Archive for February, 2010

Scott Lee Cohen Drops Out Of Lieutenant Governor’s Race

Scott Lee Cohen officially dropped out as the Democratic nominee for Lieutenant Governor on Sunday, slipping out of the race during the Super Bowl.

“For the good of the people of the state of Illinois and the Democratic party I will resign,” he said, according to the Sun-Times.

The embattled nominee has come under increasingly intense scrutiny since winning the party’s nomination Tuesday, as allegations of domestic violence, forcible sex, and steroid abuse have surfaced in the intervening days.

Full Story Scott Lee Cohen Drops Out Of Lieutenant Governor’s Race.

13 Things NOT To Get Your Valentine This Year (PHOTOS)

Valentine’s Day is the perfect time to let someone know how much they mean to you, but definitely don’t do it with any of these terrible gifts. It’s not that someone wouldn’t be thrilled to receive a heart-shaped pizza, candy bra or coupon for a free back-rub, but when given on February 14th they send a message about your relationship, and trust us, it’s not a good one. Oh, and if you’ve already bought your sweetie one of these disasters, don’t worry. You’ve got almost a week to ditch the duct-tape roses and get some real ones.

Full Story 13 Things NOT To Get Your Valentine This Year (PHOTOS).

Is Genetically Modified Corn Toxic?

In the United States, we grow and eat corn whose genes have been tweaked to make the plants more resistant to pests and pesticides. Most European countries don’t, largely because the citizenry fears it isn’t safe. But try as scientists might, they haven’t been able to find any good reason why we shouldn’t eat genetically modified (GM) food.

Until now. Maybe. A new analysis of data released by Monsanto pried from Monsanto’s lawyers’ cold dead hands by a tag-team of legal experts at Greenpeace and other groups suggests there may be something to the idea that we shouldn’t be eating maize that’s had its DNA messed with.

The study found that three strains of modded crops — MON 810 and MON 863, which are resistant to pests, and NK 603, which is foritified to withstand weed killer — significantly disrupted the blood chemistry of rats who ate them. According to an article in New Scientist:

With each of the three strains of maize, researchers say they found unusual concentrations of hormones and other compounds in the blood and urine of the tested rats, suggesting each strain impaired kidney and liver function. By the end of the trials, the female rats that were fed MON 863 had elevated blood-sugar levels and raised concentrations of fatty substances called triglycerides. Both are potential precursors of diabetes, according to [lead author Gilles-Eric Séralini of the University of Caen in France].

Full Story Is Genetically Modified Corn Toxic? : Discovery News.

China Shows Little Regard to U.S. Complaints on Its Currency | Economy In Crisis

The tit-for-tat between the U.S. and China continued on Thursday as a top-level Chinese official criticized the U.S. for remarks President Barack Obama made Wednesday regarding China manipulating its currency and vowing to get tougher on Beijing’s illegal trade practices.

The tit-for-tat between the U.S. and China continued on Thursday as a top-level Chinese official criticized the U.S. for remarks President Barack Obama made Wednesday suggesting that China was manipulating its currency and vowing to get tougher on Beijing’s illegal trade practices.

In a question and answer session with Senate Democrats Wednesday, Obama issued one of the sharpest rebukes of Chinese trade policy of his presidency. Obama said that he and his administration would be putting pressure on China to reform, and implied that Beijing is manipulating its currency.

“One of the challenges that we’ve got to address internationally is currency rates and how they match up to make sure that our goods are not artificially inflated in price and their goods are artificially deflated in price,” he said in response to a question from Sen. Arlen Specter (D-PA). “That puts us at a huge competitive disadvantage.”

Full Story China Shows Little Regard to U.S. Complaints on Its Currency | Economy In Crisis.

Five for One – H1-B Program Fails to Benefit American Economy

Not long ago, we took another psychological blow to our economy when Microsoft made the never-before announcement of layoffs. Having been in litigation as many times as they have, it is really amazing they haven’t escorted more en masse out the doors. “Microsued” might have been a better name.

Microsoft is one of the biggest proponents of the H1-B program, so it is no wonder they top the technology industry in H1-B hiring. Bill Gates is fond of repeating an article from the National Foundation of American Policy (NFAP) stating that for every one H1-B hired, five new American jobs are created.

Does that mean for every five Americans finding themselves in an unemployment line there is only one H1-B going home?- Microsoft recently laid off 5000 workers.– Does that mean 833 H1-B’s are buying plane tickets? Senator Charles Grassley, a republican from Iowa, wants to know the same thing.

Full Story Five for One – H1-B Program Fails to Benefit American Economy | Economy In Crisis.

The Future of High Speed Rail in Jeopardy

As it stands now the bidding for any rail projects will be open, as in, open to foreign companies as well. With almost no momentum domestically to build trains it is likely that these contracts will go to companies based in Canada, France, Japan, China, or a host of other countries.

After essentially dragging its feet for a year as it failed to push through financial or health care reform proposals, the Obama administration may have righted the ship in terms of picking up some of its progressive agendas.

During the presidential campaign then Senator Obama was all in favor of vast and comprehensive infrastructure projects that would revitalize the economy, create employment, and help America join the rest of the developed world. This was before the White House ran into the blatant obstructionist agenda of Republicans, and several bought and paid for Democrats, who took reasonable policies (financial reform, consumer protection, healthcare overhauls) and dragged them through the mud.

After having to combat the combined efforts of huge corporate policy agendas, and vast right-wing media propaganda, the Democrats and the president have absolutely nothing to show for any of their efforts. Now, with the 2010 election cycle underway, they are turning their attention to issues that are actually politically feasible.

Full Story The Future of High Speed Rail in Jeopardy | Economy In Crisis.

The second wave of mortgage defaults and foreclosures will hit the economy this year

Bob Chapman -

As we have been forecasting for the last two years, the second wave of mortgage defaults and foreclosures will hit the economy this year. Not only will we have failure in prime loans and option-arm loans, but we are faced with a new crop of subprime and ALT-A loans put into motion by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Ginnie Mae and FHA. In addition, we find it of great interest that the FHA is changing the rules to purchase homes. That, of course, means less homes will be purchased.

The incidence of unemployment may be lessening, but it isn’t going away. Those of you who keep your ear to the ground know that real unemployment is 22.5% and in cities like Detroit it is somewhere near 45 to 50 percent. This is the result of free trade, globalization, offshoring and outsourcing. No city in America has been deprived of their livelihood more than Detroit. Yet, this is only the beginning. If allowed to continue 30 percent more of our jobs will be allowed to leave America, making our country an economic basket case over the next 20 years. The $25 billion that our federal government is about to loan to the states will help keep unemployment paying out and save some 40 states from going into bankruptcy. That will keep some Americans going but not for long.

Foreigners are buying less and less US dollar denominated assets, specifically Treasury and Agency bonds. As an example, Russia is buying Canadian dollar denominated assets. We ask how does the US fund its debt and its growing debt? The administration is planning for some sort of exchange of retirement funds for a government guaranteed annuity. That is so they can fund their enormous debt domestically as Japan has done for almost 20 years. Who would want to have a government guaranteed annuity from a bankrupt nation? It should also be noted that these retirement plans are still vastly under funded. What will happen if the Dow again revisits 6,600 and these funds’ assets again fall 40 percent? The collateral behind any annuity would be almost cut in half. We will have to see what the government comes up with but any kind of voluntary plan would in time become a mandatory plan. The funds may well be funneled to insurance companies, so they can take part of the action, but they will be buying Treasuries and Agencies with those funds, you can take that to the bank. One of the rumors floating about is that a new 5 percent tax will be foisted upon what is left of American taxpayers, in the form of forced savings, which would be in the form of an annuity. The need for funds to run the government is advancing by more than 10 percent a year, as government becomes bigger and bigger. We see no abatement in Marxist, socialist or fascists in government in their desire to spend to make government ever bigger.

Full Story The second wave of mortgage defaults and foreclosures will hit the economy this year.

Worker Occupations And The Future Of Radical Labor

Noam Chomsky -

This interview was conducted on Oct. 9, 2009, at Professor Noam Chomsky’s office at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass.

DK: I would like to start this interview with a discussion of the economic crisis and how workers can deal with the issues which we face. In your recent piece titled “Crisis and Hope: Theirs and Ours,” which was published in the Boston Review, you state that the “the financial crisis will presumably be patched up somehow, while leaving the institutions that created it pretty much in place.” Following on that, there has been a recent upsurge of militant industrial action in workplaces, primarily throughout Europe, and also in North America. As you know, the Republic Windows and Doors Factory in Chicago was the first factory occupation in the U.S. since the 1930s.

NC: No, not quite, because the 1979 strike against U.S. Steel in Youngstown, Ohio was an occupation—and actually, that’s a model that really should be pursued now. They went on from striking to trying to have the workforce and the communities take over the abandoned factories that U.S. Steel was dismantling. The legal effort that followed was led by the radical labor lawyer Staughton Lynd. They didn’t win in the courts, but they could have won, and they would have had enough support. It could have meant a lot.

Full Story ZCommunications | Worker Occupations And The Future Of Radical Labor by Noam Chomsky | ZNet Article.

Unemployment Insurance Borrowing Now Greater Than During 1980s Recession

If you’ve been following our coverage of the nation’s unemployment insurance system, you may have concluded that things are pretty bad. (See our interactive feature showing whether your state’s fund is in the red.)

But what about some historical perspective?

It’s official, recession hounds: The 26 states with insolvent unemployment insurance trust funds have now borrowed more than was borrowed during 1981 and 1982, the last time there was a severe recession in the U.S., and oft-used benchmark for when things are Officially Really Bad.

According to this long-buried CBO document (PDF), in March 1983, total outstanding state loans were 13.7 billion, a figure that includes borrowing during 1981 and 1982 and the first quarter of 1983 plus carried-over borrowing from 1975 to 1980.

Full Story On The Hill: Unemployment Insurance Borrowing Now Greater Than During 1980s Recession.

CEOs to Hill: Quit Calling Us for Campaign Cash

CEOs to Congress: Quit calling us for campaign cash, pass public financing

Dozens of current and former corporate executives have a message for Congress: Quit hitting us up for campaign cash.

Roughly 40 executives from companies including Playboy Enterprises, ice cream maker Ben & Jerry’s, the Seagram’s liquor company, toymaker Hasbro, Delta Airlines and Men’s Wearhouse sent a letter to congressional leaders Friday urging them to approve public financing for House and Senate campaigns. They say they are tired of getting fundraising calls from lawmakers — and fear it will only get worse after Thursday’s Supreme Court ruling.

The court ruled that corporations and unions can spend unlimited money on ads urging people to vote for or against candidates. The decision was sought by interest groups including one that represents American businesses, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. They argued that restrictions on ads they could finance close to elections violated their free-speech rights, and the court agreed.

Full Story CEOs to Hill: Quit Calling Us for Campaign Cash – ABC News.

G7 to cancel Haiti’s debt

The world’s seven most industrialised countries vowed they would each cancel their nation’s remaining bilateral debt with quake-hit Haiti, Canadian Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said after two days of G7 talks in northern Canada.

Haiti’s debt to Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the United States is already relatively small after past relief efforts.

It’s foreign debt, however, remains at about US$890 million ($1.2 billion), of which 41 per cent is owed to the InterAmerican Development Bank and a further 27 per cent to the World Bank.

Full Story G7 to cancel Haiti’s debt – World – NZ Herald News.

The US Military: A Mindset of Barbarism, Part 2

Yesterday, Truthout ran the first part of an interview with Dr. Stjepan Mestrovic, a Professor of Sociology at Texas A&M University who has written three books on US misconduct in Iraq: “The Trials of Abu Ghraib: An Expert Witness Account of Shame and Honor,” “Rules of Engagement?: Operation Iron Triangle, Iraq” and “The ‘Good Soldier’ on Trial: A Sociological Study of Misconduct by the US Military Pertaining to Operation Iron Triangle, Iraq.” He has three degrees from Harvard University, including a Master’s degree in clinical psychology, and has been an expert witness in psychology and sociology at several Article 32 hearings, courts-martial and clemency hearings involving US soldiers accused of committing crimes of war in Iraq, including the trials of prison guards involved in the Abu Ghraib scandal.

