Archive for December, 2009

Study blames two genes for aggressive brain cancer

Scientists have discovered two genes that appear responsible for one of the most aggressive forms of brain cancer.

Glioblastoma multiforme rapidly invades the normal brain, producing inoperable tumours, but scientists have not understood why it is so aggressive.

The latest study, by a Columbia University team, published in Nature, pinpoints two genes.

The researchers say that the findings raise hopes of developing a treatment for the cancer.

Full Story BBC News – Study blames two genes for aggressive brain cancer.

California man sues for return of medical pot cop confiscated

Kyle Kelly had just paid $45 for an eighth of an ounce of pot at a Sacramento medical marijuana dispensary when a California Highway Patrol officer pulled him over on a routine traffic stop.

The officer noticed Kelly had a copy of the West Coast Leaf – “The Cannabis Community Newspaper of Record” – in the car and asked the 25-year-old Sacramento man if he had any weed on him.

Kelly admitted that he did. But he didn’t have his doctor’s certificate of approval as well, so the CHP officer confiscated the pot and wrote him a ticket for misdemeanor marijuana possession.

Full Story California man sues for return of medical pot cop confiscated | McClatchy.

9/11 Hero Dies of Cancer on Christmas Day

FDNY says cancer was 9/11-related

A Sept. 11 hero died of cancer on Christmas Day. Jim Ryan was on the front lines during 9/11, a firefighter who spent many weeks rummaging through the destruction that encompassed Ground Zero, only to succumb to pancreatic cancer, according to a report.

The fire department confirms that his sickness was 9/11-related. And now his family – his three children, wife and all the people who loved him – mourn the death of a hero.

“He was just really really great,” his grieving wife, Magda, told the Daily News.

Ryan, 48, was first diagnosed with cancer three years ago. He relapsed last year, reports the News.

Full Story 9/11 Hero Dies of Cancer on Christmas Day | NBC New York.

Specter looks to revive 9/11 suits against Saudis

In a sign that the bitter litigation between victims of the 9/11 attacks and the government of Saudi Arabia is far from over, Sen. Arlen Specter yesterday introduced legislation that would overturn court rulings barring lawsuits that contend the desert kingdom helped cause the terrorism.

Specter (D., Pa.) said the legislation would clarify that lawsuits by U.S. citizens could go forward without a sign-off from the State Department.

A federal appeals court in Manhattan last year dismissed claims against the Saudi government, saying such litigation can proceed only if the State Department finds that the Saudis provided financial aid and other assistance to terrorist groups.

Besides clarifying the law, the bill would reinstate those lawsuits.

Full Story Specter looks to revive 9/11 suits against Saudis | Philadelphia Inquirer | 12/24/2009.

Woman found dead in city homeless camp: Anchorage

A 50-year-old woman died early Christmas morning at a homeless camp in Mountain View, apparently of natural causes, Anchorage police said.

A friend had left Malorie Dora Pete at the camp in Davis Park earlier in the evening, and said she seemed fine at that time, police spokeswoman Marlene Lammers said. When he returned later, he found her unresponsive and called 911 from a nearby gas station shortly before 2 a.m., saying he thought she was dead.

Responding officers found the woman dead when they arrived, Lammers said. Her body was in a tent at the camp, near the 400 block of North Pine Street.

It appears she died of natural causes, Lammers said. The temperature was about 31 degrees.

Full Story Woman found dead in city homeless camp: Anchorage’s homeless | adn.com.

Colorado resort legalises cannabis, but not on the ski slopes

Breckenridge is boasting that it has become the Amsterdam of the Rockies

It’s already being dubbed “the Amsterdam of the Rockies” and an après-ski spliff is likely to become almost as common as a beer when cannabis possession is legalised in the hip mountain town of Breckenridge, Colorado, on 1 January.

Well known as a laid-back party resort characterised by baggy-trousered snowboarders and a vigorous happy hour, Breckenridge voted last month to relax marijuana laws.

From New Year’s Day there will be no criminal or civil penalties imposed on anyone carrying up to an ounce of marijuana – or the paraphernalia usually associated with it, such as long rolling papers, a small pipe or a bong. That also goes for tourists, in a resort popular with British visitors who flock there for the exciting ski slopes and the exuberant nightlife.

“I’m already getting calls from people outside the state asking questions, such as ‘Can I do it while I’m skiing?’, ‘Can I bring it to my hotel room?’, that kind of thing,” said Kim Green, spokeswoman for the Breckenridge police department.

Full Story Colorado resort legalises cannabis, but not on the ski slopes | Society | The Observer.

At Tiny Rates, Saving Money Costs Investors

Millions of Americans are paying a high price for a safe place to put their money: extremely low interest rates on savings accounts and certificates of deposit.

The elderly and others on fixed incomes have been especially hard hit. Many have seen returns on savings, C.D.’s and government bonds drop to niggling amounts recently, often costing them money once inflation, fees and taxes are considered.

“Open a Savings Plus Account today and get a great rate,” read an advertisement in the Dec. 16 Newsday for Citibank, which was then offering 1.2 percent for an account. (As low as it was, the offer was good only for accounts of $25,000 and up.)

“They’re advertising it in the papers as if they’re actually proud of that,” said Steven Weisman, a title insurance consultant in New York. “It’s a joke.”

Full Story At Tiny Rates, Saving Money Costs Investors – NYTimes.com.

Rush Limbaugh Says Poor Don’t Deserve Healthcare

In a bizarre interview with William Shatner, on his show “Raw Nerve”, Rush Limbaugh argued that there is no “morally superior aspect” to the question of the right to healthcare and suggested that it is entirely fair that if someone cannot afford healthcare, they should not have it.

Limbaugh unbelievably argued that poor people should have no more right to quality healthcare than they have to purchase “a house on the beach”, arguing instead that they should have healthcare equivalent to the “bungalow” they would be able to afford.

For Limbaugh, the right to have one’s health issues treated adequately, is a luxury and nothing more. If one is wealthy, then the luxury is within one’s reach. If not, there’s no moral reason whatsoever for society to provide any means to assist the underprivileged (or, middle class?) in affording quality health treatment.

The interview should once and for all seal Limbaugh’s position as radical, callous and out of step with the 100% of the American population who believe they should have access to care when they need it. Limbaugh’s view allows only for the wealthy to decide whether the poor should live or die.

more……

Full Story Rush Limbaugh Says Poor Don’t Deserve Healthcare – J.E. Robertson – Open Salon.

AFRICA: Drying, Drying, Disappearing…

Lake Chad was bigger than Israel less than 50 years ago. Today its surface area is less than a tenth of its earlier size, amid forecasts the lake could disappear altogether within 20 years.

Climate change and overuse have put one of Africa’s mightiest lakes in mortal danger, and the livelihoods of the 30 million people who depend on its waters is hanging by a thread as a result.

An unprecedented crisis is looming that would create fresh hunger in a region already suffering grave food insecurity, and pose a massive threat to peace and stability, experts say.

“If Lake Chad dries up, 30 million people will have no means of a livelihood, and that is a big security problem because of growing competition for smaller quantities of water,” Dr Abdullahi Umar Ganduje, executive secretary of the Lake Chad Basin Commission (LCBC) tells IPS in Rome.

“Poverty and hunger will increase. When there is no food to eat, there is bound to be violence.”

The lake, which shrank 90 percent between 1963 and 2001 from 25,000 square kilometres to under 1,500, is bordered by Chad, Niger, Cameroon and Nigeria.

Four more countries, the Central African Republic, Algeria, Sudan and Libya, share the lake’s hydrological basin and are therefore affected by its fortunes.

“Lake Chad has experienced shrinkage,” Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi said at November’s World Food Security Summit at the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) in Rome. “If it dries up, it will be a real disaster. I want to warn the world about this imminent disaster.”

Full Story AFRICA: Drying, Drying, Disappearing… – IPS ipsnews.net.

Health bill packs punch for politicos

The Senate vote on a health care proposal this week has given pundits what’s always at the top of their Christmas list: a hot topic in what is traditionally among the slowest news weeks of the year. But rather than critique the particulars, many commentators are measuring the impact the grueling process has been having on political fortunes.

E.J. Dionne addresses progressives dejected by compromises in the legislation.

“Of course what has happened on the health care bill is enraging,” he writes. “It’s quite clear that substantial majorities in both houses of Congress favored either a public option or a Medicare buy-in. … (But) because of a front of Republican obstruction and the ludicrous idea that all legislation requires a supermajority of 60 votes, power has passed from the majority to tiny minorities.”

Full Story Health bill packs punch for politicos | detnews.com | The Detroit News.

Tighter security on U.S.-bound travel

All passengers must be seated one hour before flights arrive

Extra pat-downs before boarding. No getting up for the last hour of the flight. More bomb-sniffing dogs. Airports worldwide tightened security a day after a passenger tried to light some kind of explosive on a flight into Detroit.

NBC News reports the new steps include:

• Pat downs of passengers at airport security, concentrating on the upper torso and legs;
• Physical inspections of all carry-on bags at the gate;
• Requiring all passengers to be seated for the full hour prior to arrival;
• Banning the use of blankets and pillows one hour prior to arrival.

Full Story Tighter security on U.S.-bound travel – Security- msnbc.com.

A wing and a prayer as Audubon members set out on annual survey

Bird-watchers are counting species in 2,000 locales from

Alaska to Antarctica, collecting data that will help scientists map migration trends and track habitat changes.

Reporting from New York – Some things are a given when you’re with people who count birds.

First, prepare to be interrupted.

“Chickadee!” someone will shout in the midst of a conversation that has nothing to do with the black-headed little passerine (that’s birders’-speak for a perching species).

“Oh! I just heard a yellow-bellied sapsucker!” someone else will blurt out.

“Two red-tails!” another birder will bellow, pointing skyward at a pair of hawks soaring across a slate sky beginning to drop snowflakes on the cusp of a monstrous storm.

Full Story A wing and a prayer as Audubon members set out on annual survey — latimes.com.

California Begging

The once-great state of California has been reduced to begging from the federal government. But no matter how much help the feds give, the state’s fiscal ills won’t end until its lawmakers stop spending money.

To say California is a mess is an understatement. In the current fiscal year, the state is expected to post a deficit of $21 billion as the budget continues to spiral out of control. Even after last year’s epic budget battle, when Californians were hit with $12.5 billion in new taxes and $6 billion more in borrowing, the state still isn’t close to bringing revenues and expenditures into balance.

So Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has an idea: He wants President Obama to give him $8 billion — or else, he says, he’ll kill or slash most of the state’s welfare programs, cut pay for 200,000 state workers and end two tax breaks for big corporations.

How far the Golden State has fallen. Once the nation’s unquestioned economic and innovation leader, it’s now a laggard. With 13% of the country’s population, it has nearly a third of its welfare recipients. Though it’s still the world’s seventh-largest economy, it’s in danger of sliding backward as its fiscal and economic crises drive jobs and workers away.

Full Story Investors.com – California Begging.

Seeing the Forest: Getting Corporate Money Out Of Politics Must Become Our #1 Priority

Health care: huge majorities of the public want something – anything – along the lines of a “public option” or Medicare buy-in. In the last election people turned out and overwhelmingly voted in Obama, 60 senators and a huge majority in the Congress.

But after “the system” plays itself out we instead end up with government power ordering all of us to buy insurance from giant insurance corporations. It remains illegal for us to buy into Medicare because this would interfere with the stream of money flowing from all of us to a few already-wealthy executives and owners.

It is so clear now what our system has become. The wealthy have a lock on our politics, and we can't help but see it. It is in the way of getting anything done. It is blocking our ability to do anything about our urgent problems like health care, climate change, financial reform, and of course the low-wage, everything-to-the-top structure of our jobs.

