A Look At Freedom's Currents

A Look At Freedom's Currents
Each time a person stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others. . .they send forth a ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance." Robert F. Kennedy

21st Century's Priority One

1) Implementation of: The Promise of New Energy Systems & Beyond Oil ___________________________________________ #1 Disolves the Problem of the ill designed "Corporism: The Systemic Disease that Destroys Civilization." through simple scientific common sense ___________________________________________ _________ Using grade school physics of both Newtonian and Nuclear models, does anyone foresee counter currents of sufficient size to minimize/change direction of the huge Tsunami roaring down on us, taking away not only our Freedom, but our Lives? Regardless if our salaries are dependant on us not knowing the inconvenient truths of reality (global warming, corporate rule, stagnant energy science) portrayed by the rare articles in the news media? I know only one - a free science, our window to Reality - that easily resolves the Foundational Problem of Quantum Physics and takes E=MC2 out of Kindergarten

Friday, March 30, 2007

65 Tornadoes in Six States Kill Four People


Time to Bunker Down, Adapt and Pray. Certainly easier than to demand science freedom which would automatically unleash wisdom, understanding and open the door to an unlimited, sustainable and prosperous future for all













March 30, 2007
65 Tornadoes in Six States Kill Four People
By CHRISTINE HAUSER
Four people were killed in Colorado, Oklahoma and Texas after 65 tornadoes swept through six states on Wednesday, officials said yesterday.
Two people died when a tornado swirled through their rural neighborhood near Elmwood, Okla., a state emergency official, Dixie Parker, said. They were identified as Vance and Barbra Woodbury, a husband and wife.
The authorities spread into Beaver County on Wednesday, warning residents to take shelter and to offer assistance, Mrs. Parker said. “There was no house left,” she said. “It was demolished, and we found them in the field. One was still alive, the husband. He passed away just before the ambulance got there.”
The tornado appeared to have cut through their house, as the closest neighbors had just uprooted trees, Mrs. Parker said.
Tornadoes also struck Illinois, Kansas and Nebraska, said Patrick Slattery of the National Weather Service, with some regions pummeled by large hailstones and heavy snowfall.
“It was a big storm, a big system,” Mr. Slattery said. “The majority of these were almost in a straight north-south line along the Kansas-Nebraska border. The effects stretched from Colorado and Wyoming ...full text

Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Income Gap Is Widening, Data Shows


Increase that productivity and multitasking our corporate lords demand as they cut more corners, jobs, pay!!! And the overworked, underpaid, under insured, vacation deprived, stuck in traffic consumer/worker slaves complied - desperately trying to qualify for credit cards to be able to afford sufficient "material goods and some luxury items of the good life", despite no time to enjoy them........THESE ARE THE SYMPTOMS & WONDERS OF A CRIPPLED SCIENCE UNDER CORPORATE CONTROL that are destroying imagination, creativity, and sanity. On to the Future! Now let's profit with corn for fuel - and if you (world) ain't got food, eat cake.

NYT March 29, 2007
Income Gap Is Widening, Data Shows
By DAVID CAY JOHNSTON
Income inequality grew significantly in 2005, with the top 1 percent of Americans — those with incomes that year of more than $348,000 — receiving their largest share of national income since 1928, analysis of newly released tax data shows.
The top 10 percent, roughly those earning more than $100,000, also reached a level of income share not seen since before the Depression.
While total reported income in the United States increased almost 9 percent in 2005, the most recent year for which such data is available, average incomes for those in the bottom 90 percent dipped slightly compared with the year before, dropping $172, or 0.6 percent.
The gains went largely to the top 1 percent, whose incomes rose to an average of more than $1.1 million each, an increase of more than $139,000, or about 14 percent.
The new data also shows that the top 300,000 Americans collectively enjoyed almost as much income as the bottom 150 million Americans. Per person, the top group received 440 times as much as the average person in the bottom half earned, nearly doubling the gap from 1980.
Prof. Emmanuel Saez, the University of California, Berkeley, economist who analyzed the Internal Revenue Service data with Prof. Thomas Piketty of the Paris School of Economics, said such growing disparities were significant in terms of social and political stability.
“If the economy is growing but only a few are enjoying the benefits, it ...full text

Saudi King Condemns U.S. Occupation of Iraq


Long time Allies deserting? I suppose the question of the exponential rise of murder and killing, including the murder and killing of women and children since the "liberation" and "occupation", does occasionally arise. The oil fields are pretty safe though.


