Archive for January, 2010

James Dobson to start new nonprofit and radio show, giving him ‘greater leeway to hold forth on politics.’

Last year, Focus on the Family founder James Dobson announced that he would be stepping down from his organization but would “continue to host Focus on the Family’s flagship radio program, write a monthly newsletter and speak out on moral issues.” The group had been suffering from financial troubles, laying off more than 100 staffers. However, Dobson recently announced that in March, he and his son will instead be launching a new nonprofit and radio show called “James Dobson on the Family.” While the current Focus on the Family President has insisted that Dobson just wants to “share his life’s work and passion with his only son,” the New York Times notes that the new venture will allow Dobson “greater leeway to hold forth on politics.” The Colorado Springs Gazette also reported:

Dobson’s departure from Focus only to start a similar ministry has some outside obervers speculating that Dobson was forced out of Focus and that a bitter Dobson decided to create a competing organization. Dobson, they say, may also feel that Focus’ kinder and gentler approach under CEO and president Jim Daly is not doing the trick, motivating Dobson to start a family nonprofit where fiery rhetoric is the norm. Both Focus and Dobson deny these reasons.

Full Story Think Progress » James Dobson to start new nonprofit and radio show, giving him ‘greater leeway to hold forth on politics.’.

Looming High Court Ruling Could Taint Justice, Legal Expert Says

A pending U.S. Supreme Court ruling could aggravate the influence of corporate campaign spending that already has skewed justice in some of the nation’s courts, a University of Illinois labor law expert warns.

Michael LeRoy says he found evidence that judges’ rulings are being swayed by campaign contributions from businesses, based on a new study of more than 200 state court cases. The study will appear in the Iowa Law Review.

He predicts justice would tip even more out of balance if the Supreme Court strikes down limits on election spending in a high-stakes challenge to the Bipartisan Campaign Finance Reforms Act of 2002, commonly known as the McCain-Feingold bill.

Full Story On The Hill: Looming High Court Ruling Could Taint Justice, Legal Expert Says.

OPS:  This is the final assault on the American form of Democracy. If they do this – everything changes. Fascism comes out of the closet

344 Cuban Medics Treat Earthquake Victims

There are 344 Cuban medics working in Haiti today, they have two improvised hospitals where they are providing services to the earthquake victims. Only two of them were injured in the earthquake, both of whom have received treatment for minor injuries and remain there to assist the disaster victims.

Cuban doctors are working in all 10 “departments” (administrative regions) of Haiti. They are assisted by approximately 400 Haitian medical interns who have completed medical degrees on full scholarships in Cuba.

Cuba has provided free public health care to the poor of Haiti since 1989 – the only public medicine available in that country. During the recent coup and subsequent US/French/Canadian invasion which deposed the Aristide presidency, Cuban doctors continued to provide medical care when other hospitals closed down and other doctors fled the country.

Full Story 344 Cuban Medics Treat Earthquake Victims.

Red Mass?

William Rivers Pitt -

The nature of modern American politics has been off-the-wall weird for a dozen years now. We’ve seen a president impeached for lying about sex. We’ve seen another president who was selected instead of elected in an orgiastic festival of Florida and federal fraud. We saw an administration use the darkest day in our history as an excuse to scare us, spy on us, steal from us and start false wars in our name. We’ve seen a vice president go on national television and advocate the benefits and blessings of torture. We came within an eyelash of seeing the first woman president elected in this still-misogynist nation, and did see the first African-American president elected in this still-racist nation.

Those are just the big-ticket items. It is almost impossible to quantify the political mayhem that has broken loose during the last several years, and after all of it, you start to think that maybe you’ve seen it all. How much more deranged can it really get?

Full Story t r u t h o u t | Red Mass?.

The Great Tea Party Rip-Off

Frank Rich -

Even given the low bar set by America’s bogus conversations about race, the short-lived Harry Reid fracas was a most peculiar nonevent. For all the hyperventilation in cable news land, this supposed racial brawl didn’t seem to generate any controversy whatsoever in what is known as the real world.

Eugene Robinson, the liberal black columnist at The Washington Post, wrote that he was “neither shocked nor outraged” at Reid’s less-than-articulate observation that Barack Obama benefited politically from being “light-skinned” and for lacking a “Negro dialect unless he wanted to have one.” Besides, Robinson said, Reid’s point was “surely true.” The black conservative Ward Connerly agreed, writing in The Wall Street Journal that he was “having a difficult time determining what it was that Mr. Reid said that was so offensive.”

President Obama immediately granted Reid absolution. A black columnist at The Daily News in New York, Stanley Crouch, even stood up for the archaic usage of “Negro.” George Will defended Reid from charges of racism as vociferously as Democrats did. Al Sharpton may have accepted Reid’s apology, but for once there’s no evidence that he ever cared enough to ask for one. So who, actually, was the aggrieved party here? What — or who — was really behind this manufactured race war with no victims?

Full Story Op-Ed Columnist – The Great Tea Party Rip-Off – NYTimes.com.

U.S. opens (antitrust) probe of Diebold unit sale -report

The U.S. Department of Justice and 14 states have opened investigations into the sale of Diebold Inc’s (DBD.N) voting machines business to Election Systems & Software that could lead to the unwinding of the September sale, the New York Post said on Saturday.

he deal was too small to require government approval at the time, but it gave ES&S a 70 percent share of the voting machine market, the newspaper said.

However, now the Justice Department could file a lawsuit to unwind the deal and New York Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer was planning to hold hearings on the matter next month, the paper said, citing a source with direct knowledge of the process who was not identified.

Diebold spokesman Michael Jacobsen said in an email that the company was cooperating with the Justice Department review of the sale. A department spokeswoman declined to comment and ES&S could not be reached.

Full Story U.S. opens probe of Diebold unit sale -report | Reuters.

2010 as 1994? Relax, Democrats

This year’s midterm elections won’t be a repeat of the GOP’s surge to power in 1994. Why? Because almost everything we think we know about that election is wrong.

Two Democratic senators and one governor announced their retirements earlier this month, and days later, the smart money has Ted Kennedy’s Massachusetts Senate seat falling to the GOP for the first time in nearly 60 years. Suddenly, the Republicans are crowing and Democrats are trembling — everyone says the Democratic Party is doomed in 2010.

What is the source of this breathless hysteria? Memories of the 1994 Republican midterm landslide. But everyone should take a deep breath: The 2010 midterms will not be a repeat of 1994. Why? Because almost everything we think we know about the 1994 election is wrong.

Let’s look at the 1994 election. How was the GOP able to pick up 52 House seats and eight Senate seats to take control of Congress for the first time in over four decades? This was the second year of Bill Clinton’s presidency, and his signature initiative — healthcare reform — had just failed. Although economists insisted the recession was over, unemployment remained high and wages were stagnant.

Full Story 2010 as 1994? Relax, Democrats – latimes.com.

The Right Testicle of Hell:History of a Haitian Holocaust

There’s no such thing as a ‘natural’ disaster. 200,000 Haitians have been slaughtered by slum housing and IMF “austerity” plans.

Blackwater before drinking water

1.
Bless the President for having rescue teams in the air almost immediately. That was President Olafur Grimsson of Iceland. On Wednesday, the AP reported that the President of the United States promised, “The initial contingent of 2,000 Marines could be deployed to the quake-ravaged country within the next few days.” “In a few days,” Mr. Obama?

2.
There’s no such thing as a ‘natural’ disaster. 200,000 Haitians have been slaughtered by slum housing and IMF “austerity” plans.

3.
A friend of mine called. Do I know a journalist who could get medicine to her father? And she added, trying to hold her voice together, “My sister, she’s under the rubble. Is anyone going who can help, anyone?” Should I tell her, “Obama will have Marines there in ‘a few days’”?

4.
China deployed rescuers with sniffer dogs within 48 hours. China, Mr. President. China: 8,000 miles distant. Miami: 700 miles close. US bases in Puerto Rico: right there.

Full Story Greg Palast » The Right Testicle of Hell:History of a Haitian Holocaust.

Unions call for Science-Based Reductions in Greenhouse Gasses

Over the past couple of years, the American labor movement has become an enthusiastic supporter of expanding “green jobs” that fight global warming. But policies to reduce carbon emissions scientists say are safe have been a harder pill to swallow. Now, in a significant breakthrough, three significant unions have come out for the science-based emissions targets called for by the IPCC.

As 250 international union delegates arrived in Copenhagen for the global climate summit, a statement by the Transport Workers Union (TWU) and a joint statement by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the Laborers International Union of North America (LIUNA) called for a 25 to 40 percent reduction on 1990 levels for developed countries by 2020.

Sean Sweeney, director of the the Cornell University Global Labor Institute, who worked with the US labor delegation to be fully engaged in the UN process at the Copenhagen conference, said:

Full Story Unions call for Science-Based Reductions in Greenhouse Gasses | CommonDreams.org.

Keiser Report №8: Iceland – A Lesson for everyone (video)

This week Max Keiser and co-host, Stacy Herbert, talk about Geithner’s AIG shenanigans, Goldman’s 259% bonuses and the teamsters defeat of Goldman Sachs. Keiser also speaks to Birgitta Jonsdottir, leader of The Movement in the Icelandic Parliament, who is taking on the international bankers.

Privatization Profiteering

Ralph Nader -

Whenever Frank Anderson speaks the way he did at a recent public forum in Washington, D.C. about “essential state functions performed by businesses,” people better listen. Mr. Anderson is the president of the Middle East Policy Council, but previously he was the chief of the Near East and South Asia Division of the CIA. A discussion-relayed over C-Span-featuring Mr. Anderson, was among established scholars and policy wonks focused on national security in that tumultuous area of the world. Mr. Anderson was asked about Blackwater, the controversial corporation whose profits come from Pentagon and State Department contracts to provide security to U.S. government personnel in west and central Asia and to perform such secret operations that it could have an identity crisis with the CIA.

Blackwater has gotten in trouble for shooting up Iraqi civilians in unprovoked situations. The corporation's operatives are involved in sensitive missions, such as the recent double-agent suicide explosion in Afghanistan. Again and again, the line between corporate and governmental functions is not only blurred, it has ceased to exist.

Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL.) called Blackwater a “repeat offender endangering our mission repeatedly, endangering the lives of our military and costing the lives of innocent civilians.” She asked why Blackwater is employed anywhere by the U.S. government.

Full Story Privatization Profiteering | CommonDreams.org.

Civilian Casualties Soar; Key Afghan Metric Headed In Wrong Direction

Civilian deaths in Afghanistan climbed in 2009 to their highest number since the fall of the Taliban, the United Nations says in a recent report.

