Well shanah tova to you losers. I think John McCain should suspend his campaign permanently — since he did such a good job getting his party’s most fanatical trolls to line up. And, I hope the shit really hits the fan before Nov. 4, so Great American Voter can see clearly that the Republicans have trashed the entire country in the last eight years — and so, kick the bastards clear out.

Nightnote Kentucky correspondent and friend Janice felt it! The big midwest shaker shook her area and she sends us this report:

You Californians might think this is normal but I was awoken at 5:30 this morning with my house shaking and a making all sorts of noise! We had a 5.2 quake and an aftershock of 4 point something that was a bit dramatic because I’m on the 12th floor of a highrise at this time. I’ve never felt the ground move. It was weird. I thought it was an explosion but it kept moving. I like terra firma. When I woke up, my cat was about to bolt from bed. I grabbed her, both to calm her down and to snatch her up if it was bad enough to force us to leave in a hurry. I didn’t want to have to hunt for her. As far as I can tell, nothing was damaged but some stuff knocked off shelves. I’ll check for cracks again when I get home, especially chimneys because several in the neighborhood fell or look close to falling. It makes me want to move back to the deep alluvial plane of the Mississippi River!

Thanks for the report J. Learn more about Janice’s shaker at the USGS.

In other earth shaking news, the USGS sent out a report last week that “found that California is virtually certain to experience at least one major temblor by 2028,” read more at the LAT. And, yes moms, we have our earthquake kit in order.

Despite GOP tactics that pulled the House of Representatives into a late-night secret session — only the third since 1825 — today the House said no to warrantless government wiretapping and no to immunizing telcos that participate in warrantless trolling of American citizens’ communications. Nicely, they also said yes to investigations of the whole Bush administration domestic spying program and yes to our Fourth Amendment rights. Wee. [Read more about it at the Washington Post] Now it’s back to the Senate for a test of that body’s spine.

Of course, Bush trotted right out of the White House to say that he’d veto it all if it got to him. [Cover story of Cover Your Ass Weekly] Still, I watched the C-Span of some of the debate before the vote and it was nice to see that some legislators still understand the Bill of Rights when it says:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Contact your Senator to let him/her know you’re still listening. Learn more about this issue in this and this previous post.

Still there are members of congress — I’d say members who are against having an educated and informed populace — who are fighting hard right now to cut funding for public broadcasting. It is easy to let them know that Discovery Channel’s Shark Month, The History Channel’s never-ending Nazi fest and The Learning Channel’s Wedding Story Marathon are not an equally good free-market replacement for public broadcasting. Tellthempublicmatters.org has a super-easy form for sending the message to the appropriate members of the House and Senate. It takes less than 3 minutes to stand up for public broadcasting — you don’t even have to write a sentence, if you’re not feeling creative.

Yes! Public does matter! Take me there now!

[1] Congressional Research Service Report for Congress, The Cost of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Other Global War on Terror Operations Since 9/11 (pdf). Learn more about the Congressional Research service here.

From the People for the American Way: The Senate passed a FISA reform bill last week that grants retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies that may have aided the Bush administration’s illegal domestic wiretapping. The bill also gives the government license to wiretap without individualized warrants. The House can still put on the brakes, so it’s time to take action. Watch our new video – produced in collaboration with our allies at the Electronic Frontier Foundation – featuring activists calling for Congress to stop the spying. Then add your voice by signing the petition.

Or contact your Congressional Representative directly. Sadly, mine is Dana Rohrabacher, but I wrote to him anyway. Common Cause makes it easy to find and contact all your elected officials here.

A talk-about-a-futile-effort update: My fearmongering Rep. Dana Rorabacher tells the OC Register, “Just think about shutting down the interceptions because of some misplaced notion about protecting American rights and we end up with families being murdered at Disneyland because some messages weren’t intercepted.” Guess he didn’t get the memo.

At the nexus of history geeks, graphics geeks and politico-geeks there are things like these HistoryShots’ posters, “History of the [American] Political Parties I and II”. Fascinating. Whiggy. See them at historyshots.com.