Dr. Mestrovic’s books meticulously document how the US Army, as an institution, has become dysfunctional, and how illegal rules of engagement (ROE) are issued by officers and politicians at the top of the Army’s hierarchy, but only low-ranking soldiers are punished for carrying out those same rules and orders. As an example, in one of the several hearings Dr. Mestrovic has attended as an expert witness, US soldiers openly admitted they had shot a 75-year-old man who had emerged unarmed from his house, but because the soldiers were following the rule to shoot all “military aged males,” neither they nor their officers were charged for that death.

Full Story t r u t h o u t | The US Military: A Mindset of Barbarism, Part 2.

Obama to hold televised summit on healthcare

US President Barack Obama will hold a televised, summit-style meeting to discuss healthcare reform with both Democratic and Republican lawmakers.

Speaking on CBS News, he said the discussions would aim to explore the “best ideas”, “step-by-step”.

Senate Republic leader Mitch McConnell said “shelving” the bill would be the best way to reach consensus.

Mr Obama has made healthcare a centrepiece of his presidency but has so far failed to get a new law enacted.

The loss of a Senate seat in Massachusetts in January to Republican Scott Brown deprived the Democrats of their filibuster-proof 60-seat majority in the Senate.

Full Story BBC News – Obama to hold televised summit on healthcare.

Branson warns of oil crunch within five years

Sir Richard Branson and fellow leading businessmen will warn ministers this week that the world is running out of oil and faces an oil crunch within five years.

The founder of the Virgin group, whose rail, airline and travel companies are sensitive to energy prices, will say that the ­coming crisis could be even more serious than the credit crunch.

“The next five years will see us face another crunch – the oil crunch. This time, we do have the chance to prepare. The challenge is to use that time well,” Branson will say.

“Our message to government and businesses is clear: act,” he says in a foreword to a new report on the crisis. “Don't let the oil crunch catch us out in the way that the credit crunch did.”

Full Story Branson warns of oil crunch within five years | Business | The Guardian.

America Is Not Yet Lost

We’ve always known that America’s reign as the world’s greatest nation would eventually end. But most of us imagined that our downfall, when it came, would be something grand and tragic.

What we’re getting instead is less a tragedy than a deadly farce. Instead of fraying under the strain of imperial overstretch, we’re paralyzed by procedure. Instead of re-enacting the decline and fall of Rome, we’re re-enacting the dissolution of 18th-century Poland.

A brief history lesson: In the 17th and 18th centuries, the Polish legislature, the Sejm, operated on the unanimity principle: any member could nullify legislation by shouting “I do not allow!” This made the nation largely ungovernable, and neighboring regimes began hacking off pieces of its territory. By 1795 Poland had disappeared, not to re-emerge for more than a century.

Today, the U.S. Senate seems determined to make the Sejm look good by comparison.

Full Story Op-Ed Columnist – America Is Not Yet Lost – NYTimes.com.

The Terror-Industrial Complex

Chris Hedges  -

The conviction of the Pakistani neuroscientist Aafia Siddiqui in New York last week of trying to kill American military officers and FBI agents illustrates that the greatest danger to our security does not come from al-Qaida but the thousands of shadowy mercenaries, kidnappers, killers and torturers our government employs around the globe.

The bizarre story surrounding Siddiqui, 37, who received an undergraduate degree from MIT and a doctorate in neuroscience from Brandeis University, often defies belief. Siddiqui, who could spend 50 years in prison on seven charges when she is sentenced in May, was by her own account abducted in 2003 from her hometown of Karachi, Pakistan, with her three children—two of whom remain missing—and spirited to a secret U.S. prison where she was allegedly tortured and mistreated for five years. The American government has no comment, either about the alleged clandestine detention or the missing children.

Siddiqui was discovered in 2008 disoriented and apparently aggressive and hostile, in Ghazni, Afghanistan, with her oldest son. She allegedly was carrying plans to make explosives, lists of New York landmarks and notes referring to “mass-casualty attacks.” But despite these claims the government prosecutors chose not to charge her with terrorism or links to al-Qaida—the reason for her original appearance on the FBI’s most-wanted list six years ago. Her supporters suggest that the papers she allegedly had in her possession when she was found in Afghanistan, rather than detail coherent plans for terrorist attacks, expose her severe mental deterioration, perhaps the result of years of imprisonment and abuse. This argument was bolstered by some of the pages of the documents shown briefly to the court, including a crude sketch of a gun that was described as a “match gun” that operates by lighting a match.

Full Story Chris Hedges: The Terror-Industrial Complex – Chris Hedges’ Columns – Truthdig.

Tea Party fascism in Revolutionary War clothes

Sinclair Lewis said if fascism ever comes to America it will come wrapped in the flag. Though the neo-fascists at the Tea Party convention will never come close to translating their brand of American neo- Fascism into power that runs the government, the fascism and how they wrap it in the flag has been well on display at their convention in Nashville.

While there are moderates in the Tea Party movement who are neither Republican nor Democrat, the more radical wing of the movement specializes in a special brand of neo fascism, blaming Democrats and liberals for the failures of the party of their choice, the Republicans, and are purely partisan and about partisan power. They seemingly forgive Republicans for 911 and all of the country's economic problems, while trying to pin the blame on liberals for current economic mess. They seem to forget about the $5 1/2 trillion budget surplus, balanced budget, and zero deficits that Bush and the Republicans blew.

Listening to their rants, remembering the swasitakas at the town hall meetings, their belief that they are the true Americans, their attiudes make them text book fascists in their ideology, political approach and beliefs and all anyone has to do is simply look up fascism and read the manifestos to see for themselves.

Full Story Tea Party fascism in Revolutionary War clothes.

‘Conspiracies of Rich Men’ to Commit War Crimes and Aggression

Len Hart -

The establishment derides conspiracies and, for awhile, it was fashionable to deny the existence of ‘conspiracies’. In fact, conspiracies are how things get done. Very little is accomplished by one person working alone. If what is to be accomplished is illegal, the ‘conspiracy’ is called a ‘crime syndicate’ or ‘orgnized crime’.

If the ‘conspiracy’ in question is legal, however questionable, it is called a corporation or a business enterprise. Theorists on the high court have said corporations are people! But, should you call five idiots who have thus conspired to subvert the U.S. Constitution by the term ‘conspirators’, you are likely to be called a nut job! But SCOTUS believes mere words on paper is a real, living breathing person if it happens to have a seal on it supplied to you by the Delaware Secreatary of State! So –I ask you –who is nuts?

The government often cites the specter of ‘organized crime’ in order to rally voters to a ‘right wing’ cause like ‘law and order’, a big issue in the 1960s. In order to fully exploit this ‘threat’, this ‘clear and present danger’ to the lives of middle America who seemed to have been cowering in fear, it was necessary to promote all manner of fears –hippies, black people, rock n’ rolll, and crime syndicates. Law and order’ was, therefore, a big issue among the GOP hoping to exploit the fears of ‘hippies’ and ‘black people’ –both of whom were unhappy with increasing poverty, denial of rights, the seemingly endless, mindless and destructive war in Viet Nam. It was a war fought on behalf of a ‘conspiracy of rich men’ –ITT, Honeywell et al –all of whom hoped to make a killing with defense contracts.

Full Story The Existentialist Cowboy: ‘Conspiracies of Rich Men’ to Commit War Crimes and Aggression.

Iraq war was illegal, says former lord chief justice

But, says Lord Bingham, any legal redress is unlikely

The Guardian once ­described Lord “call me Tom” Bingham as “the radical who is leading a new English revolution”. That would not ­necessarily be your impression on meeting the gentlemanly, old-school 76-year-old who, when I arrive at his tall-ceilinged, book-lined, art-filled mansion flat in Notting Hill, west ­London, immediately makes me ­ coffee, served in a silver pot. If this is ­revolution, it will not be instant.

Bingham – Baron Bingham of Cornhill to give him his proper title – was the first person ever to manage the judicial triple-whammy: master of the rolls from 1992-96, lord chief justice from 1996-2000, and senior law lord from 2000-2008. He retired in 2008 – at 75, an age when I’d assumed judges were just getting into their stride – and has now written a book called The Rule of Law, which he chose as a subject “because [though] the expression was constantly on people’s lips, I was not quite sure what it meant”. It is not untypical of Bingham that he would admit to not understanding the meaning of the phrase “rule of law” after a lifetime spent applying it.

The book is pleasingly short and essayistic but also heavily footnoted; he says it is for the general reader but perhaps wants to keep his legal peers onside too. He has a serious purpose – to try to establish what this totemic phrase means – but, happily, his natural quirkiness sometimes intrudes. “So, if you maltreat a penguin in the London Zoo, you do not escape prosecution because you are Archbishop of Canterbury,” he writes when seeking to establish that no one is above the law. He is also good at rooting out legal nonsense, such as this sentence in an adjunct to the 1979 Banking Act: “Any reference in these regulations to a regulation is a reference to a regulation contained in these regulations.” He has spent 50 years going through this stuff, and appears to have kept his sanity.

Full Story Iraq war was illegal, says former lord chief justice | UK news | The Guardian.

Wars sending U.S. into ruin

Obama the peace president is fighting battles his country cannot afford

U.S. President Barack Obama calls the $3.8-trillion US budget he just sent to Congress a major step in restoring America’s economic health.

In fact, it’s another potent fix given to a sick patient deeply addicted to the dangerous drug — debt.

More empires have fallen because of reckless finances than invasion. The latest example was the Soviet Union, which spent itself into ruin by buying tanks.

Washington’s deficit (the difference between spending and income from taxes) will reach a vertiginous $1.6 trillion US this year. The huge sum will be borrowed, mostly from China and Japan, to which the U.S. already owes $1.5 trillion. Debt service will cost $250 billion.

To spend $1 trillion, one would have had to start spending $1 million daily soon after Rome was founded and continue for 2,738 years until today.

Full Story Wars sending U.S. into ruin | Eric Margolis | Columnists | Comment | Toronto Sun.

Is pot legalization push in California a trend that will spread?

It’s almost a cliche these days that San Francisco and its sister to the east, Oakland, stand as the primary incubators of some of California’s infamously wacky but later transformational social and political ideas.

From the Silicon Valley to Oakland and Berkeley to the Napa Valley — if it was at first weird, untested, illegal and/or controversial, it probably got its start right here.

Now a small but determined coalition of Bay Area activists and politicos are on a mission to have California be the first state in the union to fully legalize, regulate and tax the use of marijuana – and they’re approaching that goal from several different angles.

Full Story Is pot legalization push in California a trend that will spread? | McClatchy.

The state with the largest increase in teen pregnancy is …

Surprise! It’s Alaska, home of that stalwart supporter of abstinence only education, Sarah Palin, and her daughter Bristol, a teen who became pregnant outside of marriage. That startling bit of information is was included in CDC statistics that formed the basis for a new review calling attention to a worrisome development. After years of dropping steadily, the teen pregnancy rate has plateaued and begun to rise.

According to a report from the Guttmacher Institute, U.S. Teenage Pregnancies, Births and Abortions: National and State Trends and Trends by Race and Ethnicity:

In 2005, the U.S. teenage pregnancy rate reached its lowest point in more than 30 years (69.5), down 41% since its peak in 1990 (116.9). However, in 2006, the rate increased for the first time in more than a decade, rising 3%…

Full Story The state with the largest increase in teen pregnancy is … – AmyTuteurMD – Open Salon.

How to Maintain a Democratic “Activist” Base

As the military surges into Afghanistan and Pakistan and Xe Services LLC (formerly known as Blackwater) and the CIA eke into Pakistan and Yemen, the appetites of toadyish liberal analysts demand their daily diet of Republican bogeys. The changeling base must be kept in line, despite the lack of any change at all. Change you can believe must continually slide seamlessly into belief you can change.