The rising number of innocent Afghan casualties constitutes a major failure for the American forces if judged by the standards set out by General Stanley McChrystal in the summer of 2009, when he testified before Congress.

American success in Afghanistan should be measured by “the number of Afghans shielded from violence,” not the number of enemy fighters killed, he said at the time.

Full Story Civilian Casualties Soar; Key Afghan Metric Headed In Wrong Direction.

Analysis – Senate Race Underscores Voter Anger

Howard Dean: “It’s going to be a hard November for Democrats. Our base is demoralized.”

The ill winds of an angry electorate are blowing against Democrats, the warning signs clear in a closer-than-expected Massachusetts Senate race that may doom President Barack Obama’s health care agenda and foreshadow the party’s midterm election prospects.

Anti-incumbent, antiestablishment sentiment is rampant. Independents are leaving Obama. Republicans are energized. Democrats are subdued. And none of that bodes well for the party in power.

”It’s going to be a hard November for Democrats,” Howard Dean, the Democratic Party chairman in 2006 and 2008 elections when the party took control of the White House and Congress, told The Associated Press in an interview. ”Our base is demoralized.”

Full Story Analysis – Senate Race Underscores Voter Anger – NYTimes.com.

Union Exemption From Excise Tax Is a Bad, Bad Idea

Michael Whitney:  -

Jane Hamsher explained last night that unions have a tentative deal for a way out of the excise tax: exempting health care plans protected by collective bargaining agreements. That means union plans that cross the $23,000 threshold won’t be taxed.

TPM backs up this story with Rep. Rob Andrews explaining exemptions for the excise tax may pull together enough votes to pass:

As I first reported yesterday, one idea gaining traction in negotiations between Congressional leaders, union officials, and the White House is that collectively bargained benefit plans could be exempted from the tax. According to Rep. Robert Andrews (D-NJ), who chairs the health subcommittee of the House Education and Labor Committee, that could be enough to build a majority for health care reform.

“It would be a way to lessen impact of the so-called excise tax,” Andrews said. “I think we could build a consensus around that idea–a majority around that idea.”

Full Story Michael Whitney: Union Exemption From Excise Tax Is a Bad, Bad Idea.

AP Exclusive: Tobacco’s plea — no big US payments

Tobacco industry lawyers met secretly with Solicitor General Elena Kagan in an effort to avoid the government’s last-ditch attempt to extract billions from companies that illegally concealed the dangers of cigarette smoking, The Associated Press has learned.

Four cigarette makers that control nearly 90 percent of U.S. retail cigarette sales have until Feb. 19 to persuade the government not to go to the Supreme Court and ask the justices to step into a landmark 10-year-old racketeering lawsuit.

In 2006, a judge ruled that the industry concealed the dangers of smoking for decades. Despite that finding, lower courts have said the government is not entitled to collect $280 billion in past profits or $14 billion for a national campaign to curb smoking.

Full Story AP Exclusive: Tobacco’s plea — no big US payments – Yahoo! News.

Dems threaten to use 51-vote tactic for health bill if they lose in Mass.

Democrats are prepared to use a budgetary procedure to pass healthcare reform legislation if they lose a key Senate race on Tuesday, a House leader said this weekend.

Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), the assistant to the Speaker and chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), said using budget reconciliation is “an option” to pass a healthcare bill.

“Even before Massachusetts and that race was on the radar screen, we prepared for the process of using reconciliation,” Van Hollen said during an appearance on Bloomberg television over the weekend.

Full Story Dems threaten to use 51-vote tactic for health bill if they lose in Mass. – The Hill’s Blog Briefing Room.

Frank Rich is right, Wall St. greater threat vs. Al-Qaeda

On the Edge with Max Keiser – 15 January 2010

Part 2

Part 3

Ben Nelson Asks Senate Leaders To Delete Nebraska Medicaid Deal From Final Health Care Bill

Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska is asking Senate leaders to eliminate a controversial Medicaid deal for his state in the health care bill.

The moderate Democrat, who provided the crucial 60th vote for the Senate health care bill, has been criticized because Nebraska was exempted paying any cost of a proposed expansion of Medicaid.

All other states would have to pick up a portion of the tab after the first few years.

Full Story Ben Nelson Asks Senate Leaders To Delete Nebraska Medicaid Deal From Final Health Care Bill.

OPS: Wouldn’t it be better it Moderate Republicans like Ben Nelson stopped pretending they were Democrats? They could be the “reasoned” and tempering force on the right.

Obama is right to clobber Wall Street

FT   Editorial –

The American public dreams of putting bankers on trial. The hearings of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, which started this week, are a spectacle that comes close to that fantasy. With camera flashes firing, the bankers’ journeys to take the stand have had the drama of the “perp walk”. The quasi-defendants were quizzed, among other things, on the White House’s new plan, revealed this week, for a $90bn tax on banks.

The proposal is political. That much is clear from the timing. The administration announced it ahead of bank bonus season. With US unemployment continuing to rise, the spectacle of Wall Street plutocrats reporting multimillion dollar earnings from bailed-out companies will trigger geysers of rage. This policy should soothe and exploit that popular anger.

Full Story FT.com / Comment / Editorial – Obama is right to clobber Wall Street.

Greg Mortenson On Bill Moyers: A Better Path To Peace In Afghanistan (VIDEO)

The U.S. has committed up to 30,000 more troops to the escalation of the war in Afghanistan. Greg Mortenson, the author of the new book “Stones into Schools,” believes that there’s a better path to peace.

After working in the region for 17 years, Mortenson argues that building schools and nurturing local communities is the way to win the hearts and minds of the Afghan population and end our long occupation of the country.

He discusses with Bill Moyers his efforts to build schools in some of the most remote and dangerous regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan.

WATCH:

Full Story Greg Mortenson On Bill Moyers: A Better Path To Peace In Afghanistan (VIDEO).

Voters Who Lost Faith In Dodd Wouldn’t Trust Obama’s Economics Team Either

Senator Chris Dodd announced last week that he is relinquishing his office. He didn’t really have much choice — the voters of Connecticut were prepared to take it away from him in November even if he had tried to keep it.

And they would have had good reason. After 30 years as a champion of reform, Dodd had violated their trust — on a particularly important issue, at a particularly important moment. First, there was the issue of his consistent enabling of the financial industry in his role as chairman of the Senate banking committee. Then it came out that Countrywide Financial CEO Angelo Mozilo, the kingpin of subprime, had arranged sweetheart mortgage loans for him. And finally, in a sign of where his loyalties lay, Dodd slipped a provision into a bill allowing AIG, the most culpable and irresponsible player of them all, to hand out big bonuses paid for with taxpayer dollars.

Voters had legitimate reason to conclude that he couldn’t be counted on to represent their interests. The denizens of one of the bluest states in the nation were even steeled to vote Republican instead, just to get rid of him — even if that meant replacing him with a political neophyte whose fortune was made in the violence-porn industry known as “professional” wrestling.

Full Story Voters Who Lost Faith In Dodd Wouldn’t Trust Obama’s Economics Team Either.

U.S. Geek Shortage Is National Security Risk

Sure, we’re all plugged in and online 24/7. But fewer American kids are growing up to be bona fide computer geeks. And that poses a serious security risk for the country, according to the Defense Department.

The Pentagon’s far-out research arm Darpa is soliciting proposals for initiatives that would attract teens to careers in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM), with an emphasis on computing. According to the Computer Research Association, computer science enrollment dropped 43 percent between 2003 and 2006.

Darpa’s worried that America’s “ability to compete in the increasingly internationalized stage will be hindered without college graduates with the ability to understand and innovate cutting edge technologies in the decades to come…. Finding the right people with increasingly specialized talent is becoming more difficult and will continue to add risk to a wide range of DoD [Department of Defense] systems that include software development.”

Full Story Darpa: U.S. Geek Shortage Is National Security Risk | Danger Room | Wired.com.

Top 9 Tech Trends To Watch In 2010 (PHOTOS)

A new year means new gadgets, new tech, and a fresh wave of innovation.

What will our lives look like in the coming year? Get a sense for how technology could shape the way we live, work, and play by checking out our list of the top nine tech trends to watch in 2010.

Suggest your own in the comments below!

Whether or not Twitter remains the standard for instantaneous information in 2010, real time updates are here to stay. What remains to be seen is how much faster “real time” can get, where it will go next (it’s already been added to search), and where the information will come from–Twitter, yes, but what about blogs, texts, chats, and more?

Full Story Top 9 Tech Trends To Watch In 2010 (PHOTOS).

In Reversal, U.S. Expresses Concern Over Additive to Plastics – BPA

In a shift of position, the Food and Drug Administration is expressing concerns about possible health risks from bisphenol-A, or BPA, a widely used component of plastic bottles and food packaging that it declared safe in 2008.

The agency said Friday that it had “some concern about the potential effects of BPA on the brain, behavior and prostate gland of fetuses, infants and children,” and would join other federal health agencies in studying the chemical in both animals and humans.

The action is another example of the drug agency under the Obama administration becoming far more aggressive in taking hard looks at what it sees as threats to public health. In recent months, the agency has stepped up its oversight of food safety and has promised to tighten approval standards for medical devices.

Concerns about BPA are based on studies that have found harmful effects in animals, and on the recognition that the chemical seeps into food and baby formula, and that nearly everyone is exposed to it, starting in the womb.

Full Story In Reversal, U.S. Expresses Concern Over Additive to Plastics – NYTimes.com.

OPS: It’s about damned time.

Fox News’s Roger Ailes Is the Real GOP Chairman

I’ve been trying to answer this question: does the Republican Party have a “leader”? Surely it’s not Michael Steele, the loose-lipped chairman of the RNC. Not Mitch McConnell, the funereal Kentuckian who heads the Senate’s rejectionist GOP minority. Not Sen. John McCain; he’s too busy watching his own right flank back home in Arizona. And certainly not the Bushes, elder and younger, hunkered down in Texas. As for the 2012 wannabes, none gets more than a fifth of the GOP vote in the early polls.

But I finally found my answer while I was watching Fox News Channel. Last Wednesday, the other news outlets were engaged in wall-to-wall, on-the-ground coverage of the horrific earthquake in Haiti. FNC, meanwhile, featured an hourlong Glenn Beck sit-down with Sarah Palin, Fox’s newest “analyst,” and wall-to-wall, on-the-ground coverage of the U.S. Senate race in Massachusetts, where a Republican, Scott Brown, seemed to be closing in fast on what was once Ted Kennedy’s seat. “All eyes are on the Senate race in Massachusetts!” said Sean Hannity, who did his best to make it seem as though he believed it.

Full Story Fox News’s Roger Ailes Is the Real GOP Chairman – Howard Fineman – Newsweek.com.

