Archive for February, 2010
It’s A Trap! Stewart Mocks GOP’s Reluctance To Join Health Care Summit
With President Obama inviting Republicans to a televised summit on health care, many GOP leaders have been reluctant to attend, thinking it’s an elaborate trap. This logic didn’t sit well with Jon Stewart… or Admiral Ackbar.
Stewart jokingly agreed with the Republican sentiment, explaining that having a televised, bipartisan conversation on health care is so reasonable that it’s actually an ingenious trap.
Minority Leader John Boehner expressed concern, worried about having to “walk into some setup… who knows what.” To this Stewart responded: “It’s a public dialogue about important legislation. Not Little Big Horn.”
Stewart then called Boehner’s bluff:
Full Story It’s A Trap! Stewart Mocks GOP’s Reluctance To Join Health Care Summit.
10,000 TSA staff to get secret intel
About 10,000 airport security workers will get access to secret intelligence that could help stop terrorist attacks on planes.
The Transportation Security Administration plan aims to help its officers spot terrorists by giving them more detailed information about tactics and threats, TSA officials and security experts said. The agency, viewed by some as throngs of workers pawing through luggage at checkpoints, hopes to empower its higher-level workers as part of an effort to professionalize airport security.
The 10,000 people in line to get classified information are managers, supervisors and “behavior detection officers” who roam airports looking for suspicious people. They represent about 20% of the TSA’s airport workforce and exclude screeners who scan passengers and bags.
Full Story 10,000 TSA staff to get secret intel – USATODAY.com.
OPS: 10,000 minimum wage workers with secret intel – how long is that going to stay secret?
Pregnant Iowa Woman Arrested for Falling Down
Life can’t get much worse for Christine Taylor. Last month, after an upsetting phone conversation with her estranged husband, Ms. Taylor became light-headed and fell down a flight of stairs in her home. Paramedics rushed to the scene and ultimately declared her healthy. However, since she was pregnant with her third child at the time, Taylor thought it would be best to be seen at the local ER to make sure her fetus was unharmed.
That’s when things got really bad and really crazy. Alone, distraught, and frightened, Taylor confided in the nurse treating her that she hadn’t always been sure she’d wanted this baby, now that she was single and unemployed. She’d considered both adoption and abortion before ultimately deciding to keep the child. The nurse then summoned a doctor, who questioned her further about her thoughts on ending the pregnancy. Next thing Taylor knew, she was being arrested for attempted feticide. Apparently the nurse and doctor thought that Taylor threw herself down the stairs on purpose.
Full Story Pregnant Iowa Woman Arrested for Falling Down | Women’s Rights | Change.org.
U.S. successfully tests airborne laser on missile
A U.S. high-powered airborne laser weapon shot down a ballistic missile in the first successful test of a futuristic directed energy weapon, the U.S. Missile Defense Agency said on Friday.
The agency said in a statement the test took place at 8:44 p.m. PST (11:44 p.m. EST) on Thursday /0444 GMT on Friday) at Point Mugu’s Naval Air Warfare Center-Weapons Division Sea Range off Ventura in central California.
“The Missile Defense Agency demonstrated the potential use of directed energy to defend against ballistic missiles when the Airborne Laser Testbed (ALTB) successfully destroyed a boosting ballistic missile” the agency said.
The high-powered Airborne Laser system is being developed by Boeing Co., (BA.N) the prime contractor, and the U.S. Missile Defense Agency.
Boeing produces the airframe, a modified 747 jumbo jet, while Northrop Grumman (NOC.N) supplies the higher-energy laser and Lockheed Martin (LMT.N) is developing the beam and fire control systems
Full Story U.S. successfully tests airborne laser on missile | Reuters.
Toyota faces massive legal liability
Legal expenses and damages could add billions to Toyota’s recall costs, with dozens of suits pending over injuries and deaths and at least 30 seeking class-action status over lost use of vehicles.
Toyota Motor Corp.’s massive recalls for acceleration and braking problems are creating a huge legal liability for the company — and Toyota owners may share in the pain.
The Japanese automaker faces dozens of lawsuits over injuries and deaths attributed to safety problems, with many more suits expected. Lawyers and legal experts said the lawsuits could be particularly expensive for the automaker if plaintiffs prove that Toyota was aware of problems but failed to correct them.
On top of that, there are at least 30 lawsuits seeking class-action status to recover damages for the reduced value of the cars and the lost use of vehicles during repairs.
Full Story Toyota faces massive legal liability – latimes.com.
Iceland aims to become haven for investigative journalism
Parliament to vote on Wikileaks-backed law that would protect sources, guarantee freedom of speech and end libel tourism
Iceland is aiming to become a global haven for investigative journalism, with the country’s parliament expected to vote through legislation protecting sources, guaranteeing freedom of speech and ending libel tourism.
Supporters liken the initiative to the offshore financial havens that corporations use to avoid government tax regimes – only for free speech.
The Icelandic Modern Media Initiative is due to go before the country’s parliament on Tuesday, according to Jonathan Stray – a blogger for Harvard University’s Nieman Journalism Lab. And the people behind Wikileaks have been involved in drafting the law.
Full Story Iceland aims to become haven for investigative journalism | Media | guardian.co.uk.
Few Americans Want Members of Congress Re-Elected, Poll Finds
Just 8 percent of Americans want the members of Congress re-elected, according to a CBS News-New York Times poll taken nine months before roughly one-third of the Senate and the entire House face voters.
The Feb. 5-10 survey found 81 percent of respondents saying the lawmakers shouldn’t receive another term.
By 80 percent to 13 percent, Americans said members of Congress are more interested in serving special interests than the people they represent.
Full Story Few Americans Want Members of Congress Re-Elected, Poll Finds – Yahoo! News.
One in ten House Republicans calling it quits
With Thursday’s announcement that Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart (R-FL) will not seek re-election in his Miami-area district, the number of Republicans not running for re-election to the House now amounts to more than 10 percent of the House Republican caucus, compared to less than five percent for Democrats.
Chris Cillizza at the Washington Post notes that the total number of House Republicans set to retire or seek other office is now 18, or slightly more than 10 percent of the 178 seats the GOP holds in the House.
By comparison, Roll Call’s list of departing lawmakers shows that only 12 House Democrats are retiring, or slightly less than five percent of the Democrats’ 255 seats.
Full Story One in ten House Republicans calling it quits | Raw Story.
Howard Dean: Democrats ‘need a spinal transplant’
One year after being swept into the White House and bestowed huge majorities in Congress, Democrats have seen their towering lead over Republicans evaporate. Why? According to previous DNC chairman Howard Dean, they’re just not tough enough.
Dean declared Thursday that Democrats “need a spinal transplant” as the party is too quick to succumb to Republican intimidation rather than stand by their convictions and bring their ideas to fruition.
“Republicans are so irresponsible,” Dean said. “They put the good of their party ahead of the good of the country, and when that happens they don’t deserve to serve in office anymore.”
Full Story Howard Dean: Democrats ‘need a spinal transplant’ | Raw Story.
Top five health insurers posted 56 percent profit gains in 2009
If no health care overhaul passes Congress, health insurers may be in for a windfall — and one far larger that most Americans probably realize.
According to a study by a pro-health reform group published Thursday, the nation’s largest five health insurance companies posted a 56 percent gain in 2009 profits over 2008. The insurers including Wellpoint, UnitedHealth, Cigna, Aetna and Humana, which cover the majority of Americans with insurance.
The insurers’ hefty profit gains came even as 2.7 million more Americans lost their insurance coverage due to the declining economy.
Full Story Top five health insurers posted 56 percent profit gains in 2009 | Raw Story.
Obama ‘wins showdown’ with Republicans as the Senate confirms 27 of his high-level nominees.
At the beginning of this week, the Senate was sitting on 63 of President Obama’s nominees because of holds placed on them by one or more senators. In a bipartisan meeting with congressional leaders on Tuesday, Obama warned Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) that he would be forced to make a large number of recess appointments if Republicans didn’t stop their politicking and help break the “unprecedented” logjam before the Senate’s Presidents’ Day recess. Today, the Senate finally confirmed 27 of these nominees. However, in his statement, Obama held out the possibility of using recess appointments in the future if Republicans continue to block his nominees:
While this is a good first step, there are still dozens of nominees on hold who deserve a similar vote, and I will be looking for action from the Senate when it returns from recess. If they do not act, I reserve the right to use my recess appointment authority in the future.
GOP Sen. candidate refuses to apologize for comparing embryonic stem cell research to Nazi experiments.
As ThinkProgress noted earlier this week, GOP Senate candidate Curtis Coleman (R-AR), who is running against Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR), compared embryonic stem cell research to “what the Nazis did to the Jews.“ Yesterday, progressive radio host Thom Hartmann invited Coleman onto his show and offered him a chance to apologize to survivors of the Holocaust for his statement. Coleman flatly refused to apologize and went on to say that it is “not at all” a horrific comparison:
HARTMANN: I wanted to give you an opportunity to apologize to the Holocaust survivors of Arkansas for that comparison and that remark.
COLEMAN: I’m not sure an apology is needed. [...]
The U.S. Needs an Industrial Policy
As a nation we’ve been driving toward this no-growth plateau for several decades.
John Hofmeister, former president of Shell Oil Company and founder and CEO of Citizens for Affordable Energy wrote the following article which appeared in the Wall Street Journal Op-Ed. American policymakers need to commit to developing a strategic industrial policy, like every other industrialized nation in the world.
As a nation we’ve been driving toward this no-growth plateau for several decades. As manufacturing has shrunk, we’ve honored the gods of “rationalization,” “restructuring,” and the almightiest of all, “globalization.” Core industry after industry has orchestrated its own decline, facilitated by short-term managerial reward systems.
Full Story The U.S. Needs an Industrial Policy | Economy In Crisis.
Bernanke Says Interest Rates May Rise
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke outlined the central bank’s plan to disentangle itself from the financial markets after a period of unprecedented intervention.
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke on Wednesday outlined the central bank’s plan to disentangle itself from the financial markets after a period of unprecedented intervention, telling lawmakers that the Fed would likely raise interest rates in the near future to begin that process.
In prepared testimony Bernanke was scheduled to deliver to a Congressional committee, he planned to tell lawmakers that the Fed was prepared to increase short-term interest rates as soon as the economy was on more sound footing.
“Although at present the U.S. economy continues to require the support of highly accommodative monetary policies, at some point the Federal Reserve will need to tighten financial conditions by raising short-term interest rates and reducing the quantity of bank reserves outstanding,” he wrote. “We have spent considerable effort in developing the tools we will need to remove policy accommodation, and we are fully confident that at the appropriate time we will be able to do so effectively.”
Full Story Bernanke Says Interest Rates May Rise | Economy In Crisis.
OPS: No Shit.
How the U.S. is Creating Longterm Stress
Award winning author and economist Eamonn Fingleton discusses how the consumer goods and capital goods that are flooding our economy will impact our future.
