Possible Theory of Everyyhing

Telegraph.co.uk:

Surfer dude stuns physicists with theory of everything By Roger Highfield, Science Editor Last Updated: 6:01pm GMT 14/11/2007 Page 1 of 2

The E8 pattern (click to enlarge), Garrett Lisi surfing (middle) and out of the water (right)

An impoverished surfer has drawn up a new theory of the universe, seen by some as the Holy Grail of physics, which has received rave reviews from scientists.

Garrett Lisi, 39, has a doctorate but no university affiliation and spends most of the year surfing in Hawaii, where he has also been a hiking guide and bridge builder (when he slept in a jungle yurt).

In winter, he heads to the mountains near Lake Tahoe, Nevada, where he snowboards. "Being poor sucks," Lisi says. "It's hard to figure out the secrets of the universe when you're trying to figure out where you and your girlfriend are going to sleep next month."

Despite this unusual career path, his proposal is remarkable because, by the arcane standards of particle physics, it does not require highly complex mathematics.

Even better, it does not require more than one dimension of time and three of space, when some rival theories need ten or even more spatial dimensions and other bizarre concepts. And it may even be possible to test his theory, which predicts a host of new particles, perhaps even using the new Large Hadron Collider atom smasher that will go into action near Geneva next year.

Although the work of 39 year old Garrett Lisi still has a way to go to convince the establishment, let alone match the achievements of Albert Einstein, the two do have one thing in common: Einstein also began his great adventure in theoretical physics while outside the mainstream scientific establishment, working as a patent officer, though failed to achieve the Holy Grail, an overarching explanation to unite all the particles and forces of the cosmos.

Now Lisi, currently in Nevada, has come up with a proposal to do this. Lee Smolin at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, describes Lisi's work as "fabulous". "It is one of the most compelling unification models I've seen in many, many years," he says.

"Although he cultivates a bit of a surfer-guy image its clear he has put enormous effort and time into working the complexities of this structure out over several years," Prof Smolin tells The Telegraph.

"Some incredibly beautiful stuff falls out of Lisi's theory," adds David Ritz Finkelstein at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta. "This must be more than coincidence and he really is touching on something profound."

The new theory reported today in New Scientist has been laid out in an online paper entitled "An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything" by Lisi, who completed his doctorate in theoretical physics in 1999 at the University of California, San Diego.

He has high hopes that his new theory could provide what he says is a "radical new explanation" for the three decade old Standard Model, which weaves together three of the four fundamental forces of nature: the electromagnetic force; the strong force, which binds quarks together in atomic nuclei; and the weak force, which controls radioactive decay.

The reason for the excitement is that Lisi's model also takes account of gravity, a force that has only successfully been included by a rival and highly fashionable idea called string theory, one that proposes particles are made up of minute strings, which is highly complex and elegant but has lacked predictions by which to do experiments to see if it works.

But some are taking a cooler view. Prof Marcus du Sautoy, of Oxford University and author of Finding Moonshine, told the Telegraph: "The proposal in this paper looks a long shot and there seem to be a lot things still to fill in."

And a colleague Eric Weinstein in America added: "Lisi seems like a hell of a guy. I'd love to meet him. But my friend Lee Smolin is betting on a very very long shot."

Lisi's inspiration lies in the most elegant and intricate shape known to mathematics, called E8 - a complex, eight-dimensional mathematical pattern with 248 points first found in 1887, but only fully understood by mathematicians this year after workings, that, if written out in tiny print, would cover an area the size of Manhattan.

Black Budget items not trickling down to the public...?

from an Interview of Michael Schratt, Aerospace Draftsman, Armstrong Aerospace, Elmhurst, Illinois by Linda Moulton Howe. This is just a tiny bit of it. I left off the parts about the UFOs...

Electrostatic Reduction of Wing Drag Saves Fuel -

Why No Application to Civilian Aircraft?

IN YOUR PRESENTATION, I THOUGHT ONE OF THE FASCINATING BUT DISTURBING PART WAS A DRAWING FOR A PLANE OF A MILITARY APPLICATION IN WHICH ELECTROSTATIC FIELDS WERE PLACED ON THE FRONT OF THE WINGS AND I THINK AND IN THE TAIL IN ORDER TO REDUCE DRAG.

That’s correct. Now, this comes from March 9, 1992, Aviation Week & Space Technology. That is the reference for this and you will recall that twenty-one Northrup B-2 ATV stealth bombers have been built at the cost of $2.2 billion per aircraft. The Northrup engineers who worked on the program were getting really disgusted that the technologies associated with the B-2 were not being trickled down into the commercial airline industry. That’s why they came forward.

Text and illustrations above and below by Michael Schratt.

What the engineers said is that a number of technologies that are actually in use on the B-2 were classified technologies. One of them referenced, ‘T. T. Brown [Townsend Brown] Electrogravitic Patent No. 3,187, 206, specifically talking about how the B-2 electrically charges the leading edge of the wing to reduce the radar cross section. Then it negatively charges the exhaust gases to reduce the infrared signature. They also found out that a 1968 report from Northrup Grumman Corp. was that when you electrically charge the leading edge of the wing, there is a resulting drag coefficient reduction up to 60%. That could be retrofitted to the commercial airline industry, but it’s not happening. And that’s why the engineers came forward.

IF WE WERE ABLE TO REDUCE THE DRAG ON OUR AIRLINERS BY 60%, THAT WOULD REDUCE THE FUEL DEMAND BY A LARGE AMOUNT.

That’s exactly correct, yes. The implications are staggering and this has so many applications, but is not being used and that was the reason Northrup engineers came forward. And I certainly hope some day we do see this technology.

IN A DAY AND AGE RIGHT NOW WHERE WE ARE FIGHTING FOR EVERY DROP OF OIL AND JET FUEL THAT WE CAN GET, ISN’T THERE SOMETHING CRIMINAL ABOUT THE SEPARATION AND SUPPRESSION OF ADVANCED TECHNOLOGIES FROM CIVILIAN APPLICATIONS?

I could not agree more, Linda. It’s our Constitutional obligation to question authority and that’s what we are doing tonight. I think an accounting should be made of these programs. They should be brought out into the light. Many of these programs represent absolutely no threat to the national security. That’s why I think they should be exposed.

I'm sorry. When I saw the words "Electro Gravitic Propulsion" I just couldn't help myself...

US general says: Iran war—Bad!

theCanadian:

The U.S. neoconservative agenda to Sacrifice the Fifth Fleet - The New Pearl Harbor

by Michael E. Salla, M.A., Ph.D.

The Bush administration has covered up and ignored dissenting Pentagon war games analysis that suggests an attack on Iran's nuclear or military facilities will lead directly to the annihilation of the Navy's Fifth Fleet now stationed in the Persian Gulf. Lt. General Paul Van Riper led a hypothetical Persian Gulf state in the 2002 Millennium Challenge war games that resulted in the destruction of the Fifth Fleet. His experience and conclusions regarding the vulnerability of the Fifth Fleet to an asymmetrical military conflict and the implications for a war against Iran have been ignored. Neoconservatives within the Bush administration are currently aggressively promoting a range of military actions against Iran that will culminate in it attacking the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet with sophisticated cruise anti-ship missiles. They are ignoring Van Riper's experiences in the Millennium Challenge and how it applies to the current nuclear conflict with Iran.

