Archive for January, 2010

Sex Addiction: A B.S. Excuse for Not Thinking

Sexual compulsions are real and they harm the person in their grip as well as others. But treating them like a problem — something to be ‘fixed’ — isn’t working.

Tiger Woods has reportedly sought treatment for sex addiction. Given the tsunami of false reports about him, this rumor is highly suspect. Nevertheless, no one would be surprised if he joined the list of high-profile figures, usually men, who have been labeled sex addicts or actively sought treatment as such, e.g. David Duchovny, Charlie Sheen, Michael Douglas, Eliot Spitzer, Mark Foley and Ted Haggard, to name a few.

Whether applied earnestly or as a PR gloss for bad behavior, sex addiction is an increasingly common diagnosis. In my view, it’s a problematic one. It’s ambiguous, hard to define, blurry around the edges, and an excuse for not thinking. If a married man has a lot of extramarital sex, is he necessarily a sex addict? If a seemingly straight man frequents restrooms for casual sex, is he an addict? How much pornography does someone have to look at, how many hours spent in chat rooms, hookers hired, to go from “hound dog” to “sex addict?”

Current attempts at diagnosis focus on the extent to which sexual compulsions interfere with a person’s good judgment or are pursued despite obvious risks to health, job and family. Anyone who has experienced such compulsions or has treated them knows what I mean — the husband who spends untold hours cheating on his wife online or with hookers, spends money he doesn’t have pursuing his sexual interests, engages in unsafe sex, etc. But how much risk does there have to be? If my lifestyle easily allows me to spend five hours a day surfing Internet porn or cruising for hookers, I may experience little risk but a high level of compulsion. If I feel too guilty to leave a terrible marriage and instead have a series of affairs, am I being compulsive or simply escaping a lonely existence? What about a priest who feels compelled to have sex, thereby risking his entire identity and belief-system; is he a sex addict or did he choose a ridiculously unhealthy lifestyle? Subjective experiences are clearly unreliable: Some people with very strict consciences and conservative backgrounds experience almost any sexual impulse as “out of control,” while for others, living in a Fellini film would barely make the forbidden list.

Full Story Sex Addiction: A B.S. Excuse for Not Thinking | Sex and Relationships | AlterNet.

Coakley Loses — And So Does Obama

Dems need to recognize that they’ve mismanaged the health care debate, spent too little time focused on jobs and haven’t held Wall Street and the big banks to account.

John Nicols, The Nation -

Whoever scheduled the special election for the U.S. Senate seat vacated by the death of Edward Kennedy on January 19 did Barack Obama no favors.

The president did not need the tension of a too-close-for comfort electoral test on the day before the one-year anniversary of his inauguration.

Democrat Martha Coakley loss to Republican Scott Brown in Tuesday’s voting was a painful blow to the president.

One year into his presidency, he has been hit with the most painful of all measures of the success or failure of his presidency — the loss of the filibuster-proof majority he needed to pass health-care reform and the rest of his agenda.

Full Story Coakley Loses — And So Does Obama.

One of the Most Common Chemicals Used in Modern Life Is Now Being Seen as a Health Threat

Damning new evidence has even the FDA worried about the impacts of BPA in consumer products, especially those for infants and children.

On Friday, in a substantial shift in policy, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced that it has “some concern” about the health effects of bishphenol A (BPA), particularly on infants and children. While not currently advocating regulation, the FDA is proposing steps that could lead to restrictions.

“We need to know more,” said FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg during a press conference. But “as a precaution,” the FDA has issued recommendations for reducing exposure.

This contrasts markedly with the FDA’s 2008 assessment that declared BPA use safe in consumer products, including for infants and children. It also aligns FDA’s views with those of the National Toxicology Program and National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.

Full Story One of the Most Common Chemicals Used in Modern Life Is Now Being Seen as a Health Threat | Health and Wellness | AlterNet.

America absolutely needs a national manufacturing policy, urges Senator Brown

An interview with Sherrod Brown, the progressive senator from Ohio who calls for unleashing America’s economy to build wind turbines and solar panels.

As chairman of the Senate Banking Subcommittee on Economic Policy, Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH), has been a strong and consistent advocate for the middle class and working families.

Often described as “Congress’s leading proponent of American manufacturing,” he has been steadfastly working with the Obama administration on the creation of a national manufacturing policy.

Over the past year, Brown held a series of Subcommittee on Economic Policy hearings examining ways to rebuild U.S. manufacturing and is also fighting to ensure that our nation’s trade laws work for domestic manufacturing and American workers.

Kathleen Wells: Later this month or early in February, it is expected that the Senate will take up a jobs bill (Jobs for Main Street Act). How can Americans be certain that this bill will actually create jobs –actually put Americans back to work?

Full Story America absolutely needs a national manufacturing policy, urges Senator Brown | Race-Talk.

Which Came First: Conservatism or Status Quo?

Conservative ideas, like support for the status quo and justifications for inequality, can make the world seem like a more secure place for those who don’t like uncertainty.

Over the past year, a conservative right-wing movement has found a loud political voice in the United States. Strongly anti-government, the movement seems largely oriented around a message that anything the Obama administration wishes to accomplish is an attack on American tradition, and it is up to them to stop this radical socialist agenda emanating from Washington to preserve the country.

This burst of activity has left some asking where such a rush of conservative energy might come from. Is it a response to the anxiety and uncertainty of tough economic times? Does having an African-American president have anything to do with it?

According to some new research on the cognitive origins of political conservatism, the answers may be yes and yes.

Full Story Culture & Society Articles | Which Came First: Conservatism or Status Quo? | Miller-McCune Online Magazine.

Profiting From Haiti’s Crisis

US corporations, private mercenaries, Washington and the International Monetary Fund are using the crisis in Haiti to make a profit, promote unpopular neoliberal policies, and extend military and economic control over the Haitian people.

In the aftermath of the earthquake, with much of the infrastructure and government services destroyed, Haitians have relied on each other for the relief efforts, working together to pull their neighbors, friends and loved ones from the rubble. One report from IPS News in Haiti explained, “In the day following the quake, there was no widespread violence. Guns, knives and theft weren’t seen on the streets, lined only with family after family carrying their belongings. They voiced their anger and frustration with sad songs that echoed throughout the night, not their fists.”

Bob Moliere, an organizer within the popular political party Fanmi Lavalas was killed in the earthquake. His wife, Marianne Moliere, told IPS News after burying her husband, “There is no life for me because Bob was everything to me. I lost everything. Everything is destroyed,” she said. “I’m sleeping in the street now because I’m homeless. But when I get some water, I share with others. Or if someone gives some spaghetti, I share with my family and others.”

Full Story Toward Freedom – Profiting From Haiti’s Crisis.

Long-stalled TSA nominee Erroll Southers withdraws Republicans’ political opposition.

Erroll Southers Today, Erroll Southers, President Obama’s nominee to head the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), announced that he was withdrawing from consideration because “his nomination had become a lightning rod for those with a political agenda.” Indeed, Southers’ most vocal opponent was Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC), who was blocking the highly qualified nominee “to prevent TSA workers from joining a labor union.” Following the failed Christmas Day bombing when it became increasingly clear how much the TSA needed a director, the right wing insisted on playing politics with Southers’ nomination. The White House said it “accepted Southers’ withdrawal with great sadness and continued to believe he would have made an excellent TSA administrator.” According to Foreign Policy, there are still 177 Obama nominees awaiting confirmation, and “dozens of those holds are directly affecting the agencies responsible for the United States’ security and foreign policy.”

Full Story Think Progress » Long-stalled TSA nominee Erroll Southers withdraws Republicans’ political opposition..

OPS: This, and the Brown victory in MA  are indications that the Democrats don’t really want the job. Obama will be a one-termer. The Country is screwed.

EXCLUSIVE PREVIEW: Tragic Story of Mike Connell, Bush/Rove/GOP IT Guru,

The story for which The BRAD BLOG was awarded a 2010 Project Censored award for “Excellence in Investigative Journalism” is “censored” no more. From the February 2010 issue of Maxim hitting mag racks this week…

The February 2010 issue hits newsstands this week, and should be available on the Internet soon, featuring a detailed investigative feature on the mysterious death of Mike Connell, the George W. Bush/Karl Rove/GOP “IT Guru” described as a “‘High IQ Forrest Gump” for his proclivity to be at the scene of so many Bush/Rove/GOP crimes over the years.

The 3,500-word Maxim piece was penned by British investigative journalist and author Simon Worrall after a year or so of digging, following the startling tragic death of Connell in December of 2008. The long-reliable Republican IT entrepreneur was on his way home from D.C. to his company’s Christmas party near Akron, Ohio, when his single engine Piper Saratoga plunged from the sky for reasons that remain unexplained to this day.

Full Story The BRAD BLOG : EXCLUSIVE PREVIEW: Tragic Story of Mike Connell, Bush/Rove/GOP IT Guru, Breaks in Maxim.

Texas Social Studies Curriculum: Out With Civil Rights Leaders, In With Phyllis Schlafly And Joseph McCarthy

For months, the Texas State Board of Education has been hearing from “experts” about the direction of the state’s social studies curriculum and textbook standards. The advice to the 15-member board — which is composed of 10 Republicans — has included more references to Christianity, fewer mentions of civil rights leaders, George Wasington, and Abraham Lincoln.

On Thursday and Friday last week, the State Board of Education took up these recommendations in a lengthy, heated debate. Some highlights of what the Republican-leaning board ended up deciding, and the debates that went on:

— On a 7-6 vote, the board decided to add “causes and key organizations and individuals of the conservative resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s, including Phyllis Schafly, the Contract with America, the Heritage Foundation, the Moral Majority, and the National Rifle Association” to the curriculum.

Full Story Think Progress » Texas Social Studies Curriculum: Out With Civil Rights Leaders, In With Phyllis Schlafly And Joseph McCarthy.

What’s so bad about socialism?

Thom Hartmann  with William Baker

Court won’t close shipping locks to keep out carp

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday refused to order immediate closure of shipping locks near Chicago to prevent Asian carp from infesting the Great Lakes.

The court rejected a request by Michigan for a preliminary injunction to close the locks temporarily while a long-term solution is sought to the threatened invasion by the ravenous fish. The one-sentence ruling didn't explain the court's reasoning.

Asian carp, primarily bighead and silver varieties, have been migrating up the Mississippi and Illinois rivers toward the Great Lakes for decades. They have swarmed waterways near Chicago leading to Lake Michigan.

Full Story Court won’t close shipping locks to keep out carp – washingtonpost.com.

Tougher Cancer Warning On Tanning Beds Debated By FDA

Just as millions head to tanning beds to prepare for spring break, the Food and Drug Administration will be debating how to toughen warnings that those sunlamps pose a cancer risk. Yes, sunburns are particularly dangerous. But there’s increasing scientific consensus that there’s no such thing as a safe tan, either.

This is a message that Katie Donnar, 18, dismissed until a year ago when, preparing for the Miss Indiana pageant, she discovered a growth on her leg – an early-stage melanoma, the most dangerous form of skin cancer.

She can’t prove tanning beds are to blame, but started using them as a sixth-grade cheerleader, says she stepped under the bulbs about every other day during parts of high school, and at one point even owned one. No more.

