Wow GTAdmin, what a surprise to see the new board....
At first I thought this is a serious takeover, Lol?

Is this permanent?
I think I prefered the softer page colors we had b4
Sky Is this permanent?

Gt admin, your new site looks great! How long have you been working on it? I have a company working on mine and so far it has been 8 weeks.

Get Ready to be Outraged — 50 Examples of Government Waste
By Heritage Foundation , Leadership for America - October 09, 2009

http://waronyou.com/topics/get-ready-to ... ent-waste/

The Congressional Budget Office reported yesterday that the U.S. government ended its 2009 fiscal year with a deficit of $1.4 trillion, the biggest since 1945.

Washington will spend $33,932 per household in 2009–$8,000 per household more than last year. Following President Barack Obama’s budget, Washington will be spending $33,000 per household (adjusted for inflation) by 2019, and that does not include the costs of Obamacare. This spending is not inevitable.

In the 1980s and 1990s, Washington consistently spent $21,000 per household (adjusted for inflation). Simply returning to that level would balance the budget by 2012 without any tax hikes. Alternatively, returning to the $25,000 per household level (adjusted for inflation) that Washington spent before the current recession would likely balance the budget by 2019 without any tax hikes.

To help move back to these healthier levels of spending, Heritage Senior Policy Analyst Brian Riedl has identified 50 Examples of Government Waste. Eliminating waste cannot balance the budget. But here’s a start:

* 1. The federal government made at least $72 billion in improper payments in 2008.
* 2. Washington spends $92 billion on corporate welfare (excluding TARP) versus $71 billion on homeland security.
* 3. Washington spends $25 billion annually maintaining unused or vacant federal properties.
* 4. Government auditors spent the past five years examining all federal programs and found that 22 percent of them–costing taxpayers a total of $123 billion annually–fail to show any positive impact on the populations they serve.
* 5. The Congressional Budget Office published a “Budget Options” series identifying more than $100 billion in potential spending cuts.
* 6. Examples from multiple Government Accountability Office (GAO) reports of wasteful duplication include 342 economic development programs; 130 programs serving the disabled; 130 programs serving at-risk youth; 90 early childhood development programs; 75 programs funding international education, cultural, and training exchange activities; and 72 safe water programs.
* 7. Washington will spend $2.6 million training Chinese prostitutes to drink more responsibly on the job.
* 8. A GAO audit classified nearly half of all purchases on government credit cards as improper, fraudulent, or embezzled. Examples of taxpayer-funded purchases include gambling, mortgage payments, liquor, lingerie, iPods, Xboxes, jewelry, Internet dating services, and Hawaiian vacations. In one extraordinary example, the Postal Service spent $13,500 on one dinner at a Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse, including “over 200 appetizers and over $3,000 of alcohol, including more than 40 bottles of wine costing more than $50 each and brand-name liquor such as Courvoisier, Belvedere and Johnny Walker Gold.” The 81 guests consumed an average of $167 worth of food and drink apiece.
* 9. Federal agencies are delinquent on nearly 20 percent of employee travel charge cards, costing taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars annually.
* 10. The Securities and Exchange Commission spent $3.9 million rearranging desks and offices at its Washington, D.C., headquarters.
* 11. The Pentagon recently spent $998,798 shipping two 19-cent washers from South Carolina to Texas and $293,451 sending an 89-cent washer from South Carolina to Florida.
* 12. Over half of all farm subsidies go to commercial farms, which report average household incomes of $200,000.
* 13. Health care fraud is estimated to cost taxpayers more than $60 billion annually.
* 14. A GAO audit found that 95 Pentagon weapons systems suffered from a combined $295 billion in cost overruns.
* 15. The refusal of many federal employees to fly coach costs taxpayers $146 million annually in flight upgrades.
* 16. Washington will spend $126 million in 2009 to enhance the Kennedy family legacy in Massachusetts. Additionally, Senator John Kerry (D-MA) diverted $20 million from the 2010 defense budget to subsidize a new Edward M. Kennedy Institute.
* 17. Federal investigators have launched more than 20 criminal fraud investigations related to the TARP financial bailout.
* 18. Despite trillion-dollar deficits, last year’s 10,160 earmarks included $200,000 for a tattoo removal program in Mission Hills, California; $190,000 for the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, Wyoming; and $75,000 for the Totally Teen Zone in Albany, Georgia.
* 19. The federal government owns more than 50,000 vacant homes.
* 20. The Federal Communications Commission spent $350,000 to sponsor NASCAR driver David Gilliland.
* 21. Members of Congress have spent hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars supplying their offices with popcorn machines, plasma televisions, DVD equipment, ionic air fresheners, camcorders, and signature machines–plus $24,730 leasing a Lexus, $1,434 on a digital camera, and $84,000 on personalized calendars.
* 22. More than $13 billion in Iraq aid has been classified as wasted or stolen. Another $7.8 billion cannot be accounted for.
* 23. Fraud related to Hurricane Katrina spending is estimated to top $2 billion. In addition, debit cards provided to hurricane victims were used to pay for Caribbean vacations, NFL tickets, Dom Perignon champagne, “Girls Gone Wild” videos, and at least one sex change operation.
* 24. Auditors discovered that 900,000 of the 2.5 million recipients of emergency Katrina assistance provided false names, addresses, or Social Security numbers or submitted multiple applications.
* 25. Congress recently gave Alaska Airlines $500,000 to paint a Chinook salmon on a Boeing 737.
* 26. The Transportation Department will subsidize up to $2,000 per flight for direct flights between Washington, D.C., and the small hometown of Congressman Hal Rogers (R-KY)–but only on Monday mornings and Friday evenings, when lawmakers, staff, and lobbyists usually fly. Rogers is a member of the Appropriations Committee, which writes the Transportation Department’s budget.
* 27. Washington has spent $3 billion re-sanding beaches–even as this new sand washes back into the ocean.
* 28. A Department of Agriculture report concedes that much of the $2.5 billion in “stimulus” funding for broadband Internet will be wasted.
* 29. The Defense Department wasted $100 million on unused flight tickets and never bothered to collect refunds even though the tickets were refundable.
* 30. Washington spends $60,000 per hour shooting Air Force One photo-ops in front of national landmarks.
* 31. Over one recent 18-month period, Air Force and Navy personnel used government-funded credit cards to charge at least $102,400 on admission to entertainment events, $48,250 on gambling, $69,300 on cruises, and $73,950 on exotic dance clubs and prostitutes.
* 32. Members of Congress are set to pay themselves $90 million to increase their franked mailings for the 2010 election year.
* 33. Congress has ignored efficiency recommendations from the Department of Health and Human Services that would save $9 billion annually.
* 34. Taxpayers are funding paintings of high-ranking government officials at a cost of up to $50,000 apiece.
* 35. The state of Washington sent $1 food stamp checks to 250,000 households in order to raise state caseload figures and trigger $43 million in additional federal funds.
* 36. Suburban families are receiving large farm subsidies for the grass in their backyards–subsidies that many of these families never requested and do not want.
* 37. Congress appropriated $20 million for “commemoration of success” celebrations related to Iraq and Afghanistan.
* 38. Homeland Security employee purchases include 63-inch plasma TVs, iPods, and $230 for a beer brewing kit.
* 39. Two drafting errors in the 2005 Deficit Reduction Act resulted in a $2 billion taxpayer cost.
* 40. North Ridgeville, Ohio, received $800,000 in “stimulus” funds for a project that its mayor described as “a long way from the top priority.”
* 41. The National Institutes of Health spends $1.3 million per month to rent a lab that it cannot use.
* 42. Congress recently spent $2.4 billion on 10 new jets that the Pentagon insists it does not need and will not use.
* 43. Lawmakers diverted $13 million from Hurricane Katrina relief spending to build a museum celebrating the Army Corps of Engineers–the agency partially responsible for the failed levees that flooded New Orleans.
* 44. Medicare officials recently mailed $50 million in erroneous refunds to 230,000 Medicare recipients.
* 45. Audits showed $34 billion worth of Department of Homeland Security contracts contained significant waste, fraud, and abuse.
* 46. Washington recently spent $1.8 million to help build a private golf course in Atlanta, Georgia.
* 47. The Advanced Technology Program spends $150 million annually subsidizing private businesses; 40 percent of this funding goes to Fortune 500 companies.
* 48. Congressional investigators were able to receive $55,000 in federal student loan funding for a fictional college they created to test the Department of Education.
* 49. The Conservation Reserve program pays farmers $2 billion annually not to farm their land.
* 50. The Commerce Department has lost 1,137 computers since 2001, many containing Americans’ personal data.

"Death Bonds": Wall Street’s Shocking New Plan to Reap Billions off Dying Americans

By Mark Ames, AlterNet. Posted September 10, 2009.

