Archive for September, 2009
Rocket launch prompts calls of strange lights in sky
(CNN) – A series of spooky lights above parts of the northeastern United States Saturday sparked a flurry of phone calls to authorities and television news stations.
CNN affiliate stations from New Jersey to Massachusetts heard from dozens of callers who reported that the lights appeared as a cone shape shining down from the sky.
However, the lights were the result of an experimental rocket launch by NASA from the agency’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia, a spokesman told CNN.
Keith Koehler said the Black Brant XII Suborbital Sounding Rocket was launched to study the Earth’s highest clouds. The light came from an artificial noctilucent cloud formed by the exhaust particles of the rocket’s fourth stage about 173 miles high.
Full Story: Rocket launch prompts calls of strange lights in sky – CNN.com.
Jack Straw calls for heroin on NHS
– Times Online – JACK STRAW, the justice secretary, has called for the NHS to give out heroin on prescription to addicts for whom other forms of treatment have failed.
He claims “imaginative” solutions to hard-drug abuse are needed and believes there could be “huge benefits” to issuing the drug to chronic addicts.
Straw said: “For the most problematic heroin users it may be the best means of reducing the harm they do themselves, and of stamping out the crime and disorder they inflict on the community.”
Full Story: Jack Straw calls for heroin on NHS – Times Online.
U.S. conservative Christians target 16 Democrats
OPS: Tax exempt status is based on not getting involved in Politics. It’s time to revoke the 501C3 from these front organizations
\(Reuters) – Conservative Christians, a key base for the Republican Party, said on Saturday they were targeting 16 Democrats, including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, in the 2010 congressional elections.
Four other Democratic senators and 11 U.S. representatives were on the list, which was released at a summit in Washington of conservative “values voters” who are rallying against President Barack Obama’s agenda.
The mid-term elections will be the first national test for Obama, who has seen his approval ratings fall in recent months as he and his ruling Democratic Party attempted to push through a sweeping overhaul of the healthcare sector.
“We think we have a shot at taking back some seats,” said Connie Mackey, president of FRC Action, the legislative or political arm of the Family Research Council, a conservative Christian lobby group which organized the summit.
Full Story: U.S. conservative Christians target 16 Democrats – Yahoo! News.
International Monetary Fund to sell over 403 tons of gold
Raw Story » The International Monetary Fund said its executive board endorsed the sale of 403 tons of gold, worth an estimated 13 billion dollars, to boost its lending capacity to poor countries.
The IMF said in a statement the sales would be “in a volume strictly limited to 403.3 metric tons, with these sales to be conducted under modalities that safeguard against disruption of the gold market.”
The 186-nation institution said the decision was a core element of a new income model to make it less dependent on its lending revenue to cover expenses, such as surveillance of members’ economic and financial policies, that the board had approved in April 2008.
The Group of 20 key developed and developing countries, at their April summit in London, agreed the gold sales should allow the IMF to offer favorable conditions on loans to the poorest countries.
Full Story: Raw Story » International Monetary Fund to sell over 403 tons of gold.
‘You lie’ Wilson shows two faces on illegal immigration
Raw Story » The anti-illegal immigration movement is singing Congressman Joe Wilson’s praises, but the lawmaker who was rebuked by the House this week recently helped extend the stay of one of those very “illegals” the activists hope to remove from the country.
Hundreds of illegal immigration opponents are gathering in Washington right now for the annual Federation for Immigration Reform (FAIR) effort to lobby Congress for tighter border controls and other policies designed to keep undocumented immigrants out of the U.S.
This year, they’re making Wilson, a South Carolina Republican, their new poster boy after he famously shouted “You lie!” during President Obama’s speech on healthcare reform last week. Wilson’s outbust occurred as Obama was saying he has no intention of giving illegal immigrants access to health care benefits in his reform plan, and CNN personality and avowed anti-illegal immigration crusader Lou Dobbs is giving Wilson “great credit” for advancing the cause, per The Washington Independent and Politics Daily.
Full Story: Raw Story » ‘You lie’ Wilson shows two faces on illegal immigration.
CNN anchor calls out Fox News: ‘You lie’
Raw Story » Following CNN anchor Rick Sanchez’s angry rebuttal of Fox News’ claims in a newspaper ad that the other news networks didn’t cover the 912 Tea Party protests, CNN has launched a 15-second ad clip in which it says of the rival network: “Fox News — distorting, not reporting.”
Watch the ad below.
Full Story: Raw Story » CNN anchor calls out Fox News: ‘You lie’.
Candid Camera: Behind the scenes video at 9/12 protest shows Fox News producer coaching crowd
- Media Matters for America - We just received the following behind the scenes footage from an anonymous tipster showing what appears to be a Fox News producer encouraging a crowd to scream and holler during a “report” by Fox News’ Griff Jenkins at the 9/12 protest:
We would expect that type of behavior from a producer of, say, a daytime talk show with a live studio audience like Oprah or Maury or Jerry, but from a cable news producer? Really?
I guess it wasn’t enough for Fox News to promote the hell out of Glenn Beck’s 9/12 death march – they also needed to incite the crowd – you know, get them nice and pumped up so they’d looked good for the cameras.
Fair & Balanced? More like Fake & Staged.
Rockefeller criticizes the ‘Gang of Six’: ‘You don’t do legislation that way.’
OPS: The question is and has been, why did Reid put these Corporatist stooges and idiots in charge?
Think Progress » Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) appeared on the Charlie Rose Show last night to discuss his criticisms of Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus’ (D-MT) bill. He announced he will introduce at least 17 amendments to the Baucus proposal. “This is my chance, having not be a part of the Gang of Six,” to improve the legislation, he said. When asked if he was “thrilled” about the so-called “Gang of Six,” Rockefeller responded that he doesn’t think legislation should be done that way:
ROSE: You’re not thrilled by the Gang of Six, are you?
ROCKEFELLER: No I’m not. No I’m not. But that’s — I just don’t think you do legislation that way, and particularly if you end up not getting any of the three Republicans, and hopefully we will get Olympia Snowe.
Watch it:
Full Story: Think Progress » Rockefeller criticizes the ‘Gang of Six’: ‘You don’t do legislation that way.’.
Rep. Price: If Obama Signs Health Reform, GOP Will Take Back Congress And ‘Repeal The Disaster And Tyranny’
OPS: The “tyranny” of affordable health care?
Think Progress » This morning, Reps. Tom Price (R-GA) and Michele Bachmann (R-MN) participated in a panel on health care reform at the Values Voter Summit. During the question-and-answer period, an audience member asked, if Democrats are able to pass health reform, “how do we roll this back in 2010 and 2012?”
Fielding the question, Price quipped that, if “they strong-arm it through — if they Rahm [sic] it through,” then Republicans will take back the House and Senate. Price continued:
The specific answer to your question is two-fold: Once we have the appropriate checks and balances in Congress, then we have a great opportunity to sit down with President Obama and say, we’re happy to talk about whatever issues you’d like to talk about, but first we need to repeal the disaster and the tyranny that you passed last session.
The right-wing crowd responded with strong applause. Watch it:
Rep. King thanks Sen. Grassley as ‘single most important factor’ in obstructing health reform.
Think Progress » Yesterday, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) lashed out at President Obama, saying he “resents” the administration “associating” him with “extreme” claims about “the end-of-life situation.” Of course, Grassley actually did spread radical smears against health reform, including myths about death panels and “Obamacare.” As ThinkProgress has documented, Grassley — who prides himself as a self-described “obstructionist” — has been a dishonest member of the Gang of Six negotiations. Rather than making positive contributions to the process, he has delayed legislation with the ultimate goal of killing meaningful reform. Rep. Steve King (R-IA), one of the most vehement opponents of reform, took to the House floor Thursday to personally thank Grassley for his job of effectively preventing the passage of any bills all summer and raising the chances of stopping health reform:
KING: Mr. Speaker, at this point, I want to thank my senior Senator, Chuck Grassley [...] It may well have been the single most important key factor that allowed for the debate in health care to be extended through the month of August and past Labor Day to get us to this point in September where we are.
Watch it:
Full Story: Think Progress » Rep. King thanks Sen. Grassley as ‘single most important factor’ in obstructing health reform..
Jindal blocks non-existent state funding for ACORN.
Think Progress » Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) is trying to shore up his anti-ACORN bona fides. The New Orleans Times-Picayune reports today that Jindal issued an executive order barring state funds from going to the community organizing group. However, there’s one small kink in Jindal’s plan:
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal issued an executive order to keep any state money from going to the controversy-wracked Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, which has its national headquarters in New Orleans.
According to the state’s Division of Administration, no state agencies have existing contracts with ACORN.
Since recently released videos showing ACORN staff engaging in inappropriate and potentially unlawful activity, the group’s president said ACORN will conduct a “thorough review” of the organization’s operation. (HT: TPM)
Full Story: Think Progress » Jindal blocks non-existent state funding for ACORN..
‘Media Courage Award’ recipient Bill O’Reilly bans the media from his speech.
Think Progress » Members of the press were dismayed to find out that they were banned from Bill O’Reilly’s speech at the Values Voter Summit tonight. The Washington Independent’s Dave Weigel snapped a picture of the sign letting them know that they couldn’t get in:
Ironically, O’Reilly was receiving a “Media Courage Award.”
Full Story: Think Progress » ‘Media Courage Award’ recipient Bill O’Reilly bans the media from his speech..
Vitter Introduces Amendment To Block Funds From Crucial Environmental Adviser
OPS: Have you noticed yet that Conservatives are indifferent to everything, even the welfare of their own children, except profit and power?
Think Progress » – Yesterday, the National Journal reported that Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) has filed an amendment to the $32.1 billion FY10 Interior-Environment appropriations bill that would block any of the bill’s funds from being used to carry out orders from Carol Browner, director of the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy, who is often referred to in the press as the White House “climate czar“:
Lawmakers have filed more than 20 amendments to the $32.1 billion FY10 Interior-Environment appropriations bill, including a proposal from Sen. David Vitter, R-La., that would prohibit any of the bill’s funds from being used to carry out directives from the White House climate change czar.
The amendment will ensure the climate czar is not directing actions of the departments and agencies funded in the bill, Vitter said.
While the right may be dedicated to portraying Browner’s position as unaccountable, unprecedented, and even “radical,” the fact is that Browner was originally brought into the executive branch as head of the Environmental Protection Agency in 1993 — a position in which she was unanimously approved by the Senate.
Full Story: Think Progress » Vitter Introduces Amendment To Block Funds From Crucial Environmental Adviser.
Reagan and George H.W. Bush advisers defend presidential ‘czars.’
Think Progress » – In today’s Washington Post, attorneys David B. Rivkin Jr. and Lee A. Casey, who served under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, take exception to all the conservatives who are lambasting President Obama over his appointment of presidential advisers, whom they have dubbed “czars.” Rivkin and Casey argue that in fact, subjecting all these advisers to a Senate confirmation process would perhaps be unconstitutional:
The White House czars are presidential assistants charged with responsibility for given policy areas. As such, they are among the president’s closest advisers. In many respects, they are equivalent to the personal staff of a member of Congress. To subject the qualifications of such assistants to congressional scrutiny — the regular confirmation process — would trench upon the president’s inherent right, as the head of an independent and equal branch of the federal government, to seek advice and counsel where he sees fit.
They also note that the “critical difference between the White House czars and federal officials who must be confirmed by the Senate” is that while the former can “drive the policymaking process,” only the latter can legally “determine what policy will be.”
