How to Wake Up Sleeping Americans

How to Wake Up Sleeping Americans

In his final interview Fingleton discusses the domestic policies which got the U.S. into this international mess, and the new policies which could or should be implemented to get us out.

Editor’s note: The following is the final interview in a six part series with economist Eamonn Fingleton. Click on the links below to watch all six groundbreaking interviews.

In Fingleton’s sixth and final interview, he discusses a variety of issues. Some of the focus surrounds the domestic policies which got the U.S. into this international mess, and the new policies which could or should be implemented to get us out.

Fingleton is a proponent of creating an American value-added tax program similar to those used in over 100 nations around the world and he believes we should return to the national economic model of the late 19th century. Unfortunately, he also believes that it may be too late for America to emerge from this crisis unscathed. We are to expect a major depreciation of the dollar and American living standards in the near future.

via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.

Breadline USA: Why People Are Going Hungry in the Land of Plenty

Breadline USA: Why People Are Going Hungry in the Land of Plenty

By Sasha Abramsky, PoliPoint Press. Posted July 4, 2009.

America’s poor are being priced out of a market flush with excess eatables. It’s an abomination we can fix.

When the Month is Longer Than the Money

Billy MacPherson believed that for many of her friends and pantry clientele “the months are longer than the money.” What little income they brought in each month— from work, from Social Security or disability checks, in food stamps or welfare payments— was never quite enough to last a full four-plus weeks. And so they faced an unpalatable choice: try to stretch the family budget to cover the whole month, which involved scrimping on food and missing meals throughout the entire period, or eat semi-decently for the first two or three weeks of the month and pray that something, somehow, would come about to tide them through the lean times at the end.

Once gas prices started going up, food prices also headed north— at least in part because so much corn and arable land was diverted into biofuel production in response to the energy crunch; in part, too, because oil-based fertilizers soared in price and inflation took root throughout the broader economy. In the last years of George W. Bush’s presidency, that lean period at the end of each month began to grow. Instead of a few days, it became a week; then it became ten days, even two weeks. For low-income Americans, wages and government checks lagged far behind inflation, leaving them little choice but to watch as month after month their never particularly munificent purchasing power collapsed.

via Breadline USA: Why People Are Going Hungry in the Land of Plenty | Politics | AlterNet.

Timely, Masterful HBO Documentary about The First Amendment

Timely, Masterful HBO Documentary about The First Amendment

Just in time for July 4, HBO debuted its First Amendment documentary, “Shouting Fire: Stories from the Edge of Free Speech,” this past Monday. Its perspective – that the First Amendment has not been under such fire since the 1950s – is something that anyone who cares about the First Amendment can’t help but agree with. The documentary features First Amendment lawyer Martin Garbus, and was made by his daughter Liz Garbus. She’s already won two Emmys. Her work on this documentary should win her another and more.

Martin Garbus has been an heroic champion of the First Amendment – I quote him about the need for shield laws for blogger journalists in New New Media – and in this documentary, he is the main guide through recent attacks on our freedoms of expression guaranteed in the Constitution.

The key is that in order for the First Amendment to protect speech we value, we must support its protection of speech we may loathe. Communication that everyone including the government likes needs no protection from government censorship and punishment. “Shouting Fire” thus includes the battles of Ward Churchill, a professor who disparaged some of the victims of 9/11 as “little Eichmanns”, and Chase Harper, a student who wore a tee-shirt in his high school that said “homosexuality is shameful”.

via Paul Levinson’s Infinite Regress: Timely, Masterful HBO Documentary about The First Amendment.

Helen Thomas: Not Even Nixon Tried to Control the Media Like Obama

Helen Thomas: Not Even Nixon Tried to Control the Media Like Obama

(CNSNews.com) – Following a testy exchange during Wednesday’s briefing with White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, veteran White House correspondent Helen Thomas told CNSNews.com that not even Richard Nixon tried to control the press the way President Obama is trying to control the press.

“Nixon didn’t try to do that,” Thomas said. “They couldn’t control (the media). They didn’t try.

“What the hell do they think we are, puppets?” Thomas said. “They’re supposed to stay out of our business. They are our public servants. We pay them.”

Thomas said she was especially concerned about the arrangement between the Obama Administration and a writer from the liberal Huffington Post Web site. The writer was invited by the White House to President Obama’s press conference last week on the understanding that he would ask Obama a question about Iran from among questions that had been sent to him by people in Iran.

“When you call the reporter the night before you know damn well what they are going to ask to control you,” Thomas said.

via CNSNews.com – Helen Thomas: Not Even Nixon Tried to Control the Media Like Obama.

Did a Scandal Sink the U.S.S. Palin?

Did a Scandal Sink the U.S.S. Palin?

by Max Blumenthal 

The suddenness of Sarah Palin’s resignation raises questions about whether a coming scandal caused her to leave office. Max Blumenthal looks at one possibility.

CNN and other major news outlets have reported that Sarah Palin has abruptly resigned as governor of Alaska. The suddenness of her announcement raises the question about whether Palin resigned to avert a major scandal. One logical place to start looking is the affair that has Alaska political circles buzzing: an alleged scandal centered around a building contractor, Spenard Building Supplies, with close ties to Palin and her husband, Todd.

Many political observers in Alaska are fixated on rumors that federal investigators have been seizing paperwork from SBS in recent months, searching for evidence that Palin and her husband Todd steered lucrative contracts to the well-connected company in exchange for gifts like the construction of their home on pristine Lake Lucille in 2002. The home was built just two months before Palin began campaigning for governor, a job which would have provided her enhanced power to grant building contracts in the wide-open state.

via Did a Scandal Sink the U.S.S. Palin? – The Daily Beast.

Sarah Palin Resigns: Is She Fleeing Scandal?

Sarah Palin Resigns: Is She Fleeing Scandal?

What is behind Palin’s resignation from office?

Sarah Palin has announced that she is resigning as Governor of Alaska. At a news conference from her house this morning, the Alaska Governor said that she will give up her post in the next few weeks.

Many observers expected Palin to announce that she was not seeking re-election — a prediction fueled by recent speculation that the Governor was preparing for 2012 Presidential bid.

But Palin’s shocking announcement seems to belie plans for a Presidential run. As Josh Marshall points out at TPM, “Generally, when you run for election to a high office it’s understood that you’ll stick around to do the job.”

The New York Times seems to think that Palin’s resignation means she is gearing up to run for President. Mitchell L. Blumenthal writes:

via Sarah Palin Resigns: Is She Fleeing Scandal? | PEEK | AlterNet.

Untold Truths About the American Revolution

Untold Truths About the American Revolution   | The Progressive

By Howard Zinn,

There are things that happen in the world that are bad, and you want to do something about them. You have a just cause. But our culture is so war prone that we immediately jump from, “This is a good cause” to “This deserves a war.”

You need to be very, very comfortable in making that jump.

The American Revolution—independence from England—was a just cause. Why should the colonists here be occupied by and oppressed by England? But therefore, did we have to go to the Revolutionary War?

How many people died in the Revolutionary War?

Nobody ever knows exactly how many people die in wars, but it’s likely that 25,000 to 50,000 people died in this one. So let’s take the lower figure—25,000 people died out of a population of three million. That would be equivalent today to two and a half million people dying to get England off our backs.

You might consider that worth it, or you might not.

via Untold Truths About the American Revolution | The Progressive.

Gay marriage case will go to Supreme Court: attorney

Gay marriage case will go to Supreme Court: attorney

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – The attorney representing two same-sex couples who were denied a right to wed in California said on Thursday he expected the case to end up before the U.S. Supreme Court, which has yet to hear a case on the gay marriage issue.

“When it does get to the United States Supreme Court, we expect to win,” Theodore Olson, who was solicitor general under former President George W. Bush, told reporters after the first hearing on federal lawsuit that was filed in May.

A high court ruling potentially could trump state laws prohibiting same-sex unions. Five out of 50 U.S. states have legalized gay marriage, which opponents view as a threat to what they view as the traditional family.

via Gay marriage case will go to Supreme Court: attorney | U.S. | Reuters.

Police face shocking truth: Tasers tempt the trigger-happy

Police face shocking truth: Tasers tempt the trigger-happy

THERE is a risk police will become too reliant on Tasers, using the stun guns as their weapon of first choice, a review of a year-long trial of Tasers in Queensland has warned.

NSW will begin issuing Tasers to all front-line police officers this month. Queensland has halted its adoption of the weapon after the death last month of a North Queensland man who was stunned 28 times.

Almost half the officers surveyed by the Queensland Police Service and Crime and Misconduct Commission warned there was potential for over-reliance on the Taser. A quarter said there was potential for misuse. The report found better training was required to ensure police officers did not use the stun mode – where the gun is applied directly to the skin or clothes rather than fired from a distance, known as the probe action – needlessly.

via Police face shocking truth: Tasers tempt the trigger-happy.

Representation by the Lobbyists, For the Lobbyists – the People be Damned

Representation by the Lobbyists, For the Lobbyists – the People be Damned

“Democracy” by lobbyists and for lobbyists, that’s what we have in America, despite electing a popular President by a near landslide.

The President takes admirable positions, but Obama doesn’t fight hard enough when Congress writes a bill, ostensibly carrying out his policies, but actually compromising away the store.

That’s what Congress is beginning to look like. Americans generally support Obama’s ideas, and not those of his opponents, but his opponents–big oil, say, or big Pharma–have incredible resources: money, and the mass media, which they pay for and control.

via OpEdNews » Representation by the Lobbyists, For the Lobbyists – the People be Damned.

Obama Should Stop Mountaintop Mining

A President Breaks Hearts in Appalachia - washingtonpost.com

Mountaintop removal coal mining is the worst environmental tragedy in American history. When will the Obama administration finally stop this Appalachian apocalypse?

If ever an issue deserved President Obama’s promise of change, this is it. Mining syndicates are detonating 2,500 tons of explosives each day — the equivalent of a Hiroshima bomb weekly — to blow up Appalachia’s mountains and extract sub-surface coal seams. They have demolished 500 mountains — encompassing about a million acres — buried hundreds of valley streams under tons of rubble, poisoned and uprooted countless communities, and caused widespread contamination to the region’s air and water. On this continent, only Appalachia’s rich woodlands survived the Pleistocene ice ages that turned the rest of North America into a treeless tundra. King Coal is now accomplishing what the glaciers could not — obliterating the hemisphere’s oldest, most biologically dense and diverse forests. Highly mechanized processes allow giant machines to flatten in months mountains older than the Himalayas — while employing fewer workers for far less time than other types of mining. The coal industry’s promise to restore the desolate wastelands is a cruel joke, and the industry’s fallback position, that the flattened landscapes will provide space for economic development, is the weak punchline. America adores its Adirondacks and reveres the Rockies, while the Appalachian Mountains — with their impoverished and alienated population — are dismantled by coal moguls who dominate state politics and have little to prevent them from blasting the physical landscape to smithereens.

via Robert F. Kennedy Jr. – Obama Should Stop Mountaintop Mining – washingtonpost.com.

Watching the defense contractors

Watching the defense contractors – Salon.com

Last summer, the Department of the Navy contracted with a California-based outfit called Security 20/20 to buy $9,232 worth of bicycles for use in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Security 20/20, also known as Security Pro USA, advertises Fuji Police Patrol bicycles at its Online Security Super Center, for $549.99 a piece. Security 20/20 can also assist customers of all kinds in getting their hands on bomb detection equipment, body armor, stun guns, riot and crowd control products and much, much more. It’s your one-stop online shopping center for homeland security products!

I know all this might sound as if I grabbed it from an episode of the television crime show “NCIS,” but it’s really just an example of the kind of thing one can learn from a few minutes of digging around at USAspending.gov.

via Watching the defense contractors – How the World Works – Salon.com.

Reading Of The Declaration Of Independence : NPR

Reading Of The Declaration Of Independence

Twenty-one years ago, Morning Edition launched what has become an Independence Day tradition: hosts, reporters, newscasters and commentators reading the Declaration of Independence.

At link is the audio and original text of the Declaration, alongside photos of the NPR staff members and contributors who performed the reading.

The music for this year’s reading is “Dawn at Yorktown” by Eric Weinberg.

via Reading Of The Declaration Of Independence : NPR.

Whose Country is it anyway?

Whose Country is it anyway?

A political-economic oligarchy has taken over the United States of America

by Prof. John Kozy

A political-economic oligarchy has taken over the United States of America. This oligarchy has institutionalized a body of law that protects businesses at the expense of not only the common people but the nation itself.

CNN interviewed a person recently who was seriously burned when his vehicle burst into flames because a plastic brake-fluid reservoir ruptured. Having sued Chrysler, he was now concerned that its bankruptcy filing would enable Chrysler to avoid paying any damages. A CNN legal expert called this highly likely, since the main goal of reorganization in bankruptcy is preserving the company’s viability and that those creditors who could contribute most to attaining that goal would be compensated first while those involved in civil suits against the company would be placed lowest on the creditor list since compensating them would lessen the chances of the company’s surviving. This rational clearly implies that the preservation of companies is more important than the preservation of people. Of course, similar cases have been reported before. The claims of workers for unpaid wages have often been dismissed as have their contracts for benefits.

But there is an essential difference between a business that lends money or delivers products or services to another company and the employees who work for it. Business is an activity that supposedly involves risk. Employment is not. Neither is unknowingly buying a defective product. Workers and consumers do not extend credit to the companies they work for or buy products from. They are not in any normal sense of the word “creditors.” Yet that distinction is erased in bankruptcy proceedings which preserve companies at the public’s expense.