It sounds too gruesome to be true, but the bankers have already shaken the silver out of everything that had value in America -- except for the elderly.

Now we know why America's oligarchs are fighting to keep the rest of us stuck in the world's worst health care system: the more we die, the more billions Wall Street will earn. A recent article in The New York Times exposed how Wall Street is licking its lips over a new scheme to make hundreds of billions in profits by creating financial instruments that will profit off of millions of terminally-ill Americans' agony, desperation, and death. The only thing standing in the way of this massive new Wall Street scheme is the kind of health care reform that might allow Americans to live longer lives. Yep, this is what we spent trillions of dollars bailing out Wall Street for: so that they can kill us for profit.

It sounds like something out of an old sci-fi flick like War of the Worlds, with America's billionaires as the brutal aliens harvesting our humanoid blood and tissue to fertilize their country club golf courses. Yet it makes logical sense: Wall Street has nowhere else to turn for its fat profits. Our banking class has already destroyed everything else in this country that had any value, from America's industrial base to the American Dream itself, its housing market--whatever Wall Street could securitize, leverage, flip or restructure, they destroyed for good. There's nothing left to strip and pawn -- except for our lives.


Read the Rest At:

http://www.alternet.org/story/142531/

From the BBC of All Places... People are starting to catch on!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8299079.stm

What happened to global warming?

By Paul Hudson
Climate correspondent, BBC News

This headline may come as a bit of a surprise, so too might that fact that the warmest year recorded globally was not in 2008 or 2007, but in 1998.

But it is true. For the last 11 years we have not observed any increase in global temperatures.

And our climate models did not forecast it, even though man-made carbon dioxide, the gas thought to be responsible for warming our planet, has continued to rise.

So what on Earth is going on?

Climate change sceptics, who passionately and consistently argue that man's influence on our climate is overstated, say they saw it coming.

They argue that there are natural cycles, over which we have no control, that dictate how warm the planet is. But what is the evidence for this?

During the last few decades of the 20th Century, our planet did warm quickly.

Sceptics argue that the warming we observed was down to the energy from the Sun increasing. After all 98% of the Earth's warmth comes from the Sun.

But research conducted two years ago, and published by the Royal Society, seemed to rule out solar influences.

The scientists' main approach was simple: to look at solar output and cosmic ray intensity over the last 30-40 years, and compare those trends with the graph for global average surface temperature.

And the results were clear. "Warming in the last 20 to 40 years can't have been caused by solar activity," said Dr Piers Forster from Leeds University, a leading contributor to this year's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

But one solar scientist Piers Corbyn from Weatheraction, a company specialising in long range weather forecasting, disagrees.

He claims that solar charged particles impact us far more than is currently accepted, so much so he says that they are almost entirely responsible for what happens to global temperatures.

He is so excited by what he has discovered that he plans to tell the international scientific community at a conference in London at the end of the month.

If proved correct, this could revolutionise the whole subject.

Ocean cycles

What is really interesting at the moment is what is happening to our oceans. They are the Earth's great heat stores.
“ In the last few years [the Pacific Ocean] has been losing its warmth and has recently started to cool down ”

According to research conducted by Professor Don Easterbrook from Western Washington University last November, the oceans and global temperatures are correlated.

The oceans, he says, have a cycle in which they warm and cool cyclically. The most important one is the Pacific decadal oscillation (PDO).

For much of the 1980s and 1990s, it was in a positive cycle, that means warmer than average. And observations have revealed that global temperatures were warm too.

But in the last few years it has been losing its warmth and has recently started to cool down.

These cycles in the past have lasted for nearly 30 years.

So could global temperatures follow? The global cooling from 1945 to 1977 coincided with one of these cold Pacific cycles.

Professor Easterbrook says: "The PDO cool mode has replaced the warm mode in the Pacific Ocean, virtually assuring us of about 30 years of global cooling."

So what does it all mean? Climate change sceptics argue that this is evidence that they have been right all along.

They say there are so many other natural causes for warming and cooling, that even if man is warming the planet, it is a small part compared with nature.

But those scientists who are equally passionate about man's influence on global warming argue that their science is solid.

The UK Met Office's Hadley Centre, responsible for future climate predictions, says it incorporates solar variation and ocean cycles into its climate models, and that they are nothing new.

In fact, the centre says they are just two of the whole host of known factors that influence global temperatures - all of which are accounted for by its models.

In addition, say Met Office scientists, temperatures have never increased in a straight line, and there will always be periods of slower warming, or even temporary cooling.

