Lakota CryptoCurrency

I hope this works for them...the Lakota Nation is authoring their own BitCoin style currency - MazaCoin.

[MazaCoin creator Paul] Harris says that MazaCoin is designed to avoid [Bitcoin] Mt. Gox-style booms and busts. Prior to the launch of the currency, Harris mined 25 million MazaCoins for the Lakota Nation's reserve, which can be tapped in a crisis.

[...]

Mining MazaCoin is designed to be a simpler process that requires less processing power than Bitcoin, which Harris says makes it both easier to learn and more environmentally friendly than other cryptocurrencies.

MazaCoin was embraced quickly by the cryptocurrency community, many of whom noted its promising opening performance.

  alJazeera

Environmentally friendly? Obviously I don't know anything about cryptocurrency. How environmentally unfriendly can it be?

Does This Mean Our Sprint Bill Is About to Double?

The White House has gotten its tab from Sprint for wiretapping expenses and is sending it back with a big old frowny face on it, saying the company is overcharging it by more than $21 million. And by “sending it back,” of course I mean it’s suing Sprint.

[...]

Under the Communications Assistance in Law Enforcement Act of 1994, telecommunications company must provide the government with wiretapping services when ordered to do so. But those companies don’t have to comply out of pocket and can recoup “reasonable expenses” incurred while wiretapping.

Not included in those, the government claims, are any expenses carriers ring up to modify “equipment, facilities or services” while complying with the 1994 law, under guidelines issued by the Federal Communications Commission in 2006.

  Consumerist

Well, THAT doesn’t make any sense. Could said company then say, “Sorry, our equipment can’t handle that order” ?

“Under the law, the government is required to reimburse Sprint for its reasonable costs incurred when assisting law enforcement agencies with electronic surveillance,” a Sprint spokesman [said]. “The invoices Sprint has submitted to the government fully comply with the law. We have fully cooperated with this investigation and intend to defend this matter vigorously.”

Good luck.

Do Not Be Planning a Trip to Egypt

Code Pink leader, activist Medea Benjamin, on her way to Gaza, was detained, jailed and manhandled by Egyptian officers (her arm was pulled out of its shoulder socket), and then deported to Turkey. The US consulate did nothing to try to help her. Story here.

Exactly

It's All About the Politics

The Obama administration is set to announce another major delay in implementing the Affordable Care Act, easing election pressure on Democrats.

As early as this week, according to two sources, the White House will announce a new directive allowing insurers to continue offering health plans that do not meet ObamaCare’s minimum coverage requirements.

Prolonging the “keep your plan” fix will avoid another wave of health policy cancellations otherwise expected this fall.

[...]

The White House is intent on protecting its allies in the Senate, where Democrats face a battle to keep control of the chamber.

“I don’t see how they could have a bunch of these announcements going out in September,” one consultant in the health insurance industry said. “Not when they’re trying to defend the Senate and keep their losses at a minimum in the House. This is not something to have out there right before the election.”

  The Hill

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

We Don't Know What It Is, Or Where It Comes From, But It's Nothing to Worry About

A study released on Feb. 24 by doctors at the University of California-San Francisco and Stanford University reported on at least five children that have been hit by weakness or paralysis in one or more limbs that mirrored polio effects.

“These five new cases highlight the possibility of an emerging infectious polio-like syndrome in California,” said co-author Emanuelle Waubant, an MD at UCSF.

The symptoms of those afflicted came in rapid fashion, reaching paralysis in a couple of days, the study found. Movement and sensation did not reemerge during the six-month timespan of the study, and spinal evaluations indicated a condition consistent with polio damage.

“They are absolutely not a cluster because they don’t go to the same school or live in the same town,” Waubant said. “These cases have been seen over the past year and a half.”

[...]

The condition has affected 20 children in California alone in the last 18 months.

[...]

All of the children had been vaccinated against polio, Waubant said, though two of the children tested positive for enterovirus-68, a virus associated with symptoms akin to polio.

[...]

“We would like to stress that this syndrome appears to be very, very rare,” said Stanford co-author Keith Van Haren, MD, in a statement.

  RT

Really? I’d call very, very rare something that affected one or two children in disparate parts of the world in twenty years.

“At this time, CDC does not think the situation in California is a cause for public concern,” Jamila H. Jones, a CDC public health educator, said in a statement to AP given before Boxer’s letter was received.

Really?

She added that the number of cases in California falls into a proportional rate considering the overall population.

For what?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Oh, THERE They Are

I just came back from the White House, where the police are still arresting the hundreds of students who are taking part in what will likely be the largest act of youth civil disobedience at the White House in a generation.

This is XL Dissent: a massive surge of protest against the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline and a powerful show of solidarity with all communities who are fighting the fossil fuel industry and confronting the impacts of the climate crisis.

