I am listing below the top 51 countries with the freest press. I think you'll be surprised at some of the countries that rank better than the United States.
1. Finland
1. Norway
3. Estonia
3. Netherlands
5. Austria
6. Iceland
6. Luxembourg
8. Switzerland
9. Cape Verde
10. Canada
10. Denmark
12. Sweden
13. New Zealand
14. Czech Republic
15. Ireland
16. Cyprus
16. Jamaica
16. Germany
19. Costa Rica
20. Belgium
20. Namibia
22. Japan
22. Surinam
24. Poland
25. Mali
25. OECS
25. Slovakia
28. United Kingdom
29. Niger
30. Australia
30. Lithuania
32. Uruguay
33. Portugal
34. Tanzania
35. Papua New Guinea
36. Slovenia
37. El Salvador
38. France
39. Spain
40. Hungary
41 Ghana
42. South Africa
42. Botswana
44. South Korea
45. Comoros
45. Taiwan
47. United States
47. Argentina
47. Romania
50. Latvia
50. trinidad and Tobago
07 February 2012
06 February 2012
No Comment Necessary
The first three changes to the Pledge of Allegiance were rather innocuous and appropriate for the secular government established by the Founding Fathers. The fourth however, was divisive and added a theocratic element to the pledge -- making it no longer applicable to a significant portion of the population. How can such an exclusionary change be a good thing?
05 February 2012
More Klanservative “Respect” For the Constitution
Reposted from Reconsitution
Maybe the most aggravating thing about Klanservatives these days is their utter inability to accept that other points of view exist. Like their monkey Lord, you are either with them, or you are a TURRIST. They will not accept any point of view save their own, and if someone else is elected, they hound and hound that person until he or she is gone.
We saw it back when they tried to impeach a sitting popular President. We saw it when they threatened violence unless the doctored results of the 2000 election were allowed to stand. But we’ve never seen anything like we’ve seen since one of those damn n_____s got himself elected (without tricks, unlike their monkey.) The residence of a Black man in the WHITE House has driven them plumb fucking loco.
They are now almost openly threatening the President of the United States. That this story comes from Arizona is less than no surprise, but it is far from an isolated incident. The Klanservatives have got to be exhausting the Secret Service just from trying to keep up with all of the threats.
Remember…. these are the very same people who pissed themselves when a high school kid made a poster with a tack in Chimpy’s head.
The Secret Service is investigating a picture that was posted on an Arizona police officer’s Facebook page in which an image of President Barack Obama appears to have been used for target practice.
The Peoria Police Department is also investigating Police Sgt. Patrick Shearer and a picture that was uploaded on Jan. 19 showing several young men in the desert holding various weapons (including assault rifles and a revolver) and holding up a T-shirt with President Obama’s likeness on it.
The shirt appeared riddled with bullet holes.
The picture was online while the president was visiting Arizona earlier this week, but was removed from the sergeant’s page on Thursday after inquiries were made to the Peoria Police.
“We received information about a possible policy violation today involving one of our employees,” Peoria Police spokesman Jay Davies told CBS Affiliate KPHO.
Davies said Peoria Police were contacted by the Secret Service.
The Secret Service confirmed to KPHO that it has launched an investigation surrounding the picture.
A Secret Service official confirmed to CBS News that an investigation is underway, saying, “We’re aware of the incident and we are taking the appropriate follow-up steps. We recognize that people have the right to free speech, but we also have the right to determine what someone’s intent is.
“When we get information that shows someone has an unusual direction of interest in one of our protectees we take the appropriate follow-up steps.”
Now the Klanservatives will, as they always do, claim that this was just a yuk-yuk joke, and not meant to be taken seriously.
I remember one of their other “not to be taken seriously” pictures. You could find it all over Texas, back in 1963.
Maybe the most aggravating thing about Klanservatives these days is their utter inability to accept that other points of view exist. Like their monkey Lord, you are either with them, or you are a TURRIST. They will not accept any point of view save their own, and if someone else is elected, they hound and hound that person until he or she is gone.
We saw it back when they tried to impeach a sitting popular President. We saw it when they threatened violence unless the doctored results of the 2000 election were allowed to stand. But we’ve never seen anything like we’ve seen since one of those damn n_____s got himself elected (without tricks, unlike their monkey.) The residence of a Black man in the WHITE House has driven them plumb fucking loco.
They are now almost openly threatening the President of the United States. That this story comes from Arizona is less than no surprise, but it is far from an isolated incident. The Klanservatives have got to be exhausting the Secret Service just from trying to keep up with all of the threats.
