By Nicholas von Hoffman, The Nation - Alternet
The nation's hopes--even the world's--are riding on it, but Barack Obama's stimulus plan is no sure shot. Nobody can say if it will work.
Some questions to ponder: What has to happen for us to say that the stimulus worked? Would it be a success if half the people who have lost their jobs secure some kind of employment? Would the benchmark be that one-quarter or one-third or half of the trillions in lost retirement savings were rescued? Would keeping in place two-thirds of those in danger of losing their homes be enough for us to say the stimulus has worked? Or should the standard be the Dow Jones Industrial Average clawing its way back to 10,000?
Except in the vaguest terms, no criterion has been laid down for what the stimulus is supposed to accomplish. Perhaps none can be.
Economists who a couple of years ago disagreed about almost everything have come together to buy into the central part of the Obama stimulus approach that is putting lots of government money into anybody's hands who will spend it and get business rolling again. Overnight, after decades of being ignored and discarded, the ideas of John Maynard Keynes and Alvin Hansen, the two major economists of the 1930s New Deal era, make sense again.
In the seventy years since the Depression loosened its grip on America, economists and historians have argued over whether or not Keynes-Hansen deficit spending, or pump-priming, as it was called, succeeded. The jury is still out on that one, but the Keynes-Hansen approach has been dusted off and even the stiffest opponents of deficit spending have abandoned the closely held principles of their professional lifetimes.
One such former opponent is Harvard's Martin Feldstein, chair of the Council of Economic Advisors in the Reagan administration and someone whose career has been spent in antipodean opposition to anything that smacked of Keynesianism. Things are so bad, in Feldstein's opinion, that he has put himself on record as saying there is no choice but to grab the buckets and pour water into the pump until America's distressed economy starts to chug again.
The pump, however, may be seized up. We do not know if, when money is put into millions of people's hands, they will spend it. After all, the middle-class segment of the baby boomer generation has just seen its retirement savings all but wiped out. These people, with retirement coming up fast, may be of a mind to save every cent they can get their hands on.
In the 1930s, when a reluctant Franklin Roosevelt decided to try Keynes-Hansen deficit spending, the overall situation was different from the one we are trying to live through. The leaning towers of debt built up during the crazy 1920s had collapsed by 1934. Thousands of banks had gone under, taking the savings of countless people with them. Bankruptcy had carried away debt-ridden, weak companies and individuals. Farmers were thrown off their land when they could not make their mortgage payments; city and suburban families lost their homes.
The deficit spending of the 1930s began in a society that was, thanks to massive bankruptcies, an economic tabula rasa. It had been reduced to near ruins, but in the process debt was swept away. In 2009, quite the contrary is the case.
Our current financial system is waterlogged with debt. Countless numbers of nonfinancial companies have the lead weight of indebtedness dragging them down, and personal debt is doing the same to the millions of individuals stuck with mortgages now worth more than their homes. No tabula rasa here, no debt-free new beginnings--and that raises a question: will the Obama plan be a stimulus to higher levels of economic activity or a life-support system maintaining an economically comatose patient?
We could go another way. We could sweep the table clean of debt by allowing massive bankruptcy to proceed for companies and individuals, a national liquidation. This was the plan advocated by Andrew Mellon, Herbert Hoover's treasury secretary.
Something like that had worked in the recession of 1920. The pain was sharp but short. In a few months the recession was over, and the nation was off into the Jazz Age. In 1933 the pain was sharp but hardly short. Government action not unlike what the Bush administration has been doing may have stopped the process from completing itself.
Stepping back and allowing bankruptcies to roll could not be contemplated without creating a huge program to keep the millions who would lose their jobs in their homes, fed and clothed. The politics of the Mellon approach are too horrendous to bear thinking about, so economists of every stripe, starting as far right as Feldstein and as far as left Paul Krugman, have no choice but to fall back on Keynes-Hansen.
Now let's see if it works.
REUTERS/Yannis Behrakis
By Michael Winship - Consortium News
We've all seen those sitcoms or movies in which someone stumbles into an art auction and, not knowing how it works, idly scratches his nose or pulls his ear and finds himself the owner of a Rembrandt.
Better yet, there's one of my all-time favorite films, “North by Northwest.”
Surrounded at an auction by the bad guys, Cary Grant makes outrageous bids and yells insults until the police arrive and unknowingly haul him off to safety. (“How do we know it’s not a fake?” he shouts about one painting. “It looks like a fake!” A woman sitting in front of him turns and replies, “You’re no fake. You’re a genuine idiot.”)
The Friday before Christmas, a college student in Utah who‘s neither fake nor fool pulled a Cary Grant at a Bureau of Land Management (BLM) auction of oil and gas leases for land between two of the most austerely beautiful national parks in the United States – Canyonlands and Arches.
Tim DeChristopher, a 27-year-old environmental activist and economics major at the University of Utah, was protesting the auction outside a government office building in Salt Lake City and decided to see what would happen if he went inside.
