Archive for November, 2009
Holder: DOJ Report on Yoo, Bybee Torture Memos to Be Released by Month’s End
A long-awaited Justice Department watchdog report that is said to be highly critical of the legal work on torture that three attorneys who worked at the agency's powerful Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) conducted for the Bush administration will be released at the end of the month, Attorney General Eric Holder told lawmakers Wednesday in testimony before a Senate committee.
“The report is completed. It's in its last stages of review now,” Holder said in response to a question by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, (D-Rhode Island), who queried the attorney general about the status of the report. “A career prosecutor has to review the report. We expect that process should be done by the end of the month. At that point, the report should be issued.”
Holder testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee Wednesday about, anong other issues, his announcement last week that self-professed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other suspected terrorists held at Guantanamo would be prosecuted in federal court in New York.
Full Story t r u t h o u t | Holder: DOJ Report on Yoo, Bybee Torture Memos to Be Released by Month’s End.
Texas gay marriage ban may have outlawed all marriages in Texas.
Texas gay marriage ban may have outlawed all marriages in Texas.
In 2005, the state of Texas adopted an amendment to its Constitution that said marriage in the state could only be between one man and one woman. The amendment also declared: “This state or a political subdivision of this state may not create or recognize any legal status identical or similar to marriage.” Now, Barbara Ann Radnofsky, a Houston lawyer and Democratic candidate for attorney general, is saying that the second section effectively “eliminates marriage in Texas”:
She calls it a “massive mistake” and blames the current attorney general, Republican Greg Abbott, for allowing the language to become part of the Texas Constitution. Radnofsky called on Abbott to acknowledge the wording as an error and consider an apology. She also said that another constitutional amendment may be necessary to reverse the problem.
“You do not have to have a fancy law degree to read this and understand what it plainly says,” said Radnofsky, who will be at Texas Christian University today as part of a five-city tour to kick off her campaign.
Full Story Think Progress » Texas gay marriage ban may have outlawed all marriages in Texas..
AAAS Board Releases New Statement on Climate Change
The following statement on global climate change was released today during the AAAS Annual Meeting in San Francisco. The statement was approved by the board on 9 December 2006.
The scientific evidence is clear: global climate change caused by human activities is occurring now, and it is a growing threat to society. Accumulating data from across the globe reveal a wide array of effects: rapidly melting glaciers, destabilization of major ice sheets, increases in extreme weather, rising sea level, shifts in species ranges, and more. The pace of change and the evidence of harm have increased markedly over the last five years. The time to control greenhouse gas emissions is now.
The atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, a critical greenhouse gas, is higher than it has been for at least 650,000 years. The average temperature of the Earth is heading for levels not experienced for millions of years. Scientific predictions of the impacts of increasing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases from fossil fuels and deforestation match observed changes. As expected, intensification of droughts, heat waves, floods, wildfires, and severe storms is occurring, with a mounting toll on vulnerable ecosystems and societies. These events are early warning signs of even more devastating damage to come, some of which will be irreversible.
Delaying action to address climate change will increase the environmental and societal consequences as well as the costs. The longer we wait to tackle climate change, the harder and more expensive the task will be.
Full Story AAAS – AAAS News Release.
OPS: This is from 2006 but we wanted to have it in our archives and to bring it to the attention of everyone that was not aware of this.
Economists Opposing Fed Audit Have Undisclosed Fed Ties
As the debate over an audit of the Federal Reserve intensifies in the House, one camp is trotting out eight academics that it calls a “political cross section of prominent economists.”
A review of their backgrounds shows they are anything but.
In a letter to the House Financial Services Committee earlier this month, all eight wrote that they support the type of amendment now being introduced by Rep. Mel Watt (D-N.C.). Watt's approach purports to increase Fed transparency while it actually would tighten restrictions on any audits that could go forward.
The letter was sent around Wednesday by Watt's staff to members of the committee in advance of a vote scheduled for Thursday.
Full Story Economists Opposing Fed Audit Have Undisclosed Fed Ties.
Senate Dems Close In On Reform: Details Of Health Care Bill Revealed
Senate Democrats made a big step toward comprehensive health care reform Wednesday night as Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) unveiled a bill that merges the two plans that passed the health and finance committees.
With the House having already passed its own bill, Congress is now closer to achieving health care reform than it has ever been in the six decades that Democrats have pursued it.
“We're now down to the week we've been waiting for for a long time,” said Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) after emerging from a meeting of Senate Democrats.
Democratic leadership expressed confidence that the votes would be there by Saturday for a motion to proceed to a floor debate on the bill. Three Democratic senators — Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, and Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas — have yet to commit to vote for the motion to proceed.
During the meeting, the fence-sitting members spoke to the caucus, but didn't commit one way or another on the motion to proceed, said one Democratic senator who spoke not for attribution.
Full Story Senate Dems Close In On Reform: Details Of Health Care Bill Revealed.
The Great Disconnect Between Stocks and Jobs
Robert Reich
How can the stock market hit new highs at the same time unemployment is hitting new highs? Simple. The market is up because corporate earnings are up. Corporate earnings are up because companies are cutting costs. And the biggest single cost they’re cutting is their payrolls. So they let people go and, presto, their balance sheets look better and their stock prices rise.
In the old-fashioned kind of recession decades ago, big companies laid off people with the expectation of rehiring them when the economy turned up. Then a few recessions back, companies started laying off people for good, never rehiring them even when the economy recovered.
In the Great Recession of 2008-2009, companies are going a step further. They’re using this sharp downturn to cut payrolls even below where they were when times were good. Outsourcing abroad, setting up shop in China and elsewhere, contracting out, replacing people with software and automated machines – they're doing whatever it takes to get payrolls down so earnings bounce up.
Full Story Robert Reich’s Blog: The Great Disconnect Between Stocks and Jobs.
Bush set to rewrite history of his ‘disaster’ presidency?
The University of Virginia has announced it will put together an oral history of George Bush's presidency. It will work together with the George Bush Foundation and is planning around a hundred interviews with leading members of his administration. Thom Hartmann, a U.S. radio host and author, says the attempt is to revise Bush's record which was – in his words – a disaster for America.
Full Story YouTube – Bush set to rewrite history of his ‘disaster’ presidency?.
Economics that Libertarians & conservatives don’t understand
Supply-side vs Demand-side Economics. How can they not understand this?
Thom Hartmann - challenging Wayne Root -
Hoodwinked: An Economic Hit with John Perkins
Thom Hartmann with John Perkins author of Hoodwinked and Confessions of an Economic Hitman
YouTube – Hoodwinked: An Economic Hit with John Perkins.
Is President Obama leaving Siegelman behind?
Thom Hartmann & Don Siegelman
YouTube – Don Siegelman: Is President Obama leaving Siegelman behind?.
Eight Ways In-Vitro Meat will Change Our Lives
“Future Flesh” is squatting on your plate. Are you nervous? Stab it with a fork. Sniff it. Bite! Chew, swallow. Congratulations! Relax and ruminate now because you're digesting a muscular invention that will massively impact the planet.
In-Vitro Meat — aka tank steak, sci fi sausage, petri pork, beaker bacon, Frankenburger, vat-grown veal, laboratory lamb, synthetic shmeat, trans-ham, factory filet, test tube tuna, cultured chicken, or any other moniker that can seduce the shopper’s stomach — will appear in 3-10 years as a cheaper, healthier, “greener” protein that’s easily manufactured in a metropolis. Its entree will be enormous; not just food-huge like curry rippling through London in the 1970′s or colonized tomatoes teaming up with pasta in early 1800′s Italy. No. Bigger. In-Vitro Meat will be socially transformative, like automobiles, cinema, vaccines.
H+ previously discussed In-Vitro Meat, as have numerous other publications [see references at the end of this article]. Science pundits examined its microbiological struggles in Dutch labs and at New Harvest, a Baltimore non-profit. Squeamish reporters wasted ink on its “yucky” and “unnatural” creation, while others wondered if its “vegan” or not (PETA supports it but many members complain). This article jumps past artificial tissue issues; anticipating success, I optimistically envision Eight Ways In-Vitro Meat Will Change Our Lives.
1. Bye-Bye Ranches.
When In-Vitro Meat (IVM) is cheaper than meat-on-the-hoof-or-claw, no one will buy the undercut opponent. Slow-grown red meat & poultry will vanish from the marketplace, similar to whale oil’s flame out when kerosene outshone it in the 1870′s. Predictors believe that IVM will sell for half the cost of its murdered rivals. This will grind the $2 trillion global live-meat industry to a halt (500 billion pounds of meat are gobbled annually; this is expected to double by 2050). Bloody sentimentality will keep the slaughterhouses briefly busy as ranchers quick-kill their inventory before it becomes worthless, but soon Wall Street will be awash in unwanted pork bellies.
Full Story Eight Ways In-Vitro Meat will Change Our Lives | h+ Magazine.
Len Hart: A Last Resort
A nation in which about one half of the population openly pines for the murder of the only fairly elected president in some 9 years is finished. The writing is on the wall. The America that most of us loved is dead. Tragically –it will not rest in peace, rather, infamy!
Who killed America but bigoted idiots throughout the GOP rank and file? who have think themselves rich when in fact they –like the rest of us –are consigned to relative poverty while just one percent of the total population enjoys more wealth that of 95 percent of the rest of us combined! It was all by design and began with the Presidency of Ronald Reagan about whom the GOP-types, this utterly failed mentality, this endemic crimianl psychopathy, swooned: “He made us feel good about ourselves!”
Not only have the Wall Street Journal and the hosts of Fox News been issuing their usual dark mutterings, but a new slogan has began appearing on bumper stickers, t-shirts, and even teddy bears: “Pray for Obama: Psalm 109:8.”
That psalm reads, “Let his days be few; and let another take his office. Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow.”
Maddow seemed mainly amused by the teddy bears, but when she turned for comment to former right-wing evangelical leader Frank Schaeffer, he emphasized that in a religious context “it means something more threatening.”
“The situation that I find genuinely frightening right now,” Schaeffer explained, “is that you have a ramping up of biblical language … and what it's coalescing into is branding Obama … as 'not us.' … Now he joins the ranks of the unjust kings of ancient Israel … who should be slaughtered, if not by God then by just men.”
–Former evangelist: Religious right is ‘trawling for assassins’
Full Story The Existentialist Cowboy: A Last Resort.
Exclusive: Attacks On Health Reform Orchestrated By Yet Another Shadowy Corporate Front Group — ‘CMPI’
The resistance to reforming our nation’s healthcare system has been fueled by entrenched corporate interests. Their deep pockets are funneling money into generating attack ads, funding lawmakers’ campaigns, and hiring lobbyists. These corporate interests are also funding various front groups to make up their own facts and scare the public.
Among the latest corporate front groups orchestrating a campaign of misinformation against health reform, ThinkProgress has learned, is an outfit called the “Center for Medicine in the Public Interest” (CMPI). CMPI was originally a project of the Pacific Research Institute, an older corporate front established in conjunction with Philip Morris to fabricate academic support for the tobacco industry. Some of CMPI’s recent attacks on health reform have included:
– CMPI produced a series of “US Policymaker” interviews about health reform featuring exclusively Republican lawmakers — such as Reps. Louie Gohmert (TX), Bob Inglis (SC), Jack Kingston (SC), Tom Price (GA), Joe Wilson (SC), Michele Bachmann (MN), Paul Ryan (WI); Sens. Jim DeMint (SC), Jim Bunning (KY), David Vitter (LA) — attacking health reform. CMPI also produced a series of videos mocking health reform and the public option.