On rebuilding Haiti: What Can And Ought To Be Done

The New Yorker -

The night after the earthquake, Haitians who had lost their homes, or who feared that their houses might collapse, slept outdoors, in the streets and parks of Port-au-Prince. In Place Saint-Pierre, across the street from the Kinam Hotel, in the suburb of Pétionville, hundreds of people lay under the sky, and many of them sang hymns: “God, you are the one who gave me life. Why are we suffering?” In Jacmel, a coastal town south of the capital, where the destruction was also great, a woman who had already seen the body of one of her children removed from a building learned that her second child was dead, too, and wailed, “God! I can’t take this anymore!” A man named Lionel Gaedi went to the Port-au-Prince morgue in search of his brother, Josef, but was unable to find his body among the piles of corpses that had been left there. “I don’t see him—it’s a catastrophe,” Gaedi said. “God gives, God takes.” Chris Rolling, an American missionary and aid worker, tried to extricate a girl named Jacqueline from a collapsed school using nothing more than a hammer. He urged her to be calm and pray, and as night fell he promised that he would return with help. When he came back the next morning, Jacqueline was dead. “The bodies stopped bothering me after a while, but I think what I will always carry with me is the conversation I had with Jacqueline before I left her,” Rolling wrote afterward on his blog. “How could I leave someone who was dying, trapped in a building! . . . She seemed so brave when I left! I told her I was going to get help, but I didn’t tell her I would be gone until morning. I think this is going to trouble me for a long time.” Dozens of readers wrote to comfort Rolling with the view that his story was evidence of divine wisdom and mercy.

Full Story On rebuilding Haiti : The New Yorker.

Drug Companies Threatening to Oppose Health Bill

Drug firms threatening to end support for health overhaul in biotech drug dispute

The drug industry is threatening to end its support for President Barack Obama’s health overhaul effort because of a rift with the administration over protecting brand-name biotech drugs from low-cost generic competitors.

In an e-mail obtained Friday by The Associated Press, the president of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America told the trade group’s board members that “we could not support the bill” if the industry is given less than 12 years of competitive protection for the expensive products.

Obama and House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., are leading the drive to shorten that period, which proponents argue would be a boon to consumers.

Full Story Drug Companies Threatening to Oppose Health Bill – ABC News.

OPS: Anyone surprised?

U.S. spending in Afghanistan plagued by poor U.S. oversight

The U.S. has spent more than $732 million to improve Afghanistan’s electrical grid since 2002, but delays and rising costs have plagued many of the projects in part because of poor oversight by the American government, a watchdog agency reports.

Of six projects under way in 2009, only one has been completed on time.

In the report released Friday, auditors with the Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction blamed poor communication between U.S. officials and the two companies that are working on the majority of the projects.

Full Story U.S. spending in Afghanistan plagued by poor U.S. oversight | McClatchy.

France moves closer to banning full Muslim veil

The man she married is French, her four children were born in France and she speaks French with only a trace of her native Arabic tongue. Faiza Silmi contends her clothes — a head-to-toe robe and filmy tissue covering her face — are the reason France has denied her citizenship in her adopted land.

The 32-year-old Moroccan may soon be facing an even fiercer blow. A top French lawmaker submitted a draft law this week that would ban such Islamic dress anywhere in public, a measure that would set a European precedent and trap thousands of women between their religious convictions and the law of the land.

“They say I’m too attached to my religion,” Silmi told The Associated Press at an empty restaurant near her home southwest of Paris, her large eyes peering from a slit in her veil. “Lots of Christians live in Morocco and we don’t make them wear scarves.”

Full Story France moves closer to banning full Muslim veil – Yahoo! News.

OPS: Attention Christians, this applies to you too: Your right to your religious beliefs does NOT trump anyone elses right to security

Tame inflation, falling wages signal weak US recovery

US consumer prices barely rose in December amid a sluggish recovery from recession, official data showed Friday, as falling wages pinched spending that drives most of the world’s largest economy.

The consumer price index rose less than expected in December, by 0.1 percent from November, the Labor Department reported in seasonally adjusted data.

Most analysts had forecast a stronger CPI rise of 0.2 percent.

The so-called “core” CPI, which excludes food and energy prices and is used by the Federal Reserve to forecast future inflation, rose 0.1 percent as expected.

Full Story Tame inflation, falling wages signal weak US recovery – Yahoo! News.

Network flaw causes scary Web error

A Georgia mother and her two daughters logged onto Facebook from mobile phones last weekend and wound up in a startling place: strangers’ accounts with full access to troves of private information.

The glitch — the result of a routing problem at the family’s wireless carrier, AT&T — revealed a little known security flaw with far reaching implications for everyone on the Internet, not just Facebook users.

In each case, the Internet lost track of who was who, putting the women into the wrong accounts. It doesn’t appear the users could have done anything to stop it. The problem adds a dimension to researchers’ warnings that there are many ways online information — from mundane data to dark secrets — can go awry.

Full Story AP Exclusive: Network flaw causes scary Web error – Yahoo! News.

As Massachusetts Senate GOP candidate climbs, healthcare could be doomed | Raw Story

President Barack Obama will head to Massachusetts on Sunday in a last-minute bid to revive the fortunes of Martha Coakley, the Democratic candidate for Ted Kennedy’s old Senate seat in a special election that takes place Tuesday.

Republican candidate Scott Brown had a four-point lead over Coakley in a poll published Thursday night. That poll has Democrats spooked because the loss of Kennedy’s seat to a Republican could jeopardize the Democrats’ health care agenda.

Full Story As Massachusetts Senate GOP candidate climbs, healthcare could be doomed | Raw Story.

Republicans siding with Wall Street on Obama bank fee

Prominent Republicans are coming out in opposition to President Barack Obama’s proposal for a $90-billion fee on large banks that took bailout money, a move that political observers say could force the GOP to choose between their traditional anti-tax position and populist anger over the bailout.

On Thursday, GOP Chairman Michael Steele declared that the bank fee — which would be levied only on banks that took bailout money and have more than $50 billion in assets — is “another tax on the American public.”

“The fact is this money has already been paid back by the banks and this punitive tax will hurt Americans’ savings and discourage job creation at the worst of economic times,” Steele said, as quoted at the Huffington Post.

Full Story Republicans siding with Wall Street on Obama bank fee | Raw Story.

Gov. Perry Bemoans ‘Federal Takeover’ Of Education, But His State’s Takeover Of Textbooks Is Totally Fine

Back when the economic recovery act was first put into place, Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) rejected $555 million in extended unemployment benefits, saying “we do not need any more strings from Washington attached to programs.”

Now, Perry has also decided that he won’t be applying for any of the Race to the Top funding available in the stimulus, which could bring Texas $700 million to implement education reforms. Points on the Race to the Top application are awarded for accepting the National Governors Association’s effort to adopt common national standards, which, despite originating in the states, Perry said “smacks of a federal takeover of public schools.” Perry added that he doesn’t want to put Texas’ education system in the hands of those “thousands of miles away”:

Texas is on the right path toward improved education, and we would be foolish and irresponsible to place our children’s future in the hands of unelected bureaucrats and special interest groups thousands of miles away in Washington, virtually eliminating parents’ participation in their children’s education.

Full Story Think Progress » Gov. Perry Bemoans ‘Federal Takeover’ Of Education, But His State’s Takeover Of Textbooks Is Totally Fine.

Poll: Majority Of Voters Don’t Believe DADT Is Helping The Military, Support Total Repeal Of The Ban

Today, the New York Times reported that the Pentagon is “stepping up internal discussions on how gay men and lesbians might be able to serve openly in the armed services” in anticipation that Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT) will be repealed. A small group — put together by Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mike Mullen to prepare for congressional hearings — recently met on the issue:

A one-page memorandum drafted by staff members as a discussion point for the meeting said that the chiefs could adopt the view that “now is not the time” because of the continuing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and that the military would be better off delaying the start of the repeal process until 2011.

The same memorandum, according to a military official who has seen it, also said that “every indicator of opinion over the past 16 years shows movement toward nondiscrimination based on orientation” and that “in time the law will change.”

Full Story Think Progress » Poll: Majority Of Voters Don’t Believe DADT Is Helping The Military, Support Total Repeal Of The Ban.

WTO: A Fundamentally Flawed Organization

The World Trade Organization is a fundamentally flawed organization run by the rich, for the rich. The bylaws of the organization, in many cases, supersede our own Constitution.

If the United States is to recover economically, it must either renegotiate or completely withdraw from the WTO.

The Constitution states that all treaties made under the authority of the U.S. become supreme law of the land. The U.S. invited the WTO to rule over us when our government signed the treaty, and now we have no choice but to conform U.S. laws, regulation and administrative procedures to the agreement.

Last October, Pascal Lamy, Director General of the WTO, made a visit to the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, where he openly exulted the benefits of unfettered free trade and discounted the abundance of overwhelming evidence pointing to the fallacies of “free trade.”

Full Story WTO: A Fundamentally Flawed Organization | Economy In Crisis.

More States Entering Budgetary Abyss

California is not the only state facing severe budget problems, according to the Pew Center on States, which identified ten other states that are facing budget problems approaching the size and scope of The Golden State’s.

California is not the only state facing severe budget problems, according to the Pew Center on States, which identified ten other states that are facing budget problems approaching the size and scope of The Golden State’s.

“A challenging mix of economic, political and money-management factors have pushed California to the brink of insolvency. But while California often takes the spotlight, other states are facing hardships just as daunting,” Susan Urahn, managing director of the Pew Center on the States, said in a press release.

Although not quite as bad as California, Arizona, Florida, Illinois, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island and Wisconsin are all facing similar budget difficulties.

Full Story More States Entering Budgetary Abyss | Economy In Crisis.

China Must Revalue Yuan Soon

It is widely accepted that the Chinese Yuan is artificially maintained at a peg against the American dollar, this status quo absolutely must change if anything is going to be done to truly stabilize the global economy.

Despite the fact that politicians in the United States fear speaking of it out loud, and despite the constant denials from Beijing, it is widely accepted that the Chinese Yuan is artificially maintained at a peg against the American dollar. This artificial peg results in consistently devaluing Chinese goods internationally, in particular making them cheaper than American goods, and boosting Chinese exports.

This program has been so successful against the United States and the rest of the world that China now dominates the export markets for many Western nations.

According to the The Wall Street Journal, this status quo absolutely must change if anything is going to be done to truly stabilize the global economy. Trade flows between the United States and China have been unbalanced for years, but in this time of economic collapse the imbalance is even worse.

Full Story China Must Revalue Yuan Soon | Economy In Crisis.

GM to Sell More Cars in China than U.S.

