Archive for January, 2010
US shuts embassy as al-Qaeda ‘plans attack in Yemen’
The US has indications that al-Qaeda is planning an attack in the Yemeni capital Sanaa, President Barack Obama’s top counter-terrorism adviser has said.
John Brennan was speaking after the US and UK announced their embassies in Sanaa had temporarily closed.
The US has accused a Yemen-based offshoot of al-Qaeda of being behind the alleged Christmas Day bomb attempt on a US jet flying to Detroit.
There are mounting fears that Yemen is becoming a leading al-Qaeda haven.
Mr Brennan, the US Deputy National Security Adviser for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, told ABC’s This Week TV programme that the group had “several hundred members” in Yemen and was posing an increasing threat there.
“This is something that we’ve known about for a while,” he said. “We’re determined to destroy al-Qaeda, whether it’s in Pakistan, Afghanistan, or in Yemen.”
Full Story BBC News – US shuts embassy as al-Qaeda ‘plans attack in Yemen’.
The Safety Net – Living on Nothing but Food Stamps
After an improbable rise from the Bronx projects to a job selling Gulf Coast homes, Isabel Bermudez lost it all to an epic housing bust — the six-figure income, the house with the pool and the investment property.
Now, as she papers the county with résumés and girds herself for rejection, she is supporting two daughters on an income that inspires a double take: zero dollars in monthly cash and a few hundred dollars in food stamps.
With food-stamp use at a record high and surging by the day, Ms. Bermudez belongs to an overlooked subgroup that is growing especially fast: recipients with no cash income.
About six million Americans receiving food stamps report they have no other income, according to an analysis of state data collected by The New York Times. In declarations that states verify and the federal government audits, they described themselves as unemployed and receiving no cash aid — no welfare, no unemployment insurance, and no pensions, child support or disability pay.
Full Story The Safety Net – Living on Nothing but Food Stamps – Series – NYTimes.com.
In 2010, Obama must enforce law or be impeached
My first wish for 2010 is that President Obama will direct U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to begin federal prosecutions:
- of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney — for war crimes and treason against our Constitution.
- of 30 or so leaders of the largest banks and investment, insurance, accounting, bond rating and law firms responsible for the irresponsible home mortgage lending and fraudulent repackaging of bad mortgages into investment instruments that led to the housing crash — for crimes of purposeful lack of due diligence and any other crimes they perpetrated upon investors, including false balance sheets.
- of the high-level federal appointees at Treasury, the Federal Reserve and other agencies who were told by staff what was going on with the mortgages/investment instruments and what could be done about it, and who did nothing — thus violating their oaths of office and statutory authorities.
My second wish for 2010 is that Obama wakes up and says, “My God, I am guilty of Bush’s ‘sins.’ ” And that Obama immediately orders the troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan; orders the cessation of illegal attacks against alleged terrorists in Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere; orders the FBI to draft criminal charges against suspected terrorists and presents these charges to federal courts and international police agencies, requesting the apprehension of such terrorists through police channels; orders the cessation of illegal spying on all Americans; orders the immediate closure of GITMO and moves all prisoners to the basement of the Pentagon to stand trial in federal courts; orders the immediate cessation of all actions considered torture under the Geneva Conventions; orders the termination of all agency heads and generals who told him to do all these things; and orders the prosecution of present and past agency heads and generals who advocated the above actions or implemented these actions in violation of U.S. law.
Full Story Buzz Davis: In 2010, Obama must enforce law or be impeached.
Sue the Bastards: Why are Only Republican AGs Threatening to Go to Court to Fight Health Care ‘Reform’?
Dave Lindorff –
Attorneys General from 13 states–all of them Republicans–are saying that they are going to sue to block the health insurance reform bill if, when it is finally passed, it still includes a measure giving Nebraska an extra $100 million in Medicaid funds. They charge that this “bribe” was used to get Nebraska’s conservative Democratic Senator Ben Nelson to join fellow Democrats to get the Senate’s version of the bill passed.
They’re right to sue. Nebraska shouldn’t get more funds than the rest of the country to finance hospital care for its poorest residents, and Nelson shouldn’t be able to extort the Senate. But the question is why aren’t Democratic attorneys general threatening to sue over this execrable bill?
Residents of states with higher-than-average health care costs–states like California, New York, Florida, and Connecticut, for example–will be hit hard if the bill passes, because it includes a heavy tax on health plans that cost employees and employers more than a combined $12,000 per year per person. In these and many other states, because of the higher charges by doctors and hospitals, many of which are teaching institutions or public institutions that provide more tertiary care and that treat much larger numbers of low-income patients, and all of which have much higher real-estate costs and wage rates for staff, insurance plans are inevitably also costlier. Yet the residents of those states and their employers will end up getting socked with taxes as high as 40% on those plans that are over the limit. The result, experts say, is that many employers in these states will simply reduce coverage to bring the plans in under the limit.
David Michael Green: The Perils of Passivity
I have to laugh – in-between the tears, of course – when I listen to regressives speak of the likes of Barack Obama, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi in terms of Stalinesque autocrats or thuggish mafia bosses.
I’m pretty sure that the elites who propagate this nonsense through mouthpieces such as Limbaugh or Beck know just how absurd and contradictory to pesky reality those assertions are. But the regressive hoi polloi – as idiotic and ill-informed a bunch of bots as you’ll find anywhere this side of the Borg – well, they eat this stuff up whole hog.
It’s really astonishing, because I can hardly think of three wimpier or more politically anemic drenched noodles than these Democratic buffoons, along with the rest of their pathetic pity party. And also because America actually has had some pretty tough progressives in its history. Harry Truman would eat Harry Reid for breakfast, and still be hungry again before lunch. Lyndon Johnson could teach Barack Obama a few (thousand) things about how to move a legislative agenda through a balky Congress, and it wouldn’t involve getting his ass kicked by Joe Lieberman, I can tell you that. Franklin Roosevelt would surely be able to school Nancy Pelosi on the finer points of national leadership.
Democrats have been playing the weakness game for nearly a half-century now, ever since Johnson was driven from office in 1968. That has meant very bad things for the country, which has now been all but completely captured by economic oligarchs, via their wholly-owned human levers in both parties.
Full Story The Perils of Passivity | CommonDreams.org.
Cities, Counties Take Back Corporate Tax Breaks
Cash-strapped communities have a message for corporations that promised jobs in return for tax breaks: A deal’s a deal.
As the recession drags on, municipalities struggling to fix roads, fund schools and pay bills increasingly are rescinding tax abatements to companies that don’t hire enough workers, lay them off or close up shop. At the same time, they’re sharpening new incentive deals, leaving no doubt what is expected of companies and what will happen if they don’t deliver.
“We will roll out the red carpet as much as we can (but) they are going to honor the contract,” said Brendon Gallagher, an alderman in DeKalb, Ill., where Target Corp. got abatements from the city, county, school district and other taxing bodies after promising at least 500 jobs at a local distribution center.
So when the company came up 66 workers short in 2009, Target got word its next tax bill would be jumping almost $600,000 – more than half of which go to the local school district, where teachers and programs have been cut as coffers dried up.
Full Story Cities, Counties Take Back Corporate Tax Breaks | CommonDreams.org.
Where Does A Democrat Go From Here?
Marianne Williamson: -
It’s hard to own the disappointment I feel over our moderate corporate Democratic President. The whole Obama phenomenon brings up memories from my distant past: the good-looking guy who talks real good, whose line you don’t buy immediately but whose charm is so dazzling that he gradually convinces you that this time it will be different.
Yeah. Right. Really different.
What the current administration is giving us is minimal change. And not because the President hasn’t had the time to do better; if he had truly wanted to make fundamental change, he would have gone in there fast and done his own version of shock and awe in the first hundred days. And not because he didn’t realize how mean all those Republicans can be, either; Obama knew what he was getting into, and if he didn’t, then he was as unprepared for the job as his opponents said he was. I see so many people now — many of them men, interestingly enough — tangled up in an almost school-girlish, co-dependent, apologetic relationship with this President. As though “poor baby” should be tacked onto the end of every description of his failures.
Full Story Marianne Williamson: Where Does A Democrat Go From Here?.
Biblical scholar’s date for rapture: May 21, 2011
Harold Camping lets out a hearty chuckle when he considers the people who believe the world will end in 2012.
“That date has not one stitch of biblical authority,” Camping says from the Oakland office where he runs Family Radio, an evangelical station that reaches listeners around the world. “It’s like a fairy tale.”
The real date for the end of times, he says, is in 2011.
The Mayans and the recent Hollywood movie “2012″ have put the apocalypse in the popular mind this year, but Camping has been at this business for a long time. And while Armageddon is pop science or big-screen entertainment to many, Camping has followers from the Bay Area to China.
Camping, 88, has scrutinized the Bible for almost 70 years and says he has developed a mathematical system to interpret prophecies hidden within the Good Book. One night a few years ago, Camping, a civil engineer by trade, crunched the numbers and was stunned at what he’d found: The world will end May 21, 2011.
Full Story Biblical scholar’s date for rapture: May 21, 2011.
OPS: Better get your white robes and new sneekers while they last
Bernanke Calls For Regulation To Fight Against Bubbles
Stronger regulation should be the first line of defense against excessive speculation that could send the economy into a new crisis, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said Sunday.
But he didn’t rule out higher interest rates to stop that from happening.
The Fed chief’s remarks were his most extensive on the subject since the housing market’s tumble led to the gravest financial crisis since World War II – and perhaps the worst in modern history, in his view.
Critics blame the Fed for feeding that speculative boom in housing by holding interest rates too low for too long after the 2001 recession.
Full Story Bernanke Calls For Regulation To Fight Against Bubbles.
OPS: Now that he has “successfully” helped to create two of the worst bubbles in American History, One which has burst and another that is about to, We are to believe that he actually wants to prevent them?
Brennan responds to Cheney: He’s either ‘willfully mischaracterized’ Obama or is ‘ignorant of the facts.’
Earlier this week, former Vice President Dick Cheney joined the GOP’s hypocritical attacks against President Obama’s response to the attempted Christmas day terror attack, claiming that ” it is clear once again that President Obama is trying to pretend we are not at war.” White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer responded by pointing out Obama’s numerous “public statements that explicitly state we are at war,” adding that unlike the Bush administration, Obama “doesn’t need to beat his chest to prove it.” On Fox News Sunday today, White House Homeland Security and Counterterrorism Adviser John Brennan said that either the “vice president or others have wilfully mischaracterized President Obama’s position and actions or they’re just ignorant of the facts“:
BRENNAN: It’s disappointing to me that either the vice president or others have willfully mischaracterized President Obama’s position and actions or they’re just ignorant of the facts. I think in either case, it doesn’t speak well to sort of the reasons why they sort of went out and said these things. I came back into government for the express purpose of making sure that we can make this country safer than its ever been in the past. I have worked with the president over the past 12 months now and he is as determined as anybody I’ve worked with. I’m neither Republican nor Democrat. I’ve worked with the previous five administrations and this president is determined. And I think he has demonstrated in his language. He says we’re at war with al Qaeda. Were going to destroy al Qaeda the organization and we’re going to demonstrate through our actions, whether it be in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and other places that al Qaeda might be able to run, but they’re not going to be able to hide.