Full Story How the U.S. is Creating Longterm Stress | Economy In Crisis.
Is Bipartisanship Possible with the Jobs Bill?
With Senate Democrats looking to pass a new jobs initiative within the next week, America will once again see “bipartisanship” brought to the forefront of our political culture.
According to CNN, many Democrats in the Senate are hoping to engage their counterparts across party lines to tackle America’s growing unemployment problem. Unfortunately, if the Democrats hope to build a bipartisan jobs initiative, they will have to find a way to cajole Republicans onto their plan. By including many of these Republican provisions, an otherwise worthwhile plan could turn into a disaster.
A Republican president initiated the Wall Street bailout and rescue programs, with wide Republican support in Congress. A Republican president initiated the “stimulus programs”, with wide Republican support in Congress. Now however, a Democrat is in the Oval Office and Republicans are unilaterally against the very same policies they supported up until the day before the 2008 election.
Full Story Is Bipartisanship Possible with the Jobs Bill? | Economy In Crisis.
OPS: Only the Democrats in Congress and the White House are pretending to worry about bipartisanship. No one else.
Stimulus Creating Green Jobs… Overseas
As intended, the $787 billion stimulus package is creating thousands of “green jobs,” yet, of the money spent thus far, eight of every $10 went to a foreign company.
As intended, the $787 billion stimulus package is creating thousands of “green jobs,” unfortunately the vast majority of those jobs are going overseas, according to a new report conducted jointly by the Investigative Reporting Workshop and ABC News.
So far, over $2 billion has been spent on wind energy projects through the stimulus package – enough to power 2.4 million homes, the report found.
Yet, of the money spent thus far, eight of every $10 went to a foreign company, the report says.
“This is one of those stories in Washington that when you tell people five miles outside the Beltway, or anywhere else in America, they cannot believe it,” Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said, according to ABC News. “It makes people lose faith in government, and it frankly infuriates me.”
Full Story Stimulus Creating Green Jobs… Overseas | Economy In Crisis.
Is Obama Trying to Dismantle Roosevelt’s New Deal?
FDR, he is not. Obama and his team read the lesson of humiliating defeat in Massachusetts and conservative hostility as an advisory to move further to the right.
On March 4, 1933, the day he took office, Franklin Roosevelt excoriated the “money changers” who “have fled from their high seats in the temples of our civilization [because...] they know only the rules of a generation of self-seekers. They have no vision and where there is no vision, the people perish.”
Rhetoric, however, is only rhetoric. According to one skeptical congressional observer of FDR’s first inaugural address, “The President drove the money-changers out of the Capitol on March 4th — and they were all back on the 9th.”
That was essentially true. It was what happened after that, in the midst of the Great Depression, which set the New Deal on a course that is the mirror image of the direction in which the Obama administration seems headed.
Full Story Is Obama Trying to Dismantle Roosevelt’s New Deal? | News & Politics | AlterNet.
Five Ways to Improve Your Sex Life
I won’t lie: Sex has saved me. From myself especially. From going so deep into the spirals of my own brain which could drive me crazy. But when everything is perfect, there is no mind in sex. There is just feeling; just the body, moving, stretching, pulling, reaching, opening, pulsing, listening, taking, giving; just sensation.
Sex Saves
And that’s precisely what I need on days where my mind is racing and I’ve spent one or two or eight too many hours in front of the computer screen, the only sensations being my ass going numb, my eyes getting tired and sticky with lack of lubricant, and my fingertips tip-tapping away at these little lettered keys. I live in my mind. Don’t most of us, these days? Most of us, anyway, who would be readers of a sexy intelligent site like this one.
Sex has saved me from that inward spinning. Palming the responsibility of someone else’s bruises jolts me up and out of my brain and reminds me that I am connecting; I am pounding out ripples with everything that I touch.
But it hasn’t always been this way. I struggled for too long to figure out what I wanted. I knew the sex I was having wasn’t enough, but what would be enough? How to paint myself a cobblestone path from here to there?
Full Story Five Ways to Improve Your Sex Life « Sex positivity « Society.
Why We Don’t Need Religion to Give Life Mystery
If you’re worried that we’re in danger of understanding everything about the universe, you can relax.
“What does Dr. Bloody Bronowski know about it?”
“He knows everything!”
“Oh, I wouldn’t like that. It’d take all the mystery out of life.”
It takes all the mystery out of life. This is an argument that sometimes gets made against the atheist/materialist/naturalist view of life.
Naturalism is too reductionist, the argument goes. By seeking to explain the universe in terms of physical cause and effect, and in seeking to understand that physical cause and effect in increasingly greater breadth and detail, naturalism ultimately seeks to explain and understand everything. And that would be bad. We need some mystery. Mystery — unanswered and unanswerable questions — are a central part of what makes us human. Without it, our life would be bleak and empty, with a yearning that can never be satisfied… because there’s nothing left out there to satisfy it.
Religion, supposedly, offers that mystery. The belief in that which cannot be perceived by the senses; the belief in immaterial entities or forces that somehow affect the world but that nobody perceives in the same way; the belief in a life after this one that nobody’s ever returned from and nobody really knows anything about…all of this fills the human need for mystery, the need for questions we don’t know the answer to.
Okay. Deep breath.
Full Story Why We Don’t Need Religion to Give Life Mystery | Media and Culture | AlterNet.
Republicans at Highest Levels Really Want to Do Away with Democracy for All
There’s a dangerous right-wing alignment in the making; race-baiters proposing ‘civics literacy tests’ and elite free market ideologues who see democracy as inefficient.
While Tea Party movement followers ran around Nashville last week dressed up in their Paul Revere period costumes, blathering about their heroic struggle against Obama’s Islamosocialist tyranny, the right-wing elite that nurtures them, and their paid libertarian ideologues, have been openly advocating the abolition of America’s democracy in favor of a free-market junta, because, as they say over and over, voters cannot be trusted to rule themselves.
Here, for example, is how one popular libertarian pundit summed up the attitude: “To be a libertarian in a modern democracy is to say that nearly 300 million Americans are wrong, and a handful of nay-sayers are right.” It’s a quote so common among the Republican and libertarian vanguard that it’s almost irrelevant which one of them said it — I’ll get to this guy later, but suffice to know that he’s a tenured professor, and sitting pretty in the same billionaire-funded world of think tanks, institutes, and PR machines that launched the Tea Party.
That’s the dangerously authoritarian part of the Tea Party that we’ve forgotten about lately.
Full Story Republicans at Highest Levels Really Want to Do Away with Democracy for All | News & Politics | AlterNet.
CLIMATE CHANGE: The Day After Tomorrow Might Have Been Yesterday
When the 2004 film “The Day After Tomorrow” depicted the northern United States buried under tens of feet of snow following an abrupt change in global climate patterns, it cemented the association in the public consciousness between climate change and extreme weather events.
While the three feet or so of snowfall in Washington and throughout the mid-Atlantic U.S. coast this past week was a far cry from the tidal waves and walls of ice that haunted Jake Gyllenhaal and Dennis Quaid in the science-fiction thriller, it has nonetheless been an exceptional event – and one that has ground the capital to an extended standstill.
As Washingtonians finally dug Friday to brave clogged metro trains and icy roads on the way to the office, one of the lasting impacts of the past week is the discussions it has provoked about how climate change has impacted the current weather – and how this weather might impact the ongoing debate here over how the U.S. government should address the threat of climate change.
Full Story CLIMATE CHANGE: The Day After Tomorrow Might Have Been Yesterday.
The Earthquake and Haiti’s Hidden Oil
I wrote Part 1 of Oil in Haiti as the economic reasons for the US/UN occupation back in October, 2009. After the earthquake I questioned whether oil drilling could have triggered the earthquake (Did mining and oil drilling trigger the Haiti earthquake?)
Then suddenly, after spending years hitting myself against Officialdom's colonial rock that kept denying Haiti had significant resources. After being called crazy and un-American for writing that the 2010 earthquake gives the US the perfect disaster-capitalism opportunity to come out from behind the UN and openly occupy Haiti to secure Haiti's oil, strategic location and other riches for the corporatocracy.
Just after I wrote about oil drilling causing earthquakes, on the following Tuesday, a veteran oil company man comes forward in Businessweek to say, and one wonders how he can so authoritatively speculate about the area of the faultline without intimate knowledge of the drillings, explorations, Haiti's wellheads and oil map, et al, but nonetheless his sudden, seemingly unprompted REVELATION, is that Haiti lies in an area that has undiscovered amounts of oil, it must have oil and the earthquake “may have left clues” to petroleum reservoirs!
Oil that, uhmmm, “could aid economic recovery in the Western Hemisphere's poorest nation, a geologist said.” (Haiti Earthquake May Have Exposed Gas, Aiding Economy by Jim Polson, Jan. 26, 2010, Bloomberg.) Yep, yep he may really mean: “that could aid Haiti's US-occupied economy recover its strategic oil reserves” for the global elite. No? I could be wrong, but I am thinking “and the cover up, starts.” But I won't say so. Let Stephen Pierce tell the story…
Full Story The Earthquake and Haiti’s Hidden Oil.
More Pain for Devastated Haiti: Under the Pretense of Disaster Relief, U.S. Running a Military Occupation | World | AlterNet
The rapid mobilization of U.S troops in Haiti was not primarily done for humanitarian reasons; we’re likely to see a neoliberal economic plan imposed, at gunpoint if necessary.
Official denials aside, the United States has embarked on a new military occupation of Haiti thinly cloaked as disaster relief. While both the Pentagon and the United Nations claimed more troops were needed to provide “security and stability” to bring in aid, according to nearly all independent observers in the field, violence was never an issue. in
Instead, there appears to be cruder motives for the military response. With Haiti’s government “all but invisible” and its repressive security forces collapsed, popular organizations were starting to fill the void. But the Western powers rushing in envision sweatshops and tourism as the foundation of a rebuilt Haiti. This is opposed by the popular organizations, which draw their strength from Haiti’s overwhelmingly poor majority. Thus, if a neoliberal plan is going to be imposed on a devastated Haiti it will be done at gunpoint.
One Free Market System for Wall Street, Another Free Market System for Main Street
Robert Reich -
Washington is paralyzed by snow and partisanship. Nothing is getting done – even as the Great Recession pulls more Americans into its maw.
In the midst of this paralysis, the President was asked about the giant pay packages of Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan Chase & Co. ($17 mullion for 2009) and Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of Goldman Sachs ($9 million). “First of all, I know both those guys,” Obama said. “They’re very savvy businessmen. And I, like most of the American people, don’t begrudge people success or wealth. That’s part of the free market system.”
Free market system? As I remember it, American taxpayers forked out hundreds of billions to keep JPMorgan, Goldman, and other big Wall Street banks afloat through most of 2009. Had we not done so, Dimon, Blankfein, and most other top executives on Wall Street would not have earned a dime last year. In fact, some would be out on the street, reather than sitting pretty on the Street.