The other day I wrote, Concentration Of Wealth = An Influence Lock On Our Politics,

Full Story Seeing the Forest: Getting Corporate Money Out Of Politics Must Become Our #1 Priority.

Generics chafe under big pharma’s reform shadow

The massive U.S. Senate healthcare reform measure passed on Thursday with support from the multibillion drug industry, but makers of cheaper generic rivals are feeling left out in the cold.

Generic drugmakers face several obstacles in the bill backed by Democrats that they worry will dampen a potential increase in use even as more people gain access to health insurance and prescription medicines.

The hurdles include extensive protections against generic versions of pricey biotech medicines, an incentive for Medicare recipients to use more brand-name drugs, and a possible end to payments from brandname makers to delay the launch of copy-cat medicines.

“The bill passed by the Senate unfortunately amounts to a treasure trove to brand drug companies,” said Generic Pharmaceutical Association President Kathleen Jaeger, whose group represents Mylan, Watson Pharmaceuticals and Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, among other companies.

President Barack Obama has often pointed to generics as a key way to cut costs, but big pharmaceutical makers such as Pfizer and Merck came to lawmakers and the White House with an $80 billion, 10-year pact to cut prices and pay additional taxes to help fund the expansion of health insurance coverage.

Full Story Generics chafe under big pharma’s reform shadow | Reuters.

   Christians United for War 

As today is Christmas Eve, it might be useful for those of us who call ourselves Christians to recall the teachings of Jesus Christ regarding humility, charity, tolerance, and peacemaking. The Christian message should be particularly welcome to the American people who have borne the burden of nearly continuous warfare since 2001, resulting in the deaths of more than 5,300 Americans and hundreds of thousands of foreigners at an appalling cost to the US economy. The message is particularly appropriate for Christmas 2009 because it appears that many so-called Christian leaders are urging the United States government to take steps that will inevitably lead to a new war, this time against Iran.

On December 10th a group calling itself the Christian Leaders for a Nuclear-Free Iran sent a letter to both political parties’ leaders in Congress as well as to the chairman and ranking member of the House Foreign Relations committee. The letter, beginning “We write today as Christian leaders,” preceded a December 15th vote in the House of Representatives in which 412 house members approved the Iran Refined Petroleum Sanctions Act of 2009, with only twelve votes opposed. The sanctions proposed by the House of Representatives and endorsed by the Christian leadership have correctly been seen by many as amounting to an act of war.

The Christian Leaders’ letter was signed by many prominent evangelicals including Christians United For Israel founder John Hagee, Pat Robertson of the Christian Broadcasting Network, Chuck Colson, Gary Bauer of American Values, and Richard Land. Land, who appears to be the driving force behind the letter, is president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention. There are also several Catholics among the thirty-seven signatories, which is surprising as the Vatican has repeatedly expressed its repugnance towards the ongoing conflict in the Middle East. One signatory Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, has an interesting moral compass. In defense of the Catholic priests who assaulted young boys he once explained “After all, most 15-year-old teenage boys wouldn’t allow themselves to be molested.” He has also stated that “Hollywood likes anal sex” and that the film industry is controlled by “secular Jews who hate Christianity.” Donohue’s signature might be a bizarre mea culpa for his nasty comments about Jews because it aligns him firmly with AIPAC on the issue of Iran, but it places him in strange company with Hagee, who hates Catholicism and has blamed the Catholic Church for the Holocaust.

Full Story Christians United for War           : Information Clearing House -  ICH.

OPS: If Jesus were alive today – he wouldn’t call himself a Christian

Dred Scott Redux: Obama and the Supremes Stand Up for Slavery

While we were all out doing our Christmas shopping, the highest court in the land quietly put the kibosh on a few more of the remaining shards of human liberty.

It happened earlier this week, in a discreet ruling that attracted almost no notice and took little time. In fact, our most august defenders of the Constitution did not have to exert themselves in the slightest to eviscerate not merely 220 years of Constitutional jurisprudence but also centuries of agonizing effort to lift civilization a few inches out of the blood-soaked mire that is our common human legacy. They just had to write a single sentence.

Here's how the bad deal went down. After hearing passionate arguments from the Obama Administration, the Supreme Court acquiesced to the president's fervent request and, in a one-line ruling, let stand a lower court decision that declared torture an ordinary, expected consequence of military detention, while introducing a shocking new precedent for all future courts to follow: anyone who is arbitrarily declared a “suspected enemy combatant” by the president or his designated minions is no longer a “person.” They will simply cease to exist as a legal entity. They will have no inherent rights, no human rights, no legal standing whatsoever — save whatever modicum of process the government arbitrarily deigns to grant them from time to time, with its ever-shifting tribunals and show trials.

Full Story Dred Scott Redux: Obama and the Supremes Stand Up for Slavery.

Recession Alters Migration Patterns in U.S.

The recession has had a profound effect on migration patterns in the U.S., reversing the flow of people to former housing-boom states such as Florida and Nevada, the latest data from the Census Bureau show.

In the year ending July 1, 2009, Florida — once the top draw for Americans in search of work and warmer climes — lost more than 31,000 residents to other states, the Census Bureau reported Wednesday. Nevada lost nearly 4,000. The numbers are small compared with the states’ populations, but they reflect a significant change in direction: In the year ending July 2006, Florida and Nevada attracted net inflows 141,448 and 41,640 people, respectively.

“The recession coupled with the mortgage meltdown stopped the dominant migration story of the last decade in its tracks,” said William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. “The real question is when the Sunbelt states are going to be able to come back. These new numbers suggest no end in sight.”

Full Story Recession Alters Migration Patterns in U.S. – WSJ.com.

Abstinence proponents look for aid from new health bill – washingtonpost.com

Proponents of sex education classes that focus on encouraging teenagers to remain virgins until marriage are hoping that the rescue plan for the nation’s health-care system will also save their programs, which are facing extinction because of a cutoff of federal funding.

The health-care reform legislation pending in the Senate includes $50 million for programs that states could use to try to reduce pregnancies and sexually transmitted disease among adolescents by teaching to them to delay when they start having sex.

Under the federal budget signed by President Obama, such programs would no longer have funds targeted for them.

“We’re optimistic,” said Valerie Huber of the National Abstinence Education Association, which is lobbying to maintain funding for the programs. “Nothing is certain, but we’re hopeful.”

Full Story Abstinence proponents look for aid from new health bill – washingtonpost.com.

OPS: It’s about time we stopped wasting this money. AO programs have proves to be utter failures

US KNEW ABOUT TERROR SUSPECT FOR TWO YEARS

Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab: US Knew Suspect May Have Terrorist Ties, AP Reports

An official briefed on the attack on a Detroit airliner said Saturday the U.S. has known for at least two years that the suspect in the attack could have terrorist ties.

The official told The Associated Press that the suspect, Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab, has been on a list that includes people with known or suspected contact or ties to a terrorist or terrorist organization. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing.

The Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment list is maintained by the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center. It includes about 550,000 names.

People on that list are not necessarily on the no-fly list. Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., said Mutallab was not on the no-fly list.

Full Story Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab: US Knew Suspect May Have Terrorist Ties, AP Reports.

55 companies miss payment of TARP dividends: study

Fifty-five financial companies failed to pay dividends in November on money they borrowed from the U.S. government, bank research firm SNL said on Wednesday.

That number swelled from 33 companies that missed an August payment on government funds, according to an SNL analysis of government data.

The rising dividend deferrals signal that even as some banks are deemed healthy enough to repay the United States — Wells Fargo & Co (WFC.N), for example, said on Wednesday that it gave $25 billion back to the government — many others are struggling.

U.S. regulators have closed 140 banks this year, the most since 1992, as a real estate downturn and broader credit crunch have hobbled many banks' balance sheets.

Full Story 55 companies miss payment of TARP dividends: study – Yahoo! News.

US approves million-dollar pay for bailed out execs

US officials unveiled pay packages for top executives at bailed-out housing finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac worth as much as six million dollars in a new step back from a clampdown on executive compensation.

Documents filed by the regulator for the two firms showed Fannie Mae chief executive Michael Williams and Freddie Mac CEO Charles Haldeman could each earn up to six million dollars per year, although some of that may depend on the performance of the companies and a portion will be deferred compensation.

Six other high-level executives at Fannie Mae and four others at Freddie Mac could earn over one million dollars, depending on performance,.

Full Story US approves million-dollar pay for bailed out execs | Raw Story.

Whole Foods CEO to Give up Title of Chairman

Whole Foods CEO to give up chairman title after activist shareholder calls for his replacement

The chief executive of organic supermarket chain Whole Foods Market Inc. is giving up his title of chairman, following years of petitioning by an activist shareholder to separate the two roles.

Co-founder and CEO John Mackey is voluntarily giving up his chairmanship, a position he’s held since the Austin, Texas, company’s inception in 1978, according to a Thursday filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Mackey will remain on the board.

Whole Foods said lead director John Elstrott will become chairman. His current position will be discontinued.

At Whole Foods’ annual shareholders meeting in March, CtW Investment Group, a shareholder activist group that works with union pension funds, unsuccessfully proposed that the CEO and chairman roles be separated. The grocer said it has been receiving these proposals for three years.

Full Story Whole Foods CEO to Give up Title of Chairman – ABC News.

France proposes ban on Islamic veils

France’s ruling party says it plans to present a bill to parliament next month, which would ban the wearing of full Islamic veils in all public places. The party says the move should be seen as “a law of liberation.”

France’s ruling party, the conservative Union Pour un Mouvement Populaire (UMP), says it plans to present a bill to parliament in January, which would ban full Islamic veils in all public places. The bill is to be presented in the first two weeks of next month, just before the conclusions of a French parliamentary inquiry on the burqa and niqab are published.

Jean-Francois Cope, the parliamentary party leader of the UMP, said the measure was meant to defend France from extremists.

“There are principles at stake: Extremists are putting the republic to the test by promoting a practice that they know is contrary to the basic principles of our country,” he said.

Veils “not welcome” in France

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has said that veils that hide women’s faces in public are “not welcome” in France. Most politicians say they would like to see the results of the parliamentary inquiry on the veils before they decide on the need for a law.

Full Story France proposes ban on Islamic veils | Europe | Deutsche Welle | 23.12.2009.

Obama Extends Diplomatic Immunity to Interpol by Executive Order

President Obama has issued an amendment to Executive Order 12425, designating the international law enforcement agency Interpol as a “public international organization,” thus extending diplomatic immunity to the law enforcement group

The amendment to the Executive Order — which does not need to be put to the senatorial test of “advise and consent” — reads:

“By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including section 1 of the International Organizations Immunities Act (22 U.S.C. 288), and in order to extend the appropriate privileges, exemptions, and immunities to the International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL), it is hereby ordered that Executive Order 12425 of June 16, 1983, as amended, is further amended by deleting from the first sentence the words “except those provided by Section 2(c), Section 3, Section 4, Section 5, and Section 6 of that Act” and the semicolon that immediately precedes them.”

The text of Section 2(c), which now applies to Interpol states:

Full Story The New Media Journal | Obama Extends Diplomatic Immunity to Interpol by Executive Order.

Solutions to Mexico’s Drug Crisis

To weaken the cartels, some argue the U.S. should legalize marijuana, let cocaine pass through the Caribbean and take the profit motive out of the drug trade

In the 40 years since U.S. President Richard Nixon declared a “war on drugs,” the supply and use of drugs has not changed in any fundamental way. The only difference: a taxpayer bill of more than $1 trillion.

A senior Mexican official who has spent more than two decades helping fight the government’s war on drugs summed up recently what he’s learned from his long career: “This war is not winnable.”

Full Story Solutions to Mexico’s Drug Crisis – WSJ.com.

OPS:  For 30 years most have known this is the only way out.