Barack Obama is a soporific for liberals, but such a pill, the affected change rhetoric that is, has to wear off after awhile, especially as reality piles up like record dead soldiers in Afghanistan. So how do the Obamapologists keep the righteous liberal indignation at a fever pitch?

Not to worry, for a ready corps of reactionaries will rise to the occasion, such that the wars, the bailouts, the foreclosures, and stagnant unemployment go on without too much Democratic complaint. A right-wing nut like Ollie North will surely come forth to say something ludicrous: the open acceptance of gays in the military will lead to pedophilia, bestiality, and necrophilia. Inordinate press coverage will be given to a marginal cadre of Tea Partiers, who suggest that a literacy test would have kept Obama out of office. Liberal and reactionary bases will salivate at the prospect of a new culture wars as they beat the dead horse of identity politics. Liberal indignation will be directed it at the insane, and the insane will provide an obscene spectacle to justify the indignation.

Full Story Citizens For Legitimate Government.

Chevron hires twelve public relations firms to discredit indigenous Indians in Ecuador

In response to an environmental lawsuit filed against the oil giant, Chevron has fortified its defenses with at least twelve different public relations firms whose purpose is to debunk the claims made against the company by indigenous people living in the Amazon forests of Ecuador. According to them, Chevron dumped billions of gallons of toxic waste in the Amazon between 1964 and 1990, causing damages assessed at more than $27 billion.

The company is being criticized by people and organizations from across the social and political spectrum for its unethical behavior in regards to the case. Originally filed in U.S. federal district court back in 1993, the lawsuit was eventually moved to courts in Ecuador at Chevron's behest. Having initially lauded Ecuador's legal system in an effort to have the case moved there, Chevron later changed its mind and began attacking the system when that system found the company liable for damages.

Shareholders are also upset with Chevron for its gross mismanagement of the case in which it has sidestepped the rule of law and employed guerilla-style tactics in a last ditch effort to fend off an unfavorable ruling. Part of this includes hiring Hill & Knowlton, the same firm that represented the tobacco industry during its indictment over tobacco causing cancer, to perform the same task concerning toxic oil contaminants.

Full Story Chevron hires twelve public relations firms to discredit indigenous Indians in Ecuador.

Quiet Conflict With Goldman Helped Push A.I.G. to Precipice

Billions of dollars were at stake when 21 executives of Goldman Sachs and the American International Group convened a conference call on Jan. 28, 2008, to try to resolve a rancorous dispute that had been escalating for months.

A.I.G. had long insured complex mortgage securities owned by Goldman and other firms against possible defaults. With the housing crisis deepening, A.I.G., once the world’s biggest insurer, had already paid Goldman $2 billion to cover losses the bank said it might suffer.

A.I.G. executives wanted some of its money back, insisting that Goldman — like a homeowner overestimating the damages in a storm to get a bigger insurance payment — had inflated the potential losses. Goldman countered that it was owed even more, while also resisting consulting with third parties to help estimate a value for the securities.

Full Story Quiet Conflict With Goldman Helped Push A.I.G. to Precipice – NYTimes.com.

Carnival: Brazil Handing Out 55 Million Condoms

Brazilian health officials have kicked off an AIDS awareness campaign and will hand out 55 million condoms during the annual Carnival festival that begins next week.

A new television ad features a talking condom that loudly reminds young people to take him along when they go out to party.

Health Minister Jose Temporao said Saturday that this year's campaign is focusing on educating young women and young gay men to use protection.

Full Story Carnival: Brazil Handing Out 55 Million Condoms.

The Great Recession: Will Construction Workers Survive?

The middle and working-classes have been hammered by the Great Recession and no industry has taken it more on the chin than construction. Nationally, unemployment fell to 9.7% in January, but in construction it jumped to 24.7% from 18.7% in October. In many regions, union officials report 30% of their members are unemployed or “riding the bench.” “In the previous 14 years, I had not been out of work for more than one week,” says Pat O’Connor, 57, a Connecticut carpenter. With no work since July, O’Connor says, “It is a bad dream turning into a nightmare. Is construction dead? It’s just horrible right now. No one expected this. It’s a depression.” He has a mortgage and is worried he will fall behind and lose his condo. “When I go to bed, I keep the TV on just so I have the noise. If it gets silent, I get a panic attack.”

Commercial construction workers are in a bind. Before, if work dried up in Boston or Seattle, carpenters, electricians and plumbers would pack up and go to Las Vegas or Texas or Alaska. “Now there is no work anywhere,” says Mark Erlich, whose New England Regional Council of Carpenters represents 22,000 union members in six states. “The largest problem is the continued lack of financing,” says Jerry Rhoades, executive secretary treasurer of the Florida Carpenters Regional Council. “In the summer of 2009, there were 800 jobs on the books to build across the state. We do commercial, high-rise residential and power plants. The permits were ready, but the financing dried up. I am in my 60s and I’ve never experienced a downturn like this. Three years ago, three contractors would bid on a project. Now 90 contractors bid on a project. That is how desperate people are.” (See why teens are suffering in the current employment market.)
Full Story The Great Recession: Will Construction Workers Survive? – TIME.

A Financial Crisis That Just Keeps Moving

YOU know we’re in trouble when we’re told that the economic problems in Greece, Portugal and Spain, the most indebted countries in the euro zone, are likely to remain safely contained in those nations.

After all, we heard the same nonsense in 2007 from United States financial leaders talking about the subprime mortgage mess. Both Ben S. Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, and Henry M. Paulson Jr., then the Treasury secretary, rolled out to reassure concerned investors that troubles in mortgage land wouldn’t permeate the rest of the economy.

As we all now know, mortgage woes were contained — to planet Earth. And so it may be with overleveraged nations in Europe.

Full Story Fair Game – A Financial Crisis That Just Keeps Moving – NYTimes.com.

Netanyahu: Israel Open To Peace Talks With Syria

Israel’s prime minister attempted to end a war of words with Syria on Sunday, saying his country is open to peace talks with its longtime enemy.

Israeli and Syrian officials have traded threats over the past week, raising concerns of an escalation between two countries that have officially been at war for more than 60 years.

Israel desires peace agreements with “all of its neighbors,” Netanyahu told his weekly Cabinet meeting.

Full Story Netanyahu: Israel Open To Peace Talks With Syria.

Core Chicago Team Sinking Obama Presidency

Financial Times Washington Bureau Chief Edward Luce has written a granularly informed insider account about those who hold the keys to the inner most sanctum of Obama Land — Rahm Emanuel, Robert Gibbs, Valerie Jarrett and David Axelrod.

It’s a vital article — a brave one — that interviews “dozens of interviews with his closest allies and friends in Washington”.

Most are unnamed because the consequences of retribution from this powerful foursome can be severe in an access-dependent town. John Podesta, President of the powerful, adminstration-tilting Center for American Progress, had the temerity and self-confidence to put his thoughts publicly on the record. But most others could not.

Full Story Steve Clemons: Core Chicago Team Sinking Obama Presidency.

Mumps Outbreak Strikes 300 In Jewish Communities In New York

More than 300 people have been diagnosed with the mumps in suburban New York as the nation’s largest outbreak of the disease in years spreads.

A health official says 303 people in the Rockland County towns of Monsey and New Square have been diagnosed with the highly infectious disease. Almost all the cases are among Orthodox Jews.

Investigators say the outbreak started in August 2009 at a Jewish summer camp in Sullivan County with an 11-year-old boy who brought the disease from England.

Full Story Mumps Outbreak Strikes 300 In Jewish Communities In New York.

Why You Need More Vitamin D

Dr. Andrew Weil:

I am raising my recommendation of 1,000 IU of vitamin D per day to 2,000 IU per day. Since 2005, when I raised it from 400 to 1,000 IU, clinical evidence has been accumulating to suggest that a higher dose is more appropriate to help maintain optimum health.

We have known for many years that we need vitamin D to facilitate calcium absorption and promote bone mineralization. But newer research has shown that we also need it for protection against a number of serious diseases. In recent years, scientists have discovered that it may help to prevent several cancers, cardiovascular disease, autoimmune disorders, psoriasis, diabetes, psychosis, and respiratory infections including colds and flu.

To focus particularly on cancer prevention, two recent meta-analyses (in which data from multiple studies is combined) conducted by the Moores Cancer Center at the University of California at San Diego and colleagues suggested that raising blood levels of vitamin D could prevent one-half of the cases of breast cancer and two-thirds of the cases of colorectal cancer in the U.S. Discussing the breast cancer analysis, study author Cedric Garland, Dr.P.H., stated that “The serum level associated with a 50 percent reduction in risk could be maintained by taking 2,000 international units of vitamin D3 daily plus, when the weather permits, spending 10 to 15 minutes a day in the sun.”

Full Story Dr. Andrew Weil: New Recommendation: Why You Need More Vitamin D.

SNL Mocks Fox News’s Coverage Of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell (VIDEO)

SNL Mocks Fox News’s Coverage Of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell (VIDEO).

High energy biscuits get mixed reviews in Haiti’s Cite Soleil slum

A gentle breeze blew discarded U.N. biscuit wrappings jerkily across the dust in this makeshift camp in the Haitian capital's most notorious slum.

Each gust threatened to topple the shelters of sticks and sheets that are now home to around 100 families left shelterless by the earthquake.

“We want any help we can find,” said Rosemand Bolivar, a grandmother who shares a patch of dirt beneath a faded pink bed sheet with her son, his wife and their three children.

Full Story Reuters AlertNet – High energy biscuits get mixed reviews in Haiti’s Cite Soleil slum.

OPS: more experimenting on whole populations?

Think-tanks take oil money and use it to fund climate deniers

ExxonMobil cash supported concerted campaign to undermine case for man-made warming

An orchestrated campaign is being waged against climate change science to undermine public acceptance of man-made global warming, environment experts claimed last night.

The attack against scientists supportive of the idea of man-made climate change has grown in ferocity since the leak of thousands of documents on the subject from the University of East Anglia (UEA) on the eve of the Copenhagen climate summit last December.

Free-market, anti-climate change think-tanks such as the Atlas Economic Research Foundation in the US and the International Policy Network in the UK have received grants totalling hundreds of thousands of pounds from the multinational energy company ExxonMobil. Both organisations have funded international seminars pulling together climate change deniers from across the globe.

Full Story Think-tanks take oil money and use it to fund climate deniers – Climate Change, Environment – The Independent.

HRW says Israel ‘failed’ to probe Gaza war crimes

Human Rights Watch said on Sunday that Israel has failed to properly investigate alleged crimes committed during last winter’s devastating Gaza war as demanded by the United Nations.

“Israel claims it is conducting credible and impartial investigations, but it has so far failed to make that case,” said Joe Stork, HRW’s New York-based group’s deputy director for the Middle East.

“An independent investigation is crucial to understand why so many civilians died and to bring justice for the victims of unlawful attacks,” Stork said in a statement.

About 1,400 Palestinians were killed during the 22-day onslaught launched by Israel on December 27, 2008, aimed at halting rocket attacks from the Islamist Hamas-ruled enclave. Thirteen Israelis were killed in the fighting.

Full Story AFP: HRW says Israel ‘failed’ to probe Gaza war crimes.

Christians claim hate crimes law an effort to ‘eradicate’ their beliefs

A Christian group in Michigan has filed a lawsuit alleging that a package of hate crimes laws named after murder victim Matthew Shepard is an affront to their religious freedom.

Far from the intended purpose of severely punishing criminals who commit unspeakable acts against a persecuted minority group, the religious activists claim the laws are a guarded effort to “eradicate” their beliefs.

Filed by the Thomas More Law Center — which bills itself as the religious answer to the American Civil Liberties Union — the complaint claims that protecting gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people “is an effort to eradicate religious beliefs opposing the homosexual agenda from the marketplace of ideas by demonizing, vilifying, and criminalizing such beliefs as a matter of federal law and policy.”

Full Story Christians claim hate crimes law an effort to ‘eradicate’ their beliefs | Raw Story.