Iran has sufficient quantities of cruise missiles to destroy much or all of the Fifth Fleet which is within range of Iran's mobile missile launchers strategically located along its mountainous terrain overlooking the Persian Gulf. The Bush administration is deliberately downplaying the vulnerability of the Fifth Fleet to Iran's advanced missile technology which has been purchased from Russia and China since the late 1990's. The most sophisticated of Iran's cruise missiles are the 'Sunburn' and 'Yakhonts'. These are missiles against which U.S. military experts conclude modern warships have no effective defence. By deliberately provoking an Iranian retaliation to U.S. military actions, the neoconservatives will knowingly sacrifice much or all of the Fifth Fleet. This will culminate in a new Pearl Harbor that will create the right political environment for total war against Iran, and expanded military actions in the Persian Gulf region.

Is it Graft and Corruption? Or Corruption and Graft? I can never remember...

TPMmuckraker.com:

$20 Billion in Afghanistan, Iraq Contract Cash Goes to Unidentified Companies

By Spencer Ackerman - November 20, 2007, 12:59PM

Ah, Iraq. The land of milk and honey for a defense contractor. Not that all those contractors have such high profiles. In fact, due to a clever bit of disclosure chicanery, some of them are completely unknown, even to budget watchdogs.

The Center for Public Integrity's brand-new report on Iraq contracting, Windfalls of War II, identifies at least $20 billion in contract money that has gone to non-U.S. companies that it cannot identify:

When the 2003 study was published, federal agencies did not comprehensively distinguish war contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan from other government contracts; therefore, Center researchers had to flush out these contracts one by one. Since then, however, most such contracts list Iraq or Afghanistan as their "place of performance," making the contracting process more transparent and the search for data—available from the General Service Administration's Federal Procurement Data System—more methodical.

But not all contracts for Iraq and Afghanistan are reported in this federal data system, including awards originating at one contracting agency in Baghdad, which reports only some aggregate totals for inclusion in the central database. Because the agency has so far refused to furnish these missing contracts, the Center is now seeking copies via Freedom of Information Act requests.

What would happen to you, do you think, if you couldn't account for, oh, $2,000 of your boss's money? And then pleaded that there was a glitch in the database you maintain to keep track of the cash?

Too early to tell yet, but this could be big

Celsius.com:

Solar now Cheaper Than Coal...!

Their mission: to deliver cost-efficient solar electricity. The Nanosolar company was founded in 2002 and is working to build the world’s largest solar cell factory in California and the world’s largest panel-assembly factory in Germany. They have successfully created a solar coating that is the most cost-efficient solar energy source ever. Their PowerSheet cells contrast the current solar technology systems by reducing the cost of production from $3 a watt to a mere 30 cents per watt. This makes, for the first time in history, solar power cheaper than burning coal.

These coatings are as thin as a layer of paint and can transfer sunlight to power at amazing efficiency. Although the underlying technology has been around for years, Nanosolar has created the actual technology to manufacture and mass produce the solar sheets. The Nanosolar plant in San Jose, once in full production in 2008, will be capable of producing 430 megawatts per year. This is more than the combined total of every other solar manufacturer in the U.S.

Nano particles

Nanosolar, Inc. prides themselves on being the “Third Wave” of solar technology. The “First Wave” began over three decades ago with the introduction of silicon wafer based solar cells. This technology bore high material and production costs with poor capital efficiency. Silicon does not absorb light very well and therefore, the silicon wafers must be very thick. Also, the wafers are extremely fragile. Their need for intricate handling complicates processing all the way up to the final panel product.

The “Second Wave” came about a decade ago with the first “thin-film” solar cells. This established that a cell 100 times thinner than the solar wafers can work just as well. However, this process also has its setbacks. First, the cells semiconductor was deposited using slow and expensive high-vacuum based processes. Secondly, the thin films were deposited directly on glass as a substrate. This eliminated the possibilities of:

• Using a conductive substrate directly as electrode (The Nanosolar cells work on a metal foil substrate, or semiconductor, instead of the stainless steel or glass substrate. The metal foil semiconductor creates an increase in yield of 20%);
• Achieving a low-cost top electrode of high performance (An electrode is a conductor through which electricity flows.);
• Employing the yield and performance advantages of individual cell matching & sorting (The effect of electrical mismatch per cell leads to greater losses per panel as a result, and panel yield and efficiency distribution suffer: A bad cell results in a bad panel with thin-film-on-glass technology; but with a cell-sorting technology, only that cell will be a loss);
• Employing high-yield continuous roll-to-roll processing (Roll-to-roll processing allows large quantities of material to be processed with equipment that leaves a small footprint);
• Developing high-power high-current panels with lower balance-of-system cost {Nanosolar.com}. To put it simply, the production cost was still too high and the product did not yield a high enough output of energy.

Nanosolar, however, brings together the entire conjunction of all seven areas of innovation which delivers a dramatic improvement in cost efficiency, yield and throughput of the production of much thinner cells than ever before.

Nanosolar offers a 25 year warranty on its products. They test their products in much harsher conditions than the official certification standards. They expose the cells to intense UV light as well as intense humidity. This in depth testing allows for Nanosolar to produce a quality product with efficient output in all environments.

Do I detect the Iraq story subtly changing...?

News.Yahoo.com:

Wed Nov 21, 9:51 AM ET

US general says Iran helping stop Iraq bloodshed

BAGHDAD (AFP) - A US general on Wednesday acknowledged Iran's role in helping quell the bloodshed in Iraq, saying Tehran had contributed to stopping the flow of arms across the border into the country.

Lieutenant General James Dubik, who is in charge of training Iraqi security forces, said Tehran was keeping to its pledge of stopping the smuggling of weapons to Iraqi extremists.

"We are all thankful for the commitment Iran has made to reduce the flow in weapons, explosives and training (of extremists) in Iraq," Dubik told reporters in Baghdad's Green Zone.

"As a result of that, it has made some contribution to the reduction of violence" in Iraq, he said.

US commanders claim violence in Iraq has dropped by 55 percent since the military's surge became fully operational in June.

Dubik said it was still early to assess the exact contribution of Iran but "we hope that the commitment stays in effect."

US Defence Secretary Robert Gates earlier this month said Tehran had assured Baghdad it would help stop the inflow of Iranian weapons into Iraq.

If past experience is any guide, expect Lt. General Dubik to find himself "prematurely retired."

Or maybe this is a backhanded way of justifying previous US claims that Iran is arming "insurgents" in Iraq. "So, when did you stop beating your wife, Mr. Smith...? And by the way, thank you for stopping!"

Meanwhile, there's this, from the news.Scotsman.com:

Attacks fall 90% since UK Basra pull-out

ATTACKS have plunged by 90 per cent in southern Iraq since Britain withdrew its troops from the main city of Basra, their commander has said.

The British presence in central Basra, Iraq's second-largest city, was the single largest trigger for violence, Major General Graham Binns said.

About 500 British troops moved out of one of Saddam Hussein's palaces in the heart of Basra in early September, joining some 4500 at a garrison at an airport on the city's edge.

Since then there has been a "remarkable and dramatic drop in attacks", General Binns said.

"The motivation for attacking us was gone, because we're no longer patrolling the streets."

Last spring, British troops' daily patrols through central Basra led to "steady toe-to-toe battles with militias fighting some of the most tactically demanding battles of the war", General Binns said. Now British forces rarely enter the city centre, an area patrolled only by Iraqis.

Why does this strike me as ominous?

english al jazeera:

China warship heads for Japan visit

The guided missile destroyer Shenzhen is to be open to visits by the public during its stay in Japan The guided missile destroyer Shenzhen is to be open to visits by the public during its stay in Japan A Chinese warship is sailing for Japan ahead of the first ever visit by the Chinese military to a Japanese port. The visit by the Shenzhen, a guided missile destroyer, comes amid growing signs of a thaw in the often icy relations between the two rival Asian powers. On Thursday, as the Shenzhen headed for Japan, Beijing confirmed that the Chinese president planned to make a state visit to Japan next year. The visit by Hu Jintao would be the first such trip by China's head of state in a decade. Cui Tiankai, China's newly-appointed ambassador to Japan, said Hu's trip would "certainly produce important and far-reaching consequences".

