Archive for November, 2009
Dodd’s Banking Bill Takes The Fed Down A Notch Or Two
This is not a time for timidity,” Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) said Tuesday as he unveiled what he called a “sweeping, bold, comprehensive, long overdue” restructuring of the financial regulatory regime – one that, unlike competing proposals, limits rather than expands the powers of the Federal Reserve.
Specifically, Dodd’s bill takes away the Fed’s regulatory power in some key areas. “I really want the Federal Reserve to get back to its core enterprises,” Dodd said. “We saw over the last number of years when they took on consumer protection responsibilities and the regulation of bank holding companies, it was an abysmal failure. So the idea that we’re going to go back and expand those roles and functions at the expense of the vitality of the core functions that they’re designed to perform is going in the wrong way.”
The bill would also end the practice of allowing banks to select the directors of the regional Federal Reserve banks. That was a last-minute addition that came after the committee’s top Republican, Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, told HuffPost he wanted to end the conflict of interest.
Dodd’s bill is comprehensive, coming in at over 1,000 pages and tackling topics from derivatives reform to consumer financial protection.
Full Story Dodd’s Banking Bill Takes The Fed Down A Notch Or Two: HELP US DIG THROUGH IT.
Babies have accents when they are born
Babies learn the pattern of their mother’s native language during the third trimester of pregnancy. The sense of hearing is very well developed in the third trimester. After the baby is born they begin speaking with an accent. Even their first noises have a definite accent quality that was learned before they were born.
A study of 30 French and 30 German babies aged two to five days showed distinctive differences in the cadence, intonation, and accent of baby’s cries and other noises. The research demonstrated the differences depend on what language the mother speaks. This early development of accent is assumed to help the child learn their native language more quickly and is an evolutionary inheritance.
The study was the work of researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, the Centre for Pre-language Development and Developmental Disorders (ZVES) at the University Clinic Würzburg, and the Laboratory of Cognitive Sciences and Linguistics at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris.
Full Story Babies have accents when they are born.
Sea Levels and Property Rights
The Rising Tide
Florida is a good lens through which to view the dilemma of delay and inadequate response by government to the challenges of global warming. There has been plenty of talk about reforming energy conservation in order to limited carbon dioxide emissions. The inconsistencies are only a few feet above sea level. The foot-dragging makes marks in the sand. Meanwhile, downtown Miami and Miami Beach are beginning to flood like Venice at seasonal high tides.
The low hanging fruit is easy: simple steps like government purchase of fleets of higher mileage efficiency cars. But there has been resistance by private Miami taxi cab companies to do the same; effectively blocking rules that would require a timeline for conversion. It is no different from big energy companies. In other states, Florida Power and Light accepts common sense measurement of energy efficiencies as a test for whether or not to build new power generating facilities, but not in Florida. Why? Because they have the system wired.
There is a subgroup of power brokers who also have the system wired, from the adoption of computerized voting machines to votes on the county commission: property rights attorneys and lobbyists representing land speculators. In recent months, the mainstream media has started to pick up on the topic: that local governments should stop development of houses and office space and malls in the areas that will be flooded, first, as a result of sea level rise.
Full Story Alan Farago: The Rising Tide.
Making Wall Street pay
Dean Baker
Wall Street’s irresponsible bankers caused this economic crisis. It’s only fair that they pay to clean up their mess
The deficit hawk crew, famous for missing the $8tn housing bubble that wrecked the economy, is now on the warpath, pressing the case for a big, new, national sales tax. They claim that the United States badly needs additional revenue to address projected budget shortfalls.
While we may need additional revenue at some point, it makes far more sense to impose a financial transactions tax, which would primarily hit the Wall Street banks that gave us this disaster, than to tax the consumption of ordinary working families. We can raise large amounts of money by taxing the speculation of the Wall Street high-flyers while barely affecting the sort of financial dealings that most of us do in our daily lives.
The logic of a financial transactions tax is simple. It would impose a modest fee on trades of stocks, futures, credit default swaps and other financial instruments. For example, the UK puts a 0.25% tax on the sale or purchase of shares of stock. This has very little impact on people who buy stock with the intent of holding it for a long period of time.
Full Story Making Wall Street pay | Dean Baker | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk.
When a Time Bomb Is Ticking
Eugene Robinson
There’s a difference between sensitivity and stupidity. If there were indeed signs that Maj. Nidal Hasan, the alleged Fort Hood mass murderer, was becoming radicalized in his opposition to the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Army had a duty to act—before he did.
Gen. George Casey, the Army chief of staff, said Sunday he was concerned that “this increased speculation” about Hasan’s evolving political and religious views “could cause a backlash against some of our Muslim soldiers.” Casey is right to worry about the lunatics and bigots who now will think of all Muslims in the military as potential enemies. But it only feeds such paranoia to ignore alarm bells that an unstable individual, Muslim or not, is about to blow.
According to published reports, Hasan told people of his serious doubts about the U.S. military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan. Hasan, a psychiatrist who had evaluated returning soldiers for stress-related disorders, made no secret of his reluctance to serve in the Afghan theater, where he was to be sent within weeks. According to ABC News, fellow Army doctors told superiors of their concern that Hasan felt divided allegiance—both to the Muslims whom he felt were under attack and the country he had volunteered to serve.
Full Story Truthdig – Reports – When a Time Bomb Is Ticking.
Navies of 2 Koreas exchange fire near border
A badly damaged North Korean patrol ship retreated in flames Tuesday after a skirmish with a South Korean naval vessel along their disputed western coast, South Korean officials said.
The first naval clash in seven years broke out just a week before President Barack Obama is due to visit Seoul, raising suspicions the North’s communist regime is trying to rachet up tensions to gain a negotiating advantage.
There were no South Korean casualties, the country’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement, and it was not immediately clear if there were any casualties on the North Korean side. Each side blamed the other for violating the sea border.
The exchange of fire occurred as U.S. officials said Obama has decided to send a special envoy to Pyongyang for rare direct talks on the communist country’s nuclear weapons program. No date has been set, but the talks would be the first one-on-one negotiations since Obama took office in January.
Full Story Navies of 2 Koreas exchange fire near border – Yahoo! News.
Free Speech Under Assault by Police Chief in Brooksville, Florida
The video here involving the simple effort to use a PA system for an event that I organized to allow Veterans the opportunity to present their side (unfiltered) to the public was squelched by City officials. There is no free speech if one side’s speech is allowed to be heard and another’s is not.
In April of 2008, the County Parks Director, Mr. Fagan gave us permission to use a PA system in the same location where we see Mr. Sagar speaking here this past Saturday, Nov. 7, 2009.
Full Story YouTube – Free Speech Under Assault by Police Chief in Brooksville, Florida.
Officer Caught Swiping Lawyers Papers On Court Camera
NN’s Rick Sanchez: Arizona Officer Caught Swiping Lawyers Papers On Court Camera – 11/09/09
Full Story YouTube – Officer Caught Swiping Lawyers Papers On Court Camera.
‘No’ Votes on Health Care Bill Received $2.3 Million More from Health Insurance Industry
Members of Congress who noted “no” on health care reform legislation late Saturday night have received $2.3 million more in campaign donations from health insurance interests than those who voted in favor of the legislation to overhaul of the nation’s health care system, according to an analysis released by a coalition of campaign reform groups.
“The health care debate shows that our campaign finance system is as much in crisis as our health care system,” says David Donnelly, national campaigns director of Public Campaign Action Fund, the watchdog group that conducted the analysis for the coalition. “As measured in campaign donations, it clearly pays to be against reform and with the health insurance interests.”
The health insurance industry donated $12.5 million to the campaigns and leadership PACs of 215 members of Congress who voted against the House health care legislation this weekend. Members voting against the legislation received, on average, 24 percent more in campaign money than those who voted yes, according to analysis of campaign contribution data from the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.
Full Story On The Hill: ‘No’ Votes on Health Care Bill Received $2.3 Million More from Health Insurance Industry.
Catholic Church Emerges as Key Player in Legislative Battle
Injecting itself aggressively into the health-care debate, the Roman Catholic Church in America has emerged as a major political force with the potential to upend a key piece of President Barack Obama’s agenda.
Behind-the-scenes lobbying, coupled with a grassroots mobilization of Catholic churches across the country, led the House Saturday to pass an amendment to its health-care bill barring anyone who receives a new tax credit from enrolling in a plan that covers abortion, a once-unthinkable event in Democrat-dominated Washington.
The restriction would still have to be accepted by the Senate, where it will likely face a tough fight. The issue could sink the larger health legislation if the chambers fail to reach agreement, or if any consensus language leads supporters to defect.
The House vote, and the central role played by one of the country’s biggest religious denominations, stunned abortion-rights groups that had worked hard to elect Mr. Obama and expand Democratic congressional majorities. Activists on the left had thought social issues would take a back seat to economic concerns.
The bishops’ success served as a reminder that Democrats’ strategy over the past two election cycles of recruiting more conservative candidates to run in competitive House and Senate seats can have unwelcome policy consequences for liberals among the party’s base. About 40 House Democrats are opposed to abortion rights.
Full Story Catholic Church Emerges as Key Player in Legislative Battle – WSJ.com.
OPS: It’s past time to start rescinding 501C3
Anti-reform doctors seeking to rescind AMA endorsement are led by front group with insurer, GOP ties.
The House passed historic comprehensive health insurance reform on Saturday with the help of endorsements from hundreds of community organizations, including the American Medical Association. However, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that former AMA president Donald Palmisano is leading an effort to force the AMA to rescind its endorsement of the bill. As ThinkProgress first reported back in July, Palmisano’s organization Coalition to Protect Patients’ Rights is being managed by the infamous lobbying firm known as DCI Group, which specializes in creating “credible coalition partners” to advance the interests of corporations. ThinkProgress’ Victor Zapanta caught up with Palmisano, who told us he supports the “patient-doctor relationship” where uninsured patients and patients who cannot afford care should simply beg for charity:
PALMISANO: If you have a problem, you would just say ‘look I have a financial problem, can you help me’ and doctors will help you. If somebody couldn’t pay, we just send them a note, ‘you haven’t paid, is there a reason you can’t pay?’ All they have to do is give us any reason and we just wrote off the bill, forgot the bill. That’s what doctors do.
Watch it:
Fred Hiatt employs fuzzy math to claim House health bill would bring ‘America a step closer to bankruptcy.’
In this morning’s Washington Post, editorial page editor Fred Hiatt argues that the House health care bill “could take America a step closer to bankruptcy” and harm “the poor and vulnerable.” But since the CBO’s analysis of the House health care bill doesn’t support Hiatt’s contention that it would bring America to the brink of bankruptcy, Hiatt relies on the CBO’s analysis of the President’s entire budget and implies that it’s Obama’s health “plan”:
The root difficulty is Obama’s insistence that the nation can afford a large new social program without raising taxes on anyone who earns less than $250,000 per year. Under his plan, according to a CBO analysis, the government will be spending 24.5 percent of gross domestic product — the total value of the national economy — by 2019 while raising only 19 percent in revenue: a huge, unsustainable gap.
The 24.5% of GDP isn’t a measure of government spending as a result of the House/Obama health care bill. It’s a measure of the outlays of all of the President’s policies in his 2010 budget in 2019 and does not capture the deficit-reducing effects of health care reform or the House bill. The Wonk Room has more.
Lies About Marijuana Drive People to a Much More Harmful Drug — Booze
Anti-pot propaganda drives most people to drink alcohol instead. But booze is far more dangerous than marijuana.
Professor David Nutt didn’t play the game. As the chief drug policy advisor in the British Government, an unspoken part of his job description was to help maintain a public fiction about marijuana – or cannabis, as it is known in the U.K. and other parts of the world. Specifically, he was expected to further the misperception of cannabis as a substance worthy of being classified and prohibited in a manner similar to more dangerous drugs like heroin and cocaine.
He made a big mistake at the end of last month. In a lecture at King’s College in London, he spoke honestly – and truthfully – about the fact that cannabis is less harmful than alcohol and urged the government to factor the relative harms of substances into their policy-making. Moreover, he accused the British government of ignoring the evidence about the true harms of cannabis in order to reclassify the drug and increase penalties for possession.
Reacting with the logic and reason of pub patron after last call, Home Secretary Alan Johnson immediately demanded that Prof. Nutt resign as the head of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs. He said Prof Nutt had “crossed the line between offering advice and … campaigning against the government on political decisions.”
Full Story Lies About Marijuana Drive People to a Much More Harmful Drug — Booze | DrugReporter | AlterNet.
Stimulus Job Numbers Questionable
In one instance, according to The New York Times, the White House lists the purchase of a $1,047 riding lawnmower and claims that the purchase created 50 jobs.
Last month, the Obama administration announced that the $787 billion stimulus package championed by the White House has created or saved over one million jobs, a highly questionable figure given the fact that the U.S. Labor Department recently announced that the national unemployment rate rose to 10.2 percent in October.