OPS: The American people (you and I) are paying big money for this. It way past time to stop it.  Revoke the Tax Exempt status of all religious organizations in the US.

New Orleans elects first white mayor in 32 years

New Orleans has elected its first white mayor in 32 years, ushering in hopes of a new era in a city still trying to rebuild five years after Hurricane Katrina.

Lieutenant Governor Mitch Landrieu was elected Saturday to replace outgoing Mayor Ray Nagin, an African-American who led the city during the hurricane, but saw his popularity plunge over the slow pace of reconstruction.

“The people of New Orleans did a very extraordinary thing… striking a blow for unity,” Landrieu said after his nearest rival businessman Troy Henry conceded defeat.

Full Story New Orleans elects first white mayor in 32 years | Raw Story.

Wall Street Republicans Form ‘Action Tank’ To Push Corporate Agenda

Just two weeks after the Supreme Court ruled in favor of opening the floodgates of corporate donations into electoral politics, a class of Wall Street Republicans have assembled around a new GOP group that aims to capitalize on corporate America’s empowerment. According to The New York Times, the group aims to “develop and market conservative ideas…hoping to capitalize on the fundraising and electioneering possibilities opened up by a recent Supreme Court ruling.” “This administration as well as Citizens United — when you combine the two the prospects for funding these types of efforts are greatly enhanced,” said former senator Norm Coleman, one of the group’s organizers.

The Republican figures behind the American Action Network have a long history and symbiotic relationship with Wall Street. Here’s a breakdown of the key players in the group:

Full Story Think Progress » Wall Street Republicans Form ‘Action Tank’ To Push Corporate Agenda.

Fox News Military Analyst Endorses DADT Repeal, Criticizes McCain For Flip-Flopping

This morning, Fox & Friends Weekend hosted Col. David Hunt, a Fox News military analyst, to discuss whether to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.

According to his bio on the Fox News website, Hunt is a retired colonel with “over 29 years of military experience including extensive operational experience in special operations, counter terrorism and intelligence operations.” Hunt generally adheres to the conservative line on national security matters. For instance, he was an advocate for attacking Iraq. And instead of encouraging dialogue with Iran and Syria, Hunt said in 2006, “I think we can talk to them when we line them up and kill them.”

This morning, however, Hunt sided with progressives who are advocating repeal of the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy. Hunt called the discriminatory law “an abject failure” because “we’ve lost somewhere between 11 and 14,000 soldiers.” He continued:

Being brave in the battlefield has nothing to do with how you go to the bathroom or how you have sex. … If you volunteer to serve this great country, we should welcome you, not push you away because of some arcane attitude about sex.

Full Story Think Progress » Fox News Military Analyst Endorses DADT Repeal, Criticizes McCain For Flip-Flopping.

Palin: Obama could win reelection if he ‘played the war card’ and declared ‘war on Iran.’

This morning on Fox News Sunday, Chris Wallace conducted a 25-minute interview with Sarah Palin, a paid contributor to Fox News. Palin told Wallace that she doesn’t think President Obama will win reelection in 2012 if he “continues on the path he has America on.” However, Palin indicated that his chances of winning would dramatically change if Obama simply declared war on Iran:

WALLACE: How hard do you think President Obama would be to defeat in 2012?

PALIN: It depends on a few things, say he played — I got this from Buchanan — say he played the war card. Say he decided to declare war on Iran or decide to really come out and do whatever he could to support Israel–which I would like him to do. That changes the dynamics of what we can assume will happen between now and three years. Because I think if the election were today, Obama would not be elected.

Full Story Think Progress » Palin: Obama could win reelection if he ‘played the war card’ and declared ‘war on Iran.’.

OPS:  Just desperate for more war , dead Americans and others and less of OUR money to spend on US.  Insanity.  Let’s stop giving aritime to the Insane among us.

Is the economic ship sinking and are the rats deserting the ship and taking all the food with them?

Thom Hartmann

Missionaries turn on their leader over ‘kidnapping’ of Haiti children

Charity head from Idaho had debt problems and faced legal action

The leader of the Baptist missionaries from Idaho charged with trying to remove 33 Haitian children from the country illegally knew many of the so-called “orphans” still had living parents or other close relatives but tried to move them over the border anyway, her own lawyer, Edwin Coq, has claimed.

Laura Silsby, among the 10 Americans now in custody in Port-au-Prince, where they are accused of “child kidnapping and criminal association,” deliberately ignored the lack of correct paperwork to enable her to bring the youngsters into the Dominican Republic legally, he said.

Ms Silsby’s companions are well-meaning people caught up in a scheme they did not understand, he went on. “They were naïve,” he said of the nine. “They had no idea what was going on and they did not know that they needed official papers to cross the border. But Silsby did.”

“I’m going to do everything I can to get the other nine out,” Mr Coq, who has apparently quarrelled with Ms Silsby, to
ld reporters in Haiti. “I hope they will be released today.”

Full Story Missionaries turn on their leader over ‘kidnapping’ of Haiti children – Americas, World – The Independent.

The US Government has Lost its Reason for Being

Dave Lindorff -

There were two points in President Obama’s State of the Union address that provoked resounding and universal applause in the chamber from the assembled senators and representatives of both parties. One point was when the president said he wanted to start his job-creation program “in small businesses, companies that begin when an entrepreneur takes a chance on a dream, or a worker decides its time she became her own boss.” The other point was when he said, “While we’re at it, let’s also eliminate all capital gains taxes on small business investment; and provide a tax incentive for all businesses, large and small, to invest in new plants and equipment.”

The lusty cheering and applause were not based upon some belief on the part of the assembled legislators that this was about alleviating the pain and suffering of the one-in-five Americans who is out of work, or who is struggling to support a family on the income from some pathetic part-time job paying minimum wage. It was apparent that this was a cheer for the idea of giving more money to the capitalist class. Period.

In today’s America, those in power have completely disavowed one of the key goals–if not the key goal–of democratic government, which is, as the Constitution put it so admirably in its opening sentence, to “promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty.”
Full Story The US Government has Lost its Reason for Being | The Smirking Chimp.

Russia names NATO expansion as national threat

President Dmitry Medvedev approved Friday a new military doctrine identifying NATO expansion as a national threat and reaffirming Russia’s right to use nuclear weapons if the country’s existence is threatened.

The doctrine identifies the expansion of NATO to Eastern Europe and U.S. plans to create an anti-missile shield in Europe as concerns for national security, although it also states that the likelihood of a nuclear conflict has abated.

As Russia’s conventional troops lack modern equipment and undergo a painful reform aimed at creating professional armed forces, Moscow relies on its nuclear arsenal as a last resort, the document, published on the Kremlin website, says.

Full Story Russia names NATO expansion as national threat — Signs of the Times News.

Deepening Debt Crisis: The Bernanke Reappointment: Be Afraid, Very Afraid

If the economy deteriorates in the L-shaped “hockey-stick” rut that many economists forecast, what political price will President Obama and the Democrats pay for having returned the financial keys to the Bush Republican appointees who gave away the store in the first place? Reappointing Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke may end up injuring not only the economy but also the Democratic Party for years to come. Recognizing this, Republicans made populist points by opposing his reappointment during the Senate confirmation hearings last Thursday, January 27 – the day after Mr. Obama’s State of the Union address.

The hearings focused on the Fed’s role as Wall Street’s major lobbyist and deregulator. Despite the fact that its Charter starts off by directing it to promote full employment and stabilize prices, the Fed is anti-labor in practice. Alan Greenspan famously bragged that what has caused quiescence among labor union members when it comes to striking for higher wages – or even for better working conditions – is the fear of being fired and being unable to meet their mortgage and credit card payments. “One paycheck away from homelessness,” or a downgraded credit rating leading to soaring interest charges, has become a formula for labor management.

As for its designated task in promoting price stability, the Fed’s easy-credit bubble has made asset-price inflation the path to wealth, not tangible capital investment. This has brought joy to bank marketing departments as homeowners, consumers, corporate raiders, states and localities run further and further into debt in an attempt to improve their position by debt leveraging. But the economy has all but neglected its industrial base and the employment goes with manufacturing. The Fed’s motto from Bubblemeister Alan Greenspan to Ben Bernanke has been “Asset-price inflation, good; wage and commodity price inflation, bad.”

Full Story Deepening Debt Crisis: The Bernanke Reappointment: Be Afraid, Very Afraid.

Media Disinformation regarding Emergency Relief in Haiti

Danny Schechter -

As predicted and feared, the media coverage from Haiti has shrunk at the very time that people there are facing their most serious challenges—how to survive the aftermath of a disaster which has become a permanent feature of their environment.

It’s not just the physical destruction, and rehabilitation challenges for people who have lost family members and limbs. It’s not just the daily challenge of finding food, water and housing. There are deeper problem of finding and nurturing hope in the success of a long term recovery.

We have gone from hearing reports of massive casualties and social needs to a focus on 10 Americans being indicted for child snatching. Once again we have become the story just as the misnamed “We are the World” is revived. It may be another example of what Ishmael Reed calls “fading to white,” a play on the Fade to Black phrase that TV insiders use to end every recorded show.

In a sense, the indictment of the American missionaries by the Haitian government—which has not yet included a charge for child trafficking—is a reassertion at its authorities when we are hearing voices on CNN and in policy circles faulting the devastated government for not doing enough. Not only are they still there, and reasserting but they are launching a high-profile case against Americans, something symbolically important for a retaining the support of Haitians who are furious (but not very vocal for obvious reasons given their situation) with the US response. This case gives them a high profile way of challenging the aid effort.

Full Story Media Disinformation regarding Emergency Relief in Haiti.

AIG-GATE: The World’s Greatest Insurance Heist – Ellen Brown

Each day brings more revelations of efforts of the NY Fed and Goldman Sachs to hide the details of the criminal conspiracy of the AIG bailout. . . . This is a real crisis on the scale of Watergate

Rumor has it that Timothy Geithner is on his way out as Treasury Secretary, due to his involvement in the AIG scandal that is now unraveling in hearings before the House Oversight and Reform Committee. Bob Chapman writes in The International Forecaster:

Each day brings more revelations of efforts of the NY Fed and Goldman Sachs to hide the details of the criminal conspiracy of the AIG bailout. . . . This is a real crisis on the scale of Watergate. Corruption at its finest.

But unlike the perpetrators of the Watergate scandal, who wound up looking at jail time, Geithner evidently has a golden parachute waiting at Goldman Sachs, not coincidentally the largest recipient of the AIG bailout. At least that is the rumor sparked by an article by Caroline Baum on Bloomberg News, titled “Goldman Parachute Awaits Geithner to Ease Fall.” Hank Paulson, Geithner’s predecessor, was CEO of Goldman Sachs before coming to the Treasury. Geithner, who has come up through the ranks of government, could be walking through the revolving door in the other direction.

Full Story Web of Debt – AIG-GATE: THE WORLD’S GREATEST INSURANCE HEIST.

Smoke the Bigots Out of the Closet

Frank Rich -

A funny thing happened after Adm. Mike Mullen called for gay men and lesbians to serve openly in the military: A curious silence befell much of the right. If this were a Sherlock Holmes story, it would be the case of the attack dogs that did not bark.

John McCain, commandeering the spotlight as usual, did fulminate against the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell.” But the press focus on McCain, the crazy man in Washington’s attic, was misleading. His yapping was an exception, not the rule.

Many of his Republican colleagues said little or nothing. The right’s noise machine was on mute. The Fox News report on Mullen’s testimony was fair and balanced — and brief. The network dropped the subject entirely in the Hannity-O’Reilly hothouse of prime time that night. Only ratings-desperate CNN gave a fleeting platform to the old homophobic clichés. Michael O’Hanlon, an “expert” from the Brookings Institution, speculated that “18-year-old, old-fashioned, testosterone-laden” soldiers who are “tough guys” might object to those practicing “alternative forms of lifestyle,” which he apparently views as weak and testosterone-deficient. His only prominent ally was the Family Research Council, which issued an inevitable “action alert” demanding a stop to “the sexualization of our military.”