What Holocaust? Oh, THAT one. That one doesn't count...

Alternet.org:

Holocaust Denial, American Style
By Mark Weisbrot

Wednesday 21 November 2007

Institutionally unwilling to consider America's responsibility for the bloodbath, the traditional media have refused to acknowledge the massive number of Iraqis killed since the invasion.

Iranian President Ahmedinejad's flirtation with those who deny the reality of the Nazi genocide has rightly been met with disgust. But another holocaust denial is taking place with little notice: the holocaust in Iraq. The average American believes that 10,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed since the US invasion in March 2003. The most commonly cited figure in the media is 70,000. But the actual number of people who have been killed is most likely more than one million.

This is five times more than the estimates of killings in Darfur and even more than the genocide in Rwanda 13 years ago.

The estimate of more than one million violent deaths in Iraq was confirmed again two months ago in a poll by the British polling firm Opinion Research Business, which estimated 1,220,580 violent deaths since the US invasion. This is consistent with the study conducted by doctors and scientists from the Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health more than a year ago. Their study was published in the Lancet, Britain's leading medical journal. It estimated 601,000 people killed due to violence as of July 2006; but if updated on the basis of deaths since the study, this estimate would also be more than a million. These estimates do not include those who have died because of public health problems created by the war, including breakdowns in sewerage systems and electricity, shortages of medicines, etc.

Amazingly, some journalists and editors - and of course some politicians - dismiss such measurements because they are based on random sampling of the population rather than a complete count of the dead. While it would be wrong to blame anyone for their lack of education, this disregard for scientific methods and results is inexcusable. As one observer succinctly put it: if you don't believe in random sampling, the next time your doctor orders a blood test, tell him that he needs to take all of it.

The methods used in the estimates of Iraqi deaths are the same as those used to estimate the deaths in Darfur, which are widely accepted in the media. They are also consistent with the large numbers of refugees from the violence (estimated at more than four million). There is no reason to disbelieve them, or to accept tallies such as that the Iraq Body Count (73,305 - 84,222), which include only a small proportion of those killed, as an estimate of the overall death toll.

Of course, acknowledging the holocaust in Iraq might change the debate over the war. While Iraqi lives do not count for much in US politics, recognizing that a mass slaughter of this magnitude is taking place could lead to more questions about how this horrible situation came to be. Right now a convenient myth dominates the discussion: the fall of Saddam Hussein simply unleashed a civil war that was waiting to happen, and the violence is all due to Iraqis' inherent hatred of each other.

In fact, there is considerable evidence that the occupation itself - including the strategy of the occupying forces - has played a large role in escalating the violence to holocaust proportions. It is in the nature of such an occupation, where the vast majority of the people are opposed to the occupation and according to polls believe it is right to try and kill the occupiers, to pit one ethnic group against another. This was clear when Shiite troops were sent into Sunni Fallujah in 2004; it is obvious in the nature of the death-squad government, where officials from the highest levels of the Interior Ministry to the lowest ranking police officers - all trained and supported by the US military - have carried out a violent, sectarian mission of "ethnic cleansing." (The largest proportion of the killings in Iraq are from gunfire and executions, not from car bombs). It has become even more obvious in recent months as the United States is now arming both sides of the civil war, including Sunni militias in Anbar province as well as the Shiite government militias.

Is Washington responsible for a holocaust in Iraq? That is the question that almost everyone here wants to avoid. So the holocaust is denied.

Premature Stem Cell Celebration

Physorg.com:

[. . .]

So if you ask when doctors and patients will see new treatments, scientists can only hedge.

"I just can't tell you dates," says James Thomson of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, one of the scientists in the U.S. and Japan who announced the breakthrough on Tuesday.

[. . .]

Paul Berg, a Stanford University Nobel laureate who helped establish federal guidelines for human research on genetically manipulated cells, said the celebration over this week's announcement is premature.

"I'm amazed at the ethicists" saying the problem of needing embryos has been solved, Berg said. "We're not in the clear - this is a first step."

So what are the next steps?

The first basic question to solve is how similar iPS cells are in behavior and potential to the embryonic cells that scientists have studied for nearly a decade.

"My guess is that we'll find that there are significant differences," said Dr. Robert Lanza of Advanced Cell Technology, which has been trying to produce stem cells from cloned human embryos. "I'd be surprised if these cells can do all the same tricks as well as stem cells derived from embryos."

Another big question is how to make iPS cells in a different way. The breakthrough technique treats skin cells by using viruses to carry in a quartet of genes. Those viruses disrupt the DNA of the skin cells. When that happens, there's a risk of cancer.

That's show-stopper when it comes to creating tissue to transplant into people. So scientists have to figure out a way to make iPS cells without those DNA-disrupting viruses.

Scientists should be able to find other ways to slip the genes into the skin cells, Thomson said. Other scientists suggest that a purely chemical treatment, not inserting genes at all, might be able to get the same result.

The cancer-risk problem should be solved quickly, maybe within a year or so, said Doug Melton, co-director of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute.

Before then, iPS cells could be used in lab studies to study the early roots of genetic disease or to screen drugs. But of course, it's anybody's guess when a useful treatment would result from that.

Even with the cancer problem solved for transplant uses, there's another big hurdle:

The whole idea of using embryonic stem cells or iPS cells for treating people with conditions like diabetes and Parkinson's disease via transplant is itself far from proven. Scientists will need to learn how to turn iPS cells into the right kind of tissue, and how to use that tissue in a way that will treat a person's disease.

Such studies, in the lab, animals and finally people, will take years.

As far as that obstacle goes, Thomson said, the breakthrough announced this week changes nothing.

"We have a lot of work to do."

Bringing it home

from a Cindy Sheehan email of November 15, 2007:

"Our national identity rests on and has been formed by violence and greed. Congress has a chance to slow down, if not reverse, that cycle but will give George Bush billions more to wage their (the mess belongs to all the branches co-equally) illegal occupation because, instead of protecting life and liberty for all, they viciously protect the life and liberty of their elitist club only."

My email reply:

Cindy-

I just had a thought that seemed so clear - probably like some you've had many times.

Imagine if, instead of a bill to provide more money to continue killing nameless and faceless Iraqis, Congress was pondering a bill to permit US forces to capture, torture, and possibly kill Nancy Pelosi's children (doubtless for some imaginary national security reason.) Or substitute the children of any lawmaker you choose.

Imagine the somewhat different tactics that would be "on the table" to kill that bill.

I'd think there would be a total shutdown of the government before such a bill was allowed to go into effect. Lawmakers would be calling press conferences every hour to denounce this travesty. They'd call on all their resources, call in all their favors from powerful business and government leaders, blanket the media with outrage and demands for a return to rational, civil behavior.

In short, they'd stop "business as usual" and shift into drastic crisis mode, and not stop until the inhuman threat was gone.

And yet, how is this materially different from the situation they face now?

Kinda makes ya think.

-steve

Holiday in Carneros

Those yellow-orange things are grapevines. This shot is looking north towards Napa.

Last weekend I was privileged to once again participate in the McKenzie-Mueller Winery's segment of Holiday in Carneros. A more beautiful spot for a party cannot be imagined. Saturday began foggy, but soon was so warm and sunny that we had to put on the sunscreen.