Of course, bankruptcy is not the only American practice that makes use of this principle. The current bailout policies of both the Federal Reserve and the Treasury make use of it. Again companies are being saved at the expense of the American people. America’s civil courts are notorious for favoring corporate defendants when sued by injured plaintiffs. Corporate profiteering is not only tolerated, it is often encouraged. The sordid records of both Halliburton and KBR are proof enough. Neither has suffered any serious consequences for their abysmal activities in Iraq while supplying services to the troops deployed there. Even worse, these companies continue to get additional contracts from the Department of State. “A former Army chaplain who later worked for Halliburton’s KBR unit . . . told Congress . . . ‘KBR came first, the soldiers came second.’” [http://www.halliburtonwatch.org/news/deyoung.html] Again, it’s companies first, people last. But Major General Smedley Butler made this point in 1935. [See http://www.scuttlebuttsmallchow.com/racket.html] And everyone is familiar with the influence corporate America has over the Congress through campaign contributions and lobbying. For instance, “the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has earmarked $20 million over two years to kill [card check].” [http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-card-check4-2009jun04,0,7195326.story?track=rss] Companies expect returns on their money, and preventing workers from unionizing offers huge returns. And on Thursday June 4, 2009 USA Today reported that, “Republicans strongly oppose a government run [healthcare] plan saying it would put private companies insuring millions of Americans out of business. ‘A government run plan would set artificially low prices that private insurers would have no way of competing with,’ Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky, said . . . .” (Kentucky ranks fifth highest in the number of people with incomes below poverty. Why is he worried about the survival of insurers?)

The profound question is how can any of it be justified?

via Whose Country is it anyway? A political-economic oligarchy has taken over the United States of America.

“Super Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire”

“Super Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire”

Review of Michael Hudson’s Book

First written in 1972, it was updated in a 2003 edition that’s every bit as relevant now – thus this review focusing on Hudson’s new preface, introduction, and detailed account of the book’s theme.

He revisited it in his 2008-09 Project Censored award- winning article titled: “Economic Meltdown – The ‘Dollar Glut’ is What Finances America’s Global Military Build-up” in which he explains the following – the “inter-related dynamics” of:

– “surplus (US) dollars pouring into the rest of the world for yet further financial speculation and corporate takeovers;”

– global central banks “recyl(ing) these dollar inflows (into) US Treasury bonds to finance the federal US budget deficit; and most important (but most suppressed in the US media),”

– “the military character of the US payments deficit and the domestic federal budget deficit.”

In other words, the global “dollar glut” finances US corporate takeovers, speculative excesses creating bubbles and global economic crises, America’s reckless spending, foreign wars, hundreds of bases worldwide, “military build-up,” and culture of militarism and belligerence overall at the expense of democratic freedoms, beneficial social change, and human and civil rights.

In softer form, it’s what former US diplomat, advisor, father of Soviet containment, and dove compared to others at that time George Kennan believed should be America’s post-WW II foreign policy. In his February 1948 “Memo PPS23, he stated:

via “Super Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire”.

Cartoons

Cartoons.

Secret of Scotland’s Shrinking Sheep Solved

OPS:  The smaller Haggis were crippling the Scottish economy

Secret of Scotland’s Shrinking Sheep Solved

Call it the case of the shrinking sheep. On the remote Scottish island of Hirta, sheep have been getting smaller, shrinking an average of 5% over the last 24 years. Don’t blame evolution, though. Researchers say climate change is the real culprit.

The Hirta sheep belong to a breed known as Soay, after the remote Scottish island where they arose. One of the most primitive forms of domestic sheep, Soays first came to Hirta in 1932. Because Hirta is a remote island, its sheep have remained genetically isolated, and no other sheep have been brought in for breeding. That’s made Hirta’s Soays ideal subjects for scientific study.

In 2007, scientists first reported that the sheep were smaller than they had been in the past. This prompted biologist Arpat Ozgul of Imperial College London and colleagues to analyze body weight data going back 24 years. The researchers confirmed that the Soays had indeed been getting smaller. And, as they report online today in Science, the reason appears to be climate change.

via Secret of Scotland’s Shrinking Sheep Solved — Siva 2009 (702): 2 — ScienceNOW.

Phosphorus Famine: The Threat to Our Food Supply

Phosphorus Famine: The Threat to Our Food Supply  – : Scientific American

Key Concepts

• Mining phosphorus for fertilizer is consuming the mineral faster than geologic cycles can replenish it. The U.S. may runout of its accessible domestic sources in a few decades, and few other countries have substantial reserves, which could also be depleted in about a century.

• Excess phosphorus in waterways helps to feed algal blooms, which starve fish of oxygen, creating “dead zones.”
• Reducing soil erosion and recycling phosphorus from farm and human waste could help make food production sustainable and prevent algal blooms.

As complex as the chemistry of life may be, the conditions for the vigorous growth of plants often boil down to three numbers, say, 19-12-5. Those are the percentages of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium, prominently displayed on every package of fertilizer. In the 20th century the three nutrients enabled agriculture to increase its productivity and the world’s population to grow more than sixfold. But what is their source? We obtain nitrogen from the air, but we must mine phosphorus and potassium. The world has enough potassium to last several centuries. But phosphorus is a different story. Readily available global supplies may start running out by the end of this century. By then our population may have reached a peak that some say is beyond what the planet can sustainably feed.

via Phosphorus Famine: The Threat to Our Food Supply: Scientific American.

Virginia Station Won’t Air GOP Climate Change Ad, Citing Factual Errors (VIDEO)

Dems: Virginia Station Won’t Air GOP Climate Change Ad, Citing Factual Errors (VIDEO)

Congressional Republicans were dealt a setback Thursday in their attempt to punish Democrats in swing districts for voting for climate change legislation in the House last week.

WDBJ-TV, a Roanoke television station, will not air a National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) ad attacking freshman Rep. Tom Perriello (D-Va.), citing factual inaccuracies, according to Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee communications director Jen Crider. A source familiar with the station’s decision confirmed Crider’s account; WDBJ general manager Jeff Marks confirmed that the ad would not run, but declined to say why.

“The ad is not running, be we have not characterized why that is,” said Marks. “We don’t characterize why an ad is not running. We looked into the complaints [from national Democrats], but other than saying that, you really need to find out from the NRCC.”

An NRCC source said that Democrats are mischaracterizing the station’s decision. “One station has temporarily pulled the ad. The station manager has also informed us that he plans to notify the DCCC about their mischaracterization of what exactly has transpired. The ad is still set to run on the other stations in the local market,” said the source.

via Dems: Virginia Station Won’t Air GOP Climate Change Ad, Citing Factual Errors (VIDEO).

Why won’t NPR’s ombud speak to Salon’s Glenn Greenwald?

Why won’t NPR’s ombud speak to Salon’s Glenn Greenwald?

Salon blogger Glenn Greenwald has rarely been one to avoid responding directly to his right wing critics. He’s been on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show on multiple occasions and has even appeared on Michael Savage’s show. As an opinionated pundit, he believes that people like him should be willing to face off with others in public forums that are not always friendly to their views, and he finds those that avoid doing so “cowardly and irresponsible.”

So when National Public Radio’s ombud, Alicia Shepard, refused to come on his Salon radio show to address his criticisms, he decided to write about it. Shepard wrote a column in June defending NPR’s tendency to refrain from referring to enhanced interrogation techniques as “torture,” and Greenwald followed it with a paragraph-by-paragraph rebuttal the day after. Shortly after his response was posted, he asked a Salon intern to reach out to Shepard to see if she would speak to him for his online radio show. According to Greenwald, an NPR spokesperson said that the ombud was out for the week and would get back to him Monday. Salon’s intern said that when she spoke to Shepard on Monday she refused to go on the show because she didn’t “want to get into a shouting match.” (I reached out to NPR for comment this morning. A representative responded that he would try to get someone to speak to me on the record. I’ll update this post if I receive a response)

“I think Shepard has an obligation to engage NPR listeners when it comes to controverisial issues surrounding NPR,” Greenwald told me in a phone interview this morning. “Even that original column that she wrote was due in part to the fact that I had written about NPR’s practice of not calling interrogation techniques torture, and that’s what caused her to get so many emails in the first place and respond. So I felt like it was clear that my blog was sort of the centerplace where a lot of NPR listeners were voicing these complaints, so it was a natural place for her to go in order to have this discussion to address these issues interactively rather than the one way monologue.”

via Bloggasm » Why won’t NPR’s ombud speak to Salon’s Glenn Greenwald?.

McClatchy

McClatchy.

In Political Ads, Christian Left Mounts Sermonic Campaigns

OPS:  It’s time to remove 501-C3 status for these ‘churches’ – say what you want, but not on MY dime.

In Political Ads, Christian Left Mounts Sermonic Campaigns   – WSJ.com

Randy Brinson, a conservative political consultant in Alabama, has been fielding anxious calls for weeks from business interests across the South.

Their concern is massive ad blitz on Christian and country-music stations across 10 states. The ads, funded by a left-leaning coalition, urge support for congressional legislation to curb greenhouse-gas emissions — by framing the issue as an urgent matter of Biblical morality.

“As our seas rise, crops wither and rivers run dry, God’s creation cries out for relief,” begins one ad, narrated by an evangelical megachurch pastor. Another opens with a reference to the Gospel of John, slams energy interests for fighting the bill, and concludes: “Please join the faithful in speaking out against the powerful.”

via In Political Ads, Christian Left Mounts Sermonic Campaigns – WSJ.com.

NSA to monitor private networks for cyberattacks

NSA to monitor private networks for cyberattacks 

Obama Admin backs scouring government workers’ emails

The Obama administration is going ahead with a controversial plan to have the National Security Agency screen government email and other official computer traffic passing over private networks.

The plan is part of a cybersecurity initiative launched by the Bush administration in 2008 and known as Einstein 3. The purpose of the program is to protect government computer systems from attack, and the Department of Homeland Security insists that only data going in and out of government systems will be subject to special screening for malicious code.

Tests of the effectiveness of the program — which is derived from one used on military networks — were to have begun in February but have been delayed by debates within the Obama administration. Both the military origin of the system and the involvement of the NSA have aroused concerns about privacy.

President Obama promised in May that there would be no intrusion on private communications, and the administration has indicated its intention to consult with privacy and civil liberties groups on an ongoing basis.

via Raw Story » NSA to monitor private networks for cyberattacks.

ASCAP demands additional payment for custom ringtones

ASCAP demands additional payment for custom ringtones

If the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) gets its way, phone carriers will have to pay more money every time a customized cell phone rings in public—which ASCAP, a fierce non-profit defender of performers’ rights—claims is copyright violation.

In a press release, the civil liberties advocacy group Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) urges a federal court to reject ASCAP’s “bogus” claims, warning that the royalty fight “could raise costs for consumers, jeopardize consumer rights, and curtail new technological innovation.”

Musical ringtones have been popular for as long as cell phones have been personally customized. Song owners get royalty payments from cell phone carriers for the right to sell clips of their tunes to customers.

via Raw Story » ASCAP demands additional payment for custom ringtones.

McCain Draws A Blank When Asked About Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio

McCain Draws A Blank When Asked About Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio

Yesterday in an interview with Phoenix’s KTVK 3TV, the local news anchor asked Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) to play a quick word association game. McCain was left tongue-tied and speechless when the reporter asked him to give a one-word response to what he thinks about the controversial Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio:

• HOST: Health care.
• MCCAIN: Needs reform.
  HOST: That’s two words. [weird laugh] Iraq.
• MCCAIN: Success.
• HOST: Arizona.
• MCCAIN: The best.
• HOST: US-Mexico Border.
• McCain: Cartels.
• HOST: GOP.
• MCCAIN: Transition.
• HOST: Sheriff Joe Arpaio:
• MCCAIN: Umm…

Watch it:

via Think Progress » McCain Draws A Blank When Asked About Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

FACT CHECK: The Right-Wing Smear Campaign Against Kevin Jennings

FACT CHECK: The Right-Wing Smear Campaign Against Kevin Jennings

The right wing has a new target: Kevin Jennings, whom President Obama appointed Assistant Deputy Secretary at the Department of Education for the Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools (OSDFS). Jennings has had a distinguished career as a teacher, author, and founder of Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), an organization that works to make schools safe for all students, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity.

It is primarily Jennings’ work with GLSEN that has so outraged the far right. The Family Research Council (FRC) launched the “Stop Kevin Jennings” campaign this week, warning that he is a “radical homosexual activist” who has “worked tirelessly to bring the homosexual agenda into our nation’s classrooms.” “His history demonstrates disregard for our obligations to safeguard the health and well being of the student population,” writes FRC President Tony Perkins.

ThinkProgress investigated FRC’s claims and spoke to people who have worked with Jennings. A look at some of the “facts” about him:

via Think Progress » FACT CHECK: The Right-Wing Smear Campaign Against Kevin Jennings.

Let ‘em KNOW that we DO want the public option.

This is posted on the Bill Press show website.  Please contact these Senators and call the White House to let these people know that we DO want the public option.  Better yet, we want a single payer like they have in every other industrialized nation except ours! Please pass this along to your more progressive family members and friends.  Thanks, Diane

Health Care: The Public Plan Option

These Democratic Senators have NOT agreed to support it:

States Pitted Against One Another

States Pitted Against One Another

In America the “free trade” system not only pits us against the rest of the world in competition, it also pits individual states against one another domestically

Editor’s note: The following is the fifth interview in a six part series with economist Eamonn Fingleton. Tune in daily this week to watch all six groundbreaking interviews.

In America the “free trade” system not only pits us against the rest of the world in competition, it also pits individual states against one another domestically. Whether states are trying to package incentives to attract insourced facilities or help foreign companies invest in assets, in-fighting between states creates a vicious “race to the bottom.”

Fingleton believes that these rivalries are destructive for several reasons. First of all, they creates situations where taxpayer money is used to build facilities for overseas profit. Second, they help foreign investors gobble up assets, companies, and long-term profits from American holders. Also, the infighting signals to the rest of the world that the United States has no national coordination in international commerce. The rugged individualism which helped make America great is essentially out of control, as states “slit each others throats” chasing after short-term gains.

via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.