Full Story Op-Ed Columnist – Smoke the Bigots Out of the Closet – NYTimes.com.

Report: 85.8 percent of all emails were spam

Websense Security Labs Report – State of Internet Security, Q3-Q4 2009

The second half of 2009 saw malware authors focus their efforts to ensure they drove victims straight to them. In contrast to the first half of the year where mass injection attacks like Gumblar, Beladen and Nine Ball promoted a sharp rise in the number of malicious Web sites, Websense Security Labs observed a slight (3.3 percent) decline in the growth of the number of Web sites compromised. Instead, attackers replaced their traditional scattergun approach with focused efforts on Web 2.0 properties with higher traffic and multiple pages.

Over the six month period, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) poisoning attacks featured heavily, and Websense Security Labs research identified that 13.7 percent of searches for trending news/buzz words lead to malware. In addition, attackers continued to capitalize on Web site reputation and exploiting user trust, with 71 percent of Web sites with malicious code revealed to be legitimate sites that had been compromised.

Web security intelligence remains a critical component of any email and data security strategy as illustrated by the continued popularity of blended threats (spam emails with embedded URLs). During the second half of 2009 Websense Security Labs discovered:

Full Story Websense Security Labs Report – State of Internet Security, Q3-Q4 2009 – Websense Features.

Big Six banks urge Ottawa to tighten mortgage rules

Top bankers pushing government to clamp down on market to avoid any chance of U.S.-style collapse

Canada’s top bankers are pushing the government to clamp down on the mortgage market to cool off the rise in home prices.

The heads of the country’s six largest banks have privately told policy makers that they fear the wide-ranging economic fallout of a U.S. style binge-and-collapse in housing. To head off any chance of that happening, they are willing to accept tighter rules on mortgages that would slow the real estate market, even though it would mean forgoing some short-term profits from giving out ever bigger mortgages as home prices jump.

The chief executives of the Big Six made their point last November, when they met with Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney. The country’s top commercial bankers, who between them control more than three-quarters of the country’s $940-billion mortgage market, said then that they wanted the government to look at far-reaching options, such as raising the minimum down payment to as much as 10 per cent and shortening the maximum amortization period to 30 years.

Full Story Big Six banks urge Ottawa to tighten mortgage rules – The Globe and Mail.

New Yale Study Shows Majority of Americans Support Climate Education and Carbon Regulation

A new study released today by Yale University in conjunction with George Mason University finds the majority of Americans favor regulating carbon emissions and educational programs related to climate change. While the recently released Yale poll which found Americans opinions on the urgency of acting to control greenhouse gases declining and skepticism rising, the new study entitled titled Climate Change in the American Mind:Public Support for Climate & Energy Policies in January 2010 finds broad based public support for action on climate issues regardless of political preferences.

The new poll found that a majority of Americans support:

Full Story Jerry Cope: New Yale Study Shows Majority of Americans Support Climate Education and Carbon Regulation.

Judge: Pratt & Whitney can’t move jobs out of US

A federal U.S. judge ordered jet engine maker Pratt & Whitney to halt its plans to move 1,000 jobs out of Connecticut and to Japan, Singapore and the state of Georgia.

U.S. District Judge Janet C. Hall in Bridgeport issued a permanent injunction, stopping the company’s plans to shift the jobs.

The judge strongly criticized the subsidiary of United Technologies Corp., saying it evaded the spirit of its union contract requiring it to make every effort to keep the jobs in the state.

The union, which represents about 3,700 workers, hailed the decision. In its lawsuit, the union accused Pratt & Whitney of failing to comply with the contract that required it to do everything possible to preserve the jobs.

Full Story Excite News – Judge: Pratt can’t move jobs out of US.

Geithner Says U.S. Will ‘Never’ Lose Its Aaa Debt Rating

Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner said the U.S. is in no danger of losing its Aaa debt rating even though the Obama administration has predicted a $1.6 trillion budget deficit in 2010.

“Absolutely not,” Geithner said, when asked in an ABC News interview broadcast today whether a downgrade is a concern. “That will never happen to this country.”

Geithner said investors around the world turn to U.S. Treasury securities and dollar-denominated assets whenever they are worried about global stability. That reflects “basic confidence” in the U.S. and its ability to bounce back from the global recession, he said.

Full Story Geithner Says U.S. Will ‘Never’ Lose Its Aaa Debt Rating – BusinessWeek.

OPS:  Would you beet your house on that?

Game Over for the American Middle Class

– Inflation Adjusted Wages up 20 Percent in Last 20 Years While Housing Costs are up 56 Percent and Healthcare Costs are up 155 Percent.

The struggle for average Americans to keep up is largely becoming an act of will power and force in this current grand recession. Now you wouldn’t think that there is a definite war raging against the middle class if you simply follow the mainstream media but the facts speak to a more distilled and corporatized method of debt slavery. Americans are working more hours trying to stay in the same place that they believe would keep them on pace to having the American Dream. And this dream is merely the ability to afford a home, provide your children with a good education (public or private), and save enough to have a retirement that doesn’t require you to eat cat food after a lifetime of working. That is at the root of what most average Americans would want after a full working career.

But we are at an inflexion point and the middle class is largely being squeezed out. A recent study from the Commerce Department shed some light on an issue that we already know. Over the past 20 years the middle class has been falling behind:

Full Story Game Over for the American Middle Class – Inflation Adjusted Wages up 20 Percent in Last 20 Years While Housing Costs are up 56 Percent and Healthcare Costs are up 155 Percent..

Think Tank: Senate Dems Would Be In Bounds To Pass Health Reform Using Reconciliation

Republicans have long howled that use of a Senate procedure known as reconciliation to approve healthcare reform would be out-of-bounds and amounts to a political act of war. An independent think tank, however, finds that use of reconciliation “would be fully consistent with past practice.”

Reconciliation becomes important because bills considered under the procedure cannot be blocked by filibuster from coming to a final vote. That means reconciliation bills need just a majority of 51 votes to pass — not the 60-vote supermajority required to overcome a filibuster.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), up until now, has worked assiduously to avoid the use of reconciliation — compromising much from his original reform proposal in order to marshal the entire 60 Democratic votes he had on Christmas Eve to pass a reform bill.

Full Story On The Hill: Think Tank: Senate Dems Would Be In Bounds To Pass Health Reform Using Reconciliation.

students should graduate with a résumé, not a transcript

Consider that title for a moment, at least one moment.

The words are from Arnold Packer, principal author of what is know as the SCANS report, (SCANS = Secretary’s Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills, and the Secretary was of the Dept. of Labor). I encountered that phrase in a recent piece by Grant Wiggins, writing for The Association of Supervision and Curriculum Development’s new EDge professional social network project in piece titled Abolish the Diploma.

There is an important message, contrary to most of our discussions about educational policy. What if we totally abandoned the idea of a high school diploma meeting certain common standards, what might that mean for education, for the money we spend on standardized tests? Can we consider the implications, at least for a moment? If you are interested in the idea, please keep reading.

Wiggins is one of the great advocates of Authentic Learning and Authentic Education (you can read about his ideas here, with an undergraduate degree from St. John’s Annapolis and an Ed. D. from Harvard.  But he is not afraid of challenging conventional thinking about education.   Consider how his blog post starts:

Imagine the following HS requirements being recommend to the School Board:
•   3 years of economics and business
•   2 courses in philosophy – one in logic, the other in ethics
•   2 years of psychology, with special emphasis on child development and family relations
•   2 years of mathematics, focusing on probability and statistics
•   4 years of Language Arts, but with a major focus on semiotics and oral proficiency
•   US and World history, taught as Current Events – backwards from the present
•   1 Year of Graphics Design, Desktop Publishing, and Multimedia presentation

Outrageous?  Hardly – if we do an analysis of what most graduates actually need and will use in professional, civic, and personal life.  How odd it is that we do not require oral proficiency when every graduate will need the ability.  How absurd it is in this day and age that students aren’t required to understand the capitalist system. How sad it is that physics is viewed as more important than psychology, as parents struggle to raise children wisely and families work hard to understand one another.  Requirements based on pre-modern academic priorities and schooling predicated on the old view that few people would graduate and fewer still would go on to college make no sense. Ask any adult: how much algebra did you use this past week?

Full Story Daily Kos: students should graduate with a résumé, not a transcript.

OPS: Interesting how even this lefty author left out  a couple of years of Civics.  Learning how to balance a check book would be good to toss in there too

Mystery Men of the Financial Crisis

Who the heck is Dan Jester? And why isn’t he telling us what he did during the A.I.G. bailout and other pivotal moments of the banking crisis?

Now that we have pulled back sufficiently far from the near “destruction of the modern financial system” — as the former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson described the events of 2008 in his new memoir, “On The Brink” — to focus on how to prevent such a calamity from recurring, the time has come to hear from those players in the drama who really know what happened and why.

Until people such as Warren Spector, the former co-president and head of the fixed-income division at Bear Stearns, and Dan Jester, a mysterious former Goldman Sachs banker turned Treasury official — among many others — come forward and share with us the roles they played before, during and after the crisis, there is little hope that the members of Congress working on financial reform legislation will be able to craft a bill that will succeed in its mission, and the longer they will spend dithering with the ill-conceived ideas being pushed by the former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker.

To date, these elusive but important Wall Street executives have kept an exceedingly low profile, hoping against hope that the whole thing just blows over. We can’t let that happen. There is just too much at stake now, and Wall Street has proved repeatedly over the past 40 years — since the firms went from private partnerships (where partners had their entire net worth on the line) to public companies (where bankers and traders were encouraged to take huge risks with other people’s money) — that it is incapable of regulating itself.

Full Story Mystery Men of the Financial Crisis – Opinionator Blog – NYTimes.com.

Full Unedited Interview of Jon Stewart by Bill O’Reilly

Part 1

Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5

Poll: High % Of Republicans Are Nuts, Misinformed

TYT

How To Eliminate Migraines And Headaches In Less Than A Week

More than 10 million Americans have migraines creating a burden of mostly unnecessary suffering.(i) These severe, nearly disabling headaches can occur from once a year to three to four times a week. They can last from hours to days. They are often associated with an aura, light sensitivity, nausea, vomiting, and severe throbbing pain on one or both sides of the head. Migraines are even associated with stroke-like symptoms or paralysis in some cases …

The cost to society is also enormous. Migraine headaches add $13 billion to $17 billion to our healthcare costs each year. These costs include medications, emergency room visits, hospitalization, physician services (primary care and specialty), laboratory and diagnostic services, and managing the side effects of treatment.

Migraines have indirect costs too. A headache is the most frequent pain-related complaint among workers. Focusing specifically on migraines, one study found that the annual cost to employers exceeded $14.5 billion, of which $7.9 billion was due to absenteeism and $5.4 billion to diminished productivity.(ii)

Full Story Mark Hyman, MD: How To Eliminate Migraines And Headaches In Less Than A Week.

Astronaut Tweets Stunning Pictures From Space: PHOTOS Of Kilimanjaro, Haiti, And More

Soichi Noguchi, an astronaut on board the International Space Station, has been sending Twitter pictures from space documenting the stunning views he has seen while in orbit.

The active tweeter (@Astro_Soichi) has snapped and sent TwitPics of the full moon, Haiti after the recent earthquake, Rome, Kilimanjaro, and much more.

Check out some of his pictures from space in the slideshow below!

Full Story Astronaut Tweets Stunning Pictures From Space: PHOTOS Of Kilimanjaro, Haiti, And More.

Will We Trust Wall Street Again?

For many investors, the market’s turbulence hasn’t just destroyed wealth. It has shattered their faith in the financial system itself.

Consider Philip Eberlin, 56 years old, who runs a woodwork-restoration business in Chicago Heights, Ill. Trading hot stocks a decade ago, Mr. Eberlin got burned on picks like Krispy Kreme and Tyco. In 2007 he got back into stocks, only to take another hit.