Full Story Tougher Cancer Warning On Tanning Beds Debated By FDA.

United States Internet Speed Is on the Decline [REPORT]

According to Akamai’s Q3 State of the Internet report, the United States’ Internet speed did not qualify for a place in the top 10 list of countries with the fastest Internet in the world, and its average overall speed has actually decreased by 2.4% year-over-year from 2008 to 2009.

The United States actually ranked 18 out of the 203 nations tested in terms of average connection speeds, falling behind speed leaders like South Korea, Japan and Hong Kong.

When looked at from a global perspective, the results are quite positive. The report states:

“The global average connection speed is once again increasing, after an unusual drop in the second quarter. The average connection speed of 1.7 Mbps returns it to a level consistent with the first quarter of 2009. South Korea maintained its position as the country with the highest average connection speed, and was joined by Ireland as one of two countries in the top 10 posting quarterly gains of greater than 25% (on top of minor quarterly gains also seen in the second quarter). Romania, Sweden, and the Czech Republic all saw quarterly declines in their average connection speeds, though they all maintained positive yearly growth. While the United States saw a small quarterly gain in average connection speeds, increasing to 3.9 Mbps, from a year-over-year perspective, the trend is negative, though just slightly so.”

Full Story United States Internet Speed Is on the Decline [REPORT].

New Jersey Medical Marijuana Bill Signed Into Law

New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine has signed legislation granting chronically ill patients legal access to marijuana.

Corzine’s office said the governor signed the bill late Monday, his last full day in office. Gov.-elect Chris Christie will be sworn in Tuesday.

New Jersey is the 14th state to allow patients with diseases such as cancer, AIDS, glaucoma and multiple sclerosis to use marijuana to alleviate their pain and other symptoms.

Full Story New Jersey Medical Marijuana Bill Signed Into Law.

Will The Justice Department Investigate A Possible Cover-Up Of Homicides At Guantánamo Bay?

Will The Justice Department Investigate A Possible Cover-Up Of Homicides At Guantánamo Bay?

harry1 On June 9, 2006, “three prisoners at Guantánamo [Bay] died suddenly and violently.” The commander of Guantánamo at the time, Rear Admiral Harry Harris, immediately declared that the deaths were “suicides,” adding that he believed that the suicides were “not an act of desperation, but an act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us.”

The conclusion that the deaths were suicides was largely uncritically accepted by the press at the time, and the matter was considered closed. Then, late last year, an investigation by Seton Hall law school faculty and students found “serious and unresolved contradictions” in the military’s report on the incidents, and even declared that it was an “obvious cover-up.”

Now, following the Seton Hall investigation, Sergeant Joe Hickman and other soldiers stationed at Guantánamo have informed Harper’s Magazine’s Scott Horton that they suspect the three prisoners did not commit suicide but rather were killed by interrogators. Horton reports that Hickman — a stalwart solder who enlisted after being inspired by Ronald Reagan (whom he called “the greatest president we’ve ever had“) — was told by Navy guards and clinic staff that the men had been died because they had rags stuffed down their throats:

Full Story Think Progress » Will The Justice Department Investigate A Possible Cover-Up Of Homicides At Guantánamo Bay?.

Brown raises prospect of global bank levy

IMF to present proposals for reform of international finance in April

Gordon Brown raised the possibility of the world adopting a bank levy on Tuesday, as part of a longer-term drive to make banks pay for the implicit insurance offered to their business by the taxpayer.

Mr Brown’s government has made it clear it has no plans to copy Barack Obama’s levy, which it regards as a backward-looking move to recoup US taxpayer losses in insuring toxic assets.

But the idea of a bank levy – either on financial transactions or on an insurance basis – as a more permanent measure is one of four options he proposed to the G20 last autumn.

Full Story FT.com / Brussels – Brown raises prospect of global bank levy.

Extend bank tax to do the business

Dean Baker -

A speculation tax would not just claw back billions lost in bailouts – it would make the financial sector more efficient and productive

President Obama proposed a tax on the country’s largest banks to help recover the money lost under the Troubled Assets Relief Programme (Tarp). This tax is a positive step. However, it will not come close to recovering the losses incurred in the bailouts and it will do almost nothing to change the way that the banks do business. For this we will need a larger financial speculation tax.

First, it is necessary to be clear on the extent of the losses incurred in the bailouts of the financial system. The losses in the Tarp are currently pegged at close to $120bn, mostly due to the bailout of AIG, the giant US insurance company. This money was virtually a direct handout to several large banks, as the government’s money allowed AIG to make payments to Goldman Sachs and other large banks that would not have been possible if it had fallen into bankruptcy.

But these losses are far from the complete picture with the Tarp. On the night before Christmas, the Treasury department lifted the $200bn cap on the amount that both the mortgage agencies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac can draw on the Treasury. They both now have unlimited lines of credit.

Full Story Extend bank tax to do the business | Dean Baker | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk.

OPS: How about we stop with the Designer Taxes and simply roll back the Reagan Tax cuts. Problems solved…forever.

Though Obviously Hypocritical, GOP Has Chance to Outflank Dems on Health Care Populism

David Sirota -

SHADEGG: Both the House and Senate bills contain mandates that compel, or would compel you and I as individual Americans to buy insurance from Americas private insurance industry. I think America’s private insurance industry is the problem…

STARK: So are you for a public option?

SHADDEG: Well, you could better defend a public option than you could defend compelling me to buy a product from the people that have created the problem. America’s health insurance industry has wanted this bill and the individual mandate from the get go. That’s their idea. Their idea is “look, our product is so lousy, that lots of people don’t buy it. So we need the government to force people to buy our product. And stunningly, that’s what the Congress appears to be going along with. Why would they do that?…The notion of forcing Americans to buy a product they don’t want to buy from companies that aren’t doing it right right now is goofy…Making the IRS the bill collector for Aetna and the rest of America’s insurance companies…Blue Cross/Blue Shield and United…isn’t the way to do it.

Let’s first get the issue of Shadegg’s integrity out of the way here – he’s obviously a hypocrite. This is a lawmaker who could have voted for the public option that he suggests has value, and could have voted for much stronger overall health care reform bills in the past.

However, hypocrisy by a politician is hardly interesting in an age when President Obama has broken so many explicit promises it’s hard to even count them anymore. What is far more notable is the substantive argument Shadegg is voicing – it’s both accurate and politically telling.

Full Story Open Left:: Though Obviously Hypocritical, GOP Has Chance to Outflank Dems on Health Care Populism.

Haiti earthquake survivors face growing disease threat

Health experts warn of threats from tetanus and gangrene, and spread of measles and meningitis as aid effort continues

The spread of disease has become a major concern in Haiti, medical experts said today, as relief groups struggled to speed up the delivery of supplies to hungry and thirsty earthquake survivors.

While a slight return to normality street vendors emerging to offer fruit and vegetables, rescue teams from around the world continued to search for survivors under the rubble of collapsed buildings. More successful rescues were being reported six days after the disaster but tens of thousands are still believed to be buried.

Medical experts said many survivors had multiple fractures and internal injuries. Medical teams at mobile hospitals that have been overwhelmed by the casualties warned of the immediate threats of tetanus and gangrene and the spread of measles, meningitis and other infections.

Full Story Haiti earthquake survivors face growing disease threat | World news | guardian.co.uk.

5.8 earthquake shakes Cayman Islands

A 5.8 earthquake shook the Cayman Islands, south of Cuba on Tuesday morning, reports said.

On Monday morning, a strong earthquake rocked Guatemala and parts of El Salvador, but no there were no immediate reports of injuries or damage in either country.

The U.S. Geological Survey says the quake had a preliminary magnitude of 6.0.

The USGS says it hit Monday morning about 60 miles (97 kilometers) southwest of Guatemala City, where it was felt by many residents. There were reports of shaking in the Guatemalan countryside and in El Salvador as well.

Civil protection officials in the two countries says so far there are no reports of injuries or damage, but authorities are still checking.

Full Story 5.8 earthquake shakes Cayman Islands – News Flash – MiamiHerald.com.

What Retirees Would Have Done Differently

Money isn’t everything, according to a group of affluent Americans surveyed by Merrill Lynch Wealth Management. Focusing on family and friends, it turns out, gained in importance through the recession.

Just over half of retired respondents with at least $250,000 to invest said they wished they had focused more on their “life goals” than on “the numbers,” according to the firm’s Affluent Insights Quarterly, released today. In fact the leading response was wishing they had given more thought to how they wanted to live in retirement (38 percent) followed by wishing they had worked with a financial adviser earlier (23 percent) and given up more luxuries to reach their retirement goals (18 percent).

“The feeling is you should always absolutely have a plan, but the plan is not what we propeller heads think,” Sallie Krawcheck, president of Bank of America Global Wealth & Investment Management, which includes Merrill, told Bucks. “We as an industry talk to our clients about numbers, numbers, numbers. For us risk is standard deviation; for our clients it’s what if I have a health event that affects my life and my financials?”

Full Story what-retirees-would-have-done-differently: Personal Finance News from Yahoo! Finance.

Pumping autistic children full of an industrial chelator : Respectful Insolence

The double standard of the anti-vaccine “autism biomed” movement never ceases to amaze me.

Imagine if you will, that a pharmaceutical company examined a chemical used for industrial purposes. Imagine further that the chemical this pharmaceutical company decided to look at originated as an industrial chelator designed to separate heavy metals from polluted soil and mining drainage. Imagine still further that that pharmaceutical company wanted to use that chemical as a treatment for autism, a chelator to be given to children. Finally, imagine that the drug company was giving this chemical to children without anything resembling any sort of competent preclincal testing or toxicology testing. Then suppose that, in order to avoid having to obtain FDA approval, the pharmaceutical company rebranded its chelating agent as a “supplement,” using the DSHEA of 1994 to bypass any need for extensive clinical trial testing for safety and efficacy in order to be able to market this chemical directly to consumers. What do you think the reaction would be of the crew at Age of Autism and other anti-vaccine blogs?

I think I know. They’d scream bloody murder. That’s what they’d do. And they’d be absolutely right.

Yet, that’s exactly what Professor Boyd Haley, a Professor of Chemistry at the University of Kentucky and former chairman of the Department of Chemistry there whose career tanked after he fell down the rabbithole of mercury-autism pseudoscience has done. Trine Tsouderos of the Chicago Tribune, the reporter who has worked on two previous excellent exposes of the anti-vaccine movement and “autism biomed” movement has documented something that I had from time to time been meaning to write about but for whatever reason hadn’t, has documented it in a third excellent story to add to her trifecta entitled OSR#1: Industrial chemical or autism treatment? Parents giving kids compound created for use in mining, sold as supplement.

Full Story Pumping autistic children full of an industrial chelator : Respectful Insolence.

Truth and Consequences: ‘A Conspiracy of Rich Men’

Len Hart,

Every criminal thinks he will get away with it. Every criminal hides the truth. Every criminal has a cover story. 911 is Bush’s ‘cover story’. Inexplicably, Bush critics are called ‘conspiracy theories’ when, in fact, it was Bush who put forward an absurd theory for which the FBI has there is no no hard evidence.

Now –let’s get this straight: the media allows Bush to indulge a stupid theory and even promotes it. But if you should try it, even liberals and progressives who should know better will call you a ‘conspiracy theorist’.