A List of Corporate Lobbying

Why American Policy SUCKS

Out of curiosity I decided to see who was spending the most on lobbying in America. And Oh My Goodness – NO WONDER our policy sucks. No wonder it’s nearly impossible to pass health care reform that provides all Americans with affordable care, a global warming bill that doesn’t suck, and the Employee Free Choice Act. No wonder we’re in these two stupid wars. I know everyone’s aware of the problems lobbying poses to our country, but good lord, if people saw the sheer magnitude of it (and the comparatively paltry amounts spent in the people’s interest) they would be outraged. So here goes. Here’s the list of the top 100 (ranked by amount spent on lobbying in Q109). Enjoy.

I pulled up all of the reports for first quarter 2009 but over 20,000 items came up (and the report only shows the first 3000). OK, try again – all reports for over $1 million for first quarter 2009. This time a little over 100 came up (including AIG, who spent $1,250,000 on lobbying during that period).

So here’s how to read this list: These are the amounts spent by the corporations listed. However, many (if not most) of these corporations ALSO contract out to private lobbying firms, so the amounts you see here MIGHT not be the total amount they spent on lobbying in Q109. For example, Monsanto spent $2,094,000 for its in house lobbying but then contracted out to Arent Fox LLP; Lesher, Russell & Barron, Inc. ($60,000); Ogilvy Government Relations ($60,000); Parven Pomper Strategies ($40,000); Sidley Austin LLP; TCH Group, LLC ($50,000); The Nickles Group, LLC ($63,000); The Washington Tax Group, LLC ($40,000); and Troutman Sanders Public Affairs Group ($30,000) – for a total of $2,437,000 in first quarter 2009.

Health Care, Health Insurance, & Pharma
3. Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America: $6,910,000
6. Pfizer, Inc: $6,140,000
12. American Medical Association: $4,240,000
18. American Hospital Association: $3,580,000
19. Eli Lilly and Company: $3,440,000
37. America’s Health Insurance Plans, Inc: $2,030,000
39. CVS Caremark Inc: $2,005,000
47. Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association: $1,800,000
49. GlaxoSmithKline: $1,780,000
63. Merck & Co: $1,500,000
65. United Health Group, Inc: $1,500,000
69. Sanofi-Aventis U.S. Inc: $1,460,000
76. Novartis: $1,347,134
87. Abbott Laboratories: $1,260,000
89. Astrazeneca Pharmaceuticals, LP: $1,250,000
92. Medtronic, Inc: $1,238,000

Oil
2. Exxon Mobil: $9,320,000
4. Chevron U.S.A. Inc: $6,800,000
7. Conoco Phillips: $5,980,935
16. BP America, Inc: $3,610,000
20. Marathon Oil Corporation: $3,380,000
45. American Petroleum Institute: $1,810,000

Defense
5. Lockheed Martin Corporation: $6,380,000
11. General Electric Company: $4,540,000
28. Northrop Grumman Corporation: $2,570,000
30. Boeing Company: $2,410,00
51. Honeywell International: $1,760,000
73. Raytheon Company: $1,360,000

more……..

via La Vida Locavore:: Why American Policy SUCKS.

Memo To Deficit Hawks: Public Plan Option Indisputably Saves Money

Memo To Deficit Hawks: Public Plan Option Indisputably Saves Money  -| OurFuture.org –

When the CBO scored an early draft of the health care form bill from the Senate HELP committee as costing $1 trillion over 10 years but only covering one-third of the uninsured, obstructionists pounced and proclaimed the public plan option dead.

But the CBO had not assessed the cost of the public plan option, nor a mandate on most employers to either provide insurance or contribute to the public plan.

Now they have. And as serious reform advocates long claimed, including those two key provisions drops the 10-year cost of reform by nearly $400 billion, while achieving near universal coverage.

Will the self-proclaimed deficit hawks now embrace the public plan option since it would save money? Or will they come up with fresh excuses, such as fear-mongering that the public plan would decimate the private insurance industry?

Let’s add one more piece of information to the mix: the underreported report from the Urban Institute, “Is the Public Plan Option a Necessary Part of Health Reform?”

What did the Urban Institute find?

First, a public plan won’t kill competition, because competition is currently non-existent:

via Memo To Deficit Hawks: Public Plan Option Indisputably Saves Money | OurFuture.org –.

Spending $102 Billion a Year on 800 Worldwide Military Bases Is Bankrupting the Country.

OPS:  Article includes an intro by Tom Engelhardt 

Spending $102 Billion a Year on 800 Worldwide Military Bases Is Bankrupting the Country. We’re building new “embassies” that run close to $1 billion and host countries keep jacking the rent for existing bases.

How to Deal with America’s Empire of Bases

A Modest Proposal for Garrisoned Lands

By Chalmers Johnson

The U.S. Empire of Bases — at $102 billion a year already the world’s costliest military enterprise — just got a good deal more expensive. As a start, on May 27th, we learned that the State Department will build a new “embassy” in Islamabad, Pakistan, which at $736 million will be the second priciest ever constructed, only $4 million less, if cost overruns don’t occur, than the Vatican-City-sized one the Bush administration put up in Baghdad. The State Department was also reportedly planning to buy the five-star Pearl Continental Hotel (complete with pool) in Peshawar, near the border with Afghanistan, to use as a consulate and living quarters for its staff there.

Unfortunately for such plans, on June 9th Pakistani militants rammed a truck filled with explosives into the hotel, killing 18 occupants, wounding at least 55, and collapsing one entire wing of the structure. There has been no news since about whether the State Department is still going ahead with the purchase.

via TomDispatch.

Troop Movements Are not a ‘Withdrawal’

OPS:  Exactly.

Troop Movements Are not a ‘Withdrawal’   

by Dennis Kucinich

Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) today made the following statement regarding the announcement that U.S. troops have left the cities and towns of Iraq and turned over formal security to Iraqi security forces.

“The withdrawal of some U.S. combat troops from Iraq’s cities is welcome and long overdue news. However, it is important to remember that this is not the same as a withdrawal of U.S. troops and contractors from Iraq.

“U.S. troop combat missions throughout Iraq are not scheduled to end until more than a year from now in August of 2010. In addition, U.S. troops are not scheduled for a complete withdrawal for another two and a half years on December 31, 2011. Rather, U.S. troops are leaving Iraqi cities for military bases in Iraq. They are still in Iraq, and they can be summoned back at any time.

via Troop Movements Are not a ‘Withdrawal’.

FBI Ignored Bush-Hussein Ties

FBI Ignored Bush-Hussein Ties

By Robert Parry

The FBI has released reports on 20 interviews and five conversations conducted with Iraq’s deposed dictator Saddam Hussein before he was put to death, but none of the disclosed Q and A deals with the role of the Reagan administration in delivering key components for Iraq’s chemical and biological weapons in the 1980s.

Either those questions weren’t asked or they are still being hidden by the U.S. government. The contents of one interview on March 21, 2004, were almost entirely redacted for supposed national security reasons.

As the National Security Archive, a private non-profit group that obtained the documents under the Freedom of Information Act, wrote:

“Not included in these FBI reports are issues of particular interest to students of Iraq’s complicated relationship with the U.S. – the reported role of the CIA in facilitating the Ba’ath party’s rise to power, the uneasy alliance forged between Iraq and the U.S. during the Iran-Iraq war, and the precise nature of U.S. views regarding Iraq’s chemical weapons policy during that conflict, given its contemporaneous knowledge of their repeated use against Iranians and the Kurds.”

via Consortiumnews.com.

Aircraft repair jobs sold to foreign workers, resumes not important

Aircraft repair jobs sold to foreign workers, resumes not important

A News 8 investigation found that hundreds of aircraft mechanics have been brought into the United States to work at aircraft repair facilities.

Insiders say the companies that are importing the mechanics are so eager to save money, they’re overstating their qualifications. The result may be a threat to safety, abetted by lax enforcement of immigration law.

At daybreak any morning at San Antonio Aerospace, hundreds of workers amble through the gates for the day shift. They repair big jets like Airbuses, Boeing 757s and MD-11s. But, despite the fact that it’s a huge facility in the middle of the San Antonio International Airport, a large number of the mechanics are only temporary workers from foreign countries.

via Aircraft repair jobs sold to foreign workers, resumes not important | Latest News | WFAA.com.

US remains silent over McKinney arrest by Israel

US remains silent over McKinney arrest by Israel

Nearly a day after the detention of former US lawmaker Cynthia McKinney by Israeli forces, Washington has yet to make a reaction.

Israeli Navy detained former US congresswoman and Nobel Prize laureate Cynthia McKinney and twenty other human rights activists on board a relief boat outside Israel’s territorial waters on Tuesday as they were heading to Gaza on a humanitarian mission.

Tel Aviv claims the boat was trying to break Israel’s two-year siege on Gaza.

Ms McKinney — the 2008 Green Party nominee for President of the United States– has accused Tel Aviv of violating the international law by seizing an aid vessel in international waters.

“This is an outrageous violation of international law against us. Our boat was not in Israeli waters, and we were on a human rights mission to the Gaza Strip,” McKinney said in a statement.

“We are asking the international community to demand our release so we can continue our journey,” she added.

“My wife and I are very concerned about her safety,” Cynthia’s father told Press TV in a phone call.

via US remains silent over McKinney arrest by Israel.

Woman Commits Suicide to Avoid Eviction

Woman Commits Suicide to Avoid Eviction

A Florida woman tragically committed suicide on the day she was getting evicted from her home.

Heather Newnam, 28, of Tamarac, Fla., shot herself when a real estate agent, a locksmith and movers showed up at her home on Monday after she failed to pay her rent. She told them she had to secure the dogs first, and then a shot was fired, according to the Broward Sheriff’s Office . The SWAT team arrived on the scene and found her dead from a gunshot wound to the head.

Newnam documented her life on Twitter as user rsangel04. Her last post on June 24 read, “Rich get richer, poor get poorer, families on the street, govt doesn’t care. God bless the usa, but can He save it?”

The day before, Newnam seemed in better spirits. “Five minutes til Rescue Me, Woo Hoo! then bed, Im beat.”

via Woman Commits Suicide to Avoid Eviction.

Revisions to Health Bill Are Unveiled by Democrats

Revisions to Health Bill Are Unveiled by Democrats   - NYTimes.com

To warm words from President Obama, the Democratic leaders of the Senate health committee unveiled a revised plan Thursday to provide health coverage to nearly all Americans. The plan would require most employers to offer benefits to their workers or pay fees to the government and would create a public competitor to insurance companies.

The proposal clears the way for the committee to vote on a package next week as the House and the Senate hustle to pass separate health bills this month before Congress leaves on its August break. But a second Senate panel, the Finance Committee, is still struggling to reach consensus.

The health committee’s blueprint builds on an incomplete version that was much criticized two weeks ago when the Congressional Budget Office reported that it would cost more than $1 trillion over 10 years and still leave up to 37 million Americans uninsured. That budget report was widely considered a setback for a health care overhaul, Mr. Obama’s top domestic priority.

Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, the health committee chairman, and Senator Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut subsequently filled in details of the plan and scaled back subsidies that would help low-income people buy insurance.

via Revisions to Health Bill Are Unveiled by Democrats – NYTimes.com.

That ’30s Show

OPS: BO has surrounded himself with the very Bush and Clinton RETREADS that caused these problems. They are not going to have a come-to-jesus moment and all of a sudden admit they were criminally negligent (at best) and resign. They will continue to shovel dung on it and do their best to keep it covered  and to re-inflate the bubble as long as possible.   Regarding BO’s staffing choices and where we need to go: You can’t get there from here.

That ’30s Show  – - NYTimes.com

Paul Krugman

O.K., Thursday’s jobs report settles it. We’re going to need a bigger stimulus. But does the president know that?

Let’s do the math.

Since the recession began, the U.S. economy has lost 6 ½ million jobs — and as that grim employment report confirmed, it’s continuing to lose jobs at a rapid pace. Once you take into account the 100,000-plus new jobs that we need each month just to keep up with a growing population, we’re about 8 ½ million jobs in the hole.

And the deeper the hole gets, the harder it will be to dig ourselves out. The job figures weren’t the only bad news in Thursday’s report, which also showed wages stalling and possibly on the verge of outright decline. That’s a recipe for a descent into Japanese-style deflation, which is very difficult to reverse. Lost decade, anyone?

via Op-Ed Columnist – That ’30s Show – NYTimes.com.

Healthcare reform, scare tactics and ignorance

Healthcare reform, scare tactics and ignorance

Opponents to a public option for healthcare have tried to compare it to everything from socialism to being un-American. They also put out the outright lie that government bureaucrats will come between patients and doctors,that it will have a negative impact on the quality of health care,and  there have even been those who have tried to compare it to communism because if you cant back up your argument with anything resembling a fact why not try bringing back communism and see if that will work?

via Healthcare reform, scare tactics and ignorance.

Court Filing Shows Evidence Cheney Swayed White House Response to CIA Leak

New Evidence Cheney Swayed Reaction to Leak   – washingtonpost.com

Discussions of CIA Agent Listed in Filing

A document filed in federal court this week by the Justice Department offers new evidence that former vice president Richard B. Cheney helped steer the Bush administration’s public response to the disclosure of Valerie Plame Wilson’s employment by the CIA and that he was at the center of many related administration deliberations.

The administration’s discussion of Wilson’s link to the CIA was meant to undermine criticism by her husband of administration allegations that Iraq attempted to acquire uranium, a matter that her husband had probed for the CIA, according to testimony presented in a 2007 trial.