Many economists and financial experts are questioning the White House’s figures, while also warning that a second stimulus package may be necessary in order to avoid a “double-dip” recession.
The White House’s claims about the effectiveness of the stimulus package seemed dubious from the get-go, but after the Labor Department released its latest unemployment figures, it became readily apparent that they were either wrong, or simply fudging the numbers for political gain.
Full Story Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
Afghanistan: OUT!
Sen. Ernest F. “Fritz” 
–
After eight years and 833 dead in Afghanistan, the U.S. mission boils down to that described in a New York Times editorial, entitled “President Karsai’s Second Term.”
Editor’s Note: The following article was contributed by Former Senator Ernest F. “Fritz” Hollings, author of Making Government Work.
We learned after ten years and 58,000 dead in Vietnam that you can’t force feed democracy. And now corrupt foreigners can’t force feed a corrupt democracy in Afghanistan. After eight years and 833 dead in Afghanistan, the United States mission boils down to that described in a New York Times editorial of November 3rd, entitled “President Karsai’s Second Term:”
a. Mr. Karsai must prove that after “seven years of mismanagement and corruption … he is deserving of [his people’s] trust.”
b. Mr. Karsai “must appoint a new group of ministers and provincial governors who are committed to rebuilding their country, not enriching themselves.”
c. “The Interior Ministry, which oversees the corruption-plagued Afghan National Police, must be reformed.”
d. “The agriculture, energy and private development agencies all [get] better leadership.”
e. The Afghan people need “to see their government working to protect them and improve their lives….”
f. Mr. Karsai must “reach out to members of the opposition, choosing competent technocrats for senior jobs.”
g. Mr. Karsai must “break ties with his most unsavory cronies.”
h. Mr. Karsai must demand that Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostrum “stand trial for his crimes.”
Full Story Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
As Foreclosure Nightmares Increase, Will More Homeowners Pay Off Their Bankers in Violence? | World | AlterNet
The economic crisis revealed late-capitalism’s central offense: Human beings are being transparently treated if they were mere transactions. And they’re going postal over it.
Anger and discontent are reaching a boil as a lethal combination of economic corruption and political collusion are deleveraged across the United States.
From recent rampages in Orlando, Fla., to mortgage-related torture in Los Angeles, certain members of the citizenry seem to have had their fill of being manipulated for the financial gain of others, and they’re firing back with force.
And the situation threatens to burn hotter as the winter holidays — always a peak period fof domestic violence, due mostly to financial stress — approach to spark its frazzled strands. The economic crisis revealed late-capitalism’s central offense: Human beings are being transparently treated if they were mere transactions. And they’re going postal over it.
“They left me to rot,” Jason Rodriguez said when asked why he went on a shooting rampage at the Orlando engineering firm Reynolds, Smith and Hills that had fired him two years ago.
Despite Censorship By Beef Magnate, Michael Pollan Spreads Message About the Real Price of Cheap Food
Despite Censorship By Beef Magnate, Michael Pollan Spreads Message About the Real Price of Cheap Food
Pollan took on Big Ag and cheap food in a panel discussion, after the protests of a meat industry chairman led to his speech at a University being canceled.
Award-winning food journalist Michael Pollan was invited to speak on October 15 at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo but after pressure from a university donor who is chairman of the Harris Ranch Beef Co., the university changed his speech to a panel discussion.
Pollan, whose works include The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals and In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto is the Knight Professor of Environmental Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley. He’s also no stranger to attacks from Big Ag.
Pollan used the forum to continue to challenge people to think about the ways in which we are growing food in our current fossil-fuel dependent system of agriculture. “We’re producing ourselves into a hole,” he warned the audience.
How Biased Media Can Brainwash You
A European study shows that, over time, even the most sophisticated readers can be manipulated.
Biased News Has Delayed Impact
There’s nobody more cynical about the media than your average European.
Only 12 percent of Europeans claim to trust the media, compared to 15 percent of North Americans, 29 percent of Pacific Asians and 48 percent of Africans, the BBC has found.
Yet new research out of the London School of Economics and Political Science suggests that even the most hardened Europeans may succumb to media manipulation and change their political views if they are bombarded long enough with biased news.
Michael Bruter, a senior lecturer in European politics at the school, fed a steady diet of slanted newsletters about Europe and the European Union — either all good news or all bad — to 1,200 citizens of six countries over two years.
Over time, Bruter found, and without exception, the readers subconsciously adopted the bias to varying degrees and changed their view of the EU and of themselves as Europeans, a few of them in the extreme. Surprisingly, they didn’t register any change right after the newsletters stopped — not until full six months later, when they had obviously let down their guard.
Bruter calls this the “time bomb” effect of one-sided news. His study paints a blunt picture of how cynicism, far from inoculating citizens to resist political persuasion, merely delays the impact.
Full Story Politics Articles | Biased News Has Delayed Impact | Miller-McCune Online Magazine.
Students Who Exposed 30-Year-Old Wrongful Conviction Being Targeted By Chicago DA
It’s shocking that the state would rather keep an innocent man behind bars than admit a mistake.
Stalling Justice, The Nation
In Texas and Illinois, recent controversies have exposed our broken criminal justice system. Mounting evidence indicates that Texas Governor Rick Perry ordered the wrongful execution of Cameron Todd Willingham in 2004 and has subsequently tried to cover up the details of the case, recently dismissing three experts on the state’s Forensic Science Commission forty-eight hours before they were set to examine the evidence. Willingham’s case has rightly generated national headlines, and another case of prosecutorial overreach is unfolding in Illinois.
On the evening of September 15, 1978, a white security guard named Donald Lundahl was murdered in a robbery gone awry in a racially fraught southern suburb of Chicago. Police fingered Anthony McKinney, an 18-year-old African-American with no criminal record, as the killer. The prosecution sought death by lethal injection; the judge sentenced McKinney to life in prison.
McKinney has long maintained his innocence. Based on newly uncovered evidence, there’s strong reason to believe that he has spent thirty-one years in prison for a crime he did not commit.
When it comes to capital punishment, Illinois differs from Texas in one important respect: in 2000 the Land of Lincoln’s Republican governor, George Ryan, issued a moratorium on the death penalty, and in 2003 he granted clemency to all death-row inmates. Ryan announced his decision at Northwestern University, citing the work of Northwestern journalism professor David Protess and his students at the Medill School of Journalism, who had uncovered evidence that helped free five wrongly convicted men from death row.
Full Story Stalling Justice.
Is Blind Faith in God and the Bible a Modern Invention?
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A new book points out that the ancient Christians — and even early Americans — did not share the blind faith of today’s fundamentalists.
If you open Karen Armstrong’s new book, The Case for God, expecting to find a list of mysterious cures, scientific curiosities, or certified miracles all pointing toward the physical presence of a divine influence in the world, you will be sorely disappointed. Armstrong has no interest in, and is in fact completely antithetical to, trying to prove God’s existence. Despite this, her book is positioned — both in marketing and from its opening pages — as a direct challenge to books like Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion, Sam Harris’ Letter to a Christian Nation, and Christopher Hitchens’ God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. How can you make a defense of God if you’ve no interest in the existence of God? Quite well, actually, and if you do it as sharply as Armstrong, you can make hundreds of pages of what is basically theological analysis both entertaining and informative.
Armstrong argues for an idea very similar to the “non-overlapping magisteria” that were put forward by evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould (and in fact, Gould gets several nice mentions in The Case for God). She refers frequently to the idea that, in the past, people tended to break arguments into two groups for which she uses the Greek terms logos and mythos. Logos reflects practical, immediate reasoning — how do we build that aqueduct, what can we make from this wood, which crop would grow best in that field? Mythos is more aimed at the why — what does it mean that my friend has died, how can I recapture the joy I felt in a moment of pure experience, how can I find meaning and peace among the world’s noise and violence? This sort of approach could easily fall into a gooey cheer for “being spiritual,” but Armstrong is not talking about having a nice little breathing session now and then. She focuses on the 3000 year history of monotheism and the great effort that was put into building flexible, thoughtful religions, on how those religions continue to have a meaningful role in the life of millions, and how the recent history of those religions has led to unfortunate developments that are unique over those three millennia.
No civilization of the past thought it could get by without logos. Pyramids were built with extensive use of mathematics and the most advanced technology of the time. The same could be said of the Acropolis and of medieval cathedrals. When we see those past societies as ignorant and driven out of unreasoning “myths” it’s because we are the oddities of history. Having acquired so much new data to feed logos over such a short time, we’ve become completely centered in scientific reasoning and entirely dismissive of mythos — perversely, that’s even true when we talk about fundamentalist religion. We look back on some ritual of the past and dismiss it as mindless following of tradition and superstition. You don’t need to plant at midnight, or sacrifice a lamb, or ferry a statue around the town to satisfy some some dumb animal-headed deity. We search for the hint of reasoning that might be behind these rituals, and discount the idea that they served to establish meaning in lives that were just as busy, joyful, tragic, and brief as our own. We’ve turned “myth” into another word for fantasy, or lie. In doing so:
Full Story Daily Kos: The Case for Karen Armstrong.
The Price of Health Reform: Abortion Rights?
Why Bart Stupak’s last-minute amendment to the health care bill is even more radical than you think.
Will health care reform come at the expense of abortion rights? The Democrats’ historic health care bill squeaked through the House on Saturday only after pro-life forces scored a major victory. Despite months of wrangling over the public option and the price tag, in the end the legislation’s fate turned on an eleventh-hour push by conservative Democrats to broaden the bill’s existing limits on government funding of abortion, in the form of an amendment authored by Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.). Here’s what happened and what it means:
The Stupak amendment mandates that no federal funds can be used to pay for an abortion or “cover any part of any health plan” that includes coverage of an abortion, except in cases where the mother’s life is in danger or the pregnancy was the result of rape or incest.
The first part of the amendment isn’t new. The 1976 Hyde Amendment already prevents the use of federal dollars to pay for most abortions. Where pro-lifers won big was on the second part, which could significantly limit the availability of private insurance plans that cover the procedure.
Full Story The Price of Health Reform: Abortion Rights? | Mother Jones.
OPS: Keep in mind that Stupak is a member of “The Family”
Meet the Senators in the Creepy Right-Wing Cult Trying to Defeat Health Care Reform
10 Suicides a Month at Ft. Hood — War Stress Is Taking Soldiers to the Brink
When war comes home
While investigators probe for a motive behind the mass shooting at the Fort Hood military base in Texas last Thursday, in which an army psychiatrist killed 13 people, military personnel at the base are in shock as the incident “brings the war home”.
“We’re all in shock,” said Specialist Michael Kern, an active-duty veteran of the Iraq war, told Inter Press Service (IPS) by telephone. Kern, who is based at Fort Hood, served in Iraq from March 2007 to March 2008. “Every single person that I’ve talked to is in shock,” Kern added.
“I’m surprised this hits so close to home, but at the same time, I knew something like this was going to happen given what else is happening – the war is coming home, and something needs to be
done. Innocent civilians are being wounded and killed here at home by soldiers, and this is completely unacceptable,” he said.
Full Story Asia Times Online :: South Asia news, business and economy from India and Pakistan.
Tensions grow as Chavez masses troops on border
Threat of bloodshed as Venezuelan president tells his people to prepare for war with Colombia
Telling his people, “If you want peace, prepare for war,” and accusing the US of secretly plotting to invade and seize Venezuela’s oil reserves, Hugo Chavez announced that he intends to send 15,000 troops to his country’s border with Colombia.
The hostile move, which has inflamed diplomatic relations across the region, saw the left-wing president urge his soldiers to “defend this sacred nation called Venezuela” against what he called a creeping right-wing “empire”. In response, Colombia said it would complain to the United Nations.
“Fellow military personnel, let’s not waste a day on our main aim: to prepare for war, and to help the people prepare for war, because it is everyone’s responsibility,” he said in a televised speech. “We are going to train military
groups, revolutionary students, employees, women… The best way to avoid war is preparing for it.”
Full Story Tensions grow as Chavez masses troops on border – Americas, World – The Independent.
To be Young and Unemployed Forever
The Great Marginalization
By CARL GINSBURG
A visit to a Bronx public high school last week is a disturbing reminder of the penal quality of life for young Americans on the lower end of the economic spectrum, lower end being close to a majority, or more, a number certainly on the upswing given pervasive unemployment, structural change affecting work opportunity, the use of technology to eliminate jobs, sub-standard public education, and the rest. Officially, 27.6 percent of 16-19 year olds are unemployed, the biggest number on record; the real number is much higher and there is no relief in sight. Across the country, public schools report historic levels of overcrowding, no new textbooks, suspended after-school programs, summer school gone, all in response to the fiscal crisis caused by the credit crisis, a crisis during which banks, today, sit on in excess of $13 trillion in cash, awaiting better times, in the name of prudent investment and fiduciary responsibility. Try explaining that investment philosophy to these kids.