29% of Americans say religion ‘out of date’

A Gallup poll of Americans’ attitudes towards religion released on Christmas Eve found significant recent increases in those responding either that they have no religious preference, that religion is not very important in their lives, or that they believe religion “is largely old-fashioned or out of date.”

Only 78% of Americans now identify as Christian, while 22% describe their religious preference as either “other” or “none.”

Most of these changes have occurred since 2000 and represent the first significant shift since a sharp decline in religious adherence during the 1970s. Over the last nine years, the number with no religious preference has grown from a level of around 8% to 13%. The number for whom religion is not very important has climbed from just over 10% to 19%. And the number who believe religion is out of date and has no answers for today’s problems has jumped from slightly more than 20% to 29%.

These changes do not appear to have affected the majority of Americans who still consider religion “very important” in their own lives. That figure remains at 56% — roughly the same as for the last 35 years — while 57% still say religion has answers to most of the world’s problems.

Full Story 29% of Americans say religion ‘out of date’ | Raw Story.

Fuel spill at same Alaska reef as Exxon Valdez

A tugboat struck the same reef as the Exxon Valdez tanker 20 years ago, spilling diesel into Alaska’s Prince William Sound and creating a three-mile-long slick, the US Coast Guard said on Friday.

An unknown quantity of the fuel leaked from the Pathfinder tug after it ran aground Wednesday on Bligh Reef. The boat’s owners were pumping the remaining diesel from the original 33,500 gallons (127,000 liters) in its tanks.

Flyovers by a C-130 cargo plane and helicopters revealed “a light grey or silver diesel sheen spanning an area approximately three miles (five kilometers) long and 30 yards (meters) wide approximately one mile east of Glacier Island,” the Coast Guard said on its website.

The tug had been scouting shipping lanes for ice when it struck the same rock that did for the Exxon Valdez on March 24, 1989, spilling 11 million gallons of crude into the sea in the worst US oil disaster.

Full Story Fuel spill at same Alaska reef as Exxon Valdez – Yahoo! Philippines News.

Kucinich: Obama should fire generals who spoke out on Afghan surge | Raw Story

Obama ‘giving his generals a little too much leeway’

Congressman Dennis Kucinich says President Barack Obama ought to fire the generals who publicly aired their views on the war in Afghanistan during this fall’s deliberations on a troop surge.

The Ohio Democrat known for his anti-war views said there is “no question” that the president was pressured by the military into approving a 30,000-troop surge.

“Some of [Obama's] generals made remarks publicly, which is unheard of,” Kucinich told Russia Today. “Generals are subordinate to the Commander-in-Chief. When generals start trying to suggest publicly what the president should do, they shouldn’t be generals anymore. That’s the way it works. And frankly, President Obama, who is a good man, has given his generals a little too much leeway.”

Full Story Kucinich: Obama should fire generals who spoke out on Afghan surge | Raw Story.

Health Insurance Industry Registers Its Disapproval Of Senate Health Care Bill

In the New York Times today, Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman writes in defense of the Senate health care bill. “[F]or all its flaws and limitations, it’s a great achievement,” he says. “It will provide real, concrete help to tens of millions of Americans and greater security to everyone.” But the health insurance industry and business lobbyists weren’t quite as joyous in their reaction.

The Hill writes, “the health insurance industry expressed disappointed opposition…and big-business groups slammed the bill.” The Indianapolis Star adds, “The big losers, at the moment, seem to be insurers.” Here’s a sampling of their reactions:

– The health insurance lobby, America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), criticized the Senate health care bill, arguing it would “increase, rather than decrease, health care costs; reduce coverage options; and disrupt existing coverage for families, seniors and small businesses.”

Full Story Think Progress » Health Insurance Industry Registers Its Disapproval Of Senate Health Care Bill.

Connecting The Dots For Pete Hoekstra: Obama Administration Has Been Focused On Yemen

Connecting The Dots For Pete Hoekstra: Obama Administration Has Been Focused On Yemen

In his effort to politicize yesterday’s failed attempted terrorist attack, Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-MI) suggested the Obama administration has thus far failed to “connect the dots.” In a tweet last night, Hoekstra seemed to say that the Obama administration hasn’t paid enough attention to Yemen:

The suspect — 23 year old Nigerian Abdul Farouk Abdulmutallab — claimed to be given orders from al Qaeda in Yemen and was given an explosive device by Yemeni operatives. Hoekstra is woefully uninformed if he thinks the Obama administration hasn’t “connected the dots” to Yemen.

Yemeni security forces carried out airstrikes and ground raids against suspected al Qaeda hide-outs over the past two weeks “with what American officials described as ‘intelligence and firepower’ supplied by the United States. The assaults were Yemen’s widest offensive against jihadists in years.” President Obama reportedly personally approved the use of “military hardware, intelligence and other support to Yemeni forces” in their assault on al Qaeda.

Full Story Think Progress » Connecting The Dots For Pete Hoekstra: Obama Administration Has Been Focused On Yemen.

Catholic Hospitals Endorse Senate Abortion Compromise

The Catholic Health Association — which represents hundreds of Catholic hospitals across the country — said said in a statement that it was ‘encouraged’ and ‘increasingly confident‘ that the abortion compromise in the Senate health care bill “can achieve the objective of no federal funding for abortion.’” The announcement represents a break from the the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ strong opposition to the Senate’s less stringent restrictions and provides critical political cover for pro-life Democrats who are hesitant to vote for a bill opposed by Catholic organizations. Under the Senate measure, women are required to purchase abortion services with private premiums and pay for the care with a separate transaction. States could also prohibit insurers in the exchange from offering abortion services.

The NYT explains the theological underpinnings of the endorsement:

Full Story Think Progress » Catholic Hospitals Endorse Senate Abortion Compromise.

Rep. Keith Ellison: Public Option Still Possible If We Get Loud

Ellison still fighting.

Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) said Thursday on Twitter that the fight for the public option was still on. Ellison tweeted: “Don’t Quit on #PO. Still very possible if we get loud now.”

From the Hill:

Ellison’s words match the sentiments of several House Democrats who in recent days have said they would fight hard to keep provisions from their bill in the final proposal after it emerges from conference committee.

But Democratic senators have firmly held that their bill will take precedence over the House’s when the two are merged.

House Rules Committee Chairwoman Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.) on Wednesday said the Senate’s bill is so fundamentally flawed that the effort should be scrapped and lawmakers should go back to the drawing board. Slaughter’s comments echo Republican calls to kill the bill.

Full Story Rep. Keith Ellison: Public Option Still Possible If We Get Loud | PEEK | AlterNet.

3 Reasons Why Progressives Are So Frustrated

Really, it’s pretty simple.

If I may be so bold, I believe I can sum up, in three main points why progressives are so frustrated right now:

1. They are on the short-end of a left-progressive vs. Third Way ideological divide with the leadership of the American center-left coalition;
2. In attempts to not be on the short-end of #1, and persuade the coalition rank and file to join them, they face a massive organizational deficit against the coalition leadership;
3. Finally, if progressives look to split with the coalition in response to #1 and #2, more often than not they just end up getting squashed for it.

Full explanation on the flip side.

The ideological / policy divide within the Democratic coalition. The roots of the frustration arises from an ideological divide within the party pitting the progressive left, which seeks to use the public sector for public ends, versus the centrist, Third Way, New Democrat approach of using a subsidized and regulated private sector to achieve public ends.  Ed Kilgore nailed this ideological difference in his recent essay Taking Ideological Differences Seriously:

Full Story 3 Reasons Why Progressives Are So Frustrated | PEEK | AlterNet.

New Year’s Resolutions To Help Make Corporate Fat Cats and Our Politicians Human Again

Jim Hightower  -

This special season got me to thinking about America’s spirit of giving, and I don’t mean this overdone business of Christmas gifts. I mean our true spirit of giving — giving of ourselves.

Yes, we are a country of rugged individualists, yet there’s also a deep, community-minded streak in each of us. We’re a people who believe in the notion that we’re all in this together, that we can make our individual lives better by contributing to the common good.

The establishment media pay little attention to grassroots generosity, focusing instead on the occasional showy donation by what it calls “philanthropists” — big tycoons who give a tiny piece of their billions to some university or museum in exchange for getting a building named after them. But in my mind, the real philanthropists are the millions of you ordinary folks who have precious little money to give, but consistently give of yourselves.

My own daddy, rest his soul, was a fine example of this. With half a dozen other guys in Denison, Texas, he started the Little League baseball program, volunteering to build the park, sponsor and coach the teams, run the squawking P.A. system, etc., etc. Even after I moved on from Little League, he stayed working at it, because his involvement was not merely for his kids … but for all.

Full Story New Year’s Resolutions To Help Make Corporate Fat Cats and Our Politicians Human Again | | AlterNet.

Autumn of the Republic?

Three books suggest America has slipped into a polarized state of undermined self-government. None convincingly suggests how we can slip back out.

Did America slip into a semiliterate, polarized, pre-fascist state over the past decade or so, allowing greedy oligarchs and corporate elites to run the government? Two books I recently read offer reasonably persuasive evidence and arguments that the country did, and a third suggests that dictatorial mindsets could besiege Americans, with an assist from the Internet, if they don’t come to their more deliberative senses. Each of the books offers an informed diagnosis of the dangers that widespread ignorance and ideological polarization pose for American democracy, though none offers a comprehensive treatment for the malaise.

I read the three books in less than two weeks; friends ask how that was possible. The trick is to avoid not only Facebook and Twitter but also: celebrity news, cable news, Oprah, Jerry Springer, American Idol, The Swan, other reality-TV shows, professional wrestling, violent pornography, positive psychology and right-wing Christian fundamentalism.

Full Story Politics Articles | Book Reviews — Autumn of the Republic? | Miller-McCune Online Magazine.

Another Historic Bailout: Health Insurance Industry Defeats Public Will, Public Health « COTO Report

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act passed the Senate on Christmas Eve, forever memorializing President Obama’s squeeze on tens of millions of poor Americans. In perfect Scrooge fashion, the bill mandates those who cannot afford health insurance to buy it.

The insurance industry exists solely on profits garnered by denying healthcare. A majority of US citizens rebuked the middleman plan, but Obama and the Democrats pushed to support another industry bailout at the expense of the public. Talk about class war.

Not since 1895 has the Senate voted on Christmas Eve. Then, it was “to overturn a law that banned former Confederate Army officers from employment in the U.S. Army,” reports ABC News. This time, it’s to force poor people into insurance they cannot afford. My, have times changed.

Obama boasted his plan was “historic.”

Full Story Another Historic Bailout: Health Insurance Industry Defeats Public Will, Public Health « COTO Report.

Peter Dreier: Pass the Health Care Bill – Then Improve It

There are many lessons to learn from the health care war that has raged over the past year. We’ll get to some of them below. But here’s the bottom line: Pass the bill, then improve it.

The health care bill that will emerge from the House-Senate conference committee won’t be what most progressives had hoped for, but it is a major, historic turning point in American social reform legislation, comparable to the Social Security Act, the National Labor Relations (Wagner) Act, the Fair Labor Standards (minimum wage/40 hour week) Act, the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, the Clean Air Act, and other progressive breakthroughs. None of those laws were what their advocates wanted. They all involved compromises that, at the time, were heart-breaking to activists. Each one was subsequently improved by amendments, although not without reformers doing battle with reactionary opponents.

It is incredibly irresponsible for some radicals and progressives to call for killing the health care bill. It is important to push for changes that would improve the Senate version of the bill. For example, the House funding plan (a tax on families with incomes over $1 million) is much better than the Senate version (a tax on so-called “Cadillac” health insurance plans). That’s what the labor movement, liberal and progressive Democrats in Congress, pro-choice advocates, and others will be doing in hopes of putting a better bill on President Obama’s desk, as Harold Meyerson discusses in his latest Washington Post column.