NYT March 28, 2007
Saudi King Condemns U.S. Occupation of Iraq
By HASSAN M. FATTAH
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia told Arab leaders on Wednesday that the American occupation of Iraq is “illegal,” and he warned that unless Arab governments settle their differences, foreign powers like the United States would continue to dictate the region’s politics.
The king’s speech, at the opening of the Arab League summit meeting here, underscored growing differences between Saudi Arabia and the Bush administration as the Saudis take on a greater regional leadership role, partly at American urging. The Saudis seem to be emphasizing that they will not be beholden to the policies of their longtime ally.
The Saudis brokered a deal between the two main Palestinian factions last month but one that both Israel and the United States found deeply problematic because it added to the power of the radical group Hamas rather than to the more moderate Fatah. On Wednesday, the king called for an end to the international boycott of the new Palestinian government. The United States and Israel want the boycott continued.
In addition, King Abdullah invited President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran to Riyadh earlier this month while the Americans want him shunned. And in trying to settle the tensions in Lebanon, the Saudis seem willing to negotiate with Iran.
Last week, the Saudi king abruptly canceled his appearance at an April White House dinner planned in his honor, The Washington Post reported on Wednesday. The official reason given for the cancellation was a scheduling conflict.
Mustapha Hamarneh, director of the Center for Strategic Studies at the University of Jordan, said the Saudis are sending Washington a message. “They are telling the U.S. they need to listen to their allies rather than imposing decisions on them and always taking Israel’s side.”
In his speech on Wednesday, the king said: “In the beloved Iraq, the bloodshed is continuing under an illegal foreign occupation.. full text

Thursday, March 22, 2007

U.N.: World must share, not war over water


The water crisis stands out as significantly important because the oceans have not run dry. And we live in the 21st Century! Clean, purified, desalinated water is not being transported (using ultra modern, ‘past due’ methods and means) wherever needed solely due to One Obstacle – Energy and the stagnant science of energy evolution. This same inadequacy in energy science causing “The Trouble With Physics” (by Lee Smolin), idling the Standard Model as Physics awaits new options, is responsible for the looming lethal threats of global warming, resource wars and deadly pollution. The avenue to evolutionary new energy options became accessible in the middle 1940’s. "For the people, by the people can either demand revelations of the ‘hidden variables in science, or create a world body to “re-discover” and implement the required evolving energy systems. Evolution will not wait.
U.N.: World must share, not war over water
Population growth, and now warming, are adding to pressures
MSNBC staff and news service reports
Updated: 12:24 p.m. CT March 22, 2007

ROME - With climate change now adding to the pressures, sharing rather than warring over the world's resources of fresh water represents the "challenge of the 21st century," the United Nations said Thursday as it marked World Water Day.
"The bulk of that challenge lies in finding more effective ways to conserve, use and protect the world’s water resources," the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization said in a statement.
Already 1.1 billion people lack access to adequate clean water and, with the world's population set to grow from the current 6.5 billion to 8 billion by 2030, 1.8 billion people will face water scarcity by then, the Rome-based agency estimated.
That growing population also means that "14 percent more freshwater will need to be withdrawn for agricultural purposes in the next 30 years," the FAO stated.
FAO Director Jacques Diouf said the repercussions of not meeting the challenge would be enormous. "Water conflicts can arise in water stressed areas among local communities and between countries," he told a conference marking World Water Day.
"The lack of adequate institutional and legal instruments for water sharing exacerbates already difficult conditions. In the absence of clear and well-established rules, chaos tends to dominate and power plays ...full text

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Gore takes warming warnings to Congress


Our Lives are in "good hands" as we place our Trust in "Greedy Guts" Corporate Modus Operandi, the physical embodiment of the ancient Chinese symbol "the dragon eating its own tail".

An interesting dilemma, advancing Civilization cannot proceed without new energy systems, yet new energy systems more powerful than nukes and far simpler to develop once understood, require corresponding degrees of wisdom and understanding.