The school doors swing open to metal detectors.. once through, uniformed escorts are summoned to open each and every door—corridor entrances, bathrooms, classrooms, all locked. There are no sports, no computers, dismissing altogether the physical and techno-educational development of these teens. One of America’s ugly secrets is this: segregation never ended, and that is plain to see here, where the entire student body of 2,500 students is black or Latino. Suburbs, replete with traveling soccer leagues and advanced computer labs, are segregated in some large measure, too.
The setting here in this Bronx high school brings to mind county jails visited over recent years in places like Denver, Houston, Mobile, Los Angeles, where drug use, or just plain truancy, lead to teen jailing, with open-ended terms and psychiatric drugs. ..s ometimes kids are mixed with adults. What lands you in a teen mental health clinic in tony Westchester County – replete with sports and computers – gets you jailed in Watts. But that’s an old story. What does it say about our society that urban schools look, feel and function like prisons?
Full Story Carl Ginsburg: To be Young and Unemployed Forever.
Why Progressives Should Back a Filibuster of the Health Care Bill
“Cowardice asks the question ‘is it safe’? Expediency asks the question ‘is it politic’? Vanity asks the question ‘is it popular’? But conscience asks the question ‘is it right’? And there comes a time when we must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but we must take it because our conscience tells us that it is right.”
-Martin Luther King
On Saturday, November 8 the Democrat Congress gave us a corporate driven healthcare bill which amounts to nothing more than a de facto bailout of the healthcare insurance companies. The carnival conducted by the Democrats, masquerading as a debate around healthcare, demonstrates conclusively how craven are Barack Obama and the Congressional Democrats.
We have witnessed cynicism in other administrations but the Obama administration has as raised cynicism to a veritable science. Imagine promising the poor and desperate people of this country healthcare reform and passing legislation which will not only hurt the working class but strengthen the very forces which oppose real reform – the healthcare insurance companies!
The darling of the Democrats, Alan Grayson, voted in lockstep with most of the other so-called progressive Democrats to destroy any possibility for meaningful healthcare reform for the next 40 years. How easily the Democrat rank and file is impressed. Grayson only had to bad mouth the Republicans, something which should be part of the job description of any elected Democrat. For doing the bare minimum he is hailed as a hero. So far removed from real heroism have the Democrats traveled. So ineffective and slimy have the Congressional Democrats become in sucking up to their corporate pay masters so they can keep doing more harm to the American people, that they are praiseworthy simply for criticizing the opposition. Imagine! The Democrat rank and file is impressed by a Democrat Congressman who criticizes the Republicans but votes for a healthcare bill that will spread misery on national level! Only Dennis Kucinich remained steadfast in his opposition to a corporate welfare bill masquerading as a health care reform bill. Perhaps Kucinich does more harm than good by remaining in such a party. By remaining a Democrat he legitimizes the actions he opposes and keeps millions of well intended people from forming a truly progressive opposition party believing the myth that the Democrat Party can be changed form within.
Full Story John A. Murphy: Can Lieberman Save Single Payer?.
Dennis Kucinich: Insurance Companies are the problem
Congressman Dennis Kucinich on MSNBC, The Ed Show Monday, November 9th, 2009, at 6:00pm ET
YouTube – Dennis Kucinich on MSNBC, “The Ed Show”.
Anatomy of a Bogus Subpoena
Can the U.S. government secretly subpoena the IP address of every visitor to a political website? No, but that didn’t stop it from trying.
In a report released today, EFF Senior Staff Attorney Kevin Bankston tells the story of a bogus federal subpoena issued to independent news site Indymedia.us, and how the site fought back with EFF’s help. Declan McCullagh at CBSNews.com also has the story.
The report describes how, earlier this year, U.S. attorneys issued a federal grand jury subpoena to Indymedia.us administrator Kristina Clair demanding “all IP traffic to and from www.indymedia.us” for a particular date, potentially identifying every person who visited any news story on the Indymedia site. As the report explains, this overbroad demand for internet records not only violated federal privacy law but also violated Clair’s First Amendment rights, by ordering her not to disclose the existence of the subpoena without a U.S. attorney’s permission.
Because Indymedia follows EFF’s Best Practices for Online Service Providers and does not keep historical IP logs, there was no information for Indymedia to hand over, and the government withdrew the subpoena. However, as the report describes, that wasn’t the end of the tale: Ms. Clair wanted EFF to be able to tell the story of the subpoena and shine a light on the government’s illegal demand, yet the subpoena ordered silence. Under pressure from EFF, the government admitted that the subpoena’s gag order had no legal basis, and ultimately chose not to go to court to try to force Ms. Clair’s silence despite earlier threats to do so.
Full Story From EFF’s Secret Files: Anatomy of a Bogus Subpoena | Electronic Frontier Foundation.
At Fort Hood, Some Violence Is Too Familiar
Staff Sgt. Gilberto Mota, 35, and his wife, Diana, 30, an Army specialist, had returned to Fort Hood from Iraq last year when he used his gun to kill her, and then took his own life, the authorities say. In July, two members of the First Cavalry Division, also just back from the war with decorations for their service, were at a party when one killed the other.
That same month, Staff Sgt. Justin Lee Garza, 28, under stress from two deployments, killed himself in a friend’s apartment outside Fort Hood, four days after he was told no therapists were available for a counseling session. “What bothers me most is this happened while he was supposed to be on suicide watch,” said his mother, Teri Smith. “To this day, I don’t know where he got the gun.”
Fort Hood is still reeling from last week’s carnage, in which an Army psychiatrist is accused of a massacre that left 13 people dead. But in the town of Killeen and other surrounding communities, the attack, one of the worst mass shootings on a military base in the United States, is also seen by many as another blow in an area that has been beset by crime and violence since the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq began. Reports of domestic abuse have grown by 75 percent since 2001. At the same time, violent crime in Killeen has risen 22 percent while declining 7 percent in towns of similar size in other parts of the country.
Full Story At Fort Hood, Some Violence Is Too Familiar – NYTimes.com.
Pfizer will close R&D sites and cut jobs
Pfizer Inc (PFE.N), the world’s biggest drugmaker, will close six research and development sites and trim jobs in the Unites States and the United Kingdom, following the acquisition of Wyeth.
The company on Monday said it will reduce its global research and development square footage by 35 percent.
Pfizer will discontinue R&D operations in Princeton, New Jersey; Chazy, Rouses Point and Plattsburgh, New York; Sanford and Research Triangle Park, North Carolina; and Gosport, Slough/Taplow, United Kingdom.
“While these changes are expected to bolster productivity and reduce costs, they will result in staff reductions,” Pfizer said in a statement.
Pfizer will now conduct R&D at five main sites and nine specialized units around the world, as compared with 20 sites upon closing the acquisition of Wyeth.
The company did not elaborate on the number of jobs that will be cut. A spokeswoman could not be immediately reached for comment.
Pfizer, already the world’s largest drugmaker, got much bigger last month with completion of a $67.3 billion acquisition of Wyeth.
(Reporting by Juan Lagorio; editing by Carol Bishopric)
Full Story Pfizer will close R&D sites and cut jobs | Reuters.
Sprint to cut up to 2,500 jobs, sees charge
NEW YORK: Sprint Nextel Corp is taking actions to eliminate 2,000 to 2,500 jobs in the current quarter in an effort to save $350 million
annually. Sprint, which has about 42,000 employees, will take a charge of $60 million to $80 million in the current quarter for severance payments and other costs related to the cutbacks, the company said on Monday.
The No. 3 U.S. mobile service said many of the job cuts would happen by the end of December and would include jobs across the entire company including layoffs in its wholesale unit as well as a reduction in contractor jobs. Last week Sprint, which has been working on stemming customer losses in its mobile business, had said that it was planning dozens of layoffs in its wholesale business due to a lack of growth in its landline business. Sprint shares were up 54 cents or almost 19 percent at $3.38 on New York Stock Exchange after the news
Full Story Sprint to cut up to 2,500 jobs, sees charge- International Business-News-The Economic Times.
Consolidation Station: News ‘Sharing’ Erodes Journalism
– In These Times
Local news-sharing agreements aren’t just cropping up in Hawaii: Dozens of broadcast stations are now pooling news video.
Television broadcasters in the Aloha State have been quietly embarking on an underhanded media merger for more than a year.
In August, the CBS, NBC and MyNetwork affiliates in Honolulu announced that they were folding into one of the “largest television news operations” in Hawaii, combining the stations’ staff and newsrooms. The three news stations will now be housed in the same place, sharing reporters and editorial ideas, but they will broadcast from separate channels, appearing as distinct entities to viewers. Nearly 70 employees from the stations will lose their jobs.
The consolidated operation will be controlled by one company: Raycom Media. Raycom is among the nation’s largest broadcasters, with 46 television stations in 36 markets and 18 states. The company has been careful not to call the deal “media consolidation,” instead referring to it as an innocuous “Shared Services Agreement.” Raycom says the arrangement will save struggling news stations.
Full Story Consolidation Station: News ‘Sharing’ Erodes Journalism — In These Times.
Key oil figures were distorted by US pressure, says whistleblower
The world is much closer to running out of oil than official estimates admit, according to a whistleblower at the International Energy Agency who claims it has been deliberately underplaying a looming shortage for fear of triggering panic buying.
The senior official claims the US has played an influential role in encouraging the watchdog to underplay the rate of decline from existing oil fields while overplaying the chances of finding new reserves.
The allegations raise serious questions about the accuracy of the organisation’s latest World Energy Outlook on oil demand and supply to be published tomorrow – which is used by the British and many other governments to help guide their wider energy and climate change policies.
Full Story Key oil figures were distorted by US pressure, says whistleblower | Environment | The Guardian.
Cancer Patient Faces End Of Insurance
Sandra Ingram’s health insurance from her former employer will expire in July, reports Davenport, Iowa’s KWQC. She survived breast cancer, but found out months ago that her cancer came back, and has spread to her bones and liver. Come July, she is worried that she will be uninsurable; her cancer will be deemed a pre-existing condition. Ingram does not qualify for Medicare.
“We don’t have a limitless amount of resources,” said her husband, Jim. “We have what most people would have, a small nest egg and a home we are still purchasing.”
*********
The Federal Home Loan Bank of Cincinnati saved the home of Frank and Karen Jennings and has been helping other families stay out of foreclosure, reports Rock Armon of Akron, Ohio’s Beacon Journal. The bank’s Preserving the American Dream program gave the couple and their three children over $2,000 to put towards mortgage payments, and enrolled the couple in financial counseling courses. ”The financial aid was great, but the credit counseling classes…I can’t even measure how helpful that was,” said Frank, 38.
Full Story Cancer Patient Faces End Of Insurance.
Tobacco Company Reynolds In Talks To Buy Company For Quitters
Reynolds American Inc., maker of Camel cigarettes and Grizzly smokeless tobacco, is in talks to buy a Swedish company that helps people stop smoking, a tobacco expert who said he was briefed by people close to the talks told The Associated Press Monday.
The second-largest U.S. tobacco company is eyeing Niconovum AB, which sells cigarette replacement products in gum, pouch and spray form outside the U.S., according to David Sweanor, a Canadian law professor and tobacco expert.
The deal, which could be worth $44.5 million, could be imminent, he said.
Full Story Tobacco Company Reynolds In Talks To Buy Company For Quitters.
Paid Lying: What Passes for Major Media Journalism
Today’s major media journalism is biased, irresponsible, sensationalist reporting that distorts, exaggerates or misstates the truth. It’s misinformation or agitprop disinformation masquerading as fact to boost circulation, readership, viewers, or listeners, and on vital issues lie about or suppress uncomfortable truths to provide unqualified support for state and/or corporate interests – to the detriment of the greater good that’s always sacrificed for profits and imperial aims.
As a result, major media sources produce a daily propaganda diet and what Project Censored calls “junk food news,” and get most people to believe it. In their landmark book, Manufacturing Consent, Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky explained the “propaganda model” that controls the public message by “filter(ing)” disturbing truths, “leaving (behind) only the cleansed residue fit to print” or air.
Today the media is in crisis and a free and open society at risk at a time fiction substitutes for fact, news is carefully controlled, dissent marginalized, and on-air and print journalists support powerful interests as paid liars, or what famed journalist George Seldes (1890 – 1995) called “prostitutes of the press.”
Full Story SteveLendmanBlog: Paid Lying: What Passes for Major Media Journalism.
America Owned by Its Army
It is possible that the creation of an all-professional American army was the most dangerous decision ever taken by Congress. The nation now confronts a political crisis in which the issue has become an undeclared contest between Pentagon power and that of a newly elected president.
Barack Obama has yet to declare his decision on the war in Afghanistan, and there is every reason to think that he will follow military opinion. Yet he is under immense pressure from his Republican opponents to, in effect, renounce his presidential power, and step aside from the fundamental strategic decisions of the nation.