Watch it:
Our Political System is flawed and no longer benefits Americans
Our political system is to a great degree directed by lobbyists hired and paid for by special and foreign interests for their benefit – not ours.
I urgently suggest that you meet with your friends, neighbors and congressional representatives to discuss this article. It is obvious that we cannot continue like this. Ask your representatives what he or she can do about it.
Our political system is flawed and no longer benefits Americans. It is to a great degree directed by lobbyists hired and paid for by special and foreign interests for their benefit – not ours.
Most of the lobbies include ex-elected and appointed government officials at the highest levels with intimate knowledge of what it takes to have legislation passed for the benefit of their sponsors, who may pay them up to 20 times or more as lobbyists than they earned as government employees. * You can presume your representatives are not representing you at all when you observe what is happening to us – when you see what your representatives are allowing foreign countries to do to us.
One may wonder how the US has descended in so short a time from being a wealthy and productive nation to one now having the profile of a third-world country – forced to live on imports, ever increasing debt and liquidating our best companies to foreign ownership.
A few of the reasons for our rapid industrial decline:
Full Story Our Political System is flawed and no longer benefits Americans | Economy In Crisis.
Taiwan seeks to ban importing of US beef
McDonalds restaurants in Taiwan now post conspicuous signs that proudly say, “We serve Australian beef.” The Chinese know that is a veiled and politically sensitive way of saying, “We don’t use US beef.”
Last week Taiwan’s legislature proposed that the country reinstate its ban of US ground beef and offal due to fears of mad cow disease. Taiwan’s president Ma Ying-Jeou agreed to lift restrictions in October, but he is being overridden by members of his own party, the Kuomintang (KMT) along with members of the opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).
It’s a story that’s getting too little attention in US media, and its effects are significant. The USDA Foreign Ag Office’s web site says about Taiwan, “Taiwan is the sixth market for U.S. agriculture products, and soon will become the world’s largest consumer of U.S. agricultural products on a per capita basis.” Presciently, the site also adds this detail: “Taiwan’s consumers demand quality food products regardless of origin.” A friend of mine in Taiwan, Dan Roggenkamp, told me the Taiwanese really look down on US beef these days, but the issue isn’t solely a matter of health. “It also has sovereignty overtones,” he said. “Protesters don’t like having US beef shoved down their throats by the all powerful US beef lobby.”
One of Taiwan’s chief concerns, of course, is how the beef issue will affect US arms sales to Taiwan. Premier Wu Den-yih said last week that he believes the Taiwan Relations Act will prevent the beef issue with the United States from affecting arms sales to Taiwan. The issue is critical to Taiwan, which faces a constant threat of invasion by mainland China.
Full Story Taiwan seeks to ban importing of US beef.
Britain, US backing Yemen anti-terror police unit
Britain and the United States are assisting a counterterrorism police unit in Yemen amid fears of an increasing threat of international terrorism emanating from the country, the British government said Sunday.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s office said that he and President Barack Obama agreed to “intensify joint U.S.-U.K. work to tackle the emerging terrorist threat from both Yemen and Somalia” in the wake of the failed Detroit terror plot.
“Amongst the initiatives the PM has agreed with President Obama is U.S.-U.K. funding for a special counter-terrorism police unit in Yemen,” the statement said.
The U.S. embassy in Yemen closed on Sunday, citing ongoing threats by the al-Qaida branch that has been linked to the failed Christmas Day bombing attempt of a U.S. airliner headed to Detroit. The embassy would not say if there was a specific threat.
Full Story Britain, US backing Yemen anti-terror police unit – Yahoo! News.
OPS: Here we go again……..
A Skeleton Key to the Gemstone File: Interview with the author
A Skeleton Key to the Gemstone File is a shocking 23-page “underground” document that appeared in the United States in 1975. Based on the notes and letters of a San Franciscan named Bruce Porter Roberts, the Skeleton Key not only provides an alternative interpretation of historical and then-current events, it also names the shooters of President John F. Kennedy and explains who was behind other political assassinations of the period.
The author of A Skeleton Key to the Gemstone File, Stephanie Caruana, remained a mystery for many years, but she eventually wrote a book called The Gemstone File: A Memoir, which provides detail on the Skeleton Key based on Roberts’ letters and conversations she had with him. I became acquainted with Stephanie Caruana after writing a review of her book for Amazon. She eventually agreed to a telephone interview with the Examiner.
When she first typed the Skeleton Key it on her IBM Selectra typewriter after meeting with Roberts and reading some of his letters at the Norwegian consulate, she included her name and address on the copy she Xeroxed and distributed. After that, however, the file was retyped, often by people who would add or delete parts according to their tastes or biases, and these copies were reproduced thousands of times around the world with her name deleted. Many who have read the Key still don’t know that Caruana wrote it.
The genesis of the Skeleton Key involves a conspiracy-oriented radio talk show host named Mae Brussell who lived in the Carmel Valley in the early 1970s. Caruana then was a contributing editor of Playgirl magazine, which had assigned her to write about the whereabouts of Texas billionaire Howard Hughes in an article that would be titled, “Is Howard Hughes Dead and Buried Off a Greek Island?” This article, published in December, 1974, was largely the product of Bruce Roberts’ notes and letters along with articles and news clippings from Brussell’s files.
Full Story A Skeleton Key to the Gemstone File: Interview with the author.
OPS: Additional Background: The Source
Is the Fed Juicing the Stock Market?
by Mike Whitney -
Is the Fed manipulating the stock market? TrimTabs CEO Charles Biderman seems to think so, and he makes a strong case for his theory in an article at zerohedge.com.
Biderman focuses his attention on the mystery surrounding the stock market’s 9-month rally and asks, “Where is the money coming from?” After all, the market cap has increased by more than $6 trillion since March 9. That amount of money should be fairly easy to trace; right?
Wrong.
Biderman: “The most positive economic development in 2009 was the stock market rally. (But) We cannot identify the source of the new money that pushed stock prices up so far so fast. For the most part, the money did not from the traditional players that provided money in the past.”
Huh? So, this vast infusion of liquidity–which helped the banks to avoid painful deleveraging–did not come from the usual suspects?
That’s right. According to Biderman, the money did not come from (a) companies (“which were a huge net seller”) (b) retail investor funds, (c) retail investors, (d) foreign investors, or (e) pension funds.
What about the hedge funds?
Biderman: “We have no way to track in real time what hedge funds do, and they may well have shifted some assets into U.S. equities. But we doubt their buying power was enormous because they posted an outflow of $12 billion from April through November.”
Okay; so we’re back to Square One. Where did the money come from?
Full Story Is the Fed Juicing the Stock Market?.
Obama Administration Prepares Public Opinion for Attack on Yemen
Obama Administration Prepares Public Opinion for Attack on Yemen
Five days after the unsuccessful attempt by a Nigerian student to set off a bomb aboard a Detroit-bound passenger jet, US military and intelligence officials are said to be preparing expanded military action against targets in Yemen, the Arab country where the student allegedly received terrorist training and was equipped with an explosive device.
A series of US media reports suggest that new US-backed military attacks inside Yemen are imminent. Citing “two senior US officials,” CNN reported: “The US and Yemen are now looking at fresh targets for a potential retaliation strike.”
The network said the officials “both stressed the effort is aimed at being ready with options for the White House if President Obama orders a retaliatory strike.” CNN continued: “The effort is to see whether targets can be specifically linked to the airliner incident and its planning. US special operations forces and intelligence agencies, and their Yemeni counterparts, are working to identify potential Al Qaeda targets in Yemen, one of the officials said.”
The network said the Obama administration and the long-time Yemeni dictator, Field Marshal Ali Abdullah Saleh, had reached an agreement to allow the US to fly cruise missiles, fighter jets and armed drones, used for remote-control assassinations, in Yemeni airspace. Talks were still ongoing on whether Saleh will give permission for the entry of US helicopter-borne Special Forces.
The report comes after a series of statements by top administration officials, including Obama himself, pledging that “all elements of US power” will be used in response to the failed attack on Northwest Flight 253. The White House has been under heavy fire from its Republican opponents over the evident security failure, and a military action would serve to divert public attention from the ongoing revelations of how the CIA and other US agencies ignored warnings about the impending attack.
Full Story Obama Administration Prepares Public Opinion for Attack on Yemen.
Shooting Handcuffed Children
David Swanson --
The occupied government of Afghanistan and the United Nations have both concluded that U.S.-led troops recently dragged eight sleeping children out of their beds, handcuffed some of them, and shot them all dead. While this apparently constitutes an everyday act of kindness, far less intriguing than the vicious singeing of his pubic hairs by Captain Underpants, it is at least a variation on the ordinary American technique of murdering men, women, and children by the dozens with unmanned drones.
Also this week in Afghanistan, eight CIA assassins (see if you can find a more appropriate name for them) were murdered by a suicide bombing that one of them apparently executed against the other seven. The Taliban in Pakistan claims credit and describes the mass-murder as revenge for the CIA’s drone killings. And we thought unmanned drones were War Perfected because none of the right people would have to risk their lives. Oops. Perhaps Detroit-bound passengers risked theirs unwittingly.
The CIA has declared its intention to seek revenge for the suicide strike. Who knows what the assassination of sleeping students was revenge for. Perhaps the next lunatic to try blowing up something in the United States will be seeking revenge for whatever Obama does to avenge the victims (television viewers?) of the Crotch Crusader. Certainly there will be numerous more acts of violence driven by longings for revenge against the drone pilots and the shooters of students.
Full Story Shooting Handcuffed Children | Corrente.
Debunking Walmart’s Creation Myth + Exporing the Limits of Consumer Action
The Retail Revolution: How Wal-Mart Created a Brave New World of Business by Nelson Lichtenstein, Metropolitan Books, 311 pages, $25.00
Buying Power: A History of Consumer Activism in America by Lawrence B. Glickman, University of Chicago Press, 403 pages, $45.00
The story isn’t part of the official Wal-Mart creation epic, but it tells us almost all we need to know about the company’s approach to the interests of its employees and the laws of the nation. Around the time that the young Sam Walton opened his first stores, John Kennedy redeemed a presidential campaign promise by persuading Congress to extend the minimum wage to retail workers, who had until then not been covered by the law. Congress granted an exclusion, however, to small businesses with annual sales beneath $1 million — a figure that in 1965 it lowered to $250,000.