“Having been burned twice in 10 years,” says Mr. Eberlin, he now has about 80% of his family’s assets “protected from the market” in certificates of deposit and fixed annuities. “I don’t have trust in Wall Street to help the small investor in any way, shape or form.”

Mr. Eberlin isn’t alone. Late last year, Decision Research of Eugene, Ore., asked Americans how much they trusted bankers and other Wall Street leaders “to reduce the risk of the financial challenges the country is facing now.” On a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 meaning no trust at all, the rating averaged a paltry 1.7.

Full Story The Intelligent Investor: Will We Trust Wall Street Again? – WSJ.com.

OPS:  What is this “we”  ?

Time Is Running Out

Bob Herbert -

A failure to act boldly, he said, will result in the U.S. becoming “a cooked goose.”

We’ve now lost 8.4 million jobs in this recession, and a vast majority of them are gone for good. The politicians are clambering aboard the jobs bandwagon, belatedly, but very few are telling the truth about the structural employment problems in the U.S. and the extremely heavy lift that is necessary to halt our declining living standards and get us back to an economy that is self-sustaining.

We don’t hear a lot that is serious about the sorry state of the nation’s infrastructure or the trade policies that crippled so many American industries or our inability (or unwillingness) to compete effectively with China when it comes to the new world of energy for the 21st century or our abject failure to provide a quality public education for the next generation of American workers, scientists, artists and entrepreneurs.

Speaking at a conference here on Wednesday, Gov. Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania said that if we don’t act quickly in developing long-term solutions to these and other problems, the United States will be a second-rate economic power by the end of this decade. A failure to act boldly, he said, will result in the U.S. becoming “a cooked goose.”

Full Story Op-Ed Columnist – Time Is Running Out – NYTimes.com.

The winter of America’s discontent

Dissatisfaction with both political parties runs deep.

It has been more than four decades since the Congress of the United States has been able to summon the will to pass a major piece of social legislation. Not since 1965, when Medicare and the Voting Rights Act both overcame decades of opposition to become law, has Congress proved itself up to the task.

Significant healthcare reform is all but dead for this session, and the chances of substantively addressing the regulatory breakdown that allowed Wall Street’s irresponsible speculation to precipitate the worst global financial crisis since the Depression seem to recede with each passing day. So too the prospects for passage of further stimulus measures to remedy the crisis of unemployment and underemployment that continues to ravage the lives of families in states from Michigan to California.

In the face of these daunting issues, what was it that preoccupied the Senate on the eve of its long weekend recess? The legislative drama du jour is the standoff between the White House and Sen. Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.), who has put a personal hold on more than 70 executive branch appointments until the Obama administration agrees to fund a couple of pork-barrel projects he has earmarked for his state. One involves tens of millions of dollars for an FBI laboratory focusing on improvised explosives — something the bureau doesn’t think it needs. The other involves contract specifications for an aerial tanker that Northrop Grumman and Airbus would manufacture in Alabama, if they win the deal. (Boeing also is competing for the plane, which it would build in Topeka, Kan., and Seattle.)

Full Story The winter of America’s discontent – latimes.com.

Tibet temperature ‘highest since records began’ say Chinese climatologists

Average Tibet temperatures in 2009 increased 1.5C, with rises noted in both winter and summer at 29 monitoring sites

The roof of the world is heating up, according to a report today that said temperatures in Tibet soared last year to the highest level since records began.

Adding to the fierce international debate about the impact of climate change on the Himalayas, the state-run China Daily noted that the average temperature in Tibet in 2009 was 5.9C, 1.5 degrees higher than “normal”.

It did not define “normal”, but Chinese climatologists have previously drawn comparisons with an average over several decades.

Full Story Tibet temperature ‘highest since records began’ say Chinese climatologists | Environment | guardian.co.uk.

Scott Lee Cohen: Could Illinois’ Lieutenant Governor Candidate Hamper Democrats’ Agenda in Elections?

Democratic Nominee for Lieutenant Governor, Scott Lee Cohen, Was Charged With Battery in 2005

The politics in President Obama‘s home state of Illinois are once again in the spotlight for a scandal that seems ripped from the pages of a Hollywood script.

The Democratic candidate for lieutenant governor, Scott Lee Cohen, is butting heads with his fellow party members who are calling on him to resign amid reports that Cohen was arrested five years ago for allegedly assaulting his girlfriend.

Cohen, who won the Democratic primary by 26 percentage points Tuesday, is standing steadfast despite the controversy.

“I will not resign, I will not step down, I have done nothing wrong,” Cohen said.

Full Story Scott Lee Cohen: Could Illinois’ Lieutenant Governor Candidate Hamper Democrats’ Agenda in Elections? – ABC News.

OPS: I guess I don’t understand the process. How the Hell can the Democratic “leadership” (and I use the term loosely) ALLOW people like this to run as Democrats?  Is there No vetting process?  Anyone with the bucks that is willing to run as a Dem – and slips the “leadership” a few $$ – can run as a Democrat?  I guess this explains Blago and Bean too.  ‘This is suicidal.

Law professor: Assassinating US citizens raises ‘troubling’ issues

The admission by Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair that the United States intelligence community is authorized to assassinate Americans working with terrorists overseas has raised serious questions of constitutionality.

“It’s troubling, Keith, because it’s not on the books,” constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley told MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann on Thursday.

“This is something that President Bush developed,” Turley explained. “We actually saw the Bush administration kill an American citizen named Kamal Derwish in 2002 with a Predator strike. … The Obama administration, once again, seems to be morphing into the Bush administration.”

Full Story Law professor: Assassinating US citizens raises ‘troubling’ issues | Raw Story.

OPS: Especially if you’re assassinated

Obama wants TARP funds dolled out to small businesses

President Barack Obama called Saturday for new steps to support America's small businesses, saying they are key to rebuilding the economy on a new, stronger foundation and creating jobs.

“These companies represent the essence of the American spirit – the promise that anyone can succeed in this country if you have a good idea and the determination to see it through,” Obama said in his weekly radio address.

The president said last year, his administration had taken measures that supported over 47,000 loans to small businesses and delivered billions of dollars in tax relief to small business owners. But he argued that more must be done.

Full Story Obama wants TARP funds dolled out to small businesses | Raw Story.

Utah state representative claims climate change is a ‘conspiracy’ aimed at population control.

On Thursday, the Utah House Natural Resources Committee passed a resolution expressing the legislature’s belief that “climate alarmists’ carbon dioxide-related global warming hypothesis is unable to account for the current downturn in global temperatures.” The resolution, which now goes to the full House for a vote, urges the EPA to not regulate pollution blamed for climate change “until a full and independent investigation of the climate data conspiracy and global warming science can be substantiated.” When some members of the committee questioned the “conspiracy” wording as “pretty inflammatory,” Rep. Mike Noel (R) claimed that climate change is “in fact a conspiracy to limit population not only in this country but across the globe”:

But Noel defended the “conspiracy” wording, pointing to an out-of-print textbook, Ecoscience: Population, Resources, Environment , written in the 1970s by biologist Paul Ehrlich, Ehrlich’s wife, Anne, and physicist John Holdren about the potential hazards of unchecked population.

Full Story Think Progress » Utah state representative claims climate change is a ‘conspiracy’ aimed at population control..

The double standard at CBS

THERE ARE already at least two Christian broadcasting channels, so there is no need for CBS to be a right-wing revival tent for the Super Bowl.

Now, before all the knees start jerking, I want to be clear that this pro-choicer has no problem in the abstract with CBS’s decision to air an ad featuring Florida football star Tim Tebow. The ad, funded by the conservative Christian group Focus on the Family, features the decision by Tebow’s mother to reject the advice of doctors to have an abortion when she was very sick while the future Heisman Trophy winner was in her womb. That story is an unqualified, beautiful individual testament to faith and love.

But Focus on the Family wants to twist the free choice of this mother into a political vehicle to eliminate choice for all other women. But not even that ultimately offends me. Where CBS bears false witness is the fact that they accepted that ad while rejecting a Super Bowl ad for a gay dating service. The ad starts with one man in a Green Bay Packers jersey and the other in a Minnesota Vikings shirt cheering against each other. It ends with them making out on the couch.

Full Story The double standard at CBS – The Boston Globe.

Thousands of civilians flee Afghan region as Nato plans onslaught

Evacuation of most civilians will give commanders leeway to use air-to-ground missiles which have enraged Afghans

Ten of thousands of Afghan civilians are abandoning an area of central Helmland where UK and US forces are set to launch one of the biggest operations of the year.

The evacuation of most civilians from the town of Marjah and surrounding areas will give commanders greater leeway to use mortars-and-air-to ground missiles which have enraged Afghans in the past when responsible for civilian deaths.

US generals have unusually made no secret of their plan for a major onslaught against the town close to Helmand’s besieged provincial capital, Lashkar Gah.

Full Story Thousands of civilians flee Afghan region as Nato plans onslaught | World news | The Guardian.

Middle Class Meltdown

The social stratification of America is at least partially a result of the era of globalization and the free trade policies that it ushered in, which have caused the decline of manufacturing jobs in the country.  The loss of manufacturing prowess has caused the American middle-class to fall behind.

Globalization, like any other free-market reliant economic system, produces both winners and losers. In America, the winners have been the haves while the have-nots have gotten the short end of the stick, according to a report by the Economic Policy Institute.

In its State of Working America 2008/2009 report, the EPI found that 34.6 percent of all income growth over the past three decades went to Americans that make up the top one-tenth of one percent of wage earners. Meanwhile, over the same time period, the bottom 90 percent of wage earners realized just 15.9 percent income growth.

The social stratification of America is at least partially a result of the era of globalization and the free trade policies that it ushered in, which have caused the decline of manufacturing jobs in the country.

Full Story Middle Class Meltdown | Economy In Crisis.

Partisan Gridlock over Jobs Bill

In a shining example of the partisan gridlock ailing the nation’s capitol, Senate Democrats and Republicans are struggling to reach a compromise on a jobs package, despite job creation being the number one issue on most Americans minds.

In a shining example of the partisan gridlock ailing the nation’s capitol, Senate Democrats and Republicans are struggling to reach a compromise on a jobs package, despite job creation being the number one issue on most Americans minds, according to Politico.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has said that he hopes to take a vote on the legislation early next week. However, no bill has been unveiled, nor has the Congressional Budget Office scored a proposed jobs package.

Reports are that a small group of Senators are trying to reach a bipartisan compromise that features a heavy dose of tax cuts that they believe the Republican Conference can get behind. The extra emphasis on bipartisanship is due to the fact that newly elected Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown was sworn in on Thursday, giving the Republicans 41 seats, enough to stall any legislation with a filibuster.

Full Story Partisan Gridlock over Jobs Bill | Economy In Crisis.

OPS: the Republican strategy is to stop everything.  Why would anyone think Jobs would be different?

Obama 2011: Defense Department

In this time of financial upheaval and massive fiscal deficits so-called “spend thrift” politicians are clamoring to cut spending in virtually every direction. However very few, including the current Obama administration, seem willing to pull the plug on America’s inflated defense budget.

President Barack Obama’s 2011 fiscal budget projection was released Monday for initial debate and eventual approval. There are some obvious winners and losers in purely budgetary terms. Education, small businesses, stimulus projects, air travel, and other areas go extra funding. Big banks, the NASA Moon program, and moves to curtail climate change got less funding.

Usually the “winners” and “losers” in the budget are pretty cut and dry, but one area is always less easily categorized. The Pentagon and Department of Defense saw a 3.4 percent increase in the 2011 fiscal outlook, but it remains to be seen whether this is a good or a bad thing for the U.S.

In this time of financial upheaval and massive fiscal deficits so-called “spend thrift” politicians are clamoring to cut spending in virtually every direction. However very few, including the current Obama administration, seem willing to pull the plug on America’s inflated defense budget.

Full Story Obama 2011: Defense Department | Economy In Crisis.

