Archive for October, 2009

Can cooking with and for others prevent depression?

In a study published earlier this month, Spanish researchers looked at the diets of 10,000 people and found those who mainly ate a Mediterranean diet had lower depression rates than those who did not. The study compiled data from Spanish people who reported their dietary intake on a questionnaire between 1999 and 2005.

After an average follow-up of 4.4 years, the overall incidence of depression for those who followed the diet was 30 percent lower than for those who mostly did not follow the diet. Even lower rates of depression were associated with intake of specific elements of the Mediterranean diet, such as fruits, vegetables and olive oil.

After an average follow-up of 4.4 years, the overall incidence of depression for those who followed the diet was 30 percent lower than for those who mostly did not follow the diet. Even lower rates of depression were associated with intake of specific elements of the Mediterranean diet, such as fruits, vegetables and olive oil.

via Can cooking with and for others prevent depression? | EcoSalon.

Unemployment Compensation: A Broken System

Millions of workers have lost their jobs in the current recession. Employment is down 12% in manufacturing, 7% in professional and business services, and more than 5% overall in the private sector compared to last year. Over 5.6 million people have lost their jobs since last June. The ranks of the unemployed are continuing to grow; the unemployment rate in June hit 9.5%. Good thing that unemployment insurance provides income to help tide these workers over this rough patch, right? Not so fast.

The share of unemployed workers receiving benefits has gradually shrunk since the 1970s. In 1975, over half of unemployed workers received regular benefits. But in 2008, only 37% of the unemployed did; in some states the figure was less than 25%. And so-called “discouraged workers,” those who want but are not actively seeking employment, are not considered part of the labor force and so are not even included in these figures.

Unemployment insurance, in short, is not a benefit that everyone who loses a job can count on. Several groups are working to change this. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), better know as the Obama stimulus package, provides temporary funding for states that expand their unemployment coverage, and so far this year 25 states have done so. Others, however, are resisting even a temporary expansion of coverage that would be fully federally funded.

via Unemployment Compensation: A Broken System | Dollars & Sense.

Right-Wing Extremist Group on Active Military Duty?

Southern Poverty Law Center -

Extremists continue to get free military training in the U.S. armed forces.

Oath Keepers, the militia/“Patriot” extremist group made up of law enforcement officers, military personnel and veterans, has posted a photo on its site showing (it says) “an active duty Oath Keeper in Mosul, Iraq” wearing two Velcro-attached “tabs” or patches, one saying “Oath Keeper” and the other “Three percent.” The flag patch beneath them is also an insignia of the “Three Percenters,” an informal alliance of hard-line gun owners.

The Oath Keepers figured prominently in a recent special report by the Southern Poverty Law Center on the resurgence of the antigovernment militia movement. The report described the group as “a particularly worrisome example of the Patriot revival.” Oath Keepers is fully on board with all the standard right-wing conspiracy theories, as evidenced by its official list of 10 “Orders We Will Not Obey,” in which it vows to resist any government efforts to “disarm the American people” or turn cities into “giant concentration camps.”

In July, the SPLC also presented Congress with growing evidence that extremists are infiltrating the U.S. military and urged Congress and the military to take steps to ensure that the armed forces are not inadvertently training future domestic terrorists.

via Right-Wing Extremist Group on Active Military Duty? | | AlterNet.

Is the End Near for the Right-Wing’s Vice Grip on U.S. Israeli Policy?

Obama’s national security adviser will keynote the inaugural conference of the moderate advocacy group J-Street, an alternative to Washington’s hawkish Israel lobby.

This week, retired Marine Corps Gen. Jim Jones, Barack Obama’s national security adviser, will keynote the inaugural J Street Conference, billed as a gathering of “progressive pro-Israel, pro-peace” activists.

The event marks the emergence of the moderate Jewish advocacy group that aspires to be a counterweight to the voices of the traditionally hawkish “pro-Israel” lobby in Washington.

The White House’s decision last week to send Jones to address the event was a small move that might have a significant impact on the overheated politics of the Middle East.

via Is the End Near for the Right-Wing’s Vice Grip on U.S. Israeli Policy? | World | AlterNet.

4 Prisoners Facing Executions or Serving Extreme Jail Sentences Who Very Well May Be Innocent

Recent evidence shows that an executed Texas man was innocent. There are others who still might avoid that fate.

The tragic unraveling of the case against Cameron Todd Willingham — the Texas man executed in 2004 for killing his own daughters by supposedly setting fire to his house — seems to have crossed a major threshold in the debate over the death penalty in the past several weeks. For the first time in recent memory, there is devastating proof that an innocent man was put to death in this country.

Such a revelation, one might think, would give pause to even the most enthusiastic death penalty supporter. Yet Texas Governor Rick Perry, who has signed off on more than 200 executions, including Willingham’s, is only focused on protecting his political career. The governor, who faces a hotly contested primary race against Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson next year, is going to great lengths to cover up evidence of Willingham’s innocence — particularly proof that he had this evidence in his hands before he signed off on his murder. At the same time, he continues to defend the death penalty in Texas as perfectly fine: “Our process works and I don’t see anything out there that would merit calling for a moratorium on the Texas death penalty,” he said last week.

Meanwhile, Texas is gearing up to execute another prisoner tomorrow, a man named Reginald Blanton, who has a very strong innocence claim of his own.

via 4 Prisoners Facing Executions or Serving Extreme Jail Sentences Who Very Well May Be Innocent | Rights and Liberties | AlterNet.

Forget the rush on that H1N1 swine flu vaccine; 62% of Americans have no intention of getting it anyway

Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of Health and Human Services, who recently taught Americans the federally-approved way to sneeze this season, was on Capitol Hill on Wednesday.

She was trying to explain widespread delays in the delivery of the H1N1 vaccine across the country.

Basically, of course, she said it wasn’t the Obama administration’s fault, that as soon as the vaccines come in, they’re being shipped out immediately by the many thousands of doses.

You know how everyone talks about Americans not making things anymore, that so many manufacturing jobs, for instance, have been shipped overseas?

Well, Sebelius was essentially saying the same goes for flu-vaccine-making.

Full Story: Forget the rush on that H1N1 swine flu vaccine; 62% of Americans have no intention of getting it anyway | Top of the Ticket | Los Angeles Times.

Chris Hedges: Empire of Illusion – The Cult of Self

The Binghamton Regional Sustainability Coalition coordinated a week long series of events leading up to the International Day of Climate Action on October 24, 2009 as a part of the international campaign being organized by 350.org.

Part 2

Part 3

After Reform Passes

Paul Krugman

So, how well will health reform work after it passes?

There’s a part of me that can’t believe I’m asking that question. After all, serious health reform has long seemed like an impossible dream. And it could yet go all wrong.

But the teabaggers have come and gone, as have the cries of “death panels” and the demonstrations by Medicare recipients demanding that the government stay out of health care. And reform is still on track. Right now it looks highly likely that Congress will, indeed, send a health care bill to the president’s desk. Then what?

Conservatives insist (and hope) that reform will fail, and that there will be a huge popular backlash. Some progressives worry that they might be right, that the imperfections of reform — what we’re about to get will be far from ideal — will be so severe as to undermine public support. And many critics complain, with some justice, that the planned reform won’t do much to contain rising costs.

Full Story: Op-Ed Columnist – After Reform Passes – NYTimes.com.

Corn and corn ethanol prices going higher

The pie in the sky ethanol biofuel industry will face its first serious test this year. Prices will increase because corn molds are much higher than normal. The higher mold damage is the result of higher water content of the corn caused by above average rain. Global weather change may well spell disaster for food and the ethanol from corn industry. Less corn will be harvested so the price of corn and corn based ethanol will increase.

Richard Stroshine, a professor in the Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering at Purdue University, has developed guidelines to prevent as much loss as possible for corn growers in Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio.

Each measure recommended by Stroshine will add cost to the harvesting of corn this year. The

cost increase is not intentional (as some conspiracy theorists may prognosticate) but a necessity due to the conditions that exist. Those costs must either be passed on to the consumer of food and E85 or eaten by the farmer. Supply is going to be smaller than last year.

Full Story: Corn and corn ethanol prices going higher.

Federal Bill Would Penalize States for their Anti-Gay Adoption Laws

U.S. Rep. Pete Stark (D-Calif.) has introduced a new bill to the House called the Every Child Deserves a Family Act. It is designed to restrict a state or adoption agency’s federal funding if they discriminate on the basis of the sexual orientation, gender identity or marital status of the prospective parents.

What Would the Every Child Deserves a Family Act Do?

Introduced on Oct. 15, the act (H.R. 3827) aims to stop discrimination in adoption and foster care placements based on the sexual orientation, gender identity or marital status of the prospective adoptive/foster parent in question.

Why is this an issue? Currently, several states have restrictions on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) couples adopting. Such states include Florida and Mississippi. In Rep. Stark’s introduction to the bill, he contends that this bias is damaging to the children that are waiting to be adopted or fostered:

Full Story: Federal Bill Would Penalize States for their Anti-Gay Adoption Laws.

George W. Bush set to become motivational speaker

He left office with the US embroiled in two wars, a Great Recession and with his approval rating a toxic 22 per cent. So the next stage in his career is obvious. George W Bush — who last year inspired millions of people to vote Democrat — is about to become a highly-paid motivational speaker.

On Monday the former Republican President will appear as the headline speaker on the popular Get Motivated seminar programme, which describes itself as an “action-packed, fun-filled, explosive, exciting, inspiring, skill-building business event that is world famous for its mega-watt superstar speakers and spectacular stage production.” He will appear again in San Antonio in December.

The Forth Worth event, in Mr Bush’s home state of Texas, will also feature Colin Powell, the former Secretary of State, Rudy Giuliani, the former New York Mayor, and Rick Belluzzo, a former Microsoft executive.

Full Story: George W. Bush set to become motivational speaker – Times Online.

Obama’s Pointless Pursuit of Olympia Snowe

Obama’s pointless bipartisanship.

“There she is, the Party of One!” cried Sen. Barbara Mikulski when she saw Sen. Olympia Snowe outside the Senate chamber last week. Mikulski, in a wheel-chair because of a broken ankle, rolled closer to the object of her praise. “She is belle of the ball, because she has got so much on the ball!” Snowe gave an embarrassed nod. Sen. John Kerry hurried by, but stopped himself long enough to bestow upon Snowe a lordly embrace. “O, we love her!” he announced. Sen. Tom Carper testified to her brilliance. “Olympia’s terrific, as you know,” he said.

On Mount Olympus in Greece there were many gods, but on Mount Olympia in the District of Columbia there is one: Snowe of Maine, daughter of Spartan immigrants (yes, that Sparta). A Republican of the rarest type—a “moderate” willing to truck with Democrats—she is being feted, almost prayed to, by President Barack Obama and his party’s leaders as they struggle in the Senate to amass a filibuster-proof 60 votes for “health-care reform.” In the halls outside the chamber, every Democrat seems to have just come from, or be on the way to, another “meeting with Olympia”—if, that is, she isn’t too busy talking to the president on the phone. Politically secure (she won her last race in 2006 by a 3–1 margin), and possessing the studious air of a graduate student, Snowe has the kind of celebrity that only the Senate could find riveting: her vote is entirely up for grabs. Despite a bit of grandiloquence and a habit of quoting Longfellow (who was, in her defense, a Mainer), she is likable and earnest. She was believable when she told me that she had not sought such a prominent role. “It’s not me dictating anything,” she said.

