Dow AgroSciences, which manufactures aminopyralid, has posted advice to allotment holders and gardeners on its website. 

[T]he herbicide has now entered the food chain. Those affected are demanding an investigation and a ban on the product. They say they have been given no definitive answer as to whether other produce on their gardens and allotments is safe to eat.

It appears that the contamination came from grass treated 12 months ago. Experts say the grass was probably made into silage, then fed to cattle during the winter months. The herbicide remained present in the silage, passed through the animal and into manure that was later sold. Horses fed on hay that had been treated could also be a channel."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jun/29/food.agriculture 

It can't happen here?

Well, the EPA has licensed aminopyralid in several products used in the US: Cleanwave, Milestone vm, Forefront r&p, and Milestone.

http://firedoglake.com/2008/06/29/persistent-herbicide-in-compost-destroys-uk-gardens-can-it-happen-here/#more-26965 

Notice how the shredding contracts doubled in 2004, when there seemed a real possibility of bush's losing the election. 

Taken in context with the ongoing refusal of so many agencies in this administration to turn over their email archives it's not difficult to conclude that no one connected to this administration is particularly worried about being prosecuted for their crimes because they're blithely destroying the evidence in blatant disregard of the law.

(Also keep in mind:

-the WH's dismantling of a records system Clinton had set up to record wh communications.

-Then using the RNC's email system, beginning at the build up of the invade-iraq propaganda campaign; Emails that the RNC now claims cannot be retrieved..as ordered by a Fed judge.

-Recall rove's altering his email accounts revealed during the Plame trial.

-And how another WH employee secretly hired a private PC co to "wipe" his computer). 

* McCain strongly opposes a windfall-tax on oil company profits. Three weeks earlier, he was perfectly comfortable with the idea.

* McCain thought Bush’s warrantless-wiretap program circumvented the law; now he believes the opposite.

* McCain defended “privatizing” Social Security. Now he says he’s against privatization (though he actually still supports it.)

Wait, I’m not done with the last two weeks yet….

* McCain wanted to change the Republican Party platform to protect abortion rights in cases of rape and incest. Now he doesn’t.

* McCain thought the estate tax was perfectly fair. Now he believes the opposite.

* He opposed indefinite detention of terrorist suspects. When the Supreme Court reached the same conclusion, he called it “one of the worst decisions in the history of this country.”

* McCain said he would “not impose a litmus test on any nominee.” He used to promise the opposite.

And these come after these other reversals from April and May:

* McCain believes the telecoms should be forced to explain their role in the administration’s warrantless surveillance program as a condition for retroactive immunity. He used to believe the opposite.

* McCain supported storing spent nuclear fuel at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. Now he believes the opposite.

* McCain supported moving “towards normalization of relations” with Cuba. Now he believes the opposite.

* McCain believed the U.S. should engage in diplomacy with Hamas. Now he believes the opposite.

* McCain believed the U.S. should engage in diplomacy with Syria. Now he believes the opposite.

* He argued the NRA should not have a role in the Republican Party’s policy making. Now he believes the opposite.

* McCain supported his own lobbying-reform legislation from 1997. Now he doesn’t.

* He wanted political support from radical televangelists like John Hagee and Rod Parsley. Now he doesn’t.

* McCain supported the Lieberman/Warner legislation to combat global warming. Now he doesn’t.

* McCain pledged in February 2008 that he would not, under any circumstances, raise taxes. Specifically, McCain was asked if he is a “‘read my lips’ candidate, no new taxes, no matter what?” referring to George H.W. Bush’s 1988 pledge. “No new taxes,” McCain responded. Two weeks later, McCain said, “I’m not making a ‘read my lips’ statement, in that I will not raise taxes.”

* McCain is both for and against a “rogue state rollback” as a focus of his foreign policy vision.

* McCain says he considered and did not consider joining John Kerry’s Democratic ticket in 2004.

* In 1998, he championed raising cigarette taxes to fund programs to cut underage smoking, insisting that it would prevent illnesses and provide resources for public health programs. Now, McCain opposes a $0.61-per-pack tax increase, won’t commit to supporting a regulation bill he’s co-sponsoring, and has hired Philip Morris’ former lobbyist as his senior campaign adviser.

* McCain has changed his economic worldview on multiple occasions.

* McCain has changed his mind about a long-term U.S. military presence in Iraq on multiple occasions.

* McCain is both for and against attacking Barack Obama over his former pastor at his former church.

* McCain believes Americans are both better and worse off than they were before Bush took office.

* McCain is both for and against earmarks for Arizona.

* McCain believes his endorsement from radical televangelist John Hagee was both a good and bad idea.