Walton was furious. The mechanization of agriculture had finally reached the backwaters of the Ozark Plateau, where he was opening one store after another. The men and women who had formerly worked on small farms suddenly found themselves redundant, and he could scoop them up for a song, as little as 50 cents an hour. Now the goddamn federal government was telling him he had to pay his workers the $1.15 hourly minimum. Walton’s response was to divide up his stores into individual companies whose revenues didn’t exceed the $250,000 threshold. Eventually, though, a federal court ruled that this was simply a scheme to avoid paying the minimum wage, and he was ordered to pay his workers the accumulated sums he owed them, plus a double-time penalty thrown in for good measure.
Wal-Mart cut the checks, but Walton also summoned the employees at a major cluster of his stores to a meeting. “I’ll fire anyone who cashes the check,” he told them.
Full Story Debunking Walmart’s Creation Myth + Exporing the Limits of Consumer Action.
Gluten: What You Don’t Know Might Kill You
Something you’re eating may be killing you, and you probably don’t even know it!
If you eat cheeseburgers or French fries all the time or drink six sodas a day, you likely know you are shortening your life. But eating a nice dark, crunchy slice of whole wheat bread–how could that be bad for you?
Well, bread contains gluten, a protein found in wheat, barley, rye, spelt, kamut, and oats. It is hidden in pizza, pasta, bread, wraps, rolls, and most processed foods. Clearly, gluten is a staple of the American diet.
What most people don’t know is that gluten can cause serious health complications for many. You may be at risk even if you don’t have full blown celiac disease.
In today’s blog I want to reveal the truth about gluten, explain the dangers, and provide you with a simple system that will help you determine whether or not gluten is a problem for you.
Full Story Mark Hyman, MD: Gluten: What You Don’t Know Might Kill You.
Banks Launch New Checking, Credit-Card Fees
BANKS TO BOMBARD CUSTOMERS WITH NEW FEES IN 2010
New Charges Seek to Get Ahead of New Federal Rules Limiting Increases in Interest Rates - Move Your Money
The nation’s banks will be bombarding customers with new fees and products in 2010 as they try to replace more than $50 billion in revenue wiped out by new rules that clamp down on certain business practices.
So far, the changes are mostly concentrated in checking accounts and credit cards. In addition to attaching new fees to old products, banks are introducing new types of accounts that they hope will reel in new customers and reduce their funding costs.
For plastic, the new rules go into effect in February as part of the Credit Card Act of 2009. The rules will limit some interest-rate increases, require more disclosure to customers and prohibit banks from raising interest rates on current balances unless a customer is at least 60 days behind in a payment.
Full Story Banks Launch New Checking, Credit-Card Fees – WSJ.com.
Official Army History: Bush Administration Neglected Afghan War, Diverted Resources to Iraq
During President Obama’s December speech announcing a new strategy for the war in Afghanistan, he noted that the effort was finally getting the resources it needed. During the previous administration, Obama said, “commanders in Afghanistan repeatedly asked for support to deal with the reemergence of the Taliban, but these reinforcements did not arrive.” “In early 2003, the decision was made to wage a second war, in Iraq,” Obama said, and “for the next six years, the Iraq war drew the dominant share of our troops, our resources, our diplomacy, and our national attention.”
Former Bush administration officials fired back, claiming the Iraq war did not deprive resources from Afghanistan. Former White House adviser Karl Rove said “the United States had, at the time what the military felt was an appropriate level of resources.” Bush’s Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld called Obama’s comments a “bald misstatement, at least as it pertains to the period I served as Secretary of Defense.” Later, Rumsfeld spokesperson Keith Urbahn turned up the heat, accusing Obama distorting the facts.
Unfortunately for Rumsfeld, Rove and their neo-con allies, the Army’s official history of the first four years of the war completely contradicts their claims. The New York Times reported this week that according to the official history, as early as late 2003, the Army historians assert, “it should have become increasingly clear to officials at Centcom and [the Department of Defense] that the coalition presence in Afghanistan did not provide enough resources” for a proper counterinsurgency campaign. Paraphrasing the history, the Times notes that American forces were “hamstrung by inadequate resources” and thus “missed opportunities to stabilize Afghanistan during the early years of the war.”
Full Story Think Progress » Official Army History: Bush Administration Neglected Afghan War, Diverted Resources to Iraq.
Irish atheists use Bjork, Mark Twain to challenge blasphemy law
An Irish atheist group has published a series of quotations on religion in an attempt to challenge a blasphemy law that went into effect on New Year’s Day.
The 25 “blasphemous” quotations include the words of Jesus, Mohammed, Mark Twain, Salman Rushdie and Bjork.
Atheist Ireland published the list on its Web site Friday. It says it aims to challenge the law, which makes blasphemy a crime punishable by a €25,000-($35,800) fine.
“Despite these quotes being abusive and insulting in relation to matters held sacred by various religions, we unreservedly support the right of these people to have published or uttered them,” the group said on the site.
Full Story Irish atheists use Bjork, Mark Twain to challenge blasphemy law – CNN.com.
Are Republicans political terrorists?
It didn’t take the Republicans long, less than 24 hours after the foiled bomb attempt on flight 253, to start pointing fingers and trying to make the claim that we are less safe now than under the Republicans because of the approach or policy of the Obama Administration. Part of that approach was Obama waiting four days before making a public statement so it seems the party of “personal responsibility” seems to need a daddy to tell them everything is ok.
What the Republicans are too dishonest to say, is that we were hit on 911 and saw 3000 people killed, preciselybecause of the Republican approach and policy on terrorism, Republican bungling, Republican incompetence and Republican ideology.
This was proved during the 911 Commission Hearings which presented irrefutable evidence that 911 could have been prevented except for the gross negligence, incompetence, and conservative idelology of the Bush Administration who didn’t take terrorism seriously until it was too late.
Full Story Are Republicans political terrorists?.
Republicans astonish with lies about their previous failures
The fantasies which the rapidly collapsing Grand Old Party embrace to delude itself into believing that it is still somehow relevant beggar belief. Having mismanaged the economy, the environment, the military and national security for the last decade as part of a cynical plan to demonstrate that a free people cannot possibly govern themselves, and having been repudiated by the voters in two election cycles for doing so, they pathetically cling to the belief that embracing half- truths and … let’s just say it — out-and-out lies — will convince a electorate that has already repudiated them that they bear no responsibility for their actions.
Foremost among the fantasies is the GOP hue and cry about “Obama’s budget deficit” for 2009. “Obama Triples 2009 Budget Deficit to $1.4 Trillion!” declares the Pretend News Network, completely ignoring the fact that the Congressional Budget Office projected a deficit of $1.2 trillion on Jan. 7, 2009, two weeks before Obama’s inauguration, all of it attributable to the failures of the Bush administration . Fiscal Year 2009 began Oct. 1, 2008, and ran through Sept. 30, 2009. It was Bush’s Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson who put a gun to the head of the Congress and demanded $ 700 billion . It was under W’s watch that the stock market shed some $7 trillion in value, driving down revenues to the Treasury about $144 billion for FY 2009 and destroying any hope for growth of the GDP for the same time period.It was Bush’s budgetary wizards who failed to account for $1 trillion in defense spending for the “War on Terrah” and left unfunded a Medicare drug benefit that is adding as much as $120 billion per year to the deficit.
Full Story Republicans astonish with lies about their previous failures | News-Leader.com | Springfield News-Leader.
12 Innovations From the ‘00s That Could Save Us
With climate disruption, war, and a faltering economy, the ’00s were tough. Still, seeds were sewn for a more green and egalitarian 2010s. And peoples movements offer the power to make real change happen.
With climate disruption, war, and a faltering economy, the ’00s were tough. Still, seeds were sewn for a more green and egalitarian 2010s. And peoples movements offer the power to make real change happen.
People fell in love with local foods. There are now more than 5,000 farmers’ markets in the U.S., up 13 percent in just one year, many new school vegetable gardens, and CSA. People turned their lawns into gardens, and asked grocery stores and restaurants to offer local foods.
A home-grown U.S. pro-democracy movement brought greater integrity to the elections process. This movement, built on the voting rights movement, began after the questionable election of 2000. Through public scrutiny, legal challenges, and mobilization of poll watchers, it was able to counter election manipulation, voter suppression, black box voting irregularities, and to begin restoring voting rights to felons who had served their terms.
Full Story 12 Innovations From the ‘00s That Could Save Us — YES! Magazine.
Ceremony formally marks end of coalition effort in Iraq
The United States Force-Iraq is inaugurated in belated recognition of the fact that for some time there have been no other nations serving alongside U.S. forces, which had no combat deaths last month.
Reporting from Camp Victory, Iraq – December was the first month since the Iraq war began in which there were no American combat deaths, a milestone hailed by military officials Friday as they inaugurated a new name for the U.S. force at the start of the year that will see the war wind down in earnest.
Henceforth, the Multinational Force-Iraq will officially be called the United States Force-Iraq, in belated recognition of the fact that for some time there have been no other nations serving alongside U.S. troops in the nearly 7-year-old conflict.
British, Australian and Romanian soldiers pulled out in July, leaving Americans as the last surviving members of what President George W. Bush once called “the coalition of the willing.” A small number of foreigners are serving with a NATO training mission, but they were not part of the multinational force.
Full Story Ceremony formally marks end of coalition effort in Iraq – latimes.com.
OPS: Who will be the last person to die for this lie?
Ron Paul “They’re Terrorists Because We’re Occupiers” Larry King Live
Ben Stein calls Ron Paul antisemitic in the second segment of this video where Larry King asks his guests about the recent thwarted terrorist plot to blow up a plane en route to Detroit from Amsterdam. Ben Stein should apologize.
Full Story YouTube – 12/28/09 Ron Paul “They’re Terrorists Because We’re Occupiers” Larry King Live.
OPS: There are a few things that Ron Paul is correct about . This is one of them.
Dick Cheney wrong on Barack Obama slam
Vice President Cheney has been excoriating President Obama’s foreign policy approach of late, and Republican partisans reportedly sense an opportunity to portray yet another Democratic president as supposedly weak on national security in the coming months. The last week of 2009, with an attempted plane bombing in Detroit and tragic attack against CIA operatives in Afghanistan capping off the year, helps set the context for these criticisms.
But in fact, Obama has had a solid first year in foreign policy matters. By one measure, comparison with other first-year presidents in modern history, Obama ranks with the three or four best since World War II by my estimation – and I write this as someone who opposed Obama during the Democratic primary process of 2007-2008 largely because of fears at the time that he would not be strong on national security.
To be sure, Obama’s first year accomplishments are more in the realm of creating good inputs to policy rather than achieving good outputs. Results to date have been relatively few, as would be expected of a first-year president, and as Obama himself rightly acknowledged in his December speech in Oslo accepting the Noble Peace Prize.
Full Story Dick Cheney wrong on Barack Obama slam – Michael O’Hanlon – POLITICO.com.
OPS: When was Cheney every Correct….about anything?
Apple Tablet Rumors: The Ultimate Guide To ‘iTablet’ Talk (PICTURES)
No company feeds off mystery more than Apple. Notorious for being tight-lipped about its announcements and developments, the Cupertino-based company has neither confirmed nor denied the possibility of an Apple-made “tablet” computer device.