Pew Says Arctic Ice Melt to Cost $2.4 Trillion

Experts Say Estimating Dollar Cost of Global Warming Devilishly Complex

On one hand, it is a very, very round number — obviously just a rough and imperfect estimate of the economic impacts of an enormously complex and often unpredictable jumble of warming Earth climate systems.

The financial cost to the world economy of a warming and melting Arctic, due to human induced greenhouse emissions over the next 40 years, will add up to at least $2.4 trillion, according to a study by the Pew Environment Group.

That’s a 24 followed by 11 zeroes.

To get this figure, Pew researchers accumulated and combined estimates of the monies, both public and private, that will be spent — or lost — as the rising global heat brings drought to fields, new demands on energy plants, migration away from sea shores (prompted by what some studies estimate could be at least a 4-foot rise in sea levels this century), infrastructure and trade losses due to severe flooding as well as insurance losses related to all of these.

Full Story Pew Says Arctic Ice Melt to Cost $2.4 Trillion – ABC News.

Why We Can’t Afford to Let Obama Give Bush’s War Criminals a Free Pass

Punishing the guilty for deeds they committed in the past is the only way to show the world that we are truly on a new path.

In a week when one-year report cards on the Obama administration were piling up and not all the grades were good, Americans searching for the real change we heard so much about on Obama’s campaign trail were hit with some news that would send his grades plummeting. Late last Friday, we learned that Obama’s Department of Justice plans to go easy on John Yoo and Jay Bybee — the two assistant attorney generals under Bush who penned the infamous torture memos. For those who have been working long and hard in the accountability movement to make sure no one — not even presidents or their top advisors — is above the law, this was a serious setback.

As part of that movement, I was appalled. Not just because I want to see those who committed crimes in office punished rather than excused. Not just because I want to see the Obama White House restore accountability to government rather than cover up crimes committed by the former administration. And not just because Yoo and Bybee memo’d-up legal opinions stating that torture techniques as egregious and illegal as waterboarding were acceptable. No, there is a deeper question in play here: Why were they really asked to render these opinions in the first place?

Full Story Why We Can’t Afford to Let Obama Give Bush’s War Criminals a Free Pass | Civil Liberties | AlterNet.

‘Illusion,’ Corporatism and Inverted Totalitarianism

Chris Hedges -  Audio

“I’m not attacking culture, I’m attacking corporatism,”

In this interview with Vermont Public Radio’s Neal Charnoff, “Empire of Illusion” author and Truthdig columnist Chris Hedges emphasizes what makes his book’s argument different from that of the stereotypical elder who disapproves of emerging artistic and cultural forms: “I’m not attacking culture, I’m attacking corporatism,” he tells Charnoff.

Hedges also describes the difference between totalitarianism and inverted totalitarianism (“economics trumps politics”) and what’s wrong with the education provided these days by such vaunted Ivy League institutions as Harvard, Princeton and Yale.

Full Story Chris Hedges on ‘Illusion,’ Corporatism and Inverted Totalitarianism – Truthdig.

New Poll Results Are Proof That Republicans Don’t Think

A poll commissioned by DailyKos shows just how far to the right the GOP has been dragged by its right wing…and how far out of step they are with the rest of America.

A village cannot revise village life to suit the village idiot. — Frank Schaeffer

On Tuesday, the Daily Kos published a new Research 2000 study showing the current state of belief in the GOP. Though the results aren’t anything new — indeed, the study just puts hard numbers to everything we already thought we knew about the right wing — the data also show, in sharp detail, just how far to the right the GOP has been dragged by its right wing…and how far out of step they are with the rest of America as a result. The data also show that Frank Schaeffer was more than fair in characterizing these people as America’s “village idiots.” For one thing, they really are a bitterly small minority. Last week, I laid out some numbers of my own, which showed that the conservative movement as it’s currently constituted only represents the views of about 25 to 30 percent of Americans. (And, historically, that’s about as big as conservative movements ever get in the US — though it’s plenty big enough to do some real damage.) Furthermore, according to a Washington Post/ABC News poll done last October, only about 20 percent of Americans currently identify as Republican, which is a 40-year low. There’s nothing about our current GOP that can be supportably described as “mainstream.

Full Story New Poll Results Are Proof That Republicans Don’t Think | News & Politics | AlterNet.

The Source of the Economic Crisis: A Chicago State of Mind

But is there any evidence that this was a deliberate fraud?

“Systems analysts offer an acronym (“POSIWID”) to identify systemic flaws: the purpose of a system is what it does,” Gates says.

“In financial systems, results are downstream of the ‘Chicago model’ – a shared mindset from which today’s results flow. Over the past half-century, this market-fundamentalist perspective evolved into the ‘Washington’ consensus to emerge as the guiding principle of the World Trade Organization (WTO) now taking this model to global scale.”

What exactly does he mean by the “Chicago model”?

Full Story Dissident Voice : The Source of the Economic Crisis: A Chicago State of Mind.

Kucinich Challenges Potential Extrajudicial Killing of Americans

Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) yesterday wrote to Attorney General Eric Holder following news reports that Americans have been included on targeted assassination lists maintained by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC). The reports indicate that the President has authorized military operations with the express understanding that Americans might be killed under this policy. In the letter, Kucinich requests the legal basis for revoking the constitutional rights of any American citizens.

“Due process of law is a fundamental principle in our Constitutional structure. Even the most superficial reading of Article XIV makes it clear that extrajudicial killings of U.S. citizens by the U.S. government or its agents are by definition outside the law,” wrote Kucinich.

“The government has the right and the obligation to protect the citizens of this country. However, I reject the notion that we can accomplish this goal only by violating international law and trampling on the Constitution. Protecting the constitutional rights of some citizens should not require revoking the constitutional rights of other citizens,” said Kucinich in the letter.

Read the full letter here.

Full Story Congressman Dennis Kucinich.

Stronger Efficiency, Renewables Measures Would Benefit Consumers, Industry

WASHINGTON – February 5 – If Congress passed climate and energy legislation that strengthened the energy efficiency and renewable energy standards in the version the House of Representatives approved last June, consumer electric and natural gas costs would be $113 billion lower by 2030, and emitters would pay 4 percent less in compliance costs, according to an analysis released today by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS). The analysis also found that stronger renewable energy and efficiency policies would avoid the need for nearly 50 new nuclear reactors and diversify the nation’s energy mix more quickly than the current bill would.

“Combining a cap on global warming pollution with robust efficiency and renewable energy provisions is the quickest, most cost-effective way to transition to the clean energy economy everyone agrees we need,” said Jeff Deyette, a senior analyst at UCS’s Climate and Energy Program and author of the analysis. “The government’s own conservative data shows that a comprehensive approach is an affordable way to protect the environment. It also ensures that U.S. companies can compete in the emerging international green technology market.”

In August 2009, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) analyzed the House bill, the American Clean Energy and Security Act, which included a cap on global warming emissions and a combined energy efficiency and renewable electricity standard requiring large utilities to increase their use of efficiency and renewable energy 20 percent by 2025. The EIA analysis showed that the House bill was affordable and achievable, but it also showed that loopholes in its efficiency and renewable energy standard would undermine any substantial growth of renewable energy.

Full Story Stronger Efficiency, Renewables Measures Would Benefit Consumers, Industry | CommonDreams.org.

Physicist Discovers How to Teleport Energy

First, they teleported photons, then atoms and ions. Now one physicist has worked out how to do it with energy, a technique that has profound implications for the future of physics.

In 1993, Charlie Bennett at IBM’s Watson Research Center in New York State and a few pals showed how to transmit quantum information from one point in space to another without traversing the intervening space.

The technique relies on the strange quantum phenomenon called entanglement, in which two particles share the same existence. This deep connection means that a measurement on one particle immediately influences the other, even though they are light-years apart. Bennett and company worked out how to exploit this to send information. (The influence between the particles may be immediate, but the process does not violate relativity because some informatiom has to be sent classically at the speed of light.) They called the technique teleportation.

That’s not really an overstatement of its potential. Since quantum particles are indistinguishable but for the information they carry, there is no need to transmit them themselves. A much simpler idea is to send the information they contain instead and ensure that there is a ready supply of particles at the other end to take on their identity. Since then, physicists have used these ideas to actually teleport photons, atoms, and ions. And it’s not too hard to imagine that molecules and perhaps even viruses could be teleported in the not-too-distant future.

Full Story Technology Review: Blogs: arXiv blog: Physicist Discovers How to Teleport Energy.

Constitutionally illiterate

On Nov. 5, Rep. John Boehner of Ohio, the House minority leader, took the podium at a Republican rally, waved a document defiantly and declared:”This is my copy of the Constitution, and I’m going to stand here with the Founding Fathers who wrote in the Preamble, We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed with the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness …” Mr. Boehner was encouraging participants to protest the pending House vote for health care reform by demanding their constitutional right to make medical decisions.

Pop quiz: What’s wrong with this picture?

If you said that there is no explicit constitutional right to make medical decisions, you score some points. If you said that the passage Mr. Boehner quotes is from the Declaration of Independence you get an A. If you also noted that the quotation is not even from the Declaration’s preamble, you earn extra credit.

Mr. Boehner is not the first opinion leader to confuse the Constitution with the Declaration, nor is he apt to be the last. Moral Majority founder Jerry Falwell, for example, said, “As our Constitution declares, we are endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights …” Of course, Mr. Boehner, unlike Mr. Falwell, entered the profession by promising to protect the Constitution.

Full Story Constitutionally illiterate – baltimoresun.com.

Bill Moyers: Let’s face it, two political parties; equal opportunity hypocrites.

Comment 02.05.10

BILL MOYERS: Everybody’s been talking about that Republican retreat last weekend, where President Obama engaged his opponents in a give and take. But what you may not know is that it was organized by something called the Congressional Institute. Nice highfalutin civic bunch, you might deduce from its name. Turns out the Congressional Institute is funded by corporate contributions and run by top Republican lobbyists. There are fourteen members on its board–twelve are registered lobbyists. And the contributors to the Congressional Institute read like a who’s who of corporate America. Among its benefactors have been General Motors, Lockheed Martin, Time Warner, UPS. The institute’s chairman lobbies for among others, Goldman Sachs, B.P., Health Net and AHIP. That’s the trade group for the health insurance industry that fought tooth and nail against the public option and brought the White House to its knees. …..

video and transcript at link

Bill Moyers Journal . Watch & Listen | PBS.

Bill Moyers Journal . Dr. Margaret Flowers on Medicare for All

“I didn’t realize how broken it was. I knew that there were special interests influencing the process. But I didn’t realize that the degree, the depth to which they’re involved in our political process.”

While many in Congress, the press and the public have given up on the idea of even a limited public option in health care reform, Flowers and her group, Physicians for a National Health Program, are standing firm for a single-payer plan. Specifically, they want to extend the Medicare program, which they see as a functioning single-player plan, to the nation as a whole. Flowers has testified before Congress and penned Op-Eds and she has been arrested three times in her attempts to get Congress and the White House to pay attention to single-payer.

Full Transcript and Full Video at link

Full Story Bill Moyers Journal . Dr. Margaret Flowers on Medicare for All | PBS.

Spitzer’s Redemption Strategy

Eliot Spitzer is making fresh noises about running against Senator Kirsten Gillibrand in New York. Lloyd Grove on how Client 9′s Colbert Report appearance was a big step in his return from political purgatory.

For a guy who insists he’s not plotting a comeback, Eliot Spitzer sure looks like he’s ready to run for something.

The 50-year-old former governor of New York, who quit in March 2008 after a federal investigation of a prostitution ring caught him patronizing the high-priced talent, has been working hard to repair his shattered image—this week making two back-to-back appearances in which he confronted his scandalous past head-on.

Full Story Spitzer’s Redemption Strategy – The Daily Beast.

OPS:  We could do worse.

No joke: South Carolina now requires ’subversives’ to register

Five-dollar registration fee for persons planning to overthrow US government

Terrorists who want to overthrow the United States government must now register with South Carolina’s Secretary of State and declare their intentions — or face a $25,000 fine and up to 10 years in prison.