Full Story: Obama’s Pointless Pursuit of Olympia Snowe | Newsweek Voices – Howard Fineman | Newsweek.com.

Fight Off Back Aches & Pains This Winter With Extra Vitamin D

It’s no wonder that many people feel extra soreness and aches in their backs during winter months — they’re often not getting enough vitamin D. The body makes vitamin D from the sun’s ultraviolet rays, so it’s known as the sunshine vitamin. However, even in the sunniest parts of America, this essential vitamin for keeping bones healthy is in short supply during late fall and winter.

Up to 8 out of 10 persons will have back pain in their lifetimes. In many cases, there is no evidence of any injury, disease, or bone problem like a slipped disk. An extensive review of clinical research in a report from Pain Treatment Topics found that help may be available from a surprising champion of pain relief Vitamin D.

According to Stewart B. Leavitt, MA, PhD, Executive Director of Pain Treatment Topics and author of the report, “our examination of the research, which included numerous clinical studies, found that patients with chronic back pain usually had inadequate levels of vitamin D. When sufficient vitamin D supplementation was provided, their pain either vanished or was at least helped to a significant extent.”

Full Story: Fight Off Back Aches & Pains This Winter With Extra Vitamin D.

Companies Are Gaming The System To Beat Wall Street Expectations

More than 80 percent of major companies reporting third-quarter results this month have beaten Wall Street expectations. So is business that good? No. Are companies gaming the system? Yes.

Corporate America has a habit of low-balling the earnings forecasts used by analysts to determine their estimates. That way, the bar is lower, and companies can easily jump over when the quarter’s results are announced – even if profits and revenues have fallen off a cliff.

“Over the last decade, there’s been a distinctive tendency for companies to underpromise and overdeliver,” says Dirk van Dijk, chief equity strategist of Zacks Investment Research. “Lately companies are being even more cautious. They realize investors can very harshly punish any company that disappoints.”

Full Story: Companies Are Gaming The System To Beat Wall Street Expectations.

Paul Haggis Renounces Church of Scientology in Blistering Letter

The Church of Scientology has long claimed many of Hollywood’s most elite talents amongst its members, but now, one famous Scientologist is leaving the church, and he’s not going quietly. In a candid, confrontational letter to Scientology top brass that’s just been published online, Oscar-winning director Paul Haggis (Crash) details the abuses and cover-ups that have forced him to to leave Scientology after 35 years. It’s a must-read.

The letter was originally published in four parts on the blog of ex-Scientologist Marty Rathbun, and it’s directed at Scientology’s current national spokesman, Tommy Davis. In it, Haggis takes Davis to task for doing nothing after the church’s San Diego branch publicly sponsored the anti-gay Proposition 8.

As you know, for ten months now I have been writing to ask you to make a public statement denouncing the actions of the Church of Scientology of San Diego. […] I called and wrote and implored you, as the official spokesman of the church, to condemn their actions. I told you I could not, in good conscience, be a member of an organization where gay-bashing was tolerated.

Full Story: Paul Haggis Renounces Church of Scientology in Blistering Letter | Movieline.

“Showdown In Chicago”: Protesters Crash Bankers Convention, (VIDEO, IMAGES)

Via National People’s Action, here is some footage from the protesters at the ABA conference. From the footage, it’s clear there are some strong emotions from the protesters.

At one point a protester grabs a megaphone and says:

“The American Bankers Association has helped loosen the rules that protect us, allowing the unfettered greed that has brought us to the brink of a recession. And for those bankers who are members and support the ABA’s war against the working and middle class, shame on you!”

The crowd soon begins chanting “Shame On You!” in unison.

WATCH:

Full Story: “Showdown In Chicago”: Protesters Crash Bankers Convention, (VIDEO, IMAGES).

Yes, poverty is worse than they ever admitted

The National Academy of Sciences has issued its own estimates of the number of Americans in poverty, and yes, it’s much worse than the official statistics have been telling us for the past decade. The new NAS formula estimates nearly 1 in 6 Americans, 15.8 percent, are living below the poverty line. That’s 48 million Americans.

By comparison, the latest official Census Bureau statistics are that 13.2 percent of Americans, or 39.8 million, are impoverished. It should be noted that the Census Bureau is reportedly cooperating with the National Academy of Sciences to get this information out as quickly as possible.

According to the Associated Press, the NAS took into consideration the rising costs of medical care, transportation, child care, as well as geographical variations in living costs. Unbelievably, the Census Bureau calculations never accounted for these costs, since they were first used in 1955. My guess is that this was a convenient way to hide the destruction of the working class beginning with the oil price shocks and Volcker interest rate shock of the 1970s, and horrific human impacts of the de-industrialization of the U.S. economy that was rapidly accelerated by the usury and speculation unleashed by Ronald Reagan’s deregulation mania. Not to mention the vicious attack on organized labor initiated by Reagan’s destruction of the air traffic controllers union.

Full Story: Yes, poverty is worse than they ever admitted | The Economic Populist.

Health Bill May Cut Employer Mandate

Businesses would not be required to provide health insurance under legislation being readied for Senate debate, but large firms would owe significant penalties if any worker needed government subsidies to buy coverage on their own, according to Democratic officials familiar with talks on the bill.

For firms with more than 50 employees, the fee could be as high as $750 multiplied by the total size of the work force if only a few workers needed federal aid, these officials said. That is a more stringent penalty than in a bill that recently cleared the Senate Finance Committee, which said companies should face penalties on a per-employee basis.

These officials also said individuals would generally be required to purchase affordable insurance if it were available, and face penalties if they defied the requirement.

Full Story: AP Sources – Health Bill May Cut Employer Mandate – NYTimes.com.

Police in scheme to log ‘domestic extremists’

Thousands of activists monitored on network of overlapping databases. Detailed information about the political activities of campaigners is being stored on IT systems.

Police are gathering the personal details of thousands of activists who attend political meetings and protests, and storing their data on a network of nationwide intelligence databases.

The hidden apparatus has been constructed to monitor “domestic extremists”, the Guardian can reveal in the first of a three-day series into the policing of protests. Detailed information about the political activities of campaigners is being stored on a number of overlapping IT systems, even if they have not committed a crime.

Senior officers say domestic extremism, a term coined by police that has no legal basis, can include activists suspected of minor public order offences such as peaceful direct action and civil disobedience.

Full Story: Police in £9m scheme to log ‘domestic extremists’ | UK news | The Guardian.

Biden to announce GM plant’s reopening-source

WASHINGTON, Oct 25 (Reuters) – U.S. Vice President Joe Biden plans on Tuesday to visit a closed General Motors plant in Wilmington, Delaware, where he is expected to announce that it will be reopened for the building of plug-in hybrid electric cars.

The California-based venture capital firm Fisker Automotive Inc has reached a deal to buy the former GM assembly plant and plans to use it for the manufacture of the cars, according to a source familiar with the details of Biden’s visit.

Henrik Fisker, chief executive and founder of the firm, is scheduled to attend Tuesday’s event, said the person who asked not to be identified in advance of the formal announcement.

Full Story: UPDATE 1-Biden to announce GM plant’s reopening-source | Markets | Bonds News | Reuters.

Lender Capmark Financial Group Files for Bankruptcy

Capmark Financial Group Inc., the lender owned by Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and KKR & Co., among other companies, filed for bankruptcy protection after posting a second-quarter loss of about $1.6 billion.

The company listed consolidated debt of $21 billion and consolidated assets of $20.1 billion as of June 30, according to Chapter 11 documents filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Delaware. Forty-three affiliates also sought protection.

Capmark is one of the largest U.S. commercial real estate finance companies, with more than $10 billion in originations, according to Moody’s Investors Service. The company, formerly known as GMAC Commercial Holding Corp., services more than $360 billion of debt.

The Horsham, Pennsylvania-based company has struggled as the default rate on commercial mortgages held by U.S. banks more than doubled to the highest since 1994. Capmark said on Sept. 2 that it may reorganize under Chapter 11 of the bankruptcy code.

Full Story: Lender Capmark Financial Group Files for Bankruptcy (Update4) – Bloomberg.com.

Exposing Lies About the FED, the CIA, the Murder of JFK

Len Hart

New allegations about CIA involvment in the murder of JFK put a glaring spotlight on the current bankster crisis. Those who pull off crimes are, naturally, most motivated to lie about them! The CIA, therefore, looks very guilty of two murders that ripped America apart: the murders of JFK and RFK.

As news broke this week that CIA lies about the JFK murder had been exposed, I recalled that among the motives for JFK’s murder was his threat to abolish the FED, the very source of the government’s ‘funny money’ and most certainly, the root cause of the current banking collapse. JFK had threatened to strip the power of the FED, smash the CIA into ‘a thousand pieces’ and abolish the oil industry’s sacred cow: the Oil Depletion Allowance. No President since has dared piss off so many powerful and ruthless people.

JFK tried to strip the Federal Reserve Bank of its power to loan money to the government at interest

The move would have bypassed the Fed by restoring to the government the power and authority to issue currency. Executive Order 11110 gave the US government the ability to create its own money –backed by silver! It just might have put the FED out of business.

Full Story: The Existentialist Cowboy: Exposing Lies About the FED, the CIA, the Murder of JFK.

The Wandering Who?

In his book, Sand manages to prove beyond any reasonable doubt that the Jewish people never existed as a ‘nation-race’, they never shared a common origin. Instead they are a colourful mix of groups that at various stages in history adopted the Jewish religion.

Tel Aviv University historian, Professor Shlomo Sand, opens his remarkable study of Jewish nationalism quoting Karl W. Deutsch:

“A nation is a group of people united by a common mistake regarding its origin and a collective hostility towards its neighbours.”1

As simple or even simplistic as it may sound, the quote above eloquently summarises the figment of reality entangled with modern Jewish nationalism and especially within the concept of Jewish identity. It obviously points the finger at the collective mistake Jews tend to make whenever referring to their ‘illusionary collective past’ and ‘collective origin’. Yet, in the same breath, Deutsch’s reading of nationalism throws light upon the hostility that is unfortunately coupled with almost every Jewish group towards its surrounding reality, whether it is human or takes the shape of land. While the brutality of the Israelis towards the Palestinians has already become rather common knowledge, the rough treatment Israelis reserve for their ‘promised soil’ and landscape is just starting to reveal itself. The ecological disaster the Israelis are going to leave behind them will be the cause of suffering for many generations to come. Leave aside the megalomaniac wall that shreds the Holy land into enclaves of deprivation and starvation, Israel has managed to pollute its main rivers and streams with nuclear and chemical waste.

The Invention of the Jewish People is a very serious study written by Professor Shlomo Sand, an Israeli historian. It is the most serious study of Jewish nationalism and by far, the most courageous elaboration on the Jewish historical narrative.

Full Story: Dissident Voice : The Wandering Who?.

Germany to U.S.: Take Away Your Nukes!