Winery owners Karen and Bob wanted a more background, laid back music this time, so they hired Kevin Frazier and me to play instrumental tunes from noon until four in the afternoon Saturday and Sunday. Kevin's a good sax player, and I alternated between guitar and incredibly cheap but nice sounding Yamaha PSR 275 keyboard, both through an equally cheap but amazingly powerful and good sounding Roland Cube monitor—two Craigslist buys. Great buys.

I didn't manage to get anyone to take any pictures of us with
my camera, so this picture of the job site will have to do.
Kevin's sax can be seen under the monitor. The hay bales
were handy to set things on. Books. Cases. Me.

Eight hours of music in two days is a lot, even for me. Wore out my left thumb. But it was fun, and everyone loved it. There was quite a crowd most of both days. Limos. Busses. Lots of folks.

This was another battery gig. I ran the keyboard and the monitor-speaker (for the keyboard and the guitar) off my portable 12 volt Powerstation® battery pack and my inverter. Very cool.

Though Saturday was superb, Sunday ended up with the fog rolling back in. My hands were nearly numb by 4pm. My guitar actually felt damp. Yuck.

I don't remember the grass ever getting so green while the vines were turning orange.
Very impressive. I took lots of photos.

H2O + CO2 = H2CO3

That means water plus carbon dioxide equals carbonic acid, which disolves sea shells and coral.

the Independent:

A world dying, but can we unite to save it?

Pollution in the seas is now speeding global warming, says a devastating new climate report.

'IoS' Environment Editor Geoffrey Lean reports from Valencia

Published: 18 November 2007

Humanity is rapidly turning the seas acid through the same pollution that causes global warming, the world's governments and top scientists agreed yesterday. The process – thought to be the most profound change in the chemistry of the oceans for 20 million years – is expected both to disrupt the entire web of life of the oceans and to make climate change worse.

The warning is just one of a whole series of alarming conclusions in a new report published by the official Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which last month shared the Nobel Peace Prize with former US vice president Al Gore.

[. . .]

Scientists have found that the seas have already absorbed about half of all the carbon dioxide emitted by humanity since the start of the industrial revolution, a staggering 500 billion tons of it. This has so far helped slow global warming – which would have accelerated even faster if all this pollution had stayed in the atmosphere, already causing catastrophe – but at an increasingly severe cost.

The gas dissolves in the oceans to make dilute carbonic acid, which is increasingly souring the naturally alkali seawater. This, in turn, mops up calcium carbonate, a substance normally plentiful in the seas, which corals use to build their reefs, and marine creatures use to make the protective shells they need to survive. These include many of the plankton that form the base of the food chain on which all fish and other marine animals depend.

As the waters are growing more acid this process is decreasing, with incalculable consequences for the life of the seas, and for the fisheries on which a billion of the world's people depend for protein. Every single species that uses calcium in this way, that has so far been studied, has been found to be affected. And the seas are most acid near the surface, where most of their life is concentrated.

A report by the Royal Society, Britain's premier scientific body, concludes that, as a result, of the pollution, the world's oceans are probably now more acidic that they have ever been in "hundreds of millennia", and that even if emissions stopped now, the waters would take "tens of thousands of years to return to normal".

Professor Ulf Reibesell of the Leibnitz Institute of Marine Sciences in Kiel, Germany's leading expert on the process, concludes in an issue of UNEP's magazine Our Planet, to be published next month, that, if it continues to the levels predicted by yesterday's report for the end of the century, the seas will reach a condition unprecedented in the last 20 million years.

Something from Robert, Sam and Nat Parry about the 2000 election

ConsortiumNews.com:

Editor’s Note: Over the past couple of decades, the Republicans have benefited enormously from their ability to create and disseminate false narratives through the Right’s large, well-financed media apparatus.

With mainstream journalists unwilling to challenge the false narratives – and thus put their careers at risk – American voters often go to the polls believing things that are almost the opposite of the truth.

In this excerpt from Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush, the authors present a case study from Election 2000:

During Campaign 2000, conservative groups were given wide leeway in smearing Democratic candidate Al Gore without being called to account, even when the Vice President was falsely portrayed as a traitor.

For instance, in the weeks before Election 2000, Aretino Industries, a pro-Republican group from Texas, ran an emotional ad modeled after Lyndon Johnson’s infamous 1964 commercial that showed a girl picking a daisy before the screen dissolved into a nuclear explosion.

The ad remake accused the Clinton-Gore administration of selling vital nuclear secrets to communist China, in exchange for campaign donations in 1996. The compromised nuclear secrets, the ad stated, gave China “the ability to threaten our homes with long-range nuclear warheads.”

But the ad – which aired in “swing” states including Ohio, Michigan, Missouri and Pennsylvania – was filled with disinformation. The actual evidence was that the key breach in national security, contributing to the modernization of China’s nuclear arsenal, occurred in the 1980s, not the 1990s.

In other words, the secrets were lost during the Reagan-Bush administration, not the Clinton-Gore administration.

The most important compromised U.S. secret that allegedly helped China’s nuclear weapons program was the blueprint for the W-88 miniaturized nuclear warhead, which was smuggled to the Chinese in 1988, the last year of Ronald Reagan’s presidency, according to documents later given to U.S. authorities by a Chinese defector.

China tested their W-88-style warhead in 1992, the last year of the first Bush administration.

Therefore, the W-88 secret was lost – and acted upon – before Bill Clinton and Al Gore took office. Indeed, the only significant part of this nuclear-secrets case that happened during the Clinton-Gore administration was that a Chinese defector exposed the espionage breach in 1995.

However, when the American public first learned of the compromised secrets a few years later, the Republicans applied fuzzy logic and a blurred chronology to transform the lost nuclear blueprints, apparently compromised on the Reagan-Bush watch, into an attack theme on Clinton and Gore.

Cox Report

This clever strategy could be traced back to a May 1999 report prepared by a Republican-controlled congressional investigation headed by Rep. Christopher Cox of California. The so-called Cox report accused the Clinton-Gore administration of failing to protect the nation against China’s theft of top-secret nuclear designs and other sensitive data.

When released on May 25, 1999 – shortly after the Clinton impeachment battle had ended – the Cox report was greeted by conservative groups and the national news media as another indictment of the Clinton administration.

By then, the Washington press corps had long been addicted to “Clinton scandals” and viewed almost any allegation through that prism, regardless of the details.

The Cox report gave weight in the public’s mind to the suspicion that there was something far more sinister behind earlier allegations that a Chinese government front had funneled $30,000 in illegal “soft money” donations to the Democrats in 1996.

Cox pulled off his sleight of hand with barely anyone spotting the trick card up his sleeve. The key ruse was to leave out dates of alleged Chinese spying in the 1980s and thus obscure the fact that the floodgates of U.S. nuclear secrets to China – including how to build the miniaturized W-88 nuclear warhead – had opened wide during the Reagan-Bush era.

While leaving out those Republican time elements, Cox shoved references to the alleged lapses into the presidencies of Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton.

So, the Cox report’s “Overview” stated that “the PRC (People’s Republic of China) thefts from our National Laboratories began at least as early as the late 1970s, and significant secrets are known to have been stolen as recently as the mid-1990s.”

In this way, Cox started with the Carter presidency, jumped over the 12 years of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush and landed in the Clinton years. In the “Overview” alone, there were three dozen references to dates from the Clinton years and only five mentions of dates from the Reagan-Bush years, with none of those citations related to alleged wrongdoing.

Cox’s stacking of the deck carried over into the report’s two-page chronology of the Chinese spy scandal. On pages 74-75, the Cox report put all the information boxes about Chinese espionage suspicions into the Carter and Clinton years.