Full Story Robert Reich (One Free Market System for Wall Street, Another Free Market System for Main Street).
Mr. President: Bankers and Pro Athletes are Fundamentally Different
President Barack Obama is a relative newbie to Washington. He didn’t even complete one term in the senate, and now he’s just finished his first year in the White House, so it’s stunning to see how quickly this one-time “community organizer” has lost his moorings in the marbled halls of power in Washington.
In an interview reported in the Bloomberg news service, Obama expresses no concern with the latest huge bonuses that CEOs Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan Chase ($17 million) and Lloyd Blankenfein of Goldman Sachs (9 million) paid themselves, saying not only that they are “savvy businessmen” and that “success and wealth” are “part of the American system,” but equating them with professional baseball players who “are making more than that who don’t get to the World Series either.”
Talk about being out of it!
Full Story Mr. President: Bankers and Pro Athletes are Fundamentally Different | The Smirking Chimp.
Republicans and Medicare
Paul Krugman -
“Don’t cut Medicare. The reform bills passed by the House and Senate cut Medicare by approximately $500 billion. This is wrong.” So declared Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the House, in a recent op-ed article written with John Goodman, the president of the National Center for Policy Analysis.
And irony died.
Now, Mr. Gingrich was just repeating the current party line. Furious denunciations of any effort to seek cost savings in Medicare — death panels! — have been central to Republican efforts to demonize health reform. What’s amazing, however, is that they’re getting away with it.
Why is this amazing? It’s not just the fact that Republicans are now posing as staunch defenders of a program they have hated ever since the days when Ronald Reagan warned that Medicare would destroy America’s freedom. Nor is it even the fact that, as House speaker, Mr. Gingrich personally tried to ram through deep cuts in Medicare — and, in 1995, went so far as to shut down the federal government in an attempt to bully Bill Clinton into accepting those cuts.
Full Story Op-Ed Columnist – Republicans and Medicare – NYTimes.com.
Descent Into Barbarism: The US and NATO Wage War on the World
The argument is won: capitalism as an effective system to organise society and provide for human needs has expired. The evidence is conclusive. Trillions of dollars to kickstart the economy in the US and Europe may have given an ephemeral lease of life to the financial class to spin the casino wheel once again, but it is more apparent by the day that the tentative “recovery” has spluttered to a standstill. Gridlocked by unprecedented levels of personal and national debts, the engine of production – the real economy – is in a state of rigor mortis.
This collapse has been a long time in the making. Decades of easy credit was up to now a way for the ruling class – government, corporations, financial institutions – to let the majority of workers subsidise the chronic loss in their livelihoods, which have been drained since the mid-1970s by the oligarchy’s self-aggrandisement from wage cutting, regressive taxation and public spending cuts. The political class – whether liberal or conservative, right or left – have facilitated this giant wealth-siphoning process.
However, the point is that the economic system is now objectively shown to be moribound. And it is impossible for so-called mainstream politicians to think of any other way of doing business. They are ideologically blind. Recall former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s arrogant assertion: “There is no alternative”. Likewise, US President Barack Obama insists on throwing billions more dollars at the banks and financiers on Wall Street. But that won’t kickstart an economy in which millions of workers are without jobs and homes or who are on crumby wages and up to their necks in debt. The profit system has hit an historic dead-end and this gridlock is a result of deep trends to do with the decline in capitalism as a mode of social production (falling wages and profits and the concomitant explosion in financial speculation and debts).
Full Story Descent Into Barbarism: The US and NATO Wage War on the World.
Big Ag Takes on Yellowtail Wine
Spittin’ mad. That’s the only way to put it.
The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) makes conventional U.S. livestock farmers downright, wet-hen, cat-in-a-blender, spittin’ mad. When HSUS manages to alter state constitutions to ban battery cages and gestation crates, well, you better start bringing guns to your knife fights, vegans.
To wit: Yellowtail Wine of Australia decided to pony up $100,000 for HSUS this week, and the pushback has been conducted at lightning speed. From Big Beef’s Drovers Magazine:
Yesterday we reported about Yellow Tail wine’s new promotion (http://tinyurl.com/yderv3g) to contribute $100,000 to the Humane Society of the United States“to support us and our programs to help animals, including our Spay Day Online Pet Photo Contest,” according to HSUS. Though it’s not known to what extent, Yellow Tail admits its customers are taking issue with this collaboration.
Full Story Big Ag Takes on Yellowtail Wine | Fair Food Fight.
The Lobbying-Media Complex
“The talking heads of cable news are leading double lives as paid lobbyists for corporations.”
President Obama spent most of December 4 touring Allentown, Pennsylvania, meeting with local workers and discussing the economic crisis. A few hours later, the state’s former governor, Tom Ridge, was on MSNBC’s Hardball With Chris Matthews, offering up his own recovery plan. There were “modest things” the White House might try, like cutting taxes or opening up credit for small businesses, but the real answer was for the president to “take his green agenda and blow it out of the box.” The first step, Ridge explained, was to “create nuclear power plants.” Combined with some waste coal and natural gas extraction, you would have an “innovation setter” that would “create jobs, create exports.”
As Ridge counseled the administration to “put that package together,” he sure seemed like an objective commentator. But what viewers weren’t told was that since 2005, Ridge has pocketed $530,659 in executive compensation for serving on the board of Exelon, the nation’s largest nuclear power company. As of March 2009, he also held an estimated $248,299 in Exelon stock, according to SEC filings.
Moments earlier, retired general and “NBC Military Analyst” Barry McCaffrey told viewers that the war in Afghanistan would require an additional “three- to ten-year effort” and “a lot of money.” Unmentioned was the fact that DynCorp paid McCaffrey $182,309 in 2009 alone. The government had just granted DynCorp a five-year deal worth an estimated $5.9 billion to aid American forces in Afghanistan. The first year is locked in at $644 million, but the additional four options are subject to renewal, contingent on military needs and political realities.
Full Story The Lobbying-Media Complex.
Walmart offers job training via Public Sschools
But one activist asks whether students are being trained as “subservient workers”
The Detroit Public Schools have teamed up with Walmart Stores to provide job training and entry-level, afterschool jobs to students at four high schools.
The training program was kicked off today at assemblies held at Frederick Douglass Academy for Young Men and at Western International High.
Detroit International Academy for Women and Henry Ford High will also participate.
Students will get 11 weeks of job-readiness training during the school day and 10 high school credits for the class and work experience.
Full Story Walmart offers job training via DPS | freep.com | Detroit Free Press.
Ridicule of Conspiracy Theories Focuses On Diffusing Criticism of the Powerful
The label “conspiracy theory” is commonly used to try to discredit criticism of the powerful in government or business.
For example, just this week – after Tony Blair was confronted by the Iraq Inquiry with evidence that he had used lies to sell the Iraq war – Blair dismissed the entire Iraq Inquiry as simply being part of Britain’s “obsession with conspiracy theories“. (Not only did Blair know that Saddam possessed no WMDs, but the French this week accused Blair of using of ‘Soviet-style’ propaganda in run-up to the Iraq war).
Of course, the American government has been busted in the last couple of years in numerous conspiracies. For example, William K. Black – professor of economics and law, and the senior regulator during the S & L crisis – says that that the government’s entire strategy now – as during the S&L crisis – is to cover up how bad things are (“the entire strategy is to keep people from getting the facts”).Similarly , 7 out of the 8 giant, money center banks went bankrupt in the 1980′s during the “Latin American Crisis”, and the government’s response was to cover up their insolvency.
And the government spied on American citizens (even before 9/11 … confirmed here and here), while saying “we don’t spy”. The government tortured prisoners in Iraq, but said “we don’t torture”.
In other words, high-level government officials have conspired to cover up the truth.
Nice Guys Finish Last
The New Republic -
What Obama could learn from Bush about bipartisanship.
Everyone remembers that George W. Bush’s first tax cut was contentious when Congress considered it back in 2001. So contentious, in fact, that the Bushies didn’t even try passing it under normal Senate procedures. The GOP leadership, worried that it couldn’t collect 60 votes to overcome a Democratic filibuster, relied on reconciliation, the Senate rule that allows budget-related measures to pass with a simple majority.
What fewer people remember is the margin by which Bush’s tax cut finally passed the Senate. As it happens, the number of yeas was 62—including 12 Democrats. That would qualify as a bipartisan love-fest by contemporary standards.
There’s a lesson here: For months now, Republicans and many Democrats have faulted the White House for being too partisan in its dealings with Congress on health care. For example, in an article in The Hill this week, one centrist senator complained that chief of staff Rahm Emanuel had “misjudged the Senate by focusing on only a few Republicans.” “The Senate doesn’t work that way,” the senator said. “You need a radius of 10 to 12 from the other side if you’re going to have a shot.”
Full Story Nice Guys Finish Last | The New Republic.
Reid Tosses Bloated Bipartisan Jobs Bill For Something Leaner
The Senate’s bipartisan jobs package, which had robust support from the White House and the GOP, but was packed with corporate giveaways, lasted less than a day.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) emerged from a Democratic Caucus meeting Thursday afternoon to announce that he had decided to scrap it, in exchange for a much-simplified package. The decision left aides to members of both parties scratching their heads, but there may be a smart political rationale behind it.
The new bill drops disaster assistance and extensions of unemployment insurance and COBRA helath-insurance subsidies, all Democratic priorities which will need to be addressed before they expire within the next few weeks.
Full Story Reid Tosses Bloated Bipartisan Jobs Bill For Something Leaner.
Hunger Report 2010
The report shows that hunger is increasing at an alarming rate in the United States, and our network is expanding its reach in response:
* Feeding America is annually providing food to 37 million Americans, including 14 million children. This is an increase of 46 percent over 2006, when we were feeding 25 million Americans, including 9 million children, each year.
* That means one in eight Americans now rely on Feeding America for food and groceries.
* Feeding America's nationwide network of food banks is feeding 1 million more Americans each week than we did in 2006.
* Thirty-six percent of the households we serve have at least one person working.
* More than one-third of client households report having to choose between food and other basic necessities, such as rent, utilities and medical care.
* The number of children the Feeding America network serves has increased by 50 percent since 2006.
Full Story Hunger Report 2010.
Activist not done jousting at traffic cameras
Ronnie Kidd knew exactly what he was looking at.
The unblinking black eye on the slender steel pole could only be a traffic-enforcement camera; but what, he wondered, was it doing in Heath?
Sitting in traffic on his Yamaha motorcycle last spring, the 61-year-old former electrician and factory worker had an epiphany: The city should not have been able to decide to install traffic-enforcement cameras without residents knowing about it beforehand.
And so began Kidd’s late-blooming career as a political activist, which has earned him mixed reactions across the state.
Full Story Activist not done jousting at traffic cameras | The Columbus Dispatch.
Single Payer Health Care (along the lines of the German and French System) is the way to go.