The ‘official’ conspiracy theory of 911 is an absurd and ridiculous fabrication believed only by idiots, a bullshit cover story designed to shock, awe and confuse.

Full Story The Existentialist Cowboy: Truth and Consequences: ‘A Conspiracy of Rich Men’.

“Hope” Has Been a Bust, It’s Time for Hope 2.0

Arianna Huffington:

On the eve of the first anniversary of President Obama’s inauguration, it’s become painfully obvious that elected officials are not going to save us. The 2008 election was all about “Hope.” But Hope is simply not cutting it.

What we need is Hope 2.0: the realization that our system is too broken to be fixed by politicians, however well intentioned — that change is going to have to come from outside Washington.

This realization is especially resonant as we celebrate Dr. King, whose life and work demonstrate the vital importance of social movements in bringing about change. Indeed, King showed that no real change can be accomplished without a movement demanding it.

As Frederick Douglass put it: “Power never concedes anything without a demand; it never has and it never will.”

Full Story Arianna Huffington: “Hope” Has Been a Bust, It’s Time for Hope 2.0.

Jon Stewart on air mental breakdown over Tea Bagger Scott Brown taking the Kennedy Senate seat

Jon Stewart on air mental breakdown over Tea Bagger Scott Brown taking the Kennedy Senate seat

High Support (81%) for Medical Marijuana (ABC News/Washington Post Poll)

High Support (81%) for Medical Marijuana (ABC News/Washington Post Poll)

Eight in 10 Americans support legalizing marijuana for medical use and nearly half favor decriminalizing the drug more generally, both far higher than a decade ago.
High Support for Medical Marijuana ABC News/Washington Post Poll: 81 Percent Support Legalizing Marijuana for Medical Use

With New Jersey this week poised to become the 14th state to legalize medical marijuana, 81 percent in this national ABC News/Washington Post poll support the idea, up from an already substantial 69 percent in 1997. Indeed the main complaint is with restrictions on access, as in the New Jersey law.

Full Story High Support (81%) for Medical Marijuana (ABC News/Washington Post Poll) – Democratic Underground.

Naomi Klein on the Bank Bailouts.

Rachel Maddow Show-

Giant cattle to be bred back from extinction

Aurochs were immortalized in prehistoric cave paintings and admired for their brute strength and “elephantine” size by Julius Caesar.

But despite their having gone the way of the dodo and the woolly mammoth, there are plans to bring the giant animals back to life.

The huge cattle with sweeping horns which once roamed the forests of Europe have not been seen for nearly 400 years.

Now Italian scientists are hoping to use genetic expertise and selective breeding of modern-day wild cattle to recreate the fearsome beasts which weighed around 2,200lb and stood 6.5 feet at the shoulder.

Full Story Giant cattle to be bred back from extinction – Telegraph.

‘Freefall’ Excerpt: Too Late To Fix The Biggest Banking Blunder In History?

The entire series of efforts to rescue the banking system were so flawed, partly because those who were somewhat responsible for the mess–as advocates of deregulation, as failed regulators, or as investment bankers–were put in charge of the repair. Perhaps not surprisingly, they all employed the same logic that had gotten the financial sector into trouble to get it out of it. The financial sector had engaged in highly leveraged, non-transparent transactions, many off balance sheet; it had believed that one could create value by moving assets around and repackaging them. The approach to getting the country out of the mess was based on the same “principles.” Toxic assets were shifted from banks to the government–but that didn’t make them any less toxic. Off-balance sheet and non-transparent guarantees became a regular feature of the Treasury, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and Federal Reserve. High leverage (open and hidden) became a feature of public institutions as well as private.

Worse still were the implications for governance. The Constitution gives Congress the power to control spending. But the Federal Reserve was undertaking actions knowing full well that if the collateral that it was taking on proved bad, the taxpayer would bail it out. Whether the actions were legal or not is not the issue: they were a deliberate attempt to circumvent Congress, because they knew that the American people would be reluctant to approve more largesse for those who had caused so much harm and behaved so badly.

Full Story ‘Freefall’ Excerpt: Too Late To Fix The Biggest Banking Blunder In History?.

Apple Event 2010: Apple To Show ‘Latest Creation’ Next Week

Apple Inc. is inviting reporters to an event next week to see what it calls “our latest creation.”

The company e-mail Monday offered no specifics about what it would display at the invitation-only Jan. 27 event in San Francisco.

But it comes amid speculation that Apple is close to unveiling a tablet-style touch-screen computer that is bigger than an iPhone but smaller than a standard laptop.

Full Story Apple Event 2010: Apple To Show ‘Latest Creation’ Next Week.

Citigroup Lost $7.6 BILLION In Fourth Quarter

Citigroup said Tuesday it lost $7.58 billion during the final three months of 2009 as consumers still struggled to repay loans and the bank repaid its government bailout money.

Citigroup on Tuesday said $6.2 billion of the loss was tied to paying back $20 billion in money it received from the government.

The New York-based bank set aside $8.18 billion to cover soured loans during the quarter. However, in an encouraging sign, Citigroup's provision for loan losses declined 10 percent from the previous quarter and 36 percent from the year-ago period when the credit crisis peaked.

Full Story Citigroup Lost $7.6 BILLION In Fourth Quarter.

OPS: Maybe it’s time to: MOVE Your Money

Haiti Journal: Hacksaws and Vodka — Resurrecting Port-au-Prince’s Largest Hospital from the Rubble

The country has one doctor for 11,000 people. Electricity and running water are available in Port-au-Prince for two hours — on a good day. The chief surgeon at the General Hospital (the largest public national hospital) told me that patients often die in the operating room because the generator fails — on a good day. Under these circumstances, a small group from Partners in Health, led by Paul Farmer, is trying to resurrect the city's most important hospital from the rubble.

I have been there with a small group of seven surgeons, doctors and nurses who performed the first surgery. That was four days after the quake shook for 15 seconds — flattening the city and over half of the buildings, including the hospital where 150 nurses remain buried in the nursing school. The sickly, sweet stench of death and rotting flesh fills the air as I walk by.

Two orthopedic surgeons, my wife and father in-law, started the first amputation without water, electricity, or disinfectant. They used a rusty hacksaw we washed with vodka, lit by camping headlamps in an empty room with a few boxes of supplies we had packed into our plane. Over the last two days, we created five operating areas to care for the 1,200 patients who are still lying on the ground outside in the hospital's courtyard. They desperately need surgery to repair their crushed and broken bones, now festering and infected in the humidity and sweltering Haitian sun. The nurses and hospital staff are either dead or at home caring for their families. In the United States we have ten staff for every patient at most hospitals. There now are only a few local staff left for thousands of patients. They, too, are dead. They, too, have lost their homes. Today some began to return to work, their families gone or injured, their homes in piles of rock and debris.

Full Story Mark Hyman, MD: Haiti Journal: Hacksaws and Vodka — Resurrecting Port-au-Prince’s Largest Hospital from the Rubble.

Will The Banks Win Again? Bailout Watchdog Rallies Support For Consumer Protection Agency

‘We Cannot Let Families Lose Again’  -

The battle in the Senate over a proposed consumer financial protection agency is the final show-down between banks and American families, bailout watchdog Elizabeth Warren wrote to supporters Monday night.

The outcome “will show whether we are going to let the industry continue to write the rules — to keep the cops off the beat — or whether the financial crisis actually changed something.”

Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.) is said to be considering dropping the proposed independent agency from the Senate’s financial reform bill.

Full Story Will The Banks Win Again? Bailout Watchdog Rallies Support For Consumer Protection Agency.

Verizon and AT&T lower wireless plan prices

Verizon Wireless said early Friday it will lower prices on its unlimited wireless plans

Verizon cut its unlimited family talk and text plan from $229.99 to $149.99 and its nationwide unlimited voice plan was reduced to $69.99 from $99.99.

An unlimited family voice plan will cost users $119.99, down from $199.99, and nationwide unlimited talk and text plans were lowered to $89.99 from $119.99.

“Prices either stayed the same or were lowered for unlimited usage,” said Brenda Raney, a Verizon Wireless spokeswoman.

Full Story Verizon and AT&T lower wireless plan prices – Jan. 15, 2010.

Yellowstone hit by swarm of earthquakes

Yellowstone National Park has been rattled by more than 250 earthquakes in the past two days following a period of 11 months of quiet seismic activity in the park.

The quakes have been gaining strength, with a 3.1 tremor recorded at 11:03 a.m. today. A 2.9 quake was recorded at 12:38 p.m.

Prof. Robert B. Smith, a geophysicist at the University of Utah and one of the leading experts on earthquake and volcanic activity at Yellowstone, said that the activity is a “notable swarm.”

“The swarm is located about 10 miles northwest of Old Faithful, Wyo., and nine miles southeast of West Yellowstone, Montana,” said Smith.

Full Story Yellowstone hit by swarm of earthquakes – The Denver Post.

What’s in a cigarette? FDA to study ingredients

The Food and Drug Administration is working to lift the smokescreen clouding the ingredients used in cigarettes and other tobacco products.

In June, tobacco companies must tell the FDA their formulas for the first time, just as drugmakers have for decades. Manufacturers also will have to turn over any studies they’ve done on the effects of the ingredients.

It’s an early step for an agency just starting to flex muscles granted by a new law that took effect last June that gives it broad power to regulate tobacco far beyond the warnings now on packs, short of banning it outright.

Full Story What’s in a cigarette? FDA to study ingredients – Yahoo! News.

OPS:  WTF? – WE STILL DON”T KNOW?!!?!!

Some 390 tons of U.S. ground beef recalled

Some 390 tons of ground beef produced by a California meat packer, some of it nearly two years ago, is being recalled for fear of potentially deadly E. coli bacterium tainting, U.S. officials said on Monday.

The beef was produced by Huntington Meat Packing Inc of Montebello, California, and shipped mainly to California outlets, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s food safety arm said.

An initial problem, in ground beef shipped by the plant from January 5 to January 15, was discovered during a regular safety check, the Food Safety and Inspection Service said.

Full Story Some 390 tons of U.S. ground beef recalled – Yahoo! News.

FBI broke law for years in phone record searches

The FBI illegally collected more than 2,000 U.S. telephone call records between 2002 and 2006 by invoking terrorism emergencies that did not exist or simply persuading phone companies to provide records, according to internal bureau memos and interviews. FBI officials issued approvals after the fact to justify their actions.

E-mails obtained by The Washington Post detail how counterterrorism officials inside FBI headquarters did not follow their own procedures that were put in place to protect civil liberties. The stream of urgent requests for phone records also overwhelmed the FBI communications analysis unit with work that ultimately was not connected to imminent threats.

A Justice Department inspector general’s report due out this month is expected to conclude that the FBI frequently violated the law with its emergency requests, bureau officials confirmed.

Full Story FBI broke law for years in phone record searches – washingtonpost.com.

Senators Urge Kirk and Vilsack to Defend COOL

A bipartisan group of 26 U.S. Senators is urging U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack to vigorously defend at the World Trade Organization the nation’s right to require country of origin labeling on certain food products.

Both the Canadian and Mexican governments have challenged the law, which they say unfairly hurts their cattle producers. Unable to reach a compromise, the WTO has set up a dispute settlement panel to look into the matter.