The officer he named to command the war in Afghanistan, Stanley McChrystal, demands a reinforcement of forty thousand soldiers, raising the total US commitment to over 100 thousand troops (or more, in the future). He says that he cannot succeed without them, and even then may be unable to win the war within a decade. Yet the American public is generally in doubt about this war, most of all the president’s own liberal electorate.
President Obama almost certainly will do as the the general requests, or something very close to it. He can read the wartime politics in this situation.
Full Story America Owned by Its Army | CommonDreams.org.
Kucinich Withdraws as Palm Beach County Democratic Keynoter Amid Uproar over His Israel Stance
U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich lasted less than 24 hours as headliner for the Palm Beach County Democratic Party’s annual fundraising dinner after some of the party’s elected officials blasted the Ohio Democrat’s stance on Israel and threatened to skip the event.
Kucinich, who has a history of criticizing the actions of the Israeli government and opposing congressional resolutions in support of Israel, withdrew Friday as the keynote speaker for next week’s dinner after being announced Thursday.
The liberal former presidential candidate had been called in as a last-minute replacement for moderate Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu. Landrieu was dropped as keynoter this week because party activists were upset by her refusal to commit to blocking a Republican filibuster of health care overhaul legislation.
While Landrieu was the target of behind-the-scenes grumbling, Kucinich sparked public revolt.
Another Independent could be a spoiler as Reid moves forward on healthcare
Bernie Sanders Pledges to Hang Tough for Strong Public-Option
With a pronounced independent streak to match his political alignment, Bernie Sanders of Vermont may be another headache for Democrats trying to cobble together 60 votes for healthcare reform in the coming weeks.
At a time when most attention is being paid to the Senate’s other, more well-known Independent, Connecticut’s Joe Lieberman, it is Sanders who could end up playing spoiler for Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.). As Reid struggles to find 60 votes that will unite on procedural votes, his party’s centrists are pulling the healthcare bill politically rightward while Sanders is staking out a far-left position.
Asked if he will support Democrats on procedural votes once the healthcare bill hits the Senate floor, Sanders was repeatedly noncommital, twice telling The Hill that he intends to push for a bill that includes a government-run, public-option insurance component and refusing to guarantee his support on cloture votes.
Full Story Another Independent could be a spoiler as Reid moves forward on healthcare – TheHill.com.
Internet Virus Frames Users For Child Porn
Of all the sinister things that Internet viruses do, this might be the worst: They can make you an unsuspecting collector of child pornography.
Heinous pictures and videos can be deposited on computers by viruses – the malicious programs better known for swiping your credit card numbers. In this twist, it’s your reputation that’s stolen.
Pedophiles can exploit virus-infected PCs to remotely store and view their stash without fear they’ll get caught. Pranksters or someone trying to frame you can tap viruses to make it appear that you surf illegal Web sites.
Whatever the motivation, you get child porn on your computer – and might not realize it until police knock at your door.
Full Story Internet Virus Frames Users For Child Porn.
Credit Card Rates: Banks Plan To RAISE Rates, Annual Fees
Banks expect to tighten terms on credit cards in response to a new law that aims to protect consumers from sudden rate hikes, the Federal Reserve said Monday.
A quarterly survey by the Fed found that many banks expect to increase rates, reduce credit limits and raise annual fees for both prime borrowers – those with sound credit histories _as well as more risky “non-prime” borrowers, who have tarnished credit. Banks also expected to raise minimum credit scores for non-prime borrowers, the Fed said.
Banks already have been pushing through rate increases in anticipation of the new rules. Because of that, the House recently approved legislation to speed up the law’s effective date and have the provisions take effect immediately, although prospects are dim for Senate passage.
Most of the new credit card provisions are slated to take effect on Feb. 22.
Full Story Credit Card Rates: Banks Plan To RAISE Rates, Annual Fees.
Real Misery Index: Nearly One In Six Americans Are Jobless Or Underemployed
The rise in unemployment continues to devastate Americans, according to the latest update of the Huffington Post Real Misery Index.
The index rose to 32.9 after peaking at 32.3 in August, largely due to the increase in the U6 unemployment rate, which tracks part-time workers looking for full-time employment and those who’ve given up looking for work. Almost one in six Americans are jobless or underemployed and the economy has lost 7.3 million jobs since the recession began in December 2007, according to the latest numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The index would be even higher were it not for a few bright spots in the economy, such as no annual percent increase in food and beverage prices and a slight uptick in housing prices.
Full Story HuffPost’s Real Misery Index: Nearly One In Six Americans Are Jobless Or Underemployed.
GM to put electric Cadillac Converj into production
General Motors Co. has decided to produce the Cadillac Converj, an extended-range electric car using the same technology as the Chevrolet Volt, The Detroit News has learned.
Cadillac included the Converj, a concept car that wowed industry critics and the public at the 2009 North American International Auto Show, in a presentation made to the automaker’s board of directors Nov. 2, according to sources familiar with the production plan.
A production date has not been set, and it likely will be a few years before consumers can buy a Converj.
“Cadillac needs as much excitement in its portfolio as possible, so I think it’s a good strategy for them,” said Rebecca Lindland, director of auto industry research at IHS Global Insight in Lexington, Mass.
Cadillac sales have fallen 39.2 percent this year, the steepest decline among GM’s four core brands.
Full Story GM to put electric Cadillac Converj into production | detnews.com | The Detroit News.
Obtained: In Letter To Pelosi, 41 House Dems Pledge To Vote Against Bill With Anti-Abortion Amendment
In a move that will intensify the coming war over how to treat abortion in the health care bill, more than three dozen House Dems have signed a letter to Nancy Pelosi firmly pledging to vote against the bill if it contains an anti-abortion amendment.
A source sends over a working copy of the letter without the signatories, and the source says it currently bears the signatures of 41 House Dems. They’re all vowing to vote No on a bill if it contains the Stupak amendment — enough to sink the bill:
As Members of Congress we believe that women should have access to a full range of reproductive health care. Health care reform must not be misused as an opportunity to restrict women’s access to reproductive health services.
The Stupak-Pitts amendment to H.R. 3962, The Affordable Healthcare for America Act, represents an unprecedented and unacceptable restriction on women’s ability to access the full range of reproductive health services to which they are lawfully entitled. We will not vote for a conference report that contains language that restricts women’s right to choose any further than current law.
That’s unequivocal, with no wiggle room. The Washington Post reported this morning that Rep. Diana DeGette had collected 40 signatures vowing a No vote, without noting the language of their vow or how this would be communicated.
‘Made in China’ now made in Egypt
With cheap labour, investment incentives and unrestricted exports, one Chinese textile group has turned to Egypt as an ideal location to produce its ready-made garments, beating stiff competition at home.
The Chinese-owned Nile Textile Group has set up shop in the Port Said free zone, overlooking the north entrance of the Suez Canal, and developed an industrial estate now hiring 600 workers, 20 percent of which are Chinese and the rest Egyptian.
Cheap raw materials and favourable export conditions have given the company easy access to foreign markets.
It’s a bargain for the Nile Textile Group, which imports 60 percent of its basic products tax free and then sends them outside Egypt, mainly to the United States.
Full Story ‘Made in China’ now made in Egypt – Yahoo! News.
Prosecutor reveals how world’s largest drug company broke the law
Bloomberg news reports on why the acting U.S. attorney in Boston is blasting a top pharmaceutical company for engaging in “clearly criminal” actions.
“Prosecutor Michael Loucks remembers clearly when lawyers for Pfizer Inc., the world’s largest drug company, looked across the table and promised it wouldn’t break the law again,” David Evans writes for Bloomberg.
It was January 2004, and the attorneys were negotiating in a conference room on the ninth floor of the federal courthouse in Boston, where Loucks was head of the health-care fraud unit of the U.S. Attorney’s Office. One of Pfizer’s units had been pushing doctors to prescribe an epilepsy drug called Neurontin for uses the Food and Drug Administration had never approved.
In the agreement the lawyers eventually hammered out, the Pfizer unit, Warner-Lambert, pleaded guilty to two felony counts of marketing a drug for unapproved uses.
New York-based Pfizer agreed to pay $430 million in criminal fines and civil penalties, and the company’s lawyers assured Loucks and three other prosecutors that Pfizer and its units would stop promoting drugs for unauthorized purposes.
Full Story Prosecutor reveals how world’s largest drug company broke the law | Raw Story.
KBR may have poisoned 100,000 people in Iraq: lawsuit
Defense contractor KBR may have exposed as many as 100,000 people, including US troops, to cancer-causing toxins by burning waste in open-air pits in Iraq, says a series of class-action lawsuits filed against the company.
At least 22 separate lawsuits claiming KBR poisoned American soldiers in Iraq have been combined into a single massive lawsuit that says KBR, which until not long ago was a subsidiary of Halliburton, sought to save money by disposing of toxic waste and incinerating numerous potentially harmful substances in open-air “burn pits.”
According to one of the lawsuits (PDF), filed in a federal court in Nashville, KBR burned “tires, lithium batteries … biohazard materials (including human corpses), medical supplies (including those used during smallpox inoculations), paints, solvents, asbestos insulation, items containing pesticides, polyvinyl chloride pipes, animal carcasses, dangerous chemicals, and hundreds of thousands of plastic water bottles.”
Full Story KBR may have poisoned 100,000 people in Iraq: lawsuit | Raw Story.
Worldwide poll: Vast majority say capitalism not working
Dissatisfaction with capitalism is widespread around the globe 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall that heralded the demise of European communism, a poll released Monday showed.
Only 11 percent of people surveyed across 27 countries thought free market capitalism is working well, while nearly a quarter — 23 percent — said the system is “fatally flawed.” A bare majority, 51 percent, believed its problems can be solved with more regulation and reform, the poll said.
In only the United States (25 percent) and Pakistan (21 percent), did more than one in five people agree that capitalism works well in its current form, the poll conducted for BBC World said.
The survey of 29,033 adults comes after the worst global financial crisis since the 1930s Great Depression and amid celebrations of the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, which abruptly ended the Cold War.
Full Story Worldwide poll: Vast majority say capitalism not working | Raw Story.
RNC chair Steele: Some white Republicans are ’scared of me’
Since being elected the first African-American RNC chairman, Michael Steele has gotten into some brief internecine spats for a number of bordering-on-insurgent quips against his party, but his latest might be destined to haunt him forever. And perhaps it’s another indication that his heart isn’t in the right place and that deep down he might think that he’s speaking for the wrong party, even.
During a weekend interview, Michael Steele told NewsOne’s Roland Martin that he has experienced fear from other selected members of his party because of the color of his skin.
“I mean I’ve been in the room and they’ve been scared of me,” the RNC chairman said about fellow Republicans.
Partial transcript:
Full Story RNC chair Steele: Some white Republicans are ’scared of me’ | Raw Story.
Oklahomans rally at State Capitol to protest anti-choice law that would post abortion details online.
Oklahoma recently passed a law (HR 1595) that will collect personal details about every single abortion performed in the state and post them on a public website. Critics of the legislation worry that the information could be used to identify individuals. Portions of the law were supposed to take effect on Nov. 1, but a judge delayed activation pending the outcome of a legal challenge. On Friday, approximately 100 people gathered at the State Capitol in Oklahoma to protest HR 1595, in an attempt to better inform Oklahoma residents about what’s going on:
Shagah Zakerion, one of the organizers of the rally to protest House Bill 1595, said many of her fellow students at the University of Oklahoma were unaware the measure had passed until it drew criticism in the national media.
“We didn’t even know the bill was going through our Legislature let alone that it had already passed,” said Zakerion, a senior from Tulsa, before the rally, which attracted about 100 people. “We need to stop this stuff before it turns into law, and we need to build a coalition of Oklahomans that are not only for reproductive justice but also for progressive issues.
Westboro Baptist Church Organizes Homophobic Anti-Obama Protest Outside Sasha And Malia’s School
Fred Phelps’ Westboro Baptist Church is a hate group that goes around the country staging anti-gay rallies at some of the most inappropriate places (e.g. the funerals of former White House press secretary Tony Snow, victims of the Minneapolis bridge collapse, and U.S. troops) with messages like “Thank God For AIDS” and “God Hates Fags.”
This week, they’re bringing their hateful message to children in Washington, DC, planning pickets at a handful of local schools. This morning, they showed up outside of Sidwell Friends, the school that Sasha and Malia Obama attend. On Twitter, Megan Phelps-Roper — one of Fred Phelps’ grandchildren — posted a picture of the protest:
Conservatives register Tea Party as an official third party in Florida.
After hard-line conservatives and tea party activists forced moderate Republican Dede Scozzafava to drop out of the race in New York’s 23rd congressional district, they announced that Florida Gov. Charlie Crist would likely be their next target in the GOP civil war. Politico’s Ben Smith reports that some Florida Republicans recently registered an official “Tea Party” to challenge both Republicans and Democrats:
“The current system has become mired in the sludge of special interest money that seeks to control the leadership of both parties. It’s time for real change,” says Orlando lawyer Frederic O’Neal, the new party’s chairman, who couldn’t be reached immediately by phone, in a press release.
