Last Call

So basically, Israel is running around going AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!one!!eleven!! at everyone this week.

Given recent changes in the Middle East, Israel must prepare for a battle in several theaters, outgoing IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi said Monday at the Herzliya Conference.

"The connection between the different players requires us to contend with more than one theater," he said.

The radical camp in the Middle East is gaining strength, Ashkenazi warned, adding that "the moderate camp among the traditional Arab leadership is weakening." He also made note of what he characterized as the "fascinating phenomenon" whereby power is shifting to the people of the region thanks to online social networks.

The army chief said that in the wake of the growing threat of radical Islam among Israel's neighbors, the defense budget would have to be boosted in the coming years. The main change faced by the army is the widening spectrum of threats, he said.

"Because of this spectrum, we must prepare for a conventional war…it would be a mistake to prepare for non-conventional war or limited conflicts and then expect that overnight the forces will operate in an all-out-war," he said.

Yeah, anyone want to hazard a guess where that additional money's going to come from?

Towards The Rotating Knives

Via Balloon Juice, what do you get when you cross robots, performance art, and bio-microbial fuel cells?

Pest-disposing death furniture.

Let's begin with their digital wall clock, which doesn't need a battery or a plug because it gets its energy from eating flies.

This carnivorous clock ("8 dead flies makes it work for about 12 days," says co-designer Professor Chris Melhuish, of Bristol Robotics) is just a prototype. It doesn't catch enough flies to power the motor on top and the digital clock. But this is just a first step.
 As Professor Melhuish explains on another video:

What we have here is a belt. The white thing is a belt that's covered in honey. So it operates just like standard flypaper. Flies would be attracted to that honey. They'd land on the belt, get stuck, as you can see it is moving down very, very slowly, and right underneath here there's a blade and the blade scrapes off any insects that have become stuck to the honey. They fall into the microbial fuel cell underneath. And this is the device that turns that organic matter into electrical energy.

I know there's a notion (popular with the sci-fi crowd and especially with "singularity" enthusiasts) that one day machines are going to develop primitive minds of their own, learn how to repair themselves, copy themselves and find their own energy sources. At which point, they will become our evolutionary successors and rapidly evolve into some sort of uber-beings. I am privately wary of this idea, but Auger & Loizeau clearly find it intriguing to think about.

Needless to say, the larger furniture is powered by disposing of...larger pests.  (Bon, you miiiiight want to skip the part about the table.)

The whole thing of course reminds me of this.



(I'm serious about the table, Bon.)

But The Catfood Commission Came Back, The Very Next Day Part 5

What, you thought that Democrats weren't going to get suckered into cutting Social Security and Medicare during the worst economy in generations?  Just need to brand it better, as Digby explains.

Ohmygodohmygodohmygod. Calling Social Security cuts "welfare reform" is just brilliant. Gloria Borger will have to be taken to the hospital when she hears it. What could be better than "Welfare Reform Part II: The Greedy Geezers"? And it looks like Democrats have joined the cast:

At the same time, Democrats admit their own frustration that the president has not been more forthcoming in addressing the debt issue.

For example, “The Easy Cuts Are Behind Us” was the headline for a weekend op-ed by White House Budget Director Jack Lew promising that Obama’s 2012 budget will “look beyond the obvious” in cutting spending. But Lew is already months behind his fellow Democrats on one of his prime examples — cuts from the Great Lakes restoration initiative.

Lew listed other more significant new cuts –totaling $650 million--from community development and community service block grants. But none of these comes close to the desperate tone of last week’s 81-17 Senate vote on the small-business amendment, in which panic-driven Democrats virtually turned over the keys to the White House to cut whatever it wanted from unobligated appropriations, as long as they met the $44 billion target.

The article goes on to discuss how Republicans are facing some of the same issues. But let's face it. It's always going to be easier for the GOP to sign on to spending cuts. If the Democrats lead the way, I suspect they'll be able to set aside their differences. Where they fall out is on tax hikes, but from what I can tell that's not on the table. So it looks like Welfare Reform for the old and sick is on.

Americans who depend on Social Security and Medicare?  Welfare.  Ergo, the solution is bipartisan, Clinton-style centrist "welfare reform"!