– CMPI created various video games distorting health reform. They serve as gimmicks to recruit users to sign up for CMPI’s daily anti-reform talking points.
Jobless Benefits Set to Expire Unless Congress Acts
About one million laid-off workers will see their unemployment benefits end in January unless Congress acts quickly to renew existing federally paid extensions, according to a new survey and legislators and state officials.
The record-long extension of emergency benefits that was hastily signed into law on Nov. 6 was widely praised as an essential lifeline for the hundreds of thousands of Americans who had spent a year or more in fruitless searches for jobs.
The new law provided up to 14 weeks of federally paid aid to unemployed people who had exhausted existing state and federal limits, benefits that already extended up to 79 weeks in many states. And for the majority of states with particularly high unemployment, it added an additional six weeks of payments, bringing the potential total to 99 weeks.
But many legislators, state aid officials and struggling workers apparently failed to read the fine print. The added federal benefits were built on a series of previous extensions that are slated to end on Dec. 31, unless Congress renews these programs before then. People who lost their jobs after July 1 of this year, for example, would receive no federal extensions once their customary six months of state aid runs out.
Full Story Jobless Benefits Set to Expire Unless Congress Acts – NYTimes.com.
Health insurance rates soar as Oregon regulators nod
State regulators have approved every rate increase by Oregon’s largest health insurance companies over the past three years, trimming the requests in only seven of 40 cases, records obtained by The Oregonian show.
The Oregon Insurance Division approved every other request without changes from the seven companies seeking to raise individual and small-business premiums. The state reduced only two requested increases this year — each for 20 percent from the state’s largest insurer, Regence BlueCross BlueShield of Oregon. Those increases were both shaved to 16 percent.
The result of Oregon’s regulatory oversight: Average premiums for individuals and small businesses have climbed by more than 140 percent in seven years.
“The current method of rate review is a pass-through,” says Sean Moriarty, who serves on a state advisory panel that seeks to revise the way the state regulates insurers.
Moriarty is operations manager for a Portland construction equipment firm. He recently learned that his company’s monthly insurance rates are going up 30 percent, from $351 to $456 per individual.
Full Story Health insurance rates soar as Oregon regulators nod | Politics & Elections – - Oregonlive.com.
Integrative Mental Health: A New Model For Depression Relief
Dr. Andrew Weil:
The World Health Organization has predicted that by 2030, more people will be affected by depression than any other health problem. Yet of all the dysfunctions of modern medicine, the way we treat depression may be the worst.
As I outlined in “Are You Depressed, Or Just Human?” normal changes in mood are often labeled as depression, leading to an overdiagnosis of the condition. But even if the patient is truly depressed, the prescribed treatment is almost always limited to a potent pharmaceutical. In other words, a complex, multifaceted problem is frequently treated with an oversimplified, expensive therapy that, sadly, is often ineffective.
The reason? Money. Our profit-driven medical system makes it difficult for doctors to spend enough time with patients to make a correct diagnosis and to craft truly individualized treatments. Also, patients themselves often demand the drugs they have seen advertised, and overworked, harried doctors frequently go along.
There is another reason for this regrettable situation. Many physicians are not trained in other treatment options for depression, though these can be safe, inexpensive and highly effective. So even if both physician and patient favor an alternative to drugs, they often lack the knowledge to employ it.
Full Story Dr. Andrew Weil: Integrative Mental Health: A New Model For Depression Relief.
Senate Set To Unveil Health Care Bill Today
Tired as folks may be of hearing this, Wednesday is set to be another big day for health care reform on Capitol Hill. No, really. It is.
Senate Democrats plan to huddle at 5:00 in a closed-door meeting in the Capitol to go over a crucial and long-awaited Congressional Budget Office estimate — known as a “score” — that is expected to be ready by the afternoon, said two aides familiar with the situation.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) will share details of the score and his proposed bill with his 60-member caucus with the goal of persuading each member to vote yes on a motion to proceed to consideration of the measure. That vote, if all goes well, could come by the end of the week. Reid said Tuesday that he was “cautiously optimistic” he’d have the votes needed.
“Our purpose and resolve remain strong. We’re energized. We stand on the doorstep of delivering historic reform to the American people,” he said.
Full Story Senate Set To Unveil Health Care Bill Today.
School Employee Loses Job Over Vulgar Comment Online
A school employee lost his job after he posted a one-word vulgarity in the comments section of an online article at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch ran an article asking readers what was the “craziest thing you’ve ever eaten” and invited them to submit the oddest foods they’ve consumed, saying,
How about you? Have you gone out on a limb for a meal? What’d you try? Did you like it? Have you had friends or family who have tried stuff on a dare?
The school employee, who later lost his job, posted an anonymous, one-word comment that referred, in vulgar terms, to a woman’s anatomy.
The comment was deleted by administrators, then reposted by the reader.
After it was posted a second time, the administrators didn’t just delete the comment, but took it one step further: Kurt Greenbaum, the director of social media at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, found the commenter’s IP address and traced it to a local school.
Full Story School Employee Loses Job Over Vulgar Comment Online.
Kansas Launches $34M Energy Efficiency Program
Kansas launched a new energy efficiency program Tuesday to make low-interest loans available to several thousand home owners and small businesses for upgrading insulation, installing new furnaces and sealing air-leaking doors and windows.
Gov. Mark Parkinson said officials have discussed creating such a program a few years, but the state couldn’t afford one until federal economic stimulus dollars became available this year. The state will make $34 million in stimulus funds available to private lenders, who will then write loans.
State officials said during a news conference that home owners and businesses participating in the Efficiency Kansas program will pay back their loans from the savings on their monthly energy bills, so they don’t face out-of-pocket expenses for making improvements. Also, the program isn’t limited to poor or middle-class families.
Full Story Kansas Launches $34M Energy Efficiency Program.
Too Big To Fail: House Proposal Would Allow Feds To Break Up Biggest Banks
A key House Democrat released on Wednesday his much-awaited proposal to end “too big to fail”: Let the federal government break them apart.
Paul Kanjorski's amendment would give federal regulators the authority to force the country's biggest financial firms or those that pose the biggest risk to the financial system to sell assets or entire divisions.
A new council would decide the fate of these firms. For those that are forced to part with more than $10 billion in assets federal regulators would need the Treasury Secretary's approval; for those forced to sell more than $100 billion, the president will need to be consulted.
“Financial firms that want to play in a casino need to have their own resources to cover their bets and not assume that tax dollars are available in reserve if their bets fail,” Kanjorski said in a statement.
From Kanjorski's office:
Full Story Too Big To Fail: House Proposal Would Allow Feds To Break Up Biggest Banks.
EXCLUSIVE: Two Leading House Dems Will Close $50 Trillion Loophole In Derivatives Reform Bills
The two House Democrats shepherding derivatives reform proposals through Congress will close an existing $50 trillion loophole for foreign currency contracts, the Huffington Post has learned.
Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank and Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson will insist that foreign exchange derivatives be subject to the same transparency and accountability rules as other derivatives. The legislation as proposed by the Obama administration had exempted them.
Dave Smith, chief economist for the House Financial Services Committee, told HuffPost on Wednesday that an agreement to close that loophole was reached over the last few days by the two committee chairmen.
Like the complex and opaque derivatives contracts that nearly brought down the financial markets last year, foreign exchange derivatives will be forced to either go through clearing houses or traded on exchanges. “We want to promote as much transparency as possible,” Smith said.
Full Story EXCLUSIVE: Two Leading House Dems Will Close $50 Trillion Loophole In Derivatives Reform Bills.
The Weekly Standard’s ACLU smear indicts only itself
By Glenn Greenwald
Even for The Weekly Standard, this bitter, juvenile McCarthyite attack on the ACLU by Thomas Joscelyn sputters with so much fact-free, impotent, and self-defeating rage that it's hard to believe it was printed. Right in the headline, it oh-so-cleverly smears the ACLU as “Al Qaeda's Civil Liberties Union”; it ends by proclaiming the group to be “al Qaeda's useful idiots”; and it's filled in the middle with all sorts of trite innuendo circa 2002 that anyone who believes in the Constitution — i.e., radical “far leftist” doctrines such as “trials” and “due process” — secretly harbors love for the Terrorists and hatred for America (“The ACLU has worked diligently to undermine America's stance in what was formerly known as the 'war on terror,' and has even been willing to disseminate propaganda on behalf of our jihadist enemies”). What the article actually — and ironically — reveals is how much contempt The Weekly Standard and much of America's Right has for the nation's core political values and how, in the process, they do more to aid Islamic extremists than even those who directly fund and advocate for them.
The primary piece of incriminating evidence Joscelyn waves around in his little briefcase is this ACLU-produced video featuring five Muslim men who were held at Guantanamo without charges for years and then released. In the video, they recount the torture and abuse to which they were subjected, as well as the impact which prolonged, due-process-free imprisonment by the U.S. has had — and continues to have — on their shattered lives.
Full Story Neoconservatism – Salon.com.
Support wanes for curbs on credit-card interest rates
Efforts in Congress to cap credit-card interest rates are faltering because of opposition from Democrats and a lack of specific support from the White House, despite growing consumer outrage over a rush by banks to impose rates as high as 30 percent.
During the 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama vowed to back a strict limit on credit-card interest rates. But the White House is not yet behind any particular plan this year. While Obama has chastised credit-card companies, his spokeswoman declined to say this week how he planned to follow through on his campaign pledge.
Obama finds the behavior of credit-card lenders “outrageous’’ and “looks forward to reviewing additional legislation that caps interest rates,’’ but he has not taken a specific position, spokeswoman Jen Psaki said.
Vice President Joe Biden, whose home state of Delaware is headquarters to many credit-card companies, did not respond to requests for comment.
Full Story Support wanes for curbs on credit-card interest rates – The Boston Globe.
Rising CO2 could cause catastrophic sea level rise finds Antarctic study
In this Nov. 5, 2009, photo provided by the Australian Antarctic Division, a large iceberg spotted off Macquarie Island, about 1,500 kilometers (930 miles) southeast of Australia, mid-way between Antarctica and Australia. It is a rare sight in waters so far north, Australian scientists said Thursday, Nov. 12, 2009. (AP Photo/Australian Antarctic Division, Murray Potter)
The British Antarctic Survey found that during past periods of high carbon dioxide, temperatures in Antarctica were up to 6C above current levels. This could cause a sea level rise of up six metres, threatening coastal cities like London, New York and San Francisco.
It is the latest research to warn of the consequences of increased greenhouse gases on the Earth's climate. Yesterday a study warned that carbon dioxide produced by man is now rising at record rates putting the world on a pathway for a 6C rise in temperature.
All the recent studies are adding pressure on world leader to agree in international deal on climate change at a UN summit in Copenhagen this December.