* McCain’s first mortgage plan was premised on the notion that homeowners facing foreclosure shouldn’t be “rewarded” for acting “irresponsibly.” His second mortgage plan took largely the opposite position.

* McCain vowed, if elected, to balance the federal budget by the end of his first term. Soon after, he decided he would no longer even try to reach that goal.

* In February 2008, McCain reversed course on prohibiting waterboarding.

* McCain used to champion the Law of the Sea convention, even volunteering to testify on the treaty’s behalf before a Senate committee. Now he opposes it.

* McCain was a co-sponsor of the DREAM Act, which would grant legal status to illegal immigrants’ kids who graduate from high school. Now he’s against it.

* On immigration policy in general, McCain announced in February 2008 that he would vote against his own legislation.

* In 2006, McCain sponsored legislation to require grassroots lobbying coalitions to reveal their financial donors. In 2007, after receiving “feedback” on the proposal, McCain told far-right activist groups that he opposes his own measure.

* McCain said before the war in Iraq, “We will win this conflict. We will win it easily.” Four years later, McCain said he knew all along that the war in Iraq war was “probably going to be long and hard and tough.”

* McCain said he was the “greatest critic” of Rumsfeld’s failed Iraq policy. In December 2003, McCain praised the same strategy as “a mission accomplished.” In March 2004, he said, “I’m confident we’re on the right course.” In December 2005, he said, “Overall, I think a year from now, we will have made a fair amount of progress if we stay the course.”

* McCain went from saying he would not support repeal of Roe v. Wade to saying the exact opposite.

* McCain went from saying gay marriage should be allowed, to saying gay marriage shouldn’t be allowed.

* McCain criticized TV preacher Jerry Falwell as “an agent of intolerance” in 2002, but then decided to cozy up to the man who said Americans “deserved” the 9/11 attacks.

* McCain used to oppose Bush’s tax cuts for the very wealthy, but he reversed course in February.

* On a related note, he said 2005 that he opposed the tax cuts because they were “too tilted to the wealthy.” By 2007, he denied ever having said this, and insisted he opposed the cuts because of increased government spending.

* In 2000, McCain accused Texas businessmen Sam and Charles Wyly of being corrupt, spending “dirty money” to help finance Bush’s presidential campaign. McCain not only filed a complaint against the Wylys for allegedly violating campaign finance law, he also lashed out at them publicly. In April, McCain reached out to the Wylys for support.

* McCain supported a major campaign-finance reform measure that bore his name. In June 2007, he abandoned his own legislation.

* McCain opposed a holiday to honor Martin Luther King, Jr., before he supported it.

* McCain was against presidential candidates campaigning at Bob Jones University before he was for it.

* McCain was anti-ethanol. Now he’s pro-ethanol.

* McCain was both for and against state promotion of the Confederate flag.

* McCain decided in 2000 that he didn’t want anything to do with former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, believing he “would taint the image of the ‘Straight Talk Express.’” Kissinger is now the Honorary Co-Chair for his presidential campaign in New York.

Confronted with the inconsistencies in McCain’s record in March, the senator’s aides told the New York Times that the senator “has evolved rather than switched positions in his 25-year career.

”that’s a perfectly sensible spin — when a politician holds one position, and then, for apparently political reasons, decides to embrace the polar opposite position, it’s only natural for his or her aides to say the politician’s position has “evolved.”

mccain will clearly say ANYthing to get elected.

Obama is not perfect, but *is* there *anything* mccain won't do to bamboozle his way into the wh?

"Nanosolar's new solar panels that can produce electricity cheaper than coal in Solar Gets Competitive and they have increased production. Now we can see why most of Nanosolar's production is being exported rather that being used to help the US.

Citing Need for Assessments, U.S. Freezes Solar Energy Projects

DENVER — Faced with a surge in the number of proposed solar power plants, the federal government has placed a moratorium on new solar projects on public land until it studies their environmental impact, which is expected to take about two years.

The Bureau of Land Management says an extensive environmental study is needed to determine how large solar plants might affect millions of acres it oversees in six Western states — Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Utah.

But the decision to freeze new solar proposals temporarily, reached late last month, has caused widespread concern in the alternative-energy industry, as fledgling solar companies must wait to see if they can realize their hopes of harnessing power from swaths of sun-baked public land, just as the demand for viable alternative energy is accelerating.

“It doesn’t make any sense,” said Holly Gordon, vice president for legislative and regulatory affairs for Ausra, a solar thermal energy company in Palo Alto, Calif. “The Bureau of Land Management land has some of the best solar resources in the world. This could completely stunt the growth of the industry.”