Of course, that hasn’t stopped the gossip, rumors, and wild speculation regarding the launch, cost and features of the much-hyped fabled device.
We’ve put together the ultimate guide to the rumored Apple Tablet (or iTablet, or iSlate or TabletMac, or MacTablet — no one can decide), along with awesome concepts of what it might look like. So far, the details are pure speculation. But there may turn out to be some facts among the fiction.
Full Story Apple Tablet Rumors: The Ultimate Guide To ‘iTablet’ Talk (PICTURES).
Kill Your Web 2.0 Self — Or Change It? (VIDEO)
In retrospect, what we just left was the decade of the rapid, revolutionizing rise of the “Me-on-Web” generation. That’s why it’s called YouTube and MySpace. There’s a reason why Apple banked on a line of I-centered (iPod, iPhone, iTunes, soon-to-be iSlate or iTablet or i-whatchamacallit) digital lifestyle products. It was a tech-influenced decade steeped in “me-you-I” — increasingly, inevitably, sometimes selfishly self-centered. You over-shared. You drowned on the flood information. You faced choices — why read just one newspaper when I can rely on various blogs and online news sources instead? You took control of our media diet, not just what you read, but whom you shared it with. It was all about you.
The dawn of this new decade, however, will be shaped by the “We-on-Web” generation. It’s not just about you, but about all of us: how our growing collective consciousness (or “collective awareness,” as Al Gore calls it) will evolve and further cement its hold.
Is it gonna be just about you, or about all of us? Will all our tweeting, Digging, Facebooking, YouTubing and Wikipediaing lead to a greater good — like, say, helping promote democracy in countries such as Iran? Will it lead to greater understanding of complex issues that can’t fit in often too simplistic 30-second television soundbites? Will it lead to increased compassion among people of different and opposing backgrounds? In late October, to little fanfare, Facebook and the Persuasive Technology Lab launched Peace on Facebook, a groundbreaking page enabling people from various backgrounds and geographies to connect and exchange ideas — Israelis and Palestinians, American conservatives and liberals. Some say the Internet has led to increased polarization and partisanship in politics. But it’s not the Internet, it’s the people using the Internet. All the Internet is doing, after all, is reflect and amplify human behavior.
Full Story Jose Antonio Vargas: Kill Your Web 2.0 Self — Or Change It? (VIDEO).
Clinton Foundation Donor List: Includes Foreign Governments, Trump, Coke
Foreign countries including Norway and Oman contributed to former President Bill Clinton’s charity, and donors including Donald Trump, multinational soft drink company Coca-Cola and singer Elton John’s foundation also pitched in as Hillary Rodham Clinton served her first year as secretary of state.
A donor list released on New Year’s Day by the William J. Clinton Foundation shows that in all, Norway has given $10 million to $25 million to the charity since its founding roughly a decade ago. Oman gave $1 million to $5 million over the years. The list gave cumulative donation totals and didn’t say how much each contributor gave last year.
The foundation provided The Associated Press with a donor list Friday morning under the heading “William J. Clinton Foundation Publishes Names of 2009 Contributors on Foundation Website” but later said the disclosure, which included many more foreign governments, covered donors dating back to the charity’s inception, and that it wouldn’t identify who gave in 2009. The foundation changed course Friday afternoon and updated the list to specify 2009 donors.
Full Story Clinton Foundation Donor List: Includes Foreign Governments, Trump, Coke.
2010 Election Situation Grows More Difficult For Democrats
An already difficult situation for Democrats in Congress is worsening as the 2010 political season opens.
To minimize expected losses in next fall’s election, President Barack Obama’s party is testing a line of attack that resurrects George W. Bush as a boogeyman and castigates Republicans as cozy with Wall Street.
Four House Democrats from swing districts have recently chosen not to seek re-election, bringing to 11 the number of retirements that could leave Democratic-held seats vulnerable to Republicans. More Democratic retirements are expected.
Over the holiday break, another Democrat, freshman Rep. Parker Griffith of Alabama, defected to the GOP. “I can no longer align myself 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,” said Griffith, who voted against Democrats’ three biggest initiatives in 2009: health care, financial regulation and reducing global warming.
Full Story 2010 Election Situation Grows More Difficult For Democrats.
OPS:
Given the choice between a Republican and someone who acts like a Republican,
people will vote for the real Republican all the time
Efforts to Curb Cellphone Use While Driving Gain Momentum
When its legislature convenes this year, Kansas will consider banning motorists from sending text messages. South Carolina will, too, and debate whether to prohibit drivers from using phones altogether, or requiring them to use hands-free devices when they call. New Jersey lawmakers have proposed banning drivers from manipulating a navigation system in a moving car.
In all, lawmakers have already proposed 200 bills to curb distracted driving, and policy analysts expect to see dozens more in the coming months.
“It’s the hottest safety issue in the states right now by far,” said Jonathan Adkins, spokesman for the Governors Highway Safety Association, which represents state highway safety agencies.
The flurry of state activity — coupled with intensifying action by federal legislators and regulators, and by the cellphone and auto industries — is putting renewed focus on the risks of using phones behind the wheel, according to policy analysts.
Full Story Efforts to Curb Cellphone Use While Driving Gain Momentum – NYTimes.com.
The Logical Result of Reaganomics: a lost decade for U.S. economy, workers
THE LOST DECADE Zero Net Job Creation Over Last Ten Years
For most of the past 70 years, the U.S. economy has grown at a steady clip, generating perpetually higher incomes and wealth for American households. But since 2000, the story is starkly different.
The past decade was the worst for the U.S. economy in modern times, a sharp reversal from a long period of prosperity that is leading economists and policymakers to fundamentally rethink the underpinnings of the nation's growth.
It was, according to a wide range of data, a lost decade for American workers. The decade began in a moment of triumphalism — there was a current of thought among economists in 1999 that recessions were a thing of the past. By the end, there were two, bookends to a debt-driven expansion that was neither robust nor sustainable.
Full Story Aughts were a lost decade for U.S. economy, workers – washingtonpost.com.
Mortgage Modifications Are Seen as Adding to Housing Woes
The Obama administration’s $75 billion program to protect homeowners from foreclosure has been widely pronounced a disappointment, and some economists and real estate experts now contend it has done more harm than good.
Since President Obama announced the program in February, it has lowered mortgage payments on a trial basis for hundreds of thousands of people but has largely failed to provide permanent relief. Critics increasingly argue that the program, Making Home Affordable, has raised false hopes among people who simply cannot afford their homes.
As a result, desperate homeowners have sent payments to banks in often-futile efforts to keep their homes, which some see as wasting dollars they could have saved in preparation for moving to cheaper rental residences. Some borrowers have seen their credit tarnished while falsely assuming that loan modifications involved no negative reports to credit agencies.
Full Story Mortgage Modifications Are Seen as Adding to Housing Woes – NYTimes.com.
Attack on CIA base in Afghanistan may have had inside help
An historic blow against CIA — Intel official promises revenge on Taliban — Two of the dead were Blackwater employees
The suicide bombing Wednesday that took the lives of seven CIA officers and contractors in Afghanistan may have had help from an informant close to the spy agency, and may have been carried out on behalf of a Taliban warlord family that was once an ally of the CIA, news reports say.
Citing an unnamed “Western official,” the Wall Street Journal reported that “an Afghan informant with the agency” may have helped the suicide bomber carry explosives past layers of security at the base.
The allegation echoes what the Taliban themselves now say about the attack. Having taken credit for it, the Taliban said they “used a turncoat CIA operative to carry out” the bombing, the Associated Press reports. The militant group reportedly said the attack was revenge for the death of a high-ranking Taliban leader in a recent US airstrike.
Full Story Attack on CIA base in Afghanistan may have had inside help | Raw Story.
Wall Street ready to claim billions in tax breaks on bonus payments.
Wall Street ready to claim billions in tax breaks on bonus payments.
wallst2009 closed with the stock market rebounding 61 percent from its March lows, and “Wall Street is ready to pat itself on the back for its huge gains with big bonuses,” potentially surpassing the record payouts of 2007. Analysts estimate that Wall Street’s 2009 bonus pool could total $200 billion — led by Goldman Sachs’ $23 billion — as the New York Times reported today, the return to big bonuses will also allow Wall Street banks to claim billions in tax breaks:
Many American banks already pay minuscule federal income taxes, because of various deductions and clever tax planning; the payout-related breaks will reduce their tax bills further in coming years…Altogether, the top three Wall Street banks — Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley — will gain nearly $20 billion in tax breaks based on their employee compensation this year.
Full Story Think Progress » Wall Street ready to claim billions in tax breaks on bonus payments..
VAT: Leveling the Playing field
When every country in the world has a VAT, and the United States is unprotected by a similar system of its own, international trade swings toward imbalance.
The VAT is the most popular tax scheme on earth. Value-added consumption taxes are used by most countries around the world including Canada, China, and Mexico. When every country in the world has a VAT, and the United States is unprotected by a similar system of its own, international trade swings toward imbalance.
The Coalition for a Prosperous America posted a case study of the effects of value-added tax schemes in the United States. The article clearly expresses how foreign consumption taxes undermine American workers and the consumer economy.
The only way to level the playing field is to institute some sort of protection of our own. The United States cannot dictate tax policy to dozens of sovereign nations around the globe, but it can and should insulate itself by reorganizing its own tax policies.
Many “free trade” proponents on both sides of the American political spectrum have said that the VAT is bad for the U.S. economy. However, this claim is only true when the United States is the only nation not employing a VAT of its own. If we had a national consumption tax structure to counteract those used everywhere else, the negative effects would be mitigated.
Full Story Leveling the Playing field | Economy In Crisis.
Entering a Decade of Joblessness
According to the Associated Press, Americans could feel the sting of extremely high unemployment and stagnant wages for a decade or more.
Many economists have predicted that the high unemployment will linger in America for some time – the dreaded jobless recovery – but, according to the Associated Press, Americans could feel the sting of extremely high unemployment and stagnant wages for a decade or more.
According to the Associated Press, the best case scenario may be one in which the nation returns to normal levels of unemployment – typically five to six percent – by the middle of the decade. However, it could be at least a decade if not more before unemployment returns to normal.
“It will be the mother of all jobless recoveries,” economic historian John Steel Gordon told the AP.
A myriad of factors will contribute to the long period of high unemployment, not the least of which is the fact that the economy is growing very slowly after emerging from the worst recession since the 1930s.
In fact, the recession managed to wipe out nearly all job growth achieved during the decade. The U.S. economy gained 21.7 million jobs from 1980 to 1999, but just 464,000 jobs were created during the subsequent decade.
Currently, there are 15.4 million unemployed Americans, leaving six job seekers for every opening. That deluge of job seekers will flood the market and make job openings much more competitive, but at the same time, it will leave many still unemployed.
