Yesterday not even 2% of them, the fringe, the super ultra right, the extremists had a get together to spread rumors and lies. They did that mostly by holding signs proclaiming their rumors and lies. Some got up and talked, so the rumors and lies didn’t seem like rumors and lies. And after weeks of there most prolific leaders of the rumors and lies, rush , beck, hannity, coulter, savage, billo sending out floods of e-mails, and begging the super-ultra-extremist-fringe to show up and hold the signs, I am not surprised that they came, held the signs, and listened to, and spread the lies.

But since when do we bend, and make policy according to what .00025% of Americans think?

A man who had long been vocal in his opposition to abortion was shot to death Friday morning while staging an anti-abortion protest outside a Michigan high school, authorities said.

The man, James Pouillon, 63, was shot at 7:20 a.m. as he stood outside Owosso High School in Owosso, a city of fewer than 15,000 people 90 miles northwest of Detroit, the authorities said. By Friday afternoon, the police said they had in custody a suspect in the shooting, and in a second fatal shooting nearby, not far from the school.

Officials are investigating whether Mr. Pouillon, who had been involved in anti-abortion efforts for decades, was singled out because of those views. Local newspapers reported that he had been carrying photographs of fetuses outside the school shortly before the shooting.

Prosecutors said the suspect, who is 33, singled out Mr. Pouillon because he disapproved of the victim’s protests in front of children at the school.

“There was some displeasure with how open he was,” said Sara Edwards, the chief assistant prosecutor for Shiawassee County. “He tended to carry big signs with very graphic pictures of fetuses.”

Ms. Edwards said the suspect would likely be charged later Friday.

At a news conference, the Owosso police said several shots were fired at Mr. Pouillon from a passing car. After a witness provided the car’s license plate number, the police arrested the suspect at his home. The authorities did not immediately identified him.

The police said the suspect told them that he had been involved in another shooting Friday at a gravel company, Fuoss Gravel, in nearby Owosso Township. The company’s owner, Mike Fuoss, 61, was found dead in his office around 8 a.m.

Prosecutors said Mr. Fuoss was not involved in abortion protests and had no link to Mr. Pouillon. The suspect was angry at him for another reason, Ms. Edwards said.

The Owosso School District remained on lockdown until the suspect was arrested, officials said. Parents were notified about the shooting and were permitted to take students home.

The leader of the US House of Representatives has said that there is little support among Americans and politicians for sending more US troops to Afghanistan.

Nancy Pelosi, the speaker in the Democrat-controlled lower house of congress, made the comment on Thursday, as the administration of President Barack Obama considers whether to send more soldiers to fight the Taliban.

“I don’t think there’s a great deal of support for sending more troops to Afghanistan in the country or in the congress,” Pelosi said.

Pelosi is the most senior Democrat to suggest that any move by the White House or Pentagon to send more troops to Afghanistan may face stern opposition in the legislature.

Military assessment

General Stanley McChrystal, the commander of US and Nato forces in Afghanistan, last week sent an assessment of the military situation in the country to the White House.

The classified report does not ask for extra troops to be deployed to Afghanistan but analysts predict that a subsequent report could formally call for more soldiers to be sent to the battlefield.

A briefing on McChrystal’s report has take place this week, administration officials have said, but Pelosi said she does not expects to be briefed until next week.
At least 68,000 US troops will be stationed in Afghanistan by the end of the year, following an order by Obama to send 21,000 more soldiers to the country.

Politicians in the House and senate have said that they require compelling evidence that an influx of more troops to Afghanistan will help overcome fighters linked to the Taliban and al-Qaeda.

Opposition fear

While some officials say that sending more troops to Afghanistan will help overcome the resurgent opposition forces, others say that an overly large US presence will be seen by Afghans as an occupying force.

Fifty-one US soldiers died in attacks across Afghanistan in August, making it the most deadly month for US troops in the country since they invaded in October 2001.