Instead of being immediately hustled out, he was asked by a clerk, “Are you here to bid?”
He showed his driver’s license and was given a paddle, no questions asked. Then, as his incredulous roommate looked on, DeChristopher started bidding.
“It was just raise my arm as often as possible, Bidder No. 70,” he told a reporter, “I was trying to make it obvious I was there to disrupt the auction.”
But before you could say, “Going, going, gone,” DeChristopher had “bought” 13 lease parcels – around 22,500 acres – for some $1.7 million and, according to BLM officials, driven up other bids by about half a million dollars.
At that point, people started to complain and he was taken away by BLM security. Among his competitors: Kerr-McGee, a subsidiary of Anadarko Petroleum, the country’s second-biggest independent oil producer.
The auction was part of the fire sale the Bush administration has been holding as it winds down, selling off oil and gas parcels as part of an apparent overall strategy to further carve up American wildlands and deregulate the environment as much as possible before noon on January 20th.
The White House may as well have a sign on the fence that reads, “Final Days! Everything Must Go!”
At the end of October, the BLM adopted Resource Management Plans for five field offices in Utah that oversee around 8.7 million acres of public land. Almost immediately, oil and gas lease sales of 360,000 of those acres were announced.
Environmental groups filed suit to stop the sale of 100,000 of the acres near national parks and monuments until the National Park Service could do an environmental impact analysis. Nonetheless, the auction at which DeChristopher became a surprise bidder went ahead.
In a November editorial, The Salt Lake Tribune described the Resource Management plans as “an eleventh-hour effort of Bush’s BLM to eliminate federal protections for Utah’s redrock treasures and give extractive industries… a virtual free hand,” a belief echoed by Tim DeChristopher in a blog entry he wrote the day after the auction:
“When faced with the opportunity to seriously disrupt the auction of some of our most beautiful lands in Utah to gas and oil developers, I could not ethically turn my back on that opportunity. By making bids for land that was supposed to be protected for the interest of all Americans, I tried to resist the Bush administration’s attempt to defraud the American people.”
Some of the land, he said, was selling for as little as $2.25 an acre.
The BLM is contemplating restaging the auction. And whether Tim DeChristopher’s case will come before a federal grand jury remains up in the air – no one’s even sure whether he broke any laws, and an investigation is ongoing.
A legal defense fund has been established and they’ve even started trying to raise $1.7 million to buy the leases upon which he bid. (As of Friday, Jan. 9, $45,000 in contributions had come in, enough for the initial payment, DeChristopher said, but the BLM says it’s too late – he’s already in default.)
There’s a Web site – www.bidder70.org – and DeChristopher’s legal team includes powerful Utah defense attorney Ron Yengich and Pat Shea, who ran the Bureau of Land Management during the Clinton administration’s second term.
Shea told The Salt Lake Tribune that he admires DeChristopher’s “integrity of purpose” and suggested to the Associated Press that the ease with which his client gained access to the auction – without a bond or other proof of the ability to pay – was indicative of the Bush administration’s “rush before the door slams behind them: ‘Let’s get as many leases out as possible.’”
During his BLM tenure, Shea said, access was more tightly controlled.
Tim DeChristopher’s spur-of-the-moment action comes from a long tradition of civil disobedience in America and the belief that, in the oft-quoted words of the June Jordan poem he cites on his blog, “We are the ones we have been waiting for.”
DeChristopher wrote, “We have been told that the best we can do is to sign an Internet petition and send our donations so that Big Green could hire lobbyists to fight our battles. The upswelling of grassroots energy is finally responding that we are willing and able to do much more.”
REUTERS/Ognen Teofilovski
Think Progress - Prison Planet
Yesterday in an interview with the Associated Press’s Deb Reichmann, Vice President Cheney repeatedly insisted that no one anticipated the looming U.S. financial crisis. “I don’t think anybody saw it coming,” he said. He then compared the financial crisis to 9/11, another crisis that supposedly no one predicted:
CHENEY: No, obviously, I wouldn’t have predicted that. On the other hand I wouldn’t have predicted 9/11, the global war on terror, the need to simultaneous run military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq or the near collapse of the financial system on a global basis, not just the U.S. […]
CHENEY: Did you see it coming? (Laughter.)
REICHMANN: I wasn’t responsible for seeing it coming.
CHENEY: Now, what my point is that I don’t think anybody saw it coming.
Oddly enough, in today’s White House press briefing, Deputy Press Secretary Scott Stanzel insisted that the Bush administration “saw those [financial] problems on the horizon,” but it was Congress’s fault for taking “a long time…to act.” In reality, many economic experts — such as Nouriel Roubini, Dean Baker, and Paul Krugman — did predict the economic crisis; the Bush administration just wasn’t listening to them. In reality, administration officials often turned a “blind eye to the impending crisis.”