[...]

I was standing with press from Politico, the National Journal, CNN, CBS and others as students continued to cheer and chant at the White House fence. Even the seasoned reporters seemed impressed by the scale of the protest. No one could think of a larger student civil disobedience at the White House.

[...]

There were just over a thousand students that rallied in Lafayette Park, but it sounded like 10 thousand. This wasn't your parents' protest, but the spark-shooting dynamo of student movement that is beginning to embrace its true power.

  HuffPo

Let us hope.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Brinking and Saber Rattling Over Ukraine

In Crimea, Ukrainian soldiers faced off with Russian soldiers surrounding their bases while the Russian army is said to be digging trenches on the border with mainland Ukraine.

[...]

The UK has joined the US, France and Canada in suspending preparations for the Sochi summit.

[...]

US Secretary of State John Kerry has warned Russia could be ejected from the Group of Eight developed nations.

  BBC

Big talk. Big talk.

"You just don't in the 21st Century behave in 19th Century fashion by invading another country on completely trumped-up pretext," Mr Kerry told the CBS program Face the Nation.

And no one called him on it: “Mr. Kerry – in which century did the United States invade Iraq on the trumped-up pretext of WMD?”

US President Barack Obama called Russian troop deployments a "violation of Ukrainian sovereignty".

He doesn’t know the meaning of the word “sovereignty”, does he? Or is it “violation” he doesn’t get?

Pictures and further recitation of troop movements and counter-movements are here.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Nice, Real Nice

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) deleted veteran medical records despite its claim to the contrary, according to documents obtained by The Daily Caller.

TheDC reported Monday that former VA Los Angeles Medical Center employee Oliver Mitchell was instructed to help cancel backlogged veteran medical exam requests during a coordinated process that began at the facility in March 2009. Audio of an internal VA meeting obtained by TheDC confirms that VA officials in Los Angeles intentionally canceled backlogged patient exam requests.

The abuses occurred during a period in which VA offices across the country were “instructed to mass purge” backlogged veteran exam requests, according to an inspector general report obtained by TheDC.

VA confirmed that backlogged exam requests in Los Angeles were deleted but claimed that veterans who still needed exams did not have their exam requests or records deleted.

  Daily Caller

Did the others die? Won’t be needing that appointment any more, soldier.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

And So It Goes

Back before February 4, weeks before the most violent crackdown that killed protestors that led to Viktor Yanukovych’s ouster, Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and US Ambassador to Ukraine had a conversation about how to divvy up power between 3 opposition figures in a post-Yanukovych Ukraine. Nuland deemed “Yats” the necessary post-Yanukovych leader.

Nuland: [Breaks in] I think Yats is the guy who’s got the economic experience, the governing experience. He’s the… what he needs is Klitsch and Tyahnybok on the outside. He needs to be talking to them four times a week, you know. I just think Klitsch going in… he’s going to be at that level working for Yatseniuk, it’s just not going to work.

Pyatt: Yeah, no, I think that’s right. OK. Good. Do you want us to set up a call with him as the next step?

Thursday, Yatseniuk was appointed Prime Minister.

  Marcy Wheeler

“Yatsenyuk is the the kind of technocrat you want if you want austerity, with the veneer of professionalism,” [Vladimir Signorelli, president of boutique investment research firm Bretton Woods Research LLC in New Jersey] said. “He’s the type of guy who can hobnob with the European elite. A Mario Monti type: unelected and willing to do the IMFs bidding,” he said.

[...]

“Yatsenyuk was saying that what the Greeks did to themselves we are going to do ourselves,” said Signorelli. “He wants to follow the Greek economic model. Who the hell wants to follow that?”

[...]

Yanukovych resisted the International Monetary Fund’s demand to raise taxes and devalue the currency. Yatsenyuk doesn’t mind. For economists who think austerity is a disaster, Ukraine is on a path to ruin.

“We saw this in the 90s and what the IMF did to Russia with Yeltsin. They’ll do that to Ukraine,” said Signorelli.

  Forbes

Yeah, austerity hasn’t done any country any good that I’ve heard. Well, not directly. It’s done the money-holding countries wonders.

Meanwhile...

Russia sent fighter jets to patrol the border with Ukraine [...], as the interim president warned any movements of its troops from their Crimea naval base will be considered an act of "military aggression".

Meanwhile, a Russian news organisation said the country was providing shelter for ousted president Viktor Yanukovych in a Kremlin sanatorium just outside Moscow.

Ukrainian interim President Olexander Turchynov condemned the takeover of government and parliament buildings in Crimea as a "crime against the government of Ukraine" following a seizure by pro-Russian activists.

  UK Independent