Single Payer Health Care (along the lines of the German and French System) is the way to go.
It should be marketed to the US voters as best for small businesses, which it is.
I have been a small business owner in the USA and in Germany for over 25 years.
I can not afford the same medical benefits to my USA employees that my employees get in Germany.
Biden Attacks GOP Abuse Of Filibuster: ‘You Can’t Govern If You Require A Super Majority’
Senate Republicans have abused the filibuster in an unprecedented way, crippling the Senate from enacting needed reforms and preventing the majority from carrying out their electoral mandate.
Appearing on CNN’s Larry King Live yesterday, Vice President Biden — who serves as the constitutional President of the Senate — called out the Republican abuse of the filibuster:
I was a senator for 36 years. I got there when I was 29 years old. So I’ve been through seven presidents — eight now. And I’ve never seen a time when the operating norm to get anything passed was a super majority of 60 votes. No matter what — no matter what the bill is, it’s filibustered. It’s required to get 60 votes.
Full Story Think Progress » Biden Attacks GOP Abuse Of Filibuster: ‘You Can’t Govern If You Require A Super Majority’.
OPS: So tell me again why it hs taken you THIS long to figure this out?
US power groups to merge in $4.7bn deal
FirstEnergy to buy Allegheny Energy
FirstEnergy agreed yesterday to acquire Allegheny Energy for $4.7bn in an all-stock transaction analysts expect might start a much-needed round of consolidation in the power sector.
Under the agreement, Allegheny shareholders would receive 0.667 shares of FirstEnergy common stock for each share of Allegheny they own.
Based on the closing stock prices for both companies on February 10, Allegheny shareholders would receive a value of $27.65 per share, or a total of $4.7bn. FirstEnergy also would assume about $3.8bn in Allegheny debt.
Full Story FT.com / Companies / Utilities – US power groups to merge in $4.7bn deal.
Teabaggers upset Marvel Comics turned them into ’supervillians’
It seems there's a new third rail in American politics — don't mess with the Tea Partiers — and Marvel Comics has inadvertently grabbed it with both hands. And even though members of the Tea Party movement have extracted a half-hearted apology and a promised retraction from Marvel, their anger has barely abated.
In a recent issue of Captain America, the long-time superhero and his African-American partner The Falcon travel to Idaho to investigate a white supremacist militia group, the Watchdogs, who are long-time villains in the Marvel Universe. On the way, they pass an anti-tax rally where the protesters are holding up signs bearing familiar Tea Party slogans, such as “Stop the Socialists!” and “Tea Bag the Libs Before They Tea Bag You.”
This implied mockery of the Tea Partiers quickly aroused a firestorm of indignation on conservative blogs and message boards, made even worse by the implied association between the protesters and the local racist militia.
Full Story Teabaggers upset Marvel Comics turned them into ’supervillians’ | Raw Story.
WellPoint Rate Hike: Insurer Blames ‘Demographics’ For 39% Premium Increase In California
Health insurer WellPoint blames a shift in demographics and rising medical costs for its planned 39 percent rate hike for some California customers.
In a memo obtained by The Associated Press, WellPoint Inc. tells Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius that because of the weak economy, healthy people are dropping coverage or buying cheaper plans. The decline in premium revenue means there’s less money to cover claims from sicker customers who are keeping their coverage. That resulted in a 2009 loss for the unit. The insurer says its 2010 rates aim to cover the shortfall expected from the continuation of that trend.
“When the healthy leave and the sick stay, that is going to dramatically drive up costs,” Brian Sassi, who heads WellPoint’s consumer business unit, said in an interview with The Associated Press.
Full Story WellPoint Rate Hike: Insurer Blames ‘Demographics’ For 39% Premium Increase In California.
The Empire Falls Back
Len Hart, -
We’ve grown up with a Christian-Roman version of European and world history, primarily the Fall of Rome. The Romans –we are taught –created a great empire characterized by a sophisticated system of arrow-straight roads that made possible commerce and travel from the far flung reaches of empire from Briton to Constantinople, from Carthage to Germania.
Just outside the borders of empire, we are taught, lived uncivilized, untutored barbarian hordes intent upon harassing, plundering, threatening the Pax Romana that defined the Greatest Empire the world had ever seen. The term Pax Romana always rang false with me. Was it ever at peace but, rather, an Orwellian perpetual war, the systemized, ‘corporatized’ taking of human life required to keep the Leviathan afloat?
Much speculation about the fall of Rome is false. Fundamentalist Christians in America believe Rome fell because it indulged orgies, homosexuality and the feeding of Christians to lions. The more informed may cite Gibbon and sum up the fall of Rome in a phrase: loss of civic virtue. While no one will pretend that Rome was in all ways and all times virtuous, the ‘loss of civic virtue’ applies as well to fiscal profligacy, arrogance and, perhaps most importantly, the consequences of conquest.
Full Story The Existentialist Cowboy: The Empire Falls Back.
Brain damage causes spiritual feelings?
Damaged brains escape the material world
Increased feelings of transcendence can follow brain damage, a study of people with brain cancer suggests.
As feelings of transcending the physical world can be part of some religious experiences and other forms of spirituality, the finding may help explain why some people seem more prone to such experiences than others.
The brain region in question, the posterior parietal cortex, is involved in maintaining a sense of self, for example by helping you keep track of your body parts. It has also been linked to prayer and meditation
To further probe its role, Cosimo Urgesi, a neuroscientist at the University of Udine in Italy, turned to 88 people who were being treated for brain cancer.
Full Story Damaged brains escape the material world – life – 11 February 2010 – New Scientist.
U.S. would reap billions from $1 cigarette tax hike
Adding a $1 per pack tax to cigarettes could raise more than $9 billion a year for states, health advocates said on Wednesday, and a poll released with the study shows Americans would support such a tax.
The poll, conducted by International Communications Research, found 60 percent of voters would support the tax to help struggling states and would prefer it over other tax increases or budget cuts.
“An increase in tobacco tax rates is not only sound public health policy but a smart and predictable way to help boost the economy and generate long-term health savings for states facing deepening budget deficits,” said John Seffrin, chief executive of the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network.
Full Story U.S. would reap billions from $1 cigarette tax hike – Yahoo! News.
OPS: We could eliminate the entire deficit by revoking the Reagan Tax cuts for Millionaires and Billionaires and cutting the War Budget in half
Parents of five-year old sue health insurance company
A health insurance provider is under fire for refusing to pay for a treatment that might save a young boy’s life.
Five-year-old Kyler VanNocker of Pennsylvania is ailing from a lethal childhood cancer known as neuroblastoma, and his insurer HealthAmerica is refusing to pay for the only known treatment that can save his life, reports Ronnie Polaneczky for the Philadelphia Daily News.
In response, VanNocker’s parents Paul and Maria have filed a lawsuit against the insurance company claiming its alleged decision to refuse coverage for their son is based on “a biased, self-serving misreading and misinterpretation” of his medical records and their own policies.
Full Story Parents of five-year old sue health insurance company | Raw Story.
Vermont’s Radioactive Nightmare
The Fallout at Vermont Yankee
By HARVEY WASSERMAN
Like a decayed flotilla of rickety steamers, at least 27 of America’s 104 aging atomic reactors are known to be leaking radioactive tritium, which is linked to cancer if inhaled or ingested through the throat or skin.
The fallout has been fiercest at Vermont Yankee, where a flood of cover-ups has infuriated and terrified near neighbors who say the reactor was never meant to operate more than 30 years, and must now shut.
In 2007 one of Yankee’s 22 cooling towers simply collapsed due to rot.
Now the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has confirmed tritium levels in a monitoring well at Vernon to be 3.5 times the federal safety standard. The leaks apparently came from underground pipes whose very existence was recently denied by VY officials in under-oath testimony at a public hearing. Vermont’s pro-nuclear Republican Governor Jim Douglas has termed the event “a breach of trust that cannot be tolerated.”
Full Story Harvey Wasserman: Vermont’s Radioactive Nightmare.
Time to Tax Financial Speculation
For decades, international activists have been pushing the idea of a tax on financial transactions. Such a tax would give us a twofer: a drop in short-term speculation that serves no productive purpose and leads to dangerous bubbles, and 2) loads of money that could be used for good things, like health, climate, and jobs programs.
Today, we’re closer to achieving this two-for-one deal than we’ll probably ever be in our lifetimes. Reeling from the worst financial crisis in 80 years, policymakers are not only desperate for new sources of revenue, they’re more open to rethinking the role of Wall Street and making sure it serves real economic needs.
To take advantage of these new opportunities, a wide range of activists, including trade unionists, international health advocates, and climate justice groups, have come together to move this decades-old proposition into practice. Their efforts are gaining traction—and even some celebrity support.
Full Story Time to Tax Financial Speculation by Sarah Anderson — YES! Magazine.
Cellular user privacy at risk
If you own a cell phone, you should care about the outcome of a case scheduled to be argued in federal appeals court in Philadelphia tomorrow. It could well decide whether the government can use your cell phone to track you – even if it hasn’t shown probable cause to believe it will turn up evidence of a crime.
The American Civil Liberties Union, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Center for Democracy and Technology will ask the court to require that the government at least show probable cause before it can track your whereabouts.
Although most people don’t realize it, cell phones double as tracking devices. Newer phones contain GPS chips, the same technology that allows car navigation systems to know where you are and give directions (“Turn right now”). But even older phones that don’t have chips can be tracked by knowing the location of the cell towers they use to connect to a network.
Full Story Cellular user privacy at risk | Philadelphia Inquirer | 02/11/2010.
Unions bash Democrats, warn of political fallout
Labor groups are furious with the Democrats they helped put in office — and are threatening to stay home this fall when Democratic incumbents will need their help fending off Republican challengers.
The Senate’s failure to confirm labor lawyer Craig Becker to the National Labor Relations Board was just the latest blow, but the frustrations have been building for months.
“Here’s labor getting thrown under the bus again,” said John Gage, the national president of the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents 600,000 workers. “It’s really frustrating for labor, and a lot of union people are thinking: We put out big time in money and volunteers and support. And it seems like the little things that could have been aren’t being done.”
Full Story Unions bash Democrats, warn of political fallout – James Hohmann – POLITICO.com.
Fear of a ‘Multicultural’ Nation
Last Thursday night former Congressman and 2008 Republican presidential candidate Tom Tancredo made opening-night remarks at the inaugural National Tea Party Convention in Nashville. Tancredo fired verbal shots at Barack Obama, Sen. John McCain and “the cult of multiculturalism,” stating that people who “could not spell the word vote or say it in English” had elected the president. And that Obama’s election reveals the need for us to “have a civics [or] literacy test before people can vote in this country.”