Full Story: Think Progress » Reagan and George H.W. Bush advisers defend presidential ‘czars.’.
A $1,761 Postage Stamp: How The Glenn Beck Machine Constructed An Attack On Clean Energy Reform
Think Progress » - Fox News host Glenn Beck, the new darling of the radical right, is part of a well-coordinated machine to block progressive reform. Yesterday, Beck fanned himself with a giant $1,761 postage stamp, claiming he had uncovered “outright lies” by a “spooky” White House. According to Beck, “buried” Treasury documents reveal that President Obama’s clean energy agenda “is going to cost a lot of money.” He thanked “our friend Chris Horner at CEI” for revealing the “facts” about the “cap and trade energy bill”:
The Department of Treasury issues a report and says, “Here, Mr. President, boy, that looks like it is going to suck. It is going to cost $1,761.” Got it?
Watch it: video at link
Full Story: Think Progress » A $1,761 Postage Stamp: How The Glenn Beck Machine Constructed An Attack On Clean Energy Reform.
Insurers’ pre-existing conditions include being a cop, expectant father, or having acne.
Think Progress » – This week, ThinkProgress pointed out that women often face extra hurdles in obtaining health care on the individual market since some insurers refuse to cover maternity care, disqualify women who have had a Caesarean-section pregnancy, or consider domestic violence a pre-existing condition. Yesterday in a speech, First Lady Michelle Obama addressed these disparities:
Women are affected because, as we heard, in many states, insurance companies can still discriminate because of gender. And this is still shocking to me. These are the kind of facts that still wake me up at night; that women in this country have been denied coverage because of preexisting conditions like having a C-section or having had a baby. In some states, it is still legal to deny a woman coverage because she’s been the victim of domestic violence.
And a recent study showed that 25-year-old women are charged up to 45 percent more for insurance than 25-year-old men for the exact same coverage. And as the age goes up, you get to 40, that disparity increases to 48 percent — 48 percent difference for women for the exact same coverage in this country.
Consumer Watchdog has released internal industry “underwriting” guidelines showing some other “pre-existing conditions” that insurers have used to either deny people outright or charge exorbitant fees for coverage:
Full Story: Think Progress » Insurers’ pre-existing conditions include being a cop, expectant father, or having acne..
Gov. Perry laughs off recession: ‘We’re in one?’
Think Progress » Video at link - Speaking to the Houston Chamber of Commerce on Thursday, Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) discounted the fact that Texas is in a deep economic downturn. In an anecdote to the assembled business leaders, Perry quipped that when he was approached with a report on recovering from the recession, he replied, “We’re in one?“:
PERRY: Why is Texas kind of recession-proof, if you will? As a matter of fact, just today I think, Michael, you said someone had put a report out that the first state that’s coming out of the recession is going to be the State of Texas. I told him, I said, ‘We’re in one?’
Watch it:
Full Story: Think Progress » Gov. Perry laughs off recession: ‘We’re in one?’.
Romney pushes false claim that cap and trade would cost families $1,761 a year.
video at link
Think Progress » – At the Values Voter Summit today, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney aggressively attacked President Obama, saying that his policies will “weaken America.” In his litany of complaints, Romney included the latest fabrication that has spread among the right wing — the claim that Treasury Department “secretly calculated” that Obama’s clean energy proposals “would cost the average American family $1,761 a year, the equivalent to a 15% income tax hike.” Watch it:
As Politifact wrote yesterday, the numbers that conservatives like Romney are flinging around are “false.” “Nowhere in the documents does the Treasury Department cite the $1,761 figure,” notes the fact-checking website. Instead, the right is relying on a calculation by libertarian blogger Declan McCullagh, whose methodology for arriving at the number uses “incorrect assumptions and overly simple math.” Dan Weiss notes that the CBO released an updated estimate on the House’s climate legislation, finding that it would cost “$160 per household.” Weiss points out that means “the average household would spend 44 cents per day – less than a postage stamp.”
Full Story: Think Progress » Romney pushes false claim that cap and trade would cost families $1,761 a year..
Coburn’s Chief Of Staff On Keeping Kids Away From Porn: ‘All Pornography Is Homosexual Pornography’
Think Progress » - At the Family Research Council’s Values Voters Summit today, FRC Senior Fellow Pat Fagan, Heritage Foundation scholar Matthew Spalding and Michael Schwartz, the chief of staff for Sen. Tom Coburn, held a discussion on “The New Masculinity.” Schwartz, who was the final speaker, said that Fagan wanted him to discuss “how men, who already are good husbands and fathers,” can “change the culture.”
A few minutes into his speech, Schwartz moved to the topic of pornography, calling it a “blight” and a “disease” that parents’ “sons” would encounter. Noting that he was about to get “politically incorrect,” Schwartz said that it is his “observation that boys at that age have less tolerance for homosexuality than just about any other class of people”:
SCHWARTZ: But it is my observation that boys at that age have less tolerance for homosexuality than just about any other class of people. They speak badly about homosexuality. And that’s because they don’t want to be that way. They don’t want to fall into it. And that’s a good instinct. After all, homosexuality, we know, studies have been done by the National Institute of Health to try to prove that its genetic and all those studies have proved its not genetic. Homosexuality is inflicted on people.
Full Story: Think Progress » Coburn’s Chief Of Staff On Keeping Kids Away From Porn: ‘All Pornography Is Homosexual Pornography’.
Why the 911 Truth Movement ‘Cannot be Stopped’
by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy
There remains probable cause to indict and charge top officials, George W. Bush himself, for the crimes we call ’911′. And, last time I checked, there was no ‘statute of limitation’ with regard to the crimes of mass murder, war crimes [see: US Codes, Title 18, Section 2441] or high treason!
The evidence against Bush, Cheney and a gang of NEOCON crooks will prove in court that Bushco conspired to attack and invade Iraq for its oil! It will not help the defense that documents of Cheney’s meeting of his ‘Energy Task Force’ survive and prove that the Cheney and ‘big oil’ literally carved up the oil fields of Iraq before Bush would have the pretext he needed to attack, invade, and loot oil!
As Hitler needed a Reichstag Fire, Bushco needed a pretext –a ‘catalyzing event’ that the Project for the New American Century would compare to Pearl Harbor. [See Rebuilding America's Defenses] Bush conspired with ‘rich men’ –his base –in order to perpetrate the capital crimes of aggressive war, mass murder and high treason!
On this eighth anniversary of the tragic events of 9/11. the movement of concerned citizens who do not believe the U.S. government’s official explanation of those events (the clear majority in poll after poll after poll) only continues to grow, emboldened by breathrough after breakthrough in their efforts to bring the glaring inaccuracies of that official explanation to the attention of the general public.
Full Story: The Existentialist Cowboy: Why the 911 Truth Movement ‘Cannot be Stopped’.
Foreign Financing And The American Economy
What many in the financial community are overlooking.
The American economy is financed by foreign nations in ways that do not draw headlines, but do warrant further examination. Here is a breakdown of four foreign investment strategies in America and their potential objectives that many media outlets have overlooked:
1) Direct purchase of US Treasuries – This is not only for the return or safety, as many would naively assume, but to create leverage over our policies, artificially suppress our interest rates to suppress savings and keep our currency artificially strong to suppress our exports and reward consumer spending on imports.
Though these foreign countries are able to crash our currency by cutting their loans to us, which we depend on, it makes no sense for them to do that now. They need time to take all of the dollars out, but then slowly convert them into tangible assets while the dollar still has strength and is still a recognized medium for exchange.
Full Story: Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
Civil Disobedience in the Subdivision: Project Laundry List
Fighting for the right to hang your laundry out to dry
| EcoSalon – Fighting for a hybrid in every garage is cake compared to the battle to allow an outdoor clothesline in every yard. Still, advocacy groups like Project Laundry List are urging a return to the days before newfangled cleaning machines drained our electric bills and resources – a time when nobody flinched at the site of a big bra or jockey shorts flapping in the wind.
Why do these soldiers refuse to fold?
The advocacy group New American Dream calculates that if every American home switched to cold water for four out of five loads, together we can save $6.7 billion per year and keep nearly 50 million tons of carbon out of the atmosphere – the equivalent of removing 10 million cars from the road.
If only 40% of those households also line dried their clothes, the annual carbon savings would more than double.
Founded by Alexander Lee of Condord, NH, Project Laundry List has established a website that tracks states with ordinances banning outdoor clotheslines, such as Oregon. You can watch a compelling CBS video on the site of a feature Bill Geist did about a Bend woman engaging in civil disobedience in her subdivision by fighting for her right to conserve energy.
Full Story: Civil Disobedience in the Subdivision: Project Laundry List | EcoSalon.
It’s Still a Recession, Stupid
OPS: Senator Sanders, fighting for the American People every day.
Senator Sanders Unfiltered:
YouTube – Senator Sanders Unfiltered: It’s Still a Recession, Stupid.
NYT Investigation Exposes Severity of Nationwide Water Contamination; Corporations Violated Clean Water Act Over 500,000 Times in Last Five Years
Democracy NOW! - Free: Video, Audio, Transcript, MP3 Download
A major investigation by the New York Times has found that chemical companies have violated the Clean Water Act more than 500,000 times in the last five years. Most of the violations have gone unpunished, with state regulators taking significant action in just three percent of all cases. An estimated one in ten Americans has been exposed to drinking water that has dangerous chemicals or falls short of federal standards. We speak with Charles Duhigg, the New York Times reporter who carried out the investigation. [includes rush transcript]
Guest:
Why We Need a Government Agency to Defend the Pursuit of Happiness
Get Happy
We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.
By Walter Mosley, The Nation - Americans are an unhappy, unhealthy lot. From the moment we declared our independence from the domination of British rule, we have included the people’s right to pursue happiness as one of the primary privileges of our citizens and the responsibility of our government. Life and liberty are addressed to one degree or another by our executive, legislative and judicial branches, but our potential for happiness has lagged far behind.
As the quote above says (and does not say), freedom was once the province of white men; now the lack of that freedom and the subsequent loss of the potential for happiness belongs to all of us. Our happiness is kept from us by prisonlike schools and meaningless jobs, un(der)employment and untreated physical and psychological ailments, by political leaders who scare the votes out of us and corporate “persons” that buy up all the resources that have been created and defined by our labor.
Full Story: Get Happy.
How Time magazine enables Glenn Beck’s lies
| Media Matters for America – Four years ago, Time magazine devoted its cover story to a puff-piece profile of Ann Coulter, the right-wing ideologue best known for serial lies and wishing death upon those she disagrees with (journalists included). Only, Time forgot about the lies and the bloodlust and portrayed Coulter in a remarkably kind light.
Now, it’s Glenn Beck’s turn.
In its new issue, Time features a cover profile of the Fox demagogue, written by David Von Drehle — a profile that downplays or ignores Beck’s defining qualities, draws false equivalencies between liberals and conservatives, portrays obvious lies as simple differences of perspective, and omits Beck’s most shocking and outrageous statements.
In the opening paragraph, Time describes last weekend’s Beck-organized, right-wing temper tantrum in Washington, in which conservative activists got together to air a disparate array of sometimes contradictory grievances. Here’s how it dealt with the size of the crowd, right in the first paragraph:
If you get your information from liberal sources, the crowd numbered about 70,000, many of them greedy racists. If you get your information from conservative sources, the crowd was hundreds of thousands strong, perhaps as many as a million, and the tenor was peaceful and patriotic.
