Napolitano downplays Terrorist connections, but emphasizes Good Job by Homeland Security

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"The System Worked..." Heck of a job Janet!

From Eric Dondero:

Homeland Security Director Janet Napolitano may have just had a "Brownie moment." In 2005, during the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, President Bush visited Louisiana and pronounced to his own FEMA Director: "You're doing a heckuva job Brownie."

DHS Director Napolitano was interviewed on CNN by Candy Crowley on Sunday.

From the LA Times:

Napolitano, speaking on CNN's "State of the Union," said it was too early to speculate on the claims of Al Qaeda connections made by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the 23-year-old Nigerian held in connection with the incident

Napolitano said that "right now we have no indication that it is part of anything larger."

The Secretary then went onto to give an inarticulate response to a question by Crowley as to how this was allowed to happen.

From Politico.com:

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Sunday that the thwarting of the attempt to blow up an Amsterdam-Detroit airline flight Christmas Day demonstrated that "the system worked."

Asked by CNN's Candy Crowley on "State of the Union" how that could be possible when the young Nigerian who has been charged with trying to set off the bomb was able to smuggle explosive liquid onto the jet, Napolitano responded: "We're asking the same questions."

Napolitano added that there was "no suggestion that [the suspect] was improperly screened."

Libertarian-conservative Jonah Goldberg blogs at NRO in response:

I watched her on three shows and each time she was more annoying, maddening and absurd than the pevious appearance. It is her basic position that the "system worked" because the bureaucrats responded properly after the attack...

That is just about the dumbest thing she could say... the attack was "foiled" by a bad detonator and some civilian passengers... DHS had no role whatsoever in assuring that this bomb didn't go off.

If the White House wants to assure people that it takes the war on terror seriously... they could start by firing this patenly unqualified hack.

Linking the Components of Health Care "Reform"

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According to M.I.T. economist Jon Gruber, the Senate's tax on cadillac health plans is good policy because it

would reduce the incentives for employers to provide excessively generous insurance, leading to more cost-conscious use of health care and, ultimately, lower spending.

Gruber is right, and virtually every economist agrees. The ideal reform would combine increased taxation of employer-provided health insurance with offsetting reductions in personal or corporate income taxes.  Both changes would reduce distortions in the tax system and allow government to raise any given amount of tax revenue with a smaller negative impact on the economy.

But that does not mean government should expand spending, on health insurance or anything else. That is a logically separate question.

EPA Coal Plant Deadline

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This EPA has done more in the last 8 months than the previous EPA did in the last 8 years. They are currently deciding whether to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired power plants. You can weigh in with your comments, but the deadline for that is December 28th. This is the easy way to send your comment, from CREDO:

Earlier this month, President Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency issued a formal declaration that global warming pollution is a threat to public health and welfare — something that the rest of us have known for a long, long time.

The way is cleared for the Clean Air Act to become an crucial weapon in our fight to stop climate change. The Obama administration is now in a position to regulate global warming pollution without having to wait for Congress (which has been lured into writing weak climate policies by industry lobbyists with deep pockets).

Stand up for strong regulation of greenhouse gases before the deadline on Monday, Dec. 28. Clicking here will automatically sign your name to a public comment at EPA.

Coal-fired power plants are by far the largest producer of global warming pollution in the U.S., and Obama’s EPA is now considering a rule that would finally allow these pollution-belching smoke stacks to be regulated. This is one of the President’s best opportunities to ensure we pass on a safer planet to the next generation, but we know that Big Coal is going to fight us at every turn.

The EPA is accepting public comments on Obama’s plan to regulate greenhouse gases from coal-fired plants and other big polluters under the Clean Air Act. But the public comment period ends at the end of the day on Monday. We only have a short amount of time to show much needed support and counter the powerful coal industry lobby.

This is urgent. Take action by 6:00pm Eastern time on Monday, Dec. 28th, and we will deliver your name along with our petition as a public comment to the EPA.

Click here to send your comment on the petition.

iTunes Tagging To Be Offered In Ford’s Sync System Cars [Cars]

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We've seen several HD radios with iTunes tagging before, but this is the first time we've seen it pre-installed in a car, ready to drive off the show room floor.

Joining the in-car Wi-Fi available via Ford's Sync system, the iTunes tagging will allow car-owners to buy songs they've just heard on the radio on iTunes. Sync is expected to be rolled out sometime in 2010. [TechRadar]



Notion Ink’s Tablet Named Adam, Will Be Birthed In June [Tablets]

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The curvaceous, sexy tablet from Notion Ink has some serious gender issues, as the company has named it "Adam." It'll still be the first tablet to use a Pixel Qi screen, Notion Ink's hoping, despite its June release date.

The specs haven't changed much since we first saw it a few weeks ago, with the long battery life being touted by Notion Ink's founder Rohan Shravan:

"We are the only ones to use Pixel Qi screens for Tablet technology. It consumes one-tenth of the battery compared with conventional LCDs"

A price point of $325 sounds very attractive, though I wouldn't be at all surprised if it's pushed north of that sum, considering the amount of spec crammed within that Android-powered body. [Electronista, pics via Slashgear]



Tea Party leaders call for full repeal of Dem Health Care bill

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Beat back the Democrats on their "horrendous" legislation

From Eric Dondero:

The Tea Party movement has been searching for one single issue to unite all various factions heading into 2010. The movement consists of Fiscal Conservatives, Dick Armey's FreedomWorks, big city stockbrokers and businessmen inspired by Chicagoan Rick Sintelli of CNBC, Libertarian Party members, Ron Paul followers, Anti-Federal Reserve Goldbugs, Sarah Palin supporters, and small-town Moms mad at the Big Boys in Washington, who can't even balance their own checkbook.