Remember…. these are the very same people who pissed themselves when a high school kid made a poster with a tack in Chimpy’s head.
The Secret Service is investigating a picture that was posted on an Arizona police officer’s Facebook page in which an image of President Barack Obama appears to have been used for target practice.
The Peoria Police Department is also investigating Police Sgt. Patrick Shearer and a picture that was uploaded on Jan. 19 showing several young men in the desert holding various weapons (including assault rifles and a revolver) and holding up a T-shirt with President Obama’s likeness on it.
The shirt appeared riddled with bullet holes.
The picture was online while the president was visiting Arizona earlier this week, but was removed from the sergeant’s page on Thursday after inquiries were made to the Peoria Police.
“We received information about a possible policy violation today involving one of our employees,” Peoria Police spokesman Jay Davies told CBS Affiliate KPHO.
Davies said Peoria Police were contacted by the Secret Service.
The Secret Service confirmed to KPHO that it has launched an investigation surrounding the picture.
A Secret Service official confirmed to CBS News that an investigation is underway, saying, “We’re aware of the incident and we are taking the appropriate follow-up steps. We recognize that people have the right to free speech, but we also have the right to determine what someone’s intent is.
“When we get information that shows someone has an unusual direction of interest in one of our protectees we take the appropriate follow-up steps.”
Now the Klanservatives will, as they always do, claim that this was just a yuk-yuk joke, and not meant to be taken seriously.
I remember one of their other “not to be taken seriously” pictures. You could find it all over Texas, back in 1963.
04 February 2012
if only
From The economist
A FREIGHT train, its dozen cars loaded with coal covered in a light dusting of snow, snaked through the narrow valley, sometimes following the two-lane highway and sometimes crossing it. The valley was silent and snowy, and though it was two days into 2012 it could easily have been 1982, 1942 or 1922: coal has been mined in Appalachia and carried out by rail for well over a century.
And by some measures, coal is still going strong. It provides more of America’s electricity than any other fuel. Production has fallen off since 2008, but it remains high, as do prices, for which thank the developing world’s appetite. In Appalachia, coal remains a source of well-paid jobs in a region that needs them: for the first three quarters of 2011 employment in the Appalachian coal industry was at its highest level since 1997. And the Powder River Basin, which spans Wyoming and Montana, has become America’s major source of coal in the past decade, relieving overmined Kentucky and West Virginia. The Energy Information Administration (EIA) reckons America has enough coal to meet current demand levels for the next 200 years.
But if the raw numbers look good, the trends tell a different story. Regulatory uncertainty and the emergence of alternative fuel sources (natural gas and renewables) will probably make America’s future far less coal-reliant than its past. In 2000 America got 52% of its electricity from coal; in 2010 that number was 45%. Robust as exports are, they account for less than one-tenth of American mined coal; exports cannot pick up the slack if America’s taste for coal declines. Appalachian coal production peaked in the early 1990s; the EIA forecasts a decline for the next three years, followed by two decades of low-level stability. Increased employment and declining productivity suggest that Appalachian coal is getting harder to find.
Toughening regulation has an effect, too. Coal-fired power plants are the source of more than one-third of greenhouse-gas emissions in America. Last July the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a rule that requires 28 states to reduce the amount of sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxide they emit; in December came another, reducing the amount of mercury and other toxic air pollutants that power plants can puff out.
Many plants have already made the necessary upgrades and retrofits; around 53% of America’s coal-fired capacity comes from units fitted with scrubbers. But others, particularly older plants, will have to decide whether such expensive upgrades are worth doing at all. Most of America’s coal-fired capacity comes from plants at least 30 years old, and as much as 14% of existing coal-fired plants, accounting for 4% of America’s generation capacity, will have to be retired in the next five to eight years. Energy providers face a stark choice. They can fight these regulations in court (outcome uncertain). They can retrofit old plants: plenty have done that, too. Or they can build new plants—in which case, far more are choosing plants that burn natural gas or use renewables rather than coal.
To some, regulations prove the current administration’s hostility to coal. To others, however, they are a long-overdue attempt to gauge a putatively cheap fuel’s true external costs. A National Academy of Sciences report estimated that the external costs unrelated to climate-change costs (to human health, crop and timber yields, building materials and recreation) of coal-fired power plants in 2005 totalled $62 billion. A study of coal’s effects on Kentucky’s budget in 2006 found that it contributed $528m in revenue, but its on-budget costs—training, support, repairs to the roads, R&D for the coal industry—totalled $643m. A study in West Virginia in 2009 also found the coal industry a net cost to the state.