“Over forty-five other nations have each already implemented a food labeling program which provides country of origin information to consumers,” the senators wrote. “As you know, both Canada and Mexico have implemented food labeling programs of their own to make such information available.”

Full Story Senators Urge Kirk and Vilsack to Defend COOL | Economy In Crisis.

Double Dip a Risk

According to Reuters, Strauss-Kahn believes that advanced economies must begin to show strong recovery very soon to avoid a dreaded “double dip” recession.

Wall Street was battered to close the week last Friday evening. The NASDAQ led the charge with a 1.24 percent (28.75 points) fall, followed closely by a 1.08 percent (12.43 points) fall on the S&P 500. The Dow Jones lost the least overall, dropping 0.94 percent, but unlike the other markets its fall posted in triple digits (100.90 points).

Markets in the United States are officially on holiday, but the rest of the world is still setting trends for days to come. As the U.S. observes Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Asian and European stocks were off to sluggish starts, starting the week with losses or uninspiring gains.

Starting tomorrow, 57 companies will report their quarterly earnings

Full Story Double Dip a Risk | Economy In Crisis.

South Korean Auto Market Not Open Enough to U.S. Imports

In 2007 the U.S. sold 7,000 American vehicles in South Korea, or less than one percent of the entire market. South Korean automakers sold 615,000 vehicles in the U.S. that same year.

In what could be a major blow to the proposed U.S.-South Korea free trade agreement, Chinese state-owned news agency Xinhua reported Friday that South Korea’s top trade officials said during a radio interview that there would be no renegotiation of the trade pact.

South Korean Trade Minister Kim Jong-hoon told the Chinese news agency that despite objections from U.S. lawmakers, his country had absolutely no intention of renegotiating the deal that was struck under the previous administration.

“We are standing firmly in that there should not be any renegotiation,” South Korean Trade Minister Kim Jong-hoon said in a local radio interview, according to Xinhua.

Full Story South Korean Auto Market Not Open Enough to U.S. Imports | Economy In Crisis.

Business group loses ‘green’ members in global-warming fight

An organization representing some of California’s biggest carbon polluters is working to alter the state’s global-warming law, while claiming to represent several “green” environmental companies that have since left the coalition after learning of its recent actions.

The coalition, calling itself the AB 32 Implementation Group, says it represents a broad section of California interests focused on global-warming regulations. The group, which is being managed by a large public relations firm, Woodward & McDowell, features photographs of white clouds and a field of flowers on its Web site.

But the organization itself includes 22 of the state's biggest carbon polluters as ranked by the state Air Resources Board. Oil refiners, cement manufacturers, chemical companies, and trucking firms figure prominently. And, according to environmentalists and lawmakers, the Implementation Group has engaged in a steady campaign to undermine the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, which mandates a 25 percent reduction in the state’s emissions by 2020.

Full Story Business group loses ‘green’ members in global-warming fight | California Watch.

Should You Stay Together for the Kids? Hell No!

Choose the pursuit of happiness instead. For yourself, and for your child.

“Maybe it would’ve been better if I could’ve kept us together?” my mother-in-law blurted after a couple glasses of wine about her ex and father of my husband. “I just can’t help but wonder if I should’ve done more.”

Would’ve, could’ve, should’ve? At some turn we all wonder what might be different if only…. Especially when it comes to our babies, we want to do what’s best. But as Republicans said during the 2008 presidential campaign of their VP pick’s teenaged daughter in the family way, life happens. And it doesn’t always mesh with how we see things ought to be. Despite Bristol Palin’s vow to “do the right thing” by choosing motherhood and marrying the dad, she and Levi Johnston split with their baby just weeks old, becoming another notch in America’s rising rates of teen pregnancy and record 40% births out of wedlock.

Life happens, often contradicting our box of shoulds or the latest stats. Still after doing the whole “first comes love, then comes marriage, then comes baby in a baby carriage,” many unhappy couples face a crossroads they never dreamed of traversing. Which is what makes so charged the political—as in today’s flush national marriage movement to get or keep parents hitched—and personal decision for couples to stay together, or not, for the sake of their kids.

Full Story Should You Stay Together for the Kids? Hell No! | Sex and Relationships | AlterNet.

Bill Moyers Journal with Thomas Frank

Letting the GOP off the Hook for the Economic Meltdown with our short attention span.

Welcome to the JOURNAL.

There were hands in the air in Washington this week, but it wasn’t a stickup. The new Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, appointed by Congress to find out how America got rolled, began hearings this week. These four are not the victims of one of the greatest bank heists in history – they’re the perpetrators, bankers so sleek and crafty they got off with the loot in broad daylight, and then sweet talked the government into taxing us to pay it back.

Watching that scene on the opening day of the hearings, it was hard enough to believe that almost a year has passed since Barack Obama raised his hand, too — taking the oath of office to become our 44th President. Even harder to remember what America looked like before Obama, because we’ve also been robbed of memory, assaulted by what the Nobel laureate Czeslaw Milosz described as a “fantastic proliferation of mass media.” We live in a time “characterized by a refusal to remember.” Inconvenient facts simply disappear down the memory hole, as in George Orwell’s novel, “1984.”

President Obama’s made plenty of mistakes during his first year, and we’ve critiqued them frequently here on the JOURNAL, but hardly anyone talks any more about what happened in the years before. He inherited from George W. Bush the biggest financial debacle since the Great Depression, along with two unpopular and costly wars, and a dysfunctional and demoralized government.

Audio, Video and Transcript at link

Full Story Bill Moyers Journal . Transcripts | PBS.

Brown stands by supporting a tax-subsidized golf course over 9/11 rescue workers.

State Sen. (R-MA), the Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate special election on Tuesday, voted on Oct. 17, 2001 to deny financial aid to Red Cross rescue workers who had volunteered with 9/11 recovery efforts. As a state representative at the time, Brown was one out of only three legislators who had opposed the overwhelmingly bipartisan measure. As ThinkProgress reported on Saturday, at the same time Brown was voting against the 9/11 rescue workers bill, he sponsored House Bill 4423, a measure to provide a tax-subsidized bond to build a golf course in Newport, a town in his district. Brown, earlier this weekend, told ThinkProgress that he opposed the rescue worker money because of the state’s fiscal condition and because he had his own “priorities.” Given the revelation that Brown fought for a golf course over the rescue worker aid, ThinkProgress again approached Brown for comment today:

TP: Mr. Brown, in 2001 when you voted against financial aid for 9/11 rescue workers, you were pushing a bill for a tax subsidized golf course in your district. Can you explain that?

Full Story Think Progress » Brown stands by supporting a tax-subsidized golf course over 9/11 rescue workers..

Translating David Brooks – Matt Taibbi

A friend of mine sent a link to Sunday’s David Brooks column on Haiti, a genuinely beautiful piece of occasional literature. Not many writers would have the courage to use a tragic event like a 50,000-fatality earthquake to volubly address the problem of nonwhite laziness and why it sometimes makes natural disasters seem timely, but then again, David Brooks isn’t just any writer.

Rather than go through the Brooks piece line by line, I figured I’d just excerpt a few bits here and there and provide the Cliff’s Notes translation at the end. It’s really sort of a masterpiece of cultural signaling — if you live anywhere between 59th st and about 105th, you can hear the between-the-lines messages with dog-whistle clarity. Some examples:

This is not a natural disaster story. This is a poverty story. It’s a story about poorly constructed buildings, bad infrastructure and terrible public services. On Thursday, President Obama told the people of Haiti: “You will not be forsaken; you will not be forgotten.” If he is going to remain faithful to that vow then he is going to have to use this tragedy as an occasion to rethink our approach to global poverty. He’s going to have to acknowledge a few difficult truths.

The first of those truths is that we don’t know how to use aid to reduce poverty. Over the past few decades, the world has spent trillions of dollars to generate growth in the developing world. The countries that have not received much aid, like China, have seen tremendous growth and tremendous poverty reductions. The countries that have received aid, like Haiti, have not.

Full Story Translating David Brooks – Matt Taibbi – Taibblog – True/Slant.

You can tell the difference between a Democrat or a Republican by their face

Tufts University Department of Psychology researchers, Nicholas O. Rule and Nalini Ambady, published a study on January 18, 2009, that concludes people can tell if a person is a Republican or a Democrat by their face.

The researchers conducted three trials:

1) 29 undergraduates were able to determine if a Senatorial or Congressional candidate was Republican or Democrat from a campaign photo with a 99 percent accuracy,

2) 24 undergraduates examined 60 high school year book senior portraits of persons unknown to them and were able to discern if the person was a Democrat or a Republican with a 96 percent accuracy,

Full Story You can tell the difference between a Democrat or a Republican by their face.

Israel Jails Palestinian Peace Activists

Israel has long argued that Palestinians should pursue their political objectives in a non-violent way. However, several prominent Palestinian peace activists have recently been arrested and jailed for doing just that.

Abdallah Abu Rahme, 39, the coordinator of the Bi’lin Popular Committee, which has challenged Israel’s illegal expropriation of Palestinian land both in an Israeli court and a Canadian one, has been charged with “illegal arms possession, stone throwing and incitement.”

The “illegal arms possession” charge relates largely to a protest exhibition Abu Rahme had made out of spent tear-gas canisters and plastic-coated rubber bullets, shot by Israeli soldiers, and assembled to form a large peace sign.

Full Story MIDEAST: Israel Jails Palestinian Peace Activists – IPS ipsnews.net.

Will Diebold steal Ted Kennedy’s seat – and the Senate?

by Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman  -

The same types of machines that helped put George W. Bush in the White House in 2000, and “re-elect” him 2004, may now decide who wins the all-important “60th Senate seat” in Massachusetts. The fate of health care and much much more hang in the balance.

As Bay Staters vote to fill Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat, most will be marking scantron ballots to be run through easily hackable electronic counters made by Diebold/Premier.

A paper ballot of sorts does come through these machines. But the count they generated was seriously compromised in the Florida 2000 election that put George W. Bush in the White House. Similar machines played a critical role skewing the Ohio 2004 vote count to fraudulently re-elect him.

Full Story The Free Press — Independent News Media – Election Issues.

Why do ‘Tea Baggers’ and Republicans make such good l’il Nazis?

Len Hart,

Research repeatedly confirms that Republicans are naturally inclined to exhibit authoritarian personality traits. The research leading to this conclusion is extensive. It was Carl Jung, in his ‘The Undiscovered Self’ who said that about thirty percent of every population was certifiably psychopathic. Dr. Gustav Gilbert, who had been tasked with keeping Nazi war criminals alive until they could be hanged, concluded that his ‘clients’ had an defining characteristic in common: all, he said, ‘lacked empathy’. Later, Hannah Arendt, founder of the New School for Sociological Studies in New York, coined a phrase to describe what she had observed of “Adolph Eichmann at this trial: ‘the banality of evil’.

Some of the more recent research is surveyed by John Dean in his “Conservatives Without Consciences”. Essentially, conservatives are ‘authoritarian’ types and tend to sort themselves into strong leaders (fuhrers) and eager, non-questioning followers (good l’il Nazis). I suspect that it is this personality and the various ‘props’ required of it that results in Republicans having more night mares and ‘night terrors’ than do normal people.