A General Motors official suggested this week that China could soon become the automaker’s number one market, a serious blow for a company that was once considered to be a barometer of the nation as a whole

A General Motors official suggested this week that China could soon become the automaker’s number one market, a serious blow for a company that was once considered to be a barometer of the nation as a whole, and perhaps an even bigger blow for the millions of jobs that could be lost were that to happen.

Tim Lee, General Motors president of international operations, told reporters at the Detroit auto show that his company had a very good year in China, and he expects that to continue.

“We did very, very well,” he said, according to CNNMoney.com. “We don’t intend to stop with what we’ve done. We intend to grow.”

Indeed GM has done well in the Asian nation. GM now owns the largest share of the Chinese auto market at 13.4 percent, up from 11.3 percent in 2008.

Full Story GM to Sell More Cars in China than U.S. | Economy In Crisis.

Victim Gets Blamed in Trade

Many media and government elites, as well as members of the public, blame the victim in trade disputes rather than rectifying the situation. The only way to truly bring this economy back from the brink is to change this culture, and begin supporting domestic employment and domestic production once again.

After a generation of being taught the beauty and perfection of “free trade at all costs” very few Americans realize the many downsides of current U.S. trade policies. As evidenced by some of the public outcry against the Obama administration’s small-scale regulatory efforts, many Americans believe that the “free” market should be allowed to work itself out.

This is particularly prevalent in major corporate media. Charlotte-based steel producer Nucor has been labeled as a “protectionist” organization for its encouragement of regulations and strong “Buy American” provisions in federal spending packages.

Nucor CEO Dan DiMicco was interviewed for a piece on the CBS News program “60 Minutes” in February 2009 to discuss the then active “Buy American” debate on Capitol Hill. Correspondent Lesley Stahl labeled him pejoratively as “a protectionist” as if his concept of employing Americans during a recession were something to be avoided.

Full Story Leo Gerard: Victim Gets Blamed in Trade | Economy In Crisis.

Another Christian Right Madman Suggests Haiti Earthquake May Be God’s Wrath

Reverend’s article for Fox News argues “practice of witchcraft” may be God’s reason for “punishing” Haiti.

Yet another great religious thinker has joined Pat Robertson in pondering the most important question about the tragedy in Haiti: whether or not the 7.0 earthquake that has killed thousands and devastated the country’s infrastructure was the act of a vengeful God.

“Each time there is mass devastation due to acts of nature in areas of the world there is discussion as to whether or not these are acts of God’s judgment.” writes Rev. Bill Shuler, pastor of Capital Life Church, on FoxNews.com. What makes God mad enough to level an entire nation? Whoring and boobs and drinking and witchcraft, of course. Continues Shuler:

When Katrina was flooded some people pointed to the decadent offerings of Mardi Gras and the French Quarters of New Orleans. When the tsunami hit southeast Asia people noted the severe persecution of people of faith in these nations. Haiti has been described, by some, as a place where the practice of witchcraft is prevalent.

Full Story Another Christian Right Madman Suggests Haiti Earthquake May Be God’s Wrath | PEEK | AlterNet.

Solar Power Is Now an Option for Even the Most Cash-Strapped Suburbanites

Residential solar leases offer a no-money-down, low-monthly plan that makes solar electricity cheaper than the stuff we get by wire — and you don’t have to buy the panels.

Say hello to the thing that could save our sun-splashed suburban lifestyle: affordable residential solar power that puts roof-top solar panels within reach of the most cash-strapped America consumer. This breakthrough is not a result of technological innovation, but a new financing scheme cooked up on Wall Street called a “residential solar lease,” a no-money-down, low-monthly plan that has made solar electricity cheaper than the stuff we get by wire. It’s an old approach to a new source of energy, and it is taking California by storm.

“Go solar for $0 down. Now you can afford to go solar without the high initial cost of installing a system. Instead of buying the equipment, you simply lease it,”  boasts the Web site of SolarCity, a well-financed Silicon Valley start-up that has been pioneering the residential solar lease.

A solar lease is a fairly simple arrangement that is not unlike a car lease. Instead of dishing out tens of thousands of dollars upfront to buy and install a rooftop solar array, homeowners simply borrow one for a low monthly fee. Like a car lease, customers sign a contract that locks them in for a specified period of time with the option of extending their lease or buying the panels at the end of the contract. It makes sense when you consider that a typical homeowner would have to cough up between $20,000 and $50,000 to buy and install a solar panel system. A solar lease, on the other hand, would only cost them somewhere around $100 a month.

Full Story Solar Power Is Now an Option for Even the Most Cash-Strapped Suburbanites | Environment | AlterNet.

H&M’s ‘Brand Integrity’: Destroying Surplus Winter Clothes in New York Instead of Donating Them to the Needy

Perfectly good shirts, sweaters and pants and winter jackets are ripped up and trashed instead of going to the city’s huge poor population.

In a story that should have us all railing against the cancer of capitalism, it recently came to the attention of many, thanks to the New York Times, that ubiquitous fashion retailer H&M has apparently been destroying perfectly usable unsold clothing, in the middle of winter, in a city where one third the population is poor.

“Gloves with the fingers cut off,” “warm socks,” “cute patent leather Mary Jane school shoes, maybe for fourth graders, with the instep cut up with a scissor,” and “men’s jackets, slashed across the body and the arms” are among the items recently described by one New York resident to Times reporter Jim Dwyer as being among the countless pieces of merhandise purposely ruined and rendered unwearable, piled in trash bags behind the Herald Square location in Manhattan.

The article met with much outrage — “H&M” topped the Trending Topics list on Twitter — and shortly thereafter, H&M announced that that it would stop the practice and would “instead donate the garments to charities.”

Full Story H&M’s ‘Brand Integrity’: Destroying Surplus Winter Clothes in New York Instead of Donating Them to the Needy | PEEK | AlterNet.

Why It’s So Tricky for Atheists to Debate with Believers

Debates over faith often leave non-believers holding the bag: look like a jerk or leave the debate unfinished and apparently concede defeat.

In conversations between atheists and believers, is there any way atheists can win?

I’ve been in a lot of discussions and debates with religious believers in the last few years, and I’m beginning to notice a pattern. Believers put atheists in no-win situations, so that no matter what atheists do, we’ll be seen as either acting like jerks or conceding defeat.

Like so many rhetorical gambits aimed at atheists, these “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” tactics aren’t really valid criticisms of atheism. They really only serve to deflect valid questions and criticisms about religion. But they come up often enough that I want to spend a little time pointing them out. I want to spell out the exact ways that these “no-win” situations are both unfair and inaccurate. And I want to point out the general nature of this no-win pattern—in hopes that in future debates with atheists, believers will be more aware of them, and will play a little more fairly.

Full Story Why It’s So Tricky for Atheists to Debate with Believers | Belief | AlterNet.

Easily Hacked Diebold Systems to Decide ‘Toss-Up’ U.S. Senate Special Election in MA on Tuesday

Since writing today’s piece for Upstate New York’s right-leaning Gouverneur Times, a new poll has come out this morning showing the Republican Scott Brown now leading the Democrat Martha Coakley by 4 points in the race for the U.S. Senate seat formerly held by a Democrat named Kennedy for nearly 60 years.

As of last night, when I filed the story with them, the latest survey from a Democratic-leaning pollster showed Coakley up by 8, though a day or two earlier, Republican Rasmussen had Brown down only by 2 points.

Suffice to say it’s now officially “a toss-up”, at least according to the Rothenberg Political Report, and to all the Dems and Reps now sweating out what was previously thought to have been an easy Democratic win.

Full Story The BRAD BLOG : Easily Hacked Diebold Systems to Decide ‘Toss-Up’ U.S. Senate Special Election in MA on Tuesday.

Grim Picture Of Conditions Of Indigenous Peoples

The world’s 370 million indigenous peoples suffer from disproportionately, often exponentially, higher rates of poverty, health problems, crime and human rights abuses, the first ever United Nations study on the issue reported today, stressing that self-determination and land rights are vital for their survival.

Startling figures contained in The State of the World’s Indigenous Peoples include:

Full Story Scoop: Grim Picture Of Conditions Of Indigenous Peoples.

Kucinich Subcommittee Findings Triggered Expanded Enforcement

Congressman Dennis Kucinich, who is Chair of the House Domestic Policy Subcommittee, announced on Wednesday, January 13th, that “the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) decision to file charges against Bank of America (BofA) for its failure to disclose mounting losses at Merrill Lynch was a response to finding made during the Kucinich subcommittee’s 9-month investigation of the merger.”

Kucinich’s Domestic Policy Subcommittee held five joint hearing on the matter with the Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

Subcommittee investigators found several potential violations of securities laws. On December 10, 2009, the Kucinich subcommittee staff sent a memo to majority members on the Oversight Committee and the Domestic Policy Subcommittee outlining potential legal violations committed in the BofA/Merrill Lynch merger. During the fifth Congressional hearing on the subject, Mr. Robert Khuzami, the Director of the Division of Enforcement at the SEC, agreed that SEC would investigate the potential violations.

Full Story kucinich.us – Kucinich Subcommittee Findings Triggered Expanded Enforcement.

Architects and Engineers for 911 Truth calls for independent investigation

The buildings didn't implode. They exploded!

Momentum is growing in what’s come to be called the “911 Truth Movement.” Apparently the psychological shock of what happened that September 11th was sufficient to delay many of us from even getting around to looking at the evidence. Of course we had to wait almost three years for the government’s official pronouncement: The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, or more simply, The 911 Commission’s Report.

When I saw those building fall on TV that day, I told someone it looked like a planned demolition. My friend agreed. That wasn’t the correct terminology, but we got the concept. It wasn’t until I saw the government’s treatment of evidence in its report that I was completely converted however. Like in the JFK assassination, evidence that contradicted the predetermined conclusion was destroyed, buried in endless pages of trivia, or simply ignored. That’s not how investigations are supposed to work. The evidence is supposed to guide the conclusion, not the other way round.

I’ll be following developments in a growing movement by a group called Architects and Engineers for 911 Truth, whose founder, Richard Gage, heard a discussion on Bonnie Faulkner’s KPFA show “Guns and Butter,” which led to his forming this group.

The helpful aspect of this group is that it’s harder to pass these people off as conspiracy wack jobs. They speak the language of scientists and are cultivated skeptics. It’s true that just because a scientist says something doesn’t necessarily mean what’s said is scientific, but that applies as fairly to the “government scientists.”

Full Story Architects and Engineers for 911 Truth calls for independent investigation.

McCully opens Antarctic wind farm

A new joint-venture wind farm at the bottom of the world is expected to cut diesel use by nearly 500,000 litres a year at Scott Base and McMurdo Station.