Without alternatives, America might need to resign itself to these costs. But alternatives are there. As coal’s share of America’s electricity-generation market fell between 2000 and 2010, those of natural gas and renewables rose: gas from 16% to 24%, and renewables from 9% to 10%.
The EIA forecasts that America will still obtain 39% of its energy from coal by 2035, but that assumes a consistent regulatory framework. Other sources are less sanguine. Deutsche Bank predicts that coal’s share will fall to 20% by 2030 as regulatory risk grows, with natural gas and renewables rising. That seems more likely. The EPA’s new emissions rules may have been stayed by the courts, but they loom nonetheless, hampering investment in coal.
The switch away from it will be painful for some. But as Robert Byrd, the late senator from West Virginia, once said, coal-dependent regions “can choose to anticipate change and adapt to it, or resist and be overrun by it.”
A FREIGHT train, its dozen cars loaded with coal covered in a light dusting of snow, snaked through the narrow valley, sometimes following the two-lane highway and sometimes crossing it. The valley was silent and snowy, and though it was two days into 2012 it could easily have been 1982, 1942 or 1922: coal has been mined in Appalachia and carried out by rail for well over a century.
And by some measures, coal is still going strong. It provides more of America’s electricity than any other fuel. Production has fallen off since 2008, but it remains high, as do prices, for which thank the developing world’s appetite. In Appalachia, coal remains a source of well-paid jobs in a region that needs them: for the first three quarters of 2011 employment in the Appalachian coal industry was at its highest level since 1997. And the Powder River Basin, which spans Wyoming and Montana, has become America’s major source of coal in the past decade, relieving overmined Kentucky and West Virginia. The Energy Information Administration (EIA) reckons America has enough coal to meet current demand levels for the next 200 years.
But if the raw numbers look good, the trends tell a different story. Regulatory uncertainty and the emergence of alternative fuel sources (natural gas and renewables) will probably make America’s future far less coal-reliant than its past. In 2000 America got 52% of its electricity from coal; in 2010 that number was 45%. Robust as exports are, they account for less than one-tenth of American mined coal; exports cannot pick up the slack if America’s taste for coal declines. Appalachian coal production peaked in the early 1990s; the EIA forecasts a decline for the next three years, followed by two decades of low-level stability. Increased employment and declining productivity suggest that Appalachian coal is getting harder to find.
Toughening regulation has an effect, too. Coal-fired power plants are the source of more than one-third of greenhouse-gas emissions in America. Last July the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a rule that requires 28 states to reduce the amount of sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxide they emit; in December came another, reducing the amount of mercury and other toxic air pollutants that power plants can puff out.
Many plants have already made the necessary upgrades and retrofits; around 53% of America’s coal-fired capacity comes from units fitted with scrubbers. But others, particularly older plants, will have to decide whether such expensive upgrades are worth doing at all. Most of America’s coal-fired capacity comes from plants at least 30 years old, and as much as 14% of existing coal-fired plants, accounting for 4% of America’s generation capacity, will have to be retired in the next five to eight years. Energy providers face a stark choice. They can fight these regulations in court (outcome uncertain). They can retrofit old plants: plenty have done that, too. Or they can build new plants—in which case, far more are choosing plants that burn natural gas or use renewables rather than coal.
To some, regulations prove the current administration’s hostility to coal. To others, however, they are a long-overdue attempt to gauge a putatively cheap fuel’s true external costs. A National Academy of Sciences report estimated that the external costs unrelated to climate-change costs (to human health, crop and timber yields, building materials and recreation) of coal-fired power plants in 2005 totalled $62 billion. A study of coal’s effects on Kentucky’s budget in 2006 found that it contributed $528m in revenue, but its on-budget costs—training, support, repairs to the roads, R&D for the coal industry—totalled $643m. A study in West Virginia in 2009 also found the coal industry a net cost to the state.
Without alternatives, America might need to resign itself to these costs. But alternatives are there. As coal’s share of America’s electricity-generation market fell between 2000 and 2010, those of natural gas and renewables rose: gas from 16% to 24%, and renewables from 9% to 10%.
The EIA forecasts that America will still obtain 39% of its energy from coal by 2035, but that assumes a consistent regulatory framework. Other sources are less sanguine. Deutsche Bank predicts that coal’s share will fall to 20% by 2030 as regulatory risk grows, with natural gas and renewables rising. That seems more likely. The EPA’s new emissions rules may have been stayed by the courts, but they loom nonetheless, hampering investment in coal.
The switch away from it will be painful for some. But as Robert Byrd, the late senator from West Virginia, once said, coal-dependent regions “can choose to anticipate change and adapt to it, or resist and be overrun by it.”