Tancredo is wrong. United States political history reveals our long-standing tradition in this area. In “Before the Mayflower,” Lerone Bennett Jr. recounts how literacy tests were first employed at the federal level as part of the immigration process in 1917. Southern state legislatures adopted literacy tests once African-Americans were granted citizenship rights under the 15th Amendment, as part of the voter registration process. As practiced, the literacy test became notorious for denying suffrage to African-Americans. Adopted by a number of Southern states, the tests were applied in a patently unfair manner and were used, along with the poll tax, to disfranchise many literate Southern blacks while allowing many illiterate Southern whites to vote.
Full Story Marcia Alesan Dawkins: Fear of a ‘Multicultural’ Nation – Truthdig.
Pelosi Makes Her Case: A Majority Is 51 Votes
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is pinning the blame on Republicans for a lack of bipartisanship in Congress and plans to bypass them if they continue to oppose efforts to enact near-universal health care.
“A constitutional majority is 51 votes,” Pelosi said in an interview Tuesday with Roll Call. “If in fact the Republicans are going to say nothing can be done except by 60 percent, then maybe we all should be elected with 60 percent. It isn’t legitimate in terms of passing legislation.”
Pelosi has been wary of publicly giving advice to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) or President Barack Obama, but it’s no secret that House Democrats have been increasingly frustrated at the dysfunction on the opposite side of the building.
Full Story Pelosi Makes Her Case: A Majority Is 51 Votes – Roll Call.
OPS: She’s just now figuring this out?
Rachel Maddow Interviews Scientist Bill Nye On Climate Change
Bill Nye the science guy calls Republicans unpatriotic
MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Interviews Scientist Bill Nye ‘The Science Guy’ Refuting Conservative Claim That The Blizzard In Washington, DC Proves Climate Change Does Not Exist – 02/10/10
Ambassador Discovers Bride Is Bearded, Cross-Eyed Behind Veil
An Arab ambassador in Dubai has had his marriage annulled after discovering that his bride, behind her veil, was bearded and cross-eyed.
The couple had only met a few times during their courtship. Each of these times the woman had worn a niqab, an Islamic veil that covers most of the face.
After the marriage contract was signed in Dubai, the ambassador tried to kiss his new wife. However, as he removed the veil, he was shocked at what he saw.
“He was absolutely horrified,” a guest said. “The bride had a nice personality, but there was a good reason why she was hiding her looks behind a veil.”
Full Story Ambassador Discovers Bride Is Bearded, Cross-Eyed Behind Veil.
Haiti Judge To Free U.S. Missionaries, Reuters Reports
The judge weighing whether 10 U.S. missionaries should go on trial for trying to take a busload of children out of Haiti was expected to issue his decision soon, a defense attorney said Wednesday.
Judge Bernard Saint-Vil finished questioning the Americans and the next step would be to issue a recommendation to the prosecutor, something that could happen Thursday, lawyer Gary Lassade said.
Reuters is reporting, citing a judicial source, that the judge has decided to release the missionaries:
Full Story Haiti Judge To Free U.S. Missionaries, Reuters Reports.
Bernie Sanders to GOP: Spare me the lectures on YOUR deficit
Sanders on the Budget and Deficit
Sen. Sanders discusses his votes on major deficit-causing measures as opposed to the found-religion Senate republicans who broke the bank with two wars, an unpaid-for pharma bill, and two tax cuts for the most wealthy.
Full Story YouTube – Sanders on the Budget and Deficit.
Congressman Grayson: 20% Of Our Accumulated Wealth From 2 Centuries – Gone In 18 Months!
Video: Alan Grayson and Ed Schultz
Black Hole Simulator Uses Real Star Data To Take You Inside The Black Hole (VIDEO)
Jonathan Turley points HuffPost Tech to a new interactive program which shows what scientists believe it would be like to approach a black hole.
The program uses real star data to to show you what you’d see if you wandered into proximity with a black hole — like how the extreme gravity would appear to “shred” background constellations of stars, “spinning them around as though in a giant black washing machine.” More details from NewScientist:
The program’s creators say it could be an excellent tool to familiarise people with the weird ways that black holes warp light. “It’s useful for people to play around with the parameters to study how, for instance, a black hole would distort the constellation Orion,” says Thomas Müller of the University of Stuttgart in Germany.
A black hole forms when a massive star explodes at the end of its life, the core collapsing to a point with huge density and an enormous gravitational pull. Even at a safe distance from the black hole, its gravity can distort the apparent positions of background stars, an effect called gravitational lensing.
WATCH VIDEO
Full Story Black Hole Simulator Uses Real Star Data To Take You Inside The Black Hole (VIDEO).
Dinosaur Revealed In Full Color (PHOTOS):
First Full-Body Rendering
For the first time, scientists have decoded the full-body color patterns of a dinosaur–the 155-million-year-old Anchiornis huxleyi — a new study in the journal Science says.
That may sound familiar, given last week’s announcement of the first scientifically verified dinosaur color scheme.
But the previous research, published in Nature, had found pigments only on a few isolated parts of dinosaurs–and had used less rigorous methods for assigning colors to the fossilized, filament-like “protofeathers” found on some dinosaur specimens, say authors of the new report.
Read Sloan’s full story here.
SEE photos and drawings of the researchers’ findings:
Full Story Dinosaur Revealed In Full Color (PHOTOS): First Full-Body Rendering.
Diane Sawyer Talks About Move Your Money On ABC ‘World News’ (VIDEO)
Diane Sawyer updated ABC World News’ viewers about Move Your Money on Wednesday night, noting that the campaign could lead to $5 billion in New Mexico state funds being transferred from big banks to local banks.
According to Sawyer, one local lawmaker said, “The funds would be safer in institutions that don’t harvest profits from greed and recklessness.”
As Arianna pointed out on the broadcast, “People are really eager to move beyond anger and frustration into action.” The grassroots movement has spurred roughly 3 million people to research how they can take action on MoveYourMoney.info.
WATCH:
Full Story Huff TV: Diane Sawyer Talks About Move Your Money On ABC ‘World News’ (VIDEO).
Credit Card Protester Takes Campaign To MSNBC (VIDEO)
John Clinton Tuttle took his campaign against credit cards to the airwaves on Wednesday.
(video at link)
“What has gone on for the last 30 years has been outrageous and it’s surprising to me there isn’t more outrage,” said Tuttle on MSNBC’s Dylan Ratigan Show. “I just felt somebody’s gotta do something and I’m gonna take a crack at it.”
How’s he doing that? By sticking bank-bashing fliers on ATM machines throughout Seattle, and encouraging people across the country to do the same. He’s started a group called Credit Card Holders United and launched a website: www.creditcardrevolt.com. Don’t miss the YouTube videos.
The Huffington Post first reported Tuttle’s sticker campaign on Monday. His goal is “ethical reform” of the credit card industry — he wants a 15 percent interest rate cap and better disclosure of fees and rates.
WATCH Tuttle on MSNBC:
Full Story Credit Card Protester Takes Campaign To MSNBC (VIDEO).
Elizabeth Warren Warns About Commercial Real Estate Crisis, ‘Downward Spiral’ For Small Businesses, Local Banks
Even as the economy shows signs of recovery, a government watchdog is warning that another financial crisis is coming round the bend — and that the Treasury Department and financial regulators are not prepared to deal with it.
“There is a commercial real estate crisis on the horizon, and there are no easy solutions to the risks commercial real estate may pose to the financial system and the public,” says a report issued Thursday by the Congressional Oversight Panel, the bailout watchdog led by Harvard Law professor and middle-class advocate Elizabeth Warren.
“The Panel is concerned that until Treasury and bank supervisors take coordinated action to address forthrightly and transparently the state of the commercial real estate markets — and the potential impact that a breakdown in those markets could have on local communities, small businesses, and individuals — the financial crisis will not end.”
Scientists discover genes that lead to stuttering
the finding could ease parents’ guilt
Why people stutter has long been a medical mystery, with the condition blamed over the years on emotional problems, overbearing parents and browbeating teachers. Now, for the first time, scientists have found genes that could explain some cases of stuttering.
“In terms of mythbusters, this is really an important step forward,” said Jane Fraser, president of the Stuttering Foundation.
Researchers taking part in a government-funded study discovered mutations in three genes that appear to cause the speech problem in some people. Stuttering tends to run in families, and previous research suggested a genetic connection. But until now, researchers had not been able to pinpoint any culprit genes.
Global support for a tax on banks is growing, says Gordon Brown
Prime minister predicts financial deal by G20 in June
A global bank tax could soon be agreed by the world’s leading economies as a response to last year’s financial crisis, Gordon Brown said today.
“Support is building” for a deal to potentially tax the international financial services sector to the tune of tens of billions of pounds, the prime minister said in an interview in today’s Financial Times.
Brown said he hoped a deal would be hammered out at the G20 summit in Canada in June, glossing over the possibility that he may not be in charge by then.
Full Story Global support for a tax on banks is growing, says Gordon Brown | Politics | guardian.co.uk.
Job growth may not curb unemployment rate: WHouse
A new White House economic forecast showed Thursday the US economy is set to start producing job growth this year at a rate of 95,000 per month, but that the unemployment rate will remain high.
President Barack Obama’s annual economic report to Congress said the economy is on the verge of pulling out of a period of steep job losses stemming from the worst recession in decades.
But the report also said that the unemployment rate may not come down much from the current level of 9.7 percent, and may even rise because of labor market growth and the return of more discouraged workers to the labor force.
Full Story Job growth may not curb unemployment rate: WHouse – Yahoo! News.
Jobless claims fall sharply in latest week
The number of U.S. workers filing new applications for jobless benefits tumbled last week, a government report showed on Thursday, reversing a recent spike that had raised concerns about renewed labor market weakness.
Initial claims for state unemployment benefits dropped by 43,000 to a seasonally adjusted 440,000 for the week ended February 6, down from a revised 483,000 in the prior week, the Labor Department said.
Analysts polled by Reuters had expected 465,000 initial claims. The prior week was initially reported as 480,000, an unexpectedly high reading that was blamed in part on a backlog of claims that piled up over the holiday season.
Full Story Jobless claims fall sharply in latest week | Reuters.
Virginia delegates pass bill banning chip implants as ‘mark of the beast’
Concerns over privacy have aligned with apocalyptic Biblical prophecy in a proposed Virginia law that limits the use of microchip implants on humans because of a lawmaker’s concern that the chips will prove to be the Antichrist’s “mark of the beast.”
On Wednesday, Virginia’s House of Delegates passed a bill that forbids companies from forcing their employees to be implanted with tracking devices, a move likely to be applauded by civil libertarians.
But Virginia state Delegate Mark Cole’s reasons for proposing the law have as much to do with the Book of Revelation as they do with concerns over privacy in the digital age.
Full Story Virginia delegates pass bill banning chip implants as ‘mark of the beast’ | Raw Story.
OPS: Well we are torn. Banning RFID implants is a good thing. Doing it on “mark of the Beats” grounds is psycho. What ever
Adopting a VAT is a Necessity
There is not the political will in Washington to cut spending and raise taxes enough to rein in the massive federal budget deficit, so it is therefore inevitable that America will adopt a value-added tax out of necessity, according to CNNMoney.com’s Shawn Tully.