Louise Sime, lead of the British Antarctic Survey study, looked at ice cores to see how temperatures changed during periods of high carbon dioxide
She found that during the last period of high CO2, 125,000 years ago, temperatures were up to 6C higher than present day levels.
Such a hike in temperature could lead to a rise in sea levels of between 4 to 6 metres over hundreds of years as the ice sheets melt.
“We didn’t expect to see such warm temperatures, and we don’t yet know in detail what caused them. But they indicate that Antarctica’s climate may have undergone rapid shifts during past periods of high CO2.”
Full Story Rising CO2 could cause catastrophic sea level rise finds Antarctic study – Telegraph.
Geithner Singled Out In TARP Watchdog Neil Barofsky’s Scathing Report On AIG Bailout
A brutal report issued Monday by a government watchdog holds Timothy Geithner — then the head of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and now the nation’s Treasury Secretary — responsible for overpayments that put billions of extra tax dollars in the coffers of major Wall Street firms, most notably Goldman Sachs.
The authoritative new narrative describes how, while bailing out insurance giant AIG last fall, a team led by Geithner failed nearly every step of the way.
Instead of bargaining with AIG’s numerous counterparties to resolve its billions of dollars in souring derivatives contracts, Geithner’s team ended up paying top dollar for toxic assets — “an amount far above their market value at the time,” the report notes.
“There is no question that the effect of FRBNY’s decisions — indeed, the very design of the federal assistance to AIG — was that tens of billions of dollars of Government money was funneled inexorably and directly to AIG’s counterparties,” the Office of the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program said.
Full Story Geithner Singled Out In TARP Watchdog Neil Barofsky’s Scathing Report On AIG Bailout.
Fox News’s faux news
Fox News presents an alternative, right-wing reality where up is down and Tea Party protest misinformation is legion
It must be stated over and over again: the Fox News Channel is not a news channel. It’s a Republican party propaganda channel. As such, its first amendment right to say whatever it likes ought to be protected, but not its “right” to call itself “news”. That’s false advertising, and it ought to be outlawed by whoever regulates such things.
Perhaps if they changed the name to the Republican News Channel (RNC for short), there would be no complaint. Until they do, however, they need to be called out by the rest of us for exactly what they are.
To that end, recent statements by the White House are right on the money: Fox should be treated not like a news organisation but like a television network that exists to promote a specific political agenda.
This public recognition of the perfectly obvious is long overdue from Democrats, many of whom continue, foolishly, to treat Fox as merely a news outlet with a conservative bent. These Democrats fall into the false equivalence brier patch when they say Fox is merely a conservative counterpart to rival network MSNBC. Sure, several of the GE-owned news outlet’s primetime shows cover real news from a progressive perspective, but progressivism does not equal liberalism, whatever that is, nor even Democratic-ism.
Full Story Fox News’s faux news | Brad Friedman | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk.
Christian Bootcamp Seeks to Arm Home-Schooled Youths for “Spiritual Warfare”
Rev. Rusty Lee Thomas, Assistant Director of Operation Save America, is worried. According to studies by the Barna Research Group, California pollsters specializing in tracking religious and spiritual attitudes, only nine percent of teenaged Christians believe in moral absolutes. What’s more, Barna reports that the vast majority of kids raised Christian will abandon all or part of their faith by the time they finish high school. “Assembly of God leaders estimate between 65 and 70 percent will depart, while the Southern Baptist Council on Family Life estimates roughly 88 percent will leave,” Thomas writes.
To remedy this, Thomas' Elijah Ministries has started the Kingdom Leadership Institute, a weeklong ideological boot camp for home-schooled Christians between the ages of 14 and 21. His recently released book, The Kingdom Leadership Institute Manual, is a roadmap for their training and a fascinating — if twisted — look at the concerns of far right evangelicals, complete with a game plan for action.
There's no pussy-footing in Thomas' screed. For him the battle between God and Satan is at hand, pitting True Believers against Sinners. Common ground? Impossible since there are only two sides, one resulting in heavenly salvation and the other ending with the earth’s destruction.
Palin says Glenn Beck ‘clever,’ won’t rule out Palin-Beck ticket
Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, asked whether she’d campaign with Fox News’ personality Glenn Beck as her running mate, chuckled, but according to a conservative website, “wouldn’t rule it out.”
“It’s no secret that former GOP vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin and Fox News host Glenn Beck share great respect and admiration — so their fans can be forgiven for wondering: Is a ‘dream ticket’ of Palin-Beck ticket is completely out of the question?” Newsmax’s David Patten wrote Tuesday night.
“Perhaps not,” he added.
“Palin initially chuckled when Newsmax broached the idea,” he continued. “But then she had some serious words of praise for the popular Fox personality.”
Full Story Palin says Glenn Beck ‘clever,’ won’t rule out Palin-Beck ticket | Raw Story.
New kid’s book hits Pelosi as radical, uses Yiddish term to depict Jewish senator
A new soon-to-be-released book by conservative author Katharine DeBrecht combats what she perceives as a left-wing agenda being forced on children by American media and culture.
The novel, titled Help! Mom! Radicals Are Ruining My Country! paints House Speaker Nancy Pelosi – dubbed “Speaker Queenosie” – as a elitist, tiara-wearing radical who is out of touch with regular Americans. An excerpt reads:
Tell me about it, Darrrling, Speaker Queenosie primed her professionally styled hair. Little common people are entitled to a swingset just like the rest of you commoners, she jiggled a pair of jet keys through her perfectly manicured fingers.
Many of the characters are representations of real Democratic lawmakers, but with slightly altered names. One such character is “Congressman Schmoozer,” based on Jewish Democrat Chuck Schumer, who is actually a Senator. “Schmoozer” is a play on the word “schmooze,” which is derived from a Yiddish term.
Full Story New kid’s book hits Pelosi as radical, uses Yiddish term to depict Jewish senator | Raw Story.
We Need Health Care, Not Insurance
What Real Health Reform Looks Like
A very complex, mandatory private insurance scheme recently passed the U.S. House. The public is being overwhelmed by sound bites on one hand about how great it is, on the other, how terrible. We are hearing few of the details that are actually in the bill. Having read the bill, it is clear now that what started as health reform has emerged from the political process as health “deform,” building on the worst, not the best of the current system.
It is still a toss-up as to whether the Senate will pass any bill this year. However, due to intense political pressure, the Senate is likely to pass a bill that will make some House provisions better and others worse. What actually comes out in the final conference-committee bill is anyone's guess at this point — so little time, so many deals still to be made, so many political funders to be appeased.
A careful analysis of the bill shows that it is designed more for political goals than to eliminate financial barriers to health care. For example, the actual coverage doesn't even begin until 2013, opportunistically after the next presidential election, in 2012. Run on having accomplished “historic reform” but before anyone actually experiences how bad it is? How cynical is that?
Yes, there are some good provisions. The best relate to improving existing programs like the Indian Health Service, community health centers, and health professionals education and training; all are important for New Mexico.
Full Story Carol Miller: We Need Health Care, Not Insurance.
International Justice Group Takes Aim at Bush Officials
The International Center for Transitional Justice usually focuses on bringing to light and holding perpetrators accountable for such heinous crimes as genocide, mass murder and systematic torture, often in far-off war-torn countries with dismal human rights records.
So it’s significant that today they’ve released a report calling on the United States to follow its legal obligation to prosecute the leaders in the U.S. government responsible for the “torture, cruel and inhuman treatment” of detainees during its own “war on terror.”
“Investigations and prosecutions should focus on the engineers of official policies that were the basis of illegal abuses, to send a clear signal that the absolute prohibition of torture and the ban on cruel and inhuman treatment will be respected by the United States,” the report said, adding that if the U.S. government fails to initiate prosecutions, then other countries will take up the cause. Italy, for example, recently convicted 23 Americans for their involvement in “extraordinary renditions.”
“Failing to hold accountable the architects and overseers of a policy of abuse undermines the U.S. justice system and the fundamental idea that law provides a check on power,” Alex Boraine, acting president of ICTJ, said in a statement today. “As we have seen in countless examples around the world, abuse of power by allowing torture and cruel treatment can tear down what the law and democracy have built.”
Full Story International Justice Group Takes Aim at Bush Officials « The Washington Independent.
Harkin: we have the 60 votes to break a filibuster
Sen.Tom Harkin assured Ed Shultz on MSNBC on Tuesday night that the Democrats had the 60 votes to break a filibuster and bring the senate health care bill to the floor for a vote.
He said he had been in a 2 hour meeting the night before and guaranteed that the Democrats had the votes to bring the bill, with the pulbic option with Harry Reid's opt out clause, to the floor.
However, Keith Olbermann and others at MSNBC showing that they dont even watch their own programming, followed that night with guests talking about whether the Democrats had the 60 votes.
If Harkin's assurrances are correct though, and there is every reason to think they are, it means that Joe Lieberman was given a dose of reality and clearly given the choice of joining a filibuster or losing his chairmanship of the Homeland Security committee and probably getting drummed out of the Democratic caucus as was called for here a week ago.
Full Story Harkin: we have the 60 votes to break a filibuster.
Goldman apologises for role in crisis
$500m pledged to help small businesses
Goldman Sachs apologised for its role in the financial crisis on Tuesday and pledged $500m over five years – or about 2.3 per cent of its estimated bonus and salary pool for 2009 – to help 10,000 US small businesses recover from the recession.
The moves come as the bank tries to defuse a political and public backlash over its plans to share billions of dollars among top dealmakers after rebounding sharply from the turmoil and earning record profits in the first nine months of the year.
Lloyd Blankfein, Goldman’s chief executive, told a corporate conference in New York that the bank regretted taking part in the cheap credit boom that had fuelled the pre-crisis bubble. “We participated in things that were clearly wrong and have reason to regret,” said Mr Blankfein. “We apologise.”
Full Story FT.com / Companies / Banks – Goldman apologises for role in crisis.
OPS: So, when are they going to jail?
Obama warns of ‘double-dip’ danger
Growing US deficit threatens recovery
US President Barack Obama on Wednesday warned the US economy could head into a “double-dip recession” unless urgent steps were taken to rein back America’s mounting levels of public debt.
Mr Obama’s remarks, which were made in an interview with Fox News in Beijing towards the end of his eight-day tour of Asia, come just a few weeks after data showed the US economy had emerged from recession in the third quarter of this year.
But Mr Obama, whose economic team is debating the best point to begin cutting back the historically-high federal budget deficits without endangering the fragile recovery, warned that it could prove short-lived unless the US returned to a path of fiscal rectitude.
Full Story FT.com / US & Canada – Obama warns of ‘double-dip’ danger.
OPS: If you’ve been paying attention here, at OPS then you’ve been aware of the double
dip form months now. Glad to see BO is finally acknowledging it.
‘Tenther’ Oklahoma Lawmaker Considering Bill To Opt Out Of Hate Crimes Act
A common right-wing objection to federal health care legislation is that it’s unconstitutional. So-called “tenthers” argue that the 10th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution never explicitly gives the federal government the right to regulate health care, leaving that power exclusively in the hands of the states. To that end, officials in various states have raised the possibility of passing legislation to exempt their residents from federal health care reform if it passes.