The state’s “Subversive Activities Registration Act,” passed last year and now officially on the books, states that “every member of a subversive organization, or an organization subject to foreign control, every foreign agent and every person who advocates, teaches, advises or practices the duty, necessity or propriety of controlling, conducting, seizing or overthrowing the government of the United States … shall register with the Secretary of State.”

There’s even a $5 filing fee.

Full Story No joke: South Carolina now requires ’subversives’ to register | Raw Story.

OPS: Holy Crap!  There are way too many people in SC related to themselves.

Pentagon draws plans for immortal ’synthetic organisms’

The Pentagon’s advanced research division has set aside $6 million from its next budget for research on the creation of “synthetic organisms” whose DNA can be altered to make them live forever, or die on command, and even keep a genetic record of what they have been doing.

In its 2011 budget (PDF, 522 pages), the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency lays out its intention to create “BioDesign,” a project to create artificial life, presumably with military purposes in mind.

“BioDesign eliminates the randomness of natural evolutionary advancement primarily by advanced genetic engineering and molecular biology technologies to produce the intended biological effect,” the DARPA document states.

Full Story Pentagon draws plans for immortal ’synthetic organisms’ | Raw Story.

After Calling The Stimulus ‘Fiscal Child Abuse,’ Sanford Flies To DC To Demand Stimulus Money

South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford (R) waged a high-profile war against the economic stimulus package last spring, claiming that accepting the $700 million for which his state was eligible would lead to “a thing called slavery.” Even as his state’s unemployment rate climbed above the national average, Sanford maintained his partisan and politically motivated refusal to take the funds.

But yesterday, Sanford flew to Washington to demand $300 million in stimulus money for education, the State newspaper reports:

Sanford, who spent much of last year fighting parts of the Obama administration’s stimulus plan, now wants S.C. to have a piece of $4 billion in “Race to the Top” education money. [...]

Full Story Think Progress » After Calling The Stimulus ‘Fiscal Child Abuse,’ Sanford Flies To DC To Demand Stimulus Money.

The autism-vaccine lie that won’t die

The media trumpeted an irresponsible study, ensuring that its nasty legacy thrives

This week, Dr. Andrew Wakefield’s now infamous study linking the MMR vaccine to autism was finally retracted by the prestigious Lancet medical journal. The move came days after medical officials in the United Kingdom found the doctor guilty of multiple ethics violations. For doctors, this is a victory — but a bittersweet one.

As a pediatrician, I grapple daily with what Wakefield wrought: parents who are twisted in knots — to the point of tears — about whether to immunize their child. In the 12 years since the publication of Wakefield’s study, 10 of his fellow co-authors have denounced him, and an unremitting series of revelations have exposed just how corrupt his motives and methods were. Most important, multiple studies verified there is no link between the MMR (or any other) vaccine and autism. Meanwhile, infectious diseases once confined to medical history have broken out in our communities. To say the retraction is criminally overdue is an understatement.

Further, even as Wakefield’s research is expunged from the scientific record, what he spawned — a well-funded, vocal, even rabid movement — will remain. Without him, poster girl Jenny McCarthy would have been abandoned in the MTV archives instead of smugly crowing to Time magazine, “I do believe sadly it’s going to take some diseases coming back to realize that we need to change and develop vaccines that are safe. If the vaccine companies are not listening to us, it’s their f___ing fault that the diseases are coming back. They’re making a product that’s s___ .” And anti-vaccine darling David Kirby would split his time between running a P.R. firm and writing pithy articles about art and aircraft instead of turning speculation and rumor into a Kennedy-esque vaccine-autism conspiracy theory. Finally, Wakefield himself stands to be completely unaffected by both the U.K. medical community (which could revoke his license to practice there) and the Lancet’s decision. He long ago settled here in the U.S. and successfully peddles his views through his Thoughtful House autism center in Texas.

Full Story Autism – Salon.com.

Marijuana growing superstore opens in California

Obama admits health care overhaul may die on Hill

Obama sounding resigned on health care, says Congress may decide ‘we’re not going to do it’

No, maybe he can’t. President Barack Obama, who insisted he would succeed where other presidents had failed to fix the nation’s health care system, now concedes the effort may die in Congress.

The president’s newly conflicting signals could frustrate Democratic lawmakers who are hungry for guidance from the White House as they try to salvage the effort to extend coverage to millions of uninsured Americans and hold down spiraling medical costs. Obama’s comments Thursday night came hours after Republican Scott Brown was sworn in to replace the late Edward M. Kennedy, leaving Democrats without their filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, and Obama’s signature health legislation with no clear path forward.

“I think it’s very important for us to have a methodical, open process over the next several weeks, and then let’s go ahead and make a decision,” Obama said at a Democratic National Committee fundraiser.

Full Story Obama admits health care overhaul may die on Hill – Yahoo! Finance.

Abortions higher among religious school students

A study published in The Journal of Health and Social Behavior shows that more than 25 per cent of young women who went to religious schools had abortions.

The study of 1,500 women under the age of 26 found that “unwed teens and those in their twenties who have attended religious schools are more likely to have abortions than their counterparts who went to public schools.”

Conducted by Amy Adamczyk of City University of New York (left), the study theorized that young women who attend religious schools, even if they’re not particularly religious, may feel more shame about becoming pregnant through sexual relations outside marriage.
Paradoxically, the study found no correlation between young women’s personal religiosity — defined by their attendance at a religious institution, prayer frequency and the importance of faith in their lives — and their abortion decisions.
“Religious school attendance is not necessarily indicative of conservative religious beliefs because students attend these schools for a variety of reasons,” Adamczyk said.
“These schools tend to generate high levels of commitment and strong social ties among their students and families, so abortion rates could be higher due to the potential for increased feelings of shame related to an extramarital birth.”

Full Story Abortions higher among religious school students – The Search.

Tea partiers skip prayer and Pledge of Allegiance at opening of national convention.

The inaugural National Tea Party Convention began yesterday in Nashville, TN despite teabagger infighting and controversy surrounding the event in recent weeks. Tea Party activists have criticized the “scammy” convention’s cost, organizer Judson Phillips’ intention to make money of the event, and Sarah Palin’s $120,000 speaking fee. Just last week, Reps. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) and Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) withdrew from their speaking engagements at the convention. And today, the Washington Post reports that the teabaggers — who often boast of their patriotic bona fides — got off to a slow start:

And outside the convention hall, entrepreneurs sold souvenirs: sterling silver tea bag necklaces ($89.99), bags of “Freedom Coffee” ($9) and T-shirts emblazoned with a bald eagle ($20).

Full Story Think Progress » Tea partiers skip prayer and Pledge of Allegiance at opening of national convention..

How to Get Our Democracy Back: Lawrence Lessig Says “If We Want to Change, We Have to Change Congress”

In a cover story of The Nation magazine, Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig writes, “At the center of our government lies a bankrupt institution: Congress. Not financially bankrupt, at least not yet, but politically bankrupt.” He goes on to argue that, “Congress is the core of the problem with American democracy today. In a single line: There will be no change until we change Congress.”

Full Story How to Get Our Democracy Back: Lawrence Lessig Says “If We Want to Change, We Have to Change Congress” | CommonDreams.orgV.

‘Don’t Be Evil,’ Meet ‘Spy on Everyone’: How the NSA Deal Could Kill Google

The company once known for its “don’t be evil” motto is now in bed with the spy agency known for the mass surveillance of American citizens.

The company once known for its “don’t be evil” motto is now in bed with the spy agency known for the mass surveillance of American citizens.

The National Security Agency is widely understood to have the government’s biggest and smartest collection of geeks — the guys that are more skilled at network warfare than just about anyone on the planet. So, in a sense, it’s only natural that Google would turn to the NSA after the company was hit by an ultrasophisticated hack attack. After all, the military has basically done the same thing, putting the NSA in charge of its new “Cyber Command.” The Department of Homeland Security is leaning heavily on the NSA to secure .gov networks.

But there’s a problem. The NSA and its predecessors also have a long history of spying on huge numbers of people, both at home and abroad. During the Cold War, the agency worked with companies like Western Union to intercept and read millions of telegrams. During the war on terror years, the NSA teamed up with the telecommunications companies to eavesdrop on customers’ phone calls and internet traffic right from the telcos’ switching stations. And even after the agency pledged to clean up its act — and was given wide new latitude to spy on whom they liked – the NSA was still caught “overcollecting” on U.S. citizens. According to The New York Times, the agency even “tried to wiretap a member of Congress without a warrant.”

Full Story ‘Don’t Be Evil,’ Meet ‘Spy on Everyone’: How the NSA Deal Could Kill Google | Danger Room | Wired.com.

Bachmann: Obama ‘wants to annihilate us!’

In a fiery fundraising pitch for the American Conservative Union Strikeforce, Rep. Michele Bachmann asks supporters, “Will you let Barack Obama KILL conservatism?” Calling the president a “political street fighter,” she says his “agenda is a dagger pointed right at the heart of conservatism.”

The fundraising letter, which was sent out in late December, says, “Obama wants to use ACORN to radicalize America because he isn’t interested merely in defeating conservatives… …HE WANTS TO ANNIHILATE US! That’s the purpose behind ObamaCare, too.”

Here’s the full text of the letter:

Full Story Bachmann: Obama ‘wants to annihilate us!’ « Minnesota Independent: News. Politics. Media..

Police want backdoor to Web users’ private data

Anyone with an e-mail account likely knows that police can peek inside it if they have a paper search warrant.

But cybercrime investigators are frustrated by the speed of traditional methods of faxing, mailing, or e-mailing companies these documents. They're pushing for the creation of a national Web interface linking police computers with those of Internet and e-mail providers so requests can be sent and received electronically.

CNET has reviewed a survey scheduled to be released at a federal task force meeting on Thursday, which says that law enforcement agencies are virtually unanimous in calling for such an interface to be created. Eighty-nine percent of police surveyed, it says, want to be able to “exchange legal process requests and responses to legal process” through an encrypted, police-only “nationwide computer network.” (See one excerpt and another.)

The survey, according to two people with knowledge of the situation, is part of a broader push from law enforcement agencies to alter the ground rules of online investigations. Other components include renewed calls for laws requiring Internet companies to store data about their users for up to five years and increased pressure on companies to respond to police inquiries in hours instead of days.

Full Story Police want backdoor to Web users’ private data | Politics and Law – CNET News.

Warning, Your Cell Phone May Be Hazardous To Your Health

Earlier this winter, I met an investment banker who was diagnosed with a brain tumor five years ago. He’s a managing director at a top Wall Street firm, and I was put in touch with him through a colleague who knew I was writing a story about the potential dangers of cell-phone radiation. He agreed to talk with me only if his name wasn’t used, so I’ll call him Jim. He explained that the tumor was located just behind his right ear and was not immediately fatal—the five-year survival rate is about 70 percent. He was 35 years old at the time of his diagnosis and immediately suspected it was the result of his intense cell-phone usage. “Not for nothing,” he said, “but in investment banking we’ve been using cell phones since 1992, back when they were the Gordon-Gekko-on-the-beach kind of phone.” When Jim asked his neurosurgeon, who was on the staff of a major medical center in Manhattan, about the possibility of a cell-phone-induced tumor, the doctor responded that in fact he was seeing more and more of such cases—young, relatively healthy businessmen who had long used their phones obsessively. He said he believed the industry had discredited studies showing there is a risk from cell phones. “I got a sense that he was pissed off,” Jim told me. A handful of Jim’s colleagues had already died from brain cancer; the more reports he encountered of young finance guys developing tumors, the more certain he felt that it wasn’t a coincidence. “I knew four or five people just at my firm who got tumors,” Jim says. “Each time, people ask the question. I hear it in the hallways.”

Ever worry that that gadget you spend hours holding next to your head might be damaging your brain? Well, the evidence is starting to pour in, and it’s not pretty. So why isn’t anyone in America doing anything about it?

Full Story Warning, Your Cell Phone May Be Hazardous To Your Health: Gear + Gadgets: GQ.