Gore takes warming warnings to Congress
Call for curbs on coal power, carbon emissions met with GOP skepticism
MSNBC staff and news service reports
Updated: 6:26 p.m. CT March 21, 2007

WASHINGTON - Al Gore spoke out on his signature issue Wednesday, telling Congress that the world faces “a true planetary emergency” unless it dramatically and immediately reduces emissions that most scientists tie to global warming.
In a return he described as emotional, the former vice president testified before House panels that it is not too late to deal with climate change “and we have everything we need to get started.”
Gore advised lawmakers to cut carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases 90 percent by 2050 to avert a crisis. Doing that, he said, will require a ban on any new coal-burning power plants — a major source of industrial carbon dioxide — that lack state-of-the-art controls to capture the gases.
‘A sense of hope’He said he foresees a revolution in small-scale electricity producers for replacing coal, likening the development to what the Internet has done for the exchange of information.
“There is a sense of hope in this country that this United States Congress will rise to the occasion and present meaningful solutions to this crisis,” he said. “Our world faces a true planetary emergency. I know the phrase sounds shrill, and I know it’s a challenge to the moral imagination.”
Gore favors a “cap-and-trade” program for the U.S. economy, not just specific sectors such as electricity or manufacturing, which would set an overall limit on warming emissions but allow industry to meet the target by trading pollution allowances.
“Trust the market, make it work for us,” he said.
Gore gained international recognition with his Oscar-winning documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth,” as perhaps the leading spokesman on dealing with global warming. At the hearing, he was flanked by cardboard boxes that he said contained some 516,000 letters calling for congressional action to counter global warming.
Skeptics question science, costsBut several Republicans sharply questioned Gore's recommendations....full text

Sunday, March 11, 2007

Harmful Warming Effects Already Here?


In Awakening to New Energy Alternatives Andrew Mount says "It is no surprise that a rise of militarism should precede the demise of the fossil fuel empire. It is the vain attempt of the 'old guard' to extend the life of a dying ideology. Rather than take proactive steps to reconstitute the existing business model, brute force is the preferred, more expedient choice." (with the current addition "Adapt to misery and death from global warming, cook up some corn ethanol, escape to Trivia, and avoid Science FUNDAMENTALS at all costs for they threaten our Corporate Power and Glory - and so THE TROUBLE WITH PHYSICS PERSISTS)

Harmful Warming Effects Already Here?
CBS WASHINGTON, March 11, 2007
(AP) The harmful effects of global warming on daily life are already showing up, and within a couple of decades hundreds of millions of people won't have enough water, top scientists will say next month at a meeting in Belgium. At the same time, tens of millions of others will be flooded out of their homes each year as the Earth reels from rising temperatures and sea levels, according to portions of a draft of an international scientific report obtained by The Associated Press. "Things are happening and happening faster than we expected," said Patricia Romero Lankao of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., one of the many co-authors of the new report. Tropical diseases like malaria will spread. By 2050, polar bears will mostly be found in zoos, their habitats gone. Pests like fire ants will thrive. For a time, food will be plentiful because of the longer growing season in northern regions. But by 2080, hundreds of millions of people could face starvation, according to the report, which is still being revised. The draft document by the authoritative Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change focuses on global warming's effects and is the second in a series of four being issued this year. Written and reviewed by more than 1,000 scientists from dozens of countries, it still must be edited by government officials. But some scientists said the overall message is not likely to change when it's issued in early April in Brussels, the same city where European Union leaders agreed this past week to drastically cut greenhouse gas emissions by 2020. Their plan will be presented to President Bush and other world leaders at a summit in June. The report offers some hope ...full text

Saturday, March 10, 2007

Crisis Looms in Mortgages

Not to worry. The sound philosophy of the prehistoric economic model and corporate structure spreading worldwide has human life, and quality of life, as its first and foremost priority - understanding full well, without human life, there would be no long term profit (historical stats may have an argument here questioning starvation, poverty, pollution, global warming, traffic nightmares, health & medical deprivation, sweatshops and so on)


NYT March 11, 2007
News Analysis
Crisis Looms in Mortgages
By GRETCHEN MORGENSON
On March 1, a Wall Street analyst at Bear Stearns wrote an upbeat report on a company that specializes in making mortgages to cash-poor homebuyers. The company, New Century Financial, had already disclosed that a growing number of borrowers were defaulting, and its stock, at around $15, had lost half its value in three weeks.
What happened next seems all too familiar to investors who bought technology stocks in 2000 at the breathless urging of Wall Street analysts. Last week, New Century said it would stop making loans and needed emergency financing to survive. The stock collapsed to $3.21.
The analyst’s untimely call, coupled with a failure among other Wall Street institutions to identify problems in the home mortgage market, isn’t the only familiar ring to investors who watched the technology stock bubble burst precisely seven years ago.
Now, as then, Wall Street firms and entrepreneurs made fortunes issuing questionable securities, in this case pools of home loans taken out by risky borrowers. Now, as then, bullish stock and credit analysts for some of those same Wall Street firms, which profited in the underwriting and rating of those investments, lulled investors with upbeat pronouncements even as loan defaults ballooned. Now, as then, regulators stood by as the mania churned, fed by lax standards and anything-goes lending.
Investment manias are nothing new, of course. But the demise of this one has been broadly viewed as troubling, as it involves the nation’s $6.5 trillion mortgage securities market, which is larger even than the United States treasury market.
Hanging in the balance is the nation’s housing market, which has been a big driver of the economy. Fewer lenders means ...full text