Much of the 119 million surface acres of federally administered land in the West is ideal for solar energy, particularly in Arizona, Nevada and Southern California, where sunlight drenches vast, flat desert tracts.

Galvanized by the national demand for clean energy development, solar companies have filed more than 130 proposals with the Bureau of Land Management since 2005. They center on the companies’ desires to lease public land to build solar plants and then sell the energy to utilities.

Big coal has high hopes for the future and many friends in the Congress, White House and Federal Government.  While the Republicans fight for more coal, oil and gas exploration on Federal Lands they continue to put road blocks up for alternatives.

http://www.newshoggers.com/ 

"In November, alongside casting their ballot for the next president, the people of San Francisco will also vote on a measure to rename one of the city's largest sewage works the George W Bush Sewage Plant, to provide a "fitting monument" to the outgoing commander-in-chief's achievements.

It may sound like a student prank, but the proposal is almost certain to be passed. Democrats usually secure between 70 and 80 per cent of the vote in San Francisco – and in 2006 passed a proposition to impeach Mr Bush and his Vice-President Dick Cheney by a majority of almost two to one.

 If the measure passes, city authorities will be forced to erect a prominent sign bearing the legend "George W Bush Sewage Plant" at the site of the bayside facility.

Local Republicans call it an "abuse of process" and "There's no use to this other than to make these nutcases feel good." (The proposal even jollified yesterday's White House press briefing, where a spokesman three times refused to comment.)

However, Mr McConnell claimed to have only noticed two forms of opposition during his campaign so far. "First, we get people who say they just want to forget George Bush's presidency," he said. "Second, we hear from those who say that sewage plants perform a valuable public service and, as such, it does not make sense to name one after George Bush."

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/san-francisco-to-vote-on-naming-sewer-after-george-bush-855433.html 

 The actual meaning is, the US increased troop strength:

 WHILE ramping up a program to pay off Sunni resistance leaders

 WHILE Iraq’s warring ethno-religious factions finished completely remaking Iraq’s demographic patterns (owing to tens-to-hundreds of thousands of dead and millions of exiled and internally displaced),

 WHILE the US turned the capital into a warren of barricades. The net result of all those changes has been a less obtrusively violent Iraq for the time being, and the whole arrangement is “The Surge” in practice, but its' cheerleaders talk as if it was all due to The Surge in pretense.

 
Meanwhile Iraq’s “calm” would count as calamity almost anywhere on earth but Darfur or Zimbabwe.

http://raycomfortfood.blogspot.dotcom/2008/06/atheist-worldview.html

--I believe the general has that covered:

"The Rove Guru

Report: Rove Talks "Fairly Regularly" With McCain Camp; Getting Six Figures From Freedom's Watch

In a new National Journal article (not available online), writer Peter Stone dives deep into the conservative establishment and gets campaign staffers, movement operatives, and the ubiquitous "strategists" and "consultants" to talk about Karl Rove's current role in presidential politics. The takeaway? Rove is back. In fact, he probably never left. The campaign that is trying to prove it's not a second coming of George W. Bush is using the President's former chief strategist on a regular basis.

Stone says not to be fooled by Rove's hesitance to be identified with John McCain publicly.

...away from the spotlight, Rove has been busy pitching in by giving informal advice to McCain’s team and spending a considerable amount of time as an outside adviser to Freedom’s Watch, the conservative political group that is expected to spend tens of millions of dollars to help elect House GOP candidates. William Weidner, a Freedom’s Watch board member, recently told National Journal that Rove has offered strategic advice to both the group and its major financial backer, Las Vegas casino tycoon Sheldon Adelson. Weidner, president of the Las Vegas Sands Corp., which Adelson chairs, called Rove "an invaluable asset" to the group....

While the top of McCain's campaign won't admit to extensive conversations with Rove, fearing that Rove is too closely associated with the Bush Administration and its worst scandals, some folks are willing to spill the beans off the record.

…

And Rove is even more deeply involved with Freedom's Watch, the internally troubled right wing group that seeks to make trouble for Democrats throughout the campaign season.

[William] Weidner [a Freedom’s Watch board member] stressed that Rove has been "very generous with his time and ideas. He gives up his time for those things he believes in."

Two GOP strategists said they have heard that Rove has worked out a private consulting deal with Adelson; this arrangement, one strategist reported, pays Rove in the mid-six figures for giving speeches and providing assistance to Freedom’s Watch on labor union issues, a top priority of the group.

