scratching decision to hide her college thesis from public view because it was about radical organizer Saul Alinsky. It was there in her refusal for 30 years to admit that she had failed the bar exam the first time she took it. It was there in the way she glossed over in her memoir her summer internship at the law firm of Treuhaft, Walker and Burnstein - one of the most renowned left-wing law firms in the nation. It was there in the way she handled the Whitewater and Travelgate investigations, which, as Bernstein told me, "ended up unnecessarily prolonging them."
Bernstein quotes Clinton lawyer Mark Fabiani as saying of Hillary and Whitewater: "She would do anything to get out of the situation. And if that involved not being forthcoming (in releasing documents and other materials), she herself would say, 'I have a reason for not being forthcoming."' And he reports that then-White House adviser George Stephanopoulos described Hillary's responses to the various scandals of the Clinton presidency as "Jesuitical lying."
And it has been there in the way Hillary's camp has attacked Bernstein's book, saying, among other things, "Is it possible to be quoted yawning?" and deriding it as old news: "Nothing more than cash for rehash." This assessment stands in stark contrast to the majority of reviews, including the one in The Los Angeles Times by Ron Brownstein, who called it "a model of contemporary political biography . . . an excellent book: thorough, balanced, judicious and deeply reported."
"Hillary Clinton and her advisers apparently don't want people to know her real story," Carl Bernstein told me. "That is particularly sad because the authentic picture of her life is so much more compelling than the tired, airbrushed and sanitized version they keep serving up and refining. The campaign's official response to A Woman in Charge - even before they had seen the book - is the kind of thing I would have expected from the Nixon White House or the Bush White House, not a Clinton presidential campaign committed to a new openness and transparency."
I actually found Bernstein's book to be a very humanizing portrait of Clinton, which is why her camp's reaction struck me as excessive and misguided. It's as if Hillary and those around her have such an idealized view of her they feel the need to vanquish anything that contradicts the faultless fantasy. No imperfection is allowed.
On the campaign trail, Clinton talks a lot about her experience in the White House - clearly we're meant to factor those eight years in when evaluating her fitness to return. But reading the Bernstein book made me feel like she has taken away all the wrong lessons about being in power. Her tendency to hide and obfuscate appears to be a learned behavior.
So the question facing Democrats - and, indeed, the country - is whether we want another presidency cloaked in secrecy, deception and denial. ---