The same goes for 9/11. On August 6, 2001, the Bush administration received a President’s Daily Brief entitled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike U.S.” The memo warned:
We have not been able to corroborate some of the more sensational threat reporting, such as that from a —- service in 1998 saying that Bin Laden wanted to hijack a U.S. aircraft to gain the release of “Blind Sheikh” Omar Abdel Rahman and other U.S.-held extremists.
Nevertheless, FBI information since that time indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York.
In 2001, the Federal Aviation Administration distributed a CD-ROM presentation to airlines and airports that cited the possibility of a suicide hijacking. In response to the threat warnings, the Bush administration did nothing.
In September, President Bush made similar comments to Cheney’s, citing the financial crisis in the same breath as “the bursting of the dot-com bubble, major corporate scandals, an unprecedented attack on our homeland, a global war on terror, a series of devastating natural disasters.”
Transcript:
REICHMANN: So let’s start with the economy. Did you ever think that you’d be — that we’d be finishing a two-term Republican presidency with a federal budget deficit so high, with bailouts and government spending sort of run away?
CHENEY: No, obviously, I wouldn’t have predicted that. On the other hand I wouldn’t have predicted 9/11, the global war on terror, the need to simultaneous run military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq or the near collapse of the financial system on a global basis, not just the U.S.
So it’s not a — it’s a difficult set of problems without question. And I wouldn’t have predicted the things that caused it. It’s not as though somebody went out and created a huge deficit because they like deficits. You’ve got the business of having to shore up the financial system, because the financial system is central to the whole, and because the government has a major responsibility for the nation’s finances, in terms of the Federal Reserve, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Treasury, regulatory authority over the financial sector, the value of the dollar and so forth.
REICHMANN: People think that the administration didn’t see it coming, and they want to know why?
CHENEY: Well, I don’t know that anybody did.
REICHMANN: But why, why didn’t you see such a huge downfall in the economy coming?
CHENEY: I suppose because nobody anywhere was smart enough to figure that out. There may have been a few people who figured it out. But when I look back on it, I think a lot of what happened financially had to do with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, that those were programs that were put in place by the federal government, produced subprime mortgages and mortgage-backed securities, and were invested in on a global basis.
REICHMANN: I mean, I know you asked the Congress for reform on that and they didn’t act.
CHENEY: They did not.
REICHMANN: But I mean, we can’t really blame the whole debacle on the fact that there was no Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac reform.
CHENEY: No, but I think you can with the whole concept with mortgage-backed securities that were developed, where the old relationship between borrower and lender broke down, and all of those mortgages were packaged, some good viable instruments, others were questionable in terms of their repayment.
And things happened in the financial community, and I’m not an expert on it, but I think things happened in the financial community that created a situation in which, for example, the five-major investment banks that existed a year ago were gone, or fundamentally transformed themselves. And it’s not just a U.S. problem, this isn’t something that happened only in Washington and New York, this is in fact, a global problem.
REICHMANN: No, but it started here. And I think — CHENEY: Did you see it coming? (Laughter.)
REICHMANN: I wasn’t responsible for seeing it coming.
CHENEY: Now, what my point is that I don’t think anybody saw it coming.
Robert Reich's Blog
The stimulus plan will create jobs repairing and upgrading the nation's roads, bridges, ports, levees, water and sewage system, public-transit systems, electricity grid, and schools. And it will kick-start alternative, non-fossil based sources of energy (wind, solar, geothermal, and so on); new health-care information systems; and universal broadband Internet access.
It's a two-fer: lots of new jobs, and investments in the nation's future productivity.
But if there aren't enough skilled professionals to do the jobs involving new technologies, the stimulus will just increase the wages of the professionals who already have the right skills rather than generate many new jobs in these fields. And if construction jobs go mainly to white males who already dominate the construction trades, many people who need jobs the most -- women, minorities, and the poor and long-term unemployed -- will be shut out.
What to do? There's no easy solution to either dilemma. But there's no reason to think about "green jobs" as simply high-tech. Many low-income and low-skilled workers -- women as well as men -- could be put directly to work providing homes and businesses with more efficient and renewable heating, lighting, cooling, and refrigeration systems; installing solar panels and efficient photovoltaic systems; rehabilitating and renovating old properties, and improving recycling systems. "Green Jobs Corps" teams could be trained to evaluate and advise homeowners and businesses on these and other means of conserving energy.
People can be trained relatively quickly for these sorts of jobs, as well as many infrastructure j0bs generated by the stimulus -- installing new pipes for water and sewage systems, repairing and upgrading equipment, basic construction -- but contractors have to be nudged both to provide the training and to do the hiring.
I'd suggest that all contracts entered into with stimulus funds require contractors to provide at least 20 percent of jobs to the long-term unemployed and to people withincomes at or below 200 percent of the federal poverty level. And at least 2 percent of project funds should be allocated to such training. In addition, advantage should be taken of buildings trades apprenticeships -- wich must be fully available to women and minorities.
