Archive for August, 2009
Unemployment: The Worst-Hit States In July (MAP)
Unemployment: The Worst-Hit States In July (MAP)
The state-by-state unemployment numbers didn’t change too much from June to July, the government announced on Friday. Fifteen states still have jobless rates above 10 percent, down from 16 in June.
The government announced two weeks ago that the national unemployment rate fell from 9.5 to 9.4 percent, although that may have been a statistical aberration.
Michigan continues to lead the nation in unemployment, with a rate of 15 percent, down from 15.2 percent in June. Rhode Island came in second at 12.7 percent (up from 12.4), followed by Nevada at 12.5 percent (up from 11.9). The largest increases occurred in Wyoming and Arizona, where unemployment rose from 5.9 to 6.5 percent and from 8.7 to 9.2 percent, respectively. Seventeen states saw their unemployment rates decline from June to July.
Here’s a chart from the Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics showing the damage.
via Unemployment: The Worst-Hit States In July (MAP).
US rejects wiretapping challenge
US rejects wiretapping challenge - BBC NEWS
A US judge has rejected a challenge to a law that allows intelligence services to eavesdrop on overseas conversations to gather intelligence.
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act allows the US to monitor the calls and emails of non-US citizens abroad.
Human rights groups contended that their workers might be bugged for talking to people under surveillance.
But District Judge John Koeltl in New York said the mere fear of surveillance was not enough to bring a lawsuit.
Fears about the law’s effect on them were “subjective”, the judge added.
via BBC NEWS | Americas | US rejects wiretapping challenge.
Workplace suicides surge by 28 percent
Workplace suicides surge by 28 percent – The Associated Press: – By SAM HANANEL
WASHINGTON — The Labor Department says the number of workplace suicides increased by 28 percent last year.
The rise in suicides came as the agency reported the overall number of workers who died on the job fell by 12 percent.
The 5,071 overall workplace fatalities recorded by the Bureau of Labor Statistics in 2008 was the lowest number since the agency began tracking the data in 1992. That number includes 251 suicides, however.
The agency says economic factors could be responsible for the overall decline in fatalities. Workers on average worked 1 percent fewer hours last year and the construction industry posted even larger declines in employment or hours worked.
via The Associated Press: Workplace suicides surge by 28 percent.
Ocean temperatures hit all-time high
OPS: Not good news for those in the Hurricane/ Typhoon belt 
Ocean temperatures hit all-time high - The Raw Story »
In hot water: World sets ocean temperature record
Swimming in warm waters of … Maine? Summer seas seem on boil as oceans smash heat records
Steve Kramer spent an hour and a half swimming in the ocean Sunday — in Maine. The water temperature was 72 degrees — more like Ocean City, Md., this time of year. And Ocean City’s water temp hit 88 degrees this week, toasty even by Miami Beach standards.
Kramer, 26, who lives in the seaside town of Scarborough, said it was the first time he’s ever swam so long in Maine’s coastal waters. “Usually, you’re in five minutes and you’re out,” he said.
It’s not just the ocean off the Northeast coast that is super-warm this summer. July was the hottest the world’s oceans have been in almost 130 years of record-keeping.
The average water temperature worldwide was 62.6 degrees, according to the National Climatic Data Center, the branch of the U.S. government that keeps world weather records. That was 1.1 degree higher than the 20th century average, and beat the previous high set in 1998 by a couple hundredths of a degree. The coolest recorded ocean temperature was 59.3 degrees in December 1909.
via The Raw Story » Ocean temperatures hit all-time high.
Rove op-ed reveals he had inside information about probe
Rove op-ed reveals he had inside information about probe - Raw Story »
Lawyer declines to say how he found out accuser didn’t talk to Justice Department –
Karl Rove’s latest attempt to proclaim his innocence and demand apologies from those who have accused him of being behind the prosecution of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman may backfire if it turns out that Rove was improperly receiving inside information after leaving his position as Deputy White House Chief of Staff.
“For more than two years,” Rove writes in the Wall Street Journal, “House Judiciary Committee Democrats and the New York Times editorial board have argued that I personally arranged for Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman to be prosecuted in 2004 for corruption and ordered the removal of eight U.S. attorneys in 2006 for failing to investigate Democrats. The Washington Post editorial board also echoed this last charge. The Times and the Post have published a combined 18 editorials on these issues, which were also catnip to House Judiciary Committee Democrats.”
via Raw Story » Rove op-ed reveals he had inside information about probe.
Idaho GOP leader, Wells Fargo contractor, pulls .357 Magnum on delinquent homeowner
Idaho GOP leader, Wells Fargo contractor, pulls .357 Magnum on delinquent homeowner - The Raw Story »
The Republican Party chairman of Boise County in Idaho was arrested Thursday for aggravated assault after he pulled a gun on a man whose house he was photographing.
Charles McAffee, 33, was among Idaho’s anti-tax tea-party activists, and is a member of the Idaho Republican Party Central Committee. He was arrested after pulling a handgun on a homeowner whose mortgage his employer sought to photograph for being delinquent. His employer is a contractor for Wells Fargo.
Wells Fargo called McAffee’s behavior “horrific and absolutely inexcusable.” Via AP:
According to police in the Boise suburb of Meridian, resident Robert Lutes called officers just before 5:30 p.m. Tuesday to report McAffee had pointed a .357 Magnum handgun at him during a verbal confrontation. McAffee acknowledged he pointed the gun at Lutes, according to the police account.
“I’m unarmed, I’m an old man,” Lutes, 51, told The Associated Press on Thursday. “I’m trying to find out why he’s taking pictures of my house. I said, ‘Knock on my door, let me know what you want.’ Then, I think he’s reaching for his business card and he pulls out a concealed weapon and I think he’s going to blow my head off.”
Idaho’s Republican Party told the Associated Press the arrest of one of its leaders was a “personal matter.”
“It’s not a party matter,” Jonathan Parker, state GOP director in Boise, told AP.
via The Raw Story » Idaho GOP leader, Wells Fargo contractor, pulls .357 Magnum on delinquent homeowner.
Outsourcing our food production
OPS: Insanity. How Vulnerable and weak will we allow the GREED of Corporations to make us? This is truly a matter of National Security
Outsourcing our food production
A recent USDA report shows that we are continuing to outsource our food production.
A recent USDA report show that we are continuing to outsource our food production. USDA’s Economic Research Service released its August 19, 2009 Livestock, Dairy and Poultry Outlook (PDF file). USDA is under much better management now, with Secretary Vilsack putting a high priority on promoting family-based agriculture, but the agency has not been producer friendly in the past.
Cattle/Beef: The ERS report shows declining cow inventories. Cows are the present and future mothers of new cattle. They are the “factories” to produce future beef for sale. Declining cow inventories are analogous to declining plant capacity. A structural decline.
Why are they declining? Prices are too low and farmers/ranchers are selling out. Why again? A trade deficit in beef and cattle. Beef and cattle are traded across borders, beef is the retail product you eat, and live cattle of course produce beef.
via TradeReform.org – Agriculture.
Things Falling Off the Table – Economy
Things Falling Off the Table – Economy
The signs seem to indicate that the current economic downturn will continue, and perhaps even intensify over the next couple of years.
In the heat of healthcare reform and the mobilization of radical shock troops, the economy has drifted with little public discussion. When it comes up, it is frequently within the context that “the worst is behind us;” “we’re leveling off;” or “recovery is just around the corner.” While I wish all of this was true, I am concerned that it is not. While I wish that the Obama administration were being more honest, I believe they are engaging in the same type of spin we became accustomed to under the Bush administration.
The signs seem to indicate that the current economic downturn will continue, and perhaps even intensify over the next couple of years. Part of this has to do with more real estate issues, part with continued job losses, and part with the global economic scenario. For real people, things do not look all that good.
The real estate debacle is not behind us. The chart below from Credit Suisse shows mortgage reset activity remaining high through 2011. Elizabeth Warren, appearing
on the August 12, 2009 MSNBC “Morning Joe,” warned that another shoe would be dropping as commercial real estate entered a reset period that runs through 2012.
via OpEdNews – OpEdNews.
No Exit Strategy for the Fed
No Exit Strategy for the Fed – Dustin Ensinger -economyincisis.org
According to CNNMoney.com, the Fed has shown no signs of exiting from the financial markets and instead is still pumping money into the economy at a record rate.
Much like the U.S. military in Iraq, the Federal Reserve seems to have no concerted exit strategy to disengage itself from its complex entanglements into U.S. financial markets.
According to CNNMoney.com, the Fed has shown no signs of exiting from the financial markets and instead is still pumping money into the economy at a record rate.
On Monday, the Federal Reserve extended the Term Asset-Backed Loan Facility, or TALF – a program designed to stimulate demand in the commercial real estate market – until June of next year. The program was originally set to expire in December.
“Conditions in financial markets have improved considerably in recent months. Nonetheless, the markets for asset-backed securities backed by consumer and business loans and for commercial mortgage-backed securities are still impaired and seem likely to remain so for some time,” said a Fed release announcing the extension.
via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
Americans Living in Poverty on the Rise
Americans Living in Poverty on the Rise - Dustin Ensinger – economyincisis.org
Rebecca Blank, the Commerce Department’s undersecretary of economic affairs, told the AP that she expects the poverty rate to rise to at least 12.7 percent.
According to preliminary data released by the U.S. Commerce Department, the worst recession since the Great Depression is taking a severe toll on the American people, potentially sending millions into poverty and resulting in the loss of health insurance for millions of others, The Associated Press reports.
Rebecca Blank, the Commerce Department’s undersecretary of economic affairs, told the AP that she expects the poverty rate to rise to at least 12.7 percent when the official data is released in September. That would put the number of Americans living in poverty at over 38.8 million.
If the poverty rate does show the increase predicted by Blank, it would mean that 1.5 million Americans have been thrust into poverty in the past year.
However, given that Blank’s prediction is a rough estimate combined with the fact that, much like unemployment, poverty levels are a lagging indicator of economic performance, it is highly likely that the true poverty rate will be much higher.
via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
Fox, CNN Falsely Label Budget Reconciliation Process As The ‘Nuclear Option’
Fox, CNN Falsely Label Budget Reconciliation Process As The ‘Nuclear Option’ - Think Progress »
nukeAs it becomes increasingly clear that Senate Republicans are more interested in scuttling President Obama’s agenda for political gain than they are in actually negotiating on health care, the White House and Senate leadership are looking at a process known as “reconciliation,” which would allow some health care reforms to pass the Senate by a simple majority vote. Cable news, however, has raced to draw a false comparison between this well-established reconciliation process and a strongarm tactic known as “nuclear option” which progressives opposed in 2005.
As Media Matters reports, two CNN anchors described reconciliation as a “nuclear option” being invoked by Democrats. Fox News’ Bill Sammon claimed that “Democrats are headed for, not the public option but the nuclear option.” Sean Hannity claimed that Senate Democrats are “talking about a nuclear option if they can’t get their 60-vote filibuster number in the Senate,” and Fox commentator Dick Morris labeled reconciliation “the so-called nuclear option.” Watch this video compilation:
via Think Progress » Fox, CNN Falsely Label Budget Reconciliation Process As The ‘Nuclear Option’.
VIDEO: Stimulus Opponent Cantor Hosts Job Fair With Jobs Fueled By The Stimulus
VIDEO: Stimulus Opponent Cantor Hosts Job Fair With Jobs Fueled By The Stimulus - Think Progress »
House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) has been one of the Recovery Act’s most vocal critics. Despite evidence that that the stimulus is helping to turn around the economy, Cantor repeatedly says that it is “failing” to “create jobs.” On Monday, Cantor hosted a job fair in Midlothian, VA, to demonstrate how he — and not the Obama administration — is working on “long-term solutions that will put Virginia businesses and Virginia workers back on the path to financial stability.”
ThinkProgress attended the event, which attracted more than 2,000 people. Watch a video report on Cantor’s stimulus-fueled job fair:
via Think Progress » VIDEO: Stimulus Opponent Cantor Hosts Job Fair With Jobs Fueled By The Stimulus.
Caught in fraud, dirty coal group dumps one of its Astroturf contractors.