Liberals and progressives, by contrast, are often independent, creative, original. An ‘ENTP’ type is one of several types identified by the Jung Personality Test, similar to the Myers/Brigg test. ENTP, specifically, is described thus: “Inventor”. Enthusiastic interest in everything and always sensitive to possibilities. Non-conformist and innovative.”

Full Story The Existentialist Cowboy: Why do ‘Tea Baggers’ and Republicans make such good l’il Nazis?.

Revealed: Jack Straw’s secret warning to Tony Blair on Iraq

A “SECRET and personal” letter from Jack Straw, the then foreign secretary, to Tony Blair reveals damning doubts at the heart of government about Blair’s plans for Iraq a year before war started.

The letter, a copy of which is published for the first time today, warned the prime minister that the case for military action in Iraq was of dubious legality and would be no guarantee of a better future for Iraq even if Saddam Hussein were removed.

It was sent 10 days before Blair met George Bush, then the US president, in Crawford, Texas, in April 2002. The document clearly implies that Blair was already planning for military action even though he continued to insist to the British public for almost another year that no decision had been made.

Full Story Revealed: Jack Straw’s secret warning to Tony Blair on Iraq – Times Online.

What’s Still Hidden in AIG’s Files?

Company Trustees, Lawmakers Resist Calls for More Disclosure

As federal hearings into the cause of the financial crisis got underway this week, attention has focused on one key outstanding question: Whether the giant insurer American International Group committed fraud in the run-up to its $182 billion bailout.

The records of AIG’s actions presumably are contained in company documents and e-mails. Some of those records have been obtained and published by news organizations and congressional investigators. But some lawmakers and former financial prosecutors argue that most details remain unknown and should be made public—an idea resisted so far by congressional Democrats and AIG’s regulators.

The little the public knows about AIG’s bailout pertains to the company’s use of $25 billion in government money to buy back toxic securities from Wall Street’s big banks.

Full Story What’s Still Hidden in AIG’s Files? | The Huffington Post Investigative Fund.

US “Security” Companies Offer “Services” in Haiti

Jeremy Scahill

The Orwellian-named mercenary trade group, the International Peace Operations Association, didn’t waste much time in offering the “services” of its member companies to swoop down on Haiti for some old fashioned humanitarian assistance disaster profiteering. Within hours of the massive earthquake in Haiti, the IPOA created a special web page for prospective clients, saying: “In the wake of the tragic events in Haiti, a number of IPOA’s member companies are available and prepared to provide a wide variety of critical relief services to the earthquake’s victims.”

While some of the companies specialize in rapid housing construction, emergency relief shelters and transportation, others are private security companies that operate in Iraq and Afghanistan like Triple Canopy, the company that took over Blackwater’s massive State Department contract in Iraq. For years, Blackwater played a major role in IPOA until it left the group following the 2007 Nisour Square massacre.

In 2005, while still a leading member of IPOA, Blackwater’s owner Erik Prince deployed his forces in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Far from some sort of generous gift to the suffering people of the US gulf, Blackwater raked in some $70 million in Homeland Security contracts that began with a massive no-bid contract to provide protective services for FEMA. Blackwater billed US taxpayers $950 per man per day.

Full Story RebelReports – US “Security” Companies Offer “Services” in Haiti.

Congress takes a bold stand against surveillance abuses

Glenn Greenwald – Salon.com

Fixating on and condemning abuses of other countries is one of the greatest weapons the U.S. Government wields for distracting attention away from its own transgressions: like those gossip-obsessed individuals endlessly mucking around in and passing judgment on the personal lives of others as a means of ignoring their own failings:

The San Francisco Chronicle, yesterday:

Few expect Google Inc.’s stare-down with China to usher in a new era of openness across the Asian nation, but some believe — or hope — it could pressure the government to improve relations with foreign technology companies. . . . The Obama administration issued statements of support for Google, and members of Congress are pushing to revive a bill banning U.S. tech companies from working with governments that digitally spy on their citizens.

Thank God for that, because we all know there’s nothing worse than “governments that digitally spy on their citizens,” and there are few things that galvanize our righteous members of Congress more than vast domestic surveillance abuses over the Internet:

Full Story Glenn Greenwald – Salon.com.

Rachel Maddow Show- Naomi Klein on the Bank Bailouts.

Ratigan & Spitzer: TARP’s Only a Tiny Piece of Subsidies to Banks

“Why Aren’t We Demanding Restitution?” On Dylan Ratigan, Eliot Spitzer and Larry McDonald explain how banks paying back TARP monies doesn’t begin to cover what’s been stolen.

Ethics and Corporate Scandals: How Much Do You Really Know?

What is ethics? When do we cross the line between right and wrong and who determines when that line is crossed? Ethics can be defined as moral philosophy. It is basically “the discipline concerned with what is morally good and bad, right and wrong. The term is also applied to any system or theory of moral values or principles”

(Ethics, Encyclopedia Britannica Online, 2000). When we apply the concept of ethics to business the scope broadens. Business ethics is “the study and evaluation of decision making by businesses according to moral concepts and judgments” (Business ethics, The Columbia Encyclopedia, 2007). In this paper I will be discussing business ethics, including three common misunderstandings, one major taboo of corporate social responsibility discourse, and give examples of two major corporation scandals, Enron and WorldCom.

When you think of the words business and ethics you usually don’t relate the two. This is due to three misunderstandings. The first is that morality and profits just do not mix. If you make money then you are considered successful but you have to become corrupt to make money. The second misconception is that all ethical problems can be solved in a simplistic manner and that the problems are always either right or wrong. There is no in between. When we assume this concept is true, we tend to ignore the gray area in between and as a result, ignore the fact that soul-searching might me necessary to come to a decision about an ethical problem. The third misunderstanding is that ethics is following a set of regulations or rules. When we think about it, the legal issue might not be related to the moral issue or just the opposite. (Lamberton & Minor-Evans, 2007).

Full Story Ethics and Corporate Scandals: How Much Do You Really Know? – Associated Content – associatedcontent.com.

Hartmann: Elect PROGRESSIVE Democrats and Hold Them Accountable

Thom Hartmann Massachusetts Senate Race, Obama administration policies, Democratic party

U.S. Military Weapons Inscribed With Secret ‘Jesus’ Bible Codes

Pentagon Supplier for Rifle Sights Says It Has ‘Always’ Added New Testament References

Coded references to New Testament Bible passages about Jesus Christ are inscribed on high-powered rifle sights provided to the United States military by a Michigan company, an ABC News investigation has found.

The sights are used by U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and in the training of Iraqi and Afghan soldiers. The maker of the sights, Trijicon, has a $660 million multi-year contract to provide up to 800,000 sights to the Marine Corps, and additional contracts to provide sights to the U.S. Army.

U.S. military rules specifically prohibit the proselytizing of any religion in Iraq or Afghanistan and were drawn up in order to prevent criticism that the U.S. was embarked on a religious “Crusade” in its war against al Qaeda and Iraqi insurgents.

Full Story U.S. Military Weapons Inscribed With Secret ‘Jesus’ Bible Codes – ABC News.

Hansen and Watts Agree: Cold Weather, Warm Climate

As the ice that formed on the Hudson River during the recent cold snap begins to break up (see my video snapshot below), it’s perhaps a good time to close the case on unusual cold spells in an unusually warm world.

Anthony Watts runs a Web site that has become perhaps the most popular portal for climate news and opinion of interest to people aiming to rebut warnings that humans are poised to disrupt climate. James E. Hansen of NASA has long been the most prominent scientist advocating sharp and prompt cuts in emissions of greenhouse gases to avoid a climatic calamity.

In the last few days, a notable conjunction occurred when these two men essentially agreed on something: that the planet — despite a lot of very cold patches — is unusually warm.

On his nongovernmental Web site, Dr. Hansen posted “If It’s That Warm, How Come It’s So Damned Cold?” (pdf) — a draft article, written with several colleagues, setting the current cold conditions in global (warming) context.

Full Story Hansen and Watts Agree: Cold Weather, Warm Climate – Dot Earth Blog – NYTimes.com.

Flight 253: Anatomy of a Cover-Up

New revelations about the failed Christmas Day attack on Northwest Airlines Flight 253 continue to emerge as does evidence of a systematic cover-up.

With the White House in crisis mode since the attempted bombing, President Obama met for two hours January 5 with top security and intelligence officials. Obama said that secret state agencies “had sufficient information to uncover the terror plot … but that intelligence officials had 'failed to connect those dots',” The New York Times reports.

The latest iteration of the “dot theory” floated by the President, aided and abetted by a compliant media, claims “this was not a failure to collect intelligence” but rather, “a failure to integrate and understand the intelligence that we already had.”

“Mr. Obama's stark assessment that the government failed to properly analyze and integrate intelligence served as a sharp rebuke of the country's intelligence agencies,” declared the Times uncritically.

While the President's remarks may have offered a “sharp [rhetorical] rebuke,” Obama's statement suggests that no one will be held accountable. Indeed, the President “was standing by his top national security advisers, including those whose agencies failed to communicate with one another.”

Full Story Flight 253: Anatomy of a Cover-Up.

What Bush did to Haiti

The February 29, 2004 Coup D’ Etat instigated by the Bush Administration

by David Swanson -

If a group of dedicated scholars, attorneys, journalists, and activists had tried to generate a comprehensive list of impeachable offenses committed by George W. Bush as president, and only 35 of them had been introduced into Congress, one of the many discarded ones, in rough and overly detailed form, might have read something like this:

In his conduct while President of the United States, George W. Bush, in violation of his constitutional oath to faithfully execute the office of President of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in violation of his constitutional duty under Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution  “to take care that the laws be faithfully executed”, has both personally and acting through his agents and subordinates, caused the United States of America to kidnap, imprison, intimidate, coerce, threaten, confine, abduct, and carry away the elected, constitutional President of Haiti, and his wife, a U.S citizen, in violation of United States statutes, to wit:

a. The President, both personally and acting through his agents and subordinates, prevented the security contractors working for Haiti’s elected, constitutional government led by President Jean-Bertrand Aristide from receiving reinforcements at a time when Haiti’s constitutional government was under attack. The removal of the security contractors facilitated the kidnapping of President Aristide:

Full Story What Bush did to Haiti.

Phone Calls from the 9/11 Airliners

Given the cell phone technology available in 2001, cell phone calls from airliners at altitudes of more than a few thousand feet, were virtually impossible

Prof David Ray Griffin

On November 27, 2009, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s Fifth Estate program aired a show entitled “9/11: The Unofficial Story,”1 for which I, along with a few other members of the 9/11 Truth Movement, was interviewed. In the most important part of my interview, I pointed out that, according to the FBI’s report on phone calls from the airliners provided in 2006 for the Moussaoui trial, Barbara Olson’s only call from Flight 77 was “unconnected” and hence lasted “0 seconds.” Although this Fifth Estate program showed only a brief portion of my discussion of alleged phone calls from the 9/11 airliners, its website subsequently made available a 22-minute video containing this discussion.2

Shortly thereafter, a portion of this video, under the title “David Ray Griffin on the 9/11 Cell Phone Calls: Exclusive CBC Interview,” was posted on You Tube,3 after which it was posted on 911 Blogger.4 This latter posting resulted in considerable discussion, during which some claims contradicting my position were made. In this essay, I respond to the most important of these claims, namely:

1. The FBI has not admitted that cell phone calls from high-altitude airliners on 9/11 were impossible.

2. There is no evidence that some of the reported 9/11 phone calls were faked.

3. American Airlines’ Boeing 757s, and hence its Flight 77, had onboard phones.

4. The FBI’s report on phone calls from the 9/11 airliners did not undermine Ted Olson’s report about receiving phone calls from his wife.