Today, a decade after implementation, the Clinton-Republican “bipartisan” welfare law is a failure. As unemployment has doubled since 2007 and the number of people receiving food stamps has skyrocketed by 40%, the welfare caseload has risen only 10% — a clear indication that the nation’s poorest families are not receiving welfare grants due to the restrictive time limits imposed by the 1996 law.

Ask yourself: if the federal government allowed states to put time limits on food stamps, would those numbers have gone up 40%? Or would we have even more kids on the streets begging for alms?

And when that comes to Social Security and Medicare, it'll be "Obama's death panels" and Republicans will run against the President on this the day after Obama signs it into law.  Democrats will get pillaged on this because Republicans will lie and say they never wanted to cut anything but taxes.  Bush's response to reforming Medicare was the multi-trillion dollar prescription drug benefit, remember?  Republicans in 2012 will run on "restoring dignity to America's seniors" and the Dems will be left hanging out to dry.

And yes, the Democrats in Washington are this stupid.

Watch.

That Voodoo That You Do So...Badly, Actually

The Not A Witch is back, people.

Failed GOP Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell is back, and she's telling supporters she wants her newly formed political action committee ChristinePAC to "investigate and counter attack leftwing groups."

O'Donnell, who wrote that her losing campaign sent "shockwaves" throughout the nation, said in an e-mail to supporters Tuesday that her group will look into the groups "funded with one million dollars or more from billionaire leftist George Soros."

And then turn them into newts.  Or maybe Newts.  Not sure.

"The Left keeps after me because they consider strong, Republican women a danger to their status quo," O'Donnell wrote. "Your donation also enables me to speak out in many venues from Coast to Coast, thereby helping support a nationwide effort. This is a way that will help me counter attack our opponents and bring the battle to them."

ChristinePAC is based out of O'Donnell's Delaware home, raising concerns for ethics groups given that O'Donnell is already under investigation for alleged misuse of campaign funds.

Yes, give more money to the lady already illegally living off her campaign funds because she can't get a real job.  (It's hard being a hedge witch.)

The only reason that she lost of course was The Left, and not her atrocious, screwball antics.

Mini-Moose Memoir

Bristol Palin, daughter of former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, will soon be able to add "author" to her resume with the release of an as-yet-untitled memoir set to hit bookshelves this summer.

As noted by Political Wire, an Amazon listing for an "Untitled Bristol Palin Memoir" -- in hardcover no less -- has been created, announcing that the 304-page book will be available for a little over $17.

I can't imagine what she might have to say that is useful.  Nobody knows the name, and the world can't  possibly be prepared for the pearls of wisdom that are about to be shared.  But by golly, we know how much it will cost.

Moosed It By Just A Hair

Sarah Palin fired off a loopy criticism of Obama and how he has handled the events in Egypt.  An article on Yahoo news by an independent contributor is quick to point out why every word she says is (surprise!) dead wrong.  Here is what Palin had to say:

"This is the 3 a.m. White House phone call ... that call went right to the answering machine."

"Nobody yet has explained to the American public what they know, and surely they know more than the rest of us know who it is will be taking the place of Mubarak. ... We need strength and a sound mind there in the White House. We need to know what it is that America stands for so we know who it is that America will stand with. And, we do not have that information yet."

I think the last thing I want to hear is what Sarah Palin considers a sound mind, or the conclusions she thinks it would come to.  The only good that comes of these articles is that surely, oh surely people are reading, and more people who were wavering on the border will come over to the side of common sense. 

Everyone can speak out of turn, and anyone can make a mistake.  This woman is scary because the only thing that outshines her stupidity is her ambition.

The Current And Future Keith

The NY Times is reporting this morning that Keith Olbermann is going to Current TV.

Keith Olbermann, the former top-rated host on the news channel MSNBC, will announce his next television home on Tuesday, and people on Monday familiar with his plans pointed to a possible deal with the public affairs channel Current TV.

Mr. Olbermann, his representatives and executives from Current TV declined to comment on the move, but they did not deny that the channel, which counts former Vice President Al Gore as one of its founders, will become at least one partner in Mr. Olbermann’s future media plans.

One of the people with knowledge of the plans said Mr. Olbermann would have an equity stake in Current TV. The people insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized by their employers to comment in advance of the official announcement.

