From Denny: The Russians have wanted to nuke America for decades. Now it looks like they just might get what their Communist souls have desired: blow up America. They are actually suggesting America use a nuclear bomb to shut off the BP oil spill. Now why can't you use a conventional bomb minus the nuke factor? The Russians claim they have done it numerous times to their own oil spills.
Well, that answered one question: Are they crazy? Yes. Answered another question: Do they care if they pollute their own environment for centuries? No. And how about this one: How did all those mysterious cancers and the like show up in the Russian population? Duh.
So, now Prez Obama, Congress and Big Business are seriously considering advice from the same guys who blew up the nuclear plant Chernobyl??? By their own admission the Russians have woefully failed to follow safety protocols in their own oil drilling, suffering serious disaster after serious disaster. Their solution is "just nuke it."
Honey, the Earth's crust is not a microwave oven. We're talking about trying to shut off an underwater volcano of gushing oil and natural gas. I live on the Gulf Coast and am not supportive of this IDIOT "NUKE THE OIL SPILL" ARGUMENT. Try again, Congress, Prez Obama and BP. You are going to have to do better than this bad idea. Since when did we start taking advice from our enemies anyway??? You honestly believe they are interested in our welfare? They don't care about their own people's health and environment. This is pure lunacy.
Prez Obama is worried about huge looming deficits he wants to get under control by changing our current tax system and do tax reform. Well, the first order of business - instead of raising taxes on the middle class - is to stop the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars. They are bleeding the national treasury to the tune of billions of dollars per month we could put to good use elsewhere - like rebuilding our national energy grid that is in tatters.
Let the Middle East sort out their own problems. If the Taliban overrun their governments then so be it. We can always send in drones to deal with that stupidity and not waste paying for a huge army to sit around waiting for the next engagement. Our military is needed at home to deal with protecting our borders from drug dealers and terrorists coming in from Mexico.
We need our military here to watch our coastlines, help with the BP oil spill and start checking literally every container that comes into our ports to help stop drug smuggling and human trafficking. There are plenty of government jobs, in a less hazardous environment, here at home in America for them to do. All of this will help our economy recover faster. Mr. Prez, quit allowing the drug drip to Defense contractors who are basically war profiteering off our soldiers' blood.
As a taxpayer I refuse to pay for this carnage, bad foreign policy holdover from the Republicans and drain on the national wallet. These situations are intractable and it's best to cut your losses and turn your attention to a situation where the people of the area do have the will to want better for themselves.
And as to the big uproar over the sleaze giant Facebook violating your privacy and selling your info to other social sites and the like, well, I left last April a year ago. Back then, they only allowed you to "deactivate" your account. How annoying is that? Well, finally, someone put up instructions on how to delete your Facebook account and put it into the search engines. I finally went over last night and deleted my Facebook account. Facebook tells you it will take 14 days. We will see if they are good for their word.
I never was much of a fan of Facebook because of the bizarre rude and crude psychology study probes they were doing: probably both for government agencies and advertising and marketing businesses eager to find out how to manipulate the consumer to buy their products. To me, that's just plain sleaze. Facebook is pure sleaze. Sleaze. They never honored anyone's privacy settings; they were busy selling all your personal information to other social sites, marketing and government companies. Duh. It's all about Big Business greed and profit.
As it is Facebook claims they have 400 million accounts. It will be interesting to see it all shake out and see how many millions leave them. They overstepped their bounds with consumers and should be investigated as to all the secrecy and manipulations, psychology and marketing studies. Of course, they termed it "marketing studies" but that's just a code phrase for "Just how easy is it to manipulate weak or unsuspecting minds? Let's find out!"
Why don't we just drop a nuclear bomb on the Gulf oil spill? (CS Monitor)
Using a nuclear explosion to try to plug the gushing oil well in the Gulf of Mexico might sound like overkill, but a Russian newspaper has suggested just that based on past Soviet successes. Even so, there are crucial differences between the lessons of the past and the current disaster unfolding.
The Russians previously used nukes at least five times to seal off gas well fires. A targeted nuclear explosion might similarly help seal off the oil well channel that has leaked oil unchecked since the sinking of a BP oil rig on April 22...
Weapons labs in the former Soviet Union developed special nukes for use to help pinch off the gas wells. They believed that the force from a nuclear explosion could squeeze shut any hole within 82 to 164 feet (25 to 50 meters), depending on the explosion's power. That required drilling holes to place the nuclear device close to the target wells...
Obama in Buffalo: tax reform is needed, but a flat tax isn't (CS Monitor)
President Obama said the nation must make "hard decisions" on tax policy, and that it would be better to find a fiscal fix in the next couple of years than to delay.
He avoided the hottest part of this hot-button topic: He didn't say whether he'd support tax hikes that may be recommended by a bipartisan fiscal commission he has created. (He has said all options should be "on the table" for the commission to consider.)
But in response to a town-hall questioner, Mr. Obama voiced support for efforts to streamline the tax code, even as he framed the case against a "flat tax" that many Republicans support.