“The battle over whether America should adopt a VAT will be a bloodbath. The debate over how it will work will be wrenching,” he writes. “Most Americans may well hate the entire concept. Our leaders should have thought of that sooner. The smart money says the VAT is America’s destiny, a destiny that comes closer with each passing budget.”
While the political support for a VAT is few and far between in the political community, it is a very popular idea in academia among economists. Not only would a VAT be a very efficient deficit reduction tool, it would also have the added benefits of encouraging savings while discouraging needless consumption and level the playing field for American manufacturers that have been left behind in the era of free trade.
Full Story Adopting a VAT is a Necessity | Economy In Crisis.
OPS: Don’t know about VAT one way or the other, but I do know there are ways other than VAT (or in addition to):
- Cut our obscene military budget in half saving over $350 Billion per year (we will still be spending 3 times more than the next country on the list – China)
- revoke the Reagan tax cuts.
- and for good measure remove the cap on Social Security.
All problems solved with or without a VAT
Sen. Feingold Lobbies Colleagues for “Buy American” Clause
Sen. Russ Feingold, a long time critic of job-killing free trade policies, in a letter to Sens. Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Byron Dorgan (D-ND) asks that any jobs bill that passes the Senate includes a domestic procurement clause.
An influential U.S. Senator is urging his colleagues to include a version of the “buy American” clause in the upper chamber’s yet-to-be-unveiled jobs bill, claiming the provision would go a long way toward putting unemployed Americans back to work.
Sen. Russ Feingold, a long time critic of job-killing free trade policies, in a letter to Sens. Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Byron Dorgan (D-ND) asks that any jobs bill that passes the Senate includes a domestic procurement clause.
[Made in the USA - Buy ... ] “Robust domestic sourcing requirements will help to ensure that federal resources are being used for their intended purposes – to create jobs here in the United States,” he writes.
Full Story Sen. Feingold Lobbies Colleagues for “Buy American” Clause | Economy In Crisis.
Is Obama Committing Political Suicide? President Calls Obscene Wall St. Bonuses ‘Part of the Free Market System’
Obama says he doesn’t have a problem with bonuses at Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan. He’s going to have a big problem at the polls in November.
After several weeks of strong showings in the media, President Barack Obama appears to have committed political suicide in an interview with Bloomberg focusing on bank bonuses. Just as bad, Obama’s statements praising bailout barons and downplaying their bloated bonuses amount to outright economic insanity.
Here’s what Obama had to say about the $9 million bonus Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein will be paid and the $17 million bonus JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon will receive:
“There are some baseball players who are making more than that and don’t get to the World Series either, so I’m shocked by that as well….I know both those guys; they are very savvy businessmen,” Obama said. “I, like most of the American people, don’t begrudge people success or wealth. That is part of the free-market system.”
CBS Corporation Bans Ad Calling for Marijuana Legalization Over ‘Morals’
The fifteen-second ad, asserting that taxing and regulating the adult use and sale of marijuana would raise ‘billions of dollars in national revenue,’ was rejected out of hand
Representatives from the CBS Corporation and Neutron Media Screen Marketing have rejected a paid advertisement from the NORML Foundation, the educational arm of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), that was intended to appear on the CBS Super Screen billboard in New York City’s Times Square.
The fifteen-second ad, which asserts that taxing and regulating the adult use and sale of marijuana would raise ‘billions of dollars in national revenue, was scheduled to appear on CBS’s 42nd Street digital billboard beginning on Monday, February 1, 2010.
Representatives from Neutron Media approached NORML in mid-January about placing the ad, which was scheduled to air 18 times per day for a two-month period. The NORML Foundation entered into a contractual agreement with Neutron Media to air two separate NORML advertisements, and produced an initial ad exclusively for broadcast on the CBS digital billboard.
Full Story CBS Corporation Bans Ad Calling for Marijuana Legalization Over ‘Morals’ | Drugs | AlterNet.
The End of Influence: What Happens When Other Countries Have America’s Money
America finds itself cash poor, and to a great extent, power follows money. A new book explores the grave consequences this loss will have for America’s place in the world.
Editor’s Note: America’s leading role in the international economy is waning as other world powers find themselves holding onto trillions in U.S. debt. Recently, former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson’s claimed in his new book that Russian officials encouraged the Chinese to ditch their Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bonds in 2008 in an attempt to make the United States bail out the troubled mortgage giants. (Russia that year sold all of the bonds it had in both public firms.) And then a few days later came news that Chinese military officers have proposed that their country sell some U.S. bonds to punish Washington for its latest round of arms sales to Taiwan. Power follows money, and Stephen S. Cohen and J. Bradford DeLong’s new book The End of Influence: What Happens When Other Countries Have the Money (excerpted below) explores what will happen in this new world, where other countries have America’s money.
* * *
For more than a quarter century now the countries of the world have been dreaming the neoliberals’ dream. They have been trying to shrink their states back to their core competencies to promote economic efficiency, global economic integration, and growth, and to slash through red tape, rent-seeking, and simple corruption. They have been actively privatizing state holdings. They have hugely reduced their ownership and their active involvement in “national champion” companies. They have cut back on interventions to affect market outcomes and on regulation to scrutinize and control market players.
But now they are waking up. And the neoliberals’ dream is at an end.
Full Story The End of Influence: What Happens When Other Countries Have America’s Money | World | AlterNet.
Waxman Launches Probe Into Blue Cross’ Massive California Rate Increases
Henry Waxman, the Democratic chairman of the powerful House Committee on Energy and Commerce, launched an investigation Tuesday into massive rate increases Anthem Blue Cross intends to impose on as many as 800,000 California customers beginning March 1.
Waxman (D-California) and Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations Chairman Bart Stupak (D-Michigan) sent a letter Tuesday to Angela F. Braly, chief executive of Blue Cross parent company WellPoint, asking her to voluntarily testify before the subcommittee February 24 and provide “a detailed explanation of the reasons for the premium rate increase proposed by Blue Cross in California.”
Last week, The Los Angeles Times reported that Anthem Blue Cross, California’s largest for-profit insurance provider, planned to hike individual insurance premiums by as much as 39 percent. California state officials and the Obama administration have called on Anthem Blue Cross and WellPoint executives to justify the rate hikes, noting that the parent corporation saw its profits skyrocket last year.
Full Story t r u t h o u t | Waxman Launches Probe Into Blue Cross’ Massive California Rate Increases.
Iran BANS Gmail:
‘Permanent Suspension’ Of Google Email Goes Into Effect
In a move that aims to curb opposition protests, Iran has announced that it will permanently suspend Gmail services.
In place of Google email, users will be able to use a national email service provided by Iran’s telecom agency.
The Wall Street Journal reports:
Iran’s telecommunications agency announced what it described as a permanent suspension of Google Inc.’s email services, saying instead that a national email service for Iranian citizens would soon be rolled out. It wasn’t clear late Wednesday what effect the order had on Google’s email services in Iran.
Google didn’t have an immediate comment about the announcement.
The WSJ also notes that Internet and text messaging services have recently suffered widespread disruptions. ‘Satellite dishes from residential rooftops have been confiscated, as well as mobile phones from some opposition members,’ Mashable adds.
Full Story Iran BANS Gmail: ‘Permanent Suspension’ Of Google Email Goes Into Effect.
Gas Plant Explosion: Workers Allege ‘Substandard’ Safety Conditions
80 Hour Work Weeks At Kleen Energy Systems Plant
The brother of one of five workers killed in an explosion at a power plant under construction says his brother called the project “screwed up,” and a worker on the job the day before the explosion says safety on the job was “substandard.”
The concerns about pressure to get the job done and safety standards at the Kleen Energy Systems plant in Middletown were raised in interviews with The Associated Press on Wednesday, and add to a growing number of questions about work conditions at the site.
Carl Crabb told the AP that his brother, Ron, and other workers evacuated the building after they smelled gas. He said they made it outside the building, but Ron was killed.
Thom HartmannWho Is Really “Anti-Business”?
In the Bloomberg story today, Obama Doesn’t ‘Begrudge’ Bonuses for Blankfein, Dimon, President Obama, spoke up about the huge Wall Street bonuses handed out this year,
“I know both those guys; they are very savvy businessmen,” Obama said in the interview yesterday in the Oval Office with Bloomberg BusinessWeek, which will appear on newsstands Friday. “I, like most of the American people, don’t begrudge people success or wealth. That is part of the free- market system.”
Free-market system? These huge bonuses are for the Wall Street robber-barons that caused the financial collapse, took taxpayer dollars to prop up their fortunes, and get free money from the Federal Reserve with which to “trade” — speculate, gamble, call it what you want. Meanwhile they spend hundreds of millions of dollars “lobbying” (bribery) to fight any kind of financial reforms or consumer protections from enactment, and to make sure that no such think as a “free market” with honest competition never threatens their dominance of business and government.
Full Story Who Is Really “Anti-Business”? | OurFuture.org.
Law Suit against 4 US Presidents & 4 UK Prime Ministers for War Crimes, Crimes Against Humanity & Genocide in Iraq
Law Suit in Spanish Court directed against George H. W. Bush, William J. Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack H. Obama, Margaret Thatcher, John Major, Anthony Blair and Gordon Brown
MADRID/CAIRO: Public inquiries on the decision to wage war on Iraq that are silent about the crimes committed, the victims involved, and provide for no sanction, whatever their outcome, are not enough. Illegal acts should entail consequences: the dead and the harmed deserve justice.
On 6 October 2009, working with and on behalf of Iraqi plaintiffs, we filed a case before Spanish law against four US presidents and four UK prime ministers for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide in Iraq. The case presented spanned 19 years, including not only the wholesale destruction of Iraq witnessed from 2003, but also the sanctions period during which 1.5 million excess Iraqi deaths were recorded.
We brought the case to Spain because its laws of universal jurisdiction are based on principles enshrined in its constitution. All humanity knows the crimes committed in Iraq by those we accused, but no jurisdiction is bringing them to justice. We presented with Iraqi victims a solid case drawing on evidence contained in over 900 documents and that refer to thousands of individual incidents from which a pattern of accumulated harm and intent can be discerned.
The Case Against Corporate Speech
by Ralph Nader and Robert Weissman
Last month, by a vote of 5 to 4, the U.S. Supreme Court gave carte blanche to the world's largest corporations to spend unlimited sums of money to support or oppose candidates for elected office. Big Business domination of Washington and state capitals will now intensify.
The case of Citizens United portends dire consequences for the nation's constitutional premise of “we the people,” not we the corporations. Our constitution, at its origins and through all of its amendments, makes no mention of corporate entities, only human beings and their government.
For 120 years, it was not Congress but the Supreme Court that expanded the definition of “persons” to include for-profit corporations for the purposes of applying constitutional protections. For 30 years, the court has granted First Amendment speech protections to corporations as “artificial persons.”