It would be good to see Olbermann doing the news again, even if it's kinda fly-by-night and internet-based.  Still, this could be very good for Current TV and for Olbermann.  Then again, it could turn into a disaster, too.  We'll see. 

I wish the guy luck.

No Longer Payday

Kentucky Democrats have long tried to fight payday lenders in the state and have lost twice before.  This year's effort wants to limit payday loan interest rates to what the federal government says military personnel receive: 36% instead of the 400% plus that Kentuckians are paying now.

With one critic calling it “legal loan-sharking,” a coalition of advocates, religious leaders, consumer protection officials and lawmakers lined up Monday to support a bill aimed at curtailing the payday loan industry in Kentucky.

“It is so easy to get caught in this trap,’’ said Mary Love, 65, of Oldham County, who said she became mired in a cycle of such loans in 2004. “The fees keep adding up and putting you deeper into the hole.”

Rep. Darryl Owens, D-Louisville, said his House Bill 182 represents the third effort in three years to limit interest rates that critics say can rise to more than 400 percent for the short-term cash loans.

Owens’ bill would restrict annual interest to 36 percent, the same limit Congress imposes on payday loans for military personnel.

“Hopefully, the third time will be the charm,” Owens said.

Rep. Jeff Greer, D-Brandenburg, who is chairman of the House Banking and Insurance Committee, said he plans to hold a hearing on HB 182 next week and call it for a vote.

“I intend to stay there till we vote it up or down,” Greer said. “It is time to vote on it.”

But even if the bill passes, payday lenders will find a way to get around it like they have across the river in Ohio.

The dispute over Ohio’s payday lending practices began after voters upheld a 28 percent interest rate cap on payday loans in November of 2008, and many payday lenders began operating under several small loan laws already on the books. The legislature approved the cap in the spring of 2008, and payday lenders fought back with the voter referendum, but failed.

The small loan laws, which have been in existence for decades, are intended to govern installment loans, not single-payment, two-week payday loans. Payday lending opponents say the lenders are exploiting those laws to avoid the 28 percent rate cap. Lenders contend they are legitimately licensed by the state to make the small loans.

Some 800 of the Ohio’s 1,600 payday lending stores have shut down since rates were capped – and the rest are “trying to make a go of it” by adhering to the small loan laws, said Ted Saunders, CEO of CheckSmart Financial Co., a national payday lender with more than 200 stores in 10 states. “We’re lending money for far less than we did when all this started,” he said. “This is not business as usual. The activists just want to put us out of business entirely.”

Those activists are pushing the Ohio legislature to move once again, to close the loopholes in the loan laws by placing them all under the 28 percent cap. More than 1,000 payday lenders already have gotten licenses to make short-term loans under the old small loan laws, which allow for high origination fees and other charges, according to a report by the Housing Research & Advocacy Center in Cleveland.

Under those laws, for a 14-day loan of $100, lenders can charge an origination fee of $15, interest charges of $1.10, and a $10 credit investigation fee, for a total amount of $126.10, or a 680 percent annual interest rate.

Of course, Republicans are firmly on the side of the payday lenders being able to charge 500%, 600%, 700% or more interest rates,  and that's saying nothing about regular banks, who charge rates nearly as high for their own version of payday lending for customers who need an advance on their direct deposits, often used to avoid incurring hundreds of dollars in overdraft fees.

That's right:  banks have been getting into the payday lending business and if you're wondering why they've been able to pay off TARP money so quickly, now you know:  trapping customers between $40 or $50 per overdraft or a vig of $1 on every $10 taken out on a direct deposit advance to avoid the overdraft means you're damned if you do, damned if you don't.

In the end, payday lenders will find a way to make their billions.  Here in Northern Kentucky there's a payday lender in every strip mall, if not more than one.  If Ohio is any indication, all HB 182 would do is thin out the competition a bit.

The Birds And The Bees (And The Humans, Too)

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard makes the connection between world food shortages and the collapse of the world's honeybee population, something I hadn't even considered.

The bee crisis has been treated as a niche concern until now, but as the UN's index of food prices hits an all time-high in real terms (not just nominal) and grain shortages trigger revolutions in the Middle East, it is becoming urgent to know whether the plight of the honey bee risks further exhausting our already thin margin of food global security.