By Kenneth T. Walsh - U.S. News & World Report
In his final days as president, Bush remains very polarizing
In his final days as president, George W. Bush remains an extraordinarily divisive figure. My last column, which focused on Bush's current moves toward outreach, caused such a reaction—pro and con—that it seems worth examining, one last time, what it is about this man that generates such scorn on the one side and such devotion on the other.
The column discussed how Bush was acting in a very gracious and cooperative manner toward President-elect Barack Obama, in contrast to the harsh and rancorous tone that Bush helped to foster in Washington over the past eight years. That piece generated nearly 200 comments on our website. Few took a middle ground.
Bush inadvertently stirred up the divisions again on January 7 when he hosted Obama, along with former Presidents Jimmy Carter, George H. W. Bush, and Bill Clinton, at the White House. By all accounts, this ultimate power lunch was marked by goodwill and good cheer, but many of Bush's critics said it was too little, too late.
A new CNN-Opinion Research Corp. poll found that only 27 percent of Americans approve of Bush's job performance. And such ratings have caused intense frustration in the president's inner circle. A senior White House official sent me an E-mail arguing that Bush's achievements aren't being properly recognized. "I just read your piece about the president's lack of reaching out to Dems early on in the administration (before the '08 election)," the adviser wrote. "I disagree—and don't think it's possible for any president to have passed as much legislation as the President has if he didn't have that bipartisan support, even on the most controversial issues, like FISA reform. But the one thing that burns me up about this criticism of the President is that he has never once personally attacked any of them—and yet, they get away with calling him a liar, a thief, and a war criminal. I think that if there's criticism for the tone in Washington that we share some of the blame, but not all of it—the most vitriolic and hateful things were said openly about him, and he never rose to the bait. Just something to keep in mind for the future in case you continue to write about this in the future—thanks for hearing me out."
Well said. But this adviser's defense, however heartfelt, does not explain why Bush has generated such intense reactions for so long. Based on the outpouring of comments on the U.S. News website, the pro-Bush side generally cites his character, his willingness to stick to his guns no matter how much he is criticized, and his success in keeping the country safe from major terrorist attacks since 9/11. The anti-Bush group argues that most of his major policies have failed, that people trusted him but he let them down, especially in the Iraq war, and that has been too arbitrary and inflexible.
On the plus side, John Skookum of AZ, a Bush fan, wrote: "Good for you, Mr. Bush. What a change from the open contempt that the Clinton White House treated you with during the previous transition. You're going to be another Harry Truman. Reviled in office, and revered in retrospect. Well done, sir. Enjoy your retirement."Janis Moakler of ME wrote: "Only the maniacal 'Bush haters' can deny the good qualities about this president." Mike of NJ added: "The lack of reality necessary to be a Democrat is amazing. If America so disgusts the left, get the heck out. NOW."
On the anti-Bush side, Angusr of CA wrote, "Of course he is changing his colors. He does not want to be indicted for war crimes." Added "of CA": "President Bush's selection of a running mate nine years ago sent a shock wave through those of us who have followed Dick Cheney throughout the last 30-plus years. It is no surprise to me that President Bush destroyed the nation's resolve, economy, and status throughout the world." And a reader in Ohio wrote, "Bush is still an idiot."
Expressing a more balanced view—a rare stance in assessing Bush—was Tony L of NY. "Yes," he said, "Bush was a horrible president who was unwavering in his political stance, even when wrong. Yes, he is a respectful man of good character. The possibility that both assessments could be true is something his detractors have never been able to accept. Just because someone doesn't agree with you or your views doesn't make him a bad person."
In recent years, Republican Ronald Reagan also was a polarizing figure, as was Democrat Bill Clinton. But Bush appears to have divided America at least as much as they did, and largely because he was such a decisive person. It was his own choices that, by and large, led to his polarizing impact, not fate or circumstances beyond his control. One can only hope that Barack Obama, when he takes office on January 20, can somehow get past the animosities and vengefulness of the past and move toward a more harmonious era.
REUTERS/Roger Benavides
By Robert Fisk - The Independent (UK) - TruthDig
So once again, Israel has opened the gates of hell to the Palestinians. Forty civilian refugees dead in a United Nations school, three more in another. Not bad for a night’s work in Gaza by the army that believes in “purity of arms”. But why should we be surprised?
Have we forgotten the 17,500 dead—almost all civilians, most of them children and women—in Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon; the 1,700 Palestinian civilian dead in the Sabra-Chatila massacre; the 1996 Qana massacre of 106 Lebanese civilian refugees, more than half of them children, at a UN base; the massacre of the Marwahin refugees who were ordered from their homes by the Israelis in 2006 then slaughtered by an Israeli helicopter crew; the 1,000 dead of that same 2006 bombardment and Lebanese invasion, almost all of them civilians?