The wind farm on Ross Island in Antarctica was to have been opened remotely in Auckland by Hillary Clinton, the United States Secretary of State, during her visit to New Zealand. However, she abandoned her visit to return to Washington to co-ordinate the American aid effort for earthquake-devastated Haiti.

Today foreign minister Murray McCully stepped in and in a live link with Antarctica, formally declared the wind farm open.

Full Story McCully opens Antarctic wind farm – National – NZ Herald News.

Obama confidant’s spine-chilling proposal

Glenn Greenwald – Salon.com

proposing  the  Government  “cognitively infiltrate” online groups, websites  and activist groups

Cass Sunstein has long been one of Barack Obama’s closest confidants. Often mentioned as a likely Obama nominee to the Supreme Court, Sunstein is currently Obama’s head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs where, among other things, he is responsible for “overseeing policies relating to privacy, information quality, and statistical programs.” In 2008, while at Harvard Law School, Sunstein co-wrote a truly pernicious paper proposing that the U.S. Government employ teams of covert agents and pseudo-”independent” advocates to “cognitively infiltrate” online groups and websites — as well as other activist groups — which advocate views that Sunstein deems “false conspiracy theories” about the Government. This would be designed to increase citizens’ faith in government officials and undermine the credibility of conspiracists. The paper’s abstract can be read, and the full paper downloaded, here.

Sunstein advocates that the Government’s stealth infiltration should be accomplished by sending covert agents into “chat rooms, online social networks, or even real-space groups.” He also proposes that the Government make secret payments to so-called “independent” credible voices to bolster the Government’s messaging (on the ground that those who don’t believe government sources will be more inclined to listen to those who appear independent while secretly acting on behalf of the Government). This program would target those advocating false “conspiracy theories,” which they define to mean: “an attempt to explain an event or practice by reference to the machinations of powerful people, who have also managed to conceal their role.” Sunstein’s 2008 paper was flagged by this blogger, and then amplified in an excellent report by Raw Story’s Daniel Tencer.

Full Story Glenn Greenwald – Salon.com.

Rage Against the Vegetable Garden: Factory Farming Manifesto Sets Sights on the Edible Schoolyard Program

My father often tells a story of a chicken dinner he once prepared that involved a “whole fryer.” I toddled into the kitchen, perhaps curious as to what Da-da was doing in there. He held the bird that would become our dinner up for to his little daughter to see: pimply skin, strange flipper-looking things and all.

“It looks like a little person!” I cried.

My father was taken aback. Looking down at this shocked little person standing in his kitchen, he wondered how it could be that for every time he had served his little girl fowl, she never realized that it came from the same type of entity depicted as Chicken Little and Foghorn Leghorn.

The thing was, we lived in the city. And though my father's parents had experience farming, my own knowledge of such a place was limited to books and the occasional public school field trip. Sure, trips to historic Gibbs Museum of Pioneer and Dakotah Life in St. Paul, MN were cool, but the experience gave us kids the impression that a “farm” was a relic of the past, an inefficient, hardscrabble life we were all happy to abandon.

Full Story Rage Against the Vegetable Garden: Factory Farming Manifesto Sets Sights on the Edible Schoolyard Program | BuzzFlash.org.

Newsflash: Right Is Not Center

David Sirota

“War is peace, freedom is slavery and ignorance is strength”—more than a quarter-century after those oxymorons were supposed to pervade an Orwellian 1984, today’s media make such newspeak even more preposterous: On economic issues, we are often told that right is center, center is left, and left is fringe.

For a year, national reporters (with help from conservative talk-radio goons) have depicted the center-right Obama administration and its corporatist policies as quasi-Marxist. We’ve heard that a government-run public health care option is a “liberal” cause, even as polls confirm that most Americans—not just liberals—support the idea. We’re told that legislators backing no-strings-attached bank bailouts are mainstream “centrists,” while bailout opponents are extremists—even as public opinion surveys say the opposite.

This is Washington’s “fair and balanced” journalism (or “journalism,” as it were) and as two of the most respected metro newspapers show this week, its distortions can bleed into local coverage.

Full Story David Sirota: Newsflash: Right Is Not Center – Truthdig.

U.S. law firm that sued China reports cyber attack

A Los Angeles law firm that recently filed a $2.2 billion copyright infringement suit against the People’s Republic of China said that it has become the target of cyber attacks originating in China.

“I was the first one to get one of these e-mails,” said Gregory Fayer, a lawyer at Gipson Hoffman & Pancione, which began receiving unsolicited e-mails on its firm computers on Jan. 11.

“Something about it didn’t seem right. It didn’t seem quite in the manner in which the person who was supposedly sending it to me would put something, and so I called up the other attorney and said: ‘Did you just send me an e-mail?’ That person said, ‘No.’ That’s how we discovered the first one.”

Fayer, who is handling the suit, could not say whether the attacks on the firm were related to it but noted, “It is difficult to believe that the timing is merely coincidental.”

Full Story U.S. law firm that sued China reports cyber attack.

Secret copyright treaty debated in DC: must-see video

The drive to ram through the secret Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement is ramping up, with the next meeting set for the end of this month in Mexico. ACTA is an unprecedented copyright treaty (unprecedented in that it reaches farther than previous copyright treaties, and that it is being negotiated behind closed doors, without any public input or oversight) that will force copyright policing duties on Internet companies (vastly increasing the cost of hosting “user-generated content”); create new penalties for infringement (including Draconian penalties such as disconnection from the Internet on accusations of infringement); and require countries to search hard-drives, personal media players, and other personal data at their borders.

Last month, Google’s DC office hosted a public debate on ACTA, with Steven J. Metalitz, a lawyer and lobbyist representing the International Intellectual Property Alliance; Jamie Love, an activist with Knowledge Ecology International; Jonathan Band, a lawyer representing a coalition of library groups and a variety of tech and Internet companies and Ryan Clough from Silicon Valley Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren’s office; moderated by Washington Post consumer technology columnist Rob Pegoraro.

The video runs to 90 minutes. I don’t get a lot of 90-minute chunks of time in my life, but I made time for this. It was one of the most spirited — even heated — debates I’ve heard on the subject, and it got into substantive questions of law, jurisdiction, economics and ethics. It was especially interesting to hear Metalitz, the main mouthpiece for the private corporate interests behind this proposal, attempt to defend both the proposal and the secrecy behind it.
Full Story Secret copyright treaty debated in DC: must-see video Boing Boing.

Steele Comes Out Against Tax On Big Banks

In his press briefing on Thursday, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs all but invited Republicans to attack the president’s proposal to tax roughly 50 of the nation’s largest banks as a way of recouping TARP funds and curbing compensation practices.

“If you want to be on the side of big banks,” Gibbs said, “this is a good country, you are free to do so.”

Already, some in the GOP are taking up the challenge. Minutes before Gibbs briefed reporters, Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele slammed the administration’s proposal, calling it “nothing more than another tax on the American public.”

“The fact is this money has already been paid back by the banks and this punitive tax will hurt Americans’ savings and discourage job creation at the worst of economic times,” Steele added.

Full Story Steele Comes Out Against Tax On Big Banks.

US demands China explain cyberattacks in face-to-face talks

The United States on Thursday said it held talks with Chinese officials, calling for an explanation of cyberattacks against Internet giant Google and dozens of other firms.

“We have had a discussion today here in Washington with officials from the embassy. We raised the issue,” said State Department spokesman Philip Crowley, “we’ve asked them for an explanation.”

Google announced on Tuesday that it would stop bowing to Chinese Internet censors and could pull out of the world’s largest online market of 360 million users after a series of “highly sophisticated” cyberattacks aimed at Chinese human rights activists.

Full Story US demands China explain cyberattacks in face-to-face talks – Yahoo! News.

Monsanto says DOJ wants seed access details

Monsanto Co said on Thursday that the U.S. Department of Justice has issued a civil investigative demand for information on the company’s key soybean genetic traits business after complaints that Monsanto was trying to limit access to push a new, pricier product instead.

Monsanto said it was cooperating with investigators, and reiterated that it would allow farmers and seed companies continued access to its first-generation Roundup Ready soybean trait — a genetic alteration that makes the soybeans tolerate herbicide treatments — following that product’s patent expiration in 2014.

Seed dealers, rivals and others have complained that Monsanto was creating conditions, through contracts with seed dealers and other means, that would unfairly push farmers to buy its new Roundup Ready 2 Yield soybeans and away from the first-generation, lower-priced Roundup Ready beans.

But Monsanto has said repeatedly over the last month that it will not try to stop farmers from saving and replanting its Roundup Ready soybeans after the patent expires and rivals will be able to continue to incorporate the Roundup Ready-tolerant trait into their products. The company said it will not enforce contracts requiring seed companies to destroy or return Roundup Ready seed after patent expiration.

Full Story Monsanto says DOJ wants seed access details | Reuters.

OPS: Monsanto is one of the top three most evil Corporations on the Planet. They need to be crushed.

An unholy alliance at war with Obama’s foreign policy

Dick Cheney and Osama bin Laden are as one. The former US vice-president and the al-Qaeda leader agree that Barack Obama was too soft on the underpants bomber.

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, charged with trying to blow up an airliner on Christmas day, should be in Guantánamo. There, hooded and shackled, he could have been subjected to what Mr Cheney likes to call “enhanced interrogation techniques”; torture in English.

That would have shown that the US is still serious about fighting the “war on terrorism”. Instead, Mr Abdulmutallab was read his legal rights and brought before a US court. Inexplicably, the Nigerian was afforded the same due process as an American would-be terrorist.

Full Story FT.com / UK – An unholy alliance at war with Obama’s foreign policy.

Secret Senate digs proliferate

Shhhhhhh. The perks of Senate membership just got sweeter.

For the first time, all 100 members of the chamber will have their own cloistered hideaways in the U.S. Capitol, traditionally a coveted mark of seniority and clout that lowly freshmen could only dream about.

This year, even junior senators will get their own private, unmarked offices that are a convenient few steps from the Senate chamber.

The addition of a dozen or so newly renovated rooms in the bowels of the Capitol represents a cultural shift in the custom-bound institution, made possible by moving a Capitol Police facility from the building's basement into the new, $621 million Capitol Visitor Center. The vacated space inside the Capitol's West Front made room for even shunned members of the Senate — Illinois Democrat Roland Burris, for example — and freshmen minority Republicans to move in.

Full Story INSIDE WASHINGTON: Secret Senate digs proliferate – Yahoo! News.