But here’s what Time left out: Those conservative sources are flat-out lying.
Full Story: How Time magazine enables Glenn Beck’s lies | Media Matters for America.
Global network detects sign of atomic bomb testing
The Associated Press: - UNITED NATIONS — Iran, Israel and the five nuclear powers that are permanent Security Council members are part of a global network to detect signs of testing of a new atomic bomb, a positive sign of cooperation in the bid to halt the spread of such weapons, the head of the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty organization said Friday.
The monitoring network has not been widely reported nor have its participants, including Iran, which the West believes is pursuing nuclear weapons, and Israel, which is widely believed to possess a nuclear arsenal but won’t say as much.
Tibor Toth said at a news conference that a system to detect and verify atomic blasts that was started in 2000 now has 270 monitoring facilities and expects to increase the number to 340.
The stations rely on four technologies: seismic, sensing the shock waves of an underground blast; hydroacoustic, listening for underwater explosions; infrasound, picking up the low-frequency sound of an atmospheric test; and radionuclide detection, sampling the air for a test’s radioactive byproducts.
The data is transmitted to the Vienna headquarters of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization and relayed to its signatory nations, including the U.S., which signed the pact in 1996, only for the Senate to reject it three years later.
Full Story: The Associated Press: Global network detects sign of atomic bomb testing.
White House rails against ad protesting new consumer agency
White House calls attack wildly misleading
- The Boston Globe – – With his cherubic face, white apron, and racks of sausage links, a neighborhood butcher would seem an unlikely target of White House ire. But Obama administration officials contend the photograph of a butcher is part of a misleading attack on the president’s plan to prevent another Wall Street meltdown.
The image is being used by the US Chamber of Commerce, one of the most powerful business organizations in the country, as part of an advertising campaign that criticizes President Obama’s proposal for a new consumer protection agency.
Obama says the new arm of government is needed to protect borrowers from the types of risky lending practices that helped trigger the nation’s economic crisis. But Wall Street and other US business groups see the proposed new bureau, which would be called the Consumer Financial Protection Agency, as a heavy-handed government intrusion. They have made it a prime target of their opposition to new regulations.
Enter the butcher.
Full Story: White House rails against ad protesting new consumer agency – The Boston Globe.
“Personhood” Legislation Chips Away at Women’s Rights
- | The Progressive – Opponents of abortion are backing legislation across the country that would give legal rights to embryos from the instant of conception.
These efforts might be wrapped up in the rhetoric of dignity, but make no mistake: “Personhood” laws would weaken women’s rights.
This week, anti-abortion activists in Missouri launched their campaign for “personhood” for fertilized eggs. The Missouri campaign follows on the heels of efforts to create a “personhood’ amendment in Colorado and Florida.
These proposals would ban abortion in all cases, including incest and rape, and criminalize some forms of contraception.
The state legislatures of Montana and North Dakota have already rejected proposed “personhood” laws this year. Petition drives are also under way in Mississippi, Montana, and Nevada.
Full Story: “Personhood” Legislation Chips Away at Women’s Rights | The Progressive.
Russia Scraps Missile Deployment After Obama Cancels Missile Shield
- VOA News – - Russia says it has scrapped plans to deploy missiles in a region near Poland after U.S. President Barack Obama canceled plans for a missile defense system in Central Europe.
In a radio interview Saturday, Russian Deputy Defense Minister Vladimir Popovkin said Mr. Obama’s move has made the deployment of Iskander short-range missiles in the Kaliningrad region unnecessary.
President Obama said Thursday he is replacing the planned missile defense system with what he called a new approach for defending the United States and its NATO allies from a missile threat from Iran.
Russia had fiercely opposed the earlier planned system as a threat to its security.
Full Story: VOA News – Russia Scraps Missile Deployment After Obama Cancels Missile Shield.
Did Bush Continue to Secretly Operate Total Information Awareness?
- Jason Leopold - t r u t h o u t - Back in 2001, the Defense Department was briefed about a massive data mining system that officials said was aimed at identifying alleged terrorists who lived and communicated with people in the United States.
The new intelligence program granted traditional law enforcement agencies as well as the FBI and the CIA the authority to conduct what was then referred to as “suspicionless surveillance” of American citizens.
“Suspicionless Surveillance” was developed by the Pentagon’s controversial Total Information Awareness department, led by Adm. John Poindexter, the former national security adviser, who secretly sold weapons to Middle Eastern terrorists in the 1980s during the Iran-Contra affair and was convicted of a felony for lying to Congress and destroying evidence. The convictions were later overturned on appeal.
Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, had referred to Poindexter as “the architect of a program to extend surveillance of private databases.”
Rotenberg said Poindexter was involved in a 1984 policy directive criticized by civil liberties groups and lawmakers, who said it would hand the National Security Agency control over privately held information. The directive was voided with the passage of the 1987 Computer Security Act.
Full Story: t r u t h o u t | Did Bush Continue to Secretly Operate Total Information Awareness?.
Michael Moore blames capitalism for meltdown
Two weeks before his movie “Capitalism: A Love Story” opens nationwide, filmmaker Michael Moore swept through San Francisco on Thursday with a rally, a Commonwealth Club appearance and an unlikely new antagonist: Democrats.
When Moore criticized Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., this week on NBC’s “The Jay Leno Show” for getting “sweetheart loans” from a mortgage company he was charged with overseeing, Moore said he got a call from a top Democratic Party official telling him to “back off.” (Dodd was cleared by a Senate ethics panel.)
But Moore, a longtime supporter of a single-payer health plan, didn’t back off.
In an interview with The Chronicle, he chided House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for not being aggressive enough in pushing health care reform and ripped President Obama’s financial team as “the foxes guarding the henhouse.”
Full Story: Michael Moore blames capitalism for meltdown.
Pressure Builds On Pentagon to Investigate Electrocution Death in Iraq
By Jeremy Scahill, RebelReports -
Congressional pressure is increasing on the Department of Defense to investigate the apparent electrocution death of Adam Hermanson, a 25 year old DoD contractor who died September 1 in a shower at Camp Olympia inside the Green Zone in Baghdad, Iraq. Hermanson is an Air Force veteran who did three tours in Iraq before joining Triple Canopy, the firm the Obama administration has chosen to take over much of Blackwater’s major “security” work in Iraq.
This week, New Hampshire Representative Carol Shea-Porter, a member of the House Armed Services Committee and Illinois Representative Jan Schakowsky, a member of the Intelligence Committee, called on Defense Secretary Robert Gates to “fully investigate the circumstances” surrounding Hermanson’s death.
“We are appalled by the Pentagon’s failure to pursue answers to the questions surrounding this tragedy,” they wrote in a September 17 letter to Gates. “Since Mr. Hermanson was in Iraq working on a DoD contract, we believe that the Pentagon has a responsibility to fully investigate.” Citing comments from Major Shawn Turner to The Nation that there is “no indication that US forces will be launching a formal investigation” because Hermanson’s death took place at a facility that “does not fall under DoD responsibility,” the lawmakers told Gates: “it is disturbing that the Department of Defense apparently wishes to distance itself, now that a fatality has occurred.”
Full Story: RebelReports – Pressure Builds On Pentagon to Investigate Electrocution Death in Iraq.
Official: FCC to propose ‘Net neutrality’ rules
The head of the FCC plans to propose new rules that would prohibit Internet service providers from interfering with the free flow of information and certain applications over their networks, an official at the agency said Saturday.
The Federal Communications Commission chairman, Julius Genachowski, will announce the proposed rules in a speech Monday at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank, the official said on condition of anonymity because news of the announcement had not been formally released.
The proposals would uphold a pledge Barack Obama made during the presidential campaign to support Internet neutrality — the equal treatment of Internet traffic. That would bar Internet service providers such as Verizon Communications Inc., Comcast Corp. or AT&T Inc., from slowing or blocking certain services or content flowing through their vast networks.
Without strict rules ensuring Net neutrality, consumer watchdogs fear the communications companies could interfere with the transmission of content, such as TV shows delivered over the Internet, that compete with services the ISPs offer, like cable television.
Full Story: Official: FCC to propose ‘Net neutrality’ rules by AP: Yahoo! Tech.
Man Arrested For Asking Anthem Blue Cross/Shield About His Rate Increase
Video at link | Crooks and Liars - It gets more unbelievable by the day, doesn’t it?
Joe Szakos leads the Virginia Organizing Project, an almost fifteen year-old community organization that Health Care for America Now works with in Virginia to organize for health care reform. Szakos’s organization employs dozens of people, and they get their health care through Anthem Blue Cross/Blue Shield.
This year, Szakos was informed that Anthem was going to increase the premiums on Virginia Organizing Project’s health plan by 14.1%. Around the same time, the Virginia Organizing Project received an email from Anthem:
We strongly support reform that builds a strong, sustainable private-sector health care system – and strongly oppose creating a government-run health plan. We are urging our elected officials in Washington to take bipartisan action that will accomplish that. We are educating policymakers in Washington and working with our trade associations to encourage Congress to build on the current system and not disrupt the quality, affordable coverage on which our members depend….
As our elected officials debate health care, they need to hear directly from you.
Szakos immediately had some questions for Anthem. Chief among them, why is Anthem using its resources to lobby against health care reform with a public health insurance option while at the same time increasing rates by 14.1%?
Full Story: Man Arrested For Asking Anthem Blue Cross/Shield About His Rate Increase | Crooks and Liars.
Landmark Verdict: Jury Slaps ADM With $6.7M Wrongful Death Judgment
- In These Times – When he still a teenager, Francisco Moreno Garcia left his small hometown in southern Mexico for El Norte more than a decade ago to earn money for his family. 
He worked in California, then he and his cousin headed to Decatur, Ill., where they heard there were good jobs at the Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) bioproducts plant.
But the job he hoped would sustain his parents and siblings back in Mexico instead took his life. In a landmark decision on Sept. 11, a mostly white jury agreed that Garcia’s life was worth just as much as that of a wealthy white American, as attorney Donald Shapiro describes it, and ordered ADM to pay $6.7 million to Garcia’s family back in Mexico.
Full Story: Landmark Verdict: Jury Slaps ADM With $6.7M Wrongful Death Judgment – Working In These Times.
Obama’s smart decision to scuttle Bush’s European missile-defense plan.
- By Fred Kaplan – Slate Magazine - President Barack Obama’s scuttling of George W. Bush’s plan to deploy a missile-defense system in the Czech Republic and Poland—or, more particularly, the way he scuttled it—amounts to a remarkably shrewd bit of politics and statesmanship.
The decision, which he announced this morning after completing a six-month review of the program, removes the biggest obstacle in U.S.-Russian relations—a step that could clear the way for cooperative measures on a wide range of international issues—without scrapping the general idea of some sort of “missile shield” for Europe.
Bush came up with the plan to put 10 anti-missile interceptors and radars on Czech and Polish soil in 2007, and the Russians have been clamoring about it ever since. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin accused Bush of trying to upset the balance of power.
Full Story: Obama’s smart decision to scuttle Bush’s European missile-defense plan. – By Fred Kaplan – Slate Magazine.
Home Loan Modification Company Charged, Accused of Scamming Consumers
– ABC News- Following an ABC News investigation that exposed a suspect California loan modification company taking thousands of dollars from desperate homeowners while providing little to no help with their lenders, civil charges have been filed against the Nations Housing Modification Center (NHMC), the Federal Trade Commission announced today.