Louisiana readers note: Mary Landrieu was one of only four Dems to cross the line to vote in favor of administration secrecy and telcom immunity.

Tomorrow — Monday, January 28 — the Senate will take up the question of cloture on the FISA Amendments Act (S. 2248). Now before your eyes glaze, this is important! Ever say anything on the phone or in an e-mail that you would rather not share with loyal Bushie operatchiks? Believe Bush administration should keep its grubby mitts off the Bill of Rights? Well then, this legislation is important to you.

From the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s (EFF) backgrounder:

“For at least six years, President Bush has authorized the National Security Agency (NSA) to conduct dragnet surveillance on our domestic telecommunications networks, vacuuming up the private communications of millions of ordinary Americans with no warrants or other meaningful oversight.

Yet instead of reining in this illegal activity, congressional leadership handed the president even more authority to violate your rights by passing the so-called “Protect America Act” in August 2007. Now the Administration wants to make its power grab permanent and prevent any court from stopping the illegal spying. Proposed immunity legislation could let telephone companies off the hook for their role in the program and block lawsuits like EFF’s case against AT&T.

So Monday, the administration and its minions are going to try to close down debate on the bill — killing efforts to strip telecom immunity out of the FISA re-authorization — effectively granting reverse immunity to the telecom giants for handing over our private communications to the government without a warrant. The Bush administration wants this to happen so that the extent of their illegal spying will never be exposed in court.

What to do? Contact you Senator now. This is especially important for our Louisiana readers, because Sen. Mary Landrieu is voting the wrong way on this issue. [TPM] And there is no excuse not to do it, because it is really effortless. Follow this link to the EFF’s contact page, enter your address, type in a message of your own or use the one that’s there, click send and off your message goes to the appropriate Senators. EFF will also give you your Senator’s phone numbers and notes on the bill and amendment names. (I will be calling Senators Boxer and Feinstein tomorrow morning.)

Tell your Senator: “I’m a constituent, and I want to urge my Senator to oppose cloture on S. 2248, the FISA Amendments Act. I also want the Senator to support the Dodd-Feingold amendment to strip retroactive amnesty from the bill.” [EFF]

If you’re feeling creative, you can join the EFF’s photo/video petition drive. That’s what Val and I did this morning. Learn more about that at stopthespying.org.

Read editorials from all over the country on this issue here.

Read the text of the Fourth Amendment here.

Still, the air in Long Beach has been bad and my throat and chest have been giving me trouble. So Ajax and I have bugged out of our un-air-conditioned beach house to Laurie’s more accommodating bungalow. (My throat and my dog thank you, Laur).

The photo above is a grab from the ABC weather cam in Long Beach. Click it to see the most recent cam shots.

The Long Beach Press-Telegram puts it in numbers:

“Data on the Port of Long Beach Web site Monday showed PM10 (particulates/10 microns) at levels exceeding the state standards.

While state standards are set at 50 and federal standards at 150, today’s PM10 has hit a high of 370.7, said Thomas Jelenic, senior environmental specialists with the Port of Long Beach.

The levels are considered “very unhealthy,” meaning everyone may experience more serious health effects, he said.

Read more at the P-T.

A couple of interesting air-quality things overheard on broadcast media:

• When the high pressure system moves to the east and the winds shift from offshore to onshore, it will have the effect of blowing lots of particulates back onshore. It will take weeks for the air to be completely free of fire particles.

• A moisture rich little weather system that was supposed to come in on Friday looks weak and may not make it to us. The weather service is considering extending the red flag fire warnings into Thursday, because heat and super-low humidity will keep things dangerous.

]]> http://thenitenote.com/2007/10/23/particulates-matter/feed/ 0 http://thenitenote.com/2007/10/09/223/ http://thenitenote.com/2007/10/09/223/#comments Wed, 10 Oct 2007 02:18:14 +0000 kate http://www.thenitenote.com/blog/2007/10/09/223/ Watching the Republican debate tonight, I find it hard to believe that Americans can get behind any of these guys. But then I remember the party’s last candidate, and the sad reality sets in.