A list of at least seven related conversations involving Cheney appears in a new court filing approved by Obama appointees at the Justice Department. In the filing, the officials argue that the substance of what Cheney told special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald in 2004 must remain secret.

via Court Filing Shows Evidence Cheney Swayed White House Response to CIA Leak – washingtonpost.com.

The Great American Bubble Machine

OPS:   posted this article from another source a few days ago but it’s being posted and linked again now that Rolling Stone has finally got it on their web page.  If you haven’t read this yet, drop what you’re doing and read.  It’s that good!  The Article now includes a video from Taibbi  providing some additional information

The Great American Bubble Machine -  : Rolling Stone

Matt Taibbi

Matt Taibbi on how Goldman Sachs has engineered every major market manipulation since the Great Depression

In Rolling Stone Issue 1082-83, Matt Taibbi takes on “the Wall Street Bubble Mafia” — investment bank Goldman Sachs. The piece has generated controversy, with Goldman Sachs firing back that Taibbi’s piece is “an hysterical compilation of conspiracy theories” and a spokesman adding, “We reject the assertion that we are inflators of bubbles and profiteers in busts, and we are painfully conscious of the importance in being a force for good.” Taibbi shot back: “Goldman has its alumni pushing its views from the pulpit of the U.S. Treasury, the NYSE, the World Bank, and numerous other important posts; it also has former players fronting major TV shows. They have the ear of the president if they want it.” Here, now, are excerpts from Matt Taibbi’s piece and video of Taibbi exploring the key issues.

From Matt Taibbi’s “The Great American Bubble Machine” in Rolling Stone Issue 1082-83.

The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it’s everywhere. The world’s most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.

Any attempt to construct a narrative around all the former Goldmanites in influential positions quickly becomes an absurd and pointless exercise, like trying to make a list of everything. What you need to know is the big picture: If America is circling the drain, Goldman Sachs has found a way to be that drain — an extremely unfortunate loophole in the system of Western democratic capitalism, which never foresaw that in a society governed passively by free markets and free elections, organized greed always defeats disorganized democracy.

They achieve this using the same playbook over and over again. The formula is relatively simple: Goldman positions itself in the middle of a speculative bubble, selling investments they know are crap. Then they hoover up vast sums from the middle and lower floors of society with the aid of a crippled and corrupt state that allows it to rewrite the rules in exchange for the relative pennies the bank throws at political patronage. Finally, when it all goes bust, leaving millions of ordinary citizens broke and starving, they begin the entire process over again, riding in to rescue us all by lending us back our own money at interest, selling themselves as men above greed, just a bunch of really smart guys keeping the wheels greased. They’ve been pulling this same stunt over and over since the 1920s — and now they’re preparing to do it again, creating what may be the biggest and most audacious bubble yet.

via The Great American Bubble Machine : Rolling Stone.

Media Outlet Refuses To Run Republican TV Ad Filled With Misrepresentations Of Clean Energy Bill

Media Outlet Refuses To Run Republican TV Ad Filled With Misrepresentations Of Clean Energy Bill

This afternoon, Roanoke television station WDBJ-TV, announced they will be refusing to air a National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) ad attacking freshman Rep. Tom Perriello (D-VA), citing factual inaccuracies. The NRCC had been planning to run television ads against Democratic members of Congress, like Perriello, who voted for the Waxman-Markey clean energy economy legislation that passed last week. After receiving information about the factual inaccuracies in the ad, the station pulled it from rotation.

For any objective observer, the the ad is pulled out of thin air. The ads erroneously state that the bill will “destroy jobs” and “cost middle-class families $1,800 a year.” According to a study by the Center for American Progress, clean energy economy legislation will create 1.7 million American jobs while simultaneously addressing climate change by capping carbon dioxide emissions. The $1,800 figure used by NRCC is also made of whole cloth. The Congressional Budget Office has scored the bill and found that by 2020, the annual cost would be about $175 per household — about a postage stamp a day. An EPA estimate of the bill found similar results, projecting the cost to be about $80 to $111 per a year.

Still refusing to accept reality, the Republican leadership is instructing its members to lie about the clean energy economy bill:

via Think Progress » Media Outlet Refuses To Run Republican TV Ad Filled With Misrepresentations Of Clean Energy Bill.

Extinction Looms, Study Says

Extinction Looms, Study Says  | CommonDreams.org

by Bradley S. Klapper

GENEVA – Governments are failing to stem a rapid decline in biodiversity that is now threatening extinction for almost half the world’s coral reef species, a third of amphibians, and a quarter of mammals, a leading environmental group warned today.

“Life on Earth is under serious threat,” the International Union for Conservation of Nature said in a 155-page report that describes the past five years of a losing battle to protect species, natural habitats, and geographical regions from the devastating effects of man.

IUCN, the producer of the world’s Red List of endangered animals, analyzed more than 44,000 species to test government pledges earlier this decade to halt a global loss in biodiversity by 2010.

That target will not be met, the Gland, Switzerland-based body said, describing the prospects of coral reefs as the most alarming. It also said slightly more amphibians, mammals, and birds were in peril compared with five years ago, with species most prized by humans for food or medicine as disproportionately threatened.

via Extinction Looms, Study Says | CommonDreams.org.

Ignoring Propethic Predictors

Ignoring Propethic Predictors  | CommonDreams.org

by Ralph Nader

I’ve wondered often why people who go to “town meetings” held by campaigning politicians rarely ask fundamental questions.

Here is one that should have been asked of presidential candidate Barack Obama: “If you get to the White House, will you appoint to top positions Americans who have a track record of making the right decisions in their respective fields?”

“Of course, I will,” Obama would have undoubtedly replied.

Of course, he did not when it came to the collapse of the corrupt Wall Street casinos and the bailout of these gamblers by the American people. Obama chose the very Wall Streeters and Wall Street servants who were involved in, condoned, or profited from the speculative binges that led to the biggest government bailout scheme in world history. The President’s explanation is that he wants experienced people who know how Wall Street works. Yeah, right! In reality, he wanted political cover.

Something very important is missing when even people who are part of the ruling establishment are ignored, marginalized, or ridiculed even though their detailed, public warnings prove to be all too accurate.

via Ignoring Propethic Predictors | CommonDreams.org.

NAFTA Trade Plunges

NAFTA Trade Plunges

Surface trade with America’s North American Free Trade Agreement partners, Canada and Mexico, continues to plummet.

Although there have been few bright spots in the economy recently, a report released Tuesday by the Bureau of Transportation Statistics found that surface trade with America’s North American Free Trade Agreement partners, Canada and Mexico, continues to plummet, providing a glimmer of hope for American manufacturers.

The report found that overall, surface trade with Canada and Mexico for the month of April was down 33.1 percent from the previous April, falling to $49.7 billion.

That represents the fourth consecutive month in which surface trade between the three nations declined greater than 27 percent.

The report found that imports carried by trucks were down 27.6 percent year-over-year and exports fell 26.7 percent for the same period.

In the first four months of this year alone, surface trade between the three nations is down 29.9 percent

via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.

Unemployment Report Brings Effectiveness of Stimulus into Question

Unemployment Report Brings Effectiveness of Stimulus into Question

For the ninth consecutive month, the unemployment rate rose, suggesting that the beleaguered U.S. economy is far from bottoming out.

For the ninth consecutive month, the unemployment rate rose, suggesting that the beleaguered U.S. economy is far from bottoming out and the Obama administration’s $787 billion stimulus package may not be having its desired effect.

The unemployment rate rose to 9.5 percent in the month of June from 9.4 percent in May, according to statistics released by the U.S. Labor Department. That is less than the 9.6 percent unemployment rate economists had predicted.

That slight rise, however, was blunted by the fact that a total of 467,000 jobs were shed in June – much higher than the 365,000 jobs expected to be lost in June.

“The disappointing report highlights the severity of the downturn and suggests a bottom for employment is not near,” Sophia Koropeckyj at Moody’s Economy.com, told AFP.

via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.

Short-term Setbacks, Longterm Sustainability

Short-term Setbacks, Longterm Sustainability

An economy that sustains itself on frivolous spending by consumers who do not have the means to buy the products they are buying is completely unsustainable and a recipe for disaster.

Personal savings rates reached a 15-year high during the month of May, signaling that American consumers may have learned their lesson from the current recession.

“The unfortunate thing is that high savings in the short run is not good in terms of the recession ending,” Kevin Mabe, chief economist with Farmers Insurance Group in Los Angeles, told CNNMoney.com. “But what savings allows us to do is to use money for long-term growth. We can’t spend anymore. The consumer is tapped out.”

Until recently, Americans had been relatively good at saving. From the 1950s through the 1980s Americans saved, on average, eight to 10 percent of their earnings. Over the last decade that savings rate actually turned negative at one point in time. From mid-2005 to late last year, personal savings rates actually remained in the negative.

Fueled by extremely low interest rates and other forms of cheap credit, Americans amassed massive amounts of debt over the past decade, which only worsened the recession.

via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.

Overhauling America’s Debilitating TRADE Policies

Overhauling America’s Debilitating TRADE Policies

A diverse group of House members are pushing legislation for a complete overhaul of America’s trade policies known as the Trade Reform, Accountability, Development and Employment Act (TRADE)

Editor’s Note: EconomyInCrisis.org fully supports the TRADE act and encourages you to contact your representatives in Washington and ask that they support this very important piece of legislation as well.

For years America’s failed trade policies have resulted in the loss of millions of quality manufacturing jobs, environmental degradation, rising income inequality and threatened public health and safety.

Now a diverse group of House members are pushing for a complete overhaul of the nation’s trade policies which they claim would “ensure economic security and the creation of quality jobs here, while offering opportunities for sustainable development in poor countries.”

The legislation, sponsored by Rep. Mike Michaud (D-ME) in the House and Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) in the upper chamber, is aptly named the Trade Reform, Accountability, Development and Employment Act (TRADE).

The bill would require the Government Accountability Office to conduct a comprehensive review of America’s major trade pacts including NAFTA, the World Trade Organization and the Central American Free Trade Agreement. That review must be conducted before Congress and would be allowed to analyze any new or pending trade pacts. In addition, the GAO would be asked to set guidelines for what could and could not be included in future trade pacts.

via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.

Vitamins that Change Hair from Gray to Fabulous – Associated Content

OPS: Pantothenic Acid is Vit B5

Vitamins that Change Hair from Gray to Fabulous

Relief from Graying Hair

Vitamins for hair; I’ve tried a lot of them hoping to get thicker, faster growing, shiny-soft glamorous hair. Some seemed to help, but wound up giving me faster growing nails. I never thought about vitamins or vitamin combinations that could let you say goodbye to gray hair. Dying hair  does a lot of damage that isn’t apparent at first. It can make your hair fall out and make it look extremely dry and burned up. Gray hair comes early for some and the Adrenal Glands could very well be responsible. When the body is lacking in Pantothenic Acid it in turn causes the Adrenal Glands to malfunction.

Here’s what cold happen:

Hair turns gray, stress levels rise, allergies develop and can cause sore scratchy throats, and uneasy breathing, fatigue steps in, muscles lose strength, uric acid explodes, gout shows up, some forms of arthritis occur, and tempers flare.

If you go to the doctor for treatment of Adrenal Gland mishaps they might prescribe Cortisone not considering an overworked Adrenal gland to be the cause of any of the above problems. Healthy bodies produce Cortisone to fight stress. People who do not produce any Cortisone will pass out from a good scare because they can’t handle any stress. Abraham Lincoln was said to have taken Cortisone because his body couldn’t produce it. A swelled puffy face and facial hair in women are some of the side effects of Cortisone. All of that can be avoided by taking Pantothenic Acid and it won’t cause all the grueling side effects. You might want to consider that stress quickly depletes Pantothenic Acid from the body. If after a stressful situation you can calm down enough for stress levels to remain low the body can produce Pantothenic Acid in twenty-four hours.

via Vitamins that Change Hair from Gray to Fabulous – Associated Content.

Bernie Sanders Makes Genius Point

YouTube – Bernie Sanders Makes Genius Point.

Jon Stewart Blasts Glenn Beck & Michael Scheuer For Promoting Slaughter Of Americans (VIDEO)

Jon Stewart Blasts Glenn Beck & Michael Scheuer For Promoting Slaughter Of Americans (VIDEO)

Hey, you remember a couple of days ago when Michael Scheuer appeared on the “Glenn Beck Whirligig Of Freakjuice” to talk about border security, and he said that “the only chance we have as a country right now is for Osama bin Laden to deploy and detonate a major weapon in the United States.” And then Glenn Beck was all up inside Osama bin Laden’s head like he was the star of “CSI: Methamphetaminetown,” gravely noting, “Which is why I was thinking this weekend if I were him, that would be the last thing I would do right now.”

Remember that? Well, I think we can all say that reasoned discourse was perfected that day. I think the next time I see someone on the streets caught out in the rain, I’m just going to march up to them and yell, “What’s it going to take, jerkface? Another HURRICANE KATRINA? Before you remember your fracking umbrella?”

However, on last night’s “Daily Show” it sure didn’t seem that host Jon Stewart took this eminently sensible discussion in the spirit it was offered. It looked to me like Stewart was speaking from the perspective of someone who lived through a terrorist attack and had little patience for fools who just casually suggest that maybe we’d all benefit from another one.

via Jon Stewart Blasts Glenn Beck & Michael Scheuer For Promoting Slaughter Of Americans (VIDEO).

McClatchy: “Is Mark Sanford Crazy? Some In South Carolina Now Wonder”

The Mark Sanford Affair Commemorated In Poetry

Republican legislators are wondering whether Mark Sanford has gone crazy.

“That’s a troubled man,” said Sen. Harvey Peeler, R-Cherokee, a longtime Sanford ally who this year became frustrated at Sanford’s refusal to take federal stimulus money. “You can see it in his eyes and his body language. I’m concerned about his mental well-being.”
John Crangle, executive director of Common Cause South Carolina, called Sanford “delusional” and said it was obvious the governor has “serious mental problems.”[...]