Oklahoma state Sen. Steve Russell (R) is proposing to use the same argument and tactic to try to exempt his state from the recently-passed Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Act — which extends hate crimes protections to gays and lesbians — because he claims it infringes on freedom of speech:
Russell said because the government has decided to intervene on issues of morality, he is worried that religious leaders who speak out against any lifestyle could be imprisoned for their speech.
Full Story Think Progress » ‘Tenther’ Oklahoma Lawmaker Considering Bill To Opt Out Of Hate Crimes Act.
OPS: Apparently they want hate crimes in Oklahoma. It’s a “Freedom” ya know.
Study: Uninsured Trauma Victims Face Sky-High Death Rate
It’s federal law: All seriously injured emergency and trauma patients must be given equal lifesaving care, whether or not they can pay for it. But that’s not happening, according to a new report. The study, conducted by Children’s Hospital Boston research fellow Dr. Heather Rosen and colleagues from three other hospitals, found that uninsured trauma victims ages 18 to 30 are dying at an annual rate 89 percent higher than insured victims with identically severe injuries.
As the health reform tornado continues to swirl on Capitol Hill, the data could provide fresh ammunition for those pushing for expanded health insurance coverage.
The study, published today in the Archives of Surgery, examines the survival rates for patients brought to about 900 U.S. trauma centers between 2002 and 2006, analyzing some 690,000 patients who had suffered penetrating trauma — such as wounds inflicted by a gun or knife — or blunt trauma from vehicle crashes and falls. Earlier research found 18,000 extra deaths a year among uninsured victims of such injuries. Rosen and the other researchers chose to focus on the 18-to-30-year-old subset because they had fewer existing conditions — comorbidity — that muddy the evaluation of the cause of death.
Full Story Study: Uninsured Trauma Victims Face Sky-High Death Rate — Sphere News, Opinion and Analysis.
Patriotism in the Age of the Phony
It is so hard not to be a cynic.
How could it be otherwise? We live in the Age of the Phony.
What once used to be confined mostly to the entertainment industry has infested our national consciousness — including, most dangerously, our political discourse.
Campaigns are little more sophisticated marketing campaigns. Our political parties feed us poll-tested candidates with poll-tested ideas. Our media focuses on drama and process rather than issues and results. The loudest and most radical voices on both sides of the political spectrum dominate the discussion without actually adding anything to it.
The rancorous voices are so loud that they are distracting us from the very real dangers that we face. There is a growing sense that we are at the end of the our American Empire. As I've said before, I think rumors of our demise are a bit premature, but the signs of stress are everywhere.
Our failure, if it comes, isn't going to be because of geopolitical shifts. We've weathered those before. Our fate rests a lot closer to home. Somewhere along the road, we stopped thinking about ourselves as members of a grand democratic experiment, and so our democracy is dying.
Full Story Patriotism in the Age of the Phony – Heather Michon – Open Salon.
Feds plan 25,000 on-site H-1B inspections
Immigration Services to take a more aggressive stance on H-1B visa enforcement
U.S. immigration officials are taking H-1B enforcement from the desk to the field with a plan to conduct 25,000 on-site inspections of companies hiring foreign workers over this fiscal year.
The move marks a nearly five-fold increase in inspections over last fiscal year, when the agency conducted 5,191 site visits under a new site inspection program. The new federal fiscal year began Oct. 1.
Tougher enforcement from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services comes in response to a study conducted by the agency last year that found fraud and other violations in one-in-five H-1B applications.
In a letter to U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), Alejandro Mayorkas, director of the Citizenship and Immigration Services, said the agency began a site visit and verification program in July to check on the validity of H-1B applications. Mayorkas’ letter was released on Tuesday by Grassley.
Full Story Feds plan 25,000 on-site H-1B inspections.
Obama’s Bad Case Against Single Payer
Solidarity vs Individualism
The Obama administration has broadened the scope of what it wants to dismiss as unrealistic, utopian and unpragmatic, i.e. as for all practical purposes impossible. These claims have typically been accompanied by the assurance that “This is not something that Americans would go for – it’s not the American way.” Obama’s case against a single payer health care system is a conspicuous case in point. His position on this issue features weak arguments and serious factual errors.
The Alleged Impossibility of Universal Health Care
In May and August, 2007 Obama stated his position on single payer:
“If you're starting from scratch, then a single-payer system'-a government-managed system like Canada's, which disconnects health insurance from employment-'would probably make sense. But we've got all these legacy systems in place, and managing the transition, as well as adjusting the culture to a different system, would be difficult to pull off. So we may need a system that's not so disruptive that people feel like suddenly what they've known for most of their lives is thrown by the wayside.” (May, 2007)
” [W]hen we had a healthcare forum before I set up my healthcare plan here in Iowa there was a lot of resistance to a single-payer system. So what I believe is we should set up a series of choices….Over time it may be that we end up transitioning to such a system. For now, I just want to make sure every American is covered…I don't want to wait for that perfect system…” (August, 2007, at an Iowa roundtable)
Full Story Obama’s Bad Case Against Single Payer | CommonDreams.org.
‘For Afghans, there is no refuge’
Humanitarian groups’ study of 700 civilians reveals shocking pattern of continuing misery
For most of her life, the young Afghan woman was fleeing war. But everywhere she went it stalked her.
“She was very quiet and shy, and you could barely hear her speak,” said Ashley Jackson of Oxfam. “When the civil war began in the early 1990s, she left Kabul and went to the border. But her son was killed by a rocket attack.
“She went to Pakistan and lived in a refugee settlement, and her daughter was taken by a man who wanted her. When the Taliban fell and the family finally got back to Kabul, her husband was killed.
“For Afghans, there is no refuge.”
The story of the Afghan woman is one of 700 that form a shocking pattern of abuse, trauma and death suffered by Afghans caught in three decades of war – misery that did not end with the defeat of the Taliban and entry of thousands of Canadian and international troops.
Full Story ‘For Afghans, there is no refuge’ – thestar.com.
Movie Popcorn Has Shocking Amount Of Calories Fat In It
CBS reports on a study by the Center for Science and Public Interest that analyzed nutritional makeup iof movie popcorn; the results are eye-opening. Consuming a medium size popcorn and soda is the equivalent of eating three Quarter Pounders from McDonald’s, along with 12 pats of butter.
The caloric and fat content of this theater staple will have you thinking twice before you order:
the concessions from Regal, the country’s biggest movie chain, have 1,160 calories and three days worth – 60 grams – of fat. Regal said that the medium popcorn had 720 calories and the large had 960, but CSPI’s tests found those numbers to be understated. A small popcorn at Regal had 670 calories – the same as a Pizza Hut Personal Pepperoni Pan Pizza. Even if you share a small popcorn – it’s still about a day’s worth of saturated fat per person, according to CSPI.
In related news, a study sponsored by the United Health Foundation, Partnership for Prevention, and American Public Health Association found that 40 percent of the U.S. will be obese by 2018: “the states most in danger of a ballooning obesity epidemic are: Kentucky, Maryland, Mississippi, Ohio, Oklahoma and South Dakota.”
Full Story Movie Popcorn Has Shocking Amount Of Calories Fat In It.
Wall Street Profits On Pace For Record, Industry Recovering ‘Faster Than Expected’: NY State Comptroller
It took Wall Street just one year to make its way back to record profits.
According to a report released Tuesday by the comptroller of New York State, Thomas P. DiNapoli, Wall Street is turning around “much faster than expected” and is on pace to pull in record earnings this year.
New York City’s four largest investment firms — Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley — earned $22.5 billion in the first nine months of 2009. Wall Street’s earnings, should they remain steady for the rest of the year, could lead some firms to eclipse 2007′s record profits.
From DiNapoli’s report:
“The national economy is slowly improving, but Wall Street has recovered much faster than anyone had envisioned. Profitability is on track to exceed 2006 levels, which was a banner year for the industry. Strong profits have been driven by low interest rates, which reduce the cost of doing business.
Full Story Wall Street Profits On Pace For Record, Industry Recovering ‘Faster Than Expected’: NY State Comptroller.
Obama and Hu Jintao Talk Climate Change: “We Must Rally The World” For Climate Deal In Copenhagen
President Barack Obama, with China's leader at his side, lifted his sights Tuesday for a broad interim accord at next month's climate conference that he said will lead to immediate action and “rally the world” toward a solution on global warming.
Obama and President Hu Jintao talked of a joint desire to tackle climate change, but failed to move off differing positions on an root issue that could block a deal at the 192-nation conference in Copenhagen: how much each country can contribute to curb greenhouse gases and how the world will pay the billions of dollars needed to fight rising temperatures.
Hu said nations would do their part “consistent with our respective capabilities,” a reference to the firmly held view among developing nations – even energy guzzlers like China, India and Brazil – that they should be required only to set goals for reining in greenhouse-gas emissions, not accept absolute targets for reducing emissions like the industrialized countries.
Full Story Obama and Hu Jintao Talk Climate Change: “We Must Rally The World” For Climate Deal In Copenhagen.
Safest Cars 2010: Ford, Subaru, VW Win Insurance Industry Picks
Ford, Subaru and Volkswagen lead the insurance industry’s annual list of the safest new vehicles, according to a closely watched assessment used by car companies to lure safety-conscious consumers to showrooms.
The Virginia-based Insurance Institute for Highway Safety awarded its “top safety pick” on Wednesday to 19 passenger cars and eight sport utility vehicles for the 2010 model year. The institute substantially reduced the number of awards compared with 2009, because of tougher requirements for roof strength.
Ford Motor Co. and its Volvo unit received the most awards with six, followed by five awards apiece for Japanese automaker Subaru and German automaker Volkswagen AG and its Audi unit.
Full Story Safest Cars 2010: Ford, Subaru, VW Win Insurance Industry Picks.
Biden On The Bailout: ‘Socialism For The Rich And Capitalism For The Poor’ (VIDEO)
In an interview with Jon Stewart on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show Tuesday evening, Vice President Joe Biden acknowledged the anger and frustration many taxpayers feel over the way financial institutions seem to have favored status in Washington D.C.
Pointing to the hundreds of billions of government dollars that been spent to keep banks from failing, he recalled a “great expression” of his grandfather, Ambrose Finnegan: “It’s socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor,” Biden said.
But he defended his administration’s decisions to rescue Wall Street institutions from the brink of failure. “Because if we did not bail them out, we would have been in a position where there was a literal depression, not a recession.”
The vice president noted that some of the money paid out to the endangered banks is now being returned to the Treasury. He said he expects another $50 billion to be returned in the next year. But Biden also acknowledged that the TARP bailout has not spurred an increase in lending to small businesses — one of, if not the main goal, of the program.
Full Story Biden On The Bailout: ‘Socialism For The Rich And Capitalism For The Poor’ (VIDEO).
U.S. Government Creates New Financial Fraud Task Force
IndustryWeek :
The Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force is aimed at investigating and prosecuting mortgage, securities and corporate fraud, as well as recovering funds for victims.
On Nov. 17, the U.S. government announced the creation of a new interagency task force to crack down on financial fraud, saying its mission was to prevent “another meltdown.”
President Barack Obama’s new Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force replaces a corporate fraud task force established in 2002 following scandals at Enron and other major firms.