Obama’s administration has called on legislators to assist in formulating a list of benchmarks that the government could then use to measure the efficacy of US strategy in Afghanistan and neighbouring Pakistan, where the Taliban and al-Qaeda have bases.

Pelosi said she was “more interested” in those recommendations, which are due in two weeks, than in the McChrystal report.

A decision on whether to deploy more soldiers to Afghanistan is unlikely to be made for several weeks, administration officials have said.

In September 2008, an appellate court composed of three judges appointed by both Democratic and Republican presidents ordered the government to disclose photographs depicting detainees being abused in US custody.

The court rejected as too speculative an argument by the administration of George Bush, the former US president, that the pictures should be suppressed in order to prevent anti-US sentiment and protect US soldiers from any violence that might be inflamed by their release.

Now, a year later, and despite the court’s ruling, - and much to our profound disappointment at the American Civil Liberties Union - Barack Obama, the US president, has vowed to continue to suppress the photos.

The president should reverse course and embrace transparency.

As the appellate court recognises: “There is a significant public interest in the disclosure of these photographs.”

They are critical to a full and informed understanding of the interrogation and detention policies of the Bush administration.

Rogue soldiers

Releasing the pictures to the public would serve to rebuke the myth, perpetuated by the Bush administration and recently repeated by Obama himself, that rogue soldiers are responsible for the abuse.

And, perhaps most importantly, the pictures would illustrate in ways no words could the consequences of the Bush administration’s unlawful detention and interrogation regime.

Pictures, especially controversial ones, have a unique ability to transform public debate.

It was the video of the Rodney King beating by police in 1991, for example, that exposed racial tensions in Los Angeles.

It was the images of the Twin Towers burning and collapsing in New York that conveyed to the country, and the world, the unspeakable horrors of that day in a way words never could.

And it was the iconic picture of a man, hooded, wired and balanced on a cardboard box at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, that signalled to our nation that our counter-terrorism policies had strayed far from our core values.

Just weeks ago, the president himself recognised the transformative power of pictures.

While addressing the post-election unrest in Iran, he noted that he had seen the amateur video of an Iranian woman – Neda – dying after being shot in the chest.

The video has come to symbolise Iran’s oppressive response to recent political protest.

President Obama was moved by what he saw: “It’s heartbreaking. And I think that anybody who sees it knows that there’s something fundamentally unjust about that.”

Inflame anti-US sentiment?

To the president, however, there is apparently a difference between images of America’s and other countries’ abuse.

Releasing the photographs would, he says, “inflame anti-American opinion and put our troops in greater danger”.
These photos would certainly be disturbing and no one wants to endanger our troops.

But the president is wrong to suppress the images.

In rejecting the same argument put forward by the Bush administration, the appellate court noted that the risk that the release of the photographs would endanger our troops is “speculative” and the possibility that it would endanger any particular solider is “minuscule”.

The court’s analysis should sound familiar, because it was Obama himself who declared on his second day in office that information should not be suppressed based on “speculative or abstract fears”.

The more fundamental problem with the president’s rationale, however, is that it is unbounded and would justify the greatest suppression of the worst governmental wrongdoing.

To prevent inflaming anti-American opinion, the government would have to suppress all evidence of torture and any discussion of Guantanamo Bay or Abu Ghraib.

That anti-democratic equation, the greatest suppression of the worst misconduct, would forever keep the public in the dark about the facts most important to informed decision-making.

Obama also argued that the images of abuse “would not add any additional benefit” to the debate about detainee treatment.

In the same statement, however, he repeated the myth that the abuse of detainees was aberrational and carried out by rogue soldiers.

‘Expose policy-makers’

To the contrary, the images would expose the abuse as a result of policies approved at the highest levels of government, in part because they document abuse at locations other than Abu Ghraib.

In that respect, the photos would advance the debate, which thus far has failed to sufficiently focus on high-level accountability and which is still permeated by the inaccurate “bad apple” explanation.

To date, the only individuals held accountable for unlawful abuse are low-level implementers of policies, not the policy-makers themselves.