What is amazing is that so many Western leaders, so many presidents and prime ministers and, I fear, so many editors and journalists, bought the old lie; that Israelis take such great care to avoid civilian casualties. “Israel makes every possible effort to avoid civilian casualties,” yet another Israeli ambassador said only hours before the Gaza massacre. And every president and prime minister who repeated this mendacity as an excuse to avoid a ceasefire has the blood of last night’s butchery on their hands. Had George Bush had the courage to demand an immediate ceasefire 48 hours earlier, those 40 civilians, the old and the women and children, would be alive.
What happened was not just shameful. It was a disgrace. Would war crime be too strong a description? For that is what we would call this atrocity if it had been committed by Hamas. So a war crime, I’m afraid, it was. After covering so many mass murders by the armies of the Middle East—by Syrian troops, by Iraqi troops, by Iranian troops, by Israeli troops—I suppose cynicism should be my reaction. But Israel claims it is fighting our war against “international terror”. The Israelis claim they are fighting in Gaza for us, for our Western ideals, for our security, for our safety, by our standards. And so we are also complicit in the savagery now being visited upon Gaza.
I’ve reported the excuses the Israeli army has served up in the past for these outrages. Since they may well be reheated in the coming hours, here are some of them: that the Palestinians killed their own refugees, that the Palestinians dug up bodies from cemeteries and planted them in the ruins, that ultimately the Palestinians are to blame because they supported an armed faction, or because armed Palestinians deliberately used the innocent refugees as cover.
The Sabra and Chatila massacre was committed by Israel’s right-wing Lebanese Phalangist allies while Israeli troops, as Israel’s own commission of inquiry revealed, watched for 48 hours and did nothing. When Israel was blamed, Menachem Begin’s government accused the world of a blood libel. After Israeli artillery had fired shells into the UN base at Qana in 1996, the Israelis claimed that Hizbollah gunmen were also sheltering in the base. It was a lie. The more than 1,000 dead of 2006—a war started when Hizbollah captured two Israeli soldiers on the border—were simply dismissed as the responsibility of the Hizbollah. Israel claimed the bodies of children killed in a second Qana massacre may have been taken from a graveyard. It was another lie. The Marwahin massacre was never excused. The people of the village were ordered to flee, obeyed Israeli orders and were then attacked by an Israeli gunship. The refugees took their children and stood them around the truck in which they were travelling so that Israeli pilots would see they were innocents. Then the Israeli helicopter mowed them down at close range. Only two survived, by playing dead. Israel didn’t even apologise.
Twelve years earlier, another Israeli helicopter attacked an ambulance carrying civilians from a neighbouring village—again after they were ordered to leave by Israel—and killed three children and two women. The Israelis claimed that a Hizbollah fighter was in the ambulance. It was untrue. I covered all these atrocities, I investigated them all, talked to the survivors. So did a number of my colleagues. Our fate, of course, was that most slanderous of libels: we were accused of being anti-Semitic.
And I write the following without the slightest doubt: we’ll hear all these scandalous fabrications again. We’ll have the Hamas-to-blame lie—heaven knows, there is enough to blame them for without adding this crime—and we may well have the bodies-from-the-cemetery lie and we’ll almost certainly have the Hamas-was-in-the-UN-school lie and we will very definitely have the anti-Semitism lie. And our leaders will huff and puff and remind the world that Hamas originally broke the ceasefire. It didn’t. Israel broke it, first on 4 November when its bombardment killed six Palestinians in Gaza and again on 17 November when another bombardment killed four more Palestinians.
Yes, Israelis deserve security. Twenty Israelis dead in 10 years around Gaza is a grim figure indeed. But 600 Palestinians dead in just over a week, thousands over the years since 1948—when the Israeli massacre at Deir Yassin helped to kick-start the flight of Palestinians from that part of Palestine that was to become Israel— is on a quite different scale. This recalls not a normal Middle East bloodletting but an atrocity on the level of the Balkan wars of the 1990s. And of course, when an Arab bestirs himself with unrestrained fury and takes out his incendiary, blind anger on the West, we will say it has nothing to do with us. Why do they hate us, we will ask? But let us not say we do not know the answer.
By BILL WARD- Minneapolis Star Tribune
Ice-fishing houses are getting a little fancier, but the basic goal is unchanged.
Bob Sonenstahl is pretty sure he knows what fate awaits the thieves preying on Lake Minnetonka ice-fishing houses.
"What you're gonna end up with is four kids in the hospital and 40 people standing around with bruised knuckles, and nobody's seen nothing," said Sonenstahl, owner of Wayzata Bait & Tackle. "The fishermen will just take care of it; they won't even call the cops."
Last week's thefts from a dozen edifices near Excelsior are just the tip of the ice-house berg; break-ins are rampant in the land of 100,000-plus winter fishing structures. The combination of spiffed-up ice-fishing houses -- a flat-screen TV was among the items purloined early Wednesday on Lake Minnetonka -- and a sputtering economy are major motivating factors.