Full Story Entering a Decade of Joblessness | Economy In Crisis.
Yummy! Ammonia-treated pink slime now in most U.S. ground beef
This is truly astounding, worse than I could’ve imagined.
You’re not going to believe what you’ve been eating the last few years (thanks, Bush! thanks meat industry lobbyists!) when you eat a McDonald’s burger (or the hamburger patties in kids’ school lunches) or buy conventional ground meat at your supermarket:
According to today’s New York Times, The “majority of hamburger” now sold in the U.S. now contains fatty slaughterhouse trimmings “the industry once relegated to pet food and cooking oil,” “typically including most of the material from the outer surfaces of the carcass” that contains “larger microbiological populations.”
This “nasty pink slime,” as one FDA microbiologist called it, is now wrung in a centrifuge to remove the fat, and then treated with AMMONIA to “retard spoilage,” and turned into “a mashlike substance frozen into blocks or chips”.
Thus saving THREE CENTS a pound off production costs. And making the company, Beef Products Inc., a fortune. $440 million/year in revenue. Ain’t that something?
Full Story Daily Kos: Yummy! Ammonia-treated pink slime now in most U.S. ground beef.
15 Best Foods to Boost Your Metabolism and Lose Weight
Remember the days when your metabolism was like a caffeinated mouse in a wheel? Yeah, me neither. If you aren’t one of those lucky gals who can eat whatever she wants and burn it off thanks to an annoyingly fast metabolism, look to these helpful foods for a metabolic boost. (And check out this post on additional tips to speed up a sluggish metabolism.)
Grapefruit
This diet super fruit lowers the insulin levels in your body that trigger your system to store fat. Plus, it is rich in fiber, and your body must burn extra calories in order to break it down.
Green Tea
Green tea is the main source of epigallocatechin gallate, known better as EGCG. This healthy catechin speeds up your brain and nervous system, causing your body to burn more calories.
Full Story 15 Best Foods to Boost Your Metabolism and Lose Weight | EcoSalon.
15 Reasons Never to Let Anyone You Love Near a McDonald’s
Reasons and Ways to Avoid McDonalds and Other Fast Food
The Golden Arches: the ultimate American icon. Super Size Me taught us that fast food culture brings obesity, heart disease, hypertension and a whole slew of other problems. How bad do you really want that Big Mac? Here are 15 reasons you’ll never let anyone you love get near those Golden Arches.
Real food is perishable. With time, it begins to decay. It’s a natural process, it just happens. Beef will rot, bread will mold. But what about a McDonald’s burger? Karen Hanrahan saved a McDonald’s burger from 1996 and, oddly enough, it looks just as “appetizing” and “fresh” as a burger you might buy today. Is this real food?
You would have to walk 7 hours straight to burn off a Super Sized Coke, fries and Big Mac. Even indulging in fast food as an occasional treat is a recipe for weight gain…unless you’re planning to hit each treadmill in the treadmill bay afterwards.
Full Story Reasons and Ways to Avoid McDonalds and Other Fast Food | EcoSalon.
Mega Giant Corporations Are Very Bad for America
Wal-Mart delivers at least 30% and sometimes more than 50% of the entire U.S. consumption of products. Why the monopolization of our economy should scare you.
The following is an excerpt from the first chapter of Cornered: The New Monopoly Capitalism and the Economics of Destruction, published by Wiley Press.
Even with a GPS and a good map, I have a hard time finding Diane Cochrane’s home, which is tucked in the crease of a hill a few miles east of Prescott, Arizona. The one-story green frame building sits at the bottom of a steep driveway that drops from a rocky road that cuts off a maze of streets that, as I drive along in my rented Pontiac, seem more like a mad Motocross track than the arteries of a neighborhood.
Yet it is easy to understand why Diane settled here with her husband after they fled the monotony of a Ford assembly line in Ohio. The landscape is a testament to the creativity of both humanity and God. Every one of the hundred or so houses in the community is unique. There are ramblers, chalets, A-frames, ranches, and log cabins. The terrain, meanwhile, seems to change in character almost inch by inch as the roadway drops and twists vertiginously into deep and scrubby ravines, only to crest a moment later to stunning views of a far shimmering horizon.
A few miles down Highway 69, the Wal-Mart Supercenter at the edge of Prescott is a different world. The parking lot alone is the grandest swath of flat space I’ve seen in the last hour of driving. Then there’s the store itself. To fit the big box into the undulating land, the builders had to cut deep into the side of a hill, carving away as much as six or seven stories worth of dirt and rock.
Full Story Mega Giant Corporations Are Very Bad for America | Corporate Accountability and WorkPlace | AlterNet.
North Korea calls for end to hostility with US
North Korea has issued a New Year message calling for an end to hostile relations with the US.
A statement carried in major newspapers said Pyongyang also wanted “a lasting peace system on the Korean Peninsula”.
In response, a US State Department official said North Korea should show its good faith by returning to six-party talks on its nuclear programme.
In early December, the North said talks with a special US envoy had narrowed differences between the two sides.
The North Korean regime traditionally marks New Year’s Day with a joint editorial in the country’s three major newspapers.
Analysts say the statement is examined carefully for clues to Pyongyang’s policies for the coming year.
Full Story BBC News – North Korea calls for end to hostility with US.
America’s armed militia on the rise
Extremist “patriot” groups and other armed militias have undergone a dramatic resurgence in America, their numbers more than doubling in the past year amid growing Right-wing fears over expanding federal power and gun control.
Such groups – a mix of libertarians, gun rights advocates and survivalists – appeared to be in terminal decline before the election of Barack Obama, according to monitoring bodies.
The Southern Poverty Law Centre, which tracks extremist organisations, says it has so far counted more than 300 patriot groups this year, at least double last year’s total of 150. The real total will be much higher as many groups do not go out of their way to publicise their existence.
Full Story America’s armed militia on the rise – Telegraph.
Obama’s stock falls as Medicare-for-all is abandoned
An increasing number of Americans are voicing their disillusionment over the current healthcare legislation (Democrats in final push for healthcare bill, 21 December). It’s a pity President Obama has largely taken a hands-off approach and meekly allowed the Republicans to shred the bill. Behind the scenes, the administration met secretly with the health insurance and drug companies and negotiated terms favourable to their continued high profitability. Predictably, the stock for insurance companies has soared to a 52-week high in anticipation of a measure that will force over 25 million Americans to buy health insurance.
Millions of dollars have been doled out to lawmakers to cajole them into compliance. In the rush to pass a poorly crafted bill and declare “a healthcare victory”, the Democrats have created an albatross around the neck of their party. It is tragic that support for a public option, or Medicare-for-all, which has overwhelming public support, has been abandoned. This is another shameful example of deeply entrenched business special interests triumphing over the aspirations of the American people.
Jagjit Singh
Los Altos, California, USA
• While Michael Tomasky (Comment, 12 December) seems willing to give Barack Obama a pass for failing to deliver on any of his major campaign promises on the grounds that the system is convoluted, I – a once enthusiastic Obama voter – am not. Other presidents have enacted meaningful legislation with smaller majorities in Congress. The problem is that in his quest for an elusive bipartisan veneer on legislation, Obama begins all his negotiations with concessions.
Full Story Letters: Obama’s stock falls as Medicare-for-all is abandoned | World news | The Guardian.
GOP AGs Strike Out At Ben Nelson’s Health Reform Payoff As Unconstitutional
A group of Republican attorneys general from across the nation are demanding that a healthcare reform provision favoring the state of Nebraska be stricken from the legislation.
The provision in question, which would grant Nebraska a permanent exemption from paying Medicaid expenses that other states, was inserted into the Senate health reform bill in order to secure the vote of Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.). The last holdout, Nelson's vote was needed to have all 60 senators aligned with the Democrats hold together last week to overcome a united GOP filibuster. All 60 Senate Democrats voted together on Christmas Eve to give final passage to its healthcare reform legislation.
The package now goes to a conference with members of the House to reconcile differing versions of health reform.
The attorney generals sent a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), demanding that the provision be removed or face having the reform bill taken for a legal challenge.
Full Story On The Hill: GOP AGs Strike Out At Ben Nelson’s Health Reform Payoff As Unconstitutional.
Experimental proof that openness in government and science are more productive
In an experiment that examines the compatibility of prediction markets with the current practice of scientific publication economists in Sweden and the United States found that disclosure of private information was the most productive policy.
The three scenarios tested were:
- Different pieces of information were disclosed to the public during the experiment,
- Participants received private information,
- Each piece of information was private at first, but was subsequently disclosed to the public.
When asked about the applicability of the same regimen to news and political announcements, Thomas Pfeiffer (the principal author and researcher) responded “In principle I believe that the reasoning also applies to news and politics: It clearly should make markets more stable it private information is made public at some point.
One important point to consider is that politics is man-made, while the truth of scientific hypotheses is not so much under human control (if science is done properly). That makes markets on scientific hypotheses less prone to manipulation – in science it is less easy to place bet on some event (or hypothesis) and than make it happen.
Full Story Experimental proof that openness in government and science are more productive.
Rasmussen poll on flight 253 terrorism hits new low
Rasmussen, one of the most unreliable and dishonest of all polls, did a new poll on the flight 253 terrorist bomb plot that hits new lows for personal gain in the media.
A new Rasmussen poll on the flight 253 terror suspect has hit new lows for exploitation of people’s fears for personal gain and appealing to a mob mentality.
As has been pointed out here many times before, Rasmussen has proved to be not only the most unreliable of all public opinion polls, but, based on their questions and how they are posed, easily the most intellectually dishonest and as such are completely worthless.
But now Rasmussen has hit a new low in a pandering, sleazy poll that has no value to anyone or anything except maybe to them in order to get Rasmussen some cheap attention.
Their recent foray into the political gutter has them taking a poll ( you can almost imagine the village idiot who came up with this idea being congratulated in Rasmussen offices), asking if the Flight 253 bomber should be waterboarded.
Gee, what a great idea for a poll. Especially since as everyone knows, every American is an expert on interrogation techniques, so who better to ask? Whose opinion could possibly matter more?
Full Story Rasmussen poll on flight 253 terrorism hits new low.
Is the Detroit Nigerian “Terrorist” A Patsy?
by BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon
The bumbling Nigerian “terrorist” who set his lap on fire on board an airliner in Detroit Christmas day will provide days or weeks of conveniently hysterical headlines, along with excuses to target West Africa and Yemen for extra special attention from the American military, and the usual host of justifications for existing US policies in what used to be called ‘the war on terror’. But the similarities between his case, and that of incompetent “terrorists” in Fort Dix New Jersey, in Miami’s Liberty City and elsewhere raise serious questions about the whole incident.