The state Constitution has measures for removing a mentally unstable governor, but that’s not likely to happen in this case, observers said.

via The Mark Sanford Affair Commemorated In Poetry.

DeMint Inadvertently Concedes That Public Health Insurance Option Won’t Take Over The Market

DeMint Inadvertently Concedes That Public Health Insurance Option Won’t Take Over The Market

A leading right-wing argument against offering a public health insurance option as part of any health reform initiative is that such a plan would drive private health insurance companies out of the market. The health insurance lobby group AHIP called a public option “potentially lethal” to their industry. Similarly, Republican Conference Chairman Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) said in May that adding a public plan would be akin to asking mice to compete against an elephant. “There wouldn’t be any mice left after a while,” he insisted.

Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) recently used this talking point himself in arguing against a public option for the National Review. Yesterday, however, DeMint appeared to inadvertently offer an example that demonstrates that the notion that the public plan would drive out competition is false. On Bill Bennett’s radio show, DeMint called blocking health care reform the top Republican priority, arguing that of all the items on President Obama’s legislative agenda, it would be the hardest to reverse. To support his point, he offered “government schools” — public education — as an example. “You can never, with another piece of legislation, change it,” DeMint said:

via Think Progress » DeMint Inadvertently Concedes That Public Health Insurance Option Won’t Take Over The Market.

The Wall Street White House

How Goldman Sachs and Citi Run the Show

The Wall Street White House

Robert Hormats, Vice Chairman of Goldman Sachs, is to be installed as Under Secretary of Economics, Business, and Agricultural Affairs. This comes as one more, probably unnecessary reminder of the total control exercised by Wall Street over the Obama administration’s economic and financial policy. True, Hormats is “a talker rather than a decider” according to one former White House official, but he will find plenty of old friends used to making decisions, almost all of them uniformly disastrous for the U.S. and global economy.

Among the familiar Wall Street faces that Hormats will encounter in his new post will that of Deputy Secretary of State Jacob Lew, lately Chief Financial Officer of Citigroup Alternative Investments Group which lost $509 million in the first quarter of 2008 alone. On visits to the White House he is sure to bump into Michael Froman, who also tore a swath through the Citi balance sheet at the alternative investments shop (they specialized in “esoteric” investments such as private highways) but is now Obama’s Deputy National Security Adviser for International Economic Affairs. If Froman is otherwise engaged, Hormats can interface with Froman’s deputy, David Lipton, who was until recently running Citi’s global country risk management effort.

Citigroup is also well represented at Treasury, in the form of Lewis Alexander, formerly the bank’s chief economist and now Counselor to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. Given the role played by all of the above in bankrupting us all, Alexander’s 2007 verdict on the onset of the mortgage crash, “I think that’s not going to spill more broadly into the economy and so I think we’re going to have a normal kind of housing cycle though the middle of this year,” can only have been a recommendation in the eyes of his current employer.

via Andrew Cockburn: The Wall Street White House.

H. L. Mencken Covers the ‘Monkey Trial’

H. L. Mencken Covers the ‘Monkey Trial’

American education has deteriorated inversely with the rise of right wing politics! An example is the ‘Texas’ that Bush left behind. It beats out Mississippi for DEAD LAST in high school graduations at the same that that it LEADS the nation in executions due to the state’s extremely high crime rate! This, I believe, is due to the neglect given a fact-based, a science-based liberal education. This is, I am convinced, the result of the influence of fanatics and ‘religionists’ upon education.

Social Darwinism, creationism and ‘intelligent design’ are the result of this neglect; they follow inexorably from the disdain shown ‘education’ by the elitists of the Republican party and the fanatics of that party’s religious wing! Social Darwinism, for example, does not follow from “Darwinism” and, worse, it attributes to Darwin positions he never took. Interestingly, the term “survival of the fittest” was never used by Darwin. It has been variously attributed, but Hofstadter seems to attribute that phrase to rail road men:

Railroad executive Chauncy Depew asserted that the guests of the great dinners and public banquets of New York City represented the survival of the fittest of all who came in search of fortune. They were the ones with superior abilities. Likewise railroad magnate James J. Hill defended the railroad companies by saying their fortunes were determined according to the law of survival of the fittest.

—Hofstadter, Richard; 1959; Social Darwinism in American Thought, Braziller; New York.

via The Existentialist Cowboy: H. L. Mencken Covers the ‘Monkey Trial’.

America’s Third World Healthcare Plan

America’s Third World Healthcare Plan

Conversation with Dr. Quentin Young, Former Obama Healthcare Confidant

by Dr. Gary Null

Gary Null (GN): We’re going to talk about the severity of America’s healthcare and review President Obama’s health reform. Our guest is Dr. Quentin Young, and he is quite simply one of our nation’s most distinguished medical physicians and a leading advocate for a universal health plan. Dr. Young recently retired from private practice after 61 years. He served as the physician for Martin Luther King and was the Chairman of the Medical Committee for Human Rights, Chairman of the Medicine department at Cook County Hospital, a founder of the Health and Medicine Policy Research Group and President of the American Public Health Association. Dr. Young is now Clinical Professor of Preventive Medicine and Community Health at the University of Illinois Medical School at Chicago and a founding member and National Coordinator of the Chicago based Physicians For A National Health Program, a nonprofit physician advocacy organization. Dr. Young, it’s nice to have you with us today.

Quentin Young (QY): Thank you very much.

GN: Dr. Young, I’d like to get an insider’s view to set the record straight about what President Obama actually ran his campaign on regarding healthcare reform. There are those who claim he promised a single payer, universal model. Others say that while giving lip service to it he actually dodged a firm commitment to universal care. As a fellow Chicagoan resident and a community leader who provided health consultation and friendship to Obama the Senator and Presidential candidate over the years, how would you compare the would be President Obama with Obama the Commander and Chief for the public’s health crisis?

QY: Well you did a good job of summarizing his evolution. No less than four years ago, he was on the public record saying he supports single payer. It’s the way to go. Then as his fortunes improved—and they certainly did during those four short years when he became a national senator, then presidential candidate and finally the President of the United States—he modified his position. He began by saying that if he was starting from scratch he would go for the single payer system. Then more recently, in fact as we speak, the Administration’s position is that we want to build on what we have experience with in this country. That translates into relying on the employment-based insurance arrangement that many millions of Americans receive. That’s what’s on the table now. That’s where the President is. He no longer says that single payer is the way to go. They sort of mealy mouth the expression that while single payer may work in many countries, in the US we want to build on what we have. Well that has a nice ring to it, but it’s crazy. The plan that we have has put us in desperate straits. Let me be straightforward; the employment-based insurance scheme has proven to be an increasingly empty promise. For example, there are thousands of employees in the big three auto companies who are losing their health insurance as these plants shut down. And we’re seeing an increasing number of uninsured citizens annually for the last 20 years. We’re now up to about 50 million people with no health insurance and another 50 million with very poor insurance. If these people have a serious illness they’re out of the loop. So I am very critical of the President’s compromise. If you were to ask me why he did that—obviously we can’t get inside his mind—the best answer I can give is to replay what happened to President Clinton in 1993 when he came forward with an ambitious plan. The industry attacked the plan ferociously with a multi-million dollar media blitz. By the time it was over in 1994 we had nothing. And now it’s some 15 years later, and we’re seeing another round. So let’s understand why the forces opposing reform are so powerful.

via America’s Third World Healthcare Plan.

Declaration Of Independence, Rare Original Copy, Found In British National Archives

Declaration Of Independence, Rare Original Copy, Found In British National Archives

LONDON — British researchers have announced the discovery of a rare original copy of America’s Declaration of Independence _ just in time for the Fourth of July.

Katrina McClintock, a spokeswoman at the National Archives, said Thursday that a researcher accidentally discovered the “Dunlap print,” named after a printer, several months ago. The find was announced only after it could be properly catalogued.

Edward Hampshire, the National Archives’ specialist in colonial materials, said the find was “incredibly exciting.”

“It is likely that only around 200 of these were ever printed, so uncovering a new one nearly 250 years later is extremely rare, especially one in such good condition,” he said.

He said the declaration is one of the most important documents in history because it marks the birth of the United States.

The last Dunlap print to be found was sold at an auction for $8.14 million in 2000.

via Declaration Of Independence, Rare Original Copy, Found In British National Archives.

John Pilger Calls UK National Health Service a Treasure, Blasts US Lawmakers for Being “in Bed with Powerful Interests” and Neglecting “Their Own People’s Basic Human Rights”

AUdio – Video -  Transcript – MP3 download

John Pilger Calls UK National Health Service a Treasure, Blasts US Lawmakers for Being “in Bed with Powerful Interests” and Neglecting “Their Own People’s Basic Human Rights”

Democracy NOW!

We play an excerpt of an extended interview with Australian investigative journalist, John Pilger. Speaking about the US healthcare system, Pilger says, “What is it about US legislators that they appear to be so in bed with such powerful interests such as the insurance companies, that they can’t represent their own people’s needs, their own people’s basic human rights.”

via John Pilger Calls UK National Health Service a Treasure, Blasts US Lawmakers for Being “in Bed with Powerful Interests” and Neglecting “Their Own People’s Basic Human Rights”.

Congress’s $1.2 Million a Day Drug Habit—and Pharma’s Phony “Gift” to Health Care Reform

Congress’s $1.2 Million a Day Drug Habit—and Pharma’s Phony “Gift” to Health Care Reform

by James Ridgeway

Big Pharma pulled off a first-class PR coup last week with its widely celebrated pledge to support health care reform by offering up a package of discounts they claim will run to $80 billion over the next ten years. The highlight of the package, said to be worth about $30 billion, is a 50 percent discount offered to old and disabled people who fall into the “donut hole,” the notorious coverage gap in the Medicare Part D prescription drug benefit, which leaves some of us paying as much as $3,000 out of pocket for our meds.

Announcing the agreement, President Obama hailed the drug-makers for offering “significant relief” to a “continuing injustice that has placed a great burden on many seniors,” and for helping to reach “a turning point in America’s journey toward health care reform.” AARP, the mammoth old people’s lobby, was right there at Obama’s shoulder, with head man Barry Rand trumpeting that industry’s progress: “This is an early win for reform and a major step forward. It is a signal the process is working and will work.” The deal was also seen as a victory for Senate finance committee chair Max Baucus (D-MT), who engineered negotiations in his self-assigned role as champion compromiser in the reform debate. But the real triumph belongs to the drug companies themselves, since the supposedly magnanimous offer is just what we might expect it to be, considering the source: another wolf in sheep’s clothing from Big Pharma.

via Congress’s $1.2 Million a Day Drug Habit—and Pharma’s Phony “Gift” to Health Care Reform | CommonDreams.org.

Who Sits at the Health-Reform Table?

Who Sits at the Health-Reform Table?  | CommonDreams.org

President Obama held a town hall on Health Care Reform last week, broadcast nationwide on ABC with Charlie Gibson and Diane Sawyer. Once again, even though a majority of the public and now even a majority of doctors in the US favor a single-payer system, single payer was still off the table.

The president of the AMA, which opposes single payer, nowadays representing about a 19 percent minority of doctors, was prominently on display.

Ron Williams, CEO of Aetna, the health insurance company that in the 1850’s provided insurance to slave holders for their slaves, was part of the discussion too. In 2007, Ron Williams received $19,924,027.00 in total compensation as CEO of that health insurance company.

via Who Sits at the Health-Reform Table? | CommonDreams.org.

ExxonMobil Continuing to Fund Climate Sceptic Groups, Records Show

ExxonMobil Continuing to Fund Climate Sceptic Groups, Records Show

Records show ExxonMobil gave hundreds of thousands of pounds to lobby groups that have published ‘misleading and inaccurate information’ about climate change  | CommonDreams.org

The world’s largest oil company is continuing to fund lobby groups that question the reality of global warming, despite a public pledge to cut support for such climate change denial, a new analysis shows.

Company records show that ExxonMobil handed over hundreds of thousands of pounds to such lobby groups in 2008. These include the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA) in Dallas, Texas, which received $75,000 (£45,500), and the Heritage Foundation in Washington DC, which received $50,000.

According to Bob Ward, policy and communications director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, at the London School of Economics, both the NCPA and the Heritage Foundation have published “misleading and inaccurate information about climate change.”

via ExxonMobil Continuing to Fund Climate Sceptic Groups, Records Show | CommonDreams.org.

Massive US Assault to Seize Taleban Heartland

Massive US Assault to Seize Taleban Heartland  | CommonDreams.org

Thousands of US Marines stormed into an Afghan river valley by helicopter and land early today, launching the first major military offensive of Barack Obama’s presidency with an assault deep into Taleban-held territory.

Operation Khanjar, which the Marines call simply “the decisive op”, is intended to seize virtually the entire lower Helmand River valley, a heartland of the Taleban insurgency and the world’s biggest heroin producing region.

It is the biggest operation launched by the US Marines Corps since the retaking of Fallujah in 2004 and seeks to break the grinding stalemate between Nato forces and the Taleban in the province.

via Massive US Assault to Seize Taleban Heartland | CommonDreams.org.

Amnesty Accuses Israel of Using Human Shields in Gaza

Amnesty Accuses Israel of Using Human Shields in Gaza  | CommonDreams.org

JERUSALEM – Amnesty accused Israeli forces on Thursday of war crimes in Gaza, saying they used children as human shields and conducted wanton attacks on civilians, in a report rejected as “unbalanced” by Israel.

The London-based human rights group also accused Hamas of war crimes, but said it found no evidence to support Israeli claims that Gaza’s Islamist rulers used civilians as human shields during Israel’s massive 22-day offensive.

