Necessary News

All you need to know to sound brilliant

Collars Turning Green Across America

• White collar? Blue collar? So 20th century. 21st century collars are green. [American Progress]
• Transitioning to a low-carbon economy has the potential to revitalize America’s economy and create millions of new jobs.
• Green collar jobs produce “environmentally friendly products or services such as construction of green schools, solar panel manufacturing, energy efficiency retrofits of homes, brownfield clean-up, and waterfront restoration.”
• They also tend to be localized, difficult to outsource, and more likely to pump money back into
• Here are the numbers behind America’s green revolution:
• 5.3 Million: Number of new jobs created by the environmental sector in 2005, creating $341 billion in sales and $47 billion in tax revenue.
• 6.3 Million: Number of jobs “created directly and indirectly by environmental protection” by 2015.
• Twice as many: Renewable energy creates twice as many jobs per unit of energy than fossil fuels—so we could be spending money creating jobs in America instead of propping up dictators overseas.
• 39%: Globally, the annual revenue for solar power, wind power, biofuels, and fuel cell companies rose to $55.4 billion in 2006 from $40 billion in 2005, a 39% increase.
• $700 billion: Renewable crops could provide $700 billion of economic activity in America’s heartland, and create 5.1 million jobs in America’s rural areas by 2025.
• The bottom line: these jobs “create local economies and are strong enough to lift people out of poverty, all while rolling back pollution and creating healthier cities and more equitable livelihoods for all Americans.”

We love our green collar.

Mukasey’s Headed For The Justice Department

The Story

• He slipped through. [Guardian]
• By a vote of 11-8, members of the Senate Judiciary Committee approved the nomination of Michael Mukasey for Attorney General. Technically, he has to get a full vote on the floor of the Senate now, but his nomination is all but assured.
• 8 Democratic members of the committee, including Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VM), voted against the nomination due, in large part, to Mukasey’s unwillingness to call waterboarding “torture.” Catch up here: [MicCheck] [MicCheck]
• In case you were wondering: 69% of Americans think waterboarding is torture, and 58% think the government shouldn’t be able to use it to get information from suspected terrorists. [CNN]
• Two Democrats, Chuck Schumer of New York, and Diane Feinstein of California, broke ranks and voted to approve his nomination.
• Their reasoning?
• In a New York Times op-ed, Schumer defended his decision on the grounds that if the Senate did not confirm Mukasey, Bush could appoint a recess appointment without consent of the Senate who would “surrender the department to the extreme ideology of Vice President Dick Cheney.” [NY Times]
• Furthermore, Schumer and Feinstein argued that Mukasey would enforce a waterboarding ban if Congress explicitly passed a bill outlawing it. Clap. Clap.
• Chairman Patrick Leahy noted that “George W. Bush would almost certainly veto any ban on waterboarding, meaning it would take effect only if two-thirds majorities in both the House and the Senate were willing to stand up to the president and override such a veto.” [Salon]
• Listen in.

The Audio

Senator Kennedy (D-MA) votes no:

• “Make no mistake about it. Waterboarding is already illegal under United States law.”
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• “After six long years of reckless disregard for the rule of law by this administration we can’t afford to take our chances on the judgment of an attorney general who either does not know torture when he sees it or is willing to look the other way to suit the president.”
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• “We are supposed to find comfort in the representation by a nominee by the highest law enforcement office in the country that he will in fact enforce the laws that we pass in the future? Can our standards really have sunk so low? Enforcing the law is the job of the attorney general. It is a pre-requisite, not a virtue that enhances a nominees qualifications.”
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Senator Feinstein (D-CA) votes yes:

• “I believe the President would not send another nominee to the hill. I believe he appointed this man because he believes he is mainstream. I believe there was even discussion about whether he should appoint him or appoint somebody who was even more conservative.”
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Senator Graham (R-SC) votes yes but still condemns torture:

• “If we go down the road of trying to reserve, in special circumstances, our ability to breach conventions and laws that we have enacted for the good, then we will have, in my opinion, given the enemy a great victory.”
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A cut above Gonzo, but still the President’s man.