Thursday, March 08, 2007

Memos Tell Officials How to Discuss Climate


Just Protocol and your standard no need to know freedumb services teaching the public about reality.
“This sure sounds like a Soviet-style directive to me,” Ms. Williams said.

NYT March 8, 2007

Memos Tell Officials How to Discuss Climate
By ANDREW C. REVKIN
Internal memorandums circulated in the Alaskan division of the Federal Fish and Wildlife Service appear to require government biologists or other employees traveling in countries around the Arctic not to discuss climate change, polar bears or sea ice if they are not designated to do so.
In December, the Bush administration, facing a deadline under a suit by environmental groups, proposed listing polar bears throughout their range as threatened under the Endangered Species Act because the warming climate is causing a summertime retreat of sea ice that the bears use for seal hunting.
Environmentalists are trying to use such a listing to force the United States to restrict heat-trapping gases that scientists have linked to global warming as a way of limiting risks to the 22,000 or so bears in the far north.
It remains unclear whether such a listing will be issued. The Fish and Wildlife Service this week held the first of several hearings in Alaska and Washington on the question.
Over the past week, biologists and wildlife officials received a cover note and two sample memorandums to be used as a guide in preparing travel requests. Under the heading “Foreign Travel — New Requirement — Please Review and Comply, Importance: High,” the cover note said:
“Please be advised that all foreign travel requests (SF 1175 requests) and any future travel requests involving or potentially involving climate change, sea ice and/or polar bears will also require a memorandum from the regional director to the director indicating who’ll be the official spokesman on the trip and the one responding to questions on these issues, particularly polar bears.”
The sample memorandums, described as to be used in writing travel requests, indicate that the employee seeking permission to travel “understands the administration’s position on climate change, polar bears, and sea ice and will not be speaking on or responding to these issues.”
Electronic copies of the memorandums and cover note were forwarded to The New York Times by Deborah Williams, an environmental campaigner in Alaska and a former Interior Department official in the Clinton administration.
“This sure sounds like a Soviet-style directive to me,” Ms. Williams said. ...full text

Wednesday, March 07, 2007

Congress Takes Aim At Credit Card Policies


Long as it makes a profit, it is right and good - cause you, the people, gave me (the corporation) the power to do as I please - now keep playing trivia, watch footsybally, increase productivity, and hopefully any spare time you have left will be stuck in traffic....................long ago, there was a biblical story about money exchangers
Congress Takes Aim At Credit Card Policies
WASHINGTON, March 7, 2007
(CBS/AP) An Ohio man whose $3,200 credit card debt mushroomed to $10,700 with interest and fees told his story Wednesday to senators, who denounced the industry for confusing billing practices and shifting interest rates. Executives of three major banks defended their credit card practices as responsible and responsive to consumers' needs in testimony at the hearing of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs' investigative subcommittee. Those from Citigroup Inc. and Chase Bank USA said their companies were eliminating some practices — including the one that hit Wesley Wannemacher of Lima, Ohio, with over-limit fees on his Chase card account 47 times although he went over his credit limit only three times. The interest charges and fees on Wannemacher's account more than tripled his debt despite his having made payments averaging $1,000 a year over six years, noted Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., the subcommittee's chairman. "Unfair? Clearly, I think," Levin said. He said an investigation by the panel found that "sky-high interest charges and fees are not uncommon in the credit card industry. While the ...full text

Monday, March 05, 2007

Without Health Benefits, a Good Life Turns Fragile


It is well known that the ranks of the uninsured have been swelling; federal figures show an increase of 6.8 million since 2000.
But the surprise is that the uninsured are not necessarily the poor, the unemployed and the undocumented. Solidly middle-class people like Ms. Readling are one of the fastest growing subgroups.
…………freedumb, freedumb, freedumb and taxes, as government services dwindle and/or are turned over to For Profit Corporations – huh, that don’t make no lick of sense