Full Story Peter Dreier: Pass the Health Care Bill – Then Improve It.

Obama and the Permanent War Budget

It’s been a good decade for the Pentagon. The most recent numbers from Capitol Hill indicate that Pentagon spending (counting Iraq and Afghanistan) will reach over $630 billion in 2010. And that doesn’t even include the billions set aside for building new military facilities and sustaining the U.S. nuclear arsenal.

But even without counting the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Department of Defense budget has been moving relentlessly upward since 2001. Pentagon budget authority has jumped from $296 billion in 2001 to $513 billion in 2009, a 73% increase. And again, that’s not even counting the over $1 trillion in taxpayer money that has been thrown at the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Even if those wars had never happened, the Pentagon would still be racking up huge increases year after year after year.

And perhaps most disturbing of all, the Pentagon budget increased for every year of the first decade of the 21st century, an unprecedented run that didn’t even happen in the World War II era, much less during Korea or Vietnam. And if the government’s current plans are carried out, there will be yearly increases in military spending for at least another decade.

Full Story Foreign Policy in Focus | Obama and the Permanent War Budget.

Len Hart: Who Owns America and Why!

Always severely divided in one way or another, the U.S. has become two nations –one of the very,very rich elite on the one end and the rest of us on the other. The rich have literally waged war upon the poor since the nation’s founding. The so-called ‘Robber Baron Era’ was notable for preceding and causing the Great Depression.

Income and wealth disparities are even worse now! As a direct result of Reagan/Bush tax cuts benefiting only the upper classes just ONE PERCENT of the U.S. population owns more than 95 percent of everyone else combined. Poverty is higher among every minority group. A ‘ruling elite’ of just one percent is primarily White Anglo Saxon Protestant.

…two Americas…one privileged, the other burdened…one America that does the work, another that reaps the reward. One America that pays the taxes, another America that gets the tax breaks.

–Sen. John Edwards

Edwards was absolutely correct and, if anything, understated the problem. It is not surprising that the ruling elites, the establishment, and the fossilized leadership of the GOP would respond with yet another label: class warfare! If ‘class warfare’ it be, then ‘bring it on’!

Full Story The Existentialist Cowboy: Who Owns America and Why!.

CNN goes brain dead over Sean Goldman’s return

Little things mean a lot and CNN recently did a piece on the return of Sean Goldman to his father and their return to the United States. The Goldman’s first stop is going to be Orlando where David Goldman is going to take his son to Disney World.

Frederica Whitfield reporting on the return of Sean Goldman questioned Ines Ferre, the correspondent covering the return and Whitfield opened the interview wanting to know the answer to what she seemed to think was a very perplexing question that she wanted the correspondent to answer.

Given all that’s happened in the Goldman case, the angst, the five years of legal wrangling, the fact that a trade agreement between the U.S. and Brazil and been held up in the senate because of it, and after reporting that David and Sean Goldman upon reaching the US were going to make their first at Disney World, the question the CNN anchor felt she needed an answer to was, “Why Disney”?

Let’s see. Nine year old boy, separated from his father for 5 years in a foreign country, after years of legal delays is finally reunited with his father, father picks him up in Brazil, returns to the U.S. and the first thing he does is take son to Disney World. Strange isnt it? We’re lucky to have such incisive journalists at CNN who know how to get right to the heart of a news story.

Full Story CNN goes brain dead over Sean Goldman’s return.

GOP lawmakers change tune on costly health plans

Democrats are troubled by the inconsistency of Republican lawmakers who approved a major Medicare expansion six years ago that has added tens of billions of dollars to federal deficits, but oppose current health overhaul plans.

All current GOP senators, including the 24 who voted for the 2003 Medicare expansion, oppose the health care bill that's backed by President Barack Obama and most congressional Democrats.

The Democrats claim that their plan moving through Congress now will pay for itself with higher taxes and spending cuts and they cite the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office for support.

By contrast, when Republicans controlled the House, Senate and White House in 2003, they overcame Democratic opposition to add a deficit-financed prescription drug benefit to Medicare. The program will cost a half-trillion dollars over 10 years, or more by some estimates.

Full Story GOP lawmakers change tune on costly health plans – Yahoo! News.

“You’re screwed”: GOP plan for America right on schedule

In Mike’s most recent Nota Bene, he points us to a disturbing, if not altogether surprising little vignette from Capitol Hill.

When House Democrats gathered on Friday for their end-of-the week caucus meeting in the basement of the Capitol, caucus chairman John Larson (D-Conn.) told the group he wanted them to hear first from Rep. Michael Capuano, who’d just returned from a primary campaign for the Senate seat in Massachusetts vacated by the death of Ted Kennedy.

Larson asked Capuano, who finished in second place, to share the wisdom he learned on the campaign trail.

Capuano took to the microphone, looked out at his colleagues and condensed what he’d learned into two words. “You’re screwed,” he told his friends in the House, according to one attendee. The room’s silence was broken only by soft, nervous laughter.

Indeed, although I suspect there’s a word that comes closer to conveying the full measure of the predicament better than “screwed.”

Full Story Scholars and Rogues » “You’re screwed”: GOP plan for America right on schedule.

The Individual Mandate: An Unconstitutional Exercise of Congressional Power

It is generally agreed, by both proponents and opponents of the Administration’s health reform bill, that the lynchpin of the legislation is the individual mandate requiring uninsured Americans to obtain health insurance, or pay a tax penalty for failing to do so. Without the mandate, even the Administration’s wildly exaggerated cost savings estimates simply cannot work. The whole plan is predicated on enlarging the risk pool by bringing in younger, healthier people who currently lack the means or the incentive – or both – to purchase health insurance.

Given the centrality of the mandate, it is somewhat surprising that little attention has been paid to the critical legal question of whether Congress has the constitutional authority to require Americans to purchase a commodity from a private, for-profit corporation. Other than some limited commentary on the Right — George Will and Orrin Hatch both had columns on this topic in the Washington Post and the Heritage Foundation recently published a detailed legal analysis of the question – there has been almost no critical discussion of the issue. The silence on this issue is even more amazing in view of the fact that the Congressional Budget Office raised a red flag on the question during the Clinton Administration’s abortive effort at health care reform:

A mandate requiring all individuals to purchase health insurance would be an unprecedented form of federal action. The government has never required people to buy any good or service as a condition of lawful residence in the United States.

Full Story The Individual Mandate: An Unconstitutional Exercise of Congressional Power | AfterDowningStreet.org.

Israel summons envoys from all over the world

Israel’s ambassadors and consuls generals from all over the world have been summoned to attend a conference to be held over global challenges facing Israel.

The meeting to be attended in Jerusalem Al-Quds on December 27-31 is hosted by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, headed by Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, the ministry reported on its website.

“The idea is to facilitate direct dialogue with the country’s leaders, mutual updates on major diplomatic issues, and a discussion of action plans to deal with the challenges awaiting Israel in the international arena in the coming year, including the Iranian threat,” it said.

Full Story Israel summons envoys from all over the world.

Illinois police protect atheist sign

A conservative candidate for Illinois comptroller was ordered out of the state Capitol for trying to remove a sign placed by an atheist group, officials said.

William J. Kelly calls the sign, placed by the Freedom from Religion Foundation, “hate speech,” saying it mocks the views of believers, CBS2Chicago.com reported. He announced Tuesday he was going to try to remove it and made his attempt Wednesday, only to be detained by police.

“I don't think the State of Illinois has any business denigrating or mocking any religion, and I think that's what the verbiage on the sign was doing,” Kelly said.

The foundation has placed similar signs in several state capitol buildings. It was on display in the Illinois Capitol last year.

Full Story Illinois police protect atheist sign – UPI.com.

Sanders Strengthens Senate Health Bill

It’s been a rough week for democracy and genuine healthcare reform.

The Senate revealed itself to be a deeply flawed institution better suited to sausage making than democratic deliberation. The doling out of party favors has resulted in a historic but watered down bill to expand healthcare coverage to 30 million more Americans. Widely shared reform goals–a public option, Medicare expansion–have been killed off by turncoat Senators like Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson, an anti-democratic filibuster, and a White House unwilling to lead more boldly.

But step back for a moment and look at how a few Senators have worked to leaven this flawed bill–adding some decent and humane measures.

Without fanfare, the good Senator from Vermont, Bernie Sanders, has continued to work behind the scenes to champion community health centers–something he has done for years (also here). These non-profit, community-based facilities provide primary healthcare, dental care, mental health services, and low-cost prescription drugs on a sliding scale. As amendments were added in recent days to win over the Liebermans and Nelsons of the “greatest [undemocratic] deliberative body” in the world, Sanders made sure that a $10 billion increase in funding for the health centers was included.

Full Story Sanders Strengthens Senate Health Bill.

U.S. Patriot Act: ‘Tea Baggers’ are Domestic Terrorists !

Len Hart,  -

Tea Baggers and on-air personalities who have threatened President Barack Obama with death are ‘Domestic Terrorists’ as defined by the U.S. Patriot Act. Threats against Obama are up 400% over those against Bush and according to many sources, the Secret Service is not able to keep up.

A recent exchange on YouTube convinces me that it is time to to deal with lawless tea baggers while making a point about the rule of law. Those threatening the life of the President have, in fact, sought to ‘(i) intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion’. That means that threatening the life of the President is an act of terrorism.

Section 802 (Pub. L. No. 107-52) which expands the definition to cover “domestic”. terrorism ” …if the act appears to be intended to: (i) intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion …”

–U. S. Patriot Act

The Southern Poverty Law Center says that the U.S. has seen a 35 percent rise in hate groups in recent years, and few doubt that the discontent stirred up over the election of an African-American president is fueling the rise in threats. But, could the influx of modern technology also be to blame?

Full Story The Existentialist Cowboy: U.S. Patriot Act: ‘Tea Baggers’ are Domestic Terrorists !.

Republican prayer on healthcare reform blows up in their face

Before the healthcare reform vote in the Senate, Republican senator Tom Coburn, who had already distinguished himself as someone not worth listening to, urged Americans to pray that “somebody cant make the vote tonight. That’s what they ought to pray”.

Well, maybe conservatives got a message they weren’t too happy about because their prayer was answered. Except it was conservative Republican senator James Inhofe who opposed the healthcare bill who is the one who didn’t show up.

You would think that might be enough to make many conservatives, especially those that call themselves religious reconsider their positions on healthcare reform. But only those who werent blatant hypocrites and so far there have been none.

Full Story Republican prayer on healthcare reform blows up in their face.

Chinese dissident sentenced to 11 years in jail

One of China’s leading dissidents was sentenced to 11 years in jail on Friday for “inciting subversion of state power”, charges which have prompted the sharpest confrontation over human rights in recent years between western governments and Beijing.

Liu Xiaobo, a former university professor, had pleaded not guilty to the charges, which are based on six articles he published on the internet and his role in organising Charter 08, a petition demanding the end of one-party rule in China.

At a time when China’s growing power and influence have muted some criticism of its human rights record – it revised up its 2008 growth to 9.6 per cent on Friday – Mr Liu’s trial has led to a rare full-blown argument between Beijing and western governments.

Full Story FT.com / Asia-Pacific – Chinese dissident sentenced to 11 years in jail.

Fannie And Freddie Receive Unlimited Future Funds To Stay Afloat

The government has handed its ATM card to beleaguered mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

The Treasury Department said Thursday it removed the $400 billion financial cap on the money it will provide to keep the companies afloat. Already, taxpayers have shelled out $111 billion to the pair, and a senior Treasury official said losses are not expected to exceed the government's estimate this summer of $170 billion over 10 years.