"Typically, we have problems up in this area every year," said Rich Robinson, owner of Mike's Bait on 8 in Forest Lake. "In the past, it's typically been kids screwing around, trying to get some new fishing gear. But with the economy being bad, I can see it being anybody."
Ice palaces used to be the sole province of the St. Paul Winter Carnival. Nowadays many of the fishing shelters on local lakes -- called "ice houses" by some, "fish houses" by others and "dumps where guys go to get outta the house" by more than a few -- cost more than a used car. Even the more humble part-time abodes often contain expensive toys, from surround-sound systems to Aqua-Vu underwater cameras and four-stroke augers.
These stocked mini-RVs are a far cry from the ice-fishing archetype: "Grumpy Old Men"-like folks perched on overturned buckets who look more than a little like they're using the lavatory.
"You'll see some of them with DirectTV, great stereos," said Robbie Pieper of Maple Grove, who was fishing inside and playing with his dogs outside his comfy ice house Friday at Carson's Bay on Lake Minnetonka. "A lot of guys come out to watch the game and put a couple of tips in the water, just trying to make it like home."
Many of Prior Lake's better-appointed ice houses are home, or at least second homes for recent retirees and construction workers who have the winter off, said Prior Lake Bait and Tackle manager Tom Pushcar.
"They'll spend long stretches out here, several days at a time. They have nice stoves, surround-sound TV and some of 'em have bathrooms. There's no plumbing, of course," said Pushcar, laughing. "I've been here three years, and I've definitely seen the ice houses getting nicer."
Neighborhood watch
With more than 300 houses on the north end of Prior Lake, many of them clustered in "suburbs," Pushcar said, there's less chance of crime because there's usually someone around. The Lake Minnetonka break-ins took place in a secluded area near Big Island in the wee hours Wednesday.
Among the victims were Minnetonka High School student Kevin Fink, who with three friends had built an ice house last fall -- and mounted a 14-inch Panasonic flat-screen TV on the wall. "We spent a lot of time and thousands of dollars doing this," said Fink Friday afternoon, as he was headed back to the ice. "They broke the window and just ripped the TV and a mounted radio out of the wall."
Fink said he was impressed that the Hennepin County Water Patrol sent out a crime-lab team and hopeful that the perpetrators would be caught. The sheriff's office has received a few tips and is increasing patrols on Lake Minnetonka, said spokeswoman Lisa Kiava.
The best hope might lie not with the constabulary but rather the fraternity of ice anglers who make our lakes such beehives of activity for several months every winter.
"Hey, it's winter in Minnesota, you gotta do something. That honey-do list, you can only do so much," said Kevin Kvam of Minnetonka, inside his toasty, modest ice house on Gideon's Bay, about a mile from the scene of the crimes. "Fishermen, they're all like one big family. They're gonna get [the thieves] and they're gonna want to know where the gear is. It's not gonna be pretty."
Still, we're far from the days, recalled by Wayzata Bait & Tackle' Sonenstahl, when the occasional ice-house owner "would mount a shotgun on a chair and run it through a pulley system, and if someone pushed that door, it would blow a hole in 'em."
Forest Lake's Robinson, though, might have the approach that best combines Midwestern practicality and Minnesota civility.
"If I caught somebody stealing my stuff, I wouldn't call the cops," said Robinson. "I'd take their shoes and socks and make them walk home."
Minneapolis City Pages
It's the battle of opinions these days in the race for the Minnesota U.S. Senate seat. While a majority of Minnesotans believe the recount was fair and a majority of the mainstream media has accepted that fact, there are some out there still holding true to Norm Coleman's vital talking points.
In the latest Wall Street Journal opinion piece, Kimberley Strassel suggests that Franken is "manipulating" his way through the Minnesota election system to pull out the win. Please, prove it.
And in a hilarious, and very honest piece over at Salon, Joe Conason tells everyone to prove he stole the election or shut your trap. The bickering continues.
More from the WSJ piece:
Mr. Franken was also created out of scandal -- though, fortunately for him, the type that is today considered politics-as-usual. Mr. Franken has been manipulating the socks off the Minnesota system, turning what had been a 700-plus vote lead for Mr. Coleman into a 225-vote lead for himself. This was primarily accomplished by litigating back to life absentee votes that had been rejected on Election Day.
It was not so much a recount as a one-sided do-over. But since it took place behind the scenes, and since the comedian loosed the standard Democratic cry of "let every vote count," nobody got upset.
Ah yes, our favorite type of opinion pieces. Those that have no evidence to support their claim.
Unfortunately Strassel didn't do her research because the recount was amazingly transparent. It was conducted by a bipartisan state Canvassing Board that voted unanimously 95 percent of the time even on the most important issues. Coleman's campaign even trusted the Canvassing Board from the onset. All of the proceedings were streaming live on The UpTake for anyone interested in watching. And any interested resident could visit the county recount centers to watch the campaigns challenge ballots.