The agri-business lender Rabobank said the numbers of US bee colonies failing to survive each winter has risen to 30pc to 35pc from an historical norm of 10pc. The rate is 20pc or higher in much of Europe, and the same pattern is emerging in Latin America and Asia.

Albert Einstein, who liked to make bold claims (often wrong), famously said that "if the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe, man would have only four years to live".

Such "apocalyptic scenarios" are overblown, said Rabobank. The staples of corn, wheat, and rice are all pollinated by wind.

However, animal pollination is essential for nuts, melons and berries, and plays varying roles in citrus fruits, apples, onions, broccoli, cabbage, sprouts, courgettes, peppers, aubergines, avocados, cucumbers, coconuts, tomatoes and broad beans, as well as coffee and cocoa.

This is the fastest growing and most valuable part of the global farm economy. Between 80pc and 90pc of pollination comes from domesticated honey bees. Moths and butterflies lack the range to penetrate large fields.

The reservoir of bees is dwindling to the point where ratios are dangerously out of kilter, with the US reaching the "most extreme" imbalance. Pollinated crop output has quadrupled since 1961, yet bee colonies have halved. The bee-per-hectare count has fallen nearly 90pc.

"Farmers have managed to produce with relatively fewer bee colonies up to this point, and there is no evidence of agricultural yields being affected. The question is how much further this situation can be stretched," said the report. 

In other words, the loss of America's bee colonies may not have caused the global food problems we're experiencing in 2011, but it's sure not helping the world recover.  More than ever, US farmers need healthy bees to pollinate crops.  If bees continue to vanish at their current rate, things could get very bad for the country and the world in only a few years.

It seems very few people are concerned about it, and I agree with Pritchard that it needs to change.

StupidiNews!

• Over a million people have been evacuated due to heavy flooding in Sri Lanka.
• Human Rights Watch says nearly 300 have died so far in Egyptian protests in the last two weeks, far higher than official estimates.
• Health insurance companies continue to drop child-only insurance policies, saying that guaranteed coverage provisions make the policies impossible.
• China has raised interest rates for the third time since October in an effort to rein in overheating inflation.
• Is video game Dead Space 2 a direct attack on Scientology?

Last Call

I know I bemoan Kentucky politicians, but the people of this state, like most Americans, are basically hard-working good folk who are just trying to get by.  And every now and then they'll surprise even me.

Some 83 percent of Kentuckians believe gay people should be protected from discrimination in the workplace, in housing and public places such as restaurants, according to a survey released Monday by the statewide Fairness Coalition. That is an increase of 18 percentage points since 2004, when a similar survey was conducted.

"I think the numbers will shock people across the state," said Chris Hartman, director of the Fairness Campaign, one of five groups that are part of the umbrella coalition that works for equality for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Kentuckians.

Hartman said he was astounded at the level of tolerance reflected in the answers to 10 questions in the survey.

"I believed the numbers were going to be good, but with all of them hitting the 80s or sometimes 90s (percent), that was surprising," he said.

What made the difference since 2004?

"The times have simply changed," Hartman said. "More people have gay, lesbian or transgender friends or family members who have come out. That has changed the way people think across Kentucky."

Good for us, Kentucky.  Five out of six believe in workplace equality?  I'll put those numbers up against any other state.

Thai Feud, Anyone?

By the time the armies of Thailand and Cambodia end their battle for Preah Vihear, an 11th-century temple on the border between the two countries, there may be nothing left to fight over.

It's hard to say what, exactly, sparked this latest round of violence - the triggers seem as murky as the conflicting territorial claims.

I love history.  I have a great appreciation for the labor and cultures of our ancestors.  It bothers me to read about this destruction and that nobody really seems to know for sure why they are doing this.  Meanwhile, a treasure that is irreplaceable is being torn apart.

Danger Prone Daphne Strikes Yet Again

One of my very first articles was about a woman whose five-year-old son wanted to dress up as Daphne from Scooby Doo.  The mother allowed it, and some moms at school said unkind things about his choice of costume, and her parenting skills.  In a well-written response, the mother very eloquently calls them on it and a viral blog post was born.