Treasury Department officials said it will now use a flexible formula to ensure the two agencies can stand behind the billions of dollars in mortgage-backed securities they sell to investors. Under the formula, financial support would increase according to how much each firm loses in a quarter. The cap in place at the end of 2012 would apply thereafter.

By making the change before year-end, Treasury sidestepped the need for an OK from a bailout-weary Congress.

Full Story Fannie And Freddie Receive Unlimited Future Funds To Stay Afloat.

Hacker: I Broke Kindle’s DRM

An Israeli hacker going by the handle “Labba” claims he has found a method which breaks the copyright protection on the Kindle, allowing the user to transfer eBooks purchased on the device as a PDF to another device. Kindles use a proprietary format “.azw” which prevents transfer to another device.

Not all books for Kindle include DRM – Amazon leaves it up to the publisher to decide whether or not they would like to protect their content. It is likely the company will rush to patch the hole opened by the hacker, although it was not immediately responding to requests for comment Wednesday.

The hack was developed as an entry to a contest on hacking.org.il, where participants were tasked with finding a way to open up the AZW format to allow it to be read on other devices. The hack took about eight days for Labba to complete. The hack is actually an application that is installed onto the device, which then converts the files to the mobi format. Be forwarned though that Amazon has apparently already pushed out code for the Kindle that breaks these scripts, although it is reported it does not auto-update the device.

Full Story Hacker: I Broke Kindle’s DRM – PC World.

Alcohol’s Neolithic Origins: Brewing Up a Civilization

Did our Neolithic ancestors turn to agriculture so that they could be sure of a tipple? US Archaeologist Patrick McGovern thinks so. The expert on identifying traces of alcohol in prehistoric sites reckons the thirst for a brew was enough of an incentive to start growing crops.

It turns out the fall of man probably didn’t begin with an apple. More likely, it was a handful of mushy figs that first led humankind astray.

Here is how the story likely began — a prehistoric human picked up some dropped fruit from the ground and popped it unsuspectingly into his or her mouth. The first effect was nothing more than an agreeably bittersweet flavor spreading across the palate. But as alcohol entered the bloodstream, the brain started sending out a new message — whatever that was, I want more of it!

Full Story Alcohol’s Neolithic Origins: Brewing Up a Civilization – SPIEGEL ONLINE – News – International.

Judge strikes down Richmond’s Chevron tax

In a blow to financially strapped Richmond and a $20 million victory for Chevron Corp., a Contra Costa County judge has struck down a tax approved by voters last year that assessed the company for the value of the crude oil it refines in the city.

Measure T is unconstitutional because the tax is out of proportion to the business Chevron does in Richmond and the services it receives there, said Superior Court Judge David Flinn.

He said the tax also violates state law because it is based on the value of materials that Chevron uses in its refinery. Only the state can impose such a use tax, Flinn said.

He said Chevron is entitled to a refund.

Michael Colantuono, a lawyer for Richmond, said Thursday that the city will appeal the Dec. 16 ruling.

Full Story Judge strikes down Richmond’s Chevron tax.

Demand for fuel assistance spikes

Driven by demand created by residents who are either unemployed or aren’t making enough money, the director of Rockingham County’s fuel assistance program said the need for help with winter heating is great.

“The need is probably greater this year, and it’s not because the cost of fuel has been up,” said Sharon Brody.

The energy and client services director for the Portsmouth office of the Rockingham Community Action told the Herald last week that about 4,700 applicants had signed up for the service, and about 3,000 had been accepted. During the short fuel crisis of 2008 and early 2009 when prices climbed past $4 a gallon at times, Brody said RCA only received a total of 6,500 applications through April.

Brody said each of the four regional offices is averaging 50 to 70 people per day, a number likely to stay steady until about February. At that point, she said, utility companies who have not received pay for their services are more willing to shut off the power for residences as the weather warms a little, leaving residents with a need for fuel assistance that will pick the number of requests back up again.

Full Story Demand for fuel assistance spikes | SeacoastOnline.com.

Chimps use cleavers and anvils as tools to chop food

For the first time, chimpanzees have been seen using tools to chop up and reduce food into smaller bite-sized portions.

Chimps in the Nimba Mountains of Guinea, Africa, use both stone and wooden cleavers, as well as stone anvils, to process Treculia fruits.

The apes are not simply cracking into the Treculia to get to otherwise unobtainable food, say researchers.

Instead, they are actively chopping up the food into more manageable portions.

Observations of the behaviour are published in the journal Primates.

Full Story BBC – Earth News – Chimps use cleavers and anvils as tools to chop food.

Feingold blasts health reform ‘deal making that secured votes’

Following the passage of the Senate health reform bill Thursday, Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) slammed the special deals President Obama and the Democratic leadership cut with recalcitrant senators down the stretch.

“The Senate health care bill is far from perfect,” Feingold said in a statement backing the bill. “I am deeply disappointed it does not include a public option to help keep down costs and I also don’t like the deal making that secured votes with unjustifiable provisions.”

Feingold’s criticisms appear to be directed primarily at the leadership’s acquiescence to the recent demands of Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NB) and Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) — both of whom were critical to achieving the 60 backers necessary to proceed to a final vote.

Nelson’s sweetener exempted his home state of Nebraska to pay Medicaid expenses, instead ensuring that the federal government picks up the tab. The Congressional Budget Offices estimates that it will save Nebraska hundreds of millions of dollars in the next decade.

Prosecutors in seven states have questioned the Constitutionality of such a compromise, the Associated Press reports.

Full Story Feingold blasts health reform ‘deal making that secured votes’ | Raw Story.

Why the U.S. Must reinstate Tariffs

If the United States simply placed a tariff – or even a quota – on Chinese imports it would be able to counteract the imbalance and make homegrown alternatives seem more reasonable.

The year 1913 was perhaps one of the most important in United States economic history. We were not attacked or embroiled in a foreign war and we did not suffer some economic hardship (just the opposite in fact). We had yet to grant women’s suffrage and our society was still racially segregated. Without major social, military or economic upheaval how could 1913 be such a landmark in our history?

The Sixteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified on February 3, 1913. It granted Congress permanent authority to levy taxes against the income of citizens and remains in place today. In concert with this amendment a law was passed by Congress – the Revenue Act of 1913 – on October 13 which simultaneously re-imposed the fleeting income tax and lowered basic tariffs (from 40 percent to 25 percent).

By switching from tariffs to taxes the government was able to greatly increase the money it brought in and expand itself (the expansion has never stopped to this day). The side-effect however was that it kicked off a century of foolhardy trade policies which have been the death of our modern manufacturing and industrial base. During the throes of the Great Depression the United States – and most other nations around the world – put up major barriers to trade which are said to have worsened the economic climate.

Full Story Why the U.S. Must reinstate Tariffs | Economy In Crisis.

Christmas Eve marks the 3,000th day of the war in Afghanistan, the 30th anniversary of the Soviet invasion.

Christmas Eve marks the 3,000th day of the war in Afghanistan, the 30th anniversary of the Soviet invasion.

Yesterday, Rep. Eric Massa (D-NY) — a 24-year Navy veteran and former Special Assistant to Supreme Allied Commander of NATO Wesley Clark — wrote an op-ed in The Hill noting that today, Christmas Eve, marks the 3,000th day of our war in Afghanistan and also carries another historic significance for the nation of Afghanistan: It’s the 30th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of that country:

As we begin our deployment of 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan, this Christmas Eve will also mark the 3,000th day of the war in Afghanistan and the 30th anniversary of the initial Russian invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. Thus far, this war has already cost the American taxpayer a minimum of $300,000,000,000 according to the Congressional Research Service (and that’s just the funding that’s “on budget”).

Sadly, the fact that we’re spending about $101 million per day in this war is the good news. The financial cost of this war is nothing compared to the fact that 937 American troops have been killed, and 4,434 have been wounded (and that’s not counting the thousands more that will carry the memories of this war for their entire lives).

Full Story Think Progress » Christmas Eve marks the 3,000th day of the war in Afghanistan, the 30th anniversary of the Soviet invasion..

Will Obama Block Sen. McConnell’s Attempt To Dismantle Legal Services For The Poor?

Will Obama Block Sen. McConnell’s Attempt To Dismantle Legal Services For The Poor?

The Legal Services Corporation (LSC) is a federally funded provider of legal services to the poor. By law, no more than six members of the LSC’s 11-member board can be controlled by the same party, so the president traditionally nominates six members of his choosing, and the party-out-of-power’s Senate leader selects the other five.

In 1981, President Reagan tried to dismantle LSC by nominating the head of a right-wing legal organization called the Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF) to chair LSC’s board, although this nomination was eventually withdrawn due to outrage over Reagan’s decision to nominate an attorney to the LSC board who fundamentally disagreed with LSC’s mission. Now, however, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) wants to refight this battle by selecting another PLF attorney named Sharon Browne:

A member of the right-wing Federalist Society, Browne has worked on behalf of a panoply of conservative legal causes while at the industry-funded PLF, including opposing race-based school district assignment policies, and supporting Prop 209, a California ballot initiative to end most affirmative action programs in the state.

Full Story Think Progress » Will Obama Block Sen. McConnell’s Attempt To Dismantle Legal Services For The Poor?.

Senate Fails To Confirm Obama’s Key Progressive Nominations

Senate Fails To Confirm Obama’s Key Progressive Nominations

dawnBefore adjourning for its winter break yesterday, the Senate confirmed 30 of President Obama’s nominees for federal posts, including the head administrators for the U.S. Agency for International Development and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

But the Senate also rebuffed six other nominations, including Office of Legal Counsel nominee Dawn Johnsen and Department of Labor Solicitor Patricia Smith — both of whom tout solid progressive credentials. The Washington Post reports:

The Senate did not take a formal vote Thursday on any of the officials, but Jim Manley, a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.), said, “They ran into opposition.”

As head of the OLC, Johnsen would lead the same office which, under Jay Bybee’s command in the Bush administration, gave sanction to the use of torture. Johnsen was a fierce outspoken critic of the so-called “torture memos,” writing, “We must regain our ability to feel outrage whenever our government acts lawlessly and devises bogus constitutional arguments for outlandishly expansive presidential power.”

Full Story Think Progress » Senate Fails To Confirm Obama’s Key Progressive Nominations.

OPS:  Question – like the Public Option, or Single Payer. or Medicare for All….. How hard did BO push? How much support did he actually provide?

CSPAN Caller: I’m So Mad About Health Care, I Took Down My Xmas Tree

The Teabagger that stole Christmas.

OPS:  “…you don’t know the power of the Dark Side”

Carter apologizes for ‘stigmatizing Israel’

Former US president offers US Jewish community heartfelt apology for any contribution he may have had to Jewish nation’s negative image

Former US President Jimmy Carter on Monday asked for the Jewish community’s forgiveness for any negative stigma he may have caused Israel over the years.

Carter, who is not a popular character in Israel, enraged the American Jewish community’s in the past with various statements made in his book “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.” In the book, Carter blamed Israel for impeding the Middle East peace process via settlement construction, further claiming such a policy will lead to apartheid.”We must recognize Israel’s achievements under difficult circumstances, even as we strive in a positive way to help Israel continue to improve its relations with its Arab populations, but we must not permit criticisms for improvement to stigmatize Israel.

The former president also accused Israel of interfering with US efforts to broker peace in the region.Full Story Carter apologizes for ‘stigmatizing Israel’ – Israel News, Ynetnews.

Sorry, Bill O’Reilly. Christians themselves started the ‘War on Christmas’… in the 16th Century!

As Talk To Action writer Frederick Clarkson observes, proclamations from Bill O’Reilly, claiming the existence of a leftist assault on Christmas, are “part of a transcendent politics of the Religious Right, and a variant of that old time McCarthism — baiting everyone with whom they disagree as advocating a ‘godless’ agenda.” Indeed, Billy James Hargis’ Christian Crusade was making the same charges back in 1960 and much earlier in the year – in July in fact.

