side note: If you don’t know who Rep. Waxman is, you should take the time to watch this interview. He is one of those people in DC who still gives us hope! He’s still working for the American people, not just his largest doners like most other Congressmen.

Truthout.org

CLICK HERE TO WATCH VIDEO

side note: This guy should find a new hobby!

http://www.news.com.au

A LONELY Japanese man has been arrested for allegedly calling directory assistance thousands of times because he liked to be scolded by operators.

Takahiro Fujinuma – who is 37, single and unemployed – reportedly would whisper “darling” as he tried to start a conversation and then pleaded with female operators not to hang up.
He was arrested yesterday in Tokyo on charges of obstructing the business of service operator NTT Solco, part of telecom giant Nippon Telegraph and Telephone.

He placed 2,600 calls to directory help – reached in Japan by dialling 104 – between early June and mid-November, a police spokesman said.

But Japanese media said he is suspected of starting his habit in 2004 and calling 104 more than 10,000 times. (more…)

side note: It’s real easy for everything we depend on to be gone in a moment’s notice. If this were to happen here….everything would come to a standstill.

by Elham Nakhlawai and Mustafa Al Arab
CNN.com

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (CNN) — Large swathes of Asia, the Middle East and north Africa had their high-technology services crippled Thursday following a widespread Internet failure which brought many businesses to a standstill and left others struggling to cope.

One major telecommunications provider blamed the outage, which started Wednesday, on a major undersea cable failure in the Mediterranean.

India’s Internet bandwidth has been sliced in half, The Associated Press reported, leaving its lucrative outsourcing industry trying to reroute traffic to satellites and other cables through Asia.

Reports say that Egypt, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Bahrain are also experiencing severe problems.

Nations that have been spared the chaos include Israel — whose traffic uses a different route — and Lebanon and Iraq. Many Middle East governments have backup satellite systems in case of cable failure. (more…)

side note: A perfect article to follow the Pot vending machine story! In all seriousness though, this is pretty damn cool!

By Jeremy Laurance,
The Independent.co.uk
Health Editor

The accidental breakthrough came during an experiment originally intended to suppress the obese man’s appetite, using the increasingly successful technique of deep-brain stimulation. Electrodes were pushed into the man’s brain and stimulated with an electric current. Instead of losing appetite, the patient instead had an intense experience of déjà vu. He recalled, in intricate detail, a scene from 30 years earlier. More tests showed his ability to learn was dramatically improved when the current was switched on and his brain stimulated.

Scientists are now applying the technique in the first trial of the treatment in patients with Alzheimer’s disease. If successful, it could offer hope to sufferers from the degenerative condition, which affects 450,000 people in Britain alone, by providing a “pacemaker” for the brain.

Three patients have been treated and initial results are promising, according to Andres Lozano, a professor of neurosurgery at the Toronto Western Hospital, Ontario, who is leading the research.

Professor Lozano said: “This is the first time that anyone has had electrodes implanted in the brain which have been shown to improve memory. We are driving the activity of the brain by increasing its sensitivity – turning up the volume of the memory circuits. Any event that involves the memory circuits is more likely to be stored and retained.” (more…)

side note: Thanks Kate for sending this! It made my day! This actually made me want to start searching for available real estate in Cali! Those Californians are like the Dutch compared to the rest of Europe….they are so much more progressive then the rest of the country!

By DAISY NGUYEN
Associated Press Writer
Yahoo.com

The city that popularized the fast food drive-thru has a new innovation: 24-hour medical marijuana vending machines.

Patients suffering from chronic pain, loss of appetite and other ailments that marijuana is said to alleviate can get their pot with a dose of convenience at the Herbal Nutrition Center, where a large machine will dole out the drug around the clock.

“Convenient access, lower prices, safety, anonymity,” inventor and owner Vincent Mehdizadeh said, extolling the benefits of the machine.

But federal drug agents say the invention may need unplugging.

“Somebody owns (it), it’s on a property and somebody fills it,” said DEA Special Agent Jose Martinez. “Once we find out where it’s at, we’ll look into it and see if they’re violating laws.”

At least three dispensaries in the city, including two belonging to Mehdizadeh, have installed vending machines to distribute the drug to people who carry cards authorizing marijuana use.