At a news conference in Washington, FTC Chief Jon Liebowitz said that charges had been brought against the NHMC of San Diego, whose operations were essentially shut down after authorities raided the offices following reports on Good Morning America and World News.
“In our case against the so-called Nation’s Housing Modification Center, the malefactors guaranteed to modify mortgages,” Liebowitz said. “They required a minimum upfront fee of $2500 or 3000 or more but they failed to deliver on those promises. And they made the situation worse by actually telling the people who signed up for them not to make any more mortgage payments – that resulted in some consumers losing their homes.”
Full Story: Home Loan Modification Company Charged, Accused of Scamming Consumers – ABC News.
42 states lose jobs in August, up from 29 in July
WASHINGTON – Forty-two states lost jobs last month, up from 29 in July, with the biggest net payroll cuts coming in Texas, Michigan, Georgia and Ohio.
The Labor Department also reported Friday that 27 states saw their unemployment rates increase in August, and 14 states and Washington D.C., reported unemployment rates of 10 percent or above.
The report shows jobs remain scarce even as most analysts believe the economy is pulling out of the worst recession since the 1930s. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said earlier this week that the recovery isn’t likely to be rapid enough to reduce unemployment for some time.
The jobless rate nationwide is expected to peak above 10 percent next year, from its current 9.7 percent.
Full Story: 42 states lose jobs in August, up from 29 in July – Yahoo! News.
The Harding Affair: Evidence of Racism Rising
By JOHN W. DEAN
This is the first in a two-part series of columns on the Harding affair and letters.—Ed.
Typically, I have little interest in book reviews. But I am interested in the reviews that have greeted a new book for which I have written a foreword. The book was just published: The Harding Affair: Love and Espionage during the Great War. It examines long-suppressed love letters written by no less than Warren G. Harding, our twenty-ninth president.
The analysis of the letters was written by an attorney friend of mine from Cleveland, James D. Robenalt, who — when not handling major litigation for his law firm, Thompson Hine LLC — is frequently thinking about or digging into Ohio history. As I’ve explained in the foreword, Jim obtained these extraordinary letters through unusual circumstances.
Harding wrote these letters a century ago to his long-time lover and mistress, Carrie Phillips. There are over one hundred letters, many deeply passionate and some remarkably explicit. This was a serious romance that lasted about fifteen years, beginning before Harding was elected to the U.S. Senate, and running until shortly before he was elected president in 1920. Some of his handwritten letters run forty pages in length. Collectively, they provide a new view and understanding of Harding – and, unless you are a committed prude, deeply hypocritical, or a racist, that new understanding is not for the worse.
Full Story: The Harding Affair: Evidence of Racism Rising.
No public option in Michelle Obama speech on Obama health plan
Up until now Michelle Obama had been silent in the health care debate. It was curious because her biography listed her as a former hospital administrator. But a closer look at her functions as a hospital administrator made clear why she had steered clear of the debate so far. Her job was part of the problem not the solution, a $316,000 a year job which was created for her when Obama was elected Senator.
But the White House embarking on a media blitz this weekend is sending out the First Lady to promote the President’s health care plan from the point of view of its affects on women and families.
But in a speech given on what health care reform means to women and families, Mrs. Obama, in outlining the President’s plan, conspicuously left out the public option as an integral part of the plan. In mentioning was she called the President;s three pronged approach, the public option was missing from the choices an insurance exchange would offer. This was no accident. Every word of her speech was vetted by White House staff and no doubt approved by the President himself.
Full Story: No public option in Michelle Obama speech on Obama health plan.
The rich still run the US
America’s traumatic recession should have ushered in a wave of progressive political reform. It hasn’t happened
| Mark Weisbrot | guardian.co.uk – Corruption takes many forms in different countries and locations. Here in the United States it may not be as common to pay off a judge or a customs official as it is in most low- and middle-income countries, but we do have quite a bit of legalised bribery, especially in the form of electoral campaign contributions. The most obvious current case is that of healthcare reform, where the powerful insurance, pharmaceutical and other lobbies are in the process of vetoing some of the most important parts of the healthcare reform that most Americans want and need.
For example, the vast majority of Americans favour a public option – insurance offered by the government, as we have for senior citizens in the Medicare programme – yet these powerful interests are blocking it in the Senate. This is despite the modest nature of the reform, which would not provide free or universal insurance, but rather an additional option that employers and individuals could buy into, with some subsidies for those who could not afford it. The insurance companies don’t want competition, and the pharmaceutical corporations don’t want another potentially large buyer that could bargain against their own monopoly power over the prices of patented drugs.
The United States is a rich country, so it seems obvious that our forms of corruption are preferable to those that plague developing countries. And they are, in the sense that it that it is always better to be a rich country and have rich country problems than to be a poor or middle-income country. But if we look at the US from the point of view of its potential – and I don’t mean utopian dreams but merely what is quite feasible and practical in the immediate or near future – it seems that we have a very limited form of democracy.
Full Story: The rich still run the US | Mark Weisbrot | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk.
Bernie Sanders vs. Barack Obama on Wall Street
| The Progressive - On Saturday, I heard Senator Bernie Sanders speak about the criminal acts that occurred on Wall Street, which created last year’s crash.
Sanders said he wanted to see some of the criminals behind bars.
And he also said he was sick of the expression “too big to fail.” If banks are too big to fail, he said, they’re too big to exist. So he demanded that we dismantle them into smaller units.
Two days later, Barack Obama went to New York to give his big speech on financial reform.
Unlike Sanders, Obama didn’t threaten Wall Street execs with jail.
And he didn’t talk about busting up the bank holding companies.
Full Story: Bernie Sanders vs. Barack Obama on Wall Street | The Progressive.
Too much radiation for astronauts to make it to Mars
- New Scientist - FORGET the risk of exploding rockets or getting sideswiped by a wayward bit of space junk. Radiation may be the biggest hurdle to human exploration beyond low-Earth orbit and could put a damper on a recently proposed mission to Mars orbit.
A panel tasked by the White House with reviewing NASA’s human space flight activities (New Scientist, 22 August, p 
suggests sending astronauts to one of Mars’s moons, Phobos or Deimos, among other possibilities raised in its report released last week (http://tinyurl.com/mbajav).
From such a perch, astronauts could use remote-controlled robots to explore the Martian surface and retrieve samples – from the planet as well as the moon itself – for later close-up study on Earth. This would avoid the need to develop expensive hardware to land humans on a body with substantial gravity, like Mars.
“I, for one, would go to Phobos or Deimos in a heartbeat, even without any hope of landing on Mars,” says planetary scientist Pascal Lee of the Mars Institute, a California-based research organisation.
Full Story: Too much radiation for astronauts to make it to Mars – space – 16 September 2009 – New Scientist.
Senior Democrat turns healthcare debate into fight over illegal immigration
- TheHill.com – Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) is putting Democrats in a bind by seeking to let illegal immigrants benefit from the healthcare overhaul.
Menendez, the only Hispanic senator, has considerable leverage with Democrats because he may represent the deciding vote on the Senate Finance Committee set to mark up the legislation next week. He’s also the party’s campaign committee chairman, giving him added influence.
Menendez said he is withholding his support for the bill until his concerns about immigration and other matters are addressed.
His objections come one week after President Barack Obama staunchly disputed GOP accusations that the healthcare proposal would aid illegal immigrants — prompting the now-famous “You lie!” outburst from Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.).
The Senate Finance Committee bill, drafted by centrist Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.), does not allow illegal immigrants to purchase health coverage over an exchange set up to create competition within the insurance industry and reduce costs.
Full Story: Senior Democrat turns healthcare debate into fight over illegal immigration – TheHill.com.
A President was killed the last time right-wing hatred ran wild like this
That being John F. Kennedy, who was gunned down in Dallas, of course.
| Media Matters for America – I’ve been thinking a lot of Kennedy and Dallas as I’ve watched the increasingly violent rhetorical attacks on Obama be unfurled. As Americans yank their kids of class in order to save them from being exposed to the President of the United States who only wanted to urge them to excel in the classroom. And as unvarnished hate and name-calling passed for health care ‘debate’ this summer.
The radical right, aided by a GOP Noise Machine that positively dwarfs what existed in 1963, has turned demonizing Obama–making him into a vile object of disgust–into a crusade. It’s a demented national jihad, the likes of which this country has not seen in modern times.
But I’ve been thinking about Dallas in 1963 because I’ve been recalling the history and how that city stood as an outpost for the radical right, which never tried to hide its contempt for the New England Democrat.
Now, in this this month’s Vanity Fair, Sam Kashner offers up in rich detail the hatred that ran wild in Dallas in 1963. To me, the similarity between Dallas in 1963 and today’s unhinged Obama hate is downright chilling.
Full Story: A President was killed the last time right-wing hatred ran wild like this | Media Matters for America.
Risks From Toxic Ingredients In Cosmetics, And Personal Care Products
The Cancer Prevention Coalition and Organic Consumers Association warn of major risks to health from the great majority of cosmetics and personal care products.
As the Obama Administration works with Congress to pass comprehensive health care reform legislation this year, President Barack Obama told reporters at the July 10 Group of 8 news conference, “We have to bend the cost curve on health care, and there are some very specific ways of doing that – - game changers that incentivize quality as opposed to quantity, that emphasize prevention.”
Most cosmetics and personal care products on store shelves today contain five major categories of toxic ingredients. These are: frank carcinogens (cancer causing); precursors of or “hidden” carcinogens; endocrine or hormonally disruptive; penetration enhancers; and allergens.
Full Story: Samuel S. Epstein: Risks From Toxic Ingredients In Cosmetics, And Personal Care Products.
Scalia recalls 9-11 experience for Jewish daily – WCAX.COM Local Vermont News, Weather and Sports-
NEW YORK (AP) – Justice Antonin Scalia has defended the court’s accommodation of religion in the public sphere in recent rulings, saying the founding fathers would want it that way.
Scalia told the Jewish daily newspaper Hamodia for Wednesday editions that it was never U.S. constitutional, social or legal tradition to exclude religion. He noted that the Supreme Court recently allowed the Ten Commandments on the grounds of the Texas State Legislature.
He said current law does not mean the government “cannot accommodate religion, and indeed favor religion.”
Scalia said he was at a judges’ conference in Rome during the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, when a foreign judge told him he wished his country’s leader could invoke God during a national emergency as President Bush did.
Full Story: Scalia recalls 9-11 experience for Jewish daily – WCAX.COM Local Vermont News, Weather and Sports-.
Dodd to Introduce Bill Tackling Overdraft Fees
The Washington Independent » -Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) will soon unveil legislation to rein in the overdraft fees that banks charge consumers who exceed their balances with debit card purchases, American Banker reported Thursday (subscription required).
The bill is sure to provoke an outcry from the banking industry, which claims the overdraft policy protects consumers by covering their purchases even when accounts have run dry. But many lawmakers and consumer groups maintain that the fees — averaging nearly $30 a pop — are excessive, particularly because consumers are rarely informed that they’re about to exceed their balance — or that a $30 penalty will accompany their latte purchase.
There’s a lot at stake here. Overdraft fees are estimated to bring the banks more than $38 billion this year alone, The Washington Post reported today, citing data from Moebs Services, an Illinois-based financial research firm.