But how did the “War on Christmas”, as a concept, originate ?

As it happens, once upon a time there was a real “War on Christmas” and it was initiated by the theocratic Christian right of its day, Swiss Calvinists and Scottish Presbyterians. Here’s a short overview:

The “war on Christmas” traces back, historically, to Calvinist bans on the celebration of Christmas which began in Geneva and then migrated, with the spread of Calvinist theological views, to Scotland, where Christmas was banned in 1583. As Amy McNeese writes, in an article first published in the Church of Scotland magazine, Life & Work that may be one of the best treatments of the War on Christmas, in an historical account of the Scottish ban on Christmas that only was lifted in the 1950′s,

Full Story Talk To Action | Sorry, Bill O’Reilly. Christians themselves started the ‘War on Christmas’… in the 16th Century!.

Obama ‘Absolutely’ Will Help Merge Health Care Bills (VIDEO)

While many Americans are wrapping gifts, President Barack Obama is pledging to personally wrap up health-care reform.

Obama told PBS’s Jim Lehrer that he would ‘absolutely’ take a hands-on role in merging it with the House version. The Senate passed its version of the health care bill Thursday morning.

“We hope to have a whole bunch of folks over here in the West Wing, and I’ll be rolling up my sleeves and spending some time before the full Congress even gets into session,” he said.

This comes after the president has taken some criticism for being too passive and allowing too many aspects of health care reform to be compromised. He responded to those charges in an interview with the Washington Post:

Throughout the health-care debate, the president has declined to weigh in with specific preferences. The tactic has exasperated his supporters, but his advisers have deemed it key in keeping the bill moving through a balky Congress. Obama called the public option his preferred choice to ensure broad coverage and provide cost-cutting competition to the private insurers. But he has never demanded that it be part of a final bill.

“We don’t feel that the core elements to help the American people have been compromised in any significant way,” Obama said. “Do these pieces of legislation have exactly everything I want? Of course not. But they have the things that are necessary to reduce costs for businesses, families and the government.”

Full Story Obama ‘Absolutely’ Will Help Merge Health Care Bills (VIDEO).

Italy tax amnesty yields record €80bn

Era of fiscal havens over, says Tremonti

Italy’s amnesty for tax evaders holding funds outside the country has been successful in attracting more than €80bn so far, Giulio Tremonti, the finance minister, declared on Wednesday in setting out a record haul for the centre-right government.

“I want my money back,” Mr Tremonti said, breaking into English at his year-end news conference, recalling what he had recently told Hans-Rudolph Merz, his Swiss counterpart, to the anger of Swiss banks, which hold the majority of Italian funds and have accused Rome of intimidating their clients.

Full Story FT.com / Europe – Italy tax amnesty yields record €80bn.

Haunted by 40 Months in Iraq

Editor’s Note: A former Marine re-ups 24 years after his discharge and volunteers for four consecutive combat tours. Now he’s at home fighting the war within. “Anonymous” wrote this for the Veterans Workshop, a New America Media writing project for combat veterans.

Since Iraq, I might go several days without sleep. It’s hard to function like that. When I do sleep, I often wake up after a bad dream and all I want to do is put on my gear, grab my weapon and hurt someone. On nights like that I can never fall back asleep.

I was in Iraq for almost 40 months straight, so long that all of my neighbors at home moved away. I came home with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and a traumatic brain injury (TBI). What follows are some of the thoughts that have been bouncing around in my head since my return. But it’s hard to focus. TBI can do that to a person.

I joined the Marines in 1977 and served in the infantry until I got out in 1981. I went to work for a major transportation company, eventually rising to a management position. But as I saw the war in Iraq dragging on, I decided in 2005 to re-enlist. I was too old at 46 to get back into the Marine Corps, but with a waiver I was able to join the Army National Guard.

I volunteered for the next unit deploying to Iraq, and reached the combat zone in late 2005. I knew that I was filling a slot, and I hoped that because I had deployed that a soldier who did not want to go to Iraq was able to stay home with his family. I felt that I was contributing more in Iraq than I had during the previous 24 years as a civilian. I truly enjoyed being in Iraq and doing an important and dangerous job.

Full Story Haunted by 40 Months in Iraq – NAM.

CREW: TOP 10 ETHICS SCANDALS OF 2009

Christmas came early today when Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington revealed their “Top Ten Ethics Scandals” of 2009. It’s their third annual list, and is jam-packed with titillating/depressing breaches of ethics in both the legislative and executive branches. A must-read for all observers of crooked ambition and unchecked hubris in the political sphere.

Republican South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford made the naughty list by taking secret trips to Argentina to see his mistress, possibly financing said trysts with state funds. (Happens to the best of us.) Filed under “Gov. Mark Sanford’s Excellent Argentinian Adventure,” the scandal comes complete with a recommendation for accountability:

CREW’s holiday wish: For the South Carolina's Attorney General and the State Ethics Commission to find the governor violated state laws, forcing him (finally!) to do the honorable thing and resign. This would allow the state's government to focus on serving the citizens of South Carolina, where nearly one in four adults are unemployed.

Other outrages include:

Full Story TOP 10 ETHICS SCANDALS OF 2009 | Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

Hordes of Angry Activists and a $27 Billion Court Case Is Making Oil Giant Chevron Pretty Nervous

A dozen nonprofits are going right after the company’s greed, and the outcome will likely have repercussions in the oil industry for years to come.

The oil industry is more powerful today than at any other time in history save the early 20th century. Thanks to last year’s record run-up in oil prices, seven of the world’s most valuable corporations are now oil companies. Yet just one of those companies has become the focus of intense consumer ire.

Perhaps the largest coordinated activist campaign in history is being launched against the San Ramon-based Chevron Corporation. Foregoing boycotts and other traditional market campaign techniques, non-governmental organizations are creatively communicating the business case for why Chevron should change its ways, focusing on mobilizing company shareholders and consumers to compel the company to come clean and pursue social and environmental leadership.

This unprecedented campaign to make Chevron the poster child of corporate irresponsibility has already persuaded pension funds in California, Maryland, New York, and Pennsylvania to consider selling a total of $12 billion in Chevron shares on the grounds that the firm is mismanaging its operations around the globe. The prime focus of this ongoing anti-Chevron effort has been the company’s annual shareholder meetings, but protests at the Richmond refinery and a series of movie and PR stunts have been also been effective tactics.

Full Story Hordes of Angry Activists and a $27 Billion Court Case Is Making Oil Giant Chevron Pretty Nervous | Corporate Accountability and WorkPlace | AlterNet.

Cyber Attack Hobbles Major Sites

Attack On Major DNS Provider To Internet Sites Hobbled Service For About An Hour

An attack directed at the DNS provider for some of the Internet’s larger e-commerce companies, including Amazon.com, took several Internet shopping sites offline Wednesday evening, two days before Christmas.

Neustar, the company that provides DNS services under the UltraDNS brand name, confirmed an attack took place Wednesday afternoon, taking out sites or rendering them extremely sluggish for about an hour. A representative who answered the customer support line said the attacks were directed against Neustar facilities in Palo Alto and San Jose, Calif, and Allen Goldberg, vice president of corporate communications for Neustar, confirmed that at about 4:45 p.m. PST, “our alarms went off.”

Goldberg said the company received a disproportionately high number of queries coming into the system, and analyzed it as an attack. Neustar deployed “a mitigation response” within minutes of the attack, he said, and brought matters under control within an hour. The response limited the problems to Northern California, he said.

Full Story Cyber Attack Hobbles Major Sites – CBS News.

Organizing Progressives after Obama

Maya Wiley and Danny Schechter talk about the problems Obama has had organizing since the campaign and how progressives need to rally the base.

GRITtv with Laura Flanders brings participatory democracy onto your computer screen and into your living room, bridging the gap between audience and advocates.

Venezuela’s Chavez threatens to kick out carmakers

Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez has told car companies they must share their technology with local businesses or leave the country.

Mr Chavez gave the ultimatum to Toyota, Ford, General Motors and Fiat during a public address.

If the demand isn’t met, he said: “I invite you to pack up your belongings and leave. I’ll bring in the Russians, the Belorusians, the Chinese.”

Venezuela has nationalised most of the oil, metal and coffee industries.

Mr Chavez attacked Toyota in particular, saying it was not producing enough four-wheel drive vehicles, which are used for public transport, and ordered an investigation.

So far, the carmakers have not responded.

Full Story BBC News – Venezuela’s Chavez threatens to kick out carmakers.

MSNBC (Effectively) Pins Obama Down on Public Option Rhetoric

Countdown: President Obama’s Claims Of Not Having Campaigned On The Public Option Debunked

YouTube – MSNBC (Effectively) Pins Obama Down on Public Option Rhetori

FDIC Strangely Resembling A Private Investor

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. is looking for a few good business partners.

The beleaguered federal agency, hammered by this year’s spate of bank failures, is getting creative to sell off its growing portfolio of commercial real estate properties from failed banks. In fact, it’s taken to partnering with some of the most prominent — and notorious — private equity firms on Wall Street.

Today, the Wall Street Journal reports that the FDIC is about to announce the winning bidder of the second-largest bulk sale of commercial property in its history. The winner is expected to be one of finance’s private equity titans.

The sale consists of a portfolio of nonperforming loans from commercial real estate properties issued by defunct lenders Corus, Franklin and IndyMac. As the FDIC fund that insures bank deposits has teetered into the red this year, the agency has been scrambling to raise some cash from a vast array of bank assets.

Full Story FDIC Strangely Resembling A Private Investor.

Jane Hamsher, Grover Norquist Call for Rahm Emanuel’s Resignation

by   Jane Hamsher,

Today, Grover Norquist and I are calling for an investigation into Rahm Emanuel’s activities at Freddie Mac, and the White House’s blocking of an Inspector General who would look into it. The letter follows:

December 23, 2009

Attorney General of the United States of America

U.S. Department of Justice

950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW

Washington, DC 20530-0001

Dear Attorney General Holder:

We write to demand an immediate investigation into the activities of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. We believe there is an abundant public record which establishes that the actions of the White House have blocked any investigation into his activities while on the board of Freddie Mac from 2000-2001, and facilitated the cover up of potential malfeasance until the 10-year statute of limitations has run out.

The purpose of this letter is to connect the dots to establish both the conduct of Mr. Emanuel and those working with him to thwart inquiry, and to support your acting speedily so that the statute of limitations does not run out before the Justice Department is able to empanel a grand jury.

Full Story Firedoglake » Jane Hamsher, Grover Norquist Call for Rahm Emanuel’s Resignation.

Colbert: Beck ‘Raised The Stupid Bar’ To ‘Nearly Inapproachable’

Colbert Dishes On Bush, Glenn Beck, and MSNBC

When Chicago’s Second City comedy troupe held a weekend-long 50th anniversary bash, the obvious highlights were Friday and Saturday shows with Martin Short, Steve Carell, Bonnie Hunt, Jim Belushi, George Wendt, Eugene Levy, Andrea Martin, Catherine O’Hara, Harold Ramis, Shelly Berman, Rachel Dratch, Robert Klein, Jack McBrayer and tons more.

There were also panel discussions, including one in which alumnus Stephen Colbert and writers on his “The Colbert Report” held forth. Along the way, they revealed what didn’t get said at a controversial Washington engagement, underscored the impossibility of parodying Glenn Beck and wondered just a bit about the comedic forays of serious-minded news hosts like Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow.

With a tape of the hour-long session from Second City, I just watched as Colbert explained the creation of the “well-intentioned idiot” he portrays. (“The character really means well. He’s willfully ignorant of what you know and care about. He’s not mendacious and stupid. He’s innocent and stupid, like a puppy who’s urinating on your politics, not destroying your politics.”) But a question-and-answer period inspired the best exchanges, starting with one on Colbert’s appearance at the 2006 White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner.