I go through and follow up on topics from time to time, and I was surprised to see that her blog post has led to the mother being bullied by her pastor, who gave her an ultimatum that included an apology to those mothers she so offended, and the pastor included a helpful draft in case she needed help saying she was sorry.  The pastor claimed she broke the 8th Commandment and bore false witness.  She was told she couldn't transfer to another church and be considered "in good standing" if she did not apologize and meet the terms of the agreement he was proposing.

And again I say to you that bullying is not okay, even if you wrap it in a bow and call it ‘spiritual care.’

Congrats to this woman, for having common sense and the ability to write about it in a way that is respectful and thoughtful.  I wish her luck in fighting The Stupid.

You're On Your Own, Florida

GOP Gov. Rick Scott is going the full Galt with his budget proposal, balancing Florida's budget solely on the backs of state employees and the poor in order to approve billions in property tax cuts for the wealthy and corporate tax cuts for businesses.

Gov. Rick Scott on Monday afternoon will unveil a proposed state budget that includes deep spending cuts of an estimated $5 billion and will ask lawmakers to approved a dramatic reduction in property taxes.

He will announce his budget - his first as governor - before a crowd of tea party activists in this small central Florida town about 190 miles from Tallahassee at a rally, beginning at 1 p.m. He will then return to Tallahassee to brief reporters on his budget plan at about 4 p.m..

The budget blueprint, which must be approved by the Legislature, includes promises Scott made on the gubernatorial campaign last fall when he pledged to revolutionize government by running it like an efficient business. He said the leaner budget would set the foundation to create jobs throughout recession-weary Florida.

Scott, a former hospital chain executive, wants legislators to cut more than $1 billion in school property taxes and then transfer money from other sections of the budget. To offset the lost revenue, state workers would contribute to their pensions - for the first time - by contributing five percent of their salaries.

He also wants to trim about $700 million in corporate income taxes in Florida, which already has one of the nation’s lowest rates.

Another big target for savings: the growing health insurance program for the poor and financially challenged, Medicaid.

More than half of Medicaid’s $20.3 billion tab is picked up by the federal government, which can halt some wholesale changes. Scott and the Legislature can cut up to half of the program’s so-called optional services, many of which are popular and are designed to save money, however. Regardless, the state would lose hundreds of millions in federal matching money.

Slashing billions from schools and Medicare in order to give tax breaks to the wealthy and businesses, and making state and local employees pay the difference out of their own pockets.  What a nice guy.  Welcome to the realm of the "laboratory of democracy" there, Florida.  Enjoy your stay.

Remember, Florida's property values have dropped like a rock thanks to the housing depression.  Now Scott wants to cut property taxes even further.  Revenue?  What's revenue?

Hope those Tea Party folks cheering Scott on know that their services are about to get ravaged.

Well Of Course It's Worse

Anyone who has been paying attention to this blog for the last 2.5 years knows that the unemployment numbers are full of crap and have been for a couple decades now.  We've simply stopped counting the long-term unemployed as being in the labor market, hence last Friday's numbers that we gained less than 100k jobs in the last two months but that the unemployment rate dropped from 9.7% in November to 9.0% in January, so of course the numbers are worse.

"These numbers were bad if we look at a little bit of trend in composition, and not just one month at a time," David Stockman, former OMB director under President Reagan, told CNBC Friday.

"Where is the half-million jobs that were lost in the last thirty days that no one talked about? I'm talking about the once a year, re-benchmarking of the number of absolute jobs in the economy," Stockman said.

"Thirty days ago we were told 130.7 million jobs in the economy, in December, this morning it was 130.2," he said, adding, "that's the half million."

"Over the last 19 months, since the recession ended, we had 130.7 million jobs in the economy. This morning they said we had 130.2, we're still down a quarter of a million jobs from when the recession ended," Stockman added.

In addition, the U.S. is issuing three times more bonds a month than the GDP is growing, he said, adding, "I don't think we are headed for a cliff, I think we are heading for a wall."

One look at the Shadow Government Statistics web site, where unemployment numbers are counted the way they were before the 1990's, shows our functional unemployment has been north of 20% for  two years now, and it seems neither the Democrats nor the Republicans care enough in Congress to do much, if anything, about it.

We're told the problem is deficit, austerity, and sacrifice.