Mehdizadeh said he spent seven months to develop and patent the black, armored box, which he calls the “PVM,” or prescription vending machine.

A sliding fence protects the tinted windows of his dispensary, barely distinguishing it from a busy thoroughfare of strip malls, automobile dealers and furniture shops. A box resembling a large refrigerator stands inside the nearly empty shop, near a few shelves stocked with vitamins and herbs.

A guard in a black T-shirt emblazoned with the word “Security” on the front stands at the door. A poster of Bob Marley decorates a back room. (more…)

side note: Didn’t think this would happen till after Feb 5th. I guess the money really dried up for Edwards. I wonder if he’ll throw his delegates behind someone or if he’ll wait to see if he can get picked again as VP.

By JULIE BOSMAN
The New York Times

NEW ORLEANS — Democratic candidate John Edwards has decided to drop out of the presidential primary race, giving a speech this afternoon at the same place where he began this campaign — in New Orleans.

Throughout this season, Mr. Edwards hasn’t been able to break through the dueling high-profile candidacies of Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama. And he had not been able to raise the kind of funds that those two had early on.

Top advisers said that Mr. Edwards would not be endorsing another candidate today when he makes his announcement at 1 p.m. On Tuesday, Mr. Edwards canceled events in Alabama and North Dakota, opting instead to fly to New Orleans late Tuesday night. His press aides told reporters that he would make a “major policy speech” on poverty, in the city where Mr. Edwards announced his candidacy in December 2006. (more…)

side note: Thanks Matt! This is so funny! I can handle roughly 25….how about you?
CLICK HERE TO FIND OUT

side note: Welcome to the beginning of dubya’s policies starting to take effect. I’m worried that the economy will be such a huge deal come November elections that if Mitt gets the nod from the GOP, that he could actually win against either Clinton or Obama b/c of the sad state at which dubya left us.

By SARAH E. NEEDLEMAN
WSJ.com

Planning Ahead Can
Boost Your Chances of
Keeping, Finding a Job

Recession fears are causing more than just stock-market jitters this winter. They’re also shaking some workers’ confidence in their ability to continue earning a paycheck.

In December, overall worker confidence reached the lowest level recorded in 2007, according to a monthly report from Spherion Corp., a recruiting and staffing company. Roughly 2,800 workers were surveyed on their confidence in their personal employment situation and the broader employment environment.

Past economic downturns have led to layoffs throughout corporate America and, at least temporarily, a tighter labor market. But some industries tend to be more vulnerable than others when the economy is in a slump.

Even if there isn’t an official recession, a number of areas are already seeing layoffs and hiring freezes. Industries affected by the recent mortgage crisis and home-building downturn, such as real estate, construction, banking and law, are among the hardest hit so far, say recruiters. (more…)

side note: This is one of the most important things happening in the Senate. We can’t let these people get away with giving a free pass to these companies. They broke the law…everyone knows it and this is the bushies way around it. Call your Senator and make sure this doesn’t get through!

By Pamela Hess
The Associated Press

Washington – The Senate voted Monday against extending the eavesdropping law beyond Feb. 1, increasing political pressure to pass a new version of the bill this week.

The existing law will expire Feb. 1, a deadline the White House, intelligence officials and congressional Republicans are using to push the Senate into adopting a bill that would also protect from civil lawsuits the telecommunications companies that allowed their customers to be wiretapped without court approval.

The Senate vote was 48-45, 12 votes short of the 60 needed to extend the law. Also on Monday, House Democratic leaders delayed until Tuesday a vote on whether to extend the law.

The White House threatened to veto any short-term extension.

The expiration of the law is more of a political deadline than a practical one, congressional Democrats say. All existing electronic surveillance activities can continue uninterrupted for at least a year from their commencement. (more…)

side note: the photo says it all.

By LARRY MARGASAK, Associated Press Writer
yahoo.com

Democratic Congress is poised to heed President Bush’s call to help save the economy, but may not give him much else after a State of the Union speech that recycled many of the administration’s past initiatives.

A lame duck president called again for immigration reform, an end to lawmakers’ pet projects, control of Social Security spending and making tax cuts permanent. Democrats have rejected those Bush initiatives before.

And, in a sign that the dominant political battles will not be in Congress, many in the House chamber kept an eye during the speech on Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton — bitter rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination. They sat close to each other, but managed not to shake hands. (more…)

side note: Hopefully Obama can make a turn around in these huge states!