Of course, the biggest political consideration for the president might be that transparency and accountability march hand in hand.

As more and more evidence of executive excess under the Bush administration amasses, calls for some form of accountability will become louder and more resolute.

Obama’s apparent desire to sidestep this thorny issue ignores the need for, and inevitability of, full transparency and accountability.

In America, nothing remains a secret forever, and the sooner we investigate and publicly acknowledge past abuses, the safer, freer and stronger we will be as a nation.

An explosion at a coal mine in China’s central Henan province has killed at least 35 workers and left another 44 miners trapped, officials have said.

The country’s work safety watchdog said the pre-dawn explosion occurred at Xinhua No 4 pit in Pingdingshan city on Tuesday.

The State Administration of Work Safety in a statement on its website said 14 of the 93 men who were working underground at the time of the blast managed to escape.

It did not say what caused the explosion.

China’s mines are the deadliest in the world, with unregulated mines accounting for almost 80 per cent of the country’s 16,000 mines.

An average of 13 workers are killed every day in the country, with most accidents blamed on lax safety standards and a rush to feed demand from a robust economy.

Despite pledges by the Chinese government to improve safety, regulations are poorly enforced while the country’s soaring demand for energy and resources often means many unsafe mines continue to operate.

In 2008 alone more than 3,000 people died in coal mine accidents across China.

CINCINNATI — President Barack Obama is asking union men and women to help him resuscitate the struggling economy, saying “a strong labor movement is part of a strong economy.”

Obama traveled to Cincinnati Monday to speak to thousands of union members at a picnic, using the occasion to thank organized labor for its strong support and pledging that he will help to re-energize the Labor Department on behalf of working people.

He said the people who now run the agency realize that it’s “not the Department of Management.”

At the same time, Obama repeated that he’s not comfortable with the 9.7 percent national jobless rate and said “we’ve still got a long way to go. So we will not rest. We will not let up.”

The nation’s largest labor union and some allied Democrats are pushing a new tax that would hit big investment firms such as Goldman Sachs reaping billions of dollars in profits while the rest of the economy sputters.

The AFL-CIO, one of the Democratic Party’s most powerful allies, would like to assess a small tax — about a tenth of a percent — on every stock transaction.

Small and medium-sized investors would hardly notice such a tax, but major trading firms, such as Goldman, which reported $3.44 billion in profits during the second quarter of 2009, may see this as a significant threat to their profits.

“It would have two benefits, raise a lot of revenue and discourage speculative financial activity,” said Thea Lee, policy director at the AFL-CIO.

“The big disadvantage of most taxes is that they discourage some really productive activity,” she said. “This would discourage numerous financial transactions. People flip their assets several times in an hour or a day. They make money but does it really add to the productive base of the United States?”

Lee said that taxing every stock transaction a tenth of a percent could raise between $50 billion and $100 billion per year, which could be used to pay for infrastructure projects and other spending priorities. She said the tax could be applied nationwide or internationally.

The proposal would hit especially hard those hedge funds and large banks earning hefty profits despite the shaky economy from a practice known as high-frequency trading. High-frequency traders use powerful computers to conduct hundreds of thousands of orders in mere seconds, taking advantage of slower traders.

Only the biggest investment firms can afford to develop the technology, which delivers handsome profits at little risk. The growing popularity of the practice has contributed to the soaring volume of trades on Wall Street in recent years and, some critics argue, market volatility and rampant speculation.

High-frequency trading is estimated to earn about $20 billion in profits for the nation’s biggest investment firms, who guard the their practices zealously. Goldman Sachs, for example, has accused a former computer programmer of stealing the valuable code, launching a high-profile legal battle.

The AFL-CIO and some allied Democrats would like to cut down on the overall level of trading, or at least give the U.S. government a piece of the action, which would likely tamp down trading.

Democrats and labor officials would also like to take a bite out of Goldman’s profits. Liberals are angry the company, which immersed itself in the frenzy of speculation leading to last year’s financial collapse, is now making huge profits after accepting (and repaying) $10 billion in government aid. Goldman employees are on track to earn an average of more than $700,000 this year. 