It reiterated its call for international arms embargoes against Israel and Hamas, and called for “criminal investigations in national courts” under universal jurisdiction wherever there is sufficient evidence of war crimes.

“Much of the destruction was wanton and resulted from direct attacks on civilian objects,” Amnesty said in a report on the December-January war on the Gaza Strip.

In numerous cases, Israeli troops forced Palestinians to stay in one room of their home while turning the rest of the house into a base and sniper position, “effectively using the families, both adults and children, as human shields and putting them at risk,” the group said.

via Amnesty Accuses Israel of Using Human Shields in Gaza | CommonDreams.org.

Saddam Hussein Considered ‘Security Agreement’ With U.S. To Counter Threat From ‘Fanatics’ In Iran

Saddam Hussein Considered ‘Security Agreement’ With U.S. To Counter Threat From ‘Fanatics’ In Iran

Yesterday, the National Security Archive released declassified FBI reports detailing both the bureau’s interrogations and “casual conversations” with former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. According to the documents, Hussein told FBI agent George Piro (one of only a few agents who spoke Arabic) that he let the world believe he had weapons of mass destruction because he feared appearing weak to what he considered his country’s real threat, Iran:

Hussein’s fear of Iran, which he said he considered a greater threat than the United States, featured prominently in the discussion about weapons of mass destruction. … Hussein said he was convinced that Iran was trying to annex southern Iraq — which is largely Shiite. [...]

“The threat from Iran was the major factor as to why he did not allow the return of UN inspectors,” Piro wrote. “Hussein stated he was more concerned about Iran discovering Iraq’s weaknesses and vulnerabilities than the repercussions of the United States for his refusal to allow UN inspectors back into Iraq.”

Saddam “felt so vulnerable to the perceived threat from ‘fanatic’ leaders in Tehran that he would have been prepared to seek a ‘security agreement with the United States to protect [Iraq] from threats in the region.’” If that could not happen, only then, he said, would Iraq reconstitute its WMD programs.

via Think Progress » Saddam Hussein Considered ‘Security Agreement’ With U.S. To Counter Threat From ‘Fanatics’ In Iran.

Washington Post reportedly selling health care lobbyists and CEOs access to its journalists, Obama officials.

Washington Post reportedly selling health care lobbyists and CEOs access to its journalists, Obama officials.

The Politico reports that the Washington Post, for a price of $25,000 to $250,000, is “offering lobbyists and association executives off-the-record, non-confrontational access to ‘those powerful few’ — Obama administration officials, members of Congress, and the paper’s own reporters and editors.” While the Politico notes that on-the-record events and conferences are becoming a trend in the newspaper industry, this type of closed, pay-for-access event raises serious ethical concerns. The flier for the event, titled “Health-Care Reform: Better or Worse for Americans? The reform and funding debate,” reads:

Underwrite and participate in this intimate and exclusive Washington Post Salon, an off-the-record dinner and discussion at the home of CEO and Publisher Katharine Weymouth [...] Bring your organization’s CEO or executive director literally to the table. Interact with key Obama Administration and Congressional leaders […] Spirited? Yes. Confrontational? No. [...] Annual series sponsorship of 11 Salons offered at $250,000 […] Health-care reporting and editorial staff members of The Washington Post [...] An exclusive opportunity to participate in the health-care reform debate among the select few who will actually get it done. [...] July 21, 2009 6:30 p.m.

In recent weeks, the Washington Post has editorialized against a public option as a part of health care reform. Defending the status quo of a private insurer-dominated system, the Post wrote, “A public plan is not necessary to maintain a competitive market in health insurance.”

via Think Progress » Washington Post reportedly selling health care lobbyists and CEOs access to its journalists, Obama officials..

Washington Post sells access, $25,000+

Washington Post sells access, $25,000+ 

For $25,000 to $250,000, The Washington Post is offering lobbyists and association executives off-the-record, nonconfrontational access to “those powerful few” — Obama administration officials, members of Congress, and the paper’s own reporters and editors.

The astonishing offer is detailed in a flier circulated Wednesday to a health care lobbyist, who provided it to a reporter because the lobbyist said he feels it’s a conflict for the paper to charge for access to, as the flier says, its “health care reporting and editorial staff.”

The offer — which essentially turns a news organization into a facilitator for private lobbyist-official encounters — is a new sign of the lengths to which news organizations will go to find revenue at a time when most newspapers are struggling for survival.

And it’s a turn of the times that a lobbyist is scolding The Washington Post for its ethical practices.

via Washington Post sells access, $25,000+ – Mike Allen – POLITICO.com.

New York Times, Rep. Holt, Still Misrepresenting Contents of Controversial Election Reform Bill

New York Times, Rep. Holt, Still Misrepresenting Contents of Controversial Election Reform Bill   -  The BRAD BLOG

A week later, the ‘paper of record’ fails to correct egregious ‘paper ballots’ error in endorsement editorial

Democratic Congressman’s own website touts endorsement, repeats same fictitious information about bill…

It was a “glaring inaccuracy,” according to VotersUnite.org’s Ellen Theisen last week.

Yet, even though it’s been more than a full week since the New York Times ran an editorial endorsing Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ)’s new election reform bill, in which they included a huge factual error about the legislation, they have failed to issue a correction. Neither have they even bothered to respond to letters to the editor detailing the error, sent to them when we first pointed out the problem last week.

While several aspects of their editorial misled readers about the bill, as we detailed in our original article, one assertion made by the “paper of record” was just out and out incorrect, when they erroneously asserted the following:

via The BRAD BLOG : New York Times, Rep. Holt, Still Misrepresenting Contents of Controversial Election Reform Bill.

Californians are sinking themselves

Californians are sinking themselves  | Salon 

An inflexible right wing is allowing the Golden State to drown in debt. But it’s not alone

The world’s eighth-largest economy has just gone belly-up. When midnight tolled on Tuesday night with legislators and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger still deadlocked over how to resolve the state’s staggering $24 billion budget shortfall, California became unable to pay its bills. The state will have to begin issuing IOUs to its creditors as early as Thursday. It is the worst budget crisis in the state’s modern history.

There is an unreal, almost dreamlike quality about this moment. Dreadful things are about to happen: Hundreds of thousands of children will lose their healthcare. Five thousand state workers will be laid off. Massive cuts will decimate education at every level. Social services will be slashed. Two hundred and twenty-nine parks, out of a total of 280, will be shut down. Even some of the state’s landmarks may go on the auction block to raise money.

Yet as their state prepares to go over the cliff, California’s citizens seem weirdly oblivious, or resigned, or numb. Like inhabitants of a corrupt third-world country who have utterly lost faith in their government and in politics itself, or ostriches sticking their heads in the sand, Californians are behaving as if the whole thing is out of their control. Or even that it isn’t happening at all.

via Californians are sinking themselves | Salon.

Suddenly, a Trillion Dollars Is Too Expensive?

Suddenly, a Trillion Dollars Is Too Expensive? 

By Joe Conason

If Americans hope to discuss health care, climate change, green economics or public infrastructure with any degree of realism, then the time has come to acknowledge that hearing someone say “a trillion dollars” is no reason to panic. Politicians and pundits cite that figure to argue that we cannot afford health care reform, following recent cost estimates by the Congressional Budget Office, but the plain truth is that we spend (and squander) more than that on purposes not nearly so wise and humane as universal quality health care.

As a matter of fact, America’s current health care system wastes considerably more than a trillion dollars every year. We know that because countries such as France, Germany, Japan and Finland, with standards of living comparable to ours, spend roughly half what the United States spends annually on health care per citizen, while they cover everyone and achieve better results. So if the total cost of American health care over the coming decade reaches $40 trillion, as economists expect, then we will be “wasting” approximately $20 trillion, or $2 trillion a year.

Compared with figures such as those, the CBO scoring estimate of $1.6 trillion over 10 years to reform the U.S. health care system is so small as to be almost negligible. Constantly hearing numbers that sound so large makes perspective even more important. When Princeton health economist Uwe Reinhardt actually did the simple calculations, he found that the price of reform amounted to only 4 percent of the country’s cumulative health care budget between next year and 2020. He noted that this amount is much less than the annual increase in health care spending over the past 10 years. And he also pointed out that on the broader economic horizon, $1.6 trillion represents only about 1 percent of the $170 trillion in gross domestic product that Americans will produce over the same period.

via Truthdig – Reports – Suddenly, a Trillion Dollars Is Too Expensive?.

FTA’s and Their Destabilizing Effect

FTA’s and Their Destabilizing Effect

“Free trade” agreements decimate America’s manufacturing base, drive up the nation’s trade deficit and have an incredibly destabilizing effect on America’s trading partners

Not only have so-called “free trade” agreements decimated America’s manufacturing base, drove the nation’s trade deficit to record heights and encouraged the outsourcing of American jobs, they have also had an incredibly destabilizing effect on America’s trading partners, according to Eyes on Trade.

The evidence of this is widespread. In Mexico, Peru, Columbia and now Honduras social unrest has become a hallmark of “free trade” agreements with the United States.

Mexico, which became inextricably linked to the U.S. through the ill-conceived North American Free Trade Agreement, is on the verge of becoming a failed state. NAFTA allows American agricultural products to flood the Mexican market, pushing hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions of indigenous farmers out of work.

That, in turn, led to both an increase in illegal immigration to the U.S. as many of those out of work farmers sought economic refuge in the U.S. and a drastic increase in drug-trafficking in the country. The increase in drug activity has led to the deaths of thousands, pushed Mexico’s law enforcement agencies to the brink and the violence threatens to spill over the border into the U.S.

via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.

History is a Cruel Teacher

History is a Cruel Teacher

Why Obama’s reforms won’t prevent future crises.

The Obama administration’s proposed financial reforms which were announced two weeks ago have been viewed by many as lacking the necessary measures to rein in the excesses of Wall Street and prevent future crises of the current one’s magnitude.

One of those skeptics is Les Leopold, author of The Looting of America: How Wall Street’s Game of Fantasy Finance destroyed our Jobs, Pensions and Prosperity, and What we can do about it, who believes that the Obama administration’s proposed reforms lack the teeth to ensure the economy does not fall off the cliff in the future.

The first problem with the administration’s proposed rule changes is the fact that they do very little to slim down the incredibly bloated financial sector. Instead of attempting to shift the economy away from its reliance on Wall Street and toward a more stable and industry reliant economy, Obama is simply preserving the status quo.

“It’s still more profitable to produce a fantasy finance derivative than it is to produce a car or any other tangible product in the real economy. In fact, our economy is totally misshapen …. In 1950 there were about eight manufacturing jobs for every job in the financial sector. Now it’s about 1.5 to one. And it’s only getting worse,” he writes at The Huffington Post.

via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.

Misunderstood: “Free Trade”

Misunderstood: “Free Trade”

Not only is the population of the United States increasingly less educated than foreign populations, but our media is increasingly one-sided.

Editor’s note: The following is the fourth interview in a six part series with economist Eamonn Fingleton. Tune in daily this week to watch all six groundbreaking interviews.

One of the biggest problems facing the United States today is the lack of understanding by its population. Not only is the population of the United States increasingly less educated than foreign populations, but our media is increasingly one-sided.

The American media favors “free trade” almost unflinchingly, despite the fact that even a cursory overview of global economies shows that no nation is being more adversely affected by this practice than the U.S. For this reason Fingleton often faces negative responses in popular media because of his anti-“free trade” views. In this section Fingleton discusses the need to educate Americans on the lack of fiscal responsibility and economic fundamentals in the United States.

via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.

Rove twitters: Obama officials are ‘ingrates.’

OPS: truly deranged.  He expects thanks for destroying the Country.

Rove twitters: Obama officials are ‘ingrates.’

Earlier today, former Bush White House adviser Karl Rove expressed his irrational irritation with the Obama White House on his Twitter page, writing the “Ingrates speak,” before linking to a post by Commentary Magazine’s Jennifer Rubin:

via Think Progress » Rove twitters: Obama officials are ‘ingrates.’.

New Budget Estimate Of Public Plan Proves It Lowers Cost And Covers More Americans

New Budget Estimate Of Public Plan Proves It Lowers Cost And Covers More Americans

A couple of weeks ago, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released a preliminary score of the health care legislation under consideration in the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. The bill was estimated to cost $1 trillion over 10 years, while reducing the number of uninsured by “only” one-third. As many informed bloggers noted at the time, the cost estimate was incomplete because the legislation that the CBO reviewed did not contain language about a public health insurance plan or an employer mandate.

Nevertheless, Republicans seized on the opportunity to engage in merciless political attacks, citing the incomplete CBO score as proof that health care reform is not worth doing:

John McCain: “[The CBO estimate] should be a wake up call for all of us to scrap the current bill and start over in a true bipartisan fashion.”

John Boehner: “[T]he public option would cost over $1 trillion, and would cause 23 million Americans to lose their private health care coverage.”

Lindsey Graham: “The CBO estimates were a death blow to a government run health care plan.”

via Think Progress » New Budget Estimate Of Public Plan Proves It Lowers Cost And Covers More Americans.

We Already Have a Popular Single-Payer Health Care System — It’s for Active Military and Veterans

Single-payer TRICARE military health plan most popular in South

Oddly the states with the most people enrolled are down South — where political leadership has been most opposed to single-payer.

In this year’s health reform debate, Congressional Democrats quickly took proposals for a single-payer system off the table, claiming it was “unrealistic.”

But more than 9 million people in the U.S. have already signed on to a single-payer system that’s proved both workable and popular: TRICARE, the Department of Defense’s program for active-duty military and retirees.

Even more interesting: According to a Facing South analysis, nearly half of TRICARE beneficiaries live in the South — states where Congressional leadership has been most vocal in opposing public involvement in health care.