Similar legislation to rein in overdrafts, introduced by Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y), has been sitting idle in the House for months.
Full Story: The Washington Independent » Dodd to Introduce Bill Tackling Overdraft Fees.
: When Will Healthcare Get its Norma Rae?
GRITtv with Laura Flanders »
Crystal Lee Sutton died last week. You might know her by her “other” name. It was Sutton’s story that inspired the film Norma Rae, starring Sally Field who won an Oscar, a Golden Globe and Best Actress award at Cannes for her portrayal of Sutton, a North Carolina union organizer in the early 1970s. In an act of defiance Sutton wrote the word “UNION” on a piece of cardboard and stood up on her work table at the J.P. Stevens textile plant. Her co-workers followed and turned their machines off in solidarity.
After hearing of her death, Field said that, portraying Crystal Lee in Norma Rae “not only elevated me as an actress, but as a human being.”
Sutton fought for the working poor much of her life. What she also had to fight for, it turns out, was health care. After being diagnosed with cancer a few years back, she was told that her insurance wouldn’t cover the potentially life saving medication she needed. By the time the approval came through Sutton’s cancer had spread.
Speaking of her own predicament, Sutton said, “How in the world can it take so long to find out [whether they would cover the medicine or not] when it could be a matter of life and death. It is almost like, in a way, committing murder.”
She died at 68.
Full Story: GRITtv with Laura Flanders » F Word: When Will Healthcare Get its Norma Rae?.
Joseph Stiglitz: “Our Faith in Markets Blinds Us”
Joseph Stiglitz questions traditional economic indicators.
Ranging over topics from the urgency of reconsidering how to calculate a nation’s wealth to that of rethinking the reform of the capitalist system, American economist Joseph Stiglitz confides in Libération during an interview with Laurent Joffrin, Christian Losson and François Sergent.
Libération: Alternative indicators for the calculation of wealth are proliferating. How has the report of the commission over which you presided been a game changer?
Joseph Stiglitz: It shows that to refer to gross domestic product (GDP) only as the sole indicator of wealth leads to an impasse. Created to calculate market activity, GDP has, unfortunately, been used more to calibrate the measure of well-being or the quality of life. In a society where performance reigns, this single statistical figure has more influence than all others. We must democratize statistical measures by integrating subjective measures (environmental quality, personal and economic security, habitat, etc.).
Full Story: t r u t h o u t | Joseph Stiglitz: “Our Faith in Markets Blinds Us”.
Incomes of young in 8-year nose dive
– USATODAY.com - The incomes of the young and middle-aged — especially men — have fallen off a cliff since 2000, leaving many age groups poorer than they were even in the 1970s, a USA TODAY analysis of new Census data found.
People 54 or younger are losing ground financially at an unprecedented rate in this recession, widening a gap between young and old that had been expanding for years.
While the young have lost ground, older people have grown more prosperous over the years and the decades. Older women have done best of all.
Full Story: Incomes of young in 8-year nose dive – USATODAY.com.
Woman, Dies After Catching Fire During Surgery
ST. LOUIS — A southern Illinois woman died after being severely burned in a flash fire while undergoing surgery, a rare but vexing dilemma in operating rooms. Janice McCall, 65, of Energy, Ill., died Sept. 8 at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tenn., six days after being burned on the operating table at Heartland Regional Medical Center in Marion, Ill., her family’s attorney said.
Attorney Robert Howerton said he had requested medical records from the Marion hospital and that he had few details about what happened. He declined to say why McCall was having surgery.
The Tennessee state medical examiner’s office said McCall died from complications of thermal burns and classified her death as accidental.
“The family is in shock and suffering their grief,” Howerton said Thursday. “Every family has an anchor, and she was it. They’re really just devastated.”
Full Story: Janice McCall, Ill. Woman, Dies After Catching Fire During Surgery.
Nobel winner Joseph Stiglitz predicts recession’s end: not now, but 2012
Did you hear? The recession is over! Or at least it will be in the foreseeable future! And several of our leading economic sages have said so, so that makes it true. Or does it? Not when there’s a prominent naysayer like Joseph Stiglitz. The Nobel-winning economist, a former head of the World Bank and now a professor at Columbia University, has a blunt — if characteristically bearish — warning of more economic turbulence ahead.
– DailyFinance - Stiglitz’s outlook is anything but rosy. Americans must prepare for the recession to continue until 2012 — practically, if not technically — he said this week in an interview with DailyFinance. Stiglitz blasts the use of complex derivatives, which he says go against “the social good,” and he reserves special contempt for Goldman Sachs and the $13 billion injection it received from the U.S. as part of AIG’s counter-party bailout last year.
Just after returning to New York from Japan, Britain, and economically devastated Iceland, Stiglitz paints a picture of a U.S. economy that has stanched the most serious bleeding but remains deeply wounded. “I think we would be lucky to be out of the recession by 2012,” Stiglitz says. “2010 may be a year of positive growth, though far weaker than would be necessary to get unemployment down significantly.” Central to the grim diagnosis, Stiglitz says, is the lack of new jobs — an argument echoed by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, which this week said high unemployment in the world’s wealthiest countries could last years.
Full Story: Nobel winner Joseph Stiglitz predicts recession’s end: not now, but 2012 — DailyFinance.
Can Angelides Panel Bring Justice to Wall Street?
Last Chance For Justice?
The new Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission may be the only opportunity to nail Wall Street.
| Newsweek.com - As he ushered in a new era in Washington, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s theme song was “Happy Days Are Here Again,” but people tend to forget that along with sunny optimism FDR delivered a strong dose of justice. He left that job to Ferdinand Pecora, a fierce New York prosecutor whom Roosevelt urged to investigate Wall Street’s perniciousness. Pecora delivered big time. He humiliated and forced the resignation of Charles Mitchell, the head of National City Bank (later Citibank), and oversaw a 12,000-page probe into the causes of the Great Depression that gave birth to a new regulatory framework, including the Securities and Exchange Commission (Pecora was later one of the first commissioners). Other Wall Streeters were prosecuted, convicted, and jailed.
The theme song to our current era might be, more appropriately, “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.”
Two years into the revelation that Wall Street was playing a giant confidence game with the world, disguising bad and often fraudulent mortgages as highly rated securities, selling scam derivatives by the trillions, there have been no major prosecutions. Afloat in taxpayer bailouts and the giant bonuses they’re awarding themselves once again, Wall Streeters are back to being their feisty selves. No executive has gone to jail. The only ones who’ve resigned are those who had no choice because their companies disappeared (James Cayne of Bear Stearns, Dick Fuld of Lehman, John Thain of Merrill Lynch) or who were shown to be such astonishing incompetents that their boards had no choice but to can them (Stanley O’Neal of Merrill, Chuck Prince of Citigroup). The handful of prosecutions on the horizon are not promising: the trial of former Bear Stearns hedge-fund managers Ralph Cioffi and Matthew Tannin starts in mid-October, but their lawyers are confident they can show that the duo was simply foolish, not criminal. A grand jury has been convened to look into the behavior of Joseph Cassano, the former AIG executive who sold $500 billion worth of credit-default swaps without hedging them. But Cassano will no doubt argue the same thing: “I was just a moron.” It will be hard for any jury to disagree.
Full Story: Can Angelides Panel Bring Justice to Wall Street? | Newsweek Voices – Michael Hirsh | Newsweek.com.
UBS faces Swiss exchange probe
Investigation includes release of price-sensitive information 
FT.com – The Swiss stock exchange is investigating UBS over possible breaches of rules covering the disclosure of price-sensitive information.
The announcement, made on Friday morning, will add to the bank’s woes as it works to rebuild its investment banking and private banking businesses following the settlement of a long running legal battle with US tax authorities.
The SIX Swiss Exchange’s monitoring and enforcement unit said it had opened a probe into “possible breaches by UBS AG of the provisions on the ad hoc publicity in the period from 2007 to the end of 2008 as well as possible breaches of the Corporate Governance Directive in connection with the bank’s 2008 annual report.”
Full Story: FT.com / Companies / Banks – UBS faces Swiss exchange probe.
Gaza’s Water Supply Near Collapse
RAMALLAH, (IPS) – The International Committee of the Red Cross has warned that Gaza’s access to safe supply of drinking water could cease at any time. The World Health Organisation (WHO) says outbreaks of disease could be triggered as a consequence.
The warnings follow a United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) report Monday that “Gaza’s underground water system is in danger of collapse after recent conflict compounded by years of overuse and contamination.”
“An outbreak of Hepatitis A and parasitic infections could occur at any time,” Mahmoed Daher from WHO in Gaza told IPS. “Already the number of people, especially children, suffering from diarrhoea has risen dramatically.”
“We have noticed an increase in people suffering from kidney diseases from water contaminated with toxins, as well as babies born with an unnatural blue tinge,” Munther Shoblak from Gaza’s Coastal Municipalities Water Utility (CMWU) told IPS.
The UNEP report focuses on a rise in saltwater intrusion from the sea caused by over-extraction of ground water, and pollution from sewage and agricultural run-off, with toxic levels high enough to put infants at risk of nitrate poisoning.
Full Story: MIDEAST: Gaza’s Water Supply Near Collapse – IPS ipsnews.net.
Can America Be Salvaged?
by David Michael Green
| CommonDreams.org – I really don’t know what to say anymore, about a country in which proposing a new and better version of corporate-plunder masquerading as national healthcare gets you burned in effigy for being a socialist stooge by gun-toting angry mobs.
I really don’t know what to say anymore, about a country in which the same people who hate you for being a socialist simultaneously hate you for being a fascist.
I really don’t know what to say anymore, about a country in which angry mobs of supposed anti-socialist demonstrators scream at their congressional representatives to “keep your government hands off my Medicare”.
I really don’t know what to say anymore, about a country in which claims that the government is going to start killing off seniors are taken seriously by tens of millions of people.
Full Story: Can America Be Salvaged? | CommonDreams.org.
Selective Deficit Disorder
By David Sirota
Truthdig - Watching the health care debate unfold these days is a little like watching scenes from “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”—the ones showing a collage of strung-out, deranged or otherwise incapacitated patients rotting away in a squalid psychiatric ward.
As the insurance industry’s Nurse Ratched lurks in the background, congressional Democrats cower in the corner, fearing the phantom menace of their own shadows. Standing next to the window, suicidal Republican leaders rant about “death panels” and threaten to splatter their electoral prospects onto the pavement below. Nearby, White House officials struggle with multiple-personality ailments as they mumble contradictory statements about the public option. Meanwhile, tea party protesters lie on the floor in the fetal position, soiling their hospital diapers as they throw incoherent tantrums about everything from socialism to communism to czarism to Nazism. And, not surprisingly, Washington reporters just stare off into the distance, having been long ago lobotomized in the wake of their Watergate heyday.
Clearly, the inmates in America’s political sanitarium are each struggling with a different malady. However, they are all suffering from Selective Deficit Disorder—an illness whose symptoms can be particularly difficult to detect.
Full Story: Truthdig – Reports – Selective Deficit Disorder.
Protecting Local Farms
When the spinach contamination epidemic was happening in the fall of 2006, and supermarkets were pulling spinach from their shelves under order from the FDA, many local produce growers experienced a sharp increase in sales. Customers didn’t stop eating spinach and other leafy greens—instead, many went to their farmers’ market to buy local.