Oh, and "litigating back to life" those absentee ballots? She must not have realized that any rejected absentee ballot that was counted in the race was approved by both campaigns based on a Minnesota Supreme Court decision.
Salon comes to the rescue with a spot-on piece telling all these conspiracy theorists to shut up.
If Al Franken were not a longtime public figure -- and thus severely handicapped by American jurisprudence -- he could file a powerful complaint for libel or slander against several of the most prominent wingnuts in the United States. From Rush Limbaugh to Bill O'Reilly to Richard Mellon Scaife, a chorus of familiar voices is loudly defaming the Democrat whose razor-thin win in the Minnesota Senate race will now be tested in that state's courts. Ever since Election Day, on radio and television, on the Internet and in print, they've screamed that Franken is stealing, rigging, pilfering, scamming, thieving and cheating his way to victory.
These media figures, some of whom occasionally pretend to be journalists, have spewed such accusations repeatedly, without offering any proof whatsoever -- in plain contradiction of the available facts. Not only is there no evidence that Franken or his campaign "cheated" in any way during the election or the recount, but there is ample reason to believe that the entire process was fair, balanced and free from partisan taint.
(State Canvassing Board) decisions against Coleman, which led to Franken's provisional victory by 255 votes, were unanimous. It is this group, composed of distinguished judges with spotless reputations, whose hard work has been described in odious terms by the likes of Morris, Limbaugh and Ann Coulter.
REUTERS/Yiorgos Karahalis
By Jia-Rui Chong - Los Angeles Times
There were 267 quakes of magnitude 3 or greater in 2008, up from 125 in 2007. Seismologists say such clusters could indicate a bigger temblor to come -- but then again, maybe not.
Do you think the ground feels a little shakier these days? It's not your imagination.
Last year saw a significant increase in the number of temblors of magnitude 3.0 or greater in Southern California and the northern portion of Baja California, according to data from Caltech and the U.S. Geological Survey.
The region recorded 267 shakers with magnitudes of 3.0 and above last year, compared with 125 in 2007. Seismologists said 2008 had the highest number of such quakes of any year since 1999.
What experts don't know is whether the quake cluster is a harbinger of bigger quakes to come. The 1990s was considered a seismically active decade in Southern California, producing the magnitude 7.3 Landers quake in 1992 and the destructive Northridge temblor in 1994. During the quake cluster of 1999, the region was hit by the magnitude 7.1 Hector Mine temblor in the desert and several sizable aftershocks. There were 828 quakes with magnitudes of 3.0 and above that year.
Lucile Jones, a seismologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, said that although experts can't predict future quake activity, it appears Southern California is waking up from a steep drop-off in seismic activity so far this decade.
"It looks more like we're returning to a more normal rate," she said. "The last 15 years was one of the quietest times we've had in terms of [magnitude] 3's, 4's and 5's."
But the shift underscores one of the more perplexing elements of seismology: That quakes tend to happen in clusters, but not in any patterns that are easy to understand.
The clusters often come and go cyclically, but it's not clear whether they are laying the groundwork for a major quake.
"The analogy is the weather in California," said Caltech seismologist Kate Hutton. "Some years are rainy and some years are completely dry. With earthquakes, they never go away completely, but they do clump together in time, and we don't know why."
Since the end of November, clusters of earthquakes ranging from magnitude 3.0 to 5.1 have bloomed in areas near Barstow, Trona and two areas of Baja California not far from Calexico. Four such quakes, which are considered light to moderate, have occurred so far this year.
The current uptick has not included any major quakes, but a number of the temblors have been felt across the region, including Thursday's magnitude 4.5 San Bernardino shaker.
There is some evidence that rising seismic activity can be a precusor to larger temblors, earthquake scientists say. A classic example is the earthquake that devastated San Francisco in 1906, judged to have a magnitude of about 7.8.
There was a crescendo of quakes in the Bay Area of magnitudes 4, 5 and 6 in the decades leading up to the 1906 earthquake on the San Andreas fault, said James Dolan, a professor of earth sciences at USC. Another crescendo in the Bay Area began in the 1950s, peaking with 1989's magnitude 6.9 earthquake at Loma Prieta.
"If we saw this pattern repeating here over the next five or 10 years with a gradual crescendo and increase in small quakes, that would be extremely interesting," Dolan said. "There's certainly nothing to be alarmed about in the short term."
The Bay Area's major faults tend to run parallel to each other, but Los Angeles has so many faults of different sizes and orientations that this crescendo model may not apply very well, he cautioned.
"This is a very structurally complicated part of the world," he said. "There are dozens of big faults and hundreds of little ones capable of generating a magnitude 3 quake."
Thursday's quake was particularly notable for scientists because it occurred so close to the San Jacinto and San Andreas faults. Although quakes of that size do not tend to ripple out far from the epicenter, the San Bernardino quake could have changed stress patterns on two of the faults capable of producing a large earthquake, Dolan said.