The task force led by the Justice and Treasury departments is aimed at investigating and prosecuting mortgage, securities and corporate fraud, as well as recovering funds for victims.
“This task force’s mission is not just to hold accountable those who helped bring about the last financial meltdown, but to prevent another meltdown from happening,” Attorney General Eric Holder said in announcing the effort. “We will be relentless in our investigation of corporate and financial wrongdoing, and will not hesitate to bring charges, where appropriate, for criminal misconduct on the part of businesses and business executives.”
Full Story IndustryWeek : U.S. Government Creates New Financial Fraud Task Force.
Global temperatures will rise 6C by end of century, say scientists
By studying data on carbon emissions the team was able to estimate how much CO2 is being absorbed naturally by forests, oceans and soil. Photograph: Evan Hurd/Getty Images
Most comprehensive CO2 study to date is expected to give greater urgency to diplomatic manoeuvring before Copenhagen
Global temperatures are on a path to rise by an average of 6C by the end of the century as CO2 emissions increase and the Earth’s natural ability to absorb the gas declines, according to a major new study.
Scientists said that CO2 emissions have risen by 29% in the past decade alone and called for urgent action by leaders at the UN climate talks in Copenhagen to agree drastic emissions cuts in order to avoid dangerous climate change.
The news will give greater urgency to the diplomatic manoeuvring before the Copenhagen summit. President Obama and President Hu of China attempted to breathe new life into the negotiations today by announcing that they intended to set targets for easing greenhouse gas emissions next month. Obama said that he and Hu would continue to press for a deal that would “rally the world”.
Full Story Global temperatures will rise 6C by end of century, say scientists | Environment | The Guardian.
‘Wasteful, improper’ govt payments targeted in US
President Barack Obama will act to rein in massive improper and wasteful payments by the government that totaled nearly 100 billion dollars this year alone, the White House has said.
Obama is to sign an executive order “boosting transparency, holding agencies accountable and creating strong incentives for compliance,” the White House said in a statement.
The Obama administration aims to “bring the bright light of public scrutiny to these errors” by providing access to an “online dashboard” of key indicators that will allow people to view payment error rates for various agencies.
The order will also create a single mechanism to allow the reporting of suspected fraud or waste of federal funds.
“We can no longer tolerate these errors, mistakes and misdeeds,” the White House said.
“Taxpayers deserve to know that their dollars are being spent wisely and effectively.”
Full Story ‘Wasteful, improper’ govt payments targeted in US – Yahoo! News.
Michael Moore says Democrats’ healthcare bill is giveaway to insurance industry
In a speech broadcast on Canadian television Tuesday, Michael Moore savaged the Democrats' healthcare bill, calling it a gift to the health insurance industry, which he argues will make $70 billion more as a result of mandated health insurance.
“The health insurance companies are going to make an extra $70 billion dollars as a result of Americans being forced to buy their health insurance,” Moore quipped. “What company wouldn't love this bill?”
Moore argues that the health insurance industry isn't really upset about healthcare reform. His assertions — which mirror those of some on the left — highlight the challenge that Democrats in Congress face on healthcare reform. On the left, critics say that the bill doesn't go far enough in ensuring universal care; on the right, critics say the proposal will lead to a government takeover of healthcare.
“So all of the wailing that they're doing about this bill — believe me, the health insurance companies are not that upset about it,” Moore said. “In fact, they helped write this bill.”
“It's not universal health care,” he continued. “Thirteen million people will still not have health insurance in the United States.
Full Story Michael Moore says Democrats’ healthcare bill is giveaway to insurance industry | Raw Story.
SPLC president tells Bill O’Reilly to pay up $10,000 Dobbs bet.
Southern Poverty Law Center’s (SPLC) President J. Richard Cohen appeared on Bill O’Reilly’s show this past summer and called on CNN to fire Lou Dobbs over his inaccurate immigration reporting. O’Reilly advised Cohen to stop wasting his time. O’Reilly was so sure Dobbs would never be fired from CNN that he seemed willing to bet Cohen $10,000:
O’REILLY: CNN is never going to fire him, you know that…
COHEN: I’m not quite as cynical as you are Bill. I think that if enough people speak out, CNN will listen and be more responsible in the future.
O’REILLY: You wanna bet?…I’ve got ten grand for Habitat for Humanity on the table if you wanna bet me.
COHEN: How about ten grand for the Southern Poverty Law Center?
O’REILLY: But I’m not going to take your money. There’s no real bet there — he’s not going to get fired.
Watch it:
Full Story Think Progress » SPLC president tells Bill O’Reilly to pay up $10,000 Dobbs bet..
Coburn vows to read the entire health care bill on the Senate floor.
Speaking to reporters last night, the Senate’s top obstructionist, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK), said that he would attempt to slow down progress on health care reform by insisting that the 1,000-page-plus health care reform bill be read aloud on the Senate floor. “The American people are going to get to hear this bill read, period,” said Coburn, adding that “he would also block other legislative shortcuts” in an effort to delay the bill, such as requiring “the Senate to use up the entire 30-hour debate period called for after a filibuster has been broken.” According to Roll Call, “earlier this month, Republican leadership aides said Coburn was unlikely to make such a move without the blessing of GOP leaders.”
Full Story Think Progress » Coburn vows to read the entire health care bill on the Senate floor..
OPS: This is the same Republican that is personally preventing Vets from getting health care
Florida senatorial candidate Marco Rubio slams Ronald Reagan’s immigration policy.
The Palm Beach Post reports that former Florida House Speaker and Republican senatorial candidate Marco Rubio took issue with President Ronald Reagan’s immigration platform at a Martin County Republican Womens Federated meeting today. The Post reports that Rubio “delivered a six-minute discourse on immigration policy” in which he slammed Reagan’s support of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA), which put undocumented immigrants on a path to legalization and made it illegal to knowingly hire unauthorized workers:
In 1986 Ronald Reagan granted amnesty to 3 million people. You know what happened, in addition to becoming 11 million a decade later? There were people trying to enter the country legally, who had done the paperwork, who were here legally, who were going through the process, who claimed, all of a sudden, ‘No, no no no , I’m illegal.’ Because it was easier to do the amnesty program than it was to do the legal process. [...]
Full Story Think Progress » Florida senatorial candidate Marco Rubio slams Ronald Reagan’s immigration policy..
Right-Wing American Family Association Misfires In The War On Christmas
It’s not even Thanksgiving, but the American Family Association (AFA) has already taken up arms in the War on Christmas. On Nov. 11, the right-wing organization announced that it was urging its followers to boycott Gap Inc. (Gap, Banana Republic, and Old Navy) from now until Christmas Day because the company refuses to say the word “Christmas”:
For years, Gap has refused to use the word Christmas in its television commercials, newspaper ads and in-store promotions, despite tens of thousands of consumer requests to recognize Christmas and in spite of repeated requests from AFA to do the same.
Last year, Gap issued this politically-correct statement to Christmas shoppers: “Gap recognizes that many traditions are celebrated throughout this season and we feel it is important to display holiday signage that is inclusive to everyone.”
Christmas is special because of Jesus. It’s not just a “winter holiday.” For millions of Americans the giving and receiving of gifts is in honor of the One who gave Himself. For the Gap to pretend that isn’t the foundation of the Christmas season is political correctness at best and religious bigotry at worst. The Gap is censoring the word Christmas, pure and simple.
Full Story Think Progress » Right-Wing American Family Association Misfires In The War On Christmas.
OPS: If the wingnuts were actually paying attention they would realize that in the War on Christmas, Corporations are the enemy.
Obama Dissatisfied With Afghanistan Options
Obama is dissatisfied with all the options currently on the table, and he wants all of his military and political advisors to get back to the drawing board.
On October 11 President Barack Obama officially demonstrated his opposition to all of the policies currently being levied for a new stance on Afghanistan.
Several weeks ago it was revealed that General Stanley McChrystal wanted anywhere between 40,000 and 80,000 additional troops for the Afghan front. For a time it seemed as if the president was all but certain to send more troops to the war-torn nation, the only question remaining was how many he would authorize.
Now however the president seems to have taken a stand on the issue. According to CNN, Obama is dissatisfied with all the options currently on the table, and he wants all of his military and political advisors to get back to the drawing board.
The coordinated opposition to the White House, largely coming from the Republican Party and its conservative base, will likely take time to point out yet another instance of indecision by President Obama. But the decision to try new avenues is probably the best choice available.
Full Story Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
Popping Adderall To Get That A
Can ADHD stimulants like Adderall be the answer for college students looking to increase academic performance? They think so.
It's a week before final exams and you haven't begun studying. These general education classes are, simply, a drag and you're already tired from fraternity, sorority or extracurricular activities. Besides, your friends are partying this weekend anyway.
You should, (A) clamp down and study for a few hours every night this week, pacing yourself for finals. But you know you'll probably (B) start absentmindedly perusing your books four days before the exam to make yourself feel better, or (C) free your mind of finals worries until two days before testing, then pop an Adderall pill and spend 10 and 12 hours a day in the library maniacally whirring through your textbooks.
For a small, but growing, minority of college students, the answer is clearly (C).
Full Story News Blog Articles | Popping Adderall To Get That A | Miller-McCune Online Magazine.
Stupak Amendment Could End Abortion Coverage — For Everyone
A little over a week ago, Democrats bent over backwards to appease conservatives in the House by adding the Stupak-Pitt amendment to the health care bill. The amendment imperils access to abortion — a reproductive freedom affirmed by the Supreme Court of the United States in 1973 — by making it illegal for women to use government insurance plans to cover costs associated with an abortion.
And there is more bad news for women: a George Washington University study released this week indicates that the Stupak amendment could have serious implications for industry-wide coverage of medically-indicated abortions.
But if the GWU study is correct, the Stupak amendment would not simply affect women under the public insurance option — it would affect women covered by private insurance plans, too:
Full Story Stupak Amendment Could End Abortion Coverage — For Everyone | Rights and Liberties | AlterNet.
Obscenely Rich Bankers Claim to Do God’s Work — They Can Go to Hell
By Jim Hightower
Top executives were initially hurt by the public’s moral outrage. But their sense of entitlement quickly kicked in, and now they claim they’re the good guys.
“Repent,” the preacher cried out, startling those who heard him.
This was no street evangelist ranting at the passing crowd, but the archbishop of Canterbury, head of the Church of England. His sharp admonition was pointed directly at a particular set of sinners, who undoubtedly had never given any thought to the morality of their actions: the barons of global banking.
As in our country, people in Europe are enraged at those hustlers of high finance who wrecked the world’s economies, then flexed their political muscle to get governments to replenish their bankrupt vaults. Infuriatingly, these bailed-out bankers have now returned to business as usual, including grabbing monstrous bonus payments for themselves.
In Europe, such greed is not only being assailed politically, but it is also being cast as a matter of fundamental moral failure. As another of Britain’s leading clergymen put it, “There is a general feeling that the level of bonuses we’ve seen have been obscene.”
Full Story Hightower: Obscenely Rich Bankers Claim to Do God’s Work — They Can Go to Hell | | AlterNet.