“I was guessing it was going to really hurt us, but it was the complete opposite,” said Pete Johnson of Pete’s Greens in Craftsbury, Vermont, one of many growers who reported their sales went up or held steady during the E. coli scare. “People used it as a reason to not buy the California stuff. We sold double the usual amount of spinach for a couple of weeks there.”
As the local food trend has gained momentum in recent years, it has become apparent that consumers want local food not just because it’s fresher and tastes better, but because they believe it’s safer and more wholesome than industrial food.
Full Story: Regulations Pose Threat to Local Farms.
Brazil eyes Amazon sugar cane ban
The Brazilian government has unveiled plans to ban sugar cane plantations in environmentally sensitive areas.
BBC NEWS | | – The proposal, which must be passed by Congress, comes amid concerns that Brazil’s developing biofuels industry is increasing Amazon deforestation.
Environment Minister Carlos Minc said the measures would mean ethanol made from sugar cane would be “100% green”.
The government agenda is becoming more environmentally friendly ahead of the 2010 presidential poll, analysts say.
The plans unveiled by Mr Minc would limit sugar cane plantations to 7.5% of Brazilian territory or 64m hectares, and prevent the clearing of new land for the crop.
Full Story: BBC NEWS | Americas | Brazil eyes Amazon sugar cane ban.
Health Care Reform with Michael Moore
Health Care Reform with Michael Moore. Michael Moore’s view on U.S. Health Care Reform.
YouTube – Health Care Reform with Michael Moore.
Scores of walrus carcasses spotted on coast
ICY CAPE: Dead animals appear to be young; cause of death unknown.
Up to 200 dead walruses have been spotted on the shore of Chukchi Sea on Alaska’s northwest coast.
Federal wildlife researchers from the U.S. Geological Survey on their way to a walrus tagging project spotted 100 to 200 carcasses near Icy Cape about 140 miles southwest of Barrow.
They report the dead walruses appeared to be mostly new calves or yearlings. However, neither the age of the dead walruses nor the cause of death is known, said Bruce Woods, spokesman for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Full Story: Scores of walrus carcasses spotted on coast: Wildlife News | adn.com.
75 Percent of Oklahoma Students Can’t Name the First President
OKLAHOMA CITY — Only one in four Oklahoma public high school students can name the first President of the United States, according to a survey released today.
The survey was commissioned by the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs in observance of Constitution Day on Thursday.
Brandon Dutcher is with the conservative think tank and said the group wanted to find out how much civic knowledge Oklahoma high school students know.
The Oklahoma City-based think tank enlisted national research firm, Strategic Vision, to access students’ basic civic knowledge.
“They’re questions taken from the actual exam that you have to take to become a U.S. citizen,” Dutcher said.
Arctic sea ice at third lowest level
Sea ice cover in the Arctic Ocean reached the third lowest level on record last year, according to the latest Nasa statistics.
- Telegraph – The satellite measurements from the National Snow and Ice Center in Boulder, Colorado showed an increase in the extent of minimum sea ice this summer to two million square miles (5.1 million square km).
This is an increase of 224,000 square miles (580,000 square km) on last year and a 375,000 square miles increase (970,000 square km) on 2007 which was the lowest on record.
Full Story: Arctic sea ice at third lowest level – Telegraph.
Neal Horsley Calls for Assassination
Anti-Abortion Provocateur Takes Aim at Obama
Women’s eNews – By Frederick Clarkson - A minister caused a firestorm last month by calling on followers to pray to God to kill the president. Frederick Clarkson says now Neal Horsley, a man he’s covered for the past decade, wants to take the minister’s prayer campaign national.
Editor’s Note: The following is a commentary. The opinions expressed are those of the author and not necessarily the views of Women’s eNews.
Frederick Clarkson
(WOMENSENEWS)–Rev. Steven L. Anderson is the pastor of the man who made national news for carrying an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle at an August protest outside a hall where President Barack Obama was speaking to the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in Phoenix.
Anderson made news himself when it turned out during what is termed an “imprecatory prayer,” he had, the night before, repeatedly called on God to kill the president because, he believes that among other things, Obama is leading the nation away from God’s laws; has “wrought lewdness in America” and especially, because by virtue of being prochoice, Obama is a “murderer.”
Nationally known anti-abortion militant Neal Horsley, of Carrollton, Georgia, thinks Anderson has the right idea — except that he thinks Christians shouldn’t wait for God to do the job.
Full Story: Women’s eNews – Anti-Abortion Provocateur Takes Aim at Obama.
Senators’ Patriot Act ‘fix’ would eliminate telecom immunity
OPS: A serious effort, or just fishing for campaign “contributions” like Baucus and others have done with Health Care Reform?
Raw Story » A group of US Senators unveiled legislation Thursday aiming to strip telecommunications firms that took part in a hugely controversial Bush-era spying program of immunity from lawsuits.
The bill aims to “fix problems with surveillance laws that threaten the rights and liberties of American citizens” without crippling the government’s ability to track suspected terrorists, the lawmakers said in a joint statement.
The legislation would affect the way the US government can search Americans’ personal records, conduct wiretapping, and otherwise collect and use information on US citizens.
Full Story: Raw Story » Senators’ Patriot Act ‘fix’ would eliminate telecom immunity.
‘You lie’ Exclusive: Wilson kept illegal immigrant in the US; Spokesman mum
Raw Story » The anti-illegal immigration movement is singing Congressman Joe Wilson’s praises, but the lawmaker who was rebuked by the House this week recently helped extend the stay of one of those very “illegals” the activists hope to remove from the country.
Hundreds of illegal immigration opponents are gathering in Washington right now for the annual Federation for Immigration Reform (FAIR) effort to lobby Congress for tighter border controls and other policies designed to keep undocumented immigrants out of the U.S.
This year, they’re making Wilson, a South Carolina Republican, their new poster boy after he famously shouted “You lie!” during President Obama’s speech on healthcare reform last week. Wilson’s outbust occurred as Obama was saying he has no intention of giving illegal immigrants access to health care benefits in his reform plan, and CNN personality and avowed anti-illegal immigration crusader Lou Dobbs is giving Wilson “great credit” for advancing the cause, per The Washington Independent and Politics Daily.
Full Story: Raw Story » ‘You lie’ Wilson shows two faces on illegal immigration.
Former loyal Bushie: Obama advancing ‘fascist, socialist ideals.’
Think Progress » TPMDC reports that Ellen Sauerbrey, who served as President Bush’s Assistant Secretary of State for Population, Refugees, and Migration, told a local Republican group in Maryland last week that President Obama was following in the footsteps of global dictators:
She said that the Obama administration advanced “fascist, socialist ideals.”
“I’m really afraid for the future of our country,” Sauerbrey told attendees at the annual Lincoln/Reagan Dinner of Sept. 12 in Callaway. “Our Constitution is indeed being dismantled.”
Full Story: Think Progress » Former loyal Bushie: Obama advancing ‘fascist, socialist ideals.’.
Corporate Corruption Killing America
Make no mistake: Corporate corruption is a true bipartisan effort, perhaps the most bipartisan enterprise. 
Anyone smart and strong enough to fight delusional thinking and who pays attention to current events should clearly see that corporate corruption of the US political system is so pervasive and powerful that there will be no genuine reform of both the health care and financial sectors.
I always believed that president Obama was just a different color corrupt politician who was subservient to the two-party plutocracy. His so-called reform efforts and ludicrous federal deficit spending should disappoint all his non-delusional supporters.
For health reform the only genuine and sensible reform legislation should have been not much more than a single sentence mandating that every American has a right to full Medicare coverage. Period. End of story. True reform. True universal health insurance.
Full Story: OpEdNews – Article: Corporate Corruption Killing America.
DEFICIT? WHICH DEFICIT!
There are TWO kinds of federal deficits. One is totally within the control of our Federal Government to manage, but the other is an untamed beast that is permitted to run loose and is potentially lethal to our society.
TradeReform.org - Much has been said about “the deficit” without clearly identifying exactly what is being discussed. There are TWO kinds of federal deficits. One is totally within the control of our Federal Government to manage, but the other is an untamed beast that is permitted to run loose and is potentially lethal to our society. Unfortunately, public attention is riveted on the easily controllable deficit, while the extremely dangerous one continues out of control, ignoring the perfectly reasonable techniques that could eliminate its threat.
THE CONTROLLABLE DEFICIT
The more visible and publicly debated deficit is an internal matter that is the function of too much government spending and not enough federal government taxing. It originates in the Federal Government’s power to print money. With the power to print money, the Feds can spend first and tax later. In fact, they might be able to spend without taxing at all. That happened in the first 100 years of our country when taxing was quite minimal. For many years Federal taxation was fairly limited to import tariffs. The result might have been horrendous inflation except for the fact that our country was growing, expanding, and producing more and more goods. As long as the printed money did not exceed the pace of increasing production, there was little inflation and no need to tax.
But that is not where we now are. This seems to be the age of bailouts and stimulus packages. Meanwhile, our production is actually decreasing because of unprecedented outsourcing of manufacturing. The Federal spending is far outpacing the tax revenues, on top of which there are less domestically produced goods to buy. Heavy inflation is the eventual result of these policies – or lack of policies.
Full Story: TradeReform.org – DEFICIT? WHICH DEFICIT!.
U.S. to Hit Debt Ceiling- Again
At $12.1 trillion, the national debt ceiling was just $349 billion away from being topped after unprecedented intervention into the financial markets.
Dustin Ensinger -economyincisis.org - Sometime after the battle over health care reform is over, for the 90th time in the past 69 years lawmakers are set to engage in another contentious debate, this one with a foregone conclusion.
This fall, lawmakers will once again increase the national debt ceiling. The debate will be highly partisan, but the outcome will assuredly be that the U.S will raise its credit limit by about $1 trillion.
At $12.1 trillion, the national debt ceiling was just $349 billion away from being topped after unprecedented intervention into the financial markets that included $700 billion in bailouts and a $787 billion stimulus package.
Full Story: Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
The Ruins in Our Future
Why Red-Colored Snow on the Rockies Is a Major Warning Sign That the West Is Drying Up. The era of cheap and plentiful water in the West is over and that’s bad news for our sprawling cities, agriculture and ecosystems. 
Tomgram: Chip Ward, – All of us have been watching drought in action this summer. When it hits the TV news, though, it usually goes by the moniker of “fire.” As we’ve seen, California, in the third year of a major drought, has been experiencing “a seemingly endless fire that has burned more than 250 square miles of Los Angeles County” (and that may turn out to be just the beginning of another fire season from hell).
Southern California has hardly been the only drought story, though. For those with an eye out, the southern parts of Texas, the hottest state in the union this year, have been in the grips of a monster drought. Seven hundred thousand acres of the state have already burned in 2009, with a high risk of more to come.
Jump a few thousand miles and along with neighboring Syria, Iraq has been going through an almost biblical drought which has turned parts of that country into a dustbowl, sweeping the former soil of the former Fertile Crescent via vast dust storms into the lungs of city dwellers.
In Africa, formerly prosperous Kenya is withering in the face of another fearsome drought that has left people desperate and livestock, crops, and children, as well as elephants, dying.
Full Story: Tomgram: Chip Ward, The Ruins in Our Future.
Why Cooking Matters
We need radical thinking, but we don’t need a revolution. We don’t need an overthrow of capitalism. Nor do we need to become vegetarians. We need not become spartans. We’re just going to have to learn how to cook.