Germany’s new coalition government put the finishing touches to its policy program this weekend, promising moderate tax cuts to help support the economy, a reduction in the length of compulsory military service, and the continued operation of the nation’s aging nuclear power plants. No big surprises there. But one detail could have interesting international repercussions: the man designated to be foreign minister, Guido Westerwelle, is pushing for the U.S. to remove its remaining nuclear weapons from German soil.

“We want the last nuclear weapons that are stationed in Germany to be taken away,” Westerwelle said at the conclusion of the coalition talks on Saturday. The U.S. doesn’t disclose the exact number of nuclear warheads it still keeps in Germany, a legacy of its Cold War policy that dates back to the 1950s, and which made western Germany the frontline of its Soviet containment strategy. But German sources estimate there could be as many as 20 nukes still in the country. (See a profile of Guido Westerwelle.)

Full Story: Germany to U.S.: Take Away Your Nukes! – TIME.

Pacific’s El Nino calms Atlantic hurricanes

The Pacific’s El Niño ocean-warming phenomenon has resulted in an especially calm Atlantic hurricane season – a welcome respite for the Caribbean and southeastern USA.

There have only been two hurricanes in the 2009 Atlantic season, which runs from June 1 to late November 30, but normally peaks in September and October.

Little activity expected

“We were expecting very little activity this season,” said Lixion Avila, a weather expert at the U.S.’s Miami-based National Hurricane Centre. “This happens when the El Niño phenomenon is present in the Pacific, the water warms up there, and that leads to hurricanes forming there and not in the Atlantic.”

Hurricane Bill reached powerful Category Four intensity on the five-point Saffir-Simpson scale in mid-August. It bypassed most of the Caribbean and the U.S. east coast, making landfall in southeastern Canada and causing modest damage.

Full Story: Pacific’s El Nino calms Atlantic hurricanes | COSMOS magazine.

Plants can recognize rivals and fight, study says – LiveScience- msnbc.com

Greenery grows more roots to absorb resources when next to ‘strangers’

Plants can’t see or hear, but they can recognize their siblings, and now researchers have found out how: They use chemical signals secreted from their roots, according to a new study.

Back in 2007, Canadian researchers discovered that a common seashore plant, called a sea rocket, can recognize its siblings — plants grown from seeds from the same plant, or mother. They saw that when siblings are grown next to each other in the soil, they “play nice” and don’t send out more roots to compete with one another.

But as soon as one of the plants is thrown in with strangers, it begins competing with them by rapidly growing more roots to take up the water and mineral nutrients in the soil.

Full Story: Plants can recognize rivals and fight, study says – LiveScience- msnbc.com.

Physicists Calculate Exact Number of Alternate Universes | Popular Science

There are 10^10^16 of them (but #1,000,443,163,313,125,343,132 is the evil one)

For some time, physicists have theorized about the existence of alternate universes. In fact, some models of physics require multiple universes, to explain some rarely observed phenomena. But, other than obvious ones like The Man In The High Castle Universe where the Nazis won WWII, the Earth-295 Age of Apocalypse Universe, and the Terran Empire “Mirror Mirror” Universe, just how many alternate universes are there? Well, some Stanford University physicists have answered that question, and the magic number is: 10^10^16 other realities.

The physicists, Andrei Linde and Vitaly Vanchurin, calculated the number by first going all the way back to the Big Bang. Linde and Vanchurin posit that the stellar organization and physics of our universe resulted from small perturbations in the otherwise uniform mass of matter and energy that existed milliseconds after the Big Bang. So, the number of possible variations of those perturbations represents the upper limit of possible alternate universes, or about 10^10^10^7 possible alternate universes.

Full Story: Physicists Calculate Exact Number of Alternate Universes | Popular Science.

Lard Lesson: Why Fat Lubricates Your Appetite

Saturated fat dulls the brain’s response to key appetite hormones, an effect useful in our evolutionary past during times of scarcity, but not so much in a well-fed society

When you’ve spent the weekend splurging on greasy fast foods, your bathroom scale isn’t alone in reeling from the impact. Your brain does, too. New research shows just how saturated fat tricks us into eating more and elucidates the evolutionary basis for the propensity for poundage in developed nations. Our brain physiology, it seems, is glaringly out-of-date in the modern world.

Researchers have long known that the hormones leptin and insulin play key roles in appetite and food intake. In healthy people leptin, which is secreted by fat tissue, acts as a molecular measuring tape for our waistlines, quashing feelings of hunger. Insulin spikes when the pancreas gets a whiff of the blood sugar increase after a meal; once the brain detects the spike, it knows to tamp down the desire for  food.

Certain foods and metabolic disorders, however, can disrupt our ability to respond appropriately to these hormonal signals. In a study published in the September issue of The Journal of Clinical Investigation, scientists report unraveling a central biochemical mechanism behind fat’s effect on the mammalian brain . They found that after only three days on a diet high in saturated fat—a common ingredient in beef and cheese—the brains of rats and mice became resistant to leptin and insulin. In contrast, unsaturated fats, such as those found in olive oil, did not trigger resistance.

Full Story: Lard Lesson: Why Fat Lubricates Your Appetite: Scientific American.

The four biggest reasons for escalating war in Afghanistan–and why they’re bogus

Jim Hightower

Ambassador Richard Holbrooke is America’s “Man in the Stans”–Afghanistan and Pakistan, that is. Handpicked by President Obama to be special representative to what is at present the hottest of hot spots in the muddled global war on terrorists, Holbrooke is among the Washington influentials who is now urging Obama to hurl tens of thousands of additional troops and tens of billions of additional dollars into the Afghanistan war effort.

Why should America do that? What victory do we seek? In August, Holbrooke responded with a diplomatic quibble: “I don’t use the word ‘victory’ but ‘success’ instead.” Okay. What success will we achieve? Well, dodged the man who would commit untold numbers of people to their death in this hellish land, “success” really can’t be defined. “We’ll know it when we see it.”

On such gossamer wings does America’s Afghanistan policy fly.

Full Story: Hightower Lowdown | The four biggest reasons for escalating war in Afghanistan–and why they’re bogus.

Nader deserves more respect than he gets

Ralph Nader has been the victim of more playa’ hatin’ than just about any figure in contemporary American politics. Merely whispering his name is enough to elicit hisses of derision across the political spectrum.

The Right hates Mr. Nader because his decades of activism have emboldened ordinary citizens to challenge the prerogative of big business to profit at the expense of the American consumer.

Many on the Left resent him because they believe his perennial presidential quests siphon votes from the Democratic candidate. Though he’s never received more than 2.74 percent of the popular vote, liberals continue to blame him for making the Bush presidency possible instead of blaming the U.S. Supreme Court for stopping the Florida recount in 2000.

Full Story: Nader deserves more respect than he gets.

Who Ya Gonna Call in an Environmental Disaster?

Nine out of ten Americans now live in places of significant risk, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) These risks include things like dam failure, hazardous material exposure, nuclear explosion, terrorism and natural disasters like wild fires, heat, hurricane, thunderstorms, tornados, tsunami, earthquakes, floods, landslides, volcanoes and winter storms.

Actually, it appears that the increased risk of disaster is occurring worldwide due to climate change, deteriorating ecosystems and the expansion of poverty, says a UN Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction.

So what are we to do in the face of such threats to our lives, our homes, our communities-and our world?

“We need to change behavior in this country,” Craig Fugate, FEMA’s new director, told his emergency-management instructors at a conference last June. The “government-centric” approach to disasters increases the odds of catastrophic failure in a big disaster, as Hurricane Katrina so clearly showed.

Full Story: Who Ya Gonna Call in an Environmental Disaster? | CommonDreams.org.

Costs for U.S. project in Afghanistan balloon, benefit hyped

Flipping a switch on one of Afghanistan’s long-awaited electrical power plants in August, U.S. Ambassador Karl Eikenberry urged Afghans to think of U.S. taxpayers’ support when they turn their lights on at night.

Only about 6 percent of Afghans are estimated to have electricity, and in his appearance with President Hamid Karzai east of Kabul, Eikenberry hailed the project as part of the country’s emergence out of the “darkness” of oppression and isolation.

To some U.S. experts, however, the project is the latest example of exaggerated political expectations and wasted American taxpayers’ dollars in the effort to rebuild Afghanistan.

Full Story: Costs for U.S. project in Afghanistan balloon, benefit hyped | McClatchy.

Beware a Times/Pentagon ‘Virtual Coup’ on Aghanistan

Some military coups are still done the old-fashioned way. Tanks surround the capital, generals grab the radio station, the slaughter begins.

Here, the Declaration of Independence scorned King George III for elevating his army over our colonial legislatures. The Founders opposed a standing army. Our first Commander George Washington warned against military entanglements. So did Dwight Eisenhower nearly two centuries later. These “quaint” monuments to civilian rule form the core of our constitutional culture.

So when the Pentagon wants to trash inconvenient opposition and escalate yet another war, it seeks subtler means. For example: the “virtual coup” now being staged in league with the New York Times, aimed at plunging us catastrophically deeper into Afghanistan.

It’s how they drove us into the abyss in Vietnam and Iraq. It demands we decide who will rule—the Pentagon, or the public.

Full Story: Beware a Times/Pentagon ‘Virtual Coup’ on Aghanistan | CommonDreams.org.

Minnesota judge: CIA ‘probably misled’ panel he led on JFK assassination P:S

U.S. District Judge John R. Tunheim says the Central Intelligence Agency “probably misled” a panel he led in the 1990s seeking documents related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. That’s because the CIA didn’t tell Tunheim that its liaison to a panel that preceded his Assassination Records Review Board had been involved with anti-Castro Cubans in Miami who tangled with Lee Harvey Oswald in 1963.

The New York Times reported Tunheim’s remarks in a front-page story Saturday on Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests by Minneapolis-born journalist Jefferson Morley, formerly an editor at the Washington Post and past national editorial director for the Center for Independent Media, the Minnesota Independent’s nonprofit parent.

Full Story: Minnesota judge: CIA ‘probably misled’ panel he led on JFK assassination | Twin Cities Daily Planet | Minneapolis – St. Paul.

OPS: Oh gee…. ya really think so?
Let’s remember that Poppy Bush was in teh CIA at the time

Colombian football team ‘killed’

At least 10 bodies – believed to be those of a kidnapped Colombian football team – have been found across the border in Venezuela.

The bodies, with multiple gunshot wounds, were found in Tachira. One of the team is reported to have survived.

State authorities say they suspect a left-wing Colombian guerrilla group, the ELN, is to blame for the deaths.

The team, kidnapped two weeks ago, was known as Los Maniceros or Peanut Men, as they sold nuts along the border.

The Venezuelan authorities say they are still investigating whether the bodies are those of the kidnapped team members.

Full Story: BBC NEWS | Americas | Colombian football team ‘killed’.

Rachel Maddow : Why Fox News isn’t news

Oct. 23: Rachel Re: Rachel Maddow points out what has been largely overlooked in the discussion of the White House feud with Fox News, that explains why Fox is not news.

Full Story: YouTube – Rachel Maddow : Why Fox News isn’t news.

Soros says Wall St’s ‘hidden gifts’ should not be used for bonuses

The big profits made by some of Wall Street’s leading banks are “hidden gifts” from the state, and taxpayer resentment of such companies is “justified”, George Soros, the fund manager, said in an interview with the Financial Times.