A spokeswoman for the Florida Secretary of State, Jennifer Davis, said the party had registered in August.
Full Story Think Progress » Conservatives register Tea Party as an official third party in Florida..
Senators call on Coburn to lift his hold on veterans benefits bill.
Earlier this month, it was revealed that Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) has placed a hold on a major veterans benefits bill because he wants to use unspent stimulus dollars to fund it. Today, Democratic senators who are advocates of the bill will hold a press conference to highlight Coburn’s obstructionism and call on him to lift his hold:
Democratic Senators are calling on Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) to lift his hold on a veterans’ health bill that Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) hopes to clear before the chamber adjourns this week for a three-day recess.
Sens. Daniel Akaka (D-Hawaii), Jon Tester (D-Mont.) and Mark Begich (D-Alaska) will hold a press conference Monday to rally support for the measure. [...]
In a floor statement Friday, Begich called on Coburn to lift his hold. Other Democratic Senators made similar appeals, but Begich took the rare step of naming Coburn on the Senate floor.
Full Story Think Progress » Senators call on Coburn to lift his hold on veterans benefits bill..
Dick Armey’s View Of Americans With Pre-Existing Conditions: Someone Who ‘Eats Like A Pig’ And Has Diabetes
Ensuring that insurers don’t reject any American for health coverage because of a pre-existing condition is a top priority of the public. Republicans have repeatedly said that they also want to make this change, but in the alternative legislation they released, Americans with pre-existing conditions would still be left out to dry.
Today on CNN, FreedomWorks head Dick Armey defended the industry’s discriminatory practices by saying that if you have diabetes because you “eat like a pig,” you don’t deserve coverage:
ARMEY: But now, they [government officials] come along and they say, irrespective of the fact they’ve gone 20, 30, 40 years of their adult life without ever having bought insurance prior to getting a liver inflammation due to their excessive drinking habits or diabetes because they eat like a pig, you must now insure them.
But at what point do we allow the government to order people that you must sell your product to this person or that person, irrespective of any good judgment? We saw what happened in housing when they ordered banks to make loans to people who weren’t qualified. Are we now going to have the same destructive influences in health care because we’re going to order doctors to provide services and so forth?
Watch it:
Army to test electric tactical vehicle
Electricity has been the military’s fuel of choice for the very large (2,500-ton submarines) and the very small (12-pound unmanned aerial vehicles), but not for the vast middle ground of tactical vehicles.
A vehicle maker hopes to change that with the HEMTT-A3, a hulking hybrid truck. Oshkosh Corp. says the vehicle consumes 20 percent less fuel, requires less maintenance than current trucks and can double as a power source for field hospitals or command centers.
Dubbed the “heavy expanded mobility tactical truck,” the vehicle is headed to Army proving grounds this fall to undergo durability, reliability and performance tests.
The U.S. has spent years testing vehicles that run in part or entirely on electricity, said Paul Skalny, director of the Army’s National Automotive Center. So far, the service has not embraced them.
Full Story Army to test electric tactical vehicle – Army News, news from Iraq, – Army Times.
Is the House Health Care Bill Better than Nothing?
Well, the House health reform bill — known to Republicans as the Government Takeover — finally passed after one of Congress’s longer, less enlightening debates. Two stalwarts of the single-payer movement split their votes; John Conyers voted for it; Dennis Kucinich against. Kucinich was right.
Conservative rhetoric notwithstanding, the House bill is not a “government takeover.” I wish it were. Instead, it enshrines and subsidizes the “takeover” by the investor-owned insurance industry that occurred after the failure of the Clinton reform effort in 1994. To be sure, the bill has a few good provisions (expansion of Medicaid, for example), but they are marginal. It also provides for some regulation of the industry (no denial of coverage because of pre-existing conditions, for example), but since it doesn’t regulate premiums, the industry can respond to any regulation that threatens its profits by simply raising its rates. The bill also does very little to curb the perverse incentives that lead doctors to over-treat the well-insured. And quite apart from its content, the bill is so complicated and convoluted that it would take a staggering apparatus to administer it and try to enforce its regulations.
What does the insurance industry get out of it? Tens of millions of new customers, courtesy of the mandate and taxpayer subsidies. And not just any kind of customer, but the youngest, healthiest customers — those least likely to use their insurance. The bill permits insurers to charge twice as much for older people as for younger ones. So older under-65’s will be more likely to go without insurance, even if they have to pay fines. That’s OK with the industry, since these would be among their sickest customers. (Shouldn’t age be considered a pre-existing condition?)
Full Story Is the House Health Care Bill Better than Nothing? – Healthcare-NOW!.
Rachel Maddow: The Healthcare Bill Contains a Poison Pill for Progressives
Rachel Maddow was on Meet The Press today talking about the healthcare bill that the House recently passed. Maddow said that language restricting access to abortion in the bill is a poison pill for liberals and progressives that could end up costing Democratic candidates votes with pro-choice women. Maddow called it the biggest restriction on abortion in a generation.
Here is the video:
Full Story Rachel Maddow: The Healthcare Bill Contains a Poison Pill for Progressives | Politicususa.com.
Is man on course to cause the sixth extinction?
At first sight it seems an unlikely topic for a landmark publishing deal: a fee of about half a million dollars for a book about dead animals – or, to be more precise, extinct animals.
Nevertheless the subject of eradicated species has become publishing hot property after a bidding battle in the US saw Henry Holt, a publisher, beat its rivals to buy The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert last week. According to the New York Times, a “mid-six-figure advance” has now been agreed between writer and publisher.
“The idea of mass extinctions as the next step after talking about the perils of global warming is the most crucial subject,” said Gillian Blake of Holt, after completing the deal with Kolbert, a writer for the New Yorker on environmental issues. Her last book, Field Notes from a Catastrophe, outlined evidence collated from sites across the planet showing how global warming is changing the world. The book was well reviewed on both sides of the Atlantic, with the Observer praising it as “a superbly crafted, diligently compressed vision of a world spiralling towards destruction”.
Full Story Is man on course to cause the sixth extinction? | Environment | The Observer.
Spain reaches new wind record: 45.1% of Spain’s total electricity demand
Wind energy in Spain reached a new record last night, providing at its peak 45.1% of Spain’s total electricity demand – 2.1% greater than the previous record set in November last year.
Spain reaches new wind record: 45.1% of Spain’s total electricity demand
Spanish electricity grid, Red Eléctrica, said that today’s record is a first since it was sustained over several hours during last night. Between 00.40 and 06.20 on 5 November wind met over 40% of electricity demand.
“There have been several peaks over 40% in Spain, but this new one – lasting nearly six hours compared to around one hour the previous time – shows the huge part that wind can play in meeting Spain’s electricity demand,” Jacopo Moccia, regulatory affairs adviser for EWEA said.
The surge in wind power last night triggered water pumping stations which transport water into reservoirs. This store of water will then be released over the day generating electricity via water turbines at times of peak demand.
Full Story REVE – Regulación Eólica con Vehículos Eléctricos -.
Official US Air Force Document Reveals the True Intentions Behind the US-Colombia Military Agreement
An official document from the Department of the US Air Force reveals that the military base in Palanquero, Colombia will provide the Pentagon with “…an opportunity for conducting full spectrum operations throughout South America…” This information contradicts the explainations offered by Colombian President Alvaro Uribe and the US State Department regarding the military agreement signed between the two nations this past October 30th. Both governments have publicly stated that the military agreement refers only to counternarcotics and counterterrorism operations within Colombian territory. President Uribe has reiterated numerous times that the military agreement with the US will not affect Colombia’s neighbors, despite constant concern in the region regarding the true objetives of the agreement. But the US Air Force document, dated May 2009, confirms that the concerns of South American nations have been right on target. The document exposes that the true intentions behind the agreement are to enable the US to engage in “full spectrum military operations in a critical sub-region of our hemisphere where security and stability is under constant threat from narcotics funded terrorist insurgencies…and anti-US governments…”
The military agreement between Washington and Colombia authorizes the access and use of seven military installations in Palanquero, Malambo, Tolemaida, Larandia, Apíay, Cartagena and Málaga. Additionally, the agreement allows for “the access and use of all other installations and locations as necessary” throughout Colombia, with no restrictions. Together with the complete immunity the agreement provides to US military and civilian personnel, including private defense and security contractors, the clause authorizing the US to utilize any installation throughout the entire country – even commercial aiports, for military ends, signifies a complete renouncing of Colombian sovereignty and officially converts Colombia into a client-state of the US.
The Air Force document underlines the importance of the military base in Palanquero and justifies the $46 million requested in the 2010 budget (now approved by Congress) in order to improve the airfield, associated ramps and other installations on the base to convert it into a US Cooperative Security Location (CSL). “Establishing a Cooperative Security Location (CSL) in Palanquero best supports the COCOM’s (Command Combatant’s) Theater Posture Strategy and demonstrates our commitment to this relationship. Development of this CSL provides a unique opportunity for full spectrum operations in a critical sub-region of our hemisphere where security and stability is under constant threat from narcotics funded terrorist insurgencies, anti-US governments, endemic poverty and recurring natural disasters.”
Full Story Official US Air Force Document Reveals the True Intentions Behind the US-Colombia Military Agreement.
Paranoia Strikes Deep
Paul Krugman
the takeover of the Republican Party by the irrational right is no laughing matter. Something unprecedented is happening here — and it’s very bad for America.
Last Thursday there was a rally outside the U.S. Capitol to protest pending health care legislation, featuring the kinds of things we’ve grown accustomed to, including large signs showing piles of bodies at Dachau with the caption “National Socialist Healthcare.” It was grotesque — and it was also ominous. For what we may be seeing is America starting to be Californiafied.
The key thing to understand about that rally is that it wasn’t a fringe event. It was sponsored by the House Republican leadership — in fact, it was officially billed as a G.O.P. press conference. Senior lawmakers were in attendance, and apparently had no problem with the tone of the proceedings.
True, Eric Cantor, the second-ranking House Republican, offered some mild criticism after the fact. But the operative word is “mild.” The signs were “inappropriate,” said his spokesman, and the use of Hitler comparisons by such people as Rush Limbaugh, said Mr. Cantor, “conjures up images that frankly are not, I think, very helpful.”
What all this shows is that the G.O.P. has been taken over by the people it used to exploit.
Full Story Op-Ed Columnist – Paranoia Strikes Deep – NYTimes.com.
Rising Military Expenditure: The Coming U.S. Budget Attack
The United States is moving backwards…fast. State budget cuts are decimating essential health and social services; public education is being destroyed; the social safety net is in tatters. To make matters worse, all of this is occurring when the loss of jobs stands at a twenty-six year high with no end in sight.
But this is only phase one. The federal government intends to balance its books too, at the expense of society’s neediest. Instead of governors presiding over painful cuts, the President will be doing the gutting. And although his proposed budget isn’t due until February, the President’s spokespeople are priming the media to play a major propaganda role in what will be a colossal blow against working and poor people.
Obama’s Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner, has been particularly busy promoting the future cutbacks, repeating that “the country must live within its mean;” “deficits must be brought down dramatically” — something that will “require very hard choices.”
What are these hard choices? One possible option is no longer available. The biggest annual deficit producer is the U.S. military, which Obama will not radically reduce. Instead, he will increase it; Taxpayers will pay $660 billion (!) in 2010 toward the military. And maybe more — military commanders see more fighting in the future, not less; consequently, they want more money. The New York Times reports:
“…Admiral. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, did not say how much additional money would be needed, but one figure in circulation within the Pentagon and among outside defense budget analysts is $50 billion.” (November 4, 2009).
Senate Democrat John Murtha thinks only $40 billion extra will do the trick, making the military budget an even $700 billion for 2010.
Full Story Rising Military Expenditure: The Coming U.S. Budget Attack.
Additional Info:
- US & Global Military Spending
This graph was created in mid 2008 based on best data available at the time.
An Analysis of Warrantless Wiretapping-Part I
Sibel Edmonds’
This piece will attempt to analyze the US Government’s Warrantless Wiretap Program utilizing open source information including A.T.&T. Whistleblower Mark Klein’s EFF affidavit, podcasts by James Bamford and Russell Tice available on this site, and comparisons with similar surveillance networks currently in use in Great Britain and China. The rise of the Internet and the World Wide Web in the past thirty years has been touted as a mechanism of information freedom and open societies, a global clearinghouse for political and personal empowerment and a panacea against the forces of repression and censorship. What I will attempt to show in this piece is how those lofty goals remain largely unrealized and how governments, under the guise of “security” are, in fact, using the Internet as a new, overarching and suffocating surveillance state to monitor, compile and track the personal and private lives of virtually everyone who uses modern telecommunications in any form. I will attempt to demonstrate that, because of the erection of this surveillance regime, privacy of communications is essentially dead. I will also attempt to show how information gathered under this program can be used to populate private corporation databases and affect the general populace through credit reports, employment opportunities and the convergence of private and government databases.