The real problem is Washington doesn't give a damn about jobs.  Democrats were punished in the polls for the economy, and Republicans newly in power in the House are responding by looking for as many cuts as they can find...oh yes and trying to redefine rape and fighting Obamacare.

Meanwhile the country burns.  Maybe that's the point.

Endless Wonder Down Under

If things weren't bad enough in Australia with massive flooding in the east in December and a massive Category 5 cyclone wrecking the northern states in January, the problem this month is on the island's west coast:  massive drought and wildfires near Perth.

Western Australia’s state premier, Colin Barnett, declared an area near the state capital of Perth a natural disaster zone after a bushfire raging out of control on the fringes of the city destroyed 59 structures.

Homes, sheds and carports have been destroyed by the blaze, Natasha Thorson, a spokeswoman with the Fire & Emergency Services Authority, or FESA, said in a phone interview today.

The fires started yesterday in the Roleystone and Kelmscott areas in Perth’s south-east from sparks by a machinist using an angle grinder, WAToday.com cited a FESA spokesman, which it didn’t identify, as saying.

More than 100 firefighters are battling the blaze, which is moving at 100 meters an hour in numerous directions with flames reaching three meters, FESA said. The bushfire poses a “threat to lives and homes,” the authority said.

The blaze has burned about 440 hectares, has cut power and closed two schools in the area. Two helicopters are assisting, FESA said. There are no reports of injuries.

The state government will provide immediate financial help to people affected by the fire, Barnett said in an e-mailed statement today.

That of course is adding to Australia's wheat farming woes, as if the world doesn't have enough disaster-related food shortages as it is.

So it goes.

Meanwhile In Baghdad...

Oh yes, ladies and gentlemen, the protests in Egypt have not gone unnoticed in Iraq.

Hundreds of Iraqis took part in scattered demonstrations on Sunday, calling for an improvement in basic services and the resignation of local government officials as unrest sweeps much of the Arab world.


In Baghdad, around 250 people gathered in the impoverished district of Bab al-Sham to protest against a lack of services. "It is a tragedy. Even during the Middle Ages, people were not living in this situation," said engineer Furat al-Janabi.

Some carried a coffin with the word "services" written across it, while others called for the resignation of all members of the local council in their area.

Almost eight years after the U.S.-led invasion, Iraq's infrastructure remains severely damaged. The country suffers a chronic water shortage, electricity supply is intermittent and sewage collects in the streets.

While public frustration is a challenge to the government as Iraq emerges from the sectarian war after the invasion, the country has already been freed from the autocratic rule that protesters in other countries such as Egypt are seeking to end.

In the oil city of Basra, 420 km south of Baghdad, around 100 protesters demanded the resignation of the governor and members of the city council, saying they were corrupt.

The demonstrators carried yellow cards symbolising the warning card a referee carries in a soccer match.

"I and my children depend totally on food rations, without it we will die. I find work for one day, and then nothing for 10 days after that," said 43-year-old Nuri Ghadhban, a day labourer in the construction industry and father of six.

"I have been looking for kerosene for a month and I cannot find it. We have had enough. What do they want? For us to burn ourselves until they think about us?"

As bad as things are, these protests have the potential to pretty much undo what little gains we have made in the region and delivering the country back into near civil war.  If ordinary Iraqis are starving on top of having no power, no jobs, and no hope of getting us out of their country, things are going to get ugly, fast.  But that's not the biggest problem.

The protests are moving eastward from Egypt to the Middle East.   If they continue on this trajectory, the next countries in line east of Iraq are Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India, and now we start getting into some serious international problems if those countries start protesting food prices, corruption, and despotism.  Pakistan's government is already fragile as hell.  Iraq and Afghanistan's governments are cardboard at best.  And if nuclear Pakistan goes into Egyptian-style turmoil, India isn't going to just sit around.

I mentioned last week that Saudi Arabia was the big domino at the end of this destabilization chain.  That's certainly true in the Middle East, but globally there are many worse places that could see chaos, and Pakistan has to be tops on that list.

Super Brawl

The big political story from yesterday's 31-25 Packers win over the Steelers wasn't Reagan's 100th birthday or Xtina botching the national anthem, but China being pissed over Groupon's commercial featuring a pro-Tibet message.