Caught in fraud, dirty coal group dumps one of its Astroturf contractors. - Think Progress »
The American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE) is dumping Bonner & Associates, the Astroturf firm that forged letters to Congress attacking clean energy legislation on its behalf. Bonner, an organization with a long record of deceptive practices, sent letters this June purporting to be from black, Hispanic, women’s and senior citizen’s groups to several members of Congress telling them to vote against the American Clean Energy and Security Act. ACCCE spokesman Joe Lucas told National Journal that his organization “did nothing wrong”:
We will not be working with Mr. Bonner again. ACCCE did nothing wrong. Looking back, there would be many things we would do differently.
via Think Progress » Caught in fraud, dirty coal group dumps one of its Astroturf contractors..
Utilizing Public Airwaves, Media Mogul Murdoch Is Big Muscle Behind Fraudulent Astro Turfers
Utilizing Public Airwaves, Media Mogul Murdoch Is Big Muscle Behind Fraudulent Astro Turfers – By Adele M. Stan, AlterNet.
Burrowing inside the radical right’s gathering of astroturfers and mouthpieces, AlterNet Reporter Adele Stan discovers what makes the anti-health reform machine tick.
As nearly 2,000 progressives made their way last weekend to Pittsburgh for the annual Netroots Nation conference, the right made its stand in the same town with a conference called RightOnline, sponsored by Americans for Prosperity, a group that has gained notoriety for its involvement in organizing seemingly grassroots opposition to health-care reform.
Billed as a counterconference to the Netroots Nation gathering of bloggers and online activists, RightOnline convened at a Sheraton hotel, offering a few 101-level workshops on new technologies like Twitter and YouTube.
But the highlight of the conference was a red-meat program of speakers designed for a crowd of older activists who were hungry to hear myriad myths about the myriad forms of oppression in store for them if they don’t stop the purportedly nefarious agenda of President Barack Obama.
Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens our Future
Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens our
Science matters- to politics, the economy, and our future. But do Americans really understand and appreciate that?
From Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens our Future by Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum. Excerpted by arrangement with Basic Books, a member of the Perseus Books Group. Copyright © 2009.
Rethinking the Problem of Scientific Illiteracy
As Mark Twain put it, “The trouble with the world is not that people know too little, it’s that they know so many things that just aren’t so.” Take the army of aggrieved parents nationwide who swear vaccines are the reason their children developed autism and who seem impossible to convince otherwise. Scientific research has soundly refuted this contention, but every time a new study comes out on the subject, the parents and their supporters have a “scientific” answer that allows them to retain their beliefs. Where do they get their “science” from? From the Internet, celebrities, other parents, and a few non-mainstream researchers and doctors who continue to challenge the scientific consensus, all of which forms a self-reinforcing echo chamber of misinformation.
via Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens our Future | Environment | AlterNet.
More Than Tofu: Delicious Meat Alternatives for Vegetarian Recipes
7 Delicious Meat Alternatives (and Not a Lick of Tofu in Sight) - | EcoSalon
When you get hungry, and I mean hungry, it’s your body calling out for protein. While you don’t have to go full-time veg to green your lifestyle, many people are surprised to learn that simply cutting back on meat consumption is one of the most significant ways to help the planet. And it doesn’t require subsistence on tofu. (Personally, I find tofu delicious, but it’s one of those vegetarian protein sources people either really love or really don’t.)
There are so many delicious options available that slipping out of meat mode is breeze. Try one meat-free dinner a week, and build from there:
via More Than Tofu: Delicious Meat Alternatives for Vegetarian Recipes | EcoSalon.
Health Care Rats Come Out Of The Woodwork
Health Care Rats Come Out Of The Woodwork - True/Slant
On both sides of the “debate,” pundits’ main concern seems to be that readers are demanding the public option, in spite of what they’re being told.
Matt Taibbi
It is not the be-all and end-all of health-care reform. It is not the long-awaited safety net for the uninsured. And if, as many liberals hope, it turns out to be nothing more than Medicare for All, it won’t do anything to hold down long-term growth in health spending.
via Public Optioned-Out – The Opinionator Blog – NYTimes.com.
There are some days when it almost seems like the national press is making a conscious effort to prove Noam Chomsky’s Manufacturing Consent gospel. If the national commercial media really did exist solely to perpetuate the attitudes of the political elite, and to create phony debates around unthreatening policy poles, endlessly pitting a conservative/reactionary status quo against an “acceptable” position of dissent — if that thesis were the absolute truth, then you’d see just what we’re seeing now in the coverage of the health care debate.
All across the country the news media reacted to the White House leak about the possibility of the public option being dropped with, well, an oddly circumspect tone. Although some initial stories carried a sensational tone, within a day or two the debate had settled down, and the country’s most prominent pundits were considering this treacherous and cowardly development in a pragmatic light. In Eric Etheridge’s review-of-reviewers blog in the Times, the “Opinionator,” the situation was described this way:
via Matt Taibbi – Taibblog – Health Care Rats Come Out Of The Woodwork – True/Slant.
Blackwater: CIA Assassins?
Blackwater: CIA Assassins? – The Nation
Former CIA Agent: “What the Agency Was Doing With Blackwater Scares the Hell Out of Me”.
Jeremy Scahill
n April 2002, the CIA paid Blackwater more than $5 million to deploy a small team of men inside Afghanistan during the early stages of US operations in the country. A month later, Erik Prince, the company’s owner and a former Navy SEAL, flew to Afghanistan as part of the original twenty-man Blackwater contingent. Blackwater worked for the CIA at its station in Kabul as well as in Shkin, along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, where they operated out of a mud fortress known as the Alamo. It was the beginning of a long relationship between Blackwater, Prince and the CIA.
Now the New York Times is reporting that in 2004 the CIA hired Blackwater “as part of a secret program to locate and assassinate top operatives of Al Qaeda.” According to the Times, “it is unclear whether the CIA had planned to use the contractors to capture or kill Qaeda operatives, or just to help with training and surveillance.”
The Times reports that “the CIA did not have a formal contract with Blackwater for this program but instead had individual agreements with top company officials, including the founder, Erik D. Prince, a politically connected former member of the Navy Seals and the heir to a family fortune.” A retired intelligence officer “intimately familiar with the assassination program” told the Washington Post, “Outsourcing gave the agency more protection in case something went wrong.” The Post reported that Blackwater “was given operational responsibility for targeting terrorist commanders and was awarded millions of dollars for training and weaponry, but the program was canceled before any missions were conducted.”
via Blackwater: CIA Assassins?.
How Pharma Giants Are Getting Rich By Calling Our Life Problems ‘Medical Disorders’
The Drug Barons’ Campaign to Make Us All Crazy
Pharma companies have waded into helping us with life problems far beyond the biological — they claim to cure our social maladies.
Inside the DSM
By EUGENIA TSAO
Some years ago, a friend told me that he had been diagnosed with a major depressive disorder and that his psychiatrist had given him a prescription for Forest Laboratories’ popular SSRI antidepressant Celexa (chemical name, citalopram hydrobromide; $1.5 billion in sales in 2003). Knowing him to be a vociferous critic of the pharmaceutical companies, I asked whether he agreed that the origins of his unhappiness were biological in nature. He replied that he unequivocally did not. “But,” he confided, “now I might be able to get my grades back up.”
This guy was, at the time, a full-time undergraduate student who managed rent, groceries and tuition only by working two part-time jobs. He awoke before dawn each morning in order to transcribe interviews for a local graduate student, then embarked upon an hour-long commute to campus, attended classes until late afternoon, and then finally headed over to a nearby café to wash dishes until nine o’clock in the evening. By the time he arrived home each night, he was too exhausted to work on the sundry assignments, essays and lab reports that populated his course syllabi. As the school year dragged on, he had become increasingly disheartened about his slipping grades and mounting fatigue and decided, finally, that something had to be done. So he’d seen the psychiatrist and was now on Celexa.
It is worth reflecting on this anecdote, and others like it, as research proceeds on the upcoming revision of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-V), a draft of which is slated for release in late 2009. When perceived through the aseptic lens of statistics, diagnostic rates, and other seemingly objective metrics, the urgency with which companies like Pfizer exhort us to monitor ourselves for sadness or restlessness and to “ask your doctor if Zoloft is right for you” assumes a superficially unproblematic aspect. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, over 17 million American adults are afflicted with clinical depression each year, costing the national economy $30 billion in absenteeism, inefficiency and medical expenses. Eighty per cent of those afflicted will never seek psychiatric treatment, despite the American Psychiatric Association’s regular reassurances that 80-90 per cent of chronic depression cases can be successfully treated, and 15 per cent will attempt suicide. Suicide is, indeed, the third leading cause of death among American youth aged 10 to 24.
via Eugenia Tsao: The Drug Baron’s Campaign.
Politicization of terror alerts
OPS: remember this from 2005?
Politicization of terror alerts
Click image to enlarge
Coal industry won’t give up easily on using atmosphere as a dumping ground
US coal industry won’t give up easily on using atmosphere as a dumping ground - guardian.co.uk
Fossil fuel lobbyists are fiercely fighting US attempts to make the world’s dirtiest power sector pay for its carbon emissions
The US recently passed a bill in the house of representatives called the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009. Unsurprisingly, the bill has raised the ire of fossil fuel lobbyists on Capitol Hill who have been fighting such a thing since the Kyoto protocol was first proposed more than a decade ago.
One of the biggest lobby groups in the fight to water down the bill is the coal industry, who stands to lose big time if this bill is passed. A price on carbon in the US will cost the coal industry dearly, as they will be forced to pay for using our atmosphere as a dumping ground for their harmful by products.
Within the coal lobby itself, the biggest player is a multi-million dollar powerhouse called the “American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity” (ACCCE), an organisation receiving big bucks from major coal companies like Peabody Energy.
Mortgage defaults soar to record 13%
Mortgage defaults soar to record 13% - -- latimes.com
In the second quarter, the number of homeowners behind on payments or in foreclosure rose along with the jobless rate, with California among states leading the way.
Widespread joblessness is causing more Americans to fall behind on their house payments, triggering a new round of foreclosures that some analysts fear could delay the nation’s economic recovery.
A mortgage trade group reported Thursday that more than 13% of the nation’s mortgage holders were delinquent on their mortgages or in the process of having their homes repossessed during the second quarter of this year. That’s the highest figure since tracking began in 1972. California’s rate, 15.2%, was among the highest of all states.
The numbers underscore a worrisome trend. A spate of foreclosures — which began with speculators who walked away from their souring investments, then spread to high-risk borrowers who couldn’t make their payments when their low-interest mortgages reset — is now hitting unemployed homeowners with good credit scores, clean financial histories and conventional home loans.
via Mortgage defaults soar to record 13% — latimes.com.
U.S. Ends ‘Cash for Clunkers’ Program Months Ahead of Schedule
U.S. Says Program Will End on Monday - – washingtonpost.com
The federal government, acknowledging that the “Cash for Clunkers” program was running out of money, declared it a success Thursday and killed it off, effective 8 p.m. Monday.
After just a week, the program, which began July 24 and was expected to last until as late as Nov. 1, ran out of the $1 billion originally appropriated by Congress. An additional $2 billion was approved two weeks ago, and it was supposed to last until Labor Day. Now that’s almost gone, too.
In his radio address on Thursday, President Obama said the program, designed to stimulate auto sales and production and get gas guzzlers off the road, had “been successful beyond anybody’s imagination. And we’re now slightly victims of success because the thing happened so quick, there was so much more demand than anybody expected, that dealers were overwhelmed with applications.”
via U.S. Ends ÂCash for Clunkers’ Program Months Ahead of Schedule – washingtonpost.com.
Obama’s Trust Problem
Obama’s Trust Problem - – NYTimes.com
Obama an “Appeaser”, Easily “Rolled” by Far Right
Paul Krugman
According to news reports, the Obama administration — which seemed, over the weekend, to be backing away from the “public option” for health insurance — is shocked and surprised at the furious reaction from progressives.
Well, I’m shocked and surprised at their shock and surprise.
A backlash in the progressive base — which pushed President Obama over the top in the Democratic primary and played a major role in his general election victory — has been building for months. The fight over the public option involves real policy substance, but it’s also a proxy for broader questions about the president’s priorities and overall approach.
The idea of letting individuals buy insurance from a government-run plan was introduced in 2007 by Jacob Hacker of Yale, was picked up by John Edwards during the Democratic primary, and became part of the original Obama health care plan.
via Op-Ed Columnist – Obama’s Trust Problem – NYTimes.com.