Let me begin by defining some terms to help the reader understand the overall scope of Warrantless Wiretaps. These terms will give the reader an idea of the masses of data being monitored:
The basic building block circuit for our purposes is called a DS-3. Each DS-3 contains 28 T-1s, each containing 24 voice channels. So 1 DS-3 equals 24 times 28 or 672 voice channels. These DS-3s are multiplexed to the Optical Channel level and have a numerical value of 1. Therefore, an Optical Channel or OC-3 circuit contains 3 DS-3s capacity or 2016 voice channels. An OC-12 circuit contains 12 DS-3s or 8064 voice channels; an OC-48 circuit contains 48 DS-3s or 32,556 voice channels. These circuits are multiplexed to an OC-192 DWDM (Dense Wave Division Multiplex) level for long distance transport. What the last term means is anywhere from 24 to 36 OC-192 (192 DS-3s) modulated on a single fiber for long distance transport. So a single optic fiber can carry almost 5,000,000 individual phone channels at once. Most single mode fiber cables contain between 50 and 100 individual fibers providing a transmit and receive path for 25-50 OC-192 DWDM circuits. I am personally certified on equipment up to and including the OC-192 DWDM level.
Full Story Sibel Edmonds’ Boiling Frogs Post | Home of the Irate Minority.
Fannie Mae to allow borrowers in foreclosure to lease back homes
The mortgage giant’s move is part of an attempt by lenders to keep a wave of foreclosed properties from slamming a housing market that has shown some signs of recovery.
Mortgage giant Fannie Mae said Thursday that it would throw a lifeline to some people losing their homes to foreclosure by allowing them to lease those properties back for up to a year at market rental rates.
The move is the latest in a series of steps by lenders trying to manage inventories of foreclosed homes on their books in an attempt to keep a wave of properties from slamming a housing market that has shown some signs of recovery.
The news came as Fannie Mae reported a net loss of $18.9 billion in the third quarter ended Sept. 30, compared with a $14.8-billion loss in the second quarter and a $29.4-billion loss in the third quarter last year.
Full Story Fannie Mae to allow borrowers in foreclosure to lease back homes — latimes.com.
Abortion amendment on health care bill frustrates activists
The health care bill being debated at the Capitol building today has changed in important ways since its emergence. Pro-choice activists are sounding the alarm over the Stupak amendment, named after Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI). The last-minute compromise will prohibit insurance coverage of elective abortions for anyone receiving federal aid.
Abortion-rights supporters in the House were frustrated by the concession to 40 anti-abortion democrats who indicated they wouldn’t vote for H.R. 3962 unless the current provisions were changed. Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.) told Politico “pro-choice members are not happy this morning.”
Bart Stupak, on the other hand, is pleased with the amendment’s success, claiming that he has 225 votes, including almost every single Republican.
Though the vast majority of House democrats are supporters of abortion rights, Nancy Pelosi told reporters she believes that her pro-choice peers will support the bill with the amended language on abortion.
The leader of the Progressive Caucus Policy Foundation, Darcy Burner, released a video speaking out against the Stupak amendment. “Women who find they have cancer while they are pregnant won’t get the choice of how to proceed, but those choices will instead be made by politicians in Washington, DC,” Burner said. “The idea that we would throw women under the bus in the process of doing health care reform is completely unacceptable.”
Full Story Abortion amendment on health care bill frustrates activists | Raw Story.
Former Chief of National Intelligence: U.S. Unprepared for Cyber Attacks
Cyber War: Sabotaging the System – 60 Minutes
Nothing has ever changed the world as quickly as the Internet has. Less than a decade ago, “60 Minutes” went to the Pentagon to do a story on something called information warfare, or cyber war as some people called it. It involved using computers and the Internet as weapons.
Much of it was still theory, but we were told that before too long it might be possible for a hacker with a computer to disable critical infrastructure in a major city and disrupt essential services, to steal millions of dollars from banks all over the world, infiltrate defense systems, extort millions from public companies, and even sabotage our weapons systems.
Today it’s not only possible, all of that has actually happened, plus a lot more we don’t even know about.
Full Story Cyber War: Sabotaging the System – 60 Minutes – CBS News.
Gorbachev gives Obama advice on Afghanistan : Get Out
Washington (CNN) – As the American public and the global community await the completion of the Obama administration’s extensive review of U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan, Mikhail Gorbachev, the former president of the Soviet Union, said Sunday that, instead of sending more troops, Obama should begin to the lay the groundwork to withdraw from Afghanistan.
“I think that what’s needed is not additional forces,” the former Soviet leader said through a translator, “this is something that we discussed, too, years ago but we decided not to do it. And I think our experience deserves attention.”
WATCH: The entire Gorbachev interview
Instead of more troops, Gorbachev said the Soviets decided to emphasize domestic development in Afghanistan and promoting national reconciliation between the various clans in the country. In deciding how to proceed in Afghanistan, Gorbachev said the Soviet Union also consulted with other countries including the United States, Iran, Pakistan, and India.
‘Prepare for war,’ Chavez warns Venezuelan military, populace
The leader of the fifth-largest oil exporter in the world is warning his country’s military and citizenry to prepare for war with Colombia and the United States, according to published reports.
Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez issued his warning during a weekly radio address.
“Let’s not waste a day on our main aim: to prepare for war and to help the people prepare for war, because it is everyone’s responsibility,” he reportedly said.
Chavez has repeatedly voiced deep fears of US encroachment in the region.
“Students, revolutionaries, workers, women: all are ready to defend this sacred homeland called Venezuela,” he continued, adding that the best way to “avoid war is to prepare for it”.
Full Story ‘Prepare for war,’ Chavez warns Venezuelan military, populace | Raw Story.
Supreme Court To Decide If Life In Prison For Juveniles Is “Cruel And Unusual”
Joe Sullivan was sent away for life for raping an elderly woman and judged incorrigible though he was only 13 at the time of the attack.
Terrance Graham, implicated in armed robberies when he was 16 and 17, was given a life sentence by a judge who told the teenager he threw his life away.
They didn’t kill anyone, but they effectively were sentenced to die in prison.
Life sentences with no chance of parole are rare and harsh for juveniles tried as adults and convicted of crimes less serious than killing. Just over 100 prison inmates in the United States are serving those terms, according to data compiled by opponents of the sentences.
Full Story Supreme Court To Decide If Life In Prison For Juveniles Is “Cruel And Unusual”.
Cavern Threatens to Swallow New Mexico Town
-The bright yellow signs on U.S. 285 are the first indication that things aren’t right in Carlsbad.
“US 285 south subject to sinkhole 1,000 feet ahead,” motorists are warned.
‘Like a Bomb Going Off’
Full Story Cavern Threatens to Swallow New Mexico Town.
Lieberman Pledges To Filibuster House Bill: The Public Option Is ‘Unnecessary’
This morning on Fox News Sunday, host Chris Wallace asked Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) about the House’s historic passage of health care legislation last night. Lieberman said that as a “matter of conscience,” he will join a Republican filibuster if a public option — which has supposedly been put forward “by people who really want the government to take over all of health insurance” — is also included in the bill that goes before the Senate:
LIEBERMAN: A public option plan is unnecessary. It has been put forward, I’m convinced, by people who really want the government to take over all of health insurance. They’ve got a right to do that; I think that would be wrong.
But worse than that, we have a problem even greater than the health insurance problems, and that is a debt — $12 trillion today, projected to be $21 trillion in 10 years.
WALLACE: So at this point, I take it, you’re a “no” vote in the Senate?
LIEBERMAN: If the public option plan is in there, as a matter of conscience, I will not allow this bill to come to a final vote because I believe debt can break America and send us into a recession that’s worse than the one we’re fighting our way out of today. I don’t want to do that to our children and grandchildren.
Watch it:
Full Story Think Progress » Lieberman Pledges To Filibuster House Bill: The Public Option Is ‘Unnecessary’.
What is the true value of the United States’ gold?
The price isn’t right, but it doesn’t matter — all that glitters won’t be sold
Buried in the Treasury’s International Reserve Position report is an intriguing bit of math. The document details the total amount, by weight, of the Treasury’s gold reserves, plus a dollar value for said metal. But some fast division reveals something interesting: The Treasury marks the value of its gold at $42 an ounce, the price settled on in 1973, two years after the United States scrapped the Bretton Woods System, which had held gold at $35 an ounce for decades.
Wait — what? Spot gold is heading toward $1,100 per ounce, and the Treasury is embracing a Cold War relic of a price? If the Treasury’s bling were valued at the spot price, we’d be sitting on a literal gold mine of nearly $288 billion. Why doesn’t the Treasury account for the huge run-up in gold prices?
For starters, marking the Treasury’s gold to market would create a huge headache of an ever-fluctuating balance sheet as the price of gold rises and falls, pointed out Dimitri Papadimitriou, president of the Levy Economics Institute at Bard College. Plus, if gold tumbled, we’d lose our hypothetical wealth as quickly as we’d accrued it.
Full Story What is the true value of the United States’ gold? – washingtonpost.com.
How to End Wars | Let’s Try Democracy
Around the United States, peace groups are engaged in effective campaigns against proposed new military installations, local funding of weapons companies, and the routine destruction of the environment and of workers’ health by such companies. Activists are building better media outlets, educating young people, educating old people, keeping military testing and recruiting out of schools, and discouraging the Army from building real-weapon video arcades in shopping malls. But when it comes to stopping our wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, our citizens are less clear how to go about it.
The peace movement was defunded and demobilized by the absurd belief that an election alone would make a difference, and now there is widespread desire to tell everyone that it didn’t. Certainly, it didn’t. We have a larger military budget, bases in more nations, and more troops and mercenaries on the ground in Afghanistan and Iraq combined now than before the election. We need to understand that this was entirely predictable and predicted. Those who expected something from an election alone need to be clear that such expectation was entirely – not just partially – misguided. Disappointment with a president needs to be replaced with acknowledgement of strategic error. The latter generates less despair and allows clearer thinking about strategy going forward.
There is still and will always be a role for journalists, bloggers, authors, and pundits to expose the abuses of any and all government officials, including the president. But the primary role of peace activists should have nothing to do with presidents, or with senators. We have virtually no ability to influence them. When you’re invited to discuss these wars on a television show, by all means expose what the president is doing. But asking members of an activist group to spend their time writing or calling the White House is a waste of energy that could be better used. It should be directed at the House of Representatives.
Full Story How to End Wars | Let’s Try Democracy.
Tax the Traders! Make Wall Street Pay its Share With a “Tobin Tax”
Ellen Brown
Wall Street owns the country. It is no longer a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, but a government of Wall Street, by Wall Street, and for Wall Street. Our laws are the output of a system which clothes rascals in robes and honesty in rags.”
-1890 speech by Populist leader Mary Ellen Lease, thought to be the prototype for Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz
Consider these arresting facts:
* The Bank for International Settlements estimates that in 2008, annual trading in over-the-counter derivatives amounted to $743 trillion globally – more than ten times the gross domestic product of all the nations of the world combined.
* Just five super-rich Wall Street banks control 97% of the U.S. derivatives market: JPMorgan Chase & Co., Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc. and Wells Fargo & Co.
* Wall Street traders compete to design computer programs that can move many trades in microseconds, allowing them to beat ordinary investors to the “buy” button and to manipulate markets for private gain.
* Goldman Sachs, the uncontested leader in this game, was reported in September to be sitting on a cool $167 billion in cash. Meanwhile, a September survey of state finances found that state governments faced a collective budget shortfall for fiscal 2010 of $168 billion – nearly the same amount.
* In 2008, Goldman Sachs paid a paltry 1% in income taxes – less than clerks at WalMart.
Full Story t r u t h o u t | Tax the Traders! Make Wall Street Pay its Share With a “Tobin Tax”.
Afghanistan: Time to leave
Patrick Cockburn, our award-winning reporter who has covered the region for more than 30 years, explains why it is best for the world, and Afghanistan, if our troops are brought home
Britain should start withdrawing, not reinforcing, its troops in Afghanistan. Sending extra troops is unnecessary and will prove counter-effective. The additional number of British troops is small, but the US is poised to send tens of thousands more soldiers to the country. The nature of the conflict is changing. What should be a war in which the Afghan government fights the Taliban has become one which is being fought primarily by the American and British armies. To more and more Afghans, this looks like imperial occupation.
With regard to disputes in Washington and London about sending more troops, it is seldom mentioned that Afghans are against the deployment. Contrary to Western plans, just 18 per cent of Afghans want more US and Nato/Isaf forces in Afghanistan, according to an opinion poll carried out earlier this year by the BBC, ABC News and ARD of Germany. A much greater number of Afghans – 44 per cent – want a decrease in foreign forces.
