The late-night Chinook helicopter crash in Afghanistan that killed up to 31 Americans and 7 Afghans killed over 20 Navy SEALs, including members of Seal Team Six, the same unit that participated in the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.

n the aftermath of a massacre in Hama, Syria state media broadcasted images of “burnt, buildings, makeshift barricades and deserted streets strewn with rubble,” according to the New York Times and claimed the revolt in Syria has ended. Meanwhile, The Guardian reports tens of thousands have taken to the streets all over the country and are continuing a five-months old uprising against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

At age 27, during the closing days of the Bush Administration, DeChristopher submitted bids at a Bureau of Land Management auction of public lands to fossil fuel companies, even though he had no intention of purchasing the properties, in order to stymie what amounted to a gift to the oil and gas industry. The uproar that followed DeChristopher’s sabotage derailed this collusive theft of public property and saved 130,000 acres of wilderness from destruction.

Things you will learn today:

Pregnancy is not a medical issue.
Sean Hannity’s inability to get it up is.

The British press is reporting that ten major human rights and anti-torture organizations have announced they will not be cooperating or participating in the United Kingdom Torture Inquiry, headed by Sir Peter Gibson. The organizations, who sent a letter on August 3 to Sara Carnegie, Solicitor to the Detainee Inquiry, cited a lack of transparency and credibility in the proposed investigation, noting, “Plainly an Inquiry conducted in the way that you describe and in accordance with the Protocol would not comply with Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights.”

It’s interesting to see conservative efforts to mimic public works and infrastructure: They’re inevitably generally inferior to and do a worse job than the public works they emulate, and their main activities seem to be engaging in outright fraud and scammery, as well as manipulating the racist fears of their chosen white marks in order to separate them from their tax money, and so leave less and less money for the legitimate public institutions being badly imitated.

As it is with charter schools, so it is with the boondoggle called “Personal Rapid Transit”, or PRT for short.

This being the last month of summer, for which those of us suffering under the Heat Dome are very grateful, did you do any traveling during the vacation? As some of you already know, I’m going for a trip in the fall, and mostly stayed home for the summer, which was not a great choice. It’s been insufferable, and all my work projects outside had to be cancelled along with my lawn.

Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Disappearing Clues from episode 103 of The Muppet Show.

People are focused on the market implications of the downgrade, but that isn’t what this is about. It’s about a President who will now be relentlessly tagged with responsibility for a rating given by a disgraced organization whose victims should have liquidated them long ago.

Whatever S&P’s agenda, it has nothing to do with avoiding default risks or putting the US on sound fiscal footing. It appears to be intertwined with their attempts to absolve themselves from responsibility for their role in the 2008 financial crisis, and they are willing to manipulate not only the 2012 election but the world economy to escape the SEC’s attempts to regulate them.

It’s time the media and Congress started asking Standard and Poors what their political agenda is and whom it serves.

Sign our petition to the SEC: Revoke S&P’s authority as a credit ratings agency for their use of ratings as a political weapon and their attempts to avoid responsibility for their role in the financial crisis of 2008.