03 February 2012
Why the Tea Party fights Renewable Energy
Charles and David Koch are owners of a primary funders for the tea party and other extreme conservative groups. $21.5 billion each make them the 5th richest people in America and controlling stockholders for Koch Industries Inc. They are a private global conglomerate located in over 60 countries, including interests in oil, refining, pipelines, paper products, chemicals, fertilizer and commodities trading with annual revenues around $100 billion.
A review of documents and tax records for frequently connected interconnected web of corporate front groups, supported by the Koch brothers, shows how dangerous these groups espousing free markets and liberty have become to society.
The Koch brothers’ decision to create a nonprofit network dates back to 1977 when Charles Koch founded the Cato Institute, an organization the Koch foundations continue to fund. According to Cato’s web site, David Koch continues to sit on its board along with Kevin Gentry, Vice President for Strategic Development at the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation and chief honcho of the secret, annual strategy meetings of the Kochtopi.
From 2002 to 2006 the Koch funded Mercatus Center paid Lawrence Kudlow, a CNBC co-host and later host of his own show “The Kudlow Report”. “Mercatus spent at least $227,000 on more than 400 trips for lawmakers and their aides from 2000 to mid 2005”. Kudlow and frequent guest of the Kudlow Report Stephen Moore are big names and have a huge impact on who gets the presidential slate in 2012.
A review of documents and tax records for frequently connected interconnected web of corporate front groups, supported by the Koch brothers, shows how dangerous these groups espousing free markets and liberty have become to society.
The Koch brothers’ decision to create a nonprofit network dates back to 1977 when Charles Koch founded the Cato Institute, an organization the Koch foundations continue to fund. According to Cato’s web site, David Koch continues to sit on its board along with Kevin Gentry, Vice President for Strategic Development at the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation and chief honcho of the secret, annual strategy meetings of the Kochtopi.
From 2002 to 2006 the Koch funded Mercatus Center paid Lawrence Kudlow, a CNBC co-host and later host of his own show “The Kudlow Report”. “Mercatus spent at least $227,000 on more than 400 trips for lawmakers and their aides from 2000 to mid 2005”. Kudlow and frequent guest of the Kudlow Report Stephen Moore are big names and have a huge impact on who gets the presidential slate in 2012.
02 February 2012
2011 was ninth-warmest year since 1880: NASA
(Reuters) - The global average temperature last year was the ninth-warmest in the modern meteorological record, continuing a trend linked to greenhouse gases that saw nine of the 10 hottest years occurring since the year 2000, NASA scientists said on Thursday.
A separate report from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said the average temperature for the United States in 2011 as the 23rd warmest year on record.
The global average surface temperature for 2011 was 0.92 degrees F (0.51 degrees C) warmer than the mid-20th century baseline temperature, researchers at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies said in a statement. The institute's temperature record began in 1880.
The first 11 years of the new century were notably hotter than the middle and late 20th century, according to institute director James Hansen. The only year from the 20th century that was among the top 10 warmest years was 1998.
These high global temperatures come even with the cooling effects of a strong La Nina ocean temperature pattern and low solar activity for the past several years, said Hansen, who has long campaigned against human-spurred climate change.
The NASA statement said the current higher temperatures are largely sustained by increased concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, especially carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is emitted by various human activities, from coal-fired power plants to fossil-fueled vehicles to human breath.
Current levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere exceed 390 parts per million, compared with 285 ppm in 1880 and 315 by 1960, NASA said.
A separate report from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said the average temperature for the United States in 2011 as the 23rd warmest year on record.
The global average surface temperature for 2011 was 0.92 degrees F (0.51 degrees C) warmer than the mid-20th century baseline temperature, researchers at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies said in a statement. The institute's temperature record began in 1880.
The first 11 years of the new century were notably hotter than the middle and late 20th century, according to institute director James Hansen. The only year from the 20th century that was among the top 10 warmest years was 1998.
These high global temperatures come even with the cooling effects of a strong La Nina ocean temperature pattern and low solar activity for the past several years, said Hansen, who has long campaigned against human-spurred climate change.
The NASA statement said the current higher temperatures are largely sustained by increased concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, especially carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is emitted by various human activities, from coal-fired power plants to fossil-fueled vehicles to human breath.
Current levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere exceed 390 parts per million, compared with 285 ppm in 1880 and 315 by 1960, NASA said.
01 February 2012
No Comment Necessary
There will be, in the next generation or so, a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing dictatorship without tears, so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them, but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda or brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods. And this seems to be the final revolution.—Aldous Huxley
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