It is hardly surprising, therefore, that the Taliban have been able to win some support. The cruelty of their rule before 2001 is becoming a distant memory and they are successfully portraying themselves as the defender of the country against foreign occupation. Matthew P Hoh, the senior American civilian representative in Zabul Province east of Kandahar, resigned last week convinced that the US military should not be in Afghanistan. As a former US marine officer who served in Iraq, he says in his resignation letter that the US has joined in on one side in a 35-year-old civil war between the traditional Pashtun community and its enemies. “The US military presence in Afghanistan greatly contributes to the legitimacy and strategic message of the Pashtun insurgency,” he says. “Our backing of the Afghan government in its current form continues to distance the government from the people.”
Full Story Afghanistan: Time to leave – Asia, World – The Independent.
Utter Fraud!
Max Keiser
>> Obama could have wiped clean every mortgage and credit card debt in 2008 for less than he gifted to the banks
Chemicals in Our Food, and Bodies – BPA
Your body is probably home to a chemical called bisphenol A, or BPA. It’s a synthetic estrogen that United States factories now use in everything from plastics to epoxies — to the tune of six pounds per American per year. That’s a lot of estrogen.
More than 92 percent of Americans have BPA in their urine, and scientists have linked it — though not conclusively — to everything from breast cancer to obesity, from attention deficit disorder to genital abnormalities in boys and girls alike.
Now it turns out it’s in our food.
Consumer Reports magazine tested an array of brand-name canned foods for a report in its December issue and found BPA in almost all of them. The magazine says that relatively high levels turned up, for example, in Progresso vegetable soup, Campbell’s condensed chicken noodle soup, and Del Monte Blue Lake cut green beans.
Full Story Op-Ed Columnist – Chemicals in Our Food, and Bodies – NYTimes.com.
House Passes Health Reform, But Without Reproductive Rights
John Nichols, The Nation
The U.S. House of Representatives answered “the call of history” put to it by President Obama Saturday and voted 220-215 in favor of the most sweeping expansion of health-care coverage since the enactment of Medicare and Medicaid Act of 1965.
House Democrats burst into sustained applause at 11:08 EST as the majority-making 218th vote was cast in favor of the the Affordable Health Care for America Act.
The measure ultimately received the votes of 219 Democrats.
Only one Republican, Louisiana’s Joseph Cao, supported it. (Cao, who represents an overwhelmingly-Democratic district dominated by the city of New Orleans, frequently breaks with the GOP leadership. He was one of the few Republicans who was seriously lobbied by the White House and Democratic leaders in the House, and it worked.)
Full Story House Passes Health Reform, But Without Reproductive Rights.
Dennis Kucinich: Why I Voted NO
We have been led to believe that we must make our health care choices only within the current structure of a predatory, for-profit insurance system which makes money not providing health care. We cannot fault the insurance companies for being what they are. But we can fault legislation in which the government incentivizes the perpetuation, indeed the strengthening, of the for-profit health insurance industry, the very source of the problem. When health insurance companies deny care or raise premiums, co-pays and deductibles they are simply trying to make a profit. That is our system.
Clearly, the insurance companies are the problem, not the solution. They are driving up the cost of health care. Because their massive bureaucracy avoids paying bills so effectively, they force hospitals and doctors to hire their own bureaucracy to fight the insurance companies to avoid getting stuck with an unfair share of the bills. The result is that since 1970, the number of physicians has increased by less than 200% while the number of administrators has increased by 3000%. It is no wonder that 31 cents of every health care dollar goes to administrative costs, not toward providing care. Even those with insurance are at risk. The single biggest cause of bankruptcies in the U.S. is health insurance policies that do not cover you when you get sick.
But instead of working toward the elimination of for-profit insurance, H.R. 3962 would put the government in the role of accelerating the privatization of health care. In H.R. 3962, the government is requiring at least 21 million Americans to buy private health insurance from the very industry that causes costs to be so high, which will result in at least $70 billion in new annual revenue, much of which is coming from taxpayers. This inevitably will lead to even more costs, more subsidies, and higher profits for insurance companies – a bailout under a blue cross.
Full Story Why I Voted NO | CommonDreams.org.
Woman’s Health Horror: ‘My Vagina Fell Out’
Allison Henry isn’t the first to suffer from a horrifying medical condition that few women talk about. But her case was particularly bad, and she’s just one of the few brave souls willing to come forward so that others will have the courage to seek help.
To put it bluntly, as Henry does: “My vagina fell out of my body.”
The 39-year-old school psychologist from Kenmore, Wash., suffered from a rare combination of disorders that began when she was pregnant with her son, Kirian, and she writes an amazing account of her bizarre medical condition on MomLogic.com.
“I know it sounds like a science fiction movie,” she told Sphere.com. “Every time I retell this story, I still tell myself, ‘I can’t believe this happened to me.’”
It began five years ago, when Henry was in her 10th week of pregnancy with Kirian, her second child. She had vowed that she wouldn’t gain 60 pounds this time around, and she was practicing prenatal yoga in her home when she felt a sudden pain.
Full Story Woman’s Health Horror: ‘My Vagina Fell Out’ — Sphere News, Opinion and Analysis.
Warning of extra heart dangers from mixing cocaine and alcohol
A third chemical – cocaethylene – builds up in the liver over a number of years among those who mix the two drugs. And this is now having major health consequences
“I first took coke when I was 18 and at university. I remember two friends who did chemistry told me I should get really drunk first because it would mix into this new chemical in my blood and make me even higher,” a 30-year-old woman who works in publishing told the Observer yesterday.
What her friends did not tell her is that the combination of cocaine and alcohol in her then teenage body will have left a highly toxic chemical in her liver called cocaethylene.
While few outside the world of pharmacology have heard of the chemical, fewer still are aware of its life-threatening properties. Now, however, its side-effects, discovered in 1979, are threatening to become tragically familiar as they take their toll on users in their 30s and 40s.
Full Story Warning of extra heart dangers from mixing cocaine and alcohol | Society | The Observer.
Windfall Is Seen as Bank Bonuses Are Paid in Stock
Even as Washington tries to rein in Wall Street pay, bankers are likely to make unusually large gains on the stock grants and options they received after shares in their companies fell sharply during the financial meltdown.
Banks cut bonuses last year and shifted more pay into stock and options from cash, a tactic that lawmakers supported for its emphasis on long-term performance. Within months, the financial system began to mend — partly with the help of billions of dollars in government aid — and that stock began surging in value. Some of it can be cashed in starting in just a few months.
And so the bonuses Wall Street received last year, billed as paltry at the time, are turning out to be among the most lucrative payouts ever.
Goldman Sachs, for instance, sharply cut nearly all bonuses it paid last year but gave some executives more options than usual.
Full Story Windfall Is Seen as Bank Bonuses Are Paid in Stock – NYTimes.com.
Wal-Mart, Amazon, Target In DVD Price War
First it was books. Now it’s DVDs.
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. started another price war Thursday, trimming the online preorder prices of some upcoming DVDs following its price cut on books last month. And, once again, competitors Amazon.com and Target scrambled to match the prices.
It’s the latest salvo in an ongoing online push by Wal-Mart designed to make sure everyone knows it intends to be the low-price leader on the Web, as well as in stores.
The retailer, based in Bentonville, Ark., said late Thursday that it would lower the online prices of new DVDs such as “Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince” and “Star Trek XI” to $10.
Full Story Wal-Mart, Amazon, Target In DVD Price War.
Are nuclear weapons safe in Pakistan?
Seymour M. Hersh >>
In an unstable Pakistan, can nuclear warheads be kept safe?
In the tumultuous days leading up to the Pakistan Army’s ground offensive in the tribal area of South Waziristan, which began on October 17th, the Pakistani Taliban attacked what should have been some of the country’s best-guarded targets. In the most brazen strike, ten gunmen penetrated the Army’s main headquarters, in Rawalpindi, instigating a twenty-two-hour standoff that left twenty-three dead and the military thoroughly embarrassed. The terrorists had been dressed in Army uniforms. There were also attacks on police installations in Peshawar and Lahore, and, once the offensive began, an Army general was shot dead by gunmen on motorcycles on the streets of Islamabad, the capital. The assassins clearly had advance knowledge of the general’s route, indicating that they had contacts and allies inside the security forces.
Pakistan has been a nuclear power for two decades, and has an estimated eighty to a hundred warheads, scattered in facilities around the country. The success of the latest attacks raised an obvious question: Are the bombs safe? Asked this question the day after the Rawalpindi raid, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said, “We have confidence in the Pakistani government and the military’s control over nuclear weapons.” Clinton—whose own visit to Pakistan, two weeks later, would be disrupted by more terrorist bombs—added that, despite the attacks by the Taliban, “we see no evidence that they are going to take over the state.”
Clinton’s words sounded reassuring, and several current and former officials also said in interviews that the Pakistan Army was in full control of the nuclear arsenal. But the Taliban overrunning Islamabad is not the only, or even the greatest, concern. The principal fear is mutiny—that extremists inside the Pakistani military might stage a coup, take control of some nuclear assets, or even divert a warhead.
Full Story Are nuclear weapons safe in Pakistan? : The New Yorker.
Joseph Cao: Voting For Health Reform Was “A Decision Of Conscience” (VIDEO)
The one House Republican to support health care reform said on Sunday that his decision to back the bill was driven by his conscience and the needs of his district and not back-room dealing with the White House or Democrats.
Rep. Joseph Cao (R-La), appearing on CNN, said that he cast his vote in favor of reform only after an amendment greatly restricting the coverage of abortions was allowed to come to a vote. Once that hurdle was clear, Cao said, “I called the White House and said I could possibly support the bill.”
The subject of a fierce, late-in-the-game, lobbying effort between Democrats and Republicans, Cao ultimately voted yea because, as he put it, “I had to make a decision of conscience based on the needs of the people in my district.”
Full Story Joseph Cao: Voting For Health Reform Was “A Decision Of Conscience” (VIDEO).
America’s Dirtiest Cars and Trucks
Chrysler Dominates Forbes’ Dirty Vehicles List With Six
Just because a car has low fuel efficiency doesn’t mean it’s the worst polluter on the road. The Chevrolet Suburban and Dodge Challenger are some of the biggest gas-gulpers available, but they don’t cause quite the environmental harm other cars do.
That title is reserved for vehicles that combine their poor gas mileage with high tailpipe and greenhouse gas emissions. Think along the lines of some of the bulkiest cars on the road, like the Jeep Grand Cherokee, Chevrolet Trailblazer and Dodge Dakota.
While fuel economy is linked to emissions, it’s not the only factor. Pollution levels also have to do with the type of fuel being used and the age and condition of the engine, among other things.
“You can have a really fuel-efficient, dirty vehicle and a really clean, not-so-fuel-efficient vehicle,” says Karl Simon, a director of compliance and innovation for the EPA’s Office of Transportation and Air Quality. “It really is pretty wide open from a technical perspective.”
Full Story America’s Dirtiest Cars and Trucks – ABC News.
Gold Advances to Record in New York, London After Jobs Data
Gold rose to a record in New York and London trading after a report showed U.S. employers cut more jobs than forecast in October, boosting demand for the metal as store of value.
Bullion is heading for a ninth consecutive annual gain and approaching $1,100 an ounce for the first time as investors seek to protect their wealth from the threat of inflation and the debasement of the U.S. currency. Payrolls fell by 190,000 workers last month, compared with a 175,000 drop anticipated by the median forecast of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News, figures from the Labor Department showed today.
“There’s massive investment demand for gold at the moment,” said Christoph Eibl, co-founder of Zug, Switzerland- based Tiberius Group, which manages $1.8 billion. “I see more liquidity pumped in to lift the economies from bad news.”
Full Story Gold Advances to Record in New York, London After Jobs Data – Bloomberg.com.
A Petition Establishing Health Care as a Civil Right
Dennis Kucinich
Whereas, Universal Health Care was proposed by President Teddy Roosevelt in 1912; and
Whereas today, nearly 100 years later, 47 million Americans are uninsured and another 50 million are underinsured bringing great social and economic harm to the American family; and
Whereas, HR 676, authored by Congressmen John Conyers and Dennis Kucinich provides for Medicare for All, a universal, single payer, not-for-profit health care system which means the end of premiums, copays and deductibles; and
Whereas we are already paying for a universal standard of care but are not getting it because one of every three dollars in the health care system goes to the activities of the for-profit insurance system; and
Whereas HR676 firmly establishes health care as a Civil Right, consistent with the Preamble to the Constitution of the United States and Article 1, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution which defines a purpose of government “to promote the General Welfare,” now therefore,
I HEREBY EXPRESS MY STRONG SUPPORT FOR HR676, SINGLE PAYER HEALTH CARE, AND THE PRINCIPLES OF ECONOMIC JUSTICE FOR WHICH IT STANDS:
Full Story kucinich.us – A Petition Establishing Health Care as a Civil Right.
Still-murky copyright treaty could change web as we use it
The future of the Internet in Canada may have been decided in Seoul, Korea, this past week.
But it’s hard to be sure, since the latest negotiations for the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement were held in secret, as they have been in the past, and the only details came to the public through leaks, says Michael Geist, a law professor and Star columnist, who himself posted a leaked chapter on the agreement’s Internet Policy on his personal website.