Mexico Legalizes Drug Possession
Mexico Legalizes Drug Possession - - NYTimes.com
Mexico enacted a controversial law on Thursday decriminalizing possession of small amounts of marijuana, cocaine, heroin and other drugs while encouraging government-financed treatment for drug dependency free of charge.
The law sets out maximum “personal use” amounts for drugs, also including LSD and methamphetamine. People detained with those quantities will no longer face criminal prosecution; the law goes into effect on Friday.
Anyone caught with drug amounts under the personal-use limit will be encouraged to seek treatment, and for those caught a third time treatment is mandatory — although no penalties for noncompliance are specified.
Mexican authorities said the change only recognized the longstanding practice here of not prosecuting people caught with small amounts of drugs.
via Mexico Legalizes Drug Possession – NYTimes.com.
Now more than ever, bipartisanship is for suckers
Now more than ever, bipartisanship is for suckers – | Salon
Republicans want Obama to fail. He needs to stop seeking consensus, because it makes him look weak
By Joe Conason
From the earliest moments of Barack Obama’s presidency, the most perplexing question was how he would fulfill his promise to change Washington’s partisan standoff – and whether that promise was ever more than a rhetorical and political campaign gambit. More than once, observers have suggested that he always knew he couldn’t rely on Republicans to act in good faith, to negotiate reasonable compromises, or even to speak honestly in debate. According to that theory, Obama’s commitment to bipartisan solutions was and is theater aimed at persuading independent or centrist voters to trust him.
But if seeking consensus is still his strategy, as he and his advisors insist, it may be time for a rethink. All the months of bipartisanship in talk and tactics from the White House have neither brought congressional Republicans closer to supporting Obama’s objectives nor preserved Obama’s early support among moderate voters. What they have done is encourage the most outrageous conduct by his opponents – including those who themselves claim the bipartisan mantle – and make the president look weak.
The simple truth is that there is nobody on the Republican side who wants to negotiate with Obama. They are no longer afraid of him, and they unanimously want to ruin his presidency, regardless of the consequences. They are in thrall to the stupid extremism that questions the president’s citizenship and suspects that he is driving the country toward a socialist dictatorship – while simultaneously demanding angrily that the government be stopped from interfering with Medicare.
via Now more than ever, bipartisanship is for suckers | Salon.
Native, Green Groups Oppose State Department Dirty Pipeline Permit
CONTACT: International Coalition – | CommonDreams.org
OAKLAND, Calif. – August 20 – An international coalition of environmental and Native American groups strongly opposed Thursday’s U.S. State Department decision to issue a permit for a pipeline to carry the dirtiest oil on earth from Canada to the U.S. and vowed to challenge it in court.
“The State Department has rubber-stamped a project that will mean more air, water and global warming pollution, particularly in the communities near refineries that will process this dirty oil,” said Earthjustice attorney Sarah Burt. “The project’s environmental review fails to show how construction of the Alberta Clipper is in the national interest. We will go to court to make sure that all the impacts of this pipeline are considered.”
The groups-Earthjustice, Indigenous Environmental Network, Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy and Sierra Club-pointed out that this decision contradicts President Obama’s promise to cut global warming pollution and America’s addiction to oil while investing in a clean energy future.
The State Department’s decision would allow construction of Enbridge Energy’s Alberta Clipper pipeline across northern Minnesota to Superior, Wis. and the Southern Lights pipeline to carry hazardous liquids back to Canada.
Tar sands development in Alberta is creating an environmental catastrophe, with toxic tailings ponds so large they can be seen from space and plans to strip away the forests and peat lands in an area the size of Florida. In addition, greenhouse gas emissions from tar sands production are three times that of conventional crude oil and it contains 11 times more sulfur and nickel, six times more nitrogen and five times more lead than conventional oil. These toxins are released into the U.S. air and water when the crude oil is processed into fuels by refineries.
“The tar sands pipeline connects U.S. refiners and consumers with the dirtiest, most carbon-intensive crude oil on earth,” said Kevin Reuther, Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy’s legal director. “Tar sands crude is causing massive environmental degradation in Canada and results in significantly more greenhouse gas emissions. This is the absolute wrong step to take if we want to create a greener energy future.”
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton needed to find that allowing the pipeline to be built across the U.S.-Canadian border would be in the national interest of the United States. In fact, these two pipelines will hurt the United States.
“Importing dirty tar sands oil is not in our national interest,” said Sierra Club executive director Carl Pope. “At a time when concern is growing about the national security threat posed by global warming, it doesn’t make sense to open our gates to one of the dirtiest fuels on earth. This pipeline will lock America into a dirty energy infrastructure for years to come. This is exactly the kind of project the State Department should be protecting us from.”
Many of the groups involved also have appealed the U.S. Forest Service over its willingness to allow the pipeline to traverse parts of the Chippewa National Forest in Minnesota. In addition, a group of tribal members have apparently gathered enough signatures on a petition to hold a referendum on the Leech Lake tribal council’s agreement to allow the line through tribal land.
via Native, Green Groups Oppose State Department Dirty Pipeline Permit | CommonDreams.org.
Jon Stewart Extended Uncensored Interview with Deal Panel Betsy McCaughey
Video at Link
Jon Stewart Extended Uncensored Interview with Deal Panel Betsy McCaughey
Seems Jon Stewart studied up hard for this interview! This conservative wonk has managed to confuse and confound Sarah Palin and the rest of the Republican Base with her runaround bullshit, but not Jon Stewart or anyone with a brain bigger than a bullet.
Global Youth United in Efforts to Stop Climate Change
Global Youth United in Efforts to Stop Climate Change – | Future Majority
CBS’s Morning Show had a piece on the youth activism around global climate change. Young people like 15-year-old Alec Loorz is taking
“his message across the country, using poles to illustrate the predicted sea level rise if nothing is done to prevent global warning.”
But this generation of youth isn’t new to global warming nor the activism surrounding it. The 1990′s brought a nation wide effort in Canada called the Youth Alliance for the “Turnaround Decade” where young people advocated for solutions to climate change, and young people in California particularly advocated for recycling programs when environmental activists invested in a generation of young people who also convinced their parents to take action. And who can ever forget growing up with Jesse the good-hearted environmentalist on Saved by the Bell (before she became a stripper). There was even an entire episode about how “drill baby drill” on the school football field killed hundreds of the crew’s beloved science pets in the school’s pond.
A whole generation of youth from 35 and under grew up with saving the world from ourselves and the extenuation of “last chances” has sputtered on and on like an old diesel engine.
via Global Youth United in Efforts to Stop Climate Change | Future Majority.
Rumor: Glenn Beck’s week-long vacation not by choice
Rumor: Glenn Beck’s week-long vacation not by choice – The Raw Story »
This comes in via TV Newser, which reports the words of an unnamed source. And a denial. (I.E. Skepticism is appropriate.)
Glenn Beck’s vacation this week from his Fox News show was not planned. We hear Beck was told to take this week off to let some of the heat surrounding him die down. That heat began July 28 on “Fox & Friends” when Beck said he thought Pres. Obama has “a deep-seated hatred for white people,” adding, “This guy is, I believe, a racist.”
Of course, several paragraphs later, TV Newser notes: “Beck’s personal publicist Matthew Hiltzik forwarded us an email dated July 14th sent by Christopher Balfe, President & COO of Mercury Radio Arts and General Manager of Beck’s radio show, addressed to Mercury Radio employees reading: ‘Glenn will be off of radio & TV the week of August 17th, returning to air August 24th.’”
Finally, the only cold quote from the anonymous source of the rumor is … Only partial.
Contrary to that, our tipsters tell us it was Beck himself who was telling Fox staffers last week that he was “forced to take the week off.”
Is Color of Change’s advertiser campaign having an effect on the bigwigs at Fox? The official answer to that question is unclear. None of this is confirmed, except that Beck is indeed MIA, however briefly.
via The Raw Story » Rumor: Glenn Beck’s week-long vacation not by choice.
Joe Scarborough Is Shocked, Yet Awed by Single-Payer Logic
OPS: Moron Joe was SHOCKED! Shocked to find logic in the room
Joe Scarborough Is Shocked, Yet Awed by Single-Payer Logic
Something rather remarkable happened on Tuesday’s Morning Joe. Rep. Anthony Weiner of New York pointed out that the health insurance industry has no clothes, and Joe Scarborough, after first trying to spin it some gossamer threads, broke down and said, By God, you’re right, this emperor is a naked money-making machine!
Well, he didn’t use those exact words, but Joe did seem to finally get that America has granted insurance companies the right to create bottlenecks in the financing of health care in order to extract profits out of the suffering of ordinary people–without providing any actual health care whatsoever.
“Why are we paying profits for insurance companies?” Weiner asked Scarborough. “Why are we paying overhead for insurance companies? Why,” he asked, bringing it all home, “are we paying for their TV commercials?”
via Joe Scarborough Is Shocked, Yet Awed by Single-Payer Logic.
BP and Shell warned to halt campaign against US climate change bill
BP and Shell warned to halt campaign against US climate change bill – | guardian.co.uk
Oil firms urged to leave American Petroleum Institute and halt political lobbying by Greenpeace
BP and Shell are being told to tear up their membership of the American Petroleum Institute (API) in protest at the organisation’s attempts to incite a public backlash against Barack Obama‘s energy and climate change bill.
The two oil companies are also being asked to bring a halt to their own political lobbying in Washington in letters sent to their chief executives from Greenpeace and the Platform environmental group.
“BP maintains its membership of the API through paying substantial fees based on the large size of BP’s business. It is our concern that these fees are used by the API to undermine US government action on climate change and that BP’s membership of the API contradicts its position on the issue,” writes John Sauven, executive director of Greenpeace UK, in a letter to Tony Hayward, the BP boss.
via BP and Shell warned to halt campaign against US climate change bill | Business | guardian.co.uk.
New Poll: 77 Percent Support “Choice” Of Public Option
New Poll: 77 Percent Support “Choice” Of Public Option
More than three out of every four Americans feel it is important to have a “choice” between a government-run health care insurance option and private coverage, according to a public opinion poll released on Thursday.
A new study by SurveyUSA puts support for a public option at a robust 77 percent, one percentage point higher than where it stood in June.
But the numbers tell another story, as well.
Earlier in the week, after pollsters for NBC dropped the word “choice” from their question on a public option, they found that only 43 percent of the public were in favor of “creating a public health care plan administered by the federal government that would compete directly with private health insurance companies.”
Opponents of the president’s agenda jumped on the findings as evidence that backing for the public option was dropping. Proponents responded by arguing that NBC’s tinkering with the language of the question (which it had also done in its July survey) had contributed to the drop in favorability for a public plan.
via New Poll: 77 Percent Support “Choice” Of Public Option.
GOP Attack Machine Knows Misinformed Intensity of Emotion Wins Against Reason and Fact: FOX News Best Year Ever
GOP Attack Machine Knows Misinformed Intensity of Emotion Wins Against Reason and Fact: FOX News Best Year Ever
BUZZFLASH EDITOR’S BLOG – By Mark Karlin
Haven’t we seen this before? The majority of Americans support progressive policies, such as the public option in healthcare reform legislation when stated factually, but oppose them when the false perceptions fostered by right wing media and GOP politicians take root in their heads.
For all the comaradarie and mutual indignation of the net roots — including BuzzFlash — at the failure of the Obama White House to aggressively push the public option (not to mention single payer), they are up against the same corporately and wealthy individual finance propaganda media dissemination machine that Clinton ran into. In this sense, little has changed in 30 years, since the right wing misinformation infrastructure started to fully take root in the Reagan years (although FOX “News” came later).
Indeed, much to the dismay of progressives, FOX “News” viewership is up 11% over last year according to Nielsen Media Research, as cited in an AP article ominously entitled “FOX News on Pace for best year ever.”
Mercury-tainted fish found widely in U.S. streams
Mercury-tainted fish found widely in U.S. streams - | Reuters
Scientists have detected mercury contamination in every one of hundreds of fish sampled from 291 freshwater streams, according to a U.S. government study released on Wednesday.
More than a quarter of those fish contained concentrations of mercury exceeding levels set by the Environmental Protection Agency for the protection of people who eat average amounts of fish, the U.S. Geological Survey report said.
More than two-thirds exceeded the EPA-set level of concern for fish-eating mammals.
“This study shows just how widespread mercury pollution has become in our air, watersheds, and many of our fish in freshwater streams,” Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said in a statement. The USGS is part of the Interior Department.
via Mercury-tainted fish found widely in U.S. streams | U.S. | Reuters.