Dan Barber, The Nation. - It’s impossible to overemphasize the importance of good farming for safe and nutritious food. But the campaign for food democracy needs to start with boning knives and cast-iron skillets. A lack of technique behind the stove is, in the end, as complicit in harming human health and the environment as the confinement pig or the corn-fed steer.
Yes, that sixteen-ounce rib-eye takes precious resources like water (approximately 2,500 gallons) and grain (about twelve pounds) away from feeding the poor, and the environmental havoc associated with raising beef most often affects the disenfranchised. By 2050, if we continue this gorging, livestock will be consuming as much as 4 billion people do.
These horrors of conventional animal husbandry are tied to the amount of meat we eat, which is intimately linked to the parts of the animal we choose to eat. That is, choosing the rib-eye–as opposed to choosing, say, the brisket–determines how many animals are produced.
Full Story: Why Cooking Matters.
Anti-Choice Floridians Peddling Constitutional Amendment to Criminalize Birth Control Pill
Anti-Choice Floridians Peddling Constitutional Amendment to Criminalize Birth Control Pill
The “Personhood Amendment” would define someone as a “person,” regardless of age or health status, “from the beginning of the biological development of that human being.”
Florida has done it again, folks.
Yes, the state that brought you Bush v. Gore, the sex offender colony under the bridge, and the shoot-first-ask-questions-later legislation known as the “Stand Your Ground Law” has another idea up its sleeve. And this one’s for the ladies.
Tampa Bay Online reports:
TALLAHASSEE – Anti-abortion conservatives are proposing a new constitutional amendment that critics claim would make it a crime to take birth control pills in Florida.
The “Personhood Amendment” that conservative activists are filing today in Tallahassee would add language to the state constitution that defines someone as a “person,” regardless of age or health status, “from the beginning of the biological development of that human being.”
This, of course, is just another twist on the conventional argument by anti-choice groups that birth control pills are basically murder weapons. “The pill will irritate the lining of the uterus so that the newly formed human being cannot attach to his/her mother’s womb and dies,” reads an explanation on the website of the American Life League, which is supporting similar efforts in other states. “This is called a chemical abortion.”
Would You Know How to Survive After the Oil Crash?
Could you get by without your car, food from outside your community, your job? There’s a bunch of folks who want to show you how. 
By Tara Lohan, AlterNet. – Do you know how to make shoes? Can you build a house? How about grow food? Do you have a doctor and a dentist in your circle of friends?
These are the questions that Andre Angelantoni thinks you should be able to answer in order to plan for the next 10 to 15 years. Angelantoni believes there are radical changes ahead for our society — and no, it’s not the rapture he sees coming, but a post-peak-oil world.
Simply put, peak oil is the point when the world hits the maximum rate of petroleum extraction, and after that, production begins to decline. Since the calculations of geophysicist M. King Hubbert, Ph.D., in 1956, there has been speculation about when (and for some, if) the world will hit its peak production of oil.
Full Story: Would You Know How to Survive After the Oil Crash? | Environment | AlterNet.
Evangelicals Divorce More Often Than “Godless” Europeans?
By Amy DePaul, Bookslut |The Marriage-Go-Round, an analysis of the state of matrimony and partnering in the U.S., owes some small part of its success to timing. It arrived in bookstores amid a string of high-profile marital meltdowns, i.e. Jon and Kate, Mark Sanford, John Edwards, et al. None of which has been a bad thing for author Andrew Cherlin, whose book recently won prominent mentions in Time, Newsweek and The Atlantic.
Lost in the commentaries and essays about marital crisis, however, are some of the surprising findings to emerge from The Marriage-Go-Round, such as this one, for example: Americans prize marriage more highly than do people in other wealthy countries, and they consider it the hallmark of a successful life. Yet they divorce at higher rates, just as they re-partner in higher numbers, causing turnover that may be highly destabilizing for children. The statistic Cherlin likes to cite is that a child in the U.S. has a greater chance of seeing his married parents break up than a child of unmarried parents in Sweden.
Cherlin, a sociologist at Johns Hopkins who has studied families, poverty and marriage for 30 years, gently pries loose the tangled reasons for Americans’ sometimes contradictory impulses when it comes to wedlock. In a recent interview, he explained his book’s key findings, and he also discussed controversial federal policies to promote marriage, the ways that Evangelicals tolerate and may even unknowingly enable divorce, and the quest for gay marriage in the U.S. vs. in Western Europe.
Full Story: Bookslut | An Interview with Andrew Cherlin.
Food Industry Is Now Calling Junk Food ‘Healthy’ – Why Could That Be?
By Jim Hightower, AlterNet. 
Food corporations are hoping to cash in on the growing public concern about nutrition by launching a program that labels some junk food healthy.
Smart is the new cool thing. There’s a smart car, cities now tout smart growth, and you can buy a smart refrigerator. Now comes another breakthrough: Even your breakfast cereal has gotten smart.
At least that’s what we consumers are being told by a group of major food corporations that are hoping to cash-in on the growing public concern about nutrition. Your concern is their concern, they say, so these eager-to-serve marketers have launched a snappy food labeling campaign to guide your nutritional choices. They’ve designated hundreds of their food products as being not just tasty, zesty and zowie — but also good for you.
You’ll know which ones to reach for on the supermarket shelf because they’ll be labeled with a snappy green checkmark on the front of their packages, along with the phrase, “Smart Choices.”
Full Story: Food Industry Is Now Calling Junk Food ‘Healthy’ – Why Could That Be? | | AlterNet.
Paranoia Strikes Deep in America
If Obama and his progressive allies hope to defeat the latest assault on federal power, they will need to go beyond the president’s artful ambivalence.
By Michael Kazin, The Nation. – “If something is not done shortly, this country is going the way of Italy, Germany or Russia, and it is high time we did something,” exclaimed Irenee du Pont, one of the more prominent conservatives of the 1930s. Many of his fellow Americans agreed there was good cause to be alarmed: a new Democratic president was proposing an unprecedented expansion of federal power that would increase taxes on the well-off and dole out benefits to the jobless and other unfortunates. Several spokesmen on the right made more ominous vows: “So help me God, I will be instrumental in taking a Communist from the chair once occupied by
There is nothing particularly novel about today’s protesters, including one failed vice presidential candidate and the chairman of the Republican Party, who have been screaming that Barack Obama is a closet socialist — or fascist — whose plans for reforming the healthcare system will destroy their freedoms and perhaps kill off their loved ones. They are just the latest representatives of a long national tradition: fear of a strong central government that periodically leads some Americans to make extraordinary leaps of logic and challenge the power of the alleged leviathan.
Full Story: Paranoia Strikes Deep in America … Over and Over | Politics | AlterNet.
Barclays sells $12bn of risky assets to Cayman-based fund
• Barclays spins off troublesome loans to Cayman Islands fund
• Former Barclays Capital staff will manage the toxic assets
| guardian.co.uk – Two top bankers are leaving Barclays to manage a fund in the Cayman Islands that is buying $12.3bn (£7.47bn) of the bank’s most troublesome assets.
The deal was criticised by analysts who questioned its complexity, but it will enable the British bank to report a more stable performance in future. Throughout the financial crisis, Barclays has been forced to defend the way it was pricing and accounting for these troublesome assets and is now hoping to smooth out the effect of the investments on its profits.
The assets will not actually be removed from the bank’s balance sheet for regulatory purposes but the accounting treatment will be changed, allowing Barclays to avoid taking further big hits by no longer needing to price its assets at current market values through the convention known as “mark to market”.
Full Story: Barclays sells $12bn of risky assets to Cayman-based fund | Business | guardian.co.uk.
US federal judge quits; cites flat pay, 7 children
OPS: “7 Children” So this asshole is disappointed that the taxpayer won’t fund his hobbies. Don’t let the door……
NEW YORK, Sept 17 (Reuters) – A federal judge in California is resigning to go into private practice, saying his salary is too low to let him support his seven children.
Stephen Larson will step down from the bench on Nov. 2, just 3-1/2 years after becoming a district judge based in Riverside, California, near Los Angeles. He was previously a federal magistrate judge for six years.
“The costs associated with raising our family are increasing significantly, while our salary remains stagnant and, in terms of its purchasing power, is actually declining,” Larson, 44, said in a statement. “I must place my family’s interest, particularly the future of my children, ahead of my own fervent desire to remain a federal judge.”
Larson’s statement was released by the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, where he sits.
Full Story: UPDATE 1-US federal judge quits; cites flat pay, 7 children | Markets | Markets News | Reuters.
Festival of Dangerous Ideas: Archbishop will debate atheist Christopher Hitchens
At the Sydney Opera House in Australia on October 3-4, Sydney’s archbishop Cardinal George Pell will debate Christopher Hitchens, a well-known atheist and author of God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. The debate will take place as part of the first Festival of Dangerous Ideas, which strives to “push the boundaries enough to stimulate, provoke and engage people in wider discussion.” More than 50 other speakers will be participating in the event, covering topics ranging from religion to democracy to genetic enhancement. For more information about the festival, click here: Festival of Dangerous Ideas.
The upcoming debate between the archbishop and the atheist will be taking place around the same time as the premiere of a new Turkish TV game show called, “Penitents Compete.” Scheduled to begin this month, the show challenges four spiritual leaders (a Buddhist monk, a Christian priest, a Jewish rabbi, and a Muslim imam) to convert a group of 10 atheists. Everyone who embraces religion will win a trip to a location that is sacred to their new belief system: Jerusalem, Mecca, Tibet, or the Vatican.
Full Story: Festival of Dangerous Ideas: Archbishop will debate atheist Christopher Hitchens.
Monopoly Looms on Electronic Voting
While we’ve been concentrating on the healthcare debate, the economy and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, another story important to American democracy has gotten inadequate attention: a single company is poised to monopolize the counting of over 75 percent of the nation’s votes.
Earlier this month, Election Systems & Software (ES&S), which counted roughly 50 percent of the ballots in the last four major U.S. elections, purchased Diebold’s electronic voting unit, Premier Election Solutions, which controls roughly a third of the voting machine market.
The merger of these two companies has set off alarm bells, and not just in the voting activist community.
Hart InterCivic, a competitor in the voting machine market, has filed a lawsuit seeking a federal court injunction to block the merger as an antitrust violation and a threat to “the integrity of the voting process in the United States.”
Full Story: Consortiumnews.com.
Obama’s Website Quietly Drops Support of Public Option
The Reality Check » - It looks like President Obama’s campaign site cum community organizing website, Organizing for America (OFA), has quietly dropped its claim that the “public option” is a “must” in its healthcare policies open letter to Congress.
Originally the open letter told Congress that it “must” vote for the public option. The second bullet point in the OFA’s letter originally read as follows:
* Guarantee choice – Every American must have the freedom to choose their plan and doctor – including the choice of a public insurance option.
(A screen shot of the relevant section of the original is page below. While it lasts, here is the Google cached page.)
Full Story: The Reality Check » Blog Archive » Obama’s Website Quietly Drops Support of Public Option.
Health Ills Abound as Farm Runoff Fouls Wells
– NYTimes.com – MORRISON, Wis. — All it took was an early thaw for the drinking water here to become unsafe.
There are 41,000 dairy cows in Brown County, which includes Morrison, and they produce more than 260 million gallons of manure each year, much of which is spread on nearby grain fields. Other farmers receive fees to cover their land with slaughterhouse waste and treated sewage.
In measured amounts, that waste acts as fertilizer. But if the amounts are excessive, bacteria and chemicals can flow into the ground and contaminate residents’ tap water.