Nothing sinister is attributed specifically to the Reagan-Bush era, other than a 1988 test of a neutron bomb built from secrets that the report says were believed stolen in the “late 1970s,” the Carter years.

Only a careful reading of the text inside the chronology’s boxes made clear that many of the worst national security breaches could be traced to the Reagan-Bush era.

[One of the authors of the Cox report was I. Lewis Libby, a key neoconservative who would later become Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff and a figure in the Plame-gate scandal, the leak of Valerie Plame Wilson's covert CIA identity.]

there's much much more here.

The circular firing squad in action

A Tiny Revolution:

Here’s Hillary Clinton in the debate last night, responding to Obama’s proposal to raise the payroll cap for Social Security:

CLINTON: I do not want to fix the problems of Social Security on the backs of middle class families and seniors. If you lift the cap completely, that is a $1 trillion tax increase.

This is why my strategy is to hate all leaders, at all times, in all circumstances.

First, Obama uses right-wing talking points to tell us how we must be VERY VERY WORRIED about Social Security, so he can portray himself as a BOLD TRUTH TELLER.

Then, Clinton uses right-wing talking points to attack him for proposing a MASSIVE TAX INCREASE so she can portray herself as NOT A DIRTY TAX-RAISING LIBERAL.

In reality, there’s no reason to fret about Social Security or change it at all now. Obama is trying to scare us by thinking there is.

But if we have to change things in the future, the changes necessary would be minor. Clinton is trying to scare us by throwing around huge numbers most people don’t understand. The $1 trillion tax increase she’s talking about would be over 75 years, during which time the U.S. GDP is projected to be $600 trillion. It would also only affect the best-off people in America. (Moreover, Clinton’s numbers are wrong; eliminating the payroll cap would be more like a $4 trillion tax increase, depending on how you measure it. I suspect she lowballed it in order to make her fearmongering more credible.)

So hand in hand, Obama and Clinton each endorse one-half of the right-wing story, adding up to one gruesome whole. Here’s Sean Hannity, speaking to you during the recession of 2012:

HANNITY: How can you criticize Republican proposals to privatize Social Security, when even Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton agree we should be VERY VERY WORRIED and that the only alternative to privatization is a MASSIVE TAX INCREASE?

AND: This is yet another example of the Iron Law of Institutions.

(Thanks to Dean Baker for help with the specific numbers.)

posted by Jonathan Schwarz at 12:16 PM

| link

Something to Stand For

Physorg.com:

Study Finds That Sitting May
Increase Risk of Disease

Most people spend most of their day sitting with relatively idle muscles. Health professionals advise that at least 30 minutes of activity at least 5 days a week will counteract health concerns, such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes and obesity that may result from inactivity. Now, researchers at the University of Missouri-Columbia say a new model regarding physical activity recommendations is emerging. New research shows that what people do in the other 15 and a half hours of their waking day is just as important, or more so, than the time they spend actively exercising.

“Many activities like talking on the phone or watching a child’s ballgame can be done just as enjoyably upright, and you burn double the number of calories while you’re doing it,” said Marc Hamilton, an associate professor of biomedical sciences whose work was recently published in Diabetes. “We’re pretty stationary when we’re talking on the phone or sitting in a chair at a ballgame, but if you stand, you’re probably going to pace or move around.”

In a series of studies that will be presented at the Second International Congress on Physical Activity and Public Health in Amsterdam, Hamilton, Theodore Zderic, a post-doctoral researcher, and their research team studied the impact of inactivity among rats, pigs and humans. In humans, they studied the effects of sitting in office chairs, using computers, reading, talking on the phone and watching TV. They found evidence that sitting had negative effects on fat and cholesterol metabolism. The researchers also found that physical inactivity throughout the day stimulated disease-promoting processes, and that exercising, even for an hour a day, was not sufficient to reverse the effect.

There is a misconception that actively exercising is the only way to make a healthy difference in an otherwise sedentary lifestyle. However, Hamilton’s studies found that standing and other non-exercise activities burn many calories in most adults even if they do not exercise at all.


“The enzymes in blood vessels of muscles responsible for ‘fat burning’ are shut off within hours of not standing,” Hamilton said. “Standing and moving lightly will re-engage the enzymes, but since people are awake 16 hours a day, it stands to reason that when people sit much of that time they are losing the opportunity for optimal metabolism throughout the day.”

Hamilton hopes that creative strategies in homes, communities and workplaces can help solve the problem of inactivity. Some common non-exercise physical activities that people can do instead of sitting include performing household chores, shopping, typing while standing and even fidgeting while standing. Given the work of muscles necessary to hold the body’s weight upright, standing can double the metabolic rate. Hamilton believes that scientists and the public have underestimated common activities because they are intermittent and do not take as much effort as a heavy workout.

“To hold a body that weighs 170 pounds upright takes a fair amount of energy from muscles,” Hamilton said. “You can appreciate that our legs are big and strong because they must be used all the time. There is a large amount of energy associated with standing every day that can’t be easily compensated for by 30 to 60 minutes at the gym.”

Only 28 percent of Americans are getting the minimal amount of recommended exercise. Hamilton predicts that eventually there will be health campaigns with doctors advocating limiting sitting time, just like they ask people to limit sun and second hand smoke exposure.

“The purpose of medical research is to offer effective new strategies for people whom the existing therapies are not working,” Hamilton said. “Because our research reveals that too little exercise and excessive sitting do not change health by the same genes and biological mechanisms, it offers hope for people who either are not seeing results from exercise or can not exercise regularly.

The lifestyle change we are studying is also unlike exercise because it does not require that people squeeze an extra hour into their days and/or get sweaty at the gym, but instead improving the quality of what they already are doing. One misrepresentation is that people tend to say 'I sit all the time, so your studies suggest that I can't even work,' but Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson showed us that you can be very productive and still do great work in an office with a 'standing' desk."

Source: University of Missouri

“The enzymes in blood vessels of muscles responsible for ‘fat burning’ are shut off within hours of not standing,” Hamilton said. “Standing and moving lightly will re-engage the enzymes, but since people are awake 16 hours a day, it stands to reason that when people sit much of that time they are losing the opportunity for optimal metabolism throughout the day.”

Hamilton hopes that creative strategies in homes, communities and workplaces can help solve the problem of inactivity. Some common non-exercise physical activities that people can do instead of sitting include performing household chores, shopping, typing while standing and even fidgeting while standing. Given the work of muscles necessary to hold the body’s weight upright, standing can double the metabolic rate. Hamilton believes that scientists and the public have underestimated common activities because they are intermittent and do not take as much effort as a heavy workout.

“To hold a body that weighs 170 pounds upright takes a fair amount of energy from muscles,” Hamilton said. “You can appreciate that our legs are big and strong because they must be used all the time. There is a large amount of energy associated with standing every day that can’t be easily compensated for by 30 to 60 minutes at the gym.”

Only 28 percent of Americans are getting the minimal amount of recommended exercise. Hamilton predicts that eventually there will be health campaigns with doctors advocating limiting sitting time, just like they ask people to limit sun and second hand smoke exposure.

“The purpose of medical research is to offer effective new strategies for people whom the existing therapies are not working,” Hamilton said. “Because our research reveals that too little exercise and excessive sitting do not change health by the same genes and biological mechanisms, it offers hope for people who either are not seeing results from exercise or can not exercise regularly.