Changing the Corporation
Changing the Corporation - by Robert C. Hinkley - | CommonDreams.org
The corporation is no more than an aggregation of capital managed for the proportional benefit of those who supply it. It is a system controlled by managers, administrators and clerks largely for the benefit of passive investors looking for a higher return than they can earn elsewhere.
It makes no sense that government should provide the very wealthy with a tool that poses a continuous threat to the public interest. Government’s job is to protect the public interest, not sponsor those that destroy it.
via Changing the Corporation | CommonDreams.org.
The PolicySpeak Disaster for Health Care
The PolicySpeak Disaster for Health Care – | CommonDreams.org
by George Lakoff
Barack Obama ran the best-organized and best-framed presidential campaign in history. How is it possible that the same people who did so well in the campaign have done so badly on health care?
And bad it is: The public option may well be gone. Neither Obama himself nor Senior Advisor David Axelrod even mentioned the public option in their pleas to the nation last Sunday (August 16, 2009). Secretary Sibelius even said it was “not essential.” Cass Sunstein’s co-author, Richard Thaler, in the Sunday NY Times (August 16, 2009, p. BU 4) called it “neither necessary nor sufficient.” There has been a major drop in support for the president throughout the country, with angry mobs disrupting town halls and the right wing airing its views with vehemence nonstop on radio and tv all day every day. As the NY Times reports, Organizing for America (the old Obama campaign network) can’t even get its own troops out to work for the President’s proposal.
What has been going wrong?
It’s not too late to turn things around, but we must first understand why the administration is getting beat at the moment.
The answer is simple and unfortunate: The president put both the conceptual framing and the messaging for his health care plan in the hands of policy wonks. This led to twin disasters.
via The PolicySpeak Disaster for Health Care | CommonDreams.org.
Searching for the Depression—And Finding It!
Searching for the Depression—And Finding It! -
Economic Stress Is Hidden, But It’s There in a Recovery That Isn’t.
by Danny Schechter - | CommonDreams.org
Last week I was telling a visiting filmmaker from overseas about the financial crisis and how it was getting worse. He looked at me askance. The market had just gone up, he said, and the White House was talking about an emerging recovery.
“I have been in New York before, he said, and it looks the same.”
A lot of the pain is hidden, I told him, hidden behind the deceptive spin in our media or buried in the denial and delusions of many people on the streets who have not taken the trouble to try to understand the nature of the calamity they are living through.
On the elevator, we pass the offices of City Harvest, a charity that collects excess food from restaurants and distributes it to shelters and programs for the hungry. An employee explains that with the restaurant business way off, they have less to donate. What about the demand by the hungry, I ask? With a shrug, he tells me the need is way up. (AP is reporting, “The nation’s food banks, struggling to meet demand in hard times, are turning to prison inmates for free labor to help feed the hungry.”)
via Searching for the Depression—And Finding It! | CommonDreams.org.
Poll: Most Say Afghanistan War Not Worth Fighting
Poll: Most Say Afghanistan War Not Worth Fighting - by Will Lester - | CommonDreams.org
WASHINGTON — A majority of Americans say the war in Afghanistan is not worth fighting, according to a poll released on the eve of that nation’s elections.
An ABC News-Washington Post poll found 51 percent who said the war was not worth fighting, while 47 percent said it was worth it.
Only a quarter in the poll favored sending more U.S. troops to Afghanistan while almost twice as many would like to see the number of troops decreased. At the beginning of this year, people were slightly more inclined to say the number of troops should be increased than decreased.
Three years ago the U.S. had about 20,000 troops in Afghanistan. There are expected to be about 68,000 by year’s end.
By a 2-1 margin, the poll found that people doubted Thursday’s election in Afghanistan will produce an effective government. The voting to choose a new president comes at a time when the nation is struggling with an armed insurgency, drugs, corruption and a weak government.
via Poll: Most Say Afghanistan War Not Worth Fighting | CommonDreams.org.
When liberals fight back
When liberals fight back - - Joan Walsh – Salon.com
God bless Barney Frank. His outburst at a “town hell” protester who accused him and Obama of supporting “Nazi policy” spread virally around the Web early Wednesday and expressed a lot of liberals’ head-splitting frustration. “On what planet do you spend most of your time?” he countered, to lots of applause. Frank called it “a tribute to the First Amendment that this kind of vile, contemptible nonsense is so freely propagated,” and closed by saying: “Ma’am, trying to have a conversation with you would be like trying to argue with a dining room table. I have no interest in doing it.”
On “Hardball” today, Politico’s Ken Vogel suggested Frank’s outburst might help the right, but I said I saw the opposite: That Frank’s frank talk might embolden liberals to counter lies with truth: The idea that some delusional young woman in Massachussetts (reportedly a Lyndon LaRouche supporter) can accuse a gay Jewish congressman of supporting Nazi policies is reprehensible ignorance, and Frank responded with perfect pitch. Here’s our Hardball discussion (text continues below video):
via When liberals fight back – Joan Walsh – Salon.com.
Study says plastic decomposes at sea
Study says plastic decomposes at sea - – Salon.com
Environmentalists have long denounced plastic as a long-lasting pollutant that doesn’t break down. A new study indicates that, in the oceans, plastic does decompose, but says that’s not a good thing either.
Thousands of tons of plastic debris wind up in the oceans every year, some of it washing up on coasts, some being swirled by currents into the Great Pacific Garbage Patch between California and Hawaii, said to be larger than Texas.
“Plastics in daily use are generally assumed to be quite stable,” Katsuhiko Saido, a chemist at Nihon University, Chiba, Japan, said in a statement.
“We found that plastic in the ocean actually decomposes as it is exposed to the rain and sun and other environmental conditions, giving rise to yet another source of global contamination that will continue into the future,” said Saido, who presented his findings at the annual meeting of the American Chemical Society on Wednesday.
via Study says plastic decomposes at sea – Salon.com.
White House Will Weather Liberal Anger; Baucus Doubles Down
White House Will Weather Liberal Anger; Baucus Doubles Down – - The Atlantic
The White House and Senate Democrats won’t buckle to demands from liberals that they revise their health care strategy, officials said today.
White House advisers and Democratic strategists concede that President Obama’s poll numbers are at post-inauguration lows, and that the public has grown queasy about the health care debate. But they insist that the discontent has its roots in disenchantment over Washington’s ways. They note that large majorities of voters disapprove of how Republicans are handling health care in Congress and that President Obama remains the most popular active politician in the country.
Steve Schale, Obama’s Florida campaign director in 2008 and a Democratic party strategist, said via Twitter that Obama “is DC’s adult. Make [the] GOP show its cards, give mods a few wins, and go sell it. He’s still the U.S.’s most credible poll.”
In a statement today, Sen. Max Baucus said he was committed to a bipartisan bill. “The Finance Committee is on track to reach a bipartisan agreement on comprehensive health care reform that can pass the Senate,” he said. Republicans and Democrats, and their staffs, will hold a conference call tomorrow to discuss their progress.
via White House Will Weather Liberal Anger; Baucus Doubles Down – The Atlantic Politics Channel.
Unemployment claims unexpectedly worsen, rise 15,000
Unemployment claims unexpectedly worsen, rise 15,000 – The Raw Story »
New jobless claims rise unexpectedly to 576K
New jobless claims rise unexpectedly to 576,000; total benefit rolls show little change
The number of newly laid-off workers filing claims for unemployment benefits rose unexpectedly for the second straight week, an indication that jobs remain scarce.
The Labor Department says the number of first-time jobless claims rose to a seasonally adjusted 576,000 last week, from a revised figure of 561,000. Wall Street economists expected a drop to 550,000, according to a survey by Thomson Reuters.
The number of people remaining on the benefit rolls dropped by 2,000 to 6.24 million. Analysts had expected a slight decline.
The four-week average of initial claims, which smooths out fluctuations, also rose for the second straight week to 570,000.
via The Raw Story » Unemployment claims unexpectedly worsen, rise 15,000.
America’s Exhausted Paradigm: Macroeconomic Causes of the Financial Crisis and Great Recession
America’s Exhausted Paradigm: Macroeconomic Causes of the Financial Crisis and Great Recession - Thomas Palley – The New America Foundation
The old post-World War II growth model based on rising middle-class incomes has been dismantled, while the new neo-liberal growth model has imploded.
This report traces the roots of the current financial crisis to a faulty U.S. macroeconomic paradigm. One flaw in this paradigm was the neo-liberal growth model adopted after 1980 that relied on debt and asset price inflation to drive demand. A second flaw was the model of U.S. engagement with the global economy that created a triple economic hemorrhage of spending on imports, manufacturing job losses, and off-shoring of investment. Deregulation and financial excess are important parts of the story, but they are not the ultimate cause of the crisis. Instead, they facilitated the housing bubble and are actually part of the neo-liberal model, their function being to fuel demand growth based on debt and asset price inflation. The old post-World War II growth model based on rising middle-class incomes has been dismantled, while the new neo-liberal growth model has imploded. The United States needs a new economic paradigm and a new growth model, but as yet this challenge has received little attention from policymakers or economists.
Click here to download the full report.
Bankers Need to be Regulated
Bankers Need to be Regulated – Dustin Ensinger -economyincisis.org
In all, the nation’s nine largest banks paid out $32.6 billion in bonuses last year despite recording $81 billion in losses and accepting $175 billion in taxpayer money through TARP
The extravagant pay packages of American bankers is on the rise again and needs to be stringently regulated, otherwise another financial collapse of the magnitude of the current meltdown is likely, according to Reuters columnist Christopher Swann.
Earlier this month, a report released by New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo found obscene bonuses are already back on Wall Street.
The report also found that nine of the nation’s largest banks paid out $1 million or more to roughly 5,000 employees last year. In all, the nation’s nine largest banks paid out $32.6 billion in bonuses last year despite recording $81 billion in losses and accepting $175 billion in taxpayer money through the Troubled Assets Relief Program
via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
WTO Rules Against U.S.
WTO Rules Against U.S. – Stumo -economyincisis.org
The WTO ruled for the Japanese, and has generally been hostile to the U.S. zeroing method.
The following article originally appeared on TradeRefrorm.org.
The WTO ruled against the U.S. again. This time in a case brought by Japan which was dumping ball bearings here, or selling here for less than the bearings cost at home. The U.S. antidumping duties were calculated using a “zeroing” method that the WTO rejected. It is an important decision that is bad for us and bad for trade.
What is zeroing? Let’s assume there is a dumping challenge brought here in the U.S. International Trade Commission, which rules on whether the U.S. should impose duties. The industry seeking duties must establish “dumping” by showing the ball bearings, in this case, were sold in the U.S. for less than their cost in Japan.
The Japanese argue that there were 10 sales, for example. Six transactions were “dumped” at $50 below their domestic price. Four transactions were sold above their domestic price by $50. The Japanese want a credit for the four transactions (say $200) above the domestic price to offset the dumped transactions (at $300) for a net dumping finding of $100.
via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
A New Biofuel
A New Biofuel – Dustin Ensinger – economyincisis.org
Algae has the potential to fuel the nation’s vehicles while simultaneously trapping carbon dioxide emissions that contribute to global warming.
Video Courtesy of KSL.com
Wind and solar power have the potential to slowly wean America off of its over reliance on foreign energy sources, but neither will fuel America’s cars and trucks which are the vehicles of economic growth. Instead, the answer may lie in the green slimy stuff lying on the surface of lakes and ponds: algae.
Algae has the potential to fuel the nation’s vehicles while simultaneously trapping carbon dioxide emissions that contribute to global warming. Thus far, the technology is in its infancy, however, progress is being made.
One such example is the Solix Biofuels company, whose efforts to turn algae into the next generation of biofuels was profiled in The New York Times on Sunday.
Partnering with the Southern Ute Indian Reservation in Southwest Colorado, Solix Biofuels is leading the charge to replace petroleum-based fuels. Although, the company is not yet producing usable fuel through the algae, it is only a matter of time, according to company officials.
via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
China’s Impact on the U.S. Trade Deficit
China’s Impact on the U.S. Trade Deficit – Dustin Ensinger -economyincisis.org
China was responsible for over three-fourths of America’s enormous trade deficit in manufactured goods with the rest of the world in the first half of 2009.
According to data recently released by the U.S. Department of Commerce, China was responsible for over three-fourths of America’s enormous trade deficit in manufactured goods with the rest of the world in the first half of 2009.