“Those earnings are not the achievement of risk-takers,” Mr Soros said. “These are gifts, hidden gifts, from the government, so I don’t think that those monies should be used to pay bonuses. There’s a resentment which I think is justified.”

Mr Soros, who joins a transatlantic chorus calling for limits on risk, leverage and compensation at big banks, said proprietary traders belong at hedge funds, not at banks, and that the compensation at Wall Street companies should be limited to prevent excessive risk.

Full Story: FT.com / UK – Soros says Wall St’s ‘hidden gifts’ should not be used for bonuses.

MAX KEISER in Fall of the Republic; the Presidency of Barack Obama

a Max Keiser segment from the film just released

YouTube – MAX KEISER in Fall of the Republic the Presidency of Barack Obama.

Study Shows Hope for Type of Blindness

A small but provocative study showed that a form of gene therapy significantly improved the vision of patients left legally blind by a rare genetic eye disease. The benefit was especially striking among children.

Researchers said the findings amount to an important advance toward medicine’s ambitious but generally unrealized dream of replacing disease-causing mutant or missing genes with normal DNA to treat and cure debilitating illnesses.

In the study, 12 patients, including four children between ages 8 and 11 years old, underwent a surgical procedure in which a gene that makes a protein critical to vision function was injected into one eye. The second eye wasn’t treated. While normal sight wasn’t restored in any of the patients, all reported some improvement. Six gained enough vision that they may no longer meet criteria for being legally blind, researchers said, including the four children for whom substantial recovery of vision appears to have transformed their lives.

Full Story: Study Shows Hope for Type of Blindness – WSJ.com.

UN Nuclear Inspectors Head To Iran To Visit Site

Israeli forces stormed Jerusalem’s holiest shrine Sunday, firing stun grenades to disperse hundreds of stone-throwing Palestinian protesters in a fresh eruption of violence at the most volatile spot in the Holy Land.

A wall of Israeli riot police behind plexiglass shields closed in on the crowd, sending many protesters – overwhelmingly young men – running for cover into the black-domed Al-Aqsa mosque. The mosque is one part of the compound known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary.

Dozens of protesters remained holed up inside the mosque for several hours, occasionally opening shuttered doors to throw objects at police. The Israeli forces did not enter the building, and the protesters eventually left peacefully and the compound was closed, police said. There were no serious injuries.

Full Story: UN Nuclear Inspectors Head To Iran To Visit Site.

Climate Change Refugees Number 10 Million

Fleeing drought in the Horn of Africa

A new kind of refugee has arrived: Those forced from their home regions not by war or persecution, but by the climate. A Kenyan camp is bursting with the displaced, some of whom share their stories.

Reporting from Dadaab, Kenya – For centuries, Adam Abdi Ibrahim’s ancestors herded cattle and goats across an unforgiving landscape in southern Somalia where few others were hardy enough to survive.

This year, Ibrahim became the first in his clan to throw in the towel, abandoning his land and walking for a week to bring his family to this overcrowded refugee camp in Kenya.

He’s not fleeing warlords, Islamist insurgents or Somalia’s 18-year civil war. He’s fleeing the weather.

Full Story: Fleeing drought in the Horn of Africa — latimes.com.

Vaccine Output Falls Short

Less Than Half of Expected Supply Is Delivered; Key Ingredient Foils Manufacturers

Less than half of the swine-flu vaccine expected to be shipped to doctors, hospitals and clinics in the U.S. this month has been shipped so far. The disease now is widespread in 46 states and the U.S. death toll has passed 1,000.

The delays are occurring around the globe, officials said, and are due to a series of manufacturing difficulties, as vaccine makers scramble to fill vast orders using an old technology that requires growing virus in chicken eggs.

It takes about six to nine months to produce vaccine once a flu strain has been identified.

A total of 11.3 million doses of vaccine had been shipped to U.S. doctors, hospitals, and clinics as of Wednesday, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, out of a total of 14.1 million doses that manufacturers had shipped to warehouses by that time.

Full Story: Vaccine Output Falls Short – WSJ.com.

Is Obama Keeping His Promises?

One year in, a look at how the president is doing.

Assessing a young presidency. Barack Obama campaigned as a populist firebrand but governs like a cerebral consensus builder. The founding fathers wouldn’t have it any other way.

From time to time the American people participate in a mass delusion about how their government works. Such a delusion took place exactly a year ago, when a 47-year-old African-American who had once been accorded little chance of prevailing was elected president of the United States.

Full Story: Anna Quindlen: Assessing Barack Obama’s Progress | Newsweek Politics | Newsweek.com.

7 Stories That Prove You Don’t Need A Car To Get A DUI

People do a lot of stupid crap when drunk, and if we as a society are lucky, they get caught. Here are seven examples of folks dumb enough to get arrested for drunk driving in “vehicles” that were not cars–not even close.

Note: The two incident in the slideshow from outside the U.S. didn’t result in “DUIs” but the drivers of the “vehicles” in each case were punished.

Full Story: 7 Stories That Prove You Don’t Need A Car To Get A DUI.

George Will To Cheney: You Should Have Dithered Before Invading Iraq (VIDEO)

Conservative columnist George Will went after former Vice President Dick Cheney on Sunday, saying the Bush administration could have used some “dithering” before they invaded Iraq.

Will was responding to the VP’s widely-circulated comment that President Obama was “dithering” on Afghanistan and putting troops in danger. On the contrary, Will said, it was hasty decisions that put people at risk.

“A bit of dithering might have been in order before we went into Iraq in pursuit of non-existent weapons of mass destruction,” Will said on ABC’s “This Week. “For a representative of the Bush administration to accuse someone of taking too much time is missing the point. We have much more to fear in this town from hasty than from slow government action.”

Watch:

Full Story: George Will To Cheney: You Should Have Dithered Before Invading Iraq (VIDEO).

Baghdad Car Bombs Kill Over 130

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Two powerful suicide car bombs blew up outside the Justice Ministry and city government offices in downtown Baghdad Sunday, killing at least 136 people in the worst attack in more than two years. Iraqi leaders said the attacks aimed to disrupt political progress in the months leading up to January’s crucial elections.

While violence has dropped dramatically in the country since the height of the sectarian tensions, the latest bombings underscored the precarious nature of the security gains and the insurgency’s abilities to still pull off devastating attacks in the center of what is supposed to be one of Baghdad’s most secure areas.

The street where the blasts occurred had just been reopened to vehicle traffic a few months ago when blast walls were repositioned to allow traffic closer to the government buildings. Such changes were touted by Iraq’s prime minister as a sign that safety was returning to the city

Full Story: Baghdad Car Bombs Kill Over 130.

Feingold: No Public Option A “Strong Reason” Not To Support Reform

Senate Pushing For Public Option Without Obama’s Support -

The major point of contention between the White House and congressional Democrats is now whether a public option for insurance coverage has the 60 votes needed for passage in the Senate. In reporting our piece on the state of play in the health care reform debate, Ryan Grim and I heard the same refrain from a number of sources: Majority Leader Harry Reid’s office thinks it can get the support needed to pass a public option with an opt-out provision for states. The White House thinks that Reid’s whip count is too optimistic.

Part of the administration’s reasoning is that if you don’t have Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) on board, you end up losing the votes of a handful of conservative Democrats. So White House officials are pushing an alternative proposal that would have the public plan “triggered” in by economic conditions.

But the equation is more complicated than that. Increasingly, there are senators on the liberal side of the spectrum who say they won’t pass a plan that includes the trigger provision.

Full Story: Feingold: No Public Option A “Strong Reason” Not To Support Reform.

Australia faces famine, expert warns

A food production expert says Australia may face a massive famine if governments fail to address an impending global food shortage.

A conference of food productivity experts in Sydney this week heard the greatest threat to the world is not climate change, but food production on land and in the water.

Science communicator Julian Cribb, an adjunct professor at the University of Technology Sydney, made a keynote address at the seminar saying there is expected to be about 9.2 billion people in the world in 2050, barring wars or major accidents.

But Professor Cribb says that population will create an alarming problem – there simply will not be enough food to go round.

Full Story: Australia faces famine, expert warns – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation).

One fifth of electorate consider voting BNP [Ultra Right]

One fifth of the UK electorate would consider voting for the BNP in the wake of Nick Griffin’s Question Time appearance, according to a poll.

The YouGov poll, taken hours after the BBC show aired, indicates that 22% of people in this country would ‘seriously consider’ voting for the far-right party in an upcoming election.

The BNP’s leader’s invitation to join the Question Time panel was condemned by minsters and prompted chaotic anti-fascist protests outside the BBC’s studios on Thursday.

There were fears that Griffin would receive a boost in popularity among voters as a result of his appearance on the corporation’s flagship current affairs program.

Full Story: One fifth of electorate consider voting BNP – Times Online.

OPS: The 20% Club is a global cult . They are well funded, aggressive, ruthless and sociopathic.  We cannot win back our country or planet by ignoring this.

The Rachel Maddow Show: Cheney Inc.

Rachel Maddow reports on the funding source behind Liz Cheney’s “Keep America Safe”. Surprise, surprise…a man who’s helping to attempt to “polish” Dick Cheney’s political legacy. I don’t know how anyone could possibly “polish” that big of a turd, but it looks like it’s not going to stop them from trying.

Video and more at link

Full Story: The Rachel Maddow Show: Cheney Inc. | Video Cafe.

White House confronts the U.S. Chamber of Commerce

The group has long been a powerful player in Washington. But the Obama White House is critical of the group’s positions and seeks to develop its own pipeline to the business world.

Reporting from Washington – The Obama White House, stepping in where other Democrats feared to tread, has launched a potentially risky fight with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — attempting to bypass the nation’s most powerful business organization and develop independent ties to corporate America.

In recent weeks, President Obama, his Energy secretary and one of his other most senior advisors have begun criticizing the chamber publicly, casting it as a profligate lobbying organization at odds with its members in opposing the administration on such issues as consumer protection and climate change.

At the same time, the administration has been meeting privately with prominent corporate leaders — more than 60 of them since June — in an effort to develop its own pipeline to the business community.

Full Story: White House confronts the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — latimes.com.

President Obama discouraging public opt-out option, reports say

The wheels may be coming off the cart of the Democrats’ all-in-this together strategy for overhauling healthcare.

And according to two reports, the people doing the wheel removing work at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Last week, conservative Democratic senators broke the news that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) was considering including a provision in the Senate healthcare bill which would create a government-run healthcare option but allow states to opt out.

On Friday, Politico claimed that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) was coming up short when corralling votes for the “robust” public option she’d promised. Critics dismissed the report, but the New York Times subsequently reported that there were indications Pelosi was short of the needed votes to pass a more aggressive public plan.

Full Story: President Obama discouraging public opt-out option, reports say | Raw Story.

Preparing for a Pandemic, State Health Departments Struggle With Rationing Decisions

New York state health officials recently laid out this wrenching scenario for a small group of medical professionals from New York-Presbyterian Hospital:

A 32-year-old man with cystic fibrosis is rushed to the hospital with appendicitis in the midst of a worsening pandemic caused by the H1N1 flu virus, which has mutated into a more deadly form. The man is awaiting a lung transplant and brought with him the mechanical ventilator that helps him breathe.