What does the hapless Nigerian mope yanked off a plane in Detroit Christmas Day for setting his lap on fire have in common with color-coded terror alerts, with the shoeless, homeless Miami Haitians convicted of trying to bring down the Sears Tower, or with the 2004 pre-election videos allegedly dropped by Osama Bin Laden? Easy. All have been useful in whipping up public fear of Muslim-inspired “terrorism” and each and every one plugs neatly and sweetly into the meta-narratives that justify increasing the power of US police and intelligence establishments and the further militarization of foreign policy.
The guy is said to be an engineering student from Nigeria who received terrorist training in Yemen. Engineers are the practical souls whose profession is making things that actually work. Fortunately for the people on the plane, he seems to have been a very bad student who would have made a wretched engineer. He didn’t know the difference between an explosive device, which might have done great harm to the plane and its passengers, and a small incendiary one which could do no more than set his own lap on fire, and maybe singe the hair of the passenger immediately next to him.
His Nigerian nationality is extremely useful, as it lets “terror experts” and talking heads on TV and radio to draw simplistic and misleading pictures for American audiences of Nigeria as a place besieged by Muslim fundamentalists linked with Al Qaeda and in need of more US military assistance. In the real world Nigeria is a major US oil supplier, and West Africa furnishes about a fifth of US oil imports, a portion expected to grow over the next decade. Nigeria has pumped trillions of dollars worth of oil for the West over the last fifty years without managing to give people in the oil-rich areas schools or electricity or hospitals. It has allowed foreign oil companies to make the region one of the most polluted in the world, where the rain eats metal roofs, health problems are endemic, and fishing and farming are nearly impossible.
Full Story Is the Detroit Nigerian “Terrorist” A Patsy? | Black Agenda Report.
American Mantra: Free Market Capitalism and Obama
Obama’s business/government revolving-door cabinet is comprised of just as many corporate CEO’s and business elites as any presidency in recent history. This new government elite will continue the work to see that the American mantra remains safe, globalized, and unchallenged.
ree Market Capitalism remains the dominant American ideological truth. The decline of communism opened the door for unrepentant free marketers to boldly espouse market competition as the final solution for global harmony. According to the American mantra, if given the opportunity to freely develop, the marketplace will solve all evils. We will enjoy economic expansion, individual freedom, and unlimited bliss by fully deregulating and privatizing society’s socio-economic institutions.
The selection of Obama as the U.S. President placed into power the party of the trilateralist wing of the American corporate elite. Obama’s business/government revolving-door cabinet is comprised of just as many corporate CEO’s and business elites as any presidency in recent history. This new government elite will continue the work to see that the American mantra remains safe, globalized, and unchallenged.
Pesky socialist or nationalist leaning governments will be undermined, pressured into compliance or even invaded if they dare to resist the American mantra. The full force of U.S. dominated global institutions: WTO, World Bank, IMF, NAFTA, will focus on maximizing free market circumstances and corporate access to every region of the world.
Full Story Dissident Voice : American Mantra: Free Market Capitalism and Obama.
Peter Phillips is a Professor of Sociology at Sonoma State University, and Director of Project Censored, a media research organization.
Campaign to Amend US Constitution and revoke corporate “rights” – Personhood
National coordinated campaign unites to revoke corporate “constitutional rights”
ReclaimDemocracy.org and a broad alliance of grassroots pro-democracy groups are preparing to make 2010 a breakthrough year for the Democracy Movement. To accomplish this, we’re building the broadest coalition yet to confront and revoke runaway corporate power. The focus: amending the U.S. Constitution to overturn the Court-created notion of applying constitutional rights to corporations.
While we have been calling for this action for almost the entire decade of our existence, we now find the idea reaching a “tipping point” among many other organizations.
A Teachable Moment
The Campaign to Legalize Democracy will debut publicly the day the U.S. Supreme Court announces a ruling in the potential landmark case, Citizens United v Federal Election Commission. Despite enormous anger over public subsidies, systematic credit card rip-offs, and more, it’s widely expected the Court will give corporations even greater power over our government by allowing company funds to be spent in efforts to elect or defeat political candidates. If this happens, we will work quickly to channel anger where it needs to go: overruling the Court.
And after campaigning to bring “change” to Americans that included public health insurance and taking on Wall Street, President Obama and Congress have demonstrated they either are unwilling or unable to challenge the power of pharmaceutical, insurance, and financial corporations to correct our nation’s most urgent problems
Full Story Campaign to Amend US Constitution and revoke corporate “rights”.
FDA approves Crestor for people who have no health problem to correct
Big Pharma has been trending this direction for a long time: marketing medicines to people who don’t need them and who have nothing wrong with their health. It’s all part of a ploy to position prescription drugs as nutrients — things you need to take on a regular basis in order to prevent disease.
The FDA recently gave its nod of approval on the matter, announcing that Crestor can now be advertised and prescribed as a “preventive” medicine. No longer does a patient need to have anything wrong with them to warrant this expensive prescription medication: They only need to remember the brand name of the drug from television ads.
This FDA approval for the marketing of Crestor to healthy people is a breakthrough for wealthy drug companies. Selling drugs only to people who are sick is, by definition, a limited market. Expanding drug revenues requires reaching people who have nothing wrong with them and convincing them that taking a cocktail of daily pharmaceuticals will somehow keep them healthy.
Full Story FDA approves Crestor for people who have no health problem to correct « Food Freedom.
Three Approved GMOs Linked to Organ Damage
In what is being described as the first ever and most comprehensive study of the effects on mammalian health of three major genetically modified corn varieties, researchers have linked organ damage with consumption of Mon 810, Mon 863 and NK 603 varieties of Monsanto’s GM maize.
All three varieties were approved for consumption by US, European and several other national food safety authorities. Made public by European authorities in 2005, Monsanto’s confidential raw data of its 2002 feeding trials on rats that these researchers analyzed is the same data, ironically, that was used to approve them in different parts of the world.
The Committee of Research and Information on Genetic Engineering (CRIIGEN) and Universities of Caen and Rouen studied Monsanto’s 90-day feeding trials data of insecticide producing Mon 810, Mon 863 and Roundup® herbicide absorbing NK 603 varieties of GM maize.
The data “clearly underlines adverse impacts on kidneys and liver, the dietary detoxifying organs, as well as different levels of damages to heart, adrenal glands, spleen and haematopoietic system,” reported Gilles-Eric Séralini, a molecular biologist at the University of Caen.
Full Story Three Approved GMOs Linked to Organ Damage « Food Freedom.
: Destroying TV Channels that criticize Israel?
Is Congress planning to destroy every Middle East TV Channel that criticizes Israel?
Franklin Lamb
Part II Israel and H.R. 2278 vs. Lebanon’s Al Manar TV et al.
“Al Manar is being singled out by the US Israel lobby precisely because it excels as a responsible TV channel that demands and applies the highest industry standards and because Israeli and Western viewers trust its news broadcasts more than they do much of their own media”
An Advisor to the Dean, Columbia University School of Broadcast Journalism, New York City 12/26/09
Beirut
Having inherited the Bush administrations rising stack of terrorism lists, President Obama’s team had expressed interest in culling them “so they are more accurate and manageable and Americans experience less stress”, according to Homeland Security director Janet Napolitano. These lists, plus the reported existence of others that have not been made public, are supposed to reduce the fear and stress on Americans just knowing there are such lists and that someone is ‘watching out’.
Full Story Scoop: Destroying TV Channels that criticize Israel?.
Marijuana Cancer Cure! – Updated
A discussion of this and other Medical uses of Marijuana
Audio Interview with Dr. Robert Melamede
Updated 1.05.10
Part 1
Colorado’s minimum wage becomes 1st in US to drop
Colorado’s minimum wage will drop slightly in the new year – the first decrease in any state’s minimum wage since the federal minimum was adopted in 1938.
Colorado’s wage is falling 3 cents an hour, from $7.28 to the federal level of $7.25. That’s because Colorado is one of 10 states that tie the state minimum wage to inflation. The goal is to protect low-wage workers from having unchanged paychecks as the cost of living goes up.
But Colorado’s provision also allows wage declines, and the state’s consumer price index fell 0.6 percent last year, so the minimum wage is going down.
The lower consumer price index, attributed to lower fuel prices, would have forced the wage down 4 cents an hour, But no state can go below the federal minimum of $7.25.
Thirteen other states and the District of Columbia will keep a minimum wage higher than the federal minimum, according to the U.S. Labor Department. Alaska will join them Friday when its minimum wage rises 50 cents to $7.75.
Full Story My Way News – Colorado’s minimum wage becomes 1st in US to drop.
On the EdgeMayo Clinic in Arizona to Stop Treating Some Medicare Patients
The Mayo Clinic, praised by President Barack Obama as a national model for efficient health care, will stop accepting Medicare patients as of tomorrow at one of its primary-care clinics in Arizona, saying the U.S. government pays too little.
More than 3,000 patients eligible for Medicare, the government’s largest health-insurance program, will be forced to pay cash if they want to continue seeing their doctors at a Mayo family clinic in Glendale, northwest of Phoenix, said Michael Yardley, a Mayo spokesman. The decision, which Yardley called a two-year pilot project, won’t affect other Mayo facilities in Arizona, Florida and Minnesota.
Obama in June cited the nonprofit Rochester, Minnesota-based Mayo Clinic and the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio for offering “the highest quality care at costs well below the national norm.” Mayo’s move to drop Medicare patients may be copied by family doctors, some of whom have stopped accepting new patients from the program, said Lori Heim, president of the American Academy of Family Physicians, in a telephone interview yesterday.
“Many physicians have said, ‘I simply cannot afford to keep taking care of Medicare patients,’” said Heim, a family doctor who practices in Laurinburg, North Carolina. “If you truly know your business costs and you are losing money, it doesn’t make sense to do more of it.”
Full Story Mayo Clinic in Arizona to Stop Treating Some Medicare Patients – Bloomberg.com.
North Carolina Bans Smoking In Bars, Restaurants
In dozens of states, Gary Richards wouldn’t have been able to light up a Marlboro before tucking into his meat-lover’s pizza, as he did at Satisfaction Restaurant & Bar this week. But in North Carolina, the nation’s leading tobacco producer, limits on indoor smoking have lagged behind those in much of the country.
That changes Saturday, when smoking in restaurants and bars is banned in the state that is home to two major tobacco companies and where the golden leaf helped build Duke and Wake Forest universities.
“There’s smokers and there’s nonsmokers. We’ve gotten along in the past,” Richards, 52, said this week during a pre-meal smoke at the restaurant inside a former tobacco warehouse. “Why can’t I come in here and have my beer and a couple of slices of pizza and a cigarette?”
Full Story North Carolina Bans Smoking In Bars, Restaurants.
UN to withdraw staff from Pakistan
The United Nation is to withdraw a quarter of its international staff from Pakistan as the country descends further into violence.
At least 11 UN workers have been killed in Pakistan in the last year, and over 500 people have died in attacks since the army began an offensive against militants in the Taleban stronghold of South Waziristan in October.
In the latest deadly attack, 44 people were killed on Monday when a suicide bomber attacked a Shiite Muslim religious procession in the southern port city of Karachi.