He needs to go down to the bayou with a sack full of enough Spanish gold for the witch women to reanimate the remains of Lee Atwater, Jerry Fallwell, Father Coughlin, George Wallace, Spiro Agnew and Bull Connor.

Come November, if the GOP Base chooses to remain asleep in their Barca-Loungers dreaming their filthy little Confederate dreams, McCain loses.

And that’s the problem.

McSame is living a comical, modern variation of the ancient myth of Tantalus:

Tantalus' punishment, now proverbial for temptation without satisfaction, was to stand in a pool of water beneath a fruit tree with low branches. Whenever he reached for the fruit, the branches raised his intended meal from his grasp. Whenever he bent down to get a drink, the water receded before he could get any. Over his head towers a threatening stone, like that of Sisyphus.

(They tolerate his Clinton-supporter wooing for the same reason Hagee’s minions “support” Israel. They view it as a tactical expediency…a necessary toll booth on the road to a glorious future where the True Believers can once-and-for-all annihilate their eternal enemies new BFFs and dance a merry tarantella on their stupid bones.)

-By the inimitable Driftglass.

http://driftglass.blogspot.com/

Check out the blog; and comments for this post: 

--Bar none, the best political commentator on modern politics out there. And funny, too.

-Read the whole article; the comments are illuminating, too.  Can't say that I agree to 'sensitization' down the road. Sure, the gop will raise holy hell about even the most milquetoast center-liberal dem appointments and nominations, but when they eventually fool half the public into giving them another chance, does anyone doubt IOKIYAR will be the order of the day? (It's OK If You're A Republican).

Watergate happened, and is now back worse than ever. Reagan's Iran/hostage treason, begat iran-contra. The intel-abuses illuminated by the church commission are back, stronger than ever. Cia/Pentagon propaganda in america are back, too. 

We continually see this same hypocrisy in new form, every election: from marriage, to moral values, to family values, to fiscal discipline, to military service. Every One is used to hype gooper candidates, and/or attack dem's. When the issues are reversed, the fourth reich media whine about 'partisan politics' and 'meanness' or 'bitterness'. (And anyone who listens to  o'lielly, beck, or limbaugh and misses the partisan/bitterness/meanness aspect really needs to seek mental help and/or sterilization; it's for the species, people!)

Oh well. When the level of political discourse is determined by those who fell off the turnip truck, this is what we're reduced to.

Goopers who can win elections, but can't govern. And Dem's who won't fight back, but allow the gop to prevent them from governing. 

Clearly that is the "christian" man to lead this nation.

Baptist Minister Asks McCain: "Did You Call Your Wife A C**t?" (VIDEO)

"the man who asked the question is a Baptist minister worried about McCain's temper:

Clive businessman Marty Parrish was escorted from Sen. John McCain's town hall meeting by Des Moines police and members of the Secret Service after asking McCain if he had called his wife Cindy an expletive in 1992.

Parrish, an ordained Baptist minister who holds a master's degree in political science, was questioned by Secret Service agents before being released. He was not charged in the incident. Parrish asked whether McCain called his wife Cindy an expletive related to the female anatomy, as has been alleged in the book "The Real McCain," written by Dem strategist Cliff Schecter.

McCain's response got him a round of applause from the crowd: "There's people here who don't respect that kind of language, so I'll move on to the next questioner in the back."

In an interview with IowaPolitics.com, Parrish said his intentions were simple in posing the question to McCain. The former Joe Biden campaign worker stressed he is very concerned about the Republican presidential nominee's temperament.

"We have a man whose temper can get the best of him," Parrish said. "What I am worried about is his temper. Our country is in a serious crisis. This election is the most significant one since 1860. It appears America is asleep -- so I stood up and asked the question."

Recycling them is about to get easier. Home Depot, the nation’s second-largest retailer, will announce on Tuesday that it will take back old compact fluorescents in all 1,973 of its stores in the United States, creating the nation’s most widespread recycling program for the bulbs.

“We kept hearing from the community that there was a little bit of concern about mercury in the C.F.L.’s,” said Ron Jarvis, Home Depot’s senior vice president for environmental innovation, using the industry abbreviation for the bulbs. “And if the C.F.L.’s were in their house, how could they dispose of them?”

Until now, consumers had to seek out local hazardous waste programs or smaller retail chains willing to collect the bulbs for recycling, like Ikea and True Value. Some consumers have waited for retailers like Wal-Mart to have a designated recycling day. Others bought kits to mail the bulbs to a recycling facility."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/24/business/24recycling.html?ex=1372046400&en=d039520f2d91d9c7&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink 

Combine that w/ Batteries Plus (in moline) accepting used small batteries (aa, c, d, etc), and two of the more toxic, polluting sources in landfills can now be recycled. 