Full Story The Case Against Corporate Speech | CommonDreams.org.
GOP Senate candidate compares embryonic stem cell research to ‘what the Nazis did to the Jews.’
In March 2009, President Obama issued an executive order that removed President Bush’s limitations on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research, ending the tragic politicization of the issue that existed under the former president. GOP Senate candidate Curtis Coleman (R-AR), who is running against Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR), blasted Obama’s decision in an interview yesterday, comparing embryonic stem cell research to “what the Nazis did to the Jews“:
On March 9, 2009, President Barack Obama issued an executive order, removing barriers to responsible research involving human stem cells.
Coleman, however, has different view on things.
Rolling Stone: No We Can’t
Obama had millions of followers eager to fight for his agenda. But the president muzzled them – and he’s paying the price
“Staff are replaceable. A mass of dedicated volunteers is not.” — David Plouffe
As the polls were closing in Massachusetts on the evening of January 19th, turning Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat over to the Republicans for the first time in half a century, David Plouffe was busy reminiscing about the glory days.
The president’s former campaign manager was nowhere to be found at the sprawling war room of Organizing for America, the formidable grass-roots army he had forged during the 2008 campaign. Instead, Plouffe — who serves as a “supersenior adviser” to OFA and its only direct conduit to Obama — was across town at a forum hosted by the Progressive Book Club, where he pimped his memoir, The Audacity to Win: The Inside Story and Lessons of Barack Obama’s Historic Victory.
It was a bitterly ironic way to mark the end of the president’s first year in office. Together with David Axelrod, Plouffe was the brains of Obama’s campaign, the man who transformed a shoestring organization into a high-tech juggernaut. After the 2008 election, Plouffe had taken OFA, previously known as Obama for America, and moved its entire operation into the Democratic National Committee. There, he argued, the people-powered revolution that Obama had created could serve as a permanent field campaign for the Democratic Party, capable of mobilizing millions of Americans to support the president’s ambitious agenda. Fresh off the campaign, the group boasted 13 million e-mail supporters, 4 million donors, 2.5 million activists connected through the My.BarackObama social network and a phenomenal $18 million left in the bank. Even Republican strategists were staggered. “This would be the greatest political organization ever put together, if it works,” said Ed Rollins, who was to Ronald Reagan what Plouffe is to Obama. “No one’s ever had these kinds of resources.”
Full Story No We Can’t : Rolling Stone.
OPS: BO didn’t muzzle them – he blatantly ignored them
Corporate Welfare Roulette
Jim Hightower -
One thing that governors and mayors absolutely love to do is win a prize in the national game called “Corporate Welfare Roulette.” It’s a simple casino-style game in which politicos put down a big stack of taxpayers’ money on an out-of-state corporation as an “incentive,” hoping that their bet outbids other states and cities trying to lure that same corporation to move to their area and hire some people.
There’s always a celebration when politicos “win” one of these cash-for-jobs gambles. The media gather, politicos prance, the Chamber of Commerce chief grins from ear to ear and the corporate CEO mouths platitudes about free enterprise (while stuffing taxpayer cash in his pockets).
Only six years ago, Winston-Salem, N.C., had its lucky day, having won the spin of the roulette wheel to land a corporate gem. Dell, the computer giant, was headed to town, pledging to erect a state-of-the-art assembly plant and hire up to 1,500 folks.
Full Story Corporate Welfare Roulette by Jim Hightower on Creators.com – A Syndicate Of Talent.
FOX Fraudcasting Isn’t News; It’s a Campaign Headquarters
FOX News has long positioned itself as a place for former GOP leaders like Mike Huckabee, Sarah Palin, and Rudy Giuliani to contribute to the national GOP talking point express long after their ephemeral periods of success as politicians passed them by. Emboldened by the network’s success in aggressively promoting the campaigns of Scott Brown and the tea partiers, FOX has done little to hide its attempt to promote GOP candidates for the upcoming elections, as well.
Due to Gregg Jarrett’s position as part of the programming FOX itself claims is the “news” section, viewers should expect Jarrett to give a bias-free presentation of stories. But Jarrett highlighted an attempt by GOP Senator Jim DeMint to raise cash in the form of a “moneybomb” for Marco Rubio, a candidate attempting to become a fellow conservative senator, might have had a chance to qualify as straight news reporting. Then Jarrett proceeded to bring in Senator DeMint to discuss said “moneybomb” while referring to him as a “conservative kingmaker” and allowing DeMint to shill for his website to contribute to Rubio’s campaign, though, making Jarrett’s lack of objectivity apparent. Coupled with his penchant for reporting unsubstantiated stories as facts, Jarrett’s journalistic credibility decreases with his every politically motivated broadcast.
The more appallingly salient campaigning from a FOX contributor came from Angela McGlowan. McGlowan began her career with FOX in 1999, but not until May 2008 did she come onto the network to pitch for herself as a candidate for a seat in Congress. Speaking of the eventual race in Mississippi, McGlowan told Bob Beckel on the air, “That’s my district, and I’m going there soon to beat your Democrat colleague, honey. I’m going soon. 2010 is my year. Announcing it right here.” For a little under a year, McGlowan has since used her position at the network to court Mississippi voters and bolster her conservative credentials despite so brazenly campaigning as a candidate. She reportedly waited until her FOX contract expired before making her candidacy official, suggesting a recognition of a conflict of interest for an active political candidate contributing as an “analyst,” but her unambiguous proclamation to Beckel made her intentions clear last year
Full Story FOX Fraudcasting Isn’t News; It’s a Campaign Headquarters | BuzzFlash.org.
Tea Bag Movement: Harbinger of Fascism?
Anybody inclined to laugh off the current Tea Bag Movement as just a passing fancy involving a few isolated kooks had better guess again.
Analyze what was said at the group’s recent convention where Sarah Palin regaled her audience along with the series of preceding rallies cheer led by Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and others and a disturbing trend surfaces.
These Teabaggers hold some discomforting points in common with the Brownshirts of Germany’s pre-Third Reich period. Many from the progressive movement in Germany during that period laughed off the appearance of “a funny looking little man with a mustache” along with those “kooky guys in the Brownshirts” as one conclusion was clear to them.
This strange breed of crude malcontents could not hope to prevail in a land of rich culture such as Germany. This was, after all, the nation of Goethe, Bismarck, Bach, Beethoven, Schiller. Yes, Wagner held some of those same bigoted views of Hitler and the Brownshirts, but that was seen by many as a tragic aberration of a great composer and he had a genius that these presumed misfits did not.
Full Story Tea Bag Movement: Harbinger of Fascism? | Antemedius.
Thom Hartmann Explains Globalization
Segment from the Thom Hartmann program where he explains: What is Globalization. – Video
The Case FOR Homeopathic Medicine
The Historical and Scientific Evidence -
A lot of people today are confused about what homeopathy is (and isn’t), and this situation is not helped by the skeptics of homeopathy who go to incredible extents to exaggerate and misconstrue what homeopathic medicine is and who commonly provide misinformation about it. It is more than a tad ironic that these “skeptics” who hold themselves out as “defenders of medical science” have exhibited an embarrassingly poor scientific attitude when evaluating what homeopathy is and what the scientific evidence does and doesn’t say about it.
Because many skeptics of homeopathy today indulge in spreading misinformation about homeopathy, this blog is addressed at setting the record straight and is packed with references to confirm the veracity of what is being asserted here.
First, to clarify, advocating for or using homeopathic medicines does not preclude appreciation for or use of selective conventional medical treatment. Advocates of homeopathy simply honor the Hippocratic tradition of “First, do no harm” and therefore seek to explore and utilize safer methods before resorting to more risky treatments. This perspective has historical and international roots, and it is thus no surprise that American health care which has been so resistant to homeopathic and natural therapies in its mainstream institutions is presently ranked 37th in the world in the performance of its health care system.(1) In comparison, the number one ranked country in the world is France, a country in which around 40 percent of the population uses homeopathic medicines and around 30 percent of its family physicians prescribe them (2).
Full Story Dana Ullman: The Case FOR Homeopathic Medicine: The Historical and Scientific Evidence.
Chris Matthews Rips Palin: ‘Frightening,’ ‘Empty Vessel,’ ‘Nothing Going On Mentally’ (VIDEO)
“Hardball” host Christ Matthews harshly criticized Sarah Palin for her comments that President Obama could increase his re-election chances by bombing Iran. Matthews called this line of thinking “frightening”:
She’s frightening. Mark, that is frightening stuff. Frightening. First of all, president don’t declare war. Anybody knows that in high school. Congress has to declare war. To declare war on Iran, I don’t think the most far right, Middle East hawk will talk about declaring war on Iran, a country with 70-some million people, with an advanced air force…. Why does she talk like that? Is Michael Ledeen, a real hawk, writing this stuff for her? I don’t know anyone as far right as that, besides him.
Matthews went on to say that Palin “has nothing going on mentally… I’d be afraid of her because I think she’s an empty vessel ready to be filled by ideology she doesn’t understand. And that is really scary.”
TIME’s Mark Halperin noted that she’s “obviously flailing” during her interview with Fox News’ Chris Wallace and that “she’s lucky [her answers] are not worse.”
WATCH:
Full Story Chris Matthews Rips Palin: ‘Frightening,’ ‘Empty Vessel,’ ‘Nothing Going On Mentally’ (VIDEO).
Study Links Children’s Sweet Tooth to Alcoholism, Depression
A new study finds that children are more likely to have an intense sweet tooth if they have a family history of alcoholism, or if they’ve suffered from depression themselves.
The research was conducted by scientists at the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia, and published online in the journal Addiction.
Sugary foods and alcohol trigger many of the same reward circuits in the brain, so scientists in this case decided to test the sweet tooth of children with a family history of alcohol dependence. They also hypothesized that children who suffer from depression might be more likely to crave sweets, because they make them feel better.
Full Story Study Links Children’s Sweet Tooth to Alcoholism, Depression – AOL News.
Google To Build Ultra-Fast Broadband Network
Google Inc. plans to build a handful of experimental, ultra-fast Internet networks around the country to ensure that tomorrow’s systems can keep up with online video and other advanced applications that the search company will want to deliver.
The Google project, announced Wednesday, is also intended to provide a platform for outside developers to create and try out all sorts of cutting-edge applications that will require far more bandwidth than today’s networks offer.
The company said its fiber-optic broadband networks will deliver speeds of 1 gigabit per second to as many as 500,000 Americans. The systems will be many times faster than the existing DSL, cable and fiber-optic networks that connect most U.S. consumers to the Internet today at speeds typically ranging from 3 megabits to 20 megabits per second.
Full Story Google To Build Ultra-Fast Broadband Network.
Carl Levin: Filibuster Could Fall ‘After Massive Conflict On The Floor’
Senate Republicans made a persuasive case for abolishing or reforming the filibuster on Tuesday night when they blocked a routine nomination to the National Labor Relations Board that had been held up since April.