NYT March 5, 2007
Without Health Benefits, a Good Life Turns Fragile
By ROBERT PEAR
SALISBURY, N.C. — Vicki H. Readling vividly remembers the start of 2006.
“Everybody was saying, ‘Happy new year,’ ” Ms. Readling recalled. “But I remember going straight to bed and lying down scared to death because I knew that at that very minute, after midnight, I was without insurance. I was kissing away a bad year of cancer. But I was getting ready to open up to a door of hell.”
Ms. Readling, a 50-year-old real estate agent, is one of nearly 47 million people in America with no health insurance.
Increasingly, the problem affects middle-class people like Ms. Readling, who said she made about $60,000 last year. As an independent contractor, like many real estate agents, Ms. Readling does not receive health benefits from an employer. She tried to buy a policy in the individual insurance market, but — having had cancer — could not obtain coverage, except at a price exceeding $27,000 a year, which was more than she could pay.
“I don’t know which was worse, being told that I had cancer or finding that I could not get insurance,” Ms. Readling (pronounced RED-ling) said in an interview in her office, near the tree-lined streets and stately old homes of this city in the Piedmont region of North Carolina.
It is well known that the ranks of the uninsured have been swelling; federal figures show an increase of 6.8 million since 2000.
But the surprise is that the uninsured are not necessarily the poor, the unemployed and the undocumented. Solidly middle-class people like Ms. Readling are one of the fastest growing subgroups.
And that is one reason, according to a recent New York Times/CBS News poll, that the problems of the uninsured have jumped to the top of the domestic political agenda in Washington and on the campaign trail.
Today, more than one-third of the uninsured — 17 million of the nearly 47 million — have family incomes of $40,000 or more, according to the Employee Benefit Research Institute, a nonpartisan organization. More than two-thirds of the uninsured are in ...full text

Sunday, March 04, 2007

China Plans Big Increase in Military Budget


"Laca" Wisdom, Understanding, promotes Oblivion in the blink of an eye. If Physics did not have the deliberate missing fundamentals problem, resource wars, adapting to global warming and limitations would disappear - from health care, to food, to material goods, to technological wonders. The quality of life, including transportation, would soar. Freedom and science would replace Corporate Rule.
March 4, 2007
China Plans Big Increase in Military Budget
By JIM YARDLEY and DAVID LAGUE
BEIJING, March 4 — China announced its biggest increase in military spending in five years on Sunday, an increase that quickly prompted the United States to renew its calls for more transparency from the Chinese military about the scope and intent of its rapid arms buildup.
Jiang Enzhu, a spokesman for the National People’s Congress, the Communist Party-controlled national legislature, said China’s military budget would rise this year by 17.8 percent, to roughly 350 billion yuan, or just under $45 billion.
“We must increase our military budget, as it is important to national security,” Mr. Jiang said at a news conference. “China’s military must modernize. Our overall defenses are weak.”
But China’s military modernization efforts, particularly its drive to develop advanced weaponry, have been raising concern from Washington to Tokyo to New Delhi. In January, China set off fears of an arms race in space when it successfully tested an anti-satellite missile that destroyed one its own aging weather satellites. A month earlier, the People’s Liberation Army began deploying the country’s first state-of-the-art jet fighter, the J-10.
These advances reflect China’s intense focus on scientific and technological development, and are the fruits of more than a decade of increased military spending. China’s defense outlays increased ...full text

Saturday, March 03, 2007

Record power for military laser


21st Century Wisdom & Understanding magnifying a global arms race to oblivion. This definitely is a lethal Trouble with Physics and a 'laca' wisdom scientific teachings, with glaringly obvious missing fundamentals. Test your scientific skills on the Evolution blog sidebar for elementary survival parameters.