The four sections of this essay will respond to these four claims in order.

Full Story Phone Calls from the 9/11 Airliners.

US Cloaks Case Files Involving Civil Rights

Nearly half a century after the height of the civil rights movement, hundreds of thousands of pages of government files about the volatile era remain shielded from the American public, buried in FBI field office cabinets, blocked by resistant bureaucracies, or available only with large sections blacked out, according to US officials and researchers.

The situation has prompted a new push in Congress, led by Senator John F. Kerry of Massachusetts, to require that all records relating to the life and death of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. be located, reviewed, and released by a review board at the National Archives similar to those established for the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and for Nazi war criminals.

Kerry’s plan to introduce legislation this week, however, is seen as only the first step in a broader movement to force the government to disclose what it knows – and did – about violence against blacks during the civil rights era, including scores of unsolved lynching and bombing cases.

Full Story US Cloaks Case Files Involving Civil Rights | CommonDreams.org.

Will Scott Brown Ruin Republicans’ (Secret) Plan to Pass Obamacare?

Lawrence O’Donnell:

It is now a given that if he wins a Massachusetts Senate seat on Tuesday, Scott Brown will destroy the Democrats' plan to pass health care reform. But he will also destroy the Republicans' not-so-secret plan to pass health care reform.

In Washington, where everyone is desperate to know what's happening behind closed doors, all you have to do to keep something secret is do it out in the open, preferably on C-Span. Mitch McConnell did exactly that when he entered a unanimous consent agreement with Harry Reid about how to proceed on the health care bill. McConnell knew that agreement was going to make it impossible for Republicans to amend the bill and would put it on a fast track toward passage.

McConnell accepted an agreement brilliantly designed by Reid that required 60 votes to pass an amendment. McConnell did that without anyone noticing anything odd after a year of saturation coverage of the importance of 60 votes in the Senate. Everyone outside the Senate now thinks it takes 60 votes to do anything. Not amendments. Amendments pass by a simple majority, 51 votes. Amendments are usually debated for a couple of minutes or hours or days, then voted on. Once in a while, a 60-vote cloture motion is needed to end debate on an amendment. What McConnell agreed to was an implicit cloture motion in every vote on every amendment, thereby completely surrendering the minority's real power. In all my years in the Senate, I never saw a leader make such a mistake. If it was a mistake.

Full Story Lawrence O’Donnell: Will Scott Brown Ruin Republicans’ (Secret) Plan to Pass Obamacare?.

Social Security in America is about to become extinct.

Legislation includes: “….creating a special commission to recommend binding steps to reduce entitlement spending.”

In final action of year, Senate OKs debt ceiling hike

In its last vote of 2009, the Senate early last Thursday approved a short-term increase in the federal debt ceiling that the Treasury Department said is necessary to allow the federal government to do business past Jan. 1.

But, under the deal that allowed quick passage on Christmas Eve, Republicans eager to use the issue to bash Democrats over current levels of federal spending will get a chance to debate the debt ceiling issue when the Senate reconvenes next month.

The legislation passed on Dec. 24 raises the debt ceiling by $290 billion to $12.39 trillion, a step approved by the House before that chamber adjourned for the year last week. Democrats initially had hoped to pass a larger debt increase to take the issue off the table for 2010, but were forced to retreat on those plans.

Full Story In final action of year, Senate OKs debt ceiling hike (12/29/09) — GovExec.com.

India to push US on social security pact

In a move that could nip the current Indo-US bonhomie in the bud, the Indian government is likely toNEW DELHI: In a move that could nip the current Indo-US bonhomie in the bud, the Indian government is likely to link progress on the social  security agreement with the US to that of the Bilateral Investment Promotion Agreement (BIPA). The ministry of overseas Indian affairs will be taking up the matter with the ministry of external affairs.

The government has been pursuing the social security agreement — that will allow Indians working under short-term contracts in the US to secure exemption from contributing to the American social security system — since 2006 without much success.

Sources said, “The US has steadfastly turned a blind eye to the real need for finding a solution to the complete loss of contribution for the large number of expatriate workers in the US.” It is estimated that Indian expatriate workers are contributing about $1 billion to the US exchequer annually as social security tax, including the employers contribution.

Full Story India to push US on social security pact – India – The Times of India.

OPS:  If they don’t like it – phuck ‘em – go home.

Exxon Valdez Oil Trapped By Gravel Beaches

An engineering professor has figured out why oil remains trapped along miles of gravel beaches more than 20 years after the Exxon Valdez tanker disaster in Prince William Sound.

An estimated 20,000 gallons of crude remain in Prince William Sound, even though oil remaining after the nearly 11-million-gallon spill had been expected to biodegrade and wash away within a few years.

The problem: The gravelly beaches of Prince William Sound are trapping the oil between two layers of rock, with larger rocks on top and finer gravel underneath, according to Michel C. Boufadel, chairman of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Temple University. His study appeared Sunday in Nature Geoscience’s online publication and will be published in the journal later.

Full Story Exxon Valdez Oil Trapped By Gravel Beaches.

Law Meant to Curb Lobbying Sends It Underground

Ellen Miller, co-founder of the Sunlight Foundation, has spent years arguing for rules to force more disclosure of how lobbyists and private interests shape public policy. Until recently, she herself registered as a lobbyist, too, publicly reporting her role in the group’s advocacy of even more reporting. Not anymore.

In light of strict new regulations imposed by Congress over the last two years, Ms. Miller joined a wave of policy advocates who are choosing not to declare themselves as lobbyists.

“I have never spent much time on Capitol Hill,” Ms. Miller said, explaining that she only supervises those who press lawmakers directly. “I am not lobbying, so why fill out the forms?”

Her frankness makes Ms. Miller a standout among hundreds of others who are making the same decision. Though Washington’s influence business is by all accounts booming, a growing number of its practitioners are taking a similar course to avoid the spotlight of public disclosure.

Full Story Law Meant to Curb Lobbying Sends It Underground – NYTimes.com.

The Guantánamo “Suicides”: A Camp Delta sergeant blows the whistle—By Scott Horton (Harper’s Magazine)

Scott Horton-

1. “Asymmetrical Warfare”

When President Barack Obama took office last year, he promised to “restore the standards of due process and the core constitutional values that have made this country great.” Toward that end, the president issued an executive order declaring that the extra-constitutional prison camp at Guantánamo “shall be closed as soon as practicable, and no later than one year from the date of this order.” Obama has failed to fulfill his promise. Some prisoners are being charged with crimes, others released, but the date for closing the camp seems to recede steadily into the future. Furthermore, new evidence now emerging may entangle Obama’s young administration with crimes that occurred during the Bush presidency, evidence that suggests the current administration failed to investigate seriously—and may even have continued—a cover-up of the possible homicides of three prisoners at Guantánamo in 2006.

Late in the evening on June 9 that year, three prisoners at Guantánamo died suddenly and violently. Salah Ahmed Al-Salami, from Yemen, was thirty-seven. Mani Shaman Al-Utaybi, from Saudi Arabia, was thirty. Yasser Talal Al-Zahrani, also from Saudi Arabia, was twenty-two, and had been imprisoned at Guantánamo since he was captured at the age of seventeen. None of the men had been charged with a crime, though all three had been engaged in hunger strikes to protest the conditions of their imprisonment. They were being held in a cell block, known as Alpha Block, reserved for particularly troublesome or high-value prisoners.

Full Story The Guantánamo “Suicides”: A Camp Delta sergeant blows the whistle—By Scott Horton (Harper’s Magazine).

Taliban Attack: Afghanistan Capital Under Assault

Taliban militants struck in the heart of the Afghan capital Monday, launching attacks on key government targets in a clear sign the insurgents plan to escalate their fight as the U.S. and its allies ramp up a campaign to end the war. At least five bystanders and security forces were killed and nearly 40 wounded, officials said.

The Defense Ministry said seven attackers had also been killed in the brazen attack, which occurred 10 days before a major international conference in London on ways to shore up the Afghan government to confront the growing Taliban threat.

After a series of blasts and more than three hours of subsequent gunfights outside several ministries and inside a shopping mall, President Hamid Karzai said security had been restored to the capital, though search operations continued amid reports that more attackers were hiding in the city.

Full Story Taliban Attack: Afghanistan Capital Under Assault.

Real Unemployment Needs to be Addressed

The national unemployment rate isn’t 10.0 percent; it is closer to 19 percent or 20 percent. The so-called “real” unemployment rate in the United States is more representative of the Great Depression than it is of a simple recession similar to those of the 70s and 80s.

Lawrence Summers, the president’s chief economic strategist and aide, has been declaring for more than a month that the recession is “over” and that our recovery has begun. He also seems to think that Americans are generally in agreement about these “facts.” Many economists have talked about the “jobless recovery” we will see in 2010, but when one considers the real numbers the concept of a jobless recovery seems impossible.

Leo Hindery, writing for The Huffington Post, discussed the extent of American joblessness in an article published on January 12.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the United States currently has about 15 million unemployed workers, and a national unemployment rate of 10.0 percent. However, if you account for the “underemployed” – those working part-time instead of full-time, those who live outside of the economy, or those who have given up the job search – those figures roughly double.

America doesn’t have 15 million people in need of work; it has almost 30 million in need of work. The national unemployment rate isn’t 10.0 percent; it is closer to 19 percent or 20 percent. The so-called “real” unemployment rate in the United States is more representative of the Great Depression than it is of a simple recession similar to those of the 70s and 80s.

Full Story Real Unemployment Needs to be Addressed | Economy In Crisis.

Helluva Week for Net Neutrality

It’s been one amazing week for Net Neutrality. Nearly 19,000 people filed pro-Net Neutrality comments with the FCC before the docket closed at midnight Thursday night. It was a remarkable outpouring of public support.

And just before the bell tolled, Free Press filed a whopping 198 pages of comments, offering compelling evidence that Net Neutrality rules will promote investment, encourage innovation, create jobs, and spur competition.

In its filing, Free Press not only shows that Net Neutrality promotes investment, but that losing this fundamental protection would unleash harmful, anti-consumer business models. Free Press argues that the true motive of the phone and cable companies trying to dismantle Net Neutrality is to protect their legacy voice and video services from the competition enabled by the open Internet.

Full Story Helluva Week for Net Neutrality | Save the Internet.

Why beer is the latest hope in fight against cancer

It might be your preference to crack open a bottle of red wine at the end of a hard day but you may be better off pouring a pint.

Researchers at the German Cancer Research Centre in Heidelberg have discovered that beer contains a powerful molecule that helps protect against breast and prostate cancers.

Found in hops, the substance called xanthohumol blocks the excessive action of testosterone and oestrogen. It also helps to prevent the release of a protein called PSA which encourages the spread of prostate cancer.

Full Story Why beer is the latest hope in fight against cancer | Mail Online.