New York’s governor has declared a state of emergency and hospitals are following the state’s pandemic ventilator allocation plan — actual guidelines drafted in 2007 that are now being revisited. The plan aims to direct ventilators to those with the best chances of survival in a severe, 1918-like flu pandemic where tens of thousands develop life-threatening pneumonia.

Full Story: Preparing for a Pandemic, State Health Departments Struggle With Rationing Decisions | Raw Story.

Thousands gather for worldwide climate protests

From Asia to the Americas via Europe and the Middle East, activists around the planet have protested in an effort to mobilize public opinion against global warming 50 days ahead of a crucial UN climate summit.

Many of the thousands that gathered on the steps of Sydney’s iconic Opera House to kick off the event waved placards bearing the logo 350, a figure scientists believe is the maximum parts per million of CO2 that the atmosphere can bear to avoid runaway global warming.

In New York’s Times Square, a crowd of demonstrators gathered as giant screens beamed in images from around the world. Organizers told the activists that events had taken place in “more than 180 countries” at 5,200 events.

Full Story: Thousands gather for worldwide climate protests | Raw Story.

Podesta: Bush Administration Spent Only One Hour On Afghanistan Report It Handed Off To Obama

Link includes video

For weeks, former Bush administration officials have been attacking President Obama for “dithering” on whether to send more troops to Afghanistan, with Vice President Cheney saying that “signals of indecision out of Washington hurt our allies and embolden our adversaries.” But these Bush officials are also facing criticisms for largely neglecting Afghanistan in order to invade Iraq. In response, they have been citing an Afghanistan strategy report they handed off to the Obama administration that clearly laid out recommendations for moving forward. From Cheney’s recent remarks to the Center for Security Policy:

In the fall of 2008, fully aware of the need to meet new challenges being posed by the Taliban, we dug into every aspect of Afghanistan policy, assembling a team that repeatedly went into the country, reviewing options and recommendations, and briefing President-elect Obama’s team. They asked us not to announce our findings publicly, and we agreed, giving them the benefit of our work and the benefit of the doubt.

Today on ABC’s This Week, Center for American Progress President and CEO John Podesta revealed that the Bush administration spent just one hour on that report:

PODESTA: [T]hey did present him with a report at the very end of the Bush administration, but I have it from reliable sources that the principals in the Bush administration spent one hour on that report before they handed it off to Obama.

Watch it:

Full Story: Think Progress » Podesta: Bush Administration Spent Only One Hour On Afghanistan Report It Handed Off To Obama.

Paid to project the Recorded Vote – not the True Vote

Only some are aware that Final National Exit Poll (NEP) has always been forced to match the recorded vote. In several elections, forcing the match has required that there be more returning Republican voters from the previous election than were alive to vote – a key indicator of a fraudulent recorded vote. Yet forecasters, pollsters and media pundits always assume that the official vote count and final exit poll demographics represent the truth.

It’s ironic that a pollster who has correctly projected the True Vote (as opposed to the official, fraudulent recorded vote) is considered to be a failure while another who correctly predicted the recorded vote is considered to be an expert.

Pollsters, media pundits and political scientists must be well aware of the endemic fraud but they are paid to project the winner of the recorded vote, regardless of whether or not it is legitimate. They claim that final pre-election polls are correct when they match the official vote but are wrong if they don’t.

They get it “right” by disregarding important forecast indicators, such as the results of registered voter polls,undecided voters and approval ratings. And they compound the duplicity after the fact by avoiding a thorough analysis of exit poll anomalies that clearly point to fraud. Instead they blame the exit polls for “behaving badly”, as one writer once put it immediately after the 2004 election..

The media pundits never consider that votes may have been miscounted. They accept the official vote on “faith” without doing the proper analysis; looking for the True Vote could be a career-breaker. They claim the unadjusted, and preliminary exit polls have a Democratic bias (which they attribute to a higher response rate), but they fail to consider uncounted votes and voter turnout.

Full Story: Progressive Independent – Viewing topic.

Fair Game – If the Lender Can’t Find the Mortgage

If Lenders Say ‘The Dog Ate Your Mortgage’ ~ ~

FOR decades, when troubled homeowners and banks battled over delinquent mortgages, it wasn’t a contest. Homes went into foreclosure, and lenders took control of the property.

On top of that, courts rubber-stamped the array of foreclosure charges that lenders heaped onto borrowers and took banks at their word when the lenders said they owned the mortgage notes underlying troubled properties.

In other words, with lenders in the driver’s seat, borrowers were run over, more often than not. Of course, errant borrowers hardly deserve sympathy from bankers or anyone else, and banks are well within their rights to try to protect their financial interests.

But if our current financial crisis has taught us anything, it is that many borrowers entered into mortgage agreements without a clear understanding of the debt they were incurring. And banks often lacked a clear understanding of whether all those borrowers could really repay their loans.

Full Story: Fair Game – If the Lender Can’t Find the Mortgage – NYTimes.com.

In Defense of the ‘Balloon Boy’ Dad

Frank Rich -

FOR a country desperate for good news, the now-deflated “balloon boy” spectacle would seem to be the perfect tonic. As Wolf Blitzer of CNN summed up the nation’s unrestrained joy upon learning that the imperiled boy had never been in any peril whatsoever: “All of us are so excited that little Falcon is fine.”

Then came even better news. After little Falcon revealed to Blitzer that his family “did this for the show,” we could all luxuriate in a warm bath of moral superiority. No matter what our own faults as parents, we could never top Richard Heene, who mercilessly exploited his child for fame and profit. Nor could we ever be as craven as the news media, especially cable television, which dumped a live broadcast of President Obama in New Orleans to track the supersized Jiffy Pop bag floating over Colorado.

Or such are the received lessons of this tale.

Certainly the “balloon boy” incident is a reflection of our time — much as the radio-induced “War of the Worlds” panic dramatized America’s jitters on the eve of World War II, or the national preoccupation with the now-forgotten Congressman Gary Condit signaled America’s pre-9/11 drift into escapism and complacency in the summer of 2001. But to see what “balloon boy” says about 2009, you have to look past the sentimental moral absolutes. You have to muster some sympathy for the devil of the piece, the Bad Dad. And you can’t grant blanket absolution to those in the American audience who smugly blame Heene and television exclusively for the entire embarrassing episode.

Full Story: Op-Ed Columnist – In Defense of the ‘Balloon Boy’ Dad – NYTimes.com.

Jamie Rubin puts Anne Coulter in its place over Cheney’s dithering comment

(10/23/09) Ann Coulter and Jamie Rubin debate Dick Cheney’s view of Barack Obama’s handling of Afghanistan war strategy.

Coulter: “…Wars change, they fight back. You send in more troops, you send in fewer troops. And now it’s just going on and on and on. And it isn’t cleaning up Bush’s mess. In fact, it’s to the contrary. He is living off the legacy of Bush’s success in the war on terrorism.”

Full Story: YouTube – Coulter Vs. Rubin: Cheney’s ‘Stop Dithering’ Challenge to Obama on Afghanistan Strategy.

Multiple Deployments May Raise Risk of Military Spouse Suicide

As the effects of eight years of war accumulate in Army families, a growing number of military spouses suffering stress, depression and thoughts of suicide can’t get the care they need. There is “a severe shortage of mental-health-care facilities for families, both on post and off, especially as post-behavioral health centers are already filled to capacity with soldiers,” according to Army psychiatrist Col. Kris Peterson. (Army News Service, October 13, 2009)

The Army has been closely tracking the uptick in mental health problems of soldiers, and is collaborating with the National Institute of Mental Health on “the largest study ever of suicide and mental health in the military.” (“Study to Seek Clues to Soldier Suicides.” The Washington Post, August 10, 2009) Military family members aren’t included in the study, which was announced in July, the same month that two spouses of multiply-deployed husbands were reported dead of suspected self-inflicted injuries.

One of the women was a pregnant 40-year-old Army wife in Fayetteville, North Carolina, who called 911 threatening to harm herself. When the police arrived, she was dead of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound. A few weeks earlier, Army officials began investigating “the recent suspected suicide of a 172nd spouse in Schweinfurt, according to Lt. Col. Eric Stetson, 172nd Infantry Brigade rear detachment commander.” (“Some seek mental health checks for spouses of multiple-deployed soldiers.” Stars and Stripes, July 5, 2009) Almost three years ago, another Fort Bragg wife committed suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning, locking herself and her young children in the family car parked in the garage with the engine running. “Her husband, a lieutenant colonel in the Army, had been deployed to Iraq just two months before, just after the birth of the couple’s daughter.” (“War’s Silent Stress: The Family at Home,” The Virginian Pilot, August 9, 2009)

Full Story: t r u t h o u t | Multiple Deployments May Raise Risk of Military Spouse Suicide.

Failed State Update with Krugman and Roberts

Len Hart

In theory, a near worthless dollar is great for American manufacturers, American jobs. Lower costs for American goods means US exports should rise, reducing our trade deficit and helping pay off the national debt! That’s the theory, the rationale behind Richard Nixon’s decision to take the US off the so-called ‘gold standard’ back in the 70s.

The reality is this: despite the right wing’s subversion of the dollar, despite the deals Nixon and subsequent GOP regimes cut with China, US exports have decreased, US jobs have decreased, the US standard of living has decreased as just one percent of the population has prospered at everyone else’s expense. That has been the case at least since Ronald Reagan’s tax cut of 1982, a tax cut which benefited only this rich base of GOP/right wing supporters. These downward trends have defined US history since the 1970s despite temporary gains made during the Carter and Clinton years. I have previously posted the key ‘stats’ which prove this to have been the case.

Check out the CIA’s World Fact Book which lists the US at the very bottom of the list with the world’s largest negative Current Account Balance. China, which pegs the Yuan to the dollar, is at the top of the list with the world’s largest positive Current Account Balance. If the GOP had been correct, US exports should have risen! The ‘balance of trade deficit’ i.e, the NEGATIVE Current Account Balance would have been reduced! If the GOP had been correct, the US could have paid off huge amounts of national debt run up in incompetent and dishonest GOP regimes. The US might have survived decades of conservative budgets which forced the US to borrow from other countries. But –not surprisingly –things have not worked out as the GOP would have you believe.

Full Story: The Existentialist Cowboy: Failed State Update with Krugman and Roberts.

Rep. Alan Grayson: “Has the Federal Reserve Ever Tried to Manipulate the Stock Market?”

This is Rep. Alan Grayson asking Federal Reserve General Counsel Scott Alvarez about the Fed’s independence.

Full Story: YouTube – Rep. Alan Grayson: “Has the Federal Reserve Ever Tried to Manipulate the Stock Market?”.

Stockholder’s lawsuit wants executives held responsible if scheme is proved

Trustee alleges scam, wants execs to take fall

A stockholder in a Middle Tennessee real estate company has filed legal claims against a group of the firm’s top executives — including some prominent local businessmen — claiming they should be held financially responsible if they schemed to buy nursing homes and flip them to a nonprofit organization for a big profit.