Senate Defeats Attempt To Block Closing Gitmo
Some 57 senators voted to defeat a Republican proposal that would have prohibited the use of funds to construct or modify prison facilities to hold individuals currently being detained at the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
In his first act upon taking office this year, President Obama set a deadline of January 2010 to close the Guantamamo prison, which was established during the Bush administration to hold detainees in the Bush “war on terror.”
That goal to close the Guantanamo facility, which has long been site of torture and human rights abuses, has come under criticism, most recently in the form of an amendment to the Military Construction and Veterans Affairs Appropriations Act by Republcan Sen. Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma. The Inhofe amendment was opposed by Attorney General Eric Holder, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano.
Full Story On The Hill: Senate Defeats Attempt To Block Closing Gitmo.
Scientology a ‘criminal organisation’ Extraordinary attack
Extraordinary attack: Senator Xenophon said the church was abusive and manipulative. (ABC TV)
Australia
The Church of Scientology says allegations made in Federal Parliament by Independent Senator Nick Xenophon are an abuse of parliamentary privilege.
Senator Xenophon used a speech in Parliament last night to raise allegations of widespread criminal conduct within the church, saying he had received letters from former followers detailing claims of abuse, false imprisonment and forced abortion.
He says he has passed on the letters to the police and is calling for a Senate inquiry into the religion and its tax-exempt status. “I am deeply concerned about this organisation and the devastating impact it can have on its followers,” he told the Senate.
Full Story Scientology a ‘criminal organisation’ – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation).
Who Are You and What Have You Done With the Community Organizer We Elected President?
Robert Scheer
What’s up with Barack Obama? The candidate for change once promised to take on the powerful banking interests but is now doing their bidding. Finally, a leading Democrat, in this case Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd, has a good idea for monitoring the Wall Street fat cats who all but destroyed the American economy, and the Obama administration condemns it.
Dodd wants to take supervisory power from the Federal Reserve, which is controlled by the banks it pretends to monitor, and put it in the hands of a new independent agency. That makes sense given the Fed’s abject failure to properly monitor the financial sector over the past decade as that industry got drunk on greed. As Dodd’s spokeswoman Kirstin Brost put it: “The Federal Reserve flat out failed at supervising the largest, most complex firms.” But White House economic adviser Austan Goolsbee frets that taking power from the Fed would cause financial industry “nervousness.” Isn’t that the whole point of government regulation—to make the bandits look over their shoulders before they launch their next destructive scam?
Not so in the view of Deputy Treasury Secretary Neal Wolin, who blithely insists that the Fed “is the best agency equipped for the task of supervising the largest, most complex firms,” despite the mountain of evidence to the contrary. There is some irony in the fact that the largest of those complex firms got to be “too big to fail” because of the radical deregulatory legislation that Wolin drafted during his previous incarnation as the Treasury Department’s general counsel in the Clinton administration. Wolin is now deputy to Timothy Geithner, who as head of the New York Fed in the five years preceding the banking meltdown looked the other way as the disaster began to unfold.
Full Story Truthdig – Reports – Who Are You and What Have You Done With the Community Organizer We Elected President?.
John McCain: The Reason For All Of This
“If he had any sense of responsibility, he would resign. And if the Washington media had any sense of responsibility, it would never invite him on TV again without demanding he take responsibility for what he nearly did to the national security of this country. No one who put this person [Palin] near the nuclear button should have a future in public life.”
By Andrew Sullivan
Richard Coen convenes a meeting:
The Institute for the Study of Sarah Palin might conclude that she represents the exact moment important Republicans gave up on democracy. She was clearly seen as an empty vessel who could be controlled by her intellectual betters. These include the editorial boards of the Weekly Standard and the Wall Street Journal, neither of which would hire Palin to make an editorial judgment but both of which would be thrilled to see her as president of the United States. It does not bother these people in the least that the woman is a demagogue — remember “death panels”? — and not, on the face of it, very responsible. If she quit as governor of Alaska in the noble pursuit of money, might she quit as, say, vice president or president for the same reason? From what I hear, one can never be too rich.
The WSJ and TWS have long ago lost any intellectual credibility. They use sophism to maintain power. Their cynicism and/or denial mechanisms are deeper than most mortals can imagine.
We knew that about a charlatan like Kristol and a nihilist like Rove. But what I didn’t fully come to terms with, until the Palin farce, was the full extent of John McCain’s recklessness and cynicism. This is worth keeping in mind through all this. The only reason we even know about Sarah Palin is John McCain.
Full Story John McCain: The Reason For All Of This – The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan.
Keith Olbermann: Bill O’Reilly Worst Person
Bill O’Reilly – “I Don’t Care About The Constitution, You Pinhead!”
YouTube – Keith Olbermann: Bill O’Reilly Worst Person.
Frank Schaeffer warns against fundamentalist christians wanting to harm President Obama
“…they’re trolling for assassins….” “…The Christian Right is America’s Taliban.…”
Frank Schaeffer is the author of: ‘Crazy for God’
17 November, 2009 MSNBC
Full Story YouTube – Frank Schaeffer warns against fundamentalist christians wanting to harm President Obama.
Stupak claims he has enough pro-life votes to defeat health bill
The co-author of a House amendment that would exclude abortion from health care reform says efforts to overhaul the US’s health care system will fail if the amendment is removed.
US House Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI) told Fox News’ Fox & Friends that if his contentious amendment is stripped from the House bill, it will lose 15 to 20 pro-life votes in the House, meaning it wouldn’t have the votes necessary to pass the House.
“They’re not going to take it out,” The Hill quotes Stupak as saying. “If they do, health care will not move forward.”
But that claim was immediately disputed by another House representative, Diana DeGette, Democrat of Colorado and co-chair of the Congressional Pro-Choice Caucus, who said that Stupak’s math is wrong, because many of those 15 to 20 votes were conservative Democrats who voted in favor of the amendment, but still voted against the health care bill as a whole.
“I think [Stupak] won’t have the votes when people explain to those members what exactly the Stupak amendment does,” DeGette told ABC News.
Full Story Dem claims he has enough pro-life votes to defeat health bill | Raw Story.
C Street House No Longer Tax Exempt
Residents of the C Street Christian fellowship house will no longer benefit from a loophole that had allowed the house’s owners to avoid paying property taxes.
Previously, the house — despite being home to numerous lawmakers — had been tax exempt, because it was classified as a church. That arrangement had allowed the building’s owner, the secretive international Christian organization The Family, to charge significantly below market rents to its residents. In recent year, Senators John Ensign (R-NV), Tom Coburn (R-OK), Sam Brownback (R-KS) and Jim DeMint (R-SC), and Reps. Zach Wamp (R-TN), Bart Stupak (D-MI) and Mike Doyle (D-PA) have all reportedly called C Street home.
Natalie Wilson, a spokeswoman for the Office of Tax and Revenue for Washington D.C., told TPMmuckraker that her office inspected the house this summer. “It was determined that portions of it were being rented out for private residential purposes,” she said. As a result, the tax exempt status was partially revoked. Sixty-six percent of the value of the property is now subject to taxation.
According to online records, the total taxable assessment is $1,834,500. The building’s owner last month paid taxes of $1714.70 on the property.
Full Story C Street House No Longer Tax Exempt | TPMMuckraker.
OPS: Well that’s a start! Now how about the 700 Club and the Catholic Church?
National Debt Now Tops $12 Trillion
It’s another record-high for the U.S. National Debt which today topped the $12-trillion mark. Divided evenly among the U.S. population, it amounts to $38,974.34 for every man, woman and child.
Technically, the debt hit the new high yesterday, but it was posted on the Treasury Department website just after 3:00 p.m. ET today. The exact calculation of the debt is a 16-digit tongue-twister and red-ink tsunami: $12,031,299,186,290.07
This latest milestone in the ever-rising journey of the National Debt comes less than eight months after it hit $11 trillion for the first time. The latest high-point is not unexpected, considering the federal deficit for the just-ended 2009 fiscal year hit an all-time high at $1.42-trillion – more than triple the previous year’s record high.
Much of the increase in the deficit and debt is attributed to government spending outpacing revenue – both exacerbated by the recession and the government response to it – including hundreds of billions in bailouts and stimulus spending and tax cuts along with decreased tax revenues due to rising unemployment.
Full Story National Debt Now Tops $12 Trillion – Political Hotsheet – CBS News.
OPS: The unnerving thing here is that US GDP is only about $16 Trillion
MoveOn furious over US Chamber of Commerce lobbying to block rape victims’ lawsuits
Liberal activist group MoveOn is furious with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce for lobbying against rules which have prevented rape victims from having their day in court.
In a mass e-mail, the group cites the 2005 gang rape of KBR employee Jamie Leigh Jones. Jones was raped while in Iraq, which barred her complaint to a U.S. court due to her signature on a form agreeing to enter binding arbitration for any disputes.
“Why?” asked the e-mail. “Because big corporations, led by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, have worked for years to prevent workers from suing their employers in almost any circumstance, even sexual assault.”
Jones won the right to sue when the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals found in Sept. that her assault was not in any way related to her employment, therefore nullifying restrictions in her employee contract.
Months ago, controversy over victims’ right to sue while already having agreed to binding arbitration led Republican lawmakers to vote against a provision put forward by Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) that aimed at giving Jamie Leigh and other assaulted women a path to justice.
Full Story MoveOn furious over US Chamber of Commerce lobbying to block rape victims’ lawsuits | Raw Story.
The Logic of the 9/11 Trials, the Madness of the Military Commissions
With just over two months to go until President Obama's deadline for the closure of Guantanamo, the administration has finally woken up to the necessity of actually doing something to facilitate the prison's closure by announcing on Friday that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other prisoners accused of involvement in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, will be brought to New York to face federal court trials.
Despite the fact that the “war on terror” was launched over eight years ago to pursue those responsible for the 9/11 attacks, and despite the fact that Attorney General Eric Holder noted, in a statement announcing the trial, that the opportunity for the relatives of the 9/11 victims “to see the alleged plotters of those attacks held accountable in court” had been “too long delayed,” Republican critics immediately leapt on the announcement, with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell describing it as “a step backwards for the security of our country” that “puts Americans unnecessarily at risk.”
Full Story t r u t h o u t | The Logic of the 9/11 Trials, the Madness of the Military Commissions.
Retired Gen. Clark calls for exit strategy in Afghanistan
Ret. Gen. Wesley K. Clark urged members of Congress Tuesday to adopt an exit strategy for American forces in Afghanistan.
Speaking to the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, Clark said American leaders should strengthen the national partnership with Pakistan — including sharing intelligence regarding al Qaeda operations — and promote economic development in Afghanistan to undercut the drug trade fueled by growing poppies.
Gen. Clark, a former Democratic presidential candidate, praised President Barack Obama for taking his time in developing an Afghanistan strategy and said that any troop increase should wait until a firm endgame has been establsihed for U.S. Involvement in the country.
“The legacy of Vietnam really looms over these discussions,” said Gen. Clark, reflecting on his experience in Vietnam and the arc of one of the nation's most painful wars.
Full Story Retired Gen. Clark calls for exit strategy in Afghanistan – Washington Times.
Whats wrong with sick pay?