Full Story Colbert Dishes On Bush, Glenn Beck, and MSNBC – James Warren.

Market Says Some Banks Only Slightly Less Likely To Default Than U.S. Treasury

Has the government’s implicit policy of rescuing “too big to fail” banks ended? Not according to the market.

As Peter Boone and Simon Johnson slyly notes in this post, the market does not believe that the government has made — or will make — any significant changes to its approach to dealing with ailing mega-banks.

In their post, Boone and Johnson consider whether or not Ben Bernanke should be reconfirmed for a second term as head of the Federal Reserve. In defending his tenure, Bernanke has pointed out that the government will not continue a policy of “too big to fail” and will find an orderly way to unwind failed banks. (To be fair, this is one of the key components of pending financial reform bills.)

Full Story Too Big To Fail: Market Says Some Banks Only Slightly Less Likely To Default Than U.S. Treasury.

Banks That Bundled Bad Debt Also Bet Against It

In late October 2007, as the financial markets were starting to come unglued, a Goldman Sachs trader, Jonathan M. Egol, received very good news. At 37, he was named a managing director at the firm.

Mr. Egol, a Princeton graduate, had risen to prominence inside the bank by creating mortgage-related securities, named Abacus, that were at first intended to protect Goldman from investment losses if the housing market collapsed. As the market soured, Goldman created even more of these securities, enabling it to pocket huge profits.

Goldman’s own clients who bought them, however, were less fortunate.

Pension funds and insurance companies lost billions of dollars on securities that they believed were solid investments, according to former Goldman employees with direct knowledge of the deals who asked not to be identified because they have confidentiality agreements with the firm.

Full Story Banks That Bundled Bad Debt Also Bet Against It – NYTimes.com.

OPS: How is this not criminal and actionable?

Michigan’s population drops below 10M

Economic woes continued to force thousands of Michiganians to leave the state, leading the overall population to drop below 10 million for the first time since 2000, according to population estimates released Wednesday morning by the U.S. Census Bureau.

The July 1, 2009, population estimate shows the state lost an estimated 32,759 people, the fourth consecutive year the population fell. Only Maine and Rhode Island saw their population go down in the last year.

Michigan has been bleeding people since 2005, and at the heart of the decline has been the growing exodus of people moving out looking for work. The current estimate puts Michigan’s population at 9,969,727, down from 10,002,486 in 2008. The state has seen a net loss of more than a half-million people to other states since 2001 — a number that swamps the natural increase from a greater number of births than deaths.

For a number of years, the relative vibrancy of the nation’s economy gave unemployed Michigan workers a chance to seek jobs in the Sun Belt and across the country. But with the rest of the nation fully consumed by the recession in 2008, some experts suspected there would be fewer opportunities for workers to flee Michigan.

Full Story Michigan’s population drops below 10M | detnews.com | The Detroit News.

Oil price climbs above 77 dollars

Oil prices rose on Thursday, extending a rally caused by a larger-than-expected drop in US energy stockpiles, traders said.

New York’s main futures contract, light sweet crude for delivery in February, rose 37 cents to 77.04 dollars a barrel.

Brent North Sea crude for February delivery gained 25 cents to 75.70 dollars.

The Christmas Eve market surge was largely driven by a fall in energy inventories in the United States — the world’s biggest consumer — that had been far larger than expected, analysts said.

Data released by the US Department of Energy on Wednesday showed stockpiles of crude dropping by 4.9 million barrels to 327.5 million in the week ending December 18, far above analyst expectations of a 1.1 million-barrel drawback.

Distillate inventories also slid 3.1 million barrels last week, against analyst forecasts of a 1.6 million barrel fall.

Full Story Oil price climbs above 77 dollars- Indicators-Economy-News-The Economic Times.

US new home sales slump 11.3 percent

Sales of new US homes slid 11.3 percent in November to their lowest level since April, according to government data Wednesday highlighting volatility in the fragile housing market.

The Commerce Department said sales plunged to a seasonally adjusted annual pace of 355,000 from a downwardly revised 400,000 in October.

The figure was far below analyst expectations for a pace of 440,000 new home sales, but some said the figure may have been skewed by a tax credit for some buyers that was due to expire in November.

The report dampened optimism about a rebound in the critical housing sector, which had risen after data Tuesday showing a 7.4 percent rise in the larger market for existing home sales.

Full Story US new home sales slump 11.3 percent – Yahoo! News.

Canadian police consider GPS for people with Alzheimer’s

Police in Montreal are studying the possibility of offering GPS bracelets to people suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, an official told AFP.

The Montreal Police Service (SPVM) is looking at ways to keep safe people suffering from diseases that degrade brain function, including memory.

Those who suffer from such diseases can often leave their homes without the ability to find their way back, putting them at risk of hunger and the cold.

“For us, the priority is the safety of the population. In cases where citizens go missing because of Alzheimer’s, we want to get involved as quickly as possible to return them,” Daniel Rousseau, the police official heading community action strategies, told AFP on Tuesday.

Last month, a 73-year-old woman suffering from Alzheimer’s was found dead in the snow after a three-day search.

Full Story AFP: Canadian police consider GPS for people with Alzheimer’s.

Pentagon sees big savings in replacing contractors with federal employees – washingtonpost.com

The Defense Department estimates it will save an average of $44,000 a year for every contractor it replaces with full-time federal personnel to perform critical defense jobs, according to the House-Senate conference report on the fiscal 2010 defense appropriation bill.

The measure, which passed Congress on Saturday, contains $5 billion to hire replacements for contractors currently performing what have been termed “inherently government functions” both at home and abroad. Those functions include a wide range of activities, from supervising other contractors who provide guard services at forward operating bases, to providing oversight of aid projects overseas.

The Bush administration widely expanded the use of contractors following the invasion of Iraq. At the time, officials argued that the Pentagon and other agencies had to staff up quickly; the war was seen as a limited operation that would end quickly, without the need to either increase the size of the military or the ranks of civilian employees.

Full Story Pentagon sees big savings in replacing contractors with federal employees – washingtonpost.com.

OPS: The brain trust is finally figuring it out, or, they realize they can’t get away with the fraud any longer

Obama: Anger over Copenhagen failure ‘justified’

In what amounts to an admission that the Copenhagen climate summit ended in failure, President Barack Obama says people are “justified” in being disappointed with the lack of a comprehensive deal for emissions reductions.

But the president added that “an important principle” was established with the last-minute, non-binding agreement signed in Copenhagen late last week: By having China and India agree to emissions reductions, Obama said, it was established that developing countries, and not just wealthy ones, share responsibility for cutting emissions.

“I think that people are justified in being disappointed about the outcome in Copenhagen,” Obama told PBS’s Jim Lehrer in a year-end interview for NewsHour. The president said:

It didn’t move us the way we need to. The science says that we’ve got to significantly reduce emissions over the next – over the next 40 years. There’s nothing in the Copenhagen agreement that ensures that that happens.

What did occur was that at a point where there was about to be complete breakdown, and the prime minister of India was heading to the airport and the Chinese representatives were essentially skipping negotiations, and everybody’s screaming, what did happen was, cooler heads prevailed.

Full Story Obama: Anger over Copenhagen failure ‘justified’ | Raw Story.

Unfair Tactics Advancing U.S. Competitors

The benefits of in-sourcing have been greatly exaggerated and the costs almost completely overlooked. Here are some problems with in-sourcing:

1) Foreign corporations operating in America typically pay far less tax than their American counterparts. Operating from nations where corporate accounting standards are much lower than in the United States, they rig their bookkeeping to pretend that they make no profits in the United States. As reported by the General Accounting Office, one typical gambit is “transfer pricing.” This typically involves a foreign parent company charging its American subsidiary exorbitant prices for key inputs. A variant on this technique is for the foreign parent to pay artificially low prices for the American subsidiary’s output. Either way the impression created is that the American subsidiary is unprofitable and thus no tax is payable in the United States. Among other paper games that can be played are the rigging of interest rates on loans or the creation of artificial deductions.

2) Insourcing creates few jobs. Typically foreign manufacturers’ US subsidiaries are engaged merely in final assembly. They rely on the foreign parent and its home-country affiliates and partners for supplies of most of the key components. Take, for instance, Toyota’s new San Antonio plant, which will produce 150,000 trucks per year with just 2,000 people. The reason the staffing is so low is because most of the serious manufacturing will be done elsewhere, typically overseas.

Full Story Unfair Tactics Advancing U.S. Competitors | Economy In Crisis.

Japan’s Cash-For-Clunkers Program Excludes U.S. Cars

Both U.S. automakers and lawmakers say that the exclusion of American cars from the program is yet another example of Japan’s unfair trade practices that hurt U.S. manufacturers.

A new Japanese program, similar to the cash for clunkers program, designed to spur demand for new, fuel efficient vehicles is discriminatory toward foreign imports, Detroit’s Big Three says.

The program offers consumers who trade in vehicles at least 13-years-old with a $2,800 tax credit toward the purchase of a new vehicle that meets Japanese fuel efficiency standards.

While the program does not specifically exclude American autos from the program, the Big Three imports such a low volume of cars and trucks to Japan that their models are not required to be fuel economy certified, and are therefore ineligible for the program.

Through November, U.S. automakers made just 7,901 sales in Japan. By comparison, Japanese automakers have exported 1.3 million vehicles to the U.S. in that time.

Full Story Japan’s Cash-For-Clunkers Program Excludes U.S. Cars | Economy In Crisis.

OPS:  It’s not ‘unfair’. American “lawmakers” and manufactureres need to stop whining, stop selling us out and wake up.  Japan is doing exactly what it should be doing with Japanese TAX money – Helping the Japanese economy.  China has done similar BUY CHINESE ONLY programs with THEIR tax money.  American Stupidity still shine.  Buy American.

Ugandan official on gays: ‘Killing them might not be helpful’; life imprisonment would be better.

Reuters reports that Uganda may “soften” its Anti-Homosexuality Bill, a draconian attempt to severely punish gay men and women by making some homosexual acts punishable by life imprisonment or even the death penalty. However, Ethics and Integrity Minister Nsaba Buturo is now saying that officials may drop the death penalty in order to impose a “life sentence” on gay men and women, during which time they could work to cure them of their sexual preferences:

Ethics and Integrity Minister Nsaba Buturo told Reuters that the revised law would now probably limit the maximum penalty for offenders to life in prison rather than execution.

Full Story Think Progress » Ugandan official on gays: ‘Killing them might not be helpful’; life imprisonment would be better..

COMPULSORY PRIVATE HEALTH INSURANCE: JUST ANOTHER BAILOUT OF THE FINANCIAL SECTOR?

Ellen Brown, Web of Debt

Dr. Benjamin Rush, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, is quoted as warning two centuries ago:

“Unless we put medical freedom into the Constitution, the time will come when medicine will organize into an underground dictatorship. . . . The Constitution of this republic should make special privilege for medical freedom as well as religious freedom.”

That time seems to have come, but the dictatorship we are facing is not the sort that Dr. Rush was apparently envisioning. It is not a dictatorship by medical doctors, who are as distressed by the proposed legislation as the squeezed middle class is. (For a withering analysis by an outraged M.D. of the nearly 2000 – page House bill, see here.) The new dictatorship is not by doctors but by Wall Street — the FIRE (finance, insurance, and real estate) sector that now claims 40% of corporate profits.

Economist L. Randall Wray observes that ever since Congress threw out the Glass-Steagall Act separating commercial banking from investment banking, insurance and Wall Street finance have been “two peas in a pod.” He writes:

“[T] here is a huge untapped market of some 50 million people who are not paying insurance premiums—and the number grows every year because employers drop coverage and people can’t afford premiums. Solution? Health insurance ‘reform’ that requires everyone to turn over their pay to Wall Street. . . . This is just another bailout of the financial system, because the tens of trillions of dollars already committed are not nearly enough.”