Now, Tea Party leaders may have found an issue all Tea Party Patriots can rally behind.

The Plum Line (Who runs the Gov), a liberal-leaning publication, quotes a promiment leader in the Tea Party movement - Alex Pappas, VP of FreedomWorks, on the Health Care legislation:

"This has an unusual ability to be repealed, and the public is on that side.” he said. "The Republicans are going to have to prove that they are worthy of their votes."

Writes Greg Sargent of Plum Line:

It’s now becoming clear that this could be a major issue for Republicans in 2010: the Tea Party movement, as well as high-profile conservatives, are going to demand that candidates call for a full repeal of the Dem healthcare reform bill, presuming it passes.

Rosputin, top blogger at FreedomWorks.org puts the deeds into action:

For the next 11 months, until the 2010 elections, we will see a continuous battle of messaging between the Democrats trying to show what the bill "gives" people and Republicans (and others) trying to show what it takes from people (money, liberty, quality of health care.) It is absolutely critical that the Democrats be soundly beaten back every time they try to offer a positive message about their horrendous legislation.

For tips on activism against Health Care and how to get active in the fight for the 2010 campaign - FreedomWorks.org blog

One Year Ago: the TVA Coal Ash Spill

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Coal ash waste is a dangerous and growing pollution problem in the U.S.  Watch the video on the bottom of this article describing waste problems from coal, the waste they are now hauling into poor areas of Alabama by the truckload.

Since the disaster one year ago, the Kingston “disaster ash,” as it is known here, “has spread like a cancer across the Southeast,”

An aerial view of the 2008 Kingston Fossil Plant coal fly ash slurry spill in Tennessee. (Image: Tennessee Valley Authority)

On the third day before Christmas in 2008, the people living along the Emory River in East Tennessee were listening to songs about a “white Christmas” like everybody else in the country, trying to look forward and not back. . . . . Instead of a white Christmas, though, people like Steve Scarborough of the Dagger Kayak and Canoe Company woke up to a black-gray mess of epic proportions, a river full of toxic coal ash from the Tennessee Valley Authority’s coal-fired power plant at Kingston, Tennessee.

“There are no excuses for this,” Scarborough said. “One of the dumbest thing humans do is dig coal out of the ground and burn it.”

The largely affluent population of the area demanded action and an immediate cleanup of the largest environmental disaster in American history in the lower 48 states, second only to the Exxon Valdez spill in Prince William Sound, Alaska, in the spring of 1989. So within four months, by March 20, TVA began dredging the mountain of coal ash out of the river and shipping it by train to a landfill in the poor Black Belt of Alabama.

One year later, on the first anniversary of the second worst environmental disaster in American history, while the people in Tennessee are hiring lawyers and suing TVA and reading story after story in the local newspapers about their plight while the cleanup continues, the poor people of Perry County, Alabama, where TVA found a place to dump the toxic ash, are not singing Christmas carols. They are locked in their homes with their air conditioners running even in winter, trying to stay out of the gaseous fumes from the landfill where the coal ash is piling up on top of household garbage by the freight train load.

There’s not a newspaper or a TV station anywhere around telling their story, and most of them are so poor and living in such a remote, rural area that they can’t even turn to the Internet, either to voice their concerns and get organized or find out what’s going on to help them, if there is anything. They are not hearing much out of their local government officials or the congressman elected to represent them either, so they are living in the dark with a nagging fear for the future.

North of the landfill, other residents with nowhere to go to escape the gaseous smell from the liquid waste being dumped from [...]

ddc logics

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hi friends

can you tell me in Building Management System logics (BMS)

that means AHU ,Chiller,VFD &etc...

for sequentional logic, PID logics ,& etc ...

i want know that creating new logic in any brands for EX Honeywell, Siemens,or any software .... for CARE , COMFORPOINT OR anyt

Doesn’t She Look Thrilled About LG’s First DTV Devices For The US [Dtv]

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Yes, your eyes are deceiving you, LG's not licensed the StarTAC design. Phew. That telescopic antenna doesn't just harp back to ye olden days though, it also receives a digital TV signal, one of the first US DTV devices.

Joining the Lotus clamshell is the DP570MH portable DVD player, which will play DVDs and over 800 channels of live digital TV thanks to the LG2160A ATSC-M/H chip, which LG's offered to Dell for use in its laptops, and manufacturers of in-car receivers such as Kenwood. The DVD player has a four hour battery life when playing TV, which is only two hours less than the iPod Touch.

I'm all for DTV devices, but surely LG could've picked a better handset to introduce to the US market, considering the Lotus has been floating around since the end of 2008? [LGE via Engadget]



Amazing Jobs: Wind Turbine Cleaner [Jobs]

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It may not offer the toehold-challenge of traditional rock climbing, but then, traditional rock climbing doesn't usually come with a paycheck. These climbers have been employed to scale huge wind turbines for maintenance, which is green in so many ways.


Instead of using huge, expensive and environmentally-unsound cranes to get repairs done, owners of wind turbines have started hiring rock climbers to do what they do best—get way high up. It's cost-effective, environmentally-friendly on a couple levels, and most importantly (for our purposes), looks really freaking cool. [Treehugger]