Through June, the U.S.’s trade deficit in manufactured goods was $173 billion. Of that, China accounted for 78.5 percent of that deficit, or $101.8 billion worth of manufactured goods.
“The knowledge that China, America’s largest creditor, now accounts for more than three-quarters of the U.S. trade deficit in manufactured goods should alarm President Obama and the Congress,” said American Manufacturing Trade Action Coalition (AMTAC) Executive Director Auggie Tantillo in a press release.
via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
A Weak Recovery
A Weak Recovery – Craig Harrington – economyincisis.org
Massive bank losses and an escalating foreclosure crisis will dampen any growth, and the strain of unemployment will have broad-reaching effects on everything from the federal deficit to worker productivity.
There is a growing consensus in the United States that the perpetual declines of the recession are easing. Unfortunately, as reported by The Washington Post, there is also a growing consensus that this particular downturn has left the American economy permanently scarred.
We may see recovery, but this economy is currently swimming against a stiff current of unemployment, wage stagnation, inflation, and financial malaise. Massive bank losses and an escalating foreclosure crisis will dampen any growth, and the strain of unemployment will have broad-reaching effects on everything from the federal deficit to worker productivity.
One of the major obstacles still facing this nation is its lack of adequate credit. Easy, and at times too easy, credit was what drove the boom times as people bought houses, financed cars, and generally spent their way into opulence. With an economy over two-thirds predicated on consumption, the availability of credit is a must.
via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
When it Comes to Water, Can Corporations and Community Really Coexist?
When it Comes to Water, Can Corporations and Community Really Coexist? – By Peter Asmus, AlterNet.
When drought brought a critical shortage of water to Kerala, India, anti-globalization activists placed part of the blame on Coca-Cola, which operated a plant there.
Critics contended that Coca-Cola failed to involve the local community in its plans, and the activists began building a substantial global movement against water privatization, employing the tactic of “brand-jacking” of the world’s No. 1 brand — Coke — to make their point.
Coke’s Kerala plant has since ceased operations, making it a casualty of the global pressure placed on the company. But the campaign against privatization of water resources by activist groups has only grown stronger on the campaign front.
Today, the focus is on bottled water, which critics point to as a wasteful, expensive example of water privatization — companies taking public water, repackaging it and selling it back to us for a profit.
The latest fight between activists and companies such as Coke and Nestle is about who really owns water — corporations or communities.
via When it Comes to Water, Can Corporations and Community Really Coexist? | Water | AlterNet.
Would You Buy a Bag of Lays Chips If They Ran Deceptive Ads Saying Local Farmers Grew the Potatoes?
Would You Buy a Bag of Lays Chips If They Ran Deceptive Ads Saying Local Farmers Grew the Potatoes? - By Tara Lohan, AlterNet.
Frito-Lay is trying to co-opt a movement designed specifically to provide an alternative to industrial food.
A few weeks ago, Chicago commuters witnessed the unbelievable — as busy subway travelers at the Jackson stop bustled between trains in a tunnel, many were shocked to see that the ceiling tiles had broken away above them to reveal the fat bulbs of potatoes growing out of clumps of soil. Or so it seemed.
Sadly, invasive tubers taking over the transit system were merely just an ad stunt for Lay’s Potato Chips. Accompanying posters in the hallway read, “Our potatoes are grown closer than you think.”
This was the latest in a massive campaign launched in May by Frito-Lay North America, the $12 billion “convenient foods business unit” of PepsiCo. Eager to cash in on a growing local-foods movement, the chip company has been hoping to convince consumers that buying Lays means buying local.
MSNBC’s Maddow Show Propels Growing Scandal Over Washington’s “Christian Mafia”
MSNBC’s Maddow Show Propels Growing Scandal Over Washington’s “Christian Mafia” - by Bruce Wilson
Now Christian media have started digging into the story.
In a new August 17, 2009 Maddow show segment [link to MSNBC page with viewable show segment], Rachel Maddow and Jeff Sharlet discuss, among many new revelations, the disturbing fact that the “Christian Embassy” scandal, propelled by a complaint to the Department of Defense from the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, was investigated by a Pentagon Inspector General who is in fact a Family member.
The Family, also known as “The Fellowship”, is a secretive fundamentalist Washington DC ministry which runs the National Prayer Breakfast and Bible study groups attended by numerous US Senators and Congress members, wields global influence, and celebrates the leadership lessons of Hitler, Lenin, and Mao.
Over the course of the summer of 2009, Washington’s Family-run “C Street House” has become notorious as a string of sex scandals have engulfed national GOP political figures who live at or have lived at, or attended Bible study classes at, the secretive former convent turned church-cum cheap-rent high end boarding house: Senator John Ensign, former Congressman Charles “Chip” Pickering, and South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford.
Campus Hypocrisy: Marijuana Is Safer, But Students Are Pushed to More Dangerous Booze
Campus Hypocrisy: Marijuana Is Safer, But Students Are Pushed to More Dangerous Booze - By Paul Armentano and Steve Fox and Mason Tvert, Chelsea Green Publishing.
The stats for death and injury tied to alcohol on campus are staggering, yet students are more harshly punished for pot — which is far more benign.
Two weeks ago, we published an excerpt from the recently released Marijuana is Safer: So Why Are We Driving People to Drink? It was so well received, we asked the authors for a second excerpt, which is included below. If you have found one or both of these excerpts compelling, we encourage you to participate in The Great Marijuana Book Bomb taking place today (August 20). The authors have organized a one-day campaign to drive the book to the top of the Amazon.com rankings. If you want to see it reach #1, click on the book title above and make a purchase of your own.
Campuses are a microcosm of the broader society when it comes to alcohol and marijuana use. Although both substances are illegal for students under the age of twenty-one, the punishments for those who use them are far from equal. Most universities impose policies mandating that students who are busted using cannabis will face more severe sanctions than students caught drinking alcohol. We are aware of numerous students who have been removed from campus housing for possessing a small amount of marijuana in their dorm room. Yet these same students would have received a slap on the wrist — most likely in the form of a warning or campus probation — if alcohol had been present.
Take Purdue University in Indiana, for example. This school imposes a “zero tolerance” policy for students who are caught with marijuana in their dorms. This means that the possession of any amount of cannabis will result in immediate cancellation of their campus housing contract. By contrast, Purdue employs a “three strikes” policy for underage possession of alcohol. Bob Heitert, director of administration for university residence halls at Purdue, justifies the school’s inconsistent policy this way: “Illegal drugs are against the law for everyone, while alcohol is against the law for a larger portion of students but not for everyone. Society seems to take a different approach to alcohol than they do to illegal drugs. We reflect that societal difference.”
Utilizing Public Airwaves, Media Mogul Murdoch Is Big Muscle Behind Fraudulent Astro Turfers
Utilizing Public Airwaves, Media Mogul Murdoch Is Big Muscle Behind Fraudulent Astro Turfers - By Adele M. Stan, AlterNet.
Burrowing inside the radical right’s gathering of astroturfers and mouthpieces, AlterNet Reporter Adele Stan discovers what makes the anti-health reform machine tick.
As nearly 2,000 progressives made their way last weekend to Pittsburgh for the annual Netroots Nation conference, the right made its stand in the same town with a conference called RightOnline, sponsored by Americans for Prosperity, a group that has gained notoriety for its involvement in organizing seemingly grassroots opposition to health-care reform.
Billed as a counterconference to the Netroots Nation gathering of bloggers and online activists, RightOnline convened at a Sheraton hotel, offering a few 101-level workshops on new technologies like Twitter and YouTube.
But the highlight of the conference was a red-meat program of speakers designed for a crowd of older activists who were hungry to hear myriad myths about the myriad forms of oppression in store for them if they don’t stop the purportedly nefarious agenda of President Barack Obama.
GOP Ex-Leader Tom DeLay Declares Support for Killing Medicare
GOP Ex-Leader Tom DeLay Declares Support for Killing Medicare – Pensito Review »
Republican leaders are sending signals that their real target in killing health-insurance reform is privatizing Medicare, and thus killing it, too.
Just this week, former House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-Texas) described Medicare on “Meet the Press” as “tyranny.” Tonight, on MSBNC’s “Hardball,” another former House Majority Leader, Tom DeLay, R-Texas, agreed with Armey, saying Medicare must go:
TOM DELAY: I want Medicare to be privatized. It shouldn’t be a government program. It’s the thing that is driving up costs. Not [the need] to have a public option. It’s Medicare, Medicaid and SCHIP — the government-run programs — that are running up costs. That’s where the reform ought to be.
via Pensito Review » GOP Ex-Leader Tom DeLay Declares Support for Killing Medicare.
In a Reasoned Debate, Single Payer Will Come Out on Top
In a Reasoned Debate, Single Payer Will Come Out on Top – Truthdig
By Laura S. Boylan, M.D., and Joanne Landy, M.P.H.
This piece was originally posted at the Web site of Physicians for a National Health Program (http://www.pnhp.org).
One can only feel sorrow and dismay at the bullying and hate-mongering that is taking place at health care forums around the country.
Massive job losses, the devaluation and foreclosures of people’s homes, and precipitous declines in lifetime savings produce widespread fears of further loss. In an era of insecurity, mainstream Democratic Party proposals for reforming the health system have played into such fears.
A health care “reform” that protects private insurers and massive profits for the pharmaceutical industry inevitably becomes an ugly game where ordinary people’s interests are pitted against each other. Witness, for example, the proposed cuts to Medicaid and Medicare to fund an initiative that subsidizes the mandated purchase of private insurance with taxpayer dollars. Relatively little is offered to the already insured majority who are told of upcoming belt-tightening.
The near-total exclusion of single payer from the health care debate by our political leaders and the media has contributed to the present state of affairs. Single payer is an expanded and improved Medicare for All (“Medicare 2.0”). Many, perhaps most, Americans have come to believe in the false choice between universal coverage and quality health care.
via Truthdig – Reports – In a Reasoned Debate, Single Payer Will Come Out on Top.
After Calling High-Speed Rail Funds In Stimulus ‘Wasteful,’ Jindal To Request Millions
After Calling High-Speed Rail Funds In Stimulus ‘Wasteful,’ Jindal To Request Millions - Think Progress »
The AP reported earlier this month that Gov. Bobby Jindal’s (R-LA) administration is planning to request $300 million dollars from the federal government to develop a high-speed rail between Baton Rouge and New Orleans. The trains, which would run at about 79mph, would be part of a larger Gulf Coast rail plan with top speeds of 110mph. Much of the money, however, comes from the Recovery Act, a stimulus measure Jindal not only opposed, but recently called a failure.
In opposing the Recovery Act, Jindal offered the Republican party’s official response to President Obama’s nationwide address last February. Jindal specifically smeared high-speed rail projects as “wasteful spending”:
Fox News viewers overwhelmingly misinformed about health care reform proposals.
Fox News viewers overwhelmingly misinformed about health care reform proposals. - Think Progress »
Last night, NBC News and the Wall Street Journal released a poll showing that “all the misinformation out there” about health care reform proposals in Congress is taking root with many Americans. For instance, 45 percent believe the false claim that legislation includes “death panels” while 55 percent believe the false claim that coverage will be extended to illegal immigrants. MSNBC’s First Read notes that self-identified viewers of Fox News are disproportionately misinformed:
via Think Progress » Fox News viewers overwhelmingly misinformed about health care reform proposals..
Bachmann: Health Care Reform Is Unconstitutional
OPS: Queue the Twilight Zone theme
Bachmann: Health Care Reform Is Unconstitutional – Think Progress »
Speaking on Fox News last night, right-wing Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R-MN) claimed that health care reform is unconstitutional:
It is not within our power as members of Congress, it’s not within the enumerated powers of the Constitution, for us to design and create a national takeover of health care. Nor is it within our ability to be able to delegate that responsibility to the executive.
Watch it:
via Think Progress » Bachmann: Health Care Reform Is Unconstitutional.
New poll finds that 39 percent of Americans want government to ‘stay out of Medicare.’
OPS: the result of 30 years of the Dumbing down of America by Conservatives
New poll finds that 39 percent of Americans want government to ‘stay out of Medicare.’ - Think Progress »
As ThinkProgress has noted before, conservatives have frequently obscured the fact that Medicare is a government-run single-payer program. Constituents appearing at health care town halls have even demanded that their members of Congress keep their “government hands off of Medicare.” Now, a new Public Policy Polling poll finds that millions of Americans do not realize that the federal government runs Medicare:
One poll question indicative of how difficult it is to gain public understanding on a complicated issue asked if respondents thought the government should ‘stay out of Medicare,’ something inherently impossible. 39% said yes.