The health reform bills now coming through Congress are not focused on how to make health care cheaper or more effective, how to eliminate waste and fraud, or how to cut out expensive middlemen. As originally envisioned, the public option would have pursued those goals. But the public option has been dropped from the Senate bill and radically watered down in the House bill.

Full Story Web of Debt – COMPULSORY PRIVATE HEALTH INSURANCE: JUST ANOTHER BAILOUT OF THE FINANCIAL SECTOR?.

GOP Obstructionism and Progressive Change

As Democrats approach the end of their first year of the 21st century in control of both Congress and the White House, we are reminded of a hard truth: progressive change is much more difficult than conservative retrenchment.

Throughout history change has always faced an uphill battle against the seductive forces of fear, hatred, dogma, and tradition. In fact, major progressive change is so difficult and occurs so infrequently that such victories are historical outliers. As Mike Lux points out, only four or five decades in the history of the United States have proved to be fertile ground for such change.

Some believed that the 21st century would be different, that the proliferation of technology and the internet would be a panacea. However, this view ignored those aspects of this century that make change more difficult. While it is true that the internet has enabled more public participation and government transparency and allowed people to compete with the media power of corporate television and radio, it also allowed people to self-select their news, information, and facts. No longer can a Walter Cronkite turn the tide of American public opinion against a war with a single statement. The internet is a value-neutral platform and it spreads conservative messages just as effectively as progressive ones. Life expectancy is dramatically longer than in the past, slowing generational change and keeping old prejudices and fears alive (this is where conservatives will convince themselves that I am arguing for death panels as a progressive conspiracy). Change today will be just as difficult as it has been in the past.

Full Story GOP Obstructionism and Progressive Change | Future Majority.

On Individual Mandates

David Sirota   -

I agree with with those who note the danger of progressives attacking individual mandates in the health care bill, and how such attacks could be construed to be a criticism of all compulsory policies. That’s the conservative attack on mandates, of course, just like it is the conservative attack on taxes paid into social programs – namely, that anything the government requires individuals to do is unacceptable (tellingly, conservatives rarely ever argue it’s not acceptable to force people to pay taxes that go to fund, say, the Pentagon).

But here’s the difference on health insurance mandates that (as Adam says) progressives should internalize: It’s perfectly OK to be against them if there is zero choice of a public option. if the Lieberman-gutted health care bill becomes law, it will be the first time in history a federal law will mandate that you buy a product from a private corporation as an obligation of being alive.* Social Security, Medicare and other social programs are different – they are public systems.

I think that’s really the key point – and why the public option has to be connected ideologically to the mandate. A mandate without a public option is different than paying taxes to the government for something like Medicare – it is, instead, being compelled to pay taxes, almost literally, to a private corporation.

Full Story On Individual Mandates | The Smirking Chimp.

AMAZING SPEECH BY WAR VETERAN

Our real enemy is not the ones living in a distant land whose names or policies we don’t understand; The real enemy is a system that wages war when it’s profitable, the CEOs who lay us off our jobs when it’s profitable, the Insurance Companies who deny us Health care when it’s profitable, the Banks who take away our homes when it’s profitable. Our enemies are not several hundred thousands away. They are right here in front of us
- Mike Prysner

The chain reaction of evil… wars producing more wars… must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark  abyss of annihilation
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy… The loss of Liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or imagined, from abroad…”
- James Madison

Plants and animals race for survival as climate change creeps across the globe

Lowland tropics, mangroves and deserts at greater risk than mountainous areas as global warming spreads, study finds

Global warming creeps across the world at a speed of a quarter of a mile each year, according to a new study that highlights the problems that rising temperatures pose to plants and animals. Species that can tolerate only a narrow range of temperatures will need to move as quickly if they are to survive. Wildlife in lowland tropics, mangroves and desert areas are at greater risk than species in mountainous areas, the study suggests.

“These are the conditions that will set the stage, whether species move or cope in place,” said Chris Field, director of the department of global ecology at the Carnegie Institution in the US, who worked on the project. “Expressed as velocities, climate change projections connect directly to survival prospects for plants and animals.”

The study, by scientists at the Carnegie Institution, Stanford University, the California Academy of Sciences, and the University of California, Berkeley, combined information on current and projected future climate to calculate a “temperature velocity” for different parts of the world.

Full Story Plants and animals race for survival as climate change creeps across the globe | Environment | guardian.co.uk.

Gun Owner Nabbed Near Obama Was Bush Employee

The man who was arrested with two guns and hundreds of rounds of ammunition near the Capitol during President Barack Obama’s health care speech in September had been an employee of the George W. Bush White House. The arrest of the man, Joshua Bowman, was widely reported at the time, but the news stories made no mention of his previous employment: For several years he worked in the Executive Office of the President, dealing with tech issues, including White House emails, his lawyer, George Braun, tells Mother Jones.

On the night of September 9, Bowman was on his way to meet Braun, a Bush administration political appointee, at the National Republican Club on First Street, SE when he was stopped by Capitol Police around 7:45 p.m.—minutes before Obama was scheduled to deliver a major address to Congress pushing his health care initiative. Bowman had driven up to a security checkpoint and told officers he wanted to park, but his lack of a permit for the area aroused their suspicions, and they asked to search his car

Full Story Gun Owner Nabbed Near Obama Was Bush Employee | Mother Jones.

The Nevada gambler, al-Qaida, the CIA and the mother of all cons

Tom Ridge got angry

The intelligence reports fitted the suspicions of the time: al-Qaida sleeper agents were scattered across the US awaiting orders that were broadcast in secret codes over the al-Jazeera television network.

Flights from Britain and France were cancelled. Officials warned of a looming “spectacular attack” to rival 9/11. In 2003 President Bush’s homeland security tsar, Tom Ridge, spoke of a “credible source” whose information had US military bracing for a new terrorist onslaught.

Then suddenly no more was said.

Six years later, Playboy magazine has revealed that the CIA fell victim to an elaborate con by a compulsive gambler who claimed to have developed software that discovered al-Jazeera broadcasts were being used to transmit messages to terrorists buried deep in America.

Dennis Montgomery, 56, the co-owner of a software gaming company in Nevada, who has since been arrested for bouncing $1m worth of cheques, claims his program read messages hidden in barcodes listing international flights to the US, their positions and airports to be targeted.

Full Story The Nevada gambler, al-Qaida, the CIA and the mother of all cons | World news | The Guardian.

Break the CIA in Two

Ray McGovern

After the CIA-led fiasco at the Bay of Pigs in April 1961, President John Kennedy was quoted as saying he wanted to “splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it into the winds.” I can understand his anger, but a thousand is probably too many.

Better is a Solomon solution; divide the CIA in two. That way we can throw out the bath water and keep the baby.

Covert action and analysis do not belong together in the same agency — never have, never will. That these two very different tasks were thrown together is an accident of history, one that it is high time to acknowledge and to fix.

The effects of this structural fault became clear to President Harry Truman as he watched the agency at work in its first decade and a half. He was aghast.

Like oil on water, covert action fouls the wellspring of objective analysis — the main task for which Truman and the Congress established the CIA in 1947. The operational tail started wagging the substantive tail almost right away. It has done so ever since — with very unfortunate consequences.

An accident of history? How so?

Full Story t r u t h o u t | Ray McGovern | Break the CIA in Two.

Scoop: Shell Accused of Media Whitewash

ERA Exposes Shell Again On Environmental Terror

Accuses Oil Giant Of Media Whitewash

NIGERIA’s leading environmental rights advocacy group, Environmental Rights Action (ERA) has again indicted the Anglo-Dutch super oil and gas major, Shell, of fuelling environmental terrorism in the volatile Niger Delta area. The group said the oil company cannot continue with its media whitewash on the issue.

They therefore want Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) to commence immediate supply of medical and relief materials to the Batan Community in Warri South-West Local Government Area of Delta State, to avoid further gust of deaths that have been recorded due to the company’s negligence in cleaning up an oil spill that has persisted for months.

ERA’s position is coming on the heels of reports that eight infants under the age of three have died since the incident, with several more already ill from either consuming poisoned water or inhaling fouled air.

Batan community in Diebiri Kingdom, Warri South-West Local Government Area of Delta State is host to SPDC’s Batan Flow Station and a gas plant which the oil company has been operating since the 1960’s.

Full Story Scoop: Shell Accused of Media Whitewash.

Senate Passes Health Care Bill, 60-39

Without a single Republican vote, the United States Senate passed a sweeping health care reform bill in a landslide, shortly after 7:00 in the morning on Christmas Eve. After months of intense back and forth, and more than three weeks of continuous floor debate, the bill moved through the Senate by a gaping 60-39 margin.

The House of Representatives previously passed a much stronger version of reform with a tighter 220-215 margin. The two versions will now be merged in conference committee negotiations, with the House pushing for more generous subsidies for those required to buy insurance and the Senate attempting to hold the line. The cross-Capitol negotiations will not involve the Republican Party.

Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), who cast the deciding 60th vote to break a GOP filibuster, said after the vote that the conference report could not include “material changes” if it wanted to keep his support.

Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.), whose name is upon the House bill, was on hand for the Senate vote Thursday. He predicted that the House would eventually fall in line. “I think that the House will come together behind this bill,” he said. Asked what the House would need, he declined to say. “In a poker game, I never show my cards.”

Full Story Senate Passes Health Care Bill, 60-39.

Bolton: Strike On Iran Is No Problem As Long As It’s Accompanied By A ‘Campaign Of Public Diplomacy’

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad yesterday rejected a year-end deadline set by the Obama administration to agree to a U.N.-sponsored proposal for Iran to ship its low-grade uranium abroad for further processing.

On Fox News today, John Bolton — who has wanted nothing short of a military strike on Iran for years — dismissed any talk of sanctions and lamented that if Israel “take[s] a pass” on attacking Iran, then “Iran gets nuclear weapons.” When host Trace Gallagher wondered if attacking Iran might cause the opposition there to coalesce around the regime, Bolton said that wouldn’t be a problem because all that would be needed is an accompanying public diplomacy campaign:

BOLTON: I don’t agree with that, if handled properly. … I think a careful campaign of public diplomacy in the wake of a military strike could explain to the people of Iran who are knowledgeable and sophisticated, that the attack is not aimed against them, it’s aimed against this regime that they dislike so much.

Watch it:

Full Story Think Progress » Bolton: Strike On Iran Is No Problem As Long As It’s Accompanied By A ‘Campaign Of Public Diplomacy’.

House Rep. stole voter data before defecting to GOP, Dems say

A US House representative from Alabama took voter registration information from Democratic Party offices before defecting to the GOP, the Alabama branch of the Democratic Party says.

Rep. Parker Griffith announced his switch to the Republican Party on Tuesday, telling the press he can “no longer align [him]self with a party that continues to pursue legislation that is bad for our country, hurts our economy, and drives us further and further into debt.”

The Alabama Democratic Party issued a statement Wednesday accusing Griffith’s political consultancy, Main Street Strategies, of downloading “sensitive voter identification data that was the property of the Alabama Democratic Party.”

“This final act was obviously intended to aid Mr. Griffith in his new role as a Republican candidate. Upon hearing of Mr. Griffith’s switch, security measures were taken to prevent further transfers of data,” the statement read.

Full Story House Rep. stole voter data before defecting to GOP, Dems say | Raw Story.

Sanders: Rep Obstructionism, Reconciliation,

Universal Health Care Will Happen at State Level

Senator Bernie Sanders on Thom Hartmann

Brunch with Bernie. December 18, 2009