Police Academy Iraq: This One’s Not Funny

• One of the major benchmarks for success in Iraq is transferring security from our troops to their police officers. How’s that going, you ask?
• Last year, we discovered the $45 billion police academy built by the U.S. contractor Parsons was such a wreck that fecal matter and urine poured through the ceiling in student barracks. One light fixture actually stopped working because it filled with urine and feces. Floors actually heaved off of the ground and split apart. One room was called the “rain forest” because water endlessly poured through the ceiling. Foundations in the classrooms sank into the ground. Water poured down stairwells. [Washington Post]
• The concrete used was so substandard that the buildings are already crumbling. The pipes used were so substandard that the students to this day can’t use the toilets on upper floors because they are so prone to bursting and spewing sewage everywhere.
• Hauled before Congress, Parsons promised they’d fix everything, free of charge.
• Yeah, that didn’t happen.
• Now they say, hey, not our fault. We finished the project in 2006, end of story.
• We’ll quote the NYT: “More than a year after the Parsons Corporation, the American contracting giant, promised Congress that it would fix the disastrous plumbing and shoddy construction in barracks the company built at the Baghdad police academy, the ceilings are still stained with excrement, parts of the structures are crumbling and sections of the buildings are unusable because the toilets are filthy and nonfunctioning.” [NY Times]
• Said one American military officer: “What I’ve seen here disgusts me as a taxpayer. When it’s for something good, I don’t mind flipping the dime, but this money just went from my pocket to a contractor.”
• Parsons…Parsons…that name sounds familiar...oh, right.
• In 2006, the Army Corps of Engineers cancelled Parsons’s $99 million contract to build a prison, after the contractor was turned out to be two years behind schedule, millions of dollars over budget, and was busted for virtually abandoning the project altogether. [NY Times]
• Oh, and they also had a separate $300 million contract cancelled in 2006 after failing to finish the hospitals they were paid to build. After two years and $186 million, the company only completed 20 of 150 promised clinics. [Washington Post]
• What the…oh, now we get it. The Pentagon guy who handed out contracts 2004, when Parsons received their contracts, was the former president of a Parsons subsidiary. [AP]

What would Steve Guttenberg say?

U.S. Deaths In Iraq This Year: 852 And Counting

• On Sunday, we told you how 2007 was on track to become the deadliest year for U.S. soldiers in Iraq since the war began. On Tuesday, the U.S. military announced the deaths of five more soldiers, which officially makes 2007 the deadliest year for our troops. [AP] [Mic Check]
• At least 852 American military personnel have died in Iraq so far this year — the highest annual toll since the war began in March 2003, according to numbers provided by the Associate Press.
• The five U.S. soldiers were killed Monday in two separate roadside bomb attacks, said Rear Adm. Gregory Smith, director of the Multi-National Force-Iraq’s communications division.
• The last grim record was set in 2004, when 850 U.S. troops were killed. With nearly two full months left in 2007, this year’s figure will unfortunately far surpass that figure.
• Yet, for as dangerous as it is for American troops in Iraq, the fatality statistics are much worse for Iraqis. On average, 56 Iraqis were killed every day in 2007.
• And although fewer Iraqis were killed in Baghdad in the past couple of months, but that may not exactly be good news. Experts believe some neighborhoods became quiet after ethnic cleansing killed all members of opposing sects, leaving areas empty. [Slate]
• Also Tuesday: the U.S. military said Iraqi troops had discovered 22 bodies in a mass grave northwest of Baghdad over the weekend. The bodies were found during a joint operation Saturday. It was the second mass grave found in the area in less than a month.

“Getting better?” Hardly.

Whoops: Border Agents Make 21,000 Mistakes

• A new study by the Government Accountability Office reports thousands of people have been able to skate through official U.S. border checkpoints due to lax procedures by the United States Customs and Border Protection agency. [MSNBC] [NYTimes] [CNN]
• 21,000: The number of people who should not have been allowed to enter the United States who were waved through official border crossing points between October 1, 2005 and September 30,2006.
• The GAO Report: “When CBP does not apprehend a potentially dangerous person, this increases the potential that national security may be compromised.
• There are 326 ports of entry into the United States, including air, land and sea.
• What’s the problem? Try staffing shortages and poor management.
• Problem: GAO officers entering at one point of entry found *zero* border agents on duty.
• Problem: In other locations, agents didn’t bother to ask for travel documents.
• Problem: Some agents didn’t bother to look up from their computer screens in their booths, let alone check out the driver and passengers.
• Problem: Some agents merely asked, “You an American?” and didn’t bother to ask for proof.
• Problem: CBP is so short staffed and has such morale problems that sometimes officers don’t show up for duty after pulling double shifts.
• Problem: Although CBP adopted new inspection procedures last July, it hasn’t put any management structure in place to make sure they are followed.
• You said it: Rep. Bennit Thompson (D., MS) pointed out, “As we continue to pump more resources into virtual and real fences between our ports of entry, we cannot afford to lose sight of other vulnerabilities at our borders.”

