ch.annel2-i.s-n.ow-a.ngry

Democrats are being taken to task for not passing a budget that Bush would veto for increases of $26 billion to help Americans out. However, on one of the bills, the Democrats are confident they’ll get enough votes to pass because it entail a $3 billion appropriation for a border fence between here and Mexico, which does no good and much harm (as well as costs freaking $3 billion). The budget is barely late so far and they’ve given themselves a month and a half to work things out with a President that threatens to veto pretty much everything they send him that wasn’t his idea. Despite the majority of Americans not approving of his ideas.

And this mere days after Bush asked for and got a $850 billion increase in the debt limit, allowing us to edge to within $200 billion dollars of a $10 trillion dollar debt. We may “do everything bigger and better” here, but that is spectacularly insane.

Oh, and Bush, whining about a $26 billion increase in domestic spending to help Americans as fostering big government, wants an extra $40 billion for the Pentagon. I guess military doesn’t count as government.

Every day, the Reuters news agency compiles a roundup of security developments in Iraq. The summaries show that although the U.S. troop surge has tamped down the bloodshed, Iraq remains extraordinarily violent. Monday’s developments, as Gen. David Petraeus reported to Congress on the surge, were fairly typical:

• Baghdad. Seven U.S. soldiers were killed and 11 injured in a vehicle accident in western Baghdad, the U.S. military said.

• Near Mosul. A suicide truck bomb killed 10 people and wounded 78, Iraqi police said

And the list goes on…

No thanks, I’ll take Ground-Based Midcourse Defense. Apparently that’s what the name’s been changed to. And it only costs $85 million to shoot a missile down.

Reuters sez: U.S. debt stood at about $5.6 trillion at the start of Bush’s presidency.

Actually, it was $5.727 trillion dollars, if you want to get into the nitty gritty. Head back over to the Treasury Now website and set the time machine for January 20, 2001. And, the same article mentions there is a debt limit of $8.965 trillion, a limit we are currently exceeding with our $8.994 trillion dollar debt. Also, on August 31st, as I mentioned before, we hit the $9 trillion mark. How does that jive with our supposed limit of $8.965 trillion. These is the government’s own numbers, not some random US-is-evil website.

Reuters sez: Fifty-nine U.S. soldiers have been killed in September, according to the Web site icasualties.org which tracks military deaths, making it the least deadly month for U.S. troops since July last year. Twenty-two of the deaths were defined as “non-hostile”, many of them road accidents.

USA Today sez: In July 2006, 43 U.S. troops were killed in Iraq, and 54 died in each of the previous two Julys.

I sez: Lowest since last July, but still  beat it by 16 deaths so far, and there’s a whole weekend left in the month. At the daily average of around 2.3 DPD (Deaths per Diem) That means we should see about five more US troops slain, bringing us to a total of around 64 deaths this September, putting it almost in reach of August 2006 (65 deaths, the second lowest since July 2006). If you want to see the rest of the statistics, they can be found at icasualties.org. It may be trending downward now, but it may trend right back upwards again; after all July 2006 was downright peaceful to any of the last 12 months.

The U.S. Senate later voted 72-25 to repudiate the [move-on.org] ad [denouncing the Petraeus and Bush strategy] . Twenty-two Democrats joined 49 Republicans and one independent in denouncing it.

I hope  no one in Congress wonders why they’ve been called the do-nothing congress.

The BBC has an answer for you:

Israel has done it before. Its air force destroyed Iraq’s nuclear facilities in 1981.

When flame retardants are not present, as was the case in the tragic 2003 Rhode Island Station nightclub fire in which 100 people died during a fire involving foam insulation that was not flame-retarded, rapid ignition and fire spread can lead to significant loss of life and property.

What they fail to mention is that the band was shooting off unapproved, unsafe pyrotechnics (i.e. fireworks) in the nightclub, which is what caused the fire. They actually repeat this paragraph twice on the page.

Oh, and in case you’re wondering, yes, flame-retardants are carcinogens.

After studies in Sweden found substances related to PentaBDE accumulating in breast milk and other tissues, Sweden reduced the use of this substance.