Tea Party Darling Marco Rubio And 35 Other Candidates Sign Pledge To Repeal Health Care Reform

As part of the GOP’s all-out-effort to repeal health care reform, the Club For Growth is asking lawmakers and candidates in the 2010 elections to “pledge to the people of my district/state to sponsor and support legislation to repeal any federal health care takeover passed in 2010, and replace it with real reforms that lower health care costs without growing government.” At least 17 lawmakers and 36 candidates have signed onto the repeal, including Florida “Tea Party” candidate Marco Rubio. “The proposed government takeover of health care being rammed through Congress runs contrary to the principles of limited government that have made Americans the freest and most prosperous people ever,” Rubio said:

As a U.S. senator, I will sponsor and support legislation to repeal any federal health care takeover passed in 2010, and replace it with real reforms that lower health care costs without growing government. This is not just about simply opposing and repealing the Obama-Reid-Pelosi agenda. This is about putting America back on a limited government track. This will require opposing new spending binges, but also turning back some of the mistakes made by President Obama and this Congress, including the pending health care bill.”

Full Story Think Progress » Tea Party Darling Marco Rubio And 35 Other Candidates Sign Pledge To Repeal Health Care Reform.

Tax expansion could pay for healthcare overhaul

White House and congressional Democratic leaders consider applying the Medicare payroll tax to investment income. The move could bolster Medicare and would affect mainly the wealthy.

Reporting from Washington – Democratic congressional leaders are considering a new strategy to help finance their ambitious healthcare plan — applying the Medicare payroll tax not just to wages but to capital gains, dividends and other forms of unearned income.

The idea, discussed Wednesday in a marathon meeting at the White House, could placate labor leaders who bitterly oppose President Obama’s plan to tax high-end insurance policies that cover many union members. It could also help shore up Medicare’s shaky finances, and the burden of the new tax would fall primarily on affluent Americans, not the beleaguered middle class.

Full Story Tax expansion could pay for healthcare overhaul – latimes.com.

System Failure

Christopher Hayes -

the decade we’ve just brought to a close was singularly disastrous for the country

There is a widespread consensus that the decade we’ve just brought to a close was singularly disastrous for the country: the list of scandals, crises and crimes is so long that events that in another context would stand out as genuine lowlights–Enron and Arthur Andersen’s collapse, the 2003 Northeast blackout, the unsolved(!) anthrax attacks–are mere afterthoughts. We still don’t have a definitive name for this era, though Paul Krugman’s 2003 book The Great Unraveling captures well the sense of slow, inexorable dissolution; and the final crisis of the era, what we call the Great Recession, similarly expresses the sense that even our disasters aren’t quite epic enough to be cataclysmic. But as a character in Tracy Letts’s 2007 Pulitzer Prize-winning play, August: Osage County, says, “Dissipation is actually much worse than cataclysm.”

American progressives were the first to identify that something was deeply wrong with the direction the country was heading in and the first to provide a working hypothesis for the cause: George W. Bush. During the initial wave of antiwar mobilization, in 2002, much of the ire focused on Bush himself. But as the decade stretched on, the causal account of the country’s problems grew outward in concentric circles: from Bush to his administration (most significantly, Cheney) to the Republican Party to–finally (and not inaccurately)–the entire project of conservative governance.

As much of the country came to share some version of this view (tenuously, but share it they did), the result was a series of Democratic electoral sweeps and a generation of Americans, the Millennials, with more liberal views than any of their elder cohorts. But it always seemed possible that the sheer reactionary insanity of the Bush administration would have a conservatizing effect on the American polity. Because things had gone so wrong, it was a more than natural reaction to long for the good old days; the Clinton years, characterized by deregulation and bubbles, seemed tantalizingly placid and prosperous in retrospect. The atavistic imperialism of the Bush administration had a way of making the pre-Bush foreign policy of soft imperialism and subtle bullying look positively saintly.

Full Story System Failure.

Wendell Potter: Still Time to Fight for Health Care Reform

Wendell Potter worked for CIGNA health insurers for more than 15 years, including a position as head of communications. He left that job, in a 180-degree switch, to fight for the rights of all Americans to affordable health care. He now serves as Senior Fellow on Health Care at the Center for Media and Democracy, and he joined Laura in studio today to give us a quick update on the health care reform process, explain the so-called “Cadillac tax,” and remind us all that the battle isn't over yet — there's still time to fight.

Full Story Wendell Potter: Still Time to Fight for Health Care Reform | CommonDreams.orgV.

A Growing Underclass

Slowly but surely, longer-term unemployment seems to be becoming the norm.

While layoffs are slowing, the number of job openings relative to the unemployed population were still at a record low in November.

That means that those who have already been laid off must spend longer and longer periods looking for work. Take a look at the make-up of the unemployed last month, compared with a year earlier:

Full Story A Growing Underclass – Economix Blog – NYTimes.com.

In reversal, federal regulators now propose to limit oil and gas commodities

With the price of gas at the pump at its highest point in well over a year, federal regulators moved Thursday to prevent excessive speculation by financial traders from driving the cost of oil even higher. The effort to adopt new limits on the trading of oil and other energy commodities is a sharp reversal after years when regulators left those markets alone.

The proposal from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which oversees oil and energy trading, would introduce new restrictions on what the largest traders can do. Concerned that some firms can amass such large holdings in energy commodities that their trades can have an outsize effect on the price of gasoline, heating oil or natural gas, officials said they would prevent traders “from establishing extraordinarily large positions.”

Full Story In reversal, federal regulators now propose to limit oil and gas commodities – washingtonpost.com.

Soros fund to set up Hong Kong office

Investment company joins rush to Asia

Soros Fund Management, billionaire investor George Soros’ investment company, is setting up an office in Hong Kong to take advantage of the region’s growth, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The move comes as a wave of global financial groups have in recent months moved to open or expand operations in Asia, many choosing Hong Kong because of its links to mainland China.

Full Story FT.com / Companies / Financial Services – Soros fund to set up Hong Kong office.

Credit Reform and My New 703.8% Card

Consumer reporters were all crowing about a 79.99% rate credit card that was launched in response to credit reform a few months ago–collectively horrified that a law designed to cut rates and eliminate sneaky fees was inspiring increasingly abusive bank behavior.

I thought that was about as bad as it gets until I took a close look at the statement for my new Macy’s card, which I had opened with “instant credit” while Christmas shopping. It made that 79% card look like a bargain.

Department Stores National Bank, which issues the card, charges a “minimum interest charge.” On my average daily balance of $3.41, that minimum charge worked out to “an actual annual percentage rate” of 703.80%. (Part of the impact of last year’s credit reform is that the issuer had to disclose that shocker on the statement, while also noting that the card’s normal APR is 24.5%.)

Full Story Credit Reform and My New 703.8% Card – CBS MoneyWatch.com.

Inhofe: I Am The Planet’s #1 Worst Enemy

Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) just can’t get any respect. Nearly a month ago, he went to the climate change conference in Copenhagen to explain that global warming was a “hoax” conceived by the United Nations and spread by the “Hollywood elite.” But the European press would have none of it. A German reporter even told the the cowboy boot-wearing senator that he was “ridiculous.” Inhofe suffered his latest indignity at the hands of Rolling Stone, which awarded him the 7th spot on its list of the “planet’s worst enemies.”

Inhofe took this as a slight. “I should have been number one,” he told KFAQ radio in Tulsa, “I guess [Warren] Buffet has a lot more money so he went first.”

Inhofe also aired his grievances in an interview with the Tulsa World. “My first response was I should have been number 1, not number 7,” he said. “I am serious about that. I have spent now literally years on this thing, and it has been a long, involved thing.”

Full Story Inhofe: I Am The Planet’s #1 Worst Enemy | TPM LiveWire.

Geithner: Bailed Out AIG ‘Absolutely’ Right To Pay Banks Top Dollar (VIDEO)

Tim Geithner believes that bailed out insurer AIG was “absolutely” right to pay other bailed out Wall Street firms 100 cents on the dollar for their toxic credit default swaps. Geithner also believes that there was no other option.

CNBC’s John Harwood interviewed the treasury secretary about the new tax on banks, AIG payments, bank bonuses, and the New York Fed’s decision to advise AIG to keep quiet about the payments.

During the interview, Geithner maintained that even as Chief of the New York Fed, he was not involved in the decision to advising AIG to keep details of the payments private.

Full Story Geithner: Bailed Out AIG ‘Absolutely’ Right To Pay Banks Top Dollar (VIDEO).

Seeing The Effects Of Climate Change (PHOTOS)

Sometimes as we go about our daily lives, climate change can seem abstract, and not something we think we are experiencing on a daily basis. However, our planet is rapidly being altered and the physical signs of this shift can’t be ignored. These photos reveal how the world has already been impacted and what kind of changes we can expect in the future if we continue with our carbon-intense ways.

Full Story Seeing The Effects Of Climate Change (PHOTOS).

Textbooks in Texas : Rehabilitating Joe McCarthy?

See ‘Who stays and who goes? Texas Board of Education meeting in Austin,’ Below

When we last checked in on the U.S. history textbooks standards setting process in Texas, the conservative-dominated State Board of Education was mulling one-sided requirements to teach high school students about Newt Gingrich, Phyllis Schlafly, and the Moral Majority.

Now, in the home stretch of a process that will set the state's nationally influential standards, a liberal watchdog group is worried that the State Board of Education will try to push through changes to claim that communist-hunting Sen. Joseph McCarthy has been vindicated by history, among other right-wing pet issues.

The Republican-dominated board is meeting in Austin to vote on amendments to the current draft standards.

Full Story The Rag Blog: Textbooks in Texas : Rehabilitating Joe McCarthy?.

Haiti Earthquake: Breaking News, Updates (VIDEO)

Why it’s so hard to get relief into Haiti — Simply landing at the airport is a major logistical challenge, the AP says:

U.S. military air traffic controllers are scrambling to keep earthquake aid flowing into the Haitian capital without the use of a control tower or radar, and amid struggles over fuel, tarmac space and even staircases to access planes.

With all the hurdles facing rescue and relief efforts in this shattered city, it appears the first to overcome are at its major entry point for supplies. U.S. federal officials halted nonmilitary flights for eight hours Thursday at the request of the Haitian government, leaving dozens of planes circling.

10:55 AM ET: U.S. troops arriving — AP has some raw video of US troops arriving in Haiti this morning, as well as footage of them helping those who are injured.

Full Story Haiti Earthquake: Breaking News, Updates (VIDEO).

JP Morgan reports $3.27 billion profit

Banking giant JP Morgan Chase reported on Friday a big jump in net profit to 3.27 billion dollars in the fourth quarter of 2009, highlighting renewed health in the troubled sector.

The New York-based financial giant doubled its profits for the full year to 11.7 billion dollars, and quadrupled the numbers put up in the fourth quarter of 2008.

The results highlight a return to health in the banking sector after more than a year of crisis, but were expected to fuel public resentment over hefty profits and compensation of firms bailed out by the government and at a time when much of the US economy continues to struggle and unemployment remains high.