Of last year's quake cluster, the largest occurred July 29 in Chino Hills, with a magnitude of 5.4. Only minor injuries and damage occurred, but it was the largest quake in Southern California since the Hector Mine quake and its aftershocks.
With the lull in seismic activity, earthquake experts worried that preparedness efforts had dragged, and Hutton and Jones used the interest in the Chino Hills quake to remind locals about earthquake hazards.
Residents of the seismic hotspots have been trying to take the latest temblors in stride. Mirna Velasquez, a 45-year-old receptionist at a doctor's office in Calexico, said she has felt many of the 16 jolts of magnitude 3 or greater since November.
"There's usually a rumbling and then a shaking," Velasquez said Thursday. "If we're at work, we just keep on working and make sure the patients are OK. If I'm at home, I make sure the big-screen TV doesn't fall."
She remembers being awakened by a quake on Christmas morning and hearing her husband exclaim, "Oh my God!" He is usually home only every other weekend because he works in Los Angeles. Velasquez said she was surprised, but immediately turned to soothing her husband.
"He doesn't experience them as much as we do," she said. "I tried to calm him down."
By VERENA DOBNIK - Excite News
NEW YORK (AP) - A 140-year-old lobster once destined for a dinner plate received the gift of life Friday from a Park Avenue seafood restaurant.
George, the 20-pound supercentenarian crustacean, was freed by City Crab and Seafood in New York City.
"We applaud the folks at City Crab and Seafood for their compassionate decision to allow this noble old-timer to live out his days in freedom and peace," said Ingrid E. Newkirk, president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.
PETA spokesman Michael McGraw said the group asked City Crab to return George to the Atlantic Ocean after a diner saw him at the restaurant, where steamed Maine lobster sells for $27 per pound. George had been caught off Newfoundland, Canada and lived in the tank for about 10 days before his release.
Some scientists estimate lobsters can live to be more than 100 years old. PETA and the restaurant guessed George's age at about 140, using a rule of thumb based on the creature's weight.
He was to be released Saturday near Kennebunkport, Maine, in an area where lobster trapping is forbidden.
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The Eyes Have It
You can improve your putting by proper use of your eyes during each stage of the putt; here’s how...
Eyes during setup: • When you set up to stroke a putt, one of the first things you must do is position your eyes over the golf ball and over your target line. Doing this will give you the best chance to start the ball headed on the target line.
• To help position your eyes over the ball, most putter heads have a top surface split into two separate elevations, with an indicator placed on each elevation. When used correctly, this mechanism ensures your eyes are directly over the ball.
• If your head/eyes drift outside or inside of the ball, the putter’s bi-level alignment indicators will no longer match up to each other, immediately indicating your eyes are not directly over the ball and target line. For example, if your putter has two indicator lines on the upper level and an indicator on the bottom level, you know your eyes are positioned correctly over the ball and target line when the indicator on the lower level appears between the two lines on the upper level.
Eyes during the stroke:
• Keep your eyes on the ball and over the target line during the stroke.
Eyes after contact:
• Keep your eyes over the target line during the stroke. If you have to peek toward the hole, try your best to only swivel your head down the target line rather then lifting your head, as this will change your spine angle and move your head off the target line.
• Try your best to keep your eyes over the target line by holding your focus on the grass that was under the ball, even long after contact. You’re not going to improve the putt by watching it roll, so don’t be in a rush to look up.
The Key to Eliminating Your Slice
Making a proper “full shoulder turn” is one of the most important fundamentals of the golf swing, yet it's one of the most common mistakes made by golfers; and why so many have slice problems. A proper shoulder turn is when you rotate the shoulders so the leading shoulder comes under your chin, without letting your hips turn much at all. Below we explain the ways this eliminates the slice:
• If your shoulder rotation is stopped too early, your arms will tend to continue by fling across the target line and causing an outside-to-inside swing path, resulting in the dreaded banana-ball. A full shoulder turn will help the club fall “on plane”, which greatly reduces the chance of cutting across the target line and slicing the golf ball.
• A full shoulder turn will promote proper weight shift. Remember too keep your lower body from moving laterally. Do not confuse the full shoulder turn as meaning you must get the club back to parallel at the top of the swing. Many great golfers have a compact swing that comes up far short of parallel at the top, but all great golfers take a full shoulder turn when executing a full shot.
• A full shoulder turn will bring you to the top of the swing and assist in getting the hands and arms into proper position.
• Keep your chin up and off your chest so the leading shoulder can rotate and pass under the chin. If the shoulder hits your chin, it will cut the shoulder rotation short and encourage a slice.
• When a golfer does not utilize a full shoulder turn, they tend to rely more on the small muscles (hands and arms) to swing the golf club. This leads to inconsistent ball striking and shots prone to slicing. With a full shoulder turn, you will use more of your big muscles, which are much more consistent, and help you square the club face and avoid a slice. Don’t be in a rush; taking the club back slow will help you to finish the back swing with a full shoulder turn. More body, less arms.
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