Record power for military laser
By Paul Rincon Science reporter, BBC News 2/22/07
A laser developed for military use is a few steps away from hitting a power threshold thought necessary to turn it into a battlefield weapon.
The Solid State Heat Capacity Laser (SSHCL) has achieved 67 kilowatts (kW) of average power in the laboratory.
It could take only a further six to eight months to break the "magic" 100kW mark required for the battlefield, the project's chief scientist told the BBC.
Potentially, lasers could destroy rockets, mortars or roadside bombs.
For many years, solid state, electrically powered lasers like SSHCL were only able to operate at a fraction of the 100kW mark.
I know of no other solid state laser that has achieved 67kW of average output power Bob Yamamoto, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
Then, in March 2005, the system achieved 45kW. Hitting 67kW, said SSHCL programme manager Bob Yamamoto, meant 100kW was now within reach.
"I know of no other solid state laser that has achieved 67kW of average output power," Dr Yamamoto, from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, told BBC News.
"We believe we hold the world's record for this."
Pros and cons
The news was announced at an army science conference in Orlando, Florida, and reported by the website Defensetech.org.
The US military has been researching laser weaponry since the 1960s. But the technology has struggled to live up to high hopes; directed energy weapons projects have failed to enter the battlefield ...full text

Friday, March 02, 2007

U.S. Blasted for Treatment of Detainees


Oh, now I remember studying the EXCEPTIONS to the Constitution... huh?


U.S. Blasted for Treatment of Detainees
3/1/07 U.N. Human Rights Chief Criticizes U.S. Action Barring Guantanamo Detainees From Using Courts
By EDITH M. LEDERER Associated Press Writer
The Associated Press
UNITED NATIONS - The U.N. human rights chief expressed concern Wednesday at recent U.S. legislative and judicial actions that she said leave hundreds of detainees without any way to challenge their indefinite imprisonment.
Louise Arbour referred to the Military Commissions Act approved by Congress last year and last month's federal appeals court ruling that Guantanamo Bay detainees cannot use the U.S. court system to challenge their detention. The case is likely to go to the Supreme Court.
Arbour was critical of the ruling, calling on the judicial system to "rise to its long-standing reputation as a guardian of fundamental human rights and civil liberties and provide the protection to all that are under the authority, control, and therefore in my view jurisdiction of the United States."
Twice before, the Supreme Court issued ruling giving Guantanamo detainees full access to courts. But last June, the justices suggested President Bush could ask Congress for more anti-terrorism authority, prompting passage of the commissions act that in part stripped federal court review.
The act grants suspects at Guantanamo Bay the right to confront the evidence against them and have a lawyer present at specially created "military commissions." But it does not require that any of them be granted legal counsel and specifically bars detainees from filing habeas corpus petitions challenging their detentions in federal courts.
"I am very concerned that we continue to see detention without trial and with, in my opinion, insufficient judicial supervision," Arbour told a news conference after meeting with Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
"I thought there had been progress in that direction. There's been a legislative setback now recently in my view, a judicial decision," she said. These people have "no credible mechanism to ascertain the validity of these ... suspicious or allegations."
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. ABC News Internet Ventures

Widespread Storms Cause Deaths in 3 States


More Energy, More Weather

NYT March 2, 2007
Widespread Storms Cause Deaths in 3 States
By BRENDA GOODMAN
ATLANTA, March 2 — A violent storm system that stretched nearly 1,000 miles from the Midwest to the Southeast has killed at least 20 people in three states, including 8 who died when what appeared to be a tornado caused the roof to collapse at a high school in Enterprise, Ala. on Thursday, state emergency management officials said.
At least 31 tornados have been reported over the last two days in Missouri, Illinois, Alabama, Georgia and Florida, the National Weather Service reported. The storm system has been blamed for nine deaths in Alabama, two in Georgia and one in Missouri.
A tornado apparently touched down early today near the Sumter Regional Hospital ...full text

Thursday, March 01, 2007

U.S. Heading Towards Bankruptcy?


.....And he acknowledges nobody is addressing the matter. Why? "Because it's always easier not to," Conrad says, "because it's always easier to defer, to kick the can down the road to avoid making choices … You get in trouble in politics when you make choices."

U.S. Heading Towards Bankruptcy?
March 1, 2007
(CBS) The U.S. government's top accountant says the law that added a prescription drug benefits to Medicare may be the most financially irresponsible legislation passed since the 1960s. U.S. Comptroller General David Walker says Medicare — barring vast reform to the program and the nation's healthcare system — is already on course to possibly bankrupt the treasury and adding the prescription bill just makes the situation worse. Walker talks to 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft this Sunday, March 4, at 7 p.m. ET/PT. "The prescription drug bill is probably the most fiscally irresponsible piece of legislation since the 1960s," says Walker, "because we promise way more than we can afford to keep." He argues that the federal government would need to have $8 trillion today, invested at treasury rates, to cover the gap between what the program is expected to take in and what it is expected to cost in the next 75 years — and that is in addition to more than $20 trillion that will be needed ...full text