Full Story JPMorgan reports big jump in profits – Yahoo! News.

Series of Earthquakes hits Calif. eastern desert

A magnitude 4.4 earthquake followed by three smaller ones struck in California’s eastern desert Friday morning, just a day after the same region was shaken by another series of temblors.

The Inyo County Sheriff’s Department said there were no reports of injury of damage from the quakes, which began at 12:23 a.m. with the 4.4 temblor that was centered near Coso Junction, about 75 miles northeast of Bakersfield.

The U.S. Geological Survey said that over the next two hours quakes with magnitudes of 3.5, 3.0, and 3.6 rumbled in the same area.

Another temblor with a preliminary magnitude of 3.4 was recorded shortly after 5:30 a.m.

Full Story Series of quakes hits Calif. eastern desert.

RECALL: Tylenol Problems Affected Extra Strength And Rolaids

More Tylenol Products Recalled Due to Noxious Chemical

A recall of Tylenol products that began last month with the popular Tylenol arthritis caplet expanded this morning to include more than two dozen other over-the-counter products manufactured by McNeil Healthcare LLC, the arm of Johnson & Johnson that manufactures Tylenol products.

The broadened directive adds 54 million bottles of product to the recall, boosting the total number of bottles recalled by McNeil to 60 million, according to the company.

McNeill initiated a voluntary recall of Tylenol Arthritis Relief Caplets at the end of December after consumer complaints of stomach problems. The problems were linked to the presence of a chemical called 2,4,6-tribromoanisole (TBA), which results from the breakdown of a chemical in wood pallets used to transport and store packaging materials for the drugs.

Full Story Tylenol Problems Affected Extra Strength And Rolaids – ABC News.

Dodd may scrap consumer protection

Dodd Weighs Dropping Idea of Creating Independent Body in Bid to Get Financial Regulatory Revamp Passed This Year

Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd is considering scrapping the idea of creating a Consumer Financial Protection Agency, people familiar with the matter said, an initiative at the heart of the White House’s proposal to revamp financial-sector regulations.

The Connecticut Democrat, who announced this month that he wouldn’t run for re-election this year, has discussed the possibility of abandoning the push for a new agency during negotiations with key Senate Republicans as a way to secure a bipartisan deal on the legislation, these people said.

Full Story Consumer Protection Agency in Doubt – WSJ.com.

OPS:  Politically he’s toast so he’ll be feathering his nest before he goes even more than usual

US newspaper industry ‘bible’ Editor & Publisher sold

Editor & Publisher, a magazine which has chronicled the US newspaper industry for over a century, was sold, exactly two weeks after being shut down by its owner, the Nielsen Co.

Duncan McIntosh Co. the Irvine, California-based publisher of Boating World and other magazines, announced it had bought E&P for an undisclosed price from Nielsen.

“Such a critical information source for a newspaper industry so desperately in need of help should not go away,” said Duncan McIntosh, whose company also produces the Newport Boat Show.

Full Story US newspaper industry ‘bible’ Editor & Publisher sold – Yahoo! News.

Wall Street’s payout for 2009: $145 billion

Banks poised to start fearmongering campaign about Obama’s bailout fee

If you still needed statistical proof that the folks on Wall Street have become entirely detached from reality in the wake of the massive taxpayer-funded bailout of their colossal mistakes, here it is.

The 38 largest financial institutions on Wall Street will pay out a total of $145.85 billion in compensation for 2009, an 18 percent increase over 2008 and “slightly more than in the record year of 2007,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

Full Story Wall Street’s payout for 2009: $145 billion | Raw Story.

Fox News inflates Obama bank fee by factor of 100

Fox News seems to have trouble with numbers, at least when they have to do with global warming or President Barack Obama.

Today, Fox & Friends falsely claimed that Obama proposed a 15 percent tax on banks in an effort to recoup taxpayer funds shelled out to prop up consumer lending giants Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and AIG.

Trouble is, the actual Obama-backed fee would be assessed at .15 percent — or 15 basis points — for covered liabilities. It also wouldn’t kick in until bank assets exceeded $50 billion.

Full Story Fox News inflates Obama bank fee by factor of 100 | Raw Story.

Republicans use failed terrorist attack as excuse to further delay Dawn Johnsen’s confirmation.

One of President Obama’s long-stalled progressive nominees is Dawn Johnsen to head the Office of Legal Counsel. Since the Senate failed to confirm her last year, the White House has said that it plans to renominate her. Sen. Arlen Specter (D-PA) has also said that he now backs her confirmation, giving her the support of 60 votes. However, Roll Call is reporting that Republicans are trying to further stall her confirmation, “arguing that the failed Christmas Day bombing and other events require the panel to hold fresh hearings“:

“In recent weeks there have been several incidents threatening our national security and underscoring the need for more aggressive counterterrorism efforts, information sharing, and military and intelligence initiatives,” all seven of the GOP Judiciary members write, arguing that, “We believe many unanswered questions remain about Dawn Johnsen’s suitability to guide our Nation’s legal response to the war on terror. … Ms. Johnsen’s record calls into question her dedication to aggressive Executive action in national security matters.”

Full Story Think Progress » Republicans use failed terrorist attack as excuse to further delay Dawn Johnsen’s confirmation..

American Job Market Permanently Altered

When workers begin re-entering the workforce, they are going to find that in many cases the positions they once held are simply not around anymore

When Americans talk today about the jobs this economy has lost, they are speaking specifically with regard to layoffs and cutbacks that add to unemployment. The economy is expected to begin adding more jobs than it loses within the next several months.

Unfortunately, even after we begin adding jobs once again, we will still talk about “lost jobs” in a different sense. Instead of discussing actual growth in unemployment, we will look back nostalgically on the job market that once existed. When workers begin re-entering the workforce, they are going to find that in many cases the positions they once held are simply not around anymore.

According to The Wall Street Journal, some jobs that existed in large numbers before the recession will be as rare as typewriter repairmen and streetcar operators when all is said and done.

Full Story American Job Market Permanently Altered | Economy In Crisis.

Obama Proposes Bailout Tax

In a move designed to assuage an angry public, the Obama administration plans to announce Thursday a new proposed tax on the nation’s largest financial institutions that will ensure that American taxpayers recoup all the money lost through bailouts, multiple media outlets report.

In a move designed to assuage an angry public, the Obama administration plans to announce Thursday a new proposed tax on the nation’s largest financial institutions that will ensure that American taxpayers recoup all the money lost through bailouts, multiple media outlets report.

The new tax, dubbed the “financial crisis responsibility fee,” will last a decade and should allow the taxpayers to recoup about $90 billion from banks, insurance companies and brokerage houses.

The tax will have to be approved by Congress in the Obama administration’s 2011 budget, which should be unveiled sometime next month. That could put business-friendly lawmakers in a sticky situation. With populist outrage at Wall Street growing by the day, not many lawmakers will want to be seen as siding with the very people responsible for the crisis over the American taxpayer.

Full Story Obama Proposes Bailout Tax | Economy In Crisis.

Animal Fats in Food

When you became a vegetarian, you quickly learned it wasn’t just about skipping pepperoni on that pizza. You had to start scanning labels for ingredients like capric acid, tallow, rennet, glycerin, whey, suet, stereate and emulsifiers – because eating animal fat by any other name would be just as carnivorous. What you may not know is that plenty of common foods widely considered to be veg-friendly (or perhaps we should say veg-adjacent) actually contain animal fat, not just dairy fat. That means flesh. Read on to learn more.

Ice Cream

Ice cream is the one comfort food that temporarily heals all wounds. Unfortunately, you may be noshing on Bessie under all that chocolate sauce. Many brands of ice cream contain capric acid, a fatty acid that’s obtained from animal fats. Check the label!

Chocolate

I hate to break it to you – I really do – but that chocolate sauce your pour over your sundaes may not be any better than the ice cream underneath it. Emulsifiers are present in chocolate, which may or may not be derived from animal fat. The problem is that most labels don’t specify the difference, so you’re better off sticking to ones that do.

Full Story Animal Fats in Food | EcoSalon.

Haiti Didn’t Become a Poor Nation All on Its Own — The U.S’s Hidden Role in the Disaster

Haiti’s many years of underdevelopment and U.S.-sponsored political turmoil made the Haitian government ill-prepared to respond to such a disaster.

In the hours following Haiti’s devastating earthquake, CNN, the New York Times and other major news sources adopted a common interpretation for the severe destruction: the 7.0 earthquake was so devastating because it struck an urban area that was extremely over-populated and extremely poor.  Houses “built on top of each other” and constructed by the poor people themselves made for a fragile city.  And the country’s many years of underdevelopment and political turmoil made the Haitian government ill-prepared to respond to such a disaster.

True enough.  But that’s not the whole story.  What’s missing is any explanation of why there are so many Haitians living in and around Port-au-Prince and why so many of them are forced to survive on so little.  Indeed, even when an explanation is ventured, it is often outrageously false such as a former U.S. diplomat’s testimony on CNN that Port-au-Prince’s overpopulation was due to the fact that Haitians, like most Third World people, know nothing of birth control.

It may startle news-hungry Americans to learn that these conditions the American media correctly attributes to magnifying the impact of this tremendous disaster were largely the product of American policies and an American-led development model.

Full Story Haiti Didn’t Become a Poor Nation All on Its Own — The U.S’s Hidden Role in the Disaster | World | AlterNet.

Recovering a Lost America

Len Hart -

Europe is a life changing experience for many Americans, an important part of the ‘American Experience’. The most obvious examples are famous writers from Thomas Wolfe to Ernest Hemingway’. They enriched American literature with their often personal experiences of Europe. Artists like James Whistler and John Singer Sargent were at once fresh eyes in Europe and glimpses of rich European culture for Americans.

I recall reading the ‘Story of a Novel’ by Thomas Wolfe at about age 15. I was deeply impressed by the ‘homesickness’ for America that Wolfe felt as he sat near the Champs-Elysees. Something about it –I think it was smell of mowed grass –reminded him of watermelons on the Fourth of July. An iron railing flashed him back to the board walk in Atlantic City. At the end of this journey of self-discovery in Europe, Wolfe had written ‘Of Time and the River’.

Much later, I watched the 1995 remake of Sabrina with Harrison Ford and with Julia Ormand as Sabrina. There is a scene in which Sabrina is heard in an off screen voice. The view is of the intersection of three narrow streets on the Left Bank, one imagines near the Cafe Flore. Her letter to home is heard in her voice off screen. Of Paris, she said: “…I found myself in Paris.”

Full Story The Existentialist Cowboy: Recovering a Lost America.

Do Obama and Geithner Have the Same Flaw: Accommodation Instead of Moral Action?