The suit, filed earlier this week in U.S. District Court, claims National Health Investors Inc. bought property and then sold it at an inflated price to Care Foundation of America. The lawsuit alleges NHI created the nonprofit to carry out the transaction. Company directors named in the suit include Pinnacle Financial Partners Chairman Robert A. McCabe Jr., a member of the Nashville Downtown Partnership board of directors; and real estate developer Ted H. Welch, a former commissioner of the state Department of Finance and Administration and a major player in national Republican fundraising.

Full Story: Stockholder’s lawsuit wants executives held responsible if scheme is proved | tennessean.com | The Tennessean.

Small Business Faces Sharp Rise in Costs of Health Care – NYTimes.com

As Congress nears votes on legislation that would overhaul the health care system, many small businesses say they are facing the steepest rise in insurance premiums they have seen in recent years.

Insurance brokers and benefits consultants say their small business clients are seeing premiums go up an average of about 15 percent for the coming year — double the rate of last year’s increases. That would mean an annual premium that was $4,500 per employee in 2008 and $4,800 this year would rise to $5,500 in 2010.

The higher premiums at least partly reflect the inexorable rise of medical costs, which is forcing Medicare to raise premiums, too. Health insurance bills are also rising for big employers, but because they have more negotiating clout, their increases are generally not as steep.

Higher medical costs aside, some experts say they think the insurance industry, under pressure from Wall Street, is raising premiums to get ahead of any legislative changes that might reduce their profits.

Full Story: Small Business Faces Sharp Rise in Costs of Health Care – NYTimes.com.

Scientology Spokesman Storms Out Of Nightline Interview (VIDEO)

Last night ABC’s Nightline aired a report on the Church of Scientology, and accusations made against the church’s leader, David Miscavige, by ex-Scientologists. At one point, during an interview with the church spokesman Tommy Davis, Nightline’s Martin Bashir asked him about the church’s alleged secret core beliefs that have been divulged by former Scientologists. Davis took great offense to Bashir’s questions, and eventually walked out in the middle of the interview, tearing off his microphone and throwing it on the floor on his way out.

Full Story: Scientology Spokesman Storms Out Of Nightline Interview (VIDEO).

CNN Edits Out Dobbs Criticism From Taped Interview

This week, CNN aired a new four-hour documentary called “Latino in America,” exploring how Latinos are reshaping American communities and culture. The broadcast sparked protests in cities around the country, including outside CNN’s headquarters in Atlanta, with minority groups calling on the network to fire anti-immigration crusader and serial misinformer Lou Dobbs.

The New York Times reports that CNN “has not commented on the protests or covered them on its news programs.” But not only has CNN ignored the Dobbs protests, the network edited out criticism of Dobbs from civil rights lawyer Isabel Garcia during a taped interview with controversial Arizona Sheriff Joe Arapaio that aired on Anderson Cooper 360 this week:

Full Story: Think Progress » CNN Edits Out Dobbs Criticism From Taped Interview.

Goldman Sachs-Robbing and Thieving The American Sucker-AGAIN

Dylan Ratigan

The Blue Blood front Investment company is at it again as they rob and steal from the hard working American Sucker..Do they the American Sheeple need to be homeless on the streets b4 they take down these scumbags ???

Full Story: YouTube – Goldman Sachs-Robbing and Thieving The American Sucker-AGAIN.

Texas, the Eyes of Justice Are Upon You

by: Bill Moyers and Michael Winship

On October 13, we lost a resolute champion of the law, a man who left his impact on the lives of untold numbers of Americans.

His very name made his life’s work almost inevitable, a matter of destiny. William Wayne Justice was a federal judge for the Eastern District of Texas. That’s right, he was “Justice Justice.” And he spent a distinguished legal career making sure that everyone – no matter their color or income or class – got a fair shake. As a former Texas lieutenant governor put it last week, “Judge Justice dragged Texas into the 20th century, God bless him.”

Dragged it kicking and screaming, for it was Justice who ordered Texas to integrate its public schools in 1971 – 17 years after the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision made separate schools for blacks and whites unconstitutional. Texas resisted doing the right thing for as long as it could. Many of its segregated schools for African-American children were so poor they still had outhouses instead of indoor plumbing.

This small town lawyer appointed to the federal bench by President Lyndon B. Johnson ordered Texas to open its public housing to everyone, regardless of their skin color. He looked at the state’s “truly shocking conditions” in its juvenile detention system and said, repair it. He struck down state law that permitted public schools to charge as much as $1,000 tuition for children of illegal immigrants.

Full Story: t r u t h o u t | Texas, the Eyes of Justice Are Upon You.

Rachel Maddow: Sen John McCain vs. “Net Neutrality”

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow: Republican Senator John McCain vs. “Net Neutrality” – Boing Boing Co- Editor Xeni Jardin Is Interviewed And Explains Net Neutrality – 10/23/09

Full Story: YouTube – Rachel Maddow: Sen John McCain vs. “Net Neutrality”.

Karzai Rival Says Won’t Join Afghan Government

Abdullah Abdullah, Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s rival in next month’s run-off election, said he would not join Karzai’s government if the incumbent won.

Asked in a CNN interview about comments by Karzai that he would welcome his rival in his government, Abdullah said he had “absolutely no interest in such a scenario.”

Abdullah, a former foreign minister, said his intention in seeking the presidency was to bring change to the impoverished country, not to be “part of the same deteriorating situation.”

Full Story: Karzai Rival Says Won’t Join Afghan Government – NYTimes.com.

A teenager questions a Republican’s use of the word freedom.

YouTube – Sigh… Republicans.

Strict Oklahoma Abortion Laws Spark Court Battles

Two new laws being challenged in the Oklahoma courts would give the state some of the strictest abortion laws in the country by forcing women to answer questions about race and their relationships, and to listen to a doctor talk them through an ultrasound.

Legal challenges to the laws are in their early stages, but observers say the trajectory of cases could mirror that of the partial-birth abortion debate, which went through Nebraska courts and was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court before Congress made it a federal law that was upheld in 2007.

“That’s an apt comparison,” said Joseph Thai, a professor at the University of Oklahoma who specializes in constitutional law and the Supreme Court. “So, expect these Oklahoma laws and the ensuing court decisions to be the first rather than last word on how far a state may go with respect to compulsory procedures and reporting requirements.”

Full Story: Strict Oklahoma Abortion Laws Spark Court Battles.

350′s International Day Of Climate Action

: The World Shows Support (PHOTOS)

These photos say it all! People around the world are coming together to support the International Day of Climate Action, and they are showing support in some amazing and creative ways. Find out more at 350.org and be sure to check out our slideshow and vote for your favorite expression of climate change activism!

Full Story: 350′s International Day Of Climate Action: The World Shows Support (PHOTOS).

“Smart Choices” Food Labeling Program Halts Over FDA Concern

A food industry group is voluntarily halting promotion of its nutrition labeling program after federal regulators said such systems could mislead consumers, officials with the group said Friday.

Industry leaders launched the “Smart Choices” program in August to identify foods that meet certain nutritional standards and then highlight them for consumers with a green label on package fronts.

But the Food and Drug Administration said Tuesday that there are so many labeling programs with different criteria that they may mislead consumers about the health benefits of certain foods. The agency told manufacturers it will crack down on inaccurate labeling, although it did not name specific products or give a timeline for enforcement.

Full Story: “Smart Choices” Food Labeling Program Halts Over FDA Concern.

Bloomberg Sets Record for Personal Spending in Pursuit of Public Office

Michael R. Bloomberg, the Wall Street mogul whose fortune catapulted him into New York’s City Hall, has set another staggering financial record: He has now spent more of his own money than any other individual in United States history in the pursuit of public office.

Newly released campaign records show the mayor, as of Friday, had spent $85 million on his latest re-election campaign, and is on pace to spend between $110 million and $140 million before the election on Nov. 3.

That means Mr. Bloomberg, in his three bids for mayor, will have easily burned through more than $250 million — the equivalent of what Warner Brothers spent on the latest Harry Potter movie.

Full Story: Bloomberg Sets Record for Personal Spending in Pursuit of Public Office – NYTimes.com.

Arizona May Turn Death Row Over to Private Companies

— One of the newest residents on Arizona’s death row, a convicted serial killer named Dale Hausner, poked his head up from his television to look at several visitors strolling by, each of whom wore face masks and vests to protect against the sharp homemade objects that often are propelled from the cells of the condemned.

It is a dangerous place to patrol, and Arizona spends $4.7 million each year to house inmates like Mr. Hausner in a super-maximum-security prison. But in a first in the criminal justice world, the state’s death row inmates could become the responsibility of a private company.

State officials will soon seek bids from private companies for 9 of the state’s 10 prison complexes that house roughly 40,000 inmates, including the 127 here on death row. It is the first effort by a state to put its entire prison system under private control.

Full Story: Arizona May Turn Death Row Over to Private Companies – NYTimes.com.

Obama: Swine Flu A National Emergency

President Barack Obama declared the swine flu outbreak a national emergency and empowered his health secretary to suspend federal requirements and speed treatment for thousands of infected people.

The declaration that Obama signed late Friday authorized Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to bypass federal rules so health officials can respond more quickly to the outbreak, which has killed more than 1,000 people in the United States.

The goal is to remove bureaucratic roadblocks and make it easier for sick people to seek treatment and medical providers to provide it immediately. That could mean fewer hurdles involving Medicare, Medicaid or health privacy regulations.

“As a nation, we have prepared at all levels of government, and as individuals and communities, taking unprecedented steps to counter the emerging pandemic,” Obama wrote in the declaration, which the White House announced Saturday.

Full Story: Obama: Swine Flu A National Emergency.

Jeb Bush: GOP can’t be ‘old white guy party’

The GOP needs to shed its image as the “old white guy party,” Jeb Bush said this week.

Speaking at George Washington University, Bush said Republicans need to reach out to a more diverse group of voters.

“You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to realize that in order for a political party to be successful it has to reach out to everyone,” Bush said, according to the GW Hatchet. “In politics, you never win when you say ‘us and them.’ We need a more welcoming message.”

Finally, seizing on a DNC talking point, Bush suggested his party needs to come up with more ideas of its own.

“We just can’t be the party of no,” he said. “Republicans need to offer, based on their own principles, solutions to these problems.”

Bush also hinted that his party has come across as intolerant at times.

“Tone matters,” he said, according to New Majority. “In twenty or so years our country will have a minority majority.”

Full Story: Jeb Bush: GOP can’t be ‘old white guy party’ – The Hill’s Blog Briefing Room.

U.S. forces kill four Afghans in car: including a child and two women

Four Afghans, including a child and two women, were killed Saturday when U.S. forces opened fire on a car in southern Kandahar city, police said.

A man in the car also was killed when a U.S. military convoy opened fire on the civilian vehicle, Kandahar police official Shah Agha told Reuters. He said a U.S. Special Forces convoy appeared to be involved.

A spokeswoman for NATO in Afghanistan was not able to confirm the nationality of troops involved. A statement from the provincial governor of Kandahar confirmed the casualties.

A NATO spokesman in Afghanistan said three civilians were killed and two were wounded when NATO forces fired on the car because it failed to stop when repeatedly signaled to do so.

The spokesman was unable to confirm if children were among the casualties.

Full Story: U.S. forces kill four Afghans in car: police – Yahoo! News.