The poll also shows that an additional 15% of respondents were “not sure” if the government should be involved in Medicare. Only 46% of respondents disagreed with the proposition that the government should stay out of the government-run program.
Update
The poll also finds that only 62 percent of respondents believe that President Obama was born in America. Of the 38 percent who either don’t believe or are unsure, some think he was born in Indonesia, Kenya, the Philippines, or France. Six percent of the total poll respondents also don’t think Hawaii is a U.S. state.
Why The Public Health Insurance Option Is Worth Fighting For
Why The Public Health Insurance Option Is Worth Fighting For – Think Progress »
Howard Dean,
Our guest blogger is Gov. Howard Dean, former chairman of the DNC and the author of Howard Dean’s Prescription For Real Health Care Reform.
deanIn today’s Washington Post, Steven Pearlstein argues that Democrats should just give up on the public option. “Enough already with the public option!,” he writes. Pearlstein thinks we should drop one of the most popular and effective aspects of health care reform simply because the fight is too politically difficult in Congress. I think such an approach would ruin health care reform and devastate the Democratic party.
Pearlstein is confusing health insurance reform with health care reform. If we only get reform that requires insurance companies to provide coverage to everyone who applies, charge everyone the same premiums, and end their discriminatory practices, that would be great insurance reform, but it’s not, as Pearlstein writes, health care reform.
via Think Progress » Why The Public Health Insurance Option Is Worth Fighting For.
Ink found in Jurassic-era squid
Ink found in Jurassic-era squid - BBC NEWS
Palaeontologists have drawn with ink extracted from a preserved fossilised squid uncovered during a dig in Trowbridge, Wiltshire.
The fossil, thought to be 150 million years old, was found when a rock was cracked open, revealing the one-inch-long black ink sac.
A picture of the creature and its Latin name was drawn using its ink.
Dr Phil Wilby of the British Geological Survey said it was an ancient creature similar to the modern-day squid.
“The structure is similar to ink from a modern squid so we can write with it,” he said.
via BBC NEWS | UK | England | Wiltshire | Ink found in Jurassic-era squid.
Former CIA Operatives Agree: American Occupation of Afghanistan Threatens US Security
Former CIA Operatives Agree: American Occupation of Afghanistan Threatens US Security
Brave New Foundation Interviews Former CIA Operatives on National Security
Interviews Available Upon Request
LOS ANGELES – August 19 – Afghanistan holds their elections this week and Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal prepares to request additional resources for the war in Afghanistan, former CIA operatives raise US security concerns due to the American presence in Afghanistan. Former operatives assert that the US occupation of Afghanistan is a fruitless effort with unclear objectives and no possibility of a definite end. They contend that ultimately, this war only threatens the safety and security of Americans, both in the US and abroad.
To view the video, please click link below:
“Our original objective in Afghanistan was to find Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden. Eight years later, there is no Al-Qaeda left in Afghanistan. Al-Qaeda has all fled to the Pashtun border of Pakistan. The last thing we want is for Al-Qaeda, an international terrorist organization to destabilize Pakistan and take over their nuclear weaponry.” Bob Baer, Former Officer at the Central Intelligence Agency
“Both wars have made the Middle East and the world much more dangerous for Americans and for any American presence overseas. Its creating much greater hostility towards the US and crating a whole lot more people that would be happy to kill Americans or join in some kind of terrorist operation.” Graham Fuller, former Station Chief in Kabul for the CIA.
“I don’t think the strategy we’re pursuing right now, which is focused on building up the Afghan army, building up the national police and trying to establish central government control throughout Afghanistan is going to work.” Robert Grenier, Former Director for the CIA Counterterrorism Center
Former CIA operative Bob Baer states that over the last eight years, the US has changed its main objective from finding and destroying Al-Qaeda to the never-ending arduous task of nation building. American efforts in Afghanistan have only increased activity and membership of the Taliban, a nationalist organization unaffiliated with Al-Qaeda. He explains that American involvement has only served to push the Taliban into the mountains, endanger Pakistan, and ensnare the US in an Afghan civil war. Baer concludes that US efforts in Afghanistan only further destabilize the region, and does nothing to protect the safety of the American people.
Why the health care debate is so important regardless of one’s view of the “public option”
Why the health care debate is so important regardless of one’s view of the “public option” - – Salon.com
Glenn Greenwald
The New York Times today has a discussion from several contributors, including me, of the politics of the health care debate. My contribution, which focuses on the role the White House has played and the ample evidence that they have been quite active in shaping the course of events, can be read here. I want to elaborate on a couple of points I referenced in passing.
Over the past decade, the Democratic Party has specialized in offering up one excuse after the next for its collective failures. During the early Bush years, the excuse was that they endorsed Bush policies because his popularity and post-9/11 hysteria made it politically unwise to oppose him. In later Bush years when his popularity plummeted, the excuse was that Democrats were in the minority and could do nothing. After 2006 when they won a Congressional majority, the excuse was that Bush still controlled the White House and had veto power. After 2008 when a Democrat won the White House, the excuse was that Republicans could filibuster.
Now that they have a filibuster-proof majority, a huge margin in the House and the White House, the excuses continue unabated, as Democrats are now on the verge of jettisoning one of the most significant attractions for progressives to the Obama campaign — active government involvement in the health insurance market. The excuses for “compromising” are cascading more rapidly than ever: We need Republican support to ensure it’s bipartisan. The Blue Dogs won’t go along with what we want. Centrist Senators will filibuster. There are similar excuses being made to defend Obama from accusations that he deserves some of the blame for the failure of the “public option.” Matt Yglesias makes the typical case for shielding Obama from any responsibility:
Why the stock market is still unsafe for the small investor.
Still a Chump’s Game. Is the stock market safe again for the small investor? Not by a long shot. - – Slate Magazine
By Eliot Spitzer
One of America’s great accomplishments in the last half-century was the so-called “democratization” of the financial markets. No longer just for the upper crust, investing became a way for the burgeoning middle class to accumulate wealth. Mutual funds exploded in size and number, 401(k) plans made savings and investing easy, and the excitement of participating in the growth of our economy gripped an ever larger percentage of the population. Despite a backdrop of doubters—those who knowingly asserted that outperforming the average was an impossibility for the small investor—there was a growing consensus that the rules were sufficient to protect the mom-and-pop investor from the sharks that swam in the water.
That sense of fair play in the market has been virtually destroyed by the bubble burstings and market drops of the past few years. Recent rebounds notwithstanding, most people now are asking whether the system is fundamentally rigged. It’s not just that they have an understandable aversion to losing their life savings when the market crashes; it’s that each of the scandals and crises has a common pattern: The small investor was taken advantage of by the piranhas that hide in the rapidly moving currents. And underlying this pattern is a simple theme: conflicts of interest that violated the duty the market players had to their supposed clients. It is no wonder that cynicism and anger have replaced what had been the joy of participation in the capital markets. Take a quick run through a few of the scandals:
via Why the stock market is still unsafe for the small investor. – By Eliot Spitzer – Slate Magazine.
Best And Worst Cities To Find A Job: Indeed.com’s Rankings
Best And Worst Cities To Find A Job: Indeed.com’s Rankings
Though the Obama Administration has warned that unemployment will reach 10 percent this year, job markets across the country may not be uniformly bad. According to a new report by the search engine Indeed, the best city to find a job is Washington, D.C., where there are six job postings for every unemployed person. Before you get too excited, Washington, D.C. and Jacksonville, Florida are the only cities on the list in which job postings actually outnumber the unemployed.
The list ranks the 50 most populous U.S. cities by the ratio of job postings to unemployed citizens. Here’s the rest of the top 10 – and each city’s respective ratio:
1. Washington, DC (6:1)
2. Jacksonville, FL (3:1)
3. Baltimore, MD (1:1)
4. Salt Lake City, UT (1:2)
5. New York, NY (1:2)
6. San Jose, CA (1:2)
7. Hartford, CT (1:2)
8. Oklahoma City, OK (1:3)
9. Austin, TX (1:3)
10. Boston, MA (1:3)
via Best And Worst Cities To Find A Job: Indeed.com’s Rankings.
Showdown with Russia and China: U.S. Advances First Strike Global Missile Shield System
Showdown with Russia and China: U.S. Advances First Strike Global Missile Shield System
by Rick Rozoff
On August 13th the Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency (MDA) and Chicago-based Boeing International announced a test of their joint Airborne Laser (ABL) missile defense system, which “successfully tracked and hit the mark earlier this month during its first in-flight test against an instrumented target missile.” [1]
Employing a modified Boeing 747-400F prototype airplane, on August 10 the Missile Defense Agency had the adapted commercial airliner use infrared sensors against a missile launched from San Nicolas Island, California and “found, tracked, engaged and simulated an intercept with a missile seconds after liftoff. It was the first time the Agency used an ‘instrumented’ missile to confirm the laser works as expected. Next up this fall will be the first live attempt to bring down a ballistic missile….” [2]
A newspaper from Alabama, the state where the MDA headquarters is based, mentioned that “The news came today [August 13], just a few days before the 12th annual Space and Missile Defense Conference opens next week in Huntsville.” [3]
The Wall Street Journal waxed enthusiastic about the advanced missile interceptor test, stating that “Along with space-based weapons, the Airborne Laser is the next defense frontier. The modified Boeing 747 is supposed to send an intense beam of light over hundreds of miles to destroy missiles in the ‘boost phase,’ before they can release decoys and at a point in their trajectory when they would fall back down on enemy territory….The laser complements the sea- and ground-based missile defenses that keep proving themselves in tests.
“Never has Ronald Reagan’s dream of layered missile defenses – Star Wars, for short – been as….close, at least technologically, to becoming realized.” [4]
via Showdown with Russia and China: U.S. Advances First Strike Global Missile Shield System.
Higher interest rate? It’s up to you
Credit card rules change Thursday - - MSN Money
Starting Thursday, your credit card issuer will have to give you more notice of rate changes — and tell you how you can reject the new terms.
Starting Thursday, when the first phase of the new Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility and Disclosure (CARD) Act goes into effect, credit card users will be armed with a new right to say no to — that is, opt out of — interest-rate increases and other changes in their credit card agreements. (See “What the credit card law means for you.”)
Under the first phase of the new law, consumers must be given:
- At least 45 days’ warning of changes to their credit card accounts. Currently, only 15 days’ notice is required unless customers default on their accounts, in which case interest-rate increases can go into effect immediately.
- At least 21 days to pay their monthly credit card statements without threat of late fees.
- The right to opt out of interest-rate and fee increases and the right to cancel their accounts while paying off the balances under the old, lower interest rates. Currently, issuers offer opt-out options at their discretion, and it is not a consumer right.
Other aspects of the new credit card law — such as restrictions on interest-rate increases, bans on issuing and marketing credit cards to young adults, and regulations on gift cards — take effect in February 2010 and later. In addition, starting July 1, 2010, a host of requirements for disclosing fees, rates and terms on monthly statements, credit card applications and mailers will become law as a result of new rules drafted and approved by the Federal Reserve Board and other banking regulators.
via Higher interest rate? It’s up to you – MSN Money.
Without Public Option, Enthusiasm for Health Care Reform, Especially Among Democrats, Collapses
Without Public Option, Enthusiasm for Health Care Reform, Especially Among Democrats, Collapses
ust 34% of voters nationwide support the health care reform plan proposed by President Obama and congressional Democrats if the so-called “public option” is removed. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that 57% oppose the plan if it doesn’t include a government-run health insurance plan to compete with private insurers.
Last week, Rasmussen Reports tracking found that support for the Congressional plan was at 42%.
While the tracking question did not specifically mention the public option, it referred to the bill proposed by the president and congressional Democrats now working its way through Congress. All of the congressional committees that had passed reform legislation included a government health insurance plan. Therefore, it is reasonable to compare those results with the current polling to measure the potential impact of dropping the public option.
The most dramatic impact is a sharp decline in enthusiastic support. Without the public option, only nine percent (9%) Strongly support the legislation. The earlier poll found 26% Strongly in favor of it.