The lifestyle change we are studying is also unlike exercise because it does not require that people squeeze an extra hour into their days and/or get sweaty at the gym, but instead improving the quality of what they already are doing. One misrepresentation is that people tend to say 'I sit all the time, so your studies suggest that I can't even work,' but Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson showed us that you can be very productive and still do great work in an office with a 'standing' desk."

Source: University of Missouri

Three reasons Congress is wrongheaded in Iraq

This is from an email from Cindy Sheehan, commenting on an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal in which Karl Rove complains about how Congress is threatening to screw up Iraq and the Middle East by trying to end the War in Iraq. Cindy agrees they're screwing up, but for failing to end the War...

There are at least three errors with the Congressional “New Direction in Iraq.” First of all the timelines are again “non-binding” and not worth the breath it takes to talk about them, or the ink and paper that it takes to write them (or the headache one gets to think about them). With 2007 being the deadliest year for our US troops and the people of Iraq (did anyone not see---except Bush and Congress that a “surge” which Karl says is working in his laughable op-ed---would not increase the bloodshed?) and the violence predictably picking up after the holy month of Ramadan, by the end of 2008, we should tragically witness the deaths of hundreds of more US troops and thousands of more Iraqis, with even more fleeing their homes to take an inhumane refugee status.

The second thing wrong with a short-term handover is that any amount of money for a war that is wrong, is also wrong. Using the drug addiction illustration again, if one of my children asked me for money to buy crack, but I told them abusing crack is wrong, but “I will give you more money to abuse crack: but only until March! By March, you must have your crack addiction under control because I won’t give you one more penny to abuse crack!” My child would take the money with relief to continue his/her habit knowing that by March (from my past performance of always- buckling under to his/her pressure) I would give him/her more money, anyway. Then between now and March, I could not once tell my child that abusing crack is “harmful/illegal” because I have given my “implied consent” by funding his/her habit. Congress is reaffirming the implied consent theory of war continually by feeding George’s habit for chaos and killing.

The third reason the offer of partial blood money to George is a mistake is that the Constitution divides powers between the branches. Congress (read—Democratic Leadership) has forgotten that the institution is a co-equal branch with the Executive and Judicial. I studied the Constitution in Civic class for my entire eighth grade year and it has only been amended twice since then, once granting suffrage to 18 year olds in 1971 after they had been dying for years in Vietnam (27th Amendment) Incidentally, with the Every Child Left Behind Act, our children, today, learn very little, if anything about civics, history, or critical thinking---that’s education in a fascist state, my friend. Anyhow, in eighth grade I learned that Congress has the power and duty to declare war and pay for war and the Executive has the duty to wage the war. In Congress’ New Direction, the bill has elements that “redefine” the mission in Iraq. I agree that the mission needs to be radically redefined to no mission at all. However, the president, who is clearly irresponsible, to say the very least, is well within his Constitutional right to veto any bill like this and within his Constitutional powers to wage the war as he sees fit. Have I said lately, that he isn’t fit, at all?

The only power that Congress has to end this war (and effectively and affectively redefining the mission), to the chagrin of Karl who is clearly out of step with reality and the country, is to not give George Bush one more penny of China’s money, let alone 50 billion more of Chinese dollars.

Dare we believe a story about loggers, pygmies, and GPS units is actually good news?

english.aljazeera.net:

Congo's pygmies turn to technology
By Gladys Mjoroge

Commercial logging is big business in the Congo Basin Pygmies in the world's second largest rainforest are turning to modern technology to preserve their lands. While the world's rainforests are a rich source of raw materials, they're also home to many indigenous people, and for the hunter-gatherer pygmies of Africa's Congo Basin, the forest is crucial to their way of life. Al Jazeera's Gladys Njoroge has been finding out how global positioning satellites are now being used to protect the pygmies' traditional way of life: Pygmies and commercial loggers are working together [Al Jazeera] The Basin is the world's second-largest rainforest, covering six countries from Cameroon to the Democratic Republic of Congo. The growth and spread of commercial logging has long been seen as a threat to the indigenous tribes, cutting through hunting grounds and sacred areas that have been used by them for centuries. About 80 per cent of the timber removed from the Congo Basin will end up in China and the European Union. Until now the growing commercial activity threatens to wipe out the livelihood and culture of the pygmies who are traditionally hunters and gatherers. Now though, these indigenous tribes are hoping that a marriage of tradition and technology may hold the answer. Hand-held satellite tracking devices are being used to mark areas of forest that should be left untouched. One of the Juslin Independent people demonstrated the new system to Al Jazeera: "The images you can see on the GPS are of the sacred tree of the spirit of the woman, the sacred city of men for Eteni culture, also the cemeteries are marked there. "It's a win-win situation for both parties." Lucas van der Velt Logging company representative "So the vehicles must not drive around these areas. There's also the Mengoulou, which indicates the location of hunting grounds and settlements." The GPS maps are also being used by a Danish-run company to guide their logging activities in the same area. In the past, such companies were considered a threat; few employed pygmies and their traditional lifestyles were at risk from the bulldozers of the loggers, while decades of civil war also opened up the forest to illegal logging. This new scheme ensures that forest areas critical to the pygmies' survival are left standing – irrespective of the timber business. Tribes are using wind-up radios to spread the word on technology Lucas van der Walt, the Environment Manager at Congolaise Industrialle Des Bois told us: "It's a win-win situation for both parties. "The communities who live in these forests have the reassurance and the guarantee that their livelihoods will be protected and not be damaged by our operation and there's an independent group of people making sure that we adhere to this. "On our side there's also benefit of having a good relation with these communities," he said. This conservation message is now being transmitted through the airwaves to communities living near the forest, using other technology such as clockwork-driven radios. Modern technology is slowly creeping in among the pygmies – and instead of killing their ancient traditions, it’s helping preserve them.

George Carlin has things to say...

...and he's not shy about saying them.

Warning: Obscenity and frighteningly frank and clear thinking.

It's reassuring to know there are nuts everywhere

But not that reassuring...

the Daily Star:

Fanatics warn Bush to fear consequences of peace
By Agence France Presse (AFP)

Tuesday, November 06, 2007

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM: A fringe group of ultra-nationalist Israeli rabbis has petitioned US President George W. Bush this week to cancel a Middle East peace meeting, saying that his country will face mass calamity if he does not. "We wrote to President Bush, a man who believes in the Bible, to warn him against the terrible danger to which he is exposing his country by hosting such a conference," Rabbi Meir Druckman, one of eight signatories, told Army Radio. "The land of Israel belongs to the people of Israel. God punishes anyone who wants to force Israel to give up its land," he said, alluding to the occupied Gaza Strip and West Bank. "There is no doubt the New Orleans flood from the Katrina hurricane was God's punishment for dismantling the settlements," he said of the August 2005 catastrophe that hit the southern United States. Israel withdrew all troops and settlers from the Gaza Strip in 2005 with wide US and other international support. "The recent fires in California should be considered the last warning," added Rabbi Druckman. On Sunday some 2,000 people, many of them Jewish settlers living in the West Bank, protested against the international peace meeting expected to be held in the United States later this year. It was the first significant Israeli demonstration against the negotiations aimed at reviving full Israeli-Palestinian peace talks after seven years of stalemate. - AFP

Two more ominous stories

from Physorg.com:

• As sea levels rise, coastal communities could lose up to 50 percent more of their fresh water supplies than previously thought, according to a new study from Ohio State University.
• An international team of scientists has published a new analysis showing that as plant species around the world go extinct, natural habitats become less productive and contain fewer total plants –– a situation that could ultimately compromise important benefits that humans get from nature.