The GOP was joined by Democrats Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas in defeating President Obama’s nominee, Craig Becker, by a vote of 52-33. The 52 votes were in favor of Becker, while the 33 were in opposition. In today’s Senate, that’s enough to block a nominee.
“I’m in my thirty-sixth year. I’ve never seen anything like it,” said Judiciary Committee Chairman Pat Leahy (D-Vt.), noting that no previous Republican Senate leader would have allowed his party to filibuster such a routine nomination.
Leahy said that the overuse of filibusters by the GOP was leading Democrats to consider ways to modify it.
Full Story Carl Levin: Filibuster Could Fall ‘After Massive Conflict On The Floor’.
Clueless
Paul Krugman -
I’m with Simon Johnson here: how is it possible, at this late date, for Obama to be this clueless?
The lead story on Bloomberg right now contains excerpts from an interview with Business Week which tells us:
President Barack Obama said he doesn’t “begrudge” the $17 million bonus awarded to JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon or the $9 million issued to Goldman Sachs Group Inc. CEO Lloyd Blankfein, noting that some athletes take home more pay.
The president, speaking in an interview, said in response to a question that while $17 million is “an extraordinary amount of money” for Main Street, “there are some baseball players who are making more than that and don’t get to the World Series either, so I’m shocked by that as well.”
Full Story Clueless – Paul Krugman Blog – NYTimes.com.
New Mexico House Votes 65-0 To Move State’s Money To Credit Unions, Community Banks
House Says ‘No More’ To Big Banks In 65-0 Vote, Could Move $2-5 Billion
New Mexico’s House of Representatives voted Monday to pass a bill that allows the state to move $2 billion – $5 billion of state funds to credit unions and small banks.
The municipal funds bill was approved 65-0 (roll call – PDF), and is subject to a vote by New Mexico’s Senate. Governor Bill Richardson told the bill’s sponsor that he supports the legislation.
Credit Union Times, spoke to one banker who believes that the bill got a boost from Huffington Post’s Move Your Money campaign:
The altered view of New Mexico lawmakers in favoring local control of state funds, officials said, follows national mention of the New Mexico effort in the “Move Your Money” campaign of New York pundit Arianna Huffington in her online Huffington Post columns.
Full Story New Mexico House Votes 65-0 To Move State’s Money To Credit Unions, Community Banks.
OPS: Good for NM !
The Republican War on American Consumers
The Consumer Financial Protection Agency apparently lives again in the financial reform package Sen. Chris Dodd is drafting. A few weeks ago, the very existence of that agency was in doubt, because of Republican obstructionism. Today HuffPo is reporting that it’s back, although likely not as a completely independent agency.
Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.), who’s shepherding financial reform legislation through the chamber, will release the latest version of his bill later this month, perhaps as early as this week. Sources say he’ll likely call for an agency that will have:
* The authority to write and enforce rules governing mortgages, credit cards and consumer loans;
* Its own budget, one not subject to the Congressional appropriations process so it can’t be harmed by lawmakers bent on taking away its power;
Full Story Daily Kos: State of the Nation.
‘Cutting’ Elevated From Symptom To Mental Disorder
Cutting has been around for centuries and is best understood as a form of self-help, however misguided. People who cut, or intentionally injure their skin, often say it helps them relieve tension.
Up until now, cutting has been categorized as a symptom of borderline personality disorder — an illness marked by unstable moods, impulsive actions and chaotic relationships. The problem is, the majority of those who cut don't have borderline personality disorder. And under the current diagnostic guidelines, sometimes a doctor who first sees the patient, say in the ER, might confuse cutting with a suicide attempt.
But cutting is rarely related to suicide, and researchers haven’t been able to trace it to any one disorder. For instance, it can show up among those who have eating disorders, substance abuse problems, anxiety or depression, says Dr. David Shaffer, chief of the division of child and adolescent psychiatry at Columbia University Medical Center.
Full Story ‘Cutting’ Elevated From Symptom To Mental Disorder : NPR.
Earthquake rattles northern Illinois
An early morning earthquake rattled northern Illinois on Wednesday, shaking an area about 50 miles west-northwest of downtown Chicago, the U.S. Geological Survey said.
The quake was originally reported as having a magnitude of 4.3, but the USGS later downgraded it to magnitude 3.8. It hit just before 4 a.m. CT (5 a.m. ET), with an epicenter about 3 miles underground. The USGS pinpointed the quake between the towns of Virgil and Sycamore, Illinois.
Millions of people felt the temblor, with reports coming in to the USGS from Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Iowa and Wisconsin, as well as Illinois. Members of the public sent more than 10,000 reports of the earthquake to the USGS within the first few hours after it struck.
Full Story Earthquake rattles northern Illinois – CNN.com.
New WaPo Poll: Two-Thirds of Voters Say Pass Comprehensive Reform
Obama and Congressional leaders will head into the healthcare summit (which Cantor has agreed to) with some good polling backing them up for finishing the job, even without Republicans.
Americans spread the blame when it comes to the lack of cooperation in Washington, and, in a new Washington Post-ABC News poll, most want the two sides to keep working to pass comprehensive health-care reform.
Nearly six in 10 in the new poll say the Republicans aren’t doing enough to forge compromise with President Obama on important issues; more than four in 10 see Obama as doing too little to get GOP support. Among independents, 56 percent see the Republicans in Congress as too unbending and 50 percent say so of the president; 28 percent of independents say both sides are doing too little to find agreement.
WaPo can call that “spreading the blame,” but with 58 percent saying the Republicans are resisting compromise, the summit can provide much needed clarity on where the hold up remains. At the same time, healthcare reform can’t fail–this summit can’t be used as an attempt to shift the blame to the Republicans and set up a failure.
Too many people are counting on reform.
Full Story Daily Kos: New WaPo Poll: Two-Thirds of Voters Say Pass Comprehensive Reform.
Calling GOP Obstruction ‘Disgraceful,’ Reid Urges Obama To Recess Appoint ‘All’ Held-Up Nominees
Yesterday, the Senate rejected President Obama’s nominee to the National Labor Relations Board, Craig Becker, even though he received a majority 52 votes. Because Becker’s nomination was subject to a filibuster by Republicans and a few Democrats, Obama was thwarted in his effort to staff the U.S. government with his nominee. Becker also was the target of intense lobbying by business groups.
Senate Republicans have used parliamentary tactics to hold up the confirmation of critical administration nominees to an unprecedented degree. Yesterday, Obama warned that “if the Senate does not act,” he would be forced to make recess appointments to fill critical jobs, because “we cannot allow politics to stand in the way of a well-functioning government.”
Calling the holds “unfair,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) took to the Senate floor last night to give a withering attack of Republican obstructionism and urge Obama to recess appoint “all” of his blocked nominees:
Republicans Demand Brennan Resign For Calling Out GOP Politicization Of Terrorism
Almost immediately after Umar Farouk Abdulmuttalab failed to detonate a bomb on an airplane on Christmas Day, conservatives rushed to politicize the attempted terrorist attack. “People have got to start connecting the dots here and maybe this is the thing that will connect the dots for the Obama administration,” Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-MI) said before he’d even been briefed on the incident. Karl Rove and Rep. Peter King (R-NY) criticized President Obama for issuing a statement on the failed bombing 72 hours after the event, even though President Bush waited longer to comment on “shoe-bomber” Richard Reid’s failed attempt to bring down an airliner in Dec. 2001.
The drumbeat of political criticism from conservatives since then has been unrelenting, especially focusing on the fact that Abdumuttalab was read his Miranda rights after he awoke from surgery. Recently, the Obama administration has begun pushing back at the GOP’s political onslaught. On Meet The Press this past Sunday, Deputy National Security Adviser John Brennan, a 25-year veteran of the CIA, pointed out that he had kept key Congressional Republicans informed of Abdulmuttalab detainment by the FBI
Full Story Think Progress » Republicans Demand Brennan Resign For Calling Out GOP Politicization Of Terrorism.
Home Prices Likely to Double Dip in 2010,
Overall U.S. home values declined again in the fourth quarter of 2009, and fell 5% year-over-year and 0.5% quarter-over-quarter, according to the Zillow Home Value Index. The S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Index showed mixed data in its January report on house prices ending Nov. 29, but it, too, showed house price declines in November in many markets.
While some markets do appear to be finding their bottoms, and some even saw increases in price, the fourth quarter showed values slipping again in many parts of the country. Of the 143 markets tracked by Zillow, 29 showed five consecutive month-over-month increases in home values in 2009 before beginning to flatten or fall again in the second part of the year, among them Boston, Atlanta and San Diego.
But there is some good news: A different set of 29 markets saw prices increases during each month of the fourth quarter. Those rising markets include Los Angeles and New York. You can see how your market did with a new interactive market report available at Zillow.com
Full Story Home Prices Likely to Double Dip in 2010, Zillow and S&P/Case-Shiller Predict – DailyFinance.
Obama Won’t Drop Potential Use Of Reconciliation On Health Care
President Obama wants to keep the option of using reconciliation to pass health care reform despite calls from Republican lawmakers that he agree to drop the parliamentary maneuver as a “good faith” gesture” before their bipartisan health care summit.
White House Spokesman Robert Gibbs said on Tuesday that Republicans coming to the West Wing for the much-anticipated February 25 meeting would be better off arriving “without preconditions.” Asked whether Obama would commit to not using reconciliation — which would allow aspects of health care legislation to be considered in the Senate by an up-or-down vote — Gibbs replied:
The president is not going to eliminate things based on preconditions. And if that’s one of their preconditions, the president doesn’t agree to limiting the way we are going to discuss this.
Full Story Obama Won’t Drop Potential Use Of Reconciliation On Health Care.
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Republicans Don't Care about Voter Fraud....owa Republicans are trying to dismiss claims that the vote count in Tuesday's Iowa Caucus was wrong. An Iowa voter told a local TV station yesterday that he noticed a 20-vote discrepancy in the count - and that Rick Santorum was the real winner of the Caucuses. Republican Party officials, though, are sticking to their first count - showing Mitt Romney as the winner by 8-votes - and there will be no recount.The Republican Party has launched a war on voters around the nation this year with strict new laws that will disenfranchise over 5 million Americans. They claim these laws are necessary to combat so-called voter fraud. Yet in Iowa - where there are no such laws - and where a very, very close and questionable election was just held - Republicans don't seem to care at all about getting it right.Clearly - the war on voters isn't about making sure the people's voices are represented accurately - it's about making sure poor people, young people, and minorities who tend to vote for Democrats - can't vote at all.-Thom(Who do you think won? Tell us here.) -
LEGALIZE Democracy
" We the corporations" On January 21, 2010, with its ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the Supreme Court ruled that corporations are persons, entitled by the U.S. Constitution to buy elections and run our government. __________
MOVE to AMEND
a project of the CAMPAIGN TO LEGALIZE Democracy
Help end Corporate personhood
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The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. 