Wall St. Weighs Legal Challenge to Proposed Bank Tax

Wall Street’s main lobbying arm has hired a top Supreme Court litigator to study a possible legal battle against a bank tax proposed by the Obama administration, on the theory that it would be unconstitutional, according to three industry officials briefed on the matter.

In an e-mail message sent last week to the heads of Wall Street legal departments, executives of the lobbying group, the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, wrote that a bank tax might be unconstitutional because it would unfairly single out and penalize big banks, according to these officials, who did not want to be identified to preserve relationships with the group’s members.

The message said the association had hired Carter G. Phillips of Sidley Austin, who has argued dozens of cases before the Supreme Court, to study whether a tax on one industry could be considered arbitrary and punitive, providing the basis for a constitutional challenge, they said.

Full Story Wall St. Weighs Legal Challenge to Proposed Bank Tax – NYTimes.com.

US general: 200,000 dead Haitians just a ’start point’

Haitians sought comfort in their faith Sunday, flocking to pray in church ruins as rescue teams raced against time to pull out any final survivors five days after a devastating earthquake.

UN chief Ban Ki-moon flew in to assess what he called the “most serious humanitarian disaster in decades,” while security degenerated in the capital with police killing a man as they fired on looters ransacking a market.

The leading US general on the ground warned that 200,000 might be a reasonable “start point” for the eventual toll, but said it was still too early to predict a figure that might never be accurately known.

Full Story US general: 200,000 dead Haitians just a ’start point’ | Raw Story.

Martin Luther King “I have a dream” (video)

The full version of Martin Luther King’s famous “I have a dream” speech.

Red Cross financial aid Scott Brown voted to kill now assisting Massachusetts relief efforts in Haiti.

State Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA), the Republican candidate for the special U.S. Senate election Tuesday, voted against a bill to provide financial assistance to 9/11 rescue workers who had volunteered to rush to the site of the twin towers after the terrorist attack in 2001. The measure, which was opposed by only two other legislators in addition to Brown, provided paid “leaves of absence for certain Red Cross employees participating in Red Cross emergencies.” Despite Brown’s efforts to kill the legislation, it passed along overwhelmingly bipartisan lines and is now helping to compensate Massachusetts Red Cross employees currently deploying to Haiti to provide emergency assistance…

Full Story Think Progress » Red Cross financial aid Scott Brown voted to kill now assisting Massachusetts relief efforts in Haiti..

Avatar half-tells a story we would all prefer to forget

The Holocaust We Will Not See

Avatar, James Cameron’s blockbusting 3-D film, is both profoundly silly and profound. It’s profound because, like most films about aliens, it is a metaphor for contact between different human cultures. But in this case the metaphor is conscious and precise: this is the story of European engagement with the native peoples of the Americas. It’s profoundly silly because engineering a happy ending demands a plot so stupid and predictable that it rips the heart out of the film. The fate of the native Americans is much closer to the story told in another new film, The Road, in which a remnant population flees in terror as it is hunted to extinction.

But this is a story no one wants to hear, because of the challenge it presents to the way we choose to see ourselves. Europe was massively enriched by the genocides in the Americas; the American nations were founded on them. This is a history we cannot accept.

In his book American Holocaust, the US scholar David Stannard documents the greatest acts of genocide the world has ever experienced(1). In 1492, some 100m native peoples lived in the Americas. By the end of the 19th Century almost all of them had been exterminated. Many died as a result of disease. But the mass extinction was also engineered.

Full Story Monbiot.com » The Holocaust We Will Not See.

Why You Should Fear Your Sofa, Baby Stroller and Nursing Pillow

Flame retardants in everyday products cause cancer, birth defects or endocrine disruption in every animal species studied.

For good or ill, California often leads the nation’s social and cultural trends and legal standards. California’s passion for organic, local food, for example, has spread across the nation. When the state demanded lower vehicle emissions, manufacturers rushed to produce vehicles compliant with California’s regulations. With nearly forty million people buying consumer products in one state, manufacturers across the nation, as well as in China, tailor their specifications to meet California’s regulations.

Here’s the “ill” part. In 1972, California passed legislation requiring flammability standards for upholstered furniture and baby products like high chairs, strollers and nursing pillows. Manufacturers met these new standards by using inexpensive, toxic and untested flame retardant chemicals. These flame retardants contained hazardous halogenated chemicals similar to PCB’s and Dioxins, two of the most toxic classes of chemicals, Untested in humans, these brominated and chlorinated flame retardants can cause cancer, birth defects, neurological and reproductive or endocrine disruption in every animal species studied. As a result, one state’s law has become the de facto standard for the country and poses a serious threat to everyone in the nation. Californians, in fact, have earned the dubious honor of having the highest amount of toxic flame retardant chemicals in their bodies of any people on the planet.

Environmental health experts speak about “the body burden,” of the many dangerous chemicals we ingest that compromise our health. Once you bring these products into your home, the flame retardant chemicals, which are not chemically yoked to the upholstery foam , escape as dust into your living room and bedroom, adding millions of pounds of toxic chemicals to homes across the country. This toxic household dust, according to research studies, not only enters our bodies, but also contaminates soil, water and ends up in our food.

Full Story Why You Should Fear Your Sofa, Baby Stroller and Nursing Pillow | Health and Wellness | AlterNet.

FBI admits Spanish politican was model for ‘high-tech’ Osama bin Laden photo-fit

The FBI has admitted using a photograph of a bearded Spanish politician as the basis for a mocked-up photofit image showing how Osama Bin Laden might look now.

The US state department was forced to withdraw the mocked up photo-image, circulated around the world last week, after the discovery that it was not quite as technically sophisticated as the FBI had originally claimed.

The digitally altered image of an older and greying Bin Laden was meant to show how the world’s most wanted terrorist might now look without his trademark turban and long beard. It was released in a renewed effort to locate him, more than eight years after the September 11 attack which he ordered and directed.

But it created an unexpected stir in Madrid when a Spanish MP recognised strong elements of himself in the image and complained to the US.

Gaspar Llamazares, 52, a member of Spain’s communist party and the former leader of the United Left coalition in parliament, said his forehead, hair and jaw-line had been “cut and pasted” from an old campaign photograph.

Full Story FBI admits Spanish politican was model for ‘high-tech’ Osama bin Laden photo-fit – Telegraph.

Satan’s Open Letter to Pat Robertson

A Minneapolis Star-Tribune reader named Lily Coyle drafted the perfect answer to Pat Robertson’s Haiti hate-speech earlier this week. It’s almost enough to make the Bad Thoughts of the Bad Things we want to happen to Pat Robertson stop running on a constant Bad Loop in our head. And, as Elizabeth Spiers points out on her blog, it’s What Mark Twain Would Do!):

Dear Pat Robertson,

I know that you know that all press is good press, so I appreciate the shout-out. And you make God look like a big mean bully who kicks people when they are down, so I’m all over that action. But when you say that Haiti has made a pact with me, it is totally humiliating. I may be evil incarnate, but I’m no welcher. The way you put it, making a deal with me leaves folks desperate and impoverished.

Full Story Satan’s Open Letter to Pat Robertson — Daily Intel.

What Didn’t Happen

Paul Krugman -

Lately many people have been second-guessing the Obama administration’s political strategy. The conventional wisdom seems to be that President Obama tried to do too much — in particular, that he should have put health care on one side and focused on the economy.

I disagree. The Obama administration’s troubles are the result not of excessive ambition, but of policy and political misjudgments. The stimulus was too small; policy toward the banks wasn’t tough enough; and Mr. Obama didn’t do what Ronald Reagan, who also faced a poor economy early in his administration, did — namely, shelter himself from criticism with a narrative that placed the blame on previous administrations.

About the stimulus: it has surely helped. Without it, unemployment would be much higher than it is. But the administration’s program clearly wasn’t big enough to produce job gains in 2009.

Full Story Op-Ed Columnist – What Didn’t Happen – NYTimes.com.

IMF to Haiti: Freeze Public Wages

Richard Kim, The Nation -

Since a devastating earthquake rocked Haiti on Tuesday–killing tens of thousands of people–there’s been a lot of well-intentioned chatter and twitter about how to help Haiti. Folks have been donating millions of dollars to Wyclef Jean’s Yele Haiti (by texting “YELE” to 501501) or to the Red Cross (by texting “HAITI” to 90999) or to Paul Farmer’s extraordinary Partners in Health, among other organizations. I hope these donations continue to pour in, along with more money, food, water, medicine, equipment and doctors and nurses from nations around the world. The Obama administration has pledged at least $100 million in aid and has already sent thousands of soldiers and relief workers. That’s a decent start.

But it’s also time to stop having a conversation about charity and start having a conversation about justice–about recovery, responsibility and fairness. What the world should be pondering instead is: What is Haiti owed?

Haiti’s vulnerability to natural disasters, its food shortages, poverty, deforestation and lack of infrastructure, are not accidental. To say that it is the poorest nation in the Western hemisphere is to miss the point; Haiti was made poor–by France, the United States, Great Britain, other Western powers and by the IMF and the World Bank.

Full Story IMF to Haiti: Freeze Public Wages.

Eliot Spitzer Talks To Fareed Zakaria About Wall Street Bonuses (VIDEO)

On Sunday, Eliot Spitzer appeared with Naomi Klein, David Frum, and Stephen Dubner and on Fareed Zakaria’s CNN show “GPS” to discuss Wall Street’s gigantic bonuses and the prospects for regulatory reform. Spitzer made the point that when it comes to holding banks accountable, the political divisions of left versus right are disappearing:

What’s amazing now is the politics of the left and the right are converging on similar ideas and agreeing that the Fed, AIG — that is where it all converged, that is the black box, the center of the web — and somehow the transparency we need there is essential.

Watch:

Full Story Eliot Spitzer Talks To Fareed Zakaria About Wall Street Bonuses (VIDEO).

‘Even Charles Manson could beat him now’

One year after his election, Barack Obama’s approval rating is lower at this stage than for any US president since Eisenhower. So why has the optimism surrounding his victory disappeared so suddenly?

Every Wednesday at 4.30pm they come: a small steady human trickle rolling down a ravine in Prestonsburg, western Kentucky ­towards the Town Branch church. They come in pick-ups, on foot, alone and with families. Some stop for just a few minutes. Others linger. They come for food and warm second-hand clothes. They come because desperation in this part of America has become a routine part of life.

More than a quarter of the families in Prestonsburg live in poverty; half of the children in Floyd County, where it is situated, are on food stamps. This ­Appalachian coal mining area has never been rich. But no one can remember when it has ever been this poor either. It sits on the old Route 23 – the country music highway of which Dwight Yoakam (a Floyd Country native) sang in Readin’, Rightin’, Route 23. It was the road that took people north to factory jobs in places such as Detroit and Cleveland and “the good life they had never seen”. Now those cities are broke and there’s nowhere left to go.

Full Story ‘Even Charles Manson could beat him now’ | From the Guardian | The Guardian.

US waves white flag in disastrous ‘war on drugs’

After 40 years, Washington is quietly giving up on a futile battle that has spread corruption and destroyed thousands of lives

After 40 years of defeat and failure, America’s “war on drugs” is being buried in the same fashion as it was born – amid bloodshed, confusion, corruption and scandal. US agents are being pulled from South America; Washington is putting its narcotics policy under review, and a newly confident region is no longer prepared to swallow its fatal Prohibition error. Indeed, after the expenditure of billions of dollars and the violent deaths of tens of thousands of people, a suitable epitaph for America’s longest “war” may well be the plan, in Bolivia, for every family to be given the right to grow coca in its own backyard.