Their Nukes, Bad—Our Nukes Good!

t r u t h o u t | Report:

Cheney Pursuing Nuclear Ambitions of His Own
By Jason Leopold

Monday 05 November 2007

While Dick Cheney has been talking tough over the years about Iran's alleged nuclear activities, the vice president has been quietly pursuing nuclear ambitions of his own.

For more than two years, Cheney and a relatively unknown administration official, Deputy Energy Secretary Clay Sell, have been regularly visiting the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to ensure agency officials rewrite regulatory policies and bypass public hearings in order to streamline the licensing process for energy companies that have filed applications to build new nuclear power reactors, as well as applications for new nuclear facilities that are expected to be filed by other companies in the months ahead, longtime NRC officials said.

[. . .]

Behind the scenes, Cheney and Sell have worked in tandem with the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), a powerful industry organization whose members include some of the country's largest energy corporations, to get the NRC to rewrite long-standing environmental review policies and limit oversight of new nuclear projects, thereby simplifying the application process, and significantly cutting down the time it takes to get new nuclear projects off the ground, an NRC official said.

The Nuclear Energy Institute spent $680,000 during the first half of 2007 lobbying the White House, Congress, the Department of Energy, and other federal agencies, according to a disclosure form posted online August 13 by the Senate's public records office. Cheney's longtime friend, Tom Loeffler, a former lobbyist and Republican congressman, represented the NEI. Loeffler's former aide, Nancy Dorn, worked as a Congressional liaison for Cheney, and later became a lobbyist for General Electric.

Cheney and Sell's behind-the-scenes efforts have been a boon for the nuclear energy industry - and to Westinghouse Electric, a nuclear reactor designer whose AP1000 reactor unit was certified by the Department of Energy. The company stands to earn tens of billions of dollars in profit through the sale of just a few of its nuclear reactor units. Cheney has said publicly he wants to see dozens scattered across the US.

In September, Princeton-based NRG Energy Inc., having emerged from bankruptcy proceedings, became the first company in 30 years to submit an application to build two new General Electric-designed nuclear reactors at its Bay City, Texas, nuclear power plant facility, a move that came as a direct result of several private meetings NRG lobbyists and executives held with Cheney and Sell, according to company officials. NRG's former president, David Peterson, traveled to Washington on two occasions in 2001 to help Cheney's Energy Task Force shape the country's energy policy, according to government records.

Prior to NRG's application, there had not been a filing for a new nuclear power plant in the United States since before the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor meltdown three decades ago.

NRG Chief Executive David Crane told investors recently that massive federal tax incentives and federal loan guarantees included in the Energy Policy Act of 2005 was the deciding factor in steering the company toward the $6 billion nuclear project.

"The whole reason we started down this path was the benefits written into the [Energy Policy Act] of 2005," Crane said.

Fascist America, in 10 easy steps

Naomi Wolf is on Thom Hartmann's show right now, running down her list of easy steps to Fascism. Here's the simple list. How many do you recognize around you right now?

• 1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy
• 2. Create a gulag
• 3. Develop a thug caste
• 4. Set up an internal surveillance system
• 5. Harass citizens' groups
• 6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release
• 7. Target key individuals
• 8. Control the press
• 9. Dissent equals treason
• 10. Suspend the rule of law

Watchdogs to Lapdogs: Bushco. Inspector Generals

This is long...and well worth reading...

Bush's Lap Dogs: What Happened to DC's Watchdogs?
By Tim Dickinson
Rolling Stone

Wednesday 31 October 2007

In October, with Osama Bin Laden still at large, the Central Intelligence Agency announced the creation of a new spy unit. Headed by a top deputy and staffed with a select corps of agents, the operation was charged with gathering intelligence on a single man - a foe who was threatening to undermine the president's War on Terror.

The CIA's new target? John Helgerson, the man appointed by President Bush to expose wrongdoing at the CIA. As inspector general of the agency, Helgerson came under attack from his superiors simply for trying to do his job: He was aggressively investigating torture at the CIA's secret prisons.

Like the other twenty-eight inspectors within the executive branch, Helgerson is supposed to be immune from such political meddling. Created in 1978 as a post-Watergate check on Nixonian abuses of power, the inspectors bypass the chain of command within their own agencies and report their findings directly to Congress. By law, the president must appoint these watchdogs "without regard to political affiliation" and "solely on the basis of integrity and demonstrated ability."

But as the investigation of Helgerson makes clear, the administration is more interested in turning the watchdogs into lap dogs. Just as he politicized every other facet of government from FEMA to the Farm Bureau, President Bush has ignored the law and stocked the inspector general posts with inexperienced cronies. According to a study by the House Oversight Committee, more than a third of Bush's inspectors previously held a political post in the White House, compared to none of Bill Clinton's appointees. Judging from their résumés - deputy counsel to the Bush-Cheney transition team, special assistant to Trent Lott, senior counsel to Fred Thompson, daughter to Chief Justice William Rehnquist - Bush's appointees seem more qualified to be partisans at a neoconservative think tank than America's last line of defense against fraud and abuse. What's more, fewer than one-fifth of the inspectors appointed by Bush had previous experience as auditors, compared to two-thirds of Clinton's appointees. "The IGs have been politicized and dumbed down," said Rep. Brad Miller, oversight chair of the House science committee.

Rather than root out wrongdoing, Bush's appointees - men with nicknames like Moose and Cookie - have actually helped the White House cover up corrupt defense contracts, conceal the theft of sensitive rocket technology and whitewash a host of scandals from Abu Ghraib to Medicare prescription drugs. "Not only has this administration been aided in avoiding scrutiny by a compliant Republican Congress, they installed inspectors general who were not going to use their positions aggressively - if at all," says Rep. Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Oversight Committee.

Even worse, inspectors have often been hand-selected by the very Cabinet heads they are supposed to oversee - a practice that Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, a lonely Republican voice for executive accountability, blasts as "directly contrary to the spirit of the law." As a result, the administration often treats inspectors more like employees than independent auditors. "Cabinet secretaries expect their inspectors general to be members of the 'team,' rather than watchdogs who call things as they see them," says Clark Kent Ervin, who came under fire as Bush's first inspector general in Homeland Security for exposing weaknesses in airport security.

No one epitomizes the politicization of Bush's inspectors general more than Janet Rehnquist. The chief justice's daughter, who served as a former White House counsel to Bush's father, was named IG of the Department of Health and Human Services in 2001. She quickly eviscerated her own investigative staff, lightened penalties for fraudulent Medicare contractors and doled out political favors to the Bush clan. In 2002, in direct response to a request by Jeb Bush's chief of staff in Florida, Rehnquist postponed an embarrassing audit of the state's pension system until after Jeb's re-election.

Rehnquist eventually resigned under a cloud: The Government Accountability Office rebuked her for having "compromised" the independence of her post. But her acting successor, Dara Corrigan, soon became an accessory to one of the greatest taxpayer heists of all time, ignoring a congressional demand to investigate whether the White House had lied to Congress about the true costs of the Medicare prescription-drug bill. And Rehnquist's permanent replacement, Daniel Levinson, had no prior experience as an auditor, having proved his mettle for the job by serving as chief of staff to Rep. Bob Barr, the Republican ringleader of the Clinton impeachment. "Bush has disregarded the requirement of the law to make these people non- partisan investigators with the background to do the work," says Waxman.