UN security managers are seeking a reduction f up to 30 percent of its 250 international staff working in Pakistan, an official said, but the final number is expected t be lower
Full Story UN to withdraw staff from Pakistan – Times Online.
Washington slaps fee on plastic shopping bags
The measure, which takes effect on January 1, 2010 and is the first such initiative in the United States, seeks to make consumers bear the brunt of clean up costs for the bags which currently are dispensed for free with a customer’s purchases.
Plastic bags, while popular with shoppers, often end up clinging to tree branches, tangled in power lines, polluting rivers and clogging up storm drains.
“I signed this law in July to cut down on the disposable bags that foul our waterways,” said Mayor Adrian Fenty in a statement last month, saying that one particularly urban waterway, the city’s Anacostia River, has been particularly befouled by the plastic shopping bags.
“Our research shows that plastic bags are a major component of the trash in the Anacostia River,” said Maureen McGowan, interim director of the city’s environment department.
Full Story Washington slaps fee on plastic shopping bags | Raw Story.
Despite massive layoffs and budget woes, Focus On The Family plans on spending $4 million on Super Bowl ads.
Firedoglake reports that Focus On the Family, an ultra-right Christian group, is poised to drop $4 million on a Super Bowl commercial aimed at promoting its anti-choice propaganda. According to sources:
A source says the new head of Focus, Jim Daly, spoke at an evangelical conference a few months ago and unveiled the Super Bowl ad plan. Then he begged for donations from like-minded organizations. According to the source, Daly was given about $3 million, and Focus dipped into its general fund for the other $1 million.
However, Daly doesn’t really seem to have a whole lot of money to spare these days. Apparently, since 2005, his organization has been forced to layoff chunks of its staff every year. This past September, Focus On the Family let go of 8% of its staff — nearly 500 people. As Lisa Derrick of Firedoglake points out, “isn’t keeping families employed the best way to help them thrive?” In the past, neither anti-abortion nor pro-choice ads have been able to pass the television network and NFL approval process.
2009 was deadliest year for U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
AFGHANISTAN MARINESAccording to Pentagon records, 2009 was the deadliest year for U.S. forces in Afghanistan, and the first year in which casualties there exceeded those in Iraq:
More than 312 American soldiers died in Afghanistan last year — nearly twice as many as in 2008. In Iraq, only 150 Americans lost their lives, half as many as the year before. Military officials and analysts predict the trend will continue into 2010 as the U.S. continues to draw down forces in Iraq and build up troop levels in Afghanistan as part of President Obama’s new military strategy there.
Full Story Think Progress » 2009 was deadliest year for U.S. troops in Afghanistan..
Why do oil billionaires oppose America being competitive with other nations that have national health care systems?
Thom Hartmann with Phil Kerpen
Obama Becomes Corporatist 3rd Way Politician, Needs Roosevelt on his iPod
Thom Hartmann defines 3rd Way Politics. A Dangerous direction for America
What Brought America to its Economic Knees
Listen as Craig Harrington discusses America’s trade policies, its financial leadership and the path our economy is currently traversing.
On June 13, Craig Harrington was featured on the Rick Smith show. Listen to the above interview as Craig Harrington discusses America’s trade policies, its financial leadership and the path our economy is currently traversing.
Full Story What Brought America to its Economic Knees | Economy In Crisis.
Disastrous Effects of NAFTA 16 years later
On January 1, 2010 Americans mourned the sixteenth anniversary of the implementation of the deleterious “free trade” agreement that is the North American Free Trade Agreement.
On January 1, 2010 Americans mourned the sixteenth anniversary of the implementation of the deleterious “free trade” agreement that is the North American Free Trade Agreement, now it is just as important to look back and examine what an utter disaster it has been for the United States.
Proponents of NAFTA asserted that the agreement would create hundreds of thousands of jobs in America, Canada and Mexico. They promised to turn a small trade surplus with Mexico into a huge surplus that would benefit all three countries involved. Illegal immigration would be a thing of the past as jobs in Mexico would be plentiful and lucrative. Free traders talked openly of cheaper goods for American consumers with newfound purchasing power and unprecedented surges in exports to markets never before opened to U.S. products. Of course, none of that panned out and those free trade advocates failed to mention what the biggest U.S. export would be: good-paying American jobs.
“NAFTA is really less about trade than it is about investment,” former presidential candidate Ross Perot once said of NAFTA. “Its principal goal is to protect US companies and investors operating in Mexico. The text of the agreement is contained in two volumes covering more than 1,100 pages. Buried in the fine print are provisions that will give away American jobs and radically reduce the sovereignty of the US.”
Prior to the implementation of NAFTA, the U.S. held a small trade surplus with Mexico of approximately $10 million. By 2007, that surplus had turned into an astounding $91 billion trade deficit. With Canada and Mexico combined, the U.S. has taken a $24 billion trade deficit prior to NAFTA and turned it into a $190 billion deficit – a 691 percent increase.
Full Story Disastrous Effects of NAFTA 16 years later | Economy In Crisis.
The New Survivalists
This new generation of survivalists fear watching helplessly as the United States becomes a shell of its former self.
n the 1950s and 1960s, at the height of the Cold War and Mutually Assured Destruction, the idea of preparing for global cataclysm began to become mainstream. However, as years turned to decades, with no mushroom clouds to show for it, the ideals of “survivalism” began to wane.
Every decade has had its own assortment of conspiracy theorists, alarmists, and zealots who believe that the world is going to end. Even today there are perhaps several million Americans waiting with baited breath for December 21, 2012: the date that the Mayan calendar “runs out.” Completely ignoring every single Mesoamerican expert, astronomer, physicist, or reasonably minded human being, people think the world will end in some horrendous catastrophe.
However, outside the realm of unsubstantiated conspiracies and scare-tactics, there is a growing population of Americans who are preparing for unknown hardships. This new generation of suvivalists is outlined in an online exclusive by Newsweek.
The so-called “preppers,” are regular hardworking Americans who enjoy the amenities of modern life. They certainly do not look forward to widespread devastation, and they do not believe we are on the brink of Armageddon.
Full Story The New Survivalists | Economy In Crisis.
Fed Judge Gives Blackwater Huge New Year’s Gift, Dismisses All Charges In Iraq Massacre
Jeremy Scahill -
A federal judge in Washington DC has given Erik Prince’s Blackwater mercenaries a huge New Year’s gift. Judge Ricardo Urbina dismissed all charges against the five Blackwater operatives accused of gunning down 14 innocent Iraqis in Baghdad’s Nisour Square in September 2007. Judge Urbina’s order, issued late in the afternoon on New Year’s Eve is a stunning blow for the Iraqi victims’ families and sends a clear message that US-funded mercenaries are above all systems of law—US and international.
In a memo defending his opinion, Urbina cited a similar rationale used in the dismissal of charges against Iran-Contra figure Oliver North—namely that the government violated the rights of the Blackwater men by using statements they made to investigators in the immediate aftermath of the shooting to build a case against the guards, which Urbina said qualified for “derivative use immunity.” Urbina wrote that he agreed that “the government violated [the Blackwater guards’] constitutional rights by utilizing statements they made to Department of State investigators, which were compelled under a threat of job loss.” He added that the “government is prohibited from using such compelled statements or any evidence obtained as a result of those statements” to bring indictments.
Urbina concluded: “the government has utterly failed to prove that it made no impermissible use of the defendants’ statements or that such use was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. Accordingly, the court must dismiss the indictment against all of the defendants.”
Full Story RebelReports.
The Year In Pot: Top 10 Events That Will Change the Way We Think About Marijuana
There has been a tidal shift in politics and on Marijuana laws in America, from Obama lightening up on pot prosecutions to the recognition of cancer prevention properties.
- Obama Administration: Don’t Focus On Medical Marijuana Prosecutions
United States Deputy Attorney General David Ogden issued a memorandum to federal prosecutors in October directing them to not “focus federal resources … on individuals whose actions are in clear and unambiguous compliance with existing state laws providing for the medical use of marijuana.” The directive upheld a campaign promise by President Barack Obama, who had previously pledged that he was “not going to be using Justice Department resources to try to circumvent state laws on this issue.” Read the full story here. - Public Support For Legalizing Pot Hits All-Time High
A majority of U.S. voters now support legalizing marijuana, according to a national poll of 1,004 likely voters published in December by Angus Reid. The Angus Reid Public Opinion poll results echo those of separate national polls conducted this year by Gallup, Zogby, ABC News, CBS News, Rasmussen Reports, and the California Field Poll, each of which reported greater public support for marijuana legalization than ever before. Read the full story here. - Lifetime Marijuana Use Associated With Reduced Cancer Risk
The moderate long-term use of cannabis is associated with a reduced risk of head and neck cancer, according to the results of a population-based control study published in August by the journal Cancer Prevention Research. Authors reported, “After adjusting for potential confounders (including smoking and alcohol drinking), 10 to 20 years of marijuana use was associated with a significantly reduced risk of head and neck squamous cell carcinoma.” Read the full story here.
more…..
Full Story The Year In Pot: Top 10 Events That Will Change the Way We Think About Marijuana | DrugReporter | AlterNet.
Harsh lessons we may need to learn again
Joseph E. Stiglitz -
The best that can be said for 2009 is that it could have been worse, that we pulled back from the precipice on which we seemed to be perched in late 2008, and that 2010 will almost surely be better for most countries around the world. The world has also learned some valuable lessons, though at great cost both to current and future prosperity – costs that were unnecessarily high given that we should already have learned them.
The first lesson is that markets are not self-correcting. Indeed, without adequate regulation, they are prone to excess. In 2009, we again saw why Adam Smith’s invisible hand often appeared invisible: it is not there. The bankers’ pursuit of self-interest (greed) did not lead to the well-being of society; it did not even serve their shareholders and bondholders well. It certainly did not serve homeowners who are losing their homes, workers who have lost their jobs, retirees who have seen their retirement funds vanish, or taxpayers who paid hundreds of billions of dollars to bail out the banks.
Under the threat of a collapse of the entire system, the safety net – intended to help unfortunate individuals meet the exigencies of life – was generously extended to commercial banks, then to investment banks, insurance firms, auto companies, even car-loan companies. Never has so much money been transferred from so many to so few.
Full Story Harsh lessons we may need to learn again.
Demand that Obama End Bush’s Policies and War Crimes
Len Hart -
I did not support Obama so that the US could continue Bush's criminal policies! I most certainly did not and do not support the commission of new war crimes, aggression, or atrocities! When one's own country is wrong, it is one's patriotic duty to protest. I had hoped Obama would not become the new LBJ –stuck with and blamed for GOP wars of aggression accompanied by heinous war crimes by the US military and the world's largest and best financed terrorist organization –THE CIA! [See: Kangas, A Timeline of CIA Atrocities]
Three of the seven–George Tenet, Porter Goss, and Michael Hayden–were themselves involved, in one way or another, in planning, conducting, or covering up all manner of illegal actions, including torture, assassination, and illegal eavesdropping. In this light, the most transparent part of the letter may be the sentence in which they worry: “There is no reason to expect that the re-opened criminal investigation will remain narrowly focused.”