Thom Hartmann with Cari Lukas of the Independent Woman’s forum
Right wingers don’t want you to get Sick Pay
YouTube – Thom challenges Carrie Lukas – Whats wrong with sick pay?.
“Raise taxes now!” Thom has a rumble w/ JD Foster of the Heritage Foundation
Thom Hartmann
Raising taxes on those making over $500k / year
YouTube – “Raise taxes now!” Thom has a rumble w/ JD Foster of the Heritage Foundation.
David Frum: GOP Headed For “Bloodbath” In Florida
Conservative David Frum wrote on CNN Monday night that Republicans are headed for a “spectacular bloodbath” in 2010.
The Republican fratricide in the Nov. 3 special election in upstate New York may prove just an opening round of an even more spectacular bloodbath in Florida in 2010.
In New York, Republican feuding lost the party a seat in the House of Representatives. At stake in Florida is not only a senatorship — but very possibly Republican hopes for 2012 as well.
Frum points out that Marco Rubio, the conservative candidate challenging Gov. Charlie Crist for the Senate, has won an enthusiastic national following by opposing stimulus funds. He has the endorsement of the Club For Growth. But he’s getting little support with actual Florida voters.
Full Story David Frum: GOP Headed For “Bloodbath” In Florida.
Costco Stops Carrying Coca Cola Products
Costco says it is no longer carrying Coca-Cola products in its stores nationwide due to a pricing dispute with the beverage maker.
The Issaquah, Wash.-based wholesale club operator would not discuss the matter further. But a Costco executive confirmed Monday that the company is no longer carrying products from the world’s largest soft drink maker.
Atlanta-based Coca-Cola Co. says it won’t comment on on-going negotiations but said Costco is an important customer that it is committed to working with “in a spirit of fairness.”
Costco Wholesale Corp. operates about 560 warehouses in the U.S. and abroad.
Full Story Costco Stops Carrying Coca Cola Products.
Colbert Destroys R.I. Governor For Denying Gay Couples Death Rights (VIDEO)
Rhode Island Governor Don Carcieri vetoed legislation last week that would give same-sex couples the rights to claim the bodies of and make funeral arrangements for their deceased partners. He said such legislation was a “disturbing trend” signifying the erosion of traditional marriage.
| The Colbert Report | Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| The Word – Skeletons in the Closet | ||||
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Full Story Colbert Destroys R.I. Governor For Denying Gay Couples Death Rights (VIDEO).
Transparency International’s Corruption Index For 2009
Transparency International has released its 2009 Corruption Perception Index, which focuses on corruption in the public sector and uses surveys to establish how much corruption is perceived to exist within the country. This year’s worst included Afghanistan, Iraq, Sudan, Myanmar and Venezuela.
Below are some highlights from the rankings. Depending on your familiarity with the survey, the U.S.’s ranking, which is include below, may well surprise you. See the full rankings index
- The Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) table shows a country’s ranking and score, the number of surveys used to determine the score, and the confidence range of the scoring.
- The rank shows how one country compares to others included in the index. The CPI score indicates the perceived level of public-sector corruption in a country/territory.
- The CPI is based on 13 independent surveys. However, not all surveys include all countries. The surveys used column indicates how many surveys were relied upon to determine the score for that country.
- The confidence range indicates the reliability of the CPI scores and tells us that allowing for a margin of error, we can be 90% confident that the true score for this country lies within this range.
| Rank | Country/Territory | CPI 2009 Score | Surveys Used | Confidence Range |
| 1 | New Zealand | 9.4 | 6 | 9.1 – 9.5 |
| 2 | Denmark | 9.3 | 6 | 9.1 – 9.5 |
| 3 | Singapore | 9.2 | 9 | 9.0 – 9.4 |
| 3 | Sweden | 9.2 | 6 | 9.0 – 9.3 |
| 5 | Switzerland | 9.0 | 6 | 8.9 – 9.1 |
| 6 | Finland | 8.9 | 6 | 8.4 – 9.4 |
| 6 | Netherlands | 8.9 | 6 | 8.7 – 9.0 |
| 8 | Australia | 8.7 | 8 | 8.3 – 9.0 |
| 8 | Canada | 8.7 | 6 | 8.5 – 9.0 |
| 8 | Iceland | 8.7 | 4 | 7.5 – 9.4 |
| 11 | Norway | 8.6 | 6 | 8.2 – 9.1 |
| 12 | Hong Kong | 8.2 | 8 | 7.9 – 8.5 |
| 12 | Luxembourg | 8.2 | 6 | 7.6 – 8.8 |
| 14 | Germany | 8.0 | 6 | 7.7 – 8.3 |
| 14 | Ireland | 8.0 | 6 | 7.8 – 8.4 |
| 16 | Austria | 7.9 | 6 | 7.4 – 8.3 |
| 17 | Japan | 7.7 | 8 | 7.4 – 8.0 |
| 17 | United Kingdom | 7.7 | 6 | 7.3 – 8.2 |
| 19 | United States | 7.5 | 8 | 6.9 – 8.0 |
More……
Full List: CPI 2009 Table/2009/cpi/surveys_indices/policy_research.
“Countdown” Producer Attends Health Care Clinic In New Orleans: “There Are No Words” (VIDEO)
One of the free health clinics launched due to the generosity of “Countdown” viewers took place over the weekend in New Orleans.
While Keith Olbermann was unable to attend himself due to his father’s illness, “Countdown” producer Rich Stockwell — who Olbermann credited on air as the brains behind the drive to raise money for the clinics — did attend, and he wrote an essay for MSNBC.com about his experience.
In the essay, Stockwell relays several stories of patients who came to Saturday’s clinic: the 50-year-old woman with stage four breast cancer whose cancer was likely diagnosed so late because she didn’t have insurance; the nurse who holds down two part-time jobs but can’t work enough hours to qualify for medical benefits; the woman sent to the hospital with a 220/180 blood pressure who didn’t know why she wasn’t feeling well.
Full Story “Countdown” Producer Attends Health Care Clinic In New Orleans: “There Are No Words” (VIDEO).
Jeff Stein: U.S. Ports Still Wide Open to Nukes, Report Says
Over $3 billion and seven years since U.S. intelligence discovered al Qaeda kingpin Osama Bin Laden was seeking a nuclear bomb, terrorists can still drive a radioactive truck through the holes in America’s border defenses, a government watchdog agency suggested Tuesday.
“The polyvinyl toluene (PVT) portal monitors CBP currently uses for this screening can detect radiation but cannot identify the type of material causing an alarm,” the Government Accountability Office’s top nuclear detector expert told a House panel.
“As a result, monitors’ radiation alarms “can be set off even by shipments of bananas, kitty litter, or granite tile because these materials contain small amounts of benign, naturally occurring radioactive material.”
But a new detector under development that costs almost three times as much hasn’t done much better during years of evaluation, even after the tests were cocked to make the devices look better, said Gene Aloise, GAO’s director of Natural Resources and Environment.
Full Story Jeff Stein: U.S. Ports Still Wide Open to Nukes, Report Says.
Newspapers Raided: Police Raid New York Newspaper Offices For Union Corruption Probe
Investigators in the city raided offices for some of the nation’s largest newspapers Tuesday as part of a corruption probe into a powerful union that has long faced accusations of ties to organized crime, a law enforcement official said.
Police officers working with the Manhattan district attorney’s office searched for paperwork related to the Newspaper and Mail Deliverers Union in circulation, production and delivery offices of The New York Times, the New York Post, the Daily News and El Diario, said the official, who spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing.
District Attorney Robert Morgenthau said search warrants also were executed at a labor union, but he would not specify which.
“The investigation solely concerns business activity and practice and is completely unrelated to the content of any publication,” he said.
Full Story Newspapers Raided: Police Raid New York Newspaper Offices For Union Corruption Probe.
Economists Tout Health Care Reform In Letter To Obama
In a boost to the Obama administration’s efforts to frame health care reform as an economic boon, a group of 20 health economists sent a letter to the White House on Tuesday touting the fiscal results of passing reform legislation.
The group lists four specific elements of reform as crucial to controlling costs and righting the fiscal trajectory of the health care system’s overhaul. They include making legislation deficit neutral (which describes both the House and Senate version of reform), including an excise tax on high-cost insurance plans (which is part of the Senate’s version of reform, but not the House’s version), creating an independent Medicare commission (also in the Senate bill), and general changes to the delivery system.
There is, notably, no mention of a public option for insurance coverage, which is estimated by other analysts as a major price savor in the health care system. But the note from the group of economist could give a needed boost to those conservative Democrats who are already skittish about the costs and size of congressional reform efforts.
As the economists write: “we believe that it is important to enact health reform, and it is essential that health reform include these four features that will lower health care costs and help reduce deficits over the long term. Reform legislation that embodies these four elements can go a long way toward delivering better health care, and better value, to Americans.”
Full Story Economists Tout Health Care Reform In Letter To Obama.
Widow Stuck With Bill After Insurer Approved Husband’s Treatment
Fanny Gonzalez’s husband died in May after a five-month battle with stomach cancer, and now she’s stuck with the bill, reports the Chicago Tribune’s Jon Yates. Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Illinois approved the treatment and then refused to pay, leaving Gonzalez with a $161,601 bill.
Blue Cross called the drug used “experimental” for her husband’s type of cancer. Now Gonzalez is working with the Cancer Treatment Centers of America for help with her debt.
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In 2006, trucker Kenny Whitey fell 18 feet from the roof of his truck and broke almost every bone in his face. His serious head trauma left him unable to walk or talk. He breathes and eats through a tube, and needs nursing care around the clock. But now the company handling his workers’ compensation is going bankrupt, reports Brandee A Thomas for the Gainesville, GA, Times, and the Whitey family does not know where to turn.
The insurance company has directed Whitey’s attorney to his former employer, but the employer has stated that the medical bills — $47,000 per month — would bankrupt the company. “Basically, this leaves [the family] in the cold,” said the attorney. “Their only recourse at this point for their immediate future is to look for help through public assistance programs.” Unfortunately, because Whitey receives a disability check and his wife works, they likely make too much to qualify for public aid but too little to pay for the care themselves.
Full Story Widow Stuck With Bill After Insurer Approved Husband’s Treatment.
Audit The Fed Effort Under Threat In House
A bipartisan effort to force transparency on the Federal Reserve is suddenly in jeopardy after a House Financial Services Committee member introduced an amendment that would let the multi-trillion dollar organization continue throwing tax dollars around in secret.
Rep. Mel Watt, a Democrat from North Carolina, has introduced an amendment intended as an alternative to the measure to audit the Federal Reserve introduced by Reps. Ron Paul (R-Texas) and Alan Grayson's (D-Fla.) . But instead of increasing transparency, as the amendment claims to do, Watt's measure would instead make the institution more opaque.
The measure could come for a vote anytime this week. Read the amendment here.
Watt pitched his amendment in a letter to colleagues circulated Tuesday. “While my amendment will certainly fall short of demands by those intent on destroying the independence (if not the existence) of the Fed, the critics of my amendment will have to concede…that my amendment will provide transparency of the Fed's financial operations that will be completely unprecedented,” he wrote.
Full Story Audit The Fed Effort Under Threat In House.