Electrolux plant closings to cost 850 Iowa jobs

Appliance maker Electrolux announced Friday that it would close two Iowa plants by spring 2011, putting 850 people out of work as operations are moved to Mexico.

Electrolux Major Appliances North America said it would close the Webster City plant by early 2011 and a smaller facility in Jefferson by late 2010.

The Webster City plant employs about 880 people and produces top-loading washing machines. About 50 people work in the Jefferson plant, about 50 miles southwest of Webster City, which builds components for the washing machines.

The company says about 75 jobs will remain at a technology center in Iowa.

Advertising

“This is a very difficult decision and certainly a last resort,” Electrolux spokeswoman Blythe Reiss said.

Full Story: Omaha.com – The Omaha World-Herald: Metro/Region – Electrolux plant closings to cost 850 Iowa jobs.

OPS:  The Hemmoraging won’t stop until trade laws are change to favor Americans

Public option likely to be managed by private insurance company

A little-noticed tidbit in Saturday’s Washington Post is sure to raise eyebrows among liberal supporters of a gorvernment-run healthcare plan: the plan is likely to be administered by a private insurance company, the very companies that progressive activists are trying to unseat.

The public-option debate is frustrating some Democrats, who have come to believe that a government-run plan is neither as radical as its conservative critics have portrayed, nor as important as its liberal supporters contend. Any public plan is likely to have a relatively narrow scope, as it would be offered only to people who don’t have access to coverage through an employer.

The public option would effectively be just another insurance plan offered on the open market. It would likely be administered by a private insurance provider, charging premiums and copayments like any other policy. In an early estimate of the House bill, the Congressional Budget Office forecast that fewer than 12 million people would buy insurance through the government plan.

Supporters of the public plan contend that it will help to trim healthcare costs, as a public insurer wouldn’t need to generate profits. Health insurance companies typically earn profits of around two to four percent, which amounts to billions of dollars for some firms.

Full Story: Public option likely to be managed by private insurance company | Raw Story.

OPS: Suicide. Political and economic suicide

Hoekstra campaigns against detention facility that Michiganders actually want.

Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-MI), who is currently running for governor, has been fighting the Obama administration over its plans to close Guantanamo Bay. The Michigan Republican, who believes waterboarding is legal, is concerned that terrorism suspects from Guantanamo “could be moved to Michigan.” Indeed, it has been rumored that the administration is considering moving some detainees to a maximum security facility in Standish, MI which is slated to shut down at the end of October. As Hoekstra raises unwarranted fears about the U.S.’s ability to maintain a secure facility, the residents of Standish aren’t buying it. The Standish City Council voted 6-0 this week in support of a resolution telling the administration to relocate detainees to their prison facility:

Full Story: Think Progress » Hoekstra campaigns against detention facility that Michiganders actually want..

OPS:  Why the Disconnect between what the people want and what the Reich will do?
Anything that might improve the economy will be vigorously resisted by the Reich.
They would rather see the country destroyed than remain out of power.
It’s as simple and twisted as that.

Fox News’ War on the White House

YouTube – Fox News’ War on the White House.

Out of Afghan – Into Trade War

Sen. Ernest F. “Fritz” Hollings

Like world peace, free trade is an admirable goal, but it will never exist in our lifetime. Instead, we must recognize an intense Trade War that ensues.

Editor’s Note: The following article was contributed by Former Senator Ernest F. “Fritz” Hollings, author of Making Government Work.

Washington is a hard learner. It took ten years and cost 58,000 lives in Vietnam to learn that you couldn’t build and destroy or secure the country and institute democracy at the same time. Now we insist on trying it in Afghanistan. A second election won’t do it. As Secretary Gates says they’ve still got the same corruption. Many in Afghanistan have yet to learn of the first election and warlords will probably vote them again. We can’t get it through our heads that we’re trying to change a culture that values tribe and religion more than freedom and democracy. Even if it works, Afghans will probably be back to their culture after we leave. After eight years, bitter-enders keep calling for the number of troops the generals ask for, but the generals say the military or number of troops can’t do it. It’s got to be done by “a willing partner.” After eight years of trying, it’s criminal to ask GIs to give their lives while we search for “a willing partner” in corruption.

We, as a people, are hard learners. Guerrilla war has checkmated nuclear, and the world has moved to economic hegemony. Capitalism, free markets, are America’s long suits. But as Henry Clay said of free trade: “It never existed … it never will.” Like world peace, free trade is an admirable goal, but it will never exist in our lifetime. Instead, we must recognize an intense Trade War that ensues.

Forty years ago, Lee Kuan Yew, the Prime Minister of Singapore and Wise Man of the East, told me how Japan was determined to take over the world economy. Lee said: “Japan teaches in its schools that the defeat in World War II was just a temporary setback. After the war, Japan launched a policy of prevailing in the world economically.” After World War II, Japan started the Trade War by closing its domestic market, subsidizing its manufacturing, selling its exports at or near cost and making up the profit in its closed market. Toyota, operating from this closed market, has now become No. 1, while General Motors, operating from an open market, is bankrupt. Six years ago, Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama and I visited Singapore, and I wanted Shelby to hear Lee Kuan Yew. Sure enough, Lee received us at his apartment and, during the hour and a half visit, Lee reaffirmed what he had told me about Japan and gave me a book where he had written this. Then Lee told of the unannounced visit of Hu Jintao, the then-incoming President of China. Hu had not called on Lee or any officials, but stayed with a friend several days who took him around Singapore. When Hu left, Lee summoned the friend and asked: “What gives?” The friend told Lee that Hu wanted to see how Singapore with a diverse population and no natural resources managed to become so strong economically. Then Lee cautioned: “Now we’ll have to watch China as it takes over the world economically.”

Full Story: Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.

Further Evidence America Needs a VAT

International trade is inherently unfair if everyone plays the game by a different set of rules.

Just before signing the North American Free Trade Agreement and mutually lowering its official import tariffs against the United States, the Canadian government instituted a so-called Goods and Services Tax. The GST is a multi-level valued-added tax no different than the VAT used in other countries around the world.

Canada is the United States’ largest trading partner – just ahead of China – yet it is allowed to maintain a value-added tax. Not all goods coming out of Canada are rebated, and not all U.S. goods are taxed at the border – for instance, automobiles are exempted.

However, some American-produced goods are taxed, and some imports into the United States are rebated by the Canadian government. This is an overt example of unfair “free trade” policies, and it is right on our border. Mexico also maintains a similar tax scheme against imported goods, including U.S. items.

Full Story: Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.

USA Loses In An Economics War And Is Now A Defeated and Conquered Nation

Americans have been defeated in an economics war with consequences as meaningful and damaging as if having lost a military war

USA Loses In An Economics War And Is Now A Defeated and Conquered Nation with a destroyed industrial infrastructure. We are forced to live on imports and on credit from anyone who will offer it. Here is how it happened:

Americans have been defeated in an economics war with consequences as meaningful and damaging as if having lost a military war. Strangely, the citizens do not feel the pain and economic destruction to the same extent as a perilous military defeat. Americans are oblivious to how this defeat happened and how it is affecting them, going about their merry way, living well in passive and painless submission, on borrowed money and cheap imports from China and Japan.

China and Japan each operate their economies as one huge business that is done first-and-foremost for the best interest of their countries. Functioning with a unique, effective and a most-creative system of guided and managed capitalism, their economies are set up to destroy any competitive economy that stands in their way.

Full Story: Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.

How the Economy was Lost

Paul Craig Roberts

“Free trade” has destroyed the employment prospects of older workers. Forced out of their careers, they seek employment as shelf-stockers for Wal-Mart.

Editor’s Note: The following article originally ran in February, but is just as relevant today.

The American economy has gone away. It is not coming back until free trade myths are buried 6 feet under.

America’s 20th century economic success was based on two things. Free trade was not one of them. America’s economic success was based on protectionism, which was ensured by the union victory in the Civil War, and on British indebtedness, which destroyed the British pound as world reserve currency. Following World War II, the U.S. dollar took the role as reserve currency, a privilege that allows the United States to pay its international bills in its own currency.

World War II and socialism together ensured that the U.S. economy dominated the world at the mid-20th century. The economies of the rest of the world had been destroyed by war or were stifled by socialism.

The ascendant position of the U.S. economy caused the U.S. government to be relaxed about giving away American industries, such as textiles, as bribes to other countries for cooperating with America’s Cold War and foreign policies. For example, Turkey’s U.S. textile quotas were increased in exchange for over-flight rights in the Gulf War, making lost U.S. textile jobs an off-budget war expense.

Full Story: Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.

Groups Rally to Stop Nestlé’s Raid on Sacramento Water

Grassroots community activists are mobilizing against the internationally boycotted corporation that is planning to bottle water in an already parched state.

Sacramento councilmember Kevin McCarty again raised the issue of the plan by Nestlé to build a new bottling plant in South Sacramento at last Tuesday night’s Sacramento City Council meeting as grassroots community activists mobilized against the internationally boycotted corporation coming to the Capital City.

McCarty asked for the issue to be agendized for a future city council meeting so that an “urgency ordinance” can be passed, according to Save Our Water in Sacramento, the grassroots group fighting against Nestlé’s plan to come to Sacramento after being kicked out of McCloud by massive local resistance.

“Councilmember McCarty will be asking the council to pass an urgency ordinance that would require a special permit for water bottling facilities in the city,” said Evan Tucker, an activist with Save Our Water. “This would require this type of project to come before the city council and be subject to environmental review under the California Environmental Quality Act.”

Full Story: Groups Rally to Stop Nestlé’s Raid on Sacramento Water | Take Action | AlterNet.

‘War on Terror’ II

Obama Is Keeping Bush’s Worst “War on Terror” Policies Firmly In Place.  Thanks to behind-the-scenes maneuvering by the Obama administration, a bipartisan majority has approved legislation that seems to abandon hope of reining in the Patriot Act.

By Julian Sanchez , The Nation

We know the rules by now, the strange conventions and stilted Kabuki scripts that govern our cartoon facsimile of a national security debate. The Obama administration makes vague, reassuring noises about constraining executive power and protecting civil liberties, but then merrily adopts whatever appalling policy George W. Bush put in place. Conservatives hit the panic button on the right-wing noise machine anyway, keeping the delicate ecosystem in balance by creating the false impression that something has changed. We’ve watched the formula play out with Guantánamo Bay, torture prosecutions and the invocation of “state secrets.” We appear to be on the verge of doing the same with national security surveillance.

Last week, the Senate Judiciary Committee seemed to abandon hope of bringing any real change to the Patriot Act. A lopsided and depressingly bipartisan majority approved legislation that would reauthorize a series of expanded surveillance powers set to expire at the end of the year. Several senators had proposed that reauthorization be wedded to safeguards designed to protect the privacy of innocent Americans from indiscriminate data dragnets–but behind-the-scenes maneuvering by the Obama administration ensured that even the most modest of these were stripped from the final bill now being sent to the full Senate.

Full Story: ‘War on Terror’ II.

Pot Farming the Next Gold Rush?

How Are Some Middle-Class Families Coping with the Recession? Growing Pot. A financial stimulus for the recession-battered middle class: pot farming.