What is crucial, they say, is the long-term trend in global temperatures. And that, according to the Met office data, is clearly up.

To confuse the issue even further, last month Mojib Latif, a member of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) says that we may indeed be in a period of cooling worldwide temperatures that could last another 10-20 years.

Professor Latif is based at the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences at Kiel University in Germany and is one of the world's top climate modellers.

But he makes it clear that he has not become a sceptic; he believes that this cooling will be temporary, before the overwhelming force of man-made global warming reasserts itself.

So what can we expect in the next few years?

Both sides have very different forecasts. The Met Office says that warming is set to resume quickly and strongly.

It predicts that from 2010 to 2015 at least half the years will be hotter than the current hottest year on record (1998).

Sceptics disagree. They insist it is unlikely that temperatures will reach the dizzy heights of 1998 until 2030 at the earliest. It is possible, they say, that because of ocean and solar cycles a period of global cooling is more likely.

One thing is for sure. It seems the debate about what is causing global warming is far from over. Indeed some would say it is hotting up.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/s ... 299079.stm

Published: 2009/10/09 15:22:46 GMT

© BBC MMIX

"Death Bonds": Wall Street’s Shocking New Plan to Reap Billions off Dying Americans

By Mark Ames, AlterNet. Posted September 10, 2009.

It sounds too gruesome to be true, but the bankers have already shaken the silver out of everything that had value in America -- except for the elderly.

Thank you for lovely new format!
Went into panic mode today when no server found - but here we are again - phew
Back to business then

Ya sorry about that I really tried NOT to do it this way right after such a nasty Server Crash but I really had NO CHOICE.

That's why I sent out the mass email to let all know that we are still here, I hate mass emails but I think this one was justified.

Thanks for the nice comments it's been a very long 48 hours but I think it was worth it!

Rogue satellites to be cleared from Earth's orbit by German robots
Published on 10-11-2009

Source: The Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/ ... satellites

Robots that rescue failing satellites and push "dead" ones into outer space should be ready in four years, it has emerged. Experts described the development by German scientists as a crucial step in preventing a disaster in the Earth's crowded orbit.

Last year it was reported that critical levels of debris circling the Earth were threatening astronauts' lives and the future of the multibillion-pound satellite communications industry. But senior figures at the German Aerospace Centre (DLR) told the Observer they have been given the go-ahead to tackle a crisis that will come to a head in the next five to 10 years as more orbiting objects run out of fuel.

Their robots will dock with failing satellites to carry out repairs or push them into "graveyard orbits", freeing vital space in geostationary orbit. This is the narrow band 22,000 miles above the Earth in which orbiting objects appear fixed at the same point. More than 200 dead satellites litter this orbit. Within 10 years that number could increase fivefold, the International Association for the Advancement of Space Safety has warned.

Klaus Landzettel, head of space robotics at DLR, said engineering advances, including the development of machines that can withstand temperatures ranging from -170C (-274F) to 200C (392F), meant that the German robots will be "ready to be used on any satellite, whether it's designed to be docked or not".

In 2007, the US Orbital Express project succeeded in refuelling an orbiting satellite. However, that satellite had been specifically designed to dock with the device.

Hi GTAdmin,
Great job indeed. I think I like the prosilver better for me and my eyesite, but the other looks good also.
Now to get used to the new format! You did good indeed.
brightstar

Great job! The darker format helps my eyes. Just a personal preference; it's great to see that one can choose which format to use. Again, awesome job!
Belated Happies for the birthdays!

I use the VA for all my medical problems. They are sure pushing the flu shots . . . but so far they are not mandatory for continuing care. Keeping my fingers crossed - I'm one that does NOT want the shot.

I must post more often. I spend a lot of time here reading; I should speak up more often. I'm working on several medical issues and happily my SSDI came through, so I can stop worrying about being homeless (for now). (c:
Thanks for the great forum, and keep up the Good Works - and words.
~Wyz

A very classy new look indeed, Admin.

And ooooh, wow. I just noticed the inifinitely variable typeset colors on the right of the message posting panel....very cool.

Cheers,
Selene

I like it too...added more quality..
Dex

I heard the first several minutes of the Wilcock video you linked to, cyberbird, but the shameless self-promotion was a bit of a turn-off for me, sad to say. David Wilcock and I share only one thing in common: we've both been shat upon by Dan Burisch, and we have some common acquaintances as a result. Beyond that, we have entirely different concepts of what "disclosure" and "2012" are all about.