Last week, a top-rated diary at DailyKos by a person claiming to be “an active duty obstetrician/gynecologist in a major medical facility on the East Coast” noted that:

9.2 Million active duty and retired uniformed service member and their families receive their healthcare from the federal government. My family and I receive free healthcare from the federal government … I am struck however that nobody has brought up the simple fact that the government already provides free healthcare in a single payer model to over 9 million of its population.

via ISS – Single-payer TRICARE military health plan most popular in South.

How Our Fast-Paced World Is Making Us Sick

Slow Down: How Our Fast-Paced World Is Making Us Sick

Living under unnatural time pressures causes a myriad of psychological, social and physical ailments.

Not so very long ago, humans — like the rest of the animals and plants on earth — moved through our natural cycles at nature’s pace. Time was marked by the passing of the seasons, the life cycles of human, animal and plant life and the yet grander cycles of the moon and the other celestial bodies.

Homo sapiens, a late-appearing species in the long history of our unimaginably ancient planet and universe, evolved during the recent (as the universe views these things!) Pleistocene era, adapted for a life intimately connected with and expressive of our natural surroundings on the African savannah and beyond.

And this is how we lived for millennia.

via Slow Down: How Our Fast-Paced World Is Making Us Sick | Environment | AlterNet.

Adam and Eve Did What? A Visit to the Creationism Museum Makes Scientists Laugh, Cry

Adam and Eve Did What? A Visit to the Creationism Museum Makes Scientists Laugh, Cry

The museum argues, among other things, that war, famine and natural disasters are to blame on belief in evolution.

For a group of paleontologists, a tour of the Creation Museum seemed like a great tongue-in-cheek way to cap off a serious conference.

But while there were a few laughs and some clowning for the camera, most left more offended than amused by the frightening way in which evolution — and their life’s work — was attacked.

“It’s sort of a monument to scientific illiteracy, isn’t it?” said Jerry Lipps, professor of geology, paleontology and evolution at University of California, Berkeley.

“Like Sunday school with statues… this is a special brand of religion here. I don’t think even most mainstream Christians would believe in this interpretation of Earth’s history.”

The 27 million dollar, 70,000-square-foot (6,500-square-metre) museum which has been dubbed a “creationist Disneyland” has attracted 715,000 visitors since it opened in mid-2007 with a vow to “bring the pages of the Bible to life.”

via Adam and Eve Did What? A Visit to the Creationism Museum Makes Scientists Laugh, Cry | | AlterNet.

‘There Is No Way I Will Deploy to Afghanistan’ — Seeds of Dissent in the U.S. Military Are Growing

‘There Is No Way I Will Deploy to Afghanistan’ — Seeds of Dissent in the U.S. Military Are Growing

By Dahr Jamail, Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute.

From suicide to desertion to refusal to deploy — service members’ dissent may be growing into something far larger.

Editor’s Note: The following is an introduction by Tom Engelhardt.

The All-Volunteer Force (AVF) exists for a reason captured in a study by Colonel Robert D. Heinl, Jr., author of the “definitive history of the Marine Corps,” published in Armed Forces Journal in 1971. The U.S. military in Vietnam was at that moment at the edge of chaos. As Colonel Heinl put it, it was experiencing “widespread conditions… that have only been exceeded in this century by the French Army’s Nivelle mutinies of 1917 and the collapse of the Tsarist armies [of Russia] in 1916 and 1917.”

In fact, statistics flowing back to Washington about the American war machine in Vietnam then pointed toward an unimaginable nightmare. Drug use was rampant; desertions stood at 70 per thousand, a modern high; small-scale mutinies or “combat refusals” were at critical, if untabulated, levels; incidents of racial conflict had soared; and strife between “lifers” and draftees was at unprecedented levels. Reported “fraggings” — assassination attempts — against unpopular officers or NCOs had risen from 126 in 1969 to 333 in 1971, despite declining troop strength in Vietnam. According to Colonel Heinl’s figures, as many as 144 antiwar underground newspapers were being published by, or for, soldiers. And most threatening of all, active duty soldiers in relatively small numbers (as well as a swelling number of Vietnam veterans) were beginning to actively organize against the war.

via ‘There Is No Way I Will Deploy to Afghanistan’ — Seeds of Dissent in the U.S. Military Are Growing | World | AlterNet.

Unprotected Sex: Abstinence Education’s Main Accomplishment

Unprotected Sex: Abstinence Education’s Main Accomplishment

Teens are having more condomless sex than they did in the 1990s. It’s time for science-based sex ed, not moralizing.

WASHINGTON — It hardly seems worth mentioning that the search for role models of sexual rectitude has gone pretty badly lately. That famous poster of Farrah Fawcett — her golden locks tumbling around her shoulders and her gleaming smile offering a girl-next-door counterpoint to the suggestiveness of her red swimsuit — sure makes it look as though, by comparison, the 1970s were an era of wholesomeness. They weren’t.

It was about then that social conservatives — fed up with sex, drugs, rock ‘n’ roll, divorce, Roe v. Wade, women surging into the work force and who knows what else — began organizing politically to stamp out all this threatening change. They failed. But eventually they did succeed in imposing their prescription — abstinence-only sex education that studies have repeatedly shown doesn’t work — on the one group of sexually active people most in need of hard information and least likely to respond to harangues: teenagers.

via Unprotected Sex: Abstinence Education’s Main Accomplishment | Sex and Relationships | AlterNet.

Chamber of Commerce Launches $100 Million Campaign to Protect Wall Street’s Power at Our Expense

Chamber of Commerce Launches $100 Million Campaign to Protect Wall Street’s Power at Our Expense

The CoC is the world’s most powerful lobbying machine and it’s working to make sure our money gets funneled to corporate execs.

Perhaps the greatest public deception surrounding today’s financial meltdown is the notion that it is unique — a once-in-a-lifetime crisis that reflects bad luck rather than any fundamental problem with the U.S. banking system’s sway in global politics.

The truth is that throughout the 1980s, the major money center banks were in much the same situation they find themselves in today.

But the U.S. Chamber of Commerce plans to spend $100 million on a lobbying push to tell you the otherwise. It’s a very careful strategy designed to ensure that Wall Street maintains the power to hijack the economy and demand epic bailouts from ordinary citizens as a reward for its own greed.

The name may sound like a coalition of your friendly neighborhood small-business proprietors, but in truth, the CoC is the world’s most powerful lobbying machine for the corporate executive class.

via Chamber of Commerce Launches $100 Million Campaign to Protect Wall Street’s Power at Our Expense | Corporate Accountability and WorkPlace | AlterNet.

Did Free Trade Cause The Recession?

Did Free Trade Cause The Recession?

– by Dave Johnson

For many years the world has suffered under a “free trade” regime that eliminates good paying jobs in every country, sending the work to countries that keep wages low and restrict workers’ ability to organize for a better life. The profits went to an already-wealthy few and the inequities increased, wealth concentrating massively at the very top.

And now consumers around the world have run out of money. This is not a surprise.

Did these trade policies cause the recession?

Imagine a company in South Carolina that makes 20,000 pairs of shoes a week and distributes them to stores. Now, imagine that the company closes its South Carolina plant, opens a plant in a low-wage country, ships all the machines and raw materials there, ships back 20,000 pairs of shoes each week and distributes them to the same stores. Is that “trade?” Are the raw materials sent out of the country an “export?” Are the shoes brought back into the country an “import?”

The only thing that has been “traded” in this scenario is American jobs traded for huge executive bonuses. The workers in the low-wage country are not paid enough to buy any remaining American-made products. And, as the economic collapses as a result of shenanigans like this, American workers are no longer able to buy shoes so the executives won’t be getting bonuses next year.

via Seeing the Forest: Did Free Trade Cause The Recession?.

Emergency Email to Obama Re Gaza * Cindy Sheehan

Emergency Email to Obama Re Gaza | AfterDowningStreet.org

by davidswanson

* Cindy Sheehan

Dear President Obama,

My friend, Cynthia McKinney and Nobel laureate, Mairead Maguire and 20 other people were trying to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza, which, as I understand, is something that you have encouraged Israel to allow.

The Honorable Cynthia McKinney served six terms in the US Congress and she was the Green Party candidate for the office that you eventually won. It is an outrage that the Israeli Navy would block the boat that she and 21 others were on in international waters and board the boat and kidnap the crew and humanitarian aid workers.

President Obama, when an American captain was kidnapped by Somali “pirates” US Navy SEALS were sent in to rescue him. He was the captain of a private, for profit, ship and the US military was used to rescue him.

What Israel did, outside of its waters, to an unarmed boat filled with aid for Gazans who have been trapped in a concentration camp by Israel, is an act of international piracy and you must demand that Israel release Ms. McKinney and her fellow captors with all haste.

via Emergency Email to Obama Re Gaza | AfterDowningStreet.org.

Italy to Declare Independence from US Military

Italy to Declare Independence from US Military   | AfterDowningStreet.org

By David Swanson

Do they have a fourth of July in Italy? That’s not a trick question. This July 4th, Italians plan to gather in Vicenza to take nonviolent action aimed at freeing Italy from U.S. occupation and opposing the proposed construction of an enormous new U.S. military base in a town already swarming with U.S. troops stationed at existing bases. For years now, a major campaign organized by local residents has resisted the construction of the new base. The history of this campaign is chronicled in English here and here. A local referendum voted 95 percent against the base. A leader of the opposition to the base has been elected to the local government. An Italian prime minister has been temporarily thrown out of power. Local activists and members of parliament have visited Washington to oppose the base, and testified before the U.S. House Appropriations Subcommittee on Military Construction and Veterans Affairs on April 23, 2009. The European media has been unable to avoid the story.

Last month, participants broke into the fenced off construction site to plant flags and banners: (video). Last week, U.S. soldiers jogging through Vicenza were greeted with signs asking them to go home: (video). I used to live in Vicenza in the late 1980s and was enthusiastically welcomed as an American and a friend. The military presence was already pervasive, but since then it has grown tremendously, while Italians’ opinions of the purposes served by the U.S. military have plummeted. The U.S. Army is not liberating Italy from Nazism, but sending soldiers off to fight aggressive wars in the Middle East, and bringing them back disturbed, suicidal, and prone to drinking and causing trouble. In April, Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez visited Venice (Venezia in Italian, and not far from Vicenza), where she told Italians that they would just have to accept the new base, and that the United States needs it in order to more easily attack Africa.

via Italy to Declare Independence from US Military | AfterDowningStreet.org.

Schools for sale: privatizing education in America

Schools for sale: privatizing education in America

Charter schools are not the answer to public school woes

America’s primary and secondary education systems need fundamental reform. Unfortunately, it seems inevitable that this much-needed change will come in the form of charter schools and universal voucher systems, given the political momentum of the privatized education movement. However, many of the arguments put forth by proponents of this movement are simply inaccurate.

One impetus for these trends lies in the frustrations of parents and students living in underserved areas, attending under-funded and under-performing schools. The public education system has failed these people, and they are right to demand improvements.

With no other promising reform proposals in sight, however, the efficacy of the deregulated school model has risen in the public’s eyes to a point of fact. For example, on April 5th the Hustler ran an opinion piece titled “Charter schools work.” In this thesis, the author suggested expanded funding for charter schools without actually proving that charter schools work; their merit is simply assumed.

However, data backing this assumption is lacking. One 2005 study conducted at Columbia University found no significant differences in charter schools’ performance against public schools performance in 49 out of 50 states. For impoverished Asian-Americans and Hispanic-Americans, charter schools actually scored four to five percent lower than public schools. Another study conducted in California showed that charter schools in that state reach their Adequate Yearly Progress less often than public schools. A policy brief released by the Education Policy Research Unit at Arizona State University went so far as to call charter schools “a failed reform.”

via Schools for sale: privatizing education in America – Opinion.

False Recall: A Conclusion and a Rebuttal

False Recall: A Conclusion and a Rebuttal

Too Many Bush Voters? False Vote Recall and the 2004 Exit Polls
Mark Lindeman (OnTheOtherHand)

http://inside.bard.edu/~lindeman/too-many.pdf

Conclusion

False vote recall complicates our analysis of partisan dynamics, and challenges some unconscious assumptions. Political observers rarely profess surprise that some respondents wrongly claim to have voted, but some find it strange that millions of voters might misreport – indeed, might forget – whom they voted for four years ago. I have not presented (or uncovered) systematic evidence about the mechanism behind false vote recall, but mere forgetfulness is not a bad account for respondents who (e.g.) report in 2000 that they voted for Gore, then report four years later that they had voted for Bush in 2000 but for Kerry in 2004.

No spiral of silence this: more like a slow-drifting fog. I am reminded of Larry Bartels’ (1996) conclusion that presidential incumbents derive approximately a five-point advantage from “information effects” (or, one might say, non-information effects) in the electorate. False vote recall favoring the previous winner is one distinctive manifestation of this incumbency advantage, although its practical importance is difficult to gauge – especially given the confounding influence of differential turnout.

George W. Bush evidently won in 2004 not by turning out a higher proportion of his 2000 supporters, but (inter alia) by winning the votes of millions of people whom, if asked, would not have recalled that they did not vote for him the first time around. The fraud theorists were right to infer that the previous-election tabulation could not mean what it said, and their account of it – a desperate attempt to paper over the evidence of a stolen election – has evident narrative appeal. On the evidence presented here, however, retrospective Bush bandwagoning is what we should have expected all along.

A TIA Rebuttal

http://progressiveindependent.com/dc/dcboard.php?a…

No, what we should have expected all along was that the media would go to any extreme to cover up the 2004 election theft. Otherwise, the endemic fraud which has permeated our elections for many years might also be uncovered.

False Recall was advanced as soon as the reluctant Bush responder (rBr) theory was thoroughly debunked. Exit poll naysayers could not provide a rational explanation for the Final 2004 National Exit Poll and its impossible returning Bush phantom voter anomaly. They had to come up with another explanation.

via Progressive Independent – Viewing topic.