There is also a growing realization among Obama administration officials and lawmakers that tax increases may be necessary to curb the ballooning federal deficit.

The idea of taxing financial transactions has gained some support on Capitol Hill and among senior government officials in London, a major foreign financial center.

In Congress, Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.), chairman of the Highways and Transit Transportation Subcommittee, has seized on the idea as a way to help pay for a new massive surface transportation reauthorization bill, estimated to cost $450 billion over six years.

Instead of taxing all stock transactions, as the AFL-CIO has contemplated, DeFazio wants to focus on oil-based derivatives.

At the end of July, shortly before the House broke for the August recess, DeFazio introduced legislation that would impose a 0.2 percent transaction tax on crude oil futures contracts. The legislation would tax the options for oil futures (in other words, the premium paid to have the option to buy a futures contract) at 0.5 percent.

“The tax is simple; it imposes a small burden that penalizes short-term traders for speculating on the price of oil,” DeFazio said in a statement. “This legislation exempts legitimate hedgers from the transaction tax. Since the tax is on speculation only, it deters speculation and undermines much of the crude oil price bubble.”

DeFazio estimates his proposal, which has been referred to the House Ways and Means Committee, would raise $190 billion over six years. It has 29 cosponsors.

An aide to a liberal Senate Democrat said a transaction tax seems like a good idea but did not know who might champion the cause in the upper chamber. An aide on the Senate Finance Committee was not aware of discussion of the proposal.

Taxing financial transactions has gained some momentum in Europe. Lord Adair Turner, chairman of the Financial Services Authority, Britain’s top banking regulator, voiced support for taxing financial transactions in a recent magazine interview. The French government has endorsed the idea as a way to fund development in poor countries.

The proposal to tax financial transactions is also known as a “Tobin tax,” after the late American economist and Nobel laureate James Tobin. Tobin proposed a transactions tax in the early 1970s to discourage currency speculation after the collapse of the Bretton Woods fixed-exchange-rate system.

Soldiers have clashed with opposition supporters after Ali Bongo, the son of Gabon’s long-time ruler Omar Bongo, was declared the winner of the country’s disputed presidential election.

Pierre Mamboundou, a rival of Bongo’s, was seriously wounded in the capital, Libreville.

Rioting also broke out in Port Gentil in the central African nation’s oil zone, French media reported.

Opposition supporters in Port Gentil, Gabon’s second-largest city, set fire to France’s consulate general after Bongo’s victory was announced, witnesses said.

Prisoners who had been set free or escaped from a local jail were roaming the streets and set fire to a petrol station, a resident told French state radio France Info.

“There are thousands of people. There is the opposition, but it is not just the opposition,” he said.

“Everyone is taking advantage of this, not just the prisoners.”

Tear gas fired

About 10,000 French citizens living in the country were warned by French officials to stay indoors after the rioting broke out.

“Measures are in place to ensure the security of French citizens,” Alain Joyandet, the international development minister, told the Agence France-Presse news agency.

“We have taken measures to keep them in, it is recommended to French people to stay at home.”

Security forces had earlier used tear gas to disperse hundreds of opposition supporters who had led an overnight sit-in on a square near the election commission in the capital.

Officials said on Thursday that Bongo had won the election with just over 40 per cent of the vote.

Once again, for at least the third time, Rep. Peter King (R-Seaford) has drawn attention to his considering a campaign for higher office, collected a bit of media coverage and contributions, and then decided to run for re-election to Congress. He’d have been a logical Republican choice for the race, but announced formally today what he’s been saying for the past few weeks, that if it had been Caroline Kennedy he’d have been in but not under current circumstances. This comes on the verge of the decennial Census which could cut New York’s Congressional delegation by one or two seats and perhaps threaten his district with getting chopped up in a Democratic-controlled redrawing process. But that’s a concern for another year.