The “war”, declared unilaterally throughout the world by Richard Nixon in 1969, is expiring as its strategists start discarding plans that have proved futile over four decades: they are preparing to withdraw their agents from narcotics battlefields from Colombia to Afghanistan and beginning to coach them in the art of trumpeting victory and melting away into anonymous defeat. Not surprisingly, the new strategy is being gingerly aired in the media of the US establishment, from The Wall Street Journal to the Miami Herald.

Prospects in the new decade are thus opening up for vast amounts of useless government expenditure being reassigned to the treatment of addicts instead of their capture and imprisonment. And, no less important, the ever-expanding balloon of corruption that the “war” has brought to heads of government, armies and police forces wherever it has been waged may slowly start to deflate.

Full Story US waves white flag in disastrous ‘war on drugs’ – Americas, World – The Independent.

New York Times Ready to Charge Online Readers

New York Times Chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr. appears close to announcing that the paper will begin charging for access to its website, according to people familiar with internal deliberations. After a year of sometimes fraught debate inside the paper, the choice for some time has been between a Wall Street Journal-type pay wall and the metered system adopted by the Financial Times, in which readers can sample a certain number of free articles before being asked to subscribe. The Times seems to have settled on the metered system.

One personal friend of Sulzberger said a final decision could come within days, and a senior newsroom source agreed, adding that the plan could be announced in a matter of weeks. (Apple's tablet computer is rumored to launch on January 27, and sources speculate that Sulzberger will strike a content partnership for the new device, which could dovetail with the paid strategy.) It will likely be months before the Times actually begins to charge for content, perhaps sometime this spring. Executive Editor Bill Keller declined to comment. Times spokesperson Diane McNulty said: “We'll announce a decision when we believe that we have crafted the best possible business approach. No details till then.”

The Times has considered three types of pay strategies. One option was a more traditional pay wall along the lines of The Wall Street Journal, in which some parts of the site are free and some subscription-only. For example, editors and business-side executives discussed a premium version of Andrew Ross Sorkin's DealBook section. Another option was the metered system. The third choice, an NPR-style membership model, was abandoned last fall, two sources explained. The thinking was that it would be too expensive and cumbersome to maintain because subscribers would have to receive privileges (think WNYC tote bags and travel mugs, access to Times events and seminars).

Full Story New York Times Ready to Charge Online Readers — Daily Intel.

Why Haiti Matters : By Barack Obama

In the tragic aftermath of Haiti’s 7.0 earthquake, images of the disaster break our hearts and remind us of the fragility of life. What America must do now—and why.

In the last week, we have been deeply moved by the heartbreaking images of the devastation in Haiti: parents searching through rubble for sons and daughters; children, frightened and alone, looking for their mothers and fathers. At this moment, entire parts of Port-au-Prince are in ruins, as families seek shelter in makeshift camps. It is a horrific scene of shattered lives in a poor nation that has already suffered so much.

In response, I have ordered a swift, coordinated, and aggressive effort to save lives in Haiti. We have launched one of the largest relief efforts in recent history. I have instructed the leaders of all agencies to make our response a top priority across the federal government. We are mobilizing every element of our national capacity: the resources of development agencies, the strength of our armed forces, and most important, the compassion of the American people. And we are working closely with the Haitian government, the United Nations, and the many international partners who are also aiding in this extraordinary effort.

Full Story Why Haiti Matters | Print Article | Newsweek.com.

Craziest Pat Robertson Quotes Ever

Pat Robertson’s Haiti quotes this past week have created quite a stir.

The outspoken televangelist and 1988 presidential hopeful said about Haiti:

“They were under the heel of the French. You know, Napoleon III, or whatever. And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, we will serve you if you’ll get us free from the French. True story. And so, the devil said, okay it’s a deal [...] ever since, they have been cursed by one thing after the other.”

Robertson’s Haiti quotes join a series of outrageous comments. He seems to have a habit of making such statements, particularly at inappropriate times.

Here’s a collection of Robertson’s most controversial quotes of all time. Vote on the sanity of each below.

Full Story Pat Robertson Haiti Quotes Latest Of MANY Controversial Comments: Craziest Robertson Quotes Ever.

Johnson & Johnson Accused of Drug Kickbacks

Johnson & Johnson paid kickbacks to the nation’s largest nursing home pharmacy to increase the number of elderly patients taking the antipsychotic Risperdal and several other medications, according to a complaint filed Friday by the office of the United States attorney in Boston.

The payments violated the federal anti-kickback statute and led Omnicare, a pharmacy company specializing in dispensing drugs to nursing home residents, to submit false claims to Medicaid, the complaint charged.

The government’s civil complaint joins a whistle-blower suit against Johnson & Johnson brought by two former employees of Omnicare, which has headquarters in Covington, Ky.

Full Story Johnson & Johnson Accused of Drug Kickbacks | HeraldTribune.com | Sarasota Florida | Southwest Florida’s Information Leader.

Sex, Stress Relief Drive People to Worship

Research Indicates Relationship Between Religion and Mating

Ask 100 people what they get out of religion and you will probably get 100 different answers. Some worship out of habit, others out of fear of death. New experiments offer two surprising reasons people find God: sex and stress relief.

Men and women shown dating profiles of attractive members of the same sex will describe themselves as more religious than people who don’t feel as if they have to compete in the attractiveness stakes. Meanwhile, another study finds that thoughts of randomness push people toward God – but only if they can’t attribute feelings of stress to some easily defined external factor. Subjects were primed for random thoughts by being exposed to phrases containing words such as “chance”, “haphazard” and “random”.

“You can become more or less religious depending on the situation,” says Ara Norenzayan, a psychologist at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, who was not involved in the studies.

Full Story Sex, Stress Relief Drive People to Worship – ABC News.

Church to vote on greater rights for partners of gay clergy – Telegraph

The Church of England is poised to give greater recognition to homosexual clergy in relationships, The Sunday

A proposal to give the partners of gay priests some of the same rights that are awarded to priests’ spouses is likely to spark a new row over homosexuality.

Bishops and senior clergy will debate at next month’s General Synod whether the Church should provide same-sex couples with the same financial benefits as are awarded to married couples.

Traditionalists have expressed strong opposition to the move, which they claim would give official recognition to homosexual relationships

Full Story Church to vote on greater rights for partners of gay clergy – Telegraph.

Adults with ADHD ‘stuggle to get treatment’

Adults with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are struggling to access treatment because of a lack of services, figures suggest.

Prescriptions for drugs to treat the condition fall off significantly in 15-21 year olds, a study has shown.

It suggests that some adults who would benefit from treatment are not getting it, the NHS-funded researchers said.

The government said there were efforts to improve the transition between child and adult mental health services.

Full Story BBC News – Adults with ADHD ‘stuggle to get treatment’.

Antarctica Ice Sheet – Break Up Of Antarctica Ice Sheet Photos

3 time-lapsed photos show the incredible disintegration of the Filchner ice shelf in Antarctica.

Full Story Antarctica Ice Sheet – Break Up Of Antarctica Ice Sheet Photos – thedailygreen.com.

Tony Blair: ‘Find me some obviously sick children’

Downing Street officials were ordered to round up ‘obviously sick children’ for a photo call on a hospital visit by Tony Blair during the 2001 General Election.

Labour Party general secretary Peter Watt tells how he prepared for the visit to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in King’s Lynn, Norfolk.

‘En route I got a call from one of the PM’s team asking if I could make sure that there were half a dozen “obviously sick” children for Tony to meet,’ he says. ‘I spent several hours scouring hospital wards for poorly looking kids … and had them in position seconds before Tony turned up.’

Full Story Tony Blair: ‘Find me some obviously sick children’ | Mail Online.

Scientists: Haiti facing even more powerful quakes in the future

Haiti and its neighbors must prepare themselves for more massive quakes after the devastating tremors this week increased pressure along a lengthy fault line, scientists warned Friday.

Paul Mann, a senior research scientist at the Institute for Geophysics at the University of Texas at Austin, warned that just because the rebuilding process had started people shouldn’t assume the risk was over.

“This relief of stress along this area near Port-au-Prince may have actually increased stress in the adjacent segments on the fault,” he told AFP.

Full Story Scientists: Haiti facing even more powerful quakes in the future | Raw Story.

Dem: If Coakley loses, health reforms may pass by reconciliation

Could a special election in Massachusetts completely derail President Obama’s health reforms? Not if Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) has his way.

Massachusetts voters will decide on Tuesday whether to elect Republican Scott Brown or Democrat Martha Coakley to serve the remainder of the late Senator Edward Kennedy’s term. Should Brown be elected, the Democratic super majority in the U.S. Senate would be broken, endangering passage of the health reform bill.

Van Hollen, who chairs the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, stressed during a recent Bloomberg television appearance that if Brown wins, Democrats may yet pass the health overhaul through the process of reconciliation.

Full Story Dem: If Coakley loses, health reforms may pass by reconciliation | Raw Story.

Despite controversy over Haiti, Robertson still welcome at McDonnell’s inauguration prayer breakfast.

Despite his controversial remarks this week tying Haiti’s devastating earthquake to the country’s “pact to the devil,” televangelist Pat Robertson still attended Bob McDonnell’s gubernatorial inauguration prayer breakfast today. McDonnell, who was sworn in as Virginia’s new Republican governor today, attended law school at Robertson’s Regent University and took some heat on the campaign trail over his graduate thesis. Although Robertson went to McDonnell’s prayer breakfast this morning, he was not given the honor of sitting behind the governor on the podium during the actual ceremony:

However, according to McDonnell’s aides, Robertson has not been given the honor of an invitation to sit behind McDonnell on the portico of the Capitol during the swearing-in. Despite McDonnell’s long time friendship with the Virginia Beach televanglist, this marks a departure from the Inauguration of Virginia’s last Republican governor, when Robertson was seated not far behind incoming Gov. Jim Gilmore. He also attended the inauguration of Gov. George Allen in 1994.

Full Story Think Progress » Despite controversy over Haiti, Robertson still welcome at McDonnell’s inauguration prayer breakfast..

Brown Justifies Denying 9/11 Rescue Workers Aid: ‘We Had To Take Care Of Our Own Priorities First’

As the Plum Line reported yesterday, State Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA), the Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate special election on Tuesday, voted on October 17, 2001 to deny financial aid to Red Cross rescue workers who had volunteered with 9/11 recovery efforts. As a state representative at the time, Brown was one out of only three legislators who had opposed the overwhelmingly bipartisan measure.

At a campaign rally today in Hyannis, ThinkProgress caught up with Brown for comment on why he voted against the measure:

TP: In 2001, you voted against 9/11 recovery workers, giving them aid, do you have any comment on this story?

BROWN: Yes, it was a time when our budget was down. We had a lot of cuts unfortunately, and we had to take care of our own priorities first.

Watch it:

Full Story Think Progress » Brown Justifies Denying 9/11 Rescue Workers Aid: ‘We Had To Take Care Of Our Own Priorities First’.