Jokes About Ann Coulter by Mike Malloy

YouTube – Jokes About Ann Coulter by Mike Malloy.

Suicide Warning Issued For 2 Anti-Smoking Drugs

Chantix, Zyban Issued Suicide Warning By FDA  

NEW YORK — The Food and Drug Administration will require two smoking-cessation drugs, Chantix and Zyban, to carry the agency’s strongest safety warning over side effects including depression and suicidal thoughts.

The new requirement, called a “Black Box” warning, is based on reports of people experiencing unusual changes in behavior, becoming depressed, or having suicidal thoughts while taking the drugs.

The antidepressant Wellbutrin, which has the same active ingredient as GlaxoSmithKline PLC’s Zyban, already carries such a warning.

via Chantix, Zyban Issued Suicide Warning By FDA.

Republicans On House Census Subcommittee Rebuke Bachmann’s Fearmongering As ‘Illogical’ And ‘Illegal’

OPS:  She’s been hooked on -  Carnation Instant Palin – for years.

Republicans On House Census Subcommittee Rebuke Bachmann’s Fearmongering As ‘Illogical’ And ‘Illegal’

As ThinkProgress has repeatedly pointed out, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) has been bragging about the fact that she plans not to answer Census questions this year, which is a violation of federal law punishable with a fine up to $5,000. Bachmann has been mocked by Stephen Colbert and criticized harshly by the largest Minnesota newspaper for her conspiratorial stance.

Now, in the latest rebuke of her off-the-wall claims about the Census, three out of the four House Republicans on the subcommittee that oversees the Census have released a statement calling her boycott plan “llogical, illegal and not in the best interest of our country”:

via Think Progress » Republicans On House Census Subcommittee Rebuke Bachmann’s Fearmongering As ‘Illogical’ And ‘Illegal’.

Gingrich On Private Health Insurance Companies: ‘They Have It Done Well’

OPS:  From whose perspective butt-munch?  From the perspective of a sociopath.

Gingrich On Private Health Insurance Companies: ‘They Have It Done Well’

Newt Gingrich, one of the de facto leaders of the Republican Party, gave an interview to ABC Medical editor Dr. Timothy Johnson last week to discuss health care reform. Gingrich predictably went into scare-mongering mode, making arguments against measures that aren’t even part of the debate. He said the U.S. should not adopt a “single national health system” such as in Canada or the UK. “If I have to choose between my doctor and a government bureaucrat, I have zero doubt which one I want,” he said. Of course, no such choice is being offered.

But Gingrich also touted the success of private health insurers. When Johnson noted that it is insurance companies that are coming between patients and needed care, Gingrich claimed, “If you don’t like your current insurance company, you can change insurance companies.” He later argued that private insurers have done “well”:

GINGRICH: They have it done well. And the fact is, overall, 71 percent of Americans are relatively satisfied with the health insurance.

JOHNSON: But we have 46 million uninsured.

GINGRICH: Right. And we have — you know, that means you also have 260 million insured.

via Think Progress » Gingrich On Private Health Insurance Companies: ‘They Have It Done Well’.

Steele: Democrats ‘basically hijack elections at their whim.’

OPS:  Bolstering the alternate universe the Reich lives in

Steele: Democrats ‘basically hijack elections at their whim.’

On his radio show last night, Hugh Hewitt asked RNC Chairman Michael Steele what he planned “to do to prevent strategic chicanery” of Democrats voting in open Republican primaries in 2012. Misunderstanding the question, Steele replied that he agreed with Hewitt that election fraud was a “frightening concern” because he believes that Democrats can now “basically hijack elections at their whim”:

HEWITT: What are you going to do to prevent strategic chicanery of the sort that you and I both know MoveOn.org and Code Pink and the rest of them are very capable of doing?

STEELE: Well, you know, I think you raise a very important and frightening concern here, and that is the Democrats have spent the last six to eight years building in place an infrastructure to allow them to basically hijack elections at their whim.

Listen here:

via Think Progress » Steele: Democrats ‘basically hijack elections at their whim.’.

Glenn Beck Guest: Osama Bin Laden Should Attack Again (VIDEO)

OPS:  When will we start to prosecute for treason?

Glenn Beck Guest: Osama Bin Laden Should Attack Again (VIDEO)

As many of you know, the modern and civilized life that we lead in America, as sensible people, has long clashed terribly with the panoply of phantasmagoric doo-doo that washes and warps inside the mind’s eye of Fox News’ Glenn Beck. So it makes sense that he’d be the sort of person who could have a guest (Marching Toward Hell author Michael Scheuer) on the air who thinks it’d be a great thing for the United States to be attacked by Osama bin Laden. That izsto say, our nation’s one hope for survival and reclaiming its values is for bin Laden to detonate a “major weapon” on top of it. Just like what happened the last time, right? Where we all went a little demented, started spying on each other, transformed the Executive Branch into a weird, lawless nether zone of extra-legal nonsense, fought a needless war and what not? Good times!

Naturally, no one has thought all this through. What if that “major weapon” that bin Laden detonates is the Gay Bomb? What a dilly of a pickle that would be!

Anyway, your psychosis highlight reel:

BECK: Yes, sir. OK. So you have seen this. Do you really, honestly believe that we have come to a place to where those very senior people in the highest offices of the land, Congress and the White House, really will not do the right thing in the end, that they won’t see the error of their ways?

via Glenn Beck Guest: Osama Bin Laden Should Attack Again (VIDEO).

We Must Stop the Rampant Fraud in the Health Care Industry

We Must Stop the Rampant Fraud in the Health Care Industry

US Senator Bernie Sanders

As a member of the Senate health committee, one of two Senate panels dealing with health care reform, it has become apparent to me that real health care reform must address the billions of dollars in fraud and abuse that comes from the major corporations in the health care industry.

What we have seen over the last several decades is the systemic fraud perpetrated by private insurance companies, private drug companies, and private for-profit hospitals ripping off the American people and the taxpayers of this country to the tune of many billions of dollars.

The rampant fraud is another reason why our current health care system, dominated by private insurance companies, is the most costly, wasteful, complicated and bureaucratic in the world. Its function is not to provide  quality health care, but to make huge profits for those who own the companies. With 1,300 private insurance companies and thousands of different health benefit programs designed
to maximize profits, our country spends an incredible 30 percent of each health care dollar on administration and billing, exorbitant CEO compensation packages, advertising, lobbying and campaign contributions. Public programs like
Medicare, Medicaid and the VA are administered for much less.

via OpEdNews » We Must Stop the Rampant Fraud in the Health Care Industry.

The Great Bank Robbery: How the Federal Reserve is destroying America

The Great Bank Robbery: How the Federal Reserve is destroying America

As global leaders struggle to rescue their nations from economic breakdown, the legitimacy of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency is under attack. Perhaps the problem lies with the Fed.

A large part of the “super” in the American superpower is based on the modern creed of liberal democracy, which serves as the motor of free-market capitalism. And the lubricant that keeps this colossal machine humming at full speed 24/7 is the US dollar. So before we risk any conjectures on the future prospects of America’s versatile banknote, which presently serves as the ‘world’s reserve currency,’ perhaps we should know more about who controls it.

In the Fed We Trust

It usually comes as a shock to people – especially diehard Americans who place infinite trust in their sacred Constitution – when they discover that the US dollar is not a product of the American government. That’s right, fellow consumers, that crumpled wad of dollars in your pocket is the product of the U.S. Federal Reserve, and despite the very official title, is about as “federal” as Federal Express. The reality is that the U.S. Federal Reserve is a profit-making venture just like Wal-Mart, General Motors or McDonald’s.

Yet the US Constitution clearly states (Article 1, Section that one of the many functions of government is to “coin money, regulate the value thereof.” Indeed, this task was deemed so important that the Founding Fathers mentioned it ahead of the obligation to “raise and support armies.” The Constitution says absolutely nothing about outside parties being responsible for printing money or regulating interest rates.

To quote Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States, “The privilege of creating and issuing money is… the supreme prerogative of government.”

Today, a handful of blue-blooded American politicians (a very rare breed these days, it seems) are beginning to echo ol’ Abe on the very same issue.

via The Great Bank Robbery: How the Federal Reserve is destroying America.

Honduran Coup Shines Spotlight on Controversial U.S. Military Training School

Honduran Coup Shines Spotlight on Controversial U.S. Military Training School  | CommonDreams.org

Before the torture debates about Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib, there was the School of Americas — a U.S. military training school in Fort Benning, Georgia, which has trained some of the worst human rights abusers in Latin America.

As Facing South reported yesterday, two of the leaders of the Honduran coup — General Romeo Vasquez Velasquez, leader of the armed forces, and Gen. Luis Javier Prince Suazo, head of the Air Force which transported the president to Costa Rica — were trained at the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, formerly known as the School of the Americas.The Honduran coup leaders are just two of over 60,000 Latin American graduates of the school, which since 1984 has been headquartered at Fort Benning, Georgia. The SOA Watch database lists 3,566 graduates of the school from Honduras alone

via Honduran Coup Shines Spotlight on Controversial U.S. Military Training School | CommonDreams.org.

Wal-Mart’s Health Scare

OPS:  Running Scared

Wal-Mart’s Health Scare   | Reuters

Wal-Mart (WMT), the former poster child for corporate villainy, once again has surprised both its critics and its corporate peers by backing President Barack Obama‘s plans to force employers to provide health insurance to workers, the Wall Street Journal reports. This show of support from the nation’s largest private employer could give much-needed momentum to “one of the most-contentious aspects of legislation taking shape in Congress to fix the health system” and help provide coverage for the 46 million uninsured Americans, the paper notes. It’s also making many CEOs choke on their coffee this morning. As the WSJ describes, the National Retail Federation, the industry’s main lobby, said it was “flabbergasted” by Wal-Mart’s move. The New York Times meanwhile shines a spotlight on the growing number of people who are forced into personal bankruptcy by huge medical bills. Three-quarters of them actually had health insurance to begin with, the NYT writes, reflecting that, “even as Washington tries to cover the tens of millions of Americans without medical insurance, many health policy experts say simply giving everyone an insurance card will not be enough to fix what is wrong with the system.” Advocates argue that any universal health insurance program must guarantee a “base level of coverage” for all those it covers.

via Wal-Mart’s Health Scare | Reuters.

Iraq: Govt plays hardball over oil contracts

Iraq: Govt plays hardball over oil contracts

BAGHDAD – Iraq is locked in a struggle with the world’s largest oil companies over contracts that would see “Big Oil” return to the Iraqi oilfields for the first time in almost 40 years.

The award of contracts began in Baghdad yesterday and was broadcast live on television to show there were no secret corrupt deals.

But the process was immediately in trouble as some of the 32 international oil companies involved baulked at the low level of fees they would be paid by Iraq.

via Iraq: Govt plays hardball over oil contracts – World – NZ Herald News.

The Secret Rulers of the World – The Legend of Ruby Ridge (2001)

“In the first episode of this five-part series, Jon Ronson covers the events of 21st August 1992, near Naples, Idaho, during which Randy Weaver, his family and a friend, came head-to-head with the US Marshals Service and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.” -imdb.com

Free Movies & Documentaries – The Secret Rulers of the World – The Legend of Ruby Ridge (2001).

Insured but Unprotected, and Driven Bankrupt by Health Crises

OPS :This is why, even if you have Health Insurance, you need to support a Single Payer plan

Insured, but Bankrupted by Health Crises - NYTimes.com

Health insurance is supposed to offer protection — both medically and financially. But as it turns out, an estimated three-quarters of people who are pushed into personal bankruptcy by medical problems actually had insurance when they got sick or were injured.

And so, even as Washington tries to cover the tens of millions of Americans without medical insurance, many health policy experts say simply giving everyone an insurance card will not be enough to fix what is wrong with the system.

Too many other people already have coverage so meager that a medical crisis means financial calamity.

One of them is Lawrence Yurdin, a 64-year-old computer security specialist. Although the brochure on his Aetna policy seemed to indicate it covered up to $150,000 a year in hospital care, the fine print excluded nearly all of the treatment he received at an Austin, Tex., hospital.

He and his wife, Claire, filed for bankruptcy last December, as his unpaid medical bills approached $200,000.

via Insured but Unprotected, and Driven Bankrupt by Health Crises – Series – NYTimes.com.

Taco Bell’s New Green Menu Takes No Ingredients From Nature (VIDEO)

From the Onion.

Taco Bell’s New Green Menu Takes No Ingredients From Nature (VIDEO)

Taco Bell has gone green, so green in fact that no nature is used to make the “food.” Puppies count as nature, right?

via Taco Bell’s New Green Menu Takes No Ingredients From Nature (VIDEO).

Urban farming movement ‘like a revolution’

Urban farming movement ‘like a revolution’  – CNN.com

On a plot of soil, nestled against the backdrop of skyscrapers in downtown Atlanta, Georgia, a group of residents are turning a lack of access to fresh produce into a revival of old traditions and self-empowerment.

HABESHA Gardens is one of many urban gardens sprouting up around the country. Fruits and vegetables are thriving in this community garden located in an economically depressed area of the city known as Mechanicsville.

But the garden serves an even greater purpose. The harvest helps feed some of the neediest members of the neighborhood.

“It’s a reawakening going on. It’s almost like it’s a renaissance,” says Cashawn Myers, director of HABESHA Inc.

“There’s a Ghanaian proverb that says Sankofa. Sankofa means return to your past so you can move forward. Even if you look at coming over here during our enslavement, we were brought here to cultivate the land because that’s something we did on the continent. So really, that’s what many of the people are doing now,” he said.

via Urban farming movement ‘like a revolution’ – CNN.com.