If Rehnquist fits a pattern of Bush nominees who, according to Grassley, "weren't qualified to do the job in the first place," Howard "Cookie" Krongard stands as a glaring example of those who "are qualified to do the job - but don't." Before being appointed IG of the State Department in 2005, Krongard had an impressive résumé, having served as general counsel for the accounting firm of Deloitte & Touche. But far from putting that experience to work as inspector general, he has set about dismantling his own investigative team, which, according to House documents, currently has twenty vacancies for twenty-seven positions. "Under the current regime," Krongard's assistant inspector general for investigations wrote in an e-mail made public by the House Oversight Committee, orders are "to keep working the BS cases ... and not rock the boat with more significant investigations." Most troubling, Krongard has stonewalled explosive allegations that the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad was built with the indentured labor of Filipino workers who were flown to Iraq at gunpoint. Rather than launch a formal investigation, Krongard announced he would personally tour the construction site - and then gave the contractor, First Kuwaiti, six months' advance notice of his visit and allowed the company to handpick the six employees he interviewed. In the summary report he dashed off to Congress, Krongard whitewashed the problem: "Nothing came to our attention," he wrote, "that caused us to believe" the allegations. At a July hearing, Krongard confessed to Congress that he took few notes during his "investigation," saying he didn't want to make the people he was investigating "uncomfortable."

Abuses in Iraq were also covered up by Joseph Schmitz, who served as Bush's inspector general at the Pentagon. What Schmitz lacked in relevant training to monitor the Defense Department's $400 billion budget - "I am neither an accountant nor an auditor by background," he admitted to Congress - he more than made up for with his political pedigree. The son of a former GOP congressman, Schmitz worked for both Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich, and his brother served as a deputy counsel to George H.W. Bush and as a "pioneer" fund-raiser for George W. Bush.

Schmitz served Bush well as inspector general. In the wake of Abu Ghraib, he declared - without any formal investigation - that the scandal was the work of "bad eggs" in the junior ranks, not a direct result of the interrogation techniques approved by the president. He also turned a blind eye to war profiteering by contractors like Halliburton and Blackwater. "I haven't seen any real deliberate gouging of the American taxpayer," he said in 2004. "But we are looking." Not very hard, apparently: Schmitz sent only a single auditor to Iraq, and then quietly called him home in 2003 after just three months on the job.

According to those who worked with him, Schmitz spent much of his time as inspector general obsessively researching the history of Baron Friedrich von Steuben, George Washington's inspector general for the Continental Army. He also devoted three months to personally redesigning the inspector general's official seal to incorporate von Steuben's family motto: "Always under the protection of the Almighty."

But Schmitz always made time to shield administration officials from criminal investigation and congressional oversight. In 2004, according to Congressional documents, Schmitz blocked an inquiry by his own staff into John Shaw, an undersecretary to Donald Rumsfeld who was suspected of steering a lucrative Iraqi contract to an associate. Distrust in the IG's office grew so intense that Schmitz's senior staffers reportedly used code names for officials they were investigating so that their boss wouldn't torpedo their efforts. In a report to Congress, Schmitz also omitted testimony by Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz and blacked out the names of White House officials suspected of colluding with Boeing on a fraudulent deal that would have cost taxpayers $5 billion.

Under fire for withholding evidence from Congress to shield the very officials he was supposed to be investigating - as well as for spending more than $100,000 in public funds on a ceremony honoring von Steuben - Schmitz resigned in 2005. He soon found a more comfortable home, however, at the helm of one of the shady contractors he had failed to properly oversee. He is now chief operating officer of the Prince Group, parent company to the mercenary security force Blackwater USA.

His replacement, Lt. Gen. Claude "Mick" Kicklighter, isn't likely to be any tougher on fraud and waste in the administration. A Rumsfeld and Wolf- owitz loyalist, Kicklighter previously served in an administration post that has become virtually synonymous with fraud and waste: The general was in charge of transforming the Coalition Provisional Authority in its final days into the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.

A few inspectors - nearly all of them holdovers from the Clinton administration - continued to do their jobs. Nikki Tinsley of the Environmental Protection Agency revealed that the White House actively misled residents of Lower Manhattan about toxic dangers after September 11th. Earl Devaney of the Interior Department worked tirelessly to bring down Steven Griles, the former deputy secretary now imprisoned for his complicity in the Jack Abramoff scandal. And Glenn Fine of the Justice Department exposed the FBI's illegal abuse of the Patriot Act to spy on average Americans. "A lot of the trouble for Alberto Gonzales came out of the work the inspector general did," says Rep. Miller. "It's the perfect example of why we need competent, tough, independent IGs."

To squelch such independence, the president has turned to his ultimate loyalist, Clay Johnson III - his prep-school pal from Andover and roommate at Yale. As a top official at the White House Office of Management and Budget, Johnson has made no secret that the administration expects inspectors to be seen and not heard. Testifying before Congress, he asserted that the "proper relationship" of the IGs is "to work together" with the agency heads they are supposed to monitor. Johnson also disparaged aggressive IGs like the Clinton holdovers, calling them "junkyard dogs."

To keep the inspectors in line, Johnson has browbeaten them into signing what amounts to a loyalty oath. According to Ervin, the former inspector for Homeland Security, Johnson held a meeting with the IGs and demanded that each of them sign a series of "principles" promising to work "in partnership" with their cabinet secretaries. "Clearly, the intent was to intimidate people," says Ervin, who refused to sign and was soon out of a job. Ervin's replacement, Richard Skinner - who had previously done a heck of a job as the acting inspector general of FEMA - now prints Johnson's loyalty principles at the front of his semiannual reports to Congress.

No inspector general has been more criticized for his lack of independent oversight than Robert "Moose" Cobb, who served as associate White House counsel under Alberto Gonzales before being appointed inspector general of NASA in 2002. According to a report by the President's Council on Integrity and Efficiency, an office run by fellow IGs to police the work of their peers, Cobb helped cover up the theft of nearly $2 billion in rocket-engine data from NASA's servers. The council also found that Cobb had tipped off Sean O'Keefe, the head of NASA, to impending FBI search warrants, and sought O'Keefe's input on how he should structure his "independent" audits.

Cobb wasn't nearly so considerate of those under him: According to the council, he berated subordinates as "knuckle-draggers" and "fucksticks," causing more than half of his staff to quit. As his own hand-picked assistant testified before Congress, "Mr. Cobb's arrogance, his abusive, bullying style, absence of managerial experience, limited understanding of investigative processes, egotism and misplaced sense of self-importance make it impossible for him to successfully manage and lead an organization."

The president's council concluded that Cobb should be subject to discipline "up to and including removal." But Clay Johnson left Cobb's punishment up to NASA administrator Michael Griffin, who asked only that Cobb work with an "executive coach" to further his "professional growth."

Such ineptitude and blind loyalty have implications far beyond the hurt feelings of disgruntled staffers. NASA, which funds much of the government's research into global warming, has been accused of trying to silence agency scientists like James Hansen, who warn that the world has less than a decade to forestall a climate catastrophe. "I would like an independent NASA watchdog investigating whether government scientists are free to research climate change," says Miller, oversight chair of the House science committee.

Now that the Democrats have regained control of Congress, they are seeking to restore a measure of independence to the inspectors general. Under a bill passed by the House on October 3rd, IGs - who now serve strictly at the pleasure of the president - would be given seven-year terms and could be fired only for cause. "The government needs more junkyard dogs," says Sen. Grassley, a Republican veteran of six administrations. But even if the current bill becomes law, Grassley notes, real oversight won't happen without change at the top to encourage honesty from below. "Whistle-blowers are the essence of IGs doing their job," he says. "The government is too big - you don't know where the skeletons are buried, you don't know where the fraud is being committed. You've gotta have leads, and the leads come from whistle-blowers. We need a president who will hold a Rose Garden ceremony honoring these people. Everyone from the top of the federal bureaucracy down to the janitor needs to know that whistle-blowers are patriots - and not the skunks at a picnic."