“The Collapse Gap”
Closing the ‘Collapse Gap’ – : Information Clearing House – ICH
The USSR was better prepared for collapse than the US
By Dmitry Orlov
Energy Bulletin — Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I am not an expert or a scholar or an activist. I am more of an eye-witness. I watched the Soviet Union collapse, and I have tried to put my observations into a concise message. I will leave it up to you to decide just how urgent a message it is.
My talk tonight is about the lack of collapse-preparedness here in the United States. I will compare it with the situation in the Soviet Union, prior to its collapse. The rhetorical device I am going to use is the “Collapse Gap” – to go along with the Nuclear Gap, and the Space Gap, and various other superpower gaps that were fashionable during the Cold War.
via “The Collapse Gap” : Information Clearing House – ICH.
Methane seeps from Arctic sea-bed
Methane seeps from Arctic sea-bed - BBC NEWS
Scientists say they have evidence that the powerful greenhouse gas methane is escaping from the Arctic sea-bed.
Researchers say this could be evidence of a predicted positive feedback effect of climate change.
As temperatures rise, the sea-bed grows warmer and frozen water crystals in the sediment break down, allowing methane trapped inside them to escape.
The research team found that more than 250 plumes of methane bubbles are rising from the sea-bed off Norway.
The joint British and German research team detected the bubbles using a type of sonar normally used to search for shoals of fish. Once detected, the bubbles were sampled and tested for methane at a range of depths.
via BBC NEWS | Science & Environment | Methane seeps from Arctic sea-bed.
Snorkel rice could feed millions
Snorkel rice could feed millions - BBC NEWS
A new rice plant has been developed which grows “snorkels” when exposed to floods.
A paper in the journal Nature, describes how the plant elongates rapidly in response to being submerged.
One of the scientists, Motoyaki Ashikari from Nagoya University in Japan, said “the impact is huge”.
It could also boost the production of rice in Asia and Africa, where up to 40% of crops are subject to flash floods or deep water.
“People cannot plant any crops in the rainy season, because the crops drown and die in the floods,” said Mr Ashikari.
via BBC NEWS | Science & Environment | Snorkel rice could feed millions.
Taking Wall Street Advice in Rally Means Owing $6,000
Taking Wall Street Advice in Rally Means Owing $6,000 - – Bloomberg.com 
Wall St. Experts’ Stock Picks Would Have Lost You Money During The Biggest Rally In 70 Years
- Anyone who did what Wall Street analysts advised last March has only losses after the biggest stock market rally in seven decades.
Citigroup Inc., Bank of America Corp. and more than a dozen other firms told clients to purchase European energy producers and U.S. drugmakers while selling banks and retailers, according to combined rankings compiled by Bloomberg. An investor who used $10,000 to buy companies in the highest-rated industries and bet on declines in the lowest since the advance began on March 9 lost everything and would owe as much as $6,000 to cover bearish trades, the data show.
The recommendations didn’t work because companies with the worst earnings led the 46 percent gain in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index since it fell to a 12-year low five months ago. Securities firms that failed to foresee that the hardest-hit stocks last year would recover fastest steered investors to drug and energy producers, which have trailed the MSCI World Index by more than 24 percentage points, the data show.
via Taking Wall Street Advice in Rally Means Owing $6,000 (Update2) – Bloomberg.com.
Unemployed — And Crossing Her Fingers For A Health Care Bill
OPS: Unfortunately she’s SOL. Obama admitted it would take 3 years to implement any program
Unemployed — And Crossing Her Fingers For A Health Care Bill
Health insurance is mighty important to three-time cancer survivor Mary Duffy, of Redwood City, California. So when she lost her job in June 2008, she opted to pay the big premiums to keep her coverage under the COBRA program. But COBRA has a time limit — 18 months. In December, Duffy’s being kicked loose.
Aside from frantically searching for a job, Duffy has had one hope.
“Honestly I’ve been crossing my fingers and praying that Obama would be able to pass health care by December,” she said in a phone interview.
In between revising her resume “what feels like 387 times,” Duffy has been watching in frustration as the man she admired so much has had his signature policy initiative clobbered in Congress.
via Unemployed — And Crossing Her Fingers For A Health Care Bill.
Nouriel Roubini: A phantom recovery?
Nouriel Roubini: A phantom recovery?
Most emerging economies may be returning to growth, but they are performing well below their potential
Most emerging economies may be returning to growth, but they are performing well below their potential, says Nouriel Roubini
Where is the American and global economy headed? Last year, there were two sides to the debate. One camp argued that the recession in the United States would be V-shaped — short and shallow. It would last only eight months, like the two previous recessions of 1990-1991 and 2001, and the world would decouple from the US contraction.
Others, including me, argued that, given the excesses of private-sector leverage (in households, financial institutions, and corporate firms), this would be a U-shaped recession — long and deep. It would last about 24 months, and the world would not decouple from the US contraction.
via Nouriel Roubini: A phantom recovery?.
The FDIC is Broke
The FDIC is Broke
When Colonial Bank failed on Friday, the 77th bank to fail this year, very few people noted that it was the largest bank failure of 2009. Even fewer people noted that the cost of cleaning it up required more capital resources than the FDIC had.
The total losses of Friday’s five bank failures, according to the FDIC, would be $3.67 Billion. The problem is that the FDIC had less than $650 million in its Deposit Insurance Fund at the time.
Back on May 22, the FDIC decided to impose a special levy on solvent banks in order to replenish its DIF. The smaller, more prudent banks of America screamed about how unfair it was that they were being asked to bail out a few irresponsible banks, but their complaints went unheeded.
The special levy won’t be collected until September 30, which brings us back to the depleted DIF.
Ah. Now we have a reasonable explanation for why the FDIC has been dragging its feet and not shutting down the numerous banks that are already bankrupt, yet still operating.
It can’t afford to.
Dragging its feet? The FDIC has closed down more than twice as many banks as last year, and the year is far from over.
Believe it or not, there are two major banks practically begging to be shut down right now, but the FDIC has shown no rush to do it.
For instance, Guaranty Bank, the second-largest bank in Texas, had this to say in a recent filing with the SEC.
via Daily Kos: State of the Nation.
The Murky World of High-Fructose Corn Syrup
The Murky World of High-Fructose Corn Syrup
By Linda Joyce Forristal, CCP, MTA
Think of sugar and you think of sugar cane or beets. Extraction of sugar from sugar cane spurred the colonization of the New World. Extraction of sugar from beets was developed during the time of Napoleon so that the French could have sugar in spite of the English trading blockade.
Nobody thinks of sugar when they see a field of corn. Most of us would be surprised to learn that the larger percentage of sweeteners used in processed food comes from corn, not sugar cane or beets.
The process for making the sweetener high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) out of corn was developed in the 1970s. Use of HFCS grew rapidly, from less than three million short tons in 1980 to almost 8 million short tons in 1995. During the late 1990s, use of sugar actually declined as it was eclipsed by HFCS. Today Americans consume more HFCS than sugar.
High-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is produced by processing corn starch to yield glucose, and then processing the glucose to produce a high percentage of fructose. It all sounds rather simple–white cornstarch is turned into crystal clear syrup. However, the process is actually very complicated. Three different enzymes are needed to break down cornstarch, which is composed of chains of glucose molecules of almost infinite length, into the simple sugars glucose and fructose.
via The Murky World of High-Fructose Corn Syrup.
WaPo Unleashes Army Of Anonymous Sources To Slag Public Option
I’ve said for a long time now that the press has long endeavored to diminish the public support for the “public option,” characterizing it as one of those foolish and untenable pipe dreams of “the left” when it actually has mainstream support. At the same time, the Obama administration has spun like a weather vane, conveying that a robust “public option” was essential to health care reform on one day, shruggingly suggesting that it would not be all that important the next. In today’s Washington Post, we have an article in which they attempt to make these two great tastes taste great together.
Michael D. Shear and Ceci Connolly’s piece is headlined, “Debate’s Path Caught Obama by Surprise.” Of course! WHO KNEW THAT THE PUBLIC OPTION WOULD BECOME SO IMPORTANT TO PEOPLE? Circa August 19, the President apparently had no idea that people were so het up over it!
But at a time when the president had hoped to be selling middle-class voters on how insurance reforms would benefit them, the White House instead finds itself mired in a Democratic Party feud over an issue it never intended to spotlight.
via WaPo Unleashes Army Of Anonymous Sources To Slag Public Option.
Cannabis chemicals may help fight prostate cancer
OPS: Ahh hell. Now I have to learn to smoke a joint with my butt? Guess I”ll have to get out the old Yoga videos.
Cannabis chemicals may help fight prostate cancer – | | Reuters
Chemicals in cannabis have been found to stop prostate cancer cells from growing in the laboratory, suggesting that cannabis-based medicines could one day help fight the disease, scientists said Wednesday.
After working initially with human cancer cell lines, Ines Diaz-Laviada and colleagues from the University of Alcala in Madrid also tested one compound on mice and discovered it produced a significant reduction in tumor growth.
Their research, published in the British Journal of Cancer, underlines the growing interest in the medical use of active chemicals called cannabinoids, which are found in marijuana.
Experts, however, stressed that the research was still exploratory and many more years of testing would be needed to work out how to apply the findings to the treatment of cancer in humans.
via Cannabis chemicals may help fight prostate cancer | Health | Reuters.
Arms expert warns new mind drugs eyed by military
Arms expert warns new mind drugs eyed by military – | | Reuters
A leading expert on chemical and biological arms control called on Wednesday for urgent efforts to stop new mind-altering drugs developed for medical purposes from being adopted by the military for use in warfare.
In an article in the U.S. journal Nature, British academic Malcolm Dando said civilian researchers in many countries seemed largely unaware of the danger and urged quick action to adapt a key arms pact to head it off.
“In the past 20 years, modern warfare has changed from predominantly large-scale clashes of armies to messy civil strife,” wrote Dando, citing the Bosnian conflict of the mid-1990s and current fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.
via Arms expert warns new mind drugs eyed by military | Science | Reuters.
Dispute over ‘public option’
Our view on health care: Dispute over ‘public option’ veers into fantasyland – - – USATODAY.com
Here’s a little secret: Government already pays more than insurers.
Depending on who you listen to, a central feature of President Obama’s health care overhaul — a government-run insurance plan known as the “public option” — is either dead or on life support. That it is in trouble at all reflects the Alice-in-Wonderland nature of the medical discussion.
In health care politics, down is up, right is left and the sun rises each morning in the West. When lawmakers try to be frugal with taxpayers’ money, their actions are labeled as Big Government intruding. When they try to bring some compassion to end-of-life issues, uncontroversial until it was included in a medical proposal, they’re accused of promoting euthanasia. And when they ignore the unsustainable amounts of public money pouring into a broken system, they call themselves pro-market.
This last illusion was illustrated in 2003 when Congress, then under Republican control, passed a Medicare drug benefit estimated to cost about $500 billion over a decade. Even though every dime was taxpayers’ money, the government was barred from using its clout to negotiate the most advantageous deals with pharmaceutical companies. Borrowing trillions from future generations was OK. Trying to get taxpayers the most for their money was not.
via Debate on health care: Our view — Dispute over ‘public option’ – Opinion – USATODAY.com.
Monsanto’s Man in the Obama Administration
Monsanto’s Man in the Obama Administration - by Isabella Kenfield
The Return of Michael Taylor
Michael R. Taylor’s appointment by the Obama administration to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on July 7th sparked immediate debate and even outrage among many food and agriculture researchers, NGOs and activists. The Vice President for Public Policy at Monsanto Corp. from 1998 until 2001, Taylor exemplifies the revolving door between the food industry and the government agencies that regulate it. He is reviled for shaping and implementing the government’s favorable agricultural biotechnology policies during the Clinton administration.
Yet what has slipped under everyone’s radar screen is Taylor’s involvement in setting U.S. policy on agricultural assistance in Africa. In collusion with the Rockefeller and Bill and Melinda Gates foundations, Taylor is once again the go-between man for Monsanto and the U.S. government, this time with the goal to open up African markets for genetically-modified (GM) seed and agrochemicals.
In the late 70s, Taylor was an attorney for the United States Department of Agriculture, then in the 80s, a private lawyer at the D.C. law firm King & Spalding, where he represented Monsanto. When Taylor returned to government as Deputy Commissioner for Policy for the FDA from 1991 to 1994, the agency approved the use of Monsanto’s GM growth hormone for dairy cows (now found in most U.S. milk) without labeling. His role in these decisions led to a federal investigation, though eventually he was exonerated of all conflict-of-interest charges.