“We’re dealing with intellectual property agreements that are being treated as akin to nuclear secrets and that just doesn’t make any sense at all,” Geist says. “That’s the transparency side of this. Then, of course, there’s the content side of it… this week, they crossed the line into the realm of affecting individuals very, very directly.”
If it’s any measure of the public’s interest, Geist’s site got 100,000 unique hits in a 24-hour span after he posted the document.
Full Story Still-murky copyright treaty could change web as we use it – thestar.com.
The Holes in Health Reform
The legislation just passed by the House builds on a deeply flawed system, rather than fixing it. Conor Friedersdorf on how the Democrats missed the boat—and why the GOP is partly to blame.
Neither Republicans nor Democrats adequately acknowledge that it is deeply weird to tie health insurance to one’s job, and even stranger to discuss health care reform as though it is primarily a matter of getting everyone insured.
These two dysfunctional features are preserved in the legislation just passed by the House. Employer- provided health care distorts labor markets by incentivizing workers to stay put. But voters are risk-averse. They’d prefer to keep the insurance they have. Thus President Obama and Democratic leaders pushed reform that built on the employer provided health care system, rather than improving it.
The present pace of inflation in the health care sector is unsustainable. Bettering the situation requires price pressures driven by consumers. The present legislation doesn’t bring us closer to that reality either.
Full Story The Holes in Health Reform – The Daily Beast.
U.S. optimistic about new nuclear weapons treaty with Russia
Kremlin says there is ‘every chance’ to agree on START successor
After months of negotiations with Russia, Obama administration officials are hopeful about a breakthrough — possibly this week — that would enable the two sides to sign a successor to their most extensive nuclear weapons treaty before it expires Dec. 5.
The optimism stems from a trip to Moscow in late October by national security adviser James L. Jones, who gave his Kremlin counterpart a package of proposals for the new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or START, according to U.S. and Russian officials. Moscow has not yet formally responded, but high-level Russian officials have reacted positively, senior U.S. officials said.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said in remarks released Saturday that both sides “have every chance to agree on a new treaty, determine new [weapons] levels and control measures and sign a legally binding document [by] the end of the year.” With U.S. policymakers and the Pentagon united behind Jones’s proposals, Kremlin policymakers have gone back to the Russian military to get its approval or perhaps recommendations for counterproposals.
Full Story U.S. optimistic about new nuclear weapons treaty with Russia – washingtonpost.com.
Japanese protest against US base
Thousands of people have protested on the southern Japanese island of Okinawa demanding the removal of a US military base there.
The local mayor called on new Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama “to put an end to Okinawa’s burden and ordeal”.
Japan and the US agreed in 2006 to relocate the Futenma base from an urban area to reclaimed land but the PM’s election has rekindled opposition.
The protest comes ahead of this week’s visit by US President Barack Obama.
Full Story BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | Japanese protest against US base.
Gay-Marriage Fight Heads to New Jersey
The battle over gay rights will move to New Jersey and the federal government, advocates said, after Tuesday’s narrow rejection of same-sex marriage by Maine voters in a hard-fought contest.
The Democrat-controlled legislature in New Jersey, which currently recognizes same-sex couples in civil unions, is under pressure to pass a bill authorizing gay marriage before Gov. Jon Corzine ends his term in mid-January.
Mr. Corzine, a Democrat unseated in Tuesday’s election, said he would sign such a bill. His successor, Republican Chris Christie, opposes same-sex marriages.
Full Story Gay-Marriage Fight Heads to New Jersey – WSJ.com.
Kucinich’s Brave Health Vote Vs. Obama’s Failed Promise
There were plenty of cowardly votes in the House last night but there was only one truly brave one. The unsung hero of the night was Ohio Representative Dennis Kucinich. Despite enormous pressure to support H.R. 3962, Rep. Kucinich did the right thing and voted ‘no’. Unlike the Blue Dog votes against the bill, he did it for all the right reasons.
In a principled and practical statement, Rep. Kucinich said what a growing number of progressives have realized as we’ve watched real health care reform be compromised again and again.
During the debate, when the interests of insurance companies would have been effectively challenged, that challenge was turned back. The “robust public option” which would have offered a modicum of competition to a monopolistic industry was whittled down from an initial potential enrollment of 129 million Americans to 6 million. An amendment which would have protected the rights of states to pursue single-payer health care was stripped from the bill at the request of the Administration. Looking ahead, we cringe at the prospect of even greater favors for insurance companies.
Full Story Lee Stranahan: Kucinich’s Brave Health Vote Vs. Obama’s Failed Promise.
Obama Failing on Trade Policy
President Obama’s pragmatic, nuanced and compromising approach to handling tough issues is drawing sharp rebukes from both the left and the right for his administration’s trade policy – or lack thereof – thus far.
President Obama’s pragmatic, nuanced and compromising approach to handling tough issues is drawing sharp rebukes from both the left and the right for his administration’s trade policy – or lack thereof – thus far.
Critics on the right are slamming the president for failing to move forward with previously negotiated free trade agreements. Under the Bush administration, trade agreements were negotiated with South Korea, Columbia and Panama. The Obama administration has said that before signing the agreements, they plan to rework them.
“If you go to class, college, and you don’t do anything, you get an F,” Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) told Reuters last week.
At the same time, critics on the left are claiming that the administration is simply carrying on a continuation of the Bush administration’s trade policies
Full Story Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
Editorial – NYTimes – - Jobless Recovery
— the share of the unemployed population out of work for more than six months — also continues to set records. It is now 35.6 percent.
If you are looking for an economic recovery you can believe in, the October employment report is not for you.
After contracting for a year and a half, the economy grew in the quarter that ended in September, driven largely by federal stimulus. But government spending, as large and as necessary as it has been, has not been enough to revive hiring.
Unemployment surged from 9.8 percent in September to 10.2 percent last month, its highest level since 1983. At the same time, the economy lost 190,000 more jobs. That means employers have eliminated 7.3 million positions since the recession began in December 2007.
As dreadful as they are, the headline numbers understate the severity of the problem. They also obscure an even grimmer fact: Unless there is more government support, it will take several years of robust economic growth — by no means a sure thing — to recoup the jobs that have been lost.
The unemployment rate includes only jobless people who have looked for work in the past four weeks. The underemployment rate — which also includes jobless workers who have not recently looked for work and part-timers who need full-time work — reached 17.5 percent in October. And the long-term unemployment rate — the share of the unemployed population out of work for more than six months — also continues to set records. It is now 35.6 percent.
Full Story Editorial – Jobless Recovery – NYTimes.com.
Profiteers Find That “Free Trade” Is Still An Easy Sell
There is now a stigma that buying American is cheap, undesirable, of poor quality, and in poor taste. Clearly the only group unquestionably damaged by “free trade” is American industry.
Editor’s Note: This article originally ran in 2004, but is more relevant today than ever.
Free trade sounds great. Consumers get the benefit of increased competition for their buying dollars, manufacturers get to locate or source from the lowest cost labor pool, exporters have the opportunity to sell into new markets with no tariffs. So what could be bad about that?
Fundamental Flaws In Free Trade
There are at least two fundamental flaws with free trade that have led to the most massive wealth transfer in the history of the world ($4 Trillion has been lost by the United States since the 1970′s through trade deficits caused by elimination of tariffs).
Full Story Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
The Night They Drove the Tea Partiers Down
Frank Rich
FOR all cable news’s efforts to inflate Election 2009 into a cliffhanger as riveting as Balloon Boy, ratings at MSNBC and CNN were flat Tuesday night. But not at Fox News, where the audience nearly doubled its usual prime-time average. That’s what happens when you have a thrilling story to tell, and what could be more thrilling than a revolution playing out in real time?
As Fox kept insisting, all eyes were glued on Doug Hoffman, the insurgent tea party candidate in New York’s 23rd Congressional District. A “tidal wave” was on its way, said Sean Hannity, and the right would soon “take back the Republican Party.” The race was not “even close,” Bill O’Reilly suggested to the pollster Scott Rasmussen, who didn’t disagree. When returns showed Hoffman trailing, the network’s resident genius, Karl Rove, knowingly reassured viewers that victory was in the bag, even if we’d have to stay up all night waiting for some slacker towns to tally their votes.
Alas, the Dewey-beats-Truman reveries died shortly after midnight, when even Fox had to concede that the Democrat, Bill Owens, had triumphed in what had been Republican country since before Edison introduced the light bulb. For the far right, the thriller in Watertown was over except for the ludicrous morning-after spin that Hoffman’s loss was really a victory. For the Democrats, the excitement was just beginning. New York’s 23rd could be celebrated as a rare bright spot on a night when the party’s gubernatorial candidates lost in Virginia and New Jersey.
Full Story Op-Ed Columnist – The Night They Drove the Tea Partiers Down – NYTimes.com.
Sweeping Health Care Plan Passes House
Handing President Obama a hard-fought victory, the House narrowly approved a sweeping overhaul of the nation’s health care system on Saturday night, advancing legislation that Democrats said could stand as their defining social policy achievement.
After a daylong clash with Republicans over what has been a Democratic goal for decades, lawmakers voted 220 to 215 to approve a plan that would cost $1.1 trillion over 10 years. Democrats said the legislation would provide overdue relief to Americans struggling to buy or hold on to health insurance.
“This is our moment to revolutionize health care in this country,” said Representative George Miller, Democrat of California and one of the chief architects of the bill.
Democrats were forced to make major concessions on insurance coverage for abortions to attract the final votes to secure passage, a wrenching compromise for the numerous abortion-rights advocates in their ranks.
Full Story Sweeping Health Care Plan Passes House – NYTimes.com.
comment from Mike5000 @ BF. OPS agrees:
#2 So close.
Thank you Dennis Kucinich and progressives for voting against this trillion dollar giveaway to the health mafia. (Fake Progessive Weiner had his twenty minutes of fame, withdrew his Single Payer amendment, and voted for the health mafia.) This evil bill was carried by Blue Dog Dimocrap votes because it bans health exchange plans from covering abortions.
A Day At The Freak Show: A Report From The Heart Of The Tea Party Protest
The only thing more frightening than being caught in an angry mob of health care protesters is revealing to that angry mob that you work for the Huffington Post.
On Thursday, I ventured down to Capitol Hill with a professional death wish. I was going to mingle with a group of tea partiers to get a sense of what, exactly, keeps their clocks ticking. For two-and-a-half hours, I got the Glenn Beck treatment — accused of, among other things, subverting freedom, working for a communist propaganda outlet, and having a soulless devotion to slander and scandal.
One woman picked up her items and moved away — taking her family with her — after I settled down on the Capitol’s front lawn. At another point a man, who seemed generally concerned about my safety, whispered in my ear: “You’re a sheep amidst the wolves in this crowd, son.”
Full Story A Day At The Freak Show: A Report From The Heart Of The Tea Party Protest.
Obama leaning toward 34,000 more troops for Afghanistan
President Barack Obama is nearing a decision to send more than 30,000 additional U.S. troops to Afghanistan next year, but he may not announce it until after he consults with key allies and completes a trip to Asia later this month, administration and military officials have told McClatchy.
As it now stands, the administration’s plan calls for sending three Army brigades from the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, Ky. and the 10th Mountain Division at Fort Drum, N.Y. and a Marine brigade, for a total of as many as 23,000 additional combat and support troops.
Another 7,000 troops would man and support a new division headquarters for the international force’s Regional Command (RC) South in Kandahar, the Taliban birthplace where the U.S. is due to take command in 2010. Some 4,000 additional U.S. trainers are likely to be sent as well, the officials said.
Full Story Obama leaning toward 34,000 more troops for Afghanistan | McClatchy.
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Republicans Don't Care about Voter Fraud....owa Republicans are trying to dismiss claims that the vote count in Tuesday's Iowa Caucus was wrong. An Iowa voter told a local TV station yesterday that he noticed a 20-vote discrepancy in the count - and that Rick Santorum was the real winner of the Caucuses. Republican Party officials, though, are sticking to their first count - showing Mitt Romney as the winner by 8-votes - and there will be no recount.The Republican Party has launched a war on voters around the nation this year with strict new laws that will disenfranchise over 5 million Americans. They claim these laws are necessary to combat so-called voter fraud. Yet in Iowa - where there are no such laws - and where a very, very close and questionable election was just held - Republicans don't seem to care at all about getting it right.Clearly - the war on voters isn't about making sure the people's voices are represented accurately - it's about making sure poor people, young people, and minorities who tend to vote for Democrats - can't vote at all.-Thom(Who do you think won? Tell us here.) -
LEGALIZE Democracy
" We the corporations" On January 21, 2010, with its ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the Supreme Court ruled that corporations are persons, entitled by the U.S. Constitution to buy elections and run our government. __________
MOVE to AMEND
a project of the CAMPAIGN TO LEGALIZE Democracy
Help end Corporate personhood
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The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. 