The document, which ended up in e-mail limbo, without official status, was the E.P.A.’s answer to a 2007 Supreme Court ruling that required it to determine whether greenhouse gases represent a danger to health or the environment, the officials said.

This week, more than six months later, the E.P.A. is set to respond to that order by releasing a watered-down version of the original proposal that offers no conclusion. Instead, the document reviews the legal and economic issues presented by declaring greenhouse gases a pollutant."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/25/washington/25epa.html?ei=5087&em=&en=72d58b65224232f2&ex=1214625600&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1214467397-i+KH1HahhFf3SGcZcDX0gg 

--Sweet!  According to bush, no one has to pay taxes ever again: declare you will pay them at the end of the year, then decline to open the IRS audit statement.

So buy a car, buy a house, speculate on oil:  should it go badly, just decline to open the credit-agency reports and subpeonas.

He really IS an MBA preznit. Gotta go; I've got things to buy, investments to make, and things to sell.......the money's all *mine*!!!

No creditor can touch me. Thanks george! 

 Who knew?

Former American Airlines CEO Bob Crandall said that deregulation has failed and called for some aspects of the airline industry to be re-regulated

http://startelegram.typepad.com/sky_talk/2008/06/crandall-airlin.html 

More here:

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/ 

--Is anyone else detecting a trend here? Privatize regulated industries and profit from "efficiencies": slashing personnel, wages, and benefits. Pocket windfalls and crow about the "free market" 

When times, costs, competition gets rough, call for the govn bailout and "limited" re-regulation.........as in, have the taxpayer save "us" (white collar exec's and investor/speculators), until we're stable enough to begin sucking cash again from the business.

The employees? Hey, at least (some of them) still have jobs. Check, please. (Ingrates!).

.

.

.

.

.

Consider what we’ve learned about McCain’s superstitions:

* McCain believes it’s bad luck for someone to hand him a salt shaker.

* McCain believes it’s bad luck to throw a hat onto a bed.

* McCain regularly carries 31 cents in lucky change in his pocket.

* McCain carries a lucky feather, a lucky compass, a lucky penny, a lucky nickel, a lucky quarter, and a laminated four-leaf clover.

* McCain believes it’s bad luck to pick up a coin if it isn’t heads up.

* McCain’s been known to have an aide carry his lucky pen at all times."

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/15986.html 

--Didn't we already have a gop presidency run with tarot cards? Nancy? Nancy? Been there, done that.

*mccain's gas tax holiday was a bust;

*his drill-more oil-relief plan' been shown to be useless;

*Now, about the drilling, he's claiming: "Even though it may take some years, the fact that we are exploiting those reserves would have psychological impact that I think is beneficial.”

http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/06/24/1163504.aspx 

Got that? While he supported leaving the enron-loophole as law (which closing would bring down oil/gas prices),  he's advocating (useless for years) more drilling b/c it'll give us warm fuzzies inside.

Me, I'd appreciate the extra $30 bucks left in my pocket from $2 gas. That's all the beneficial psychological impact I need, thank you.

Rove, Tort Reform, and Big Tobacco

Karl Rove, is alleged by Republican attorney turned whistle-blower Dana Jill Simpson to have played a major role in the prosecution of Don Siegelman in Alabama. Simpson is not alone in her allegations. Many lawyers, politicians, and even active members of the Alabama RNC have made similar allegations during the course of our investigation.

As one Alabama Republican close to the state Republican Party told us, Rove “would never discuss anything on the phone. He would tell you to meet him at some corner and then you get there and sure enough he is standing in the middle of the intersection waving at you.”

http://rawstory.com/news08/2008/06/24/justice-for-sale-how-big-tobacco-teamed-up-with-the-gop-to-crush-democrats-in-the-south/

--So this was rove's 'southern strategy'.  We can already see the miscarriage of  justice he orchestrated in Alabama on Dem gov Don Siegelman. Congress wants to talk to him on that, but he's claiming 'executive privilege' to cover up crimes committed from the wh.

$50 bucks says rove walks w a general pardon on bush's last day. Any takers?

If he is pardoned. Well, then he is prosecutable. A pardon only covers crimes indicted/found guilty of. Then congressional dem's can frogmarch him into session. And if he suddenly "cannot recall", well the SC and his lover buddy bush has established the right to "extreme discomfort up 'till death" against enemy americans. Since rove's helped kill more americans, just soldiers, than AQ and binladen have in their existence, a little gitmo slap-and-tickle to jog his memory seems appropriate.  It's just like harmless frat-hazing, per his gop.