Tim Geithner has a long history of caving to moral pressures and smoothing over colossal failures. But his personality is much like Obama. Maybe that’s how he keeps his job.

A lot of us have been wondering, despondently, why the Hell Barack Obama is keeping Timothy Geithner on the job as Treasury Secretary, given his central role in the plunder of trillions of dollars from American taxpayers, and his record of subverting democracy in the service of Wall Street billionaires. Geithner’s the guy that drove the getaway car in the heist — so why was he hired to run the Treasury? You’d expect to see a guy as corrupt as Geithner serving as the Finance Minister in some Central Asian autocracy — but not in Barack Obama’s government, not after all he promised in the campaign.

Maybe a better question is: Why did Obama choose Geithner in the first place? On the surface, those two are supposed to be on relatively opposite ends of the American spectrum: Geithner is an East Coast Republican blue-blood whose catastrophic tenure at the New York Fed represented everything Obama — a half-Kenyan liberal Democrat from America’s western-most state — promised to change for the better.

The most recent hope-crushing revelation about Geithner — emails showing that the New York Fed under Geithner’s watch forced AIG to lie to the public in order cover up tens of billions of taxpayer dollars that were being funneled through AIG and out the backdoor to top financial institutions like Goldman Sachs — proves once and for all that Geithner is the worst choice imaginable for the job. He’s the epitome of the sort of incompetence, sleaze and corruption that Bush specialized in — so why did Obama name him, and why is he sticking by him?

Full Story Do Obama and Geithner Have the Same Flaw: Accommodation Instead of Moral Action? | Politics | AlterNet.

OPS:  …..or is their flaw Corporatist Puppets?

A coup attempt in the Teamsters

Lee Sustar explains the background to the attempt by the Teamsters bureaucracy to oust the reform leadership of an important local in Chicago.

A COUP against the reform leadership of a big Teamster local in Chicago is underway–and it’s aimed at restoring the corrupt old guard leadership to power and snuffing out union democracy.

Teamsters Local 743 President Richard Berg and the local’s vice president, Gina Alvarez, were removed from office January 11 by Teamsters Joint Council 25, a body comprised of the leaders of Chicago-area Teamster locals.

Although Teamsters General President James Hoffa reinstated Berg and Alvarez pending a full investigation by the union, the charges remain. The Joint Council alleges that Berg and Alvarez improperly handled the severance package of a fired union representative and wrongfully denied membership in the local to some union representatives for 18 months.

Full Story A coup attempt in the Teamsters | SocialistWorker.org.

Bankers Without a Clue

Paul Krugman –

The official Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission — the group that aims to hold a modern version of the Pecora hearings of the 1930s, whose investigations set the stage for New Deal bank regulation — began taking testimony on Wednesday. In its first panel, the commission grilled four major financial-industry honchos. What did we learn?

Well, if you were hoping for a Perry Mason moment — a scene in which the witness blurts out: “Yes! I admit it! I did it! And I’m glad!” — the hearing was disappointing. What you got, instead, was witnesses blurting out: “Yes! I admit it! I’m clueless!”

O.K., not in so many words. But the bankers’ testimony showed a stunning failure, even now, to grasp the nature and extent of the current crisis. And that’s important: It tells us that as Congress and the administration try to reform the financial system, they should ignore advice coming from the supposed wise men of Wall Street, who have no wisdom to offer.

Full Story Op-Ed Columnist – Bankers Without a Clue – NYTimes.com.

OPS:  Providing cover?  No one is so ‘lucky’ that when they screw up (by being clueless) they win big – every time.  These criminals are not stupid, and they are not “clueless” .  Something else happened.  But appearing ‘clueless’ makes you less sinister and easier to accept an apology, acquit,  and allow for amnesty.  As Condi Rice used it  “…no one could have imagined…”

New poll showing shift to GOP in Mass senate race, doubtful

A new Suffolk university poll showing a dramatic shift to the GOP candidate in Massachusetts which has President Obama in a panic, is in the end extremely suspect.

Though there are probably regrets among politically challenged Democrats that Coakely is the candidate, she won the Democratic primary handily with 50% of the vote.

The latest Suffolk poll that seems to have everyone in a tizzy is the Suffolk poll that shows Republican Scott Brown with a 50-46 % lead.

Full Story New poll showing shift to GOP in Mass senate race, doubtful.

OPS:   Our Thoughts on Polls (2004):

They like to tell you that Polling is as much ART as Science.
The term ‘art’ in this context is used as an excuse, the ‘get out of jail free’ card. When it’s ‘ART’ you can do anything

Polling companies have been caught over and over again screwing around with their numbers.

Assuming you believe the polls are not rigged….like most of corporate MSM.

Now that they have you buying the polls (because they have been telling you what you wanted to hear) you will be more likely to continue to buy it when the polls start telling you that it’s soooo close it’s a ‘VERTUAL’ tie. Of course this will happen.

Think they got control of most MSM and somehow forgot to get control of the Polls? Really?

Israeli Threats Against Gaza Grow

Israel’s hawks are starting to make frightening noises.

If Israel attacks Gaza again, Maj. Gen. Yoav Galant will run the operation. Galant recently said that right now “the sun is shining – but one can see dark clouds in the distance.” His soldiers are training to face trouble ahead, and “civilians are rightly preparing themselves for another round of fighting.”

A few days later, Galant’s predecessor, Maj. Gen. Yom Tov Samia (who still heads the reserves who would invade Gaza), sounded even more ominous: “We are before another round in Gaza,” he predicted. “I am very skeptical about the possibility that Hamas will suddenly surrender or change its ways without being hit much more seriously than it was during Cast Lead.” Israel must carry out “a more focused strike with long-lasting results.”

Full Story t r u t h o u t | Israeli Threats Against Gaza Grow.

The Health Insurance Monopoly – A Predatory System

By DON MONKERUD -

Like pathetic knights of another era jousting at windmills, industry shrills attack health care reform, claiming it “tramples individual liberty” and stifles “free enterprise.”

Far from protecting individual liberty or promoting free enterprise, these forces uphold monopoly control of health care insurance that has a stranglehold on American consumers. And they pay huge sums to control the debate and twist legislation to their advantage.

Since 1998, over 400 mergers left two conglomerates in control of the huge health care insurance industry. Mergers allowed insurers to raise prices, buy influence in Congress, and redistribute cost savings to shareholders. Consolidation increased rapidly. Between 2004 and 2005, 28 health care mergers, valued at $53 billion, outpaced the number of health care mergers in the previous eight years combined.

Full Story Don Monkerud: The Health Insurance Monopoly.

Analyst Says Financial Crisis Commission Hearings Start As All Puff, No Punch

One of Capitol Hill's top Democrats expresses confidence in the results of a commission now investigating the causes of the 2008 financial meltdown and its subsequent long, deep recession. But an independent financial analyst says the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC) is just letting bankers off the hook.

Created by Congress to examine the root causes of the financial crisis, the bipartisan panel began holding hearings this week in Washington.

“Under the bipartisan leadership of Chairman Phil Angelides and Vice Chairman Bill Thomas, the Commission will provide the American people with answers about how we descended into the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression and how we can prevent such as crisis in the future,” says House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, adding that Congress will “rely on the ongoing work” of the commission to develop further legislation to prevent another such crisis.

Full Story On The Hill: Analyst Says Financial Crisis Commission Hearings Start As All Puff, No Punch.

Meet Harold Ford, Jr.: Ann Coulter’s Favorite Democrat.

Blackwater…murder for hire?

Thom Hartmann with Jeremy Scahill

Shouldn’t we kill factory farming before it kills us?

Thom Hartmann with Gregory Conko

Bill Fletcher, The Black Commentator on Haiti

Thom Hartmann

Haiti’s political history

Thom Hartmann and  Max Blumenthal

UN should be sidelined in future climate talks, says Obama official

Obama Official: Biggest Polluters Should Run Climate Talks

America sees a diminished role for the United Nations in trying to stop global warming after the “chaotic” Copenhagen climate change summit, an Obama administration official said today.

Jonathan Pershing, who helped lead talks at Copenhagen, instead sketched out a future path for negotiations dominated by the world's largest polluters such as China, the US, India, Brazil and South Africa, who signed up to a deal in the final hours of the summit. That would represent a realignment of the way the international community has dealt with climate change over the last two decades.

“It is impossible to imagine a global agreement in place that doesn't essentially have a global buy-in. There aren't other institutions beside the UN that have that,” Pershing said. “But it is also impossible to imagine a negotiation of enormous complexity where you have a table of 192 countries involved in all the detail.”

Full Story UN should be sidelined in future climate talks, says Obama official | Environment | The Guardian.

Move Your Money

The Nation; Editorial -

Are you angry about Wall Street’s reckless excesses? Are you disappointed with President Obama’s limp approach to reform? You can change this, acting individually and collectively. Withdraw your deposit and savings accounts from the large banks that brought the system to ruin and were subsequently rescued with billions in government bailouts. Put your money instead in smaller, safer banks or credit unions closer to home–the thousands of community institutions that do not harvest their profits from greed and recklessness.

“Move Your Money” is an electrifying slogan that’s lighting up the Internet because it shows people how they can push back against the big dogs of banking. The concept is simple, but this is a big idea that could alter the timid direction of financial reform.

This campaign is potentially more than a feel-good gesture. If coordinated with institutional reform efforts, it could lead to a broad rebellion against the financial system, with citizens reclaiming the power to act directly when politicians are too intimidated by moneyed interests to act in the public interest. Economist Jane D’Arista put it crisply: “We are not a nation of widows and orphans. We have quite a lot of money, and people control some of it. They might ask why they don’t control more of it.”

Full Story Move Your Money.

C Street House No Longer Tax Exempt

Residents of the C Street Christian fellowship house will no longer benefit from a loophole that had allowed the house's owners to avoid paying property taxes.

Previously, the house — despite being home to numerous lawmakers — had been tax exempt, because it was classified as a church. That arrangement had allowed the building's owner, the secretive international Christian organization The Family, to charge significantly below market rents to its residents. In recent year, Senators John Ensign (R-NV), Tom Coburn (R-OK), Sam Brownback (R-KS) and Jim DeMint (R-SC), and Reps. Zach Wamp (R-TN), Bart Stupak (D-MI) and Mike Doyle (D-PA) have all reportedly called C Street home.

Natalie Wilson, a spokeswoman for the Office of Tax and Revenue for Washington D.C., told TPMmuckraker that her office inspected the house this summer. “It was determined that portions of it were being rented out for private residential purposes,” she said. As a result, the tax exempt status was partially revoked. Sixty-six percent of the value of the property is now subject to taxation.

Full Story C Street House No Longer Tax Exempt | TPMMuckraker.