Tibet has long been a source of consistent domestic and international tension for China, which established control over the region in 1951. The Dalai Lama went into exile in 1959 following an uprising against communist leadership.

Tensions related to religious freedom, human rights, development and political sovereignty have plagued the region periodically ever since.

"Just saw the ad, are they oblivious?" asked user Mofei on Sina.com's microblogging service Weibo.
"Groupon is doomed to failure now in China," wrote user Yageboo on Sina's Weibo. "Groupon's lax approach to the Chinese market is not going to work!"

Sina.com user cnbuff410 asked, "Groupon ... you play a 'free Tibet' advertisement during the Super Bowl ... do you actually want to enter the Chinese market?"

Vivek Kunwar, a co-owner of Himalayan Restaurant in the Chicago area, saw the advertisement during a Super Bowl commercial break.

"When we saw it, it was an 'uh-oh' moment, even for me," Kunwar said in a phone interview.

"There was nothing that we could do .. we were not even involved in the shoot."

And so once again, a US company doing business in China has to decide between human rights and their bottom line.  It's getting old, especially since the prospect of a billion customers tends to very quickly remove any pretense of principle from executives.

How fast will Groupon apologize?  Certainly before the end of the week, would be my guess.

The Kroog Versus A Food Fight

Paul Krugman notes that extreme weather in 2010 certainly isn't helping food prices globally.

Consider the case of wheat, whose price has almost doubled since the summer. The immediate cause of the wheat price spike is obvious: world production is down sharply. The bulk of that production decline, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture data, reflects a sharp plunge in the former Soviet Union. And we know what that’s about: a record heat wave and drought, which pushed Moscow temperatures above 100 degrees for the first time ever.

The Russian heat wave was only one of many recent extreme weather events, from dry weather in Brazil to biblical-proportion flooding in Australia, that have damaged world food production.

The question then becomes, what’s behind all this extreme weather?

To some extent we’re seeing the results of a natural phenomenon, La Niña — a periodic event in which water in the equatorial Pacific becomes cooler than normal. And La Niña events have historically been associated with global food crises, including the crisis of 2007-8.

But that’s not the whole story. Don’t let the snow fool you: globally, 2010 was tied with 2005 for warmest year on record, even though we were at a solar minimum and La Niña was a cooling factor in the second half of the year. Temperature records were set not just in Russia but in no fewer than 19 countries, covering a fifth of the world’s land area. And both droughts and floods are natural consequences of a warming world: droughts because it’s hotter, floods because warm oceans release more water vapor.

As always, you can’t attribute any one weather event to greenhouse gases. But the pattern we’re seeing, with extreme highs and extreme weather in general becoming much more common, is just what you’d expect from climate change.

The usual suspects will, of course, go wild over suggestions that global warming has something to do with the food crisis; those who insist that Ben Bernanke has blood on his hands tend to be more or less the same people who insist that the scientific consensus on climate reflects a vast leftist conspiracy.

But the evidence does, in fact, suggest that what we’re getting now is a first taste of the disruption, economic and political, that we’ll face in a warming world. And given our failure to act on greenhouse gases, there will be much more, and much worse, to come. 

The theory that climate change leads to food production shortages leads to political instability is nothing new, the Pentagon has been pushing that for some time now.

Recent war games and intelligence studies conclude that over the next 20 to 30 years, vulnerable regions, particularly sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and South and Southeast Asia, will face the prospect of food shortages, water crises and catastrophic flooding driven by climate change that could demand an American humanitarian relief or military response.

Of course, the Pentagon may want to move up their timetable from 20-30 years to, you know, now.   The combination of economic turmoil and climate change is already turning out to be pretty potent.  Ask Tunisia, Sudan, Egypt, or Ivory Coast.  Krugman is right however when he says more is coming, and coming soon.

My guess is very soon.

StupidiNews!

• President Obama meets with the US Chamber of Commerce over jobs and taxes today.
• AOL will buy the Huffington Post for $315 million in an effort to focus on "original news content".
• Military crackdowns and mass arrests of journalists and human rights activists continue in Egypt despite talk of government concessions.
• Weather related cancellations may be costing US airlines as much as $600 million on record numbers of scrubbed flights.
• Alcatel-Lucent says new smaller cell tower technology can handle twice the data without the "hut" at the bottom.