Full Story: Health Ills Abound as Farm Runoff Fouls Wells – Series – NYTimes.com.
Sotomayor Issues Challenge to a Century of Corporate Law
OPS: Keep in mind that this is the perspective of the “Murdoch Journal”. Extract from END CORPORATE “PERSONHOOD”: An 1886 Supreme Court clerk’s headnotes misreading (Santa Clara County vs. Southern Pacific Railroad) applied the 14th Amendment to corporations, extending to them all the rights, but none of the responsibilities, of human persons.
- WSJ.com — In her maiden Supreme Court appearance last week, Justice Sonia Sotomayor made a provocative comment that probed the foundations of corporate law.
During arguments in a campaign-finance case, the court’s majority conservatives seemed persuaded that corporations have broad First Amendment rights and that recent precedents upholding limits on corporate political spending should be overruled.
But Justice Sotomayor suggested the majority might have it all wrong — and that instead the court should reconsider the 19th century rulings that first afforded corporations the same rights flesh-and-blood people have.
Judges “created corporations as persons, gave birth to corporations as persons,” she said. “There could be an argument made that that was the court’s error to start with…[imbuing] a creature of state law with human characteristics.”
After a confirmation process that revealed little of her legal philosophy, the remark offered an early hint of the direction Justice Sotomayor might want to take the court.
Full Story: Sotomayor Issues Challenge to a Century of Corporate Law – WSJ.com.
OPS: Additional info:
Corporate Personhood is a lie! – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ziXcKqIlgM
Diana reads some parts of the introduction to “Unequal Protection; The Rise of Corporate Dominance and Theft of Human Rights,” by Thom Hartmann.
Thom Hartmann discusses BUSH as CEO birthright.” End Corporate Personhood www.ecporegon.org “Return Democracy to We the People” The End Corporate Personhood Action Group is an Oregon …
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSy7s6cHyqw
California Issues State Medical Marijuana ID Cards
After years of effort on the part of Medical Marijuana advocates, California is now issuing state identification cards intended to help legitimate patients avoid unnecessary detainment and arrest. The state’s new Medical Marijuana Program (MMP) is being administered by the California Department of Public Health.
According to a memorandum issued by the Office of the Attorney General, “The Medical Marijuana Program (MMP) was established to provide a voluntary medical marijuana identification card issuance and registry program for qualified patients and their caregivers. The web-based registry system allows law enforcement and the public to verify the validity of qualified patient or caregiver’s card as authorization to possess, grow, transport and/or use Medical Marijuana in California.” The new system may benefit patients by allowing the police to quickly determine the validity of a suspect’s medical marijuana claim.
Under the current system, verification may take hours or days; meanwhile, the unfortunate patient may be subject to harassment, arrest, jail, and a loss of their legally possessed stash. The new state card doesn’t show a patient’s name, only their photo and an ID number that officers can quickly input into a website or phone system. The online verification site can be seen here: www.calmmp.ca.gov
Full Story: California Issues State Medical Marijuana ID Cards.
Are You One of Obama’s ‘Lone Wolf’ Suspects?
- Citizens For Legitimate Government - By Lori Price - Yesterday, we read: White House Backs Controversial Domestic Surveillance Provisions 16 Sep 2009 The Obama administration is urging lawmakers to extend three provisions of the controversial domestic surveillance law known as the USA Patriot Act. The U.S. Justice Department issued a letter Tuesday asking Congress to renew provisions of the law that allow authorities to conduct roving electronic eavesdropping, or wiretaps, access business records and track so-called “lone wolf” suspects with no known links to foreign powers or terrorist groups. The roving wiretaps would let agents track the communications of suspects who change their cell phones or other devices. The provisions are due to expire on December 31. (VOA News)
Obama administration to seek extension of Patriot Act spy powers By Patrick Martin 17 Sep 2009 In a letter from the Justice Department to the Senate Judiciary Committee, the Obama administration has gone on record for the first time supporting the extension of key provisions the USA Patriot Act, including the notorious provision that gives the federal government the power to subpoena library records of any individual. Several provisions of the Patriot Act, legislation adopted in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks that grants sweeping surveillance powers to US intelligence agencies, are scheduled to expire December 31, unless renewed by Congress. (WSWS)
I say, we are all ‘lone wolf’ suspects (activists), ready to howl and bray at the injustices that were not eradicated when Barack Obama took office. Indeed, the injustice and malfeasance is growing under President Obama. Despite the premise and unending promises of ‘change,’ the only ‘change’ that we see is a deepening of the entrenchment of policies and ideologies of the Bush regime, and a lack of willingness of the political Left to question and/or attack the sad and sorry trail of Obama’s broken promises. (See: Barack Obama: Change We Can Deceive In –A critique from the Left By Lori Price 19 Aug 2009.)
Full Story: Citizens For Legitimate Government.
Baucus and the Threshold
Paul Krugman 
- NYTimes.com - So Senator Max Baucus, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, has released his “mark” on proposed legislation — which would normally be the basis for the bill that eventually emerges from his committee. And serious supporters of health care reform will soon face their long-dreaded moment of truth.
You see, it has been clear for months that whatever health-care bill finally emerges will fall far short of reformers’ hopes. Yet even a bad bill could be much better than nothing. The question is where to draw the line. How bad does a bill have to be to make it too bad to vote for?
Now, the moment of truth isn’t here quite yet: There’s enough wrong with the Baucus proposal as it stands to make it unworkable and unacceptable. But that said, Senator Baucus’s mark is better than many of us expected. If it serves as a basis for negotiation, and the result of those negotiations is a plan that’s stronger, not weaker, reformers are going to have to make some hard choices about the degree of disappointment they’re willing to live with.
Full Story: Op-Ed Columnist – Baucus and the Threshold – NYTimes.com.
Comment: Mike5000 @ BF
#1 So Krugman likes the way Obama-care worked out in Massachusetts?
A couple of years after implementing Obama-care, Massachusetts now has the highest premiums in the nation and they’re rising twice as fast as the national average. There’s a reason why the health mafia is spending hundreds of millions to push Obama-care – PROFIT.
Obama-care is just more of the same – higher premiums and more denied care. The solution is Single Payer : http://www.healthcare-now.org/docs/spreport.pdf
Volkswagen L1 Concept Car – 240 MPG.
Now the idea of the one-liter car has been resurrected. VW’s biggest news at the Frankfurt auto show was the L1 concept, a prototype that “is close to production” and “will be developed,” the company says. Three ingredients were needed to make it happen: a supremely efficient powertrain, great aerodynamics, and lightweight engineering.
As to the powertrain, VW has opted for a two-cylinder, 39-hp turbo-diesel engine combined with a 14-hp electric motor. There is a stop/start system and a seven-speed dual-clutch transmission. The L1 can reach 100 mph, but fuel economy at that speed drops to a shameful 1.38 liters per 100 kilometers, or 170 mpg.
Full Story: Volkswagen L1 Concept on Yahoo! Autos – Pictures, News.
Hate Radio Hollows Out America
Consortiumnews.com Editor’s Note: The election of the first African-American President has unleashed an ugliness on the Right and within the Republican Party that now confronts the United States with a new political crisis.
It is a battle over whether facts and decency have any chance in a political/media system dominated by distortions and fury – amplified by hate-mongers and opportunists in the powerful right-wing media – as media activist Jay Diamond observes in this guest essay:
For months radio lout Steve Malzberg screamed 10 times a day that “Folks, Barack Obama HATES! this country and his WIFE HATES! this country.”
Full Story: Consortiumnews.com.
Less animal testing for some drugs is now a common reality
Fruit flies, greater wax moths, and one type of hawk moth have such similar immune reaction chemistry to animals and humans that they can be used in the testing of antimicrobial drugs instead of mice and other animals. Insect testing produces results in 48 hours instead of 4 to 6 weeks with mice.
Dr. Kevin Kavanagh from the National University of Ireland Maynooth, presented his research
findings at the Society for General Microbiology’s meeting at Heriot Watt University, Edinburgh,
Full Story: Less animal testing for some drugs is now a common reality.
Poverty is Still a Dirty Word in America
- NAM Editor’s Note: Politicians, the media and the public have largely ignored the crisis of poverty in the United States, possibly because the poor don’t have an active political lobby to represent their interests, writes NAM contributor Earl Ofari Hutchinson.
The figure on real poverty in America is far worse than the Census Bureau recently reported. It found that nearly 40 million Americans are living in official poverty (less than $22,000 for a family of four). This is an 11-year high.
The Bureau figure does not take into account the number of persons tossed into poverty in the past year, the worst year so far of the recession. It also undercounts real unemployment. Officially, nearly 10 percent of Americans are unemployed. Economists say that if seasonal and discouraged workers are counted the real unemployment figure exceeds 16 percent. As always, blacks and Hispanics have by far the highest poverty rate.
Despite the massive economic hardship, “poverty” is still a dirty word. Politicians, much of the media and the public have largely ignored the crisis.
Full Story: Poverty is Still a Dirty Word in America – NAM.
Canada introduces bill supporting war deserters
A Canadian member of Parliament has introduced a bill that would allow U.S. and other war resisters to stay in Canada.
The bill, introduced Thursday by the Liberal Party’s Gerard Kennedy, would allow other countries’ military deserters to stay in Canada if their refusal to serve is based on sincere moral, political or religious objections.
Full Story: Canada introduces bill supporting war deserters – USATODAY.com.
No health coverage tied to 45,000 deaths a year
OPS: 45,000 per year = 1 person every 12 minutes
Tally rises from previous estimates of about 18,000 annually, study says
– msnbc.com - Nearly 45,000 people die in the United States each year — one every 12 minutes — in large part because they lack health insurance and can not get good care, Harvard Medical School
researchers found in an analysis released on Thursday.
“We’re losing more Americans every day because of inaction … than drunk driving and homicide combined,” Dr. David Himmelstein, a co-author of the study and an associate professor of medicine at Harvard, said in an interview with Reuters.
Overall, researchers said American adults age 64 and younger who lack health insurance have a 40 percent higher risk of death than those who have coverage.
Full Story: No health coverage tied to 45,000 deaths a year – Health care- msnbc.com.
Grassley ‘resents’ White House calling him out for things he said.
Think Progress » In an impromptu news conference with reporters today, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) lashed out at President Obama and the White House, saying that he “resents” the administration “associating” him with “extreme” claims about “the end-of-life situation.” Obama “gave some speeches during August in which he was associating me with efforts to make this a political document and efforts that other people in the country were making to give extremes, like on the end-of-life situation and associating me with things — I [never] used the words he said,” Grassley told the reporters. But as FirstRead points out, Grassley did “lend credence” to the outrageous “death panel” attacks:
And on death panels last month, Grassley did lend credence to the idea that the government would “determine if you’re going to pull the plug on grandma.”
“There is some fear because in the House bill, there is counseling for end-of-life,” Grassley said at an Iowa town hall after fielding a question about it from a town hall attendee. “And from that standpoint, you have every right to fear. You shouldn’t have counseling at the end of life. You ought to have counseling 20 years before you’re going to die. You ought to plan these things out. And I don’t have any problem with things like living wills. But they ought to be done within the family. We should not have a government program that determines if you’re going to pull the plug on grandma.”
Full Story: Think Progress » Grassley ‘resents’ White House calling him out for things he said..
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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
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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. 