Now, that’s just one. There are many others, all with scary sounding names. What California AB 706 is about is preserving the profits of this toxic industry, not saving lives. Sure, save the lives of few thousand people from fire, and condemn everyone who gets near these toxic chemicals to the threat of cancer? Well, thanks for giving me my state senator’s phone number, Californiansforfiresafety.org. Want to know who your California legislators are, and be able to bug them about this, whether for or against?

You must speak to be heard.

update: Oh yes, the retardants being banned do not constitute “fire retardants” as Californiansforfiresafety.org claims, but rather they constitute “some fire retardants.” Many more fire retardants are still legal after this bill passes. Upon further reading of the actual text of the bill, I found a part that mentions that all retardants will have to go through safety screening and be known to not be toxic and bioaccumulative in animals (including humans) before being approved for use. It works in reverse for any current retardants, if they are found toxic they will be banned.

The bill text itself further seals the grave on Californiansforfiresafety.org’s arguments with this sub-paragraph:

Utilizing existing technologies in both chemical fire retardants and in construction techniques, the mattress and institutional furniture industries have achieved a higher level of fire safety without the use of BFRs and CFRs. Updating California statute and regulation will enable the residential furniture industry to do the same.

And, even if the BFRs and CFRs do delay ignition of material, they convert into dioxin immediately afterwards, just in time for you to inhale a big cloud of give me cancer! Don’t believe me, ask a Vietnam vet.

A 2003 study at Umea University in Sweden found that brominated fire retardants efficiently convert into dioxins and furans when they combust after just seconds of delayed flame ignition. Dioxins and furans have been designated by the National Toxicology Program of the United States Department of Health and Human Services as known human carcinogens and, in the case of dioxins, contact with skin is a primary route of human exposure.

They kill firefighters too, according to the bill:

A 2006 study published in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine found that firefighters have a probable cancer risk for multiple myeloma, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, prostate cancer, and testicular cancer. Eight additional cancers also were found to have a possible occupational link to firefighting. The presence of carcinogenic chemical byproducts in soot and smoke, such as dioxins and furans created when brominated fire retardants burn, are considered the probable source of workplace cancer risks for firefighters.

There’s more stuff in the bill but it’s boring, and mostly legal wrangling about how and where to apply the bill. Enjoy.

Sen. John Warner, R-Va., the senior Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, struck a less contentious tone, noting the Iraqi government relies heavily on contractors to provide services.

“Having visited now 10 times in Iraq, most recently just two or three weeks ago, I know full well the dependence of that nation upon contractors - contractors who are trying to refurbish their seriously deteriorated oil production facilities, their power lines, their fresh water,” Warner said.

“Any number of activities today in Iraq are performed by rather a courageous band of civilians who have gone over there and assumed the same extraordinary risks that men and women in the armed forces are experiencing every day,” he told reporters on the sidelines of a conference in Williamsburg, Va.

 Of course they get paid 3 or more times what our ‘men and women in the armed forces’ get paid.

 Naomi Klein says: Stuart Bowen, US special inspector general for the reconstruction of Iraq, reported that in the few cases where contracts were awarded directly to Iraqi firms, “it was more efficient and cheaper. And it has energised the economy because it puts the Iraqis to work”. It turns out that funding Iraqis to rebuild their own country is more efficient than hiring lumbering multinationals who don’t know the country or the language, surround themselves with $900- a-day mercenaries and spend as much as 55% of their contract budgets on overhead.

 Oh, so hiring people who have a vested interest in their own country to rebuild makes better sense? Is this some kinda Twilight Zone episode? Why should they get paid to fix our destruction and then be able to buy goods and support their families. Don’t they know there are people in America that don’t have enough money so they have to go over there and get paid $900 a day? Wont someone please think of the children!

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice telephoned Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to express regret at the loss of life and promise that the results of an internal investigation into Sunday’s incident would be shared with the government in Baghdad.

“She told the Prime Minister that we were investigating this incident and wanted to gain a full understanding of what happened,” said deputy State Department spokesman Tom Casey. “She reiterated that the United States does everything it can to avoid such loss of life, in contrast to the enemies of the Iraqi people who deliberately target civilians.”

 Excepting, of course, Marines in Haditha and however many other cases there are of such things that I can’t be bothered to look up right now.  And of course the torture of probably innocent lockups in Abu Graib and elsewhere. But of course, the United States does everything it can to avoid such things.