Sarah’s whole street reeks of pot. This is not hyperbole. When you turn the corner onto this lane of 1970s tract houses, you smell the tang: the sour, earthy, green odor that wafts up from lush marijuana plants steaming in the sun.

Sarah estimates that seven of 10 households on her semi-rural street, a couple miles from white-bread-suburban Rohnert Park, Calif., are growing weed. She ran into one neighbor at the hardware store, in the new section devoted to cultivation, with the special dirt, fertilizer and outsized plastic pots the growers use. Her next-door neighbors, two brothers, trade plant-sitting with her and let their pit bulls loose at night to patrol both yards. The women across the street have a small crop in their vegetable garden. And the new couple on the block, noticing the smell, mentioned they’d like to get in on it. In fact, she says, she doesn’t know anyone in Sonoma County who isn’t growing pot.

Full Story: Business & Economics Articles | Pot Farming the Next Gold Rush? | Miller-McCune Online Magazine.

8 Reasons Fox Is Not a News Organization

PR for the GOP? Yes. Platform for right-wing hatemongers? Definitely. But a news organization? Definitely not.

Even before Barack Obama was elected to the presidency, Rupert Murdoch had declared war on him via the personalities of Fox News Channel, a subsidiary of Murdoch’s media conglomerate, News Corp.

Since Obama’s election, the cable channel’s hosts and paid analysts have launched a full frontal assault on the president, smearing his nominees, calling him a racist and suggesting that his administration was trying to persuade disabled veterans to off themselves.

Now the fearmongers at Fox are crying foul since the president and his aides declared Fox not to be a news organization. Earlier this month, White House Communications Director Anita Dunn called Fox an “arm” of the Republican Party. Obama went even further, suggesting this week that Fox “is operating basically as a talk-radio format,” and we know what that means: A format in which the most provocative opinions dominate the discourse and facts are optional.

Full Story: 8 Reasons Fox Is Not a News Organization | Media and Technology | AlterNet.

After the Billionaires Plundered Alabama Town, Troops Were Called in … Illegally

“We have to tolerate the inequality as a way to achieve greater prosperity and opportunity for all,” says one Goldman Sachs adviser. But tell that to the people of Samson, Ala.

Editor’s Note: The shocking transfer of public wealth to Wall Street’s pockets is illustrated vividly in Mark Ames’ article below, which covers some very disturbing recent events in Alabama, where billionaires and banks are squeezing the locals so hard that they’re literally going bankrupt just for flushing their toilets, where violence and the threat of violence are reaching a boiling point and where even the Posse Comitatus Act is under threat.

One of this year’s more disturbing stories that were ignored was the illegal Army occupation of Samson, Alab., in March following a shooting spree that raged across two towns by a disgruntled worker, leaving 11 people dead.

As I wrote at the time, Michael McLendon, 27, went on a killing rampage following years of relentless corporate exploitation and harassment against him, his mother (whom he mercy-killed), and the entire rural Alabama region, which suffered like so many parts of rural America at the hands of billionaire goons like chicken oligarch Bo Pilgrim of Pilgrim’s Pride notoriety.

One of the creepiest details to emerge in the shooting rampage were reports that troops from nearby Fort Rucker were brought into Samson and other surrounding areas to patrol the streets. This is a clear violation of the Posse Comitatus Act, every freedom-loving American’s worst nightmare.

Full Story: After the Billionaires Plundered Alabama Town, Troops Were Called in … Illegally | Corporate Accountability and WorkPlace | AlterNet.

Reagan’s Lesson: “Patience” in a President’s First Year Is Political Suicide

David Sirota

When the New York Times’ John Harwood reported that a top Obama adviser told him that progressives “need to take off the pajamas, get dressed and realize that governing a closely divided country is complicated and difficult,” it was a rejoinder that expressed far more than Village disdain for grassroots pressure and activism. It represented a deeper assertion, pervasive in political circles, that says we all must be patient with the Obama White House because we’re only 10 months into the new administration. “Governing a closely divided country is complicated and difficult” is a euphemism for both “stop pushing so hard,” “don’t expect so much change so fast,” “he’s trying to do too much too fast” and every other similar dollop of conventional wisdom.

In one sense, there’s nothing surprising about this coming from the Village. Beltway journalists, pundits and politicians are inclined to despise anything even vaguely grassroots in nature, because anything grassroots in nature fundamentally challenges their authority and power. But in another sense, it’s shocking that the same Beltway culture that so consistently venerates the political vehemence, aggressiveness and legacy of Ronald Reagan would manufacture a conventional wisdom assuming that the first year of a president’s first term is the time for patience.

Here’s a passage from Gil Troy’s Reagan biography, Morning In America that explains how most of the major legislative initiatives that have been come to be called the Reagan Revolution happened in 1981:

Full Story: Reagan’s Lesson: “Patience” in a President’s First Year Is Political Suicide | The Smirking Chimp.

EPA to limit mercury emissions from power plants by 2011 | McClatchy

The Environmental Protection Agency will put controls on the emissions of hazardous pollutants such as mercury from coal-fired power plants for the first time by November 2011, according to an agreement announced Friday to settle a lawsuit against the agency.

Many other polluters were forced to reduce emissions of toxic material such as mercury, arsenic and lead after the Clean Air Act was strengthened in 1990. Power plants, however, the largest source of mercury pollution, aren’t subject to nationwide rules.

The tougher rules will clean up more than just heavy metals because some kinds of pollution controls — scrubbers, for example — also remove other pollutants, such as soot.

Full Story: EPA to limit mercury emissions from power plants by 2011 | McClatchy.

Elizabeth Warren Suspects Fraud As Cause of Financial Crisis

Elizabeth Warren Speaks With Michael Moore (VIDEO): Exclusive Footage

The House Financial Services Committee passed a watered-down version of the proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency Thursday morning.

In the words of Financial Services chairman Barney Frank: “We have restricted the CFPA from what the administration proposed.”

The CFPA is largely the idea of Elizabeth Warren, the Harvard law professor who serves as the chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel for the TARP program, and who has long advocated for stronger consumer protections.

The Huffington Post has been given exclusive video of a candid interview Warren gave to Michael Moore for his documentary “Capitalism: A Love Story,” much of which never made it into the film. In it, she expresses her disappointment at the lack of accountability that has come with the massive bailout of Wall Street, and explains why the need for a strong Consumer Financial Protection Agency is so urgent.

The video is broken up into three clips below.

Full Story: Elizabeth Warren Speaks With Michael Moore (VIDEO): Exclusive Footage.

US says it can wait ‘a few days’ for Iran nuclear response

The United States can wait a few days for Iran’s response to a UN-brokered deal on its nuclear program, President Barack Obama’s administration said Friday, signaling it would not wait indefinitely.

France, Russia and the US have all backed a proposal whereby the Russians will enrich the uranium Iran needs for a research reactor, but are still waiting to hear back from Tehran.

“I think we can stretch things a few days,” said US State Department spokesman Ian Kelly. “But we’re not going to wait forever.”

The UN watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said that Iran had asked for more time and planned to respond by the middle of next week, but that it was looking favorably at the deal.

Western diplomats had initially said the international powers would not accept any attempt to drag out negotiations beyond Friday.

Full Story: US says it can wait ‘a few days’ for Iran nuclear response – Yahoo! News.

Our Plastic Crap – Killing Seabirds

These photographs of albatross chicks were made just a few weeks ago on Midway Atoll, a tiny stretch of sand and coral near the middle of the North Pacific. The nesting babies are fed bellies-full of plastic by their parents, who soar out over the vast polluted ocean collecting what looks to them like food to bring back to their young. On this diet of human trash, every year tens of thousands of albatross chicks die on Midway from starvation, toxicity, and choking.

To document this phenomenon as faithfully as possible, not a single piece of plastic in any of these photographs was moved, placed, manipulated, arranged, or altered in any way. These images depict the actual stomach contents of baby birds in one of the world’s most remote marine sanctuaries, more than 2000 miles from the nearest continent.

Full Story: current work.

Public Option Annie – with lyrics (guerrilla musical at AHIP conference)

AHIP is the powerful insurance lobby that spends 5 million dollars a week trying to kill health care reform. Billionaires for Wealthcare is a grassroots network looking to stop them – with song.

• AHIP and other insurance and HMO interests spend nearly $5 million per week undermining real health care reform, including a public option.

• AHIP has resorted to out-right lying and scare tactics to block health care reform. They sent letters that lie to seniors about what health care reform means for Medicare, and they issued a report on the costs of health care reform legislation that is so misleading even the reports embarrassed authors distanced themselves from the way AHIP used their work.

• Every year, 45,000 people die because they cant get access to the health care they need. Yet AHIP continues to stand in the way of health care reform that would provide coverage to millions of Americans because the industry is more concerned with protecting profits than saving lives.

Lyrics to “Public Option Annie”

(to the tune of “Tomorrow” from Annie)

SINGER #1

No, thank you!

FOR KILLING THE PUBLIC OPTION

AND BLOCKING ANY HOPES OF ITS ADOPTION

THANK YOU, SIR!

SINGER #2

Sure,

BUT WHAT ABOUT COMPETITION?

IT’S AN OLD AMERICAN TRADITION

OR SO I’VE HEARD?

SINGER #1

Meh.

SINGER #3

WHEN OLYMPIA SNOWE

SAID NO,

IT CROAKED

Right?

SINGER #2

NO, THE OPTION’S NOT DEAD

SINGER #3

OR RED!

SINGER #1

EXPLAIN!

Who let these hippies in here?

SINGERS #2 AND #3, and CHORUS MEMBERS

IF WE GET A PUB-

LIC OPTION

WE CAN SNIFF OUT WASTE

JUST LIKE A DACHSUND

COSTS COME DOWN!

SINGER #1

Hey, those “costs” are my profits!

SINGERS #2 AND #3, and CHORUS MEMBERS

THE OPTION

THE OPTION

THE PUBLIC WANTS OPTIONS

WITHOUT IT,

IT’S A GIVEAWAY

SINGER #1

Exactly. To us. Am I in the right room?

THE OPTION

THE OPTION

THE PUBLIC WANTS AN OPTION

SINGERS #2 AND #3, and CHORUS MEMBERS

OR REFORM IS A CORP’RATE GIVE-A-WAY!

SINGER #1

Well, I’ve heard enough – my helicopter is parked in a handicap space.

Full Story: YouTube – Public Option Annie – with lyrics (guerrilla musical at AHIP conference).

FBI looks at bribery allegations against Alaska Rep. Young

An Alaska businessman admitted to giving gifts to Republican Rep. Don Young, the state’s long-serving sole congressman, in a confession made public this week as part of an ongoing federal investigation into political corruption in the state.

The confession, signed in 2007 by Bill Allen, the former chief of Veco, an Alaska oil services company, was released as part of Allen’s upcoming sentencing on charges that he bribed state lawmakers.

In the document, which outlines criminal activity Allen was involved in, the 72-year-old executive admits to 13 years of gift-giving to public officials. They include former Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens and Young, whom the document referred to as to “United States Representative A.”

Full Story: FBI looks at bribery allegations against Alaska Rep. Young | McClatchy.

Thom debates John Lott on net neutrality

YouTube – Thom debates John Lott on net neutrality.