Translation: What’s the point of spending gazillions of dollars to build a huge fence along the borders when we’re not doing even the basics at the official ports?

Good News, Bad News

GROSSEST DRUG EVER

A Florida Sheriff has issued a press release warning parents of “jenkem,” a new street drug that’s showing up in high schools across Collier County. And it’s gross. Jenkem, also called “butthash” and “fruit from crack pipe,” is created by placing “fecal matter and urine” in a bottle, putting a balloon over the top, and sitting the bottle in the sun until the fermenting poo fills the balloon with gas. This gas, when inhaled, induces “a euphoric high similar to ingesting cocaine but with strong hallucinations of times past.” [The Smoking Gun]

GOOD NEWS

Now you can create your own hallucinogen without even leaving your bathroom.

BAD NEWS

“Jenkem users dislike its sewagey taste, which can last for days.” Uh...we think we’re gonna throw up.

Quote Of The Day

“Morally you are pygmies.”

— Rep. Tom Lantos, to officials at Yahoo. Yahoo helped the Chinese government silence a dissident, turning documents about journalist Shi Tao over to Chinese authorities. The Chinese promptly used the documents to throw Shi Tao in jail, where she is a political prisoner. Yahoo then lied to Congress about it. [ABC News]

Speed Round

AUDIO: RUSH LIMBAUGH HATES CHILDREN, POLAR BEARS

The only thing that makes Rush Limbaugh more disgusted than a crying child is a child that’s crying over polar bears. [Media Matters]

AUDIO: PAT BOONE, HOMOPHOBE

That weird, nasty, anti-gay message someone just left on your voice mail? Yeah, that would be Pat Boone: “"Now do you want a governor who’d like Kentucky to be another San Francisco?”

BUSH’S NEW RECORD

For the first time ever, in the entire history of the Gallup poll, more than half of all Americans say they “strongly disapprove” of the president. Congratulations, Mr. Bush, you’ve just topped Richard Nixon, who only made it to a high of 48% disapproval right before his impeachment. [USA Today]

“WE ARE WINNING”

Senator Joe Lieberman (I-CT), on Iraq. Apparently he missed the news that 2007 has been the deadliest year thus far for our troops. [Think Progress]

GLOBAL WARMING

Rich, powerful, polluted: Rich nations’ greenhouse gas emissions rose close to an all-time high in 2005. The dirtiest offenders? The U.S. and Russia. [Reuters]

TELEVANGELISTS

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R., IA) goes after false prophets, investigating six televangelists for dipping a little too freely into their offering plates. [CBS News]

THE OTHER WAR

A massive explosion in northern Afghanistan kills 28 people, including five members of the country’s parliament. [AP]

$986

What you can expect to pay in heating costs this winter — that’s an increase of roughly 10.9% from last year and $9 higher than the Energy Department estimated just last month. . [USA Today]

SCARY

Why are students and teachers at a Virginia high school suddenly seized with an uncontrollable, inexplicable twitching sickness? We don’t know, but it freaks us out. [ABC News]

STRETCHED THIN

The U.S. military is going to make it easier for people with criminal records to join up. [Guardian]

30 YEARS

Jail sentence for Michael C. Reynolds, convicted of “plotting to help a supposed al-Qaida operative blow up U.S. oil pipelines and refineries.” [AP]

POPES AND KINGS

Pope Benedict meets with the King of Saudi Arabia for the first time and expressed concerns over the plight of Christians in the Muslim kingdom. [MSNBC]

LET’S GET READY TO RUMBLE

Last night, a majority of House Republicans joined Democrats in escalating a confrontation with President Bush by overriding his veto on a $23.2 billion water resources bill. [NY Times]

ELECTIONS

Kentucky’s state house is handed over to the election’s Democratic challenger. [USA Today]

OUR TROOPS

Tragic: Some troops are cheating on mental health tests in order to stay with their units. [USA Today]