From MNBC’s Mark Murray

USA Today/Gallup is out with polls looking at the February 5 battlegrounds of California and New York. Per the surveys, Clinton leads Obama in California, 47%-35%, and also in New York, 56%-28%.

On the GOP side in California, it’s McCain 35%, Romney 27%, Huckabee 12%, and Giuliani 11%. And in New York, it’s McCain 42%, Giuliani 24%, and Romney 14% (more…)

side note: Haven’t we been hearing from the bushies that all is well in the American economy? When we said in 2004 that a good chunk of middle America was voting against their own interests when they put that monkey back into the White House…this is what we meant. These are the same folks who took money out against their inflated value of their homes. Now the market has dropped, along with the value of their homes, and these people are stuck. If they wanted to see their house now, they would take a negative hit b/c they still owe on the loan that can’t be covered based on their present day value of their house. Hope this makes sense….

By Chris Isidore
CNN MONEY
Weak December sales caps 2007’s record slide, with prices for the month off sharply from a year earlier.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — New home sales posted the biggest drop on record in 2007, according to the government’s latest look at the battered housing market released Monday, as a year that saw a meltdown in the mortgage market and a drop in home values ended with yet more signs of weakness.

December sales came in at an annual rate of 604,000, the report showed, down from the 634,000 sales pace in November, which was also revised lower.

The reading was well below the consensus forecast economists surveyed by Briefing.com, who had been looking for a December sales pace of 645,000.

The weak December sales left the full-year new home sales at 774,000, down 26 percent from the 1.05 million sales in 2006. That was the biggest drop since the government started tracking new home sales in 1963, surpassing the 23 percent decline posted in 1980.

It also was the second straight year of large declines from the record pace of 2005, which marked the end of the building boom. The report showed 2007 sales off nearly 40 percent from that peak of only two years ago. (more…)

By Paul Armentano, AlterNet.
U.S. arrests for pot possession were up to 739,000 in 2006. And the cost to tax payers? $1 billion a year.

What’s the current price for a bag of weed? According to the latest figures from the FBI, the human cost is roughly 739,000 a year.

That’s the number of American citizens arrested in 2006 for possessing small amounts of pot. (Another 91,000 were charged with marijuana-related felonies.) The figure is the highest annual total ever recorded, and is nearly double the number of citizens busted for pot fifteen years ago.

Those arrested face a multitude of consequences, primarily determined by where they live. For example, most Californians charged with violating the state’s pot possession laws face little more than a small fine. By contrast, getting busted with a pinch of weed in Ohio will cost you your driver’s license for at least six months. Move to Texas — well, now you’re looking at a criminal record and up to 180 days in jail. Or if you happen to be a first-time offender, possibly a stint in court-mandated ‘drug rehab’ (one recent study reported that nearly 70 percent of all adults referred to Texas drug treatment programs for weed were referred by the courts), probation, and a hefty legal bill. And don’t even think about getting busted in Oklahoma, where a first time conviction for minor pot possession can net you up to one year in jail, or up to ten years if you’re found guilty of a second offense. Thinking of growing your own? That’ll cost you a $20,000 fine, and — oh yeah — anywhere from two years to life in prison. (more…)

side note: we here at NT are big fans of Senator Russ Feingold. He’s one of the few politicians who’s actually doing something.

Sam Stein
The Huffington Post

As one of Congress’ foremost progressive figures, Sen. Russ Feingold is a coveted endorsement for any of the Democratic presidential nominees. But if those seeking the White House are waiting for his call, they shouldn’t hold their breath — especially if they’re John Edwards.

In an interview with the Huffington Post on Thursday, Feingold restated his hesitance to endorse either Sen. Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton. Both, he said, would make great presidents. The same praise was not, however, heaped upon Feingold’s former Senate colleague Edwards, whose political sincerity the Wisconsin Democrat questioned. (more…)

click here for a larger image
click here for the search able database
The 380,000-plus-word database presented allows, for the first time, the Iraq-related public pronouncements of top Bush administration officials to be tracked on a day-by-day basis against their private assessments and the actual “ground truth” as it is now known.

Searches may also be limited by person or subject, or both, by using the appropriate selections from the pull-down menus.