Offshore Bank Accounts Revealed To IRS By 14,700 Taxpayers
More than 14,700 U.S. taxpayers came forward to disclose billions in offshore bank accounts in 70 countries under a voluntary Internal Revenue Service program allowing most to avoid criminal prosecution as long as they pay what they owe, IRS officials said Tuesday.
A flood of people came forward in the last days before the amnesty program expired Oct. 15, IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman said. The final total far surpasses the number who disclose offshore accounts in a typical year — about 100 — and comes amid a broad U.S. crackdown on international tax evasion at Swiss bank UBS AG and other institutions.
“To put it simply, this is a historic milestone for the nation's hardworking taxpayers,” Shulman said in a conference call from Washington.
The total in taxes, interest and penalties collected from those in the voluntary disclosure program will be in the “billions of dollars,” Shulman said. The disclosures involved accounts on every continent but Antarctica.
Taxpayers flocked to the amnesty program after the U.S. reached an agreement in August with the Swiss government and UBS to obtain names of 4,450 U.S. taxpayers believed to be hiding assets in secret bank accounts. Earlier this year, UBS paid a $780 million penalty under a deferred prosecution agreement filed in a Florida federal court that included disclosure of an additional 150 names.
Full Story Offshore Bank Accounts Revealed To IRS By 14,700 Taxpayers.
Republicans threaten to block terror trials
House Republicans say they'll make Democrats feel the political heat for President Obama's decision to try Sept. 11 attack plotters in U.S. civilian courts by trying to force a vote on a bill to block those trials.
Republicans will launch a discharge petition — which means if a majority of House members sign on, then the bill would automatically be brought to the floor for a vote, despite the objections of Democratic leaders who control the chamber's schedule.
House Minority Leader John Boehner, Ohio Republican, said the Obama administration's decision to move 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four others suspected of planning the Sept. 11 attacks from the Guantanamo Bay detention site to civilian courts in the United States shows Democrats are “out of touch.”
via Republicans threaten to block terror trials – Washington Times.
OPS: Republicans hate the Rule of Law
Pledge of Allegiance 1950
Recited by schoolchildren on December 7, 1950 on the eve of the Korean War.
via YouTube – Pledge of Allegiance 1950.
The 15 Biggest Congressional Recipients Of Wall Street Campaign Cash
Reforming Wall Street is a hot topic on Capitol Hill these days. Congress is currently weighing two financial reform bills that would, to varying degrees, reshape the way the financial system is regulated.
Still, Wall Street's influence in Washington appears to be as strong as ever. After all, it was just last spring that Senator Dick Durbin, frustrated by pushback on bankruptcy reform, denounced the financial sector's influence on the Senate: the banks, he said, “they frankly own the place.” The Center for Responsive Politics, a research group that tracks money in politics, reports that financial industries — the finance, insurance and real estate sectors, specifically — have been one of the biggest benefactors to Congress over the past two decades:
“The finance, insurance and real estate sector has given $2.3 billion to candidates, leadership PACs and party committees since 1989, which eclipses every other sector. Nineteen percent of total contributions from the employees and political action committees across all sectors came from the financial sector.”
And while campaign contributions don't equate to wrongdoing, it's worth noting that, while lawmakers ponder reforming the financial sector, the industry's campaign contributions have remained strong:
“Even with a number of large financial institutions folding or merging since last fall, the sector has still given more to federal candidates and party committees than any other sector this year at $78.2 million. Current lawmakers have brought in $661.6 million from the sector through their candidate committees and leadership PACs, with Democrats collecting 53 percent of that.”
We took a look at the Center for Responsive Politics's database, OpenSecrets.org, to see which members of Congress have so far received Wall Street money for the 2010 election cycle. The answers may surprise you. Check out our slideshow of the top 15 recipients and choose which politician may be taking too much money from Wall Street.
via The 15 Biggest Congressional Recipients Of Wall Street Campaign Cash.
Obama, China, and Wishful Thinking About American Jobs
Robert Reich
President Obama says he wants to “rebalance” the economic relationship between China and the U.S. as part of his plan to restart the American jobs machine. “We cannot go back,” he said in September, “to an era where the Chinese . . . just are selling everything to us, we're taking out a bunch of credit-card debt or home equity loans, but we're not selling anything to them.” He hopes that hundreds of millions of Chinese consumers will make up for the inability of American consumers to return to debt-binge spending.
This is wishful thinking. True, the Chinese market is huge and growing fast. By 2009, China was second only to the U.S. in computer sales, with a larger proportion of first-time buyers. It already had more cell-phone users. And excluding SUVs, last year Chinese consumers bought as many cars as Americans (as recently as 2006, Americans bought twice as many).
Even as the U.S. government was bailing out General Motors and Chrysler, the two firms' sales in China were soaring; GM's sales there are almost 50% higher this year than last. Proctor & Gamble is so well-established in China that many Chinese think its products (such as green-tea-flavored Crest toothpaste) are Chinese brands. If the Chinese economy continues to grow at or near its current rate and the benefits of that growth trickle down to 1.3 billion Chinese consumers, the country would become the largest shopping bazaar in the history of the world. They'll be driving over a billion cars and will be the world's biggest purchasers of household electronics, clothing, appliances and almost everything else produced on the planet.
via Robert Reich’s Blog.
Jobs Bill Moves Forward
Throughout last winter, Sen. Ben Nelson, the Nebraska Democrat, was trailed through the Capitol by reporters curious where he stood on the amount of stimulus spending needed to pull the economy from the edge of the cliff.
He and a trio of Republicans — Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine and now-Democrat Arlen Specter — worked to trim the previous package back to the arbitrary but politically acceptable price of $787 billion.
Now that Congress is mulling more spending, Nelson will again be in the spotlight.
And while the economy didn’t collapse into a heap, largely thanks to the stimulus, it wasn’t enough to turn unemployment around — as economists at the time predicted. Instead, the jobless rate has broken the 10 percent mark and real unemployment is much higher.
via Nelson On Board For Second Round Of Spending.
Hostage-Takers in the Senate
As most of us are preparing for the holidays a small clique in the Senate, with their collaborators in the Washington punditry, are planning for a dramatic hostage-taking event. Their target of opportunity is a bill to increase the nation’s debt limit. The hostage-takers propose to obstruct the bill’s passage unless the rest of the country gives into their demands to cut Social Security and Medicare and takes other steps to meet their warped sense of fiscal responsibility.
The debt limit must be increased at regular intervals in order to allow the government to function normally because the government is currently operating at a deficit. If the debt limit is not passed, then at some point the government will not be able to pay workers and contractors. It won’t be able to send out Social Security checks or make payments for Medicaid and unemployment insurance to state governments. And, it will not be able to make interest payments on government bonds, effectively defaulting on the national debt.
As a condition of allowing a bill to increase the debt limit to pass the Senate, the hostage-takers are demanding that Congress agree to establish a special commission to make recommendations for reducing the long-term budget deficit. This commission would be stacked with people who want to cut Social Security and Medicare.
via t r u t h o u t | Hostage-Takers in the Senate.
Comcast’s Likely Acquisition of NBC May Threaten Your Access to Independent Media
MSNBC News Junkies Beware:
Business sections across the country are all abuzz this week over the expected announcement that Comcast Corp. will acquire a controlling share of NBC Universal. But should MSNBC viewers be particularly concerned about the nation's largest cable provider and second largest Internet service provider obtaining one fourth of the media content available to U.S. audiences?
The process of the acquisition itself is somewhat complicated, and could take up to a year to complete. First, Vivendi SA must sell its 20 percent of NBC Universal to General Electric Co., which already owns 80 percent. Then GE would sell 51 percent of the company to Comcast.
This Reuters piece suggests that GE might try to sell its interest in NBC entirely over the next few years, precisely because media is something of an awkward addition to a company profile which includes defense contracting and nuclear power:
In the case of GE, many of its shareholders have urged the conglomerate to offload NBC Universal, whose broadcast and cable networks, movie studio and theme parks are considered misfits among GE's mostly industrial operations.
The parties have discussed an option for GE to sell all or part of its stake in the new venture to Comcast within seven years, sources have said previously.
The Secret Global Empire(s): Russ Baker & John Perkins
GRITtv with Laura Flanders »
U.S. history has seen many presidents elected on a wave of progressive promises, only to see them compromise again and again once in office, caving to the very interests, military and corporate, that they railed against so effectively. Barack Obama is only the latest to get elected on a promise to end a war and take care of working people, only to preside over an administration stacked with Wall Street types and wind up continuing a war he wanted to wind down.
Americans voted for change and are getting frustrated with the lack of it, but our guests have both written about the powerful forces holding the status quo in place. John Perkins is the author of Hoodwinked and Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, and has written about how corporations push politicians around and even threaten them with violence. Russ Baker, meanwhile, is the author of Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty, the Powerful Forces That Put It in the White House, and What Their Influence Means for America and has written extensively about the military-industrial complex.
They argue the only weapon we have is public opinion and public pressure–and we need to bring it to bear not just on the government, but on the corporations.
via GRITtv with Laura Flanders » The Secret Global Empire(s): Russ Baker & John Perkins.
Federal panel recommends reducing number of mammograms
Potential harm of frequent mammograms outweighs benefit, task force says
Women in their 40s should stop routinely having annual mammograms and older women should cut back to one scheduled exam every other year, an influential federal task force has concluded, challenging the use of one of the most common medical tests.
In its first reevaluation of breast cancer screening since 2002, the independent government-appointed panel recommended the changes, citing evidence that the potential harm to women having annual exams beginning at age 40 outweighs the benefit.
Coming amid a highly charged national debate over health-care reform and simmering suspicions about the possibility of rationing medical services, the recommendations immediately became enveloped in controversy.
via Federal panel recommends reducing number of mammograms – washingtonpost.com.
Drilling for Scotch whiskey on frozen continent
A beverage company has asked a team to drill through Antarctica's ice for a lost cache of some vintage Scotch whiskey that has been on the rocks since a century ago.
The drillers will be trying to reach two crates of McKinlay and Co. whiskey that were shipped to the Antarctic by British polar explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton as part of his abandoned 1909 expedition.
Whyte & Mackay, the drinks group that now owns McKinlay and Co., has asked for a sample of the 100-year-old scotch for a series of tests that could decide whether to relaunch the now-defunct Scotch.
Workers from New Zealand's Antarctic Heritage Trust will use special drills to reach the crates, frozen in Antarctic ice under the Nimrod Expedition hut near Cape Royds.
via Drilling for Scotch whiskey on frozen continent – Yahoo! News.
Revised CDC swine flu figures to triple number of deaths
Some 22 million Americans have been infected with the H1N1 virus, which has caused over 4,000 deaths since its spread began, according to revised figures by the Centers for Disease Control.
“The changes reflect new surveillance methods thought to be more accurate but also show that figuring out the death toll from influenza is not a precise science,” ABC News noted.
The death toll noted by the CDC is triple that reported on Wednesday.
Officials urged that the numbers are not a sign of swine flu spreading further or becoming more lethal, but the government's methodology for estimating its spread becoming more accurate.
via Revised CDC swine flu figures to triple number of deaths | Raw Story.
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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. 