When asked about the letter on the Sunday TV talk shows on Sept. 20, Obama was careful always to respond first by expressing obligatory “respect” for the CIA and its directors. With Bob Schieffer on Face the Nation, though, Obama did allow himself a condescending quip. He commented, “I appreciate the former CIA directors wanting to look out for an institution that they helped to build.”
Full Story The Existentialist Cowboy: Demand that Obama End Bush’s Policies and War Crimes.
It’s the Democrats that need to be re-formed
On election night 2008, i had the chance to speak with my newly reelected representative in a setting more private than the average meeting with a politician. That was quite a night, wasn’t it? After eight long years of Bush-Cheney running all sorts of rampant over everything from our civil liberties to our economy and a few foreign nations in between it was hard not to savor a moment where so much seemed, once again possible. I looked down on the twinkling lights of my little city from the penthouse suite of our luxury hotel and felt hope…even through my well-cultivated cynicism.
I asked my representative, “What’s the agenda when you return to Washington?”
I did not get any “inside information”. He told me that the newly enlarged Democratic majority led by the newly elected Democratic President would first work to stabilize the financial crisis and then move on to tackling health care reform. If i remember correctly, the goal after that was Iraq…but i can’t be sure. It was a long time ago now and i’m not always the best listener.
We’ll skip over the Democratic Party’s idea of stabilization and financial industry reform. To some degree that situation was forced upon them, and while they continue to do a shitty job from a Main Street perspective, that should come as no surprise. Look at who filled their campaign coffers.
Full Story Scholars and Rogues » It’s the Democrats that need to be re-formed.
Global Survey: 74% Critical of Neoliberal Capitalism
A global survey commissioned by the BBC revealed that 74% of 29,000 respondents in 27 countries are critical of neoliberal capitalism. This is a reversal from a 2005 survey by the same firm, GlobeScan, which found 63% in favor of a free market. The only Latin American nations surveyed all hold free trade agreements with the US, and all reject neoliberalism by vast majorities. France and Germany believe strong regulation can cure problems with capitalism.
For ArgenPress:
Nine out of ten Chileans are demanding government intervention in the redistribution of wealth, while a vast majority want to bring control to free market capitalism, advocated by the far-right candidate Sebastian Pinera. A global survey commissioned by the BBC in London to the international research GlobeScan opinion revealed in November that 91% of respondents in Chile would like their government to take a more active role in a more uniform redistribution of wealth, as long as 5 % would prefer a less active role and 3% prefer to leave things as they are.
The results of this international survey was never aired in the mainstream media in Chile and Latin America during the fanfare of the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall on 9 November, because they show an extensive universal dissatisfaction of 74% critical of capitalism neoliberal. The totalitarian dogma of free market only had 11% acceptance among 29,033 respondents in 27 countries around the world who said they were good and that further regulation is not a good idea (1). Those who showed the greatest adherence to capitalism as it is today because work well, were U.S. respondents (25%) … and Pakistan (21%).
Full Story Global Survey: 74% Critical of Neoliberal Capitalism « COTO Report.
OPS: NOTE – Many Americans are confused by this.
The rest of the world calls it Neoliberal – In the US we call it NEOCON. They are the same thing.
Regional lake study points to faster warming
Lake Tahoe, Clear Lake and four other large lakes in Northern California and Nevada are warming faster than the surrounding atmosphere, suggesting climate change may affect aquatic environments faster and sooner.
The findings are reported in a new study led by researchers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena.
They used 18 years of temperature data from satellite sensors. It is believed to be the first time data have been dissected to reveal lake surface temperature over a period that long.
The other lakes in the study are Lake Almanor and Mono Lake in California, and Pyramid Lake and Walker Lake in Nevada.
Krugman: Chinese New Year
It’s the season when pundits traditionally make predictions about the year ahead. Mine concerns international economics: I predict that 2010 will be the year of China. And not in a good way.
Actually, the biggest problems with China involve climate change. But today I want to focus on currency policy.
China has become a major financial and trade power. But it doesn’t act like other big economies. Instead, it follows a mercantilist policy, keeping its trade surplus artificially high. And in today’s depressed world, that policy is, to put it bluntly, predatory.
Here’s how it works: Unlike the dollar, the euro or the yen, whose values fluctuate freely, China’s currency is pegged by official policy at about 6.8 yuan to the dollar. At this exchange rate, Chinese manufacturing has a large cost advantage over its rivals, leading to huge trade surpluses.
Full Story Op-Ed Columnist – Chinese New Year – NYTimes.com.
Richard Gage of Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth stuns Vancouver with local TV Interview
Video -
Time: 20 minutes
April 22, 2008 Vancouver
Full Story Appearances.
According to Ensign (R-NV) having an affair with a staffer is not un-ethical.
CNN’s Sanchez Grills Ensign On His Affair (VIDEO) -
Some generally awkward television took place Thursday afternoon when Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) — invited on CNN to discuss the botched Christmas terrorist attack — was quizzed about ethics allegations that he set up and aided the husband of his mistress with a lobbying gig.
The Nevada Republican insisted throughout the segment that he had done nothing unethical or untoward in arranging for his former staffer Doug Hampton to join a political consulting firm and then setting him up with clients. But with each attempt at evasion, host Rick Sanchez came back with another the excruciating question.
“Did you help [Hampton] get a job because you felt bad for him or because you had been sleeping with his wife and you wanted to get him out of the way,” the CNN anchor asked at one point.
Full Story CNN’s Sanchez Grills Ensign On His Affair (VIDEO).
BP Alaska Oil Spill Larger Than First Thought -State Authorities
BP PLC (BP) estimates that a breach at a well line in Alaska’s Prudhoe Bay oilfield resulted in a spill of as much as 100 gallons of crude oil, more than the company had originally calculated.
In a report released late Tuesday, state authorities said that the London-based company estimated it could have spilled between 300 and 700 gallons of liquids, including crude oil and water produced from the oil well. BP told the Associated Press on Dec. 23 that it had estimated that three gallons of oil and 131 gallons of water had been released.
The reason for the spill, which occurred on Dec. 21, is still under investigation, the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation said in the report. A BP spokesman couldn’t be reached for comment.
The updated estimate comes as federal and state authorities are also investigating a spill at a BP pipeline last month that released more than 1,000 barrels of crude onto the snow-covered tundra. That pipeline ruptured due to a buildup of ice within the line, BP and DEC said in a joint statement.
Full Story BP Alaska Oil Spill Larger Than First Thought -State Authorities.
Flight 253 passenger Kurt Haskell: ‘I was visited by the FBI’
Today is the second worst day of my life after 12-25-09. Today is the day that I realized that my own country is lying to me and all of my fellow Americans. Let me explain.
Following up on a visit from FBI officials about an eyewitness account first described to MLive.com, Michigan attorney Kurt Haskell described the visit in comment sections across MLive on Wednesday.
Haskell and his wife, Lori, were aboard Flight 253 when Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab allegedly tried to destroy the plane. They say another man tried to help Abdulmutallab board the plane in Amsterdam.
Haskell had two detailed posts in two different stories. Here is Part One, originally posted here (Nothing below in the indent has been changed. Only links have been added.):
Today is the second worst day of my life after 12-25-09. Today is the day that I realized that my own country is lying to me and all of my fellow Americans. Let me explain.
Ever since I got off of Flight 253 I have been repeating what I saw in US Customs. Specifically, 1 hour after we left the plane, bomb sniffing dogs arrived. Up to this point, all of the passengers on Flight 253 stood in a small area in an evacuated luggage claim area of an airport terminal. During this time period, all of the passengers had their carry on bags with them. When the bomb sniffing dogs arrived, 1 dog found something in a carry on bag of a 30 ish Indian man. This is not the so called “Sharp Dressed” man. I will refer to this man as “The man in orange”. The man in orange, who stood some 20ft away from me the entire time until he was taken away, was immediately taken away to be searched and interrogated in a nearby room. At this time he was not handcuffed. When he emerged from the room, he was then handcuffed and taken away. At this time an FBI agent came up to the rest of the passengers and said the following (approximate quote) “You all are being moved to another area because this area is not safe. I am sure many of you saw what just happened (Referring to the man in orange) and are smart enough to read between the lines and figure it out.” We were then marched out of the baggage claim area and into a long hallway. This entire time period and until we left customs, no person that wasn’t a law enforcement personnel or a passenger on our flight was allowed anywhere on our floor of the terminal (or possibly the entire terminal) The FBI was so concerned during this time, that we were not allowed to use the bathroom unless we went alone with an FBI agent, we were not allowed to eat or drink, or text or call anyone. I have been repeating this same story over the last 5 days. The FBI has, since we landed, insisted that only one man was arrested for the airliner attack (contradicting my account). However, several of my fellow passengers have come over the past few days, backed up my claim, and put pressure on FBI/Customs to tell the truth. Early today, I heard from two different reporters that a federal agency (FBI or Customs) was now admitting that another man has been held (and will be held indefinitely) since our flight landed for “immigration reasons.” Notice that this man was “being held” and not “arrested”, which was a cute semantic ploy by the FBI to stretch the truth and not lie.
Full Story Flight 253 passenger Kurt Haskell: ‘I was visited by the FBI’ | Detroit News – - MLive.com.
OPS: “…only the airport security video can verify my eyewitness account and …it is not being released.”
Reminds one of the many security videos that were available( and confiscated ) of something hitting the Pentagon on 9-11 – that would easily prove what hit it – and have not been released.
-
Republicans Don't Care about Voter Fraud....owa Republicans are trying to dismiss claims that the vote count in Tuesday's Iowa Caucus was wrong. An Iowa voter told a local TV station yesterday that he noticed a 20-vote discrepancy in the count - and that Rick Santorum was the real winner of the Caucuses. Republican Party officials, though, are sticking to their first count - showing Mitt Romney as the winner by 8-votes - and there will be no recount.The Republican Party has launched a war on voters around the nation this year with strict new laws that will disenfranchise over 5 million Americans. They claim these laws are necessary to combat so-called voter fraud. Yet in Iowa - where there are no such laws - and where a very, very close and questionable election was just held - Republicans don't seem to care at all about getting it right.Clearly - the war on voters isn't about making sure the people's voices are represented accurately - it's about making sure poor people, young people, and minorities who tend to vote for Democrats - can't vote at all.-Thom(Who do you think won? Tell us here.) -
LEGALIZE Democracy
" We the corporations" On January 21, 2010, with its ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the Supreme Court ruled that corporations are persons, entitled by the U.S. Constitution to buy elections and run our government. __________
MOVE to AMEND
a project of the CAMPAIGN TO LEGALIZE Democracy
Help end Corporate personhood
-
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. 