The president spoke at a town hall meeting in Buffalo, N.Y., a day after the federal government reported an unexpectedly high monthly budget deficit. The Treasury Department reported an $82.69 billion deficit for April, the highest ever recorded for that month.
"We're going to have to spend the next couple of years making some very hard decisions," Obama said. "It's not going to be any fun. [But] it's not going to be as painful as it will be if we put it off."
The fiscal commission is expected to report to the president in December with recommendations on how to reduce US budget deficits. Without some new fix, budget deficits under Obama's forecasts would remain higher than 3 percent of gross domestic product every year this decade – a level economists see as unsustainable in the long run...
Crackdown On Opposition Appears Under Way In Iran (NPR)
The government of Iran is refusing to return the dead bodies of five young people to their families for burial. All five were hanged on Sunday in notorious Evin prison in Tehran.
The hangings appear to have been rushed through Iran's legal system, in order to intimidate the political opposition as it plans its next challenges to the government.
Four of the five executed were ethnic Kurds, and their families wanted to take the bodies back to Iranian Kurdistan for burial. But the authorities in Tehran refused, apparently concerned that the funerals would turn into opportunities for protest.
The five, one of whom was a woman, were sentenced to death two years ago, charged with association with terrorist organizations, although by most accounts no solid evidence was offered at their very short trials.
The hangings on Sunday came as a surprise. Neither their families nor their lawyers were informed in advance.
The five have had nothing to do with the Green Movement in Iran, the opposition movement that burst into the streets after the disputed presidential election held last year on June 12.
But many observers and analysts, such as Stanford University's Abbas Milani, believe the hangings are meant to intimidate the opposition...
U.S. Firms Dodge Billions in Taxes by Moving Profits Overseas (ABC)
'Transfer Pricing' Allows Companies to Avoid Tax on Profits -- Legally
As America struggles with record deficits, tax dodgers apparently are taking billions of dollars out of the country.
A new report from the business giant Bloomberg News finds hundreds of companies skirting $60 billion in taxes, and the practice is completely legal.
Thirty million prescriptions were filed last year for the anti-depressant Lexapro, made by the U.S. pharmaceutical company Forest Labs. According to a story in Friday's Bloomberg Businessweek, most of the profits from that drug were transferred overseas, thus avoiding having to pay taxes in the United States.
The news is shocking to Lexapro customers like Tyler Hurst, who buys the drug at a Phoenix pharmacy.
"It does not say, 'The profits of this go outside the country,' anywhere," said Hurst as he looked at the drug bottle. "It is shady."
It may seem shady to Hurst, but hundreds of U.S.-based multi-national companies engage in the legal practice known as "transfer pricing."
"The most recent estimate for how much tax revenue gets lost in the U.S. is $60 billion a year," said Bloomberg reporter Jesse Drucker. "But there are some reasons to believe those estimates are conservative."
The figure, $60 billion, is more than the budget for the entire Department of Homeland Security.
"We are obviously now in a time of enormous deficits, and we should be broadening our tax base," said tax economist Martin Sullivan. "This phenomenon is moving exactly in the opposite direction."
So, how does it work? Click on the title link for the rest of the article.
Some quitting Facebook as privacy concerns escalate (CNN)
Concerns over Facebook's new privacy policy and the online social network's recent efforts to spread its information across the Web have led some of the site's faithful to delete their accounts -- or at least try to.
On Wednesday's episode of a podcast called This Week in Technology, host Leo Laporte, a well-known tech pundit, said he had to search wikiHow, a how-to site, to figure out how to delete his Facebook account permanently.
After finding the delete button, which he said is hidden deep within the site's menus, Laporte proceeded to delete his account during the online broadcast.
"That's it. It's gone," he said during the show. "And I think that's the right thing to do."
It's unclear how many people have chosen to delete their Facebook accounts in recent weeks. The popular social network doesn't publish statistics on how many people quit the site.
But there has been much uproar online about Facebook's alleged lack of concern for the privacy of its users' personal information, and its clear that some people have become so upset that they're leaving the networking site, which has more than 400 million members...
Move over blobfish, the fangtooth is scarier (CS Monitor)
The common fangtooth, Anoplogaster cornuta, is a deep sea fish like the blobfish, but has some of the largest teeth in the ocean.
The aptly-named blobfish is now in danger of being wiped out. The bloated bottom dweller, which can grow up to 12 inches, lives at depths of up to 2,700 feet.
Last week a Chicago Tribune columnist opined that the "blobfish" is scarier than the Asian carp because of its potential to swim up rivers and ooze from your shower head.
No doubt that's frightening. But scarier than the fangtooth?
Blobfish? Pshah!
At least the blobfish has a human face. It's actually quite cuddly compared to the common fangtooth...
The front two fangs are so large that to close its jaws the fish has sockets for the teeth in the roof of its mouth.
Okay, so the fangtooth does only grow to be about six inches. But these guys, like piranhas, can travel in schools. Think packs of dracula fish...
Well, (to ever encounter them) you'd have to be a real deep swimmer. Fangtooths live in the pitch black dark of the ocean, about 3,000 feet to 16,000 feet down.
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