Taylor’s re-appointment to the FDA came just after Obama and the other G-8 leaders pledged $20 billion to fight hunger in Africa over the next three years. “President Obama is currently embedded in a bubble featuring some of the fervent promoters of the biotech industry and a Green Revolution in Africa,” says Paula Crossfield in the Huffington Post. Before joining Obama’s transition team, Taylor was a Senior Fellow at the D.C. think tank Resources for the Future, where he published two documents on U.S. aid for African agriculture, both of which were funded by the Rockefeller Foundation.
via Monsanto’s Man in the Obama Administration.
Decline of America’s Empire
Decline of America’s Empire – by Stephen Lendman
Global Depression and Regional Wars – Reviewing James Petras’ New Book: Part II
Part II continues Petras’ analysis of the global depression, regional wars, and the decline of America’s empire.
Obama’s Latin American Policy
At all times under all administrations, policy, not rhetoric, defines priorities, and it’s no different for Obama. With regards to Latin America and its people, he’s been hostile and dismissive by:
– allocating half a billion dollars “in military and related aid” to aid the right wing Calderon regime and militarizing the US – Mexican border;
– on the pretext of fighting drugs trafficking and regional security, funding to Mexico and Colombia goes for military purposes; Colombia gets the most – billions under Plan Colombia; economic aid is ignored;
– beyond the timeline of Petras’ book, Hugo Chavez and other regional leaders voiced concern over Washington’s intention to supply Colombia with new weapons and technology, continued billions for the hardline “Uribe doctrine,” and of greatest concern the plan to access seven new military bases – three airfields, two naval installations, and two army bases besides nine others currently stationing US forces all supplemented by the reactivated Fourth Fleet in April 2008;
– continuing US trade policies that have been devastating to regional farmers and peasants; likely new protectionist measures will hurt them more;
– practicing the same Bush anti-Latino immigrant policies with talk now about new legislation to harden them and establish a new bracero policy;
– targeting regional left of center regimes, including Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Nicaragua and Cuba; the latter’s long-standing embargo remains in place despite some relaxed travel and other restrictions; and
– maintaining a three-fold regional strategy:
via Decline of America’s Empire.
Health Care in America: The Masquerade is Over!
Health Care in America: The Masquerade is Over!
by Rep. Dennis Kucinich
The masquerade is over! The “public option” is … dead.
Health care reform is now a private option: WHICH FOR PROFIT INSURANCE COMPANY DO YOU WANT?
You have to choose. And you have to pay. If you have a low income, under HR3200 government will subsidize the private insurance companies and you will still have to pay premiums, co-pays and deductibles.
The Administration plan requires that everyone must have health insurance, so it is delivering tens of millions of new “customers” to the insurance companies. Health care? Not really. Insurance care! Absolutely. Cost controls? No chance.
You will next hear talk about “co-ops.” The truth is that insurance company campaign contributions have co-opted the public interest.
I need your help to spread the word and rally the nation around true health care reform which covers everyone and maintains fiscal integrity without breaking our nation’s bank! Your contribution will empower our efforts to continue to fight for the single-payer, not-for-profit health care bill, HR676 “Medicare for All,” which I co-authored with Rep. John Conyers. The bill now has 85 sponsors in the House.
via Health Care in America: The Masquerade is Over!.
White House Is Seeking to Repair Intraparty Rift About Public Option
OPS: if this is true, if BO was caught by surprise by this, then it proves BO is utterly out of touch with his base. FISA, TARP, hiring non-Progressives would be more examples.
Debate’s Path Caught Obama by Surprise – - washingtonpost.com
Public Option Wasn’t Intended as Major Focus
President Obama’s advisers acknowledged Tuesday that they were unprepared for the intraparty rift that occurred over the fate of a proposed public health insurance program, a firestorm that has left the White House searching for a way to reclaim the initiative on the president’s top legislative priority.
via White House Is Seeking to Repair Intraparty Rift About Public Option – washingtonpost.com.
Howie Klein: Public Option Rides Again– $100,000 In 24 Hours
Public Option Rides Again– $100,000 In 24 Hours
Yesterday we launched a campaign to thank the 65 Democrats who are standing up for working families– standing up despite Big Insurance’s big bucks, standing up despite a campaign of Republican lies and thuggery, standing up even despite corporate shills in their own party, from Blues Dogs to DLC corruptionists like Ben Nelson, Max Baucus and Blanche Lincoln… and perhaps even standing up despite the hard-to-get-a-handle-on maneuverings from the White House. In the 24 hours since we launched the campaign an incredible 1450 1500 donors contributed close to over $100,000 to these 65 courageous Democrats.
Last night Rachel Maddow dedicated the intro to her show to “Democrats drawing a line in the sand” and featured Jane Hamsher (see video below). This came right on the heels of a dial-in weekly Democratic House caucus meeting that reiterated that the House Democrats were stronger than ever behind health care reform with a public option– regardless of what time of the day it is and where Obama happens to say he stands at the moment.
Not a single member spoke up on behalf of co-ops, according to both people on the call and people briefed on it… In the face of White House backsliding Monday, Pelosi reiterated that a public option is essential to reform. Pelosi gave the caucus a “pep talk,” one attendee said, pushing the party to keep pressing the message. She assured an ultimate victory.”Everyone has said on the record that they would support [the public option]. But there is a concern that the conference report would give them an out,” said an aide briefed on the call by his boss. “Some people spoke up and said, ‘We can’t give in on the conference report.’”
via Howie Klein: Public Option Rides Again– $100,000 In 24 Hours.
Fraud by Trial Lawyers Taints Wave of Pesticide Lawsuits
Fraud by Trial Lawyers Taints Wave of Pesticide Lawsuits - – WSJ.com
CHINANDEGA, Nicaragua — After responding to a radio commercial seeking former banana-plantation workers for a lawsuit against Dole Food Co., Marcos Sergio Medrano thought he might be entitled to some money. He says an American law firm convinced him that a pesticide used on the Dole-operated banana plantation where he had worked years ago had made him sterile.
Lawyers for the 49-year-old peasant produced tests that purported to prove it. But DNA testing by Dole revealed that he had fathered three children — something Mr. Medrano says was news to him. “I don’t feel good about this,” he says now. “I feel I was involved in foul play.”
Mr. Medrano is part of the sorry fallout from a group of U.S. personal-injury and other lawyers who descended on this small, impoverished city, seeking to recruit thousands of clients and earn up to 40% of any awards. Emboldened by a developing-world legal system that heavily favored plaintiffs, they filed an avalanche of lawsuits here against California-based Dole and eventually won $2.1 billion in local judgments.
via Fraud by Trial Lawyers Taints Wave of Pesticide Lawsuits – WSJ.com.
Buffett Says Federal Debt Poses Risks to Economy
OPS: Thanks Warren. We have known this since Bush ran up the largest Deficit in history. Here You wouldn’t be trying to help kill Health Care Reform would you?
Buffett Says Federal Debt Poses Risks to Economy – - Bloomberg.com 
The U.S. must address the massive amounts of “monetary medicine” that have been pumped into the financial system and now pose threats to the world’s largest economy and its currency, billionaire Warren Buffett said.
The “gusher of federal money” has rescued the financial system and the U.S. economy is now on a slow path to recovery, Buffett wrote in a New York Times commentary yesterday. While he applauds measures adopted by the Federal Reserve and officials from the Bush and Obama administrations, Buffett says the U.S. is fiscally in “uncharted territory.”
The government is trying to spark business and consumer spending through a $787 billion stimulus plan spanning tax cuts and infrastructure projects, while the Treasury and the Fed have spent billions more on separate programs to rescue financial institutions and resuscitate the banking system. The U.S. budget deficit is forecast to reach a record $1.841 trillion in the year that ends Sept. 30.
“Enormous dosages of monetary medicine continue to be administered and, before long, we will need to deal with their side effects,” Buffett, 78, said. “For now, most of those effects are invisible and could indeed remain latent for a long time. Still, their threat may be as ominous as that posed by the financial crisis itself.”
via Buffett Says Federal Debt Poses Risks to Economy (Update1) – Bloomberg.com.
IRS reaches Swiss tax deal, gains access to UBS accounts
IRS gets access to 5,000 Swiss bank accounts – CNNMoney.com
Government reaches deal to access to UBS accounts with up to $18 billion that U.S. investors might have used to avoid taxes.
NEW YORK — The Internal Revenue Service announced Wednesday that it has reached a deal with the Swiss government, gaining access to thousands of UBS AG accounts that Americans might have used to avoid paying taxes.
IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman said that it had gained access to about 5,000 UBS (UBS) accounts held by rich American investors. In a teleconference with reporters, Shulman said these accounts have held $18 billion in assets at one time, though he did not have a current tally for their value.
The announcement is the result of a settlement that the IRS and Switzerland-based UBS reached earlier this month to track down and identify wealthy Americans who have avoided paying taxes by hiding their assets in offshore accounts. Shulman said the deal should deter Americans from evading taxes in the future.
via IRS reaches Swiss tax deal, gains access to UBS accounts – Aug. 19, 2009.
Law requiring ultrasound for abortions struck down
Law requiring ultrasound for abortions struck down – The Raw Story »
OK judge tosses abortion law requiring ultrasound
An Oklahoma judge on Tuesday overturned a state law that required women seeking an abortion to receive an ultrasound and a doctor’s description of the fetus.
Oklahoma County District Judge Vicki Robertson said the law violated constitutional requirements that legislative measures deal only with one subject. He did not rule on the validity of the ultrasound provisions.
Special Assistant Attorney General Teresa Collett said she will meet with state officials to discuss whether to appeal. The law was passed in 2008, but legal action has prevented it from going into effect.
via The Raw Story » Law requiring ultrasound for abortions struck down.
FBI trained white supremacist to incite others: lawyer
FBI trained white supremacist to incite others: lawyer – The Raw Story »
Nearly a month after revealing that white supremacist r adio host Hal Turner was an FBI informant, his lawyer claimed that the “New Jersey blogger facing charges in two states for allegedly making threats against lawmakers and judges was trained by the FBI on how to be deliberately provocative,” the Associated Press reports.
Turner was arrested on June 24 for allegedly calling for the murder of three judges who supported the Chicago gun ban. The confession by his attorney came at a bond hearing last month.
“Attorney Michael Orozco [...] said his client gave authorities information about a plot to assassinate President Barack Obama,” reported the Associated Press in July.
His recent arrest came after a complaint about an overt call for the murder of three judges.
via The Raw Story » FBI trained white supremacist to incite others: lawyer.
HP profit plunge dashes tech recovery hopes
HP profit plunge dashes tech recovery hopes - FT.com -By Joseph Menn in San Francisco
Third-quarter profit falls 19%
An expected recovery in technology markets that could add to early indications that the world is heading out of recession has yet to take hold, according to figures released on Tuesday by Hewlett-Packard .
The group damped enthusiasm in the industry, announcing a 19 per cent drop in profit amid continued weakness in the European economy and a reluctance among corporate buyers to upgrade.
via FT.com / Technology – HP profit plunge dashes tech recovery hopes.
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Republicans Don't Care about Voter Fraud....owa Republicans are trying to dismiss claims that the vote count in Tuesday's Iowa Caucus was wrong. An Iowa voter told a local TV station yesterday that he noticed a 20-vote discrepancy in the count - and that Rick Santorum was the real winner of the Caucuses. Republican Party officials, though, are sticking to their first count - showing Mitt Romney as the winner by 8-votes - and there will be no recount.The Republican Party has launched a war on voters around the nation this year with strict new laws that will disenfranchise over 5 million Americans. They claim these laws are necessary to combat so-called voter fraud. Yet in Iowa - where there are no such laws - and where a very, very close and questionable election was just held - Republicans don't seem to care at all about getting it right.Clearly - the war on voters isn't about making sure the people's voices are represented accurately - it's about making sure poor people, young people, and minorities who tend to vote for Democrats - can't vote at all.-Thom(Who do you think won? Tell us here.) -
LEGALIZE Democracy
" We the corporations" On January 21, 2010, with its ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the Supreme Court ruled that corporations are persons, entitled by the U.S. Constitution to buy elections and run our government. __________
MOVE to AMEND
a project of the CAMPAIGN TO LEGALIZE Democracy
Help end Corporate personhood
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The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. 
